with our new brother”—he gave a meaningful glance at Varij—“I believe they won’t stand so high for much longer. Once it’s gone we’ll have a hundred miles of border country to raid at will.”
Now I watched him tug the ties on his quiver tight, regarding me with a faint but discernible resentment. As the years went by the certainty with which he pursued his plans increased, but so did his dislike of anything that might disrupt them. “So, what did you see?”
I gave a small shake of my head, which did little to dispel the clouds. It is always this way with unbidden True Dreams. The unasked-for gifts of Heaven are often vague but always troubling.
“A man,” I said. “Tall, like you. Strong like you. I saw him fight, and he fights well.”
“You’ve watched me kill men who stood a head higher than I,” he responded with an amused snort. “Stronger too. As for fighting well, who can fight as well as a god?” His voice held a mirthful note, but not, I noted, as mirthful as when he first began to describe himself as such.
“It wasn’t just that.” I closed my eyes, trying to recall the details of the vision. It had been partially formless, the figures ghostlike, insubstantial, except for the tall man. “He was on a boat, killing men,” I said. “He saved a woman, children . . .”
“How noble.” Kehlbrand’s hand slapped against the pommel of his saddle as he prepared to haul himself onto the back of his horse. “I’ll be sure to compliment him if I ever meet him . . .”
“I heard his name,” I cut in. “It is also your name. The name I found for you.”
Kehlbrand stopped, his foot lowering slowly from the stirrup as he turned back to me. The moment I began my journey away from the Stahlhast had come when Eresa’s besmirched and puzzled face brought a smile to my lips, but this was when I took the first true step away from my brother. It was a backward step, in fact, provoked by the depth of malice made stark in the suddenly ugly mask of his face. It was a face thousands would behold in years to come, some with love, more with terror. This was my first glimpse of the Darkblade and it brought tears to my eyes, for I hadn’t known until this moment that my brother could ever be rendered so ugly.
“And where do I find him?” he asked, voice mirthless now and soft with lethal certainty. “This thief of names.”
It took me the space of several hard, chest-aching heartbeats to answer, so transfixed was I by his expression. “He bore the name long before you did,” I said, my voice shot through with a tremor I detested almost as much as his transformed face. He had never made me afraid before, and I found I had to cough before speaking on. “And you will not find him. He will find you.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The carriage heaved beneath him before taking on a sustained tremble as its wheels shifted from the smooth brick surface of the road to something rougher. Cobbles perhaps? Vaelin wondered. If so, it might mean they had come to a city and this journey could finally be at an end.
He was alone in the carriage save for a small mouse that had somehow contrived to gain entry during one of the nightly rest stops. Vaelin would feed it crumbs from the bread shoved through the slat in the base of the carriage door once a day, along with a small amount of water in a wooden bowl. The mouse never came close enough for him to reach, its small but apparently keen mind having calculated the length of his chains. They were heavy and short, fixed to an iron bracket in the floor. On the first day of the journey, he had tested his strength against the bracket, promptly concluding it would take the strength of ten men to have any hope of dislodging it.
This mobile prison featured wooden walls of thick timber. Like the door they had no window, and he could discern only faint glimmers of daylight through the tiny gaps in the planking. He kept track of the days by counting the meals, now amounting to fifteen. In that time he had seen no other living soul nor heard another voice beyond the muffled conversations of the guards and drovers.
His years in an Alpiran dungeon had habituated him to