Exile's Return

Kynyr Maguire stood beneath a patch of oak trees in a secluded bend of the Bonnie Draw River that ran through Redhand Manor's extensive property. Last night's autumn gale had stripped the leaves from the trees and reduced the forest to patterns of skeletal bleakness, except for the pines and evergreens scattered through it.

The rocky soil showed its teeth along the river in a sharp slope to the far side with piles of wind and rain smoothed boulders, worn flat and jutting out in layers. The near side, although less steep in its descent to the deep waters, had almost as many boulders and rocks as the far side. Stones, many of them as jagged as a dragon's tooth, broke the surface of the creek, and water eddied around them in foamy whirls.

He spied Searlait Redhand, youngest sister to Claw Redhand, sitting in her favorite spot, a large smooth boulder that thrust out over the water from a root-tangled shelf of dirt and rock.

The young prince's golden ginger hair, so thick it bloused around his face no matter how tightly he tied it back, hung at his shoulders in a clubbed knot. A narrow fringe of close-cropped golden beard framed his face from sideburns to an inch from his chin. His chiseled features, lantern jaw, pronounced cheekbones with dramatic hollows beneath them, and cleft chin made him irresistible to the lycan bitches, which gave him great discomfort now that he had found and married the love of his life, Kady.

Kynyr climbed to the shelf and settled beside her. "I wish you'd stop coming here alone."

"I've been coming here since I was a cub." Searlait cast twigs and soggy autumn leaves into the water, watching them swirl around in frothy riffles, a distracted air clinging to her. A willow tree sheltered the rock, pressed along the right side, its roots humped across the edge and rear like a confusion of dried brown serpents. The long skirt of Searlait's blue dress spread out around her thin hips and legs, revealing her ankles and the lower part of her age-withered calves. An inch of cleavage showed above her tightly laced bodice, just enough to tease in the current de rigueur of fashion among the upper classes. Her only concession to the chill morning was a fringed kazamerie shawl that matched her dress.

The majority of her dresses were blue and Kynyr wondered if she had decorated the Blue Room on the second floor of the manor.

"It's not safe, Aunt Searlait."

"So it's 'Aunt' Searlait now?"

Her spiky tone raked Kynyr's nerves like claws. "You always were … you just didn't know it."

"They're calling you the Lost Prince." Searlait threw another twig in the water. "You swore to me that you had not come to claim your heritage."

"It was forced on me."

"Forced?" Searlait gave him an arch look.

"Sort of." Kynyr exhaled loudly, turned his hand to show the signet ring that had been his grandfather's. "Claw begged me to wear it."

"Begged?" Searlait snorted. "My brother has never begged in his life."

"I know. That's why I gave in. He said he wanted to see it on my hand before he died."

Searlait studied Kynyr's face and then laughed. "My brother can be a manipulative old sod when it serves his purposes."

Kynyr gave her a startled look, which made her laugh again.

"Just because I don't use the words, Kynyr … does not mean I don't know them."

"Then you're not angry with me?"

"You? No. Not really."

Kynyr noticed a sudden tear run down Searlait's cheek. "Is something wrong?"

"He's sent for Brock. Why does he need Brock when he has you?"

It seemed to Kynyr that most of the family had ambivalent reactions to the possible return of Claw's brother, who had been banished by their father for unforgivable transgressions that no one wanted to tell him about.

"I told him I did not want to be heir. He has my brother Bran and Merissa's twins. Why force something on me I don't want?"

"So he's hedging his bets."

"I guess." Until Kynyr's relationship to their family had been revealed, the members of the Redhand family had all been elderly except for Claw's daughter Merissa who was a year younger than Kynyr. Merissa had been a change-of-life child, born at the end of Aisha's middle years.

Searlait nodded absently and tossed more twigs and leaves into the water. "You told Lord Brodrig MacLachlan that you were the prince and heir. It's all over Wolffgard."

"Myn would have died if I hadn't." Kynyr studied the fading traces of Searlait's vanished beauty that had lingered into her old age. She resembled her niece Merissa, with a wealth of ginger hair that had begun to fade toward white with age and a single ivory streak at her left temple. He imagined that Merissa would look like Searlait when she grew old. "Brodrig MacLachlan and Fergus MacFie were too inexperienced. I had to take command … and once they saw the ring…"

"MacLachlan? Is that where my brother sent you?"

"Hell's Widow. MacLachlan was there when I arrived, but they couldn't find that nest of deatheaters. I took Gram along and she located them. She scryed."

"Cahira?"

"Yeah. I made her unhappy when I claimed my heritage so I could plan and lead the attack. I killed their leader. We got all of them." Kynyr averted his eyes, thinking hard. "I got my myn home with three wounded, none killed."

"I see." A bittersweet smile teased the corners of her lips and another tear squeezed from her eyes. "Gods, you remind me of Tarrant. Seeing the portraits again after all these years. The resemblance is uncanny. You act like him too. If he weren't buried out back, I would swear you were him."

Kynyr could not think of what to say to that, Tarrant had been Kynyr's grandfather and Claw's eldest son, so he changed the subject. "I can't always be here in the mornings to walk back with you."

"I'm not asking you to be."

"I don't want you out here alone. Promise me you'll either stop doing this or you'll bring someone with you?"

Searlait patted his shoulder. "Kynyr, I'll think about it. How's Kady?"

"I haven't had a night home since I got back from Hell's Widow. Caimbeul's murder…"

"A nasty business. Have you seen her at all?"

"I stole a couple of hours with her yesterday."

"You tell my brother that he needs to let you spend more nights at home."

"I will."

Kynyr walked her home. He had grown up in a large, loving family as the only son, smothered at times by his six sisters, on a large prosperous farm in northeastern Red Wolf. His nearest neighbor growing up, Finn MacIver had had the misfortune to be an only boy with eight sisters. They had called their combined sisters the Dreaded Horde, sometimes fondly and other times with a full measure of exasperation.

"How is Cahira handling the fact that you've finally acknowledged your connection to my family?"

"She's stopped yelling at me."

Searlait twirled a twig around in her fingers as they walked along the quiet path back to the Redhand Manor. "Is she still convinced there's a curse?"

"Yes. She beat it into us that if we told anyone that our father was Tarrant's bastard son, the curse would kill us."

"What about you? Do you still believe in the curse?"

"Sort of." Kynyr pondered for a bit, wondering if Searlait would think him crazy if he told about what happened in Hell's Widow, and then decided to take a chance on it. "When I killed Heironim Traxton, all the souls he had eaten came pouring out of him."

"I thought that only happened when you killed them with their own hellblades, the ones they use to take the souls in the first place. That's what Isranon told me."

"That's what I thought." He patted the hilt of Ladyfaith jutting above his shoulder. "A yuwenghau gave me this sword, but never told me more than its name. I think the sword did it."

"Interesting. Which one gave it to you?"

Kynyr grinned his reluctance to say more on that. "It isn't the sword I want to talk about. You see, one of the ghosts I freed told me that it isn't a curse. It's a prophecy."

"Oh, right. So now you're a legend in your own time."

He blushed to the roots of his hair and made a fending off gesture. "Didn't say that."

Searlait paused and looked at him with a curious turn. "What does it say?"

"I don't know. Cahira only remembers a few garbled words of it."

"So we still don't know anything."

"Someone knows."

"Who?"

"The ghost called him the 'boy with the book.' She didn't say his name."

"I see. Do you still dislike Malthus?"

Kynyr sensed something in Searlait's tone that made him cautious. Months ago, Searlait had taken Kynyr to task over Malthus and told him to stop trying to interfere with her niece Merissa's love life. Merissa had proceeded to inform him that if he did not stop harassing Malthus, she would never speak to Kynyr again. Fully aware of just how stubborn the Redhand family could be, Kynyr had stopped persecuting Malthus whenever there was any danger that he might get caught at it.

"Why are you asking me?"

Searlait averted her eyes, watching her feet as she walked. "I'm starting to dislike him."

That confession surprised him. Searlait had been one of Merissa's most vocal supporters in her desire to marry Malthus. "There isn't much that I can do about it. As Caimbeul liked to tell me … shoved in my face really … just because the Redhands rule does not make them above the law."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"I guess it doesn't. Yes, if anything, I dislike Malthus more now than ever."

GODWAR CENTRAL

Exile's Return