Realm Breaker Read online

  Map

  Dedication

  To those who seek and never find

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Map

  Dedication

  Prologue: The Song Unsung

  1. The Smuggler’s Daughter

  2. A Voice Like Winter

  3. Between the Dragon and the Unicorn

  4. Immortal Coward

  5. The Storm’s Bargain

  6. In the Blood

  7. The Queen of Lions

  8. Under the Blue Star

  9. Children of Crossing

  10. Jydi Charms

  11. The Assassin’s Burden

  12. The Last Card Played

  13. The Noose

  14. The Green Knight

  15. The Path Chosen

  16. Good Business

  17. For the Realm

  18. To Die Trying

  19. So the Bone Tells

  20. Bleed for Me

  21. Eyes Opened

  22. Worth the Pain

  23. Below the Priest’s Hand

  24. The Wolf

  25. Tears of a Goddess

  26. Pain and Fear

  27. Serpent

  28. The Highest Bidder

  29. The Bear of Kovalinn

  30. Against the Gods

  31. Blood and Blade

  32. The Orphans

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Victoria Aveyard

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  The Song Unsung

  No mortal alive had ever seen a Spindle.

  Echoes of them lingered, in places remembered or forgotten, in people touched by magic, in creatures descendant of other realms. But no Spindle had burned in an age. The last of them was a thousand years gone. The passages closed, the gates locked. The age of crossing ended.

  Allward was a realm alone.

  And it must stay that way, Andry Trelland thought. For the good of us all.

  The squire attended to his lord’s armor, ignoring the first drop of rainfall as he tightened the belts and buckles over Sir Grandel Tyr’s broad frame. Andry’s honey-brown fingers worked quickly over familiar leather and golden steel. The knight’s armor gleamed, freshly polished, the pauldrons and breastplate worked into the likeness of the Kingdom of Galland’s roaring lion.

  Dawn broke weakly, fighting through the spring rain clouds bunched up against the foothills and looming mountains. It felt like standing in a room with a low ceiling. Andry inhaled, tasting the damp air. The world pressed down around him.

  Their horses whickered nearby, thirteen tied in a line, huddling together for warmth. Andry wished he could join them.

  The Companions of the Realm waited in the clearing below the hill. Some guarded the pilgrim road leading into the trees, waiting for their enemy. Some patrolled the temple overgrown with ivy, its white columns like the bones of a long-abandoned skeleton. The carvings on it were familiar, Elder-written—the same letters Andry had seen in mythic Iona. The structure was ancient, older than the old Cor Empire, built for a Spindle long dead. Its bell tower stood silent. Where the Spindle inside once led, Andry did not know. No one had ever said, and he’d never worked up the courage to ask. Still, he could feel it like a scent near to fading, a ripple of power lost.

  Sir Grandel curled his lip. The pale-skinned knight scowled at the sky, the temple, and the warriors below.

  “Can’t believe I’m awake at this Spindlerotten hour,” he spat, his voice unchecked.

  Andry ignored his mentor’s complaint.

  “All finished, my lord,” he said, stepping back. He looked over the knight, checking Sir Grandel for flaw or imperfection, anything that might hinder him in the battle to come.

  The knight puffed out his chest. Three years Andry squired for Sir Grandel. He was an arrogant man, but Andry knew no swordsmen of his skill who did not also err to pride. It was to be expected. And all was in order, from the toes of Sir Grandel’s steel boots to the knuckles of his gauntlets. The veteran knight was a picture of strength and bravery, the pinnacle of the Queen’s Lionguard. A fearsome and stirring sight to behold.

  As always, Andry imagined himself in that same armor, the lion across his chest, the green cloak over his shoulders, his father’s shield on his arm instead of fixed to the wall in his mother’s parlor. Unused for years, covered in dust, nearly broken in two.

  The squire ducked his head, chasing away the thought. “You’re ready.”

  “Certainly feel ready,” the knight replied, resting gloved fingers on the hilt of his sword. “After too many days dragging my aging bones across the Ward. How long has it been since we left home, Trelland?”

  Andry answered without thought. “Two months, sir. Near two months to the day.”

  He knew the count like he knew his fingers. Every day on the road was an adventure, through valleys and mountains and wilderness, to kingdoms he’d never dreamed to see. Alongside warriors of great renown and impossible skill, heroes all. Their quest was near to ending, the battle looming close. Andry did not fear a fight, but what came after.

  The easy, quick road home. The training yard, the palace, my mother sick and my father dead. With nothing to look forward to but four more years of following Sir Grandel from throne room to wine cellar.

  Sir Grandel took no notice of his squire’s discomfort, prattling on. “Spindles torn open and lost realms returned. Hogwash, all of it. Chasing a children’s story,” the knight grumbled, testing his gloves. “Chasing ghosts for ghosts.”

  He shook his head at his battle-ready Companions, their garb and coloring as varied as jewels in a crown. His watery blue eyes lingered on a few.

  Andry followed Sir Grandel’s gaze. He landed on the figures with tight, rigid posture, their armor strange, their ways even stranger. Though they were many days on the road with the Companions of the Realm, some felt anything but familiar. Inscrutable as a wizard’s riddle, distant and unbelievable as a myth. And standing right in front of me.

  “They aren’t ghosts,” Andry murmured, watching as one stalked the temple’s perimeter. His hair was blond and braided, his form broad and monstrously tall. The greatsword at his hip would take two men to wield. Dom, Andry thought, though his true name was far longer and more difficult to pronounce. A prince of Iona. “The Elders are flesh and blood as much as we are.”

  They were easy to distinguish from the other warriors. The Elders were beings apart, six of them in all, each one like a beautiful statue, differing in appearance but somehow all alike. As distant from mortal kind as birds from fish. Children of different stars, the legends said. Beings of another realm, the few histories told.

  Immortals, Andry knew.

  Ageless, beautiful, undying, distant—and lost. Even now, he could not help but stare.

  They called themselves the Vedera, but to the rest of the Ward, to the mortals who only knew them from ancient history and fading stories, they were the Elders. Their kind were few, but to Andry Trelland’s eye, they were still mighty.

  The Elder prince looked up as he rounded the temple, meeting the squire’s gaze with fierce emerald eyes. Andry dropped his face quickly, knowing the immortal could hear their conversation. His cheeks flushed.

  Sir Grandel did not flinch, flint-eyed beneath his helmet. “Do immortals bleed, Squire?”

  “I don’t know, my lord,” Andry replied.

  The knight’s gaze shifted through the rest. The Elders came from every corner of the Ward, emerging from half-forgotten enclaves. Andry had memorized them like he did courtiers, both so Sir Grandel would not embarrass himself in company and for his own curiosity.

&
nbsp; The two Elder women were a sight unto themselves, warriors as much as the rest of them. Their presence had been a shock to the mortal men, the knights of Galland most of all. Andry still found them intriguing, if not awe-inspiring. Rowanna and Marigon were of Sirandel, deep in the Castlewood, as was Arberin. Andry guessed them to be close kin, with their red hair, pale fox-like faces, and purple chain mail, iridescent as snakeskin. They looked like a forest in autumn, shifting between sun and shadow. Nour came from Hizir, the desert enclave in the Great Sands of Ibal. They seemed to be both man and woman to Andry’s eye. They wore no armor at all, but tightly wrapped yards of dusk-rose silk banded with a ransom of precious stones. Their skin was golden, their eyes bronze, rimmed in black kohl and lightning purple, while their black hair had been worked into intricate braids. Then there was Surim, who had traveled the farthest of any, mortal or immortal. Bronze-skinned with deep-set eyes, he still wore the journey from Tarima on him like a heavy coat, his stout pony having carried him across the vast Temurijon steppe.

  Dom was more oak tree and antler than anything else. He wore leather beneath a gray-green cloak, embossed with the great stag of his enclave and his monarch. His hands were bare of gloves or gauntlets. A hammered silver ring gleamed on his finger. His home was Iona, hidden in the glens of mountain-clawed Calidon, where the Companions had first assembled. Andry remembered it sharply: an immortal city of mist and stone, ruled by an immortal lady in a gray gown.

  Sir Grandel’s voice cut through the memory.

  “And what of Corblood princes, descendants of the old empire?” he hissed, his words taking on a razor edge. “Spindlerotten, maybe, but mortal as the rest of us.”

  Andry Trelland was raised in a palace. He knew well the tone of jealousy.

  Cortael of Old Cor stood alone, his boots braced on the broken stone of the pilgrim road. He stared, unyielding, into the shadows of the wood, lying in wait like a wolf in its den. He wore a cloak of Iona too, and antlers were molded across his steel breastplate. Dark red hair fell about his shoulders, like blood at dusk. He served no mortal kingdom, but there were slight lines of age on his face, on his stern brow and at the corners of thin lips. Andry guessed him to be near thirty-five. Like the Elders, he was of Spindleblood, a son of crossing, his mortal ancestors born beneath the stars of another realm.

  So was his sword. A Spindleblade. The naked weapon reflected the sky above, filled with gray light, etched in markings no one alive could read. Its presence was a thrum of lightning.

  The knight narrowed his eyes. “Do they bleed too?”

  “I don’t know either,” Andry muttered, wrenching his eyes from the blade.

  Sir Grandel clapped the squire on the shoulder. “Perhaps we’ll find out,” he said, stomping down the hill, his heavy armor clanging with each step.

  I certainly hope not, Andry thought as his lord joined the other mortal Companions. Sir Grandel fell in among the North cousins: two other knights of Galland. Edgar and Raymon North were just as sick of the errant quest as Sir Grandel, their tired faces mirroring his own.

  Bress the Bull Rider pressed in, his smile overwide beneath his horned helm. The mercenary needled the knights whenever he could, to their chagrin and Andry’s delight.

  “Though you will not take up the sword, you should pray to the gods before battle nonetheless,” said a deep voice, smooth as thunder.

  Andry turned to see another knight step from the trees. Okran of Kasa, the brilliant kingdom of the south, bowed his head as he approached, his helmet under one arm, his spear beneath the other. The Kasan eagle screamed across his pearl-white armor, wings and talons outstretched for a kill. Okran’s smile was a shooting star, a flash against his jet-black skin.

  “My lord,” Andry replied, bowing. “I doubt the gods will listen to the words of a squire.”

  Okran angled an eyebrow. “Is that what Sir Grandel Tyr tells you?”

  “I must apologize for him. He is tired after so long a journey, crossing half the realm in blistering weeks.” It was a squire’s duty to pick up after his lord, in object and in word. “He does not mean to insult you, or any other.”

  “Don’t fret, Squire Trelland. I am not the kind to let buzzing flies bother me,” the southern knight replied, waving a nimble-fingered hand. “Not today, at least.”

  Andry fought the impolite urge to grin. “Are you calling Sir Grandel a fly?”

  “Would you tell him if I did?”

  The squire did not answer, and that was answer enough.

  “Good lad,” the Kasan chuckled, drawing his helmet over his head, fixing the amethyst nose guard into place. A Knight of the Eagle took shape, like a hero stepping out of a dream.

  “Are you afraid?” The words bubbled up before Andry could stop them. Okran’s expression softened, bolstering his resolve. “Do you fear the thief and his wizard?”

  The Kasan fell quiet for a long moment, his manner slow and thoughtful. He looked at the temple, the clearing, and Cortael at its edge, a sentinel upon the road. The forest prickled with raindrops, the shadows turning from black to gray. All seemed quiet, unassuming.

  “The Spindle is the danger, not the men seeking it,” he said, his voice gentle.

  Try as he might, Andry found he could not picture them. The sword stealer, the rogue wizard. Two men against the Companions: a dozen warriors, half of them Elders. It will be a slaughter, an easy victory, he told himself, forcing a nod.

  The Kasan raised his chin.

  “The Elders called to the mortal crowns and I was sent to answer, same as your knights. I know little of Corblood or Spindle magic, and believe even less. A stolen sword, a torn passage? All this seems a conflict between two brothers, not something to concern the great kingdoms of the Ward.” He scoffed, shaking his head. “But it is not for me to believe what the Elder monarch said or what Cortael warned, only to stand against what could be. The risk of turning away is too great. At worst, nothing happens. No one comes.” His warm, dark eyes wavered. “At best, we save the realm before she even knew she was in danger.”

  “Kore-garay-sida.”

  The language of his mother’s people was easy to reach for, well taught in Andry’s childhood. The words were honey on his lips.

  The gods will it so.

  Okran blinked, caught off guard. Then he broke into a smile, the full weight of it overpowering.

  “Ambara-garay,” he answered, finishing the prayer with a dip of his helm. Have faith in the gods. “You did not tell me you speak Kasan, Squire.”

  “My mother taught me, my lord,” Andry replied, drawing himself straight. He was nearing six feet tall, but still felt small in Okran’s lean shadow. Growing up in Ascal, Andry was used to being noticed for his darker skin, and he was proud of the heritage it showed. “She was born in Nkonabo, a daughter of Kin Kiane.” His mother’s family, a kin, was known even in the north.

  “A noble lineage,” Okran said, still grinning. “You should visit me in Benai, when all this is done and our lives returned.”

  Benai, Andry thought. A city of hammered gold and amethyst, nestled on the green banks of the Nkon.

  The homeland he had never seen took shape, his mother’s stories a song in his head. But it could not last. The rain fell cold, reality impossible to ignore. Knighthood was three or four years off. A lifetime, Andry knew. And there is so much else to consider. My position in Ascal, my future, my honor. His heart sank. Knights are not free to roam as they will. They must protect the weak, aid the helpless, and above all serve their country and queen. Not sightsee.

  And there is Mother to think of, frail as she has become.

  Andry forced a smile. “When all this is done,” he echoed, waving as Okran went down the hill, his steps light on the dampening grass.

  Have faith in the gods.

  In the foothills of the great mountains of Allward, surrounded by heroes and immortals, Andry certainly felt the gods around him. Who else could have set a squire on such a path, the son of a foreign noblewoman a
nd a low knight? Heir to no castles, blood to no king.

  I will not be that boy tomorrow. When all this is done.

  At the edge of the clearing, the immortal prince of Iona joined Cortael. His Elder senses were keenly focused on the forest. Even from the hill, Andry saw the grim set of his jaw.

  “I can hear them,” he said, the words like a whipcrack. “Half a mile on. Only two, as expected.”

  “We should take our precautions with a wizard,” Bress called out. The ax over his shoulder flashed a smile against the sky.

  The immortals of Sirandel turned to stare at him as if facing a child.

  “We are the precautions, Bull Rider,” Arberin said softly, his voice accented by his unfathomable language.

  The mercenary pursed his lips.

  “The Red is a meddling trickster, nothing more,” Cortael called without turning. “Ring the temple; keep your formation.” The Corblood was a born leader, well accustomed to command. “Taristan will try to slip through us and tear open a crossing before we can stop him.”

  “He will fail,” Dom rumbled, drawing his greatsword from its sheath.

  Okran thumped the butt of his spear on the ground in agreement, while the North cousins rattled their shields. Sir Grandel drew himself up, his jaw hard, his shoulder squared. The immortals fell in, their bows and blades in hand. The Companions were ready.

  The skies finally opened, the cold, steady rain turning to downpour. Andry shivered as the wet worked down his spine, needling through the gaps in his clothing.

  Cortael raised the Spindleblade to the road. Rain spattered the sword, obscuring the ancient design of the steel. Water ran down his face, but he was as stone, weathering the storm. Andry knew Cortael was mortal, but he seemed ageless in that instant. A piece of a realm lost, glimpsed only for a moment, as if through the crack in a closing door.

  “Companions of the Realm,” Cortael said, his voice carrying.

  Thunder rolled somewhere up the mountains. The gods of the Ward are watching, Andry thought. He felt their eyes.

  The rain doubled its onslaught, falling in sheets, turning the grass to mud.

  Cortael did not waver. “That bell has not tolled for a thousand years,” he said. “No one has set foot inside that temple or passed through the Spindle since. My brother intends to be the first. He will not. He will fail. What evil intent drove him here ends here.”