The Black Prince: Part I Read online

  THE

  BLACK PRINCE

  PART I

  P. J.

  FOX

  Book Three of The Black Prince Trilogy

  This novel is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed herein are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places or events is purely coincidental.

  THE BLACK PRINCE: PART I

  Copyright © 2015 by Evil Toad Press

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art: Die Elfenkönigin Titania findet am Strand den Zauberring, Henry Fuseli, 1804-1805

  Cover design by Evil Toad Press

  Published by Evil Toad Press

  ISBN: 978-1-942365-42-6

  First Edition: December 2015

  Acknowledgements

  The Black Prince Trilogy was meant, initially, to be an actual trilogy rather than the tetralogy it’s become. But, even before that, The Demon of Darkling Reach was meant to be a stand alone novel. Not because the story changed, but I, its mere transcriber to the page, gravely underestimated the number of pages it would consume. My decision to split the final volume into two parts, therefore, came not from the desire to punish you, my valued readers, by forcing you to buy more books but from the realization that a single volume would be nigh on impossible to produce in paperback. At least for less than the price of one of my old college textbooks. It is thus that I present to you, at long last, the second to last volume in a series that’s been close to my heart for a long time.

  My family has grown and changed, along with Isla and Tristan and Hart and all the rest, just as I, myself, have grown and changed. My husband has published his first book and is hard at work on another and our son is now in preschool. I took several breaks, from the writing of this book to bring him out for visits with his favorite friends, the cows who live down the road.

  P.J. Fox

  For Mel, who is the best.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  About the Author

  ONE

  “I promise!” The man’s words were half plea, half shriek. His voice was raw, his face tear-stained and swollen. He’d been locked up now in the dungeons for two nights, given plenty of time to contemplate his crimes. Crimes for which this fate was more than richly deserved.

  Still, if Isla were here, she’d argue that no crimes deserved such punishment.

  Isla was wrong.

  Hart stared down at the man, his expression impassive. He’d wondered, in the abstract sense, if this would be difficult. If he would, indeed, be unable to do the deed. But now that the time was upon him, he found that he did not care. He might as well have been watching a fish gasping on one of the long, low docks that jutted out into the lake.

  “Your promise is empty.” Hart’s voice sounded empty. Cold. Strange, even to him. Like the ringing of a gong inside a marble tomb. “You touched a child before, when you lived under a different name in the South. And you promised then that you’d never do this thing again, to the weak Southron lord who apprehended you.

  “It was your mistake to come North, where we protect our own.” He paused. His eyes were hard in the torchlight. “More than blood, the Gods crave justice.”

  He looked up, over the man’s head. “Bring him.”

  It was time.

  Strong, labor-calloused hands gripped him, hauling him backwards. He wouldn’t stand. Couldn’t, maybe. His heels beat out a tattoo on the hard earth as he half twisted in the air, half crab walked. “Priest!” he called. “Curse you, priest! That your balls will wither and your line will die out, and you’ll never know one true moment of peace before you’re once again claimed by the hell from which you came!”

  Hart said nothing, only watched.

  Beside him, another green-robed figure spoke. “An educated man.”

  Indeed. Highly literate, to have so many words at his disposal in a time like this. He’d been apprehended in Barghast, an unassuming character who worked as a tailor and who’d lured poor children into his shop with the promise of sweets. Sweets, and a warm fire. What he’d done after would turn any normal man’s stomach. That a customer had come in, looking to pick up her parcel at exactly the right moment—or wrong, depending on one’s point of view—could only be credited to the Gods. Their gift to the people of Barghast and now, in turn, Hart’s gift to them.

  Hart was pleased that this should be his first time. He tested the emotion, holding it inside and savoring it as he would a fine wine. Yes, pleased.

  The other figure turned. A bone-white hand rested on Hart’s shoulder. “Are you well, brother?”

  They were brothers now, he and Callas. Callas was, under the sun, the captain of Tristan’s personal guard. The duke, their lord, the source from whom all blessings flowed. Hart banished the blasphemous thought. Hart had been promoted to a lieutenant, and then captain, within that same guard. They worked together. They trusted each other. They bedded whores together. But that wasn’t what made them brothers.

  On the night of Isla’s transformation, Hart too had transformed.

  Callas had asked him, what have your Gods done for you?

  The answer to that question no longer mattered. Hart had new gods now. Standing in a circle of guardsmen, he’d pledged his soul to the shadow. Not all of Tristan’s personal guard had joined the Chosen, as they referred to themselves. Many were normal men, seeking no further glory beyond that found in hearth and home. And Hart suspected that some who did join did so only for the lure of the taboo. They wanted to dabble in something dangerous, exotic, not realizing that their vows held them until death. And, if the scrolls could be believed, beyond.

  You can’t un-know that there is more, Callas had also said.

  The religion of the North was dark enough.
In consequence, most Southrons believed all Northmen to worship the Dark One, but that wasn’t so. The Chosen were a select group who, like all good Northmen, honored all the Gods. But their true allegiance was to Ilde. The Chief of the Ghouls. The Destroyer. The Lord of the Flies.

  There had been blood, and pain.

  “I am well,” he said.

  “A fool’s words have no import.”

  But Hart wasn’t so sure.

  The Chosen. Other men called them Forsaken. There was a time when Hart would have done the same. But that time seemed very long ago now, a story he’d heard so many times that he felt like he’d been there, rather than something actually remembered.

  With Isla’s transformation had come the first snow. Within weeks, the hard-white world all around them would begin to melt. Had it really only been a season? Under the sun, he was a guardsman. A good and competent one, well reputed for being fair. He’d arrested the man before them now, who thrashed and screamed. He had the trust of the populace and the respect of his fellow guardsmen. He’d been promoted once already, and by Tristan himself. A man whom Hart also trusted, and respected. A man for whom he’d pledged to give his life, and whose table he joined most nights.

  Under the moon, he was a Priest of Ilde. Callas was their chief priest, the leader of their circle. Which made him a first among equals. Hart was the equal of his brothers, although their newest member. Or would be their equal, rather, after tonight. After months of preparation, he’d been deemed ready to join in their full communion. To prove his devotion to his Lord. To live out in action the worth of his promise.

  If he failed, he’d perish along with the man before him. But his soul would be no more free. Still, no one expected him to fail. For the first time in his life, he had the—more than respect. The love of his fellows. He was accepted here. Wanted. Callas saw him as a man to be admired. Promoted him to others as a friend and mentor. Welcomed him into his own home, one of the neat apartments afforded to officers without families.

  In the South, Hart had been nothing.

  In the North, if he worked hard, he could be whatever he wanted. When he’d met Tristan, for the first time, another man had regarded him as an equal. Had evaluated him on the basis of who he was, and not how he’d been born. And that…had changed him. More so than his vows. He’d understood for the first time that he could control his destiny.

  Control.

  Was he cursed?

  Did it matter?

  What curse could be worse than living out his life in squalor, mucking around in some sty with the pigs? A hanger-on, invisible at the best of times and laughable at the worst. He’d retreated into that identity, because it had been all he’d had. His only armor. But now…he was being offered more. And all he had to do was kill a man.

  He’d killed men before, always in the heat of battle and in defense of either himself or others. But he’d never killed deliberately, and in cold blood. This was the test.

  He felt the eyes on him.

  It had been revealed that this sacrifice was the will of his lord and his lord’s will, too, that he act as his lord’s hand.

  He strode forward and then stopped, just at the edge of the circle that surrounded the place of sacrifice. A place of pillars, jutting skyward into the night. A place of power. He felt that power now, amidst the low susurrus of chanting. Priests, devotees, their combined voices like the humming of bees. Pregnant with promise.

  Callas placed a bowl into his hands, its gentle curve that of a man’s skull. Hart didn’t know who the man had been. He took a deep breath, not pausing but readying himself. And then, raising the bowl to his lips and tipping it back, he drank.

  There was a single, stretching moment of clarity before the drug hit.

  Mistletoe was more than just something to dandle over a maiden’s head, in hopes of parting her from her innocence. It was sacred. Sacred, and powerful in the hands of an adept. The plant could heal disease, render poison harmless, bring fertility to both men and their livestock, protect them from witchcraft, and ban evil spirits. The plant was so revered throughout the North, by Chosen and non, that enemies who happened to meet beneath mistletoe in the forest would lay down their arms, embrace, and keep a truce until the following sunrise.

  From this custom grew the second custom, of suspending mistletoe over one’s door as a token of goodwill. And trust young men the world over to show their goodwill in a particular fashion. Hart had, himself, often enough.

  Although the pleasures of the flesh had…lessened to him somewhat, lately.

  He blinked. Mistletoe, along with the other ingredients in the bowl, was dangerous. Administered in the wrong quantities, it was fatal. He blinked again, as his world slowed down. How ironic that mistletoe, their sacred emblem, was a parasite. Having no roots of its own, it was dependent on its host tree for survival.

  The Chosen taught that mistletoe held the soul of its host tree.

  Did that mean that a man’s soul too was a parasite?

  He lowered the bowl slowly from his lips, his gaze cold. Everything around him stood out in crystalline detail: the flickering of the torches. How they reflected, sluggish, in the disk oil before him. At the center of the ring was a shallow stone pool, much like an artificial pond.

  Hart raised his hands. A drum began to beat, slowly, in time with his heart. He could barely feel himself breathing. Might not be. He didn’t know. He hailed each of the four elements in turn, calling on them to aid him. He asked those present to kneel and press themselves to the cold earth, to feel their connection with her. To recall, in painful detail, their arrogance and thoughtlessness in forgetting her as they destroyed field after fertile field in a mad orgy of swords and blood. How, in so doing, they destroyed their connection to the Divine. He called upon the Lord of the Flies to forgive their pitiable state and the failures it produced, and to remember them in the storm that was coming.

  A storm he felt in his bones.

  A storm they all did.

  His were his own, but not. He followed a script that had been handed down from man to man for generations. How strong it was to stand where those men had stood, and give himself to the same work.

  The cold was seeping into his bones. He couldn’t feel his fingers. “Hail, hail, to the Lord of the Flame! The Bringer of Change! The Keeper of the Well and the Tender of the Tree, the Destructor of All Things and the Bringer of Death!” For out of death came life.

  “Hear us now!”

  “Hear us now,” came the responding murmur.

  Anyone who came upon them now would be killed, along with the prisoner.

  Another sacrifice to an ever-hungry god.

  “From the depths to the heights spans the sacred tree. Sacred tree, grow within us.”

  “Sacred tree, grow within us.”

  “From the sacred tree is kindled the fire. Sacred fire, burn within us.”

  “Sacred fire, burn within us.”

  “That our souls, our bodies, and our beings may be consecrated to Your will.”

  “Accept our offering.”

  From the shadows was brought a massive thing of stripling wood, looking almost like any grandmother’s laundry basket except sized for a giant. The tree was sacred to all Northmen, the symbol of life. This thing too was sacred, having been created from many different trees, all through the forest. Oak trees, that carried mistletoe. Seeing it, the man began to struggle anew. Hart had almost forgotten about him.

  Their eyes met.

  “Bring the sacrifice,” Hart commanded.

  The chanting continued.

  He placed his hand on the man’s brow, cold flesh to cold flesh, heedless of his twisting and turning. “O, sacred fire that consumes and transforms! Ancient enemy and firstborn friend of mankind! Accept this offering. Allow it to become for us the living door to the world beyond, through which we might glimpse our Lord’s will.”

  He pulled back slightly. “Prepare him.”

  The man was lifted bodily, still s
creaming, into the basket. He thrashed to and fro, lunging at his captors and trying to bite them as the lid was forced on and tied with rope. Every effort was made not to stun the man; his full consciousness was required for the ritual.

  “Accept your fate with dignity,” Hart said, this time in his normal voice. “And please the Gods.”

  But the man didn’t respond. Only screamed. For what, Hart didn’t know.

  “Prepare the sacrifice.”

  The basket was lifted, those responsible for tending it straining at the weight, and placed into the center of the pool. They were very careful not to touch the oil. Hart held out his hand for a torch. “O, sacred bough, bless us that your fragrant smoke might reach its intended destination.” He stilled, and then spoke again. “The dank of caves, the secret birthing place, the sacred dark from which all come. The Bringer of Night, the Consort of the Crone. We invoke thee! We invoke thee! We invoke thee!”

  He threw the torch.

  TWO

  The girl ran her hands over his smoothly muscled chest. She was naked and lovely, if emaciated from the long winter. He could see the faintest suggestion of her ribs, beneath the swell of her small breasts. They were alone in an upper room of one of the city’s finest inns, a room that smelled of leather and wood smoke. Or perhaps that was only him.

  He hadn’t been prepared for the screaming. A high-pitched, inhuman sound that had gone on for hours, long past the point where the man could have been alive. And yet he was. Somehow he was. They’d waited until the end, because the ritual required them to. Hart most of all.

  And then he’d come here, with Callas, to a bowl of stew and a warm fire and a minstrel whose last set had just begun. He’d juggled prettily, then sung them a tale about love. Callas had eaten well and enjoyed himself enough but Hart’s mind was elsewhere. The whole affair had been…anticlimactic. He didn’t know how else to describe it, even to himself. He’d sacrificed a man to the Dark One and then he and his friend and gone out to eat.

  He’d finally drunk his beer, or some of it, thinking that he was absurd.