The Steele Wolf

Page 18

This was a side of Kael that I hadn’t seen before and I wasn’t sure what to make of this nonchalant attitude. Maybe it was because we weren’t at the Citadel or maybe it was because Joss wasn’t here.
I gave him a look of pure disgust as I got up and moved to my small fireplace and lit a fire.  I had begun to get goose bumps from the night air that was let in by the window. But I refused to close it, because then I would be enclosed in the room with him. When the small fire was roaring away, I looked at him intently.
“Why are you here?” I asked, tilting my head to the side.
“I’m here because I don't take orders from you.”
“No; I mean, why did you come to Valdyrstal? After we escaped the iron butterfly and prison, you could have gone home but you didn’t. You showed up in Calandry and now, here.”
“I had to.”
“What do you mean you had to? From what I’ve read about your clan, no one can make you do anything if you don’t want to do it.”
“From what you’ve read?” He smirked, shaking his head as he walked past me to the bench by the window. He sat in my favorite spot and pulled one knee up and the other lay extended. He stared out into the darkness, and the moon illuminated his face. Looking at me, he crossed his arms and raised one eyebrow.
“So you think that if you read some book that is probably full of lies, by the way, it would explain everything there is to know about a person? About me?” He rolled his eyes. “The things in whatever book you’re reading don’t apply to me anymore.” Looking across the village his voice deepened to a whisper. “I can hardly call myself a SwordBrother.”
“Of course you are.”
“How would you know; you’re not a SwordBrother, now are you?” he said sarcastically. “A SwordBrother wouldn’t have let himself get captured and drugged. A SwordBrother vows to protect the weak, which I was unable to do until it was too late.” He looked at me pointedly. “Listen, I didn’t forget my past like you so conveniently did. Now I wish I could.”
“You think losing yourself, losing your memories, is convenient? You’re wrong.”
“I know what happened down there. You think I’m some hero when I’m not.  I couldn’t even save the boy, Tym. I found his body outside of the stable in the dark; he had been stabbed in the back.”
Sitting on a small wooden chair by the fire, I looked across the room to him.  He was angry, his jaw clenching and unclenching in his familiar way. His left hand flexed in anxiousness as if he longed to clutch a knife that I knew he had hidden somewhere on his body. My heart lurched at the reminder that Tym had only tasted freedom for a few minutes, but at least he was free now from the Septori.
“But you saved me. That should count for something.”
“Yeah, you would think so, huh. But it doesn’t. I have to save you.”
“What did you mean you have to save me? And you never answered the question. Why did you come here to Valdyrstal?”
“Because of you.” He spat the words out and glared at me. Here was the side of Kael that I was used to—the angry side.
Those words spoken from Joss would have melted my heart, and if Kael had said them in any other way, I probably would have smiled. But the animosity that was behind those words made me sit up, legs extended as if I was going to bolt.
“You didn’t have to come here. I was fine. I still am. You can leave anytime; the door is right there. In fact, I will help you out.” I moved to the door.
“No!” Kael jumped up and then slowly sat down. After a few minutes, he continued. “I tried to go home after we escaped. I did. I made it out of the barn and looked around and saw that the horses were gone, so I figured you were gone and took off on foot towards home. I began to feel an intense pain, and there was a strong pull on me towards the river and not home. I tried to fight it but the pain overcame me and wouldn't leave until I followed this strange pull.”
He started to pick at a splinter on the windowsill, and I waited patiently until he was ready to go on.
“So I followed the river until I came to the signs of a camp.”
“But Darren and Joss hid any signs that we had camped there.”
“They were hidden and only a SwordBrother would have noticed the signs. Your friend, this Darren, did very well.”
Smiling in relief, I began to relax. “Good.”
“I tried everything. All of my Clan’s herbal remedies and pain medicines, and nothing worked. I was covered with sweat and started to shake, and it didn’t release my body until I took off in the direction that you three had gone. I followed you to the Inn, and I was fine again.  The next day I waited until all three of you left, and again the agonizing pain came back. I had no choice but to follow you three to Calandry.” He stood up and walked over to me by the fire. Putting his hands on the back of the chair, he leaned down and whispered to me.
“It’s you.”
I paled at his words; my mouth tried to form a rebuttal, but I couldn’t.
“I can’t be more than a few miles from you without being brought down in agonizing pain.” His fingers dug into the wood of the chair in anger. I jumped up and moved to the fireplace, putting as much distance as I could between us.
He grabbed a vase of roses off of the end table and threw it into the fire, the vase exploding into pieces and the water caused the fire to pop and boil. I watched as the roses caught fire and turned brown and then withered up into nothingness.
“I’m so sorry, Kael.” Tears started to form in my eyes and I tried to turn away from him so he wouldn’t see me cry. “They must have done something to us in the prison.”
“They did. The Septori bloodbonded us.”
“Bloodbonded?” It took me a moment as I tried to process what Kael said. It came down to the book I borrowed from Adept Kambel. There was a chapter in the book that explained how SwordBrothers were the bodyguards of the Kings and Queens. The bravest SwordBrothers could choose to be bloodsworn to their charge through a process called bloodbonding. It would tie the people’s souls together. Sometimes, a royal would have up to three sworn SwordBrothers. Then, the SwordBrother would always be able to track their charge wherever they went.  But if something happened and their charged died, the SwordBrother would inevitably die too.
“But I thought SwordBrothers don’t do that anymore.”
“Of course we don’t!” Kael huffed. “Not since one paranoid king many years ago, in a maddening fit had hundreds of SwordBrothers bloodsworn to him. You can imagine what happened next. He kept sending us into battle for him, using us as his personal assassins to kill the children of his enemies. The horror stories are true, Thalia. The ones you heard about SwordBrothers being evil. It’s because the King forced us to be that way.”
“That is horrible! I can’t believe someone would do that to the SwordBrothers.”
“It’s one thing to choose to be bloodsworn of someone. It’s quite another to have that choice taken away from you.”
“What happened?”
“The SwordBrothers code of honor was broken and they couldn’t live with themselves. Finally, one of the king’s own bloodsworn, a man named Lake, was able to free the hundreds of SwordBrothers bonded to the king.”