His arm was completely healed. The mark of the Manteceros blazed forth clear and blue from skin rosy with health.
The pain that had plagued him for years had completely gone.
Gone.
Slowly his breathing calmed, and Cavor raised his eyes, staring sightlessly into the depths of the room. Intuitively he understood what this meant. If his mark had healed, then it meant Maximilian’s mark had been freed from beneath its scar tissue.
And if that had happened…
If that had happened then Maximilian was free to make his claim. And there was only one place he could do that.
“The forest,” he whispered. “He’s in the forest.”
Maximilian sat silently before the fire, a bowl of soup in his hands, lifting the spoon to his mouth in slow, thoughtful movements. He had said almost nothing since Ravenna had returned them to the rock hut, and now stared into the flames, coming to terms with the flood of his memories in his own way.
He wore only breeches and boots, and the firelight flickered over his pale, naked torso. Every so often the eyes of the watchers would sweep over the proud blue mark on his arm, then they would sweep back to the prince’s face.
As his sickness had sloughed away from him and his memories had surged in to fill the vacuum, Maximilian had automatically assumed the demeanour and bearing of a prince. His shoulders, hunched and unsure ever since he’d been freed from the Veins (and for how many years before that?) were now straight and strong. His movements, although slow, were measured and deliberate.
His face, uncertain and haunted before, still had traces of pain lacing his eyes (and would probably all the rest of his life, thought Vorstus), but was now grave and calm, even curiously peaceful for the memories that must be coursing through him.
But then, Joseph remembered, even as a young boy he’d learned to keep his innermost feelings well to himself.
Joseph’s own eyes swam with tears. The man before him was the boy he remembered grown into his true heritage. Who could doubt that he was a prince true-blooded and bred?
The soup finished, Maximilian put the bowl down on the hearth and turned to face the three men and the young marsh woman. “Will you listen if I talk?” he asked, and they nodded.
Maximilian shifted about on his stool a little, making himself comfortable. “The hound, Boroleas, that I’d been given for my fourteenth birthday,” he began, his eyes distant, “was a false gift.” His eyes shifted to the window, as if the path that had led him to his fate still stretched within sight. “He’d been trained to answer a whistle, and on the day appointed followed the whistle to lead me deep into the forest and into a glade peopled with traitors. They had planned well, and probably for over a year to have trained Boroleas for the purpose.”
His mouth quirked, and he looked down at his hands. “And they knew me. Knew that I would not be able to resist the thrill of cornering the hart by myself.” Pain flickered briefly across his face. “There were, oh, perhaps twenty or twenty-five of them in that glade. Faceless, featureless, and voiceless but for two.”
“Did you recognise their voices?” Vorstus asked softly.
Maximilian looked up, surprised but not angered by the interruption. “No. The leader had an unusual brogue, probably from one of the eastern kingdoms.” He winced in memory. “He was roughly spoken, and harsh of spirit.”
“A mercenary,” Ravenna said in a flat, angry voice. “Hired for the occasion.”
Maximilian stared at her for a moment. “Likely, lovely lady. Likely.”
“And the other voice?” Vorstus asked.
“Belonged to a man named Furst,” Maximilian said. “They…they had a fire going behind one of the trees—stoked by Furst. They dragged me there…and while the irons heated to their satisfaction—”
“You do not have to go on with this, Maximilian,” Joseph said, concerned for the naked pain he could see in the prince’s eyes.
“I must, Joseph,” the prince replied. “I must.” He took a deep breath. “While the irons heated to their satisfaction, as they laughed and passed about a jug of wine, the leader told me that I was a changeling.” He breathed deep again, but more raggedly this time. “He laughed, and said that my mother had birthed a stillborn son so small and featureless he looked like a skinned lizard. In desperation, she caused her maid to search Ruen for a new-born boy of blue-eyed parents, tall and dark.”
Maximilian stopped for a moment, and when he continued his voice was flat and featureless. “I was the son of a blacksmith, he told me, and my rightful future lay shackled to an anvil, not a throne. I believed him.”
“Why?” Garth asked. Compassion radiated out from his eyes and voice.
“Why?” Maximilian shook his head slightly. “I can’t explain it fully. I was scared…terrified. Perhaps I thought that if I believed it they might let me go. It was all such a nightmare…if they’d told me I was a toad dressed in a princeling’s clothes I think I would have believed them utterly. And then, lost in the darkness, I continued to believe them.”
“Do you believe them now?” Vorstus asked, his face expressionless in the firelight.
Maximilian met his eyes steadily. “No, Vorstus. Now I choose not to believe them. When Garth healed my arm Ravenna told us both to believe. To believe. When the mark was restored, so was my belief.” His voice deepened with inner strength. “Vorstus, I know who I am…and I am no changeling.”
Vorstus inclined his head, pleased. Relieved.
Maximilian dropped his eyes and passed a hand briefly over his face. “When…when the irons were hot enough, they decided they’d taunted me sufficiently.” His hand crept to his arm, his fingers running softly, absently, over the mark of the Manteceros. “Then…then the nightmare truly began.”
There was silence between them for a very long time. Eventually Ravenna stood up and poured each of them a glass of wine, pausing briefly by Maximilian as she handed him his, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. He smiled at her, and pressed her hand gratefully.
As she sat back down, Maximilian continued. “I remember little of the next week or so. The burn festered—the flesh above the elbow puckered and wept evil fluids. The pain…” his voice drifted off, then he roused himself. “Eventually my tormentors laughed and drank some more, then threw me in a great iron cage on wheels and fixed my ankles to its floor.”
Garth shuddered, remembering the loathsome transport carts he’d seen on the road between Ruen and Myrna.
“From there all became blackness. Blackness and pain for an eternity, until,” he lifted his eyes and flashed his extraordinary smile at Garth, “came the light of your presence and your words, Garth. ‘What are you doing here, Maximilian?’ you asked. ‘You belong beyond the hanging wall.’”
“And so you do,” Garth said emphatically.
Maximilian grinned at his tone. “And so I do,” he said.
Then the light died from his eyes. “Joseph. Memories have flooded back, memories from before my incarceration in the Veins. My time there seems only a hellish blur. How long…look at me. I am a man grown, yet I know that when I was thrown into the darkness I was but a beardless youth. And you, Joseph. You look almost as old as I remember your father. Joseph?” Maximilian’s voice almost broke, although his face remained stoic. “How long was I down there?”
Joseph rose from his seat and squatted by Maximilian’s side. “You were gone seventeen years, Maximilian. Seventeen years.”
Maximilian stared at Joseph uncomprehendingly, then his face cracked. “Seventeen years? I have lost seventeen years?”
Joseph nodded, tears running down his face, then he leaned forward and wrapped the prince in strong arms. “But you are back now, Max. You are back now.”
Maximilian finally broke down and wept, clinging to Joseph as the last remaining remnant of the life he had lost.
He sat fifty paces away from the rock-walled hut, gazing at it with thoughtful eyes. The trail had been faint, but traceable, and it had made him frown and then follow it. One or two from that most secretive of orders, perhaps, for he had seen them here previously. But others accompanied them. Two horses, a youth, and a man crippled by some debilitating injury. And a woman, as light as a fairy child on her feet—so light, he’d only realised she was with the group after a full hour of tracking.
Who did the order bring beneath the shade, when it was death for any layman simply to step beneath the treeline?
He smiled, thinking of this cleverly hidden hut. But not so cleverly that he hadn’t found it—and five years ago, now. The moment he’d spotted the trail this morning he knew where they’d be heading.