The Whisperer Read online

  ‘You lie! My father would never do such a thing.’

  ‘Ah well, you see, perhaps not now because he has you. But a dozen or so years ago, he would have made a deal with the devil himself, so long as he could remain married to your mother and not bow to the increasing pressure to give Drestonia an heir.’

  ‘I don’t believe—’

  ‘Let me finish, Lute. You see the tale gets complex because although your father made his bargain, and sealed it with blood in fact, you miraculously came along and changed everything.’

  ‘Well, I don’t remember seeing any rule of the realm that forbids the King and Queen from having sons. Surely this made all the people happy?’

  Janko threw back his head and laughed. ‘Of course it did. Yes, indeed! There was much celebration. I heard they were dancing in the streets and three days of festival were launched. The more far-flung realms sent their envoys with messages of congratulations and our closest neighbours sent dignitaries and even a few royals to join the festivities. I could not attend, unfortunately. I was holding off Besler’s horde in the north. I was keeping our realm safe.’

  Lute ignored the Duke’s bleating. ‘So where is the problem?’

  ‘The problem, my Prince, existed with the man with whom the bargain was made. He felt cheated.’

  Lute shook his head as though he wasn’t following the tale. ‘But what had he given in return?’

  ‘His life. His loyalty.’

  ‘Well, so does every Drestonian. I’m sure he understood that the arrival of an heir would cancel all previous agreements.’

  ‘You know, I truly believe he would have understood if the heir were genuine.’ Janko ignored the way Lute was staring at him as though he had gone suddenly mad. ‘You see the man in question knows that the heir to the throne—that’s you, Lute—is an impostor.’

  Lute rocked back in his saddle. Of all the things his uncle could have said to shock him, he would not have anticipated this claim. It felt as though Janko had kicked him in the belly, knocked all the wind from him. Lute straightened, forced himself to breathe steadily. ‘I don’t know why you’re saying this or what mischief you’re up to, Duke Janko, but I’ve heard enough,’ he said, pulling vainly at the reins again but to no avail. He began to take his feet surreptitiously from the stirrups. He’d take his chances on foot, even though the Duke and his soldiers were faster on horses; perhaps he could take them by surprise and make it to the stand of trees, where there would surely be somewhere to hide.

  But the Duke was sharper than Lute gave him credit for. ‘I wouldn’t, Lute. That man over there will bring you down with a single arrow before you even get halfway to the trees,’ Janko said conversationally and smiled when Lute became still. ‘Actually I intend that you’ll hear it all. Ask yourself honestly, do you look like either of your parents? Rodin is beginning to grey now but he had sandy-coloured hair to go with his green eyes. Your mother is still very beautiful despite her now fading glory, I’ll admit, but she was once brightly golden-haired and blue-eyed. You, Lute, have dark hair and dark eyes. It’s impossible that they conceived you.’

  Lute stared at the Duke, feeling his world crumble around him. Janko was right and had hit on something that had troubled Lute since he was old enough to take notice of people’s appearances and his own. It was true. He looked nothing like either of his parents.

  ‘I asked my mother about it once,’ he replied, surprised at how even his voice sounded. ‘She told me I looked like her ancestors.’

  Janko shook his head. ‘She’s lying. Her people are from the south. They’re a fair-haired race.’

  ‘I think you’re lying.’

  ‘I have no reason to lie to you, Lute. I’m simply telling you what I know.’

  ‘For what purpose? What do you hope to gain?’ Lute demanded, desperately wishing someone would come along who would divert their attention, just for a moment. He was a boy against four men. He was beyond fear. He felt helpless. ‘Why have you told me this?’ he finally demanded.

  ‘Well, I thought it would be polite to let you know that I plan to put the real heir on the throne very shortly.’

  ‘The real heir? Have you gone mad during your time in the mountains? Who do you believe is the true heir?’ he asked, knowing he really didn’t want to hear the answer.

  ‘Oh, well, that would be me, young Lute. I am the true heir. I am your father’s genuine family—unlike you. I am his brother and was next in line to the throne until you came along. I was the man he made a bargain with, whose skills he used in defence and whose influence he used over mercenaries and our soldiers to keep the realm safe.’ Duke Janko’s voice began to rise in anger. ‘I gave my loyalty gladly, for the throne was going to be mine upon his death. We all know Rodin has a weak heart. He could go at any moment. I have been patient. I have been faithful to him. And now that the borders have been utterly secured and we are clearly the strongest of all the realms, I’m ready to claim my crown before you do. If I let it go any longer, then in a year the army will answer to you. I cannot have that. Drestonians love their royals and would instantly transfer their loyalty to you should Rodin die. As it is I sense they are already a little in love with their young Prince. And that won’t do, Lute. This is my time to seize the crown.’

  Lute could barely believe what he was hearing. ‘What are you going to do?’ he whispered, his throat so dry he couldn’t even speak properly.

  ‘Going to do?’ Janko laughed mirthlessly. ‘It is already done, boy!’

  9

  Rodin tried to calm his wife’s panic. ‘Miralda, be still. Pilo is always with Lute. You and I both know that Pilo can fend off a dozen men at once if need be. I swear Janko means the boy no harm.’

  Miralda was shocked. She rang for the servant but could no longer hide her anger. ‘Rodin, I think you are blinded by brotherly love. There is nothing vaguely sincere about Janko towards either myself or Lute. He may love you but he loves your crown more. I want a runner sent now to find Pilo. I want Lute back here immediately!’ She felt as though a scream was about to escape her throat.

  ‘I swear, Miralda, there’ll be an explanation, I promise you.’

  ‘If anything should happen to Lute I won’t forgive you, Rodin. I have tried to make you understand that Janko has been a threat to Lute since his birth. On the two occasions Lute has been hurt, Janko was present. I know you can’t see it and keep dismissing my concerns but it’s frighteningly plain to me that Lute didn’t squirm and fall from Janko’s arms; he was deliberately dropped near those stairs when he was nearly two. And the fall from the horse? Again, Janko was conveniently at the hunt. I suspect he found a way to spook Lute’s horse, and then when he realised our son would survive, he disappeared again. His time has run out for contriving accidents. He is making his move before our son turns fourteen and is general in title of our army.’

  Rodin had turned ashen. ‘What you’re suggesting is ludicrous, woman, but I have no answer for you yet, although I’ll be demanding one from my brother, I can assure you! I’ll order the runner now. I’m sure he’ll laugh at this accusation.’

  Miralda looked at her husband with sorrow, her fear for Lute taking full flight. ‘I don’t think there will be any more laughing in this palace, my King.’

  At her fateful words the doors burst open and soldiers entered followed by the King’s terrified aide.

  ‘Your majesty, soldiers have stormed the palace.’

  Miralda felt her heart sink. She clasped her hands to her face and allowed herself a moment of grief, knowing it was already too late for them—Rodin looked weakened; she worried for his heart. But she refused to accept that it was too late for Lute. Pilo would save him. And if she alone lived to see this day out, then she promised herself she would avenge this outrage. She dragged her hands away from her face, drying the tears in the movement, and setting her jaw firmly to look upon their intruders.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ Rodin demanded.

  ‘We are fo
llowing the orders of our commander, Duke Janko,’ a fearsome-looking warrior said.

  ‘You’re not Florian army!’

  ‘No, we are mercenaries. Not sure your army fully realises what’s under way yet…er, your majesty.’ The man loaded the title with irony. ‘Duke Janko plans to be King Janko before the day is out.’

  Rodin’s already reddened face darkened as he began to struggle to breathe.

  ‘Rodin!’ Miralda shrieked. ‘Help! Someone! The King’s heart is giving out.’

  ‘Probably best,’ the huge warrior said callously.

  ‘You brute! Call a physician. I demand it!’

  ‘No, madam. Let him die. It will make the situation so much easier,’ the man replied and, turning his back on her, he strode away.

  Miralda’s desperate cries rent the air.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Lute stammered. ‘What’s happening to my parents?’

  ‘Well,’ Janko began, ‘about now I’d imagine my dear brother has realised that he is no longer in charge of his realm.’

  Lute stared at the man who was supposed to be a beloved member of the family, but was now someone he was privately vowing to seek vengeance upon…if he lived long enough. ‘What’s going to happen to the King and Queen?’

  ‘Who cares?’ Janko replied and smiled.

  Lute felt a deep pain settle in his gut. ‘And me?’

  ‘Ah. That is a dilemma. You are only a child but a troublesome one because you’re claiming to be the heir. I’m afraid we’ll just have to allow vicious nature to take her course.’ He grabbed the red scarf from around Lute’s neck, gave a signal and a second later Lute heard a hard ‘thwack!’ and then Tirell screamed.

  The filly reared onto her hind hooves and Lute felt himself slide backwards. Instinctively he wrapped his arms around her neck, gripping with his knees as tightly as he could. He managed to stay on and a second later she was back on all fours, then without a chance for Lute to even gather his wits, Tirell was racing away. Whatever had frightened her had also hurt her. She was making a soft noise of anguish as she rushed them both back down the hill. Lute knew no horse would move so recklessly on a descent unless it was terrified and, his own safety aside, he was filled with fright that Tirell might break one of her legs. No soothing or handling could calm the young horse though; all he could do was let her go while he had to work hard to stay on her back. They hit the flat ground at such speed he closed his eyes briefly to steady his panic and, in that moment, remembered Pilo’s whistle.

  He had no idea if it would work. The part of him that was still thinking clearly argued that even if it did, how was Pilo to hear him from so far away? It didn’t matter. He had nothing else. He reached blindly for the silver horse’s head sculpture around his neck, put it to his lips and blew as hard as he could.

  Curiously, he wasn’t surprised when no sound came and he briefly wondered why he had ever thought something that was clearly just a beautiful ornament was ever going to have a practical use. He was alone with a panic-stricken horse that he now realised, with deep alarm, was heading straight for the ravine. He’d forgotten about the deep slash in the moors. Normally they walked their horses gently along it if they were riding in this region but he was sure Tirell was not thinking about what was ahead.

  He could hear her laboured breathing, could see her eyes—wide with shock and panic—and the flecks of foam at her mouth. He knew enough about horses to realise that she wouldn’t respond now to anything he did or said. They were going to run off the edge.

  10

  Pilo had paced angrily after Lute’s departure with the Duke, banishing the other servants in his wrath. After a few minutes of helplessness—tempted to rush back to the Queen and tell her of Janko’s deliberate decision to remove Lute from Pilo’s care—he had ignored the Duke’s couched warning and set off after the two riders.

  His idea was to shadow Lute and Janko from a distance and although he had long ago lost sight of the Prince, he knew where Lute was headed. After last night’s spying, although he was now deeply suspicious of the Duke, he didn’t anticipate that Janko would make any sinister move against the crown and was lost in thought as he guided his horse along the ravine’s edge towards Billygoat Beacon. He’d had no intention of going up to the lookout itself. His plan had been simply to hide in the small stand of trees at the southern edge of the lookout and to keep Lute in sight. He had been sworn to this duty and it made no difference to Pilo whether the Prince was larking about with friends or was with his revered, heroic uncle. His job was to be close to Lute at all times and he intended to stay true to that sworn oath of duty. And so it was with intense alarm that while he had been admiring the way the sun had finally chased off the mist of morning he heard a sickening sound. He had heard it only once before but instantly recalled it.

  The previous night Pilo had dreamed that he had become separated from Lute and that the Prince had been in danger. When he had awoken the feeling of unease wouldn’t leave. And so he had gone hunting for the whistle he’d had made more than a decade earlier for another child. A baby, in fact. The baby was his daughter. When she had been born he had never known such joy. He had always looked forward to a horde of sons and daughters and Ellin was his first. For her name-day celebration he had planned to give her the horse’s head whistle that he’d had fashioned in silver by a man many believed was a wizard. The man was neither old nor young, handsome nor plain, tall nor short. In fact, Pilo had always been bemused by the fact that he couldn’t truly remember what the man—whose name he had since forgotten—actually looked like. Everything about the silversmith was a blur. He had gone to him on a whim during his travels in the far northwest of the realm as a personal guard to a very wealthy noble. He was on his way home and was looking for a gift to take his daughter for her special day. A local artisan in the village he was passing told him of the man in the foothills. ‘Crafts silver like no-one else you will ever know,’ she had said, when he could find nothing amongst her pins and brooches that caught his eye for Ellin. With time to spare, as the nobleman had decided to stay a bit longer with old friends, Pilo’s interest had been caught by the woman’s description of the silversmith. He’d gone in search of the man and found him. Reluctant at first to make any piece for Pilo, the man had finally agreed when he’d learned that the ornament was for a child.

  ‘I want to give her something that will always remind her of me so she will know when she’s touching it, I am always close,’ Pilo had said. He had meant it as a romantic notion, so that his daughter might keep his memory close, long after his death.

  However, the silversmith had taken his request far more literally. Two days later when he went to fetch the piece, Pilo’s breath had been taken away by its exquisite work and beauty but also by the fact that the man had made a practical item, rather than simply an ornament. At first he hadn’t understood why the man had chosen a horse for a girl. He had expected something more fragile, more to feminine tastes.

  ‘Do you not want your daughter to ride?’ the man had asked.

  ‘I intend to teach her,’ Pilo had replied.

  The man had shrugged. ‘Do you not want her to love animals?’

  ‘Of course,’ Pilo had said, frowning. ‘I want her to love horses above all others because we rely on them so much for our daily lives.’

  The craftsman had nodded. ‘Do you not want her to be able to call you at any time of the day or night…to know her father is always close?’

  Pilo had felt cornered. ‘Yes, that’s certainly what I asked of you.’

  ‘Then I have given you the perfect piece for your daughter.’

  ‘But what is it?’

  ‘A whistle,’ the silversmith had replied and smiled.

  Something in that smile had sent a shiver through Pilo. It wasn’t a shiver of fear but more like a chill of omen. It was as though the man knew something that Pilo did not.

  ‘I have crafted this for your ears only,’ he had explained. ‘When blown by
another, you alone can hear it. Does she have a sister or brother?’

  ‘No. She is an only child.’ Pilo remembered how he had frowned. ‘So I’m the only person who can hear this?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘But what if I’m out of earshot?’

  Again the silversmith had smiled. ‘You will never be out of earshot because you will hear its call here,’ he said, pointing to Pilo’s head and then prodding him in the chest over his heart. ‘And here.’ He blew the whistle and a host of sensations pulsed through Pilo’s body.

  ‘No-one else can hear it?’ Pilo had asked again.

  ‘I couldn’t hear it just now,’ the silversmith admitted and again he smiled at the confirmation of the whistle’s magic properties. ‘Not even your child will hear it. It is crafted for your ears alone.’

  Pilo had never been able to give Ellin his special, magical gift. By the time he had returned to their home, family and friends were gathered sombrely to greet him, many of them weeping. In his absence his wife and daughter had been killed in a freak accident in which horses, still attached to a wagon of beer barrels, had been startled and had bolted.

  His wife, carrying his little girl, had not been able to get out of the way in time and had been trampled. Pilo arrived in time to bury his young family. His once open, happy heart had closed itself off to everyone and had hardened to a stone-like presence. He had never known such despair and bitterness. Pilo had considered burying the magical whistle with his daughter so that a part of him travelled with her, kept her soul company on its new journey but something had prevented him from tossing the beautifully wrought sculpture into Ellin’s tiny grave alongside her mother. To this day he wasn’t sure what had forced his hand to remain clasped angrily around the silver chain rather than release it to the earth where his daughter lay.

  Pilo had roamed the realm without purpose for a while. He had felt lost without his wife and child—all that happiness ripped away from him, leaving him empty and angry. He had sold his services to whoever needed anything from a guide to a guard, until he had found himself in Floris. The hum of the realm’s capital had helped to ease his anguish, kept him busy. He had accepted a position in the palace as a tracker among the royal hunting crew. His good work and quiet, professional manner had come to the King’s personal notice when out on a hunt with his young son. An accident had occurred, the Prince was thrown from the horse he was learning to ride. Rodin had been so distressed by the boy’s fall that he had not been able to think clearly. Pilo had been a pillar of strength, calming the King, and soothing the boy, refusing to let him drift into a dangerous sleep until the physicians had arrived. When Lute had become distressed at being separated from Pilo’s large, comforting embrace, Pilo had carried him gently in his lap on horseback. All through the boy’s next few days of observation by the royal doctors, Pilo had stayed close by, keeping the spirits of his mother positive and entertaining the Prince during his enforced rest. A friendship had formed and when it was time for Pilo to return to his former duties the Prince had become frantic at losing his new friend. It was no surprise that the Queen had asked Pilo to take a new position she would create—Prince’s Aide—so that he could remain a close companion to Lute.