The Last Paladin by Kathleen Bryan

Author:Kathleen Bryan [Bryan, Kathleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2009-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

GORONWY’S HEART BEAT hard. This was not the first daring thing he had done, but in his bones he knew it was the most important.

He should have been given this task. He should have been the queen’s champion. He was as royal as she.

But, he thought as he ghosted in Dylan Fawr’s wake, if he was royal, and if the throne in fact belonged to him, he was much too valuable to risk. She must know that. She trusted him. She would not waste his life or soul, that was all.

If he felt a flicker of remorse, it was no more than that. He would never be king unless he reached out to take the prize. Even his teachers had told him as much. They could not give him the throne. He had to win it for himself.

This would give it to him. Whatever key Dylan Fawr was to guard with his life and soul, it must be a mighty and terrible thing. If Goronwy had it, who knew what powers he could gain?

It was a long hunt. Dylan Fawr withdrew to his own house first, where the latest of his succession of lovers hacked doggedly at the pells—as if anyone needed a sword that heavy in this age of the world. The boy must do it for the muscles it gave him: he was a brawny creature, with a beard so strong it shadowed his jaw within moments of his shaving it.

Goronwy had no desire to loiter about while they indulged in dalliance, but luck was with him. “My love,” said Dylan Fawr, “it’s time. The battle has begun.”

Young Baron Fourchard came to the alert like a hound on a keen scent. He looked from side to side as if he expected to find an army in the courtyard, and relaxed only slightly when Dylan Fawr said, “Not that kind of battle. Not yet. Fetch your cloak and follow.”

Fourchard fetched his cloak and kept his sword. He loomed formidably behind his shorter, slighter lover. Goronwy, shorter still and happily invisible, glided in their mingled shadow.

They took a winding path through a city notorious for its interlocking circles and spirals. Goronwy stopped trying to remember each twist and turn. He marked their movement instead by the tower of the cathedral and the turnings of the river.

They circled halfway round the tower and past the White Quay with its walls of marble from Romagna, then turned toward the old city. It was long outgrown now, its streets too narrow and its houses too low and small; it was mostly the haunt of the poor and the inhuman and the hopelessly unfashionable. Goronwy went there as seldom as he could.

Dylan Fawr and his hulking escort made their way unerringly to the center of it. A mean little hovel of a church stood there, so old it barely had a tower.

If Goronwy had to hide a treasure that no one should ever find, he would hide it in such a place as this. He tracked his quarry into the dim and musty nave, and then down to a surprisingly capacious crypt.

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