❖ QUEENKILLER, KINGMAKER Book 2 ❖
A year has passed since Isla rescued Tam Mai from the dungeons, but her sister's mind is still trapped and broken. There is only one person Isla knows can help her.
Meanwhile across the sea, a prince seeks justice f...
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Mrabu Mountains, Surikhand The year 339 pos forma
Once again it had fallen upon Kiet to right a great injustice.
Whilst the Maha Rama performed his first-year mourning rites, whilst his soldiers spent twelve consecutive days saluting the late consort's empty estates, it was him, the rajini's own flesh and blood, who had to climb to the summits of the kingdom to bring her murderer to trial.
He should be home in Kathedra with his sisters, observing the release of lament over their mother's frangipani in the royal burial grounds. Instead there he was, ten-or-so thousand feet above the valleys of Shorga, hiking along the Ibex Trail in search of the Obusirjan ancestral home. He had spent a cold night camping between shrubs and stone, and just that dawn breakfasted on mountain shrew spiced with lichen.
Kiet sniffed. How far he had fallen since his days as crown prince. Now it was midday and he was down to a last mouthful of wildberries. If he failed to find the Obsidian Gates soon, he'd have to hunt for more shrew.
Just follow the trail, the Shorgan farmers had told him. None had recognised the maharaj's travel-worn face, so none had been too helpful. Once you've hiked a day and a night, search to the west and you'll see the Obsidian Gates through the trees. But until you see it, never leave the trail.
A rather ominous warning, Kiet thought. The only beast worthy of alarm at this altitude of the mountain range were the sun bears, and they generally kept to the denser forests. The trail, by contrast, cut through lightly wooded bushlands, watched by an endless train of langurs. Even now they studied Kiet from the branches. But other than the occasional mating call that would echo through the mountains and startle him in his tracks, they caused him no trouble.
Again Kiet looked westward. The view was yet to change: a splatter of conifers and rhododendrons stretching far until the mountain wall rose up behind them. Anything black would have stood out amongst the sea of green, let alone a giant structure of pure obsidian. Much of the same scenery surrounded him in all other cardinal directions. Shorga valley had long disappeared behind the swerves and swells of the Mrabu, and without the Ibex Trail, Kiet doubted he'd find his way back.
He sighed, threw the last handful of berries into his mouth. 'Looks like it's going to be shrew again.'
A langur laughed above his head, jumping from its branch and landing inches from Kiet's foot. It pulled at his robe before hopping into the brush, higher up the trail.
Pebbles rolled in its wake, but the creature was nimble and sure-footed. Kiet followed. Before long the path tightened around the mountain wall, climbing higher between slabs of stone and ancient roots. Only a wain's length of damar pilau trees separated him from a tumble to the spurs some thirty feet below. Kiet kept his grip firm on the stone wall as he rounded the crag, ignoring the langur's mocking call.
