A Dirge for Princes

Morgan Rice is the #1 bestselling and USA Today bestselling author of the epic fantasy series THE SORCERER’S RING, comprising seventeen books; of the #1 bestselling series THE VAMPIRE JOURNALS, comprising twelve books; of the #1 bestselling series THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY, a post-apocalyptic thriller comprising three books; of the epic fantasy series KINGS AND SORCERERS, comprising six books; of the epic fantasy series OF CROWNS AND GLORY, comprising 8 books; and of the new epic fantasy series A THRONE FOR SISTERS. Morgan’s books are available in audio and print editions, and translations are available in over 25 languages.

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“If you thought that there was no reason left for living after the end of THE SORCERER’S RING series, you were wrong. In RISE OF THE DRAGONS Morgan Rice has come up with what promises to be another brilliant series, immersing us in a fantasy of trolls and dragons, of valor, honor, courage, magic and faith in your destiny. Morgan has managed again to produce a strong set of characters that make us cheer for them on every page…Recommended for the permanent library of all readers that love a well-written fantasy.”

“An action packed fantasy sure to please fans of Morgan Rice’s previous novels, along with fans of works such as THE INHERITANCE CYCLE by Christopher Paolini… Fans of Young Adult Fiction will devour this latest work by Rice and beg for more.”

“A spirited fantasy that weaves elements of mystery and intrigue into its story line. A Quest of Heroes is all about the making of courage and about realizing a life purpose that leads to growth, maturity, and excellence…For those seeking meaty fantasy adventures, the protagonists, devices, and action provide a vigorous set of encounters that focus well on Thor's evolution from a dreamy child to a young adult facing impossible odds for survival…Only the beginning of what promises to be an epic young adult series.”

“THE SORCERER’S RING has all the ingredients for an instant success: plots, counterplots, mystery, valiant knights, and blossoming relationships replete with broken hearts, deception and betrayal. It will keep you entertained for hours, and will satisfy all ages. Recommended for the permanent library of all fantasy readers.”

“In this action-packed first book in the epic fantasy Sorcerer's Ring series (which is currently 14 books strong), Rice introduces readers to 14-year-old Thorgrin "Thor" McLeod, whose dream is to join the Silver Legion, the elite knights who serve the king… Rice's writing is solid and the premise intriguing.”

CHAPTER ONE

Kate sprinted for the docks Finnael had told her about, moving faster than anyone else could have, praying that she would be in time. The vision of her sister lying gray and dead haunted her, pushing her forward with all the speed her powers could give her. Sophia couldn’t be dead.

She couldn’t.

Kate could see the royal soldiers down in the village, pulling together now around their leader. Another time, Kate might have stopped to fight them, simply for the harm that the Dowager had done in her life. Now, though, there was no time. She ran for the boats, trying to pick out the one Sophia had been on in her vision.

She saw it ahead, a dual-masted vessel with a seahorse for a prow. She ran for it, leaping as she got close to clear the railing and land lightly on the deck of the ship. She could see sailors staring at her, some of them reaching for weapons. If they had done anything to harm her sister, she would kill every last one of them.

“Where is my sister?” she demanded, the words ringing out.

Perhaps they recognized the resemblance, even though Kate was shorter and more muscled than Sophia, and her hair was hacked boyishly short. They pointed mutely toward the cabin at the rear of the ship.

As she stormed toward it, Kate saw a large, balding, bearded man struggling back to his feet.

“What happened here?” she demanded. “Quickly, I think my sister is in danger.”

“Your sister is Sophia?” the man said. He still looked confused by whatever had knocked him down. “There was a man… he hit me. Your sister is in the cabin.”

Kate didn’t hesitate. She walked to the cabin and kicked the door hard enough to splinter it open. Inside…

She saw a forest cat in one corner, large and gray-furred, growling softly. She saw Sebastian there, kneeling there with a dagger in his hands, wet with blood almost to the wrists. He was howling with tears, but that meant nothing. A man could cry with remorse, or with guilt, just as easily as anything else.

On the floor beside him, Kate could see Sophia, lying corpse still, her flesh as gray as anything Kate had seen in her vision. There was blood pooling on the floor beside her, and a wound in her chest that could only have come from one weapon.

“She’s dead, Kate,” Sebastian said, looking over at her. “She’s dead.”

“You’re dead,” Kate bellowed. She’d told Sebastian once that she couldn’t forgive the way he’d hurt Sophia. This, though, was beyond anything he’d done before. He’d tried to murder her sister. Anger flooded through Kate then, and she surged forward.

She hit Sebastian, knocking him away from her sister. He rolled up, the knife still in his hand.

“Kate, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Like you hurt my sister?”

Kate kicked him in the stomach and then grabbed his arm, wrenching it until the knife clattered to the floor. He managed to pull clear before she could break the limb, but Kate wasn’t done with him yet.

“Kate, I didn’t do this, I – ”

“Liar!” She ran forward, grabbing him and bundling him back through the doorway as much through speed as through the enhanced strength the fountain had given her. She burst out into the sunlight with him, then managed to get a grip on Sebastian’s legs, lifting him. She flung him over the side of the ship to plunge down toward the docks. He landed on them headfirst, sprawling bonelessly in unconsciousness.

Kate wanted to jump down after him. Wanted to kill him. There was no time though. She had to get back to Sophia.

“If he wakes up,” Kate said to the captain, “kill him.”

“I’d do it now,” the big man said, “but I have to get this ship moving.”

Kate saw him point to where the royal soldiers were descending on the ship, moving toward it with grim determination.

“Do what you can,” Kate said. “I have to help my sister.”

She ran back into the cabin. Sophia was still too still, too bloodied. Kate couldn’t see her chest rising or falling. Only the faintest flicker of thoughts within her told Kate that there was any life there at all. Kate knelt by her, trying to gather herself, trying to remember what Finnael the sorcerer had taught her. He’d brought a plant back to lush green life, but Sophia wasn’t a plant, she was Kate’s sister.

Kate reached for the space within her where she could see the energy around things, where she could see the soft golden glow that had faded almost to nothing around Sophia. She could feel that energy now, and Kate could remember what it had felt like to pull energy out of the plant, but pulling energy away wasn’t what she needed to do.

She reached out, seeking other sources of energy, seeking the power that she needed to do this. She sank into it, trying to find any energy that she could. Kate could feel it then; feel it beyond the confines of this room, beyond the narrow bounds that defined her own flesh.

She felt it then, the instant of connection so huge, so overwhelming, that Kate didn’t think she could hold onto it. It was too much, but if it meant saving Sophia, Kate had to find a way to do it. She grabbed for the power around her…

…and found herself feeling the whole of the kingdom, every life, every hint of power. Kate could feel the plants and the animals, the people and the things that represented older, stranger powers. Kate could feel it, and she knew what the energy was: it was life, it was magic.

She took power as delicately as she could, in fragments from a hundred places. Kate felt a patch of grass brown in the Ridings, a few leaves fall from trees on the slopes of Monthys. She only took the barest amount from each place, not wanting to do more harm than that.

Even so, it felt like trying to contain a flood. Kate screamed with the effort of trying to contain it all, but she held. She had to.

Kate poured it into Sophia, trying to regulate it all, trying to force it to do what she wanted. With the plant it had simply been a case of adding energy, but would that work here? Kate hoped so, because she wasn’t sure that she knew enough about healing wounds to do anything else. She gave Sophia the energy that she’d borrowed from the world, bolstering the thin gold line of her life, trying to build it into something more.

Slowly, so slowly that it was almost imperceptible, Kate saw the wound start to close. She kept going, until the flesh there was perfect, but there was still more to do. It wasn’t enough to have a perfect-looking corpse. She kept pushing energy into her sister, hoping against hope that it would be enough.

Finally she saw Sophia’s chest start to rise and fall once more. Her sister was breathing on her own, and for the first time, Kate had the sense that she wasn’t going to die. Relief flooded through her at that thought. Sophia didn’t wake, though, her eyes staying closed no matter how much energy Kate used. Kate wasn’t sure that she could hold onto the power any longer. She let it go, falling back to the deck in exhaustion as if she’d just run a dozen leagues.

That was when she heard the shouts of fighting from beyond the cabin. Kate forced herself to her feet, and it wasn’t easy. Even if the energy to restore Sophia hadn’t come from her, channeling it had still taken an effort. Kate managed to stand, drawing her blade and making it to the door.

Beyond, soldiers in royal uniforms were forcing their way onto the ship, while sailors struggled to push them back. She saw the captain charge forward, cutting a man down using a long knife, while another sailor pushed a man back from the railing with a billhook. She also saw a sailor killed by the thrust of a soldier’s sword, another fall backward as a pistol sounded.

Kate all but staggered forward, managing to lunge with a thrust that took a soldier through the armpit, but barely managing to parry a blow from the butt of a musket. She stumbled and the man stood over her, reversing the weapon to bring a bayonet to bear.

Then Kate heard a roar, and the forest cat leapt past her, slamming into the man, its teeth ripping into his throat. The beast snarled and leapt at another, and now the soldiers hesitated, pulling back.

Kate had to kneel there and watch it, because she was too exhausted to do more than that. When she saw one of the soldiers aiming a pistol at the cat, she drew a dagger and threw it overhand. The weapon went off and he fell back from the boat.

Kate saw the cat leap over the side, onto the docks, and a second later she heard a scream as it struck again.

“Get this boat out to sea!” she yelled. “We’re dead if we stay here!”

The sailors leapt to do it, and Kate forced herself up again, trying to plug the gap. Some fought, and they were like defenders at a parapet, pushing back the clambering foes. The forest cat snapped and snarled, leaping at those who forced their way aboard, swiping with claws and clamping down with needle-sharp teeth. Kate didn’t know when her sister had acquired a companion like that, but it was certainly loyal – and deadly.

If she had been at full strength, she might have taken on the soldiers by herself, moving among them, running and killing. As it was, she could barely muster the energy to thrust down at them alongside the sailors. Those pushed past Kate, as if trying to shield her from the fighting. Kate just wanted them to focus on getting the ship away from the docks.

Slowly, the ship did start to move. The sailors used oars and long poles to push it clear, and Kate felt the shift of the deck under their efforts. A solider leapt at the ship and fell short, falling between the boat and the docks.

Below, Kate saw the forest cat still snarling and killing, hemmed in by soldiers. Kate suspected that her sister wouldn’t want her companion abandoned, and in any case, the forest cat had saved them. She couldn’t just leave it.

“You need to get aboard,” she yelled, then realized the stupidity of expecting it to understand that. Instead, she summoned up the little power she had left, wrapping the need to get aboard with an image of the boat leaving, and threw it at the creature.

It turned its head, sniffed the air once, and bounded for the boat. Kate saw its muscles bunch, and then it leapt. Its claws dug into the wood of the ship as it pulled itself up the side, and then it settled on the railing pushing its head against Kate’s hand and purring.

Kate stumbled back, feeling the solidity of a mast at her back. She all but slid down it to the deck, sitting there because she no longer had the strength to stand. But that didn’t matter anymore. They were already well away from the docks, only a few scattered shots marking the presence of their attackers there.

They’d done it. They were safe, and Sophia was alive.

At least for now.

CHAPTER TWO

Sebastian woke to pain. Total, complete pain. It seemed to surround him, throbbing through him, absorbing every fraction of his being. He could feel the pulsing agony in his skull where he’d struck it as he fell, but there was another repetitive pain, bruising his ribs as someone tried to kick him awake.

He looked up and saw Rupert looking down at him from possibly the only angle where his brother didn’t look like some golden ideal of a prince. His expression certainly didn’t match that ideal, looking as though, had it been anyone else, he would have cheerfully cut their throat. Sebastian groaned in pain, feeling like his ribs might have broken under the impact.

“Wake up, you useless idiot!” Rupert snapped. Sebastian could hear the anger there, and the frustration.

“I’m awake,” Sebastian said. Even he could hear that the words were anything but clear. More pain flooded through him, along with a kind of foggy confusion that felt as though he’d been hit over the head with a hammer. No, not with a hammer; with the whole world. “What happened?”

“You got thrown from a boat by a girl, that’s what happened,” Rupert said.

Sebastian felt the roughness of his brother’s grip as he hauled him back to his feet. When Rupert let go, Sebastian staggered and almost fell again, but managed to catch himself in time. None of the soldiers around him moved to help, but then, they were Rupert’s men, and probably had little love for Sebastian after his escape from them.

“Now it’s your turn to tell me what happened,” Rupert said. “I went through this village from end to end, and they finally told me that was the boat your beloved was taking.” He made it sound like a curse word. “Since you were thrown off it by a girl with the same look to her – ”

“Her sister, Kate,” Sebastian said, remembering the speed with which Kate had propelled him from the cabin, the anger there as she had thrown him. She’d wanted to kill him. She’d thought that he’d…

He remembered then, and the image of it was enough to make him stop, standing there in blank unresponsiveness, even as Rupert decided it would be a good idea to slap him. The pain of that felt like just one more iota added to a mountain of it. Even the bruises from where Kate had thrown him felt like nothing compared to the raw pit of grief that threatened to open up and claim him at any moment.

“I said, what happened to the girl who fooled you into being her fiancé?” Rupert demanded. “Was she there? Did she escape with the rest of them?”

“She’s dead!” Sebastian snapped without thinking. “Is that what you want to hear, Rupert? Sophia is dead!”

It was as if he were looking down at her again, seeing her pale and lifeless on the cabin floor, blood pooled around her, the wound in her chest filled by a dagger so slender and sharp that it might as well have been a needle. He could remember how still Sophia had been, no hint of movement to mark her breathing, no brush of air against his ear when he’d checked.

He’d even pulled the dagger out, in the stupid, instinctual hope that it would make things better, even though he knew that wounds were not so easily undone. All it had done was widen the pool of blood, cover his hands in it, and convince Kate that he’d murdered her sister. It was a miracle, put like that, that she’d only thrown him from the boat, not cut him to pieces.

“At least you did one thing right in killing her,” Rupert said. “It might even help Mother to forgive you for running off like this. You have to remember that you’re just the spare brother, Sebastian. The dutiful one. You can’t afford to upset Mother like that.”

Sebastian felt disgust in that moment. Disgust that his brother would think he could ever hurt Sophia. Disgust that he saw the world like that at all. Disgust, frankly, that he was even related to someone who could see the world as just his plaything, where everyone else was on some lower level, there to fit into whatever roles he assigned.

“I didn’t kill Sophia,” Sebastian said. “How could you think I could ever do something like that?”

Rupert looked at him in obvious surprise, before his expression shifted to one of disappointment.

“And there I was thinking that you’d finally grown a backbone,” he said. “That you’d decided to actually be the dutiful prince you pretend to be and get rid of the whore. I should have known that you would still be completely useless.”

Sebastian lunged at his brother then. He smashed into Rupert, sending the pair of them tumbling to the wooden slats of the docks. Sebastian came up on top, grabbing at his brother, swinging a punch down.

“Don’t you talk about Sophia like that! Isn’t it enough for you that she’s gone?”

Rupert bucked and twisted underneath him, coming up on top for a moment and throwing a punch of his own. The tumbling momentum of the fight kept going, and Sebastian felt the edge of the dock against his back a moment before he and Rupert plunged into the water.

It closed over them as they fought, their hands locked on one another’s throats almost through instinct. Sebastian didn’t care. He had nothing left to live for, not when Sophia was gone. Maybe if he ended up as cold and dead as her, there was a chance that they might be reunited in whatever lay beyond death’s mask. He could feel Rupert kicking at him, but Sebastian barely even acknowledged the tiny extra hint of pain.

He felt hands grabbing at him then, hauling him out of the water. He should have known that Rupert’s men would intervene to save their prince. They pulled Sebastian and Rupert from the water by their arms and their clothes, hauling them up onto dry land and all but holding them up as the cold water seeped through them.

“Let go of me,” Rupert demanded. “No, hold him.”

Sebastian felt the hands tighten on his arms, holding him in place. His brother hit him then, hard in the stomach, so that Sebastian would have doubled up if the soldiers hadn’t been holding him. He saw the moment when his brother drew a knife, this one curved and razor edged: a hunter’s knife; a skinning knife.

He felt the sharpness of that edge as Rupert pressed it to his face.

“You think you get to attack me? I’ve ridden halfway across the kingdom because of you. I’m cold, I’m wet, and my clothes are ruined. Maybe your face should be too.”

Sebastian felt a bead of blood form under the pressure of that edge. To his surprise, one of the soldiers stepped forward.

“Your highness,” he said, the deference in his tone obvious. “I suspect that the Dowager would not wish us to allow either of her sons to be harmed.”

Sebastian felt Rupert go dangerously still, and for a moment, he thought that he would do it anyway. Instead, he pulled the knife away, his anger sliding back behind the mask of civility that usually disguised it.

“Yes, you’re right, soldier. I wouldn’t want Mother angry that I had… miss-stepped.”

It was such a benign term to use when he’d been talking about cutting Sebastian’s face to pieces only moments before. The fact that he could switch like that confirmed almost everything Sebastian had heard about him. He’d always tried to ignore the stories, but it was as though he’d seen the real Rupert both here, and earlier, when he’d tortured the gardener at the abandoned house.

“I want all of Mother’s anger reserved for you, little brother,” Rupert said. He didn’t hit Sebastian this time, just clapped a hand to his shoulder in a brotherly fashion that was undoubtedly an act. “Running off like this, fighting her soldiers. Killing one of them.”

Almost too fast to follow, Rupert spun, stabbing the one who had raised an objection through the throat. The man fell, clutching the wound, his expression of shock almost matched by those around him.

“Let us be clear,” Rupert said, in a dangerous voice. “I am the crown prince, and we are a long way from the Assembly of Nobles, with its rules and its attempts to contain its betters. Out here, I will not be questioned! Is that understood?”

If it had been anyone else, he would have quickly found himself cut down by the other soldiers. Instead, the men murmured a chorus of assent, each one seeming to know that anyone cutting down a prince of the blood would be the one responsible for reigniting the civil wars.

“Don’t worry,” Rupert said, wiping the knife. “I was kidding about cutting your face. I won’t even say that you killed this man. He died in the fighting around the ship. Now, thank me.”

“Thank you,” Sebastian said in flat tones, but only because he suspected that it was the best way to avoid further violence.

“Besides, I think Mother will believe a tale of your uselessness more than one of your murderousness,” Rupert said. “The son who ran away, couldn’t get there in time, lost his lady love, and got himself beaten up by a girl.”