The Afterward Read online

  DUTTON BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Copyright © 2019 by E. K. Johnston

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  Libray of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Johnston, E. K., author.

  Title: The afterward / by E.K. Johnston.

  Description: New York, NY : Dutton Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, [2019] | Summary: In the aftermath of a successful quest, Apprentice Kalanthe and Olsa-the-thief-of-the-realm must cope with their newfound fame and find a way to overcome the forces that would drive them apart.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018017857| ISBN 9780735231894 (hardcover) | ISBN9780735231900 (epub)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Fantasy. | Heroes—Fiction. | Celebrities—Fiction. | Knights and knighthood—Fiction. | Robbers and outlaws—Fiction. | Love—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.J64052 Aft 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018017857

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Illustration by Sebastion Ciaffaglione

  Design by Elaine Damasco

  Version_1

  To David and Leigh Eddings,

  I really wish I had written you a letter.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  I. CadriaAfter

  After

  After

  Before

  After

  After

  Before

  After

  After

  Before

  After

  After

  Before

  II. On the Road AgainLong After

  After

  After

  Before

  After

  After

  Before

  After

  After

  Before

  After

  After

  Before

  III. The Mage KeepBefore & After

  After

  After

  Before

  After

  After

  Before

  After

  After

  More or Less the Exact Moment Of

  After

  After

  Before

  After

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  —I—

  CADRIA

  AFTER

  And so it was in the days before, when the Old God brought ruin to every corner of the world. Great were His injustices and mistreatments of all living things: the birds in the sky and the beasts on the ground, and the humans who laboured in His service. He cared nothing for their pain and suffering. Worse, it pleased Him to inflict horror wherever He could. When He saw the bright wing of a cormorant diving towards the sea for its dinner, He would send scalding water to burn bird and fish both. When a horse pulled a plough behind it, He would strew the path with rocks, to dull the blade and to pain the horse’s hooves. For humankind, He reserved his most particular kinds of violence, but, ah, remembering those days causes even the bravest of storytellers too much grief. Better to tell of what came after.

  Seven godlings, born of the Old God’s discarded human toys, found one another in the ruin of the world. They knew that should any of them stand alone, their small power would be instantly obliterated, but they did not give up hope. They practiced working together, uniting in concert to increase their chances, but still they feared it would not be enough.

  When all seemed truly lost, the youngest of them found a green stone, the sort that humans called emerald. It was of inconsequential size and not particularly striking to behold, but the godling thought that it would suit their purpose, and called upon the others to fill it with their strength. Over and over, the godlings put their power into the stone, until it sang to them with the promise of better days to come.

  The Old God felt the stirring of this new power and came to find them, but He was unprepared for their new strength. Godlings no more, they had only to touch the Old God with their gem, and they undid Him. Thus peace came at last to the world, with the Old God vanquished and the new ones much kinder in their treatment of it.

  But, alas, that was not the end. The Old God had fled, yes, but some of His servants remained, and though they faced a long wait to restore their Master, wait they did. Finally, after long millennia, one such servant took it upon herself to bring her Master back, even though it would release ruination on the world once more. To that end, the Old God’s Servant ensnared the King of Cadrium, centre of the world and beacon of knowledge, in a spell so vile that it ate away at the king’s very life.

  Fearful that the loss of her king would bring about a war violent enough to resurrect the Old God Himself, Sir Erris Quicksword went on a desperate Quest to find the godsgem again, that same emerald the new gods had used, lost all this time from history’s record. With her rode three champions, each particularly skilled in multiple aspects of the knightly arts, along with the greatest living Mage, and two others, so that their company might number seven, the same as did the new gods.

  Great were their trials and tribulations upon the road, yet through mastery of themselves and of their surroundings they did manage, not only to find the godsgem itself, but also to take it to the Old God’s altar, rebuilt in secret by His cruel servants, and there destroy Him utterly.

  It was in those final moments, when the Old God was at His most powerful and the knights at their most vulnerable, that the wisdom of the new gods showed itself. Sir Erris dealt the killing blow—yes, her sword was as quick as her name foretold—but, without the aid of her companions, picked for their skills but also for their number, she would have been overmatched.

  At this most important time, the weight of destiny fell upon the shoulders of a mere apprentice knight. Kept aside during the fighting to guard the Mage’s back, the apprentice saw the battle unfold and knew when the moment for her to act had arrived. As she watched her companions quail in the face of the Old God’s rising, Kalanthe Ironheart did not falter. She was able to distract the Old God, giving time to Sir Erris and allowing her to use the godsgem to put to rest the Old God, once and for all.

  With King Dorrenta unensorcelled and the world made safe once more, Sir Erris and her six companions returned to Cadria and to the honours and privileges they had earned. Erris herself was married to the king, as had long been both their wish, while the other knights and the apprentice resumed their duties in the palace. The Mage returned to the Mage Keep with the godsgem under his protection, to consult with his fellows how best to conceal within their sanctuary.

  The seventh companion disappeared, and little is known about her. The common folk say she was lowborn like them, and a thief besides, but it is far more likely that she was, in fact, one of the seven new gods, keeping watch over Sir Erris’s Quest to ensure no misuse of the godsgem.

  In any case, with peace returned and the kingdom stabilized, it seemed that the time for great tales was done. The horror and grief of the past was gone, driven out by the light and goodness of the new gods; and under the protection of the knights who served them and the king both, it seemed unlikely that such darkness would ever return.

  And they all lived happily ever after.

  AFTER

  As a rule, Olsa Rhetsdaughter avoided breaking into a house through the nursery. More generally, she avoided housebreaking, especially now that she operated without protection, but as the rain poured down on the city of Cadria, she was almost grateful to escape the soaking cold. She was used to sleeping rough—had slept rougher, as a point of fact, than she would tonight. But she hated the wet—how it permeated everything from her clothes to her hair to the slick stone of the wall she was scaling—and hated it all the more now that she didn’t have reliable access to a good fire. There would probably be several of those inside the house, as the wealthy owners warded off the damp.

  Once she reached her destination, she paused halfway over the sill and surveyed the layout of the room as best she could in the dark. Her preference for a job of this sort was a musty attic or, in a pinch, an unoccupied guest room. There were just so many obstacles in a nursery: toys strewn on the floor; more than the usual number of beds; the family cat; and, of course, the children themselves. Children were restless sleepers. Children required lamps left lit in case they woke up in the dark.
Children asked questions.

  “Are you Olsa-thief-of-the-realm?” The voice was high enough and young enough that she couldn’t tell whether it was a lad or lass who spoke, but the question froze Olsa in her tracks halfway across the room. Dammit, she’d done such a good job of opening and shutting the window too.

  “No,” she hissed. “I’m a demon that preys upon waking children in the night. Go back to sleep.”

  “I think a demon would be taller,” said a second voice. This one was almost certainly a girl. “Also, demons are usually on fire.”

  Olsa sighed. All she wanted was a quick, easy job, and those were increasingly hard for her to come by. She’d taken this one because it had been a slow week, because her percentage of the take was high, and because the family she’d be stealing from employed one of the best cooks in the city. She’d been planning her detour through the kitchen on her way out in almost as much detail as she’d been planning the actual heist.

  “Yes,” she said, flopping gracelessly into the chair by the fire. She was probably destroying the fine upholstery with her soaked tunic and hose, but the fire was warm enough that she couldn’t bring herself to care. “I’m Olsa.”

  “Oh, tell us about the godsgem!” said the little one, a girl after all, bouncing across the room to sit in front of her, as though Olsa were her nurse. “Papa is a gem merchant, so I’ve seen lots of pretty stones, but they say the godsgem is the prettiest.”

  “She knows Papa is a gem merchant, Ildy,” said the older girl. She was at the age where she felt it imperative to remain dignified at all times, so she didn’t bounce, but she did come closer and take a seat. “Why do you think she’s here?”

  “Be quiet, Mina,” the little one, Ildy, said. “I want a story.”

  “If you’ll both be quiet, I’ll tell you,” Olsa said.

  It wasn’t the best plan she’d ever had, but short of diving out the window right now and making a run for it, she couldn’t think of anything else. She was caught, but it was better to be caught by these two than by their parents or whatever burly servants they had kicking about the house. Also, it was a very good fire. Olsa decided it was worth the risk.

  The girls settled in front of her, their white nightgowns tucked neatly under their legs. Soon, they would be too old to sit on the floor. Their skirts and stays would require chairs. Olsa wondered if either of them had ever sat cross-legged in their lives. She’d had to teach Kalanthe how to do it, and Kalanthe wore trousers half the time anyway. Money made a person very strange, and Olsa was more aware of it now than she had ever been.

  “The first time I saw it,” she began, “I thought to myself ‘I could see a roomful of gems, all piled up on top of one another, and be able to recognize this one immediately.’”

  “What does it look like?” asked Ildy.

  “Hush,” said her sister.

  “It’s not large and it’s not cut very well,” Olsa said. “From the stories, you’d imagine an emerald the size of my fist, cut with so many facets that the reflected light goes off in all directions at once. The truth is that the godsgem is much smaller, and almost raw.”

  “That doesn’t sound very special at all,” said Mina.

  “You hush,” said her sister.

  In spite of herself, Olsa smiled.

  “It doesn’t look like much,” she continued. “It doesn’t have to. As soon as you see it, you know it’s special. It sings, you see. Imagine the most beautiful hymn you’ve ever heard at the temple. The kind they sing on festival days, where the different sections of the choir layer their voices over each other’s in more than four parts. Now, imagine that, but a hundredfold. The most complicated and the most beautiful music you’ve ever heard, so much so that you can barely stand to listen to it, because you know that once you start, you’ll never want to stop.”

  “That sounds dangerous,” said Mina.

  “Of course it was dangerous,” said Olsa. She shook herself a bit to try forgetting what the godsgem had sounded like. Of course it didn’t work. It never would. The song would haunt her for the rest of her life. “That’s why they sent all those knights to find it.”

  “Quicksword and Stonehand and Fire-Eyes and Silverspoke,” said Ildy, rhyming them off like a psalm. Olsa had seen them all naked, so she was somewhat less impressed by them. “And the Mage, of course.”

  “And Ironheart,” said Mina. “And you.”

  “Why did they send you?” Ildy asked.

  “I asked myself that question a lot,” Olsa said. “The truth is that I’d done Sir Erris Quicksword a couple of favours. She needed a spy, and I was available. Only the men I was spying on got wind of it, somehow, and sent some footpads to cut my throat. I escaped them, but I knew I needed better sanctuary. I didn’t much fancy shutting myself up in the temple, so I went to Quicksword herself and she took me with her. Then I stayed because I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and because the gods like it when the people on a Quest stay the same.”

  “They say the king picked those knights and you because you each matched a facet of the new gods,” Ildy said.

  “Don’t be foolish, Ildy,” Mina said. “Everyone knows that the king had given instruction to let Sir Erris make her own decisions, and that meant picking her companions, and she picked the ones she thought it would the hardest for the Old God to tempt.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Olsa said. It wasn’t Kalanthe’s soul she was thinking of. “But, yes, Erris picked who went.”

  There was a creak in the hallway, and Olsa tensed. Neither of the girls reacted, and presumably they weren’t supposed to be out of bed at this hour. They wouldn’t get in nearly as much trouble as Olsa would, but no one likes to be punished. Perhaps it was the cat. Olsa knew from casing the house that the family cat was enormous, and it wasn’t in the room with them.

  “Tell us about Kalanthe Ironheart,” said Ildy. It was more a plea than a demand. She wasn’t old enough that she was used to being obeyed without question yet.

  Olsa paused. Both Mina and Ildy were leaning towards her now, eager to hear a story about the Apprentice Knight. Kalanthe, like herself, had only been on the Quest because of circumstance. Young though she was, she was the same size as Sir Erris and could wear her armour. It was decided that if she came along, she could be used as Erris’s double if the occasion called for it. Since the knights were much older and the Mage was mostly unapproachable, Kalanthe and Olsa had spent a lot of time together. It hadn’t been very much fun at the start, but, well, it didn’t much bear thinking of, to be honest.

  “Ironheart will be the perfect knight someday,” Olsa said. She was plagiarizing a little bit, but maybe these girls hadn’t heard that particular ballad yet. It was easier to think about Kalanthe if she didn’t have to use her own memories to do it. “Tall and strong and dedicated. Pure of heart and sure of arm.”

  Less pure and less sure when it came to other areas of expertise, but that was hardly fit for young children. Also, it was exactly the sort of memories Olsa did her very best to avoid thinking about.

  “At the very moment when Sir Erris Quicksword needed her, Ironheart was there,” Olsa continued. She could see the scene in her head, replaying as it always did when she thought about Kalanthe and tried not to think about Kalanthe at the same time. Which happened fairly regularly. “In an act of sheer defiance and bravery, she threw her axe at the Old God’s altar.”

  Both girls gasped, their faces lit with glee. They knew the story after all, it seemed, though they hadn’t heard it from someone who had been in the room where it happened.

  “You know the Old God’s power,” Olsa went on. “Dark and cruel, it could not be broken by so simple a thing as a knight’s axe, even when the knight was good and righteous as Kalanthe Ironheart.”

  She was very proud of herself for saying that last part with a straight face.

  “But it was enough to split the Old God’s attention,” she said. “For a fraction of a second, He turned His awful face to Ironheart.”

  It had been a terrible moment. Olsa had been certain that Kalanthe was going to die for her bravery.