Beyond the Hanging Wall (23 page)

Egalion moved to a small pedestal behind the dais, removing a large tray covered with a deep red velvet cloth from its top, then stepped onto the dais and moved around to the Seat of Judgement.

“There is a rumour,” came an anonymous and rough voice from the very rear of the chamber, “that the Baxtors freed Prince Maximilian from the Veins.”

Egalion, still several steps away from Cavor, started and faltered in his stride. He recovered quickly.

“Seize that man!” Cavor yelled, his composure deserting him in an instant. He half stood from his seat, then sunk reluctantly down again.

Guards immediately sprang into the packed audience, but it was too late. Murmuring swelled through the crowd. “Maximilian? Alive?
Maximilian?
Not dead? What? Who?
Maximilian?
”

“Aye!” called another, even rougher voice, “and brought back from a living death, ‘tis said.”

Garth and Joseph exchanged quick glances—this must be the work of Alaine the woodsman.

Any further comments were silenced by the guards who had muscled their way into the tight knot of tradesmen and street thieves. They seized four or five men, hustling them out the rear doors, and the Chamber of Justice returned to some semblance of order, although there was still an observable undercurrent of tension, if not of murmur.

Cavor smiled reassuringly, although from his close vantage point Garth could see what an effort it cost him. “See the result of abominable treason, my friends?” he called softly. “No doubt the
Baxtors meant to dress up some poor prisoner and hope to pass him off as Maximilian—may his soul rest in peace.”

For the first time he stared at Garth and Joseph. “Or did you think to dye your son’s hair and pass
him
off as Prince Maximilian?” Cavor laughed, then abruptly sobered. “The depth of your treason hurts and,” his voice dropped, “saddens me. Egalion.”

Egalion now stood to the king’s side. He held out the covered tray, but he lifted his eyes and stared at Garth and Joseph. His bearing was confident, but his eyes were troubled.

Cavor did not notice. The incident at the rear of the crowd had unnerved him, and he wished he’d kept the chamber clear of rabble. But he’d wanted to avoid the look of a secretive trial, for that would indicate secrets to hide, and had ordered the doorsmen to allow in as many as the Chamber of Justice would comfortably hold.

Now Cavor hastened on with the judgement. He indicated Egalion should step forward into clear view, facing the prisoners in the dock. He took one corner of the red velvet and lifted his eyes, staring at the Baxtors.

Both stared back at him, their calmness unsettling, almost defiant.

Cavor swallowed. “Behold my judgement,” he cried, and whipped the cloth from the tray.

Beneath lay the axe of justice, glinting in the sunlight that fell from the chamber’s high windows.

Its blade was turned towards the prisoners in the dock.

Death.

If it had been turned away then the judgement would have been in the prisoners’ favour, but neither of them had harboured any doubts that the wicked blade would face them.

Another murmur spread through the chamber.

Cavor’s face had gone a pasty white. “Death,” he whispered. “Egalion? I would have the sentence carried out immediately. See to it, if you please.”

The central space of Ruen was octagonal, but had never been called anything else than City Square. Separated from the palace and court complex by a wide avenue, it was used for a number of purposes at any one time: markets (and even the bustling twice-weekly market could not fill its vast area), parade ground, meeting place and, as today, part execution ground.

Whether due to the efforts and rumours of the woodsman Alaine, perhaps aided by the Order of Persimius, or because of the unusual nature of the trial—judging as it did not only a case of high treason (and who had seen one of those in over a generation?) but also the Physician Baxtor and his son—the enormous square was filled to virtual capacity.

Despite its size, the crowd was unusually quiet. Although few knew Garth, Joseph—as were his
father and grandfather before him—was fondly and kindly remembered by the ordinary folk of Ruen. All the Baxtors wielded powerful Touch, yet they did not charge high prices for their services. Indeed, on many an occasion, they would only smile and refuse to accept payment if they knew the patient or his family was in financial difficulties.

And Joseph was also closely associated with the old king and with Maximilian. How many times had Joseph Baxtor strolled through this very square with the young prince at his side, smiling and laughing with those who stopped to talk with them?

Maximilian. The crowd was tense. Expectant. Over the past few days unusual and unsettling rumours had swept the city, yet no-one knew their origin nor the full truth of them.

Maximilian. Kidnapped at fourteen. Enslaved in the Veins. Freed by his own indomitable spirit and the magic of powerful sorcerers.

Would he return to claim the throne of Escator? When? And what of Cavor? Darker rumour had it that Cavor had planned the young prince’s disappearance. Few, having heard this rumour, were prepared to repeat it save in deepest privacy.

And Cavor’s trial (if such it could be called) of the Baxtors damned him in many eyes—especially when further rumour placed Garth Baxtor at the heart of the effort to free Maximilian.

Maximilian. Where was he? Did he really exist? Or were the rumours just a cruel hoax, constructed as Cavor suggested, to foment rebellion and civil war?

No-one knew.

But surely, someone, somewhere, must have the answers.

Necks craned and feet shifted nervously. Hands clenched, and then unclenched. The crowd muttered and rustled.

Egalion, squashing his own doubts as best he could (and only he knew how far into the nights they’d kept him awake), marched at the head of the well-armoured execution detail into the square. In the heart of the detail, surrounded on each side by at least eight guards, marched Garth and Joseph.

By this time even Garth’s eternal optimism had begun to pall. He’d expected Maximilian to stand forth in the Chamber of Judgement and challenge Cavor. But nothing had happened. True, one or two men had shouted Maximilian’s name, but the prince himself had remained stubbornly absent.

And a few shouted questions from the back of the chamber had done nothing to halt Cavor damning them to death in City Square.

Garth stumbled and Joseph caught at his elbow, concerned, his own mounting horror evident in his dark eyes.

“I’m all right, father,” Garth muttered, half expecting the guards to strike him for speaking, but they kept their heads averted and their weapons to themselves. Perhaps the Baxtors were as good as dead in their eyes anyway, and a few mumbled words and goodbyes would matter neither one way nor the other.

Joseph’s hand tightened. “There is still hope, Garth. Still hope.”

Garth tried to smile for his father, but it didn’t work.

The guards marched them remorselessly on.

The crowd stirred as the execution detail moved out from the court complex into the square. Troops had kept a way clear for it, and the detail marched sternly and briskly towards the hastily assembled executioner’s platform to one side of the square. The splintered platform rose the height of two men above the heads of the crowd and there was a wide open space before it; no-one was to be denied a view.

Behind the detail came Cavor himself on a magnificent white horse, still in the blue robes of justice, but now thrown back over his shoulder to reveal more of his armour and the sword that swung at his hip. On his head sat the crown of Escator, and below it his face was implacable and showed not a shred of doubt or guilt; those who could see him wondered at the truth of the rumours—surely their king was too confident and too grave to be accounted a schemer who had cheated Prince Maximilian of the throne?

Behind Cavor marched yet more troops, their booted feet sounding an uncompromising dirge.

The execution squad had now reached the platform, and Egalion directed several guards to march the Baxtors to its top. The other guards he ranged two deep about the platform to repel any foolish rescue attempts; yet, despite the number of guards, Egalion could not stop his eyes traversing the crowd in a curious yet apprehensive sweep.

He did not yet want to admit to himself for what or for whom he looked.

Cavor waited until Joseph and Garth, their hands now bound behind their backs, were standing behind the two wooden blocks—their surfaces scarred and stained by years of use—before he spurred his horse forward, scattering several of the crowd before him.

“My people!” Cavor shouted, standing up in his stirrups. “I beg you witness the deaths of two of the most heinous traitors this realm has yet bred!” He repeated the accusations he’d mouthed in the Chamber of Justice (and he’d rehearsed them so often in his mind that he now almost believed them himself), watching the crowd’s reaction with satisfaction. When he’d heard Maximilian’s name shouted in the Chamber of Justice, Cavor had momentarily doubted the wisdom of such a public accusation and execution. But now he was pleased. If anyone else had heard these treasonous rumours of Maximilian then best they realise the consequences of believing in them.

Garth and Joseph Baxtor’s deaths would do more than silence a pair of traitors; it might well stop civil insurrection before it had a chance to breed and fester.

And once I find Maximilian, Cavor thought coldly,
once
I find Maximilian then there will never be an excuse for rumour again. I’ll do to him what I should have found the means to do seventeen years ago. No-one is ever going to threaten my right to this throne again. Mark or no mark, Maximilian will surely die.

“Executioner!” he shouted, swinging his horse back to face the block. “Do you stand ready?”

A black robed and masked man stepped forward from the back of the platform. “Aye, sire. I stand ready.”

Two guards nudged Garth and his father forward, forcing them to their knees before the blocks. Garth gave his father one long, last look, then looked inward, searching for the inner peace he needed to meet death.

A cold smile playing across his face, Cavor raised a gloved hand high in the air. “Then—”

“I countermand both your order and your judgement, Cavor,” said a clear voice from several paces back in the crowd, “and I challenge your right to wear those robes and that crown in the first instance.”

The crowd parted and a man dressed in the rough clothes of a woodsman stepped forth.

Cavor, his hand still suspended above his head, his horse skittering nervously underneath him, stared unbelievingly into the face of Maximilian Persimius.

As the soldiers had seized Garth and Joseph, Ravenna had apologised silently to Drava for their intrusion, then spirited Maximilian and Vorstus into the dream world, expending more power in the extremity of her fear than she’d ever done previously.

As the mists closed about them Maximilian had rounded on her furiously. “What have you done? They need my help!”

Too exhausted to reply herself, Ravenna had let Vorstus speak. “And what would you do against sixty men, Prince? You don’t even have the ceremonial sword with you.”

Maximilian had turned on him with equal fury.

“I—”

Vorstus did not let him finish. “They would take you too, Maximilian, and this time Cavor would make sure that you were condemned to such a darkness that it would be impossible to escape from. We must trust that Egalion will not harm either of the Baxtors until he gets them to Ruen. And from there…well, perhaps from there we will have a chance.”

Grieving for the capture of the Baxtors, but accepting Vorstus’ reasoning, Maximilian had allowed Ravenna to lead them through the paths of the dream world until, with some direction from Vorstus, they eventually emerged into a mystical underground chamber of the Ruen headquarters of the Order of Persimius the same day that Egalion had delivered Garth and Joseph to Cavor.

There, with as many of the order as were in Ruen, together with Alaine and several of his closest and most trusted confidantes, they had planned.

Deep into the night before Garth and Joseph’s trial, Maximilian had raised his face and stared at those about the room. “I am ready,” he said quietly.

“But—”

Maximilian had turned his deep blue eyes on Vorstus. “I will never be ready enough to suit your caution, Vorstus, but I will never again have the chance that tomorrow’s spectacle provides. If I cannot succeed tomorrow, then I will never succeed, anywhere.”

Cavor, his face pale with shock, slowly lowered his hand. His heart was thudding painfully in his chest,
but somehow the actual sight of the man who threatened to tear down all he had built over the past seventeen years managed to calm and focus his mind.

His nemesis was here, and all he had to do was to confront it.

“Seize him,” he ordered Egalion.

Maximilian turned his head and looked steadily at Egalion.

His mind suddenly very clear, Egalion’s eyes flickered to Cavor, then back to Maximilian. “Perhaps you might like to state your business,” he said to Maximilian, and Cavor’s face twitched in shock at the man’s insubordination.

“I ordered you to—” he began, his voice tight with anger, but Maximilian interrupted.

“My business?” He raised his head, aware that every eye and every ear was strained his way. The square was stunningly quiet. He looked Cavor directly in the eye. “My name is Maximilian Persimius, Prince of Escator…and rightful king.”

His voice was clear and true, and the crowd took a single, gasping breath of shock.

“My business?” Maximilian said again, raising a quizzical eyebrow. Behind him two cloaked figures moved quietly out of the crowd to stand at his back. “I am here to challenge you for the throne, Cavor, and to accuse you of my kidnap and wrongful incarceration. If you claimed and sat the throne, Cavor, then you did so through lies and deceptions.” He paused. “Will you stand aside for me, Cavor? Will you vacate what you have so deceitfully claimed?”

Garth, watching from the block and with a clear view of both Maximilian and Cavor, had to admire the king’s reaction.

Cavor leaned back in the saddle and laughed, the sound apparently genuine and unforced. “Vacate the throne for
you
, Prince-of-wishing? I admire your determination, but I deplore your misguided sense of justice and truth.” Again he stood high in the saddle and addressed the crowd; now, as far as Garth could determine, so tense that a single shout could have sent them into a black riot.

But in whose favour, Garth could not tell.

“Hear me,” Cavor called, his voice as calm and as true as Maximilian’s had been. “Before me stands a man who claims to be Maximilian Persimius, son of the late king and queen. See, he even appears to have the Persimius’ darkness of hair and blueness of eyes. But, my people,” Cavor’s voice assumed an inexpressible sadness, “it hurts me to have to relate to you the truth. The dead queen, may the gods have mercy on her fragile femininity, could not bear an heir, and the single fruit of her womb slipped dead from her body. In despair—for what else could have prompted her actions?—she swapped the dead babe for the newborn son of a blacksmith who, despite his low birth, had the visage and colouring that could fool even the most discriminating of observers. Then—”

“I am true-born and blooded, Cavor,” Maximilian shouted, “and these good people do not have to listen to any more of your lies. Let the gods decide between us! Come, will you accept my challenge?”

Garth could see that Cavor’s words had affected many in the crowd, but Maximilian, even in his woodsman’s clothes, stood proud and straight before Cavor. No doubt showed in his face—and who could doubt, staring into that face, its noble ancestry?

Cavor dropped his eyes from the crowd. “A duel to the death, pretender? Is that what you wish?”

Maximilian smiled, the movement cold and thin. “I am not afraid of you, Cavor.”

“I think you should know, Cavor,” and one of the figures behind Maximilian cast aside his cloak, “that the Order of Persimius stands behind Maximilian on this issue.”

Cavor hissed, momentarily nonplussed. Vorstus stood before him, now clad in his robes of office as Grand Abbot of the Order of Persimius. Cavor sneered. “What has the Pretender offered you, Vorstus, that you desert the truth so readily? You backed my claim, you marked my arm. Why turn against me now?”

“Because now Maximilian Persimius has returned from his unnatural grave, Cavor and, unlike the majority of the good people in this square, I know who put him there!”

Cavor stared at Vorstus a moment longer, then turned withering eyes back to Maximilian. “I can see that a duel to the death is what it will take to consign your lies forever to the grave, pretender,” Cavor said very low, but clearly enough so that most could hear him in the preternatural silence. “Come, stand forth.”

“Oh,” an indescribably sad voice said, drifting over the crowd, “I’m not so sure about that.”

For the first time fear rippled swiftly across Cavor’s face, and was just as swiftly concealed again. He had known that Maximilian had made his claim in the Pavilion, had felt him trace through the mark, and he should have by rights expected this. But the actual appearance of the Manteceros unnerved him as nothing else had.