Chagri had begun to speak: The god revealed to him his every thought, related his own unspoken uncertainties, laid bare his soul.
Slyur had found himself on his knees, begging forgiveness for having doubted so long. The god informed him that begging would do no good. Slyur would have to find a way of proving himself.
Since that first meeting Chagri had required only one act of him: that he send Varenukha, a raver in the priesthood whom Slyur detested—to Trufege as their new priest. Slyur had agreed easily, because the appointment rid him of the man.
But now this second command … to send Varenukha and Trufege against the Kobachs. Varenukha would relish the order. Trufege would bathe in their neighbors’ blood.
Slyur shook his head. How many more vile acts would he have to perform to satisfy … to satisfy whom? There was the question that haunted Slyur.
Who was Chagri?
All Slyur knew for certain was that Chagri—impostor or not—would kill him with a touch if angered. And Slyur, no zealot, had no wish to play the martyr. He was forty-five, older than most men in Secamelan. He intended to live twice that long. There were just a few distasteful things he would have to do. Right now, however, there was a little girl whose life he could save. A decent act to offset the other.
Slyur leaned out the window of his carriage and signaled to his escort.
*****
Through every passage and room in the castle of Atlarma sounded the deep, sonorous phrases of a melancholy dirge.
The disembodied voices singing the lament were especially loud here in the room where the body rested in state. Painted canvases had been stretched across the windows. Torches burned on either side of the door.
The body of Dekür lay on a red catafalque. A thin candle burned at each corner, collecting him in light without shadow. The hilt of his sword protruded still from his chest. No amount of force bad been able to withdraw it from the congealed wound. Instead, in a grisly act, the blade had been snapped off where it jutted from his back.
A short, trim man stood over the body of Dekür. His red, sleepless eyes were open but unseeing. Cheybal, leader of Secamelan’s armies, held his hands stiffly at his sides and looked from the body to his own feet. His bearded chin pressed against his leather collar. “What has happened?” he asked the corpse without looking up. “Who committed this act? If you would just open your eyes, Dekür, and tell me who to condemn, who to call ‘enemy’.”
He glanced up, as if expecting his words to have moved the corpse to revive.
Cheybal recalled something he had said to Dekür one evening when the two of them were staggeringly drunk. “The unknown,” he had proclaimed, is a thing you can never prepare for, yet it’s the thing you have to prepare for.” A drunkard’s epigram. They had both laughed and toasted the unknown. But he’d been right and here was the unknown, revealed in its true colors: Dekür dead, Lewyn gone, and Cheybal floundering as temporary sovereign of Secamelan. All problems, however irrelevant to matters at hand, eventually came before him. His answers had to be the correct ones. No one ruled above him any longer to certify or refute his wisdom.
He hated being king. At least it was only temporary.
Soon enough, Tynec, an eight-year-old boy, would be thrust into that despised position … unless they could find Lewyn.. Cheybal held little hope of doing so. Her abductors had gone like ghosts, departing with the dawn to some world beyond this one. So where was he supposed to look for her? Where on Voed’s noble world? Where?
The candles around the catafalque flickered. The body seemed to move as their light wavered, bringing abrupt shadows. Cheybal tensed.
Then he realized the illusion. Someone had opened the door to this vast and empty hall.
He turned to see Tynec standing alone inside the door. Cheybal’s mouth went dry. What idiot had let Tynec in here? He must not witness this awful thing. Cheybal wanted to shield him from it, but he could not make himself move between the boy and the corpse. It was too late to do so.
*****
Tynec stared fixedly at the body of his father as he moved closer. His face was set hard against the stirring horror; he hadn’t known what to expect; the phrase “your father is dead, boy” had somehow passed right by him without giving him some measure of its meaning. Just words, adult words, pointless words.
He chose not to see the body lying away from him at eye-level ahead. His gaze shifted quickly to Cheybal, but the man seemed aghast, too awful to look at. Tynec stared at the gleaming sword hilt projecting like some grotesquely wrought silver phallus above the soles of his father’s boots. The echoes of the chanted dirge seemed to close in on him from the sides, to wrap around his head. He squeezed his eyes to put everything out of focus. The dirge roared in his ears. He arrived at the catafalque.
He saw the rings on the left hand of the body, the hand folded across the right hand beneath the hilt. His eyes kept wanting to move against his will, to look at the face. They flicked that way, they saw, and could not look away.
He found himself drawn along the side of the funeral stand until he stood beside the his father’s head. “Your father is dead, boy.” The meaning stabbed home at last. The hard shield he’d maintained crumpled. His face screwed up to hold back the tears, but they came anyway, rolling down his cheeks. He did not wipe them away.
He forgot that Cheybal stood across from him. The sleeping face of his father filled his vision and his mind. There seemed to be a cruel twist to his father’s mouth, and he reached out to smooth the lips. They were hard, like lips of an ice sculpture. His hand twitched back, and he sobbed once. Finally, he wiped at his eyes.
“Father is dead,” he whispered. His throat ached as he swallowed.
“You’re the king now, Tynec,” Cheybal said. “There’s much we have to do, you and I.” He regretted saying it instantly. How much weight could the boy withstand?
Tynec made no reply.
Cheybal thought of himself, moments before, wanting Dekür to awaken and sit up. He waited with eternal patience and said no more.
The dirge ended and began again.
Cheybal found Tynec staring at him. “There s a lot to be done,” the boy answered, seeming to echo him. “We’d better go.”
Silently, Cheybal led the way.
At the door, they were met by the Hespet Slyur. The priest momentarily blocked the doorway, while catching his breath. He looked past them even as he greeted them, to the red-draped block and its lifeless burden. He allowed the man and boy to pass him, mumbled some respectfully sympathetic utterance, and then closed the door behind him.
Gathering his robe in his one hand, he hurried across the room.
The hilt of Dekür’s sword threw off scintillas of light as Slyur neared the foot of the catafalque. Dekür’s hands were cupped together beneath it. The stone face of death made Slyur’s jaw bulge. His teeth ground together. He’d known this man.
The sword hilt unnerved him. Why hadn’t someone removed it? How could they leave it there like that? Disgusting thoughtlessness, letting the boy see his father that way. An awful thing.
Slyur spread his arms wide. He began to whisper a death oblation that Mordus would accept the spirit of the king and lead it across the crimson bridge to eternal Mordun. He paused and noticed that the dirge outside had stopped.
The candles flickered and for an instant the torches died. A shadow swept over the king. Slyur, thinking Cheybal had returned, glanced back at the door. No one was there; the door remained closed.
When he faced the body again, the head had turned to face him. Its milky eyes were open. They pierced him with their glazed stare. Slyur cried out. He stumbled back, his arm across his face to block off those eyes. He tripped over his own feet and sprawled on the cold stones.
He scrabbled on the cold slick floor to the wall, then dragged himself up. His cheek scraped against it. He uttered little whines, and looked over his shoulder, expecting to see Dekür upright, coming for him.
Eyes closed, the body of the king lay solemn in death. Slyur pressed his arm against his pounding heart. Cold sweat trickled like worms beneath his clothes.
He suddenly vaulted, frog-like, for the door. There he glanced back one final time to be sure that the body had not moved.
“See for yourself.” The words of Chagri whirled around him, dry leaves rustling on a wintry breeze.
Slyur opened the door and hurried out in search of a messenger.
Chapter 6.
In the tavern yard the only sound was the jingling of bridles as Reeterkuv moved among his horses. Their coats were sleek, though the dull sky preceding dawn contained no source to show off the sheen. The sun lay somewhere behind the trees; a hint of it glazed the tip of the tavern chimney.
Reeterkuv patted a nuzzling horse and murmured his assurance to it that soon they would be going. He watched the smoke and his stomach grumbled. Yes, they would leave soon enough, but first he would have his breakfast. He imagined he could smell the corn pudding that Grohd stirred at this very moment in the cauldron beneath the chimney, although there was no breeze and the smoke rose straight into the sky.
Reeterkuv ducked beneath the wagon tongue and began checking the harnesses on his lead horses. The next trip could only be an improvement, he thought. By the time he returned from Miria with new passengers, the death of the king would be old news. Most probably the people who would ride with him on his return northward would be on their way to see the boy given the crown. He sincerely hoped so. Such people would speak of nothing but the coming festivities, and what they would wear and how much they might drink, and who might be there to see. Oh, yes, a little celebrating could do no harm just now, especially if it silenced the bickering over blame. Such profligate lies! The king had been a good enough man. He had tried to end oppression, superstition and intolerance. He deserved tears and grief on his passing; what worried Reeterkuv was the frenzy with which people would turn to celebration in order to forget their grief—never thinking in all that time that a child never actually govern them. Who would run the kingdom? Someone had to make policy. Who? Reeterkuv did not know much about the way a kingdom was run, but he thought he did. He envisioned a boy surrounded by nameless faceless advisors, all of whom had personal interests, all of whom must surely be greedy and untrustworthy. Reeterkuv saw the world changing and that he feared above all else. No one likes to wake up and find that today’s world is not the same as yesterday’s.
“I should like to be a horse,” he muttered to one of the lead animals. “What do you care which wagon you pull, eh? You do your work, you get your feed, someone brushes you …”
He did not know exactly what it was that made him pause in his thoughts. Something caught his eye, drawing his attention to the dark road. He couldn’t see anything. He listened, but heard no sound.
Then, as he began to turn away, a rider appeared out of the murky distance. A second one followed close behind, and then a third, wearing a helmet. They came on at a steady, purposeful canter. Soldiers.
Reeterkuv squinted until he could make out for certain the color of their tunics. When he did, he turned and ran.
In the tavern, Grohd stood over the cauldron. One hand clutched a huge wooden spoon and stirred the pudding slowly. The other hand balanced a stack of wooden bowls.
The door crashed open and slammed back against the wall. The spoon jumped from Grohd’s hand. He groped for it as it settled out of sight in the pudding, which in turn caused the carefully balanced bowls to tip from his other palm and splatter into the yellow concoction. He managed to retrieve one, but the rest were sucked under in the time it took him to pull it out. The pudding eructed appreciatively. Grohd swung around, furious, his pudding-daubed fingers working like claws. Then he saw the expression on Reeterkuv’s face.
“Soldiers!” shouted Reeterkuv to everyone in the room. “Orange, Ladomantines! On the road right now, they’re coming.” He realized he was yelling, and made himself continue more calmly. “If you’ve got valuables—money, anything you treasure—give it to Grohd to hide right now.” No one moved. They stared at him dumbly. “Well, don’t weigh it in your minds, you’ve only a minute.” He leaned over and flung the door shut at his back.
People hurried to the bar and began to pour out the contents of their pockets and bags. The short beef-faced man bawled out, “My money’s in the hut, beside my bed. In my satchel!” He started for the door, but Reeterkuv caught him with one hand and jerked him to a stop. “You don’t go out. If that’s where your money is, then it’s gone, it isn’t yours hereafter. That’s a press-gang I saw and you could be farming Ladoman muck tomorrow. D’you understand?” He released his hold on the short man. “All of you. Whatever they want, you give it to them. Which is why you don’t want it on you. Isn’t that so, Grohd?”
The keeper looked at the coins and rings and bracelets that were piled on his bar. The young physician had removed his medallion and put it there. Grohd finally looked up at Reeterkuv. “That’s right,” he said. Then he glanced meaningfully at Lyrec and recalled what the stranger had said to him the night before. Lyrec, with money stuffed in his pouch, had not moved or spoken, and his face showed no sign of fear, though he had to know—as he had foretold—what this portended. Yet it seemed to make no difference to him. A shiver ran up Grohd’s spine as those dark eyes met his. For a moment, the breath of a second, they seemed to flash silver. Grohd felt suddenly that he did not know this man at all, nor even that Lyrec
was
a man. It was as if he had glimpsed some lurking … god. The cat, too, was watching Lyrec, as if that black beast shared Grohd’s fear, as though it understood that the sounds of horses’ hooves rolling like thunder across the yard presaged trouble and death. Finally, Grohd’s instincts kicked in; he scooped up the valuables from the bar and began stuffing them into mugs stacked on the shelf below it; but the perception of Lyrec’s alienness stayed with him. Grohd crouched behind the bar and knew he would never see Lyrec in the same light again.