Oath of Fealty (30 page)

“Why didn’t you use your hand?” the Royal Guard sergeant said, then added a late “my lord.”

“Here I expect to find more lethal traps and tricks than anywhere else,” Dorrin said, looking the room over carefully. “When I was a child, my great-uncle, the late Haron’s father, set a spell on the door whenever he left, to prevent anyone coming in. It would knock an intruder down. When Haron left for Vérella, he might have set a lethal one. And do you see that chair?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Looks comfortable, doesn’t it? A poisoned spike, spring-loaded, is hidden in that fancy crest. If anyone sits there but the Duke, to whom the secret of disarming the chair has been handed down, it is death. The chair before the desk has traps as well. Touch nothing here—not the doorjamb, not a chair or table or so much as a book—without my direction.”

“That’s—that’s horrible,” the sergeant said.

“Sir Valthan wants to see certain records, but I do not want to risk his life in here,” Dorrin said. Or her own, but she had to do that. “You must do nothing but stand here and witness, until I am sure the room is safe. If I fall, tell Sir Valthan to fire the room. He will not obtain the records the prince wants, but it is too dangerous to send anyone else in, and fire should cleanse it.”

“Burn the—your—body?”

“Yes. Better that than risking more lives. He and I have discussed what to do with the family should that occur.” Dorrin touched Falk’s ruby. “Ward of Falk,” she said, and stepped into the room.

Magery coiled about her, invisible but palpable to her awakened mage-sense. Woven into the blue and gray rug, its patterns picked out in silver threads that drew her eye, urged her to move here, then there, in patterns that would entrap her if she obeyed. She ignored the urging, instead looking around once more—to either side, behind, above, below, probing with her awakened abilities for every trap, every compulsion, every evil design.

The room seemed more silent than it should, the silence oozing out from shelves of books and scrolls, up from the rugs, down from a carved and painted ceiling. Stillness, timelessness—Dorrin shook herself; it was not peace, but yet another protection built into the room, intended to immobilize intruders, and she had forgotten its existence. She stamped on the floor and said, “Your Duke returns! Verrakai hoert’a basinya bakuerta bavanta da akkensaar!” In the ancient language of the password: “Verrakai: not elven, not stone-folk, not air-folk, but mage-man.” A spell and counterspell she’d been told were older than Verrakai House, old as the magelords’ retreat from Old Aare. The stillness receded.

She glanced back at the sergeant, pale-faced and sweating in the doorway. “Just an old spell, don’t worry.”

“It looked like the room was filling with dust.”

“It wasn’t exactly dust,” Dorrin said. She stayed away from the ducal desk and went to the shelves to the right. “I may disappear,” she said over her shoulder. “These shelves are images; they should recede to the real ones beyond, but I might walk through them. I wasn’t taught all the counterspells.” Under her gloved hand, the shelves felt real; she knew better than to grope among the books and scrolls for the touchlock and instead pressed the ducal ring on the most likely shelf. “Tangat Verrakai!” she said sharply.

The shelves vanished, revealing a much larger room with two tables, plain wooden chairs set near them, and more shelves. At the far end, the portrait she remembered hung above a small fireplace; it had terrified her as a small child, a larger-than-life-size image of Aekal Verrakai, the first duke, grim-faced. But she was not a child any longer and found him more repulsive than frightening.

You should fear
. Straight into her mind the words came.
Without me, you are nothing. Because of me, you were born. Because of me, you will live or die. Fear me
.

“You are dead these thousand years,” Dorrin said.

A cold laugh.
This power never dies
.

“Nor Falk’s power, nor the High Lord’s,” Dorrin said. She drew her sword and laid the sword’s tip on the image’s chest. “It is time this image died, as well as its ghost.” A little pressure, and the tip pierced the surface.

Blood spurted from the image’s chest, ran down her sword blade hissing and smoking. The blade itself flared blue; stinking black smoke curled to either side. Dorrin stared, amazed, for a split second. Blood magery even here? She lent her power to the sword blade, augmenting its innate protection with her own, at the same time drawing the tip across the portrait, ripping it one way, then another. More blood surged out, splashing against her personal shield, hissing … it died, dried. A red mist rose from the wall behind the portrait, but dissipated when Dorrin called again and again on Falk.

Grimacing, she pulled the rags of the portrait free of its frame, realizing as she did that it had been painted on thin leather, not fabric. The frame itself stank of dark magery; she pulled that, too, free, and one side broke open. Instead of solid carved and painted wood, she found it was plaster, molded and painted to look like wood, over a core of bones and bone fragments … of what she did not know and did not want to imagine. On the wall itself, a door, carved with the Verrakai crest and a warning. Dorrin didn’t touch it physically, but once more said, “Tangat Verrakai.”

The door opened, revealing a small vault. Inside, the shattered remains of an urn with a little brownish red powder that vanished as she looked at it, what looked like a wooden box with inlaid patterns, a discolored scroll, and something beyond wrapped in pale leather. Dorrin left the vault open and walked back, nearer the study door.

“Did you see that?” she asked the sergeant.

“No, my lord. Like you said, you walked through a wall of books, it looked like.”

“The room extends beyond. There was magery, and I defeated it.” The man looked pale enough already; she did not want to panic him completely. “There’s a vault in the wall, with an urn, a scroll, various
other items. I do not wish to remove these things at the moment, because Sir Valthan really needs the information in the family birth records, and I haven’t found that yet.”

“The scroll?”

“Too old. And it should be a book with pages; I saw it as a child.” She looked around that end of the office, trying to remember the size and color of the volume. As a child, she had thought it huge, but how large was it really? She found two other record books, one with the breeding records of the Verrakai stud and one with a record of harvests for the past twenty-two years, before she found the one she wanted.

Her family had seemed vast when she lived here, but from the records Haron’s plan had been to concentrate power in the family as well as without. Only one of her sisters had survived, and both her brothers had been killed in duels with Haron’s sons. Her father had died of a hunting accident; there was a mark beside his name she did not know. Relief flooded her: he was dead; she did not have to worry about seeing that face ever again. In her own generation, cousin had married cousin—to strengthen the magery, no doubt. Stillbirths … infant deaths … childhood accidents … half these listings marked like her father’s name, whatever it meant. So the gaggle of children upstairs really were all … she’d expected fifty or more.

Yet something about the record book felt wrong. She could easily imagine dishonesty—but why here, in the list of family members, births, marriages, deaths, titles? Was there another record book, hidden somewhere? Or was something hidden here, in this book?

She touched the book with her magery; to her inner sight the pages wavered, as if under water, and a new page appeared, covered densely with a small crabbed script she did not recognize. As she read, she felt the hair rise up on her body: many of those listed as dead—those with the symbol—were not dead but transferred by blood magery to the bodies of others, some Verrakaien and some not. In such disguise, unrecognized, they could go anywhere, work for Verrakai secretly.

Including her father. Not dead, still alive, hidden? At the thought, panic flooded her, the fear she had controlled while in the tower’s dungeon. She had not told the Knight-Commander—she had been ashamed, even now, to admit how much she feared him, and why. Her
uncle had been duke and also punished her, but her father—he had worn the Bloodlord’s hood and mask, he had decreed the torment of her pony and torments even more shameful.

She closed the book and went at once to the door. “I have urgent news for Sir Valthan, which my relatives must not overhear. Tell him we need a safe place to confer.”

Dorrin met Valthan in the dairy. Windowless, stone-walled, the dairy felt chill and dank, light from their candle sending tiny dazzles from the water in the channel where butter and milk kept cool. Dorrin laid the book on the small table Valthan’s men had set there. “You found something bad?” Valthan asked.

“Many things,” Dorrin said. “But this is the worst.” She opened the book and pointed to the mark. “These are listed as deaths, with dates and causes listed. But they are not dead. They live … in other bodies.”

“What?”

“I did not know such evil was possible … but with blood magery, and I suppose the help of Liart’s priests, they can transfer the souls and minds of Verrakai into other bodies, to work secretly for that traitor Haron.”

“So … the prince may still be in danger?”

“The prince, yes, but also the realm as a whole. I do not know who the alternate identities are.” Her own father, not safely dead but alive—where was he?
Who
was he? She shuddered, forcing memory away.

“How do you know this?”

“There is a page visible only by magery,” Dorrin said. “I can try to make it visible to you—” She put out her power again and the page reappeared. “There, do you see it?”

“No,” Valthan said, scowling. “What does it say?”

“It gives the dates these people were transferred to another body, and for a few it gives that identity.”

“What about those others? Are they now in Verrakai bodies?”

“They’re dead,” Dorrin said. The page gave part of the ritual by which the transfer was done; it disgusted her.

“Well … that’s one thing,” Valthan said, staring down at the page, through the page he could not see. “What will happen if I touch this? Will I feel the one I can’t see?” He put out a finger.

“Don’t,” Dorrin said. “I don’t want to risk it. I need a competent scribe, so I can read this page aloud and send a copy to the prince, but though I have literate men among my cohort, none are skilled at dictation. Do you have a scribe with you?”

He shook his head. “I’m the only one. If you trust me.”

“Of course,” Dorrin said.

“I mean, I might be one of those Verrakai put in someone’s body. I might be about to kill you.”

“We can find out,” Dorrin said. She read out the phrase that supposedly forced the transferred Verrakai to reveal themselves.

“What was that?” Valthan said.

“Proof you’re not a Verrakai,” Dorrin said. “Let’s get this done—time’s passing.”

Valthan wrote to her dictation; then Dorrin copied his copy, which matched her memory.

“Do not let my relatives know you have this,” Dorrin said. “They might find a way to destroy it, if they suspected its existence. It must go to the prince’s own hand.”

“A courier?”

Dorrin considered. “Do you have a man to spare? Considering how many prisoners you have and the Verrakai yet at large?”

“Not really,” Valthan admitted. “But I expect to meet another troop on the way.”

“I still worry that attack on a single courier would be easier than on a troop. If you send one, warn him to stop nowhere but at a grange of Gird—not for water or food or rest.”

When they returned to the great hall, the guard had changed to Phelani; Valthan’s were out in the stable, readying horses and wagons for the morning’s departure. They would sleep there, in relative safety, to be rested for the next day’s travel. Dorrin went to the front entrance and murmured the command word that swung the great doors wide. Sweet cold air flowed in, smelling of early spring, the first faint fragrance of healthy growth. She wanted to walk out into the darkness and never come back. She’d done it once; her escape saved her life and sanity.

And she had come back, unwilling, to save those who would not thank her, the innocent among her bitter and resentful family. In her
mind she saw the view that darkness hid—the fields, the trees beyond, the view that should have been as dear and familiar as anything in the world. Instead, longing for the Duke’s Stronghold stabbed her, the familiar inner and outer courts, sunrise seen from the parapet, that dinner table with Kieri at its head and Arcolin and Cracolnya across from her. Her eyes stung with unshed tears.

Would she ever feel this was home? A safe place, a comfortable place?

She stared at the gloom until her eyes dried, then turned and went inside.

B
efore dawn, Dorrin and Sir Valthan ate breakfast in the dining room of the main house, still from rations they’d brought, and Dorrin wrote out another report for the prince, on the conditions she’d found in the keep.