The War of the Moonstone: an Epic Fantasy (3 page)

“An arrow—from behind.”

Giorn stepped forward. The movement
seemed to frighten Efram. “Does he live, man?”

“For the nonce, my lord. Come.”

Giorn quit the hounds and the dead
fox without a thought. He swung astride his stallion and followed Efram through
the forest to the scene of the violence. Many servants and courtiers were
buzzing around a sun-drenched knoll, where the jutting limestone prevented a
profusion of trees. There on a patch of lime-green grass the Baron was laid on
his side, while a healer tended to him. The black-shafted arrow still stuck from
his lower back, and blood trickled down from the wound.

Giorn dismounted and joined Meril
in kneeling beside the Baron. Harin looked pale and drawn. His face was sweaty,
his eyes glazed.

“He’s lost a great deal of blood,”
the healer said.

“How?” Giorn said. “How could this
have happened?”

“Yfrin,” Meril said. “Duke Yfrin!”

“I don’t understand. Yfrin took ill
this morning and couldn’t come on the hunt. He’s still back at his tent . . .”

Meril shook his head slowly. His
jaw was clenched, his eyes narrow and hateful. Giorn would have laid a hand on
his shoulder but he saw that Meril would only shake it off.

“Several saw him do it.” Meril’s
gaze stayed on their father. “Father had ridden up here to view his friends
enjoying the hunt, when the Duke crept up behind him, bow in hand, and shot
him. Several riders were in the area and saw him do it. They chased him, but he
fled over the drop-off—” (Meril gestured to a modest cliff on the other side of
the knoll) “—where his horse waited. He fled back to camp, where we found him
in his tent, still pretending at illness.”

For a moment, Giorn grew faint, and
the world twisted about him. Sounds and smells receded, then flooded back with
shocking intensity. With effort, he concentrated on his father. The Baron
looked to be in intense pain as the royal healer attempted to remove the arrow.
Giorn moved forward and took his father’s hand. Lord Wesrain gripped his with
surprising firmness, which cheered Giorn. His father suddenly seemed more
alert, looking Giorn in the eye.

“It will be all right, Father,”
Giorn said.

The Baron gasped, trying to speak,
but could not. He shuddered and grew paler.

“Why?” Meril whispered. “Why would
the Duke
do
it? He and Father’ve been
friends all their lives . . .”

“Why does anyone do anything?” came
a new voice. Giorn turned to regard Raugst, wearing the finery of his new
position as commander of the Castle’s defensive forces. He had taken to the
post well.

“That is no sort of answer,” Giorn
said. His father squeezed his hand even tighter. Both hands were sweaty. Giorn
noticed the Baron’s hand growing colder, even under the warm sun. It was
shaking.

“Then let us torture the truth out
of him,” Raugst said.

“Yes,” Meril said. “We must know
why he did it.”

Giorn frowned. If his father died, he
would become the new baron. He would not commence his rule by torturing a duke
and a friend

“Leave Yfrin to me,” he said.

At last the healer was able to remove the arrow from Lord
Wesrain’s back and sew up the wound, but the Baron had lost a great deal of blood,
suffered much damage to his organs, and the risk of mortification was high. The
healer pronounced it too traumatic to move him, but he had more than enough
comforts here at the camp—fine wines and linens, his favorite concubine brought
from the country manor to sponge his forehead. Yet even this would not be
enough, the healer, Masan,
confided to Giorn in Giorn’s tent late one night after a bout of fever had
gripped Harin Wesrain for several hours. Iarine the concubine had laid the
Baron’s head in her lap, stroked his hair and sang to him, but he hadn’t even
seemed to notice.

“I don’t think he has much longer,”
Masan said to
Giorn, his wide face bleak and drawn. “There’s not much more I can do for him.”

Giorn stared at the man for a
moment, then nodded curtly. “You’ve done the best you could.”

“It may not be enough.”

“I know. That’s why I’ve sent for
Lady Niara. It’s possible she can aid us. And she should be here soon, Omkar
willing; I sent for her immediately after the attack.”

The healer bowed, accepting this,
that his own skills might be inadequate. He seemed about to say something, but
hesitated. “Is it true she’s part . . .
other
?”

Giorn felt his throat tighten. “Why
do you think
I
would know?”

The healer swallowed nervously. “No
reason, my lord.”

Giorn forced himself to soften. “No.
Tell me. No harm will come to you. You should know me well enough to know
that.”

“Thank you, my lord. It’s
you
I fear for. And her. You two play a
dangerous game.”

Giorn felt fear grow in him, and
anger. He tried to suppress it, but even so he saw Masan start to take half a step backward.

The healer immediately added in a
shaky voice, “But maybe the gossips have the wrong of it. They usually do . .
.” He laughed nervously.

For some reason, Masan’s nervousness banished Giorn’s anger. Masan meant no harm, that
was plain. Still, the thought that his affair with Niara was known to some
terrified Giorn. He remembered the fate of the last man caught sleeping with a
high priestess, and he shuddered. Nevertheless, he clapped Masan on the arm, startling the healer. “You
worry too much about things that don’t concern you,” Giorn said, not unkindly. “I’ll
look after my own skin. You look after Father’s.”

“I’ll do what I can, my lord. If I
may ask, how goes the interrogation of Lord Yfrin?”

Giorn sobered. Now he saw why the
healer was acting so nervously. All knew that Giorn had been overseeing the
questioning of the Duke, and all feared he was implementing the harshest
measures. Any man who could be so brutal was surely capable of anything. The
truth was somewhat different, but Giorn would not go into such detail with Masan.

“As I said, you worry about Father.
I’ll worry about the rest.”

Masan nodded reluctantly. “There
is
one other matter, if I can ask
another moment of your time.” He took a breath. “It’s probably not my duty to
bring it up—I was waiting for Lord Meril to address it with you, but, as he
hasn’t, and there is no other, so—”

“Yes?” But inside Giorn already
knew what he would say.

Masan swallowed. “Succession. You are the
Heir. Perhaps now’s the time for you to step forward—”

Suddenly furious, Giorn gripped Masan by the front of his
tunic and hauled him close so that Giorn’s teeth were just inches from the
healer’s face. “We’re practically standing over him now! Your patient in the
very next tent! How can you say this to me?”
Masan licked
his lips but evidently could find no voice to speak. At last, Giorn, abashed at
his outburst, set the healer down and half turned away.

“Forgive me,” he said. “But I
cannot do what you ask. I cannot give up on Father. Neither should you. You’re
his healer. Away with you.”

Masan nodded wordlessly and left.

Giorn found a bottle of wine among
his things and tilted its contents into his mouth. It was red and tart, and he
grimaced. He drank some more, straight from the bottle, then twisted the cork
back on.

“Time to visit Yfrin.”

It was dark outside, the stars half
hidden by amorphous clouds. A few braziers flickered in the wind, their coals
burning white-hot, and Giorn worried about sparks spreading from tent to tent. He
would have to get somebody to watch that. Gathering his green cloak about
himself for warmth, he cut through the camp, though his steps were a bit uneven.
Everywhere men saluted him or bowed. One or two approached him to give progress
reports and seek orders, and he dealt with them one by one, though he was
impatient to reach the Duke. Giorn recognized the importance of maintaining
discipline—principally his own. He could drink and wallow in private, but no
one must ever see. He was careful to appear sober.

The great limbs of the Tree of
Kings stretched overhead, their feathery green leaves filtering the moonlight. The
massive cypress loomed at the edge of camp, high and proud, majestic. Legend
said it was over eight hundred years old. It had already been huge six hundred
years ago when King Erryl Wesrain had met under it with King Haled Raegar. Two
kings had met beneath it, but only one had walked away.

Giorn neared the tent where Duke
Yfrin was being kept. Two guards stood before its closed flap and two more on
either side faced the tent. The primary pair bowed to Giorn and let him pass. Giorn
entered, shoving the tent flaps before him. Within it was darker than outside
but comparatively warm; at least there was no wind. Giorn blinked, adjusting to
the dimness, then made out the Duke, a huddled shape in soiled clothes chained
hand and foot, his ankle chain connected via a short length to a stake set deep
in the earth.

The Duke whimpered but rose to a
sitting position. He was just a shadow in the darkness. “Have you come to
finish it?” he said.

Giorn squatted beside him so that
he wouldn’t be looming over the man. “No.” He sighed. So far Yfrin had given
him nothing. He had not even admitted to the crime, despite the accounts of
several witnesses. “But I’m thinking that perhaps it’s time to question you
more . . .
thoroughly
.”

The Duke whimpered again, and Giorn
clenched his jaw. He hated having to do this, to be this man, though there was
nothing for it. But he also despised the Duke for his lack of fortitude. Giorn
had not tortured him, at least not physically. He had alternately starved him,
let him thirst, plied him with alcohol, interrupted his sleep, administered
hallucinogenic toxins (which had produced the screaming that gained Giorn his
notoriety), and more, and still Duke Yfrin would not talk. And yet he had no
trouble complaining about his treatment!

“Please don’t,” he said. “Have
mercy!”

Giorn, against his better judgment,
sat down next to him. The ground was cold and its moisture seeped through his
breeches.

“Tell me,” Giorn said, “why
shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I torture you?
You
shot my father
.”

The Duke shrank back. “I—I—I
didn’t!”

“You lie!”

“No! I would never! You know me,
Giorn. You
know
me.”

This was true, and it was why Giorn
had spared Yfrin thus far. The Duke had been a lifelong friend of his father’s,
and Giorn had grown up often traveling to the Duke’s castle to the north and
enjoying fragments of the easy life there, away from the Oslog border. Yfrin
had been a plump and happy man, and a good lord for his subjects, and his
bloodline was connected with Giorn’s in many places throughout history. Giorn
had always thought of him as something of an uncle and had actually called him
Uncle growing up.

The wind ruffled the canvas tent,
making it flap noisily. Yfrin jumped and cried out. Giorn was so distracted by
his musings that he hardly noticed. He scraped some cold dirt up in his hands,
clumped it, feeling its moisture, its richness, then let it drift through his
fingers.

“How?” he said at last. “How could
it
not
be you? You were seen.”

For a long moment the Duke said
nothing. He just crouched there, huddling in the dark, his head directed at
Giorn. “I don’t know,” he said, and there was weariness, but also earnestness,
in his voice. “I took ill that day. Shouldn’t have been drinking so early in
the morning.”

Idly, for had heard this story many
times before, Giorn said, “It’s not like you to drink so early. And before a
hunt! You could have fallen off your horse.”

“Would that I had!”

Giorn allowed himself a smile at
that.
Yes, indeed
. “Then why drink?” He
had yet to probe the issue.

He saw the Duke shrug in the
darkness. “Why does anyone? I was having a chat, he was tilting a flask, and I
thought, Why not?”

Giorn frowned. “He?”

“What? Oh, yes. That young fellow
Raugst and I. I wanted a talk with little Fria’s new husband. I haven’t gotten
to know him well—at all, really—and here I am the next thing to an uncle to
Fri. I remember sitting her on my knee when she was a little one. She used to
chase rabbits in my garden. So did you, for that matter.” His voice had grown
wistful.

“I remember. Those were simpler
times.”

“Indeed they were. Good ones,
though.”

Giorn scratched some dirt off his
pants. “Raugst, eh?” This was new.

“Yes. I didn’t mention it before?”

“No. No, you didn’t.”

“Well, no matter. Please, don’t get
him in trouble for my old body’s failings. Of course, that’s assuming you
believed me in the first place.”

“Who says I don’t? Perhaps that’s
why I haven’t tortured you yet.”

“Do you still think that you
should?”

“I . . . haven’t decided. I’ll
think on it tonight. At any rate, it’s been a long day, and I’m in no mood to
hear an old friend scream.”
And should I
become Baron, this is only the first of many hard decisions I’ll have to make.
He did not relish it. “Good night.” As he rose to his feet, his head swam and
he had to lean against the tent pole to steady himself.

“You all right?”

“I’m fine.”
Hard decisions go easier with a dulled mind.
Giorn started to go,
then turned back. “Tell me, Uncle, was it you that asked Raugst for a sip or
was it the other way around?”

The Duke scratched his chin. “It
was me that wanted a sip. Yes, yes, I’m almost certain.”

“That’s what I thought. ‘night.” Giorn
turned.

“No! Wait!”

“Yes?”

“It was Raugst! Yes, I remember
now. We were talking, and he was drinking, and I thought that it was odd for
him to be drinking so early, but then, he’s a southerner, a frontiersman, and
who knows with that lot?, and we were having a chat, about hunting stag I
think, and I was eyeing his flask, and he asked me if I wanted a sip, and I
started to say, No, it’s too early, but then I thought, Well, why not? I’m an
old man and should get my pleasures where I can. Who knows how long I’ll have
left? Not long, I’ll wager,” he added ruefully.