“My lord,” he said. “I took no pleasure in relaying this information, but it was important to tell you the truth. What will you do now?”
The king raised his head and looked at the rogue.
“I am torn, Hallic.”
He looked at the others, a deeply troubled expression on his face.
“I know what you would have me do, Jergen. But the thought of executing my own flesh and blood is grotesque to me. It is unthinkable.”
Jergen began to speak, caught himself and took a deep breath.
“I understand, my lord,” he said slowly. “Believe me, I do. But whether he is your son or not, Corbin is a traitor. Not just to you, but to our people. He wants to murder his own father and seize the throne. And we have the evidence from his own lips!”
He looked at Hallic.
“Who was the agent who passed along the schedule to the prince?” he asked. “Would they be willing to testify in open court to Corbin's treachery?”
“Oh, I think she would, yes,” Hallic assured him.
“She?”
“Yes. It was my daughter, Mel, who gave the prince the false information. She heard the entire treasonous conversation between Corbin and his cronies, as did I.”
“Your daughter?” Shandon said in surprise.
“Yes, my lord.”
The king chuckled dryly.
“So the sins of the fathers are passed down to their children, both mine and yours,” he said bitterly. “But my son is a traitor and your daughter is a patriot. Ironic, isn't it?”
“Considering how many of our people foolishly think that rogues can't be trusted, you are correct, my lord,” Pieter said, his voice heavy with emotion. “My dealings with Hallic's guild have always been honorable.”
“And what dealings would those be, pray tell?” Jergen asked with a teasing grin.
“Never you mind,” Pieter told him primly. “I've lived longer than all of you and, on occasion, I've needed information that I could not gather on my own. The guild has been very helpful in that regard, and they have always been faithful to their contracts. I would take their word over the word of many other dwarves.”
“The things that I still don't know about you, Pieter,” Jergen said, shaking his head.
Pieter gestured toward Shandon, who was staring down at the tabletop again.
“My past isn't the point of this discussion. The king's son is.”
“Yes. He is,” Shandon murmured. “Damn it, boy. Why are you forcing me to destroy you?”
The others sat quietly, leaving the king to his thoughts. Pieter drained his mug and got up to refill it. He motioned toward Jergen's empty tankard, but the dwarf shook his head.
After he had poured himself another mug of beer, the old dwarf leaned back against the bar and stared at the king.
“There is another way, my lord,” he said carefully. “Perhaps. If you are reluctant to bring your son to justice and see him executed for treason.”
Shandon looked across the room at Pieter.
“What other way could there be?” he asked. “The punishment for betraying our people is death, be you lowborn or noble. There are no exceptions.”
Pieter sipped his ale and then nodded in agreement.
“Aye, that is so, my lord. But if Corbin is never arrested and formally charged, he wouldn't face the justice of the high court, now would he?”
“What are you saying, Pieter?” Jergen asked him with a scowl. “Would you simply let the boy continue to plot the king's downfall, knowing that he intends to murder his father? Are you mad?”
“Perhaps, but no, I do not believe that it would be wise to let the prince run free,” Pieter replied.
“Then what do you suggest?” Shandon asked.
“Exile,” the older dwarf said, his eyes locked on the king's. “Send Corbin so far away that he will never get the opportunity to put his schemes into action. Isolate him from his treasonous friends and let him live his life far from the center of power.”
He shrugged.
“If you take away a serpent's fangs, it is no longer a threat.”
“Oh, that is a dangerous path to take,” Hallic interjected.
He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table.
“Corbin is very young, my lord,” he told the king. “To expect him to spend the next several centuries living a quiet life away from court is, forgive me, a foolish notion. His ambitions will never be quenched, and I speak now as one who has observed him closely for some time. My guild has also kept an eye on the prince and they report that he is burning with desire for your crown. Sending him away will do nothing to sate that desire. It would probably have the opposite effect.”
“But he would be alive, even if he never gives up his desire to take the throne,” Shandon said heavily. “Surely that is preferable to having him stand trial and face execution?”
“Is Corbin's life worth so much trouble?” Jergen muttered.
The king slammed his fist on the table, knocking over the empty mugs on it. He stood up and glared at Jergen.
“He is my son, damn it!” he shouted angrily. “Can a father murder his only child? Could you?”
Jergen stood up and faced Shandon eye to eye.
“If it meant saving the empire from civil war, then yes, my lord, I believe that I could. No one person's life is worth risking that, even if that person is the son of the king.”
Shandon glared at him for another moment and then seemed to deflate. He reached out to Jergen, who gripped his hand firmly.
“Forgive me, old friend,” the king said sadly. “But, traitorous or not, he is still my son and I cannot kill my own flesh and blood.”
“I know, my lord,” Jergen replied gently. “I know. We are at an impasse, it seems, and I do not know what the solution is.”
They sat down again and silence descended over the group. Pieter stared the king for a moment and then walked over to the table and picked up the empty mugs.
“When in doubt, have a drink,” he said merrily. “With enough ale even the toughest problems go away, at least for a few hours.”
Shandon watched Pieter walk back to the bar and begin refilling the tankards. He smiled ruefully and shook his head.
“Ah, if only life was that simple,” he said wistfully.
“It used to be,” Jergen told him with a sudden grin. “Back in Ender Scorn, remember? We could have filled a lake with the amount of ale we drank back in the old days.”
“Aye, that's true. There's a golden haze over those memories now, isn't there?” Shandon said.
Pieter returned with the full mugs and the king smiled his thanks at the old dwarf.
“We were young and brash and eager to fight and drink in equal measure back then,” he continued. “Now? Now things are so much more complicated.”
“They have become even more complicated than you know, my lord.”
All four dwarves looked toward the entrance of the lounge. A young woman wearing a dark leather tunic and trousers stood there, her pale blue eyes watching the group alertly.
“Mel?” Hallic said in surprise. “Well now, I wasn't expecting to see you again so soon.”
“This is your daughter, Hallic?” Shandon asked as he stared at the blond-haired woman.
“It is, my lord,” the rogue replied as he stood up. “May I introduce Mel Barston. Mel, this is his majesty, King Shandon Ironhand.”
Mel walked toward the table and the king rose from his seat. She stopped several feet away and nodded at him.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, young lady,” Shandon told her.
“The pleasure is mine, my lord,” she replied. “Father has told me a lot about you, and he holds you in high regard. His loyalty is not easily earned, as I am sure you know, and so I honor you as he does.”
Shandon smiled at her comment.
“Yes, I am aware of Hallic's high standards. I'm grateful that I have met them.”
“Isn't anyone going to ask h
ow this young lady got in here past your guards?” Jergen wondered, watching Mel suspiciously.
“I'm more interested in her comment about complications,” Pieter said from where he was leaning against the bar. “We know that she was trained by her father, Jergen. You shouldn't be surprised by her skill.”
“Would you care to take a seat?” Shandon asked, waving at an empty chair as he sat down again.
“Thank you, my lord, but I doubt that anyone will be sitting for much longer,” Mel replied, her expression now guarded.
“What's happened?” Hallic asked her.
“The prince is gone,” she replied. “It's like he just vanished. We had someone tailing him as usual and they report that he has disappeared.”
“What?”
Jergen lurched to his feet and glared at her. Mel met his eyes easily.
“Do you mean to say that your people lost him?” he asked angrily. “I thought that you rogues were more skilled than that!”
“There is no need to be insulting, Jergen,” Hallic told him, his eyes suddenly as hard as diamonds. “If we lost him, it is because he was simply not there anymore.”
“That is correct, Father,” Mel said. “The prince entered his residence about an hour ago, accompanied by his companion, Brulle Undersby. Our watcher waited for a time, but no lights were lit inside of the home and so he decided to take a look and find out why. That is when he discovered that the prince and his friend were gone.”
She looked around the table.
“There is only one entrance to that house, and it is a small building. No one could have slipped out of a window or hidden from our agent. He searched the residence from top to bottom and found nothing. No trap doors, no hidden passages. It is as if the prince simply disappeared.”
“Damn it,” Jergen snarled. “We've lost him. How could this happen?”
Shandon looked at Hallic and raised an eyebrow.
“Magic?” he asked.
“Yes, my lord. That is the only answer,” the rogue replied. “He must have been transported away by a magic-user. Whoever that was could have been waiting for the prince inside of his home and, when he entered, taken him elsewhere.”
“But where?” Shandon wondered. “Is he still inside of the city?”
“I doubt it, my lord,” Mel told him. “As much as I hate to admit it, it seems possible now that Corbin knew that we were on to him and escaped before he could be apprehended. If magic was involved in his sudden departure, it is also likely that magic played a role in alerting him to our plans against him.”
“I've always said that magic-users couldn't be trusted,” Jergen said irritably as he sat down again. “Why you've tried to make them respectable again, my lord, is beyond me.”
“Because they are our fellow citizens,” the king told him sternly. “Pretending that they are not there does not make them go away. And recognizing them as contributing members of dwarven society, after the power of magic returned to the world, was a way to gain their loyalty. Both to our people and to the crown.”
“Not all of them are loyal, apparently,” Pieter said dryly. “At least one of them seems to be working with the traitors now.”
Shandon shrugged and rubbed his eyes.
“There is good and evil in everyone, Pieter, and mages are no exception. I should have asked one of them to shield my conversations from magical spies.” He absently toyed with the beads braided into his beard. “I'm assuming that is how Corbin learned of my suspicions. Lesson learned, I suppose. I won't make that mistake twice.”
“Don't blame yourself alone,” Hallic told him. “I should have thought of that myself. The problem is that magical energy has only been available again for a decade or so. To our people, that is no time at all. I should have altered my thinking accordingly.”
Pieter quaffed his ale and belched loudly.
“Pardon me,” he said primly as he wiped his lips. “Well now, my lord, the question is what do we do next?”
“Find him, somehow.”
Shandon glanced at Mel and then turned to Hallic.
“Can I impose upon your people to do that?” he asked. “You have agents in every city and town across the empire. If anyone can find my son, it's the rogues guild.”
“As long as you pay the guild's fees, my lord,” Hallic replied with a grin. “We are yours to command.”
He looked at his daughter.
“Pass the word along to the guildmaster,” he told her. “We must find the prince quickly. If he does have magic on his side, he's just become a lot more dangerous.”
Mel nodded silently.
Jergen muttered under his breath, but he didn't raise any objections when the king looked at him.
“Thank you, Hallic,” Shandon said as he picked up his mug of ale.
He raised it in a salute to the rogue and his daughter.
“May you find the boy before he does any more damage to the empire,” he told them gravely.
“And when we do find him, my lord?” Mel asked evenly. “What do we do with him?”
Everyone in the room looked at the king.
He didn't shy away from the rogue's gaze.
“Contain him,” Shandon told her. “Get him away from his fellow conspirators and isolate him. Then I will deal with him.”
He drank deeply from his mug and then set it down roughly on the table.
“And if it means choosing between saving my people or saving my son, then may the gods help him, for I will do what is best for the empire. I must be a king first and a father second, no matter what my heart would have me do.”
Chapter 4
It was called the rogues guild by some and the guild of the thieves by others. Its members simply called it Domistad, the ancient dwarven word for home. It had been a part of the empire for as long as anyone could remember, and it was mentioned in even the oldest history books.
There were other guilds, of course. The warriors guild, the sanctum of clerics, and so on, but the rogues guild was the oldest of them all, and the most secretive.
No one but its members was quite sure of the location of the guild's main headquarters. All agreed that it was somewhere below the streets of Kingstone, but how one entered was a mystery. All that was known was that no one could enter without permission, on pain of death. That fact alone kept away both the curious and most of the foolish. The others, well, they paid the price for trespassing.
Hallic Barston and his daughter Mel had no such reservations, of course. Both had been raised in the guild, and their family could trace its connection to Domistad back for a thousand years or more.
When the two left the palace, they separated and made their way home by different routes. It would never do for them to be seen entering the guild together. No one outside of their fellow members and the king and his closest friends knew that Hallic was still alive, or that he had a daughter, and he preferred to keep it that way.
There were a dozen secret entrances to Domistad scattered throughout the city and unless you knew exactly where they were and how they opened, they could not be found.
Hallic slipped into one such entrance after making sure that he hadn't been followed. He climbed down a long ladder to a tunnel a dozen yards below Kingstone's streets. At the bottom, he stood for a moment in the light of a glowing rod that was embedded into the wall next to the ladder and waited for the hidden watcher to recognize him. Even Hallic Barston could not enter the guild without passing a security check.
“Welcome home, Master,” a voice whispered. “You may enter.”
“Thank you,” Hallic replied to the invisible speaker. “Is Guildmaster Darlheim in residence today?”
“He is, sir. He arrived some hours ago and awaits you in the main hall.”
“Excellent.”
Hallic set off down the tunnel, passing a glowing marker every few paces. The metal rods were made of iron and treated with a luminescent paint that lasted for years. It allowed the guild to light its facilities with
out tapping into the power grid of the city. Just another safety precaution taken by the ancient builders of the guild-house, a way to keep themselves separate from dwarven society.
The tunnel stretched on for a hundred yards. Hallic passed many heavy metal doors as he walked along the corridor, its stone floor worn smooth by the passage of uncounted feet over hundreds of years. All of the doors were sealed and even Hallic didn't know where they all led. The guild extended for miles in all directions below Kingstone and, it was said, ran from one end of the city to the other. Whether that was true or not, the system of tunnels was vast and even long-time members could become lost if they weren't paying close attention to where they were going. Somehow the tunnels weaved around the sewers of the city without once intersecting with them, which was a marvelous feat in and of itself.
At the end of the tunnel, a closed door opened as Hallic approached it. Another unseen speaker welcomed him to the guild and the rogue smiled and nodded silently as he walked through the entrance.
Inside, Hallic stopped for a moment to look at the familiar surroundings. This was his true home, and the ancient structure was always comforting to him.
A large room stood before him, empty except for a few scattered chairs, and beyond that, through an archway was the bulk of the guild-house. Level after level descended in tiers, dropping hundreds of feet into the Earth. Hallic walked across the room and through the arch and stopped as he reached a smooth metal railing. He peered over it into the plunging depths below.
When he'd been a child, the rogue had tried to count the tiers of the main hall of the guild. The problem was that they twisted around and around like a corkscrew, descending slowly in a constant spiral. There were no stairs leading up or down. If you wanted to reach an office or residence quickly, you had to use one of two elevators that were built into the walls across from each other.
These lifts were controlled manually; there were no buttons inside of them leading to individual floors. Instead, an operator responded when someone pushed a button next to the elevator and took passengers wherever they wanted to go.
Hallic was tempted to walk down to the office of the guildmaster. It was a journey that he always enjoyed. But time was short, so he hurried over to the nearest elevator and tapped the large shiny button set into the wall next to it.
The Dwarven Rebellion Page 4
