by Ellyn, Court
Kelyn held out his practice sword. “I yield.”
Valryk wasn’t amused. He helped the old man off the ground, and they started for the armory. A thin layer of snow clung to the shade beneath the walls. Across the training ground, a squad of twenty-five men gathered around Captain Tullyk. The garrison commander leaned heavily on a silver-headed cane, but his broad shoulders and muscled arms were at odds with signs of weakness.
“What are they doing?” Valryk asked. “I reserved the training grounds for myself this morning.”
“A briefing, I believe,” Kelyn said, holding the armory door open. “In response to your father’s decree. The king feels the city watch is understaffed, given the new curfew.”
“How would he know?” When was the last time the king had toured Bramoran’s streets and mingled with the people? Must’ve been during the Turning Festival a year ago. Since then the duty of ‘being seen’ had been delegated to Valryk. “Make a presence,” his Mother coached him. “Look aloof but amiable. Bless the babies when their mothers lift them toward you. Lay hands upon the wounded but not the diseased. No matter how badly they smell, don’t let your face show it.” Not only did he relished the responsibility, he was thrilled that Mother let him ride outside the castle walls. Of course, during these tours his bodyguards and half the Falcon Guard accompanied him, looking duly intimidating. The waving crowds and worshipful stares pleased him. The demands for the return of missing friends moved him. The last time he rode into town, only a week ago, the mob gathered immediately, pressing closer than usual. Not one of those faces wore a smile. “Where are they?” demanded an ink-stained man in a printer’s apron. “Where’s my Jannie?” called a lady in pearls. “When will these fiends be hanged?” cried an old man shaking his fist.
Nearly a dozen citizens between the ages three and seventy had vanished from the city and the surrounding hamlets. Neither track nor body had been found. Once the crowd started shouting, Valryk’s bodyguards feared a riot. They urged him to return to the castle, but he raised his hands instead and the crowd grew still. All their hopes rode on his words. “His Majesty is using all his resources to find your friends and family. We are deeply grieved and deeply concerned, and we will not stop searching until they are found.”
A great muddled roar of questions followed, and Valryk had no choice but to return to the castle.
The next morning two men were found beaten to death and hanging by their ankles from lampposts outside the castle gate. Notes scribbled with the word “kidnapper” were shoved into their mouths. The men were only vagrants, but someone must’ve feared they were skulking around with sinister intent. Or maybe a grieving father just needed someone to blame.
King Rhorek issued the curfew the following day.
“It’s my job to tour the city and hear the people’s complaints,” Valryk said, squinting against the winter sunlight. The cool air might feel good on his sweaty face if he weren’t so irritated. “Why wasn’t I told the watch was understaffed?”
“Trouble you with such a detail?” Kelyn asked.
“Someone troubled my father with it. Why not me?”
“It’s no matter, Highness.” Trying to placate him. Just like a child.
“I disagree.” Valryk tossed down his practice equipment and started toward the briefing. Kelyn followed half a step behind, even though Valryk hadn’t invited him. Valryk walked faster to put distance between them.
The garrison soldiers saw him coming and snapped to attention. Captain Tullyk’s instructions trailed off. “Your Highness. You do us a great honor.” He was a man scarred by experience. His left hand was wrinkled and splotched from Dragon fire, and he’d earned his limp during the Battle of Bramoran when the Warlord Goryth sacked the city. Just a sergeant in the garrison at the time, he’d languished with the other prisoners, lucky to have not been hanged from the walls like so many of his comrades. The wound in his knee had festered for weeks and had never healed properly.
“These men are to assist the watch tonight?” Valryk looked them over. Among those in the first line, one man’s surcoat boasted a wine stain and another hadn’t polished his boots in some time. “Are these your best, Captain?”
“These volunteered.”
The evasion lacked subtlety. “Send this man and this man back to the barracks. Replace them.”
“Highness—” Kelyn began, but Valryk raised a hand, silencing him.
Tullyk looked over the sullied soldiers and nodded. The two men saluted and double-timed it from the grounds. Valryk always thought Tullyk was a bit of a slouch himself. Maybe he’d get the hint.
“How badly is the watch undermanned?”
Tullyk nervously tapped his foot with the end of his cane. “I’m hoping to build up enough personnel to patrol the surrounding villages as well as the city, Your Highness. But that will take new recruits.”
“Then get them. Surely it won’t be difficult, what with the people demanding these kidnappers be found.”
“It’s a matter of funds, Your Highness.”
“Funds or lives, hmm.” He’d have to speak to Mother about it; Father’s ears were closed to his son’s voice. “Tullyk, your prince cares about these matters. Keep me informed.”
One corner of the captain’s mouth twitched with a surprised grin. “Yessir.”
A squire in royal livery raced across the muddy grounds. Valryk recognized him as Barrin, the son of Lord Westport. A snooty boy of twelve, he was constantly vying for his prince’s favor and seemed to think he deserved it. Some scheme of his maneuvering father, no doubt. Valryk prepared himself for an earful of empty praise. Wearing an obsequious grin, Barrin bowed, but then turned to Kelyn. “Lord Ilswythe, the king requires your presence.”
“Oh, beg pardon, Highness, excuse me. Tullyk.” Kelyn followed the squire up the steps and into the castle.
Watching them go, Valryk felt himself grinding his teeth. He thought he’d learned to accept Father’s preference, steeled his heart toward feelings of resentment, but the matter of the city watch opened a raw wound.
“As long as you’re interested, Highness,” Tullyk was saying, “how about giving us an official inspection? See if the rest of these men please you.”
“They don’t,” he said, turning away from the castle. “They could stand to be sharper, don’t you think? You, too, Captain. I want these men marching the perimeter, quick-time and singing, ‘March On, Soldier of Fortune.’ The first man out of step gets replaced.”
Eyes shifted his direction. The apples of Tullyk’s cheeks reddened above his yellow beard.
“I’m not bluffing, Captain. There are people disappearing out there. Lazy soldiers means lazy vigilance. Get them moving!”
Tullyk gave the order, though his battlefield voice had faded to a ghost of itself. The soldiers started running, hugging the outer wall, holding tight formation. The singing lacked enthusiasm.
“Louder!” Valryk called. “The king can’t hear you.” He was grinding his teeth again. A couple of the men bellowed the next verse, on beat but off key, and the rest followed suit.
“That man, do you see?” Valryk pointed to one of the soldiers in the rear. He had an unmistakable paunch hanging over his belt, and he was falling behind. “Unacceptable, Captain. Get rid of him.”
Tullyk called for the man by name, gave him the thumb.
“Keep going!” Valryk shouted over the chorus. Fists on his hips, he turned slowly, following their progress. “Louder!”
“Highness!” barked a voice in outrage. Kelyn hurried across the grounds. “Tullyk, stop them.”
“Prince’s orders, m’ lord,” said the captain, eyes darting between the two of them.
Valryk crossed his arms. “These men are inadequate.”
“You would fix that by shaming them?”
“Yes.”
A muscle twitched in Kelyn’s jaw and his eyes narrowed as if he were weighing both sides of a dare, then he turned and shouted, “Halt, men, halt!”
The running and singing stopped, and the men doubled over, gasping and hacking.
Kelyn waved a hand. “Dismissed! Tullyk, you too. I’ll speak with you later.”
Tullyk led his men toward the barracks. Several of them cast confused or sullen glances back toward their prince.
Valryk rounded on the War Commander. “I thought you of all people would be offended by lax practices. Those men are—”
Kelyn cut him short. “Those men are your city’s best defense, Highness.”
“Best? Did you see them?”
“If you’re displeased, take it up with Tullyk—in private. Whipping them into shape is his job, not mine and not yours. If you force a man to relinquish his dignity or his honor, you commit a crime against him. Both are more important than his life.”
Valryk raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? I’ll remember that. And you remember this, Lord Ilswythe. My father may require your words of wisdom, but do not lavish them upon me unless I extend the same invitation.”
For an instant Valryk read astonishment in Kelyn’s eyes, just before he lowered them.
Satisfied, Valryk stalked off, face burning.
In his rooms, he ordered a hot bath. He needed some time alone with Lasharia. He hadn’t seen her in ten days. Without her, he knotted up inside and his mood slid down the middens. After he scrubbed away the sweat and humiliation, he selected a soft tunic of dark silver-gray velvet and sent his chamberlain scurrying from his presence. “I’m going to take a long nap,” he told the two bodyguards at his door. “If I’m disturbed before supper, I’m sending you both to Fort Last.”
“The queen is expecting you for tea in less than an hour,” one reminded him.
“I really don’t care, Yusten. What’s she going to do? Disown me?”
The bodyguards bowed in understanding and Valryk shut the door. Alone at last, he pushed the drapes away from the windows. Early afternoon sunlight caressed his face like a balm. He’d come to cherish the feel of it because it meant time with her.
He drew the four-pointed star, whispered her name, then plumped his pillows and fell into them to wait. Lasharia knew better than to join him in his rooms. Not long after they met, they had almost been caught. That was four years ago now, the same night he learned what she was and why secrecy mattered. He’d been whining about something or other, and Lasharia sat with him on his hearthrug looking elegant in a white gown. The cozy firelight splashed her face and hands and made them shimmer. It was some time before Valryk realized she looked irritated, too. Did she no longer wish to hear about his troubles? Maybe he’d voiced the same complaints once too often. Father this, Mother that, duty, duty, duty. “Didn’t you ever feel that way?” he’d asked. “I know you did, you wanted to be a musician.”
She perked up, but only barely. This was the first question he’d asked her all evening. She shrugged. “I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.”
“It couldn’t have been that long. You’re not too terribly old. Let me guess. Twenty-three.”
“Oh, Highness.” She shook her head like she was disappointed in him.
“I know I’m not supposed to ask a lady her age, but we’re friends—”
“Have you not observed? Have you not seen what I am? Or do you not let yourself see?” She tucked her heavy hair behind an ear, and for the first time Valryk saw the pointed shape of it. He added it to the glow of her skin, her unnatural height and grace.
He scooted away from her, climbed to his knees. “You mean … you really are an elf? But they—”
“We prefer the term ‘Elari.’ It means ‘wanderer.’ Are you really going to be afraid of me after all these weeks?”
Yes, Valryk had been deathly afraid. He remembered his heart hammering so hard in his throat that he could barely swallow. “Is it true, what they say about you?”
Lasharia’s eyes narrowed. “What do they say?”
He edged farther away, gained his feet, measured the distance to the door. “That elves worked spells to make our soldiers cut their own throats. That elves burned hundreds of human villages and took no prisoners. Old men, women, and children, elves killed them all.”
Lasharia glanced down at her hands folded in her lap. “There were atrocities on both sides, Highness. I was there, a new recruit. There is no time for the luxury of music when one’s people are dying. One fights. It wasn’t long before the humans stopped taking prisoners, too. I saw Elaran babies with their brains bashed out, their mothers cut down beside them. I saw hundreds of my kin staked high on poles lining the roads. A warning and a boast miles long. Some of my brethren were still alive when we found them. We put arrows in them to end their misery.” Her eyes met his. “Yes, I’m sure that much of what you’ve read is true. But apply the same to your own kind as well, and you’ll have a truer tale still.” With a sorrowful sigh, she picked herself off the rug and turned to gaze into the fire. “Your side won the victory in any case, and my people have been in hiding for nearly a thousand years.”
Shaking, near tears, Valryk asked, “How can you call me your friend? Why are you so nice to me?”
Her smile was a sad one. “Because that was an age ago. And things change. You might help them change one day for the better. Then my people need not hide like worms under rocks.”
What would such a world be like, elves and humans living in harmony together? Valryk hadn’t an imagination big enough to envision it. “How many of you are there?”
Lasharia started to answer, but a shuffle and a voice outside his chamber door alerted them. Valryk ran to intercept the intruder, and Lasharia fled toward the dressing room. “Not there!” he hissed. She dropped and rolled under his bed just as the door opened.
“Good, you’re still up,” Mother said. “A belated birthday present, from Eliad. Isn’t that nice?”
Valryk took the small box, but his eyes clung to the glowing white hem of Lasharia’s gown trailing out from under the bedclothes.
“Open it.”
Lifting the lid, he found a note and a fine silver ring inlaid with a what looked like a polished yellow stone. Mother read the note aloud for him: “For my prince and my brother, in celebration of his thirteenth birthday and his first hunt. May the tooth of your quarry bring you good luck. We’ll get ‘em next year.”
“An elk’s tooth,” Mother said, peering close. “It makes a fine gem, doesn’t it?”
Eliad, it turned out, was forward-thinking, unlike Father who sent saddles already too small. The ring was made large and fit different fingers as Valryk grew. He wore it still.
After that close call, Lasharia urged him to find a place where they wouldn’t be bothered by unexpected visitors. He had searched and searched, found plenty of unused pantries and basement crawlspaces, but none that befitted Lasharia’s loftiness and beauty. Weeks of loneliness passed before he heard a rumor that the North Tower, where political prisoners were kept, was to be closed. The number of prisoners occupying the tower at one time rarely exceeded a dozen, when whole families were incarcerated there. Two hundred years ago, some lesser lord led a rebellion against an evil king and the Tower supposedly overflowed. But that was before Tallon the Unifier came along and made everybody happy. A smaller, more cheaply managed house was to be converted into the new prison.
“What’s Father going to do with the prison tower?” Valryk asked his mother.
Briéllyn shrugged, preoccupied with one task or another. “Turn it into storage or barracks, likely, if it’s not torn down. I’m sure he would like another garden to stroll in.”
“Isn’t that where the ghost lives?” He regretted asking as soon as Mother looked at him. Grief and anger stormed in her green eyes. “There’s no such thing. Many disturbed, angry people lived out their last days there, so of course it must be filled with tortured souls. Don’t believe the superstitions of the common people, son. It’s foolishness.”
But hadn’t Mother herself believed that the madwoman’s spirit haunted the tower? The gray cat or his
progeny still troubled the kitchen staff, stealing morsels and yowling at dark hours.
All the better for Valryk if the tower wasn’t haunted. Until it was converted for further use, it would make the perfect refuge for a prince and his Elaran friend.
Four years later, the North Tower remained empty. The stink of mildew had seeped into the cells, the doors had begun to rust on their hinges, and pigeons roosted in the rafters, but no one dared venture into the place. As far as everyone else in Bramoran was concerned, the tower remained haunted. Valryk had chosen one of the highest and largest rooms, one with escape routes down two different stairwells. Little by little, he’d purloined rugs and chairs and lamps for his retreat. He stocked it with firewood and lamp oil, even books and clothes and bedding, because he often slept there while waiting for Lasharia to answer his call. After a couple of years it stopped feeling like a prison cell and took on the ambiance of a proper parlor. Lasharia contributed to their nest’s comfort by lugging in a copper bathtub. Valryk had tactfully made her understand that the dead-mouse smell offended him, so he gifted her with bath oil and perfumes swiped from the queen’s dressing rooms, much to the detriment of one maid or another who were blamed for the thefts.
Water was a problem until they learned where the pump was and how to use the service shaft. The prison guards hadn’t been stupid; they weren’t about to haul food and water up seven flights of stairs twice a day for criminals.
Valryk waited nearly an hour before hauling himself from his pillows. He dug in his jewel box for the key to the lock he’d had made and slipped away down the service stairs. Taking one tunnel after another, he was hidden from sun, moon, and eye until he pushed open the door to what used to be the main office used by the warden. By now he could walk the route blind. Sometimes he didn’t bother bringing a lamp to light his way.
Eager for company, he ran up the seven flights of stairs and plied the key to the padlock, but found the room empty. Disappointed, he poured himself a brandy at the wine service. He’d stocked it with only the best, of course.
Despite the luxury of the furnishings, the room felt hard and cold in the winter. The hour was still early enough for a fire. He tossed a little kindling into the fireplace and struck a spark. He had to be careful. Too much smoke rising from the chimney might catch the wrong sentry’s attention.
