Shadow Over Kiriath

by Karen Hancock

  Unfortunately, she’d been unable to find anything less recent than a hundred years ago. When she’d found the journal she’d been thrilled. Though it had not held actual schematics, it had offered detailed descriptions. From those, she’d begun to compile her own drawings. Now both book and drawings were gone.

  “Not entirely, miss,” said Jemson as she lamented this fact to him. “There is the copy you had me make of your most recent work last night.”

  “That’s right!” she cried. “Are you sure you still have it?”

  He did, and delivered it over to her along with a sheaf of architectural plans. “These came from the king earlier,” he said. “The servant said you’d asked for them.”

  She studied them eagerly for a few minutes, then slumped back in her chair. “These are contemporary,” she said. “I wanted older plans.” But Abramm had said he didn’t have any. She sighed in disappointment, her eyes wandering over the lines on Jemson’s copy of her drawing. After a moment she frowned and sat forward, pulling closer the top leaf of the stack Abramm had sent over. Absently she told Jemson he could go, continuing to compare, line by line, the two maps.

  A few minutes later she sat back with a gasp and a cry of dismay. There did indeed appear to be a hidden room, concealed right in front of everyone’s eyes for centuries, it would seem. Unfortunately, it was also right in the middle of the royal apartments.

  But how could she possibly investigate that? And how could she send word? She didn’t really trust Jemson. And anyway, though he was a Terstan, he wasn’t strong in the Light and probably wouldn’t be able to even find the illusion that cloaked the entrance, let alone walk through it.

  Beyond that, there was the fact that someone didn’t want her to find it. If he knew she already had, and if the missing books were in it, what was to stop him from removing them before she could get there?

  An audacious idea came to her, and at first she discounted it, laughing at herself for even considering it. But when it wouldn’t leave her alone, she began to consider it more seriously. Yes, it was bold, but its very boldness argued for its success. People saw what they expected to see. It was a principle she’d used repeatedly. Indeed, the only person she would definitely have to worry about was Abramm. He might not see past her disguises any better than the others—certainly his record was poor—but she didn’t think she could be with him and keep her wits about her. She’d have to figure out a time to do it when he wasn’t there. Sometime soon, before the book thief could guess the truth. Perhaps in the morning while the king went out to ride.

  CHAPTER

  14

  Gillard awoke to the sounds of trickling water and the distant braying of an ass. He lay in a real bed again, in a small stone-walled room. Sunlight flooded through a narrow glassed window to his left, pooling on the patterned rug in a vivid splash of scarlet against what was otherwise a tableau of grayness. He couldn’t see well through the glass, but it looked like dark, snow-patched hills rose outside against a blue sky.

  He’d long since lost track of the days, recalling only that he’d been transferred from barge to carriage to barge again, then finally to a shaded wagon when they’d left the river for good. Drifting in and out of consciousness, he had noted numerous times when his bed tilted sharply as the wagon labored up some mountainous road. That, in addition to the air’s increasing coldness, indicated they were in the northernmost regions of the realm, most likely in or crossing the estates of Northille and Carnwarth.

  He recalled arriving here last night, borne on a litter from the wagon through frigid darkness into the warm, smoky haven of an old keep’s great room. Cloaked men had clustered around him, blocking his view of anything save the heavy-beamed ceiling high above him, and speaking to each other as if he were not there. He would’ve reprimanded them for this lapse if he could’ve made his tongue work. Next thing he knew they were transferring him to this very bed, a broad wooden-framed affair with a down-stuffed mattress and silken sheets. Which seemed an odd thing to find in such a rough and barren chamber so far from civilization.

  The tightness that constricted his chest last night had vanished along with the oppressive weakness, replaced by a deep aching in his legs and arms. He was, however, able finally to lift his hand to scratch his face—and was startled to find he’d grown a beard. He let his fingers play over the long whiskers, feeling as off-balance as if he’d suddenly been tossed from the bed. He distinctly recalled being shaved by his valet the morning he had gone out to face Abramm . . . and while it was clear he’d been captured and imprisoned for some time, it didn’t seem long enough for his whiskers to have grown this much.

  His exploration continued to his hair, increasing his dismay: the long, pale locks extended halfway down his chest. Then he saw his hand and the sense of disorientation became so strong the bed seemed to spin around. His hands were large and powerful, heavy boned, thickly tendoned . . . but this thing . . . it looked hardly more than a skeleton, the fingers weirdly long, the width of the palm thinner by half than what he recalled. And with those long, curved nails, it looked almost . . . womanish.

  A chill of horror spread through him, and again he felt the pressure on his chest. This couldn’t be his hand! And yet there it was at the end of his arm, its spidery fingers opening and closing as he bade them. . . . The other was just like it. And now, holding both aloft before his eyes, he saw that the arms were also shrunken—not just the depletion of skin and muscle . . . the bones were smaller, looking delicate and weak. Indeed, he was already shaking from the effort of holding them up.

  “Torments take you, Abramm!” he hissed, letting them fall to his sides. “What have you done to me?”

  The approach of footfalls outside preceded the door’s opening, and in stepped the same thin, shaven-headed acolyte who had attended him since shortly after his journey had begun. Shutting the door with his heel, the man carried a tray on which sat a steaming, red-glazed bowl alongside a tin cup and a crust of dark bread. He looked near middle age despite his acolyte’s robe, and his pate was several shades lighter than the skin on his weathered face, as if it had only recently lost its covering of hair. His nose was round and red, his mouth too wide for the narrow face and eyes. Seeing at once that Gillard was watching him, he broke into a smile so tight it seemed painful.

  “Ah, you are awake, my prince. Splendid. Ready to eat, I trust?” He came around the bed to set the tray on the small table at Gillard’s left.

  “Where am I?” Gillard growled. “Who are you? What’s happened to me?”

  The man, whose stiff posture hinted of a military background, bowed. “You are at Haverall’s Watch, sir. Safe and sound. As you will remain so far as we have life to protect you.” His voice was dry, nasal, and prissy.

  “Haverall’s Watch?” Gillard frowned. “That’s a Mataian place.”

  “Indeed it is, sir.” His visitor stood beside the bed. “And as such it will shield you from the eyes of the evil ones. . . . Now, if you’d like to sit up, I’d be honored to assist you.” Without waiting for agreement, he lifted Gillard’s shoulder a bit to pull out the pillows and plump them up. Then he hooked his hands under the prince’s armpits and gently shifted him upward, propping him in a half sit against the pillows. It was an operation that left Gillard breathless. And sitting just halfway up made the room spin.

  Meanwhile, his visitor pulled a chair from near the fire around to the side of the bed where he’d left the tray, then sat upon its front edge so straightbacked he might have had a metal rod for a spine. “Now we can put the tray in your lap,” he said, doing just that. Gillard noticed then that the man’s right thumb was stuck permanently in an extended position, unable to press toward the palm and rendering the hand virtually useless. A substantial, clean-lined scar—the kind one got from a blade—ran across the base of it into the palm.

  His visitor picked up the spoon with his left hand, clearly not his hand of choice, and began awkwardly feeding his charge the thick, beany porridge h
e’d brought. It was an unpleasant affair, for he kept dropping the spoon, sometimes into the bowl, sometimes onto the tray, sometimes onto the napkin he’d spread across Gillard’s chest. And every trip the utensil made to Gillard’s mouth, it trailed gravy, so that, if it weren’t bad enough having his face covered with a nest of whiskers, now he must suffer the indignity of having gravy all over them. Gillard wanted to snatch the spoon away and feed himself, except that his own limp, aching arms were unlikely to do a better job.

  As he ate, his gaze flicked repeatedly to the man’s narrow, weathered face with its tight lips and dark, too-close eyes, thinking again that he looked familiar. It was the first time he’d actually looked at him with anything approaching a clear mind, and memory stirred. A gray cloak. A small red flame . . . those last days before his showdown with Abramm, the hideous march up to the Valley of Seven Peaks, dogged incessantly by the cowards Abramm had sent to torment him. Slipping in and out again, they’d cut ropes, loosed horses, damaged wagons and tents and tack, appearing like spirits only to melt into the darkness should anyone confront them. What kind of fighting was that? The coward’s way, that’s what.

  But what did it have to do with the man now feeding him? Gillard had brought no Mataians with him. Or wait . . . maybe he had. The paleness of the man’s pate and the glaze of brown stubble pricking through it indicated he was a recent convert. So he wouldn’t have been bald and robed before Seven Peaks. Was it Matheson, maybe? He studied the face as he accepted another spoonful of porridge, allowed his bearded chin to be wiped and gave up. “You only answered one of my questions,” he said.

  “Indeed, sir. That is so.” His attendant sat back in the chair, bird-bright eyes fixed upon Gillard’s face. “You still don’t know me, do you?”

  “You look familiar. I feel I should, but I can’t seem to call it up.”

  “Mmm . . . well, it doesn’t surprise me after what was done to you.” The acolyte leaned primly forward, plucked up the bread crust, and broke a piece off. “Once I was Darak Prittleman. Lord of Lathby, First Secretary of the Nunn, and Headman in the Laity Order of Gadriel. Now I am merely Brother Honarille.”

  The moment he said his name, Gillard stiffened with both recognition and revulsion. Prittleman! So it was Abramm who’d ruined his thumb. How odd that observation should be so pleasing.

  “A recent change of name and status, I gather?” asked Gillard.

  Prittleman’s thin lips tightened and he gave a single nod. “I am a wanted man, sir.”

  The former Gadrielite dipped the chunk of bread he had been holding for some moments now into the bean porridge and offered it to Gillard. When the prince had finished chewing the morsel and swallowed it, he was offered a sip of watered wine. Then, as his acolyte attendant took up the spoon again, Gillard asked quietly, “What was it that was done to me?”

  Prittleman’s fingers tightened on the spoon. “You were enspelled, Highness. After you killed the morwhol and saved your brother’s wretched life, he thanked you by working a deathsleep over you. So he could take the credit for himself. While you have lain like one dead these last six months, he has basked in his stolen glory, making himself at home in the palace, claiming Eidon’s favor, even while allowing all manner of wickedness and atrocities to be committed against his true servants. . . .”

  He rambled on, but shock had closed Gillard’s ears. Six months! I’ve been bedridden and senseless for six months? No wonder my hair and beard are long as a hermit’s. No wonder I feel so weak . . . and Abramm did this? He found that hard to believe. Abramm was a Terstan, which of course Prittleman saw as a great evil. But Gillard had known Raynen, and his father, and a handful of others who wore the shield, and none had the ability to cast a spell of sleep over anyone. In fact, he had never known them to cast any sort of spell at all.

  “Thanks to the unceasing petitions of the handful of faithful who have remained here,” Prittleman said, “the spell has been broken, my prince, and you are freed.”

  Gillard received this declaration uneasily. “I killed the morwhol, you say?”

  The beady eyes narrowed. “You don’t remember?”

  “I remember it attacked me . . . bit me in the shoulder.” He frowned as the memory resurfaced, as vivid as if he’d experienced it yesterday: pinned helpless to the ground by the beast’s great weight, gagging on the stench of its breath and bloodied coat, its vicious laughter echoing in his head as it sucked away his strength and breath . . . and life?

  It had betrayed him. He thought it would kill Abramm, and then he himself would kill it and get the glory for doing so. Only at the last moment had he understood it meant to kill them both, drawing his life energy into itself first so as to be strong enough to kill Abramm.

  He shuddered, then reminded himself that it had failed. He still lived and it, apparently, was dead, though he did not recall how it had died.

  “It had you,” Prittleman explained, “but then Eidon was persuaded by the fervent entreaties of his holy ones and provided you the strength to prevail.”

  The holy ones and Eidon, again. I see where this is going.

  “You killed it with your bare hands, my prince.”

  “My bare hands?” His glance fell upon those hands now, thin and bony beneath skin as translucent as silk. They reminded him of his long-dead grandmother, all angles and bones. It was hard to imagine lifting a cup to his lips these days, let alone killing a morwhol.

  The former Gadrielite seemed to read his mind: “It must have been his spell that took your memory of it, my prince,” he said.

  Ah. That made sense. Except . . . why leave me alive at all? Why not simply kill me? “And you were there? You saw all that?”

  “They should be calling you Morwhol Slayer, my prince,” Prittleman declared. “Not him. The danger was past, you had saved yourself and him, but you were still weak and drained from your efforts when he pounced, spinning his evil upon you so that he might take your place and seduce away your people. And so he has. And all of us who supported you, who gave allegiance to the true Flames, we have been cast down. Our lands and titles taken, our reputations destroyed, our very lives in danger. Many have fled to Chesedh and the Western Isles, others are imprisoned—he had the gall to lock up High Father Bonafil! Can you imagine?”

  Gillard didn’t think that was supposed to please him, but it did, even if it was Abramm who’d done it.

  Prittleman was off and running again, words spilling out of him willynilly, making his story hard to follow.

  “I thought hatred was a sin, brother,” Gillard interrupted finally. “I thought it diminished the Flames.”

  “Not when it is directed at that which is evil. In fact, we are commanded to hate the Shadow and all associated with it. And your brother is consumed with Shadow, spreading his darkness over the people he has deceived.”

  The bowl emptied, Prittleman removed the tray and set it on the bedside table. “I am only grateful Eidon has seen fit to deliver me so that I may continue to serve. The creator sees all that has gone on, and he will neither forget nor overlook. I am confident that in time he will restore me to my former position. As he will you, sir, should you seek recompense from him.”

  Gillard smiled grimly. “Your faith is admirable, brother, but I prefer to seek my recompense from Abramm.” He scratched the beard again. “I don’t suppose in the meantime you could arrange for someone to serve as my valet.”

  “I am sorry, sir, but no. As you can imagine, your brother is searching desperately for you. For me, as well, for I have not been kind to him these last six months. As secretive as we made your arrival, it has still raised a few brows among the brethren here. If you were to have a valet . . . well, that would ignite far too many questions. If the beard is bothersome, it would be my honor to shave you.”

  Gillard looked at him in mild alarm, noting again the cuts and nicks and missed spots of whiskers on that weathered face. Prittleman frowned and put a hand up to his chin. “I know my hand is not the steadiest,
but I’ve not yet slit my throat.” He had an odd, wheezing laugh.

  Gillard shuddered. “That’s all right. I’ll do it myself.”

  “Sir, I very much doubt—”

  “When I’m able, of course. Until then I’ll live with it.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  ————

  ———— The morning after his address to the Tables, Abramm rose early, spent some time in prayer and meditation, and then went out for his morning ride. Barely had he reached the stable when Jared caught up with him, breathlessly informing him that Master Belmir had arrived at his apartments to request a private audience. “Lord Haldon bid him wait, sir,” Jared said, “to see if I could catch you before you left on your ride.” He paused. “He came in a common robe, without attendants, sir, and we got the sense he doesn’t wish to be widely seen.”

  Abramm hesitated only a moment. That Belmir had come surreptitiously implied he sought to talk rather than accuse and denounce. And after Abramm’s less than successful attempt yesterday to persuade the Table of Lords of the need for another tax and conscription writ—thanks largely to Mataian opposition—he would take every opportunity to change things.

  He returned to his apartments by the back stairway, where Haldon was waiting for him. “I’m sorry if I overstepped, sir,” the chamberlain said, closing the door behind him. “But I thought—”