Darin continued to cry. But it was no child’s crying, this. He was silent, although his lips trembled. The arms around him were thin but strong.
“Ah, Lady, Lady,” Stev whispered into Darin’s matted hair.
“Lady, grant your mercy here.” He held Darin until he felt the muscles of the boy’s arms and shoulders relax. Still he did not let go, but stayed in the near-darkness.
All of Stev’s memories of life were of slavery; it was what he knew. He had seen much, both in House Damion and beyond its walls. He was as all slaves were: hardened to the injustice of the life he led. He was almost comfortable with it—or so he had thought.
But there was something about this sleeping boy that kept him here, although the tasks outside wouldn’t wait. It kept him rocking and whispering meaningless prayers and words of comfort around the growing lump in his throat.
And when the child spoke, he thought he knew why he had waited.
“Daddy, I have no name anymore, no name.”
Stev tightened his arms as if to somehow protect the boy from the bewildered pain in his own voice.
“No name. Kerren’s dead. I have ... I have no family.” He tried to sit up, but Stev still held him, and slowly he sank back to rest against the warmth of another human being. “Wait for me, Daddy? Tell Mommy to wait, too. Tell Kerren I’m sorry—tell him I have no name.”
“Ahh.” Stev lost all words as he felt his own eyes begin to prickle. New slaves—and there were precious few—were always the worst; they were delicate, fragile, and lost. He had seen their anger and their pain, but this was as raw as it had ever been.
He knew why he had stayed. It was to lose what little heart his life had left him.
Darin’s prayers to his parents may have been heeded, but it didn’t matter; the one foot he had placed on the Bridge of the Beyond was lifted over the three weeks that he spent in bed. He ate automatically, drank a little, and regained his strength. Stev came to see him, but Darin spoke very little. He had learned the first lesson that new slaves often learn: have no friends.
As he grew stronger, he was once again ordered to the house mistress, and she put him back on cleaning duties. But he did these without the whistle or laughter of Stev to shorten the day.
Nor did he have the companionship of fellow slaves in the evening. He spoke to the four walls of his bare room, slept with them, and occasionally cried. Only a few slaves might have tried to reach him, but it was difficult to risk the wrath of the lord and lady for one they hardly knew. Without being obvious, they shunned him.
He did not see Lord Vellen again, except occasionally from a distance. The lord became more and more involved with the politics of the Church—much to the anger of Lord Damion.
No matter; Darin still felt the high priest’s presence in all that he did.
Every quarter, for the next four years, Darin was on stone duty. He took the silver pail and ladle and blooded the grooved stone. No slavemaster stood over him as he worked at his task; no witness held the torch or saw the tears that mingled with blood and rock.
Each time the stones were blooded he heard Kerren’s screams; they never grew distant with time.
And then, near his fifth year in House Damion, he was summoned by Lord Damion himself. He felt a stir of fear as he walked down the halls, but he had learned not to show it; it would do him no good.
He entered the lord’s chambers, and there met an older man-one he did not recall seeing before.
“This is Gervin,” Lord Damion said, lines across his brow. It was obvious that the lord did not favor the free man.
Darin looked more closely at the stranger.
He was tall. Darin thought him older than the lord, but it was hard to tell; his shoulders were broad, and he bore himself without any trace of age. His nose was turned down at a slight angle, as if it had once been broken. His eyes, a green-brown, looked impassively at the slave before him.
“This is he?” he said to the lord, although he didn’t look away.
Lord Damion grunted a reply.
“Good.” Gervin gestured with one large hand. “Come, boy. Your tenure at House Damion is at an end. House Darclan claims your service now; it has already been arranged. We’ve far to travel, and we must travel it in no long time.”
Darin automatically stepped to the older man’s side. He heard the command behind the gesture, and knew enough to obey promptly.
Gervin turned and bowed—perhaps less formally than he should have; it was hard to tell. “My lord thanks you for your service.”
These were, Darin thought, the wrong words to say. He didn’t know why, but Lord Damion did not reply at all.
Gervin shrugged and turned back to his charge. “Horses are outside.”
Darin nodded automatically.
“Can you ride? Be honest, boy.”
“N-not well.”
Gervin sighed; the roll of his eyes told Darin that he had already guessed this. “That will have to do. Come; the Lord Darclan waits and he is not a patient lord.”
Darin nodded and followed Gervin out of the open doors, into the sunlit court.
He had no belongings, nothing to call his own. He might have said good-bye to Stev, but he did not wish to ask for such a privilege when he knew so little about the temperament of his new owner. He had learned to be a good slave over the years. In time he might be one of the best.
Thus did he leave House Damion, as much a slave as he had been when he arrived.
interlude
Lord Darclan walked around the grounds of the gardens, his face pale and expressionless. He surveyed the expanse of leashed wildlife—the hedges and brambles that had been extensively manicured into growing sculptures, the roses that grew upon the oddest of trees. He had never been particularly fond of gardens, and time had not changed this.
But she loved them.
He frowned as he continued to walk, his feet leaving no mark in the grass to speak of his passing. He wanted perfection, but he knew he was not a judge of it; not here, this was not his domain. The master gardener was off in some distant corner; his ears could hear the distinct clip of metal against stem or branch.
No. I will not interrupt the gardener further this day.
He turned and walked back toward his castle.
The stonework, smooth and seamless from this distance, looked as if it had been carved from one great piece of rock, a mountain perhaps. It had four corners; four wings, but the towers were short.
She had never become used to the height of the spires of Rennath; here she would have no need to. His fingers curled into fists. He caught them, straightened them, and continued his walk. But he was troubled.
To wake you, Lady, is difficult. More difficult than I had imagined.
And not without risk.
Fists. Fists again. A momentary flash of anger colored his eyes. He loathed, as always, this lack of self-control. What matter a few more months, after so many years?
Naught. It matters not.
But it was strange, this feeling, this apprehension and anticipation. To walk with her, here, in the sunlight; to see her smile, to see her light—
Ahhhh.
His long work was over. The Empire was complete. But this making anew he could not be certain of. He despised that weakness. He realized that he had once again stopped, and he moved forward.
Someone waited at the gates to greet him. Gervin. Lord Darclan’s eyes could clearly see the fatigue in the lines of his servant’s face. He strode forward.
“You have made the passage in good time,” he said softly. Gervin nodded.
“The slave was still alive?”
Gervin nodded again, but the nod was grim. “Alive, yes. He awaits your word, Lord, in the sitting room to your study. Shall I see to him?”
“No.” This at least was distraction. “I shall see him.”
Gervin nodded. He straightened out the crease in his leathers and took a deep breath.
“How do you find him?”
It was an odd question; Gervin’s eyebrows, black frosted with age, rose fractionally. “Quiet,” he said at last. “Well trained. He asks no questions and volunteers nothing.”
Lord Darclan inclined his head and entered the castle.
The boy was waiting for him, as Gervin had said.
Almost before the door was open, he had assumed the posture. His knees were upon the ground, and a few inches from them, his forehead.
“Rise,” Lord Darclan said softly.
All that Gervin had noted was true. The boy immediately gained his feet and stood, head down, awaiting his command. It was hard to believe that this child was the last of Culverne. Perhaps death would have been a kinder option to offer in her name.
“Boy, look at me.”
The child did even this without hesitation. Darclan’s eyes caught the trembling along the boy’s jaw; it was the only thing that truly showed his fear.
Does he recognize me?
He waited for a moment, but the reaction did not change. Ah. No.
“This is House Darclan.” Its lord moved past the boy into the waiting study. “Come.”
The child followed. He waited as Lord Darclan took a seat behind a large, plain desk. “You may sit. In the chair.”
Once again the years of House Damion were evident; the boy did not look from right to left; he merely sat, stiffly, in the offered chair.
“You are now of my house.”
“Yes, lord.”
“The rules here differ slightly from the rules that govern noble houses; this is my privilege as master here.”
“Yes, lord.”
“Did you ever perform formal duty for your previous house?”
“No, lord.”
“Ah. I suppose you are young. What duties did you have there?”
Only with this question did the boy’s reactions change, and even these were minimal. His small face paled and stiffened, no more.
Interesting.
“I was with the household staff,” the boy said, his head beginning to fall. “I cleaned the brass and silver. I kept the portrait gallery clean and prepared it for visitors.” He swallowed then, convulsively. Fear was in the air; fear and pain. He opened his mouth, shut it, looked up, and then began again. “I blooded the stones.”
“Look at me, child.” Lord Darclan’s voice was cold but clear. “Now.”
The child obeyed. Brown eyes met black ones without flinching—the boy did not have even the will for this.
Clever, Vellen. Very clever. Lord Darclan had only seen this flat stillness about human eyes on one occasion: death. He thought back. How long had he been in this task? How many years had passed? Five, less three months. That was not a long span, even by normal reckoning. He looked again at the slack, lifeless eyes. Careless.
The boy could not know that the lord’s sudden anger was not directed at him. But he waited.
“Child, we do not blood the stones here.”
The boy said nothing. His face was of delicately painted alabaster, cool and immovable.
“Do you understand this?”
A nod.
“Say it, then.”
The eyes closed. The child’s head, sun-stained near white, bent as if strings were slowly being played out. “House Darclan does not blood the stones.”
Perhaps I have judged in error. The lord stood then, his expression grim. This child may not be a suitable slave for my Lady.
He rose, motioning for the slave to do the same.
But Lady, your province was healing; it gave you some joy. He relaxed slightly.
“Come, boy. Let us walk to the courtyard.”
The child stiffened again, but he moved.
chapter six
Darin met the house mistress; her name was Evayn. She was younger than he expected, and taller, too. She assigned him, after intense questioning, to the household cleaning staff. He met other slaves, but here, as in House Damion, was given his own room. It, too, was beneath the ground levels and allowed no sunlight to enter, but he had torchlight and lamplight should he desire it.
He found the house to be a different place than Damion had been. Most notable was the absence of any colors or crest. The lord himself, seen now only at a distance, and only for minutes at a time, wore unadorned black. He did not require the slaves to do the same.
The seamstress for the slaves was a robust woman, large and fat as few slaves ever got. She had been at the house for seven years—since its beginning, she assured him—and took care and pride in varying the colors of smock, tunic, and trousers to please her eye.
“Lord’s command,” she would say cheerfully.
Darin could not understand it.
He worked well, as he had done in House Damion for over four years. He answered when spoken to, but rarely tried to ask any questions to which he did not need answers.
And he became accustomed to the castle. It was large, larger by far than House Damion, and much more severe in its grandeur. The halls, gray stone, were as unadorned as the lord himself. Brass torch holders hung at a height that required a stool to reach, and Darin cleaned them weekly, wondering at the lack of mirrors, paintings, and wall hangings. It was obvious that House Darclan was not too poor to afford them.
Over the next month, all this changed. When the south wing opened up and it was added to Darin’s list of duties, he saw that it was frescoed.
He hated it. He worked beneath colored panoramas of the Dark Heart’s victories, steadily progressing from the fall of the Lady of Elliath to the fall of ... Culverne.
After his duties there started, he never again wondered at the naked stone. He much preferred it.
He counted the days and the way the sun fell across the top of the open courtyard. At night he would watch the face of the moon, slowly unveiling itself as it aged across the days.
Second quarter was coming.
Forty days into his stay, he sat in bed, his knees curled beneath his chin, his ears listening across time to the opening scream of the high priest’s command performance. His arms ached from the tension, his eyes blurred in the darkness. He wanted a torch, but could not move to get one. The second quarter was nigh.
Bright Heart. He thought, bowing his forehead. He had not prayed to the gentle God for years. Bright Heart, Bright Heart let it be true.
No knock came to trouble him, no light moved in the corridors. He did not, could not sleep.
But there was no blood on the flagstones.
Scurrying from one end of the castle to the other on an errand for the cook, the lack caught his attention.
He stopped, as he had stopped many times before, to look anew at the carved stone beneath the open sky. It was clean and gray, the eagle cresting the air with a branch clutched tightly in its glittering claws. But there was no brown stain, no sign etched with the dying blood of some poor slave, some unknown criminal.
Here we do not blood the stones.
He stopped, swallowing convulsively. On impulse he walked, looking quickly from side to side, to the colorless stone. He had never approached it this closely, partly from fear of the guards, and partly because he did not wish to diminish the wonder of hope by finding any telltale trace of old blood.
Yet now, on this day, he had no choice but to do so. His shaking legs carried him quickly to his goal, and he knelt, again snapping his head from side to side, to look at the stone, and to touch it.
It was completely clean, swept, no doubt, by another of the slaves, one assigned to the courtyard. But that was all that any slave had to do to maintain it.
He touched it and felt the warmth of the sun lingering against his fingertips. No blood. No blood on the stones; no house name filled in by a living trail. No screams, Bright Heart, no more screams.
He shuddered.
There ’s no blood. Bright Heart—Bright Heart, where have you been until now? In wonder he bowed his head, and his hand, shaking and cold, touched his forehead once, twice, three times in half-remembered benedictio
n. Bright Heart. Thank you. Thank you. Words came to his young lips; the opening of a prayer.
He had never prayed like this before, in thanksgiving. His mouth moved without his will, the urge was so strong.
Then, of a sudden, his lips clamped shut in a whitened face. He had almost forgotten the rule that governed his existence: No prayer here; never here. That part of his life was dead, and it was a miracle—however he had cursed it—that he was not dead with it.
Dead? He looked up at the stones as they blurred. No blood ...
He got to his feet rapidly, gave the courtyard yet another cursory scan, and ran back into the castle on light feet. Not even the fear of the prayer he had made could stop his lips from forming a dazed, wild smile. He entered into the side hall that led to the kitchen and continued to run down it, stopping just short of the doors in order to make a more dignified entrance.
The chief cook looked up as he entered.
“About time you got back here, boy. What’s the word?” He went back to mixing a blend of odd herbs, some of which Darin recognized, most of which he did not.
“The lord will dine alone for the evening.”
The older man allowed a glimmer of curiosity to show—there was no one but the boy to see it, and no harm done. “I thought the lord was to have a guest?”
Darin bobbed his head.
Cullen sighed. This was a strange one—all silence and misery. He wasn’t likely to get more information than that out of him. He raised his knife over a long, thin stem.
For the first time in three years, he missed, as the boy spoke again.
“He does, Cullen. Have a guest, I mean. But I don’t think she’s well.”
Cullen gave a cautious nod, glad that Old Merritt had taught him not to use his fingers to prop up what he was cutting.
“Darin, boy,” he asked gingerly, as he set the knife aside, “are you feeling well?”
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