Last King of Osten Ard 02 - Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  “You too, Tiamak?”

  “Do not look at me that way. It is my responsibility as your counselor, or secretary or whatever I might be, to ask questions on your behalf, and to accept no answer that does not have the ring of truth. But let us make that the first question—is it not my given task?”

  “Yes, yes, of course it is. Merciful Rhiap, you are as bad as Morgenes. Always setting me puzzles and questions, trying to get me to answer the way he wanted, leading me by the nose like a dull beast.”

  “You were never a beast, Simon—but in fact Morgenes was doing his best for you. That method of teaching is old and time-tested.”

  “I know, I know. I’m not a kitchen boy any more, Tiamak.”

  “Most of the time, no, you are not, Majesty.”

  Simon scowled. “Feel free to tease me as much as you wish, just because I’m not the sort of king who cuts people’s heads off when they anger him.”

  “I do, Simon. I do, and I and many others thank the stars, the fates, or even the gods that you and Miriamele are not those sort of rulers.”

  “If you keep speaking of “gods” instead of “God,” it won’t be me you need to worry about but Mother Church.”

  “She may be an admirable parent, but she is not my mother, Majesty. And the strong never need to silence the weak, or they prove that they are the truly weak ones. Now, do you have the fortitude to listen to me, or do you need to complain a bit longer about how poorly everyone treats you?”

  Simon laughed despite himself. “Good God, man, you do have a sharp tongue. Even Morgenes wasn’t so mean to me.”

  “Because when he was your councilor, you were still only a kitchen boy. I am councilor to a king. The stakes are much higher.”

  Simon waved his hand. “Very well. You win. I will sit humble and silent while you describe my faults.”

  “That is not my purpose. As I said once already, I have questions about Idela’s death. For one thing, I still do not understand exactly why she was on the stairs leading up to the uppermost floor of the residence.”

  “Why shouldn’t she be? She was the mother of the heir. She was allowed to go where she pleased.”

  “You miss my meaning. Why was she there? There is nothing on the upper floor that should have attracted her interest. The rooms there are empty bedchambers, seldom used except when a large party of visitors arrive—something that has not happened in a while, I might add.”

  Simon groaned. “Are you going to fault me for not having more guests come to the Hayholt? I thought that was only Miri’s favorite song. It’s expensive, you know, all those visitors, and they always want to hunt and feast and have musicians every night—”

  Tiamak cleared his throat. “I’m not faulting you for anything, merely wondering what Idela was doing on the stairs between the third and fourth floor.”

  “Who can guess? Perhaps she was meeting a lover up there. I have certainly heard it rumored.”

  The Wrannaman gave him a keen look. “Rumored that she had lovers, or that she met them in the upper part of the residence?”

  “Had lovers. Not that I begrudged it to her, not after the first year or so. I would actually have been happier if she hadn’t remained my son’s eternal widow.” He looked up. “You’re staring at me again. What did I do wrong?”

  “Nothing. But we do keep wandering away from the point, and I am always aware that I have your undivided attention only for a short time, and then the rest of the duties of kingship will wash in like a rising river and my business with you will be obliterated.”

  “Then talk faster—less scolding, more getting to the point.”

  Tiamak nodded. “Fairly spoken. I had the maids go through the rooms up there. All were clean, as if unused. But one—the large one in the center where the old chimney makes one wall—was cleaner than the rest.”

  Simon cocked an eyebrow. “Cleaner than the rest . . . ?”

  “No dust. As if it had been tidied more recently than the others.”

  The king shook his head. “It seems a small thing.”

  “Perhaps. But none of the maids or other household servants can remember having cleaned those rooms since early in the spring, while you, the queen, and the rest of us were still traveling in the north.”

  “Very well, but if Idela was meeting a lover there, perhaps she was also keeping the room clean herself. She was always fastidious.” He paused for a moment, a thought suddenly occurring to him. “Pasevalles found her. Are you saying he might have been her lover? That he was going there to meet her?”

  Tiamak shook his head. “I would need to learn a great deal more before I would even dream of dragging anyone’s name into such flimsy suspicions as I have. In fact, as far as I know, Pasevalles has never taken a lover from among the ladies of the court—but I do not pretend to know all the gossip.”

  “I’ve wondered about him myself, I’ll admit,” Simon said. “Whether he might be one of those, you know . . .” The king colored. “The other sort.”

  Tiamak smiled again. “I understand, sire. But I ask your leave to inquire around the castle—discreetly, I promise you—about Princess Idela and any lovers she might have had, especially in recent days.”

  “But why? You don’t believe the drunken nonsense that her father is spouting, do you? That she was murdered?”

  “In truth, no, because I can see no purpose to it—no gain for anyone. But there is still something about her death that troubles me, and she was part of the royal family, after all. Any crime against your family—any possible crime, I should say—is a threat to you and the queen as well. And preventing or uncovering such things is certainly a part of the trust you have placed in me.”

  “I suppose that’s so.” Simon let his head fall against the high back of the wooden chair. “I imagined all sorts of things could go wrong while Miriamele is in the south, but never this. And I also never imagined how tired I would be, just trying to do it all without her. I miss her, Tiamak. I miss her badly.”

  “We all do, Majesty,” he said. “But I’m certain you feel her absence more deeply than any of us.”

  * * *

  Pasevalles knocked at the door of Duke Osric’s chambers. He told the servant who opened the door, “Get the duchess.”

  “But she is sleeping, my lord!”

  “It makes no difference. Get her now.”

  The servant went off shaking his head, which made Pasevalles want to shove a dagger into the lazy, disrespectful fool’s back and leave him bleeding and weeping on the floor.

  Patience, he told himself. Cultivate patience at all times.

  He went back down the hallway where the duke was sitting on the landing of the stairs, head in hands.

  “Your Grace,” he said, gently touching the duke’s shoulder. Osric might be drunk, but he was still a large, strong man and there was nothing to be gained by startling him into anger. “Your Grace, please get up. Your wife is coming.”

  “Nelda?” Osric stirred, looked around, then lowered his head to his hands again, as if the weight was too much for his neck. “What is she doing here?”

  “She arrived this morning, Your Grace. You greeted her yourself.”

  “No. Don’t want to see her . . . don’t want her to see me. Like this.”

  Pasevalles suppressed a noise of frustration. “She’s coming, my lord. You might as well straighten up.”

  Duchess Nelda appeared in the corridor. She wore a nightcap and voluminous nightgown despite the late hour of the afternoon. Her long journey from Wentmouth had exhausted her, and seeing her daughter’s body lying in state had been enough to send her weeping to her bed. But she was still the more alert and composed of the two. “Osric? Osric, what are you doing? Get up now. Come to bed.”

  The duke groaned. “Oh, my dear, what are you doing here?”

  “What are you talking about
? I’ve been here since early this morning, as you’d know perfectly well if you hadn’t drunk so much. Come now. Aedon save us, it is hard enough . . .” She looked torn between anger and a flood of tears. “Come now. Come lie down. I will stroke your head.”

  At last Osric allowed himself to be coaxed to his feet, and with the help of the servant and Pasevalles, was led to his bedchamber. To his hidden disgust, Pasevalles even had to help the duchess pull off Osric’s boots. The duke’s feet were cold and gritty and stank of dried sweat.

  “Thank you, Lord Pasevalles.” Duchess Nelda’s doughy face looked as though it might collapse into grief again at any moment, but she did her best to smile. “You are very kind.”

  “This has been a terrible blow to all of us, Your Grace.” He left her trying with the servant’s help to get her husband’s legs under the bedcovers, but the duke was already snoring loudly, limp and heavy as a dead codfish.

  Pasevalles retreated to his chamber and washed his hands three times to remove the smell of the duke’s flesh.

  * * *

  • • •

  Twenty years earlier, Pasevalles had also washed his hands more than once, but not in such luxurious surroundings. On that day he had knelt beside a stream in the Kynswood, washing a dead man’s blood from his hands and clothes. Afterward, he left the woods and made his way into Erchester, then up Main Row and through the castle gates with the tradesmen and workers who were entering the Hayholt for the day.

  Once inside the walls he had stopped to look over the great common yard where his father Brindalles had died during the last battle in Erkynland of the Storm King’s War. Even at that early hour of the day the yard between the castle’s outer and inner baileys had been full of people, servants and soldiers, tradesmen and farmers, none of them paying any attention whatsoever to the fair-haired youth in ragged clothes standing just inside the shadow of the massive gate tower.

  Pasevalles hadn’t known how he would feel about this place where his father had been hacked to death by Norns, but after the years of imagining it, he surprised himself by feeling almost nothing, just the same dull resentment he had long held over the way that life or God had favored some—but not him.

  Still, he had come to the Hayholt for a purpose, and he knew that purpose would not be served by standing on the common, brooding. He needed to find a crack he could use to enter in the system—someone to whom he could attach himself and make himself useful. And it should be someone with powerful friends.

  Within a short time he had found the ideal candidate—Father Strangyeard, the gentle, one-eyed priest who was a close associate of the High King and High Queen and now acted as their chief almoner, disbursing the throne’s money to various worthy causes. Because Pasevalles with his noble upbringing could read and write and speak well, he had quickly secured a position as a cleric working with the account books of the castle’s busy Chancelry, and made himself as useful there as he could. Father Strangyeard soon took a liking to the young Nabban-man, in part because Pasevalles was often still bent over his accounts long after the other clerics had left, candle burned down almost to nothing. The old priest would sometimes bring him a cup of wine and share stories of the fierce, frightening days of the war, when Norns had moved through the Hayholt by night and the mad King Elias, with the aid of the dreaded red priest, Pryrates, had almost brought the undead demon Storm King back to life.

  Pasevalles had always listened to Strangyeard’s tales with apparent fascination, and in turn shared some carefully altered stories of his own life, about his sorrow at his father’s early death and the cruel way he had been thrust from his patrimony by an evil relative. Pasevalles had practiced making faces in a looking glass most of his life so he would be able to appear as other people did, and as he relayed these stories he wore a mask of deep sadness combined with a bit of a yearning expression that suggested a young man trying to lift himself above his sorrow and do something useful with his life.

  Strangyeard always enjoyed “our talks,” as he called them, and the courteous, hard-working new cleric had quickly become one of the priest’s favorites. After several months had passed, Pasevalles shyly—or at least that was the face he had chosen—admitted that he was the nephew of Baron Seriddan of Metessa and son of the man who had heroically masqueraded as Prince Josua in the last great fight and lost his life doing so.

  Strangyeard was stunned. “The nephew of Metessa? But that means you’re—don’t tell me, I know his name, I swear I do—Brindalles! You are the son of Brindalles! But why didn’t you tell me, young man? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I did not want to presume on old acquaintances,” Pasevalles told the old priest. “I wanted to show what I could do on my own, like honorable Sir Fluiren in the stories. Besides, I am no knight, and my father was only the baron’s younger brother.”

  “But you have more than proved your worth!” Strangyeard assured him. “And it is not more warriors we need in these thankfully peaceful days. We need men of learning willing to take on hard work, like you, young man—just like you!”

  This additional mark of family heroism had only done Pasevalles good in the old priest’s eyes, and as the years passed he had risen swiftly through the ranks of the Almonry. When the old Lord Chancellor died, Father Strangyeard became the new Chancellor—complete with a noble title that the old priest never used and hardly even seemed to remember. Of course, he took Pasevalles with him. And when the Red Ruin felled Strangyeard himself, it seemed only natural to King Simon and Queen Miriamele that Pasevalles, Strangyeard’s chief assistant, whose history was now known to all, should succeed him as Lord Chancellor. He was gifted with a title of his own and the income from a barony in Hewenshire, and for the first time since his father and uncle had died, he had money of his own.

  For a little while he had simply enjoyed the greater freedom, the better food and drink and clothes, the admiring way that people looked at him, but after awhile even those pleasures were not enough. Weary of hard work in the Almonry and Chancelry, he briefly contemplated a life as a peer of the realm, but the idea of living in a small castle in windy, rainy Hewenshire was not worth considering. And in any case, he had developed other interests, some of which were best indulged in a large city like Erchester. More diversions were to be found in the old scrolls and papers and books that filled the castle, many of which had not been examined for generations. From those records, and from documents he obtained by other methods, he learned more of the castle’s history, and—more importantly—of the history of what lay below it. Then the desire to see for himself became stronger than his caution, and he began to explore. And what he found there had changed everything.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Baron Pasevalles! My Lord!”

  Startled out of his memories, he took a moment to compose his features before turning. Duchess Nelda, now wearing a more suitable embroidered robe and slippers, was hurrying after him down the hall, swaying like an overloaded oxcart.

  “Yes, Your Grace? Is everything well?”

  She stopped beside him, already a little out of breath. “The duke is sleeping. I wanted to thank you for your help. You are very kind.”

  He smiled, wondering what else was on her mind—he could not imagine the stout duchess hurrying herself just to thank him. “No need, my lady. The duke is a good friend.”

  She hesitated. “You won’t tell the king, will you? I mean, how you found Osric? It is just that my husband is so distraught over our poor Idela . . . !” Tears welled in her eyes, and to stave off that unpleasant display, Pasevalles laid his hand on her arm.

  “It will remain between us.” He did not bother to tell her that Simon already knew about the drunken duke’s behavior. It was always useful to have a favor in hand.

  “Oh. Oh, thank you.” The duchess was still trying to catch her breath. “Bless you, my lord. The king has so much on his mind already, w
ith the queen away in Nabban and all.”

  It was interesting, he thought, how women seemed to cope with troubles better than men. Only Pasevalles himself saw everything, but in general, women saw more than men did, and were better at keeping it to themselves. He wondered how he could make Nelda’s gratitude useful. “The secret is safe with me.”

  She thanked him again and turned back to her bedchamber and the slumbering duke.

  Pasevalles watched her go. His face showed nothing, but he was thinking about secrets, thinking about favors, and, as always, thinking about what he would do next.

  * * *

  Already the city of Meremund was falling away behind them, the harbor small and pretty as a jewel box, the great spire of St. Tankred’s just a slim dagger’s point poking above the housetops. Miriamele stood at the quarterdeck rail and watched the froth of the Hylissa’s wake and the seabirds hovering above it, gliding and flipping like leaves tugged from their branches by the wind. Being on the open ocean at last gave her an unexpected sense of freedom, a feeling that she could at any moment simply change direction and keep going, sail away from every responsibility and care. The sea went on forever as far as anyone knew, and there were moments when that seemed like exactly the right amount of distance to put between herself and the cares of the High Throne.

  But I could not go without my Simon. And I would not leave him behind to deal with my responsibilities. He never wanted anything but me, poor fellow. I wanted both him and the throne.

  “Come away, Majesty, please.” Lady Shulamit and two other of the queen’s female companions had come out on deck. It was a fairly warm morning, but Shulamit was dressed as though for a bitter storm, wound in a thick cloak that had been reinforced with at least two woolen scarves, one around her neck and the other covering her ears and the underside of her chin, so that she looked like a lumpy nun. “It isn’t safe. There are kilpa about. See, there!” Shulamit pointed out into the sun’s glare with a shaky hand.