House of Shadows

by Rachel Neumeier

  “He went to the tomb on Kerre Taum,” Karah breathed next to her. She sounded sickened, at least as sickened as Nemienne felt. “He stole a bone from one of the Seriantes kings—from Tepres’s great-great-grandfather…”

  Nemienne had not even known there was a tomb of kings on Kerre Taum, but the idea of Mage Ankennes slipping into a tomb to steal bones was horrible. But horribly believable. If Ankennes had stolen a bone from the first Dragon of Lirionne, that would be… well, besides horrible, the flute he’d made would probably be far too suitable to the mage’s current purpose.

  “This,” Ankennes was saying, “is not an instrument that requires the cooperation of anyone but a bardic sorcerer. I might even be able to play it myself. But I would prefer to use my strength elsewhere. You will play it.”

  “You made that?” The foreigner sounded appalled, as well as shocked. “You made it?”

  “Did you assume Kalches had a monopoly on bardic sorcery?”

  “We have a monopoly on bardic training.” The foreigner sounded dismayed. “Is that flute grounded? Did you obtain permission of the, the donor?”

  “It was a little late to ask permission, don’t you think?” Now Ankennes sounded almost amused. “I’m not entirely untrained, however. I am acquainted with the limitations with which you Kalchesene sorcerers hedge yourselves about. Charming, to be sure, but unnecessary when you use sea magic and good solid magecraft to compensate for the inherent limitations of bardic sorcery. Take it!” He threw the bone flute through the circle of light that surrounded the foreigner.

  The sorcerer, apparently quite by reflex, caught it. Then he quickly tried to snap it in two, arms and shoulders flexing, but he didn’t seem surprised when the slim flute resisted his effort. After a moment he looked back at Mage Ankennes. His expression was neutral, but Nemienne thought there was fury behind the neutrality. He said, “You think I’ll play this dead-bone pipe? For you?”

  “Oh, come.” In contrast to the young sorcerer, Ankennes sounded simply matter-of-fact. “You have already demonstrated your willingness. What difference if you do away with the young prince for Miennes or for me?”

  Prince Tepres said steadily, “Lord Chontas Taudde ser Omientes, I swear I will forgive any previous acts of yours in Lirionne if you will work on my behalf tonight.”

  “Play, and I will see to it that no one suspects your hand,” said the mage. “Or do not, as you please, and I’ll play that flute myself, and then give it to the Dragon of Lirionne as evidence of your guilt. What do you suppose the Dragon will do,” he asked impatiently, “when he believes Kalches sent a sorcerer here, despite the Brenedde Treaty, to murder his last legitimate son? Kalches will look back on the war Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes ended fifteen years ago as on the mere breeze that precedes the storm.”

  There was a silence. The Kalchesene straightened his shoulders and began, “You may be surprised at what the Dragon will believe—”

  “He’s going to play it,” Karah whispered, with an agonized glance at the prince.

  Nemienne wasn’t so sure. She thought that the foreigner might be proud enough that he would continue to refuse, no matter what threat Ankennes might make. As the pause lengthened, she found herself becoming more and more sure of it. But she also thought it would all go wrong if he did—Mage Ankennes was prepared for that refusal. “Look,” she whispered back, “If he does—if he does play that flute—Karah, you be ready to hold the prince in this world. We’ll get you into that circle, and whatever you do, don’t let go of the prince! You have to be his anchor—you have to hold hard to what you love, but remember I’m here, too! I’ll try to hold you, but you have to hold onto me, too! And be sure you give that kitten to the prince, all right?”

  “What? Nemienne—”

  “Just be ready to hold the prince! And don’t forget about the kitten!” As the foreigner drew a breath to speak, Nemienne caught her sister’s hand, scooped up the kitten herself, and pulled a startled Karah after her into the light. Enkea curled her tail around her feet and sat behind them like a statue in the dimness.

  Their sudden appearance got everyone’s attention. The young Kalchesene looked mostly at Karah, and he seemed furious. Leilis looked momentarily horrified, then went expressionless, as though she’d donned a mask. Prince Tepres, drawing a shocked breath, took a step toward the edge of his prisoning circle and put out his hands as though he meant to try to push through the light. But he stopped without touching it.

  Mage Ankennes was not pleased to see the girls. “What is this?” he demanded of Nemienne, visibly trying to decide whether to be furious or merely annoyed.

  “I had to, to come. To see,” Nemienne explained awkwardly, trying to sound young and ignorant. This was not at all difficult.

  “How did you come?” Ankennes asked next.

  “From Cloisonné House,” Nemienne explained, glad to have a ready excuse for bringing Karah. “Cloisonné House just, just echoes—all through—with ties to these caverns, you know. You can walk out of Cloisonné House right into shadow. Didn’t you know?”

  Ankennes frowned at her, but now he seemed more interested than angry.

  Karah, behind Nemienne, had tried at first to shrink into Nemienne’s shadow. But now she abruptly straightened her shoulders and stepped out in front of her sister, looking outraged, but in a surprisingly adult, elegant, keiso sort of way. “How dare you!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you have any shame? Trying to make somebody else do your murder for you!”

  Mage Ankennes snorted, a rough sound that was almost a laugh. “Ignorant child! You would do better to be silent until you know whereof you speak.” He turned away dismissively, back toward Nemienne. “Come over here,” he commanded her.

  Nemienne hesitated. “And Karah? She wants to be with the prince, she says—”

  “Your sister’s presence doesn’t matter. She can’t interfere,” the mage said shortly, and added to Karah, “You may certainly join Prince Tepres, if you wish.”

  Nemienne put the kitten into her sister’s hands and gave her a little shove toward the prince’s prison. Karah lifted her chin, gave Ankennes a scornful look, and walked gracefully across the uneven floor of the cavern toward Prince Tepres. Her kitten climbed to a perch on her shoulder.

  “No!” the prince said sharply, lifting a warding hand toward her. “Ankennes—”

  “The girl won’t be harmed by your death,” the mage assured him impatiently. “I don’t pursue the deaths of innocents.”

  Karah reached the prisoning circle and stopped, trying to decide how to enter it.

  “Don’t touch it—it will burn through all your bones,” Prince Tepres warned her in a low voice, and put out a hand almost but not quite to the circle. Karah bit her lip and matched his gesture from her side.

  “How many innocents do you think will die if the Seriantes are destroyed?” the foreigner inquired of Ankennes, his tone of academic inquiry underlain with contempt. “That is your intent, is it not? To use the prince’s death as a wedge against the family entire? And when the Seriantes are destroyed, what then? Do you care nothing for Lirionne?”

  Ankennes waved a dismissive hand. “I hardly expected a Kalchesene to be dismayed at disorder in Lirionne. In any case, the side effects will be unfortunate, but they are unavoidable. Negative effects must sometimes be accepted to accomplish a great good.”

  “How comforting to us all,” Leilis said tartly, “that a great man such as yourself should see so clearly the path we should all be compelled to take. I’m sure that the survivors of the wars and riots will sing praises to your name.”

  The mage glanced her way and said simply, “I do not care for the opinions of the ignorant.” His tone was perfectly matter-of-fact. He was not trying to insult Leilis, Nemienne realized. He genuinely did not care about her opinion, no more than if she had been a horse or dog.

  Prince Tepres said sharply, “How can you think it right to do what you are about to do? Are you not a man of Lonne? What has my famil
y done that is so terrible that you would wreak vengeance on your own country?”

  Ankennes, harassed, snapped, “Vengeance is not my aim—nations and families are all ephemeral—I do not expect a Seriantes scion to understand greater necessities that overwhelm the transient welfare of his own small country.” He added, to Karah, “Join your young prince, then. You may have a moment to make your farewells.” At his gesture, the circle of light around Prince Tepres suddenly flickered and expanded to encompass Karah. She gasped and shrank back, and the kitten hissed, but the movement of the circle had been very quick and was finished almost before either of them had time to be frightened.

  The prince put a hand out toward Karah, but then hesitated, looking uncharacteristically uncertain. He drew a breath, but then let it out again without speaking. But, though she did not say anything either, Karah took a step toward Prince Tepres, looking both shy and somehow confident at the same time. She took his hand in hers, turning to face Mage Ankennes at the prince’s side in a mute declaration of support and alliance. For what good that might do, which they both probably believed would be none at all.

  Actually, Nemienne had some hope the gesture might prove more than merely symbolic. She herself walked slowly across the cavern to join the mage.

  “Well?” he said to her.

  Nemienne tried not to flinch under his severe gaze. “I had to come,” she repeated. Even to her own ears this sounded weak. She added, trying for a firm tone but not able to tell whether she managed it, “I dreamed of the Dragon.” This was even almost true; she felt in a way that she’d seen nothing else, waking or sleeping, since she’d first gazed upon its long sinuous form in this cavern. She added, which was not true at all, “And of the other Dragon,” and glanced significantly at Prince Tepres.

  “And found your own way here.” The mage sounded thoughtful. “I would not have expected that. Well… well, very well. Perhaps it’s as well you came to this place, since evidently you were so strongly drawn. And as you were drawn to be here, I am interested in your further impulses. However, now that you are here, you may do nothing without my permission, no matter how strongly you feel drawn to do it. Do you understand?”

  “Oh, yes,” Nemienne assured him earnestly. She felt ill, and didn’t even know whether this was due to generalized terror of what would happen in this place, or because she lied so easily and yet she didn’t even know—not even yet—what if Ankennes was right, had been right about everything? What if Prince Tepres and all the Seriantes were irrevocably corrupt, and the stone Dragon of Lonne the creature of darkness and evil that had corrupted them? She did not know, even now that this wasn’t so—how could she dare do anything to stop Mage Ankennes when she didn’t even know—

  “Very well,” said the mage, and turned back toward his Kalchesene prisoner.

  The Kalchesene drew a breath, bracing himself visibly to refuse any demand Ankennes might make. Ankennes, though he didn’t move, seemed to gather himself—Whatever he meant to do when the foreigner refused him again, he was ready to do it—

  Behind the mage’s back, Nemienne shook her head sharply at the Kalchesene. She held out her hands and waved at him urgently: Go on, go on!

  Neither the foreigner nor Leilis exclaimed, But what do you mean? and so at least Ankennes did not turn and see Nemienne’s insistent gestures. The foreigner seemed uncertain. It dawned on Nemienne at last that whatever signs they made in Kalches to mean go on were different from the crossed-wrist palm-down gesture of Lonne. Her heart sank. But then Leilis leaned forward and spoke quickly to the young foreigner, and he arched an eyebrow of his own and said slowly, to Ankennes, “And you will free me if I do this?”

  “I will swear to it. I do swear to it. This is the only task I demand of you.”

  “Well,” said the foreigner, and glanced at Leilis and then back at the mage and past him to Nemienne. He turned his gaze last toward Prince Tepres.

  The prince, too, had seen Nemienne signal the foreign sorcerer. He gave Karah an indecisive glance, bending his head down to listen as she whispered to him. She put the kitten into his arms, and he lifted it absently to his shoulder. Then, as the foreigner turned toward him, his face stilled into an arrogant mask. He said nothing.

  The Kalchesene sorcerer lifted the bone flute to his lips and began to play.

  The flute had a soft, breathy tone, not quite pure. It was a sound that reminded Nemienne of the moist chill of mountain mist, of the bitter taste of wood ash, of the way the air smelled before a storm. The melody the bardic sorcerer played first rose up as a prisoned bird, freed, might fling itself skyward; then, as though the bird had struck the limits of a chain, it fell back again, descending with dizzying swoops through strange minor keys. The melody swirled around the cavern, and then seemed somehow to fade—absorbed, somehow, into the darkness under the mountain—the darkness that, underlying Ankennes’s brilliant light, was somehow still there. On the far side of the black pool, the Dragon of Lonne slept, impervious to the human folk who played out their small dramas in its cavern.

  The light dimmed. Not the light of the circles that trapped Prince Tepres and Karah on the one hand and the foreigner and Leilis on the other. Those stayed bright. But the rest of the light in the caverns faltered. The waiting darkness crept forward on all sides, while the music of the flute spun a fine pathway through the dark. It was a path meant for the prince. It held his name and his heart. Within his circle, the prince’s expression passed from hard-held arrogance to openhearted wonder. He took a step along that path, and another.

  Karah clung to the prince’s hand. For a moment, the prince hesitated, held by that grip. He half turned, looking back toward Karah, but the bone flute called, beckoning, seductive. Prince Tepres turned again toward the pathway it showed him, trying absently to shake Karah loose. But she would not let go, and the prince, even enspelled, wouldn’t use violence to make her.

  Beside Nemienne, Mage Ankennes exclaimed impatiently and made a sharp gesture. The circle of light suddenly contracted, exactly as it had previously expanded to include Karah. This time it excluded her, slicing between her and Prince Tepres, cutting through the dark where their hands were joined.

  Both Prince Tepres and Karah cried out as the circle divided them, convulsing as the light burned through their bones. Their hands sprang apart. Karah took two stumbling steps backward.

  The Kalchesene sorcerer hesitated in his playing, but the melody he had drawn from the eternal darkness somehow lingered. And Prince Tepres, no longer held by Karah’s grip, followed it. He passed through the magecrafted circle as though it was not there. But of course, Nemienne realized, he was not really moving forward—he was moving sort of sideways to the rest of them, at a slant to the familiar world. Even as she understood this, the prince blurred.

  Karah gave a little cry of distress and alarm, and for a moment Prince Tepres wavered in their sight, looking back over his shoulder, held by the sheer force of her will even though their hands were no longer joined.

  “Play!” snapped Mage Ankennes. “Or I will turn all her bones to fire, and we shall see if she can hold him then!”

  “Oh, you can’t! You can’t!” Nemienne cried, but Ankennes disregarded her, and she knew he would do it.

  The sorcerer stared at Ankennes, his expression remote. Then he lifted the bone flute back to his mouth, and as the disturbing melody slid through the caverns again, the prince turned away from Karah and faded from sight. Leilis bit her lip and looked urgently at Nemienne.

  Mage Ankennes gave a grunt of satisfaction, hefted his staff, and turned toward the quiescent dragon, striding rapidly through the shallow black water of the pool toward its head.

  Karah gave another sharp little cry and ran suddenly into the dark, following the prince down the slantwise path that led through darkness and into death.

  Nemienne cried out. She had meant her sister to hold the prince and draw him back to life, not lose her hold and then run after him toward death. She could still see
Karah, but only faintly. The kitten was with them, Nemienne reminded herself—there was still hope, because if anybody could walk the pathways between the ephemeral world and the eternal dark, it was the cats.

  The sorcerer continued to play. Nemienne hesitated for one moment longer and then ran for the path that led into the darkness. If she could follow that path herself—if she could only bring Karah back—if Karah could reach ahead and bring the prince back as well—then Ankennes wouldn’t be able to use the prince’s death to bring death against the true dragon the prince symbolized and everything would still be all right. But the path eluded her. When she tried to put her foot on it, it wasn’t there after all, but somewhere else, somewhere slantwise of any place Nemienne could enter. She screamed in frustration and tried again while her sister faded from her view, but with no greater success, and then ran instead to the edge of the black pool and stared in terror across it toward Mage Ankennes.

  Ankennes had paused for a moment at the dragon’s head, gazing up at it with—what, satisfaction? A last moment of reluctant awe for the thing he was about to destroy? The top of its head, resting on one great clawed foot, was many feet higher than the mage’s own head; each of its long curved talons was as long as his leg, and its closed eye as large as his chest. Enkea had somehow crossed the pool with no one seeing her, at least without Nemienne seeing her, and was sitting upright and still beside the dragon’s foot. She seemed impossibly tiny beside those huge stone talons.

  If Ankennes saw the cat, he didn’t find her presence reason to hesitate. He turned down to stride along that huge head toward its neck, beginning to lift his staff as though he meant to swing it like a sword. He called out in a deep, rolling tone, “The dragon is departed! The dragon is dead! The dragon is destroyed!” Then he whirled his staff over his head and brought it down toward the relatively slender area where the dragon’s head joined its long neck.