House of Shadows

by Rachel Neumeier

  “Your Benne—I use the pronoun advisedly—came to me to intercede for you. He is an eloquent man when he holds a quill. After he confessed he had been Miennes’s spy, I commanded him to write down for me all the secrets he had learned through his years of spying. He told me there were people who would die before revealing the secrets they thought they held hidden, but that of course he had no recourse if I would compel him.” The king gave Benne a raised-eyebrow look, and the big man looked down, flushing. “Then he asked me how I was different from my cousin, who compelled men beyond their own choice to do murder for him. This was insolence, but I found I had no answer.”

  Taudde said nothing.

  The king nodded toward Leilis. “Now, this woman, Leilis, was not half so shy as you have been in bringing to my attention how great a service you did for me. She asked me if I did not care for justice. I had some difficulty recalling the last person who spoke to me with so little care for her own safety. Then I remembered that my wife used to speak to me so.” He paused.

  Taudde still said nothing. He could see that Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes liked and approved of Leilis, and found himself in return wanting to like and approve of the king. This was clearly a dangerous impulse, as well as a horribly uncomfortable one.

  After a moment, the king went on, “I promised them both that I would spare you if I could, which, of course, I already intended. I am aware of the promises you made to each of these people. I wish to see the art of Kalches for myself. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” said Taudde. He wanted the harp Leilis held as a man dying of cold in the mountains longs for warmth. “You will, of course, require an oath that I shall do nothing with that harp save keep those promises.”

  “I require no such oath,” said the king, astonishing them all.

  Or, no. Taudde saw that Prince Tepres was not astonished. The glance the prince gave Taudde was wary, but the look he bent on his father was merely exasperated, not in the least surprised.

  “Eminence—” the senior officer of the guard objected.

  “I cannot guarantee either your safety or this prisoner’s continued imprisonment if he touches that instrument,” warned the mage, speaking for the first time.

  “Peace,” returned the king. “Trust must be reciprocal. If it is merely required of a prisoner, it is coercion.” He lifted a finger in a minimal gesture toward Leilis. “Give Prince Chontas the harp.”

  Leilis’s first step was hesitant, but then her brows drew down and her mouth firmed. She crossed the room to Taudde with decision and put the finger harp into his hands. She was careful not to let her hand brush his: the unconscious care of long, long practice. Taudde did not let her step back; he caught her hand in his, setting his teeth against the immediate dissonance. “I gave your name to the Dragon of Lirionne,” he said to her.

  Those grave eyes met his, utterly forthright, not in the least surprised. “I hoped you would.”

  Taudde found his mouth wanting to curve into a smile, and sternly tamped it straight again. Yet it took him a moment to discipline himself to study merely the dissonance that clung to the woman, and not the graceful curve of her lips or the smooth line of her cheek. He had to tell himself very firmly that the dissonance, too, was fascinating. It was, in fact. Taudde studied it… only for a moment. It had become, as he had expected, familiar to him. Taudde opened his eyes, surprised to find he had closed them, and let go of Leilis’s hand, not quite willingly. She began to draw away, then met his eyes and stood still.

  During those endless days he’d spent imprisoned by silence, Taudde had thought, one regret sharp among so many others, that he would never have the chance to break the twisted spell that bound this young woman. Now he sent one quick glance of honest gratitude toward the King of Lirionne, and bent his head over his harp.

  Unraveling the dissonance that afflicted the woman proved a simple matter. Half of the spell was magecrafted, and though Taudde knew little of magecraft, he thought that this part was not even very well made. But it had tangled up in a familiar shadowy darkness that was not quite darkness, but almost a kind of light… Taudde said aloud, “I heard the Dragon’s heartbeat the first time I stepped across the threshold of Cloisonné House. I didn’t know what it was, then. But, Leilis, your heart beats in time with the dragon’s.”

  The woman gave him a wary look from her sea-gray eyes.

  “It’s a good thing,” Taudde assured her. “I think,” he added, and then more to the point, “except when the dragon’s inherent magic tangles with the craft of a mage who knows nothing of the darkness at the heart of the mountain.” He let his hands evoke that darkness, sending delicate notes whispering through the bright afternoon. He tuned each note to the shadows that tangled across the spellwork that bound Leilis, and then let each slip away, back to the living darkness from which it had risen.

  Opening his eyes—he had again not been aware of closing them—Taudde checked his own work and found it sound. “All that’s left is some fairly clumsy mageworking,” he told Leilis. “I expect any mage could remove it. Certainly he could.” He nodded at the king’s mage, who looked sardonic but did so with a brief gesture.

  Taudde took Leilis’s hands in his own once more. The spark that jumped between them this time owed nothing to magic. Nor was it at all unpleasant. He smiled at the woman, a little uncertainly, trying to decide whether she felt that spark as well. Then she lifted her gray eyes to meet his, and he knew she did. Even given the uncertainty of their respective positions, he found he was glad. He looked warily at the king. “She is free? You will not harm her? She never meant harm to you, or to Lonne.”

  “She deliberately chose to break my law,” Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes answered, his tone neutral. “But I have pardoned her. She is free. I shall do her no harm. Nor need you inquire on behalf of your servant. I shall save us all the time and assure you once more that him, too, I have pardoned.”

  Taudde bent his head to the king in a second gesture of sincere gratitude and looked at Benne.

  The big man slowly walked forward. He had a small flat box attached to his belt and a quill thrust through his hair above his ear, in the manner of a scribe.

  “You went to the king? On my behalf?” Taudde asked the man and, at the wary nod Benne returned, “I would not have expected that—nor asked it of you. I am grateful you would take such a risk, and glad of the chance to return the good you have done for me.” He let his hands travel over the strings of his finger harp, smiling at the fragile purity of the notes.

  Music could not restore wholeness to a cut tongue. That was not, so far as Taudde knew, within the realm of sorcery. But he had a different technique in mind, for a bard knows that sound is shaped out of minute vibrations of the air, and that there are many ways to shape a voice that do not depend on a wholeness of body.

  Now Taudde created, with purity of music and clarity of intention, a voice that would not require an entire tongue. He fixed this voice to Benne’s intention. Then, leaving the music of his harping to linger, persistent, in the air, he reached out and lifted the box from Benne’s belt. It held small, fine leaves of paper and thin parchment and an extra quill, exactly as Taudde had expected. Taudde curved the quill into a circle and folded a bit of parchment across the circle thus formed, fixing it in place with a touch. He caught the last lingering notes of his harp in this tiny drum, and then offered it to Benne. “Touch it lightly as you speak,” he instructed the other man. He infused his tone with assurance, because Benne’s own trust and belief were necessary to the sorcery Taudde was still framing.

  Benne slowly took the drum from Taudde’s hand and brushed the parchment with his thumb. He opened his mouth, and anyone expecting ordinary speech would surely have thought his deep gravelly voice came from his throat. It was exactly the sort of voice Taudde had expected from the man. It sounded perfectly natural. But those who had seen the sorcery done knew that Benne’s voice actually came from the drum he held in his hand.

  �
��Will this restore my voice?” he asked, and paused. He went white, and then flushed—and then paled again, and put a hand out blindly to a carved table in order to keep his feet. For a moment, Taudde thought the table would collapse under Benne’s weight, but it held. After another moment, the big man steadied and looked up again.

  “I know no way to restore your tongue,” Taudde explained, opening a hand in apology. “I will continue to consider the problem, if—that is, I will consider it. This solution is a little cumbersome, I know.”

  Benne opened his mouth—then touched the drum. “It is my voice,” he said, and the great amazement and joy in his deep voice was unmistakable. “You have given me this. My lord—” His voice failed, but only for the intensity of emotion that overcame him. He went to his knees and bowed to the floor in fealty, never glancing at the King of Lirionne. Taudde did, quickly, and saw the ironic look in the king’s pale eyes.

  Taudde bent and touched Benne’s powerful shoulder. “You should offer me nothing. You owe me nothing,” he said urgently.

  “I think you will find he does not agree,” the king said drily. “That is your servant, Prince Chontas Taudde ser Omientes ken Lariodde. I could hardly mistake it. But he is a free man of Lirionne and at liberty to take service where he chooses. Even with a foreign prince, if he must.”

  Taudde bowed, for once wordless. Benne rose to his feet and stepped to the side, turning to set himself at Taudde’s side. The big man’s steady presence was oddly comforting.

  “Now,” commanded the king, “put aside your harp.”

  Taudde looked at the king’s harsh, unreadable dragon’s face, and ran his thumb gently across the strings of his harp. The notes fell one by one into the room. Everyone hushed to hear them. The king’s mage shifted, but the king moved his hand in quiet rebuke and his mage stilled. Taudde touched the strings once more… and then set the harp aside on the carved table. He left it there, coming forward several steps to stand before Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes. “I thought you would bring down the silence,” he admitted.

  “And I would have been in no way astonished if you had used your sorcery to fly for Kalches,” answered the king. “But I believed you would not strike at me, and I was actually confident that you would not strike at my son. And there I was not wrong.”

  There was a long pause.

  “You must understand, eminence,” Taudde said, “I cannot possibly serve you.”

  “I don’t ask that of you.”

  “And I will wish to return to Kalches before the solstice. Indeed, I must; I have a duty to my grandfather.”

  The king inclined his head. “You will not depart without leave. But I shall give it.” Another pause fell, heavy as the weight of a mountain.

  Taudde broke it. “I might speak for you to my grandfather. But if war should come—”

  “If war comes, of course your loyalty must be wholly to your grandfather and to your country. Until such time, however, and while you are my guest, I will expect you to refrain from striking against my son. Or myself.”

  “I will swear to that,” Taudde said cautiously. He winced inwardly, thinking what choice comments his grandfather would have, knowing Taudde had made such a pledge.

  “I will trust you to hold to that oath.”

  Taudde bowed his head, then lifted his gaze to meet the king’s eyes again. “I may study the magic of the sea? And I will be free to practice bardic sorcery?”

  “To practice it and to teach it. I shall expect and require nothing less.”

  Taudde bowed again, then turned at last to Prince Tepres. Their eyes met, and held. Taudde saw the dragon’s shadows move behind the prince’s dark eyes, and wondered what the prince saw in his own. He bowed once more, this time to the prince. “I think I may even owe you service,” he said quietly, lifting his gaze to look into the prince’s face.

  Prince Tepres shook his head. “No, you have repaid that debt in full, Prince Chontas Taudde ser Omientes ken Lariodde. I hold you free of it.” The Seriantes prince sounded so like his father that Taudde blinked, but then he went on, his tone lighter, “I will have your service, but freely offered, not from the constraint of obligation. And I will return trustworthiness of my own, and no base coin. If you will believe it of a Seriantes.”

  Taudde found he had very little doubt of it. Glancing around the room, he found wary distrust in the faces of the guards, cautious interest in the mage’s expression, grim wariness in Benne’s coarse face, and real pleasure in Leilis’s sea-gray eyes. Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes rested his chin on his hand, his mouth crooked in irony and satisfaction. His face was overlain, to Taudde’s sight, by the elegant, dangerous lines of the dragon’s face.

  CHAPTER 18

  After looking in the kitchen, the workroom, and both libraries, Nemienne finally found Taudde, as she ought to have expected, in the music room. He was seated at the room’s only table, a heavy, ornate piece with carved fishes spiraling around its legs and sea dragons inlaid in lapis and pearl head-to-tail around its edge. At the moment, leaves of paper were scattered across the table, each one covered with the complex spidery trails of music notation. Each leaf had been weighed down with a glass bell against the spring breeze that wandered in through the open window. In this house, a spring breeze coming through a window did not necessarily imply that it was actually spring, but, in fact, at the moment the window’s view matched Lonne’s true season.

  The tall floor harp with the black-eyed dragon carved down its face stood beside Taudde’s chair, and the sound of a single, deep, pure note lingered in the room. The young sorcerer held an ivory plectrum in one hand and a writing quill in the other.

  He glanced up as Nemienne leaned through the doorway. “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, but there’s a new door in the hall,” Nemienne told him. “It’s made of pine and granite, and it opens onto high cliffs where there’s snow blowing in the wind. You can see a road curving around an angle of the cliffs near the door. I suppose it’s a road. It looks terribly steep.”

  Taudde put down the quill, laying it neatly across the topmost leaf of paper. “Kalches,” he said, and sighed.

  “You’ve been expecting it, you said,” Nemienne reminded him. “You said you wanted this door to appear before the solstice. Well, it has, hasn’t it? What’s wrong with having the door appear now?” She had thought he’d be happy about the new door to Kalches. He didn’t look very pleased.

  “I did expect it.” The Kalchesene sorcerer stretched his long legs out under the table and tapped the plectrum absently against the surface of the table. He sighed again. “I’ll have to ask leave of Prince Tepres to visit my grandfather. He’ll give it, of course.” He didn’t sound as if he relished the prospect. “It’s true I’d hoped to have that door before the solstice. It’s also true that I don’t look forward to using it. I imagine Grandfather will have several choice comments to make about, well, nearly everything that’s happened in the past six months.” He brightened slightly. “Perhaps I’ll ask Leilis to come with me. Let Grandfather try to sharpen his wits on her. He’ll find he’s not the only one with an edge to his tongue.”

  “She may be too busy to go with you. Or Narienneh may not want her to go, now that she’s made Leilis her heir to Cloisonné House. Or—”

  Taudde held up a hand. “Let’s not borrow trouble against the wretched day, shall we? What time is it? All right, there should be time before the candlelight district wakes for the night. Please step over to Cloisonné House and ask Leilis whether she might find a moment for me this evening, would you, Nemienne?” He bent a stern look on her. “Take Enkea with you, mind. None of this solitary wandering through the dark.”

  Nemienne hadn’t known he’d been aware of her slipping from one house of shadows to another of an evening. She could feel a flush creeping up her cheeks. “I do know the way, now,” she protested.

  “Through those caverns?” The Kalchesene sorcerer’s tone was mild, but unyielding. “I doubt any
one could. I’m glad of your skill and confidence, Nemienne. But let’s not exceed good sense. Do you wish to accidentally trouble the dragon now that it is awake? Take Enkea with you.”

  “Yes, all right,” Nemienne agreed hastily, wanting all the more urgently to drop the subject because she knew he was perfectly right. “It’s only, she’s not always handy when you want her—”

  “Patience is a virtue in sorcery as well as magecraft,” Taudde said mildly. “If I can’t expect you to act with reasonable prudence, Nemienne, I’ll go myself. Only I should first attend upon the prince.”

  “I’ll take her, I’ll take her!” Nemienne promised.

  “Attend upon me?” The prince’s voice, faintly edged with the fierceness of the dragon, made Nemienne jump; she hadn’t heard him enter.

  But Taudde glanced up with no sign of surprise, then rose and bowed, a brief gesture. “Ah, eminence, welcome. It seems this house has at last seen fit to offer us a door that leads into Kalches.”

  “I see.” The prince’s dark eyes rested on Taudde’s face. After a second, the pale brows lifted. “You don’t doubt I’ll give you leave to go? No, of course not.” The light, fierce voice gentled. “And is that such a burden?”

  Taudde moved his shoulders uncomfortably. “It’s not a burden I ever expected to bear. Forgive me if I sometimes find it weighs heavily.”

  The prince inclined his head without comment. He said after a moment, “And you are concerned about your grandfather.”

  “I fear his initial reaction to… all this… will be, um. Intense.”

  The prince did not smile. “You will have to persuade him, then.”

  “I know. I will.” Taudde lifted a hand toward the door, inviting the prince to accompany him. “Shall we find out whether you are able to perceive this newest addition to the house’s complement of extraordinary doors?”