“What is it now?” Dagnarus demanded irritably, turning to glare at his companion.
“I know this man!” Gareth gasped, pointing at Shakur as if there were forty other people in the cell and he must be singled out. “When I was a child…I was with Captain Argot. He set me on his horse. This fellow was caught deserting. He knocked me off and tried to steal the horse! I told you, Your Highness. Surely you remember?”
“No, I don’t,” said Dagnarus carelessly, eyeing the prisoner.
“You must! This man’s face haunted my dreams for weeks!”
“Perhaps I have some dim recollection,” Dagnarus said impatiently. “It doesn’t matter now, Patch. He’s not going to leap at you again. He’s chained hand and foot. Come over here. Unless you want to shout our business for all the world to hear.”
Reluctantly, Gareth crept forward, unable to take his eyes off Shakur, who grinned at him wickedly, enjoying his discomfiture.
The man’s face—bloody and battered—had been the stuff of nightmares when Gareth had last seen him, years ago. Shakur had not improved since. The terrible wound had healed, but poorly. Half the muscle and meat was missing, leaving a grotesque mass of scar tissue, which had adhered directly to the cheekbone, causing Shakur’s face to look shriveled and shrunken. The eyelid drooped, but he had kept the sight of the eye, apparently, for that eye and its twin regarded them through filthy, matted hair with undisguised, if baleful, curiosity.
“Welcome to my humble chambers, Your Highness,” Shakur said, with a sneer. “You’ll pardon me if I don’t get up, but I’m chained to the wall. Go ahead. Stare at me all you like. I won’t grow prettier.”
“We haven’t come to make sport of you,” said Dagnarus, crouching down on his haunches in front of the prisoner, who sat cross-legged on his straw mattress. “Nor are we here out of puerile or morbid curiosity. We have a proposition for you, Shakur.” Dagnarus lowered his voice. “A proposition that will permit you to escape the hangman’s noose.”
“A job I can do for Your Highness?” Shakur asked, his tone instantly more respectful.
“Yes,” said Dagnarus, “a job.”
“Who’s the mark?” Shakur asked with professional interest.
“All in good time,” Dagnarus replied. “First a question. What do you know of Void magic, Shakur?”
Shakur glanced at the fire, burning from nothing, then shifted his gaze to the prince. Interest sparked in the cunning eyes. “What do you know of it, Your Highness?”
“Enough,” said Dagnarus. Removing a knife from his boot, he held it in his hands, tapped the point upon his finger. The blade was sharp and rimed with firelight. “And now that you know my secret, you will not be allowed to live to tell it. Which leads to an interesting choice. I will kill you here and now—I can always tell the gaoler that you jumped me, tried to seize my sword to make good your escape—or you can leave this cell in company with me and my friend and those soldiers.”
“So what is this job?” Shakur repeated, gazing steadily at the prince. “And what has the Void to do with it?”
“In order for me to trust you, I require that you embrace the Void,” said Dagnarus, toying with the knife. “Renounce the gods.”
Shakur shrugged. “I never had much use for the gods. And I doubt they have much use for me. Is that all?”
“Just about. You must prove your worthiness to me by undergoing a small test. You wouldn’t mind that, I suppose?”
“What sort of test?” Shakur was suspicious.
“Nothing much. Just swear by an artifact of the Void that you take the Void for your master.”
“That’s all?”
“All that is required of you,” said Dagnarus pleasantly.
“And you’ll get me out of here? Save me from the hangman?”
“This very moment.”
“What about a sack of silver into the bargain?” Shakur leered.
“Don’t push your luck,” Dagnarus answered, amused.
“Well, then I’m your man, Your Highness,” said Shakur, and he held out his manacled hands to be freed.
“Gareth, go tell the gaoler,” Dagnarus ordered.
“Tell him what?” Gareth demanded, dismayed.
“Tell him we require this prisoner for further questioning and that we’ll be taking him with us.”
“We’ll be the talk of the taverns,” Gareth said, low and urgent. “The gaoler will tell everyone he knows. Word will get back to the palace. What will we say when someone wants to know why you freed a convicted murderer?”
“You will give the gaoler this.” Dagnarus removed a purse from his belt, handed it to Gareth. “Tell him that the man this wretch murdered was a friend of mine, that I have sworn revenge. I am sorry to cheat the people out of a hanging, but my honor is at stake. And then you will ask him to keep silent.”
“What if he won’t be bribed?”
“It is not a bribe. It is recompense for his trouble. By the gods, Patch!” Dagnarus rose to his feet. “Must I do this myself—”
“No, no,” said Gareth, grabbing the purse. He did not want to be left alone with Shakur. “I will do it.”
He departed in haste.
“Who is that?” Shakur asked, with a slight curl of his lip.
“My necromancer,” Dagnarus replied coolly.
“He’s young.”
“But quite capable.”
Shakur did not appear impressed. “When is the job, then. Where am I to hide out?”
“I have made all the arrangements. You needn’t concern yourself.” Dagnarus cast a glance at the door. “What is taking so confounded long?”
Shakur gave a practiced twist of his wrist. “A knife job, I take it?”
Dagnarus turned to look at Shakur. “Yes. A knife job.” He turned back to staring impatiently at the door.
“You won’t think the less of me if I try to escape, will you, Your Highness?” Shakur grinned.
“I couldn’t possibly think less of you than I do now,” Dagnarus assured him. “You may, of course, make the attempt, but my guards are loyal and quite dedicated to me. You must know them, they serve under Captain Argot. You once served under Captain Argot, I believe. His men have no great love for you, Shakur. They would not be sorry for an opportunity to do you harm. Nothing that would affect your usefulness, mind you. Just something extremely unpleasant.”
At the mention of Captain Argot, Shakur’s leer and grin vanished, replaced by a sullen doggedness. He said no more. The voice of the gaoler, raised in disbelief, could be heard coming down the corridor.
“Your Highness!” he began to remonstrate the moment he entered the cell.
“Free this man,” said Dagnarus.
“Your Highness, I must protest—”
“Protest, by all means,” Dagnarus said impatiently. “And when you have finished, free this man into my custody. I will accept full responsibility for him.”
The gaoler did protest, longer than he would have probably done under the circumstances, considering that it was the decision of a prince he protested. Shakur was a notorious killer, a good catch, and the hanging had promised to be extremely entertaining. Not all the prince’s silver could quite make up for that. Dagnarus bore the protestations far longer than Gareth supposed the prince would, but eventually his patience wore thin.
“I will be obeyed,” he said, at last, glowering, and even the obdurate gaoler knew that any further argument would not only have been useless, it might have been unhealthy.
Dagnarus ordered his soldiers into the cell. The gaoler released Shakur from his chains. The soldiers strapped an iron belt around his waist, from which dangled two sets of manacles—one set for his wrists and another his ankles. The soldiers locked him in with swift efficiency. It was obvious from their looks that they knew Shakur and obvious from his sneer and attempts at bravado that he remembered them.
They marched him off, the gaoler watching after them sadly, shaking his head and muttering, even as he opened the pu
rse to count his coins.
The Creation of a Vrkyl
As he had done for his elder son, King Tamaros held a feast for his younger son the night before his entry into the Temple. The feast was quite splendid, consisting of capons and pigeons, accompanied by sausages, hams, and wild boar, a whole roast sheep, and chickens with sugar and rosewater.
Gareth, invited as an honored guest, remembered with a pang the feast for Helmos, remembered how thrilled he had been to attend, how kind and good Helmos had been to him.
“And this is how I will repay Helmos for his patronage,” Gareth said to himself somberly, toying with his food and staring into his full wine cup. “This night, I will assist his brother in a ritual that will restore unholy life to the dead.”
“Come, Patch!” cried Dagnarus, turning from his other companions with a rowdy laugh and slapping Gareth on the shoulder. “No long faces! This is a time of joy! Drink up!”
He poured more wine into the already full cup, causing the blood-red liquid to slosh over the sides. Gareth cast the prince a reproachful glance, which only made Dagnarus laugh more loudly.
The prince was not drunk, or, if he was, he concealed it well. He could drink all night, drink when others were sliding from their chairs and lying under the table, as limp as the barmaid’s rag, and still retain his self-possession. It was as if there was some ice-cold part of him that no heat could touch—not the heat of alcohol, not the heat of love. As a last and desperate measure, Gareth had appealed in secret to the Lady Valura, letting her know what he feared might happen if Dagnarus persisted in his determination to become a Dominion Lord.
The Lady Valura knew full well what trials Dagnarus faced. She had watched her own husband undergo the Transfiguration. Terrified for her lover, who—it seemed to her—must be going to his death, Valura spent a night pleading with him to drop this notion. For her sake, he would turn down the nomination.
“If anything happened to you, my love,” she said to him, stroking the auburn hair that rested on her breast, “I would kill myself.”
His answer was to kiss her and make love to her and, when the candle had burned down to the level which meant that it was near dawn, he rose from their bed and said that he was sorry they could meet no more from this night on—he would be in the Temple, undergoing his Tests, and though he had thought long on the matter, he did not see how he could escape from there to be with her. He was gentle with her, but she could tell he was displeased, even angry, and she fell weeping back among the pillows.
She did not attend the banquet that night; her husband reported that she was not feeling well. She had not risen from her bed all day, had refused food. Dagnarus said what was proper and, though he sometimes glanced with a somber expression at her empty chair, that expression would then harden and he would drink off another cup of wine and laugh more boisterously than ever.
One other person did not attend the banquet—Prince Helmos. His absence was noted by everyone with astonishment, and by Dagnarus with extreme displeasure. The King did what he could to pass it off, but everyone could see that Tamaros himself was angry—angrier than anyone could remember seeing him in a long time. Two spots of red dotted his sunken cheeks; his eyes glittered like the eyes of a fierce old raptor.
Breaking all custom, he sent his chamberlain to fetch his elder son. The chamberlain returned alone—everyone in the hall watching, knowing what was going on—and bent down to whisper in Tamaros’s ear. The red spots in the King’s cheeks expanded until the red suffused his entire face. He choked down his rage, however, muttered something to the effect that Helmos was taken ill. Lifting his wine cup, King Tamaros proposed that the assembled company drink to his younger son, Prince Dagnarus.
This the assembled company did, not once, but many times. It was well that Prince Helmos did not attend the feast, for when the King left—somewhat earlier in the evening than was his wont—the party turned riotous. Gareth could feel Helmos there in spirit, however, feel the prince’s disappointment and displeasure. This, combined with the thought of what he must do that night, made Gareth physically ill, so that he was forced to rise from the table.
“Where are you going?” Dagnarus demanded, catching hold of Gareth’s wrist, squeezing it painfully.
“I am going to make the preparations,” Gareth said in a low voice. “Meet me in the playroom. You will be ready, Your Highness?” Gareth almost hoped the answer would be no.
“I’ll be ready!” Dagnarus said with a grim smile. Raising his wine cup, he made Gareth a mocking toast and quaffed the wine in a gulp.
Sick with nervousness and fear, so ill that he could barely walk, Gareth escaped the feast. He traversed the palace corridors without really paying any attention to where he was going, turning over and over in his mind the appalling crime he and the prince were about to commit. Moving along the corridors, head bowed, Gareth bumped into someone, who had also been walking abstractedly, lost in somber thought.
“I beg your pardon,” Gareth gasped, stumbling. A firm grip steadied him, and looking up, he was shocked and dismayed to find that the person was Prince Helmos.
“Your Highness, forgive me,” Gareth mumbled, and tried to escape.
Helmos kept hold of him, stared at him in the dimly lit corridor. “Gareth, isn’t it? My brother’s friend…”
Not friend…whipping boy…
“You are not well,” said Helmos. “Here, sit down. Let me call someone…”
“No, Your Highness, please! I beg of you. It is nothing. A passing indisposition.”
Gareth hardly knew what he was saying. He attempted to fend off the prince’s hands, attempted to escape. His knees betrayed him. He tottered unsteadily and had no choice but to yield to the prince’s insistence. A low carved wooden bench ran along the wall. Thinking it would be better to sit down before he fell down, Gareth sank onto the bench and drew his hood over his head, both to let the blood flow back and to keep his face concealed from the prince’s penetrating gaze.
Gareth hoped fervently—he would have prayed fervently, if he had not been convinced that the gods no longer listened to his prayers—that Helmos would leave him.
“Thank you, Your Highness,” Gareth said. “I am feeling much better already. Do not let me keep you from your duties.”
“You are worried about him,” said Helmos, sitting down beside Gareth and resting his warm hand over Gareth’s cold and trembling one. “You fear for him. You are a magus, are you not? You know what Dagnarus faces. The tests we require him to pass are difficult. But the true tests come from the gods. If they…” He hesitated, realizing where he was going with that thought, thinking how to phrase his words so that he was not unjust to his brother nor sounded mean nor vengeful. “The gods find fault with all of us,” he amended. “We are mortal, only the gods themselves are perfect. The gods found my flaws. I was chastened. The pain…the pain of the Transfiguration is hard—very hard!—to bear. Faith leads you to endure. I fear…”
He knows! Gareth realized, and the knowledge passed through him like the point of a spear. His body shuddered with the blow. Helmos knows that Dagnarus has looked into the Void and embraced it; he knows that I have joined him in that dark emptiness. He will denounce us…
Fearful, Gareth raised his head and looked into Helmos’s face. Expecting to see him grim and dour and accusing, Gareth saw kindness, pity, compassion…
Gareth lowered his head, his eyes filling with tears. Weak, despairing, terrified of himself and the enormity of the crime he was going to commit this night, Gareth longed to confess his guilt, his dreadful sins. No punishment, however severe, not even death, would be as bad as the torment he currently suffered.
“Tell me, Gareth,” Helmos was saying, and it seemed to Gareth that the crown prince spoke from a great distance away, from a place high above Gareth, as if he listened from a well of darkness. “Don’t be silent from misguided loyalty. Speak now and there is yet a chance for salvation, yours and his. You may even save his life. For love
of him, Gareth…”
For love of him.
Gareth shut his eyes, a suppressed sob convulsed his body. For love of him. I cannot betray him. I dare not. You are wrong, Helmos. We cannot be saved, either of us. We have drunk too deeply of the darkness.
And, indeed, Gareth could no longer hear the prince’s voice, though he knew Helmos was speaking to him. The voice was kind and gentle, but it was too far away. Far, far away.
Gareth regained control of himself. Lifting his head, he looked at Helmos directly. “You need have no fear for your brother, Prince Helmos.” Gareth spoke steadily, his gaze did not waver. “He is strong and he is resolute. He looks forward to whatever trials the gods may send him. He asks for nothing more than to prove his worth to you, to his father, to his people.”
Helmos rose to his feet. Gareth expected anger. He saw only disappointment, sadness, and regret.
“Thank you, Your Highness,” Gareth said, lowering his eyes, unable to see that heart-wrenching sorrow. “Thank you for your concern. I am feeling much better now.”
Helmos remained a moment longer, but Gareth sat quietly, unmoved.
“The gods be with you, Gareth,” said Helmos, and left.
When Gareth could no longer hear the prince’s footfalls, when the corridor was dark and empty, he traversed the silent halls until he came to Dagnarus’s bedchamber. There, in the privies, Gareth purged his stomach of the bitter bile he had swallowed and felt somewhat better. He made his way to the playroom, where he found Dagnarus, cloaked and booted, his face hidden by a deep cowl, waiting for him impatiently.
“Where have you been?” Dagnarus demanded.
“Talking to your brother,” Gareth replied.
Dagnarus grabbed him roughly by the forearm, jerked him into the light, stared grimly and intently into his face.
“Don’t worry,” Gareth replied coldly. “I said nothing. He cares for you, that’s all. He cares about what might happen to you.”
Well of Darkness Page 34
