by Roger Taylor
The man had staggered back several paces before his legs buckled and left him sitting incongruously in the dust, his eyes wide with shock and his mouth gaping. He placed his hands to the sides of his head and shook it to try to stop the din inside. It was only later that someone told him what had happened. The watching men stood frozen to attention by Sylvriss’s icy gaze.
‘In future,’ she said slowly, ‘you will treat your horses correctly. Is that clear?’
Her soft voice had more menace than the loudest Drill Sirshiant’s and, while no official mention was ever made of the incident, the word had spread like fire through bracken into barracks and staterooms alike, and thereafter there had been a perceptible improve-ment in the treatment of the Mathidrin’s horses.
But everything seemed to be like that these days. Almost every aspect of policy was determined by some unspoken command. Where there had once been clear and open discourse, currents and undercurrents of gossip and intrigue now ran muddy and deep and, she suspected, for less high than herself, dangerous.
It was alien to her nature to dabble in such water, but it was of Dan-Tor’s making, and she had no alternative if she were not to be left isolated and ignorant, which, she sensed, was his desire. She knew full well that the affection she was held in by so many had always been a thorn in Dan-Tor’s side, but now she had begun using it as a weapon.
Ironically, felling one of the Mathidrin officers aided in this in that it raised her in the esteem of friend and foe alike. More significantly, it delivered a death-blow to Dan-Tor’s plans to train the Mathidrin as cavalry.
Traditionally, the High Guards were trained to act as both cavalry and infantry, as well as being competent as individual fighters. High Guards at their best, such as those of Lord Eldric, thus formed a formidable fighting force. Dan-Tor had tried to emulate this in the Mathidrin, but early attempts at co-ordinated horse-manship had indicated a rocky path ahead and no certainty of reaching the destination. He had persisted in a half-hearted fashion, but the Queen’s actions had reminded him of the Riddin Muster and the comparison had tilted the final balance.
The loss of a cavalry force did not irk him too much, as the Mandrocs could be developed into a massive and powerful infantry but, although his rejection of the plan had been logical and sound, there niggled a tiny burrowing worm of doubt that he might have been prompted by fear of what would undoubtedly have been the Queen’s withering, if unspoken, scorn at such a venture. Didn’t she after all twit even the High Guards themselves about their ‘gawky horsemanship’? The possibility that such a human trait might still flicker within him sufficiently to influence so serious a decision angered him profoundly.
Sylvriss turned from the window and walked over to the chair in which her husband was sleeping. It was upholstered with tapestries showing scenes from Fyorlund’s history and the King’s sleeping head was ringed by iron-clad warriors battling the seething hordes of Sumeral’s army-men and Mandrocs. The weave was old and skilful, but the pattern had been worn away by the heads of many Kings and much of the finer detail was lost. Even so, the force of the original design was undiminished. The grim resolution of Ethriss’s Guards holding back the desperate unfettered savagery of their enemy. The awful, if unseen, presence of Sumeral himself, and the equally awful presence of Ethriss, committing his knowledge and wisdom, his hope and faith, his entire being, to this last terrible battle.
Sylvriss leaned forward and examined the chair carefully, delicately fingering the material. Was it her imagination, or was the pattern fading even more quickly? One or two small areas seemed to have a strained, worn look which she did not recall seeing before.
The King woke suddenly, though without the fearful start that so frequently followed his waking. He looked up into his wife’s face and smiled. She kissed him gently and, placing his hand around her head, he held her cheek against his in a soft embrace for a long silent moment.
‘I’m sorry I woke you,’ she said.
Rgoric smiled. ‘It was a nice awakening,’ he said. ‘Full of quiet and calm. Like when I was a boy and I’d wake up and remember that it was a holiday. No instruction, no regal duties requiring my princely presence.’ He was gently ironic. ‘Nothing to do. Secure in the arms of a bright summer morning, and the love of my parents, and a world in which everything was right. Perfection. A day ahead in which to play with my friends, or ride with my father, or walk alone in the parks and forests and just daydream.’
Sylvriss’s heart cried out to him and for him. He was so rarely in this mood and now she had nothing to say to him, nothing that would bring back to him those lost days when his tread through life was so sure-footed. All she could do was love the man and hope that in some way this would protect him. Soon, she knew, he could slip away from her into a mood of dark foreboding, or manic elation, or haunted persecution. Sadly, it had been these intermittent returns to normality that had drawn the lines of strain across her face. To see him thus, albeit a little lost and fretful, and to hope that it would last yet know it would not, was a bitter burden for her.
All the more reluctant had she been, therefore, to pick up the old standard that had so long ago dropped from her hand, but which had reappeared in front of her once again, ghostly but fluttering faintly.
Rgoric’s suspension of the Geadrol and the arrest of the four Lords had caused considerable political upheaval and was occupying a great deal of Dan-Tor’s time. While he was handling the many shuttles of intrigue that would weave the whirling threads of doubt and rumour into the pattern of his design, one small strand parted and fell from his loom unnoticed. He neglected the King.
Almost in spite of herself Sylvriss had seized the standard and held it high in her heart once more.
What attention Dan-Tor had now for the King was confined to keeping him quiet and stable so that he could safely be left. Nothing could accrue but disadvan-tage to have him bewildered and rambling at present. The King’s moods of normality thus became more frequent and it was this that persuaded Sylvriss that the true King, her King, lay still intact under the ravages of his illness; if illness it was, or had ever been. It was like the sight of a shoreline glimpsed between mountainous, shifting waves by a drowning swimmer. It was a re-affirmation. It bred courage and strength.
Slowly and deliberately she had set about reducing the medication that Dan-Tor had prepared for the King. Slowly was the word she said to herself whenever some small change occurred, be it setback or improvement. Past experience had taught her the dangers of both depression and elation. This opportunity must surely be her last, and youthful impatience had nothing to contribute. Now was the time for an experienced hand and a steady nerve if she was to win back her husband.
Relentlessly she lied to Dan-Tor about Rgoric’s con-dition whenever he asked, playing the ignorant stable-maid and wringing her hands at her own helplessness. Sternly she controlled herself when Dan-Tor undid her work with a casual dosage to quell the fretting King. And ruthlessly she set about using her personal esteem to ingratiate herself into the webs of intrigue and gossip being spun throughout the Palace and the City, until few things reached the ears of Dan-Tor that had not passed hers on their journey.
You came into Fyorlund like a silent assassin’s blade, she thought, but I’ll turn your point from its heart if it kills me. Deeper in her heart, unseen, lay the darker thought that to do this she might probably have to kill him.
She smiled at Rgoric. ‘I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘But I think days like that happen just to sustain us later. I think we forget about fathers getting angry because we’re slow, and friends quarrelling, and insects and creepy crawlies in the parks and forests.’
Rgoric looked at her. She felt him teetering towards sulky reproach at her reception of his reminiscence, and a small flicker of panic stirred inside her that, from such a small step, he might plunge catastrophically away from her into a dark and deep depression. She had seen it happen too often before.
Impulsively she giggled a
nd put her hands to her face, childlike. Rgoric’s expression changed to puzzle-ment.
‘We weren’t so fussy about creepy crawlies that afternoon in my father’s orchard, were we?’ she said, looking at him conspiratorially. Rgoric’s face darkened thoughtfully for a moment, then slowly he moved from the self-destructive edge and drifted back into another time. A time of soft springing turf and the scent of ripening fruit, and a beautiful black-haired maid by his side, as besotted with him as he was with her. And she was still here with him. He smiled and then chuckled throatily.
‘Wife,’ he said with mock severity. ‘Calm yourself.’
Then they shared something they had not shared for a long time. They laughed. Ringing laughter that mingled and twined and rose up to fill the room like an incense to older and happier gods, laughter that shone and twinkled. The glittering lethal edge of the dagger that Sylvriss was making for Dan-Tor’s dark heart.
Chapter 17
Far below the rare and ringing laughter of Sylvriss and Rgoric was a tiny suite of rooms that had once been servants’ quarters. Now it served as prison for the Lords Eldric, Arinndier, Darek and Hreldar, having held them since their arrest.
The garish light of Dan-Tor’s globes did not succeed in dispelling the dismal atmosphere that pervaded the crudely decorated rooms, and the confinement of the Lords away from the daylight and fresh air had gradually begun to take its toll.
For a time they demanded to speak before the Gead-rol, but their stone-faced Mathidrin guards treated them with an indifference that was more dispiriting than any amount of abuse and rough handling. Over the weeks a sense of impotence began to seep into them like dampness into the walls of an ancient cellar.
Physically, Hreldar seemed to suffer most from their imprisonment. His round face thinned noticeably and his jovial disposition became sober to the point of moroseness. More alarmingly, to his friends, a look came into his eyes that none of them had ever seen before, not even when they had all ridden side by side against the Morlider. It was a grim, almost obsessive, determination.
However, it was Eldric’s condition that gave them most cause for concern, for while his physical deteriora-tion was not as severe as Hreldar’s, he seemed to have aged visibly, as if he had been destroyed from within. No sooner had the cell door closed behind them than his behaviour began to change. Even his initial thundering and roaring had contained a note of desperate petu-lance. One morning he lay on his bunk without moving, his face turned to the wall, and from then on it took his friends’ every effort to make him attend to even the simple necessities of life.
Arinndier too became worried and fretful, though it was more at the condition of his friends than as a result of his own privation.
Only Darek, thin-faced and wiry, and more given to the pleasures of study than those of the field, seemed to be unaffected by their captivity. His analysis of their conduct was cruel.
‘I suppose having behaved like children, we must expect to be treated like children,’ he said, sitting on a rough wooden bunk next to a slumped and indifferent Eldric and leaning back against the wall.
Hreldar turned to look at him silently, his face non-committal, but oddly watchful. Arinndier, however, sitting opposite to him, scowled. ‘Children?’ he queried sourly.
Darek looked straight at him, and then began to enumerate points on his thin, precise hands. ‘Who but children would think the suspension of the Geadrol was anything other than madness or treachery? Who but children would think that four of us with a token guard could either reason with such madness or defeat such treachery? Who but children would see these… these Guards marching through the City and hear them called the King’s High Guard and think it wasn’t beyond all doubt treachery? And who but children would think they could walk into the middle of it and expect to walk out again?’
Arinndier reluctantly conceded the argument, but his reply was impatient. ‘Every mourner sees the obvious, Darek. We acted properly. Cautiously and within the Law. We couldn’t have foreseen what would happen.’
Darek’s fingers snapped out accusingly, the sound falling flat in the small dead room. ‘We’re Lords of Fyorlund, Arin. Trustees of the Law and the people. It’s our duty to foresee-to look forward beyond the sight of ordinary people. How big a sign did we need? What could be bigger than the suspension of the Geadrol?’
Arinndier was in no mood for reproaches. ‘What else could we have done, for Ethriss’s sake?’ he snapped.
Darek leaned forward. ‘We could have mustered our High Guards, raised the reserves and marched on the City.’
Arinndier’s irritation left him and he stared at Darek, stunned. Of all the people he might have expected to preach rebellion, Darek-lawyer Darek-would have been the last. The two men stared at one another for a long moment.
Eventually Arinndier lowered his head. ‘You’ve been too long in these dismal rooms, Darek,’ he said quietly. ‘What conceivable justification did we have for such a step? You’d have been the first to cry that force attacked the very basis of the Law.’
A look of anger flashed briefly through Darek’s eyes, then it faded and his voice became patient. ‘Arin, old friend, listen to me. Force is both the reason for the Law and its very basis. People made the Law to control the use of force because force is a bad way of doing things. It’s that simple. You don’t need to be a lawyer to understand that. They made it over centuries of bitter learning, to protect themselves-and their descendants-from the darker sides of our own natures. And if you ignore its accumulated wisdom, you’ll face that darker nature unarmed, and you’ll walk on to the people’s naked and pitiless sword.’
Arinndier shifted unhappily on his seat.
Darek spoke again. ‘Think about it, Arin. If the Law itself is assailed by those who should sustain it, what else can be done? And, I repeat, what greater attack at the heart of the Law could there have been than the suspension of the Geadrol? And, seeing it, why didn’t we act correctly? Why did we turn away our faces like Eldric’s done here and pretend that nothing was happening?’ He leaned forward and the movement made Arinndier look up. ‘We’re the people’s sword-bearers,’ he went on. ‘And we’ve failed in our duty. Who knows what power blinded us? But now we’re penned like cattle and Dan-Tor can do as he pleases. We have to escape. We have to act against him or we’ll be condemned forever.’
‘Indeed.’ The voice was grim and powerful.
Both Darek and Arinndier started, and even Hreldar looked surprised.
The unexpected voice was Eldric’s.
Arinndier looked at the old Lord intently. Eldric slowly straightened up and returned the gaze. There was life again in his eyes and it seemed to Arinndier that the aging that confinement had apparently wrought on the man was falling away as he watched. Darek’s flint had struck a spark from the iron of the old man’s soul. Arinndier felt a lump in his throat.
‘Indeed,’ Eldric repeated, before any of the others could speak. ‘Having failed in our duty once, we mustn’t do so again.’
‘Eldric,’ said Arinndier, his face broken in a confu-sion of emotions, and his hands reaching out to his friend.
Eldric raised his own hands in a gesture that forbade interrogation. ‘I’ve been away,’ he said coldly. ‘It won’t happen again.’
Arinndier looked at him and remembered the Eldric who never responded well to sympathy; the Eldric who had always preferred to tend his own wounds in private, like an injured animal. Gradually his composure returned and he took up Eldric’s first remark as if the second had never been spoken, though he could not keep the relief and joy from his face.
‘You may be right,’ he said. ‘But what can we do? We don’t know what’s happening outside. We don’t even know why we’ve been arrested. Perhaps the other Lords are… ’
‘The other Lords are dithering, just as we did,’ Hreldar interrupted, his voice contemptuous. ‘Dan-Tor will be plying them with rumours and lies. Probably telling them that there’ll be a trial or some such nonse
nse-accusing us of treason-of being the reason why the King suspended the Geadrol. He’ll pick them off one at a time. They won’t even see the blow that’s felling them.’
Arinndier winced at Hreldar’s harsh tone. ‘That’s conjecture,’ he said feebly.
Hreldar’s mouth puckered distastefully. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But do you think it’s wrong? Can you see them doing anything other?’
Arinndier did not reply.
Darek gave a grim chuckle. ‘What a considerable schemer the man is. If we remain here we can do nothing but serve his ends by our enforced silence. If we escape we must rouse such of the Lords as we can and turn into the very rebels he’s probably telling everyone we are.’ He nodded a grudging approval. ‘It’s not without a certain elegance.’
‘It’s not without a certain horror,’ said Eldric an-grily. ‘Still, warned is armed. In future we’ll see a little more clearly and make fewer mistakes for him to profit by.’
‘If we have a future,’ said Hreldar coldly. ‘Besides, Dan-Tor’s a man who profits from everything and anything. I don’t think we’ve begun to get the measure of him yet.’
Eldric nodded in agreement. He stood up and stretched himself expansively. ‘True,’ he said, then, entwining his fingers, he cracked them methodically, as if freeing the joints of long-accumulated dust. ‘But nor does he have the measure of us yet.’
Chapter 18
Sylvriss closed the door quietly behind her and spoke softly to the servant standing outside. ‘The King’s sleeping. See that he’s not disturbed.’
The servant bowed in acknowledgement. ‘Majesty.’ He watched the Queen walking away from him. Was it his imagination or had he caught a glimpse under the Queen’s silken hood of a face flushed and smiling, triumphant even? No. It must have been a trick of the light. Sadly, loved though she was by so many, the Queen rarely smiled. Ethriss knows, she’d little enough to smile about. The King demented for most of the time; Dan-Tor spreading his pernicious influence over everything, the Geadrol suspended; Lords arrested for treason; these damned Mathidrin terrifying everyone; and even rumours of troubles in Orthlund. So much dreadful change so quickly. None of us have got much to smile about. But the servant’s face remained impassive. It was unwise to express thoughts such as these. Rumours abounded about people who had spoken against Dan-Tor or the King and had disappeared mysteriously. Of course, they were only rumours, but…? Who could one trust these days?
