Gold Throne in Shadow

by M. C. Planck

  But Christopher found himself disappointed, watching Lalania and Gregor discuss her departure. There was no passion. A subtle thing, but he had become used to it, so it was remarkable by its absence.

  10

  TROUBLE IN BED

  The privilege of the city was a grand thing to have. He strolled into Oda’s clinic, leaving his squad of troopers and his sword at the door. She greeted him with a warm smile and assigned him his first patient, a cherubic two-year-old girl with whooping cough. Or, at least, a whooping cough. Christopher didn’t know precisely what disease she had, and he didn’t care. He invoked the spell, speaking in Celestial and placing his hand on her head, and her eyes cleared instantly. The child giggled at him, grabbing at his hand, while the mother made grateful beacons of her eyes.

  His duty done, he was free to leave. Walking to the door, he felt the eyes of the other patients on him. He was spared the burden of diagnosis and triage. Oda made all those hard decisions. He just showed up, snapped his fingers, and basked in adoration. Then he swaggered off in his fancy clothes, followed by his heavily armed and high-spirited bravos. What happened next should not have surprised him.

  As he was retiring to his quarters for sleep, he thought the two guards on duty were grinning more than usual. Since people had been smiling at him all day, he did not pay any attention to it, just as he ignored the bits of cloth lying on the ground at their feet.

  These little details nagging at his consciousness were not enough to alert him. Only when he saw the body lying in his bed did they come boiling to the surface, screaming of wrongness and danger.

  The spell left his lips instantly as he clutched out at the figure, and it froze. Now that he thought about it, the figure hadn’t been doing much in the first place. Mostly lying around languidly and provocatively.

  He had his sword halfway out of its sheath before he realized that there was a girl in his bed. Whether that was a testament to his reflexes or his paranoia wasn’t clear.

  Resheathing the sword, observing the paralyzed body, he finally had time to recognize that it was a fresh-faced girl, sixteen or seventeen years old, with long black hair, a lovely figure, and no clothes.

  She was stark naked. The significance of the pile of cloth outside his door chimed in. And the leers on the faces of his guards.

  He spoke the release word in Celestial, freeing the girl from his spell. She gasped a little in shock before opening her arms invitingly. Or trying; she was too nervous to manage actual seductiveness.

  “Who are you, and why are you here?” His tone was perhaps more brusque than the situation demanded, but she was quite attractive, and it had been over a year since he had seen his wife.

  “My name is Ugewne, my lord.” Her voice was trembling between schoolgirl sweetness and harlot-level huskiness. “I am here to serve you.”

  “Who sent you? And how did you get past my guards?”

  She was wilting under the interrogation, pulling her arms in to cover herself. “No one, my lord. And I walked past them. Do I not please you?”

  “I’m sure you’re a nice girl.” Or an extremely accomplished actress, pretending that perfect mix of hesitancy and desire that spelled innocence. “But you should go.” She made him feel like a teenager. He did not want to feel that way, right here, right now. He did not want to act on those kinds of feelings.

  Stunned by his dismissal, she burst into tears and fled the room, not even stopping to collect her clothing. Christopher followed her halfway, helplessly.

  “What the Dark do you mean letting her in here like that?” he barked at his guards, relieving his frustration in anger.

  “I’m sorry, my lord. It is their custom. And a fine custom indeed. We did not know it would displease you.”

  In the face of his anger they reverted to the most flattering of titles. Deflated, unable to lash out at anyone, Christopher spun his wedding ring with his thumb.

  “I made a vow, Private. I can’t accept this custom. Whatever it is.” Massaging his temple, he indicated her clothes. “Catch up to her, give her my apologies. And her clothes. Please, explain it to her.” He almost handed the soldier a gold piece to give the girl but decided that might be taken the wrong way. He couldn’t solve every problem with money.

  The soldier had already saluted and departed by the time he was done with these ruminations.

  “What custom?” he asked the other one.

  “It’s considered good luck for a girl to spend her first night with a man of rank. And begging your pardon, sir, your generosity and kindness are well-known. We did not understand, sir. We do now. It will not happen again.”

  Christopher put his hands to his face in dismay. The old right of the lord, to sleep with the bride on her wedding night. Here it had been institutionalized into a custom perpetuated by the commoners themselves. Giving it voluntarily reduced the instances of having it taken. And plying superheroes with pretty girls to keep them happy and close was in the community’s best interests. Christopher, flocked in White, healing children and raising commoners, and wearing the face of a twenty-year-old, would be considered easy duty.

  As much as the sight of the girl had aroused him, the depths to which these ordinary people had sunk sickened him. Pretty young women were always drawn to rich old men, in every world, but here it had gone from mercenary biology to self-imposed subjugation.

  He went into his room and shut the door, to find his own private peace with his turbulent feelings.

  The next day he thought to detect a subtle change in the way his men treated him. He would have expected derision, confusion, or even suspicion at his turning down a nubile girl. He could have accepted jocularity or slackness, since he had not punished the guards in any way for their failure of protocol. But it was none of those.

  If anything, they were more friendly and personable, even while their salutes were crisper. If only Lalania were here to tell him why.

  Karl, surprisingly, had not yet heard of the incident. But the young man looked drawn and tired. He trained as hard as he drove his soldiers, and he partied as hard as he trained. Still, his instincts were intact. When Christopher described the events of the previous night, he immediately seized on the one significant word.

  “You told them you had taken a vow?”

  “Yes,” Christopher said. “My marriage vow. I promised I would be faithful to my wife, and I aim to keep that promise.”

  Karl shook his head in derision. “A foolish thing to promise, especially with your wife so far away. But I have always honored your decisions. Now, I fear, it is no longer your choice.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You told them you made a vow.” Christopher nodded for him to continue; they’d already established this. “They have finally found an explanation for your meteoric rise and fantastic good luck. You made a pact with some power, some extra-planer entity. Possibly even a god. And chastity is the price you paid.”

  “But that’s not true.” Well, he had made a pact with a deity, but it was only the ordinary arrangement of priesthood. Nobody here found his spells to be worthy of special comment.

  “Truth is less important than comfort.” Karl shrugged. “Now your entire army views your virtue as their lucky charm. You will need to warn Lalania. If they think she aims to seduce you, they will shoot her.”

  Christopher’s shock received no sympathy from Karl. “You have given a name to their hopes, a concrete fact to hold against the unknown. And one they can hope to affect, through their diligence. It will do the army good and save me the need of babysitting you.” Karl had already had to intervene once, when Christopher had been seduced by magic.

  That new quality he had detected in his soldiers was protectiveness. And they were ennobled by it. No longer merely servants under the protection of his political authority and magic but partners in protecting him the only way they could.

  Perversely, he spent the rest of the day annoyed by it. She really had been a very beautiful young woma
n.

  But by the time he retired to his quarters, he had come to terms with the arrangement. He was asking a lot from these men. It was only fair that they could expect him to pay a price, as well. Spotting the same soldier outside his door, he asked about the girl.

  “As per your orders, I gave her such comfort as I could, sir. Which explains why I was away from my post for half the night. Not that I am making excuses, sir.”

  Not excuses, Christopher laughed to himself, but bragging. Still, that result seemed more appropriate; they were at least of an age.

  It didn’t make his empty bed any more comfortable, though.

  When he walked into Oda’s clinic the next day, eager to see another patient, he immediately knew something was wrong. The crowd shrank back from him perceptibly, and Oda’s face was a mask of pain.

  “I appreciate your help, Brother. But someone does not. I think it best that you reserve your magic for your own men, from now on.”

  With great sadness, she produced a cloth from her cupboard. Unwrapping the object it contained, she handed him a crossbow quarrel of white wood, fletched in goose feathers.

  “This was found next to the body. Although we did not understand it, we knew it could only be a message for you.”

  Christopher understood it. His assassin had found him.

  “What body?” he demanded. This was going to cost him a hundred tael, a veritable fortune. “We need to send for Faren, immediately.” It was a long ride to and from the Cathedral.

  “We will not send for him, Brother. He would not come. It is of no use.”

  He wanted to yell at her, to demand that she talk sense. He wanted to shout loud enough that he could not hear the words in his head, the memory of what Svengusta had told him once, when he had first discovered the power of revival. And its limits.

  It is reckoned futile to even try with a child under three.

  He crushed the quarrel in his hand, but it did not yield. Its power, like the power of evil, was obdurate.

  The giggling face of the little girl swam before his vision. The first person he had ever cured of disease, the first person he had made whole and healthy for no other reason than that he could.

  And now dead, because he had healed her.

  “None blame you, Brother. But they fear you.”

  Why were the only people who ever feared him the ones he tried to help?

  “I understand,” he said through gritted teeth, though he would never understand what useless spite drove a person to such lengths. The assassin gained nothing from this, risked herself for no profit, only for the harm it did him. That she was a woman and used a child as naught but a stone to throw against his window baffled him. But confusion crumbled before a tide of anger.

  Stiffly he bowed to Oda, turning to leave like a wooden toy soldier. She sensed his fury and clasped him in a tearful embrace. “Do not blame yourself. We are not responsible for what evil chooses. Do not blame yourself.”

  “I know who to blame,” he growled.

  The people of the town parted before him as he stalked through the streets, every boot-fall a warning of violence, his soldiers marching now stone-faced and double-time behind him, their cheery insolence evaporated without residue. But their advance broke on a wall of stone and a servant in black livery.

  “I’m here to see the wizard,” Christopher announced to the chubby, sleepy-eyed gateman at the foot of the high stone tower.

  “Not during the day, you aren’t.” The man shook his head in denial. “My job is a simple one, suited to a man of my simple abilities. My job is to tell people to come back at night.”

  “This is about murder. Let me in.”

  “If I do, it will be, about mine. It’s worth more than my life to open that door in the daytime. Come back at night.”

  Shouting up at the barred windows seemed too undignified, even for Christopher. And he was coming to ask a favor. Defeated, he turned away and retreated to his barracks, the one place in town where his law was absolute and his people were safe.

  Karl was confused as well. “I did not think her so wicked as that. You have a way of bringing out the worst in people.” Christopher almost said something snappish, before he remembered Fae. Karl had earned the right to talk like that.

  “Not always the worst,” Torme demurred. “But, my lord, consider your next action carefully. You do not want to drive the wizard to extremes.”

  Gregor shook his head, too. “Lalania thought you safe from the assassin, and in a way you are. You certainly outrank her now, and in any case she must know the Saint can revive you from a single hair. She cannot hope to destroy you directly. But no one could expect her to strike like this.”

  “Could Lala find her?” Christopher had failed to catch the woman when she was hiding on his own Church lands. Finding her here would be ten times as hard.

  “No,” Gregor said. “Because of the duty of wall-building, almost every man in the city is tracked. It would be hard for a man to live here without attracting the attention of that ravenous labor press gang. But nobody keeps track of women.”

  A thousand times as hard.

  “Maybe the wizard has magic that can help.”

  Disa shook her head. “I doubt it, Brother. The governance of society is the domain of priests, not mages.”

  “I’m going to ask, anyway.” Christopher could not bear to do nothing.

  Gregor and Torme accompanied him to the tower in the dark, along with Karl and a dozen soldiers. They didn’t expect trouble, but they could still hope for it. A vicious, poison-edged ambush was preferable to the assassin’s current tactics.

  The same servant met them at the door.

  “Don’t you have a replacement?” Christopher asked.

  “No, my lord. The wizard does not care to squander more gold than necessary.”

  “So you are always on duty?” When did the man sleep? Or do other things, equally biologically necessary things.

  “The duty is not that burdensome, my lord, although I thank you for thinking of me. Hardly anyone ever wants to see the wizard. Indeed, you have been so kind that I wish to advise you, exalted as you are, no doubt fully aware in your omnivorous perspicacity of all salient facts, yet nonetheless embarked upon a course of action whose dreadful outcome is acutely expected by myself, not through any contemplation or faculty of thought, I assure you, but merely brute, raw experience.”

  That was the biggest word salad Christopher had heard on this planet. And like salad, completely devoid of calories. “Advise me of what?”

  The doorman quirked his eyebrows, perhaps surprised Christopher had followed his entire speech.

  “Why, not to see the wizard, my lord.”

  “Not an option.” Christopher would leave no stone unturned to exorcise the creature that haunted him.

  “As you wish, though you must hazard the tower alone.”

  “If you’re not out in an hour, we’ll come in after you,” Gregor growled.

  The blue knight was only third-rank. The wizard was at least ninth, or so Lalania had claimed, based on the magic she had seen him do. It was not a credible threat.

  “If you’re not out by daylight, we’ll knock the tower down,” promised Karl.

  Even though Karl had no ranks at all, the threat was serious. Karl had a dozen cannon back at the barracks. Christopher grinned wolfishly, thinking of how surprised the wizard would be to see his tower smashed from a thousand yards away, until he remembered he would still be in it.

  The doorman bowed deeply before turning to crank open the heavy iron door. It squealed on its hinges, flakes of rust drifting down, finally coming to a stop halfway open. With an apologetic smile the doorman threw his body against the door, trying to move it, in vain.

  “That’s okay,” Christopher said. “By the way, an excellent performance.” He had the distinct suspicion that the doorman loaded the hinges with rust flakes in between each visitor.

  “A last detail, my lord,” the doorman said. �
�You must rely on the wizard to provide illumination.”

  Christopher took his light-stone out of his pocket and handed it to Torme, ignoring the doorman’s outstretched hand. Stepping around the edge of the door, Christopher entered the tower.

  The room inside was completely dark, not even allowing the light from outside to enter. Shadow, solid and monolithic, started at the edge of the door, a black fog impenetrable and featureless save for the glow of magically illuminated paving stones leading into the tower. Stepping into the darkness was unearthly. He could see nothing but the stones. He could only see his hand if it were in the path of the stones, a blank silhouette.

  “Knock three times when you’ve changed your mind,” the doorman called. Christopher looked back, but he could see nothing outside of the tower, either, the intangible fog cutting off all vision. He could hear the door cranking shut, however, and the solid thud when it meshed into the stone lintel.

  When the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, he discovered he was not immune to superstition and spookery.

  But the vision of the little girl came to him, and in an instant the theatrics were wasted. Striding across the glowing stones brought him to a spiral iron staircase, every other step illuminated like the path. Unwilling to endure any cruel tricks, he took the staircase two steps at a time, until it deposited him on what he guessed was the third floor, a room of only ordinary darkness.

  This room was dressed like a crypt, with rough stone benches and a handful of light-stones flickering from iron candelabra sticking out in regular intervals from the wall. The color they shed was black, a feat Christopher found wholly inexplicable, until he realized they must be in the ultraviolet spectrum. His skin shone with an unnatural reflection, as did cobwebs draped around the room. He reached out and touched one. Brittle with age, it crackled in his hand.

  “Why do you disturb my rest?” The voice was sonorous, and Christopher turned to see where it came from.