The Soldier King

by Violette Malan

  “Avylos must have thought putting a magic on the wall was enough to keep people out.”

  “It’s as Kera told us,” Parno agreed, “he does not waste his power.”

  The door opened on a small stone landing. Three steps led upward to another, smaller landing where an arched doorway opened onto a corridor. Parno signaled Zania to stand back, went down on one knee, and shot a quick look down each arm of the corridor from a spot just below the height of his own waist. Empty and, except for three closed doors, featureless.

  “Which way?” Zania breathed.

  Parno held up his hand, listening. He would swear he could hear a distant but rhythmic tapping. He nodded. Running footsteps. For a moment his heart leaped, only to subside again. It was not Dhulyn, he knew every sound she could make, and this was not her.

  “This way,” he said, turning toward the sound.

  Zania took a pinch of his sleeve between her thumb and forefinger. “How do you know?”

  “Someone is running toward us, it’s only courteous that we go to meet them.”

  “Shouldn’t we avoid whoever it is?” Zania’s tone was sour, but she followed.

  “From the lightness of the sound, and swiftness of the footsteps, this is a young, slim person wearing lady’s house shoes. The only person I can think of who would match that description, and who would be running in this direction, is Princess Kera. But just in case I’m wrong—” he grinned at her to show how unlikely that was. “Take this.” He pulled his spare dagger from his sleeve and handed it to her. Better careful than cursing, was what Dhulyn would have said.

  Parno set a cautious pace, and they had advanced only a few spans down the hall when Zania stopped him with a whisper.

  “Parno, this must be the door.”

  Still with his eyes on the end of the corridor he backed up two steps to come even with her.

  “The other two have latches,” Zania said. “But look, this one’s just plain, no latch, no hinges showing, nothing.”

  “That’s it, then,” Parno agreed. “But finding it doesn’t get us much further. What is it?” Zania had gone close enough to almost press her nose against the polished wood. She squinted, wrinkling up her nose.

  “There’s a shadow here,” she said, “like a bunch of cobwebs, but if I move, the shadow doesn’t change.” She waved her hand up and down.

  “I see no shadow at all, except your own.”

  “If only I see it . . . do you think it might be the latch?”

  “It’s placed higher on the door than these others,” Parno said, pointing at the closest door with the point of his sword. “But who knows, that might help the magic.” He turned to look down the corridor. The footsteps were getting closer. “Behind me,” he whispered, gesturing with his head.

  But it was indeed Princess Kera who turned into the far end of the corridor and slid to a halt at the sight of them, her hand pressed tightly to her waist, and her breath coming short and fast.

  “Parno Lionsmane,” she said, as soon as she had caught her breath and drawn closer to them. “Do you know? Avylos has arrested Valaika and Edmir.”

  Parno looked past her, but no one was following Kera from the main part of the citadel. “We know,” he said. “If Avylos is occupied with them, we must use this time to get the Stone. Do you know where Dhulyn Wolfshead is?””

  Kera gave a short nod. “Still in the baths, I should think.”

  Parno grinned despite himself. “She’s always loved baths, that’s for certain. We should have time enough, then, so long as we can get to the Stone.”

  “Have you tried the door?” she asked, stepping around him.

  Zania tapped the spot where she’d seen the shadow. “Is this the latch?”

  Kera nodded and put out her hand. As her fingers closed on the spot Zania had indicated, an intricate iron latch took form under her hand. She lifted it and the door swung silently open.

  Avylos’ working chamber was a large rectangular room with two windows equipped with both shutters and bars. The shutters were open, and Parno could see dust motes floating in the sunlight that shone across the Mage’s worktable and the dark oak floor. There were shelves and cabinets against the walls of the room, including some behind the table itself, but Parno’s eyes went almost immediately to the wooden casket that sat to the right on the table.

  “Zania?” he said.

  “I think so,” she said. “It looks like the drawing, don’t you think?”

  “You never saw it, not even as a small child?”

  “I don’t remember.” Zania walked over to the casket and put her hand on it. It was locked.

  “Well, your touching it doesn’t prove there’s no magic on it, just that whatever there is doesn’t affect women. Let’s see what happens . . .” He stood at Zania’s side and put his own hand where hers had been on the casket’s lid. The wood felt warm. Warmer than it should have felt, even with the sun upon it. Parno frowned.

  “What is it?” Kera had crept up beside them.

  “It’s a Balnian lock,” he said. “I have opened Balnian locks, but not many, and not recently.”

  “Dhulyn Wolfshead must have opened it,” Kera said. “I saw the Stone that night.”

  “My Partner has a better hand with locks than I do,” Parno said. But all the while he was speaking his hands were busy feeling along the inner seam of his sword sheath, where his lockpick was hidden. The fold of leather was stiff, but he pried it open with his thumbnail and the thin, flat, metal rod popped out into his hand. Dhulyn had found this for him, and had an old smith in Cabrea fashion it to her specifications. Half of Parno’s trouble with locks had disappeared once he had a proper tool.

  Half his trouble. Not all.

  He took a deep breath and looked around. He found himself reluctant to sit in the Mage’s chair. “Zania, pull that chair closer, would you?” He indicated where he wanted it to be placed, but the moment he sat down, he wondered if he had made a mistake. The muscles in his legs burned now that he was no longer standing, and he felt a tiny tremor in his hands that did not bode well for the picking of the lock. Since early morning he’d jumped out a window, run across half the grounds of the Royal House, used the Shoras to help him climb a magicked wall, and pulled Zania up behind him. He risked a glance at her. Her lips had no color, and there were dark smudges under her eyes.

  We’re a fine pair, he thought. He had reserves of strength the girl did not have, and she was neither complaining nor trembling. He smiled at her, and was comforted to see her smile back.

  No point in putting this off any longer, he was not going to get less tired. There was no Shora for picking locks, more was the pity. If they lived through this, he would help Dhulyn make one. He put the lockpick between his teeth, flexed his fingers and rubbed his hands together, before taking hold of the pick once more and lowering his eyes to the level of the lock. One end of the lockpick was formed like a squared-off hook, the metal bent at right angles. That end he inserted into the lock and moved it to feel gingerly to the right and left. Nothing. Up. Nothing. Down. Ah, there was the first catch of the locking mechanism.

  He had reached the fifth catch when he slipped, and lost his place. He sat back and took two deep breaths, rolling his shoulders. He would have to release the first four catches again, but having done it once, it would be much easier the second time. So he told himself, and so it proved, as he was soon unlocking the fifth catch and moving along to what he hoped was the sixth, and final catch. There were more complicated Balnian locks, he knew, but he had to hope this was not one of them. Any more catches and he would need a second lockpick, and that he did not have.

  The final catch moved with a click he felt more in his fingers than heard with his ears and he was just leaning back to share his satisfied smile with Zania and Kera when a sound made them all turn to look at the door.

  It had swung open and standing in the doorway was his Partner, Dhulyn Wolfshead.

  Twenty-five

  THE
WAY TO THE BLACK DUNGEONS was not entirely dark, contrary to what Edmir had always been told. He’d known that the stories told around the fire in the Royal Guardroom couldn’t all be true, seeing as how so many contradicted each other. But as children, he and Kera had loved to be frightened by rumors and gossip, and with wondering which tales were true. According to one source, the Black Guards never came up out of the dungeons, once their time of service there began. Another said the Guard was a secret duty, and that its members walked about mixing with the House Guard unknown to anyone but themselves. You might sit down next to one at the meal table, and never know.

  Some stories maintained the Black Guards were blind from birth, carefully selected and trained, and that the hoods and masks tradition said they wore were used only at the delivery of prisoners, to preserve anonymity. Other stories said they were sighted people, but bred—or helped by magic—to see in the dark. Most stories claimed that once Black Guards accepted their positions, the hoods and masks never came off, and hid their identities not just from guards delivering prisoners, but even from each other.

  The only thing all the stories agreed on was that the work of the Black Guards was done in the dark, “neither in sunlight, nor moonlight, nor light of flame.” That’s how Edmir had heard it. Wisdom that came down from the Caids warned against the witnessing of torture and executions. While such actions might be deemed necessary, those who watched them were in danger of developing a taste for such things. Hence the stories that even the Black Guards themselves were blind, not just dark-adapted.

  Edmir did not find it reassuring that the reality was more prosaic than the rumors. He’d been familiar with the entrance to the Black Dungeons his whole life; the circular stone stairwell was in his mother the queen’s apartments, and as Lord Prince he’d known that one day he would make the journey down into the foundations of the Royal House to visit the Black Dungeons, as his mother had done before him. No one could rule in Tegrian without knowing what sending someone to the dungeons meant.

  Truth to tell, a part of Edmir, the playwright part, he was now aware, had been looking forward to that visit, to finally learning for himself which of the stories were true, and which false. I just never thought I’d find out this way, he thought. Not as a prisoner.

  When his mother the queen had passed her sentence on them, Edmir expected other guards to be sent for, but it seemed that Avylos had thought of that as well, and Megz Primeau and her companions were senior enough for this duty. At the top of the circular staircase Edmir tried to make them stop, but he still couldn’t speak, and when he dug in his heels and pulled away, one of the two guards with Megz Primeau simply tripped him, and toppled him down the stone steps.

  “We can roll you all the way down, if you’d like.” Megz’s voice actually showed some pity. “You could break your neck, but you might prefer that to what you’ll find at the bottom.”

  Edmir shook his head and staggered to his feet, pressing his right shoulder against the stone wall of the stairwell. Whatever it was he needed to face, he’d do it better unbruised, and unbattered. He stood still, therefore, and allowed Megz to take hold of him once more by the upper arm. The larger of the two guards had four short torches in his belt. At Megz’s nod, he lit one and began the descent. He was soon lost to sight as the turnings of the stairs carried him away, but the light continued; he used the torch to ignite the evenly spaced wall sconces as he passed them by.

  Four torches, Edmir thought. Two to get us there, and two to lead them back again?

  By the time they stepped off the final stair Edmir’s legs were trembling with the strain of keeping his balance with his hands tied behind his back. Megz did not pause, however, but set off along the wide passage.After so many turns on the staircase, Edmir found he could not even guess in what direction they were now heading. The row of wall sconces continued, and in their flickering light Valaika looked gray and stunned, her lower lip trembling as she shuffled in the grip of her guard. She was in no danger of falling, or stumbling, however, as the floors and walls of the passage were clean, neither dusty nor damp, and even the stones underfoot were beautifully fitted and smooth.

  Work of the Caids, Edmir thought, remembering what the Mercenaries had told them, him and Zania. The Royal House must have been built on ruins dating from the time of the Caids themselves. These stones were older than his family, older than Tegrian, older, perhaps, than the gods. For a moment, his awe at that immeasurable, unthinkable expanse of time was enough to distract him from his own present. But only for a moment.

  The temperature increased, and Edmir realized that, dry as this passage was, they were passing close by the hot springs that surfaced in the Royal Baths. Before he could think about what that meant, the corridor ended abruptly in what was obviously a much more recent addition, a heavy oak door with metal banding, and a thickly barred grate at the height of an average man’s head. Above the door, a shaded lantern with a fat candle inside replaced the wall sconces that had lined the passage. The larger guard was there, the candle was lit, and the stubs of the first two torches lay extinguished on the floor. A rope bell pull, stout and tarred such as might be found outside the night door of any respectable inn, hung to one side.

  At a nod from Megz, the large guard put his hand on the rope.

  “It’s not like they couldn’t hear us coming,” he said.

  “Just ring the bell, Tzen.”

  The sound the bell made was very pure, very sweet, like the bells that hung on the trees in the queen’s private garden. Edmir swallowed and blinked away sudden tears.

  Tzen must have been right, the Black Guards had heard them coming, because the gate was swinging silently inward even as the last notes of the bell faded away.

  The man who stepped forward into the opening, and the two others who kept their places behind him, were masked, and hooded, as tradition had it, but there were eyeholes in the masks, something that would not have been necessary if they were blind. But their eyes were huge and dark, with no color showing around the pupils. They were squinting, as if even the shaded light from the lantern was more than they could tolerate comfortably. The Black Guard in the doorway looked at Megz, and said nothing.

  The section leader cleared her throat. “Two for the dungeons,” she said.

  “Are there questions?”

  Edmir expected the voice to be rusty from disuse, but on the contrary, it was smooth and warm, even pleasant.

  “No,” Megz said. “Death only.”

  Edmir shivered. He had not considered the possibility that there might be torture waiting for them, but his sense of relief was so great that it restored his courage. Everything, even death, took time. He did not wait for the House Guards to push him, but stepped forward, turning to face Megz and the other guards. When he was sure that she was looking at him, he took two quick, short steps to his right, and one back, almost dancing steps, and then twisted, dropping his left shoulder. If only his hands were not bound, but maybe this would be enough to remind Megz, to make her think about the block to her secret thrust—and who she’d shown it to. Who knew? At this point, anything was worth trying.

  His heart sank as Megz only looked at him with impatience before spinning him around again to face the Black Guards.

  Edmir cleared his throat and opened his mouth, the words that would give him a good exit already on his tongue.

  But a soft moan was all the sound he made.

  “A mute?” the Black Guard in the doorway said.

  “The Blue Mage took his voice,” Megz said.

  The Black Guard shook his head. “A shame. Often there is much they wish to say before they die.” He gestured, and Edmir stepped past him into the dark hallway beyond.

  “It’s them trying to pass that lout off as Lord Prince Edmir that burns the worst,” Tzen said.

  Megz Primeau let them talk. All they’d done in leaving the traitors in the hands of the masked and hooded guards of the Black Dungeon was their plain duty. But they were forbidd
en to talk to anyone else about it outside of this underground passage. Let them have their say here and now, get things off their chests where no one else could hear them.

  “There wasn’t a member of the family better liked,” Granz the other guard said. “Best noble in the Royal House, he was. Even the chamber servants had good words for Prince Edmir.” Unspoken was the knowledge that the same most emphatically could not be said for Kedneara the Queen.

  “Best noble in Beolind, comes to that,” Tzen agreed. “Too good to be king, that’s certain.”

  “And that’s why the Caids took him,” Granz said. “To save him from that path, poor lad.” Again, the three guards shared the unspoken awareness of what every soldier in the Royal House knew: well-liked as Edmir had been, even loved, the Princess Kera would make the better ruler.

  “Black Dungeons’ too good for those two,” Megz said, making her own contribution to the purging of fury and sadness that threatened to rise in her own throat as she thought about Edmir’s loss. Why it had been only this morning she’d seen him riding in the west gate . . . She stopped dead in the center of the dark hallway. The other two guards, wrapped in their own grieving, continued several paces before noticing that they were alone. They stopped, turning back toward her. She waved at them to continue.

  “I’ve dropped a buckle,” she said, holding her hand over the left side of her harness. “You two go on, I’ll check down here first while the light lasts.”

  Megz waited until the other two had reached the far end of the corridor. She needed to think, and their chattering wasn’t helping her. On the one hand, the prince was dead, had been for more than a moon, though no one had seen his corpse thanks to those Caids-cursed Nisveans. But on the other hand—

  Two steps to the right, a step back, drop the left shoulder to twist the torso to . . . allow for the block to her secret thrust—EDMIR. Megz had seen Edmir this morning. She knew she had. She’d recognized the one thing it was impossible to copy or disguise—the way he sat his horse. Maybe she hadn’t put her finger on it right at that moment, but when she’d seen him in the Jarlkevoso’s rooms, she’d known. She didn’t know how or why, but that young man, the young man she’d just left with the Black Guards, was Edmir.