by Simon Brown
Lynan’s chest was tightening; he let out his breath in a long hiss, but it did not seem to ease the pressure at all. Now other people started to pass out. First, an old dame who was lucky enough to be caught by her son, and then—of all people!—Trion. Just when Lynan thought he could no longer hold on, and that he, too, would faint, he found himself taking in air in great, heavy gasps. The pressure around his chest had simply disappeared as if it had never been, and so had the queasiness in his stomach.
“It’s over?” he asked Kumul, his own voice sounding distant to him.
Kumul, himself as pale as a sheet, nodded once and immediately approached the door. Dejanus, still recovering himself, made a vague effort to block his way.
“The queen has finished whatever she was doing,” Kumul told him. “Let me in.”
“Not until she opens the door herself,” the Life Guard wheezed.
Kumul lowered his mouth to the guard’s ear. Lynan heard him say, “And what if she is unconscious? You felt the energy emanating from that room. You know better than anyone how frail she is.”
Dejanus still hesitated. Lynan did not know what made him step up at that moment, but the same concern, the same sudden anger, must have struck Olio as well. They stood on either side of Kumul and together ordered the door be opened, Olio even managing not to stutter. Against the commands of two princes, and with no sign from Usharna, even Dejanus had to give way.
They rushed into the room, but the sight that greeted them stopped them in their tracks. The room’s sandstone walls seemed to be aglow; even the fire in the hearth seemed dim in comparison. Shimmering blue threads coruscated in the air and then died, leaving behind trails of ash that hung suspended before slowly drifting to the floor. By the bed, standing more erect than anyone had seen her for years, was Usharna, arms wide, surrounded by a soft halo of white energy that pulsed with her rapid breathing. More people crowded into the room, their mouths open in surprise. Trion and Edaytor, the latter flushed and moist with perspiration, came up beside Lynan.
“I never imagined…” Edaytor began, but ran out of words to describe his astonishment.
Even as they watched, the energy in the room dissipated like mist burned away by the morning sun, and the halo around Usharna faded away into nothing. The fire flared once, brilliantly, and then settled down to produce a steady, warming flame. Usharna looked at her court, the merest hint of a smile on her face, then slumped forward.
Kumul and Dejanus were there before she reached the hard floor and together supported her weight.
Trion hurried over and quickly checked her pulse and breathing. “She is all right. Her heart still beats strongly.” He turned to the crowd. “She is exhausted, nothing more.” The collective sigh of relief sounded like a prayer.
Kumul helped Dejanus scoop up the queen into his arms. Then the Life Guard hurried out of the room to take her to her own chambers, Trion and most of the courtiers following close behind. Kumul closed the door and went to Ager.
Edaytor Fanhow joined him, moving like a supplicant approaching a holy relic, his hands held out before him.
“There is a great deal of magic residue,” he said, more to himself than the others. He touched one of the walls, gingerly at first, but then placed his palm flat against a single sandstone block. “Still warm,” he muttered. “Utterly incredible.”
“It was certainly a p-p-performance,” Olio said in a hushed tone.
“Did you know our mother could do that?” Lynan asked him.
Olio shook his head. “Well, in theory, of course, b-b-but I’ve never seen the Keys used b-b-before, except as decoration around the queen’s throat.” His brow furrowed in thought. “I wonder what the other Keys m-m-might be capable of.”
“How is Ager?” Lynan asked Kumul.
“His breathing is almost normal,” Kumul said with obvious relief. “And see, the bleeding has stopped altogether.”
“It is a wondrous thing the queen has done,” Edaytor said.
“The queen would do anything for Kumul,” Lynan said.
“Which shows how little you know about your own mother,” Kumul replied sharply.
Chapter 3
Kumul woke with a start, almost falling off his stool. He had fallen asleep with his head resting at an odd angle against the wall and now had a painful crick in his neck. Standing up, he went to Ager’s bed. The man was still asleep, but it seemed to be the sleep of the peaceful and not of the dying. The crookback’s face seemed very old and careworn for someone who could not have been older than forty years of age, and his long hair, mostly gray, was lanky and thin.
Although the fire in the hearth had long gone out and the room was cool, Kumul felt the need for fresh air. He went to the room’s only window and eased open the wooden shutters. The city of Kendra slept in the darkness. A faint light broached its eastern walls. He could make out on the water just beyond the harbor entrance the phosphorescent glimmer of the wakes of fishing boats returning to the city’s wharves, although the boats themselves, and even their sails, were still lost against the black expanse of sea.
He returned to Ager and, once again, carefully studied the man’s face, trying to remember what it had been like all those years ago when they were both comparatively young, filled with an energy that had long since been dissipated by war and injury and the loss of their beloved general.
Kumul had not seen Ager for over fifteen years and had assumed he was dead; but last night, against all expectation, they had met again, only for Ager almost to die in his arms. He felt bitter at that last twist of fate.
The sharpness of his feelings surprised him. He had lost friends before, and his friendship with Ager during the Slaver War had been largely professional, not personal. Yet now it seemed to him that the friendship, stretched across a war with as many defeats as victories, had inherited the weight of years of vacant peace during which Kumul had slowly learned he had few real friends left in this world.
A sound rose from the great courtyard outside, the clattering of hooves on cobblestone, the challenge of the guards. He heard the sentries stamp to attention, something they only did for members of the royal family. It must be Berayma, Usharna’s eldest child, returning from his mission to Queen Charion of Hume, one of Usharna’s less predictable and more outspoken subjects. The mission had been a sensitive one, and Kumul prayed that Berayma, severe as a winter wind, had been up to it.
Kumul looked again at Ager’s face, calm in sleep but carrying with it all the scars of war earned in the service of Queen Usharna. He had a premonition then, a warning of some danger, distant but closing in. He tried to wish it away, but it hung at the back of his mind, formless and brooding.
Gasping, Areava broke away from the shreds of her sleep. She looked around wildly, pulling the sheets about her. It took her a few seconds to recognize her own chambers, and when she did, she collapsed back against the bedhead, shivering in the predawn stillness.
The black wings of the nightmare that had roused her still beat in her memory. She had dreamed of the sea rising up over Kendra and the peninsula it was built upon, washing over the great defensive walls, flooding through its narrow streets, surging against the palace itself, and still rising. She had seen her mother Usharna struggling against the waters, the weight of her clothes and the Keys of Power dragging her down relentlessly, and then her half-brother Berayma had appeared, holding out his hand to the queen, their fingers locking. For a moment it had seemed that Berayma would drag her free of the flood, but the pull of the sea was too great and his grip weakened. Areava saw the strain on her brother’s face as he tried to hold on to the queen’s hand, and then her fingers, and then the tearing sleeve of her gown…
“Oh, God.” Areava wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging herself tightly. A sob broke from her and she could not help the tears that came. She felt ashamed of her weakness, but the dream had been so terrible, so frightening.
She steadied her breathing, made herself stop crying, then slip
ped out of bed. She stirred the dying embers in the hearth, added a few small logs. Slowly the fire restarted; with the increasing warmth the last shreds of the dream seemed to evaporate from her mind, leaving behind nothing but a vague disquiet about the future. But Princess Areava of Kendra did not believe in premonitions or prophecies. Putting aside the uneasiness, she started dressing, wondering what had woken her. She remembered the sound of riders cantering into the forecourt. Had it been part of the dream? She went to the narrow door that led to her balcony and opened it. She looked over the railing to the forecourt below and saw several horses being led to the stables. So that part was real. A thought, unbidden, came to her that perhaps all of it had been real, and a shiver went down her spine.
The sun was already well above the horizon when Lynan was roused by Pirem. His servant gave no greeting, simply held out his clothes for him as he dressed and helped put on his belt with its small dress knife.
Lynan checked himself in the mirror. He liked what he saw. If not as tall as his siblings, he was as wide, and he did not object to a face which, if not handsome, was not so bad it would scare the ghosts out of children. His focus shifted and he smiled at the reflection of Pirem, whose face would scare the ghost out of a seasoned warrior. He was as short as Lynan, thin as a fencing blade, with a head made up of more sharp points than a knife box. Pirem’s lips were sealed tight.
“Not talking this morning, Pirem?”
“No.”
“Did you have a particularly heavy night on the drink?”
“Not as heavy as you, your Highness,” Pirem said pointedly.
“Ah. I see. You are angry with me.”
“Angry with you, your Highness? Me? What right has a lowly servant to be angry with the boy he has raised almost single-handedly when that boy goes off an’ almost gets hisself skewered by the likes of street thugs? I ask you, Your Highness, what right do I have?”
“You’ve been talking with Kumul.”
“Someone had to carry fresh water and sheets up to the room where that poor man who got hisself skewered on your behalf now lies on his deathbed.”
“Don’t exaggerate, Pirem. Ager is not on his deathbed.”
“Pirem, is it?” He cocked his head as if listening to the sound of his own name. “I thought that was a moniker used by a certain lad who’s got not enough sense to do as he’s told when what he’s told is for his own health and happiness.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Pirem, give your tongue a rest.”
“An’ here I was thinkin’ you were concerned ‘cause I wasn’t sayin’ enough. Silly me.”
Lynan turned away from the mirror and confronted the servant. “All right, Pirem, have it out. Give me your lecture.”
“Oh, far be it from me to lecture your Highness, who knows so much already about the ways of the world he doesn’t bother listenin’ to the advice of his seniors…”
“Forget it!” Lynan said abruptly, his irritation turning to anger. “I’ve had enough, Pirem. I had all the lectures I needed last night from Kumul, and I don’t need any more from you.”
Pirem could take no more. His voice broke as he cried out: “God’s sake, lad, you almost got yourself killed straight dead!”
Lynan’s anger melted away. Pirem was almost in tears. “Really, I was in no danger. Kumul was there—”
“Kumul? Kumul’s lucky to be alive, too. He should’ve taken me. Someone’s gotta watch his back. It’s too damned big for hisself to watch it. You’re both careless, you both think blades will turn on your hide, and you’re both as ox-headed as the general…”
Pirem stopped suddenly and turned away, but not before Lynan saw the tears start to flow. Lynan felt ashamed. There were few certainties in his life, but one of them was the love he knew Pirem held for him, and the love Pirem had held for his father, General Chisal. Pirem had never recovered from failing to stop the assassin’s knife that struck down Elynd Chisal. The fact that he was able to slay the assassin before he could get away had never been any comfort for him.
Lynan reached out to put his hands on his servant’s thin shoulders, but pulled back. “I am sorry,” he said quietly. “I promise to be more careful.”
Pirem, his face still averted, nodded. “Being careful may not be enough anymore.”
Lynan sighed. “I will not leave the palace again. At least, not by myself.”
Pirem looked at Lynan over his shoulders. “You’ll take Kumul with you?”
“I’ll even take you along, as well.”
Pirem sniffed and straightened. “Well, good enough is good enough,” he said, his voice still subdued, and carefully examined his charge. “Pretty enough to frighten the queen’s horse. Get on, then. You’re expected in court this morning.”
“Me?”
“Your brother’s back from Hume. The queen wants the rest of the family to welcome him.”
Lynan groaned. “I hate these sorts of things.”
“Berayma’s your brother, like it or not. You’ve got to stick with him. He’ll be king one day. One day soon, maybe.”
“Not much difference to me. Though at least Berayma will be no worse than my own mother.”
Pirem glared at him. “You’ve got no sense, sometimes. You don’t know when people are doin’ you good or evil. Her Majesty may have her faults, but not as many as you. Keep that in mind. An’ keep in mind your father loved her above all else, and he was no fool. An’ keep in mind that you are her son, an’ that she’s never forgotten it, even if you have.”
Lynan was taken aback by Pirem’s fierceness. “When has she ever shown me a kindness?”
Pirem shook his head. “It would take all day and the next night to tell you, and you’re in no mood to listen right now. So go or you’ll be late, an’ there’s no point in makin’ her even more angry with you than she already is.”
Usharna gripped the armrests of her chair as exhaustion overcame her. She tried to force away the nausea by concentrating on the words being spoken by Orkid Gravespear, chancellor of the realm of Grenda Lear, as he strode about the queen’s study like a tamed bear. One of her ladies-in-waiting approached, but she waved her away.
She had known last night when she had used the Keys of Power to save the life of that poor cripple how exhausted it would make her. The Keys held great magic but the cost of using them was also great. She was barely sixty years of age, yet she felt as if she inhabited the body of someone twenty years older again, thanks to the number of times she’d used the Keys during the Slaver War. Until last night she had not used them since the end of that terrible conflict, but she could not let the man die after he had so valiantly saved the life of her son.
Oh, Lynan, she thought, despite everything I have done to protect you, my enemies still get through.
Or maybe, she conceded, not her enemies but those of her last husband, Lynan’s father. Elynd Chisal had been a great man and a great soldier, but common-born. His skills as a general had earned him the enmity of the Slavers and their backers, and her marriage to him had earned him the enmity of the noble houses.
Usharna had tried to keep Lynan safe by keeping him out of the court as much as possible, by feigning indifference to him, by not letting him hold those minor offices her other children used to practice their royal responsibilities. But all to no avail. Her enemies and Elynd Chisal’s enemies were now her son’s enemies as well. She thought it bitterly ironic that the offspring between her and the only husband she had ever truly loved should have so many in the kingdom set against him, that her love should generate so much hate.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the chancellor’s rumbling voice.
“And as you predicted, your Majesty, Queen Charion of Hume has agreed to allow Berayma to tour her lands in an official capacity early in the new year.” The chancellor grinned inside his thick, dark beard. “And in so doing has once again conceded your son’s right as your successor to be her overlord.”
He glanced at Usharna, noticed how white she had sudde
nly become. “Your Majesty…?”
Usharna waved one hand. “Just more of the same, Orkid. Don’t concern yourself.” She smiled at him with genuine affection. “I try not to,” she added dryly.
Orkid, unconvinced, nodded anyway, and continued. “The gift that accompanied our proposal gave her a way to accept the tour without losing face.”
“Always best to let them think they have the better of you.”
“Charion is too proud.”
“Which knowledge we work to our advantage. Hume is a border realm, traditionally independent and aligned with the kingdom of Haxus, our oldest foe. Charion, and her father before her, are the only rulers from Hume to have ever owed allegiance to another crown. Hume must be treated with patience and every courtesy.”
“She takes advantage of you.”
“And we own her, Orkid, her and her kingdom. Never mistake the fortress for its stones.” She closed her eyes, conserving the little energy she had left. “When did you see Berayma?”
“Early this morning, as soon as he arrived. He gave his report—succinctly—handed over his papers, and went to get a couple of hours’ sleep before coming to see you. He should be here any moment.”
“When I am gone—”
“You shouldn’t say such things, your Majesty.”
“When I am gone,” Usharna persisted, “Berayma will look to you for wise counsel. Serve him as you’ve served me.”
Orkid bowed stiffly, a concession lost on Usharna, whose eyes were still closed. “Yes, of course, your Majesty.”
“You did not tell me how he took to reporting to you in the first instance. Did it rankle his pride?”
