The Book of Shane #1

by Nick Eliopulos

  Perhaps they’d even have a cure for Drina. Perhaps that was Zerif’s secret.

  He worked quickly, heedless of the splinters digging their way into his palms, or the blood trickling in around the edges of his ruined fingernails. At some point he realized that he was screaming with each tug. He must have been screaming for some time, though he couldn’t remember deciding to do so. But it felt good, so he kept screaming. He screamed each time he pulled a board free, screamed each time he tossed it onto the growing pile behind him.

  Eventually he stopped, panting for breath. Sweat streamed down his body, and he felt a salty sting in his hands.

  He’d have to get used to labor. But he was better off as a pauper in Nilo than the prince of a sinking ship.

  “I think you’re a liar,” Shane told the man in the gardens’ overgrown prison cell.

  Zerif lifted an eyebrow but said nothing. He did not stir from his place on the stone floor.

  “I know you’re a liar,” Shane corrected. “You already admitted you lied before, to get an audience with my father. So why should I believe you know anything about a cure?”

  He worked to keep his voice flat and uninterested. His hands still ached from his efforts in the tower, and he squeezed them together, hoping the pain would make him look distracted.

  Zerif shrugged. “As do most men, I tell lies when they might help me get what I want. I am not in the habit of lying for the sake of lying. What would I have to gain from lying about the bonding sickness?”

  Shane scoffed. “You must be joking. Do you know how many charlatans we’ve seen here? Twice a year, some man or woman arrives at the castle gates to hawk an elixir they promise will cure the sick.” Shane spit on the ground. “Sugar water. Salt water. One maniac tried to convince my father to drink snake venom.”

  Zerif’s eyes twinkled as if he were amused by some private joke.

  “You’re just another fraud, preying on the hopes and fears of vulnerable people,” Shane said. It was only by digging his fingernails into his cut hands that he was able to keep from shouting.

  And then he saw the ham bone lying in the cell.

  “Where did you get that?” he demanded.

  Zerif shrugged.

  “I told the guards you were not to be fed.”

  “Perhaps your uncle told them otherwise,” Zerif suggested. “It must be quite confusing for them. So many masters running around the place.”

  Shane turned on his heel, but before he could walk away Zerif called out: “Little master, I’ll give you this information for free.”

  Shane didn’t turn to face him, but he said through clenched teeth, “I’m listening.”

  “I’m not some alchemist mixing potions, nor some healer with a noble calling to aid the sick. I do not claim to have the means to cure anything.”

  Shane turned at that. “You said —”

  “I said I know what the cure is. To actually obtain it, I need aid. Aid from the king of Stetriol.”

  “I don’t understand,” Shane said. “How do you know anything about the cure if you don’t have the means to create it?”

  “I overheard the secret,” Zerif answered. “At Muttering Rock.”

  Shane narrowed his eyes. “No one goes to Muttering Rock. It’s guarded by Halawir the Eagle. And during the day, it’s as hot as a cauldron.”

  “I do not burn easily,” Zerif said, and he tapped his nose, indicating the peeling skin. He did have the look of a man who had spent too long in the wastelands. And there was nothing but wastelands for miles around Kovo’s fabled prison.

  “One can learn all sorts of secrets,” he said, “if one takes the time to listen at the base of that great pillar. You might even hear the strangest conversations passing between a warden and his prisoner.” He retook his seat. “Tell your father I’m in the mood to share. But only with the king of Stetriol.”

  Shane dreamed he’d summoned a seal.

  He stood upon the beach and watched it play in the surf. From time to time it would clamber onto shore, graceless and awkward as it hobbled across the sand like a dog with its back legs tied together. It looked up at Shane, its dark eyes shining, and grunted once — an invitation. Then it pulled itself back across the sand and into the water, where it was free and happy and could move again with grace.

  But Shane wasn’t allowed in the water. He knew he’d never be free.

  The castle had become a dark and quiet place in the years since the queen had died, as if the entire structure were her tomb.

  Shane’s mother had possessed many skills beyond the talents she displayed in the gardens. One of the most impressive was her ability to calm the people around her, to talk them down from their fears and keep them happy. Once she died, more guards and servants left the castle with each passing year. They were nervous about being around so many spirit animals, as if the bonding sickness might be contagious — as if they put their own children at risk by their proximity to the “cursed” descendants of the Reptile King.

  For many, Iskos had been the final straw. Spirit animals were one thing, but a spirit animal with eight hairy legs and venomous spit was another thing entirely.

  To Shane’s mind, the sole advantage to the situation was that much of the castle had been roped off and abandoned. So it was an easy matter for him to steal what he needed. The old lance held by an ornamental suit of armor would serve as a paddle. The extra silverware forgotten in a cupboard could be traded for food. And a tapestry — a tapestry would make a perfect sail.

  He strolled along a quiet hallway, the thick layer of dust at his feet muffling his footfalls. He hadn’t set his eyes on these artworks since he was a boy, and they were more stunning than he’d remembered. There was Suka, a white bear set against an icy background. And Cabaro, a great cat with a mane of golden hair, baring his teeth from a rocky outcropping above a field of grass. There was the tusked pig, and the white bird with the long, delicate neck — Rumfuss and Ninani. He struggled to remember their names, for the Great Beasts were all but ignored in Stetriol, and most held the forms of animals he’d never actually seen.

  But his mother had taught him all of their names. Even the names of the Four Fallen, who had defied Tellun the Elk’s vow of noninterference when they’d aided the Greencloak invasion. Those four were not represented on the tapestries. If they’d ever been part of the set, they had most likely been burned to ash in the aftermath of the war.

  Missing, too, were Gerathon and Kovo, who had sided with Stetriol. The invaders had probably burned those tapestries themselves.

  In the end, Shane chose Mulop. The oddness of the octopus appealed to him. It would be an ungainly thing on land, but quite at home in the sea. And the sea was where Shane was heading.

  He ripped it free from the wall and hid his face in the crook of his arm while the dust he’d stirred up swirled about him and settled in his hair, on his shoulders. When he lifted his eyes again, his gaze fell upon a portrait farther down the hall. He knew instantly whom it depicted.

  Rolling up the tapestry and shoving it under his arm, he drifted over for a better look.

  It was a painting of his ancestor, Feliandor. Or “Good King Fel.” Or “The Reptile King.” Most surviving imagery of the king showed a strapping young man girded for war, usually sitting astride a massive crocodile. But Feliandor had become king at a young age, and here he was in the first year of his reign, a boy no older than Shane.

  His chin was up and his shoulders back, but the artist had captured some emotion in the young king’s eyes that was not pride or confidence. It looked to Shane like fear. As if it were taking all of the boy’s willpower to sit still with the oversized crown balanced upon his head. As if the crown might fall at the very moment he was to be immortalized in brushstrokes.

  “You poor fool,” Shane said. “You should have gotten out while you could.” He looked over the portrait for a moment more, and decided he didn’t see much of a resemblance.

  “What’s in it for you?” S
hane asked Zerif on the third night of his imprisonment.

  “Come again?” Zerif asked languidly.

  “You claim you do not lie for the sake of lying,” Shane said. “But I’d wager you’re no more likely to tell the truth for its own sake. How do you benefit, traveling all the way here from the dead center of the continent to share a muttered secret with the king?”

  Zerif smiled. “Perhaps I’m just a generous soul.”

  “So smug,” Shane said, feeling a little smug himself. “So convinced that your secret gives you power over the powerful.”

  “Would I be wrong to think so?”

  “Not wrong,” Shane answered. “Provided your secret stayed secret.”

  Zerif stood and stretched, seemingly unconcerned. At length he responded, “I suppose you expect me to guess what you’ve guessed? A clever trick to make me show my hand?”

  “Not hardly. I don’t need to trick you. I may not know the riddle, but I’ve guessed the answer: Bile.”

  Shane watched the man’s face closely, so he saw the briefest flash of fury cross his features. An instant later, he appeared as calm as ever, but too late — Shane knew he’d guessed right.

  “See, I’ve been thinking about our Good King Fel — the Devourer, as the rest of the world knew him. I saw his portrait earlier, and I haven’t been able to get him out of my head. He was the last king of Stetriol to actually want a spirit animal, and legend has it that Kovo made it possible by providing a substance known as Bile. Feliandor’s soldiers all used the Bile, and none of them suffered the bonding sickness. That only happened after the war — when the secret to creating the Bile was lost. A secret known to Kovo. Who is imprisoned … at Muttering Rock.”

  Zerif glowered for a moment, but then a smile broke across his face, and this time it seemed genuine. “Not bad,” he said. “You’ve only got the barest understanding of the big picture, but you’re not wrong.”

  “So tell me the rest of it,” Shane said. “Or else I go to Muttering Rock myself and cut you out entirely.”

  “The king is dead. Isn’t he?”

  “If he is, then I’m the king. Either way, you deal with me.”

  Zerif sighed. “Kovo wants to help. As does his jailor.”

  “Halawir the Eagle? Why would —”

  “Halawir has long been sympathetic to Stetriol. It pains him to see your people suffer — on that, he and Kovo agree. They say that the Jade Serpent will be your salvation, and it’s here, in the capital. Somewhere only the king can get it.”

  “The Jade Serpent?” Shane asked.

  “A talisman,” Zerif answered. “Gerathon’s talisman, to be specific. According to Kovo, Stetriol’s true king has it.” He leveled his steely gaze at Shane. “Is that you or not?”

  Shane’s muscles burned, and now the fire was spreading to his mind. He’d lost track of how long he’d been at work — sawing and sanding and hammering on an abandoned beach, the sound of the surf in his ears. He’d worked through the night and all day long, and now it was night again. His boat was an ugly thing, that was certain — mismatched boards of pink and green, cotton stuffed in every crevice, then slathered with tar, all straight lines so that it looked more like a box than the magnificent ship he’d boarded days before. But the book he’d taken from the royal library indicated that it would float, and that was all that mattered.

  He could hardly stay focused on what he was doing. Much of the work was repetitive, and he found his mind wandering again and again to Zerif’s words. To the Jade Serpent. Did his father have it?

  Did Gar?

  Would that mean Gar was the true king of Stetriol?

  And why did that gall Shane so deeply, when he only intended to leave?

  When the moon clouded over, he decided he had done enough. He pulled his project along the beach and found a thick bramble of shrubs where the sand met an inlet, a little stream running out to the ocean. It was the best hiding spot he could manage, and close enough to the water that he’d be able to make a hasty escape when the time came.

  He knew he had to go. But he also knew he couldn’t leave, if the cure he’d hoped for all along was here.

  Bleary-eyed and sore, he made his way back to the castle, following the stream and the scrubby plants running its length. The waterway grew wider and deeper as he went, and the only sounds in the night were its gentle burble … and a rustling noise ahead, like someone stepping carefully through the brush.

  The moon broke through the clouds, and Shane could just make out a figure ahead, leaning over the stream as if examining its reflection.

  “Drina?” he whispered.

  The figure turned, and Shane had to laugh, because it wasn’t his sister — wasn’t even a person. It was a kangaroo. He’d never seen one so close to the castle grounds before.

  Their eyes met, and Shane expected the animal to hop away, but it didn’t. It just stood there, considering him, and Shane was struck again by just how human it appeared. There was intelligence in those eyes, as if the kangaroo were puzzling him out.

  “There’s no need to bow, friend,” Shane joked.

  And then there was an explosion of water, and a monster leaped from the stream to smash its jaws down around the kangaroo’s head.

  It happened in an instant, but Shane saw every detail: the teeth piercing the animal’s flesh, and the way its neck twisted at an angle that was all wrong as the beast dragged it down into the water. There was panic in the kangaroo’s eyes in the moment before they were submerged. Its legs kicked out blindly while the crocodile held its head beneath the surface and thrashed. One kick, two kicks, and then the kangaroo went still.

  It was over before Shane could react. He howled in protest, drew his sword, and charged, but too late — the kangaroo was already dead.

  All he managed to do was draw the crocodile’s attention.

  It was a massive beast with soulless eyes glowing like flat, white disks in the moonlight. Its body — what he could see of it above the waterline — appeared carved out of the same stone as his castle, but older, showing more cracks, and dents, and sharp edges. Its teeth glistened black with fresh blood as it opened its mouth to hiss.

  And then it pulled itself onto shore, heading straight for him.

  Shane waved his sword in the croc’s direction and screamed, hoping to deter it, but it showed no sign of being impressed. He changed tactics, turning to run with only yards between them — and he slipped.

  Shane fell, sprawling into the dirt. But he kept his grip on the saber. Lifting himself up on one hand, he twisted to face the predator as it bore down on him. He could see straight down its fleshy gullet.

  Then, from out of nowhere, a wild dog bounded onto the croc’s back, snapping and snarling.

  It was all the distraction Shane needed. He scrambled to his feet and ran, only daring to look back once he was clear of the brush and halfway across an empty field. The animals had not given chase.

  Only then did Shane realize what an odd sight it had been. A wild dog attacking a crocodile? He’d never heard of such a thing. And if he didn’t know better, he’d have sworn the dog was no dingo. It was a smaller, lither animal. It looked like images of jackals he’d seen in books.

  But there were no jackals in Stetriol.

  Despite his exhaustion, Shane did not go straight to bed. He went instead to the gardens. The guards stationed at its entrance startled at the sight of him.

  “My prince,” they said, one after the other. And then the boldest asked, “Uh, what brings you here at this hour?”

  “The hour is irrelevant,” Shane answered. “It’s well past time the prisoner had an audience with my father.”

  Shane had rarely been to his father’s quarters. He’d always feared the man.

  King Irwyn did not abide weakness. He refused to acknowledge that he suffered from bonding sickness, even as that sickness took its toll, wearing away at him over the years. He refused, too, to admit that his wife had been sick. But when his daughter �
�� his firstborn — was similarly stricken, something in the king had snapped.

  “Behold the king of Stetriol,” Shane said. “My fearsome father.”

  Zerif, for the first time, seemed at a loss for words.

  The king’s eyes were open, but vacant. A thin line of drool hung suspended from his slack lips.

  “Is he … still in there?” asked Zerif. His hands were shackled, and Shane felt certain the man posed no threat. He had dismissed the guards and his father’s caretaker, so that they could speak in private. He honestly didn’t know whether Irwyn could hear them or not.

  “We don’t know,” said Shane. “Gar claims to speak with him, but he’s lying. He says that so people will do what he wants. To contradict him, I’d have to publicly admit that the king is … unfit. That Stetriol is without a true leader.” Shane sighed. “His last act was to name Gar regent, to act in his stead until I become king. So as long as my father lives, I can’t take the throne — can’t even touch it, according to our laws, and Gar continues to have … influence.”

  “ ‘So long as he lives.’ Do you call this living?”

  Shane shrugged sadly. “It isn’t death, exactly.”

  “I’ve never known bonding sickness to ruin a mind so completely.”

  “It wasn’t bonding sickness that did it.”

  “No?”

  Shane tugged at his own hair tiredly. “Don’t get me wrong — he was sick, all right. But the real trouble happened when he decided he could cure himself. He decided … He thought … Well, he killed it. He killed his own spirit animal.”

  Zerif sucked breath through his teeth. “That would be like killing a piece of yourself. Like cutting off your own limb.”

  “Some animals will gnaw off their own limbs to escape a deadly trap.” Shane frowned. The room smelled sour, and he felt his sleepiness bearing down on him. “I don’t know. Maybe we’re cursed after all.”

  “Maybe you are,” Zerif said. “But it’s not the fault of any Great Beast. It’s the Greencloaks who have done this to you.” He rotated his hands in their manacles, rattling his chains. “That’s the other piece of news I intended to give the king. And here’s my audience, I suppose.”