The Kingdom of Shadow

by Richard A. Knaak

  Although her reaction caused him to regret his lie, Kentril did not change his story. “I’m sorry to worry you.”

  But her mood had already begun to lighten. “Never mind. I’ve just realized that you must come with me to the grand balcony. You’ve never been there yet. That’s where Father’s gone now.”

  “Then we shouldn’t bother—”

  “No! You must be there!” She pulled him in the direction Juris Khan and his court had gone.

  Because of its lofty location, the palace of Ureh’s rulers had, of course, many balconies, but none so vast as the grand one upon which they found Atanna’s father already standing. Kentril estimated it to be wide enough to hold more than a hundred people. With its gleaming white marble floor and stylishly crafted stone rail, it likely served also as a place where guests congregated during state functions. He even imagined that during the height of Ureh’s power, it had acted as a place for elegant outdoor dining.

  At the moment, however, it served a more important purpose. To the captain’s astonishment, Lord Khan did not face his court, but rather leaned forward over the rail, calling down to the city below.

  And evidently they could hear him well despite the distance, for cheers arose at some remark he made, cheers that lasted for quite some time.

  Six guards stood in attendance near the white-robed figure, each bearing a torch that the captain assumed somehow enabled those in the city to see their master. Another half dozen soldiers stood watch, making certain that no one attempted something so foolish as to push Juris Khan over the edge. Kentril thought the precaution unnecessary; clearly everyone both nearby and below worshipped the elder leader.

  “This is where Harkin Khan made the Speech of the Saints,” Atanna told him. “This is where my grandfather, Zular Khan, married my grandmother and presented her to the people. This is where my father spoke the words of the archangel for all to hear.”

  “How can anyone possibly hear him all the way up here? Or even see him, for that matter?”

  “Come look!”

  Kentril had no intention of becoming part of the event, but Atanna proved quite determined. She pulled him forward, but far to the right of where Lord Khan continued to speak. As they reached the rail, Kentril noticed a pair of gleaming metal spheres with rounded openings pointed in the direction of the masses below.

  “What are those?”

  The scarlet-tressed woman pointed out an identical duo on her father’s left. “They amplify and project the voice of whoever speaks from where Father stands. At the same time, an image several times larger can be seen clearly by the crowds below. They are very, very old, and the spellwork used to create them has been lost to us, yet still they function.”

  “Incredible!” Kentril remarked, feeling the word highly inadequate but unable to summon anything stronger.

  Suddenly putting her finger to his lips, Atanna whispered, “Hush! You’ll want to hear this.”

  At first, all Captain Dumon heard were more of the same promises of the future that Juris Khan had been announcing to his flock. He spoke of the ending of Ureh’s trials, of once more the sun touching their flesh without burning it away. He talked of the new role the Light among Lights would play in the world, guiding it toward goodness and peace . . .

  And then he began talking about Kentril.

  The veteran mercenary shook his head, hoping that his host would stop. Khan, however, spoke at length about the captain’s role—much of that role an exaggeration as far as Kentril could recall. To hear Ureh’s ruler describe him, Kentril Dumon was a paladin extraordinary, a defender of the weak and challenger of evil wherever it lurked. The people below began to cheer loudly every time Lord Khan spoke his name, and several of those on the balcony twisted their heads to see this righteous paragon.

  Then, to his even greater fear, Atanna’s father gestured for Kentril to join him.

  He would have refused, but Atanna gave him no choice, guiding him to where Juris Khan awaited. The benevolent lord again placed one arm around the fighter’s shoulder, his other extended to his audience in the city.

  “Kentril Dumon of Westmarch, officer at large, skilled commander . . . hero of Ureh.” More cheering. “Shortly to take up a new mantle . . . general of this holy realm’s defenders!”

  This brought renewed cheering plus jubilant applause from the court. Kentril wanted nothing more than to melt into the background, but with Atanna tightly attached to his other side, he could not move.

  “General Kentril Dumon!” Khan called. “Commander of the Realm, Protector of the Kingdom, Prince of the Blood!” The fatherly monarch smiled at Kentril. “And soon . . . I hope . . . member of my own house!”

  And the cheers erupted with such fervor that it seemed certain Nymyr would collapse from the sheer vibration. Kentril stood confused for a moment about what the last meant, but then Juris Khan placed the mercenary’s hands atop Atanna’s and eyed both with much favor.

  Only then did the captain realize that his host had just given his blessing for the two to marry.

  Atanna kissed him. Still dazzled, he followed her from the balcony, uncertain yet whether it had all been a dream. Hope filled him, true, but so did much uncertainty. Did he really dare to take on all that Ureh offered? General, prince, and royal consort?

  “I must return to my father,” Atanna whispered quickly. “I’ll see you soon.” She kissed him, then, with a last lingering glance, hurried back to the grand balcony.

  “Well,” said a voice near his ear. “My sincerest congratulations, captain—pardon me—my lord.”

  Kentril turned to find Zayl emerging from a shadowed corner. The necromancer nodded, then looked past him. “Quite a display.”

  “I never asked for anything—”

  “But it is pleasing to receive it, is it not? At the very least, the affections of the glorious Atanna must put a thrill in your heart.”

  Not certain whether or not the cloaked figure mocked him, Kentril scowled. “What do you want?”

  “Only to ask you how you found things when you entered. I became curious, I must admit, and decided to return to the palace earlier than I had said. To my surprise, there were no guards at the entrance, no people in the halls. I heard the noise from this direction and came just in time to hear you named heir to the throne.”

  “I’m not heir,” the captain retorted. “I’ll be royal consort if I marry her, not—” Kentril hesitated. In some lands, those who married a princess or the equivalent became ruler when the crown was finally passed. Had Juris Khan just made him future ruler of Ureh?

  Zayl took one look at Kentril’s questioning expression and, with a hint of a smile, replied, “No, I do not know how the line of succession works in Ureh. You may be right . . . or you may not be right. Now, come! We likely have but moments together before she returns to see to your dressing properly for your new roles.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Did you say anything about Gregus Mazi?”

  Captain Dumon felt insulted. “I keep my word.”

  “I thought as much, but I had to ask.” The necromancer’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Tell me as best you can what has happened to you since you entered.” When Kentril had related to him everything as detailed as the fighter could, Zayl frowned. “An interesting but uninformative tableau.”

  “What did you expect me to tell you?”

  “I do not know . . . just that I felt that something should have given a hint to our next course of action.” The necromancer sighed. “I will return to my quarters and meditate on it. If you should recall some significant moment that you forgot to mention, please come to me at once.”

  While he doubted very much that he had forgotten anything of value, Kentril promised Zayl that he would do as the spellcaster desired. As Zayl departed, Kentril suddenly thought again of his present condition, realizing that he had stood among the nobles and before the people of Ureh dressed in dusty, worn garments. Although it was already too late to
rectify that situation, he could at least present a better image when next anyone, especially Atanna and Juris Khan, saw him. Surely now would be the time to don the regal dress uniform he had worn at the private dinner. At the very least, it would serve him until he could procure other appropriate clothing.

  He started for his quarters, only to see down the hall Gorst and Tsin. The Vizjerei seemed quite disturbed by something the giant was saying, and when Tsin noticed Kentril, he glared at the captain as if the latter had just burned down Ureh’s treasure trove of magical tomes.

  An uneasy feeling coursed through Kentril, and the glance Gorst gave him over his shoulder only strengthened that uneasiness. He picked up his pace, praying that he had read their faces wrong.

  “I told him,” Gorst said as his commanding officer neared. “I had to.”

  “By the seven-eyed demon Septumos, Captain Dumon! What were you thinking? Why was I not informed? Is everything this cretin said about the caverns and Gregus Mazi truth? I find it hard to believe—”

  “If Gorst told you, then it’s true,” Kentril replied, cutting off the sorcerer’s tirade. He had no time for this. What had the other mercenary been thinking? Gorst usually had a level head. Why would he include Tsin without first discussing it with his captain?

  The Vizjerei shook his head in disbelief. “I should have been down there! Gregus Mazi! So many things he could’ve explained!”

  “There wasn’t much of anything that he could explain.” Kentril eyed Gorst, who did not look at all ashamed. “You did tell him how we found Mazi, didn’t you?”

  Gorst nodded. “Everything. I had to, after what Master Tsin said.”

  “And what was that you said, Tsin?”

  Drawing himself up, the robed sorcerer muttered, “I still don’t know if this brute here has a point, but—”

  “What did you say that set Gorst off, Tsin?”

  For once he had made the Vizjerei uncomfortable. “The one trait that makes this one here more tolerable than the rest of you is his proper respect for all things magical. Because of that, I tolerated his questions about the work involved in casting my great spell. He wanted to hear about the difficulty and how I overcame it. He also—” Tsin broke off as Kentril stepped closer, hand on the hilt of his sword. “I’m coming to it! I told Gorst about the patterns and incantations I’d created to undo the clever binding of the curse and how all proceeded as smoothly as I’d expected it would.”

  If the bragging did not cease quickly, Captain Dumon suspected he would soon try to throttle the spellcaster regardless of the consequences. “Everything went well. You expected that. Not one hitch. I assumed—”

  “Then you assumed wrong, cretin,” the bearded figure snapped. “There was one point when I feared that all my hard work would come to naught, when something outside my control nearly ruined a carefully prepared work of art!” Quov Tsin tapped his staff on the floor. “I expected trouble only from the girl, a skilled wielder of power but one far too distracted by daydreams . . .” At this, he frowned hard at Kentril, an obvious hint to the captain being the cause of those distractions. “What I did not expect was someone as well-versed, as well-trained, as our host nearly to turn it all into disaster!”

  “What did he do?” Kentril asked, suddenly unconcerned with such mundane things as dress uniforms and marrying the daughters of lords.

  Tsin snorted. “Like a first-year apprentice, he did the unthinkable! We had come to the threshold, the point where there could be not the slightest fraction of an error. I had the girl drawing together the proper forces, while I, guiding them by words and gesture, worked to reverse that which had turned flesh, wood, and stone to one. Had it been more than simply his legs, the complexity might have been too great even for me, but, fortunately, that was not the case. I—”

  “Tsin—”

  “All right, all right! He moved, cretin! Juris Khan, whose task was to focus his power, his will, from within in order to foment changes to the spell structure of his own body, moved!”

  The Vizjerei leaned back, as if what he had said explained everything. Kentril, however, knew that there had to be more. Gorst did not overreact.

  “He did more’n just move,” the giant interjected, now as impatient as his captain with the sorcerer. “Tsin says he almost leapt up, Kentril! Leapt up as if someone lit a fire underneath him. And from how Tsin describes it, I’d say it happened right about the time you put the dagger through Gregus Mazi’s chest.”

  FOURTEEN

  Gorst’s unsettling suggestion remained with Captain Dumon long after the three had separated. Kentril did not yet know what to make of the notion that somehow Juris Khan had reacted to Mazi’s death, but the implications did not bode well. That Tsin had been unable to offer any other idea that sufficiently explained the reaction did not help, either. Despite that, the Vizjerei had not completely accepted Gorst’s concerns that their host hid some secret from them, and neither could Kentril. However, the captain had to admit to himself that a tremendous part of his own reluctance had to do with the honors Lord Khan had bestowed upon him, especially the upcoming marriage to his daughter. As for Quov Tsin, his reasons for reluctance were even more obvious; the vast collection of Ureh’s magical library lay open to him for as long as he had the good graces of the elder ruler.

  Sleeping on it did little good for Kentril, for even his dreams turned to the troubling development. In truth, he welcomed the unexpected knock on his chamber doors, for the noise stirred him from a dream in which Juris Khan proved to be Gregus Mazi in disguise and Atanna the willing lover of the masked villain.

  Although he hoped that it would be Khan’s wondrous daughter at the door, Captain Dumon instead found himself facing a rather pensive Albord. Kentril’s first fear was that some of the other men had gone missing, but the younger mercenary quickly erased that fear. Unfortunately, in its place he presented one that in some ways disturbed his commander even more.

  “Captain, the men want to leave.”

  “No one goes into the city until I say so.”

  Albord shook his head. “Captain . . . they want to leave Ureh. They want to go home . . . and I think they should be able to.”

  This time, Kentril could think of no good reason to hold them back. He had a life offered to him here, but the others wanted only to return to the Western Kingdoms. They might have even had their rewards by now if not for his own hesitation.

  “All right, give me a few days, and I’ll see that our host makes sure each—”

  Now Albord looked even more uncomfortable. “Captain, Jodas and Orlif have already talked to him.”

  Kentril almost seized the white-haired mercenary by the throat, but fought back the impulse before he could betray himself. “When? When did they do it?”

  “Just a little while ago. I only found out myself after they came to me. They said they told his lordship that they had to go, and would he be still granting them that which he’d promised.”

  “And Khan said he would?”

  “To listen to them, he hugged each like a brother and promised that every man would have a full sack!”

  There existed no doubt in Kentril’s mind that the fatherly ruler had done just that, yet another example of graciousness that made it difficult to fathom what tie existed between the saintly monarch and the mysterious Mazi. The captain leaned on a nearby chair, trying to organize his thoughts. What could he do, though, but accept their departure as wisely and kindly as Juris Khan had? After all, by rights, they could do as they pleased now. Their contract to Tsin had ended long ago.

  “Can’t say as I blame them,” he finally responded. “And they’re probably safer out of Ureh, at least for now. So how long before you all leave?”

  “They want to go when next it’s day beyond Nymyr, captain. I’d say that’s basically tomorrow.” Albord straightened. “I’m not going with them, sir.”

  “You’re not?”

  The plowboy face lit up. “Captain, I thought about it a lot afte
r the last time I mentioned leaving. Under you, I’ve learned more than I ever would’ve back in my village. I’ve got family there like everyone else has somewhere, but they knew I might not return for a long time, if ever. I’d like to stay on awhile longer after all.” He grinned. “Leastwise, I can always go home sayin’ I served under a prince!”

  The words brought some relief to Kentril. “You sure you don’t want to go with them?”

  “My mind’s staying made up this time, sir.”

  “All right. I’ll see they’re sent off right. They’ve done well . . . you’ve all done well.”

  A grin as great as any Gorst had ever given spread across Albord’s youthful visage. “Appreciate that, captain—my lord. I’ll be happy to volunteer to escort them to the outer gates of the kingdom, though.”

  The task seemed simple and safe enough, even with the yet-unexplained disappearances of the three other men. Kentril still suspected that, like him, each had been lured to a more deserted area, then knifed. The odds were their bodies would never be found. Still, so long as Albord kept in the open where the crowds could see him, he would be safe.

  “I’ll be glad to give you that pleasure, lad . . . and thanks for the loyalty.”

  Giving his commanding officer a sharp salute, Albord left. Kentril started back to his bed, but his thoughts would now not leave his men. He could not help wondering if even one of the vanished trio could have been saved if he had let the men go home sooner. To die on the field of battle was one thing for a mercenary, to end up tossed into an alley with a dagger in your spine was another. For that matter, Kentril did not even know if the men had actually been slain; it was possible that they still lived as prisoners or—

  Prisoners?

  Captain Dumon bolted upright. He knew of one way to tell . . .

  Kentril found the necromancer in one of the rooms farthest away from the others, a special request, it appeared, from Zayl himself. The spellcaster did not respond to his quiet knock, but something made the fighter certain that he would find Zayl within. Kentril knocked again, this time quietly calling out the other’s name.