The Book of Shane

by Nick Eliopulos

  “As you say, my prince.”

  “And what does the prisoner say?”

  The man at the foot of the stairs did not lift his head. “Your grace,” he began. His voice was deep and confident, with an unusual inflection. “I am but a humble commoner and family man. The nights grow cold, and soon snow will fall upon the highlands. I only sought to keep my children warm, to stave off the cold and the illness it brings.”

  “And so you steal from the crown,” said Gar.

  “Perhaps if I could make my apologies to the king,” he said. “If I could speak to him, one father to another.”

  Something about that request bothered Shane. He had a sudden suspicion that the man before him knew more than he let on about the condition of Stetriol’s king.

  “The king —” began Shane.

  “The king does not deign to speak to common criminals,” Gar spat. “He is a busy man who has made his wishes on these matters known. Guards! Take this ‘humble father’ to a cell.”

  The guards lifted the man by his armpits. Shane saw his face for the first time then. He was sunburned, his nose peeling, and his dark beard was unkempt. For all that, though, there was something noble in his demeanor. And his eyes showed no trace of fear.

  Most curious of all, though — the man’s features and skin tone gave him the look of a foreigner. But Shane knew that was impossible.

  “What’s your name, stranger?” he asked, almost on impulse.

  “Zerif,” the man said, and then he was dragged away.

  Shane visited Drina every day, but it never got any easier. Sometimes he would walk up and down the hallway for hours, eyeing her bedroom door with dread. A closed door meant Drina was alone with her spider, Iskos, and Shane had no desire to step into their parlor.

  An open door, though, meant that Magda was there. Fearless Magda, who each day entered that darkened room, threw wide the shutters, and swept away any cobwebs she could reach. Shane had actually seen her shoo away the monstrous spider one afternoon, as if it were nothing more than a pesky dog underfoot.

  Magda was there now, piling dishes upon a tray, and she curtsied when she saw Shane enter. “My prince,” she said in greeting.

  “Hi, Magda. How is she?”

  Magda smiled a small smile. “She’s just eaten. You should visit with her while I run to the kitchen and back.”

  Shane nodded, scanning the room as he slipped into the cushioned chair beside Drina’s bed. There were webs in the far corners of the ceiling, but the spider was nowhere to be seen. By this time it was most likely out looking for its own breakfast. Spiders were hunters, and Iskos did not accept any food it hadn’t caught itself. Shane shuddered, but was grateful that it sought its meals outside, on the castle grounds.

  He took Drina’s hand. “Hey,” he said.

  She turned to look at him, and she smiled from her pillow. They had the same light blond hair, but where his skin was a healthy tan, Drina was so pale as to be nearly translucent. He could see blue veins against her skin, and her hand was cool to the touch.

  “No fever today?” he asked, and he smiled back at her. Her eyes were blue and clear and sharp with awareness.

  “I feel good,” Drina said. “Magda said I may be able to go for a walk this afternoon.”

  “It’s a beautiful day,” Shane said.

  “I haven’t been to the gardens in ages,” Drina said. Then she saw Shane’s reaction. “What?” she asked.

  “Gar is … using the gardens right now.”

  “Ah, he must have taken a prisoner.”

  Shane nodded. “I hate it,” he said softly. “Every time he locks someone away there, I feel like he’s tarnishing some part of our childhood.”

  Drina laughed. Shane hadn’t expected that, and he smiled. But the smile died on his lips as Drina’s laughter went on. It was a wild sound, aggressive and ugly, and it ended in a harsh cough.

  Shane stood, but he froze in place, unsure whether he should go or stay.

  “You’re still a child, Shane,” she said once her coughing had subsided. She threw her blanket aside and placed her bare feet upon the floor. “Gar’s never going to respect you. Why should he? Why should anyone?”

  Suddenly she pounced, quick as a spider. Before Shane knew what had happened, she had shoved him back, drawn the sword at his hip, and now held him against the wall. She had her forearm against his throat and the blade against his cheek.

  He tried to say her name but found he couldn’t produce any sound. He felt a drop of hot blood trickling down from where the saber touched him, like a burning tear.

  “You’re twelve, brother. Just a baby. But you’ll be all grown up soon. I wonder what animal you’ll get?” Her breath was sour, and her eyes were crazed. “A worm? A slug? Something small and worthless.” She pulled away from him, and he slid to the ground, gasping for air.

  “It’s not fair,” she said, dropping the sword so that it clattered on the stone. Just like that, she sounded small and weak again. It seemed to take a great effort for her to pull herself back into bed. “I’d be great. I’d be so great.”

  As Drina was overtaken by another coughing fit, Shane’s hand found the hilt of his saber. He gripped it and watched his sister’s convulsing body from her bedroom floor. He reminded himself that she was sick; he told himself it wasn’t her fault. But in that moment, he felt no pity for her, and no love — only hate.

  Then he saw the handkerchief she held against her mouth. It was wet and heavy with blood.

  One of Shane’s earliest memories was of panic and pain.

  Worse. It was a memory of golden sunlight and happiness that had turned to horror in an instant.

  He had been running through tall grass and laughing, chasing a bright white rabbit. The rabbit would wait for him to get close, then hop away, leaving Shane’s little arms to close on empty air. Something about the chase struck him, in his wide-eyed youth, as hilarious. He cackled with laughter each time the animal leaped beyond his reach.

  Then suddenly there was a snake. In the time it took Shane to blink, the snake darted forward, sunk its fangs into his calf, and retreated back into the grass.

  The shock and terror struck first, so that by the time the pain came he was already wailing, rolling around with his face in the dirt.

  Drina reached him immediately. He saw fear in her eyes, saw how she hesitated, unsure what to do. It made him cry harder.

  But then their mother was there. In his memory, her hands were everywhere at once: cupping the top of his head, wiping tears and snot from his face, ripping away the sleeve of her dress to make a tourniquet. He had no memory of what words she spoke, but to this day he remembered her tone. Her calmness calmed him.

  She tied the strip of cloth tightly around his thigh to keep the venom from spreading. And then she lifted him in her arms and carried him back to the castle.

  His tears had dried by the time she delivered him to his bed, so he was surprised to realize that Drina was crying now, burying her face in their mother’s side.

  “Why’s Drina crying?” he asked.

  “Because she’s your sister,” their mother answered. “And she loves you. Look here, Drina.” She took Drina’s chin and turned her tear-streaked face toward Shane. “Your brother is just fine. See?” With her other hand she reached out and ruffled his hair, as light blond as her own. “This is the prince of Stetriol,” she said. “He’ll never bow to a mere snake.”

  The gardens had seen better days, but they were still beautiful. It had been a project of Shane’s mother’s. She loved the idea of taming a space grown wild, of imposing some small amount of order on the chaos of nature. On the days she was feeling well, she would even get down into the dirt and do the work with her own hands — pulling weeds, planting bulbs. And on the days she wasn’t feeling well, she’d usually insist the guards lift her from her bed and carry her there. If she had to spend the day lying down, she said, she may as well have a view.

  In her absence, the si
te had become as overgrown as ever. It was wilder now, but no less lovely for its wildness.

  The space had once been home to the royal menagerie, a collection of caged animals. Kings and queens of the past — Shane’s ancestors — had kept a variety of creatures here, many of them exotic, captured in foreign lands back before travel to and from Stetriol was banned. But the cages had been emptied out in the early days of the war, when the Reptile King’s soldiers had bonded with any animal they could get their hands on.

  It boggled the mind. Shane couldn’t imagine willingly bonding with an animal. But that was a different time — a time before the bonding sickness.

  Many of the cages still stood. His mother had disguised them as best she could with creeping vines and well-placed shrubs. But with the old dungeons long flooded, the king had insisted she leave the cages intact. Just in case.

  And now, not for the first time since Gar had become regent, the gardens held a prisoner.

  He’d expected to find Zerif pacing his cell or pulling defiantly at the bars. But the man simply reclined against the far wall, seemingly unbothered and lost in thought. He watched as Shane approached. This time, he did not bow.

  “The life of a royal,” Shane said. “It’s so tedious.”

  Zerif watched him without moving.

  “Most people don’t realize that,” Shane continued. “They assume it’s nothing but feasts and dances and horseback riding. But there’s a lot of work involved in running a kingdom. Taxes, for instance.” Shane waved a stack of parchment paper in the air as he walked up and down alongside the iron bars. “Without taxes, the king is broke. We take it very seriously. We keep records — we write down who pays what, who owes what, going back to when their father’s mother’s father was granted the little patch of dirt their family still harvests to this day. And in all these many records” — Shane let the stack of papers fall to the ground — “no Zerif. Not a single mention of anyone by that name. How could that be?”

  Zerif blinked once, twice, then smiled an oily smile. “I suppose I never got my little patch of dirt.”

  Shane crossed his arms. “And those poor, freezing children of yours? You don’t seem terribly anxious to get back to them.”

  Zerif shrugged. “So I lied. It is notoriously difficult to get an audience with the king of Stetriol. I gambled that violating his edict would get his attention.”

  “And what would you do with the king’s attention once you had it?”

  Zerif rose to his feet. “I have a message for him. Information. I have traveled far and seen much, and I would tell him of the secrets I’ve learned.”

  “Tell me,” Shane said. “I have the authority to act in my father’s absence, and —”

  “You?” said Zerif. “Or should I speak perhaps to Gar instead? It is confusing to me, who exactly is in —”

  “I am in charge!” Shane shouted. “Gar is only regent.”

  “The king is dead,” said Zerif. “Isn’t he?”

  “He is not dead,” said Shane. “But he will die before he wastes time on the likes of you.” And with that, Shane turned to walk away, content to have the last word.

  Or he would have been. But then Zerif said: “Tell him I know the cure.”

  “What cure?” Shane said without thinking, but when he heard his words he realized he already knew the answer. There was only one cure that mattered — the cure for bonding sickness. In the silence that stretched out then, as Zerif stood there with a smug expression on his face, Shane felt an ache in his stomach. His mouth went dry. He fought to keep the fury in his eyes, as if Zerif didn’t have him exactly where he wanted him. As if a cure meant nothing to Shane.

  “Tell me,” he said at last, his voice breaking on the command.

  Zerif sat down again, leaning against the far wall of the cage. “I will speak only to the king.”

  Shane clenched his fists and his teeth, his whole body becoming a hard knot of muscle and bone. He could feel his heartbeat raging in the small cut on his cheek. “We’ll see how you feel after a day with no food.” And he stormed out of the gardens, tattered tax documents swirling in his wake.

  Shane dreamed he’d summoned an ostrich.

  It didn’t appear in a burst of light. Instead it grew slowly from his own body. First there was just the tip of its beak, a tough spot on Shane’s skin, like a fingernail, where his neck met his shoulder. Slowly the beak grew outward, and then there were eyes, and the feathered head, and the animal’s neck, long and sinuous like a snake.

  Something went wrong then. The ostrich stopped growing; it was stuck. It was just a head and a neck straining against Shane, desperate to be free from him, screeching and pecking at him and anyone who came close. People kept their distance. But for Shane there was no escape from the ostrich, because the ostrich was him.

  Formal occasions were always awkward for Shane. He didn’t enjoy being on display, and it was particularly embarrassing in the prince’s traditional costume. The outfit was mostly purple velvet, with puffy shoulders, frills at the wrist, and a long, trailing cape. He felt like one of his sister’s old dolls.

  Still, he smiled big and waved small and tried not to shoot dirty looks at Gar. As regent, his uncle wasn’t required to wear any costume at all. Yet the man had chosen to wear the heavy steel breastplate of Stetriol’s army.

  Stetriol had not had an army in hundreds of years. The breastplate was obviously just for show, brand-new and shining in the sunlight. Shane knew his uncle looked far more impressive than he.

  They’d traveled on horseback from the castle and now made their way through the throngs of commoners gathered at the docks. It was not a proper parade, but surrounded by mounted guardsmen, Shane and Gar quickly became the center of attention. The people stepped aside and cheered as they passed, and Shane held his hand aloft and waved as his mother had taught him.

  “This isn’t a pageant, boy,” Gar said under his breath. “What are you doing?”

  Shane kept waving and kept smiling. “I’m acknowledging my people. They appreciate it when their leaders smile.”

  Gar grunted. “In times of peace, maybe.”

  “We are at peace,” Shane said. “We’re the most peaceful nation in Erdas. The rest of the world pretends we don’t exist.”

  Gar gave no response.

  The ship, of course, was impossible to miss. Shane had only ever seen such vessels in drawings, and they somehow didn’t do justice to the sight of the thing in life. It was far larger than he’d imagined, five times the size of any dwelling he’d passed on the way here, and made entirely of wood. Its vast sails billowed dramatically, blocking out a huge swath of the sky.

  There were several other ships along the waterline, in various states of construction, but there was no question which would be the pride and joy of the fleet. Gar beamed up at it as if he’d built it with his own two hands. He launched himself from his saddle and made his way to the gangplank, leaving Shane to shuffle after him. His velvet suit was not built for speed or agility, and he eyed the plank warily. Finally he had to reel in the heavy purple cape and drape it over his arm, for fear that it might get snagged, or stepped upon, or otherwise manage to trip him up and drag him into the water below.

  A tall woman in white leather was there to greet him on deck. She bowed shallowly and said, “My prince.”

  “This is Admiral Faye,” Gar said by way of introduction, and Shane took special notice of the title. A captain was the leader of a ship. An admiral, he knew, was a captain of captains, with command of more than one ship. Stetriol had no captains, let alone admirals. It hadn’t had a navy since the great war.

  “It’s a pleasure,” he said.

  “King Irwyn sends his regards,” said Gar. “He’s quite pleased with what you’ve accomplished here.”

  The admiral’s lips turned up slightly. Her smile was as tight as her steel-gray ponytail. “I am gratified to hear it,” she said. “Everything is prepared.” She motioned with her fingers, and a man ste
pped forward to hand her a gleaming silver chalice. She lifted it toward them and then hesitated, seemingly unsure whether to hand it to the prince or the regent.

  Gar grunted, stepped forward, and took the cup from her. Red wine sloshed from the rim, dotting the deck like spatters of blood.

  “Come on, boy,” he said to Shane. “Watch and learn.”

  It took all of Shane’s self-control not to make a face.

  Gar and the admiral stepped to the stern, and Shane followed. As soon as they were at the railing, there was a sound of trumpets from below, and the jostling, chattering crowd fell silent and turned their faces upward.

  “Good people of Stetriol!” Gar shouted, and his voice echoed in the sudden stillness. “It is my honor as regent to stand before you today to christen this fine ship — the first in Stetriol’s new naval fleet!”

  A polite cheer rose up, and Gar raised his chalice and waited for the noise to die down. When he could be heard again, he continued: “The war is long over. Long, long over! And yet Stetriol continues to suffer all these years later.”

  There were a few boos and disapproving whistles from the crowd.

  “On this very site, many years ago, we were invaded. Foreigners in green cloaks came to our shores, uninvited and unwelcome. They set our forests on fire. They salted our fields, so no new trees would grow. They put our people in chains, and they murdered our great king.”

  Shane felt a chill as Gar paused and the silence stretched out.

  “The four other kingdoms of Erdas came here together,” Gar continued, “to our land, and they told us: ‘You, Stetriol, you may not have an army. You, Stetriol, you shall not rebuild your great ships. You shall never leave these shores, and none shall ever visit them.’ And for generations, we listened. Now I say, no more!”

  The crowd began to cheer again, but there was a wholly different tenor to it now. The noise was louder, coarser, and it went on for much longer. This time Gar did not wait for the noise to subside; he raised his voice and shouted over it.

  “We have been ignored for long enough!” he said. “It is time we do as we please within our own borders. And it is time the rest of the world takes notice. Stetriol will not be ignored!”