Nearly a dozen paces in front of them, an enormous table of deeply carved oak filled the centre of the room. At the table stood a man bent over a sheaf of papers neatly stacked in front of him, beside a quill and a gilded inkhorn. His hair fell over his face, veiling his features. He lifted a page from the top of the pile, scrutinized it, then exchanged it for another, not lifting his eyes, not facing the men who had been brought before him. The man wore a chain of office around his neck. It pressed into the thick fur of his collar and dangled from his chest, glinting in the light of the myriad candles that lit the chamber. The minutes stretched on interminably. Beside Kal, Uferian shifted his weight.
"My lord Proconsul, I—"
"You will not speak unless you are asked to do so," the man stated in a flat tone, not lifting his eyes from the paper in his hand.
Uferian's neck reddened, and a vein in his temple stood out and began to throb. Kal placed a hand on the king's arm and said under his breath, "Peace, Uferian, wait." But something in the proconsul's voice had taken Kal off-guard, too—something he recognized yet could not quite place. Whatever it was, it made his heart pound and his mouth go dry. To their left and their right, the guards remained unmoving. Kal felt the unpleasant, yet increasingly familiar, sensation of imminent danger.
At length, the proconsul exchanged sheets again, still not lifting his head to look at the men brought before him.
"So, Uferian of the Oakapple Isles, vassal to the high king of Arvon and so also to His Illustrious Majesty Ferabek IV, you come to worry me with your trifling grievances over the seaholding of Melderenys and its lord . . ." He dropped the sheet he held and studied another on the table. "Torras, is it? Or Lysak, that you killed? Or was it both?"
Kal's mind raced. That voice—where did he know that voice?
"My lord Proconsul," Uferian said, stiffening. "The accusations levelled against me are false. I killed neither the Lord of Melderenys, Torras, nor his son."
"Hmm." The proconsul was silent for a moment, then said, "Yet your army now occupies Tarkhuna."
"B-but, I—" Uferian stammered, aghast.
"And both lords of Melderenys are slain."
"Yes, yes, they are. But not by my hand. Lysak slew his—"
The proconsul lifted an open palm, silencing Uferian, and said, "Whether by your hand or not matters little. Either way, we find our Melderenysian problem solved." Finally, the proconsul straightened and lifted his eyes from the pages on the table. Kal's heart leapt in his throat, and he felt his head spin. The proconsul looked first at Uferian, then glanced at Kal. There was a flash of recognition in the Proconsul's steel-grey eyes, and the slightest hint of a smile played at the corners of the thick lips that grew from his oval face.
Kal tried to marshal his wits, collecting thoughts that slewed about like a team of startled horses running wild. So, the man's seeds of wild ambition had borne for him a bounty of glory, Kal thought. And here, by the questionable graces of the Boar, the traitorous Holdsman stood as Proconsul of Arvon, now more powerful even than Gawmage himself. Uferian glanced from the proconsul to Kal and back again, visibly confused.
"Yes, indeed." Enbarr leered at Kal. "Yes, yes, indeed."
There could be no escape from this predicament, Kal thought, glancing again at the guards to left and right and sensing the presence of the two others behind him who barred the door.
"Ferabek appreciates a man of action," Enbarr continued, turning again to Uferian, "and your actions do you credit. You do realize that I enjoy Ferabek's favour and have the power to show you his partiality?" Enbarr looked down to the table again and reached for a clean sheet of vellum and prepared it to receive ink. "So, I ask you, do you recognize and offer allegiance to the high king of Arvon?"
Uferian was silent a moment, then said, calmly, "I will recognize and offer allegiance to the high king of Arvon."
"Gawmage?" Enbarr glanced up at him.
"I will recognize and offer allegiance to the high king of Arvon."
"You are a sly one, Uferian." Enbarr grinned and cast a brief look at Kal. "But you have rendered a great service to my lord Ferabek. He will be greatly pleased. Yes, very pleased, indeed."
Enbarr picked up the quill, dipped it in the inkhorn, and wrote on the vellum. A minute later, he dusted the sheet, rolled it, and sealed it, affixing a red ribbon with wax and impressing the warm wax with a signet.
"The seal of Ferabek himself," Enbarr said, "acquitting you of any charge that has been or may be brought against you pertaining to the past lords of Melderenys, and granting you title." He handed the document to Uferian. "The seaholdings are yours, Uferian, Lord of the Arvonian Isles. You are free to go." Then, turning to the guards at his left, he said, "Sergeant, have your men escort Lord Uferian and his retinue back to his lodgings and search his rooms for any sign of my fellow Holdsmen. If you find them, place them under arrest.
"And, Sergeant, have this man"—he looked at Kal with a grin—"taken to Tower Dinas."
Twenty-Nine
The tongue of flame borne ahead of him on the stairs wavered, oily and weak, as it licked at the dead air of the stone passage. He fixed his eyes on it and tried to focus his attention, but it slipped from his mind's grip like an eel from the cold fingers of an old fisherman. The sight of the torch swam before his eyes even as his toe caught the lip of a step and he stumbled once more, the chains clanking from his manacled wrists. He fell against the wall of the passage. He was utterly spent. Exhaustion, like lead in his veins, weighted his limbs. He rested his forehead on the damp chill of the stone, his breaths laboured and catching in his throat. A hand from behind snatched at his shoulder, seizing the crumpled black cloth of his cloak and tunic, and pulled him away from the wall. Someone barked an order, another swore an imprecation, and Kal lifted a foot to the next step and blearily raised his eyes once more to the torch.
It was the sixth or seventh time he had been moved in half as many days, or so he supposed, for he could not be certain how long he had been kept captive after his arrest. The passage of time had become a blur to him, difficult to mark in the dark recesses of the dungeons, where he had been left alone to his gnawing doubts and fears. Indeed, he could not even be sure he was still in the grim confines of Tower Dinas, where he had been taken by boat under heavy guard. The portcullis of the Tower's watergate had closed behind him like the mouth of a ravening creature. After that, he had been led down deep into the bowels of the Tower and locked in a dank cell bereft of light and crawling with vermin, where the echoes of Uferian's remonstrances against his arrest faded from his mind, and a creeping despair began to take possession of him. In a stupor, he had been moved to another cell, then another, and another, his fitful sleep interrupted over and over as he was brusquely awakened and ushered from one stinking hole to the next, until he had lost count of them and was far beyond caring.
Kal glanced back over his shoulder, down the steps to the open door below him. The door belonged to the cell from which he was now being escorted between the rancid bodies of a pair of sullen turnkeys, fore and aft, who took turns swearing at him. It had been a room less foul than the others, though still damp, lit feebly by a single lantern hung from a bracket set high on the wall. The gaol cell had in it a straw mattress, a basin for water, and a bucket by way of a privy—but he could not remember how or when he had gotten there. He did, however, have a vague recollection that, barely conscious, he had been bundled for a second time onto a boat and had been transported across the wave-chopped waters of the Dinastor River under cover of night. The bitter-tasting wine they had pressed on him, with a crust of bread and some mouldy cheese, must have contained a sleeping draught. Either that or his senses had been dulled by a despondency made all the worse by the head-clouding vapours that seeped into the ancient riverside fortress from the vast network of caves and sewers which underlay it. It hardly mattered anyway. Kal had failed—he had failed miserably.
"Come on now, pick up your heels, worm, or you'll be late," growled the
man in front of Kal, scowling over his shoulder. Both guards were Gharssûlian, grim-faced, coarse men who spoke Arvonian but with the distinctive accent of the Boar's countrymen, guttural and choked. Although unhelmeted, the guards were clad in mail from head to knee, and they were well armed, like all the guards and gaolers Kal had encountered from the moment of his arrest, even the Telessarians, whom he was more used to seeing in subtle woodland garb.
The other guard prodded Kal roughly from behind, but Kal was too tired to object. He lifted a foot and stumbled again, but braced himself against the stone-block wall. He winced as a manacle bit into a wrist already chafed raw and bleeding. Pushing himself off the wall, he continued to climb the stairs. This time, at least, they had removed the leg shackles.
Soon, the gloom became increasingly dispelled by natural light from narrow openings set into the stone, until, finally, the staircase came to an end at a landing that led into the middle of a long hallway, paneled in oak, with a marble floor. Farther down the hallway, from a broad open doorway on the right, there flowed a wide pool of sunlight. Kal squinted at the brightness and raised his manacled hands to shade his eyes. From a place close at hand, Kal heard a hum of commotion, low and indistinct, the sound muffled and skewed somehow by the walls of the building.
"Get on with you, slug! You'll have time to gawk soon enough. This way." The guards shoved him away from the sunlit doorway and down the hall into a large drawing room, richly furnished, its far wall bright with an open casement window, which was edged by furled drapery fluttering in a slight breeze. A murmuring buzz of voices grew louder.
"Hold out your hands." The guard stepped up from behind him and unlocked the iron cuffs that fettered Kal's arms. Blinking in the light, he rubbed at his wrists and flexed his fingers, easing back the circulation of blood. Kal's eyes strayed to the window of the chamber—the painful blessedness of light! Kal winced and closed his eyes.
"Don't you take to any notions of escape now," the guard holding the chains said. "There's Scorpions at every door and beyond, by orders of my lord Ferabek himself. And even more of them in the square below, watching the windows—make you no mistake."
Kal nodded mutely. He was back, he realized, in one of the many buildings that were clustered around the Silver Palace.
"In there with you." The man lifted his hand towards the open door of an adjoining chamber, the chains clanking in his grip. Kal obediently shuffled forward. On a bed against the far wall, there were clothes neatly laid out. A water basin with ewer stood nearby on a side table beneath a shuttered window. "Take off those rags and wash yourself. See that you shave. Dress yourself with those clothes."
"Yes, be dressed proper, grub," said the other man. "They're right fine clothes. Fit for a king." The man sniggered to himself.
"There is no time for a bath, but mind you make your appearance presentable—clean-faced and shaven. You cannot be late for the Convocation, so you had best be ready when we come for you in a moment."
"Else we will have to turn you out dressed proper ourselves, worm."
"And that is not something you would want us to do, you can trust me. Now, take off those rags." The guards stood waiting, the one leering at him with an ugly sneer on his face, as Kal hesitantly pulled off first his boots and then his tunic and hose. He let the clothes fall to the floor until he stood stripped naked in the middle of the room. The pale silver swan lay crumpled, half hidden in the folds of filthy black cloth at his feet.
Without another word, the sneering Gharssûlian snatched up the discarded clothes from the floor, and the pair left the bedchamber, swinging the door closed on Kal. A key rattled in the lock.
Kal stood motionless for a long moment as if bound by a spell, then turned slowly and went to the basin and filled it with water. With bemusement, he regarded his haggard features in a small mirror above the side table, blinking at the image in the glass as if it were beyond recognition. He broke the gaze and shook his head. He lifted a razor and looked again in the mirror to scrape away his growth of beard. The water was warm. He finished shaving and began to wipe his face and body clean with the sponge he had found beside the basin. It was little enough, but for the first time in days he felt refreshed, even somewhat relieved. He towelled himself dry. For the moment, at least, he was not languishing in a damp, dark cell. All the same, he shivered again, and apprehension clenched at his gut, as he turned and saw the clothes set out for him. Reluctantly, he approached the bed and examined the finely tailored clothes spread out on the counterpane. They were the formal garb of a courtier or a nobleman, stiff and impractical, not at all what he was used to. Beyond a doubt, something was being planned for him by the forces of the enemy, something that was sure to be unpleasant, even deadly dangerous—a final dashing of all his hopes and plans.
Lifting up a high-collared white-linen shirt, he fingered it; then, with little choice but to stifle his reluctance and obey the guards, who would return all too soon, he slipped his arms into the sleeves and buttoned it. He pulled on close-fitting cream-coloured hose, together with loose thigh-length breeches and a padded jerkin with hooked ivory fastenings. Both jerkin and breeches were beige in colour and heavily embroidered, with jewels stitched in between the slashings. Around his waist Kal buckled a tooled leather belt.
Outside, the hubbub of voices swelled and grew increasingly louder, even through the shuttered windows of the bedchamber. He let the hem of the surcoat that he had lifted fall back to the bed, he stepped towards the window, lifted the sash, and eased open the shutters. Below him stretched the Great Square, the familiar broad span of cobblestone that fronted the Silver Palace and its sprawling collection of royal chancery offices and lodgings. The open space that lay spread out before him buzzed with a growing throng of people who milled about and jostled one another, most of them facing a spot situated on his end of the square, off to his right. Many of them pointed and gestured, as if in expectation, while many more folk continued to trickle in from the surrounding maze of alleys. Sprinkled through the crowd were the dread Black Scorpion Dragoons, each standing alert and stiff-backed, each afforded a wide berth by the massing press of people. Kal realized now, with certainty, that he was in an apartment of the Silver Palace itself. Just out of sight below him, he remembered, was a portico fronting the main palace building, from which a broad flight of steps descended to the square and from which, in the past, royal proclamations had been issued.
A couple of hundred paces away, on the far left side of the open concourse, there stood a building from which banners hung fluttering beneath the windows. These bore the emblems of many of Arvon's lords, marking their lodgings for the Convocation. Even though he could not make it out from this distance, the three black banners at the leftmost corner of the building, Kal knew, showed a silver swan. It was from the window above the middle banner that Kal had looked upon the same courtyard, then rain-washed and empty, perhaps three days ago. Kal's mind strayed to Uferian and Bethsefra. He wondered how she was faring now that he had been caught out and his plans had come so unexpectedly unravelled. He knew himself to be a danger to those associated with him. Happily, though, Enbarr had allowed the seaheld king to leave, pardon in hand, albeit under heavy guard. In truth, there was little that the Boar and his minions had to fear; the world was theirs, and all in it. At least, Uferian and his daughter should be safe, or so Kal assured himself.
Startled from his thoughts by a key rattling in the lock, Kal turned, and the door of the bedchamber burst open.
"What's this?" the first guard through the door demanded as he drew his sword. "What are you doing at the window?"
"Nothing—nothing at all," Kal said, raising his arms in a gesture of peaceful surrender.
"Stay away from the window." The guard sheathed his sword and lumbered across the room to slam the shutters closed. "You will have your look outside soon enough," he said as he turned to face Kal again. "Go on. Finish dressing."
The second guard stepped into the doorway, his face still c
ontorted in sneering contempt. Under their watchful eyes Kal put on the surcoat—a billowing robe of red velvet edged with sable and stitched with gold cord—and slipped his feet into the soft calf-leather shoes that had been placed beside the clothes.
"What now?" He stepped away from the bed, holding himself stiffly in the strangeness of his new garb.
"The cap, too. And pendant. Be quick about it." The guard pointed to the items of attire that remained on the bed.
Kal placed the chain of the pendant around his neck and regarded the round gold medallion in the palm of his hand. On the face of the medal was etched the outline of a hind. Then, with studied diffidence, he took the black felt cap in hand, frowned at its white plume and its jewel encrusted turn-up, and placed it awkwardly on his head.
"Now you're a picture, worm," the guard in the doorway said. "A perfect picture of yourself, I'd say."
"Make way! Move aside! Into the light, closer to the window." a man issued gruff orders in Gharssûlian as a handful of Black Scorpions moved in. "Right there. Put it there!" One of the guards grabbed Kal's arm and pulled him roughly to the side. "That's good. Now we have a chance to compare him with the original."
It was a commanding voice and familiar, all too familiar, now that the man had switched to speaking Arvonian. As Enbarr stepped in front of Kal, a couple of Scorpions placed a large frame covered by a cloth beside Kal.
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