by Karen Miller
“I fancy I’ve been foolish enough already,” murmured Darran, sinking back against his pillows. One thin veined hand stole out, fingers brushing against Gar’s black silk sleeve. His expression was beseeching. “Oh, sir. Dear sir. Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me your ruffian friend there has played a cruel trick on me. It would be like him, after all. Tell me anything ... except that they’re dead.”
Gar shook his head. “I wish I could. I’m sorry.”
Darran burst into gulping, gasping tears. Gar sank to the edge of the bed beside him and opened his arms. Clutching, coughing, Darran continued to weep, his face buried against Gar’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry—I’m so sorry—”
Gar patted his back, stroked his hair. “I know, Darran. I know.”
Skewered with pity, Asher looked away. He had no time for scarecrow Darran but even so ... the ole fool’s grief was genuine. Was a knife, opening half-healed wounds. Red blood and white bone and black flies, crawling... a friend, addled and drooling ... a tired old man broken by a mast, alone and abandoned and calling his name ...
Imagination lashed him like a whip. Smarting, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and set his jaw. He wasn’t going to cry, he wasn’t, he wasn’t. Tears were nothing but a waste of good saltwater.
At last the old man stopped his ragged weeping. Stared into Gar’s tearless face and whispered, “Oh, sir. Sir. What are we going to do?”
“What we must, Darran. Go on without them.”
“Without them?” Darran echoed. Fresh tears spilled. “Dear sir... I’m afraid I don’t know how.”
Gar reached into his tunic, withdrew a black handkerchief and held it out. Speechless, Darran blotted his sallow cheeks dry and let the damp crumpled silk fall to his lap.
“In truth, Darran, neither do I,” Gar said. “But there must be a way. And if there isn’t, we’ll have to make one. The kingdom needs me, and I need you. More than I ever have before. Can I count on you?”
“Sir!” said Darran. “As if you need to ask!”
Gar smiled and patted his hand. “I don’t want to take you for granted. Darran, I have a huge favor to beg of you. One that will tax your loyalty and endurance to their very limits, I fear. But I wouldn’t ask such a sacrifice of you if I didn’t think it was important. Will you hear me out? Please?”
The old man flushed faintly pink, like a maiden at her first Festival dance. “Well, of course, sir. You must know there’s nothing I won’t do for you.”
Asher rolled his eyes. Silly ole fool...
“Thank you, Darran,” said Gar. His pale face was settling into new and unaccustomed lines. He looked years older now, and grim. “Asher?”
Suspicious, he took a reluctant step towards the bed. “Aye?”
“I know there’s scant love lost between you two,” Gar began carefully. “That you take great delight in puncturing each other’s consequence, as often and as publicly as possible. There is fault and provocation on both sides, though I think you’d rather die before admitting it. But I also know you both love me, and I hope you know that love is returned, as for a crusty old uncle, say, and an irascible brother.”
Asher raised an eyebrow. “We s’posed to guess which one of us is which?”
“Hold your tongue, you impertinent guttersnipe!” snapped Darran. “His Highness is speaking!”
“Please!” said Gar, glaring.
Instantly contrite, Darran lowered his head. “Your Highness.”
“Sorry,” Asher muttered.
Darran snorted. “That was convincing.”
“Barl save me!” cried Gar. Overhead, the air beneath the chamber ceiling thickened. Darkened. A flickering tongue of lightning licked the underbelly of the looming cloud and the chamber’s glimfire lamps sparked and sputtered. “Must I find bandages to stuff in your chattering mouths? Listen to me! This kingdom faces its gravest crisis since Trevoyle’s Schism. I face the darkest, most demanding days of my life, and I’d rather not face them alone.”
“You are not alone, sir,” said Darran, offended. “You have me, for as long as there’s breath in my body.”
“I know, but it’s not enough!” Gar slid off the bed and began to pace the small chamber. “Don’t you understand? I need both of you! I’ve always lived a public life, but this will be different. As WeatherWorker I will be scrutinized as never before. I may be my father’s legitimate heir but my journey has been, to say the least, unorthodox. With every eye upon me I can’t afford the slightest stumble. For if I fall, not one Doranen hand will reach out to help me to my feet. Instead they’ll clutch the sleeve of Conroyd Jarralt, the only other magician we have who’s capable of wielding Weather Magic. It is the last thing my father would’ve wanted. I can’t let Conroyd win! If he wins—”
“Er ... Gar?” said Asher.
Gar turned. “What?”
He considered the cloud-obscured ceiling. “Are you s’posed to do that?” “What?”
“That,” he said, and pointed.
Gar stopped. Looked. “Oh.” He frowned. “Probably not.” He snapped his fingers and the incipient thunderstorm vanished. “Asher—”
Damn, damn, damn. This was going to give him ulcers, he just knew it. “I get it,” he sighed, “You need a united household. Me and Darran singin’ the same song.”
Gar’s expression softened. “Precisely. I don’t ask you to love each other—I’m not that much of a fool—but I do ask you to support each other, at least in public. Because in supporting each other, you support me. And Barl knows, in the weeks and months ahead I shall need all the support I can get!”
Asher heaved another sigh. “No need to fret yourself. Reckon I can stomach playin’ nice with Darran here, at least till all this upset’s settled down. Provided we ain’t talkin’ years.”
“Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but I’ll take what I can get,” Gar murmured, faintly smiling. He turned his head. “Darran?”
Darran had the look of man who had bitten into an apple and found half a worm. “Your Highness?”
Returning to the bed, Gar rested a hand on the old man’s blanketed knee. “Please. I know he’s a ruffian and a reprobate and a thorn in your side ... but he’s not all bad. Would I have him for a friend if he was?”
Darran’s thin fingers hovered for a moment, then curled around Gar’s hand. “Of course not, sir. Never fear. I will do precisely what you ask, no matter how difficult—” He flicked a dark look sideways. “—or painful—the task proves to be.”
Leaning down, Gar pressed his lips to Darran’s forehead. “Thank you.”
“I want to return to work,” said Darran. “Will you tell Nix to release me?”
“No,” said Gar. “You’ll stay in that bed until you’re quite recovered.”
Defeated, Darran slumped against the pillows. “Then can you at least do something about his dreadful medicine?”
Gar nearly laughed. “No, Darran, I’m sorry to say I can’t. I can call lightning from a clear sky, snow from a sunbeam and rain from a red dawn, but I am powerless in the face of those bloody awful potions.”
Darran heaved a lugubrious sigh. “That’s most unfortunate, sir.”
“It is, isn’t it?” said Gar, smiling, and touched his fingers to the old man’s cheek.
Nix was waiting for them in the reception area. “Your Highness.”
The warmth and brief amusement had disappeared from Gar’s face. “I understand my family was brought here for examination by you and Barlsman Holze.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Your examination is complete?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I wish to see them.”
“Certainly, Your Highness. Allow me to—”
“No need,” said Gar. “I know the way.”
Asher swallowed a groan and started after him. As Nix fell into step beside him he glanced sidelong at the pother and muttered, “You sure? They weren’t exactly portrait material last time I saw ‘em.”
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Nix’s face spasmed in an uneasy mix of anger and understanding. “To the best of my ability, that has been rectified. What do you take me for?”
Asher grimaced. “A good pother,” he admitted, and let Nix hurry him along in Gar’s impatient wake with an imperious wave of his hand.
CHAPTER FIVE
The palace’s dead room was located underground, two floors below the infirmary wing. The chill was pronounced, the silence complete. Two City guards stood sentinel by the double-doored entrance. They stepped aside as Gar approached and bowed as he and Nix swept past unseeing. Asher, who shared a weekly pint at the Goose with both of them, acknowledged each with a nod and followed Gar into the dead room’s antechamber, where he drifted into a cold white corner and held his tongue.
Holze was lighting the Barlscandle in the chapel nook cut into one stark white wall. Dressed in his most dignified crimson, cream and golden robes, he looked wan of face and grossly old, almost transparent with grief and weariness. As though his cape of office was too heavy to bear. He turned at their entrance. “Your Highness!” With an effortful puff he blew out the taper, discarded it on the floor and approached Gar with outstretched arms. “My dear, dear boy. How are you this sad morning?”
Gar suffered Holze’s embrace of peace without protest, but stepped back once the elderly cleric released him. “Well enough, sir. Yourself?”
Tears welled in Holze’s red-rimmed eyes. “Indeed, my heart is heavy.”
“What did your examination of my family’s bodies reveal?”
Holze exchanged a discomfited glance with Nix. “Ah... yes. The examination. Pother Nix ... ?”
Nix cleared his throat. “Captain Orrick has charged us to keep our findings secret until his final report is complete.”
Gar nodded. “Asher. Send to Captain Orrick and command him to make his report to the existing Privy Council two hours hence. I’ll want you there too. Dress appropriately.”
“Me?” he said, startled.
Gar ignored him. “Nix,” he continued, “as far as the conduct and findings of the examination are concerned, Holze will speak for you both. Your duty lies at Durm’s bedside. Return to him now, and do not leave him again unless it’s to tell me he’s awake and ready to fulfill his role as my Master Magician.”
Struck dumb, Nix gaped. “Your Highness,” he said at last, faintly.
“I would have privacy now,” said Gar, raking his cold gaze over all their faces. “Leave.”
There was only one other door in the dead room’s antechamber. Gar opened it, entered the chamber beyond and thudded the door shut behind him.
In the silence that followed, Pother Nix blew out his cheeks and said, “Well! Of all the high and mighty—”
“Poor boy,” said Holze, shaking his head. “He’s clearly undone with grief. Careful handling, that’s the key. Barl knows he’s a fine young man but he does have a temper though he’s seldom shown it. I wonder how best we can convince him to . ..”
As one, they exchanged glances then turned and stared at Asher.
He folded his arms across his chest and stared back unimpressed. “Don’t you go lookin’ at me,” he advisee them sourly. “I ain’t got a death wish. You’re his spiritual advisor, Barlsman Holze, and you’re his official physicker, Pother Nix. Those are sacred callings, ain’t they Me? I just work here. Now I suggest you do like the good prince said, eh? Unless you’re looking for new positions and a change of scenery.”
And with that sage advice he left them to their business, so he might attend to his.
Privy Council? Privy Council? Ha! Now what was Gar up to?
———
The dead room was cold. Well, it had to be, didn’t it? Dead flesh rotted. Even when magically preserved, in the end it still rotted. Best not to give nature a head start, then Best to beat back the ravages of decay for as long as possible, with whatever weapons came to hand. Cold was the first.
Shivering, Gar stood with his shoulderblades pressed to the chamber’s heavy door and kept his eyes closed. One glimpse of those three shrouded figures had been enough They were here in the dead room, laid out on plain wooden tables. What else did he need to know? To see?
Their unsmiling faces. Their unmoving lips. Their still unbreathing bodies.
If he didn’t, would he ever believe this nightmare was real? Or would he spend the rest of his life waking each and every morning to think, no, no, it’s all right! It was just a dream!
The idea was unbearable. He had to look. No matter how dreadful, how haunting, how unspeakable the images might be, he had to look his fill until truth overcame hope. Until he could begin to accept the inescapably altered landscape of his life.
Slowly, he opened his eyes. The first thing he truly saw was color. Vases of sweet pink pamarandums stood in niches cut into the white-washed walls. Their scent danced in the air. Tickled his nose. Cloyed in his mouth.
He was going to be sick.
Somehow he swallowed the flooding bile, just as last night he’d swallowed Nix’s gross potion. Ah, the things one did when one was a king.
Was nearly a king.
“I know you never believed me, Fane,” he said to the smallest of the shrouded shapes before him, “but I really don’t want to be WeatherWorker. I wish there’d been time to convince you I was telling the truth. Do you believe it now, wherever you are?”
Silence.
He stepped away from the door. Folded his arms across his black silk chest and tucked his fingers into his armpits. Taking another step, then another, he found himself standing not quite an arm’s length away from his family, lying so still beneath their kindly covering sheets. As part of his ritual offices Holze had laid a twisted strand of Barlsflowers on each breast. That each small bouquet sat undisturbed and unmoving hammered home, like a nail through his heart, the fact that they were dead.
“I don’t know what to say to you, Father. Mama. Little sister. You died and I didn’t. What can I say, faced with a truth so ugly? ‘Sorry’? It hardly seems adequate.”
There was something ... wrong ... with the shape of his father’s hidden body. From the shoulder region down it looked strangely flat.
Imagination stirred. Recoiled. He wasn’t going to think about that.
“Durm survived too,” he said. “Nix says his hopes are slim, but I don’t think he’ll die. I’d have to appoint Conroyd his successor if he died and Durm won’t want to give him the satisfaction. I know I bloody don’t.”
He held his breath, then, waiting to hear his mother’s loving, scolding voice. “Don’t swear, darling. It isn’t nice.” The silence persisted. He stared at her shrouded silhouette, willing her to speak. A lock of her hair had escaped the confining sheet. It shimmered in the dead room’s ghmlight, just as once, only yesterday, so long ago, it had shimmered in the sunshine as she laughed. He longed to touch it. To wind that gentle curl about his fingers and tug, teasing, as once he’d tugged and teased as a boy.
He couldn’t. What if that glorious golden hair felt dead, as she was dead? What if it came away in his hand like straw severed from the living earth? It would be a desecration...
His lungs were clamoring. He let out his pent-up breath in a sobbing rush and sucked in cold pamarandum-tainted air. The scarlet spots dancing before his eyes dimmed, and his frantic heart eased.
He knew then he couldn’t look at them unshrouded.
Couldn’t bear to poison living memory with dead flesh. All he could do was accept their passing. Be true to their hopes and dreams for him, for the kingdom they had loved their whole lives, and pledge his own life to its ceaseless service.
“Pellen Orrick is investigating, but I think this was just a terrible accident,” he told them. “Barl would never let it be otherwise. For six and a half centuries she’s watched over us. Protected us. There’s no reason she’d abandon us now. This was an accident.”
Faintly, through the room’s solid door, he heard voices. The heavy tread of booted feet. The City Gua
rd, changing over. Four souls among the thousands now resting in the palm of his hand. But was his palm big enough to hold them all safely? Heart pounding anew, he examined that palm. Every line of it. Every crease. And thought... perhaps not.
The palm became a fist, shaking. In his blood the power burned, yearned, yammered for freedom.
It was big enough. It had to be.
“And it was an accident,” he said. “Wasn’t it?”
The shrouded figures before him didn’t answer.
He sighed. Relaxed his fist and tucked his cold fingers away again. The hunger in his blood receded and, with its siren song silenced, he was able to think more clearly.
He wasn’t crying.
This was his family, laid out like butcher’s kill for housewifely perusal. Why was he so calm? So detached? Surely that couldn’t be right Shock didn’t last this long, did it? Here he was, face-to-face with his family’s broken bodies, decaying even as he stood there watching. Shouldn’t he be feeling something! Something other than physical, fleshly cold?
And oh, dear Barl preserve him, he was cold. Cold to the fingertips, cold to the marrow. Cold to the center of his heart.
Is that what had happened to his tears? Were they frozen? Unable to flow? He’d wept, surely, the last time he’d thought his father dead. He was certain he remembered weeping then. In that barn. Buried in straw. Yes, yes, he’d wept then. Quietly, so Asher wouldn’t hear him.
So shouldn’t he be howling now, like a dog? With his father and mother and sister smashed to pieces on a mountain, scraped piecemeal off the rocks, brought here to this cold white room of death, shouldn’t he be howling!
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to his rotting flesh and blood. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
In less than two hours’ time he would face Conroyd Jarralt in the Privy Council. Lay the matter of these deaths to rest so that his family might rest too. In peace. Forever. In less than two hours’ time he would be named the next king of Lur.