Horn of the River God: Book I of The Song of Agmar

by Frances Mason

  “A charming girl, isn’t she?” Eleanor said.

  “She has impeccable manners,” the duke said, noncommittally, removing his cap and running his hand through his forked white beard, his grey eyes serious, “but you didn’t exhaust yourself travelling all the way to Thedra to visit the princess.”

  “No.” Eleanor threw off the coverlets and stood up.

  Augustyn coughed uncomfortably and looked away.

  Eleanor looked down at herself, and for the first time realised she was only wearing a very light shift. Then she snapped her eyes back up to Augustyn’s face. “Oh, you’re not going to be coy about this wrinkled old body.”

  “I never saw a wrinkle.”

  “So you looked.”

  Augustyn blushed and Eleanor chuckled. “Who would have thought a mere lady could discomfit the great duke Relyan.”

  “There is nothing ordinary about you, Eleanor. Never has been.”

  “The same shy charm. Your daughter is lovely by the way.”

  “The wedding went well?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s always tricky, these arranged marriages, but they’re both as taken with each other as if they had discovered their love without our interference.”

  Augustyn stated the proverbial wisdom, “The mysteries of love are only understood by the heart.”

  She nodded her approval, and alluded to the crowned heart of Augustyn’s coat of arms, “And now the heart of Relyan rules the heart of Navre…and, of course, love is power.”

  “And who knows the truth of that better than the mermaid of Sol?”

  “Oh, Augustyn! Those days are long gone.”

  “Fishing for compliments?”

  “As eagerly as any maiden.”

  “I will not flatter, but only state the truth, that there never was, nor ever will be, a greater beauty in the kingdom.”

  “And so you flatter while refusing to. Ever the courtier.”

  “The lost has been found,” Augustyn stated, abruptly changing the direction of the conversation, “and that is why you’re here, is it not?”

  The merry look faded from her features. “Yes. Let me dress.” She looked about for her travelling chest and saw it on the other side of the bed. It was only a small chest, but her ladies had packed it carefully, ignoring her protestations that she needed little. Those girls were geniuses, she reflected. How could they fit so many dresses into such a small space? She found the key among her journeying clothes, which were draped over a chair.

  “Your ladies don’t attend you?”

  “No. I thought haste was necessary, and they would be so uncomfortable on that little caravel. Such delicate girls. Of course they protested no end, the dears. Your Grace you mustn’t. Your Grace you need. Your Grace it would not be proper. Your Grace how will you survive without us. Eventually I allowed them to talk me into letting them follow. They may take another week or more to arrive.”

  “Let me see what I can arrange.” Augustyn strode over to the entrance and spoke to a page.

  But before the page could hurry off two ladies entered the room, curtsying briefly to the duke as they passed. They were dressed in the full, layered skirts that Sophie clearly avoided. They curtsied to Eleanor as they spoke.

  “Your Grace, I am Kat.”

  “And I am Felicity, Your Grace.”

  “The princesses Sophie and Katherine thought you might be lacking attendance.”

  “The princesses spoil me. Kat…I remember, you are Belle’s daughter. I am fortunate indeed. To be waited on by the granddaughter of a queen, the daughter of a duke and, if I’m not mistaken, you are now the marchioness Anweld, are you not?”

  “Yes, Your Grace. And lady in waiting to Her Highness, Sophie. Though she lets Amelia and I do so little for her.”

  Eleanor nodded with apparent sympathy. She suspected Kat was more anxious about doing more for a princess like Sophie than less. Her features carried the undisguised pride of one who knew well how great her forbears had been, and she would likely think Sophie’s mother, and by extension, Sophie herself, an upstart. Eleanor said, with platitudinous diplomacy, “The royal princess knows well what she wants, how much and how little.” She thought she detected a slight wince at that “royal” but perhaps she imagined it. “And Felicity, your father is the viscount of Laketon?”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “It is in a beautiful region, there on the southern shores of Lake Selta. I knew your grandmother well. You know you have Matilda’s eyes?” Felicity shook her head and listened with innocent attentiveness. “I always envied her eyes. I could tell you of so many hearts those eyes routed on the field of love, but she only ever had eyes for one.” She chose not to mention the roving eyes of Felicity’s grandfather that no amount of the sweet natured Matilda’s love could restrain. Felicity might well have also inherited her grandmother’s sweet nature, Eleanor reflected, poor girl. She would, perhaps, be better suited to wait on the sweet princess Sophie, while Kat’s pride would be better restrained by the impeccable bloodlines, and strong will, of the princess Katherine.

  “Your Grace,” Felicity gushed, “Arthur has arranged a tournament. The king and queen will soon be leaving for the summer palace, so it will be before then. Kat, I mean princess Katherine, suggested it to him when we heard you had arrived, so it is really in your honour.” Her features were rapt, eyes almost glazing as she said, “The knights in painted armour, so many colours, and the banners fluttering above the pavilions of cloth of gold, and ladies all offering their tokens. Oh, it will be such a sight! And Arthur, so handsome, every lady envies my mistress so.”

  “One always likes one’s princes to be handsome,” Eleanor said lightly.

  “Oh, and isn’t he? So tall, so strong, handsome and brave. And no knight sits better his horse.”

  “Your mistress no doubt knows well his strength. Few men could match her own.”

  “Oh, yes, she is strong, I could never disobey her, even if I wanted to. But kind. She has always been so kind to me.”

  “And you, I don’t doubt, serve her well.”

  “In every way I can, Your Grace. And now I will serve you.”

  “And in serving me, serve her better?”

  “Why, yes, Your Grace. It is her will.”

  “Then I will bend to her will, and be served. I wouldn’t want her to be displeased with you on my account.”

  “You are kind, Your Grace.” Felicity bit her lip, having said more than she intended. “The princess Sophie likes you very much. I can see why.”

  Eleanor noticed Augustyn, still standing in the doorway, staring disapprovingly at Kat. “Kat,” she said, observing him with a merry eye, “how is your brother, Amery? I believe he and Augustyn are currently debating the advantages of peace in the kingdom.”

  Augustyn blanched, exactly as Eleanor had intended. She knew he would not want the younger sister of his mortal enemy privy to the thoughts of any ally, and few could be closer to the thoughts of a noble lady than her ladies in waiting. But these girls were only on loan from the royal princesses and would not learn her ways so well as her own ladies. And even they only heard as much as she wished. She was insulted by his assumptions, and was glad to make him squirm for that low estimation. As if mere girls could sound the depths of a seasoned politician like Eleanor of Navre.

  As Kat started proudly discussing her family, Augustyn looked directly at Eleanor’s face and, seeing that she had been baiting him, the tension faded from his features and he smiled. A rare expression for that very serious man. Satisfied that these young ladies would not in any way foil whatever grand strategic plans he thought he had mastered, he turned and departed, the honour guard snapping to attention again as he passed.

  Chapter 32: Raoul: Thedra

  Raoul, monk of the monastery of Death, watched from the shadows in The Pit.

  Awareness is worship, he knew. It had been the second lesson of his novitiate. He was aware of every life in this place and its contingencies, all of which w
ere subject to one irrefutable necessity. He sensed the footsteps of the guards, one set approaching, another receding, others, softer, further away, at the edge of hearing. He heard someone hawking and spitting on the level above, and a low moaning in a cell behind him. He heard receding footsteps stopping, a door opening, and a bantering voice. He heard his own heartbeat, the door closing, and the footsteps starting up again, receding, the faint tapping of the distant machines, deep within the earth, the rustling of straw where a cockroach crawled nearby, even the slight wheezing of a diseased rat’s breath, and the sizzling of pitch in the torches along the walls. He saw the shadows as they played at the edge of torchlight. The shadows of walls against walls, of men as tall as giants who shrank to mortal size as they passed, of mice become monsters of the dark. And he saw the tiny runnel of water which the insects and rats and mice came to, like thirsty men to a well. He saw the dull reflection of torchlight from cured and lacquered leather beneath a coat, showing that the guards wore light armour, and the casual saunter with which they proved their carelessness. And then there were the smells and flavours. The smells filled his nostrils, and his mouth was slightly opened so that he could taste the air. The passage smelled of straw, and tasted of dust. There was the smell of water running against stone, of matted fur, of the unwashed guards whose reek had not followed them. The smell of shit and piss in the bucket of a nearby cell. The smell of shit was more acrid than usual. Perhaps the moaning prisoner had the bloody flux. If so, he would soon meet Raoul’s Lord.

  Raoul knew, even if these other contingent beings did not, that there was no greater lord than Death, for all would be his servants in the end. All would come to his kingdom. How much better when that day came to be his vassal than his slave? The merchant whom Raoul stalked tonight would soon be Death’s slave, delivered to the underworld by the faithful service of His vassal.

  Raoul had come late to the true faith. An acrobat, juggler and actor, he had been groomed by the King of Misrule, for his dedication was great and his natural talents greater. He would have one day taken over as master of the Guild of Misrule. Then, one day, a priest of Nethra had come to the theatre. Some of the groundlings had drawn back from the stage as the priest of Death climbed up. The priest had mocked the actors who lay sprawled about at the end of the famous tragedy, “The Revenge of Blood.”

  “Do you think you see the truth in this place of lies?” a distant voice had asked, and where it came from Raoul could not tell. The priest had worn the black habit of the priesthood, rather than the brown working habit of the monks. From where he lay, Raoul had looked for a face beneath the black cowl, but all he had seen there was darkness. As an actor he had been certain that this was only an illusion, a false appearance. But when he had searched beyond the appearance, with eyes that saw clearly through theatrical deceit, he had sensed nothing.

  Several groundlings had thrown peanut shells at the Dark Priest and jeered, but he had not been deterred. “Do you think you can drive Death from the stage of your life with empty shells, you whose bodies will be empty shells when that day comes? When your flesh is sliced from your bones by the lepers, and your bones are carved into a likeness of your foolishness by the carvers of the bimateya, do you think your children’s tears will give your spirit comfort?”

  The actors, wishing to demonstrate their talent, had not arisen from their theatrical deaths to fight or argue with the priest, but instead lay as if actually dead, as if to disprove his sermon. One had acted a dying, choking spasm to the amusement and applause of the groundlings and the wealthier audience in the galleries above. But Raoul, who had lain among the other actors, had listened, at first with the same carelessness of spirit as the others, then with greater attention, as it struck him that he could not penetrate, with eye or mind, beyond the shadows in the cowl. He could not even see the usual slight shimmer at the edge of a great wizard’s illusion, where false appearance would be stitched to surrounding reality. All he could sense was a void, in which he knew with a shiver that all light and heat and life would be extinguished. Raoul had had an epiphany: in that void was truth.

  The first lesson of the novitiate was the necessity of Death. Without understanding this lesson you could not be consecrated to the service of the god. On that day in the theatre the priest of Nethra had spoken of this necessity. Raoul had understood that these plays of death, these false deaths with pig’s blood and too much talking, from which the actor always returned to bow and dance a jig and be applauded, were the lesser art, the art of contingency.

  Soon after his epiphany he had been consecrated to the Dark Brotherhood, the cult’s monastic order, unseen by the timid masses, who are ever fearful of necessity, addicted as they are to the contingencies of life. In the order he had dedicated himself to life’s end, a daily round of prayer and training and, when his novitiate was served, work. He had learned the greater art. And now he practiced it, with skill and devotion.

  The guards whose footsteps he heard did their rounds through the network of crisscrossing corridors carved from the rock beneath North Bank. They were lightly armoured with cuirasses of hardened leather and heavy wooden clubs, which they carried slung over the shoulder and occasionally swung about out of boredom, but rarely used against the wealthy prisoners of this level, most of whom had bribed their way into luxuriously appointed cells and mild conditions. Torches guttered at intervals, blown by air that was sucked down from the surface into the deepest parts of the prison by ancient machines of unknown origin and poorly understood function. In the distant depths a faint tapping could be heard, whether of the machines working as designed or slowly expiring was unknown by any of The Pit’s denizens.

  Death is patient. This had been the third lesson of Raoul’s novitiate. It was an crucial lesson, for with patience the ways of Death are most clearly revealed. Many novices, impelled to quick, careless murder, failed this lesson repeatedly. Raoul observed the guards patiently from the dark alcove just beyond the intersection of two passageways, counting the seconds it took for them to walk their circuits, noting the distances between them and the variations in those distances. If it had been impossible to reach his target without killing a guard, or several, they would also have been sent to Death’s dark kingdom, where shadows were to shades as light was to the living and silent lamentations covered tongues with dust. But while Death gladly invited the unready, necessity was his nature. Those monks who truly understood his nature therefore pursued the art of necessity with great reverence. The necessary death was the merchant’s. This guard’s death would be contingent, and therefore not well please that lord whom all mortal men were bound to one day to serve. The guard’s day would come, and his appointed hour, as would that of every man, including Raoul.

  Raoul sidled out of the alcove and along the corridor, turning at the intersection, his footsteps as light as air, as silent as the dead. He wore the dirt brown working cassock of his order, a shorter, less cumbersome cassock than that which Death’s priests wore in proselytising missions and temple ceremonies.

  Raoul flitted from shadow to shadow, always finding the only place where they joined, or becoming that place, unseen. He remembered the fourth lesson of the novitiate well. Embrace the darkness, for it is your Lord’s domain, and in it you will find His Truth and reveal it to the faithless. Remember that light is for but a day, but darkness is for ever after. Hold this truth in your heart, and with every face you see know the darkness that will hide it. Because he held this truth in his heart, and with every action reverently submitted to it, few could penetrate through the shadows to see his face. As with the priest in the theatre, it was enfolded in true darkness, a darkness beyond illusion, beyond deceit. The darkness of Death. In the past, when he had walked in sunlight and ignorance, the paleness of his skin had been evident. When unaltered, his skin was like living marble, with fine veins of blue sketching cracks across the translucent white. His long, thick, crooked nose, bent slightly to the left from having been broken in a stage fight, had
seemed out of place above his small, almost delicate mouth. His eyes, naturally smoky grey, were now as black as night, the pupils, irises, and even whites indistinguishable, altered by an apothecary’s potion. Under the cowl his head was tonsured, the dark hair falling to his shoulders, but shaved from the centre to signify his loss of living flesh’s vanity, for are we not all soon shorn by Death from the skull of this world? The skin of his face was dusted over with a dirt coloured substance, and his clothes were of the same hue. As every skilled assassin knows, earth brown, not black, is the hardest colour to see in darkness. Not that he needed such tricks anymore to remain unseen. Raoul was no novice, grasping for a darkness barely understood. He continued these practices out of ritual respect, for what they symbolised. To earth our bones will return. Even the ancestor worship practiced by the commoners of this city with their forbears’ bones would only delay that return.

  Raoul now moved. Because of his mastery, even the rats, who know the darkness better than men, did not see him. They love the darkness because they love life, and so they do not truly understand its essence, which is Death. They scuttled out of the way of the guard, their eyes glowing with torchlight, red, angry, whiskers twitching fearfully. And while they watched the guard’s receding back, Raoul passed them unseen. He flitted between two shadows as though he were a third.

  As he moved he controlled his breath in the way he had been taught, so that even if his mouth had been at the guard’s very ear he would not have heard it, or even felt it. This had been the fifth lesson. In death is no breath, no breath in breath is therefore the way of truth.

  The guard stopped at the door. He looked back down the corridor. Silently, Raoul prayed to Death, and the shadows condensed around him and along the corridor. The torches guttered and dimmed. It was Death’s benefaction. Only a master of the order of Death could beckon the god so. It required an utter devotion to His necessity, a surrendering of one’s contingent life to His glory. The guard shivered, though it was warm. He sensed his own death, and averted his eyes from it, and so he did not see the truth. There is no escaping Death. If he had looked more closely he would have understood that as the poison in a needle like blade quickly paralysed him, then slowly killed him. But as he turned away the necessity of his immediate death became once more a mere contingency, and so he would live, for a while.