The trek to the castle was steep and dismal; a brisk, wet wind licked at them all the way, now at their faces, now at their backs as they struggled up the switchbacks on the mountainside. By the time they reached the castle, Silverdun was exhausted and damp. It was dark, and the wind here at the island's summit was even stronger.
Up close, the castle Whitemount was more intact than it appeared from a distance. It consisted of a single tower surrounded by a square courtyard. The outer walls were fallen, but beyond them the courtyard was well maintained. The interior walls of the castle were straight and in good repair; the glass windows clear and unbroken. The courtyard was deserted. If Master Jedron had any retainers other than Ilian, they were nowhere to be seen, though Silverdun would not have blamed them for remaining indoors on such a bleak night.
"Come on, then," said Ilian, waving Silverdun on. He pushed open a heavy wooden door and entered the castle without further comment.
Inside, the castle was dry and cool. The main hall was decorated, though sparsely, in a style from decades past-clearly there was no lady at Whitemount. Than passed briskly through the spacious hall toward a set of wide spiral stairs that hugged the tower's interior. Silverdun followed. The stairs continued up several flights, with witchlit sconces evenly spaced along its length. Their light was tuned to orange, providing a glow that appeared warm but provided no actual warmth.
At the top of the tower, the stairs ended at a stout wooden door. Ilian knocked, and for a moment there was silence. Then a voice rasped, "Come!"
Master Jedron's study occupied the entire top floor of the tower. It was comfortable without being lavishly appointed; tapestries hung on the walls; tapers were lit and placed in sconces around the room. A well-stoked fireplace burned opposite the door. In the center of the room Master Jedron sat at a large desk made of ebony, his boots propped up on the corner of the desk. Jedron's salt-and-pepper hair hung to his shoulders, neatly combed. His face was deeply lined, giving the semblance of extreme age, but there was clearly nothing frail about him. He had a glass paperweight in his hand, which he tossed absently up and down.
Jedron squinted at Silverdun for a long moment and then said, "Who the fuck are you?"
Silverdun looked back at Ilian, who chuckled, but said nothing. Ilian retreated casually to a spot near the door and motioned Silverdun back toward Jedron with a nod of his head.
"Are you stupid?" said Jedron. "I asked you a question. Who are you?"
Silverdun cleared his throat. What was this? "I am Perrin Alt, Lord Silverdun. I'm here to present myself to you for training."
Jedron looked baffled for a moment; then he burst out laughing, as if Silverdun had just told him the funniest joke he'd ever heard.
"What? You?" Jedron pointed at Silverdun, shaking with mirth. "Oh, that's a good one! Who put you up to this?"
The tips of Silverdun's ears began to burn. "I can assure you, sir, that this is no jest. Lord Everess himself sent me to you."
"Oh, did he?" Jedron's laugh settled down to a chuckle. "You can understand my amusement, of course."
"I'm afraid I can't," said Silverdun. He was going to kill Everess for this.
"Well, look at you! You're so fancy and sensitive, you're practically a woman!" Jedron took his feet down off the desk and leaned forward. "Not that I haven't trained women, of course," he said. "That's not what I mean at all. But most of the women I've trained are quite a lot more manly than you, I'm afraid."
The old man shook his head. "And I thought the other new student was a disgrace."
Silverdun rolled his eyes. "I see. This is some kind of test, to see if I'll lose my temper under stress or some such. Am I right?"
With blinding speed, Jedron reared back and hurled the glass paperweight, which slammed into Silverdun's temple with astonishing force. Silverdun stumbled back; the pain was unbelievable. He reached out for some thing to support himself with, as he suddenly felt dizzy, but there was nothing there. Red and blue spots began to speckle his vision and his knees buckled. He sat down hard.
Silverdun's head throbbed; his entire skull hurt. When he looked up, his vision was blurred and slightly doubled. Jedron stood over him, looking at him with an appraising eye.
"Well, you were right about one thing, boy. That was your first test, and you failed it miserably, I'm sad to say."
"Oh," groaned Silverdun. "And what test was that?"
Jedron looked at Silverdun as if Silverdun were the stupidest person he'd ever met. "Dodging paperweights," he said.
Silverdun awoke in a strange bed, fully clothed, his head throbbing. He touched his temple and grimaced at the tenderness of the welt that had grown there while he slept.
Carefully, he sat up and winced, the previous evening slowly filtering into his mind. The sea voyage, the climb, the old bastard with his paperweight. After that, everything got a bit fuzzy.
The bed was comfortable, the mattress stuffed with down and the pillow large and soft. When he swung his feet gently onto the floor, a plush rug rather than cold stone met his toes. He stood carefully; the rush of pain to his skull was even worse than he expected.
When his vision cleared, he looked around the room. It was small but not cramped; the furnishings good quality but not ostentatious. A fresh set of clothes was draped over a chair, and his boots were on the floor nearby, cleaned and polished. His sword hung from a hook on the wall.
Silverdun dressed slowly and looked himself over in a mirror of perfectly smooth glass. Despite the purpling knot on his temple, he was still roguishly handsome, in his way. He'd been even more handsome, once. A length of ribbon had been hung from the mirror frame, and Silverdun tied his hair back with it.
Only then did he realize that he was starving-he hadn't eaten since the bowl of fish chowder he'd choked down on the dock yesterday morning. When he bent to pull his boots on, the throbbing in his skull had already dwindled a bit.
"Let's get trained then," he said. "Time to become a spy."
The door was locked.
He tried it several times, shaking the latch hard, but the door was heavy and the lock solid; it refused to budge.
He pounded on it and called out. "Ilian? Care to let the new trainee out for a bit of food?" There was no answer. He knelt down and peered through the keyhole; only the bare stone of the passageway's far wall was visible.
He pounded harder. "Jedron? Is this another test? Going without breakfast?" The shouting made his head ache.
The window was small; too small to climb out of, but at least it opened, rotating out with a tiny brass crank. Silverdun cranked it all the way open and stuck his head out. The salt breeze was bracing.
Silverdun's room was on the side of the tower opposite the courtyard. The wall here practically jutted out directly from the turgid water. Only a few sharp rocks and a narrow hint of a path separated the tower from the sea.
"Auberon's balls," said Silverdun. He sat down heavily on the mattress. Here was yet another cell.
At least this one had a soft bed for a change.
Perrin is nestled in his mother's lap, her arms wrapped around him against the sudden evening chill. They are on the veranda overlooking the south lawns. Beyond the row of peach trees, a group of men from the village are repairing the low wall that surrounds the manor. Perrin likes walking along that wall; he can go the entire length of it, and even once made it all the way around the giant rectangle without falling off.
Mother leans in and kisses the top of his head, inhales. "Your hair smells like sunlight," she says.
lana comes to speak to Mother. She's one of the servants, and is always kind to Perrin. "Lady," she says, curtseying. "A moment, if I may." She nods meaningfully at Perrin.
"It's all right," says Mother. "Go ahead."
lana doesn't seem to approve, but she goes on anyway, and suddenly she no longer acts like a servant. "I've decided that you will lead prayers tomorrow morning, so be ready."
"Oh," says Mother. Perrin turns in his mother's arms
to look at her face. lana has just spoken to Mother as if she were the servant, and lana her mistress! But Mother is smiling. "I am honored, Mother."
Why is Mother calling lana Mother? Perrin is confounded.
"I trust your judgment, Daughter," says lana. "If you believe the boy is ready ..."
"I believe it."
"He may not attend until his tenth birthday, you know."
"That is only two years from now."
lana smiles. "It is a good thing. For him to be brought up in Aba's light. But we must be careful."
"Yes, Mother."
lana curtseys, and she is a servant again.
When she is gone, Perrin asks, "Is lana really your mother?"
"No, silly. Grandmama is my mother. lana is my teacher in the Church."
"Aba," says Perrin. He knows about Aba. "Aba is a god," he says.
"Aba is God beyond gods," says mother. "He is first among kings."
Perrin is confused again. "I thought Uvenchaud was the first king."
Mother laughs. "Uvenchaud was the first king of Faerie, yes," she says, "but he was not a god."
"We are descended from Uvenchaud."
"Your father likes to say that, yes. But that was many thousands of years ago. I think at this point in history, more Fae are descended from Uvenchaud than not."
Perrin thinks about this. He points down to the villagers working at the wall. "Mother, are they descended from Uvenchaud too?"
"So many questions you have!" scolds Mother, smiling.
"Are they?"
Mother makes a funny face. "I suppose."
"Then aren't they noblemen as well?"
Mother laughs again, this time out loud. He loves the sound of her laughter. "Yes, I suppose they are."
"Then why don't they live in a manor like we do?"
Mother's smile fades. She looks at Silverdun. "Being noble has nothing to do with living in a manor, Perrin. That is the world's way, not the true way."
"Are you an Arcadian then?"
"Yes I am."
"Will I be an Arcadian too?"
"When you are older, you will go off to school in the city and you will learn many things, and then you will decide what sort of man you want to be."
Perrin doesn't really know what she means. "Can I go with you to the prayers? I want to hear you read them. Please?"
Now mother becomes very serious. "No you may not, and you mustn't ask again. And Perrin," she says, almost in a whisper, "you are never to speak of Aba, or of my conversations with lana, or of our prayers to anyone. Do you understand?"
"Even Father?"
"Especially Father."
"But why?"
"Your father and I agree on most things," says Mother. "But on one very important subject we have a fundamental difference." She looks so sad when she says this, and Perrin hugs her tight.
"Can't you compromise?" says Perrin. "You always say if I have a disagreement with another child I should compromise."
"In some matters there is no compromising."
Perrin feels a tightness in his stomach. "Do you want to watch me go all the way around the wall?"
"Of course I do," says Mother, and her smile returns. She stands him up and brushes his hair with her fingers. "You're getting so very big."
"Make sure you watch," Perrin says.
"Come here," says Mother. She hugs him, puts her face against the top of his head, and inhales. "My sunlight."
He turns to run off, but Mother catches his collar. "Remember what I told you. It's very important, and I must know that I can trust you."
"I promise," he says.
As he's running down the south lawn, she calls out, "Don't disturb the noblemen fixing that wall!"
"I won't!" he shouts back.
He makes it almost all the way around, but falls by the back gate, scraping his knee. He cries, and Mother comes and scoops him up, carries him into the house, and there is warm supper and music and play and the softness of sleep.
Silverdun sat up; at some point he'd drifted off to sleep again, but now hunger roused him. The door was still locked, and pounding on it still produced no response from Than or Master Jedron.
This was ridiculous; the mental equivalent of the paperweight to the head. A tactic meant to do what? Unnerve him? Test his patience? Annoy him? If so, it was succeeding admirably.
Clearly Jedron had no intention of allowing him out of the room, so it was going to be up to Silverdun to escape. Surely Everess and the odd, brooding Paet hadn't gone to all this trouble only to have Silverdun starve to death in a tower room like a doomed princess in a tale.
He began with the door. The bands around the wood and the lock were of iron plated in silver. Silverdun's attempts to use Elements or Motion against the door only succeeded in worsening his headache. Several painful shoves with his shoulders proved that it couldn't be forced, and he nicked the blade of his rapier trying amateurishly to pick the lock. If he'd had a bit of wire he might have tried picking the lock, although he wouldn't have had any idea how to do that given all the wire in the world.
"Damn you, Jedron!" Silverdun shouted, punching the door and immediately regretting it.
Breathe. Think. Be calm. Losing his temper wasn't going to accomplish anything. And if Jedron was watching him through a peephole or with clairvoyance, Silverdun felt sure that his anger would only give the old man pleasure. Clearly no one was coming to help him. He couldn't force the door. The window was of no use. He certainly couldn't spellcraft his way through the stone of the walls or the ceiling.
There must be something in the room that might help him. If nothing else, that stray bit of wire for him to practice his lock-picking skills with. He knelt and looked under the bed, finding nothing. He opened the drawers of the small bureau and felt around inside them, then pulled each drawer out and inspected it top and bottom. He pulled the bureau out from the wall and felt the back. He tipped it over and examined its bottom. Nothing. He took the mirror from the wall and found that it was indeed hung on its hook by a length of wire, but after a moment's experimentation it became clear that the stuff was far too flimsy to be of any use at lock picking. The bed frame was of wood, fitted with pegs, not nails.
After several minutes, Silverdun had been over every solid item in the small room and found nothing that might help him in any way. All that was left were the pillow and the mattress. Angrily, Silverdun stabbed at the pillow with the tip of his sword, sending goose down flying. The sight of the feathers floating aimlessly to the floor incensed Silverdun for some reason he could not explain, and he began to hack furiously at the mattress with the edge of his blade, sending clouds of down into the air. Again and again he struck at it, ignoring the pain in his skull.
He'd nearly shredded the entire mattress when he both heard and felt his sword strike metal. There, in the midst of the now-ruined mattress, was a silver key. It had been hidden in the mattress. Silverdun snatched it up and put it in the lock. It fit perfectly.
Master Jedron and Than were standing in the hallway. Jedron was smirking.
"Took you long enough," he said.
"And what, pray tell, was the point of that exercise?" Silverdun barked. "To teach me how to disarm bedclothes?"
"No," said Jedron. "It's to teach you to stop waiting around for other people to tell you what to do and think for yourself for a change."
Jedron peered into Silverdun's room. A layer of goose down covered the floor. "I hope you don't mind sleeping on wood slats," he said, smiling. "Because that's the only mattress you're getting."
-MaTula,''The Secret City"
imha awoke in his tiny chamber freezing, with the same pit of dread lodged in his stomach that had been there for weeks. Despite the chill, his chest and arms were covered in perspiration. Every day now he awoke feeling the same way. The cold, the unease, the sweat. Timha dressed quickly, pulling on his robes and a long cloak that did something to keep the chill out, but the robes absorbed the sweat and left him feeling a
bit slimy.
It was always cold in the city. Always cold, always gray. No matter where Timha went, the wind always seemed to find its way at him, invading his robes, making him shiver anew, a hundred times a day. Even the fires in the common rooms seemed to burn colder, with a sickly blue aura around them. Timha couldn't remember the last time he'd felt warm.
He left his chamber, taking care not to look out the windows that he passed in the hall on the way to the stair. He kept his eyes on the floor, concentrating on the millennia-old patterns in the tiles, faded and cracked, but still clearly visible; a vision of an earlier era. Timha and his colleagues were led to believe that the city had been built even before the Rauane Envedun-e, the Age of Purest Silver, when magic filled the world like sunlight. Well, it was certainly old. It needn't be that old in order to impress Timha.
Timha made it to the staircase without glancing out a single window. It was strange how they attracted the eye, despite the deep unpleasantness that looking outside engendered. It was the sky. Timha did not need to see the sky today. Not today when the dread was so bad that it felt as though his insides were liquefying.
All night the intricate dance of the Project paraded before him in dreams. He could not escape those motions; the precision and complexity of them consumed his waking hours and his sleeping ones as well now. Not that he slept much, or well.
Timha was still seeing those motions when he emerged in the dining hall, glowering at the other journeyers and their apprentices. They seemed at ease, restful, even content as they sat lingering over their breakfasts before the stoves that were never quite hot enough. Well, why shouldn't they be content? Each had his or her own little bit of the overall structure of the Project to contend with, and it was challenging, rewarding work for them. They knew that their presence here meant that they were the best and most respected thaumaturges in the empire, long may it sail. They knew that when their work here was done they would retire, wealthy and respected, to villas on the fore moorings of the fairest cities, perhaps even the new City of Mab itself.
What they did not know was the thing that made Timha sweat at night, that made him lightheaded and anxious nearly every moment of the day. They were spared this knowledge because it would do no good for any of them to know.
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