She roused herself at last and fled for the hall, to listen. Who was this man? And why did the intent stare of his horses set her blood to pounding? Her wrists prickled with the thought of magic, but she put that down to excitement. She must be levelheaded, clear-minded if she was to gather information accurately.
Her way was dark and close, between storage chambers and through back passages, until she reached the big indoor cistern that stood behind the fireplace of the great hall. This cistern heated the water for the kitchens, and its iron sides were warm against her as she slid around it, to stand between cistern and stone wall, pressed tight in the small space.
She put her ear to the wall where, with her help, mortar had long since crumbled away from between two stones. She could hear the voices in the hall clearly. The stranger was there, and the king himself, and the king’s son, Abisha.
Kiri peered through and could see Abisha’s plump, silk-clad legs stretched before the hearth. King Sardira, in black robes that seemed an extension of his black beard and locks, looked very pale and lined. Too much feasting, Gram would have said. Too much wine on the table. Or too much of the white powder they gave to the slaves and sometimes indulged in themselves, Kiri thought.
She could see the stranger, too. Was that a touch of humor in his dark eyes, in the lines around his mouth? One did not usually smile in the presence of King Sardira, and this stranger seemed to be holding back a laugh. Kiri liked his looks—but she knew better than to rely on a first glimpse. She pressed her ear to the hole, and listened.
Chapter 4
The voice of the king came clearly through the little hole in the mortar. The stone was cool and smooth against Kiri’s cheek. She could hear the ring of china as Prince Abisha poured out mithnon liquor and tea. She saw the stranger shake his head.
“No mithnon, please. Just tea.”
“You came from Thorley how long ago, Prince Tebmund?” The king had a way of speaking that always insinuated he did not believe one. So, the stranger was a prince.
“Several weeks,” Prince Tebmund said casually. “I had some errands in the more southerly continents.”
Kiri peered through the mortar hole to study him. She knew nothing about Thorley except that it was a small principality in the east of Thedria, which lay far to the south across hostile seas. Folk in this hemisphere knew little about its people. Kiri had heard they were peaceful and reputed to raise fine horses. She leaned against the stone, listening intently as Prince Tebmund and the king discussed the sale of the four horses. Oh, how could he bear to sell such horses?
“I can promise up to fifty head of trained war-horses like these, if Your Highness desires,” Prince Tebmund said. He had a quiet, clipped voice that Kiri found appealing. As if he did not care for long speeches.
King Sardira leaned back in the settee, stroked his black beard, and belched delicately. He was like a thin black bat with its wings folded neatly across its front and its black eyes missing nothing. “And what is your price, per head? I expect it will be higher for the stallions.”
“It is the same for both. Two hundred pieces of gold.” Prince Tebmund’s expression was calm, but his dark eyes held a flash of impatience—or dislike for the king.
There was a cold pause before the king spoke. Prince Abisha remained silent. Kiri could see his fat foot tapping softly.
“Two hundred for these four,” the king said. “That seems rather steep. But, of course, if they—”
“Two hundred per head,” said Prince Tebmund. His dark eyes and lean face hid a surge of anger, subtle as the passing of a breath.
This pause was colder, and lengthy. Prince Abisha came to stand before the hearth, his fat stomach not inches from Kiri. She drew back against the cistern.
“It is too much,” said Abisha. “It is out of the question. No one asks such gold for horses.”
“These are not common horses,” said Prince Tebmund.
“They are the finest horses on Tirror, as I’m sure you can see for yourselves. They will carry a man into battle with absolute absence of fear. They will not only carry him, they will rear and strike the enemy’s mounts and the enemy soldiers as well. They have struck down many an opponent and left a lifeless body. They are well worth twice what I ask. However, if you are not. . .”
Abisha moved away from the wall, and Kiri saw the king’s lifted hand, striking silence. Prince Tebmund waited politely.
“Why do you bring them to sell,” asked the king, “if they are so fine?”
“Our horses are our living, our finest commodity. We raise them and train them to sell. If you are not interested, there are others who will be. We offered first to you, King Sardira, because we felt that your court, of all the nations, would hold the best and kindest horsemen.”
That, thought Kiri, was laying it on pretty thick. Though it had been true once, when Papa was the king’s master of horse.
Prince Tebmund said, “I will be more than pleased to give you a fortnight in which your soldiers can work with these four mounts under my direction, to learn their unusual ways. I would not sell them without training men to their skills. If,” he said softly, “at the end of that time, you are not pleased with the horses and with the price, I will depart happily with the horses, and no charge made.”
Kiri strained to see the king’s face. It was set in a scowl, but there was a gleam of interest in his black eyes. A fortnight in which Sardira’s captains could learn some interesting secrets about training war-horses, and in which some of the king’s own mares might be secretly bred to the two fine stallions. Then, if Sardira didn’t buy, he would still have the benefit of a beginning to a fine new line of mounts . . . at no cost. Of course the king would accept. Sardira cared for nothing if not for expediency and self-gain.
Kiri wondered if Prince Tebmund had any idea that horses sold here would soon belong to the dark invaders.
Or perhaps Prince Tebmund didn’t care.
King Sardira played both sides. He courted the few leaders who stood valiantly against the dark enemies, and courted the dark invaders with equal favor. They came to Dacia often, seeking supplies and soldiers and whatever else the city could provide. Their flesh lust was easily pandered to in the quarters of the drugged servants and in the stadium fights between prisoners and animals. Those exhibitions sickened and terrified Kiri. The dark unliving wanted whatever new depravity the city and Sardira’s court could produce. In return, they offered Sardira flattery and the means for further power through their magic. The unliving were conquerors. They lusted to make war, to kill in battle. They would, when they saw Prince Tebmund’s horses, offer Sardira far more than two hundred gold pieces per head, to send such animals into the fighting.
They would let the horses win for them, but they would thirst to see them fight for their lives, see them injured and screaming in pain. Pain and death fed the unliving.
It was the un-men and Sardira together who had cut out her father’s tongue, to prevent the images that his voice could bring alive. Their way had been far more cruel than killing him. To silence Colewolf was to sentence him to a cold half death.
Didn’t this young prince understand the nature of the dark? Didn’t he know that Sardira traded with them? His uncaring ignorance angered Kiri.
Yet why should it? She had no reason to think he was anything more than just another friend of the dark.
Still, if he was a friend of the dark, he could have taken his horses directly to them. His coming to Sardira was just as bad, though. If he was willing to sell his fine, spirited animals to any cruel taker, even where they would be used to help the unliving, he was no better than the dark leaders. It was people like Prince Tebmund, who helped the dark for their own selfish gain, that made the battle so one-sided. She stood shaken with anger, but very aware that she must not lose control.
When Kiri slipped away from the great hall at last, it was all she could do to keep herself in hand. Her inner turmoil frightened her. To let her feelings rule her wa
s too dangerous—for herself and for the cause she served. Why had Prince Tebmund stirred such anger in her?
And the eyes of that black stallion! She could not forget them.
The next morning Kiri was late getting to her cousin Accacia’s apartments. She stopped in the servant’s scullery to heat the lemon juice and grind the minten leaves she used to wash Accacia’s hair, then fled up the six flights to her cousin’s floor. Accacia, of course, was in a temper, her brown eyes angry. Kiri supposed she had been pacing; her green satin robe swirled around her as she bore down on Kiri.
“Can’t you ever be on time? We have an important visitor in the palace, and I want to look my best—to please Abisha, of course, when he presents me. Do get on now as quickly as you can.” She flung herself into the straight satin chair and leaned her head back over the silver tub. Kiri lifted Accacia’s long chestnut hair up into the vessel and began to pour on the warm herbed lemon juice. The minten leaves made a fine lather, and soon Accacia relaxed under Kiri’s knowing fingers. The hearthfire had been built up to dry Accacia’s hair, making the room very hot.
It was an ornate room, not to Kiri’s liking. Too much gold-leaf filigree in the screens and furniture, too much crowding of satin draperies over the bed and at the windows, so one had a closed-in feeling. It was a room that couched Accacia’s beauty as a velvet-lined box would couch a jewel.
Accacia had ordered long ago that Kiri alone was to wash her hair and perform other small duties for her, but not because she liked Kiri’s company or wanted to make a more secure place for her in the palace, or because they had been raised together. Accacia’s father had been related to the king, but it was the girls’ mothers who had been sisters. Kiri carried none of the king’s blood in her veins, she thought with satisfaction. Accacia kept her to do her bidding because she did so like ordering Kiri around, as she always had since they were babies growing up together. Accacia’s mother had died at her birth. Her father had been in the king’s guard. When he died in battle, Accacia lived with Kiri’s family. She had not left the palace after Kiri’s father was maimed and sent away. She got herself engaged to Prince Abisha and promptly commandeered two floors of the west tower for her use. Her sympathy was shallow and short-lived when Kiri and Gram were turned out, to take the tiny cottage below the wall. Kiri guessed she ought to be grateful that Accacia had gotten her appointed a minor page. It was safer than trying to find work in the city, and the information Kiri gleaned in the palace was invaluable to those who mattered.
Kiri was so deep in thought as she shampooed away that she was startled and jerked a hank of hair badly when a shrill voice exploded behind her in the doorway. She turned, her ears filled with Accacia’s scolding and with the irritating voice of her cousin’s friend Roderica, daughter of the present master of horse. Two maids followed Roderica in, bearing curling irons to heat at Accacia’s hearth. The two friends liked to have their hair done together so they could gossip in private. Roderica had no maid of her own and used Accacia’s freely. The thin, angular girl shrieked and giggled as they discussed the visiting prince.
“Oh, he’s beautiful, Accacia! And young—far too young for you, of course. More nearly my age, I would think.” Roderica suffered from jealousy of Accacia, for all that they were friends. And no wonder. Accacia, with her long auburn hair and thick lashes framing golden brown eyes was, if nothing else, certainly the most beautiful girl in the palace. She would marry Prince Abisha at year’s end in a ceremony that threatened to overshadow even the terrible wars.
“And the horses . . .” Roderica was saying. “Oh, they are lovely horses, but the king haggled over the price—two hundred pieces of gold for each one. I’ve near heard of such a price. . . .” So Roderica had been listening, too. Roderica might be silly and loud sometimes, but Kiri knew there was another side to her, a puzzling one. She could never tell what Roderica’s mood would be and wondered if sometimes she used the drug cadacus, meant for the queen. Roderica spent much of her time with the sick queen and was the crippled woman’s only friend. She had been her handmaid since she was a small child and was the only person the queen would now tolerate. Kiri thought Roderica eavesdropped in order to supply the bored queen with palace gossip. Maybe she brought her news of Accacia, too, and whether she still had relations with the king.
“Why would such a handsome prince travel alone?”
Accacia asked. “Why does he not have attendants, some pretty traveling companions? And why did he travel all this way, past dozens of other kingdoms, to sell his horses?” She sighed. “What a terribly dull journey, all that water to cross.”
“He came up the Channel of Barter on a lumber barge out of north Thedria,” Roderica said. “He came this far, I heard him say, because . . . Oh, I heard them clearly, they were taking tea in the hall and—”
“And you listened from the pantry,” Accacia said, smiling.
“Yes,” Roderica said without shame. “He came this far because, he said, he thought the king would give his horses the best care.”
Accacia laughed. “No one would travel all that way for such a stupid reason.”
“But they are very special horses,” Roderica said with her typical superiority about horses, because her father was the king’s master of horse—though Roderica herself looked like a broken stick on horseback.
“Humph,” said Accacia. “They can’t be that special. He was fussing around the stable yard at all hours last night, coddling those horses.”
“You watched him?”
“I . . . was late coming in.” Accacia could see the stable yard clearly from her windows. “He was at it again this morning. Trying to make it look as if those horses are the most valuable things in Tirror—just to keep the price up, of course.”
Kiri held her tongue with effort. Accacia cared nothing for horses, except if they were flashy and could show her off to advantage. Kiri thought Accacia would find a way sooner or later to ride one of Prince Tebmund’s mounts. As for Accacia’s opinion of Prince Tebmund himself, she was no great judge of character.
Still, there was something about Prince Tebmund, strange and so unsettling that Kiri couldn’t decide what she thought.
She knew she was naturally suspicious. Hadn’t she grown up spying, purposely suspicious of everyone? Now, when she caught herself siding with Prince Tebmund despite her disapproval of him, that frightened her. It was not comfortable to feel so confused about someone, not comfortable to feel he should be a friend, or as if they had something in common. It was not safe for the cause she served.
Kiri left Accacia’s apartments deep in thought, hardly hearing her cousin’s final scolding. She went directly to the training field beyond the stables. Keeping to the shadows of the almond grove, she watched the first demonstration of the four Thedrian horses.
She was not allowed in the stables, though she went there anyway. Roderica’s father didn’t like her critical looks, for they recalled too plainly that Colewolf had had training skills when he was horsemaster that Riconder could never match. She watched Prince Tebmund demonstrate the larger of the two white mares, then one of the stallions. She watched Sardira’s sergeants botch the signals and flail as the horses spun and reared. Too soon Prince Tebmund called a halt—too soon for Kiri, for she was having a fine time. But not soon enough for the red-faced sergeants, nor, Kiri expected, soon enough for the horses, for they seemed well out of sorts with the clumsy riders. She stood in the almond grove for some time after the horses were returned to the stable and the soldiers had gone. Then she slipped away, to her palace duties.
*
The smell of boiled suppers was rising from the city. Kiri went by back ways to the scullery, where she helped with the vegetables for a while and picked up several interesting tidbits of gossip. She put together a nice meal for Gram and slipped out to tend to the old lady. It was not until the cover of night fell that she left Gram again to take news of Prince Tebmund and his horses where it could reach the few resistance leaders scat
tered across the city, and then Papa. Papa had worked with the resistance on Dacia for a while, before he went by barge across the sea to Cayub and Edosta to spy there and recruit rebel troops. Kiri guessed the dark had no idea how much a man could do even after his voice was destroyed. Papa would be very interested in Prince Tebmund and his fine war-horses. The rebels should have those horses, not the dark un-men.
Gram had asked a good many questions about the horses, her thin, angled face caught in eager lines and her blue eyes alight with interest. Kiri knew it was hard getting old, having to depend on someone else for exciting new experiences. Gram would rather have seen it all for herself.
Kiri made her way down the twisting lanes, with the stars gleaming in icy brilliance overhead. The cobbles were still warm under her feet, but the wind in from the sea was chill. Voices from the cottages drifted out, some raised in anger. Deeper into the center of the city crude music had begun. She could hear the clink of glasses and smell the sour scent of mithnon as she passed. Here she went quickly, keeping to shadow, her hand on the knife at her thigh. It would be worse later, toward midnight, when gangs began to roam the streets.
It took her almost an hour to cross the city, ever downward along the winding, dropping streets. Finally she came to the stone ruins that stood pale in the starlight, where once had risen a sanctuary of the old and happier civilization. Here, once, all travelers had been welcome. Now, few came, for the dark abhorred this place and had marked the ruins as forbidden. The un-men could not breach the magic of a sanctuary to enter it, but the folk of the city might have entered had not the dark laid a heavy spell to keep them away. Few folk would cross the spell’s sense of cold threat, even to save themselves from the dark’s mind-rotting evil. The resistance troops crossed, those few humans strong enough, determined enough to fight the dark’s powers. The power of the sanctuary helped them keep their minds free.
Animals could always cross the dark’s barrier. The speaking animals did not succumb to the wiles of the dark as did humans. They were in perfect tune with the powers of the sanctuary, taking of its strength and protection to help them battle the un-men. Un-men, undead, unliving, the names of the dark were several. Soul buzzards, Kiri thought, for they thirsted after the carrion of men’s souls.
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