“You are fixed on the idea of truth, but is that what everyone wants? Think about it. How much religion is about a sense of security rather than truth? How many of our people grovel before a stick or lump of metal that’s been shaped a bit, or some invented deity? In every sense, these are created gods, even down to their supposed instructions and blessings. If you were able to point people to a real god, I suspect a lot of them would prefer their own creations – easier to control, less likely to make demands. No, Osric. Truth is seldom the best thing for keeping masses content. There are deeper, more important considerations than truthfulness when making governance decisions of this kind.”
“In that, I must differ from you,” Osric replied, “And so would your father.” This resulted in several pairs of round eyes.
The humour had now completely left Burkhart’s features. The expression that remained was full of shadows. He did not look at Osric and instead turned to the group. “I shall have to make some announcement to allay concerns, else we’ll have a week of panic, looting and slothfulness. Let us resume tomorrow.”
Pages were collected and maps rolled up as the men gathered their things and began to head for the door. Aedan saw Osric leave and was about to follow him when the prince stepped in his way.
“I’d like you and your friends to wait behind,” Burkhart said.
Aedan paled. His fears rushed back. In the books he had read, it always started with being asked to remain behind.
When the room had emptied, the prince spoke with a voice that held none of its earlier cheerfulness. “Before you leave,” he said, “Ganavant, the first councillor, my right hand man, would like to speak with you.” As he turned to go, his soft cheeks attempted a parting smile, but his eyes avoided theirs.
Ganavant lumbered forward. He was not the tallest of men, yet he carried an impression of bewildering largeness – thick limbs, belly like a wheat sack, flabby neck, and swollen head with huge, bulging eyes. His stare was heavy and direct, and he wore no smile. Aedan remembered him now – the rude and strangely disturbing man from the meeting at the academy. This councillor had made his presence felt during the recent meeting too. Those unsettling eyes had slid from one person to the next, never vacant, always calculating.
He addressed them now in a voice that had a dark, flabby resonance.
“As you may have guessed,” he began, “walking out of here after what you have seen on the table today is not a right you can claim. I have made some arrangements. Jorla awaits us.”
Peashot mouthed the word “Who?” to which four pairs of shoulders were raised. Aedan was worried now. The prince, he thought, might not be capable of brutal measures, but this gurgling bullfrog of a councillor was something else.
They made their way down one level, then took a corridor that led them past a series of small galleries and halls. In one of them, Aedan thought he glimpsed the girls from their field surgery class, the young Queen’s Envoys, seated at a long table bedecked with silver cutlery, fine crystal, and strange foods that were not immediately recognisable.
“Was that a bath of seaweed on the counter?” Peashot whispered.
“Silence!” Ganavant bawled in his deep chesty voice.
They reached a stairway and descended several flights until a service door discharged them into a large courtyard. The two guards saluted the councillor who made no response. Ganavant led the way across polished flagstones to a plain, squat building where sentries scurried to unlock a heavy gate. Inside, the room was bare except for a dark flight of stairs descending into the ground.
Aedan held his breath and Peashot lifted his shirt over his nose. The smell of putrefaction and filth was thick enough to make them cough, and it grew worse as they began to descend. At the third landing Ganavant lifted a torch from an iron ring and walked ahead of them down a low corridor that became more putrid with each step. Defiant squeaks and the patter of unseen paws filled the air while little bodies brushed and tails slithered across the boys’ ankles. Lorrimer seemed to be going wild as he frantically dodged and kicked out into the darting, nipping shadows. For once, Aedan was relieved to be wearing shoes.
He noticed that low doors were passing by and started hearing faint moans in response to the group’s footfall.
The dungeons – they were in the royal dungeons!
Every horror story of wrongful imprisonment and slow death came back to him as they walked further into the darkness. With every step his dread increased, and he tried to ready his mind for a desperate escape. Ganavant was not going to trick him into a cell while standing at the entrance.
They stopped before a wooden door stained by centuries of dank air and slow rot. Ganavant pushed it open and led them inside where he held his torch against a larger one mounted on the wall. The light was not generous, nor clean. The flames shed an unwholesome red glare as they bobbed and danced with demented ecstasy.
Aedan hovered at the entrance before following the others in. As the room lit up, he felt his legs weaken. He turned to the door just in time to see it slam.
“Planning on leaving so soon?” said Ganavant. “You have yet to meet your host. Boys meet Jorla.”
What was left of Jorla filled several buckets, covered some of the floor, and sagged from a number of hooks and spikes. When Aedan looked back at Ganavant, it was with horror.
“Jorla,” the councillor continued without emotion, “was entrusted with secrets that had the potential to endanger our entire city. He betrayed us. For the safety of all, it was necessary that he reveal the extent of his betrayal. The only way to ensure he was holding nothing back was through torture. His remains will not be buried but fed to pigs. Such is the punishment for high treason.” He turned his bulging eyes on them. “Do I need to harbour any concern that you might leak what you have been shown?”
The assurances of silence could not have been more earnest.
“You are never to speak of these plans to anyone but the members of the war council. You do not even speak amongst yourselves, for you can be overheard. And remember that anyone you tell will be subject to the same fate. Do you apprehend your position?”
Five trembling voices answered that they did indeed.
Ganavant led them back through the passage, up the stairs and out into daylight.
A large unit of soldiers waited outside. Ganavant nodded to the captain and left without another word.
The boys walked between the soldiers in a kind of stupor as they were led around the side of the palace. They had to traverse the gardens to reach the gate. On the way, they were spotted by a group of women dressed with all the magnificence of royal taste. A strikingly tall and graceful woman stepped away from the group. As she approached, there was more than one gasp.
“It’s her,” Vayle whispered. “It’s Princess Allisian!”
Five young hearts almost leapt from their moorings as she smiled and beckoned them to approach. Unlike her elder brother, she was not afraid to wear the garments of royalty – she stood wrapped in deep blue fabrics, layered and delicate as the wings of a giant butterfly, and crowning her dark locks was a circlet of gold.
When they reached her, she knelt down to speak to them. They bowed, this time without any confusion.
“I am Allisian,” she said “and you must be the exceptional young apprentices I have heard so much about?”
“We are apprentices,” Hadley said, when it appeared she was waiting for an answer, “but I’m not sure we are exceptional. We were just asked here to …” He froze. Aedan looked at him with horror as Ganavant’s words and the images from the dungeon hung before them again.
“Yes?”
“Nothing, Your Highness. We are just apprentices – that’s all.”
Her brows knitted, as if she were slightly hurt, and she studied Hadley with thoughtful blue eyes that Aedan suddenly realised could be spellbinding. He fixed his gaze on the floor.
“I know you were at the war council,” she said. “You are not required to keep secrets
from me. Surely you know that? Won’t you tell me one of your ideas – ideas so interesting that they have caused apprentices to be brought to the palace?”
Heads dropped, toes squirmed within shoes, Lorrimer tugged at his ear.
“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” Hadley said at last. “We promised that we would not talk about those things to anyone but the war council.”
“You can’t possibly think that I was excluded from that circle. Come now. What I ask is not unreasonable. Would you offend me?”
The boys writhed. Aedan wondered how annoyed Hadley was that he had been left to do the talking.
“We don’t want to offend you, Highness, but we would be sent to the dungeon if we were to mention those things, even to each other. I’m sorry.”
“Look at me, all of you,” she said, and now her voice held a note that transformed the butterfly into something more like a dragonfly. “Is that your final answer?”
Each of the boys nodded and apologised.
She pouted, and then smiled. “I see you are boys of rigid principles. Very well, I’ll not be offended. In fact, I think I like you the better for it. Let us be friends.”
Aedan wasn’t really sure if it was a question or an instruction. Apparently the others were equally uncertain. Not knowing what to do with it, they said nothing and looked embarrassed.
“What is your name?” she asked, rising to her full height and addressing the only boy now on her level.
“Lo – Lorrimer, Ma’am – Miss – Your Highness, sorry.”
She smiled and Lorrimer blushed, fidgeted again with his ear and managed to show a few teeth through a misshapen, quivering grin.
“Highness is unfortunately a good description of me,” she said. “I am unhappily taller than most of the men in this city, but I’m glad to see that you will probably overtake me. Lorrimer, you shall have to learn to dance!”
With a wink, she turned and left, a butterfly again, gliding back over the lawn to the other ladies, while Peashot and Hadley whispered a few envious taunts at the full-blushing Lorrimer.
Aedan thought he saw her making a sign to the captain of the guard. Most of the soldiers turned and left. Only two remained to escort them back to the academy. He understood with a horrible chill that they had just been tested, and that the large group of soldiers had been waiting to carry them into detainment. All was not as it seemed at this palace. He was only too eager to leave.
He began to wonder about Prince Burkhart – whether his first impression had been entirely accurate. The prince had shown them nothing but warmth and laughter, but it must have been by his instruction that Ganavant had threatened them and Allisian had tested them. Apparently, the prince was a man who preferred to be seen as a cheery leader spilling sunlight while having other hands do his darker work. His argument with Osric came back to Aedan’s mind. He remembered the prince’s lack of respect for truth, and it began to seem a far more worrying thing than it had at the time.
He decided to keep the thoughts to himself. Revealing them would prove dangerous. And there was something else on his mind.
As he lay awake, long into the night, he still shook beneath the remembered power of the storm.
The others had heard only thunder, but Aedan had heard more – a voice, and it had spoken. Deep as the shuddering growl of a waterfall, yet clearer than the ring of crystal – the voice had spoken his name.
The days were growing warmer. Changing seasons did nothing to dim the memory of the storm, but as the weeks passed, Aedan began to wonder if he had truly heard a voice or if his imagination, awakened by the impossible sights, had lent a hand. Yet, when he drifted towards scepticism, there was a strange discomfort, a whisper at the back of his thoughts that he could not entirely hush. It insisted that not only had the voice been real, but that he would hear it again – and it caused his chest to hammer out the rhythm of emotions he couldn’t even begin to understand.
Aedan went as often as he could to see his mother who was looking more settled and had begun assisting at a nearby scrivener’s office. She was always delighted and proud to see her growing son. Harriet compensated for that by being even more bull-headed and domineering than before. She had given birth, and her young child did not seem to have tired her or diminished her enthusiasm for interfering in Aedan’s life.
There was still no news of Clauman. Aedan’s doubts about his father’s character refused to wane. It was those doubts that held him fast whenever he considered making enquiries. He decided it would be safest to wait for news, though he hoped it would not be too long a wait.
On his free days, he would often find himself wandering alone in a forest or sitting atop a windy hill. Sometimes he waited on a plain while heavy clouds drove in from the west and the old familiar song of the rainbird filled the air with anticipation and his heart with memories of the Mistyvales.
First, the wind would rumble in the distance like an approaching river, then he would see grass bend, pressed by a great invisible hand. The dull rumble would rise in pitch to a swishing, lashing exultation, causing stalks to lie flat against the ground while the tougher branches of shrubs held themselves up and shrieked their defiance in the gusts. Then the first drops, cold and heavy, would plummet from the sky and burst on the ground. Aedan could not have held the smile in if he’d tried. He would pull his oilskin over his head and let the deluge press down and wash over him until the drops spent themselves, thinned, resolved into a fine haze and painted a rainbow across a dripping sky.
On these solitary outings, he always carried the leather case with the design of the oak sapling and the toadstool, and though he often took it out and stared at it, he couldn’t muster the courage to look inside.
Often, he turned towards the west, towards Lekrau, and reminded himself of his purpose. Yet there were moments when he considered the enormity of what opposed him, when he wondered if he was not being completely unrealistic, and he wondered – even if he could bring justice to Lekrau, would it truly bring him peace?
But he dreaded that lost feeling of purposeless existence. Any purpose, he thought, was better than none, and what better, more noble purpose could he possibly find than – as Osric had put it – felling the oppressor? To this end, Aedan trained harder than any of them. When the others moaned about a particularly strenuous challenge, he saw it as an opportunity to increase his strength. And increase it he did. His injuries, while they still gave him a little stiffness after a heavy day, no longer held him back. Often he would be the first to complete the courses Dun and Wildemar set. If any kind of woodsmanship was involved, none of the others were even close.
The boys now jogged regularly to the tree-mantled hills and exercised the various ranging skills they were learning. Using ropes for safety, they climbed many of the rocky faces, scaled the city walls, and traversed sections of forest without touching the ground. In good weather they swam across the dam once a week, in bad weather twice. The daily routine had grown more demanding, but they now managed it, if not quite effortlessly, at least without that cloying exhaustion. Even those who had additional literacy classes were beginning to get a hold on things.
The sessions with Dun always included duels as individuals, in pairs, and in groups. Sometimes they fought with weapons but often without. Dun taught them many ways to defeat opponents using crafty, sudden movements, and always using whatever the environment offered. At first he made them fight at half speed to nurture the habit of thinking. Repeatedly, he would stop a fight and ask why someone had not swung the rope lying at his feet, kicked the sand in which he stood, or pushed over the line of barrels instead of treating them with timid respect. “Think boys, think! I cannot do it for you.”
They began to move more quickly, to hit harder and with fluid ease, and above all, to think. Aedan’s imaginative love of strategy was finding an interesting outlet. Since his humiliation during the first challenge, he had never again engaged in any form of combat without thinking it through, and he was finding that he
could not only match the others, but better them. He came up with the strangest ideas and seemed to draw them from some inexhaustible supply.
Once, when facing Warton with blunted training spear and shield, he slipped off his boots, drawing odd looks, then lobbed his spear high into the air so that it arced just beneath the ceiling and fell towards his opponent. Warton followed the trajectory, along with everyone else, snorted at the stupidity of the decision and stepped forward, allowing the spear to drop behind him. He watched it clatter to the floor and looked around just in time to catch Aedan’s shoulder full in the chest. Bare feet had enabled a soundless charge while everyone was looking at the ceiling. Warton was rammed and borne to ground.
The tricks were never repeated, and they worked more often than not.
Hadley was the strongest and best balanced, Peashot the slipperiest. Second to Aedan, Peashot was the one everyone most dreaded fighting. Malik often fought dirty, ignoring the limits that had been imposed. Many of the boys let it pass, too intimidated to object, but nobody in Aedan’s dorm cared a whit for Malik’s high standing. They took great pleasure repaying each dirty blow with another until he reined himself in.
One morning, Dun told them of a regiment that had escaped an enemy prison without tools or weapons, and been unable to survive the journey home. He vowed he would allow no such incompetence within the ranks of marshals, so the boys began learning how to make tools and weapons from what their garments and nature provided. They began with a class in which they used sharp rocks to cut slings from the material of their shirts, though for the exercise they didn’t actually use their own shirts – scrap cloth was provided.
They practiced with their slings and with better-made leather versions until they were able to hit a rabbit-sized target at twenty paces with reasonable consistency. Some who had not used slings before, proved dangerous at first. Mistiming their releases, they launched stones in any and every direction, even backwards. There was more than one injury before the skill was mastered.
Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) Page 32