Usurper

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Usurper Page 8

by David Waine


  “Then I will send to Brond…” began his master. The physician shook his head again.

  “As you will it, sir,” he continued, “but unless there have been some very recent developments about which I have not been informed, which I doubt, the Brond physician will be as much in the dark as I am. In any case, by the time he arrived here, I fear it would be too late for him to affect the outcome.

  Count Amerish’s face fell and Dorcan stared at his boots.

  “You mean it is hopeless?”

  The physician took a long, slow breath before replying. “He is bleeding freely from the bowel, sir, and from his mouth. There is no sign of any wound on his body so the bleeding is internal, where I cannot get at it to stifle the cause. I have managed to slow the rate of flow but I have failed to caulk it completely.”

  “Then there is no hope?”

  “As his blood seeps away, the pressure reduces and it may be possible to stem the flow further, perhaps even to stop it. I fear, though, that by then he will have lost so much that the outcome will be irreversible.”

  The count’s own blood seemed to have drained from his face. “You have no knowledge of this strange malady?”

  “None, sir. It is as if he is being torn apart by a thousand knives in his stomach.”

  *

  Day and night ceased to exist separately for Simack. His failing hours consisted of horror-ridden anguish, punctuated by blessed, but brief, relapses into oblivion where his dreams, at least, offered respite from the constant bloody vomit, flecked with lumps, which marked his waking periods. That and the look on the face of the girl, who spooned broth into his mouth whenever his eyelids flickered open, only for most of it to trickle out again. Her patience was endless, her beauty matchless, her kindness bottomless. He could feel his insides being slowly carved asunder by a growing, needle-sharp presence within his gut. Every day it grew bigger and sharper, gouging his vitals, slicing away yet more of his living flesh from within, releasing a further crimson flood through his mouth and leaving shreds of himself stuck to his teeth. Every day he sank lower.

  Avalind’s heart went out to Simack. Not for him would the minstrels sing in years to come. She knew that Count Amerish or Dorcan — or her father or Soth — would happily face death in battle, where the killing blow would be delivered with honour and their fame would live on in legend. Simack's fate went beyond nightmares. To be sucked beyond recall, to collapse from within, to endure this slow, ignominious, humiliating death engendered only horror and disgust. No legend would celebrate his exploits, no song would immortalise him.

  “I cannot understand how he has persevered thus far,” the physician confessed to Count Amerish and Avalind on the evening of the fifth day. “With the constitution he had, I would have expected him to succumb before now.”

  “He is a Vorst,” returned the count with a wavering note of paternal pride. “Even when the cause is without hope, he will strive to the end.”

  “I so admire his courage,” confirmed Avalind. “There are times when I am spooning broth into his mouth, he looks at me and I think he knows me.”

  “You have been a wonderful comfort to him, said Vorst softly.

  “I am nothing,” she replied humbly, “whatever I can do to help, I will do willingly. What he really needs is those he loves about him. When will Callin be here?”

  “With luck, tomorrow,” he said gravely. Turning to the doctor, he asked, “Will he last that long?”

  The doctor spread his hands. “Who can tell? As I say, I am amazed that he has lasted as long as he has. Certainly, sir, he may survive that long. We are now exploring the unknown, learning the characteristics of this mysterious malady as we go along. I note everything meticulously, of course, but I will only be able to catalogue its entire progress when it has run full term.”

  “There is no hope of a recovery then?” asked the newly arrived Dorcan grimly.

  “None sir. We must speak of ‘when’, not ‘if’.”

  Dorcan’s face shut like a clam. It had been all he could think of to say.

  “If you will excuse me, My Lord, I must return to my patient.”

  Count Vorst nodded wearily and the doctor withdrew. Dorcan stood, undecided, for a moment, and then he also stumped off in the direction of his bedchamber. The count and the princess watched them both go. A slow silence built between them for several moments before Vorst cleared his throat nervously.

  “Your Highness…” he began.

  “You don’t need to call me that here,” she smiled softly. “I am your guest.”

  “What shall I call you?” he asked.

  “Is there anything wrong with Avalind?”

  “Would you have me call you that at court?”

  “You probably wouldn’t be allowed to at court. Here, however, you are master and my host. I must remember that I have been sent here to remind me that I behaved badly, and must take my chastisement like a lady.”

  “You freed that brigand when others would hang him.”

  “Whatever Cabral was guilty of, he did not deserve to hang for it. In my place you would have done the same.”

  Vorst’s face clouded. “Had I as true a feeling for natural justice as you have, I am sure that I would have felt as you did. When you spend your life dealing out judgements, sorting the misconceptions from the lies and fitting the punishment to the crime, you begin to deal with compromises, and there should be no such thing where justice is concerned.”

  “You would not have allowed Cabral to die.”

  “Perhaps not,” he smiled grimly, “I hope not.”

  She smiled openly now and slipped her small hand inside his gnarled one.

  “There is something else I wanted to mention,” he added. “God has seen fit to honour me with three fine sons — at least I still have three for the moment…”

  “Simack will always be your son,” she interjected earnestly.

  “Of course, of course. Forgive me. An old man’s sentimentality.” He gathered himself again, unused to speaking in such terms. “Three sons, but no daughter. I prayed for one, but sons it was. Now that there is no longer a countess, sons it will remain.”

  “Dorcan or Callin may yet give you a granddaughter.”

  “I hope so. To have a girl around the castle again would bring new life to it. The place has grown grim and sullen without the softening influence of a feminine hand. You have reminded me of that, Avalind.”

  “I!” she said, surprised, “How?”

  “You do not realise it because it is so much a natural part of yourself that you do it without thinking. You have filled Nassinor with flowers and warmth; the sound of your laughter has lifted spirits cruelly thrown down. For the past month it has almost been as if I did have a daughter after all. Certainly no one could have done more than you since Simack was struck down.”

  This was no more than the truth. Avalind had hardly slept for four nights. Between nursing the dying Simack, even to the most menial level of changing him and his sodden sheets, and buoying the downcast spirits of the invalid’s brother and father, she had undertaken the day to day running of the castle. Servants and guards now reported to her. It was a tired Avalind that he talked with now, although she showed little outward sign of it. She had maintained her alertness by snatching whatever moments of slumber she could. Time for a proper sleep when this is over, she told herself.

  “I would only like to say,” he concluded, “that if God had blessed me with a daughter, my greatest wish would be that she would be like you.”

  A tear glistened in the corner of her eye. “No man has ever treated me more civilly,” she replied, “and if I may be permitted to make just one observation. Had God granted you a daughter, no girl could ever have asked for a better father.” She laughed. “I can’t continue calling you, ‘My Lord of Vorst’ after that!”

  “What would you call me?”

  She thought for a moment. “Uncle Vorst. You are my father’s cousin after all.”

&nbs
p; “Then Uncle Vorst and Avalind it is,” he replied, smiling truly for the first time in days. “There will always be a welcome for you within the walls of Nassinor.”

  *

  “There it is,” said Callin with discernible trepidation in his voice as the grim citadel appeared distantly round the bend in the road, black against the darkened mass of the hillside. The two men at arms whom Rhomic had insisted on sending to accompany him, nodded dispassionately. Neither had ever been to Nassinor before but both were familiar with stories about the place. Not that its reputation was in any way unsavoury, just that the Vorsts traditionally favoured the hard way of doing anything. Neither looked forward to his stay. Both erroneously believed that they would live on bread and water and sleep on bare boards in draughty, unglazed rooms because of Count Amerish’s insistence that a Spartan lifestyle was good for the soul.

  Brond at such an hour would have had many, many lights blazing, evidence of the constant activity that never quite left the capital. Nassinor had few, although more than Callin remembered. He noticed particularly that all the windows in the dormitory wing were lit.

  “Everybody still up,” he thought, “it isn’t over.”

  Dorcan met him at the head of the main staircase.

  “Am I too late?” Callin asked, breathlessly.

  “No, thank God, but it’s a close-run thing. This way.”

  Figures gradually separated out from the pervading gloom and revealed themselves as his father, Avalind — bending over the patient with a spoon in her hand — and Doctor Kraan, who appeared to be taking what little was left of Simack’s pulse.

  Simack himself lay flat out on the bed. He looked dead already. His face was grey, with sunken, black shadows. He had never possessed much hair, but even that was thinned and stuck lankly to the clammy skin, itself seemingly no longer firmly attached to the skeleton beneath. A steady dribble of broth, mixed with blood trickled from his mouth.

  “Callin is here,” whispered Dorcan to their father.

  Count Vorst looked round, roused from his waking nightmare, then rose and embraced his third son.

  “Thank God you arrived in time.” Turning to his eldest, he shook him ever so gently by the shoulder. “Simack, my son. Callin is here.”

  Simack’s sunken eyes flickered feebly open. They appeared defocused and uncontrolled, barely able to work in harness with each other. With agonising slowness they moved from person to person within the room, coming to rest at length on his youngest brother. The mouth trembled. He made an effort to rise, supported by his father and Dorcan. A trembling, bony finger shook its loose nail at Callin. A faint voice, thick with blood, bubbled one final word.

  “Callin!”

  The hand fell limply back on the bed.

  *

  Callin was in a light doze, an early autumn breeze stirring the air through his unglazed window. The hour was almost midday, but regular sleep had deserted him since his brother’s final, awful decline and he found himself nodding off unexpectedly at odd times of the day.

  He was wakened by a soft tap at the door

  “Master Vorst, are you in there?”

  Avalind! He sprang out of bed, banging his knee in the process, and fastened a loose robe about his frame.

  Avalind, unused to being kept waiting, was already turning away when the door opened. He stepped out into the passage, knotting the belt around his waist.

  “Forgive me, Your Highness, I was asleep.”

  She smiled. “At this hour?”

  He shrugged haplessly. “It’s odd, I know, but these are odd times and I felt the need of it. I did not know that I would receive visitors.”

  “Oh,” she said, slightly coldly, “I’ll come back when you are more prepared.”

  “No, please,” he cried, raising his hands, “you are most welcome. I was simply trying to explain why I took so long to answer the door.”

  The princess entered the room, a much plainer affair than his Brond apartment, and looked round at the unglazed window and the rumpled bed. “If I am not intruding?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Well, then,” she said, perching on the end of his bed, “poor Simack, I hope he has found peace now.”

  “He never enjoyed much happiness in life,” explained Callin truthfully, “his bad health always took the pleasure out of anything he did.”

  “I have been helping your father and Dorcan to organise the invitations to the funeral,” She said. “You could have helped as well, you know.” Callin had the grace to colour. “Anyway, they’ve gone out now. It’s to be in ten days. That will give the families some time in which to assemble. Your father sent them warnings it was likely before you even arrived and asked them to keep a window of time free.”

  “He did that?”

  “All right, I did it, but he would have.”

  Callin paced to his window and looked out. His room gave out onto one of the best views that Nassinor could afford. “Will you be there?”

  She nodded. “Father’s away negotiating tolls in Draal and Soth is minding the Kingdom in his absence, so I will be the royal representative. Even if that were not the case, I should still have come.”

  Callin felt humbled. An inner demon had tortured him ever since he had beheld his brother’s dying face. His quiet moments brought back vestiges of the dream he had experienced before Simack fell ill; the dream that terminated with him standing before a familiar door. It was only as that gaunt, quivering finger pointed directly at his heart, that he realised which door it was: the entrance to the workshop of Sigimond Vland, the glass maker, whose words came back to him like a hammer blow.

  Until the pane is finished, the crystals are razor sharp. They would lacerate your hand even if you only touched the surface lightly.

  Might that explain the mystery malady, which had baffled the most knowledgeable physician in the province? The thought horrified him. Why could he not remember? Had he entered into that pact with the Hag after all? Was he damned for all eternity?

  She was speaking again. “The last time we saw one another in Brond was that day when I made an exhibition of myself and wound up in exile here. I spoke unnecessarily harshly of you. I was appalled at the way you despatched that brigand and forgot that you acted purely in my interests. Will you forgive me?”

  “No apology is necessary, Your Highness, believe me. If you insist, however, with all my heart.”

  “Good,” she said happily, rising, “in that case you may do me a service as a friend.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Take me riding this afternoon.”

  *

  The sun had begun its decline to the horizon when Callin took a turn on the battlements. The pyre stood in the courtyard and they would be bringing Simack out within the hour. All day the noble families, save one, had arrived in solemn procession from near and far. Only the Dumarricks remained, typically, but even now he could see their column rounding the curve of the hill, led by the gross blob of Baron Loda. The monumental slug had cut it fine, but he would arrive at the tangle of thatched roofs that made up much of the town within ten minutes and at the castle gate soon after.

  “Here at last, is he?” Avalind’s voice at his ear betrayed her obvious distaste.

  Callin turned to her somewhat stiffly. The finery he had donned for the funeral was chafing him. “I take it you don’t like him.”

  She sniffed. “It’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”

  There was a moment’s pause.

  “I thought you were supposed to be diplomatic,” said Callin. “I know you’re royalty, but can you really afford to make an enemy of Dumarrick?”

  She smiled easily. “Oh, I won’t do that. He is a powerful ally. Be thankful that Rhomic is your liege lord, and not Loda. If he were king, the Kingdom would be a very different place.”

  “Is there nothing you can say in his favour?”

  She thought for a moment. “He is a highly intelligent man and an excellent military stra
tegist. His troops are among the best trained in the land, if the most flogged, and he keeps a prodigiously fine table. You only need to look at his waistline to determine that.”

  Callin smiled and nodded. The procession was now approaching the gate, where Count Amerish waited gravely.

  “He has three children, you know,” she went on, “a son and two daughters.”

  “I know about the son. I saw him at the hunt.”

  She nodded. “Bram. He’s a brainless oaf. He inherited his father’s appearance and his mother’s intelligence. It is not an ideal combination and does not bode well for Yelkin Province when he inherits it. I haven’t met either of the girls yet. They are called Lissian and Xunin. By all accounts, Lissian is as gross as he is, and as devious. Xunin, however, is very different, so they say. Apparently she is slender and beautiful — albeit given to terrible fits of jealousy. Apart from the last, characteristics one does not expect to see in a Dumarrick.”

  The procession had now stopped and Baron Loda dismounted to embrace Count Amerish solemnly.

  The sun dipped finally below the horizon, flaming the sky. Torches were lit in the courtyard and a respectful hush fell on the crowd of commoners behind the barrier. Trumpets, draped in black, blared from the topmost tower as the noble procession issued from the keep. In the lead strode Count Amerish, flanked by his two remaining sons. Behind them, head bowed, came Avalind, alone. She was followed by Baron Loda and his lumpy son, Bram, and a line of lesser nobles. Finally, after a pause of nearly half a minute while the guests took up their designated positions around the pyre, the body of Simack was brought forth on its bier, born by four men at arms. So reduced was he from his already meagre proportions, that they bore his weight as though it were nothing.

  A tolling bell announced another procession, this one religious. Nassinor’s archbishop walked slowly under the mighty cross, held there by his chaplain. When all had assembled, and the body had been secured on the pyre, a deep hush, punctuated only by the guttering of torches, settled on the gathered assembly.

  Count Amerish’s oration was predictable, but tearful. He spoke of his deep love for his eldest son, praising his many virtues, acute intelligence and wisdom, which had been a great support to his father. This came as a surprise to Callin, who had never thought of his eldest brother as possessing any of those qualities. He had always thought of him as an ailing, feeble creature devoid of anything worthwhile. He supposed he had never looked closely enough.

 

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