by Tim Stead
Cain thought about protesting. He even thought for a moment about nodding to Tilian, and all these pretty guardsmen would fall dead from their horses, but that would be madness: satisfying, but madness.
“We will follow you,” he said.
The guard officer shook his head. “Just you, and Captain Henn, and half a dozen others. The rest of your men can camp here and await your return.”
He would have preferred to leave Tilian in charge. He had the men’s respect, many of them were in awe of his reputation, and that would have been good for discipline, but that choice had been taken from him. The others were untried.
It was a difficult choice. He had four volunteer lieutenants who had never seen a battle, all of equal seniority, now he must pick one, make him a captain, and if he was forced to undo that choice it would blight the man’s career.
“Give me a moment,” he said to the guardsman. He rode over to Sheyani, explained his problem to her, keeping his voice low so that others could not hear.
“Me,” she said. “Leave me here.”
“Not in a century,” he said. “I need you by my side in Golt. You know these people and their games. This is a royal court.”
“And you are a soldier,” she said. “Play the soldier and you will be all right.”
“No,” he insisted. “I need you.”
“Then pick Worgil. He’s quiet, but steady. The others respect him, and he won’t do anything foolish.”
He nodded. Worgil hadn’t escaped his notice, but he wasn’t the brightest of the four. Steady was a good word for Worgil. He would be a rock, and take his work seriously.
“Lieutenant Worgil,” he called, the man rode to him.
“Brevet Captain,” he said. “You’re in charge. Make camp and wait here. Defend yourself if you must, but otherwise camp here and wait.”
Worgil’s frown overrode his surprise. “Aye, colonel,” he said. “We’ll be here when you’re finished with the king.”
Cain liked the emphasis – when he was finished with the king, when it was like to be very much the other way around. “Good man,” he said, and rode back to the guardsman. He pointed at Tilian, Sheyani and three of the better dressed veterans. “With me,” he said, and turning to the guardsman. “Let us go.” He wanted to get this over with quickly, if possible, and back on the road.
The guard officer wheeled and rode towards the city, twenty of his men behind him. The others waited until Cain and his party followed, and then brought up the rear. It was an escort, but not an especially polite one. Perhaps the king’s guards did not do polite.
They rode in silence, and as they drew close Cain studied the city as a soldier does, looking for weak points, for signs of slackness and overconfidence. He saw men on the walls, men in the towers. He saw bows, the glint of spears, and knew that their approach was watched keenly by dozens of eyes. This was not a city to be attacked lightly. It was strong, stronger that Bas Erinor despite the reputation of the high city for being impregnable. The king took his safety seriously.
The gates were shut as they approached. This was another admirable thing in time of war, and it also gave Cain a chance to inspect them. These were no ordinary gates. They were the gates of the royal city, and as such they were not simple wood decorated with iron studs. They had been tiled and painted. Cain had never seen anything like it. It was a picture, a huge painting rendered with considerable skill. The painting was of a dragon, winged, vast and wreathed in fire, blocking the entrance to Golt. It was only the lack of motion, the stillness of the flames, which gave it away as a lie. The monster was green, its eyes as black as coal, mouth open, and teeth the size of a man’s forearm displayed between lips drawn back in a ferocious snarl.
“Is that what dragons really look like?” he asked Sheyani.
“A small one, perhaps, Sheshay” she said. “Nobody really knows.”
“A small one?” Cain laughed.
The gates opened, splitting about the painted dragon’s nose and opening outwards to reveal a heavy iron portcullis that was already half raised. The gates made no noise. It was odd to see them move silently. Cain had seen many gates open and close, but never without a squeak, a squeal, a curse from the men tasked with the labour. It seemed unnatural to him, ghostly.
They rode through.
Glancing back he could see archers on the gate tower looking back at him. They had arrows on the string.
The streets of Golt were not thronged with people. They were clean and paved. There was no market trash or tavern vomit to mar them. Indeed, Cain could see no sign of a tavern of any kind. The people were sparse, and though they looked at Cain and his party with interest they did not call out or stop and stare. They all seemed well dressed, wealthy, neat.
The houses were fine, too. His impression that the town was filled with palaces had been quite wrong. There was a great many towers, but they graced houses of all sizes, and most were mere decorations – skeletons from which banners fluttered against the pale blue sky. Their noise was like the applause of a distant crowd, or perhaps the frustration of a thousand caged birds.
The towers were all different heights. Cain tried to find two that were the same, but could not be certain that any were. Some were certainly larger than others, and he recognised the banner that flew at the summit of this heraldic hierarchy. It was the king’s own, a gold rectangle with a wolf and a bear clutching a shield between them, and the shield quartered with swords and lilies.
He assumed that the height of the banner in some way spoke to the seniority of the house it represented. Politics.
They came to a second gate, not painted this time, but no less solid than the first. There were more archers, more keen eyes, and another silent opening of the way. This city was a fortress.
At the third gate Cain began to suspect that the king was afraid, though it was not a thought he would have spoken aloud. To Cain, and to the great majority of Avilians, the king was a ceremonial figurehead, a man with no real power. He was there to sign documents, to give continuity to the kingdom, and to be above the squabbling of the lesser houses. But here, within the concentric layers of the city of Golt, it seemed the king had real power. Someone certainly did.
Inside the third gate they dismounted in a sunny cobbled bailey, and their mounts were led away.
“What do I call the king?” Cain asked. He kept his voice almost to a whisper so that only Sheyani could hear. She smiled.
“Lord King will do,” she said. “But you can be as generous as you like.”
“Do I bow or kneel?”
“Bow from the waist. Men kneel to gods, not other men.”
There was no time for more coaching. The guard officer approached them and told them to follow, and so they did, entering the royal palace through a door that was three times Cain’s height and thrown open to the winter breeze and the smell of the ocean. The room inside was vast. A high vaulted ceiling was supported by thick pillars, each rising a full fifty feet. Each pillar was painted to resemble something that it was not. One was a giant man, another a tree, a third a snake of mythic proportions, there was a giant arm, palm flat against the roof, a fire with smoke rising above it. It was a hall of wonders.
They walked half way across and turned left, entered a small, human sized doorway and climbed a flight of stairs. They were very work-a-day stairs, the sort you might find anywhere, and Cain suspected they were being taken in the back way.
They reached a chamber that must have been above the huge hall, and it reminded Cain of the duke’s reception room in Bas Erinor. There were comfortable chairs, deep, leather bound things that looked new and smelled of the tanner’s art. There were tables set with glasses as fine as any Cain had seen, and wine decanted and ready for anyone who should wish a draught. There was food, too, small confections that might be picked up and placed on the tongue, and gone in a bite.
There was a delicacy to the place that made Cain less than comfortable. He didn’t want to touch any of it. Tili
an did not seem to be effected in the same way. He strode to the table and poured himself a glass of wine, and then drank half of it down.
“What are we doing here, colonel?” he asked. “We have work to do.”
“We have no choice,” Cain said. “The king commands.”
“But why?” Tilian was clearly frustrated, and alarmed at having to face the king. “Why would he command us to not do what needs to be done?” He drained the glass and made to pour himself another.
“A clear head would be wise, Captain.” Cain said. Tilian put the wine back down, the mild rebuke striking home.
“What are we supposed to do?” he said.
“Bow from the waist, call him Lord King. That’s all I know.” He glanced across at Sheyani, who was smiling. “It’s all very well for you,” he told her. “Your father was a king. You understand all this.”
“I do,” she said. “But it was a mistake to bring me, Sheshay.”
“Why?” There was an edge to her voice that he didn’t like. She had perceived some danger.
“I am a Durander Mage. They will not trust me. They cannot trust me.”
“You are my wife,” Cain said. “The things you have done, surely…”
“You do not know kings, Sheshay. They do not trust easily. You they can control – enough men with swords, enough archers, and you cannot harm him. A mage is different. They do not know how to be safe.”
“That’s ridiculous. You have no cause to harm the king. You are pledged to Avilian.”
“I am pledged to you, Sheshay,” she replied, and something in her tone told him that this was her highest pledge, the only one that mattered.
“Well, I am pledged to serve the duke, and the duke the king. It is all the same.”
She shook her head, but their conversation was interrupted by the return of the guard officer with a small troop of dandified men, ostensibly soldiers.
“The king will see you,” he said. “Follow me.”
They followed, exiting the waiting room by a different door and walking down a wide corridor lined with guards. There must have been fifty of them, and not one of them moved so much as an eye as they passed. It was as though they were made of stone. They passed through another broad door, and into another ante-chamber. There were more guards here. On the far side of this room was another double door, thrown open, four men standing either side of it. Beyond this Cain could see a crowd of men dressed in unimagined finery. It was all silks and satins, garish colours, gold and jewels glittering in ostentatious competition.
The guard officer led them through the final door, and into the presence of the king.
King Sebaliol Beras, second of that name, was a man of forty or so years, average in height, average in looks, thin, but with a keen eye and an air of disdain. His hair was cut short, touched with grey at the temples, and trapped by a slender band of gold, decorated with rubies. He sat sideways on his throne, elbow resting on one ornate arm, and his face resting on his hand. His eyes fastened on Cain as soon as Cain entered the room.
The king was dressed in red and black, and more simply than his noble subjects. There was another man, dressed in black, who stood beside the throne, hands folded into the sleeves of his simple robe, hood thrown back to reveal an ancient face, lined and grey and impassive.
The guard officer bowed, and the noise of conversation in the room faded quickly.
“Lord King,” the officer said. “May I present to you Colonel Lord Cain Arbak, City Councillor of Bas Erinor, Lord of Waterhill, Knight Talon of the Berashi Order of the Dragon, Victor of Fal Verdan, and the man who held the White Road this summer past.” It was a list of titles that Cain would not have remembered. Was he still a city councillor? He supposed that he must be, though it had been many months since he had even spoken to another councillor.
He bowed from the waist, as instructed, making it a deep, almost horizontal bow.
“And also Captain Sir Tilian Henn, Knight of Avilian, Victor of Narak’s Forest, and also, I am informed, victor of Berrit Bay.”
Tilian imitated Cain’s bow almost perfectly. The king studied them, not speaking for a moment. Then he beckoned.
“Approach me, Lord Waterhill,” he said. Cain did as he was told, stopping a couple of paces short of the two low steps that fronted the dais. He did not know if it was right that he should meet the king’s gaze, but he did, thinking it a fitting thing for a soldier to do.
“May I call you Cain?” the king said.
“Of course,” Cain said, then remembered his manners. “Lord King.” There was a snigger somewhere in the crowd at his hesitation, but the king smiled.
“Your praises are sung, it seems, by every songbird in the realm, Cain. Are you worthy of it?”
“No, Lord King,” he replied. This time there was no hesitation.
“No?”
“Lord King, I am a soldier. I take orders. I give orders. Like all others I do the best that I can. There is little merit in duty when it is so common a virtue.”
The king clapped his hands. “A fine answer,” he said. “And I judge it an honest answer. You please me, Cain.” The king leaned back, his eyes drifting to the grim figure by his side. “Yet I had heard – the songs say – that Cain Arbak is a man of middle years, and that he had but one hand.”
Cain had ceased to think of himself as that older man. He had grown accustomed to his young body, his two hands. Yet he saw at once how it might look. Some of these would think that he was not Cain Arbak at all.
“We live in a time of miracles, Lord King,” he said. “The hand which the Wolf took from me he has returned. The years that I wasted in the service of money have been returned to me.”
“You walk with the Wolf, then?” the king asked.
“I do, Lord King, but what happened to me, the hand and the years, is a mystery I cannot fathom. The Wolf has not seen fit to speak to me since that day.”
“And I guess the Lady who had not been named is Sheyani Esh Baradan, Mage of Durandar, your wife.”
“I am, Lord King.” Sheyani replied although she had not been addressed directly. It was a statement of who she was, thought Cain, the boldness that came with royal blood.
There was a stirring in the overdressed crowd, whispers that quickly died away.
“You are a Halith, are you not?” the king asked. Again the whispers broke out and died away like waves on a social shore.
“It is my chosen path,” she replied.
The king inclined his head. It was not exactly a bow, but it was a clear mark of respect, and Cain was surprised. The king was acknowledging her if not as an equal, then at least as a person of high blood.
“You have your pipes with you,” the king said. “I asked my guards not to take them from you as I asked them not to take the soldier’s swords. It would be an insult, and I will not insult those who risk all for Avilian. Will you play for me?” The speech had been directed as much at the grim councillor as his side as it had been at Sheyani, but the old man did not flinch, although Cain noticed that his face grew a little more sour.
“Here, Lord King?” she asked. “Now?”
He waved a hand, a gesture that took in the whole room. “There are some here who doubt Durander magic,” he said. “And others that fear it. I am not drawn to either camp, Areshi, but I have not heard court piping for many, many years, and it would please me to hear it again.”
Cain looked around the room, and he saw uneasy faces. Some of the guards were standing a little more rigidly, hands on hilts. It was a dangerous moment, but he caught Sheyani’s eye, or she caught his. He nodded to her. “Camaraderie,” he said.
She lifted the instrument to her lips and began to play.
The tension in the room dissolved. The warmth of the music invaded them all, and suddenly they were all together, the happy subjects of a wise king, and the king’s smile broadened. It was a slow, liquid tune that Sheyani played, the same one that stilled any trouble in Cain’s inn. It plucked at their f
ellow feeling, warmed them all before the fire of unity, the charm of belonging.
She picked up the pace of the song. Cain could hear a more martial note in it. She was playing victory, the certainty of it, the strength of Avilian arms, and the might of the nation. She mingled it all, and feet began to tap, the guards and even some of the ruffled courtiers stuck their chests out, fingered the hilts of their swords, eager to battle Avilian’s foes.
The music stopped. Sheyani did not end it abruptly, but allowed it to die away on a series of falling notes. The room woke again, gently eased from the dream of fellowship. There were exclamations of wonder, and the sea of whispering rose still higher.
“I thank you, Areshi,” the king said. “His smile was still broad and there was a brightness in his eye that had not been there before. “I know that you are keen to be about your duty, but I insist that you, that all or you, stay this night in Golt as my guests. You will dine with me, and in the morning you will leave us, I have no doubt, somewhat the poorer for your absence.”