Echoes of Betrayal

by Elizabeth Moon

  He had just finished writing this much when a horn call sounded. Had he lost track of days? Or was the messenger coming early, and if so, what did it mean? He sealed the letter quickly, burning his finger on the spill that melted the wax and then placed it on the table where the courier would find it. Then he ran up the stairs to the window. Out of the fog came a rider … two … more riders. The rose and white Mahieran standard flapped listlessly as the rider carrying it spurred his horse to a plunging attempt at a canter. Then a Girdish standard … So at least one Marshal had come. Beclan’s hopes rose: surely a Marshal could tell that he had not been invaded. The group stopped at a little distance, the standard-bearer alone ahead of them.

  After some time, five rode forward toward the house: one in Royal Guard uniform, one Marshal in Gird’s blue, one Knight of Gird, the standard-bearer, and a man Beclan recognized from halfway across the field as his father. He wanted to run downstairs, fling himself at his father. Instead he stood where he’d been told to stand. Archers moved still closer to the cottage, where the fog would not obscure their aim.

  He lost sight of the five when they came too close and rode to the other side of the house. He heard the distant sound of someone pounding on a door—the kitchen door, he supposed. It seemed a long time before he heard voices in the main room below, low voices in serious discussion, too low to hear clearly. Then he heard the front door open, shut, open and shut again.

  Finally his father’s voice from below: “Beclan! Come down.”

  Heart hammering, Beclan went down the narrow stairs and found himself facing a ring of drawn swords. Including his father’s. His mouth went dry. Had he been condemned? Was he to die here in this remote place without seeing the rest of his family again? Had this morning’s porridge been his last meal? He had not, he realized, believed he would be killed, not as long as he did what he was told. Those drawn swords told a different tale.

  “Sit on that stool,” his father said. Beclan sat on the stool by the fireplace; he was glad of the heat. “Bind him,” his father said. The Marshal laid his sword on the desk where Beclan had written his letter. The seal was broken, the paper unfolded, so at least one of them had read it. Firmly, but without unnecessary roughness, the Marshal bound Beclan’s arms behind him, and then knelt and bound his ankles as well.

  “Bring candles,” Duke Mahieran said. “We must see his face, his eyes, at all times.”

  The Royal Guard commander put down his sword as the Marshal took up his own, and opened the door to the kitchen. For the first time, Beclan saw the face of the woman who prepared his food and washed his shirts: wispy white hair, faded blue eyes, a mass of wrinkles that suggested she was used to smiling. He did not think he had ever seen her before. Behind her, the kitchen looked a far more interesting place than his side of the cottage, mostly because it was full of things to do—a small loom in one corner on which she—or someone—was weaving, all those kitchen tools, and the enticing smell of something roasting over the kitchen fire. The Royal Guard commander came back with a four-branched candleholder and placed it on the table.

  “Now, Beclan,” said his father. “You will answer our questions fully, and you will not speak except to do so. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Father,” Beclan said. “But—”

  “No. Nothing but answers to the questions you will be asked. I can tell you this much. We can wait no longer to find out if you are invaded. I must know; the king must know. It is our hope that your letters have been truthful—but if you were invaded, you would say the same. We cannot trust you or Duke Verrakai.”

  “I—”

  “Silence,” the Marshal said. He, too, was one Beclan had not met before. “I am High Marshal Seklis, approved by the Marshal-General to test your truthfulness with a relic of Gird himself. We would have brought a paladin if we could, for they are known to detect any evil, but none was available.”

  “We will go over the points of your story as related first to the Royal Guard who found you and then in your letters to me,” his father said. “I must warn you that if you do not answer truthfully and in detail, I have the king’s warrant to execute you here and now. Though you are my son, I will not hesitate to give that order.”

  His father’s face, Beclan realized as he was finally over the first shock, held as much misery as he himself felt. The Duke was holding himself to a hard duty, as the sergeant had, and once more Beclan was faced with the reality of the responsibility—not the privilege—of rank.

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  The High Marshal sheathed his sword and opened a sack Beclan had not noticed beside the table. It held several items wrapped in blue cloth. One was a gnarled length of wood such as old men used for canes, polished to a gleam by long use.

  “This was Gird’s, as he aged, and was also used by Cob, one of his marshals in the war. It is a potent relic and has detected lies and evil before. I will lay it alongside your head, and if it detects anything, that will be the last thing you feel.”

  Beclan said nothing, for that was not a question. The knob end of the stick, resting against his jaw, did not hurt, but he could not ignore it. The questions began simply, about his life as Duke Verrakai’s squire. What had his duties been, how had he felt about the other squires, what had he seen Duke Verrakai do? Beclan made no attempt to hide his errors; he could not, as they stood out in his memory like blazing torches.

  “Do you feel she was unfair to you, a member of the royal family?”

  “At first,” Beclan said. “I did not know how arrogant I had become; Rothlin had tried to tell me, but I thought he was but playing the elder brother. So I thought Duke Verrakai favored Gwennothlin Marrakai most and was determined to set me down. But then she gave me the longer patrols, because I was the eldest and because, she said, she thought the people would respond to me as the king’s cousin.”

  “And what escort did she provide?”

  “Four hands, one hand of them the most experienced of her former troops. By then I had begun to understand what she had meant earlier, though I still—I still made mistakes. When I argued with Sergeant—”

  “We will come to that,” his father said. “But now think: when you left on that last patrol, was any stranger at the Verrakai household?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No one from Lyonya?”

  “No, sir. Gwenno—Gwennothlin Marrakai—was on patrol in the east, due back in a day or two. If anyone had come that way, she should have picked them up. Daryan was on patrol but due back several days later—because of winter weather, we had more leeway, you see.”

  “So when you left, had Duke Verrakai spoken to you of the likelihood of war?”

  “She was concerned always about the possibility of the Pargunese coming, as they did last winter, but she said she was more worried about that man in Aarenis.”

  “Now to your patrol.” Duke Marrakai took a sheaf of papers from under his tunic. “You told the Royal Guard that it was routine until the blizzard.”

  “Yes, sir.” Had he told the Royal Guard commander every detail? He couldn’t remember; he had better tell it all now. “I tried to push on to the next village, though Sergeant Vossik thought we should stop, and we ended up having to stay in a filthy herders’ shelter with a leaky roof that night. It was my fault; I wanted to make the schedule in spite of the weather.”

  “And was it the next day you met the Duke’s messenger?”

  “Yes … in the next village. He brought word that the Pargunese had invaded Lyonya and might invade Tsaia and orders from the Duke to collect her militia from each village on the way back.”

  “And what happened then?”

  “We started back. The Duke’s messenger had told each village he came to what his errand was, so some men on the muster rolls were missing. I thought the villages along the track north would not have heard, and it might be easier to muster them.”

  Guided by questions, Beclan went on to tell of the more su
ccessful muster on this northern track and then his decision to send the main mass of them eastward to link with the improved road north, while he and a handful of the better trained militia went on north to a few more villages.

  “That’s when I heard a call for help.”

  Telling yet again how his horse had plunged off the ridge and could not climb back up, how the others had come down, how Hadrin had died and he’d forgotten names and all the other mistakes of that miserable day, Beclan saw once more just how stupid he had been.

  “I didn’t understand why my sergeant insisted we not go help whoever was calling—I mean, I was taught to help those who asked it—” Silence from the men around him; the wood knob against his cheek did not quiver, but he felt that even it condemned him. The rest came more quickly … realizing that they were not making a straight line, that the dense pines and firs were forcing them into a contracting spiral and they could not turn back.

  “Did you realize then what you faced?”

  “No,” Beclan said. “Nor did my sergeant, though he expected trouble. By the time he realized it was a Kuakkgani trap, it was too late. We couldn’t go back. We didn’t know a Kuakgan was anywhere around. Neither did Duke Verrakai; I asked her once, after the first Marshals came last summer, if any of her people were kuakgannir, and she said she didn’t think so, that the Kuakkgani had always been hostile to Verrakai.”

  “She never said anything to suggest that she might be in league with one?”

  “In league?”

  “Setting a trap for you, Beclan. She could have had the Kuakgan set the trap for you and caught the others by accident—or by design, if she placed them there.”

  “But the Kuakgan said—you heard him, sir,” Beclan said, looking at the Royal Guard commander.

  “I heard him, but I have no reason to trust him,” the commander said. “Kuakkgani are uncanny. I follow Gird, where right and wrong are clear.”

  “Beclan.” Beclan looked back at his father, reading the tension in his forehead and jaw. “Pay attention. Answer questions; do not argue.”

  “Yes, sir.” He knew mortal danger hovered over him; he thought of Gird and tried to take heart, but he did not feel brave, just scared. He wanted to be home—his real home, not here—safe in his own rooms in his father’s house. He felt cold to the bone: would he ever be safe again?

  “Tell me exactly what happened when you came to the opening in the trees.”

  Beclan told of the three apparent vagabonds, trapped like them, one wounded. “They asked our help. The sergeant said wait …” And he had waited. He had been obedient in that at least, hand on the hilt of the sword he no longer had. Step by step he told the tale as he recalled it. A sense of pressure, similar—he had thought the same—to the pressure in the Kuakkgani trap. Vossik’s attempt to charge—his jerky movements—his strained voice.

  “He said ‘Run,’ ” Beclan said. “And I had promised to run if he told me to, but I couldn’t—if he was helpless like Sergeant Stammel, I couldn’t leave him.” He squeezed his eyes shut; his voice shook, and he couldn’t keep it steady. “I had my sword out—I couldn’t—I didn’t know what would help him—”

  “What were the others doing?” the Marshal asked.

  “I don’t know—they were behind us. His eyes were bloodshot—it’s what Count Arcolin said about Sergeant Stammel. He said ‘Run’ again, and I couldn’t move.” In his memory, it was still perfectly, horribly clear. Those last minutes and seconds of Vossik’s life as the sergeant tried to fight free of the magery and save the boy, his own disbelief that it was real, that this could happen, his terror. He blinked against the tears that ran down his face, trying his best to tell it all, every detail. “I was still holding my sword out, and he said, ‘Now! Like this!’ and reached out with both hands and pulled, and the blade went in and he died.”

  “You did not thrust?”

  “No … I mean, maybe I should have, but I didn’t. I couldn’t move … and then when he had finished … died … I could move again.”

  “And then,” his father prompted.

  “The one who’d first spoken said they still had three bodies. I looked, and the others were walking forward, like—like those dolls on strings at the fairs.” He told the rest of it, how he’d killed his own escort, because they were meant to capture him, bind him, so the injured Verrakai could transfer into his body.

  Against his cheek, the wood felt warmer now but not hot, and the Marshal said nothing. It had been true—it had been Beclan’s truth at the time, and he still hoped very hard that there had not been any alternative that anyone could have thought of, not just that he had not thought of.

  “Sergeant Vossik was right,” Beclan said. “It would have been better to die if that had been possible, but they weren’t going to let me die. I remembered what people said about the attack on the king last winter, how even the Marshal-Judicar and my uncle could not move, how one magelord could hold four people motionless, and … and I was only one. I was scared.” He felt the fear again, the sick tightness in his belly, the weakness of his knees … a fear worse than what he’d felt this day, he realized. Here, if he died, he would be killed by honorable men for an honorable reason, and he could trust that his body would not be used to hurt those he loved.

  “Of death?” asked the Marshal.

  “No,” Beclan said. “Or … not mostly. I was afraid of being what they wanted me to be. A traitor. An agent of Liart. Any of that.” He looked at his father. “They wanted me to do blood magery with Sergeant Vossik’s blood and become one of them. They promised me … everything. Even the crown—two crowns, in fact. In my body, they would have killed you, sir, and contrived the deaths of the king, Rothlin, and Camwyn … but Father, I was saved by Gird.”

  “Gird.” The Marshal’s voice carried disbelief. “And just what makes you think that?”

  “I prayed,” Beclan said. “Their magery had forced me toward Vossik’s blood—but then I saw his Girdish medallion. I touched it. It came away in my hand, and my mind cleared. I could stand up. Then their voices in my head were silent. They knew … somehow … and came at me with swords. They said … things. I fought; I was sure I would die.”

  “And you, a mere stripling boy, fought and killed two grown men, no doubt experienced swordsmen, as well as those in your escort?” Still that tone of disbelief.

  “Gird helped me,” Beclan said.

  “Hmmph,” the Marshal said. “Something gave you the power to kill so many and live unscathed. I am not convinced it was Gird, though the relic does not give you the lie. At least you think it was Gird.”

  “Were you tempted, Beclan, when they offered you the crown?” his father asked.

  “I saw what they wanted me to see,” Beclan said. He would die for this, he was now sure. “Visions—dreams—all bowing before me. ‘You are strong,’ the voice said. ‘They are weak.’ But I … but you’re my father, Rothlin’s my brother, Mikeli is my cousin, as well as king.”

  “The king,” said the Marshal. “To whom you feel yourself oath-bound?”

  “Yes,” Beclan said. “I have not made my formal oath yet; I am not of age. But my father taught me from childhood that we owe the king our fealty, and I would not betray that oath.”

  “Um.” That from the Knight of Gird.

  “Would you swear that oath if your age were not at issue?” his father asked.

  “Yes, sir. I would swear it before you and the High Marshal or before the king himself. But I know you do not wish to risk him.”

  “High Marshal?” His father looked past him.

  “He has told the truth as far as he perceives it, or Gird’s relic has lost its power. I sense no evil in him, but I wish we had a paladin’s word on that. Can you recite the Ten Fingers, boy?”

  “Yes, High Marshal.” Beclan had learned the Ten Fingers as a boy in the family grange, and he rattled them off quickly.

  “I would advise it,” the High Marshal said. Beclan’s father nodded, as did
the other men.

  “Leave him bound,” the Knight of Gird said. “I don’t want any surprises just in case that relic isn’t accurate.”

  “Fine,” Mahieran said. He looked past Beclan. “My lord …”

  Beclan hardly had time to consider which lord this might be when his cousin the king walked past him and turned to face him. “Sir king,” the High Marshal said, “Gird’s relic reports him telling the truth.”

  “Beclan,” the king said. His expression was grim.

  “Sir king,” Beclan said. His mouth went dry. He had not seen Mikeli since his brief report to him at the Autumn Evener; Rothlin had told him that Mikeli had changed after the assassination attempt; facing Beclan now was no boyish king but a full-grown man.

  “You are below legal age for the full oath of fealty,” the king said. “You would not normally be allowed to swear, and you cannot be required to. But hard decisions have been forced on me, and I cannot let my realm be jeopardized by evil I can prevent. The High Marshal declares that you are telling the truth and are not harboring a renegade Verrakai in your body. But until I personally take your oath, you must stay confined away from me and any other peers. I understand you find this confinement onerous—”

  “Yes, sir king,” Beclan said. “But I understand the reasons for it.”

  “Well, then.” Mikeli’s smile was more challenging than encouraging. “Do you wish to make your full oath? You will be held to it, I caution you, as if you were of age. Should you breach it, you will be guilty of treason, and will face the same fate as other traitors.”