Unfettered

by Terry Brooks

  “My father is a fighter, not a murderer.” Rohn had killed, yes, but only that one time, as far as Kylac knew—under circumstances in which most men would likely do the same. He had confessed the matter readily to his young son without any clear reason to do so, and had in no way profited from the act. Hardly the earmarks of a professional assassin.

  “Your master sees people as mechanisms, nothing more,” Brie said, as a branch snapped beneath her shears. “He speaks of us as bony frameworks, sacks of fluid, bundles of sinew. Would it truly surprise you to learn he might advance himself through the death of another?”

  “He has no need of coin, as you may have noticed.”

  “Have you ever asked yourself why?”

  Kylac felt a boiling frustration, as only Brie could spawn in him. “You sound as though you want him to be guilty. Would you confuse him with your grandfather, I wonder?”

  He regretted the words as soon as they had escaped his lips. Too late. Brie’s ears turned flaming red, and the gaze she leveled at him scalded him where he stood. “My grandfather makes no pretense at what he is, while your father…” She caught herself, seeming embarrassed by the outburst, as if it in some way bespoke weakness. She turned her shears back upon the hedge, her movements as terse as her words. “I only wondered if you had considered the possibility.”

  How could he not? Truth be told, he’d never been able to read his father as he could others. Where most men’s thoughts and aims seemed easily discernible, his father had long ago erected walls too high and thick to penetrate. Soulless, Brie had called him before. Kylac wouldn’t know. His studies here had not encompassed souls.

  “I’ve considered it odd my father could be so clumsy, if he is all that Traeger claims. I’ve considered how easy it would be, as a captain of the city watch, to speak of secret witnesses and to happen upon evidence where it would be most convenient to find it. I’ve considered the reputation of Magistrate Aarhus, and the impunity with which his forces operate.” Brie shook her head. Kylac lowered his voice. “Yet content I knew I’d be, even as my father was being arrested, to await the ruling of a tribunal, to learn if there might be any truth to these claims.”

  Brie’s reckless pruning slowed. For a moment, Kylac ceased his stretching.

  “But, Brie, it’s been nearly three days. They’ll let none see him. There’s more to this than what we know. I can smell it.”

  Brie lowered her head, then turned it to face him. “The night before the arrest, I spied Xarius leaving Master Rohn’s chambers. Odd, it struck me, that he should visit them at a time when he knew your father to be absent.”

  She might as well have doused him with a bucket of water. The piercing chill settled quickly into his bones. Xarius. “You’re certain?” The evidence against his father…Could it have been…? “Why did you not tell me straightaway?”

  “I feared you might seek to confront him. I…”

  Kylac snapped to his feet. “Of course I’ll seek to confront him.”

  “It’s a suspicion, Kylac. I’ve no proof of anything.”

  “So I’ll be sure to inquire courteously.”

  There were no windows in Xarius’s bedchamber, and he’d lit no taper upon retiring to his slumber. Thus, there was no glint upon the blade that Kylac set to his throat, nor gleam in his eye as it flicked open in the darkness. There were only the stiffening of cords in his neck, and that small hiss of furious realization.

  “Touch that bedside blade,” Kylac whispered, “and your dreams this night will continue without end.”

  “Bold threat from a boy who wept when he butchered his first pig.”

  He felt Xarius reaching furtively, almost imperceptibly, in the blackness, and so opened a warning scratch along the man’s neck. “The pig had done nothing to warrant it. I’m not convinced you can say the same.”

  Xarius seethed. “If you were not your father’s son…”

  “Fear my father, do you? With fair cause, I should think, when he learns of your part in his betrayal.”

  The momentary silence seemed a screeching admission. “You would accuse me, boy? I am his personal shield.”

  “All the more reason to hold you responsible. What did they promise you, I wonder. Wealth? Position? I thought you beyond such petty attachments.”

  “You waste your time, boy.”

  Kylac did not disagree. He’d waited until the Nightingale’s Hour before breaching Xarius’s private quarters. He had looked to enter on the Swallow’s, earlier that afternoon, but had found a trap laid there that could only be reset from the outside. Had he attempted to set ambush within, Xarius would have known it.

  So he’d come again two full hours after Xarius had retired, with the moon cresting its midnight arc, hoping to find the man sleeping. Three traps had he discovered this time, but Kylac had known what to look for, and how to disarm them without alerting his prey. Even so, the process had been slow…painstaking.

  Successful as he’d been, he had no more hours to waste.

  “Mayhap you’re right. Mayhap I should kill you now and be on my way.” He angled his blade higher, and pressed deeper, cutting into the soft crease between neck and chin.

  It proved just enough to loosen Xarius’s tongue. “Kill me, and you’ll see him again only in pieces.”

  “The medallion found in his chambers…that was your work, was it not?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the murdered nobleman?”

  “I know not.”

  “You know not?”

  “The corpse was reported to Captain Traeger, who in turn apprised Magistrate Aarhus. They deemed it an opportune chance to implicate the headmaster. So they purchased a pair of witnesses, and gave me the medallion.”

  Meaning Xarius had been bought some time ago, primed for the moment in which he might best be used—all the while continuing to pose as Rohn’s most trusted protector. “You will testify to this at my father’s trial. If you do not…”

  Xarius’s hissing laughter stopped him short. “What trial is that? The one in which they would risk a stay of execution to your father’s royal ties? The one in which the magistrate and captain themselves might be exposed? No, boy, they will present the headmaster and their evidence to Governor Tehric, if they’ve not already, and let him pass judgment.”

  The knot in Kylac’s stomach tightened. Long hailed a national hero, Tehric had been named chief general of the Parthan West Legion and later governor of Crylag not for jailing Menzoes encountered on the frontlines, but for slaughtering them in droves. None could deny that, under his command, Partha had strengthened its foothold against the northern secessionists. Yet, for all his victories and medals, Tehric was scarcely more than an upjumped warlord, a man of cruelty and vengeance.

  He would not take lightly to the slaying of his son, useless as many believed that particular seed to be.

  Nor would Aarhus or Traeger be made to suffer the full extent of any backlash. Rohn’s favor with His Majesty, King Galdric, was not that great.

  “Where is he?” Kylac asked. “Where is my father being held?”

  “The Gilded Cleaver, by common account.”

  “It’s your account I’m asking. Not even Aarhus or Tehric would torture a prisoner jailed under the king’s roof. He’ll be where His Majesty can disavow any knowledge or involvement.”

  “And if I were to reveal their location? What cause would you have to let me live?”

  Kylac shook his head. What cause would there be to kill him? He might still need Xarius as a witness. Of greater value that than a corpse, which could only further impugn his father in the eyes of any judges.

  Besides, as Xarius had observed, Kylac was no killer—and in no great haste to claim otherwise. Though Rohn’s teachings held it to be inevitable, the slaying of a man struck Kylac as fundamentally avoidable. Not out of weakness or some vague notion of morality, but because he was so much faster, so much better, so much more skilled, that it would simply be unfair to his opponent.
<
br />   In essence, too easy.

  Not so with Xarius, mayhap. But, for all their differences, Xarius was the nearest he had to an elder brother, the one he’d always looked to match and then best. If a man were to die upon his blade, he would have to do more than Xarius had to earn it.

  “I’d sooner leave you to my father’s mercy,” Kylac said. “But tell me where he is, and I’ll tell him how you aided me in his rescue.”

  “You would seek to free him? Alone?”

  “Would that I could trust you to join me.”

  Xarius’s amusement was palpable. “The young sparrow, sniping at the tail feathers of falcons.”

  “Name their location, or I’ll sever your useless tongue and find it myself.”

  “If you’re so eager to die, seek them in the Cytharian Catacombs.”

  “Cytharia? Temple and tombs alike were sealed half a century ago.”

  “Were they?” Xarius taunted. “Doubtless I was misinformed.”

  Kylac considered. “They would not have strolled in through the temple foyer.”

  “Where the Dryslake forks beneath the southern promontory of Harrowridge Cemetery, behind a briar wall at the base of the ravine, lies a shaft of an ancient sulfur mine. Follow the right passage, and you’ll discover the catacombs.”

  Mines? Catacombs? A labyrinth. “How will I know their path?”

  “Neglected your tracking lessons?” Xarius sneered. “Failing that, follow the screams.”

  A pack of possible scenarios crowded forward in Kylac’s mind, each spawning a dozen more. But seeking to untangle them all would mean a further drain of his time. “Should I learn you’ve lied to me—”

  “Ply me no more with your threats, boy. If you would become a man, put that blade to its proper use. If not, I’ll pray you survive this night, that we might settle this matter between us.”

  Kylac withdrew his weapon, keeping it at the ready. “I’ll return with my father before sunrise. It might be wiser of you to be gone by then.”

  He backed toward the bedchamber door. He’d nearly reached it when Xarius’s voice slithered through the darkness. “Mark me, boy. You’ll spill blood this night. If not another’s, then yours.”

  As Kylac eased across the threshold into the black corridor beyond, he found himself wondering which would please Xarius more.

  He discovered the entrance to the mine precisely where Xarius had said he would, at the base of the bluff forming the promontory above, amid a forest of brambles that clawed skyward a dozen feet overhead. A thread of foul-smelling mineral water trickled from its mouth over a bed of crushed stones, forming a muddy layer at the bottom of the ravine. The signs of passage were abundant—boot prints in the mud, smears and scuffs on the dry slopes to either side, bent and broken bramble stalks, and loose stones recently overturned. Whatever company had trekked this way had made no attempt to mask its travels through the wild, scratching tangle. No fewer than six men, Kylac determined. Mayhap as many as ten.

  Given time, he would have performed a more thorough inspection, attempting to better gauge the precise number of men he must face. But the Shrike’s Hour drew near, the night half gone already. The only set of prints that truly concerned him were those matching the size of his father’s boots, the shortened stride and scraped wedges that spanned them indicating ankle irons. Although it might have been another armored company escorting some other prisoner through this remote, uninviting region, Kylac thought it unlikely. And he didn’t imagine they had dragged his father this far out of the way with the intent of ever dragging him back again.

  Better that he did not tarry.

  He did take a moment to search for snares at the tunnel’s mouth. Finding none, he crept past the half-collapsed framework of rotted timbers, treading lightly upon the stoop of moldering deadwood branches and crushed stones, weightless as a stray breeze. As part of their training in stealth, students of Talonar were trained to walk and later race across fields of eggs. Kylac had been nine years old the last time he’d lost a race, and five when last he’d suffered the penalty of breaking a yolk.

  Once inside the mine’s gullet, a shortsword came to hand. He’d forged and fashioned it himself—along with the matching blade that hung from his opposing hip—under the tutelage of Vehn, the school’s master bladewright. They were not the first weapons he’d crafted, but the first to pass all of Vehn’s tests, thus earning him the achievement of bladewright third grade. He would have to hone his smithing skills for another ten years before he could hope to achieve second grade. So he would have to hope these served to pass the only test of true consequence.

  His longsword, he’d left in his weapons closet, owing to the anticipation of close quarters. A decision that might haunt him before this night was done, but Kylac had learned to shun such misgivings. He had no intention of getting caught in any protracted duels. He intended to be swift, silent, and well gone by the time anyone was alerted to his presence.

  The meager wash of moonlight that trailed him into the tunnel bled away twelve paces in. A cold, clammy darkness embraced him in its stead. Kylac eased his pace, allowing for his eyes to find what light they could. He didn’t dare a flame, for the beacon it would become. Instead, his free hand traced the tunnel wall, finding chiseled stone amid patches of raw earth ushered through by piercing root tendrils. A stale and vaguely sulfurous smell drew him onward, deepening with each silent stride.

  He heard the skittering of rats and beetles, and now and again brushed one or the other with his hand or foot. Worms dug amid the roots sprouting from the wall; he could tell by the way they recoiled at his touch. It became harder to advance silently, for he could no longer determine the lay of the loose rocks upon the tunnel floor. Fortunately, that ground had been largely worn smooth from the days when the mine had been in use, and covered since with mud and clay that had seeped down over the years.

  The tunnel delved steadily along a mostly direct course. Kylac had counted four hundred thirty-seven paces when he felt the weight of the ceiling rise overhead and the closeness of the walls retreat. He did not require his vision to know that he had entered a larger chamber or cavern. But to map it blindly could take hours, depending on its size. And if it held multiple passages, as seemed likely, he’d have to guess as to which he should follow.

  Seeing no other choice, he drew back into the tunnel to ignite a small firebrand. Alas for his cloak of darkness.

  His flame spawned only a meager globe. Held near the ground, however, it served to reveal the trail of those he followed. He moved more quickly now, racing along in a crouch, brand outstretched to one side. Should he happen across any bowmen stationed in ambush, he didn’t want them aiming for the light and catching his face or chest in the bargain.

  The tracks took him down one tunnel and then another, each smaller and tighter than the last. Insects scurried from his light, but nothing large or loud enough to draw undue attention. For that, he was grateful. The last thing he needed was to disrupt a colony of screeching bats.

  Twice he happened upon pocket caverns that looked to have served at one time as smuggler’s dens. To whom, and for what riches, he couldn’t say, for Kylac scurried through both quickly, pressing into the next tunnel. As intriguing as it might be to explore such hidden reaches of this ancient city, he had no time for ghosts or the traces of their past.

  Upon emerging from the second, however, one of those ghosts took to following him. He did not hear or see or smell it, but felt it like a worm on the nape of his neck. A sensation he knew better than to ignore.

  Someone was following him.

  Xarius.

  Kylac considered his options. He’d known from the outset that the elder student was unlikely to leave matters as they had in his chamber. But Kylac had hoped to move quickly enough to stay ahead of any delayed pursuit. It would seem he had failed. The question now was, how great a lead did he have? As reliable as his instincts were, he was still learning to interpret them. Xarius could be a hundred paces b
ehind him, or a thousand. Should he hurry on, hoping to outpace the alarm? Or should he lie in wait and attempt to deal with his proud rival before becoming trapped?

  By the time he found the cave-in exposing the entrance to the catacombs, Kylac’s warning sense was screaming. He decided there that he dared not allow Xarius to seal off his retreat. He still had to locate his father, and knew not what condition he might find him in. Should they have to limp from this labyrinth, Xarius would descend on them like an owl on a wounded mouse.

  So he turned a tight corner and set down his brand upon a burial niche, then doubled back to conceal himself within an ornamental alcove thick with inky darkness. There he waited, single blade in hand.

  He heard Xarius coming, the hasty fool. The steps were small and slight and strangely distorted by the warren’s walls, but Kylac detected them nonetheless. Had this been a skills test, Rohn might have had his prized student flogged.

  Kylac crouched. The steps slowed. His pursuer eased across the threshold of broken stones that marked the boundary between mine and catacombs, a hooded form that Kylac sensed more than saw. He waited for it to turn the corner, to bend toward the distant pool of light. It did so tentatively, producing a long sliver of metal…

  Kylac pounced, clamping a hand around Xarius’s mouth and pressing the tip of his blade against a kidney. He might have driven deeper, given Xarius a wound to fully contemplate…but suddenly, everything was wrong. The body’s size, scent, the way it tensed, and the tone of its startled squeak.

  “Brie?”

  He stepped back, aghast. Brie turned, relief reflecting in her features before being shoved aside by an indignant pout. “That hurt,” she hissed.

  Hurt? He had almost skewered her. “What are you doing here?” was all he could think to ask.

  “To aid you, fool.”

  “You followed me?”

  “No, lackwit, I burrowed down through one of the crypts above. Of course I followed you.”

  “How did you…? How could you…?” He watched a smug smile stretch across her face. “Brie, you have to go back.”