Callo made an impatient gesture. “You know well my connection to Lord Alkiran is slight. Spare me this delicacy. You wish to discuss your position? Arias is the one you should be speaking to, Hon Sophiran.”
“At such a time it is difficult.”
Callo doubted that. This thin man with a penchant for rich clothing had the sensibilities of an ox. Callo’s stomach growled, eager for food after his exercise. Chiss stood in the shadows of the changing room, waiting for him. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, certain that Sophiran caught his restlessness.
“Lord Callo, let me be blunt. Lord Arias has not had the opportunity to get to know me. I dare say he thinks he does not like me. When Lord Mikati dies, Lord Arias is likely to ask you to become his representative to the capital.”
“Me?” That surprised him.
“I think so. He trusts you greatly, my lord, a trust of which you are more than worthy. I myself have often been impressed by . . .”
“Hon Sophiran, please. You and I have not had occasion to speak much. What you know of me, I am sure, is what is spread about in Sugetre. There is no need to throw compliments in my face. So, you think Arias would choose me for his representative. And of this, you wish to say—?”
“Do not do it, my lord. If you were to try to accomplish the role of Seagard’s representative, you would put the aims and directives of Lord Arias at risk. Simply because of something that is beyond your control, by which I mean the circumstances of your birth.”
“Yes?” Callo looked at Sophiran’s face, untrusting of its sincerity. He realized that Sophiran must feel his own position was greatly at risk, to warn Callo face to face like this.
“I have years of dealing with the King and other powers in the capital. I urge you, my lord, to ask Lord Arias to reconsider what is best for Seagard, not to decide based on shallow personal preference.”
“Lord Arias has said nothing of this. I will bear it in mind. It is, uh, conscientious of you to mention this, Hon Sophiran.” Callo bowed, politely dismissing the other man. Sophiran made a most ornate bow and left him. Callo looked after him for a moment, then turned and strode back towards the changing area. Chiss awaited him.
“My lord,” he said. “Was that Hon Sophiran?”
“Amazing, isn’t it? Yes, it was. Anticipating Arias’ ascension to the lordship, and safeguarding his position.”
“The man is a fop, Lord Callo, but dangerous.”
“By proxy, like a poisoner.”
“Exactly like that,” Chiss said. “He is still someone to beware of.”
“Thank you, Mother,” Callo said. He grinned at Chiss, who simply shook his head at his employer.
“My lord, do not dismiss these concerns. Perhaps you have not thought—but since Lord Arias is now Collared and out of consideration for the throne—”
Callo made an impatient gesture. “Ander is the heir. I will never ascend to the throne. I have not the wish for it, nor the training for it, nor the power base for it. And if I ever tried, the assassins’ guild would be swamped with business immediately.”
“I am well aware of this. But, my lord, it puts you in a position of some power.”
Callo shifted his shoulders, restless. He was still sweaty from the ring and hungry as well. “Enough of this. What do you have for me?”
“A messenger has arrived from the king. He is turning back, expecting to hear of Lord Mikati’s death. Lord Arias asked me to find you and tell you the messenger has also asked about the Leyish ship. I told Lord Arias you had no word, but he said the messenger was most demanding.”
It was time to send another man to Elder Hame, to ask about the delayed Leyish ship. He wondered if some trouble had befallen the Leyish emissaries the King had been awaiting. With Ha’las showing signs of aggression again, he only hoped the emissaries had not been taken prisoner. He took his leave of Chiss, cleaned up, and changed his clothing. He was only part of the way to the guardroom when the huge horn, usually sounded only for battle, reverberated through the air in the low note used for mourning. The sound throbbed like a living thing through the hall, and everyone stopped while it ebbed away. After a moment, it sounded again.
Lord Mikati Moran Alkiran was dead.
* * * * *
Jashan’s temple shone with white, the color of rejoicing, the color of mourning. White symbolized the wholeness of all things. For a color mage such as Mikati Alkiran had been, it symbolized the unattainable.
The funeral chamber, with the dead lord on a bier in the front of the room, was blinding as the Alkiran family, neighboring lords and King Martan Alghasi Monteni, and Queen Efalla gathered to release Mikati from his earthly bindings, of which Callo knew there were several. There was not only the overriding binding placed on him by his overlord, to faithfully keep the Watch and defend against the Black Tide, but also a lesser binding to his wife, and there were others as well. The Collared lords and their families were webs of bindings. Lord Mikati’s soul would not rest until he had been formally released.
In the midst of the chamber, behind those of greater rank, sat the solemn merchants and tradesmen of Two Merkhan who wished to mark his lordship’s passing. The back of the chamber was crowded with the lowborn visitors from Seagard village, including the two Healers and the village elders.
Callo hesitated for a moment as he entered, one of the last to arrive. The guards at the door looked at him curiously as he paused in the doorway. It was only a moment until Callo caught Lord Arias’ eye, and his brother gestured him inside the chamber to a place between the family and the King.
Callo took a deep breath and bowed as he took a place in the highest rank. He felt sure he would be sorry for this later. Right now he didn’t care; Arias’ face was tight with strain in the middle of this gathering of vultures, and he was glad to be near enough to support him.
Lady Sira Joah’s personal cleric, a pinched-looking man in spotless white, led the prayer and lit the ritual candles and lamps until Callo thought there was not a shadow in the place. Everything stood out in stark clarity as jewels blazed with the light. The unforgiving light exposed every line and blemish on the faces of the gathered mourners. It grew hot in the room; Callo, cursing his choice of the valus fur cloak, began to sweat.
The cleric began the story that was recited at every birth, and death of one of the righ class. Callo knew the story was pounded into the righ from the time they were born to make sure they internalized the pride due their class and accepted its obligation. Callo did not think this necessary; the righ he knew were altogether too enamored of their own status already. He sat back and listened to the story he had heard many times before.
It was the story of an early Righar, a land consisting of little states each ruled by a king or lord. The rulers raided each other, looking for riches in the form of cattle, cloth, gold, and sometimes slaves. They hired color mages to help them. The people who lived near borders wore themselves out in the constant watch for incursions, and they bore the brunt of the raids through the deaths of their men and the loss of their women, as well as through starvation when their crops or livestock were stolen. The rulers of the lands, impoverished since they could not wring taxes from a starving people, struggled to end the constant warfare through marriage alliances, magery, and deceit, but failed. The wars grew more brutal.
Then Jashan made himself known to the man who eventually became the first King of Righar—Valotnor the Great.
Valotnor, ruler of a tiny plains kingdom in mid-Righar, first saw Jashan when Valotnor was on the battlefield. A spear had been driven through his mail and into his chest. Blood bubbled out in his breaths and flowed from his mouth and nose. His enemy stood back, watching him die.
A warrior Valotnor did not know slew his attacker with a spear of color magery, before revealing himself to be the god Jashan. Then Jashan showed him what would happen to his land in the future because of this war.
Valotnor was not a compassionate man. Like his contemporaries, he d
id not hesitate to rape and pillage. Nonetheless, Valotnor wept as he saw his newborn son disemboweled by an enemy warrior, his wife raped, and his castle inhabited by his enemy. He felt the life leaving him, and asked the god to save him.
Jashan extracted oaths from him, and, to ensure that he followed them, the god bound him with a mighty spell and sealed it with a Collar, which he placed on Valotnor’s neck as a symbol of his duty to his people, and a sign that he was favored by Jashan. Then he healed Valotnor and began an intimidating display of color magery that stopped the battle immediately, stealing all the power from the color mages involved.
Thus, this story provided the seed of the legend.
“Jashan is god of color magery, fire, light,” the cleric said. “But first and foremost he is the god of discipline. This noble member of the righ who lies dead before us has dedicated his life to that discipline, for his god and King. Let us ask His Majesty to cut his binding, and we will send him to his god.”
King Martan went to the front of the chamber. As Mikati’s overlord, and a color mage, it fell to him to release the dead lord. Flashes of light began to etch his still form as he stood there and reached for his color magery. Green and blue, violet and gold, tendrils of color began escaping his control as he stretched his hands over the body of Lord Mikati. In the sudden glare, Callo fancied he could actually see the binding constricting Mikati, a veritable cable of light that wrapped the dead man and held him to the earth.
With a sharp movement, King Martan speared light at the bindings, and they split. The light dimmed; some of the candles in the room guttered and died. Two or three lamps were extinguished. Shadow reappeared, blessedly marking a return to the real world, and Callo released a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. King Martan bowed to the dead lord and then took his seat. The cleric gestured to the slaves who were responsible for lifting the body onto the pyre that had been prepared on the cliffs.
As Mikati’s body was carried out, the family followed. Callo decided not to follow. He had not liked the stern old lord, but he had no desire to watch him burn. Instead, he watched the mourners as they chattered their way out of the funeral chamber. Most of them had come just for the spectacle, and he couldn’t blame them. He saw a few people he knew, including the two Healers from Seagard village, and nodded a greeting to them. Healer Kirian smiled at him with a glint in her eye, pretending to no sorrow, and he liked her better for it.
The family saw Lord Mikati placed on the pyre and prayed over before they retreated to the Castle to wait out the burning. After the guests filed out, Callo joined the family and His Majesty King Martan in the upper solar.
As he entered, Lady Sira Joah pointed at him, her eyes bright with anger. “I have put up with his presence in this castle for sennights, but I will not have it now. Why should I have to have him here in the room, even as my husband burns on the cliff?”
Lord Arias’ jaw clenched. Callo knew his half-brother had always been quick to defend him. But this was not the time.
“I’ll go,” Callo said. He bowed to them all, somewhat relieved.
“Stay,” King Martan said. “Sira, Jashan knows Lord Callo cannot help being here. Ha, that was all your doing, remember? My nephew shall remain here. I wish to speak with him.”
Lady Sira Joah pushed her luminous white head veil back and glared at the king. “It is not all my doing! If it were not for that demon of Ha’las and his evil, there would have been no half-righ bastard. And if it were not for you, Your Majesty, he would not have been allowed to live beyond his first day!”
Callo stopped short and stared at her. All other talk in the chamber ceased.
Lord Arias stepped nearer with narrowed eyes. “A ku’an from Ha’las, mother? Only now you tell him this, after all these years?”
The King grinned. “It is just like you, Sira, to let the secret out as soon as Mikati is no longer here to stop your tongue. Well, you’d best go on now, and tell the rest of it. You see they all wait with bated breath.”
Arias’ eyes sparked a little green. Callo saw him take a deep breath. “Mother—please continue!”
Lady Sira Joah turned away. “It was merely a slip of the tongue. I have no wish to go further into the matter.”
“Lady Alkiran!” Callo said dangerously.
She stiffened but did not look at him. Her daughter, Litha Sira, took her mother’s hand and clasped it in both of her own. The girl looked very pale, and her eyes darted to Callo’s face as he spoke.
“My lady, I have never asked questions of you. Even when His Majesty required me to be here I have stayed out of your sight. But now that you have seen fit to announce the news in front of the whole family, I must know the rest.”
The room seemed to wait in breathless silence, just for one moment, and the sounds of the pyre and the crowd drifted up to the windows from far below and down by the sea. Arias, frowning, stared at his mother and said, “You must tell him now. Take him to the conservatory if you want privacy. You will be alone there—Eamon is Watching, and everyone else is here.”
“I will not go with him alone, and I can’t tell him here,” Sira Joah said, head held high again.
“Tell him in private,” said Queen Efalla, who was nibbling on sugared nuts at the table. “Sira, my dear, there is no taking back those words spoken without consideration.”
“By Jashan and all the gods! I am glad every one concurs!” the King snapped. “I have had enough of this gentle coaxing. Go away, Sira. In fact, everyone out! Except for you, Lord Alkiran, since you are now Collared Lord. I’ll speak to Lord Callo here. After all, I’ve work for him, which is why I had him come up here to talk to me in the first place. I am sick of all this wretched whining!”
The family members went quietly, respecting the temper of the king. Lady Sira Joah looked away from Callo’s face as she continued out the door. Only King Martan, Lord Arias, and Callo were left in the drafty solar.
“Your Majesty,” Callo said. “I must know the whole truth.” He could feel his shoulders knot with tension.
“Yes, yes, yes,” said King Martan irritably. “Well, then, you must both know. It was a traveling mage who stayed here at the castle a month or so.”
“What do you mean, a traveling mage?” Arias said angrily. “My mother just said he was a ku’an, from Ha’las—” Callo knew his half-brother’s dislike of the Ha’lasi would have been sharpened by the new binding which bade him bear constant guard against them, but he wished Arias would calm down.
“Your Majesty,” Callo said.
“You are impatient. I am aware. As you have been told, the man was really a ku’an from Ha’las, but then we thought him a simple traveling mage. He was young and good-looking, claimed to be third son of some rural righ family. Lady Sira Joah was infatuated with him, and he favored her. She claims he manipulated her into his bed with his psychic magery . . .”
“And how do we know he did not?” Arias growled.
“What happened to the mage?” Callo asked.
“Long gone. Back in Ha’las, no doubt, and my spies could discover nothing of him in the capital. What he wanted, we never found out.”
“You think it was part of a plan, then,” Callo said.
“Of course I do. Why else would a ku’an be within our borders? Why, apparently, target the wife of a Collared Lord? No one was able to trace him when he left. He didn’t go to SeagardVillage or Two Merkhan or Sugetre or any other place we could find. We asked about him at all the ports and even sent spies to Ha’las. If he had been an innocent traveler, he would have been found.”
“How did you learn he was ku’an?” Callo asked.
“The mage told her himself, when he left Seagard.”
“But she never told my father!” Arias bit out. Callo wondered through his stunned confusion why Arias was so concerned about his father’s honor now, when he had never cared before.
King Martan shrugged. His eyes dwelled with amusement on Callo, who felt as if his feet stood on
shifting sand instead of the worn stone floors of the upper solar.
“To what point? The man was Collared; he couldn’t leave and attack the Ha’lasi.”
But you could have. The thought burned in Callo’s mind, and he saw Arias’ eyes drop and knew he was thinking the same thing. It would be worth their heads to ask why King Martan Sharpeyes had failed to move the earth and sea to avenge his sister’s lost innocence.
“Why did you take him in then?” Arias asked, as if Callo wasn’t there. “Why did you feed him and educate him and even gift him with a holding, when my lady mother wished never to see him again?”
“It is better,” said King Martan Sharpeyes, “To keep one’s enemies—and their tools—under one’s eye.”
The King’s tone was cold—absolutely bitter, with none of the malicious humor he had shown as he watched all their reactions to the news spilled by Sira Joah. Callo’s gut clenched. There was no affection here, no sense of duty, as he had often imagined. Here was only a King, watching with his sharp eye over the future of his throne.
Arias walked over to one of the tall windows. The breeze came in, carrying with it the smoky odor from the pyre on the cliffs, but Arias seemed not to notice as he stared out over the sea in the direction of Ha’las. King Martan eyed his newest Collared Lord for a moment as if gauging his reaction, then turned to stare at Callo.
“I have work for you,” he said.
“Your Majesty,” Callo said, going on one knee. “With your permission, I claim leave.”
“What? You have not been your brother’s guest long enough?”
Callo did not need to look up to know that King Martan’s cold gray eyes were on his face. Callo was not good at hiding his feelings. He could feel his shock and shame flooding his expression. His legs felt unsteady as he knelt. He had known, of course, that he was a bastard, but his Ha’lasi ancestry was a shock, as was Arias’ cold reaction to the news. He had never thought he would hear Arias’ scorn and anger directed at himself.
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