I had expected the public audience at Kessing to be gruesome, and it was. Like most of the major fortress holdings of Sorretis, Kessing was built of a heavy gray stone that even on sunny days seemed to enclose a gloomy chill. Inside was a huge chamber where all the supplicants gathered twice a month to make their requests of their lord. Such public audiences were often loud and boisterous affairs; but at Kessing, where the petitioners spoke to a pitiful shell of a man, the mood was sober and deeply depressing.
Sam had casually offered to accompany me on the journey, and I had casually accepted, but inwardly I had been extremely grateful for his escort. I was doubly grateful for his presence now, a solid bulk in this sea of strangers. We stood at the back of the enormous room, gazing over perhaps two hundred bodies, staring toward the dais at the far end where Sir Havan of Kessing had been installed.
Everything Leonora had said of him was true. His head lolled back on his unsupportive neck; his arms and legs hung uselessly down. He had been tied to a large, cushioned chair so that he seemed, at least, to be sitting up and facing us. But his slack mouth and unfocused eyes gave little evidence that his mind was engaged.
Beside him, Lady Bella knelt on an embroidered stool. Leonora stood behind him, gazing down at the inexpressive face. Sir Errol stood at the head of the stage, a herald beside him to call out names, and he gravely listened to each petition. It was not a cheery or inspiring scene.
“What do you think of the lord’s wife?” I whispered in Sam’s ear, as we watched the slow procession.
“She seems to genuinely love the man,” he whispered back. “It’s a hard thing to counterfeit under such conditions.”
I nodded. “And his son?”
“He seems capable enough, but not a happy man.”
“Does he want his father dead?”
“Wouldn’t you,” Sam said slowly, “if your father lived like this?”
“And the son’s wife?”
Only once had Leonora lifted her head and surveyed the crowd. Within minutes, she had spotted us. I could see the color of her eyes even across the wide stone floor. She had not smiled or nodded, but merely dropped her gaze again to her fatherin-law’s face.
“She’s ambitious, I think,” Sam said slowly. “But she does not look cruel.”
“Tell me,” I said. “What would you choose, if you were Sir Havan of Kessing? Would you want to continue to live, imprisoned in such a wreck of a body? Or would you want some kind soul to mete out the poison that would let you die, quietly and in peace?”
“I would drink the poison, and gladly,” Sam said.
“So would I.”
For a few moments longer, I watched Sir Havana across the room. As I had told Sam, I had known Havan and Lady Bella, but not well, and that had been eleven years ago. He had been a laughing, virile, confrontational man who had had as many friends as enemies at Verallis. Raever had trusted him, though they had disagreed often enough, and spectacularly enough, to be considered wary allies. I had not dealt much with court politics, but of course I had met most of the personalities of the day, and Havan had been one of the brightest.
He had not been at Verallis when Raever died. He had not been one of those who accused me or defended me. I wondered what opinion he had, in fact, held of me—not that the knowledge would influence me one way or the other now.
We had been there maybe an hour when a strange commotion erupted on the dais. Sir Errol had just pronounced some sentence on a cowed-looking yokel, when the mangled body of Sir Havan made a violent reaction. Even from this distance, we could hear the formless grunts and whines. We could see the head shake and the shoulders twitch against the sides of the chair. Leonora’s hands flew to her cheeks. Bella’s fingers wrapped themselves around her husband’s wrist. Errol crossed to his father’s side and bent over the shivering body as if to try and understand the indecipherable sounds. He turned back to the man he had just dismissed.
“Wait!” he called out. “My father has reversed the judgment.”
On the words, Sir Havan grew calm again. The dejected man straightened and made a field hand’s salute toward the stage. “My lord,” he said, and backed into the crowd. All around us the audience murmured in a muffled unease.
“I can’t stand this,” I said. I found that my fingers had clutched Samuel’s arm in a grip that must have been painful; I dropped my hand.
“Do you want to leave?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I owe Havan the courtesy of staying long enough to be certain.”
And so we stayed, through each grim petition, each inaudible argument. Havan did not again attempt to communicate. It was with indescribable relief that I saw the last petitioner make his case, hear his judgment, bow, and rejoin the assembly. Now what? Everyone appeared to be waiting for some cue, some gesture of release. I saw activity on the dais and realized that four footmen had lifted the lord’s chair and now were carrying it carefully off the stage, down through the ranks of petitioners, and toward the exit. No one would leave the room before the lord. As the crowd divided, Sam and I found ourselves along the aisle that opened between the dais and the door. Wordlessly, we watched as Havan was carried toward us, his arms flopping against the sides of the chair, his gaze running wildly around the circle of watching faces.
He saw me and his eyes locked on mine.
It was as if he tried to lunge from the chair. His body spasmed and one of his feet kicked out, landing with considerable force against a footman’s chin. The servant stumbled, lost his grip, and came to his knees, desperately trying to keep his hold. Bella screamed from the stage. The crowd loosed a collective gasp of dismay and stepped backward as if to avoid contamination.
The other footmen hastily settled the chair on the floor as Sam strode over to offer assistance. I trailed reluctantly behind. “Shall I call for help?” Sam asked. “Do you want me to carry one leg?”
“No, no, I just lost my balance,” said the shaken servant.
I paid little attention to the conference between Sam and the footmen; I ignored the sound of Bella’s footsteps hurrying across the hall. Havan was still staring at me, still trembling in his seat. His mouth worked as if he would speak the most urgent message. He recognized me, that was clear. He knew what I was capable of. Did he want to shriek at me to go away, to leave him alone, to take my sorcerous potions elsewhere?
Did he want to beg me to release him?
I knelt before him and took one nerveless hand in mine, feeling the fingers lax and chilly. As soon as I touched him, he grew still; he stopped his frantic jerking. Even his eyes seemed more serene, though they never wavered from my face. I could read that look, I thought. Do what you can for me. I squeezed his fingers, then dropped his hand as Bella came skidding to a halt beside him. I did not want her to see me again, to guess why I had come. I stepped back into the silent crowd and turned my face away until Havan had finally been carried out the door.
We had agreed to meet Leonora at a small inn just outside the fortress gates. She came to us that evening with another cadre of guards in the blue-and-gold livery of Kessing.
“Well?” she asked the instant she was shown into our room. “Do you believe now that I told you the truth?”
“I believe you,” I said wearily. I had mixed up a potion as soon as we entered the inn. I had sworn to never again interfere in the lives of others, but it is easier to break a promise to yourself than to break a promise to someone else. “No one should have to live like that.”
I handed her the vial, wrapped in blue silk, the color of her eyes. She took it from me with those eyes at their widest. “This is it? Already? This is the potion?” she asked, almost stammering. “What must be done?”
“He must drink all of it,” I said. “There is not much and it has no flavor. It can be mixed in wine or water. He will not know what he is taking.”
She unwrapped the vial and stared at the clear liquid through the glass. “And it will not hurt him?” she whispered. “He will feel
no pain?”
“None, I swear to you,” I said.
Quickly she rewrapped the philter and tucked it inside her reticule. I wondered exactly how she planned to administer this to him, but decided not to ask. She seemed quite resourceful. “What do I owe you?” she wanted to know.
I shook my head. “I want nothing from you.”
“But—surely—I have brought gold with me, and jewels—”
“This is not a service for which I wish to be paid,” I said quietly.
She hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Very well,” she said. “On behalf of Sir Havan and his family, I thank you.”
“I don’t want thanks, either,” I said.
She could see that I would not take her hand, but she required something more of a leavetaking, so she offered her hand to Sam. He took it gravely, shook it, and released her. “Good-bye, my lady,” he said, and ushered her toward the door.
I was staring out the single small window, but I knew he had turned back to watch me once he locked Leonora out. “Do you want to leave for Salla City first thing in the morning?” he asked.
It was not quite dusk, and the trek would take us several hours. “No,” I said, “I want to leave tonight. Now.”
We did not push the horses, and in fact the cool, starlit journey was almost pleasant. In the night air, sounds seemed to be invested with a strange significance; each hoofbeat, each jingle of the bridle sounded distinct and mysterious in the plush silence. We encountered no other travelers on the way.
We had been riding for nearly two hours when I began, without prompting, to tell my story. “Raever was dying,” I said. “I was the only one who knew it. He had contracted a disease of the blood for which I did not have the remedy. I tried—Leith and Egeva, how I tried—to produce an antidote that would save him, but there are some diseases, I have learned, for which there are no cures. He was not in great pain—that much, as you know, I could do for him—but his body was growing frail and his memory had become unreliable. As I said, no one but me knew just how sick he was, and me he had sworn to secrecy.
“Raever did not fear many things, but he had an absolute abhorrence of weakness, of dependency. He hated to see someone beg—he did not even care much for humility. The idea of a gradual, wasting illness, which would leave him utterly at the mercy of others, was terrible to him. And so he asked me for a philter that would release him early into death.”
I fell silent a moment. Samuel made no comment. Had I not seen his fingers shift upon the reins, I would have thought he was asleep. “At first, I refused, for he was my king and I did not want him to die. Also, I had not yet despaired of finding a cure. But no more than he could, could I bear to see him fall into faintness and delirium, and we agreed that if he were to die by his own hand, it should be while he was still able to rationally choose such a death.
“It was Raever who came up with the plan. He had me mix up a month’s supply of potions, all in separate, identical bottles. Twenty-nine of them would be filled with a few harmless ounces of water—only one would carry the death dosage inside. He would drink one every night before he went to bed, destroying the bottle before he slept so that no one would find it and later suspect that I had given him poison. He chose this method,” I added, “because he said that no man, even one who wanted to die, should know with certainty the hour of his death.”
“And did you in fact present him with the thirty bottles?” Samuel asked at last.
“I did.”
“And upon which night did he die?”
I whispered, “The twenty-third.”
“It seems to me,” Sam said, his voice slow and comforting in the dark, “that a king as clever as Raever was said to be would know that suspicion would fall on you, no matter how careful he was with these bottles.”
“Oh, he knew it. I knew it. He wanted me to leave Verallis a few days before he began taking his nightly potions, so I would not be there for any inquisition. But I could not bear to leave him while he was still alive, while there still might be something I could do for him, however small. I was prepared for the maelstrom that followed. At that, I did not greatly care if they condemned me to death or allowed me to live. Not much really mattered to me once Raever was dead.”
“You loved him,” Sam said.
“He had a wife and three daughters, and he was twenty years older than I was.”
“Yet you loved him,” Sam repeated stubbornly.
“I believed in him,” I said. “He was an autocratic and domineering man, but he had such vision and strength of purpose. There was nothing he could have asked me to do that I would not have done, for it seemed to me that this man, more clearly than anyone I had ever met, understood right and wrong in the largest sense. I am not the only one from whom he commanded great devotion. We were a court of disciples, and we fell apart when our leader died.”
“And yet I hear good things about his daughter, who is now the queen.”
“Yes,” I said wearily. “She is an intelligent woman, and she rules well. But she is not Raever. Something went out of the world when Raever died.”
“Something went out of you,” he said.
I looked over at him, but I could not see much in the dark. “What do you mean?”
“You’re the healer,” he said. “Mend your own broken heart.”
“Your heart has been broken,” I said swiftly. “Do you think it is an easy thing to fix?”
“I think,” he replied carefully, “that someone with the right skills could heal me.”
I faced forward again. The road ahead looked endless. “There are some things for which there are no cures,” I said.
It might have been my imagination, but I thought I heard him sigh. We rode on into the unchanging darkness.
Naturally, I slept late the next day. It had only been a few hours before dawn when Sam and I arrived in Salla City. He had accompanied me to the cottage I had rented on the edge of town, watched me dismount, and taken the reins of my horse. It was, after all, his horse. He did not say good-bye as he rode away, and I did not look back at him as I let myself into my unlit house.
Now it was late afternoon, and I was, surprisingly, hungry. I had not eaten for nearly twenty-four hours, but still, hunger was a sensation I rarely experienced. I rose and moved aimlessly about my cottage, but there was very little in the cupboards that could be turned into a meal. I felt a curious reluctance to go to Sam’s for dinner, certain as I was that he would join me for the meal. I knew better than to rely on the gentleness and seeming strength of any man. I had gone so long without yielding my burdens to anyone. What made me long now to take my comfort from somebody else’s heart?
I shook my head and concentrated on putting together a makeshift meal from some moldy biscuits and a vinegary jug of wine. Out of habit, I pulled out my zafo cards and shuffled them. Mostly to distract myself, I laid out a standard grid and turned the cards over in my own unconventional order.
The primary significator: the hooded figure. The final outcome: the black queen. I smiled faintly. These same two cards had appeared in the last reading I had done, only then their positions had been reversed. Now the shadowy, unformed image was in my past, and in my future was the assured, powerful, dark-haired woman. What had I left behind, then, and what was I to become?
The four cards in the second row, the pictures of my past, showed more hazy and undefined images. There, the secretive moon that refused to answer questions; there, the locked box, showing that treasures had been denied. Again, the black king reversed. Beside him, the roan stallion, who bespoke restlessness, travel, and change.
In the third row, all was altered. A stack of twelve coins indicated the richness of my fortune, and a blazing sun shone upon my home. The white king appeared to answer the questions of my heart, and in the position that indicated career, the winged horse spread its alabaster wings. This last card was the elemental symbol for air and had been taken by the halani to mean magical ability. A rebirth of my pow
er; a professional renaissance.
I chewed on another stale biscuit and thought for a moment. Clearly, it was going to be impossible to keep the events of Kessing a secret. I had known that before I undertook the journey. Bella had recognized me on the street and had spoken my name at least once. She would be even more likely to mention it again after all this. If I stayed in Salla City, I would be found. If I was found, there were others who would bring requests to me of a dangerous and highly emotional nature. I had sworn never to interfere again in the lives of others, but Raever had made me take another vow.
“Promise me you will not kill yourself after I am dead,” he had said. I had been amazed. How had he known about the second vial I had mixed up, giving one to him and keeping one for myself? “Promise me this disease will only take one life.”
And because I had been unable to refuse him anything, I had promised, but I had only in the most rudimentary way kept my vow. You could not say I had really lived in the past eleven years.
Except for the last couple of days, when once again I had held life and death in my hands, and shuddered at the responsibility.
I picked up the white king and studied it a moment. A fair-haired man, or a good man, or an old man; the card meant all of these things. I had not looked for such a card in such a position at such a time in my life.
Outside, I heard the gate squeal on the unoiled hinges, and running footsteps crossed the gravel walk. I did not have much time to debate whether or not I would answer the door before it was flung open and Sam strode into the room. He had never before entered my house, for he had never been invited in, and I stared at him in astonishment.
He was laughing. Before I could move toward him or away, he was upon me. He grabbed me around the waist and lifted me in the air. I clutched at his shoulders to keep my balance, staring down at him in excitement and alarm.
“Samuel Berris!” I cried out. “What are you doing?”
He actually tossed me in the air once before setting me on my feet. Then he hugged me and finally let me go.
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