The Mountain of Kept Memory

by Rachel Neumeier

  Kelian stared at her. He said, “Your Highness, I had no idea you thought about such matters.” His voice was beautiful too: low and warm.

  Oressa shrugged. “Oh, well. I hear things, you know.” Probably it wouldn’t be a good idea to let Kelian understand just how much she knew about everyone’s private business. She cleared her throat. Although now that he was captain, even junior captain . . . and she did trust him, and Gulien needed men he could trust, too. “You know—,” she began

  Then her father’s man Kedmes came down the stairs, stepped out into the hall, saw her standing there with Kelian, and stopped in his tracks, glowering.

  Oressa straightened her shoulders and glared back. She knew plenty about Kedmes, too, who was her father’s bodyguard as well as his personal servant. Or, well, mostly what she knew was that Kedmes never took bribes to get anybody an audience with the king, that he occasionally visited a certain house in town but didn’t bother the servant girls in the palace, that he was big and not stupid and didn’t like her, and most of all that he would never, ever forgive Gulien for deposing their father. That last part was what worried her. She hadn’t heard anything—there had been no sound of a fight. She hadn’t even heard Gulien yell.

  “What were you doing up there?” she demanded. “I know Gulien ordered all of Father’s people to stay in his other apartment!”

  But after the spring plague and the Tamaristan invasion and now Gulien’s getting rid of the ones Oressa told him he couldn’t trust, there weren’t nearly enough guardsmen still on their feet and at their posts to keep somebody like Kedmes where he didn’t want to stay.

  He sneered, lip curling, unimpressed by her—not impressed by Kelian, either, obviously. “Don’t fret,” he said shortly. “I’m going there, and there I’ll stay, I guess, less there’s some reason why not. You tell your brother t’ keep his promise to me, hear? He listens to you, all of us know ’t, for all you’re flighty and bird-witted—”

  Kelian moved a deliberate step forward. “Watch how you speak to Her Highness, man,” he said sternly. He didn’t touch the hilt of his sword—a guardsman wouldn’t so threaten a servant, even a servant like Kedmes. But he meant it.

  Kedmes glowered at him, too, for a long moment. Then he lowered his eyes and jerked a reluctant nod at the guard captain and another at her. “Your Highness,” he said to her. “I’m going there, as His Highness ordered, if I’ve got your leave.”

  For half a honey cake, Oressa would have told Kelian to escort her father’s servant to the other apartment. For less than that, she’d have ordered the new guard captain to escort Kedmes to the dungeon and see him chained up where she could be sure he’d stay. But she wanted Kelian with her, right here at the foot of the tower . . . just in case they had to rescue Gulien after all. She definitely didn’t want to imagine storming up those stairs and into her father’s apartment and trying to extricate her brother from their father’s clutches all by herself.

  “All right,” she said at last. “Go, then. It’s a two-minute walk from here, I think. Kelian will check later to be sure it was a two-minute walk for you, too.”

  This time the look Kedmes gave her was no more fond, but it held a shade of respect. “Your Highness,” he repeated grimly, and strode away, ill-tempered but with no sign of disobedience.

  “Two minutes, is it?” said Kelian. “I really will check.”

  “You really should,” Oressa agreed. “And you’ll have to time it, but I think it’s about that.” She knew better how long it took to get from one place in the palace to another via the secret passages. Plainly she should consider pacing off and memorizing some of the distances when one took the ordinary hallways, too.

  She was deliberately trying to distract herself from her brother’s confrontation with their father, she knew. She stared worriedly up the stairs. “In fifteen minutes . . . ,” she began, though she was by no means sure she’d have the nerve to go up those stairs herself, even with Kelian and a dozen guardsmen.

  “His Highness will get that artifact, just as he intends,” Kelian assured her, clearly understanding that look. “Any man who would brace the Kieba in her mountain isn’t likely to flinch from much.”

  Oressa smiled at him gratefully and didn’t say that there was a world of difference between facing the Kieba and facing Osir Madalin.

  CHAPTER 6

  It had been simple for Gulien to promise the Kieba he would depose his father and recover Parianasaku’s artifact for her, and simple to give Oressa the same assurance. Grandiose promises were always simple to make. In the pressure of the moment, perched high atop the Kieba’s golem, with her intangible but forceful presence filling the air around him, around them all, it had been amazingly easy to compel his father to step aside. Osir Madalin was not a man to be forced into a public confrontation he couldn’t win—as Gulien very well knew.

  But there was all the difference in the world between a public confrontation and a private one. Gulien knew that, too. He had tried hard not to let any of them see his apprehension—not Lord Paulin Tegeres nor Magister Lorren nor Magister Baramis nor anyone else. It didn’t help that all of the important men whose backing Gulien needed so badly were so much older than he. It didn’t help that he knew any of them—well, at least Magister Baramis, and probably many of the others—would far prefer to have his father back in command and never mind the recent string of disasters. He didn’t blame them. He wanted that himself, except it was impossible.

  It was almost equally impossible to imagine actually facing his father, now that the ferocious flood tide of events that had carried him along had ebbed and left him stranded to make his way forward by his own strength and will.

  Though he’d so bravely strode up the stairs while Oressa was watching, as soon as he turned around the first landing and was safely out of sight, he found his steps slowing until he came to a complete halt on the second landing. He leaned against the wall for long moments, furious with himself but unable to make himself go on up the final flights of stairs.

  Perhaps he should have let Oressa come with him after all. If his sister had been with him, he wouldn’t have been able to lose his nerve. Or even if he had lost it, he’d have had to keep moving. That was sometimes all you could do, hide the fact that you’d lost your nerve and just keep moving. Especially with their father, who didn’t have nerves and despised cowardice almost more than stupidity.

  But no. Oressa brought out the worst in their father. If Gulien had let her come, she would have gone all meek and biddable and stupid, and then their father would turn impatient and imperious—more imperious—and once Osir got into that sort of mood, Gulien would never be able to get him to give up the Kieba’s artifact. Never.

  He wished fervently that the Kieba had left him a falcon, as he’d requested. He had wanted it to show everyone, especially his father’s partisans, that he was the one who held the Kieba’s favor. More than that, he found now, he had hoped to draw confidence from it himself. But she had refused him, and he must depend on his own unsupported will to face his father and make him yield the Kieba’s artifact.

  Only Gulien could take Parianasaku’s Capture from his father, and only if Osir yielded it to him; so the Kieba believed. It was in the king’s blood. What had the Kieba said? That it dwelt half in his flesh and half in his mind and hardly at all in the world . . . something of the kind. Gulien didn’t understand any of that, but he supposed it must be true and he knew he could not take that artifact. He had to persuade his father to give it up.

  Halfway up the stairs and Gulien still could hardly imagine his father giving up anything. Even to his own heir.

  Osir had been king for a long, long time. He would never accept being deposed—not by the Kieba and certainly not by his own son. He could never accept any kind of defeat, not in anything. Even though he had already seen all his advisers and counselors and . . . well, Osir didn’t really have friends . . . his allies, then. He had seen them either killed by that Tamaristan prin
ce or forced to accede to Gulien’s demands. But accept that he had lost his throne and his crown and his absolute authority? No. He would never accept any of that.

  Gulien let out a hard breath, pushed himself away from the wall, and took the next two flights of stairs two at a time.

  The landing at the top of the stairs was broad, all but empty. Polished boards stretched from one side of the tower to the other, with a window piercing the thick stone walls on each side. Generally, with the king in residence in this apartment, there would be a guardsman or two on duty here. But there were so few guardsmen Gulien trusted—well, he trusted most of the guardsmen, of course; but that meant he trusted them to go about their ordinary duties, not stand watch over the man who had been king of Carastind until just hours past, the man who had probably taken their oaths personally, who had certainly been king all their lives. Out of desperation, Gulien had ordered bolts and a chain brought from the dungeon, fastened the outer door of the tower apartment with that, and kept the key himself. If no guardsman had the key, no one could disobey orders to open the door.

  But his father’s servant Kedmes was sitting there on the hard boards next to the locked and chained door, his powerful hands folded around one drawn-up knee, his back against the wall. The man had heard Gulien coming, clearly—and just as clearly had chosen to stay seated. It might have been a deliberate insult; it probably was. But Gulien suspected it was also probably an attempt to look harmless. This was not easy for Kedmes, who was a bodyguard as well as a servant, and entirely loyal to the king.

  His father’s servants Gulien trusted not at all, except to be loyal to his father come what may—Kedmes more so than any. That was why he had ordered them all confined to the king’s newer apartment on the ground floor of the palace. All but two of the oldest servants, nearly his father’s own age, whom he had sent to the tower to see to Osir’s comfort during this period of transition. Now, finding Kedmes here on the landing, he took an involuntary step back toward the stairs and thought of calling down for Kelian, having his father’s servant arrested and confined somewhere more daunting than simply the other apartment. If the man dared lift a hand against Kelian, far less Gulien, then without question Gulien would have every right and reason to chain him down in the dungeon below the palace and leave him there.

  Kedmes knew just what Gulien was thinking, of course. He was not stupid, or the king would hardly have tolerated his service. The big man got to his feet, but carefully, opening his hands in token of submission. “Your Highness. I figured you would come up eventually. I only wanted to ask leave to go in. To stay by His Majesty. What if that Tamaristan prince comes back? Or if the Kieba sends one of them falcons of hers, or something else, something worse—”

  Gulien held up a hand, and Kedmes fell silent, glowering but ducking his head deferentially. “The Kieba won’t send a golem against my father,” Gulien said, making sure his tone was level. “She has no need to. She sent me.” He wished this were precisely true. But he only went on. “Nor will Prince Gajdosik return. He would hardly dare now. I ordered you to the lower apartment, did I not?”

  After a barely perceptible pause, his father’s servant admitted, “You did, Your Highness. But—”

  “Go there now. Stay there.” Gulien stepped aside, gesturing toward the stairway. “Get out of my way and give me no reason to think ill of you, or think of you at all, and I give you my word that when I decide where to send my father—” And where could he send him, where he wouldn’t have to worry about him? One of the ascetic desert retreats, as Oressa had suggested? Some loyal noble’s country house—didn’t Lord Paulin’s family have a house in the southeast, by the Markand border? The idea of simply leaving his father in this tower, an ominous presence just out of sight, was insupportable.

  Drawing a breath, Gulien went on with hardly a pause. “When I decide, I will send you with him, if you wish. But not if you will not obey me now.”

  The big man scowled, but he also lowered his eyes and ducked his head again. “Your Highness,” he muttered, and strode past Gulien and down the stairs, unhurriedly but without argument. And if Kedmes kept quiet and did as he was told, Gulien supposed he would have no choice but to keep his promise to send the man with his father. Even though he knew that by so doing, he put a weapon in his father’s hand.

  He wanted to go down those stairs himself, back to his own apartment, take a few hours to think everything through, set it all down in order—what he needed to accomplish and what essential obstacles he faced and what advantages were available to his hand and what everyone was likely to do. If this, then that, all in neat order. But it wouldn’t help. Whatever complicated plans Gulien laid down, his father would undoubtedly confound. Osir was almost as unpredictable as Oressa.

  No, Gulien simply had to keep matters simple, hold to what he knew was true, and never let his father distract him. Get Parianasaku’s Capture, return it to the Kieba, take the next year to set Caras and all of Carastind in good order. Settle Oressa with a reliable man who was not Madalin and had not earned the Kieba’s anger, ensure that his sister and whatever man he found for her would have the support they needed to rebuild Carastind’s safety and prosperity. He could do this. He had to do it, and he would.

  But the first step was to get Parianasaku’s Capture from his father.

  He had been, he acknowledged, deliberately putting off the moment when he must set key to that lock and open that door. He had almost welcomed the confrontation with Kedmes; he almost regretted the man had not given him more trouble—grateful, yes, but almost sorry for it as well. Because he did not want to go into that apartment and face his father.

  Recognizing that, he had no choice but to put the key into the lock and turn it.

  The apartment was a big one, of course, with several sitting rooms beyond the antechamber, a small kitchen and a large dining chamber to the left, and its own private library to the right, and at the back, no fewer than three bedchambers and a solarium with potted lemon trees that could be brought in or set out on the balcony depending on the season. Gulien was familiar with the apartment, of course, for though the king had moved down to the ground floor years before, he had long been accustomed to request and require his son’s attendance for the occasional private supper. So, despite the small noises of activity from the kitchen, Gulien automatically turned to the right and made his way to the largest sitting room.

  His father was, as he had expected, seated in one of the straight-backed chairs. He had been reading—the book was a heavy leather-bound volume with silver lettering deeply embossed across the spine: a history of the great kingdom of Estenda prior to the breakaway of Carastind and Markand. Gulien had read it, and he suspected his father had chosen to examine it now for its accounts of the earliest history of the Kieba’s alliance with the Madalin family, for it was the Kieba’s choosing to dwell in Carastind that had enabled that early rebellion.

  Osir Madalin must have heard his son at the door, or recognized his step, for he had arranged the ribbon in the book to mark his place and closed the volume. Now he unhurriedly laid the book aside on a glass-topped table and raised an eyebrow at Gulien. “Well, my son? I gather the Kieba has sent you to make her requirements known to me?”

  Gulien had known that nothing about this encounter would be easy. Pretending to be untouched by the sting of his father’s contempt, he said, “Let me be plain: To recover her artifact, she intended to allow that Garamanaji prince to conquer us. She meant us to become a subject people. If she allied with anyone, it would have been the Tamaristan, not us! That was what you achieved with your defiance.”

  Osir’s eyes narrowed. “My son, the Tamaristan prince would have found himself in difficulty soon enough. I gather you compelled his departure. That, at least, was well done, but you were not well advised to seek the Kieba’s intervention in the matter. In time you will find, as I have, that an artifact constantly in the keeping of the Madalin kings is far more reliable than the Kieba’s fickle natur
e. If you had come to me—”

  Recklessly, Gulien interrupted him. “Or I might have applied to Prince Gajdosik for his thoughts on the matter, sir, since despite your claim to have the matter in hand, by the time I returned to Caras, the Tamaristan prince was clearly well positioned to cast down the Madalin falcon.”

  Osir sighed soundlessly. “My son, you know less of these matters than you believe. Of course the Kieba does not wish Parianasaku’s artifact to remain in Madalin hands. Of course she would use any tool that set itself conveniently into her hands. It is in the nature of power, as you yourself are surely finding now, that that it must be used. However, as you would have discovered had you composed yourself in patience rather than dashing carelessly off to the Kieba’s mountain, once mortal men learn to handle certain artifacts appropriately, our kingdoms may safely dispense with her arbitrary, outmoded rule.”

  “More likely we would have found Carastind required to use whatever artifacts we might possess against both Tamarist and Estenda at once—or will you tell me the Estendan merchant-princes would not seek advantage in our weakness once their agents brought them word we had cast off the Kieba’s friendship? Do not tell me that your spies suggest the merchant-princes have failed of ambition, for I will trust the goodwill of Estenda no more readily than the peacefulness of Tamarist.”

  The king regarded Gulien with chilly amusement. “Both the merchant-princes and the ambitious Garamanaji princes would find we had cast it off because we no longer depend upon the friendship of the immortal Kieba for anything.”

  “Indeed, sir? Or they might have discovered, as you might have discovered, to your cost, that you were not superseding the Kieba’s rule, but actually unleashing plagues upon the world. Then every man’s hand would turn against you and against all of Carastind for permitting it—”