Oath of Fealty

by Elizabeth Moon

  “I could—”

  “No. I will not risk both of us in my uncle’s study. Remember what I told you of it.”

  She had been in the Duke’s study only a few times before fleeing Verrakai, but she remembered its location well enough. She felt the inherent magery pressing against her as she neared it, and paused after pushing open the heavy door with the hilt of her sword. Haron’s father had been duke when she left; Haron had the same taste in decor, elaborate and luxurious. The desk, with its blue leather cover tooled and painted with the Verrakai crest and motto. The chair, also covered in heavily padded blue leather, the crest centered in its back.

  “Why didn’t you use your hand?” the Royal Guard sergeant said, then added a late “my lord.”

  “Here I expect to find more lethal traps and tricks than anywhere else,” Dorrin said, looking the room over carefully. “When I was a child, my great-uncle, the late Haron’s father, set a spell on the door whenever he left, to prevent anyone coming in. It would knock an intruder down. When Haron left for Vérella, he might have set a lethal one. And do you see that chair?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Looks comfortable, doesn’t it? A poisoned spike, spring-loaded, is hidden in that fancy crest. If anyone sits there but the Duke, to whom the secret of disarming the chair has been handed down, it is death. The chair before the desk has traps as well. Touch nothing here—not the doorjamb, not a chair or table or so much as a book—without my direction.”

  “That’s—that’s horrible,” the sergeant said.

  “Sir Valthan wants to see certain records, but I do not want to risk his life in here,” Dorrin said. Or her own, but she had to do that. “You must do nothing but stand here and witness, until I am sure the room is safe. If I fall, tell Sir Valthan to fire the room. He will not obtain the records the prince wants, but it is too dangerous to send anyone else in, and fire should cleanse it.”

  “Burn the—your—body?”

  “Yes. Better that than risking more lives. He and I have discussed what to do with the family should that occur.” Dorrin touched Falk’s ruby. “Ward of Falk,” she said, and stepped into the room.

  Magery coiled about her, invisible but palpable to her awakened mage-sense. Woven into the blue and gray rug, its patterns picked out in silver threads that drew her eye, urged her to move here, then there, in patterns that would entrap her if she obeyed. She ignored the urging, instead looking around once more—to either side, behind, above, below, probing with her awakened abilities for every trap, every compulsion, every evil design.

  The room seemed more silent than it should, the silence oozing out from shelves of books and scrolls, up from the rugs, down from a carved and painted ceiling. Stillness, timelessness—Dorrin shook herself; it was not peace, but yet another protection built into the room, intended to immobilize intruders, and she had forgotten its existence. She stamped on the floor and said, “Your Duke returns! Verrakai hoert’a basinya bakuerta bavanta da akkensaar!” In the ancient language of the password: “Verrakai: not elven, not stone-folk, not air-folk, but mage-man.” A spell and counterspell she’d been told were older than Verrakai House, old as the magelords’ retreat from Old Aare. The stillness receded.

  She glanced back at the sergeant, pale-faced and sweating in the doorway. “Just an old spell, don’t worry.”

  “It looked like the room was filling with dust.”

  “It wasn’t exactly dust,” Dorrin said. She stayed away from the ducal desk and went to the shelves to the right. “I may disappear,” she said over her shoulder. “These shelves are images; they should recede to the real ones beyond, but I might walk through them. I wasn’t taught all the counterspells.” Under her gloved hand, the shelves felt real; she knew better than to grope among the books and scrolls for the touchlock and instead pressed the ducal ring on the most likely shelf. “Tangat Verrakai!” she said sharply.

  The shelves vanished, revealing a much larger room with two tables, plain wooden chairs set near them, and more shelves. At the far end, the portrait she remembered hung above a small fireplace; it had terrified her as a small child, a larger-than-life-size image of Aekal Verrakai, the first duke, grim-faced. But she was not a child any longer and found him more repulsive than frightening.

  You should fear. Straight into her mind the words came. Without me, you are nothing. Because of me, you were born. Because of me, you will live or die. Fear me.

  “You are dead these thousand years,” Dorrin said.

  A cold laugh. This power never dies.

  “Nor Falk’s power, nor the High Lord’s,” Dorrin said. She drew her sword and laid the sword’s tip on the image’s chest. “It is time this image died, as well as its ghost.” A little pressure, and the tip pierced the surface.

  Blood spurted from the image’s chest, ran down her sword blade hissing and smoking. The blade itself flared blue; stinking black smoke curled to either side. Dorrin stared, amazed, for a split second. Blood magery even here? She lent her power to the sword blade, augmenting its innate protection with her own, at the same time drawing the tip across the portrait, ripping it one way, then another. More blood surged out, splashing against her personal shield, hissing … it died, dried. A red mist rose from the wall behind the portrait, but dissipated when Dorrin called again and again on Falk.

  Grimacing, she pulled the rags of the portrait free of its frame, realizing as she did that it had been painted on thin leather, not fabric. The frame itself stank of dark magery; she pulled that, too, free, and one side broke open. Instead of solid carved and painted wood, she found it was plaster, molded and painted to look like wood, over a core of bones and bone fragments … of what she did not know and did not want to imagine. On the wall itself, a door, carved with the Verrakai crest and a warning. Dorrin didn’t touch it physically, but once more said, “Tangat Verrakai.”

  The door opened, revealing a small vault. Inside, the shattered remains of an urn with a little brownish red powder that vanished as she looked at it, what looked like a wooden box with inlaid patterns, a discolored scroll, and something beyond wrapped in pale leather. Dorrin left the vault open and walked back, nearer the study door.

  “Did you see that?” she asked the sergeant.

  “No, my lord. Like you said, you walked through a wall of books, it looked like.”

  “The room extends beyond. There was magery, and I defeated it.” The man looked pale enough already; she did not want to panic him completely. “There’s a vault in the wall, with an urn, a scroll, various other items. I do not wish to remove these things at the moment, because Sir Valthan really needs the information in the family birth records, and I haven’t found that yet.”

  “The scroll?”

  “Too old. And it should be a book with pages; I saw it as a child.” She looked around that end of the office, trying to remember the size and color of the volume. As a child, she had thought it huge, but how large was it really? She found two other record books, one with the breeding records of the Verrakai stud and one with a record of harvests for the past twenty-two years, before she found the one she wanted.

  Her family had seemed vast when she lived here, but from the records Haron’s plan had been to concentrate power in the family as well as without. Only one of her sisters had survived, and both her brothers had been killed in duels with Haron’s sons. Her father had died of a hunting accident; there was a mark beside his name she did not know. Relief flooded her: he was dead; she did not have to worry about seeing that face ever again. In her own generation, cousin had married cousin—to strengthen the magery, no doubt. Stillbirths … infant deaths … childhood accidents … half these listings marked like her father’s name, whatever it meant. So the gaggle of children upstairs really were all … she’d expected fifty or more.

  Yet something about the record book felt wrong. She could easily imagine dishonesty—but why here, in the list of family members, births, marriages, deaths, titles? Was there another record book, h
idden somewhere? Or was something hidden here, in this book?

  She touched the book with her magery; to her inner sight the pages wavered, as if under water, and a new page appeared, covered densely with a small crabbed script she did not recognize. As she read, she felt the hair rise up on her body: many of those listed as dead—those with the symbol—were not dead but transferred by blood magery to the bodies of others, some Verrakaien and some not. In such disguise, unrecognized, they could go anywhere, work for Verrakai secretly.

  Including her father. Not dead, still alive, hidden? At the thought, panic flooded her, the fear she had controlled while in the tower’s dungeon. She had not told the Knight-Commander—she had been ashamed, even now, to admit how much she feared him, and why. Her uncle had been duke and also punished her, but her father—he had worn the Bloodlord’s hood and mask, he had decreed the torment of her pony and torments even more shameful.

  She closed the book and went at once to the door. “I have urgent news for Sir Valthan, which my relatives must not overhear. Tell him we need a safe place to confer.”

  Dorrin met Valthan in the dairy. Windowless, stone-walled, the dairy felt chill and dank, light from their candle sending tiny dazzles from the water in the channel where butter and milk kept cool. Dorrin laid the book on the small table Valthan’s men had set there. “You found something bad?” Valthan asked.

  “Many things,” Dorrin said. “But this is the worst.” She opened the book and pointed to the mark. “These are listed as deaths, with dates and causes listed. But they are not dead. They live … in other bodies.”

  “What?”

  “I did not know such evil was possible … but with blood magery, and I suppose the help of Liart’s priests, they can transfer the souls and minds of Verrakai into other bodies, to work secretly for that traitor Haron.”

  “So … the prince may still be in danger?”

  “The prince, yes, but also the realm as a whole. I do not know who the alternate identities are.” Her own father, not safely dead but alive—where was he? Who was he? She shuddered, forcing memory away.

  “How do you know this?”

  “There is a page visible only by magery,” Dorrin said. “I can try to make it visible to you—” She put out her power again and the page reappeared. “There, do you see it?”

  “No,” Valthan said, scowling. “What does it say?”

  “It gives the dates these people were transferred to another body, and for a few it gives that identity.”

  “What about those others? Are they now in Verrakai bodies?”

  “They’re dead,” Dorrin said. The page gave part of the ritual by which the transfer was done; it disgusted her.

  “Well … that’s one thing,” Valthan said, staring down at the page, through the page he could not see. “What will happen if I touch this? Will I feel the one I can’t see?” He put out a finger.

  “Don’t,” Dorrin said. “I don’t want to risk it. I need a competent scribe, so I can read this page aloud and send a copy to the prince, but though I have literate men among my cohort, none are skilled at dictation. Do you have a scribe with you?”

  He shook his head. “I’m the only one. If you trust me.”

  “Of course,” Dorrin said.

  “I mean, I might be one of those Verrakai put in someone’s body. I might be about to kill you.”

  “We can find out,” Dorrin said. She read out the phrase that supposedly forced the transferred Verrakai to reveal themselves.

  “What was that?” Valthan said.

  “Proof you’re not a Verrakai,” Dorrin said. “Let’s get this done—time’s passing.”

  Valthan wrote to her dictation; then Dorrin copied his copy, which matched her memory.

  “Do not let my relatives know you have this,” Dorrin said. “They might find a way to destroy it, if they suspected its existence. It must go to the prince’s own hand.”

  “A courier?”

  Dorrin considered. “Do you have a man to spare? Considering how many prisoners you have and the Verrakai yet at large?”

  “Not really,” Valthan admitted. “But I expect to meet another troop on the way.”

  “I still worry that attack on a single courier would be easier than on a troop. If you send one, warn him to stop nowhere but at a grange of Gird—not for water or food or rest.”

  When they returned to the great hall, the guard had changed to Phelani; Valthan’s were out in the stable, readying horses and wagons for the morning’s departure. They would sleep there, in relative safety, to be rested for the next day’s travel. Dorrin went to the front entrance and murmured the command word that swung the great doors wide. Sweet cold air flowed in, smelling of early spring, the first faint fragrance of healthy growth. She wanted to walk out into the darkness and never come back. She’d done it once; her escape saved her life and sanity.

  And she had come back, unwilling, to save those who would not thank her, the innocent among her bitter and resentful family. In her mind she saw the view that darkness hid—the fields, the trees beyond, the view that should have been as dear and familiar as anything in the world. Instead, longing for the Duke’s Stronghold stabbed her, the familiar inner and outer courts, sunrise seen from the parapet, that dinner table with Kieri at its head and Arcolin and Cracolnya across from her. Her eyes stung with unshed tears.

  Would she ever feel this was home? A safe place, a comfortable place?

  She stared at the gloom until her eyes dried, then turned and went inside.

  Before dawn, Dorrin and Sir Valthan ate breakfast in the dining room of the main house, still from rations they’d brought, and Dorrin wrote out another report for the prince, on the conditions she’d found in the keep.

  “You’ll have to take the tower down,” Valthan said. “If it’s been the center of their evil that long—”

  “I know,” Dorrin said. She knew, but she felt a reluctance to destroy a work so old, the center of Verrakai House. As if he sensed that reluctance, Valthan put his hand on her arm.

  “My lord Duke, I’m serious. They will have built it with blood and bone: it cannot be cleansed. It must be destroyed.”

  “And will be,” Dorrin said. “When I have carried out the prince’s commands to find those under Order of Attainder and send them to Vérella. If I spend the weeks it will take to knock the tower down, stone by stone, they will get away.”

  “But—”

  “I will burn out the entire inside, leave it an empty husk,” Dorrin said. “That should hold the evil at bay awhile, while I do as the prince wished. Later, I can demolish it.”

  He nodded. “That sounds well enough.” He sighed. “I do not envy you your tasks, my lord.”

  “Nor do I envy you your journey to Vérella with my poisonous relatives.” She pushed back from the table. “I will renew my spells blocking their magery and hope those hold until you reach Vérella. Should you suspect they are regaining their magery, kill them at once. Remember they have powers you’ve never faced; just one of them held four motionless, including the Marshal-Judicar of Gird.”

  In the main reception hall, lamps and candles were alight; the women and girls stood in one huddle and the boys in another. Some glared at her, defiant; others cringed. Either expression might be a lie. Dorrin hooked her thumbs in her belt and looked them over.

  “Remember my warnings,” she said. “The Royal Guard has orders to kill you if you offer any resistance or attempt to use your magery, should my bindings fail.” For a moment her mother looked triumphant, but Dorrin smiled, putting into it all the Verrakai arrogance, and her mother’s eyes fell. “I do not think they will,” Dorrin said. “And to make certain—” She released the power again, first damping their powers, and then a glamour, making them docile, at least for a time.

  “Time to go,” Sir Valthan said. The Royal Guard urged them out the front entrance. The older women and those with child were put in a supply wagon. The others would walk. They did not complain, but
set off down the lane.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “My lord, have you slept at all?” Selfer asked when the others were well away. Dorrin glanced at him. He looked disgustingly bright-eyed for dawn when she knew he, too, had been up most of the night.

  “No,” Dorrin said. A yawn fought its way past her attempt to hold it back. “Too much to do. Now, too.”

  “My lord, by your leave—sleep a few hours. We will not let harm come to you.”

  Dorrin shook her head. “I distrust this sleepiness, Captain. It could be magery—”

  “I’ll wake you, I swear.”

  “All right,” Dorrin said. “But don’t let the men go wandering about—there are many dangers we haven’t cleared yet. And now the others have left, move those poor souls from the dungeons into the house—find clothes for them—”

  “—and get their names and homes, and find out everything we can from them,” Selfer said. “And be sure there’s clean water drawn up from the well you specified, and check the state of the pantries and—”

  Dorrin laughed, the last thing she’d expected. “And quit acting the mother hen, Captain? All right. I am exhausted. I’ll sleep in the dining room.”

  She woke in late morning when Selfer called her name.

  “Yes.” She stretched. “What is it?”

  Selfer came into the room and closed the door behind him. He carried a tray with a covered dish, two jugs, a bowl and mug, and towels over one arm. He set these on the table. “Something to eat, some hot water.”

  Dorrin yawned and stretched, while Selfer laid out a simple meal. Dorrin poured warm water into the bowl and washed her face and hands. Her clothes felt greasy, but she was awake. She sipped a spoonful of soup, trusting Selfer would have made sure it wasn’t poisoned.

  “I feel better,” she said.

  “Good, because the news isn’t. The man you found in the torture cells died. He roused enough to ask after his son, and wanted to see the body. The men carried him in; he smiled when he saw the way we’d laid the body out. He died shortly after that; I didn’t wake you then, but talked to the other prisoners and found out who he was. Two are from the same vill; they want to take the bodies there when they’re freed. They think they’re still prisoners because we’re guarding them. Anyway—we have no way to preserve the bodies and I don’t know if it’s safe to let them—the others—go. It’s too quiet; there’s no sign of those you’re sure escaped.”