The Lion of Senet

by Jennifer Fallon

  “I never said ...”

  “Kirshov doesn’t care about you, Marqel. He barely even knows you’re alive.”

  He’s lying, she told herself, resisting the temptation to put her hands over her ears to block out his scorn-filled words. I know he’s lying.

  “I don’t care about Kirshov,” she lied.

  “Then why do you ask after him every day?”

  “Because he’s a prince,” she pointed out, crossing her arms defensively. “And that makes him better than you!”

  “It makes him a whole lot better than you, too,” he reminded her. Tears stung her eyes as he stomped to the door and jerked it open. “The lesson is finished. You can find someone else to teach you how to read.”

  Marqel jumped a little as the door slammed shut, feeling suddenly very small and alone. Wiping away her tears, she turned her back on the door.

  He was wrong. She was living in a castle now, wasn’t she? And eating like a queen? Hadn’t the High Priestess herself intervened, claiming her for the Goddess? And wasn’t she going to be a Shadowdancer?

  Marqel went to the window and leaned her head against the cool glass. After a while, she opened her eyes and looked down. The room looked out over the courtyard and the main entrance to the Keep. The wide, paved yard was bordered on three sides by the castle itself and the outbuildings that made up the stables, kitchens, storehouses and other industries housed in the Keep. She watched the castle folk go hither and thither, and felt isolated and alone. Other than a full belly and clean bed, absolutely nothing had changed.

  I’ll never be one of them, she thought with dismay. I might be living in a castle now, but I’m still nothing. Still a nobody. The realization hurt more than she thought possible. And Dirk Provin. Well, that arrogant, jumped-up second son of a minor duke had no right to say what he did. She wasn’t a thief or a whore.

  I am Marqel the Magnificent, she reminded herself. Better yet... Marqel the Shadowdancer.

  You’re wrong, Dirk Provin, and I’ll make you eat those words. One day, you will call me “my lady.” One day, you will bow before me. One day . . .

  Chapter 36

  Dirk was still fuming as he ran down the stairs. He’d had enough of Marqel and the Shadowdancers, and the Landfall Festival, even Prince Antonov. He wanted to be free of his responsibility to teach the young thief, and he wanted to be certain that he would not be packed off to the Hall of Shadows for the crime of being able to solve mathematical equations in his head. The only person who could guarantee that was his father, so it was to his father’s rooms he headed, determined to get this sorted out, once and for all.

  He knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for an answer, not certain his father would be there. More than likely, he was in the Library with Prince Antonov, but he had no wish to speak to the prince. He wanted to plead his case out of the hearing of the Lion of Senet.

  “Dirk!”

  His mother looked up from the chair by the window, hurriedly wiping her eyes. She had obviously been crying. His father was standing in front of her, his expression bleak.

  “I’m sorry, Mother,” he said uneasily, wondering what he had burst in on. “I can come back later...”

  “No, son,” Wallin said heavily. “You might as well come in. We were just talking about you.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?” he asked, a little nervously. Had his father learned about his visit with Johan Thorn? It was too soon for him to know about his argument with Marqel.

  Morna smiled wanly and opened her arms to him. “Of course you haven’t, darling. Come here.”

  Dirk crossed the room warily, trying to remember the last time his mother had called him “darling.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  His parents exchanged a telling look before his father answered. “The High Priestess wants you to enter service in the Hall of Shadows.”

  “I know, but you won’t let her take me, will you?” Dirk looked at each of them in turn with a growing sense of dread.

  “In that, we’ve had a small victory,” Wallin told him with a forced smile. “Although I’m afraid your mother doesn’t agree with me.”

  “What small victory?”

  “You’re going to live with Antonov,” Morna informed him tonelessly.

  Dirk stared at his parents in shock.

  “You’ll continue your studies in Avacas until you go to the Hall of Shadows when you come of age,” his father explained. “I’m sorry, son. It was the best we could do under the circumstances.”

  Dirk’s shock at the news was lessened somewhat by a fleeting, if rather selfish thought. Studying in Prince Antonov’s court meant being with Alenor. But now was not the time to tell his parents that. And in truth, it seemed poor compensation for being made to spend his life in the service of a Goddess he wasn’t even certain he believed in.

  When he didn’t answer, Wallin smiled with false cheerfulness. “It won’t be that bad, Dirk. There are some excellent tutors in Avacas, and you’ll have Kirshov there for company. You and he seem to have become good friends. You’ll barely spare us a thought once you get a taste of mainland court life, I suspect.”

  “But why do I have to go at all?”

  “The High Priestess seems to think you’ve been chosen by the Goddess,” Wallin said.

  “For what?”

  “I couldn’t say, son, I’m not a Shadowdancer. But you can’t deny your own ability. And I know how much you enjoy learning.”

  “I learn just fine here on Elcast, Father.”

  “We have a responsibility to see that you are educated correctly,” Morna added with undisguised bitterness.

  “And Prince Antonov doesn’t like the way I’ve been educated, ” Dirk concluded. “I still don’t see why I have to leave. Can’t I study the things I need to learn with Master Helgin? And then worry about whether or not I want to be a Shadowdancer when I’m old enough to decide for myself?” Dirk was quite sure he was old enough to make his mind up now, but legally, until he came of age at eighteen, he had no real say in his own future. A fact the High Priestess was no doubt counting on.

  “Antonov feels that if you remain here, your thinking might be . . . influenced . . . in the wrong direction.”

  From what Dirk had seen and heard over the past few weeks, that was not an unreasonable assumption. His aunt had killed herself rather than live with Antonov, and his mother had run off with a pirate. It was a wonder any of them was still free.

  “Can’t you do anything?”

  “If we deny Antonov in this, we commit treason.”

  “How can it be treason?” he demanded impatiently. “Treason implies defying the crown. Antonov isn’t the King of Dhevyn. He’s just invaded us and—”

  “Keep your voice down!” Wallin hissed. “Don’t you know what could happen to you—to us—if Antonov hears you speaking like that?”

  “Mother called him a murderer and it didn’t seem to bother him. Why should he care what I think?” Dirk winced under his mother’s gaze. He hadn’t meant to blurt that out.

  “Exactly how much did you overhear, Dirk?” she asked softly.

  “Enough.”

  “Then perhaps you understand why we can’t fight this. Rainan may be Queen of Dhevyn, but she rules only as long as Antonov allows it. Between him and the High Priestess, they have Dhevyn by the throat.”

  “What about the real King of Dhevyn?”

  “Johan Thorn?” Wallin asked in surprise. “What’s he got to do with this?”

  “Dirk apparently overheard a discussion I had with Antonov,” Morna explained. “Johan’s name came up.”

  Wallin turned to Morna in despair. “Damn it, Morna, you should know better than to talk to Anton of him! Can’t you mind your tongue? For your sons’ sake, if not for mine.”

  “Johan chose his own path, Wallin. I’ve wished on more than one occasion these past years that I had stayed with him.”

  The duke shook his head as if there was
nothing he could do or say that would make the situation any better.

  “Why did you go with him, Mother?” Dirk asked, not sure what sort of reaction he’d get. He still hadn’t come to terms with his mother’s rather colorful past. It seemed so unlike her. It was almost as if the stories were about someone else.

  His mother took a long time to answer. “Because I loved him,” Morna confessed, finally. “And believed in him.”

  “Morna . . . I don’t think it’s necessary to—”

  Morna looked up at her husband apologetically. “Dirk will learn the truth, sooner or later. I’d rather he heard it from us than hear the Lion of Senet’s twisted version of events.”

  Wallin was obviously not happy about having to elaborate. He took a deep breath before he turned to Dirk. “It all happened a long time ago, son. During the Age of Shadows.”

  “When Johan Thorn was the King of Dhevyn?”

  Wallin nodded. “When Belagren announced that she had been shown the way to restore us to the Age of Light in a vision, there was a great deal of excitement. When she announced how it had to be achieved, it split the kingdom. Johan Thorn led the faction who opposed Belagren’s plans.”

  “Didn’t he want to see the end of the Age of Shadows?”

  “As far as Johan was concerned, the Age of Shadows wasn’t so bad that it required the sacrifice of an innocent child to restore the light,” Morna said bleakly.

  Johan had said almost exactly the same thing, Dirk recalled.

  “You have to understand what it was like, Dirk,” his father explained, ignoring his wife’s interruption. “There was no sun during the day, only the red sun at night. The rest of the time we were plunged into darkness. The tidal waves and volcanic eruptions we suffer now are nothing compared to what happened when the darkness came. What crops weren’t destroyed by ash, or lava, or seawater, withered and died due to lack of light. There was widespread famine. Constant earthquakes. Our cattle were dying. As the temperature dropped the seas retreated. If not for Senet, the Islands of Dhevyn would have perished. At least the mainland was able to produce enough food to keep us from complete starvation.”

  “Then I’m surprised it was Prince Antonov who championed the High Priestess,” Dirk said thoughtfully. “You’d think he’d want to maintain things as they were if the Age of Shadows handed him such power over Dhevyn.”

  “It handed him power, but Senet was suffering, too,” Wallin agreed. “Initially, the mainland was able to weather the darkness better than the islands, but it was only a matter of time before it began to suffer as we did.”

  “Stop trying to make it sound as if Antonov’s invasion of Dhevyn was a natural consequence of the Age of Shadows,” Morna complained. “Tell him what really happened. Tell him about Neris.”

  “Morna, Antonov didn’t invade—”

  “Who’s Neris?” Dirk asked, before his father and mother could be diverted into an argument about whether or not the occupation of Dhevyn by Senet constituted an invasion. “I’ve heard him mentioned before.”

  “Neris Veran was a young man with a talent in mathematics similar to yours,” Wallin answered. “He was a Sundancer, taken into service when he was quite young, only nine or ten years old, I think. The heretics believe that it is he, not Belagren, who discovered the secret of returning us to the Age of Light.”

  “He never advocated killing a child,” Morna interjected.

  “He and Johan became friends,” Wallin continued as if Morna hadn’t spoken. “He shared his heresy with Johan, and it turned the king from merely a voice of dissent into an outright opponent. The next thing we knew, we were at war.”

  “And you fought with Antonov?” he asked curiously.

  “I took the side of the Goddess, son,” Wallin agreed.

  “You took the coward’s way out,” Morna corrected. “Antonov bought off you and every other duke who sided with him with promises of safety and light, even though what he proposed was repugnant to any civilized person.”

  “As you can probably tell, your mother was violently opposed to me joining him. I followed the Lion of Senet to war and left her here on Elcast. While I was gone, she left the island with Johan and they plotted to assassinate Antonov.”

  Dirk stared at his mother in shock, but she would not meet his eye.

  “Why assassinate Antonov?” Dirk asked suddenly, turning to his father. “Wouldn’t it have been more effective to remove the High Priestess?”

  Wallin smiled faintly, as if amused by the fact that Dirk’s first reaction had been a tactical assessment rather than moral condemnation. “Belagren was the one advocating the sacrifice of a child of royal blood, but it was Antonov who planned to carry out the ritual. Remember that your mother is a Princess of Damita. She is of royal blood, just as you and your brother are.”

  “I reasoned, with very good cause, that my son was a prime candidate for the sacrifice,” Morna snapped.

  “Your mother was convinced I would not raise a finger in protest if Belagren tried to take Rees,” Wallin added, as if the mere thought offended him.

  “Would you have objected?” he asked his father.

  “Don’t be absurd, Dirk, of course I would have objected.”

  “Yet you fought on Antonov’s side. Isn’t that a bit hypocritical? I mean, if you believed in his cause enough to fight for him, shouldn’t you have enough faith to make the ultimate sacrifice?”

  Morna laughed sourly. “See, Wallin? Even Dirk can see through your excuses. Answer him, my dear. Tell him how you stood by and let Antonov kill Analee’s son while promising your wife that you wouldn’t let him harm yours.”

  Wallin frowned. Dirk realized that this was a disagreement older than he. But his father made no attempt to answer her charge.

  “The plot to assassinate Antonov was uncovered,” he continued. “Antonov defeated Johan’s army and placed the king’s sister, Rainan, on the throne. Neris killed himself by throwing himself off a cliff near Tolace. Thorn escaped after the battle and has been hiding out in the Baenlands, ravaging the Bandera Straits and the Tresna Sea as a pirate ever since.”

  “Have you seen him since he was captured?”

  Morna shook her head sadly. “He and I did not part friends.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I chose to return here. After what happened to Analee, after the war, after everything else . . . he couldn’t understand my decision to return to Elcast.”

  “The Book of Ranadon spares it one paragraph,” Dirk said thoughtfully. “Something about Prince Antonov standing on a hill overlooking Johan’s defeated army. It doesn’t mention the rest of it.” He didn’t think it prudent to repeat the line about her being a traitorous harlot.

  “You’ve read the Book of Ranadon?” Morna gasped in surprise.

  “Prince Antonov has it. He asked me to read some of it to him. I suppose the High Priestess brought the book with her.”

  “She would!” Morna replied. “The Book of Ranadon is a work in progress, Dirk. Don’t believe a word of it. Belagren makes it up as she goes along.”

  “Morna!” Wallin objected.

  “Don’t look at me like that. Even you must admit that it glosses over the facts.”

  Wallin nodded reluctantly. “I’ll grant that the Book of Ranadon sometimes errs on the side of brevity . . . but—”

  “Brevity? One paragraph to cover a full-blown civil war?” She turned to Dirk, as if disgusted that Wallin would even consider the Book of Ranadon worthy of notice. “Even today, the struggle for the truth still goes on. The day Antonov sacrificed his son was not the end of the conflict, as the Book would have us believe.”

  Dirk looked at his mother, suddenly understanding her bitterness. She had watched her king defeated, her nephew murdered and her sister commit suicide. And Wallin had been one of Antonov’s generals. It was a wonder his parents even spoke to each other, let alone live together in relative harmony.

  “How did you escape Antonov’s wrath, Mother?”
Dirk knew now what Alenor had meant when she spoke of bad blood between Morna and the High Priestess.

  “My loyalty to the Goddess was never in doubt,” his father answered for her. “Antonov and I were friends and I was one of his generals. Your mother was spared because I interceded on her behalf.”

  Dirk also began to understand why it pained Morna so much to shelter the Lion of Senet in her home.

  “Do you condone what Antonov did, Father?”

  Wallin shrugged. “He was my friend, Dirk.”

  Dirk could hardly believe what he was hearing. “Friend? He killed his wife and his baby son. And now you want to send me to live with him!”

  “Try to understand, son,” Wallin said, almost pleading for his approval. “Antonov is not an evil man. The Lion of Senet did what he honestly believed he had to do to save Ranadon, and regardless of what your mother thinks about the morality of it, it worked. The Age of Light returned. He wept as he took his son’s life.”

  “You still make excuses for him, don’t you?” Morna accused in disgust.

  “Morna...” Wallin sighed.

  “What of Analee?”

  “Analee died by her own hand, my dear. I know you blame Antonov, but he never meant for her to die. He still grieves for her.”

  “Grieves for her?” Morna jumped to her feet and turned to stare out the window. On this side of the castle, you could hear the surf far below as it crashed against the cliffs. “He defiles her memory with every breath he takes!”

  Wallin shook his head sadly, but did not answer his wife. He looked at Morna’s unrelenting back for a moment, obviously at a loss. He could not comfort her or relieve her pain. There were too many unforgivable deeds between them. Dirk wondered for a moment how they had managed to make a life together. Maybe they had declared a truce for the sake of their children. Perhaps his mother had spent the last sixteen years trying to make up for what had happened.

  Dirk felt deep sorrow for his mother, but he knew it must have been no easier on Wallin. His father was a moderate man caught between extremes. With Antonov on one side and his wife on the other, it must have been impossible.