Gold Throne in Shadow

by M. C. Planck

But Karl did not answer. He let go of the door and stepped into the street, only to stop moving again.

  “Rethinking the wisdom of that choice?” Christopher asked. It seemed awfully early for buyer’s remorse.

  “It does seem foolish, my lord,” Karl said. “I apologize. It won’t happen again.”

  The ghost came back with a vengeance, a banshee howl accentuating the unprecedented form of address that Karl had just used.

  “Since when do you call me that?” Christopher said, angry and unhappy.

  “Since I behaved so stupidly,” Karl said, before his face betrayed his confusion.

  Anger bled into suspicion, driven by Karl’s uncharacteristic indecision. Almost without conscious thought, Christopher cast a detection spell, having had them on his mind since the looting of Flayn’s shop.

  The lingering trace of magic on Karl erased all misgivings, replacing them with a towering rage. Christopher threw open the door so violently a glass panel shattered, and he blew into the shop like a storm front bellowing thunder.

  “FAE!”

  She did not answer the summons, and in Christopher’s mind her guilt was now clear. Behind him Karl followed, eyes narrowed and jaw set in a grim scowl.

  “Fae!”

  They went up the stairs, two at a time. Christopher knew he should have felt worried or frightened, but he was too angry.

  “Fae.”

  She sat on her disheveled bed, in a silk nightgown, and tried to answer him.

  “Why do you—” but her voice broke, and she looked down at the floor, unable to continue.

  “What have you done, woman?” Christopher growled.

  “What did you do to me, witch?” Karl snarled.

  “You have no cause for complaint!” Fae cried, shocked by Karl’s anger. “I gave you only pleasure.”

  Christopher tried to put a check on his wrath. Do not let her compound the crime, he felt more than thought, and so he cast the spell that bound tongues to truth. She watched him silently, her face pale and drawn like a frosted glass vase.

  “Did you use magic against Karl?” he demanded, when the spell was live. “Did you lay an enchantment on him?”

  “What of it?” she cried, defiant now. “Am I a hideous crone, to sicken him with the deed? Any man in town would gladly take his place. I placed no bond on him, laid no further demands at his door. What man can honestly say I wronged him?”

  “I can,” Christopher said. “That’s rape, Fae. Rape! What would the Cardinal do, if Karl had held you down and done the same to you?”

  “He would hang me for the deed,” Karl answered, “even for the sake of a foul witch.”

  “I did him no violence!” Fae sobbed.

  “You did violence to his mind,” Christopher said. “You did violence to his rights.”

  “The Church will hang you for this,” Karl proclaimed in righteous wrath. “Commoner though I be, I am theirs, and not yours to trifle with. You will hang.”

  “You dare not!” she screamed. “He needs me. I alone will keep his secrets and make his sky-fire. I am his, and your Church will not touch me, for he needs me.”

  Even in the midst of the red fury in his eyes; even in the grief and shame he felt for his part in the making of the witch, and thus this terrible ordeal; even through all of that, Christopher could not help but notice that these people spoke in terms of property, not rights. Drawing a deep breath, he put aside his ethical indignation and answered in their language.

  “I need you as an apprentice,” he told her, “not as a wizard. What I put in your head, I can take out. I can hang you, revive you, and reduce you to just an apprentice again.”

  “You would not!” she cried, outraged at the expense he dared, but he was standing in the zone of truth too. Her eyes danced wildly, seeking escape. Though her hands did not twitch, Christopher said it anyway.

  “If you reach for that wand, I will cut you down and burn your body next to Flayn’s.”

  The pretty face quivered and then cracked, blubbering, all pride and will vanquished in an instant. “Forgive me,” she cried, tears falling like lonely raindrops, “please forgive me. The power went to my head. All my life to be a toy, but once to hold another in my hand.

  “I am sorry.” She wrenched the words from her torn and bleeding heart and then collapsed in a weeping heap, her black hair in disarray, her fine white skin red and crumpled.

  “I cannot forgive you,” Christopher said heavily, astonished at the hard scales on his own heart. “You must ask Karl for that.”

  “You’ll not get forgiveness from me,” Karl laughed barkingly, as if the very concept were absurd. “But I will withhold my judgment, for as long as you serve our master. Should you ever fail him again, I will have my vengeance, and no amount of rank will protect you.”

  Fae’s tears washed her face and Christopher’s anger, the flame in his heart slowly quenching under the deluge. Karl stood like iron, revealing neither pain nor sorrow. Christopher wanted to avenge the proud young man, to honor him, but Fae was just a foolish child with a dangerous toy. Flayn had not seen fit to promote her. Christopher had. He could not escape his share of the blame.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but Karl would not understand. The soldier would hold only Fae responsible, and Christopher could not even argue with him. Karl had been severely wronged, and he had the right to deal with it as he chose. The truly guilty would just have to accept it.

  “I will not fail you again, my lord,” she sobbed. “I will earn my pardon, and even Karl the Cruel will not begrudge me. You will see, I am still valuable to you.”

  Christopher could not afford to feel sympathy for her. “See that you do,” he growled, and left the room and the cloying stench of shame.

  Outside, in the street, he tried to apologize to Karl again. “I am sorry for the harm you suffered from me and mine.”

  “Do not trouble yourself, Christopher,” Karl said. “Now the witch is truly bound to you, for you can take her head whenever you please. As for me, I am a soldier. I have had worse duties.” Christopher was wounded by the perfect normalcy in the young man’s voice. He watched helplessly as Karl put his suffering in an iron chest and locked it with chains of unyielding discipline. Not that he expected tears, but Karl would not even acknowledge that he had been touched.

  Late that night, finishing the long day in his chapel, he observed a subtle interchange, a brief glance from Karl and a well-disguised flush from Helga. So the man would dress his wounds, refill his self-esteem, and restore his manliness at the girl’s expense. Christopher was saddened to see the damage shared around, but what could he do? If he ordered Karl to leave her alone, he surely would, though Helga would hardly thank him for it. Who was he to deny them solace and pleasure, simply because it was driven by hurt instead of love?

  He had been disappointed, many years ago, to discover that words could not fix everything. Now he was disappointed again, discovering that even magic could not fix everything.

  “You haven’t hired the new men yet?” Standing in the machine shop yard, Christopher struggled not to snap angrily. He understood that things moved more slowly in a world without clocks and telecommunications; still, he paid Jhom to take care of things. After Fae’s betrayal, he was in no mood to countenance failure on the smith’s part.

  The smith was unsympathetic, meeting Christopher’s glare with a mulish frown of his own.

  “I cannot lure men away from ditch-digging when rifles are given as freely as shovels. And my own men glance askance. They ask why they may make rifles but may not wield them.”

  “So you want a militia program for your shop, too?” Christopher let himself think it all the way through. “But not so much under Tom’s command.”

  “My men do know and trust me best,” Jhom suggested humbly. “They already work as a team under my direction.”

  A chance to recruit the Vicar’s son into his militia was too good to pass up.

  “I have given Tom the ultimate comma
nd. But there will be too many men for him to oversee them all. The militia will have to be organized into platoons and companies, and he will need other officers.”

  Jhom was considering it. “What position would I hold, under this scheme of yours?”

  “Second only to Tom,” Christopher promised. “Captain of your own company.” He tried to ignore the twinge of conscience at the promotion of officers based on politics instead of ability. Jhom was, after all, an effective leader.

  And a reasonably honest man. He did not try to usurp Tom, instead nodding his head in approval. “You reward your man’s loyalty with your own. I was second in your service, so I will be second in this.”

  Dereth was arguably the second man Christopher had hired, but it didn’t seem politic to bring it up. Fae was certainly the second employee he had ever had, and that topic seemed safer.

  “What about Fae?” he asked.

  Jhom dismissed the suggestion with a shrug. “She is ranked,” the smith said. Professions were a different world. Unfortunately, the two worlds were not equal; the mundane one that Christopher was equipped to deal with was so insignificant to the other as to be nigh invisible.

  Just as Christopher was feeling marginally optimistic about facing the wizard of Carrhill with a smoothly running industrial empire at his back, Lalania showed up again. He wondered how she managed such excellent timing. Before he could ask about it, she frowned at him.

  “That was not wisely done,” she said.

  “What now?” Christopher asked in alarm. He had thought the plan to distribute rifles to the peasantry was subtle enough to evade attention.

  “To slay a shopkeeper is no great matter; to deny a dozen a significant portion of their income is altogether different. The Wizard’s Guild seems unlikely to turn a blind eye to yet another offense.”

  “What are you talking about?” Christopher exclaimed.

  “Paper, of course,” she said, annoyed at his denseness. “I realize you do your Church a good turn, and turn a profit for yourself, yet the damage seems unworthy of the gain.”

  “I only sell paper to this Church,” he objected, “because there are no wizards here.”

  She cocked an eyebrow at him. “But I saw your product in Samerhaven and at the Cathedral to boot.”

  He was completely lost until Lalania set him on the right path.

  “Just how much paper do you sell here?” she asked, and he went to saddle his horse and face down his latest betrayer.

  The Vicar received him in her office, as cool and urbane as the Sphinx with its secret smile. She answered his garbled accusation with calm precision.

  “When a Church has an oversupply of any particular item, it generally shares it with the others. Paper is only a single example. No one can fault me for giving my excess to our sister Churches.” Paper that cost her a fraction of the usual cost, now that he made it industrially.

  “But how do you profit from this?” Other than stirring up trouble for me, he wanted to add.

  “I spend what I always have spent, while the other Churches spend nothing. I aid my brethren at no cost to myself. Would you deny me this?”

  “The cost is to my reputation,” Christopher said sourly. “The wizards will not approve.”

  “Poor Christopher,” she said pityingly. “The wizards cannot hate you any more than they already do. Consider: what do they despise the most? The holy symbol, for our magic competes with them, and the sword, for its power frightens them.”

  “But my holy symbol is a sword,” Christopher said, stupefied, as she gently shooed him out of her office.

  Disa only made it worse. Having promised to tell him what she knew of the master of Carrhill, she regaled the dinner table with tales of darkness.

  “He only comes out at night, draped in black robes. Those who have seen him, a glimpse under the hood or a hand out of a sleeve, claim his flesh is more leather than skin. Few who go into his tower ever come out of it, and those who do speak of a crypt, not a castle. He perfumes himself with saffron, to the point of a cloying stench, and once, when there was no spice to be had, he resorted to garlic. This is taken as proof that he douses himself not to attract but to disguise the reek of decaying flesh. It is said the wizard has ruled from the tower for over two centuries.”

  “Is that possible?” Christopher asked.

  “No,” Svengusta declared. “No magic can extend a man’s natural life.”

  “Nobody said anything about extending his natural life,” growled Gregor. “I have heard a word whispered in connection to his name, but I confess until now I thought it only rumor.”

  “I have no firsthand knowledge,” Disa was quick to remind them. But she had also lived next door to the county, which was more than any of them had ever done.

  “What word?” Christopher, as usual, had to ask what everyone else knew.

  Lalania could never resist a dramatic moment. Leaning forward, pitching her voice softly so that the word would not escape the table, she whispered the dreaded phrase. “Lich.”

  A collective shudder went around the table. Except, of course, for Christopher. He sighed, and waited like a particularly obtuse child for an explanation.

  “Your performance is wasted on our good Curate,” Svengusta laughed.

  Lalania was too surprised to counter. She stared at Christopher, worried, and causing no little worry in him. If he kept making mistakes like this, he would never have to tell her that he came from a world without magic. She would figure it out on her own.

  Torme did his job and rescued his boss. “No doubt they are called differently in your homeland. She means the ultimate creatures of darkness, the masters of the soul-trapped, the ministers of death. They are akin to a zombie, but they trap their own soul in their own body.”

  “Doesn’t that mean their body has to be dead?” While Christopher didn’t know much about zombies, this much seemed fundamental.

  “Yes, it does. The wizard is so enamored of life that he kills himself to gain eternal undeath.”

  Then Torme undid all his good work. “What do they call them in your land?” he asked Christopher innocently.

  Christopher dodged, answering with a question instead. “Is it possible we didn’t have any?”

  “Probable, even,” Lalania agreed. “They are extremely rare. And I don’t believe any decent Kingdom would tolerate such a creature. Surely the King would view a lich as a hunting opportunity, not as a vassal. Our good King might have his flaws, but his dedication to the cause of Men cannot be questioned. And a lich is no longer a man.”

  Christopher, who had recently spoken with the King, was not so certain of the strength of his principles.

  “I would think the fact that the wizard of Carrhill tolerates a White chapel in his lands is proof he is not a monster of the Dark,” Svengusta said.

  “It does seem uncharacteristic,” Disa conceded. “Still, who knows how a mind like that would work?”

  Christopher couldn’t help himself. He immediately looked at Torme. The table followed his gaze. The man seemed to take their stares as simple curiosity rather than reflexive accusation.

  “How long has the chapel been there?” Torme asked.

  “Since the war,” Disa answered. “Ten years or so.”

  “Then it seems unlikely,” Torme said. “For the Black to have that much patience is unprecedented. Either he only pretends to be Black, or . . .”

  “Or what?” Christopher demanded.

  “Or he is a fiend beyond all our experience,” Lalania finished sourly. “And since we have no experience of liches, we must now consider it a possibility.”

  Only Gregor found her words heartening. “This could turn out to be a really interesting trip,” he said with a grin.

  The cavalry was still in training, so it would have to catch up later. This meant Christopher was marching without Karl or Gregor, and the prospect daunted him. He’d lost a chunk of his officer core, too, staying behind to run the training camp for the boys
who would be arriving soon, leaving him responsible for the organization of a two-hundred-man march. Even Lalania deserted him, saying she would make her own way to Carrhill and meet him there.

  His worst concern was that without Karl or Lalania, he would commit some inexcusable faux pas.

  But of course, that was what he had Torme for. The man would need an officer’s title. “I’m making him a lieutenant,” he told Karl, “and you a major. I’ll make myself a colonel.” The names meant nothing yet. Captain was the only title that translated, meaning the head of a company, and you were supposed to be at least second-rank for that. The head of his company could only be himself, so to avoid long and potentially difficult explanations he just skipped that one for now. At least the militia was not taken seriously, and he could assign titles there without raising eyebrows in anything other than gentle derision.

  Finally he realized all this self-promotion was just a way of avoiding his nervousness, as was the constant planning. Time to go. “We march in three days,” he told Torme, “whether we are ready or not.” The deadline made real, things and people and horses fell into place, and on the third day he set out again, like he had only a season ago.

  Except this time it was different. The men did not march so much as strut, yet they managed more efficiency and orderliness than he would have thought possible. The road took them through Knockford again, and the mood of the town was also changed. Not a festival, with people admiring the fine uniforms and pretty young men, but a deep and quiet pride. The older men nodded to the young soldiers like they were equals, the women smiled and flirted with grave dignity, and the children stared in open awe.

  Christopher could feel the tension generated by this wholly unusual atmosphere, even though the scene seemed normal to him; this was how he was used to people treating men in uniform, after all. But he could not stop glancing around in false alarm, as if a dark and mysterious panther were stalking him from the back-alleys and side streets of town.

  The Vicar pounced on him from one of those side streets, where she stood watching the parade go by. Her lips pursed in dismay, she scowled at him, but when she spoke, it was with a soft voice.