“What does it mean?” Tolak asked.
The Mankin shook his head. “I have heard something similar before, but I do not know what it means.”
CHAPTER 29
Meesha respected her father’s long silence but hoped he would continue the story. When he finally walked back from the window, she asked, “Did the alliance between the great houses continue?”
He shrugged. “My marriage to Arina spared the spilling of blood, but there was never a genuine reconciliation.”
Meesha’s voice was quiet. “What was the real reason the king exiled us to this place? I’ve been told several different stories.”
“As Kublan promised, upon my marriage to Arina, I was proclaimed prince of the North and became Baron Magnus of Blackthorn, and we moved to the castle there. I was happy to be isolated from my father by the distance between Kingsgate and Blackthorn. When Kadesh-Cor was born, my joy made it easy to ignore the foolishness of my father.”
Meesha saw the glimmer of happy memories in her father’s eyes. She had never thought of Kadesh-Cor as an innocent baby and a source of joy to a young mother and father. She felt a flush of guilt, but it was Valnor who teasingly called their half brother “The Evil Prince.” Half brother! There it was again.
“Eight years slipped by with only brief confrontations with my father. I confess I turned a mostly blind eye to the rumors of his repression and cruelty. Hunters on their way to Icenesses often stopped and brought us word. I wrote to him from time to time, urging him to remember who he had been and the righteous cause of his rebellion. All but the last of the missives went unanswered. The last one was a letter delivered by the king’s courier announcing that the king was sending a march of kingsriders to Blackthorn to collect his grandson.”
“Kadesh-Cor?”
“He was eight. Kublan insisted his only grandson needed to be raised at Kingsgate under his influence. I refused. It was not a disagreement between a father and his son. It was a collision between a tyrant king who used lethal force to get his way and his heir to the throne with whom there was a growing disaffection.
“Taking our son shocked me, but it was Arina who forced me to realize what he was capable of doing, even to those whom he professed to love. Arina never truly recovered from the theft of our son by the king. Even so, she manifested a strength and courage I had never imagined was in her. It was because of her that I could no longer keep my eyes or my mouth shut. I condemned my father’s tyranny and openly challenged his claim of divine right to rule.” Tolak took a deep breath. “I told him he was king because he had murdered a man and stolen his throne, not because the gods willed it.” Tolak paused. His emotions were palpable, and Meesha felt as if she had been there to witness the confrontation.
“He told me it was my destiny to follow him on the throne. He even threatened me, but standing before him as he sat on the Peacock Throne, with the entire court there to hear, I told him I would rather die than sit on a throne that had turned a good man into a tyrant and dragged a once-wise man to the edge of madness.”
“You said that to your father? In front of his entire court?”
Tolak nodded. “And that was before he was beset by his illusion of immortality.”
“And for that you were never forgiven.” It wasn’t a question.
He smiled ruefully. “Expressing my views in the presence of others added to the disaffection.”
Meesha could hardly imagine such courage or foolishness. “It is remarkable you lived to tell the tale,” she mused. “And Kadesh-Cor sided with your father?”
“He was raised by my father at Kingsgate. We saw him only twice before his mother was taken by the black death. He came home to Blackthorn for the funeral. He was twelve. I was pleased he was given a break from his training and allowed to stay for a short while. In a small way, we reconnected as father and son. At least, I like to believe we did.”
“Was it on that trip to Blackthorn that Kadesh-Cor betrayed you to the king?”
“You know more of the story than you confessed,” he said with a scowl that fell just short of serious.
“Valnor.” She shrugged an explanation.
“The trouble with Kadesh-Cor began when he returned to Blackthorn in the season of the changing leaves in annum 1059. He came with Lyra, the girl he had married at Kingsgate with the blessing of the king. We received no news of it until the day they arrived quite unexpectedly at the Blackthrone gates.
“The conflict between my son and I was not as most supposed. It was not something I did or said that turned his heart and started his vicious reports to the king. It was his contempt for your mother. Katasha and I married a few months after the death of Arina in the winter of the Strong Frost Moon in season Kit S’atti. Kadesh had grievous disaffection for Katasha from the moment they met. In truth I’ve never known why.”
“Lyra perhaps?” Meesha offered.
Tolak narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps,” he said and continued. “With Arina’s death, the fragile alliance between House Kublan and House Romagónian vanished. But Katasha was the sister of Romonik of House Dressor, who was an ally and friend of Ormmen, ruler of House Romagónian.”
Meesha knew her father met her mother, Katasha, when he took Arina’s body to her homeland for burial, but she had not understood why Katasha was present at the burial until her father connected Arina’s brother, Ormmen, with Katasha’s brother, Romonik.
“I married your mother without the king’s permission. There was a grave disaffection between us by then. Kadesh-Cor was indignant over the new marriage, and he persuaded the king that the blood of House Kublan would be polluted by my union with a commoner of House Dressor. ‘Treachery against the Peacock Throne,’ he called it.”
Meesha had never understood how Kadesh-Cor had persuaded the king to disavow his own son, strip him of his title, and march him under guard to the dreary, crumbling prison at Stókenhold Fortress. Now she did.
“You were exiled because you married Mor? That is the cause of the gulf between you and your father? Of our exile?”
“Marrying your mother was the stone that brought the camel to its knees, as the adage goes, and you must never speak of it to her.”
“Mor doesn’t know?”
“Promise me.”
“I promise,” Meesha said. Her loathing for Kadesh-Cor deepened, knowing the truth of what he had done and of his contempt for her mother. And he was coming here, to her home, to her family. She did not know how she could face him.
CHAPTER 30
Stókenhold Fortress was the oldest and largest of the northern castles. It was also the least habitable. Large sections were abandoned. The inner walls and turrets were cracked, and many had crumbled over several centuries. The thickness of the outer wall was compromised as shortsighted builders had stolen stones for other construction projects.
As a home, it was an uncomfortable place to live, but as a fortress it remained formidable. Its walls and imposing towers rose from a precipice that jutted like a broken nose from the face of the sheer cliff at the eastern end of the fjord of Dragon Deep.
It had been built upon ruins of ancient fortifications whose beginnings were lost in history. No one knew when the first of the citadels was raised, but whenever it was, it had been built to protect the land from the legendary Norskers, wild men of the far north, who invaded from the sea.
The fortress evolved over centuries as a parade of tyrants, renegades, and sovereign kings attempted to mark the timeless edifice with an endless cycle of destruction and construction. The complex of pinnacles and parapets, battlements and bartizans belonged to no one. Stókenhold Fortress was conquered, claimed, and dominated for a season by whoever wielded the most violent sword, but it was never truly possessed by any man.
Unlike mortal men, Stókenhold Fortress would never die.
In annum 716, Age of Kandelaar, the catacombs were
used as dungeons, but abandoned when the fortress fell to the Norskers for a season. In recent years, parts of those catacombs were revived as a prison for the king’s enemies. Even more recently, a force of kingsmen had been assigned as keepers of the prison and occupied the old barracks adjacent to the stable under Kublan’s orders.
Tolak, his family, and the staff occupied the newer chambers on the north and east. Meesha loved to climb to the northeast tower. The chamber at the top was abandoned. The roof was partly collapsed, and a section of the wall had crumbled, but the remains of wooden hoardings were still in place along the battlement.
Meesha had climbed the tower many times. As a child, she and Valnor would race up the flat stone steps and drop whatever they could find from the battlement into the brackish black water of the moat—broken chunks of mortar, scraps of rotted wood, and sometimes a large stone that had crumbled from the wall. They counted to see how long it took before their curious collection of missiles splashed into the depths below. One old dragon, two old dragons, three old dragons . . .
They often got to eight old dragons and sometimes nine, but never ten. Well, once she counted fast and got all the way to eleven old dragons before the stone hit the water, but Valnor said she cheated.
That morning, a gardener beyond the gate spotted a dust cloud where the road to Stókenhold Fortress wound its way westward from the King’s Road. News that the expedition of Prince Kadesh-Cor would reach the gates of Stókenhold Fortress before the sun had set scampered through the halls like a white mouse chased by a black cat.
When Meesha heard that the expedition from Blackthorn was in sight, she climbed her favorite tower on the east side. She knew the view from her secret outlook on the battlement was the perfect place to watch their arrival without being seen. She had a clear view of the road all the way to where it dropped into Fox Hollow and disappeared.
She leaned across the sill of the crenel and looked for the billowing dust on the road beyond the trees but did not see it. She remembered hiding on the balcony of the great hall thirteen years ago the first time her rude half nephew had visited. She was amused and a little chagrined that she still felt the need to hide like she had as a little girl.
The sun slipped through the clouds that hung across the fjord of Dragon Deep and touched the sea. The light kissed the bleached grass of late summer and turned it to gold. The fields east of the moat were cut into strange shapes by the purple shadows of turrets, walls, and towers. The leaves of the sycamore along the creek shimmered in the warm light, reminding Meesha of the mythical golden forest in the legend of King Noloos.
Where are they? Was the gardener mistaken? She hoped not. For all her worry, there was something exciting about the expedition’s arrival.
Unpleasant as she knew it would be to face her father’s other son and her half nephews, they were not the only ones coming to Stókenhold Fortress. It was an entire expedition, and Meesha’s curiosity about who else was traveling with the prince heightened her anticipation.
What manner of men might they be? However awkward the evening and days to follow might be, seeing new faces will be interesting.
Meesha walked south along the parapet to a crenel where she had a better view of the road. There was still no billowing of dust that she could see. Patience was not among her better qualities. She wriggled a chunk of broken mortar from a joint of rock, leaned forward as far as she dared, and dropped it into the moat. She watched it fall and counted. One old dragon, two old dragons, three old dragons, four . . .
The sound of a trumpet stopped the count, and Meesha looked up. Flags of the bannermen rose from the crest of the road where it climbed up from Fox Hollow. The expedition was closer than Meesha had imagined, hidden by the swale of the hollow and density of the trees. The moon moths in her belly took flight, and Meesha stepped away from the opening and watched, half hidden by the higher wall of the crenelations.
It was a magnificent parade. The finest Meesha had ever seen, but then, she had been isolated in Stókenhold Fortress for most of her life.
She did not recognize Kadesh-Cor from a childhood memory nor from Valnor’s description. She knew him at once by his elegant attire, fine horse, and position of honor at the head of the procession. She loathed to call him prince because of his history, but seeing him on his magnificent courser, arrayed in the hand-tooled leather of finest grade and adornments of the hunt, she could not help but think of him as royal.
The carriages followed, rising from the road behind their prancing horses like beautiful creatures being born. The man in the first and most ornate of the carriages was no older than a boy.
That can’t be him, Meesha caught herself thinking. Sargon would be older. She scolded herself for doing so but searched the entourage for a glimpse of Princeling Sargon.
Is that him? The man at the window of the coach behind? Her moon moths flittered again. Could it be Chor? The older brother? Perhaps.
She narrowed her eyes as if it would shorten the distance. No childhood memory of a boy melded with the features of the man in the coach. Little wonder, she shrugged. It has been many years.
The last of the coaches passed. It was the color of plums. The curtains were drawn, and the passengers hidden from view. The procession passed into the long shadow of the tower as the road crossed the field and swung south along the row of trees growing parallel to the moat. When the parade emerged in the swath of sunlight, she saw glints of golden light from the armor of the kingsriders riding guard beside the carriages.
Six Huszárs followed the coaches, each riding a fine horse. One rider looked to be no older than a teenaged boy.
Meesha could hear the rumbling wagon wheels and clopping hooves of the heavy draft horses even before they rose from the crest of the road. There were so many of them, and a drove of wranglers driving a remuda of spare horses not far behind.
A grand perch to watch a grand parade, Meesha thought. She looked back at the window of the polished black coach trimmed in burnished brass. What must Princeling Sargon look like as a man? she wondered, then scolded herself again. Ah, why must my childhood nemesis dominate my thoughts?
She returned her gaze to the horde of wranglers and horses at the end of the parade. Without the boiled leather and iron of the kingsriders or the ostentatious raiment of the Huszárs, the horsemen looked more like the men of Westgarten. The sight of them calmed her, and she liked them more than the rest.
She watched the wranglers and horses until they entered the shadow of the castle. The parade was over.
The fading light made her suddenly aware how long she’d lingered in the tower. Her governess was surely frantic to dress and groom her for the formal reception of the visitors. She hurried along the parapet to the tower, but before she set foot upon the steps, she stopped and leaned through the crenel for a final look at the expedition.
The front of the parade was hidden by the bartizan that protruded from the sloping walls of the chemise, but she could see that the bannermen and prince had passed beneath the portal of the rampart and halted at the footbridge of the outer barbican.
A movement on the south road at the edge of the hollow caught her eye. The first of the chariots rose from the crest of the hill. Chariots were rare, and she turned her attention with unusual fascination. Except for the black horse ridden by the prince, the trio of coursers drawing the last of the chariots looked to her to be the finest of the expedition. They were dirty white and ruddy to their bellies from the red dust of the road.
The chariot moved from the shadow into a shaft of sunlight between the tower and the keep. As the reinsman left the shadow, he looked up at the parapet as if beckoned by the light.
He looked up at Meesha.
Can he see me at such a distance? See my face? Meesha drew a quick breath and pulled back into the shadow of the battlement. She felt a strange connection with the man gazing up from the chariot below.
Is he looking at me? Did he see me?
She shifted her position to get a better look at the man driving the chariot. He was closer now and in full sunlight. He was tall with broad shoulders. The contours of his arms rippled as he guided the horses and adjusted his grip on the reins. His blouse and vest were open to the waist against the heat. The muscles of his chest and hard stomach were wet with sweat and glistened in the flaxen glow of the setting sun. He was striking, even at the distance, and when he turned again she saw it. The iron collar around his neck.
The man driving the chariot was a slave.
The corset felt like long fingers crushing her ribs. Her waist was cinched so tightly her breathing came in short little gasps. Waiting in the great hall for Kadesh-Cor, his sons, and the men of the wild horse expedition was discomforting enough without her body being squeezed into a shape never intended for it. To her grave chagrin, the corset accentuated the curves of her bosom at the edge of the bodice.
Meesha squirmed, hoping to ease her discomfort, and tugged at the neckline until she caught her mother’s frown and tried to be demure.
Her governess insisted it was her father who’d requested the elegant wardrobe, but Meesha suspected it was more likely a conspiracy between her mother and the governess. She could hardly imagine the dear old woman would still want to pair her with Princeling Sargon in one of her romantic matchmaking fantasies.
Surely she knows me well enough to know I would never stand for such a thing, the wishes of the king be damned! She bit her tongue at the thought with a flush of guilt.
In spite of her mother’s disapproval of Tolak’s hospitality, it was her mother’s nature to please her husband. She expressed her opinion, he had listened, and now she willingly abided by his decision.
The Immortal Crown Page 22