He awoke suddenly to find himself shivering so hard that he had jarred himself out of his doze. With neither fire nor tent to mitigate it, the night air was cold. He got to his feet, stamping and flapping his arms to stir his blood, and looked around.
It was very dark; the sun was long gone, an overcast hid the moon and stars, and almost all the fires had been doused.
It was perfect.
Still shivering slightly, he got his bearings, largely from the fading embers of the Uplander fires that had not yet been completely extinguished, and headed back toward the Summer Palace.
This time he did not stop at the gate, but made his way along the eastern side and clambered over the outer wall, moving as quietly as he could—which wasn’t very, unfortunately, since he could not see well enough to avoid stumbling over rocks and other obstacles, and ascending the wall was not something he could do silently. He hoped that anyone hearing the racket would attribute it to normal nocturnal activities. The distance was such that he doubted anyone would be able to recognize the sound’s exact nature.
Topping the wall was not particularly difficult, despite the darkness; it had not been intended as a serious barrier to invasion, but only to keep ara and straying Uplander children out of the gardens, and to provide a little privacy. There were no spikes or pickets to discourage climbers; he merely had to jump onto a convenient rock and then up, throw his arms across the top of the wall, catch himself there, and swing a leg up. He managed as much by feel as by sight, but he managed it. If he hadn’t had his pack, sword, and spear, he could have done it in seconds, and almost silently; as it was it took just a moment or two, and required only a moderate amount of scraping and thumping.
Once he got inside the walls the night was so utterly black that he decided trying to find his way into the palace itself would be a mistake; instead he took shelter in a corner of the garden wall, wrapped himself in his winter coat, and waited for morning, dozing occasionally and hoping he wouldn’t freeze to death.
He awoke, shivering, in the gray light of early morning, to find snow falling; the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a speckling of white on the backs of his hands, specks that quickly melted away. He shook the flakes from his hands and got stiffly to his feet, struggling to remember where he was and why he was so cold. He looked around.
The scene was nothing like the green and welcoming view he remembered. The palace gardens were brown turning to white, the dead stalks and bare earth gradually vanishing beneath the thickening snow. The skeletal trellises, with their meager burden of lifeless vines, seemed to slump beneath the weight of the leaden sky and white flakes. He shivered anew, and stumbled past the dry, snow-speckled fountains and dead planters to the gate, where he put his eye to a crack and peered cautiously out at the distant Uplanders.
They were still coming, moving across the plain and making their way carefully down the steep trail, but the throng had lessened somewhat. He could see few details through the swirling snow, and the wind that blew through or over the locked gate chilled him, so he turned away and headed for the palace itself, seeking shelter.
The doors were locked, of course—he tried every one on the south side, and the first few around the corner on the west, before concluding he would not find one left open. He didn’t let that trouble him—he had known he would probably need to break in. Although he thought he might regret it later, he was too cold to bother with latches or hinges in prying open a locked door; instead he used his sheathed sword as a club to smash in a many-paned window overlooking the terrace, breaking out mullions as well as glass, then clambered in through the hole.
Getting in out of the wind and snow helped; he was still cold, but was able to stop shivering, to stop his teeth from chattering, and to think a little more clearly.
He recognized where he was. He had spent a few days in this palace the first year the Wizard Lord had occupied it, and at that time he had learned his way around. This was a small dining salon, designed for those occasions when the Wizard Lord wanted to be able to wander out onto the terrace overlooking Barokan at a moment’s notice. A small table stood in the center, with four chairs set atop it for the winter; against the far wall stood a finely carved sideboard between two doors, and two tall matching cupboards in either corner.
Sword doubted he would be using this room much during his stay here; he hurried across and tried the left-hand door.
That led into a narrow, unadorned, windowless corridor, obviously meant for the palace staff rather than for the Wizard Lord or his guests; since he had been one of those guests, Sword had never seen this passage before. He could not tell how far it ran; the only light came from the salon windows behind him. Those windows faced west, and it was early morning, with clouds and snow obscuring the sky and dimming the sun; the dull gray glow reached barely ten feet past the door.
He had tinder in his pack, but Sword was not inclined to waste it; instead he stepped back into the salon and tried the right-hand door. That opened into a sitting room where several tall windows to the south let in what daylight could penetrate the growing storm; Sword stepped in and closed the door behind him, shutting out the mounting howl of the wind.
It was still cold, but just the common chill of an unheated room in winter, not the biting cold he had faced outside; Sword set his spear against the wall, then unslung his pack and dropped it beside the spear, before sinking into one of the richly upholstered chairs. He looked around the room.
The floor was reddish brown tile; a carpet had been rolled up and set against one wall, to stay clean for next summer, while chairs, tables, and settees had been pushed up against the opposite wall, out of the way, leaving the room bare and unwelcoming.
There was no hearth, no stove, no fireplace, and the half-dozen windows that made up most of the south wall were designed to be stood open to catch the breeze. The awnings that would keep the sun out were rolled up and stowed away for the season, leaving just a thin layer of glass and frame to keep out winter’s chill.
That was better than nothing, certainly, and probably better than the tents the Uplanders used, but it wasn’t much.
Sword thought back over his previous stay, trying to remember whether he had ever seen a hearth or stove of any kind anywhere in the building. There had been candles, of course, and oil lamps, but he could not recall any other flames. This was, after all, the Summer Palace—any time heat was called for, the Wizard Lord would be down in Barokan, not up here at all.
But there were other uses for fire besides light and heat; food had to be cooked somewhere. The kitchens would surely have stoves and ovens and hearths.
That was where he would set up housekeeping for the winter—in the palace kitchens. He merely needed to find them. As a guest he had had no business there, so he had never set foot in them, but obviously they existed. That passage from the dining salon undoubtedly led to the kitchens eventually, but he preferred to use what little daylight he had, rather than wasting tinder—especially since he saw no lamps or candles, and he had not brought any of his own.
He would need to do some exploring, he decided.
He glanced at his pack and spear, debating whether or not to bring them along; they must weigh at least sixty pounds, he thought, probably more, with all that jerky in addition to his clothing and other gear, and he had been carrying them almost constantly for the past eleven days. He was alone in the palace; precious as they were, what harm would it do to leave them here, and come back once he had found what he sought?
None at all, he told himself. It wasn’t as if anyone else would stumble across his belongings.
But then he paused. He was here, after all; how could he be sure no one else was? He knew that the Wizard Lord did not leave guards here over the winter, since it was universally accepted that no one could survive a winter in the Uplands, but what if he had posted a guard or two to stay here just until the Uplanders were gone? Sword had never heard of such a precaution, but it wasn’t an absurd specul
ation. This was not the first time he had considered the possibility, and he had no reason to rule it out.
And for that matter, what if some of the Uplanders out there on the plateau decided to break in and take shelter here from the storm before attempting the long climb down to Winterhome? He certainly wouldn’t want to try to get down the cliff in this storm.
But if an Uplander, or even an entire clan, did break in here, they would surely find better things to steal than his pack, and they certainly wouldn’t casually steal another man’s spear. At least in the Clan of the Golden Spear, spears were almost sacred—and Uplanders in general seemed to be very honest people. Even though they had no ler ordering their lives other than their own souls and the souls of those around them, they maintained their codes of behavior well. He had seen that in his time with the Clan of the Golden Spear. Also, this wasn’t the first winter that the palace had stood here, yet he had never heard of any Uplander intruding, or disturbing it in any way. That was the sort of thing that would have been all over gossip-loving Winterhome, had it ever occurred.
Of course, most years the snows didn’t start this early, and the migration down to Winterhome didn’t usually take place in a snowstorm. Sword didn’t think this had happened in any previous year since the palace was built.
He wondered whether the Wizard Lord had any control over the weather up here; could he have prevented this storm if he wanted to? Or could he have created it? His magic did not extend beyond the borders of Barokan, but wind and weather paid little heed to borders; if Artil had assembled this storm just west of the cliffs and then pushed it eastward, wouldn’t it have arrived here just like this? Previous storms had seemed to come from the east, Sword knew, but this one had arrived in the pre-dawn darkness and could have come from anywhere.
But sending it would have been insane, even by Artil’s standards. Surely, he did not want to make life more difficult for the Uplanders! In fact, had he been in the Wizard Lord’s position, and seen this storm hindering the Uplander migration, Sword would have sent the strongest winds he could to blow it away and keep the trail clear.
But Artil was trying to break magic’s hold on Barokan, trying to teach the Barokanese to live without wizardry of any kind. He had presumably let this storm happen naturally.
If any clan did break into the palace to take shelter, it was Artil’s own fault, for building it where he had and allowing these early snows—but Sword didn’t think it would happen. The Uplanders would follow their traditions and obey their laws. They had probably had to travel in the snow before, and probably had rules and customs to deal with it, as they did for every other part of their lives.
The possibility of guards seemed significantly more likely, really, but Sword had seen no sign of any, and surely, if the place were guarded, wouldn’t someone have seen him approach the gate yesterday? Wouldn’t someone have seen him huddled in the garden this morning?
If Artil had posted guards, they had probably left for Winterhome the minute the first snow fell. No Barokanese would want to risk being snowbound up here.
Well, no Barokanese except himself.
His pack and spear would be safe, he was sure. He left them where they were as he rose and started his search for access to the palace kitchens.
[ 10 ]
The kitchens were underground.
It took Sword a surprisingly long time to discover this; several times he followed what looked as if it should be a route to the kitchens, only to turn back whenever he encountered stairs leading down, on the incorrect assumption that he had found an entrance to the cellars, rather than the kitchens.
That was one reason; another was that he still had no light, and all the stairs led down into darkness.
At last, though, it occurred to him that he had circled through almost the entire ground floor without finding any kitchens, and that the cellars would surely connect to the kitchens somewhere. He had found candles in a drawer in the main dining hall; he retrieved flint, steel, and tinder from his pack, and made himself a light, then descended the nearest stairs leading down.
As he neared the bottom of the steps the light from his candle seemed to vanish into emptiness ahead. He marched on, and instead of the racks and shelves of wine and cheese and beer he had expected he found a cavernous space, where four sturdy wooden tables were lined up beneath innumerable iron hooks dangling from great stone arches, and where the walls were lined with ovens, stoves, cabinets, and open fireplaces equipped with spits and more hooks. Copper and iron pans hung on all sides, the copper gleaming warmly in the candlelight while the black iron seemed to soak up the light like a sponge. Some of the white-painted wooden cabinets were closed off with wooden doors, while others were open; many were empty, but a few were stacked full of plates, cups, and glassware. A huge gray stone sink stood along one wall, with a row of pipes descending from the ceiling above it and ending in taps. Stairs opened off the kitchens at each corner, leading down another half-level to the cellars he had expected.
There were no windows, of course, but chandeliers hung from several of the iron hooks, and countless sconces adorned the walls. The howl of the wind, which had varied in volume but always been audible, could not be heard here; the silence was complete whenever Sword stopped and allowed the echoes of his footsteps to fade away.
Sword held his lone candle high and looked about.
The floor was solid stone, without seam or polish, and not entirely even; he supposed that the builders had cut it out of the raw stone of the cliff itself. A thin layer of black greasy dirt appeared to be ground in, while the vaulted ceiling above had been blackened by smoke; the walls between the ovens and behind the cabinets were a mix of white plaster, red brick, and the original gray of the native stone. And while the place was not warm, it was only slightly cool, which was so different from the bitter cold upstairs that it seemed warm. He would not need to worry about freezing to death in here.
The lack of windows was a potential problem, but still, Sword thought, this would serve. This would be his home for the next hundred days or so. The lack of windows meant he would need to use lamps or candles, but it also meant his lights would be invisible to anyone outside. The ovens and hearths would allow him to safely produce all the heat he needed, and cook anything he found to cook, without worrying about setting anything afire, or about the glow of his fire being seen.
Of course, he would need fuel, but surely there was some stashed away somewhere. And there would still be smoke—those chimneys came out somewhere, obviously—but he hoped it wouldn’t be too visible.
He would need bedding, too. Where had the kitchen staff slept?
After further exploration, he concluded that the kitchen staff had slept upstairs; there was no sign of bedding anywhere in the extensive cellars, nor of anywhere bedding might previously have been. There were empty larders and bare pantries and dry sculleries, locked wine racks, well-drained beer kegs, and to his delight, a small wheel of hard cheese tucked away on a shelf and apparently forgotten, but he discovered no evidence that anyone had ever slept anywhere below ground level.
Nor did he find a decent supply of fuel. Candles, yes, hundreds of them, and dozens of empty lamps, but no oil, no charcoal, no firewood. He found what appeared to be a bin for firewood, but only a few sticks and some chips of bark lay at the bottom. Another bin was clearly intended for charcoal, but held little more than a film of black dust. A paper was tacked to the wall between these two bins; he held the candle high and studied it.
It was an inventory, listing quantities of wood and charcoal delivered, quantities used for cooking, and at the bottom was a notation saying, “Remainder 1½ cords wood sold to Uplanders for 100 ara plumes. Remainder 2 bushels charcoal sold to Uplanders, 60 plumes, 1 pound assorted feathers.”
So much for his expected fuel supply; he would have to improvise. That was bad news, as were all those empty shelves and kegs.
That cheese would definitely enhance his diet, though—the idea of livi
ng all winter on nothing but jerky had been seriously unappealing. He carried the cheese back to the row of tables in the great kitchen with him.
With that, he felt he had given his new quarters a good once-over and that it was time to bring down his pack and his spear, find some bedding, and establish himself. He looked around at the six staircases leading up to various portions of the palace, and chose the one he thought would bring him up closest to the southwest sitting room.
His candle had another good hour to burn, so he felt no great need to hurry, and took his time ascending the stair, looking around at the walls as he went. There were lamps mounted on brackets every few feet, but all of them were dry and wickless. That was no surprise; it wouldn’t do to have a servant stub his toe in the dark and drop someone’s supper, but wicks and oil might suffer if left out all winter.
The air grew noticeably colder as he climbed, and he was shivering slightly by the time the stair came up in a bare stone corridor running what Sword believed to be east and west. He turned west, and a moment later emerged into the little dining salon by the terrace.
The cold air pouring in through the broken window was like a shower of ice water, and despite the overhang a little snow had drifted in onto the polished floor. The wind was howling through the broken glass and curling around his ankles.
He shivered, pulled his coat more tightly about him, set his candle on the sideboard, and hurried around the corner to fetch his pack and spear.
Everything in the sitting room was just as he had left it, but he had an odd feeling of being watched as he retrieved the heavy bundle and hoisted it onto one shoulder. He paused and looked out the nearest window.
Swirling snow hid the outside world; he could not tell whether anyone was out there or not. The garden wall blocked his view of the trailhead, so he could not have seen the migrating Uplanders in any case, but the snow meant that someone could have been lurking on the palace grounds and he might never know it.
The Summer Palace Page 12