The Book of Shane

by Nick Eliopulos

  The layers of velvet wrapped around Shane felt heavy and hot. The sun beat down from above him. The fury in the faces of his people radiated up from below, giving off a heat of their own.

  “This ship!” Gar cried out, and Shane wondered how anyone below could hear him now, how anyone was capable of listening. “This ship will henceforth be known as Prince’s Honor!” He took a sip from the chalice, then splashed the remaining wine onto the deck, making the name official. “For it is our king’s will that your own prince, Shane, will command this vessel. And with it, he will sail to the island of the Greencloaks and ensure we are never ignored again!”

  Trumpets blared and feet stamped. The crowd chanted their names: “Gar! Gar! Gar!” and “Shane! Shane! Shane!”

  Shane looked up at his uncle, who grinned madly back at him, then he turned to regard the crimson-colored wine spattered all across the deck. His deck. He knew in that moment that Stetriol would be going to war again. It was inevitable. And he felt certain it would be the death of him.

  The first time he’d gone to war, Shane had been eight years old.

  It had started quietly. Privately. There had been no great speeches. Instead it came to him like a revelation: It was up to him to wipe out all the snakes of Stetriol.

  Thanks to his mother’s quick thinking, the venomous bite he’d suffered in the field hadn’t been too serious. Still, he was bedridden for several days while his body worked through the toxins. Fevered and nauseous, his dreams were full of sharp fangs and eerie slithering scales. His sister dozed in the chair beside him while Shane felt his pulse in his leg, hammering at the twin puncture marks and the cut the healer had made to bleed out the worst of the venom. And he wondered: What is the point of a snake?

  He found he could not answer that question. They were worthless and cruel, and he would be the end of them.

  Days later, when he was well enough to be on his own, he didn’t return to his toys or his wooden fort or his rambles about the castle. Instead he went to the gardener for a shovel. And he went to the tinker for scraps of metal, which he fastened around his shins and calves and forearms. No snake would be able to bite through. He was armed for war.

  Shane prowled the castle grounds over the course of a long afternoon, moving slowly and carefully through the grass. He never found a single snake. But as dusk fell, his mother found him.

  “Oh, my dear prince,” she said, and he turned to see her approaching. “What have you been doing out here?”

  Shane shrugged, suddenly worried that he may have done something wrong.

  “He wants to hurt the snakes,” Drina said, peering out from behind their mother’s dress. “Because they hurt him.”

  It wasn’t tattling, exactly. Shane hadn’t meant for his war to be a secret one. So why did he feel like he’d been caught?

  His mother knelt down to his eye level, but he kept his eyes on the ground. “Most snakes are harmless, Shane. And the one that bit you was only surprised. You don’t want to hurt snakes for being snakes, do you?”

  Shane shrugged again. “Maybe,” he said.

  “One day, my love, you will be king. And if you’re to be king, you must know mercy.”

  “But I hate them,” he said.

  “Oh, I don’t think you hate them,” said the queen. “I think maybe you’re afraid of them.”

  “I am not!” Shane yelled. “I’m not afraid. They’re stupid and I hate them.”

  His mother tilted her head. “Well. Sometimes hate and fear are the same thing.” She unstrapped the piece of tin at each of his forearms, letting them fall to the ground. “Sometimes they go together, walking hand in hand.” She removed the guards from his legs. “If you want to prove you’re not afraid, then learn to walk among snakes in peace.” She winked at him. “But it’s always wise to watch your step.”

  Shane waited anxiously for Magda to leave the room. She was going on and on about some ridiculous story the kitchen staff was spreading about a wild dog stealing meat from the kitchens. “An entire ham!” she exclaimed, and Shane widened his eyes as if he cared.

  Finally she took Drina’s tray away and Shane slipped into the chair. He kept one hand on the hilt of his sword, just in case, and with his other he shook his sister lightly. He hated to wake her, and he had promised Magda he wouldn’t. But this was important. It couldn’t wait.

  She came to consciousness slowly, blinking at him as if unsure he was really there. “Shane?” she said. “What is it?”

  “If I had to leave … would you come with me, Drina?”

  “What?” she said, looking even groggier than before. “Shane, what are you talking about? Where could we possibly go?”

  “Away,” he said. “Just … away.”

  He took a moment to steel himself before ascending the tower. It wasn’t a steep climb, and the many windows along the spiral staircase meant there were no menacing shadows to contend with. All the same, he was not eager to return to the room at the top of the stairs.

  He climbed the stairs anyway.

  When they were younger, Shane and Drina had been inseparable. They’d also been natural-born troublemakers, treating the entire castle as their fairground and the harried castle staff as captive playmates. But their father was a stern and serious man — a stern and serious king — and there were days when the safest place to be was out of his way.

  So their mother had built them a fort. It was a miniature castle all their own, made entirely of wood. Shane hadn’t appreciated at the time just how precious that made it. Surely it was the only one of its kind in Stetriol.

  The planks that made up the fort had been painted pink and green — Drina’s and Shane’s respective favorite colors. The result was garish to Shane’s eyes as he looked upon it for the first time in years, but it had seemed perfect back then. There had been just enough space inside for the two of them. Now Shane marveled at how small it was. He hadn’t been aware just how much he’d grown in the two years since his sister’s panicked screams had signaled the end of their childhood.

  He trailed his hand along a pink plank, curled his fingers into the gap, and with sudden violence ripped the board free.

  To accept Gar’s gift would be madness. It was obvious that his uncle intended to send him into danger, far from the castle. If Shane refused to sail with the fleet, he would look like a coward. If he sailed and somehow managed to survive, by the time he returned, Gar would have solidified his power and crowned himself king.

  No, Shane could not accept Gar’s gift of a ship. But maybe he could build his own boat. A boat big enough for two. If the old maps of Erdas were correct, Nilo was not so very far away.

  Perhaps they’d even have a cure for Drina. Perhaps that was Zerif’s secret.

  He worked quickly, heedless of the splinters digging their way into his palms, or the blood trickling in around the edges of his ruined fingernails. At some point he realized that he was screaming with each tug. He must have been screaming for some time, though he couldn’t remember deciding to do so. But it felt good, so he kept screaming. He screamed each time he pulled a board free, screamed each time he tossed it onto the growing pile behind him.

  Eventually he stopped, panting for breath. Sweat streamed down his body, and he felt a salty sting in his hands.

  He’d have to get used to labor. But he was better off as a pauper in Nilo than the prince of a sinking ship.

  “I think you’re a liar,” Shane told the man in the gardens’ overgrown prison cell.

  Zerif lifted an eyebrow but said nothing. He did not stir from his place on the stone floor.

  “I know you’re a liar,” Shane corrected. “You already admitted you lied before, to get an audience with my father. So why should I believe you know anything about a cure?”

  He worked to keep his voice flat and uninterested. His hands still ached from his efforts in the tower, and he squeezed them together, hoping the pain would make him look distracted.

  Zerif shrugged. “As do most m
en, I tell lies when they might help me get what I want. I am not in the habit of lying for the sake of lying. What would I have to gain from lying about the bonding sickness?”

  Shane scoffed. “You must be joking. Do you know how many charlatans we’ve seen here? Twice a year, some man or woman arrives at the castle gates to hawk an elixir they promise will cure the sick.” Shane spit on the ground. “Sugar water. Salt water. One maniac tried to convince my father to drink snake venom.”

  Zerif’s eyes twinkled as if he were amused by some private joke.

  “You’re just another fraud, preying on the hopes and fears of vulnerable people,” Shane said. It was only by digging his fingernails into his cut hands that he was able to keep from shouting.

  And then he saw the ham bone lying in the cell.

  “Where did you get that?” he demanded.

  Zerif shrugged.

  “I told the guards you were not to be fed.”

  “Perhaps your uncle told them otherwise,” Zerif suggested. “It must be quite confusing for them. So many masters running around the place.”

  Shane turned on his heel, but before he could walk away Zerif called out: “Little master, I’ll give you this information for free.”

  Shane didn’t turn to face him, but he said through clenched teeth, “I’m listening.”

  “I’m not some alchemist mixing potions, nor some healer with a noble calling to aid the sick. I do not claim to have the means to cure anything.”

  Shane turned at that. “You said —”

  “I said I know what the cure is. To actually obtain it, I need aid. Aid from the king of Stetriol.”

  “I don’t understand,” Shane said. “How do you know anything about the cure if you don’t have the means to create it?”

  “I overheard the secret,” Zerif answered. “At Muttering Rock.”

  Shane narrowed his eyes. “No one goes to Muttering Rock. It’s guarded by Halawir the Eagle. And during the day, it’s as hot as a cauldron.”

  “I do not burn easily,” Zerif said, and he tapped his nose, indicating the peeling skin. He did have the look of a man who had spent too long in the wastelands. And there was nothing but wastelands for miles around Kovo’s fabled prison.

  “One can learn all sorts of secrets,” he said, “if one takes the time to listen at the base of that great pillar. You might even hear the strangest conversations passing between a warden and his prisoner.” He retook his seat. “Tell your father I’m in the mood to share. But only with the king of Stetriol.”

  Shane dreamed he’d summoned a seal.

  He stood upon the beach and watched it play in the surf. From time to time it would clamber onto shore, graceless and awkward as it hobbled across the sand like a dog with its back legs tied together. It looked up at Shane, its dark eyes shining, and grunted once — an invitation. Then it pulled itself back across the sand and into the water, where it was free and happy and could move again with grace.

  But Shane wasn’t allowed in the water. He knew he’d never be free.

  The castle had become a dark and quiet place in the years since the queen had died, as if the entire structure were her tomb.

  Shane’s mother had possessed many skills beyond the talents she displayed in the gardens. One of the most impressive was her ability to calm the people around her, to talk them down from their fears and keep them happy. Once she died, more guards and servants left the castle with each passing year. They were nervous about being around so many spirit animals, as if the bonding sickness might be contagious — as if they put their own children at risk by their proximity to the “cursed” descendants of the Reptile King.

  For many, Iskos had been the final straw. Spirit animals were one thing, but a spirit animal with eight hairy legs and venomous spit was another thing entirely.

  To Shane’s mind, the sole advantage to the situation was that much of the castle had been roped off and abandoned. So it was an easy matter for him to steal what he needed. The old lance held by an ornamental suit of armor would serve as a paddle. The extra silverware forgotten in a cupboard could be traded for food. And a tapestry — a tapestry would make a perfect sail.

  He strolled along a quiet hallway, the thick layer of dust at his feet muffling his footfalls. He hadn’t set his eyes on these artworks since he was a boy, and they were more stunning than he’d remembered. There was Suka, a white bear set against an icy background. And Cabaro, a great cat with a mane of golden hair, baring his teeth from a rocky outcropping above a field of grass. There was the tusked pig, and the white bird with the long, delicate neck — Rumfuss and Ninani. He struggled to remember their names, for the Great Beasts were all but ignored in Stetriol, and most held the forms of animals he’d never actually seen.

  But his mother had taught him all of their names. Even the names of the Four Fallen, who had defied Tellun the Elk’s vow of noninterference when they’d aided the Greencloak invasion. Those four were not represented on the tapestries. If they’d ever been part of the set, they had most likely been burned to ash in the aftermath of the war.

  Missing, too, were Gerathon and Kovo, who had sided with Stetriol. The invaders had probably burned those tapestries themselves.

  In the end, Shane chose Mulop. The oddness of the octopus appealed to him. It would be an ungainly thing on land, but quite at home in the sea. And the sea was where Shane was heading.

  He ripped it free from the wall and hid his face in the crook of his arm while the dust he’d stirred up swirled about him and settled in his hair, on his shoulders. When he lifted his eyes again, his gaze fell upon a portrait farther down the hall. He knew instantly whom it depicted.

  Rolling up the tapestry and shoving it under his arm, he drifted over for a better look.

  It was a painting of his ancestor, Feliandor. Or “Good King Fel.” Or “The Reptile King.” Most surviving imagery of the king showed a strapping young man girded for war, usually sitting astride a massive crocodile. But Feliandor had become king at a young age, and here he was in the first year of his reign, a boy no older than Shane.

  His chin was up and his shoulders back, but the artist had captured some emotion in the young king’s eyes that was not pride or confidence. It looked to Shane like fear. As if it were taking all of the boy’s willpower to sit still with the oversized crown balanced upon his head. As if the crown might fall at the very moment he was to be immortalized in brushstrokes.

  “You poor fool,” Shane said. “You should have gotten out while you could.” He looked over the portrait for a moment more, and decided he didn’t see much of a resemblance.

  “What’s in it for you?” Shane asked Zerif on the third night of his imprisonment.

  “Come again?” Zerif asked languidly.

  “You claim you do not lie for the sake of lying,” Shane said. “But I’d wager you’re no more likely to tell the truth for its own sake. How do you benefit, traveling all the way here from the dead center of the continent to share a muttered secret with the king?”

  Zerif smiled. “Perhaps I’m just a generous soul.”

  “So smug,” Shane said, feeling a little smug himself. “So convinced that your secret gives you power over the powerful.”

  “Would I be wrong to think so?”

  “Not wrong,” Shane answered. “Provided your secret stayed secret.”

  Zerif stood and stretched, seemingly unconcerned. At length he responded, “I suppose you expect me to guess what you’ve guessed? A clever trick to make me show my hand?”

  “Not hardly. I don’t need to trick you. I may not know the riddle, but I’ve guessed the answer: Bile.”

  Shane watched the man’s face closely, so he saw the briefest flash of fury cross his features. An instant later, he appeared as calm as ever, but too late — Shane knew he’d guessed right.

  “See, I’ve been thinking about our Good King Fel — the Devourer, as the rest of the world knew him. I saw his portrait earlier, and I haven’t been able to get him o
ut of my head. He was the last king of Stetriol to actually want a spirit animal, and legend has it that Kovo made it possible by providing a substance known as Bile. Feliandor’s soldiers all used the Bile, and none of them suffered the bonding sickness. That only happened after the war — when the secret to creating the Bile was lost. A secret known to Kovo. Who is imprisoned … at Muttering Rock.”

  Zerif glowered for a moment, but then a smile broke across his face, and this time it seemed genuine. “Not bad,” he said. “You’ve only got the barest understanding of the big picture, but you’re not wrong.”

  “So tell me the rest of it,” Shane said. “Or else I go to Muttering Rock myself and cut you out entirely.”

  “The king is dead. Isn’t he?”

  “If he is, then I’m the king. Either way, you deal with me.”

  Zerif sighed. “Kovo wants to help. As does his jailor.”

  “Halawir the Eagle? Why would —”

  “Halawir has long been sympathetic to Stetriol. It pains him to see your people suffer — on that, he and Kovo agree. They say that the Jade Serpent will be your salvation, and it’s here, in the capital. Somewhere only the king can get it.”

  “The Jade Serpent?” Shane asked.

  “A talisman,” Zerif answered. “Gerathon’s talisman, to be specific. According to Kovo, Stetriol’s true king has it.” He leveled his steely gaze at Shane. “Is that you or not?”

  Shane’s muscles burned, and now the fire was spreading to his mind. He’d lost track of how long he’d been at work — sawing and sanding and hammering on an abandoned beach, the sound of the surf in his ears. He’d worked through the night and all day long, and now it was night again. His boat was an ugly thing, that was certain — mismatched boards of pink and green, cotton stuffed in every crevice, then slathered with tar, all straight lines so that it looked more like a box than the magnificent ship he’d boarded days before. But the book he’d taken from the royal library indicated that it would float, and that was all that mattered.