Did Father ever guess that I wasn’t his son? Chisaad wondered as he passed through the house wards, which dutifully recognized him and opened the bespelled front door. He never breathed a word, but I suspect he knew. He stepped out of his overshoes in the foyer and the waiting golem collected them for cleaning. The streets of the Clerks Quarter were only marginally cleaner than those of the Old City despite being nearly a thousand years younger. The golem, an artifact of wood, wire, and fierce-burning silver, moved with grace as it carefully washed and brushed the overshoes.
The movements are almost human, but I need to tune it a little better, he decided. I could put an illusion of humanity on it, but it’s a little too jerky to be persuasive, yet. He checked the older cleaning golem he had made for practice. It wasn’t even shaped like a human, a six-legged thing that looked more like a mantis. Its virtue was that it could reach from floor to ceiling and reliably clean corners, dust shelves, and refill lamps. Not much better than human servants, and more expensive considering the cost of silver, but at least they don’t spill my secrets.
He went to his tower, ascended the front stairs to the middle-level office and up through three more stories of storage and specialty rooms to his favorite workroom on the top floor. I should practice climbing these stairs, he thought, to get ready for the Hill. Prince Terrell will want to visit the Stone Throne, probably more than once, and I need to keep up with him. I’ll start walking up these front stairs and down the back ones three times a day.
The top floor work room had tall bookshelves crowded to one side of an open workspace, now dominated by a large table. On it laid the half-assembled corpus of his newest golem.
“Better articulation,” he whispered to himself, fingering the arm joints. For amusement he cast a quick simulacrum of Ap Marn’s face onto the featureless ovoid of the golem’s head. “Yes, you’d suit as a mechanical slave, Governor. But later.”
He let the spell die and went to the big bay window that dominated the room. It looked east over the city and most of Aretzo could be seen from here. He had a device of lenses and tubes that enabled him to extend his vision all the way to the harbor seawall. He began to examine the Bazaar through it.
Those performers must be somewhere. It shouldn’t be impossible to find them. And when I do, I must learn how they control a living Shadow, because I am convinced that was not a stage trick.
Their secret must become mine.
CHAPTER 6: TERRELL
The night before Terrell’s departure the dream of Light came back. This time he woke before Pen reached his side.
Terrell gasped and sat up. For a moment he saw everything in the room outlined in radiance. Then only the guttering night candle lit the darkness.
Pen’s worried face loomed over him. “My Lord? Did it happen again?”
“Yes.” He fought down a shudder. “So strong . . . I feel like something’s prying my soul open with levers, or perhaps knives.” He half snorted, half laughed. “A version of what Irreneetha did to you, perhaps, but without the scar.”
“Something prying at your soul?” Pen asked, his gaze sharp. “Or . . . Someone? Are you being magically attacked?”
“I don’t think so.” Terrell wiped his sweating face on his nightshirt. “Any mage strong enough to get at me like this would leave a signature in the castle wards that even I could see. And . . .” he checked rapidly, finding it easier than ever before. “There’s no sign of any disturbance. For that matter, if it came from a mage outside the castle, our wards should have blocked it. At the very least it would have rung an alarm bell.”
They both listened, but the castle’s warning bells were silent.
Terrell nodded. “If any mage powerful enough to overcome the wards without raising an alarm attacked us, why would he spend that kind of effort on me, but not damage me? No, I don’t think this is a magical attack.”
They were both silent for a moment, thinking of the other alternative.
“Hostile efforts by the Pale Seraphs would not, I think, be accompanied by a dream of Light,” Terrell said tentatively. He had tried to pay careful attention to Dona Seraphina’s lectures about the Holy Writ, but there was so much of it. And there were horses to ride and weapons to learn and strategies to understand if he ever hoped to be an effective ruler of millions of people.
“If the Good Seraphs are, umm, changing you, it must be for a good purpose.” Pen spoke with more confidence than Terrell felt.
“Let’s hope the Temple Hierarchy agrees with you,” Terrell answered soberly. “I’m going to have to win them over if I’m ever to rule Silbar. They’re sure to ask me about my dreams.”
“Dona Seraphina wasn’t worried about your dreams,” Pen offered.
“True.” Terrell brightened. “I’ll ask her about this one in the morning. Before we leave.”
“Very good, My Lord.” Pen bowed in transparent relief and left the room.
Terrell lay back down in his bed. He stared at the frescoed ceiling, invisible in the darkness.
If this really is the Good Seraphs at work on me, he thought, I should not resist. Pen didn’t resist Irreneetha. I must do at least as much.
He folded his hands in prayer and tried to formulate a petition to the Defender. Oh Seraph Haroun, mightiest face of the One God, hear me! I submit my soul to Thy holy justice, and my will to Thine. Let Heaven’s Plan be fulfilled in me as Thy chooseth, for Thine is the right and the glory, forever and ever, world without end.
He composed his mind for sleep again, and when the dream returned he embraced it. Pain came with it, but now he viewed it like the discomfort of stretching a long-unused muscle. Soon even that receeded and the Light settled in him, filled him like oil filling a lamp. He slept dreamlessly after that.
* * *
Dona Seraphina gasped. “Your Highness! What have you done? How—Why—”
“I had another dream, Dona.” Terrell followed her gaze back to his own chest and went crosseyed trying to look at himself. “What are you seeing, Dona?”
“Light,” she answered curtly as her shocked expression gave way to a puzzled one. “Filling you like water fills a glass vial.”
Terrell tried to turn his magesight on himself, with the usual result—disjointed confusion. He shut his eyes and tried to sense his internal flows as Shimoor had taught. Power moved through him now, flowing like blood in a vein. His mind could barely touch it, like sensing the castle’s node. The sensation thrilled him.
“Tell me about your dream, boy,” Seraphina demanded. “Everything you remember.”
Terrell tried to, only to find the memory already fading as if it didn’t quite fit into his mind. After he stammered several disjointed sentences the priestess raised a hand to stop him.
“Never mind, early visions are often said to be unclear and rapidly lost. Wait for the next one, assuming there is a next one, and write it down. It may take you a few tries to learn how. I wish we had someone experienced in dream interpretation to guide you.” She brooded for a moment, staring at his chest with her aura extended to probe him.
“Visions, Dona Seraphina?” He finally prompted her. “What kind of visions am I having?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. The prophets described in the Holy Writ rarely had happy lives, or long ones. The mere thought made him fight off a shiver. Becoming a battle mage attracted him far more than becoming a prophet.
“Seraphs bless me if I know,” she answered bluntly. “But you’re being filled with divine light and having odd dreams. I don’t have to be the Seeress of God’s Mountain to know that something extremely unusual is going on. Be very sure you pay close attention to the next dream, your Highness, and tell me about it immediately afterwards. Wake me up if you need to.”
She fixed him with that gimlet stare that always made him feel like a beast about to be butchered. His discomfort rose until he had no choice but to end it by saying, “Yes, Dona.”
But two hour later he forgot vision, discomfort and all as he
entered the castle hall for his formal leave-taking. Father and Mother sat on their thrones, robed and crowned in splendor, he in the heavy gold Imperial Crown that Grandfather had ordered fused from the crowns of Gwythlo and Klinto. As always, Mother wore only the simple silver circlet of Silbar, two palm-sized circles standing up from the front to clasp a polished amethyst between their overlapping rings. Something moved slowly within the gem, altering the way light struck through it.
Osrick sat at Father’s right, two steps down the dais on a smaller throne, decked in the Crown Prince’s regalia and his face a mask. Aunt Klairveen stood a step lower beside him, splendid in her green and gold regalia as Chief Druid. Magister Pyrull stood two steps lower at Mother’s left, Dona Seraphina a step down beside him in her most elaborate embroidered robes.
Pen walked two paces behind and to Terrell’s left with Irreneetha a sheathed fire at his side. The few in court who hadn’t heard yet gasped and whispered. Without the soulsword, Pyrull looked . . . diminished. His hair was pure white now, and thin.
He really is dying, Terrell thought, dismayed. The court will be walking ghosts when I leave.
The sight hurt; he looked around instead. Hundreds of nobles, court officials, and retainers crowded the big room.
All of them in clusters by nation, he noticed. Decades under the Imperial Crown, and each is still fiercely separate, suspicious of all the others, and ready to break free if they see an opportunity. Father, is this all we’ve been able to build? It made him sad.
The Court Herald summoned Terrell and Pen. They walked the length of the room at a measured pace. More murmurs ran around the room as those with magesight noticed Terrell’s difference. Before he could kneel, his father bid him to approach. Terrell left Pen standing behind him and mounted the marble steps. His eyes drank in every detail of his parents, knowing this would be his last sight of them.
Father looked weary, his face graven with lines. Some hadn’t been there three days ago. With a start, Terrell discovered that he could see right through his sire’s hair to the thin skin beneath. Its paleness made his father’s head look unpleasantly like a skull. The crown seemed to weigh him down, which it never had before.
This is what ‘dying’ really means. The thought ran through Terrell like the shock from a too-close lightning bolt. He couldn’t help glancing at his mother’s hand resting lightly on father’s left arm. Her lifeforce flowed into him with a muted glow. Will it ever be my lot to find such love? Perhaps, if the One is kind. But would I want that . . . shared death, to be my legacy?
He had no answer.
They spoke the formal words so that the watching nobles and functionaries would hear and know. Words of binding, words of commitment. All the while, Terrell tried to engrave every beloved line of his father’s face in his own memory, every wrinkle, and every proud angle. Only when Osrick joined them to repeat his oath did Terrell see that his sire did the same with his own face. Osrick’s eyes darted from one to the other and narrowed.
Then it was done.
The rest of the formalities were a blur. A candlemark later Terrell found himself in the Keep’s outer courtyard. The Silbari Brigade formed up behind him and a train of companions and baggage. Dona Seraphina and her husband shared a chair litter suspended between four big horses. Royal Wizard Shimoor had a smaller two-horse version to himself. Everybody else rode normally. Even the young court women and junior priestesses accompanying them had all dressed in divided riding skirts. The pack train ran longer than the entourage itself.
Osrick strode up before Terrell climbed on his horse.
“Brother,” Terrell said, opening his arms for a hoped-for embrace. He was almost surprised when Osrick accepted, bending a little to hug him.
“I am trusting you, little brother,” Osrick hissed in his ear. “I want a sign that you’ll justify that trust.”
“I will keep our oath to the letter, you know that,” Terrell protested softly.
“I don’t doubt it, since the letter favors you.” The words were bitter and Osrick’s voice rang with pain. “So I want one thing more. Don’t call yourself king. You can be a king, if that blasted rock-chair doesn’t kill you, but never call yourself one. By that I’ll know.”
“I am willing to agree,” Terrell answered, grieved. “But what others call me I can’t control.”
“I don’t care about others. I care about you. Don’t call yourself king.”
“Agreed. Goodbye, Osrick.”
“I’ll be watching, Terrell. Goodbye.”
They tightened their grips on each other, almost wrestling. Abruptly Osrick released him and strode away. He did not look back.
“My Lord?” Pen asked uncertainly from his horse’s back.
Terrell’s eyes were stinging. He shook his head, mounted and turned the horse toward the gate. “Let’s go, Pen.”
CHAPTER 7: KIRIN
“The Suliemons!” The leader of the DiUmbra troupe roared. “How did those bastard spawns of Salim steal our place in the Bazaar?”
The two older uncles who had stayed behind to manage the Troupe’s reduced presence in the Bazaar both hung their heads in shame. “They showed up five days after you left, with a written order for us to get out,” one explained.
“And you just meekly gave up our livelihood?”
Kirin flinched at the rage in grandfather’s voice and looked around. The family had gathered together in their practice room in the Sulfur Serpent Inn’s Attic, the high-ceilinged chamber that filled the fifth floor of the cavernous building. The leader of the troupe stalked back and forth across the plank floor, his fists waving in frustration. His sons and nephews rolled their eyes but said nothing. Kirin listened and worried.
“The Suliemons had City Watchmen with them,” Grandmother answered practically. “They bribed the Governor. He gave them a royal grant for the space. I went to the Treasury and read the copy in the archives.”
“He can’t do that!” Grandfather’s roar petered out.
“Of course he can. He’s acting in place of the Queen.” Grandmother gave her husband an exasperated look. “Do you seriously imagine we can persuade her to undo it?”
Everybody looked at each other. Sevan and his wife Carlai with their baby, Kirin and Maia, her younger brother Attir, her mother and father Sevan the Elder and Carmella, Uncle Ger and his wife and their three sons and young daughter, six cousins and their wives and children, and Grandmother and Grandpa DiUmbra. And Pieter, who cleared his throat.
“Father. Our Queen is more than two thousand miles away in Gwythlo,” he said. “That’s not an impossible distance, but even if one of us went there, without influence at court we have little chance of ever getting in to see her.”
Sevan the Elder gave a heavy sigh. “Everybody says the Imperial Court at Gwythford is corrupt. We’d have to bribe someone to sponsor our plea for a hearing. The rumors in the Guildhall say those bribes run more than we make in three years! It’s pointless for people like us to even try.”
“Can’t we take over the Suliemon’s old space?” Uncle Ger asked.
Grandfather snorted. “Only if we want to starve slowly. We’ve twice their numbers to feed, and that’s always been a bad location for business.”
“Besides,” Uncle Sevan added practically. “They already sold it to someone else even lower on the ladder of status than they were. Mother checked.”
Grandmother continued in her be reasonable voice. “Which means we only have one choice. We have to find a patron who controls another performance space and persuade him to let us use it.”
Sevan the Eder nodded his head dourly at his mother’s words. “That’s going to be tough. The old aristocrats are pretty humbled these days. Not many of them have any unrented space or are spending any extra coin. They’re squeezing every copper to maintain appearances.”
Ger nodded too. “The new merchants and mages have wealth, but we don’t know any of them.”
“Then we’ll get to know them,” Grandfathe
r growled. “Everybody start looking for a way. We have enough money from our trip that we can eat for the summer without earning our usual income. But if we don’t find a reasonably good performance space by the fall equinox we are in big trouble. We have to pay our lease on the Serpent then, and right now, thanks to paying for dead horses…” He paused and darted an angry look at Kirin and Pieter. “…we don’t have enough saved to do that and still eat.”
“We can take on small work. Embroidery and washing for the women, maybe stevedore work for the men,” Grandma said thoughtfully. “That will help some.”
“It’ll slow the drain,” Grandpa admitted grudgingly. “But we’ve got to stay in practice too, we can’t afford to look and be any less than perfect for a new patron. That doesn’t leave us much time for anything else.”
Grandma conceded the point with a resigned nod.
Kirin looked around at the familiar room with its high ceiling and plank floors. The trapeze and the net dominated it. This is my home, the place I belong.
Maia squeezed his arm.
“We’ll be all right,” he told her sturdily. “We’ll find something.”
* * *
The next day the whole family cleaned their living quarters and the practice room under Grandmother’s stern gaze. The men hauled in endless buckets of water up from the Inn’s courtyard fountain on wooden yokes. Kirin’s calves and thighs burned from the effort.
“It’s a good way to strengthen our leg muscles for the act,” Pieter claimed. Kirin and Sevan, keeping pace up the stairs behind him with their own yokes, rolled their eyes and grinned at each other. The younger men just panted.
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