Shadow and Light

by Peter Sartucci

  Already the sides had begun to shrink inward. She began to sweep her hand upward from the windowsill, reversing the motion that had opened this window into the abyss.

  Kirin seized the edge with his bare hands and tried to hold it open. “Wait! I need to know!”

  The portal distorted, one side shrinking in while he tugged the other wider. Black wisps of Shadow wrapped his hands as if it too sought to stop this entrance to Hell from closing. The little room shuddered. Dust puffed from the walls.

  “Stop!”

  Her command was so strong that he let go of the edge. The portal snapped shut with an audible smack like giant lips, but now a faint gray line ran across the window, a wound in the Skin of the World. He clenched his hands into frustrated fists. Beyond the window frame lay only the roof of her house and the dark night. Inside his chest his Shadow shrank into a hard, sulky ball.

  She had recoiled from him. “You are both the bravest and most foolish youth I’ve ever met, Kirin DiUmbra. I am astonished that you still have your fingers, or for that matter, your life. That portal cuts like a knife.”

  He looked at his hands, hard and callused from trapeze-work. They looked no different than usual. The edge of the portal had been as slippery as a live fish and twice as cold. Not like a knife at all. But she knew far more of these things than he did. Had he had a narrow escape from death? A shudder ran up his spine. Cascading souls . . .

  “I need to know,” he said, and the words seemed pale and limp compared to his burning desire. The good manners that Carmella and Grandmother had drilled into him reasserted themselves, and he added contritely, “I’m sorry if I broke your spell, Lady.”

  She half-lidded her eyes and he saw her veil of spells rearrange itself and settle back. “Damaged, but not broken. It will require repair before I use it again. You badly need training in the use of your abilities, young man, else you may leave more wreckage in your wake than you can imagine.”

  He remembered Mother Gee’s words. She thought he needed a protector, but he saw now that she had the wrong solution to his problem. I don’t need protection. I need knowledge. “Lady Ymera. Will you teach me?”

  She shook her head. “I dare not. When the magic users of this city truly understand what you are, there will be a collective outcry of horror. I live on sufferance as it is. I will not risk being the target of such fear and outrage. You need a powerful mentor, and it cannot be me.”

  His head bowed at her rejection, but before he could say anything she spoke again.

  “I will send you to the Royal Wizard.”

  * * *

  From her cupola Ymera watched him leave. Her guard captain punctiliously returned the boy’s knife at her front gate, with a flourish of courtesy that Kirin seemed to appreciate. The boy stood a little taller as he walked away into her street.

  Men and their weapons. Her lips twisted in a wry grimace.

  The guard-captain’s formality told her something important. She had hired and promoted him because he’d proven to be a perceptive man not easily fooled by deceits, magical or otherwise. He senses very real danger in the boy and chooses to fend it off with formality and courtesy. Wary of that which he does not understand, and suspects could be mightier than himself. Hopefully young Kirin DiUmbra will not carry any resentment of me or mine away with him tonight.

  She hugged her arms across her chest for a moment, trembling with the release of tension. I took a monstrous risk. I knew it, but even I didn’t understand how great a risk. Should I have tried to kill him while he opened himself to me? And what would I have done if I failed? Probably he would have killed me, perhaps without even meaning to do so. She shuddered at the thought, feeling death brush her like a moth’s wing. Sometimes the only path to safety is to take a great risk. She turned back to her tattered gate spell and began repairs.

  He put his hands beneath the Skin of the World and drew them back whole. He nearly tore my gate open while doing so. What manner of nightmare is he?

  * * *

  “The Royal Wizard?” Grandfather repeated, staring bug-eyed at Kirin.

  Kirin shifted on his stool uncomfortably. The leaders of the family were gathered with him and Maia in the DiUmbra’s tiny dining room. Most of them were looking at him like he’d grown two heads.

  Sevan’s stare turned envious. “You sneak into the Witch-Queen’s own garden, and instead of frying your ass, she asks Magister Chisaad to teach you? Kirin, that’s like falling in a dung-heap and coming up with a gold brick.”

  Pieter looked worried. “They are two of the most powerful people in the City. Mixing with folk on that level is dangerous for people like us. I wish you hadn’t gone there, son.”

  Maia, who had been clutching Kirin’s arm ever since he got home, nodded her head vigorously. For a moment Kirin felt abashed at the way he’d snuck out without telling her. His mind still struggled to think through the night’s events.

  Sevan the Elder looked thoughtful. “What’s done is done, Pieter. I’m worried too; but think of the possibilities. We’ve known for years that Kirin has an unusual talent. After the recent unfortunate events,” he cleared his throat and Kirin cringed as Grandfather’s stare sharpened into a glare. “It’s obvious he needs training in how to control it. There could hardly be a better trainer in the whole city than the Royal Wizard.”

  Pieter’s frown sank into a general unhappy look and he didn’t disagree.

  “This family badly needs a patron,” Grandmother pointed out. “We need a connection to somebody rich and powerful if we’re going to keep eating. Kirin needs training to use his magic safely. If the Royal Wizard consents to take him on, that gets us two-thirds of the way to where this family needs to be. Where else is Kirin going to learn what he needs to learn?”

  Grandfather’s gaze changed to a calculating one and he nodded decisively. “Yes. This really might be the gold brick in the dung heap. But only if the wizard takes him on for free. We can’t possibly pay for apprentice-level training. We’ll have to hope Kirin can interest the wizard enough to make him a charity case. Can you do that, boy?”

  Kirin gulped. Grandfather looking at him with hope was a new thing. He rallied. “I’ll find a way, Grandfather.”

  Pieter sighed and capitulated. “My prayers go with you, son. But be careful.”

  Relieved, Kirin smiled as he patted Maia’s hand. “I will, father. I will.”

  * * *

  The Wizard’s tower loomed fortress-like over the surrounding houses. From the sumptuous front courtyard Kirin saw crows perched on its slate roof. More of the scavenger birds wheeled and soared like inkblots splashed across the morning sky.

  Their flights were as agitated as his stomach. Two hours past dawn, he stood here freshly bathed wearing his best tunic and hose. He stared at the Wizard’s front door.

  I’m stalling. He forced himself to walk across the geometric patterns of the courtyard to the imposing entry. He pushed his Shadow into its cage under his heart before he gingerly lifted the ensorcelled doorknocker. When he slammed the knob down on its brass inset, the sound echoed through the house and sank into his bones.

  The door opened. A tall grave-faced man wreathed in spells stared down at him. Kirin gulped and tried to stand straighter as he recognized the Royal Wizard from that disastrous night at Millago’s house.

  “Kirin Sule DiUmbra,” Wizard Chisaad said to him in a smooth voice. “Welcome to my house.”

  CHAPTER 21: TERRELL

  “Ninth petition,” the Clerk of the Queen’s Court announced with rigid formality. His voice was only slightly leavened by the anxiety in the glance he gave Terrell, who as Governor substituted for his absent mother. The clerk knew poison when he read it on a scroll. “An appeal originally submitted by Sir Gellir DuRicci DiSolera, formerly Duke of Lonigo, now amended and consolidated to include appeals from three other former nobles or their heirs.”

  Terrell resisted the temptation to roll his eyes as the clerk read a list of names. Each man stood fo
rward when identified; a former duke and three former barons or baronial heirs, all dispossessed by the conquering Gwythlo Empire. In the waiting audience four Gwythlo nobles pressed against the edge of the petitioner’s dais. Terrell recognized the current Duke of Lonigo, Rhet Cadigan, among them. The clerk continued reading.

  “The undersigned come before the court of Her Majesty seeking redress of wrongs—”

  “I’ve read the petition,” Terrell interrupted. “Twice. Skip to the requested action.”

  The clerk hastily unrolled the heavy parchment to the end and read, “That they be restored to possession of their proper rights, titles, benefices, privileges, and duties, by the order of Her Majesty and the grace of the One God.”

  Terrell rubbed his brow for a moment and sighed. “Sir DiSolera, step forth.”

  The senior petitioner proved to be a florid, gray-haired man with a proud bearing and expensive clothing stretched over a belly that didn’t look like he’d ever missed any meals. His haughty face creased into a permanent scowl. He bowed with an antique flourish and murmured “Your Highness,” before he stared at Terrell with dark eyes lit by a demanding hope.

  Terrell regarded him without favor, aware that the man was his third cousin and thus close enough to be one of the Twenty candidates. “Sir DiSolera. You and your fellow petitioners would have me, by simple fiat, undo the consequences of the Gwythlo Conquest and return you to the seats from which you were deposed by my father. Or in the cases of Sir DiNivir and Goodman DiBrollino, to grant them baronies of which they are the closest heirs of the previous Baron. Correct?”

  DiSolera, DiVaragga and DiBrollino had the mother-wit to simply nod their heads respectfully and affirm his words. DiNivir expounded on his written argument. Terrell cut him off with a polite, “A simple ‘yes’ will do, my lord.”

  DiNivir choked off his voluble flow and managed the one word. In the audience the four Gwythlo nobles glared at the petitioners but waited for their turns.

  “You four cite your hereditary rights and your family’s suffering and shame as reasons that I should support your request, but you provide no other arguments. I give you opportunity to amend your petition. For example, do you, Sir DiSolera, claim that Lonigo is badly governed by the present Duke?” Terrell opened his right hand in the direction of Cadigan, who stared haughtily at DiSolera.

  DiSolera glanced at the Gwythlo with a sneer that made his ample jowls quiver. “I do, Your Highness. He has broken traditions stretching back centuries, dispossessed loyal knights who followed my family for generations and given their fiefs to his own creatures, allowed rampant disrespect for proper social order, and worst of all, permitted foul northern Druids to establish a fane within the city walls!”

  DiSolera offered more, but Terrell soon extracted the salient point. It seemed that the one manor the former Duke still retained turned out to be inadequate to support him in the style to which he had once been accustomed. When DiSolera took a breath before launching additional embroidery on this theme, Terrell stopped him.

  “In keeping with tradition, His Grace the present Duke of Lonigo shall now have an opportunity to speak.” Terrell gestured the man forward and Cadigan practically leaped onto the respondent’s dais.

  “Your Highness, officers of the court, and Sir DiSolera.” In Cadigan’s mouth the last name dripped contempt. “The petitioner’s words do but affirm that I have served the crown, and the Empire of which it is a part, more than well! I established my own military control of the duchy, permitted trade to flourish by eliminating monopolies and fees that fattened his favored parasites instead of enabling commerce, and granted the same freedom of worship that has long been allowed in Aretzo. Sir DiSolera has surely noticed that foreign traders have been permitted to establish their own houses of faith here in this city since Your Highness’ four-times-great grandfather’s day.”

  DiSolera glared back and prepared to launch a blistering response when Terrell stopped him again, this time with a raised hand, and gestured to his Treasurer. The official read off a prepared list of annual tax payments from Lonigo to the crown that stretched back to before the Conquest. DiSolera’s expression grew noticeably more choleric while the numbers grew smaller as the dates stretched farther back in time. Cadigan let a modest smile grow on his face.

  “Whatever other results may have come from the present rule,” the Treasurer noted, “His Grace’s contributions to the realm’s coffers are a third higher than those in the years before the Conquest. The Lord Justicar also reports that Lonigo’s dungeons are less than half as full as they were under the previous regime.”

  Terrell gestured invitingly to the clerical priestess waiting by the Treasurer’s side. She stated in a clear voice, “The Lonigo Temple’s almshouse reports that the city’s people are better fed and more prosperous than they were twenty years ago. Their contributions to the Faith have also grown, enough that the Lonigo Autarch has commissioned a new bell tower to replace the unsound one that presently graces, or threatens, her Temple.” She turned a sharp smile on Duke Cadigan. “While the Hierarchy does not of course approve of the license granted to that alien faith, attendance at Temple does not seem to have suffered from the presence of a Druidical fane in the city. Indeed, the contrast of those unsavory practices may have helped strengthen the people’s loyalty to the true faith.”

  Terrell thought Cadigan did not seem disturbed by this observation. There might be truth in the rumor that his wife has been secretly attending Silbari religious services.

  “But cousin!” DiSolera appealed. “He turned my knights out of their lands! Forty of them have been forced to enlist in the army as simple foot-soldiers, unable to afford horses any more. Without land to support followers, they cannot even bring a single man-at-arms to your service!” Belatedly it occurred to him that presuming on their kinship might not be a good idea, and added, “Your Highness.”

  Terrell, aware that much of the Silbari brigade had been built out of such dispossessed men, decided to ignore the presumption. He turned an enquiring look on Cadigan.

  “I had to be sure that the landed knights of the duchy would serve me and not him,” Cadigan acknowledged. “Ten of his fifty knights gave me their oaths, the rest I replaced with a mix of ambitious Silbari men and second sons from my brother’s Gwythlo estates. More than half of those men married kin of the dispossessed knights, adopted Silbari ways, and have raised their children to be as Silbari as Your Highness might wish.”

  DiSolera glanced at Terrell’s yellow hair and away, recognizing the double-edged blade in Cadigan’s comment. A half-blood Prince wasn’t likely to consider it a bad thing in knights or nobles. “Such dispossession remains a shocking betrayal of generations of loyal service, Your Highness. What man anywhere in Silbar can feel safe in his lands and titles, knowing they can be so readily torn away from him despite his loyalty?”

  “They were loyal to you, not to me,” Cadigan pointed out. “I had to assure the loyalty of the Duchy’s people for myself.”

  Terrell glanced at the petitioner and remarked, “My lord DiSolera, you ask me to do to Duke Cadigan and his knights what he did to yours, and without the justification of a freshly-lost war. That would add a new injustice to an old one and lay a new wound over an eighteen-year-old scar that seems to have largely healed.”

  DiSolera glowered, his wounded pride a long way from healing. “Is the age of an injustice a license to allow it, Your Highness?”

  Terrell chose not to address that point yet and turned his gaze on the other three. “Have any of you anything to strengthen your claims? What about you, DiNivir?”

  The thin noble cleared his throat and launched into a lengthy recitation of grievances, most of them wounds to his personal vanity and finances. Terrell let him run long enough that even DiSolera looked bored before he cut the man off. “Enough, my lord. I offered you the opportunity to present evidence, or even claims, that your uncle’s former barony is badly managed. You have presented nothing of the sort
. I grant you one last chance.”

  DiNivir looked at the smiling Gwythlo baron who had displaced him, looked at the Royal Treasurer standing ready with papers in hand, looked at the priestess, then shut his mouth and shook his head.

  Terrell turned to the last two petitioners and opened a hand suggestively. “Sir DiVaragga? Goodman DiBrollino? Have either of you anything of substance to add?”

  DiVaragga frowned thunderously but shook his head, unhappy and aware that he had already lost.

  DiBrollino smiled wryly and said, “I could cite my successes in trade over the last decade, Your Highness, and my demonstrable contributions to civic repair in the funding I provided for the new roof on Aretzo’s South Gate. But I suspect that you would take those as indications that I am better suited to remain where I am than to add a muddy barony on the shores of Purification Lake to my holdings.”

  Baron Rhys of Bontemna looked insulted at this description of his barony, a third of which lay under the lake during flood season. Terrell interjected before Rhys could protest.

  “I see. If it is a title that you covet, Goodman DiBrollino, I might be willing at some point in the future to consider other alternatives. Alternatives that do not dispossess someone who has been faithfully performing their duties to the crown, for which loyalty and service I am duly grateful.”

  Baron Rhys settled down at this praise and reassurance. The other three Gwythlo lords also looked mollified; DiVarraga looked calculating and DiSolera simply looked furious.

  “Your Highness is most kind,” DiBrollino said. “But that is a matter for the future. Today I withdraw my name from this petition.” He bowed and stepped off the petitioner’s dais, disassociating himself from the other three. DiSolera and DiNivir gave him angry looks.

  Terrell looked sternly at the three remaining petitioners. “I conclude that your requested outcome is not desirable for the realm. Such an act would embolden a dozen other claimants and sow discord the length and breadth of Silbar. That I will not permit. The Conquest cannot be undone, by my word or by that of any man. While I rule, whether as Crown-chosen or as Governor on behalf of my mother the Queen, my eyes will remain fixed on Silbar’s future, and not chained to its past.”