Shadow of a Dark Queen

by Raymond E. Feist

  RAYMOND E. FIEST

  and there was a slight scar above his right eye Erik hadn’t noticed before. He wore a fine red tunic, with a badge that Erik could now see depicted the Seal of Krondor, an eagle soaring over a peak above the sea.

  He had blue eyes and dark brows, and his hair needed to be trimmed. Erik wondered how he could see so much so quickly, and felt his stomach rebel. He was about to be sick from fear.

  The only prisoner not slated to die was brought to stand beside de Loungville, who turned to him and said, “Watch this and learn something, Keshian.”

  Nodding once to the men on the gibbet, he ordered, “Hang them!”

  Erik sucked in his breath in terror as he felt a powerful blow knock the box from beneath his feet.

  He heard Roo’s shriek of terror, and then he fell.

  The sky spun for Erik as he moved through the air.

  His only thought was of the blue above, and he heard himself cry, “Mommy!” as he felt his body hit the end of the rope. A sudden jerk made his skin burn as the rope tightened around his neck, then with another jerk he continued to fall. Instead of the expected crack of his own neck or the sudden choking as his windpipe was crushed, he felt a numbing slam along his face and body as he fell hard against the wooden floor of the gibbet.

  Suddenly Robert de Loungville was shouting,

  “Get them to their feet!”

  Rough hands dragged Erik upright, and with a half-dazed sense of being somewhere else, he looked around and saw stunned men returning his confused expression. Roo gaped like a just-landed fish and his face was sporting a red mark from where it had struck the boards. His eyes were puffy and red, and snot ran down from his nose as he cried like a baby.

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  Biggo glanced around, blood running from a cut on his forehead, as if trying to understand this evil prank that robbed him of his meeting with the Goddess of Death. The man next to him, Billy Goodwin, closed his eyes and sucked in breath as if he were still choking. Erik didn’t know the name of the man at the far end of the gibbet, but he stood silently, his expression as stunned as the others’.

  “Now listen, you swine!” commanded Robert de Loungville. “You are dead men!” He glanced from face to face. He raised his voice, “Do you understand me?”

  They nodded, but it was clear none of them did.

  “You are officially dead. I can have anyone who doubts my word hauled up again, and this time we’ll tie the rope to the crosspiece of the gibbet. Or if you’d prefer, I will happily cut your throat.”

  Turning to the Keshian prisoner, he said, “Get over there with the others.” The shackled men were being pulled roughly down the steps to stand next to the bodies of the dead.

  Soldiers cut short the rope hanging from each of the five men, and two placed a similar noose around Sho Pi’s neck. “You’ll leave those on until I tell you to take them off,” shouted de Loungville.

  He came up to the five still-stunned men and looked each in the eyes as he walked slowly before them. “I own you! You’re not even slaves! Slaves have rights! You have no rights. From now on, you will draw each breath at my whim. If I decide I don’t want you breathing my air any longer, I’ll have the guards close that noose around your neck and you will stop breathing. Do you understand me?”

  Some of the men nodded, and Erik said, “Yes,”

  softly.

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  De Loungville nearly roared when he said,

  “When I ask you a question, you will answer loudly so I can hear you! Do you understand me?”

  This time all six men said, “Yes!”

  De Loungville turned and began walking along before the men again. “I am waiting!”

  It was Erik who said, “Yes, sir!”

  Coming to stand before Erik, de Loungville put his face before Erik’s, so their noses were less than an inch apart. “Sir! I am more than a sir, you toads!

  I am more than your mothers, your wives, your fathers, and your brothers! I am your god from this moment on! If I snap my fingers, you’re dead men in truth. Now, when I ask you a question, you will answer, ‘Yes, Sergeant de Loungville!’ Is that clear!”

  “Yes, Sergeant de Loungville!” they said, almost shouting, despite raw throats from the mock hanging.

  “Now load those men into the wagon, you swine,”

  de Loungville commanded. “Each of you take one.”

  Biggo stepped forward, picked up the body of Slippery Tom, and carried him as a man might a child, loading him into the wagon. Two gravediggers stood in the charnel wagon and dragged the corpse deeper into the wagon bed to make room for the next.

  Erik picked up a body, not sure what the man’s name or crime had been, and carried it to the wagon, placing it where the gravediggers could grab it. He looked at the man’s face and didn’t recognize him.

  He knew it was one of six men he had seen for two days and probably spoken to, but he couldn’t recall who this man was.

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  Roo looked down at the man at his feet, then tried to pick up the body. He struggled, tears from an apparently inexhaustible fount streaming down his face. Erik hesitated, then moved to help him.

  “Get back there, von Darkmoor,” commanded de Loungville.

  “He can’t do it,” said Erik, discovering his voice still hoarse and his neck sore from the rope burn. De Loungville’s eyes narrowed menacingly, and Erik quickly added, “Sergeant de Loungville!”

  “Well, he’d better,” said de Loungville, “or he’ll be the first one of you sent back to hang.” He pointed back up the steps with a dagger he now held.

  Erik watched as Roo struggled to find strength enough to drag the corpse to the wagon. The ten feet must have looked like a mile. Erik knew Roo had never been a strong boy, and whatever vitality was usual, his had fled days before. He looked as if his arms were damp rope, and he had no power in his legs as he dragged hopelessly on the corpse.

  Finally it moved, first a foot, then two, and after a moment more, another. Grunting as if he were carrying suits of armor up a mountain, Roo pulled until he got the body to the foot of the wagon. Then he collapsed.

  De Loungville came to stand over him, crouching down so his face was level with Roo’s. He shouted so loud he nearly screamed, “What? Do you expect those honest workmen to climb down from there and finish your job for you?” Roo looked up at the short man, silently pleading to die.

  De Loungville reached down and gripped Roo by the hair, pulling him to his feet, holding the dagger to his throat. “You’re not going to die, you useless 52887_Shadow of a Dark.qxd 9/3/02 3:49 PM Page 212

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  piece of pig snot,” he said, as if reading the boy’s mind. “You’re mine, and you will die when I tell you it is my pleasure that you die. Not before. If you die before I tell you, I will reach into the Death Goddess’s hall and yank you back to life, and then I will kill you. I will cut your belly open and eat your liver for dinner if you don’t do as I tell you. Now get that dead meat into that wagon!”

  Roo fell backwards, hard against the wagon’s tailgate, and barely kept himself from falling. He leaned down, got his arms under the body’s arms, and heaved.

  “You’re no good to me, boy!” bellowed de Loungville. “If you don’t get him in that wagon by the time I count to ten, you worthless slug, I’ll cut your heart out before your eyes! One!”

  Roo heaved and his face betrayed panic. “Two!”

  He forced his own weight forward, and got the corpse sitting up. “Three!”

  He lifted with his legs and somehow got himself half turned around, so that the dead man rested against the tailgate. “Four!” Roo took a breath an
d heaved again, and suddenly the man was halfway into the wagon. “Five!” Roo let the body go and reached down quickly, gripping the corpse around the hips. He ignored the reek of urine and feces as he heaved with his last reserve of strength. Then he collapsed.

  “Six!” screamed de Loungville, leaning over the boy, who sat at the base of the wagon.

  Roo looked up and saw the man’s legs were hanging over the end of the tailgate. He struggled to his feet as de Loungville shouted, “Seven!” and pushed as hard on the legs as he could.

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  They bent and he half pushed, half rolled the dead man all the way into the wagon as de Loungville reached the count of eight.

  Then he fainted.

  Erik took a step forward. De Loungville turned, took a single step, and delivered a backhanded blow to Erik that brought him to his knees. Lowering his head to lock gazes with the stunned Erik, Robert de Loungville said,

  “You will learn, dog meat, that no matter what happens to your friends, you will do what you’re told when you are told and nothing else. If that’s not the first thing you learn, you’ll be crow bait before the sun sets.”

  Straightening up, he shouted, “Get them back to their cell!”

  The still-stunned men moved raggedly along, not certain what had happened. Erik’s ears rang from the blow to his head, but he risked a glance back at Roo and saw that two guards had picked him up and were bringing him along.

  In silence the men were taken back to the death cell and herded in. Roo was unceremoniously tossed in, and the door slammed shut behind.

  The man from Kesh, Sho Pi, came to look at Roo and said, “He’ll recover. It is mostly shock and fear.”

  Then he turned to Erik and smiled, a dangerous look around his eyes. “Didn’t I tell you it might be something else?”

  “But what?” asked Biggo. “What was all this vicious mummery?”

  The Keshian sat down, crossing his legs before him. “It was what is called an object lesson. This man de Loungville, who works, I imagine, for the Prince, he wishes you to know something without any doubt whatsoever.”

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  “Know what?” asked Billy Goodwin, a slender fellow with curly brown hair.

  “He wants you to know that he will kill you without hesitation if you do not do what he wants.”

  “But what does he want?” asked the man whose name Erik didn’t know, a thin man with a grey beard and red hair.

  Closing his eyes as if he were about to take a rest, Sho Pi said, “I do not know, but I think it will be interesting.”

  Erik sat back and suddenly giggled.

  Biggo said, “What is it?”

  Finding himself embarrassed before these men, he said, “I loaded my pants.” Then he started to laugh, and the laughter had a hysterical edge to it.

  Billy Goodwin said, “I dirtied myself, too.”

  Erik nodded, and suddenly the laughter was gone and he found to his amazement he was crying. His mother would be so angry with him if she found out.

  * * *

  Roo roused when food appeared, and to their astonishment it was not only abundant but good. Before, they had gotten a vegetable stew in a heavy beef stock, but now they were served steaming vegetables and slabs of bread, heavy with butter, and cheese and meat. Rather than the usual bucket of water, there were cold pewter mugs, and a large pitcher of chilled white, wine—enough to slake thirst and ease the tension, but not enough to get anyone drunk. They ate and considered their fortune.

  “Do you think this is some cruel thing the Prince is doing to us?” asked the grey-bearded man, a Rodezian named Luis de Savona.

  Biggo shook his head. “I’m a fair judge of men.

  That Robert de Loungville could be cruel like this if 52887_Shadow of a Dark.qxd 9/3/02 3:49 PM Page 215

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  it suited his needs, but the Prince isn’t that sort of man, I’m thinking. No, like our Keshian friend here says—”

  “Isalani,” corrected Sho Pi. “We live in the Empire, but we are not Keshian.”

  “Whatever,” said Biggo. “What he said about this being a lesson is right. That’s why we still have these on.” He flipped the length of rope that still hung from around his neck. “To remind us we’re officially dead.

  So that whatever happens next, we know that we’re living on sufferance.”

  Billy Goodwin said, “I don’t think they’ll have to remind me anytime soon.” He shook his head.

  “Gods, I can’t remember what I was thinking when they kicked the box from under me. I was a baby again and waiting for my mum to come fetch me from some difficulty. I don’t think I can tell what I felt like.”

  The others nodded. Erik felt tears start to gather as he remembered his own feelings as he fell.

  Pushing that aside, he turned to Roo. “How are you doing?”

  Roo said nothing, only nodded as he ate.

  Erik knew he was looking at something powerful changing in his friend, something was marking him and making him different from what he had known all his life in Ravensburg. He wondered if he was changing as much as his friend.

  Guards arrived later to remove the trays and pitchers, and no one spoke. Soon the cells fell into darkness, and the single torch that illuminated the hall outside remained unlit.

  “I think it’s de Loungville’s way of telling us to sleep as soon as we can,” said Biggo.

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  Sho Pi nodded. “We will get an early start on whatever it is we do tomorrow, then.” He curled up on the stone shelf and closed his eyes.

  Erik said, “I’m not sleeping in my own filth.” He removed his boots and trousers, then took them to the slops bucket and did his best to shake loose the dirt there, using a bit of the drinking water to clean them as best he could. It was a gesture, nothing more, and the pants were still dirty and again wet when he put them back on, but he felt better for trying.

  Some others followed his example, as Erik nodded at Roo, who sank back into a corner with his arms wrapped around him, despite the fact it wasn’t at all cold that night. But Erik knew his friend felt a chill inside that no fire would ever drive out.

  Erik lay back, and to his astonishment felt a warm fatigue sink into his bones, and before he could ponder the amazing events of the day he was asleep.

  “Get up, you scum!” shouted de Loungville, and the prisoners stirred. Suddenly the cell erupted in a cacophony of sound as guards slammed shields against the iron bars and began to shout.

  “Get up!”

  “On your feet!”

  Erik was standing before he was fully awake. He looked at Roo, who blinked like an owl caught in a lantern’s light.

  The door to the cell was opened and the men ordered out. They came to stand in the same order they had marched to the gibbet in, and waited without comment.

  “When I give you the command to right turn, you will all turn as one and face that door. Understand?”

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  The last word wasn’t a question but a harsh command.

  “Right turn!”

  The men turned, feet shuffling, the shackles making any quick movement difficult. The door at the end of the cell block opened, and de Loungville said,

  “When I give the order, you will start forward, with your left foot, and you will march behind that soldier there.” He pointed to a guardsman with the chevron of a corporal on his helm. “You will follow him in order, and any man who fails to keep his place will be back on the gallows within one minute. Are we clear on that?”

  The men shouted, “Yes, Sergeant de Loung
ville!”

  “March!”

  The first man in line, Billy Goodwin, moved out, but it was obvious that Biggo and Luis didn’t know their left from their right, and it was a ragged group that set out after the corporal. They followed through a long corridor, away from the courtyard where they had endured the false hanging the day before. They climbed a long flight of stairs and were taken into what appeared to be the palace proper. Their chains clanked as they moved quickly, and suddenly Erik was self-conscious, as they were hurried past some court officials who glanced at them and returned to whatever discussion they were having.

  Erik realized he was still filthy, as were all the other five men, though Sho Pi was only in need of a bath. The rest had soiled their clothing and had infused it with the reek of terror. The bit of cleaning the night before had done nothing to rid the clothing of the stink. Usually untroubled by the smell of honest sweat, a constant companion to a blacksmith, 52887_Shadow of a Dark.qxd 9/3/02 3:49 PM Page 218

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  Erik was now repulsed by the stench that intruded on his nose.

  “In there,” said de Loungville, and Erik realized it was the first time he had spoken in a calm voice in two days.

  They entered a large chamber, with six steaming tubs of water, each as high as a man. The door was closed and Erik heard it bolted from outside. Guards came and unlocked the manacles and shackles.

  “Strip off those rags!” said the corporal.

  Biggo started to remove the rope from around his neck, but de Loungville shouted, “Leave that there, swine! You’re dead men and that’s to remind you.

  Strip off the rest!”

  The men removed their clothing. Erik put his boots in a corner, and watched as a serving boy gathered up the ragged, stinking clothing.

  “You’re going to meet someone very important,”

  said de Loungville. “We can’t have you stinking the place to high heaven. I don’t mind, but I’m lowborn like you swine and have no tender ways; others aren’t so tolerant.” He motioned, and other boys, dressed in the livery of palace squires, carried buckets of soapy water. Without warning, they lifted the hot soapy water and poured it over Biggo and Billy Goodwin, and then returned to the tubs for more. “Wash down!” shouted de Loungville. “I want you as clean as you’ve ever been in your life!”