Echoes of Betrayal (50 page)

B
eclan Mahieran, isolated in a cottage at the far end of the family estates, paced the length of the largest room again and again. Outside, on every side of the cottage, Royal Guard soldiers stood watch a half-bowshot away with orders to kill anyone who crossed the line of flags stuck in the snow. A single servant, an elderly female, prepared his meals in the cottage kitchen and pushed them through a hatch in the door; she would not come closer or speak to him. He had a fireplace for warmth and a room upstairs with a bed. Every third day a squad dragged in more wood, during which he was required to stand at the upstairs window, where he could be seen—and shot—if anything went wrong downstairs.

And it was all completely unfair and unnecessary because he knew he had not been invaded by any evil Verrakaien. True, he and his escort had been caught in a Verrakai trap. True, his escort had died, leaving no proof that he was still just Beclan Mahieran: a sobered Beclan Mahieran, who had seen his first violent death, faced his own folly and its consequences, and made his own first kill. He was not the boy Beclan anymore, but a man, a man who knew he had far to go to be the man he wanted to be. The last moments of Sergeant Vossik, when that grizzled old veteran had killed himself on Beclan’s sword to give him a chance to escape … Beclan had seen then, in the raw, what it meant to be courageous and honorable, traits he’d seen in his father and the other dukes in more cultured form.

He understood now why Dorrin Duke Verrakai had not been impressed with his royal lineage, his evident—or so he’d thought—superiority to the other squires. Night after night he lived it again, woke crying or screaming, soaked in sweat. Hadrin’s horse rolling down the slope; Hadrin’s death … the Kuakkgani trap closing in on them … Vossik trying to warn him … Vossik’s face as he pulled Beclan’s sword into his body … the stiff, awkward movements of those men in his escort he’d had to kill … their terrified expressions … that horrible, tempting, insinuating voice in his head. All his own arrogance, all his mistakes and failures, repeated over and over and over.

And no one, no one at all, to talk to, to ask if his increasing misery and fear meant he was going crazy or had been invaded, after all. They were all afraid of him; they all thought he’d become a monster. Who could possibly understand what he felt? Did anyone care? Would he ever have the chance to talk to anyone ever again, to hear his name spoken without fear, without loathing? He still had his Girdish medallion; he held it hour after hour, begging Gird for help. But none had come.

He had pens and paper; he could write—had written—his father, giving his account of what happened and taking blame for what he knew was his fault. Every hand of days, a royal courier came to deliver and collect messages, and at that time he had to stay upstairs, by the window, from the horn call announcing the courier’s arrival to the one announcing him safely back outside the Royal Guard perimeter.

He knew nothing of what was going on outside. When the Kuakgan opened the spiral trap, the commander of the Royal Guard troop, Sir Flanits, answered no questions. Beclan had argued, tried to explain … but he had been forced to drink some potion that put him to sleep, and when he woke, he’d been in bed here, upstairs, alone. A letter from his father, in one of the royal courier’s bags, had laid out the conditions of his life “until we know for certain what occurred.”

No one now would tell him anything, because no one was allowed to be in the same room with him or converse with him. He imagined Duke Verrakai leading troops into battle, Gwenno Marrakai and Daryan Serrostin with her, winning glory or falling nobly … and here he was, trapped. His father answered no
questions about them, about the war, about anything. Only, over and over, warnings to obey the rules, to wait. He felt so helpless. So miserable. This sort of thing happened to people in bards’ songs: to the misunderstood, misidentified young hero brought up in poverty and hardship but destined for greatness, not to young men of good family.

Midwinter was the worst. His entire life, every Midwinter had been the same: the family gathered with all their house servants, huddled together in the dark and cold, singing and telling stories. Mahierans preserved some of the oldest customs; he had been coached into the role of “youngest boy” when he was just able to lisp the words; he had given up that role two years later to the cook’s youngest. He enjoyed the circle dance in the dark, when bumping into the others was not only allowed but intended. He loved to shout the Sunreturn greeting with the men at dawn and throw on the new fire the symbols of the new year he hoped for. And the food. Always the food. And the laughter and songs and family close around him.

Here … it had been nothing. He’d been ordered upstairs, and when he came down the hearth was bare, all candles removed, and his Midwinter dinner barely visible in the dim light coming through the window. A lump of honeycomb stood for all the delicacies; the rest of the food already chilling to sodden lumps, like the one he felt in his stomach. After a long, cold, dark night … a night in which everything and everyone he had loved in his childhood tormented him in visions … the horn blew again at daybreak, and once more he had to stand by the window while the soldiers dragged in wood and replaced candles. No one so much as called a Sunreturn greeting up the stairs.

The rules of his captivity allowed him to take exercise outside in daylight, walking a track around the cottage, but knowing that archers were focused on his every step made that less attractive, especially on a day like this, when a cold fog lay over the little valley and the archers moved in closer. And inside, he fretted … pacing back and forth, over and over, up the stairs, the length of the upper room, back down.

The rules did not permit him weapons, not even a knife to cut his own food. For eating he had a fork and spoon; the cook cut his food into what she thought of as bite-sized pieces, and they probably
were, for a small child. He felt naked without a sword, reduced to the status of a child in every way. He would gladly have traded his warm bed, his clean dry clothes, the predictable meals, for the cold, filthy floor of the old sheepfold that had so disgusted him in the snowstorm. To have the men alive once more whom his willfulness had killed would be better than the comfort he now enjoyed in royal solitude.

Tomorrow, if he’d counted aright, another courier would come. With that thought, he sat down at the desk, put a few drops of water in the bowl, and rubbed the ink stick in it. What could he say that he had not said before? That would persuade his father to mitigate the conditions of his imprisonment?

He picked up his pen.

He had just finished writing this much when a horn call sounded. Had he lost track of days? Or was the messenger coming early, and if so, what did it mean? He sealed the letter quickly, burning his finger on the spill that melted the wax and then placed it on the table where the courier would find it. Then he ran up the stairs to the window. Out of the fog came a rider … two … more riders. The rose and white Mahieran standard flapped listlessly as the rider carrying it spurred his horse to a plunging attempt at a canter. Then a Girdish
standard … So at least one Marshal had come. Beclan’s hopes rose: surely a Marshal could tell that he had not been invaded. The group stopped at a little distance, the standard-bearer alone ahead of them.

After some time, five rode forward toward the house: one in Royal Guard uniform, one Marshal in Gird’s blue, one Knight of Gird, the standard-bearer, and a man Beclan recognized from halfway across the field as his father. He wanted to run downstairs, fling himself at his father. Instead he stood where he’d been told to stand. Archers moved still closer to the cottage, where the fog would not obscure their aim.

He lost sight of the five when they came too close and rode to the other side of the house. He heard the distant sound of someone pounding on a door—the kitchen door, he supposed. It seemed a long time before he heard voices in the main room below, low voices in serious discussion, too low to hear clearly. Then he heard the front door open, shut, open and shut again.

Finally his father’s voice from below: “Beclan! Come down.”

Heart hammering, Beclan went down the narrow stairs and found himself facing a ring of drawn swords. Including his father’s. His mouth went dry. Had he been condemned? Was he to die here in this remote place without seeing the rest of his family again? Had this morning’s porridge been his last meal? He had not, he realized, believed he would be killed, not as long as he did what he was told. Those drawn swords told a different tale.

“Sit on that stool,” his father said. Beclan sat on the stool by the fireplace; he was glad of the heat. “Bind him,” his father said. The Marshal laid his sword on the desk where Beclan had written his letter. The seal was broken, the paper unfolded, so at least one of them had read it. Firmly, but without unnecessary roughness, the Marshal bound Beclan’s arms behind him, and then knelt and bound his ankles as well.

“Bring candles,” Duke Mahieran said. “We must see his face, his eyes, at all times.”

The Royal Guard commander put down his sword as the Marshal took up his own, and opened the door to the kitchen. For the first time, Beclan saw the face of the woman who prepared his food and washed his shirts: wispy white hair, faded blue eyes, a mass of wrinkles that suggested she was used to smiling. He did not think he had
ever seen her before. Behind her, the kitchen looked a far more interesting place than his side of the cottage, mostly because it was full of things to do—a small loom in one corner on which she—or someone—was weaving, all those kitchen tools, and the enticing smell of something roasting over the kitchen fire. The Royal Guard commander came back with a four-branched candleholder and placed it on the table.

“Now, Beclan,” said his father. “You will answer our questions fully, and you will not speak except to do so. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Father,” Beclan said. “But—”

“No. Nothing but answers to the questions you will be asked. I can tell you this much. We can wait no longer to find out if you are invaded. I must know; the king must know. It is our hope that your letters have been truthful—but if you were invaded, you would say the same. We cannot trust you or Duke Verrakai.”

“I—”

“Silence,” the Marshal said. He, too, was one Beclan had not met before. “I am High Marshal Seklis, approved by the Marshal-General to test your truthfulness with a relic of Gird himself. We would have brought a paladin if we could, for they are known to detect any evil, but none was available.”

“We will go over the points of your story as related first to the Royal Guard who found you and then in your letters to me,” his father said. “I must warn you that if you do not answer truthfully and in detail, I have the king’s warrant to execute you here and now. Though you are my son, I will not hesitate to give that order.”

His father’s face, Beclan realized as he was finally over the first shock, held as much misery as he himself felt. The Duke was holding himself to a hard duty, as the sergeant had, and once more Beclan was faced with the reality of the responsibility—not the privilege—of rank.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes, Father.”

The High Marshal sheathed his sword and opened a sack Beclan had not noticed beside the table. It held several items wrapped in blue cloth. One was a gnarled length of wood such as old men used for canes, polished to a gleam by long use.

“This was Gird’s, as he aged, and was also used by Cob, one of his
marshals in the war. It is a potent relic and has detected lies and evil before. I will lay it alongside your head, and if it detects anything, that will be the last thing you feel.”

Beclan said nothing, for that was not a question. The knob end of the stick, resting against his jaw, did not hurt, but he could not ignore it. The questions began simply, about his life as Duke Verrakai’s squire. What had his duties been, how had he felt about the other squires, what had he seen Duke Verrakai do? Beclan made no attempt to hide his errors; he could not, as they stood out in his memory like blazing torches.