Shards of Time (10 page)

They finished the meal quickly and Alec went to find Zella. “Her Highness wishes to speak to the corporal now,” he told her.

“Of course. Naya, go fetch one of the boys to lead them down.”

The maid returned with a young man.

Mika gave Thero a nervous look. “May I stay with you, Master?”

“I think that’s best,” Thero replied.

The servant led them to the back of the house and down a
wide set of dank stone stairs to a heavy door with a thick grille at eye level. Seregil wrinkled his nose at the smell, one he was all too familiar with, and caught Alec doing the same. They’d met in a place very like this one.

At the servant’s knock they heard the clink of keys, the scrape of the lock. A burly warder in a leather jerkin swung the door open, revealing a long stone corridor with a sharp bend at the far end.

“Shall I wait for you?” asked the servant.

“No, I’ll find my way back,” Klia replied.

The warder, a taciturn fellow apparently little moved by the presence of royalty, led them down the torchlit corridor and around the corner through another locked door and into a large square room lined on three sides with barred cells. Though windowless, they were not the worst Seregil had ever seen. They were clean and didn’t stink. Only one of them was occupied. Mika stayed close to Thero as he looked around.

Corporal Karis, a tall, wan-faced young man hardly out of boyhood, sat on a pallet against the back wall, hands and feet in manacles chained to the wall. He was barefoot but still in uniform otherwise, wearing a dirty black tabard stitched in white showing two rampant catamounts supporting a sword.

“On your feet, Corporal,” Micum ordered sharply, playing sergeant-at-arms. “This is Princess Klia and you are to answer whatever she asks you.”

Karis scrambled awkwardly to his feet, chains rattling, and saluted Klia fist to heart.

“Warder, open this cell and unchain this man at once,” Klia ordered.

The cell was opened and Klia stepped in while the manacles were being released. “Now, tell me what you saw that night.”

Trembling, the corporal wrung his hands and mumbled something in the general direction of his bare feet.

“Stand at attention when you address the princess, and speak up,” Micum snapped.

Karis drew himself up as best he could but still looked
terrified. “I said I seen the worst thing I ever seen, Your Highness.”

“And what was that?” Klia asked gently. “I know this is difficult for you, but lives may depend on your information, Corporal. As your commanding officer, I order you to speak.”

“It didn’t have no face,” he quavered. “It was tall, almost up to the ceiling, and where its face should be it was just—just empty.”

“It had no head?”

“It had a head, Highness, just the face weren’t there, only blackness.”

Seregil exchanged a sharp look with Thero. The wizard raised a noncommittal eyebrow and turned his attention back to the man being questioned.

“Could this person have been wearing a mask?” asked Klia.

Karis shook his head vehemently. “No, on account of that I could see
into
the blackness, like it was a well.”

“A well?”

“Yes, Highness. You know—deep, a long way down and dark, only it weren’t down. It was sideways, looking at me.” He was shaking harder now. “And when it reached for me with those great long arms it had, it was going to—” He fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around himself. “It was going to pull me into that blackness and I knew I couldn’t never get out again!”

“Apart from its face and arms, what did it look like?” Klia asked.

“Like I said, taller than regular folk, and arms too long even for it to have.”

“You mean they were out of proportion to its body?”

“So it seemed to me, Highness.”

“What was it wearing?”

“I can’t say.”

“In Lady Zella’s initial report, she says you claimed it was wearing some sort of old-fashioned clothing.”

“Did I?” Karis looked positively dazed with fear. “I disremember, Highness. A robe, maybe, or some kind of cloak. I don’t remember seeing the body, ’cept for the tallness. I’m
sorry, Highness, but that’s the truth!” He wrung his hands miserably again, and Seregil heard his knuckles cracking. “Lady Zella says I must go back with you. Please, Highness, don’t make me! I ain’t no use to anyone anymore. It
knows
me!”

“What do you mean?”

Karis shuddered and closed his eyes. “When I looked into that—that place where its face should have been, I could feel it looking into me, all cold-like.”

“Cold?” asked Thero. “You could feel its gaze?”

“Weren’t no gaze, my lord.” Karis’s voice fell to a strangled whisper. “I didn’t see nothing, but I
felt
it, like a snake crawling down my throat and going up behind my eyes.” He shuddered violently at the memory. “I ain’t no use to anyone, Highness. No use at all.”

“That’s not entirely true,” said Thero, joining Klia in the cell. “Highness, do I have your consent to touch this man’s mind?”

“Please do,” said Klia.

Karis cringed away as Thero knelt beside him.

“There’s nothing to be frightened of,” the wizard assured him. “This won’t hurt. I’ll just be able to see your memories for a moment, that’s all. I’d prefer not to do it against your will.”

Karis gave him a hopeless look. “Do what you want, then.”

Thero drew a sign on the air with one long forefinger, then placed his hand on the man’s matted hair and closed his eyes. Karis shivered under his touch.

Several minutes passed as the others waited in expectant silence. At last the wizard patted Karis on the shoulder. “Thank you, my friend. You’re a very lucky man.”

“It could have pulled me into that darkness, couldn’t it?”

“Yes, and would have if that’s what its purpose had been. As it was, you appear not to have been its prey that night.”

“But if I go back? It knows me, my lord! It won’t let me get away a second time! Please, Your Highness, don’t make me go!”

“I can’t make you any promises, Corporal,” Klia replied. “It depends on whether your presence is deemed necessary.”

Karis covered his head with his hands. “Please, Sakor, show me mercy.”

“I think we’ve learned as much as we’re going to for now,” said Thero.

“Shall I chain him up again, Highness?” asked the warder as Kira and Thero stepped out of the cell.

“No, let the poor wretch be. And fetch him a blanket and some proper food.”

The warder touched his forelock and led them out again.

Upstairs they found Zella waiting for them in the front hall. “Did you get any sense out of him, Highness?”

“He told us his story,” Klia replied.

“If you’ll excuse us,” said Seregil. “Please let me know when the steward of Mirror Moon arrives.”

“Of course, my lord.”

Seregil and the others accompanied Klia to her chamber. Thero locked the door and cast a silence spell on the wood, lest anyone try to eavesdrop.

Klia looked from him to Seregil. “What he said—it meant something to you two.”

“What he saw was a kind of
dra’gorgos
,” the wizard replied, taking a seat on the sofa beside Mika and resting a hand absently on the boy’s shoulder.

“A what?” asked Mika.

“You could call it a creature, but it’s difficult to explain. It exists, and it doesn’t. They appear as dark, sometimes man-shaped forms and are extremely dangerous.”

“I ran afoul of one, soon after Alec and I met,” Seregil said with an inward shudder. “It seemed pretty damn real to me.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t real,” Thero replied. “But it’s a created thing, something a necromancer makes and discards. We’ll need to take precautions at once.”

“How do you do that?” asked Alec. “Seregil saw the creature that time, but I didn’t, even though it was right there behind me.”

“Actually, you nearly encountered one with me,” Thero told him. “Remember the night you helped me escape from Mardus’s encampment in Plenimar?”

“The howling we heard?”

“It was a kind of dra’gorgos, conjured by the necromancer dyrmagnos, Irtuk Beshar.”

“You saw it?”

“It captured me. And though it was nothing like what poor Karis described, I have no doubt that it was something of that nature. The blackness and the cold he spoke of?” He tightened his arm around Mika again, frowning. “It was just as he described.”

“Then how do you protect yourself from something like that?” asked Micum.

“By taking proper precautions that I was unable to do that night. There are amulets I can make. That should protect us.”

Micum grimaced. “You don’t sound too sure of yourself.”

Thero’s expression was hard. “I’ve never had to put it into practice, but given my experience of them, I made it my business to be prepared if I ever met one again. We’ll be ready.”

“Will we need Karis?” asked Klia.

“I think he’s too frightened to be much of a guide. Give me an hour,” Thero replied. “I don’t want any of us walking around unprotected. Stay together in Klia’s room for now. Come, Mika, I have a new lesson for you.”

The wizard and his apprentice disappeared and didn’t return for nearly two hours. When they came to Klia’s chamber at last, Mika was proudly holding up a collection of what appeared to be golden sester coins, each strung on a leather cord.

Seregil took his and noted the new markings on each side of the coin. They weren’t pictures, but rather some sort of writing or symbols, done in raised lines of silver that had been fused to the gold. The metal was still warm from whatever Thero had done to it.

“Put them on,” Thero instructed. “Don’t take them off for any reason until we get back to Skala.”

“Will this work for me?” Seregil asked, slipping the cord over his head and tucking the amulet away inside his shirt. Magic—good or evil—had a way of going wrong around him—a fact that had both ruined his aspirations as a wizard and saved his life more than once.

“I hope so,” Thero replied. “It acts on the dra’gorgos, rather than on the wearer, so you should be safe.”

“Very fancy,” said Klia, putting hers on. “Did it have to be made from gold, or are you just showing off?”

Thero smiled. “The magic is in the silver; the gold amplifies it for the kind of magic it’s to ward off.”

“I helped make them,” Mika put in, holding up the one that hung around his own neck on the same chain as the Astellus amulet the sea captain had given him.

A servant knocked on the door. “The steward from Mirror Moon has arrived to greet you, my lords, and guide you to the estate. He’s in the front courtyard. Lady Zella has sent your baggage on ahead.”

“Thank you,” Seregil replied. “If you don’t mind, Klia, I think we’ll be going now.”

“I’ll see you in two days, then.”

Donning their cloaks and weapons, Seregil, Alec, and Micum bade the others farewell and went to meet the steward. As they stepped out into the late-morning sunlight of the front courtyard, they found a tall, rawboned man talking with the grooms holding Cynril, Windrunner, and Micum’s glossy black gelding. He looked pure islander at first glance, but under his brimmed felt hat Seregil noted the high cheekbones and light eyes that suggested the man had some ’faie blood—a
ya’shel
of some degree.

“Ah, here you are, Dorin,” said Zella. “Allow me to introduce the new masters of Mirror Moon. This is Baron Seregil and Baron Alec.”

An unmistakable look of surprise tinged with something like dismay crossed the man’s face as he bowed to them, but his manner was impeccably respectful as he greeted them. “My lords, I am honored to serve you.”

“Lady Zella says you’ve done a fine job managing the estate,” said Alec.

“My family has served at Mirror Moon for as long as anyone can recall, my lord. We take great pride in the place.”

“We’re glad to have you continue your service.”

“Indeed,” said Seregil. “Lead on, Steward Dorin.”

It was a bright, brisk day, and the ever-present wind blew the scent of salt and seaweed up from the harbor.

A highroad ran east along the coastline. It was one of the old ones, stone-paved and wide enough for two good-sized wagons to pass, with grooves worn by centuries of wheels. Masses of wild sea roses grew along the edge of the road, and there were marshes filled with reeds and cattails, wild ducks, and chattering blackbirds. Gulls and a few sea eagles circled overhead, mingling their harsh cries. The seaward side of the road reminded Seregil of the area where the sea temple in Plenimar had been; long granite ledges shot through with dark veins of basalt stretched into the water from grassy banks. Here and there small inlets were edged with beaches made of egg-shaped rocks that clicked and rattled like dice in the surge of the waves. As they went on, the banks rose to cliffs, which changed from granite to pale limestone. Small islands lay scattered in the distance, dark with trees.

“There’s the old city,” Dorin said, pointing at the hills ahead.

Seregil shaded his eyes. Menosi was just visible in the distance, in a broad, shallow valley up in the hills. Its distant walls glowed white as bleached bone in the morning light, and it appeared from here as if it were floating above the pale spring green blanketing the gently rolling hills.