Son of Avonar (33 page)

 

On the afternoon of the seventh day we dropped down into the high plains of eastern Valleor. Southward, to our left, soared the peaks of the Dorian Wall, needle-sharp spires piercing the heavy clouds. To the far west a lesser range called the Vallorean Spine split Valleor down the middle, and before us and stretching far to our right lay the valley of the Uker River, endless vistas of gentle hills and lakes, dotted with the darker green of patchy forests, eventually rising into craggy highlands many leagues to the north. It was beautiful country, the fertile heart of gentle Valleor, on that day pooled with fogs and mists.

King Gevron had raped the fields of Valleor, stripping them bare to feed his armies and then slaughtering any who tried to work them. Now, anything grown in the Uker valley must be shipped instantly to Leire. Only then could it be purchased, properly taxed and at highly elevated prices, for distribution in the subjugated land. The starving Valloreans had to watch as heavily laden grain wagons rolled past their villages, and never did they see even one-tenth of their land's bounty returned to them.

Three more days brought us to Yurevan, the oldest city in Valleor, and Ferrante's house, Verdillon, some half a league outside the city walls. The professor was the second son of a Vallorean count. Though unable to inherit the title or lands, he'd had a decent enough portion to escape the poverty of most University dons. As it turned out, his had been the luckier inheritance, for his brother the count had been hanged and the family's traditional holdings confiscated after Gevron's victory.

I managed to find the proper road, and my heart thumped a bit when I caught sight of the stone walls, thickly covered with vines of lush green. The gate was standing open when we arrived, and the grounds were as I remembered from my single visit long ago: sprawling cherry orchards, roses of a hundred varieties, spreading carpets of green grass. The gravel carriage road wound through the lovely parkland to a classic beauty of a country house.

The day was inordinately quiet, no sound of groom or gardener, dog or bird. Perhaps the heavy mist rolling in from the forest had deadened the noise on what should be a normally active day about the property. When we reached the flagstone courtyard before the front door, I dismounted and rang the bell. Ferrante had to be there. To have come so far to find only strangers would be too cruel.

D'Natheil stepped past me and pushed on the massive doors. They swung open easily. Wariness and foreboding shadowed his face, quieting my protest. The foyer was just as I remembered: highly polished oak floor, graceful, curving staircase, the display case still holding Ferrante's greatest treasure, a thousand-year-old brass bowl dug up from the tombs at Doria. The air smelled of the cut roses that stood in every nook and the cleaning oil used on the dark mahogany tables.

“Hello!” My greeting seemed muted by the richly colored tapestries hung on the dark wood paneling. No lamps were lit to chase away the gloom of the afternoon. Bustling servants should have been taking our sodden cloaks and wiping our damp footprints off the fine floor, but no one came.

“Professor Ferrante? Is anyone here?”

Baglos whispered anxiously, “Perhaps we should go, woman. Though your rank would permit it, we do not look like we belong here, coming in the front door.”

Something was certainly amiss. D'Natheil could sense it, too. I started up the stairs toward Ferrante's study on the second floor. “Hello,” I called again. “Professor?”

When we reached the upper gallery, D'Natheil pointed inquiringly at a pair of satiny walnut doors. I nodded. Quietly and carefully, the young man pushed open the door and led the three of us into the professor's study.

Tall, paned windows welcomed the gray afternoon into the book-lined room, revealing the comfortable furnishings of thick rugs, brass lamps, and deep chairs. Professor Ferrante sat at his wide desk, but the brilliant, gentlemanly scholar would never again answer anyone's questions. The front of his gray morning gown was drenched in blood, and his eyes gazed out at us, fixed in a horrified stare.

My skin crept. “We need to leave,” I said.

“I don't think so,” said a man's voice from behind me. I whirled about to see Baglos's eyes bulging. A long, thin arm was wrapped about the Dulcé's throat, and the point of a knife was poised at his belly. The hand that held the knife was shaking, but there was no mistaking its intent. The owner of the arm and the voice was obscured by the shadows behind the door. “Have you come back to review your handiwork? Pull down your hoods. Let me see those who would so foully murder a man of peace and intellect in his own home.” Anger and grief left the man's voice hoarse. “Do it now—before I skewer this one!”

As I lowered the sodden hood of my cloak, ready to proclaim our innocence, I heard a sharp intake of breath. “Seri!” Baglos stumbled to the side, the knife fell to the carpet, and from the shadows stepped a bespectacled man, thin and slightly stooped, gray at the temples with creases at the eyes from too many years reading in dim light. A graying goatee lengthened his narrow face, causing a moment's uncertainty before I recognized him. Then a small eternity of disbelief passed before I could convince my lips to say his name. “Tennice!”

In movements so swift one could see only the result, D'Natheil's sword was drawn and touching Tennice's belly, pressing him to the wall.

“D'Natheil, no!” I cried. “Baglos, tell him no. This is my friend . . . a friend who's come back from the dead.”

Baglos spoke quietly and insistently to D'Natheil. After a long moment, the cold-eyed young man released Tennice, but he did not sheathe his weapon.

“Is it really you, Seri?” Once it appeared that he was not going to be spitted on D'Natheil's weapon, the ghost lowered his hands and touched my cheek with his cold, but quite substantial fingers.

“He heard you die,” I whispered. “They made him listen. All of you were dead.” Now I was shaking. Dead was dead.

“And so I was or so close as to be thought so. I can tell you what happened and must hear the same from you, but first”—he turned to the grisly scene in the library and ran his fingers through his thin hair—“I've got to take care of Ferrante.”

“What happened here?”

“I've been in Vanesta for several days, searching for a book for Ferrante. An hour ago I rode in and passed four strangers on the service road behind the house. I thought nothing of it. Students are in and out all the time. But no servants were about, no grooms in the stable, and then I came up and found . . . this. When I heard your call, I thought you must be students or tradesmen. But when I stepped out and spied you coming up the stairs, I thought the murderers had come back. Who would do this to him? They didn't even steal anything!”

This murder left me with a horrid, creeping sickness . . . a sensation well beyond that caused by the vile deed itself. I glanced at Baglos and D'Natheil, then down at my own soggy cloak, and my revulsion took on more substance. “What made you believe we were the murderers?”

“Your long cloaks, I suppose, and the colors. Two of those I saw riding away wore gray, one of them black. Like you, they had their hoods up, so I couldn't see—”

Baglos caught the connection. “Great Vasrin, the Zhid! It's a trap. We must be out of here!” He was already out of the library door, dragging D'Natheil like a fierce sheepdog, bullying his charge away from the wolf's lair.

“What's he saying?” said a bewildered Tennice.

“We've no time to explain. We must go, and you must come with us.”

“I can't leave him this way. I have to notify someone . . . the University . . . his friends.”

I grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the door. “Please, Tennice. You mustn't be here if the killers return. You can't do Ferrante any good.”

Reluctantly, my friend allowed me to drag him down the stairs. D'Natheil listened carefully at the front door, then motioned us to stay back. Watchers, he gestured. Our horses nickered restlessly. A quick exchange of words and gestures between Baglos and D'Natheil, and the Dulcé announced that D'Natheil would fetch the horses and take them around the back. The rest of us should meet him . . . where?

“Tennice, does the blacksmith's shed still link the kitchen garden and the stable?” I asked. He confirmed it. “Baglos, tell D'Natheil that the stable is just past the carriage house east of the kitchen garden. We'll meet him there. And tell him he can fight today.”

Baglos translated, and D'Natheil nodded. He put his hands up to raise his hood, and, for the first time in a fortnight, he smiled, the piercing brilliance of it reflected in his marvelous eyes. For that single moment, my fear vanished, and all the annoyance of the journey was forgotten. Then he disappeared into the back of the house.

From a window that opened onto the courtyard, we watched D'Natheil slog slowly around the corner of the house from the direction of the stables. He looked shorter, bent in the back, and had acquired a slight limp. He untethered our horses and led them back toward the corner of the house, as if he were taking them to the stable to stay the night. No hurry. No hesitation. Melting into the scene every bit as much as the paving stones or the dead leaves heaped in the corners of the courtyard. It was difficult to focus on him. One's eyes kept slipping off into the background.

“Who is he?” whispered Tennice. “One would almost think . . .”

I thought I glimpsed movement in the shrubbery beyond the courtyard, but the harder I stared, the less I saw, and finally I forced myself to look away. “I'll tell you about him once we're safe. Now it's our turn.”

Tennice threw on his cloak and led us through the dark, silent passageways and the deserted kitchen into the kitchen garden. We crept through the muddy garden, hugging the high stone wall, and slipped through an iron gate that led to the blacksmith's shed. The dark enclosure smelled of coal and ashes and cold dirt floor. Carefully, Tennice cracked the wooden door that opened onto the stableyard, and we peered out. Far across the yard the stooped figure shambled toward us, leading our horses. Tennice whispered that he would meet us in the stableyard, and then he vanished into the adjoining stable. I was beginning to think our elaborate precautions foolish when a gray-robed figure stepped out of the rainy gloom behind D'Natheil.

“You! You with the horses. Who are you? All the servants were dismissed today.” D'Natheil didn't stop, but he didn't hurry either. Every sense was screaming at me to run out of the shed and get away. But D'Natheil was still too far away.

“You! Come here!” The voice was cold, like jaws of ice gnawing at the heart.

D'Natheil paused and looked around as if he had all the time until world's end. He waved at the hooded figure and continued on his way to the stable, limping slowly. When the Prince was some twenty paces from the stable, the gray-robed man started running. I needed no signal. I thumped Baglos on the shoulder, and we burst from the shed. D'Natheil snatched me off my feet and catapulted me into the saddle, then did the same for the Dulcé. The man in gray attacked D'Natheil before the Prince could mount his own steed, but D'Natheil raised his arm and backhanded him. The gray-robed man staggered backwards. Two rough-looking men in leather jerkins appeared from the front of the house and ran toward us, swords drawn. D'Natheil drew his own sword and ran one of them through in a single motion. The second, he upended with a blow so hard, the man's jaw cracked like dry wood. Two more men leaped out of the bushes.

As D'Natheil threw himself onto the chestnut, shouts rang out from several directions. Tennice shot from the stable astride a fine-boned bay, crying, “This way!” We raced down the carriage road, following him through the wet fields and gardens.

At least three horsemen gave chase. Whisperings of horror teased at my back:
might as well stop now . . . the race is over . . . you'll never elude them. . . .
Tennice moaned and pulled up on his reins, and Baglos, too, began to slow, but D'Natheil roared and slashed at our horses, and the four of us thundered down the road and through the back gate of Verdillon. Beyond the park boundaries Tennice led us off the road and into the thicker trees, and more quickly than we could have hoped, our pursuers and their creeping horrors had vanished. We pushed on, not daring to stop too soon, scarcely able to see through the rain and the failing light. Raindrops stung our faces and soaked our clothes.

At last Tennice pulled up somewhere deep in the forest. He gave me a hand down from the lathered roan and kicked open the door of a squat hut made of poorly joined logs. “We lost them, I think,” he said, urging me through the doorway. “No one knows about this place.”

Baglos tethered the horses on the lee side of the hut. While Tennice and I carried our packs inside, the Dulcé and the Prince tended the beasts, rubbing them down with a blanket Tennice had used for a saddle. Before long, Baglos joined us in the hut.

Shivering, the Dulcé Dulcé and I pulled out blankets and what little we had that was dry, sharing with Tennice. After a brief glance inside, D'Natheil remained standing in the doorway, staring out into the rain, one hand peeling strips of soft wood from the rotted facing. When Baglos offered him a plain silver flask pulled from the leather bag he always carried over his shoulder, he shoved the Dulcé away and stepped outside, striding across the soggy clearing to a low brick wall, part of the abandoned charcoal oven. He perched sideways on the wall, drew up his knees, and rested his head on them, letting the cold rain pour over his head and back.

For myself, I appreciated Baglos's offering. The potent, sweet wine left a trail of fire down my throat.