The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (35 page)

“You’re different; the way I feel about you is like nothing I’ve ever known.”

“You’re serious. You really mean it.” Theron crushed the chain between them in his embrace. Their two hearts thudded against it. They breathed in each other’s scent. They stayed thus for some time, perfectly happy. Then Theron formally placed the chain around his lover’s neck. “You are the lord of my heart,” he said. “We are even now, love for love.”

ALARIC FINN WAS SITTING IN A CELL IN THE CHOP, chin to knees on a straw pallet, watching the light fade slowly from the small barred window. He had been questioned twice since he’d been taken—once roughly by a stolid Guardsman, once courteously by a magnificent man with silver hair. The humiliating thing was that he had told the courteous gentleman everything he had withheld from the Guardsman. He’d been so gentle, so intelligent, so understanding, that it had seemed only reasonable, only natural, to confide in him.

Not, Finn thought miserably, that he had known very much to tell. Most Northern customs and rituals were not really secrets, after all. Everyone north of the foothills knew that the Companions of the King didn’t have anything to do with politics or anything like that. It all had to do with the Land, giving the Land its due of blood and life so that it would sustain the people living on it. Any Northerner could have told the courteous gentleman about how it was necessary to feed the Land with hunting and dancing and loving. Any Northerner could have told him how the Companions who came South continued their rites in this gentler land, hoping to possess it and be possessed by it, renewing the Union begun by Alcuin so many centuries before.

Any Northerner could have. But only he, Alaric Finn, had actually done it. And he’d told him what little he knew of the Inner Mysteries as well.

Again he heard his voice, speaking almost without his will, telling the silver-haired gentleman about the Hunt, the Trial, the Deer, the Little King. These things may not be secrets in the North, his heart told him, but in the South, among the king-killers, the apostates, one did not speak of them. Still less did one speak of the men who led the rituals, who named the Hunter and loosed the Hounds. And he had named them—Roland Greenleaf, Will Smith—and watched the gentleman’s secretary write it all down.

At the end of the interrogation, the gentleman had smiled slowly, gently, as a great cat might smile having caught its prey. “You’ve been most helpful, Master Finn. Thank you. Nonetheless, I’m afraid you must stay with us some time longer, perhaps until spring. It depends on the state of the road North. We shall not, I think, meet again.”

Finn would have liked to have been released. But now, having had time to realize just what he’d done, he was glad to be in prison. It was right for him to be punished for betraying his friends, his country. Not to mention his lover, Anthony Lindley, who had taken so naturally to the ways of the North. And what about his brothers, the Companions of the King? What would Greenleaf say when he knew?

He groaned and hid his eyes against his knees. He could never go home again, never face his father, who would have preferred death to telling a Southron the smallest, most unimportant detail of his life; never kiss his mother or embrace his brothers with a heart unshadowed by shame. All his life, he’d been taught that every man is tested, as the Little Kings were tested. A man who failed the test was less than a man, and cast out of the company of all true men. Sitting there in the dark, with the damp of the ancient stones creeping into his bones, Finn realized that he had met his trial in the person of the courteous gentleman, and had failed it utterly. He was without honor, without hope. And the weeks were long until spring.

book III

WINTER TERM

chapter I

WHERE LAST NIGHT WAS ROWDILY PUBLIC, FIRST Night was spent with intimates in quiet preparation for the year to come. Quarrels were made up and presents were exchanged. The streets were silent and the new moon swung unmarked among the stars. On the morning of First Day, time fell again into its accustomed cycle, and lives disrupted by the license of the White Days were put to rights again.

At LeClerc, Basil St Cloud lectured on the legal powers and responsibilities of wizards under the Treaty of Union. The students yawned and shifted on the benches. When Basil described how Alcuin had traded Northern titles for Southern forestland to be deeded to his wizards, he glanced at Finn’s usual bench, expecting an outburst. Another student was in his place, industriously taking notes. Basil wondered if the boy had gone home for MidWinter. A pity, if he missed the challenge—it was just the sort of thing to thrill his romantic Northern heart. Lindley was absent, too. But this wasn’t the time to consider the whereabouts of amorous students. Basil had other things to worry about.

When the bell released the students to their noon meal, St Cloud gestured for the inner circle to stay behind. In the absence of Finn and Lindley there were four of them, ranging from little Peter Godwin, who was barely fifteen, to Benedict Vandeleur, who might be twenty. He wanted to tell them exactly what he intended to do that afternoon, but Rugg had warned him against gossips. So all Basil said was, “Be outside the Nest before two, just you four, and Finn and Lindley, if you can find them. I have a thing I must do, and I would be glad of your company.”

Vandeleur and Justis Blake exchanged glances, and then Vandeleur said, “Before two, you said, outside the Nest. You may count on us, sir.”

Basil nodded, hesitated, decided that to add anything would be to say too much, swung his bag up on his shoulder, and marched out of LeClerc. His students stared after him in bewildered silence until Fremont said, “You may freeze your noses off here if you like. I’m going to the Nest, where I can be curious in comfort.”

Flush with the quarter’s stipend and MidWinter gifts, they ordered venison stew with dumplings and hot punch and also some hot potatoes for their pockets to be brought to the table just before two.

“So where is love’s young dream?” Henry asked, unwinding a bright new woolen muffler from about his throat.

Vandeleur shrugged. “If you mean Finn and Lindley, last I saw them, they were making asses of themselves at the University bonfire. Way they were carrying on, they probably spent the holiday in bed.”

“Surely they’d be done by now,” said Peter Godwin.

Blake remembered two figures dancing half-naked and ecstatic in the heart of the wood, and said uncomfortably, “One of us should go look for them.”

Henry snorted. “I wouldn’t bother. Do you really want Finn here? I don’t.”

“But Doctor St Cloud does,” Blake objected. “He said to find Finn and Lindley, and that’s what I mean to do.” He got up. “Save me a bowl of stew, Vandeleur. I shouldn’t be long.”

Looking beyond him, Peter Godwin said, “Don’t bother, Blake. Lindley’s just come in the door. Can Finn be far behind?”

It was indeed Lindley, but a very different Lindley from the love-flushed and braided dancer of Last Night. This Lindley was hollow-eyed and dressed in rags under a torn academic gown. His red hair hung lank, his narrow cheeks were bruised under reddish stubble, and he stank. The historians stared at him as though he were the ghost of murdered Hilary.

“Great god!” breathed Vandeleur at last. “Where in the Seven Hells have you been?”

Lindley frowned. “All of them, I think. Is that stew?”

“It is,” said Godwin. “I’m not sure I want to sit next to you while you eat it, though. No offense meant, but you smell like a midden.”

“There are worse things to smell like,” Blake said pleasantly. “Sit here, Lindley, and tell us about it. I was just about to go and look for you.”

Before Lindley could answer, two men appeared behind him. Their hair was bound in a dozen braids down their backs and their cheekbones were high and sharp— Northern men beyond doubt. One of them spun Lindley around, fisted a hand in his clothes, and shouted, “It was you, wasn’t it? You told them about Smith and Greenleaf. I’d like to . . .”

The second man shoved him aside and took his place. “Where are they, eh?” he snarled into Lindley’s stark face. “Where’s Greenleaf and Smith? And Finn? Where’s he?”

By this time, the historians had recovered themselves enough to take action. Blake and Vandeleur tackled the Northerners while Godwin took charge of Lindley, who looked ready to faint. Almost immediately, the tavern-keep bustled up, armed with his usual fistful of tankards, suggesting that the young gentlemen take their dispute outside. The Northerners departed, muttering and casting black looks behind them, and Basil’s students resumed their benches and their stew, all except Lindley, who stared at his bowl as though it contained snakes.

Blake touched him gently on his shoulder; he shrank pitifully from the touch. “You’d better tell us where you’ve been, Tony.”

“The Guard came and took us to the Chop. They put me in a cell and asked me questions about Last Night. I didn’t answer them. They let me go this morning. That’s all I know.” He lifted his eyes, their dense blue luminous in his filthy face. “Don’t ask me any more questions. Please.”

There was a shocked silence. Then Blake took a deep breath and said, “Fair enough. Why don’t you go to the baths, get some sleep. I’ll stop by in the morning and see how you’re getting on.”

“I don’t want to go home.” Lindley began to shake like laundry hung in the wind. “It’s dark at home. No candles.”

Someone got up—Henry Fremont—fumbled in his new pouch, slapped a silver coin down on the table, muttered, “Get candles,” and shoved his way to the door as if the place were on fire. Peter Godwin, looking troubled, met Fremont’s contribution, and soon there was a small pile of coins in front of Lindley.

Benedict Vandeleur scooped up the coins and tied them in his handkerchief. “I’ll buy the damned candles. Blake, Godwin, get him home and stay with him until I get there.”

“What about two o’clock and Doctor St Cloud?” Godwin asked.

Vandeleur looked harried. “We’ve better than an hour yet. I’ll think of something. Go!”

They asked Lindley no more questions then, but it all came out soon enough, in Lindley’s narrow room, between coughs, while Blake bathed his burning face and Godwin looked helplessly on. He’d been questioned and questioned again, then left to cool his heels in a cell for days with nothing to eat save thin gruel and cold water.

“I don’t even know if Alaric’s dead or alive,” he wailed. “They wouldn’t let me see him or answer any of my questions. This morning, they told me I should be more careful of the company I kept, and let me go.”

Godwin caught Blake’s eye over Lindley’s head, his mouth twisted with unsympathetic mirth. Blake frowned at him and said gently, “I’m sure he’s alive, Tony. They’ll let him go, too, as soon as they realize he’s guilty of nothing but being a damn fool.”

Lindley was not comforted. “But he
is
guilty. He betrayed them, you see—Greenleaf and Smith. He must have. I said nothing. I would rather have died than betray them. What they’re doing is important: keeping up the old ways, the reverence for the land. . . . This city, here, it’s all so dead, so cold, so artificial. No one believes in the Southern gods any more, including the priests—everyone knows it’s all for show. We need something real to love and honor. We need the kings.”

Blake hardly knew what to respond. The man was clearly half out of his mind with fever. “I wouldn’t be too quick to condemn Finn, Tony. If they tortured me, I’d tell them anything they wanted to know, just as quick as I could. Any sane man would.”