The Knight: A Tale from the High Kingdom (45 page)

3

Duke Duncan of Feln was waiting on a bench in a quiet garden within the Palace. Lit by a torch planted in the ground, he appeared to be alone and stood when he heard Lorn approach.

‘Good evening, knight. Forgive me for arranging a meeting with you in this fashion, but I must leave Oriale and it would be best, for your sake, if we weren’t seen together.’

With a gesture, he invited Lorn to take a seat. But the knight remained standing and, using the torch to set alight the note that had brought him here, he said:

‘Employing that Irelice code was hardly prudent.’

‘I wanted to be sure I caught your attention,’ explained Feln. ‘As I told you, my time is short. I hoped to see you at the banquet, but Esteveris made it clear at the last moment that my presence was no longer desirable. A minor humiliation for my daughter and myself. Pointless, but very much in the manner of Her Majesty Queen Celyane of the High Kingdom …’

Lorn waited until the paper was almost entirely consumed before letting it go and watching it disintegrate, its glowing particles carried off by a breath of air.

‘You are returning to your lands?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Thanks to you, the moment has come to make myself scarce.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘The queen is enjoying her newfound popularity and the kingdom’s coffers are full. Knowing her, none of that will last, but for now she’s in control. Her allies are increasing in number, while even my staunchest supporters are wavering …’

Feln heaved a fatalistic sigh and smiled.

‘What can I say, knight?’ he resumed. ‘The wheel turns and turns again. Would you care to take a stroll?’

It was already night.

Lorn considered the dark and silent garden around them, and asked in an ironic tone:

‘Should I expect to be abducted? After Samarande, and the fortified inn on the road to Brenvost, that would be a little much …’

‘So you guessed.’

‘That Irelice was behind it? I didn’t need to guess. Your henchmen were careless and talkative. Besides, who else would want me to disappear? Who else would be worried that I had been rescued from the dungeon where I was rotting?’

The duke shook his head contritely.

‘I did not order you to be abducted. And I certainly didn’t want to make you disappear. I know what services you rendered us and I know what they cost you. I have many faults, but I’m not ungrateful. I am loyal.’

‘Is that all you wanted to say to me this evening?’

‘In a manner of speaking. I wanted you know to you have nothing to fear from Irelice. On the contrary, I ask you to regard us as your ally.’

The proposition amused Lorn.

After Esteveris, Feln was the second person to hold out a hand to him this evening. They were disputing his favours. Even the queen was casting smiles his way, although he was not fooled by them, any more than he believed the minister’s or the duke’s sincerity. Both men were guided by their interests, by their political calculations. These offers only proved one thing: Lorn now occupied a key place on the High Kingdom’s chessboard.

‘I also want you to know,’ added Feln, ‘that your secret is safe with me. No one will ever know the charge of treason was well founded. No one will ever know the truth.’

Lorn smiled, but the look in his mismatched eyes was ice-cold. Too calmly not to be menacing, he approached Feln, who became frightened, held his breath, and froze. Lorn pressed up against him, chest to chest, gripped his neck firmly, and murmured in his ear:

‘And who would believe you? A loyal and devoted knight, unjustly accused of treason, returns from hell and saves the kingdom at the request of its ruler. That’s the tale. It’s beautiful, too beautiful for people to have any desire to hear another. And it matters little what you know. It matters little what I did. And besides, I’ve more than paid for it.’

Lorn let go of Feln and stepped back, allowing the duke to breathe.

‘Safe journey,’ he said as he walked away. ‘My regards to your daughter.’

Feln swallowed, and then called out:

‘No one can explain it and some don’t want to believe it, but it seems the Dark protects you, knight. Take care that it doesn’t guide you!’

Lorn walked off with a tranquil step into the shadows.

Lorn left the Palace thinking about the duke’s parting words. The Dark had indeed protected him from the dragon-prince’s fire. Steel against steel. Fire against fire. The Dark against the Dark.

He did not know how or why, but the fact remained.

He was alive and had never felt such well-being before. As the Dragon of Destruction had predicted, his body had let itself be taken over by the Dark rather than resisting it, and he had emerged stronger, tougher and capable of unequalled feats.

Like surviving a Dark blast.

And his soul?

In truth, he didn’t care about that, convinced that if he possessed a soul, it had died in Dalroth. Perhaps that was the price to be paid.

An exorbitant price, whatever his crimes had been.

Yes, Lorn had betrayed the High Kingdom.

Four years earlier, he’d revealed the content of the secret treaty the High Kingdom was preparing with Yrgaard, which had prevented it from being signed. That did not warrant his incarceration in Dalroth, or enduring what he’d endured, alone against madness, death and oblivion.

Alone against the Dark.

Moreover, he had been denounced. Betrayed. But by whom and why? He didn’t know, but now that he had the power he was going to find out. He was influential enough at present to manage it and had every intention of using his advantage, starting with obtaining the minutes of his secret trial from Sibellus.

After that, whoever had brought about his ruin would pay for it with their life.

4

Midnight.

Lorn considered finding his men in the tavern where they had agreed to celebrate the victory at Angborn, and to pay tribute to Dwain, whose remains now rested in the cemetery at Saarsgard. Only Vahrd, Yeras and Logan had returned to Oriale with Lorn. Liam had remained at Samarande, confined to bed by a fever which the doctors assured them was not serious. Anyway, it was better that he rest while his wounded arm healed. He would rejoin the others later.

Lorn’s steps took him almost of their own accord to the Black Tower, through a Redstone district filled with rejoicing crowds. He walked with his head down, but was recognised several times and invited to have a drink, which he refused politely by saying he would take up the offer later. He was, in fact, anxious to go home and shut himself away in the quiet of his new quarters. Following Andara’s death, restoration work in the tower had resumed unhindered and Lorn had been pleasantly surprised upon his return to find it was almost completed. Scaffolding still surrounded the keep, but it was now perfectly functional and inhabitable. Proudly flying a banner with the wolf’s head and crossed swords at its summit, a Black Tower once again stood in all its glory in Oriale.

Lorn found the place plunged into darkness and silence. But it was not deserted, which surprised him.

‘Daril?’

The boy was there, dozing in a chair on the keep’s ground floor, with a candle stub burning in a saucer at his feet.

‘What are you doing here?’ asked Lorn.

Daril stood up, rubbing his eyes.

‘I … I was waiting for you, my lord.’

‘Why?’

‘To see if you needed me. Do you need me?’

‘No. Run along and amuse yourself. You’re at liberty like the others.’

‘But—’

‘Go! Have a drink. Dance. Play. Get your hands on a girl or a boy …’

‘A boy?’

‘Do whatever you like, but scarper. Do you know where Cadfeld is?’

Although mostly recovered, the old bookseller still enjoyed the Onyx Guards’ hospitality.

‘He went out with the others, my lord.’

‘Perfect. Then go and join them,’ said Lorn, starting up the spiral staircase.

‘Until tomorrow, my lord!’

‘That’s right.’

The unkempt boy went off, with his eyes sparkling and a huge grin on his face

Lorn lived on the keep’s last floor.

He entered his quarters unwarily and just had time to see Yssaris’s small body lying in a pool of blood before he received one, two, three dagger stabs in his side.

He collapsed.

Men emerged from the shadows. Dressed in black and shod in supple boots, they wore finely crafted leather masks whose harmonious and complex patterns shifted about.

‘Take him,’ said one of the men.

Lorn wanted to move but found himself incapable of doing so.

He realised that some kind of poison had paralysed him. The wounds he’d received would be fatal, but not until all of his blood had drained into his own entrails.

The assassins carried him down the stairs and deposited him in the large fencing room which occupied almost the entire first floor of the keep.

‘Set him up,’ said the one who seemed to be the leader.

Two assassins sat Lorn on the floor, with his back against a wooden bench, and spread his arms wide so that his hands rested flat upon the piece of furniture.

The one in command crouched before Lorn. He was tall, very slender and graceful. And his eyes were a grey so pale they seemed white.

Lorn knew he would never forget those eyes.

‘I’ve been asked to make you suffer,’ the man said, as the other assassins emptied goatskin pouches of lamp oil over the walls and the floor.

Lorn could not yell but an atrocious pain shot through him when they nailed his left hand to the bench.

Then his right hand endured the same fate.

‘Suffer a lot,’ added the assassin’s leader in a gentle, compassionate voice.

His eyes filling with tears of anger, suffering and impotence, Lorn saw one of the killers bringing Daril into the room.

‘My lord!’ the frightened boy implored. ‘Help me!’

They forced him to kneel and slowly slit his throat before the knight’s eyes.

Lorn was barely able to moan, barely able to lift his shoulders when all he wanted was to scream, rise up, tear himself from the bench and throw himself on the assassins to kill them with his tortured hands.

Daril fell, choking, his throat opened and his hands bound behind his back, his eyes frozen in an expression of incredulous terror. He thrashed in his own blood, until the last bit of life he desperately clung to finally left him.

‘That’s fine,’ said the assassin’s leader.

Alone with Lorn, he leaned over him, lifted the bottom of the leather mask and placed a kiss upon the knight’s still lips. After which he set fire to the floorboards which burst into sudden flames, and walked away.

‘Farewell,’ he said.

Lorn vowed to return from hell to seek his revenge.

Also by Pierre Pevel from Gollancz:

The Cardinal’s Blades

The Alchemist in the Shadows

The Dragon Arcana

A Gollancz eBook

Original text copyright © Pierre Pevel/Editions Bragelonne 2014
English translation copyright © Tom Clegg/Editions Bragelonne 2014
All rights reserved.

The right of Pierre Pevel to be identified as the author of this work and of Tom Clegg to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London,
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9
EA
An Hachette UK Company

This eBook first published in 2014 by Gollancz.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN
978 0 575 10799 1

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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