The Office of Shadow (15 page)

At the top of the tower, the stairs ended at a stout wooden door. Ilian
knocked, and for a moment there was silence. Then a voice rasped, "Come!"

Master Jedron's study occupied the entire top floor of the tower. It was
comfortable without being lavishly appointed; tapestries hung on the walls;
tapers were lit and placed in sconces around the room. A well-stoked fireplace
burned opposite the door. In the center of the room Master Jedron sat at a
large desk made of ebony, his boots propped up on the corner of the desk.
Jedron's salt-and-pepper hair hung to his shoulders, neatly combed. His face
was deeply lined, giving the semblance of extreme age, but there was clearly nothing frail about him. He had a glass paperweight in his hand, which he
tossed absently up and down.

Jedron squinted at Silverdun for a long moment and then said, "Who the
fuck are you?"

Silverdun looked back at Ilian, who chuckled, but said nothing. Ilian
retreated casually to a spot near the door and motioned Silverdun back
toward Jedron with a nod of his head.

"Are you stupid?" said Jedron. "I asked you a question. Who are you?"

Silverdun cleared his throat. What was this? "I am Perrin Alt, Lord Silverdun. I'm here to present myself to you for training."

Jedron looked baffled for a moment; then he burst out laughing, as if Silverdun had just told him the funniest joke he'd ever heard.

"What? You?" Jedron pointed at Silverdun, shaking with mirth. "Oh,
that's a good one! Who put you up to this?"

The tips of Silverdun's ears began to burn. "I can assure you, sir, that this
is no jest. Lord Everess himself sent me to you."

"Oh, did he?" Jedron's laugh settled down to a chuckle. "You can understand my amusement, of course."

"I'm afraid I can't," said Silverdun. He was going to kill Everess for this.

"Well, look at you! You're so fancy and sensitive, you're practically a
woman!" Jedron took his feet down off the desk and leaned forward. "Not
that I haven't trained women, of course," he said. "That's not what I mean at
all. But most of the women I've trained are quite a lot more manly than you,
I'm afraid."

The old man shook his head. "And I thought the other new student was
a disgrace."

Silverdun rolled his eyes. "I see. This is some kind of test, to see if I'll
lose my temper under stress or some such. Am I right?"

With blinding speed, Jedron reared back and hurled the glass paperweight, which slammed into Silverdun's temple with astonishing force. Silverdun stumbled back; the pain was unbelievable. He reached out for some thing to support himself with, as he suddenly felt dizzy, but there was
nothing there. Red and blue spots began to speckle his vision and his knees
buckled. He sat down hard.

Silverdun's head throbbed; his entire skull hurt. When he looked up, his
vision was blurred and slightly doubled. Jedron stood over him, looking at
him with an appraising eye.

"Well, you were right about one thing, boy. That was your first test, and
you failed it miserably, I'm sad to say."

"Oh," groaned Silverdun. "And what test was that?"

Jedron looked at Silverdun as if Silverdun were the stupidest person he'd
ever met. "Dodging paperweights," he said.

Silverdun awoke in a strange bed, fully clothed, his head throbbing. He
touched his temple and grimaced at the tenderness of the welt that had
grown there while he slept.

Carefully, he sat up and winced, the previous evening slowly filtering
into his mind. The sea voyage, the climb, the old bastard with his paperweight. After that, everything got a bit fuzzy.

The bed was comfortable, the mattress stuffed with down and the pillow
large and soft. When he swung his feet gently onto the floor, a plush rug
rather than cold stone met his toes. He stood carefully; the rush of pain to his
skull was even worse than he expected.

When his vision cleared, he looked around the room. It was small but
not cramped; the furnishings good quality but not ostentatious. A fresh set
of clothes was draped over a chair, and his boots were on the floor nearby,
cleaned and polished. His sword hung from a hook on the wall.

Silverdun dressed slowly and looked himself over in a mirror of perfectly
smooth glass. Despite the purpling knot on his temple, he was still roguishly
handsome, in his way. He'd been even more handsome, once. A length of ribbon
had been hung from the mirror frame, and Silverdun tied his hair back with it.

Only then did he realize that he was starving-he hadn't eaten since the
bowl of fish chowder he'd choked down on the dock yesterday morning. When he bent to pull his boots on, the throbbing in his skull had already
dwindled a bit.

"Let's get trained then," he said. "Time to become a spy."

The door was locked.

He tried it several times, shaking the latch hard, but the door was heavy
and the lock solid; it refused to budge.

He pounded on it and called out. "Ilian? Care to let the new trainee out
for a bit of food?" There was no answer. He knelt down and peered through
the keyhole; only the bare stone of the passageway's far wall was visible.

He pounded harder. "Jedron? Is this another test? Going without breakfast?" The shouting made his head ache.

The window was small; too small to climb out of, but at least it opened,
rotating out with a tiny brass crank. Silverdun cranked it all the way open
and stuck his head out. The salt breeze was bracing.

Silverdun's room was on the side of the tower opposite the courtyard. The
wall here practically jutted out directly from the turgid water. Only a few
sharp rocks and a narrow hint of a path separated the tower from the sea.

"Auberon's balls," said Silverdun. He sat down heavily on the mattress.
Here was yet another cell.

At least this one had a soft bed for a change.

Perrin is nestled in his mother's lap, her arms wrapped around him against
the sudden evening chill. They are on the veranda overlooking the south
lawns. Beyond the row of peach trees, a group of men from the village are
repairing the low wall that surrounds the manor. Perrin likes walking along
that wall; he can go the entire length of it, and even once made it all the way
around the giant rectangle without falling off.

Mother leans in and kisses the top of his head, inhales. "Your hair smells
like sunlight," she says.

lana comes to speak to Mother. She's one of the servants, and is always
kind to Perrin. "Lady," she says, curtseying. "A moment, if I may." She nods
meaningfully at Perrin.

"It's all right," says Mother. "Go ahead."

lana doesn't seem to approve, but she goes on anyway, and suddenly she
no longer acts like a servant. "I've decided that you will lead prayers
tomorrow morning, so be ready."

"Oh," says Mother. Perrin turns in his mother's arms to look at her face.
lana has just spoken to Mother as if she were the servant, and lana her mistress! But Mother is smiling. "I am honored, Mother."

Why is Mother calling lana Mother? Perrin is confounded.

"I trust your judgment, Daughter," says lana. "If you believe the boy is
ready ..."

"I believe it."

"He may not attend until his tenth birthday, you know."

"That is only two years from now."

lana smiles. "It is a good thing. For him to be brought up in Aba's light.
But we must be careful."

"Yes, Mother."

lana curtseys, and she is a servant again.

When she is gone, Perrin asks, "Is lana really your mother?"

"No, silly. Grandmama is my mother. lana is my teacher in the Church."

"Aba," says Perrin. He knows about Aba. "Aba is a god," he says.

"Aba is God beyond gods," says mother. "He is first among kings."

Perrin is confused again. "I thought Uvenchaud was the first king."

Mother laughs. "Uvenchaud was the first king of Faerie, yes," she says,
"but he was not a god."

"We are descended from Uvenchaud."

"Your father likes to say that, yes. But that was many thousands of years
ago. I think at this point in history, more Fae are descended from Uvenchaud
than not."

Perrin thinks about this. He points down to the villagers working at the
wall. "Mother, are they descended from Uvenchaud too?"

"So many questions you have!" scolds Mother, smiling.

"Are they?"

Mother makes a funny face. "I suppose."

"Then aren't they noblemen as well?"

Mother laughs again, this time out loud. He loves the sound of her
laughter. "Yes, I suppose they are."

"Then why don't they live in a manor like we do?"

Mother's smile fades. She looks at Silverdun. "Being noble has nothing to
do with living in a manor, Perrin. That is the world's way, not the true way."

"Are you an Arcadian then?"

"Yes I am."

"Will I be an Arcadian too?"

"When you are older, you will go off to school in the city and you will learn
many things, and then you will decide what sort of man you want to be."

Perrin doesn't really know what she means. "Can I go with you to the
prayers? I want to hear you read them. Please?"

Now mother becomes very serious. "No you may not, and you mustn't
ask again. And Perrin," she says, almost in a whisper, "you are never to speak
of Aba, or of my conversations with lana, or of our prayers to anyone. Do you
understand?"

"Even Father?"

"Especially Father."

"But why?"

"Your father and I agree on most things," says Mother. "But on one very
important subject we have a fundamental difference." She looks so sad when
she says this, and Perrin hugs her tight.

"Can't you compromise?" says Perrin. "You always say if I have a disagreement with another child I should compromise."

"In some matters there is no compromising."

Perrin feels a tightness in his stomach. "Do you want to watch me go all
the way around the wall?"

"Of course I do," says Mother, and her smile returns. She stands him up
and brushes his hair with her fingers. "You're getting so very big."

"Make sure you watch," Perrin says.

"Come here," says Mother. She hugs him, puts her face against the top of
his head, and inhales. "My sunlight."

He turns to run off, but Mother catches his collar. "Remember what I
told you. It's very important, and I must know that I can trust you."

"I promise," he says.

As he's running down the south lawn, she calls out, "Don't disturb the
noblemen fixing that wall!"

"I won't!" he shouts back.

He makes it almost all the way around, but falls by the back gate,
scraping his knee. He cries, and Mother comes and scoops him up, carries
him into the house, and there is warm supper and music and play and the
softness of sleep.