White Pagan, page 73
part #6 of Kestrel Harper Saga Series
On the fifth day, woodsmen felling trees to repair damaged homes came back with the battered, bruised, and bloated body of Raebhá’s husband. Shocked and disgusted to see it, it was impossible to tell if he had drowned or if he had died of injuries sustained by the beating the river and its rocks had given. None had reason to think he had died before going into the river. Because Audh had not seen Ombhrís when he found Kavan collapsed beside the river, and because there were no marks of combat on the bard, only the discolored spread of poison beneath his skin, there was no evidence that the men had confronted each other. The river’s brutality and the forces of nature had erased any clues that might have been gained by reading the dead, and the single effort Audh made to read Kavan had brought him up against the bard’s impenetrable wall of mental protection.
The truth might never be known, and ultimately, to Raebhá, it did not matter. Despite her shock at Ombhrís’ unexpected death, the disgust of his condition, the disquiet it created within her, his demise freed her from the threat of being hunted. Freed her to remarry…if Kavan lived and could be persuaded to, desired to, take that step.
It was the barrier of power in him, along with the shallow rise and fall of his chest and the gradual fading of the poison’s kiss on his shoulder, as well as Ágdhállán’s slow return to normal, that suggested healing rather than dying. But days crept by and Raebhá remained torn between despair and hope. The joint effort of the dhóbhaen had repaired several structures, including Raebhá’s home, and then effort slowed as duties began to fracture their cohesion.
Shelter was important, but some who lost homes could take residence with others, move into houses that had stood empty after the passing of their owners, or, if need be, continue to spend their nights in the ghís kelyhag. The sailors from Maras and Phaurd had long ago departed but others ferried food and materials to nearby settlements to aid in their recovery. The days of growing warmth and unfrozen seas were short, farming, hunting, fishing and other measures for the long winter had to be complete before the snow came or people would suffer more than a housing inconvenience. No one desired starvation.
Sacrifices had to be made for the good of the ghís.
There was much Raebhá wanted to achieve but she understood that further discourse with the márbhyndhánis would have to wait for the long winter night too. The ghís’ survival had to be her priority, but it was difficult to address when Kavan’s monument, with him on it, was an ever-present reminder of what lay behind and ahead.
With the sun setting on the eighth day, Raebhá again stood at Kavan’s side, most of the townsfolk respecting her desire for privacy and preparing to sleep. She pressed her lips to his cool forehead. For the first few days his skin had been feverish; now there was little warmth to be felt and she feared that, though the trace of poison was gone, he was fading. Her thoughts surrounding that loss were morbid and made her clutch Ágdhállán more tightly as she whispered, “óymháth,” and retreated with defeated steps to her home.
Within his shell, in the recesses into which his consciousness retreated whenever his body was severely threatened, Kavan felt that kiss, felt her fear and despair and growing hopelessness, things which pulled him like a siren back from oblivion. His body hurt, stiff and sore from lying on a hard stone surface. His shoulder burned still but it no longer radiated with the excruciating fire he dredged from his last waking recollection. Those sensations and memories brought with them the taste of an icy river’s spray, the growl of water tumbling over rock, and the feel of spongey moss beneath his face and hands.
Wherever those memories stemmed from, he was not in that place any longer. He was on his back rather than his stomach, warmer and dryer, with the distant rhythmic pulse of the sea surging in time with the beating of his heart. He could smell peat fires and roasting meat, the last awakening his senses so that he choked on saliva before his throat responded to the impulse to swallow. It roused a grumble in his belly and it was his body’s demand for appeasement that finally prompted him to open his eyes.
Though his lids stuck, crusty with sleep and perhaps tears he could not recall shedding, and his eyes felt dry and shrunken, they opened and focused with effort on the patterned weaving above him. Sailing canvas, he guessed, waxed with the fat of the huge sea creatures the dhóbhaen sometimes caught. There was a trace of recent rain in the air, the clean smell of it tickling his nose. His lips pulled into a small smile, the stretching of long stationary skin mildly uncomfortable but also welcome and reassuring. He was alive. Twice he had endured the bite of poison and twice he had survived. Praise k’Ádhá, he thought, for it was surely a miracle that he lived.
“táu, sór ciágk,” Raebhá murmured to the child who had been nearly asleep but suddenly stiffened, wide-eyed, and began to fuss. Not in hunger, not in pain, but in general discontent, something that rocking and gentle humming were unable to appease.
Kavan made it to sitting, his bare feet dangling over the edge of the stone and wood upon which he had rested, not quite touching the ground. He wore a long robe of the sort the márbhyndhánis novices wore, a robe that reminded him in form, though not in color, of the ones he had worm most of his life. The memories that came with it, memories of the man he used to be and had worked hard to change, were uncomfortable enough that he nearly tore it from his body. Only realizing at the last moment that he wore nothing beneath it prevented him from removing it. The russet of dried blood stained his side and caused the fabric to stick until his movement pulled it free. The location of the stain forced him to look at where he had lain, revealing similar crimson stains where his hands and feet had been, leaving no doubt as to their source.
He frowned, wondering how long he had lain there, how much blood he had shed, how much the dhóbhaen had seen.
Determined to change out of the heavy reminder he wore, he decided to seek food and water and find Raebhá and his son if they were not in the place he expected them to be. He needed answers, needed grounding, needed to know why he had been in the center of town on display, surrounded by torches, wreaths, bouquets, and tokens of the sort he had seen placed at holy shrines many times in his life.
Blessed k’Ádhá! He was no saint! He was not even dead yet!
Although maybe, he thought with fingers tenderly probing the point where the poison had entered his body, they had believed he would be soon. Most dhóbhaen did not pray, did not believe the ágdháthé that created them, created the world, had any interaction in their lives. Yet in a peculiar way, what he saw reminded him of the beseeching of people wanting to affect the outcome of something beyond their control…prayer to whomever, whatever, might be listening who would give them what they sought.
Would his revival bring them closer to the Faith as Dhágdhuán taught it…in the belief in k’Ádhá as the Elyri espoused since the days of their banishment?
The prophecy of the White Bard suggested it might, and Kavan shivered beneath the blasting weight of that responsibility.
Standing with a hand on the dais, forcing himself to ignore the bloodstains in the wood, he looked around, gauging where he was, noting the repairs done during his slumber, trying to judge how much time had passed. The last he could not guess, although the twisting in his stomach and dryness in his mouth and throat suggested it had been several days. A faint light burned in Raebhá’s window, a tallow candle most likely, meaning she was awake, and the sounds of a fussy child confirmed it. His stiff muscles did not cooperate easily, but he forced himself to trudge towards the beacon of his soul’s home, unhindered, unhelped, by anyone. He could feel her warmth inside of him. She lived. With Ombhrís no longer a threat, she would be safe.
They all would be.
Until her door opened, Ágdhállán’s uncoordinated efforts to reach in that direction seemed no more than an infant’s random movements. The creak on the wooden planks outside heralded someone’s arrival and for a moment Raebhá feared that at this hour it would be someone come to harm the child.
Instead, her weary eyes met with the gaze of the weak, emaciated father of her son.
“Kavan!” She rushed to him and threw an arm around his neck, Ágdhállán caught gently between them. Having just left him, seeing no change in his condition, having him here was the last thing she had expected. When he stumbled, sagging against her, she bore his weight until they could sink together onto the nearby bench. He refused to release her, finding comfort and strength in her scent, her touch, and so she sat beside him, content, barely believing he was there.
“You are hungry…thirsty…” There were questions, things she wanted to know, but taking care of his needs, when he had almost died and taken their son with him, so that she might live, was the only thing she could think about. She owed him her life many times over.
“No, yes…just sit, please.” His head drooped against her shoulder and he pressed his nose to her neck with a shiver. “How long?”
“You shouldn’t talk. Let me get you…”
“How long?”
His insistence was met with a sigh and a reluctant relaxing against him. “Eight days. Audh found you, brought you back.”
“Ombhrís…I…”
Though her lips trembled with emotion she had stubbornly contained since her husband’s body was found, she forced a relieved expression and kissed Kavan’s forehead. He did not need the burden of her turbulent feelings. “He’s no longer a threat. We are free of him.”
Hearing ‘we’ as she and the child, because he did not believe Ombhrís had been a threat to him, Kavan nodded. With her arm about him, she could feel the strain ease from his shoulders. “Good.”
“I have prayed for you.” Prayer was a new, uncomfortable thing but it was the only way to describe the pleadings uttered to the air, to k’Ádhá, to anyone who would listen and restore Kavan to her.
“Your prayers have been…answered.”
He looked weak, limp in a way that worried her. She helped him slouching against the wall so that he would remain upright, and after tearing the no longer fussing child from his hold on Kavan’s robe and putting him in his bed box near the warmth of the fire, she eased Kavan to the cot he had previously used near the hearth and brought him a ladle of water. “Drink this and rest. In the morning, you will eat. You’re home. Let me care for you as you once cared for me.”
For a moment, Kavan almost protested, but he was too disoriented to form words. “Home,” was all he managed to squeak.
Yes. He was home.
Now that he was here, with her and the child both soon curled to sleep beside him, he never wanted to leave.
***
“Take this to the north tower.”
The head cook shoved the tray into Zerio’s hands, assuming he was one of the daily deliverers of meals to whoever was held in the tower and the soldiers standing guard there. There was speculation about who it could be, but most had settled on the missing Prince Jerit, and it was that belief that had brought Zerio to Glevum.
It was a different belief that had prompted him into the service of Queen Innes.
After the assault on the castle, there had been a body on display, said to be King Kjell though his features were unrecognizable and few were allowed to get close enough to inspect the corpse. An elaborate death pageant performed in his honor followed, allowing all of Glevum and Neth to mourn their murdered king. Zerio had not been there, had not seen the dead, but his superiors had no legitimate reason to believe King Kjell was alive.
Keeping a king as a hostage was a risky business.
Prince Jerit, on the other hand, could very well be alive. Anyone actively seeking the missing boy and his mother was guaranteed to fail if he was hidden from sight. Holding him meant that no one could contest Inness’s hold on Neth’s throne until King Oska’s heir came of age or someone could produce Jerit to challenge her. Why Inness did not kill the prince, if he was there, was unknown, but Inness was not the sort to act without a well-considered reason. Yes, Asta de Corrmick was missing too, but she was of little importance in the scheme of Nethite politics, new or old, even if she, like Inness, could sway the advisors at court and potentially the populace too.
Odds were, Zerio thought, Asta was dead.
If she was not, with several soldiers missing from the night of the coup, any who might support Asta, who might be a threat to Inness, could be manipulated by the belief that Prince Jerit lived as a hostage. A tool for blackmail and coercion was reason enough to keep the boy out of sight and alive.
Maybe Inness did not have the stomach to kill a child outright. Letting him rot in the dark cold of the tower would do the job just as well as a blade would.
Or maybe it was one of the missing soldiers there, held for whatever information he knew. Maybe it was Asta. Given the queen’s more visible vicious streak, it could have been any or all of them.
If it was more than one person, with only one meal a day brought on a tray, and only a little of that shoved inside, it would not take long for them to starve.
Zerio was familiar with the rumors, had ferreted them out of the household guards he served alongside, out of the serving staff he quickly befriended. He resisted settling on any one theory about who was in the tower, as there was no proof to support any one of them. He had those of General Stone, his superiors, and others, however. Only finding someone willing to talk, or getting inside that secret sanctum would prove any one of them right.
Only a select few were allowed near the tower. He expected it would take time to earn the opportunity and had been working towards that goal since entering the queen-regent’s employ. There were fifteen men assigned to the tower, six who alternated watch at the lower outer door, six who took turns at the bottom of the tower stairs, and three who alternated solo shifts at the top locked door of the tower room itself. Those were the three Zerio wanted to befriend, but so far he had not even seen their faces.
Kitchen staff and other soldiers brought meals to the men on watch. Once each day enough food was included to feed the prisoner. Trays were delivered to the men at the first gate and those at the bottom of the stairs, but none of those delivering meals were allowed up to the barred door and the man who guarded it.
Sent to the kitchen by the queen to return a stained, empty pitcher, Zerio happened to arrive at mealtime, to have the opportunity thrust on him to make it as far as the bottom of the tower staircase. He accepted the large tray with six covered bowls upon it and sauntered towards his destination as if he had done it dozens of times before. He had never been to the tower but he did not need to ask for directions. He knew the Glevum castle layout by heart.
So it was that, after passing through the empty halls of the castle that queen-regent Inness had largely to herself, he stood at the bottom of the steep stone stairs, gazing up the barely lit passage for something he could not see beyond the curvature of the staircase. He heard nothing, no voices, no sounds of movement, no coughing or snoring, to suggest who might be there but as heavily armed and armored as the sentries were, it was easy to judge that the hostage was, indeed, someone of import. Possibly Prince Jerit after all, but there was something, a niggling in the back of his head, that suggested to Zerio this was someone more important.
The guards housed apart from the rest of the de Corrmick staff, kept from accidentally revealing whatever they knew about whomever they guarded, did not appear to be the sort open to friendly discourse.
They did not recognize his face, only the royal tabard he wore over black leather armor. They had no reason not to trust him.
Seeing the layout and the staircase with his own eyes and having determined the hours of the changing of the guards, Zerio now had the basis for a plan. It would be risky, likely to fail, but such acts of honor often were and he appreciated the challenge and the trust of his superiors to undertake the risk.
“Move along,” barked one of the soldiers who had taken the tray, removed what was to be his and his companion’s portion, and left the rest to the other who was now taking it up the stairs. “The queen will have your eyes for gawking.”
“Pardon. It’s just…steeper…than I expected…from the outside,” Zerio said with a shudder, taking the remains of previous meals and the trays left behind and backing towards the door. Giving the illusion of a fear of heights would, he hoped, work in his favor later. It gained him a sneer and a snort from the men devouring their meal, the sort of brush off Zerio wanted, leaving him free to plot phase three of his plan without suspicion.
His journey back to the kitchen with the trays, a shortcut taken to avoid interaction with palace staff, brought him past the Black Room, a room most often used by the de Corrmick’s for a midday retreat. It was named as much for the color of most of its décor as it was for the fact that, historically, much of Neth’s policy and many decisions on war and execution, had been decided in that room throughout the centuries of de Corrmick rule over shared glasses of the expensively popular Glevum Black Ale that so many de Corrmick kings preferred.
He had not been inside that room, as most often the cedar doors were closed. Being caught inside might cost him his head, or at least his position in the palace guard. Today the dark wood double doors were ajar, open far enough to allow the raised voices within to be heard in the corridor by anyone who passed. A single word caught Zerio’s attention and after glancing up and down the corridor to be sure he was alone, he paused to listen to the recently arrived news.
“My brother is insane!” Inness shrieked in frustrated fury. “Risking plague to send a few…”
“I dare say more than a few.” Zerio recognized the elder Fraen’s voice and thought he recognized a few of those murmuring behind it.
