Where the crash of thunder and the roar of the wind had failed, the hunter’s scream succeeded. The Nuban woke up. And to his credit there was no wondering where he was or what was happening. He surged to his feet and had a foot of steel through the man’s chest in two heartbeats.
We stood with the hunter lying between us, each with our weapon blooded.
The Nuban wiped his blade on the hunter’s cloak.
‘That’s a big old crossbow!’ I toed it across the floor and marvelled at the weight of it.
The Nuban lifted the bow. He ran his fingers over the metalwork inlaid on the wood. ‘My people made this.’ He traced the symbols and the faces of fierce gods. ‘And now I owe you another life.’ He hefted the crossbow and smiled, his teeth a white line in the lantern glow.
‘One will be enough.’ I paused. ‘It’s Count Renar that has to die.’
And the smile left him.
17
The old corridors enfolded me and four years became a dream. Familiar turns, the same vases, the same suits of armour, the same paintings, even the same guards. Four years and everything was the same, except me.
In the niches small silver lamps burned oil squeezed from whales in distant seas. I walked from one pool of light to the next, behind a guard whose armour beggared my own. Makin and Gomst had been led to separate destinations, and I went alone to whatever reception awaited. The place still made me feel small. Doors built for giants, ceilings soaring so high that a man with a lance could scarcely touch them. We came to the west wing, the royal quarters. Would Father meet me here? Man to man in the arboretum? Souls bared beneath the planetarium dome? I had imagined him seated in the black claw of his throne, brooding above the court, and me led toward him between the men of the Imperial Guard.
I followed the single guard, feeling vaguely cheated. Did I want to be surrounded by armed men? Had I grown so dangerous? To be heaped with chains? Did I want him to fear me? Fourteen years old, and the King of Ancrath quaking behind his bodyguard?
I felt foolish for a moment. I brushed a hand over the hilt of my sword. They’d cast the blade from the metal that ran through the castle walls. A true heirloom, with a heritage at the Tall Castle predating mine by a thousand years at least. I ached for a confrontation then. Voices rose at the back of my mind, clamouring, fighting one against the other. The skin on my back tingled, the muscle beneath twitched for action.
‘A bath, Prince Jorg?’
It was the guardsman. I nearly drew on him.
‘No,’ I said. I forced myself to calmness. ‘I’ll see the King now.’
‘King Olidan has retired, Prince,’ the guard said. Was he smirking at me? His eyes held an intelligence I didn’t associate with the palace guard.
‘Asleep?’ I would have given a year of my life to take the surprise from those words. I felt like Captain Coddin must have: the butt of a joke I had yet to comprehend.
‘Sageous awaits you in the library, my prince,’ the man said. He turned to go, but I had him by the throat.
Asleep? They were playing with me, Father and this pet magician of his.
‘This game,’ I said. ‘I expect it will provide amusement to somebody, but, if you … worry me … one more time, I will kill you. Think on it. You’re a piece in somebody else’s game, and all you’ll earn from it is a sword through the stomach, unless you redeem yourself in the next twenty seconds.’
It was a defeat, resorting to crude threats in a game of subtlety, but sometimes one must sacrifice a battle to win the war.
‘Prince, I … Sageous is waiting for you …’ I could see I’d turned his smug superiority into terror. I’d stepped outside the rules of play. I squeezed his throat a little. ‘Why would I want to speak to this … Sageous? What’s he to me?’
‘He-he holds the King’s favour. Pl-please, Prince Jorg.’
He got the words out past my fingers. It takes no great strength to throttle a man if you know where to grip.
I let him go and he fell, gasping. ‘In the library you say? What’s your name, man?’
‘Yes, my prince, in the library.’ He rubbed at his neck. ‘Robart. My name is Robart Hool.’
I strode out across the Hall of Spears, angling for the leathered door to the library. I paused before it, turning back to Robart. ‘There are turning points, Robart. Forks in the path we follow through our lives. Times that we look back to and say, “If only”. This is one of those times. It’s not often we get them pointed out to us. At this point you’ll either decide to hate me, or to serve me. Consider the choice carefully.’ I threw the library door open. It slammed back into the wall and I walked through.
In my mind the library walls stretched to the very heavens, thick with books, pregnant with the written word. I learned to read at three years of age. I was talking with Socrates at seven, learning form and thing from Aristotle. For the longest time I had lived in this library. Memory dwarfed reality: the place looked small now, small and dusty.
‘I’ve burned more books than this!’ I said.
Sageous stepped out from the aisle given over to ancient philosophy. He was younger than I expected, forty at the most, wearing just a white cloth, like the Roman togara. His skin held the dusky hue of the middle-lands, maybe Indus or Persia, but I could see it only in the rare spots the tattooist’s needle hadn’t found. He wore the text of a small book on his living hide, cut there in the flowing script of the mathmagicians. His eyes – well I know we’re supposed to cower beneath the gaze of potent men, but his eyes were mild. They reminded me of the cows on the Castle Road, brown and placid. His scrutiny was the thing that cut. Somehow those mild eyes dug in. Perhaps the script beneath them bore the power. All I can say is that, for a time uncounted, I could see nothing but the heathen’s eyes, hear nothing but his breath, stir no muscle but my heart.
He let me go, like a fish thrown back into the river, too small for the pot. We stood face to face, inches apart, and I’d no memory of closing the gap. But I’d come to him. We stood among the books. Among the wise words of ten thousand years. Plato to my left, copied, copied and copied again. The ‘moderns’ to my right, Russell, Popper, Xiang, and the rest. A small voice inside me, deep inside, called for blood. But the heathen had taken the fire from me.
‘Father must depend upon you, Sageous,’ I said. I twisted my fingers, wanting to want my sword. ‘To have a pagan at court must vex the priests. If the pope dared leave Roma these days, she’d be here to curse your soul to eternal hellfire!’ I had nothing but dogma with which to beat him.
Sageous smiled, a friendly smile, like I’d just run an errand for him. ‘Prince Jorg, welcome home.’ He had no real accent, but he ran his words out fluid and musical, like a Saracen or a Moor.
He stood no taller than me, in fact I probably had an inch on him. He was lean too, so I could have taken him to the floor there and then, and choked the life out of him. One murderous thought bubbled up after another, and leaked away.
‘There’s a lot of your father in you,’ he said.
