Shadowheart (84 page)

The knife was so close that Matt Tinwright was beginning to think Hendon Tolly might be about to test it on him, despite his promises. Tinwright looked to the soldiers, three hardened men in Summerfield colors, Tolly’s handpicked guards, but they would not even meet his eye. The protector’s madness was as clear as a large livid bruise on pale skin. No one wanted to endanger himself by catching Tolly’s attention.

“What do you w-want me to do . . . ?” Tinwright didn’t even want to touch the knife. The green handle and the tomb-patina made it look envenomed.

“Follow me, of course.” Tolly lowered the knife and pointed to the steps leading down into the Eddon family vault. The sun was well behind the hills now and the opening seemed a gateway to the void itself, the naked emptiness that came before the gods. “We have work to do, fool, and midnight is only hours away. If we are to beat that brown dog Sulepis to the prize, we cannot wait any longer.” He turned to one of the guards. “When Buckle arrives, send him down to me at once.”

The guard nodded. Tolly turned back to Matt Tinwright. “Come, now. Bring the child. Haste!”

His stomach roiling so he feared he might vomit, his head full of confused and fearful thoughts, Tinwright wrapped the blankets a little tighter around the squirming royal heir and followed Hendon Tolly down into the tomb.

 

Tolly led them to the old vault, which lay behind the first outermost chamber where Okros Dioketian had died and Tinwright himself had been caught by a returning Hendon Tolly. The old vault was larger and higher than the front chamber, a hollow, six-sided mountain of stone, each of the six walls honeycombed with niches, and each niche holding its own stone or lead box. Most of the old coffins bore no images of the dead, and few even had inscriptions; those who slumbered inside, many of them kings and queens of Southmarch, had now become nameless and faceless.

“No one has been buried in this room for hundreds of years,” Tolly said, walking slowly around the hexagonal chamber with his hands behind his back like an idler out for a stroll. “Kellick built the outer chamber, it is said, which means that great Anglin himself must be here, crumbling in one of these hidey-holes.” He looked up to see whether he had shocked Tinwright with his blasphemy. “But nobody knows which!” Tolly laughed. “No matter how famous in life, when you are dead, you are nameless clay!” The baby in Tinwright’s arms was beginning to cry steadily now, the hitching sobs becoming a single wail. “By Perin’s beard, poet, will you give that cursed child a shake?” Tolly said, frowning. “Make it be quiet.”

Matt Tinwright held the small creature gingerly. What did someone like him know about comforting an infant? “Does he have to be here, Lord?”

“What are you babbling about? Of
course
he has to be here—we cannot perform the ritual without him! Might as well try to have a dinner with no roast!” Tolly closed his eyes as if he could bear no more, but he kept them closed for longer than Tinwright would have expected, and when he opened them, they had a perilous cast. “I said, silence that child.”

Tinwright could think of nothing else to do except to give the tiny creature his finger to suck. It was a trick he had seen Brigid use on her sister’s child to quiet it. Little Alessandros continued to hitch and sob for a while even with the finger in his mouth, but gradually grew silent.

Tolly thrust out his hand, and one of the guards handed over a sack he had been carrying. “Where is that other fool? He should have been here by now.”

“My lord . . . ?”

“Shut your mouth, poet, I am not talking to you. Well?”

The guard who had handed him the sack squirmed beneath his master’s bright, disturbing glare. “Buckle? I’m sure he’ll be here right quickly, Lord Tolly. ...”

Tolly silenced him with a mere movement of his hand. “Enough. Go and wait outside for him, both of you. I would talk with Master Tinwright.”

The guards, only too willing to leave the Old Vault, hustled away. Tinwright heard their footsteps going up from the new vault to the surface. When they died away he became uncomfortably aware that he was trapped far beneath the ground—in a tomb, no less!—with a dangerous madman.

“It’s almost time,” Hendon Tolly said after some moments had passed. “Did you hear the bell as we came down? That would have been ten of the clock. The Syannese must have taken the residence by now—much good it will do them!” The lord protector laughed. Of late he had stopped trimming his beard and paying close attention to his clothing. Now, ragged and almost untended, Hendon Tolly no longer looked like the mirror of Tessian court fashion. “They will strut and imagine themselves as conquerors, just as that Xixian dog beneath our feet dreams himself to be the chosen of the gods—but they will both be wrong! Because I will beat them to the post. The goddess’ favor will be mine!”

Tinwright could no longer keep track of what his fearsome master planned to achieve with his dreadful sacrifice. Sometimes he talked as though the goddess Zoria would serve him personally, other times as though he himself would become a god. Tinwright might have marked it all as the ravings of one moonstruck, but he had felt the cruel power that lurked in Tolly’s mirror, had felt it stalking him like a hungry wolf. He didn’t want to feel it again and he certainly did not want to hurt a child, royal or not. But what else could he do? Run? Even if he got away from Tolly, the sentries were just outside.

Better to let Tolly kill him, perhaps. If they fought, at least his death might be swift. He could go to the gods with the knowledge that he had refused to do an inexcusable thing.

He squeezed the baby tightly against him, which made the infant burst out crying again.

“My lord,” Tinwright began, “I can’t . . . I won’t ...” but even as the words came out of his mouth—and admittedly, they were not loud to begin with—Hendon Tolly silenced him with an imperious hand.

“Quiet. Do you hear that?” He cocked his head. “There. That fool Buckle has finally arrived. You will enjoy this, poet. A little surprise planned just for you.”

“F-For me . . . ?” But now he could hear it, too, a commotion in the other vault, the sound of people moving, of boots on stone and a woman’s voice, protesting, pleading . . .

Oh, gods, has the monster brought Queen Anissa to watch what happens to her child?
Was there no limit to Tolly’s depravity?

The soldiers dragged the struggling woman into the room. When he saw who it was, Tinwright’s knees almost buckled beneath him.

“Ah, and here is that last member of our convocation,” said Tolly cheerfully. “Lady Elan, how I have missed you. You were a cruel, fickle girl to let me think you had run away.”

Elan M’Cory stopped fighting against the guards who held her arms. “You’re a monster, Hendon—a goblin! A demon!”

Tinwright could only stare. The world seemed to be falling in on top of him.

“Nonsense, my dear.” Hendon was at her side in a moment, then pressed her cheek with the blade of the jade-handled knife as the guards held her. He pushed a little too hard and a thread of shining red appeared. “Our friend the poet will do everything I say because he will not want to see harm come to a single hair on your lovely head. Did he not go to great lengths already to hide you from me?”

Tinwright felt as though his insides had turned to sand and cold water. “Oh, gods help us, how . . . how did you find her?”

“Oh, the gods will be helping you soon enough, never fear.” Hendon Tolly’s glee was mounting by the instant. “I have had you followed every time you left the castle, little poet. You may have thought yourself clever with your twisting courses, but all you have done is make my soldiers tired and angry—you fooled no one. Honestly, did you really think to hide a noblewoman of Summerfield in your sister’s hovel?”

Tinwright turned to catch Elan’s eye. “I’m sorry. I never thought ...”

“Enough.” Tolly lingered a moment to sniff at her hair and face like a cat at a fleck of carrion. “Ah, I hope he does what he says, my dear,” he whispered loud enough for Matt Tinwright to hear. “I pray no harm must come to you. I want you back, you see. I have missed marking your white skin and I have missed the sounds of your suffering. It is like a sickness, this longing of mine. ...”

“Do nothing that he wants, Matt!” Elan called to Tinwright. “I was already a dead woman when we met—I was a corpse from the first time he touched me ...!”

“But our poet is not made of such cruel stuff,” Tolly said. “He will do what he is told. He will help me perform the ritual in place of poor, foolish old Brother Okros. He will sacrifice the child.” Tolly came to Tinwright then and touched the king’s child on the forehead with his dusty white finger, leaving a mark. “Because if he does not, he will watch me take the skin off his beloved Elan before he dies.”

She heard something moving around in the dark—a dark too deep for even her strong Funderling eyes—and sat up.

“The Tortoise ...”
a small voice was whispering.
“Then the Knot . . . and the Owl . . . the Last Hour of the Ancestor, which deep in the ancient days was the door to his house . . . the signs are so clear that surely even a fool could see them ... but why ... ?”

“Who’s there?” Opal cried.

A moment of silence passed before the answer came.
“It’s me, Mama Opal.”

“Flint? What are you doing, boy?” She elbowed herself up out of the narrow cot and felt for the warmstone. When it was in her hand it began to glow a faint pink, enough to let her see around the room. To her dismay, Flint stood before her dressed not in his nightshirt but in daytime clothes and boots, a cloth sack in his hands.

“What in the name of stone and stonecutting are you doing? What is that sack for?”

“I was only putting some food in it. Some bread and a few dried winter mushrooms.”

“What . . . ? Oh, I see—you’re going somewhere, or at least you think you are.” She sprang out of bed and put herself between him and the door to the monks’ dormitory where they slept. “But I won’t let you.”

Flint looked at her, his expression calm but solemn. “I have to, Mama Opal. Please let me go.”

“Go
where
? Why do you do this to us, boy? To me? Haven’t we been good to you?”

He flinched as if something hurt him, surprising her. “Yes. You have been better to me than anyone else ever has! I’m not running away, Mama Opal, or getting into trouble. I’ve just realized that there’s something I must do. It . . . came to me.”

“What came to you?”

“I . . . I can’t tell you. Because I don’t entirely know. But I know where it starts, and this is it. I must go.”

Opal was close to despair, her anger melting away as fear supplanted it. “But where? This is foolishness, child! Where could you go? There’s a war outside! The southerners might come down on us any moment with swords and spears. You’ll be killed!” She came toward him, her hands now clasped before her breast. “Don’t say such things, my rabbit. You’re not going anywhere. Come back to bed. Sleep—it will all look different in the morning. You had a dream, that’s all, and it seems very real.”

“No.” His voice was not cold, but neither was it comforting. “No, Mama Opal.
This
is the dream. And I am beginning to wake.”

“Why couldn’t Chert be here . . . ?” Flint was taller than she was now, but it didn’t matter: the thought of trying to restrain him had never seriously crossed her mind. She threw her arms around him. “Please, my sweet boy, my son, don’t do it. Don’t go. I’ve already had to see your . . . to see my husband off on another bootless errand. ...” Tears spilled down her cheeks.

The boy put his arms around her in an awkward embrace. “I’m sorry, Mama Opal, but I have to.”

She leaned back a little and looked keenly, sufferingly at his face. “You’re not like anyone else, are you? It’s no use trying to make you something you’re not.” She laughed, a bitter, heartbroken sound. “I’ll never see you again. The Elders gave you to me only to snatch you away again—a sort of joke.”

“You will see me again.” The confusion had left his voice. “I promise that. And you have done so much more than you know. You have saved me.”

She stepped away from the door. “Go on, then. I’ve never been able to stop either you or Chert from doing what you must. Can you really not tell me where you go?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Not yet. But I will know soon. Be brave, Mama.”

She had long ago set down the warmstone; deprived of her hand and its coursing blood, its light had by now all but faded. Only the faintest rosy glow touched Flint as he opened the door into the hallway and stepped out into the echoing darkness.