The Barrow (19 page)

But perhaps not this day.

Arduin suddenly realized that Duke Pergwyn and Lord Rohan were heading to the same set of stairs as he was. On any other day, he would have been thrilled at an opportunity to quickly rush ahead to the top of the stair, to stop there and casually greet the Duke, and then bow and give way to the Peer, to show that he was not intimidated like the others. On any other day, but not this one;
is this what I have been reduced to?
was all he could think
.
He was sick to his heart of the Court and the little games he had to play, and so he simply stopped and stood respectfully off to the side to give them plenty of room to take the stairs ahead of him.

It seemed for a moment in fact that they would pass by without even seeing him, as Lord Rohan was busy saying something in hushed tones into the Duke's ear, and this would have suited his current mood just fine. But to his surprise Arduin thought he saw the slightest gesture from Lord Rohan that drew the gaze of the Duke's one good eye right to him. He barely had a moment to wonder if he had imagined the gesture when he found himself locking eye with the Duke, and he was so startled he forgot to bow.

“Ah, Lord Arduin. Were you leaving too? Come, walk with us,” the Duke called out, and then Arduin suddenly found his feet carrying him forward to walk down the broad stairs next to the Duke and Lord Rohan, his knights falling in beside the Duke's trailing entourage. His heart leapt into his throat; any number of nearby courtiers in the hall had heard the Duke's invitation, and Arduin could not have been more astonished at this sudden good fortune.

“I think you may know I am a blunt man,” Duke Pergwyn said as they walked down the stairs and out into the lower galleries, clerks and minor courtiers scattering out of their way with scraping bows and curious glances. “It's why my cousin listens to me, I suppose, and made me a member of his privy council. I've always meant to tell you that you have had my greatest sympathy during the troubles that have befallen your family, but I regret that I have not had a chance to do so. Sir Oswin mentioned that he'd spoken to you, and so you were on my mind when we passed you by. A happy coincidence.”

“Please know, my Lord, that your dignity under duress has not gone unnoticed these many years, and that there are those of us who have watched from afar, hoping very strongly that some way back into the good graces of the High King might be found for you and your line,” Lord Rohan said quietly. “Your father is, well, perhaps not pursuing the best path . . .”

“I suspect my father wishes to marry me to Lady Silga, if that is what you mean?” Arduin replied, suddenly thankful that the young clerk's news allowed him that guess.

“Yes, and that, alas, will not likely happen,” said Lord Rohan, shaking his head. “Baron Guiton is very glad for the attention, but he will not be the one to rescue your family.”

“Your father's wasting his time, is what Rohan's trying to say. After ten long years he's desperate for patrons, and he's thrown in his lot with the Crown Prince and the Iron Cock, and they've dangled Djarfort's daughter in front of him as a carrot, and they're going to string him along as long as they're enjoying the flattery and the money,” the Duke spat. “A marriage makes perfect sense, but it won't come first. You'll have to do something to make a good marriage possible. And I mean
you
. Your father thinks that he can redeem the honor of the Orwain name, but he can't. It's got to be you.”

“But how?” Arduin blurted, then immediately regretted. “Father . . . I must admit Father has also urged me to return to the Tournaments this summer, and aim for the Champion's crown again, and I have thought hard upon it.”

“It would be good to see you back in the lists, I admit; we jousted a long time ago, didn't we?” the Duke asked.

“Yes, at the Tournament of Flowers, almost ten years ago, before . . .” Arduin trailed off. “Before . . .”
Before I killed him
.

“
Before
, yes,” the Duke said, coming to a stop in the middle of the Lower Courtyards and turning to face Arduin, staring at him with his one good eye. “That won't do. That won't do at all. No one blames you for what happened; well, I guess some do, but we all know accidents happen. But returning to the jousts, seeing you take to the lists again? No, a decade may have passed, and luckily for your sister Uthella of Uthmark has remained the most conspicuously scandalous woman in the Kingdoms, but that will just trigger a lot of unpleasant memories, and give people a chance to retell old stories.” Arduin flushed, and hung his head for a moment. He felt the Duke's one eye studying him.
But which eye?
he suddenly thought.

“My cousin Owen and the Erid King are planning a summer campaign, and they mean to have Porloss' head on a platter before the end of it,” the Duke said finally. “This time I'll be joining them, and so will King Gavant of Huelt. We are to raise a force of three thousand knights and seven thousand footmen, the largest army we've gathered during Awain's reign as High King, and we're headed right into the Manon Mole. We're not just going after Porloss, but after all those hardscrabble hill knights that have called that place home since the dawn of time. I know Owen has passed you by for his recent rosters, I'm sure he had his reasons, but I decide the men who will travel with me. Come with me this summer, as part of my contingent, you and your household knights and a portion of the levy from your country estates. Action in the field, Lord Arduin, in defense of the High King; that's the way back into his good graces.”

Arduin stood there, thunderstruck. “My . . . my Lord Duke, it would be an honor,” he finally managed to get out. “I have seven personal knights and five squires at your disposal, and by right can raise a levy of fifty sergeants-at-arms from amongst the tenants of our estates.”

“Good,” Duke Pergwyn said with a soft smile. “The plan is to start right after the Feast of the Four Kings, probably the second or third day of Myradéum. So spend the spring preparing, and expect my summons and letters of commission sometime during the month of Sirenium.” He clapped Arduin on the shoulder.

“Congratulations, my Lord Arduin,” said Lord Rohan with a short bow, and then they were off, with the Duke's entourage loudly clattering by.

When they were gone, Arduin finally let out a long breath.

“Pardon me, Lord Arduin, but
Islik's balls
,” said Sir Holgar, his mouth gaping. “Did that really just happen?”

The Duke of Enlos, cousin to the High King, just offered me his patronage, and a chance to redeem my family's honor
, Arduin thought. He looked up at the bright spring sky.
After ten years, oh happy day. And all thanks to a stray question about some country lordling's horse-faced wife
. He had the sudden urge to run back up to the High King's Hall and give the woman a kiss. He wondered for a moment what his father would say when he told him, then decided with a sudden laugh that he didn't care. He felt like everyone in the Lower Courtyards was staring at him.
As well they should
, he thought.

“Gentlemen, to the Great Temple of our Divine King,” he said, feeling himself in good humor for the first time in . . . well, in years. “For I believe offerings in His name are very much in order. Then let's find the others, and get home.” He grinned. “We've got some swords to sharpen, and a rebel earl to kill.”

Harvald crossed into the streets of the University Quarter of Therapoli in keen high spirits—feeling refreshed from his stop at the city house of his father—but with a stomach full of butterflies and a burning sensation in his ears; it was a feeling that he had been unable to shake since Stjepan had slid the map out of its scroll tube.
Someone is talking about me
, he thought with a laugh. At his father's house he had changed from the dirty, grubby travel clothes that he had felt like he had been wearing for three weeks into clean, fresh city garb: a black doublet with unobtrusive gold thread embroidery on the sleeves, black brocade knickerbockers and breeches over hose and a subtle codpiece, and pointed leather shoes. He had grabbed a plain brown sleeveless half-coat lined with fur to help ward off the spring chill, and he had affixed a small gold badge in the shape of a wyvern clutching a quill to his coat to show that he was a member of the Chancery. His leather satchel, with its precious cargo, was slung over one shoulder, and a dagger and coin purse were discreetly slung next to his left hip. To anyone glancing his way he would have appeared to be more or less what he was: a clerk from the High King's Court, perhaps from a moneyed family, on his way on some errand into the oldest and greatest University in the Middle Kingdoms.

Except, of course, that his business had absolutely nothing to do with the Court.

The University sat on a rise in the middle of its own Quarter of the city, north of the Forum and west of the High King's Hall and High Quarter. The original buildings of the University had been built in the Golden Age in imitation of the Golan Great Schools, but none had lasted to the present day. The University had been damaged or destroyed twice, and rebuilt, most recently in the years following the Worm Kings' sack of the city. Its central core was a sprawling marble building that once wrapped around a grid of four square quads. The two lower quads were named the Lower Quad and the Library Quad. The wing that separated the two upper quads had been destroyed during the War of the Throne Thief, and rather than rebuild it the two quads had been allowed to connect into one large Upper Quad. Over the centuries the University had effectively expanded into the streets surrounding its original core and campus, and now many of its administrative offices and the residences for students and magisters were now found in adjacent or nearby buildings, including the student colleges that had been chartered as affiliate parts of the University: Highwall College, the oldest and most prestigious, and now largely a bastion of noble Aurian elitism; Drewson's College, which had been started as a counter to Highwall, and served as a haven and sponsor for students of low means; the College of the Globe, a haven for alchemists and natural philosophers who believed that the world was round; and the Mottist College of Therapoli, the youngest and most controversial college in the University. A Black College, dedicated to the occult and the Nameless Cults of the Forbidden Gods, was naturally also rumored to exist, but if it did, then it at least had no official building to call its own.

Outside and around those buildings had grown an entire Quarter, filled with merchants and vendors eager to serve the University and its students. Book binders and booksellers, paper shops and quill makers, scriptoriums, laundresses, boarding houses, cheap taverns and eateries, money lenders and brothels all clustered together in the narrow streets and alleys that sprawled, maze-like, out from the University itself. Harvald felt a pang of nostalgia as he passed amongst them: Mercer's Fine Books, where he had purchased his first copy of
The Secret Book of Azoth
, a grimoire on the use of magic mirrors by the pseudonymous “Mercury King”; the boarding house at the corner of Ink Street and what the locals called Backstab Alley, where he and Stjepan had rented rooms for several months; the Feathered Quill, the tavern on Gate Street where the Lords of Book and Street had first formed up for battle during the War of the False Book.
By the gods that was a silly name
, Harvald mused as he passed the Quill.
The Lords of Book and Street, who had come up with that? Had that been Fionne, the poor bastard?

Upon arriving there as a young man, Harvald had been told by older students that the maze-like nature of the University Quarter was the mirror and manifestation of its “underground self” because, according to campus legend, it had been built not only upon the previous incarnations of the University but also upon the ancient dungeons of Myrad. Harvald knew that strictly speaking that was not likely to be true, as the University had been founded about forty years before the rule of the Mad King. But many students reported that they became lost while wandering in the streets of the Quarter at night, and the superstitious did not like to travel after dark. Harvald had never felt afraid there. The notion that a thing or a person might have an “underground self” that was different, in ways large or small, than their outer self had been very exciting to young Harvald, for he certainly found that to be true about himself. He, Stjepan, Gilgwyr, and some others had spent more than a few hours poking around in the basements and cellars of the University, looking for the entrance to the old buried dungeons, but while they delved deep and found many things to wonder at, including buried rooms and halls that belonged to the Golden Age University, they never found anything that seemed to fit the bill for the dungeons that had once imprisoned the Divine King.

The whole city, in fact, had a deep underground life: the layers of older parts of the city, now buried and built upon; the cisterns and sewer and waterworks, which fed the fountains of the city's plazas and its two Baths before emptying into the bay; and cellars, crypts, and ancient passages built by the inhabitants of the city over the course of almost two thousand years. All interconnected. Enough secrets to keep a man who enjoyed secrets busy for a lifetime.