Lyrec Page 23

  Cheybal gaped. He stared across at the Hespet.

  Slyur fidgeted under the intensity of his stunned look, and finally pushed through his own attendants and down the steps into the crowd. Cheybal numbly watched him flee. In the crowd he caught the eye of Bozadon Reket. Reket shook his head in incomprehension: He too had witnessed the slighting of Cheybal.

  The commander tried to convince himself that it had been an oversight—that he had been preoccupied with his thoughts and had stepped out too late for Tynec, who was too caught up in the pageantry to see him. Naturally the boy would get lost in all the drama. It would rattle anyone.

  Rather than dwell on his injured pride, Cheybal thought of Pavra, and asked himself how she was enjoying the coronation. It must be just as overwhelming to her as it was to Tynec. What a sight for a child from a small village!

  He scanned the teeming sea of faces below for her. He searched again. His brow furrowed. Pavra was not there.

  Something is wrong.

  Not a mere suspicion this time, but a fear, almost palpable. He felt perspiration trickle along his hairline.

  Cheybal pushed through his men to get down the steps, waving to Reket. Tynec was enjoying the crowd, touching eager hands. When Cheybal passed him, he paused and watched, as if he could sense the fear there. A slight smile caught his lips as he extended his hand once more for someone else to kiss.

  *****

  Of the two guards present at the front entrance to the castle, only one paid Lyrec any regard at all. The other went on standing as stiffly as before, only his eyes shifting to take in this ragged annoyance.

  “Who is it you want to see?”

  “Commander of the guards,” Lyrec told him.

  “Well, does he know you? Are you expected? You look like your horse drug you all the way here. You’ve missed the coronation, anyhow.” He was careful to be only mildly truculent until he knew for certain who this man in the filthy uniform was.

  “Yes, I know,” Lyrec replied. “I—” he paused, then said, “My horse went lame. Slowed me. It’s imperative I see the commander.” The guard looked him up and down. Obviously he had ridden long and hard to get there. Was he, perhaps, a spy? “Did you hear me?” Lyrec bellowed. “I said it’s urgent. It’s about an assassination—here. Tonight.”

  “What?” The guard turned to his mate. In all his years at this door no one had ever come to him with such a story. So far as Lyrec could tell, nothing was said between them, but the second guard made a hasty retreat up the steps and through the large wooden door. Just inside, another guard checked him before opening it. The sounds of many voices poured out when the door opened. The remaining guard told Lyrec to sit and wait. “It will be awhile to be sure, what with that hall filled to capacity—it’s as bad inside as it was out here. Who is it that’s to be assassinated?”

  You great idiot, thought Lyrec. “I don’t know,” he said, and moved off to one side, sat against the castle wall with a torch hissing and fluttering overhead. Until he sat, he had no idea how tired he was. He closed his eyes. Something tiny crawled across his chest. He reached under his shirt and removed a black insect, which he then ground into the dirt. He needed a bath, and food and sleep.

  Leaning back, he tried to contact Borregad again.

  Chapter 19.

  Lyrec awoke in a small curtained room within the castle. He knew that his body still sat outside. For a moment, as he observed the dim room, he assumed Borregad must have drawn him there. Then he discovered that something else entirely had snagged him.

  He drew back, shielding his presence as a figure stepped out of the shadows—a translucent figure in the helmet and bright orange uniform of Ladoman. The soldier did not walk, he saw, but floated to the curtain. Pausing, the soldier’s head tilted; then the visored helm turned his way. “Are you here again?” came the whispered accusation. “Foolish child, I should have thought one taste enough for you.” The implied threat made no sense to Lyrec, but the quality of the voice roused worms of dread in him. Too much to withstand, too horrible a being for reality to withstand, the soldier should have been destroyed by its own odious disruption of the natural order of life.

  He had found his enemy at last.

  The soldier drew off one glove. Beneath it was a hand like solid shadow wrapped in cobweb strands of gold. Sparkles of light crackled along the filaments.

  Instinct made Lyrec retreat. A wave of panic swallowed him and he spun swiftly out of the dark chamber, into the great hall of the castle, high above the crowd. With no thought but escape, he located his path in the same moment felt the glinting hand discharge its energy—a bright yellow corposant that sped past him and exploded, blossoming like a flower to surround him and blot out the scene below. He reeled in his mental extremities like a turtle pulling into its shell. Part of the energy came with him.

  On the steps in front of the castle, his body lurched in galvanic spasms. He slapped the wall, pressed against it; his head twisted back, the cords in his neck standing out like tree roots. He breathed short, sharp sobs of anguish.

  The guard came hesitantly over to him and prodded him with the end of a pike. “Here, what’s come over you?”

  Lyrec tried to speak but could only wheeze and choke. By degrees, the pain left him. Still he couldn’t explain. And that was meant for a child?

  The guard said, “Attack of the palsy, is it? You know, my brother—Voed care for him—had that till he died. I know all about it. You just lean back and rest. The commander will be here soon enough.”

  Lyrec ignored his advice and forced himself to his feet against the wall. The guard patted him on the shoulder in sympathy. Lyrec turned and struck him across the jaw, then bolted for the castle entrance. Some of the people milling about shouted at him and a few jeered. Lyrec ran up the steps and began banging on the door. People yelled out warnings to the guard inside. The braver ones threw rocks at Lyrec, most of which missed him and pounded more loudly on his behalf. The inside guard cautiously opened the door a crack. Lyrec slammed against it. The guard flew back into a small group of celebrants, knocking them all down with him. Lyrec leaped over the tumble and dove into the midst of the crowd. Cries of alarm pursued him, but were quickly lost in the general din. He shoved people out of the way. A few angrily picked themselves up and gave chase, which only added to the chaos as they, too, shoved and were shoved in turn.

  Lyrec pried his way into the great hall. Heads near the doorway turned, conversations died in a wave away from him. On the landing across the room, Tynec stiffened abruptly and wheeled around to stare at him. The mind controlling Tynec did not know the mud-caked figure, but recognized a threat in the way. Lyrec charged through the crowd directly for the steps leading to the curtained balcony.

  Tynec raised a hand to summon a guard; then a smirk crossed the boy’s face and he lowered his hand. But the guard had seen the signal and came rushing over. “Yes, Your Majesty?” he asked. Tynec shook his head. “I thought I wanted something, but I’ve changed my mind.” The guard nodded and stepped back. Tynec noted a body of pursuers making their way into the crowd from the hall. He returned to his conversation.

  Lyrec took the steps two at a time. At the top he sprang into the darkness, sword drawn, to find Miradomon. The Ladomantine guise had been abandoned. Lyrec faced the milky white robe that Borregad had seen.

  The robe chuckled softly at the sword. “You cannot be serious.”

  Lyrec struck more swiftly than any mortal swordsman, but the sword melted away the instant it touched the robe, which absorbed the force of his effort as well, slowing his rush to a sluggishness that was like trying to cleave through water. The gilded hand emerged and clutched him by the throat. Lyrec could not move. His arms hung heavily.

  “Who are you?” the robe asked. “How did you know about this? It was the child, wasn’t it? What are you, some Kobach champion? Too bad for you that you could hardly have arrived at a more propitious moment for me.”

  A warmth flooded Lyrec and som
ething bright passed in front of his eyes. Then he was thrown against a wall and held upright there by unseen force.

  A shout and footsteps echoed from the bottom of the stairwell: The people in pursuit of him had broken at last through the crowd.

  Miradomon turned away and parted the curtains slightly. “Ah, there he comes now.” His hand emerged from the sleeve of the robe again. This time it held a small object—a mechanical device shaped roughly like a cross with a spring and metal crossbar. Miradomon tossed it at Lyrec’s feet, then drew a steel bolt out of the air.

  The people giving chase reached the top of the stairwell, then stopped suddenly, paralyzed. The nearest one barely had one foot through the doorway.

  Unable to free himself from his invisible bonds, Lyrec watched in horror as the black hand lifted up the bolt, sighting along it at someone in the crowd below. He tried to shout a warning, but his mouth would not open. In agony he wrestled and fought. The bolt shot from Miradomon’s hand.

  In the hall below, people began to scream.

  The robe turned to him. “I will probably never know who you are, but I do look forward to drinking your death, which I know for a fact will be soon now. Good-bye.” He vanished upon the last word; the people at the top step burst into the chamber and confronted Lyrec with drawn weapons. Released at the same moment from his paralysis, he could only drop to his knees. He could not have raised an arm to ward off a blow.

  Hearing the shouts from below, one of the soldiers in the group crossed to the curtain and flung it back. “Someone’s fallen,” he said. He would have said more, but the man behind him yelled, “Your sword!” The soldier wheeled around, hand already drawing his blade. He saw a dark-bearded man sitting on the floor beside a miniature crossbow. The man wore a bright, clean uniform—the uniform of a Ladomantine mercenary.

  Someone down below yelled, “He’s been shot! Up there! Up there!”

  The soldier shouted down to them, “We have him!”

  The armed group closed on Lyrec. He watched them as if in a dream, barely able to understand what they were saying. He saw a foot swing up at his face but could not block it. He barely felt the boot kick his cheek. He tumbled over, cracking his head against a stone. That blow released him finally from Miradomon’s spell, but left him dazed by the violence done to him.

  He was jerked to his feet and dragged to the edge of the balcony, revealed to the crowd. They fell silent and stared up at him. Then the men holding him shoved him roughly over to the stairwell and hauled him down the steps. He expected to be stabbed at any moment, but they took him into the hall alive. The assemblage stared at him, some craning to see, as he was led across the room to the steps beneath the throne.

  Tynec stood above him arrogantly. Lyrec knew who he was facing, could perceive the aura of energy surrounding the child. “Murderer,” proclaimed Tynec so that all could hear. “No one here can doubt it, therefore I decree any trial to be a redundancy. You will be executed at dawn. Your pig of a king will regret having ever sent you.”

  He was interrupted from further threats by a commotion in the crowd. Four men came forward bearing a litter, the people in their path falling back and muttering to one another. At first, Lyrec could not see who the victim was; only the end of the steel bolt Miradomon had thrown, sticking up above the litter. When the four men reached the edge of the parting crowd, they turned about and leaned the litter up. In it lay Cheybal. He was still alive, pale, his glistening eyes half-lidded. The bolt stuck out from the center of his chest. Trailing after the litter came Bozadon Reket in a state of shock; he carried Pavra, unconscious and all but forgotten, in his arms.

  Cheybal saw Lyrec, shook his head and tried to say something.

  Lyrec tried to lean closer, but one of the men beside him grabbed his hair and tugged back his head. Cheybal motioned the men holding the foot of the litter to lower their end that he might stand. Reket quickly passed Pavra to someone in the crowd and hurried forward. “No, no, old friend, don’t try to stand. You will kill yourself, sure.”

  Cheybal squeezed shut his eyes against a wave of pain. He raised one trembling hand and pointed at Tynec. “Not the king,” Cheybal whispered. He tried to continue but the pain increased and he fell back with a groan.

  Lyrec looked at Tynec. The boy’s eyes were wide, but not in fear, rather with some fearful malice directed at Cheybal. At his sides, the boy’s hands opened and closed as if squeezing something. “Stop him!” Lyrec shouted, and flung back two of his guards. “Stop the boy—he’s killing him!” The hilt of a sword smacked into the back of Lyrec’s head and he fell to his knees.

  Cheybal twisted in agony now. Reket gripped his hand hard, willing his own life into Cheybal’s. Tears flooded his eyes. He bent over and said, “Cheybal, you struggle too much. Let Mordus come, embrace him—remember how we always said we would know the time and give over proudly, remember?” He wiped his nose and face.

  Cheybal pulled Reket down suddenly. Through his pain, he said, “The girl. Watch over her. Listen to—to what she says … Ghost.”

  It was all taking too long for Tynec. The commander put up too much resistance. He came down the steps and strode up to Cheybal. “Poor commander,” he lamented, interrupting Cheybal. “Your will is strong. You have served your country with honor.”

  He touched Cheybal’s shoulder as if in sympathy. The commander went immediately rigid and was dead.

  Bozadon Reket, still gripping Cheybal’s hand, had his fingers stung by the charge that surged through Cheybal for an instant. He dropped his dead friend’s hand and clutched his numb, tingling fingers. What had the boy done?

  The young king saw the accusation in Reket’s eyes but found it too amusing and had to turn away to conceal his crooked smile. “Well, now,” he muttered. Climbing up three steps, he turned and addressed the crowd.

  “The best man in Secamelan is dead! Killed by this Ladomantine assassin—here!” He thrust a finger toward the semi-conscious figure sprawled at his feet. “So, too, has he slain all cause for celebration. With the exception of our advisor from Findcarn, I want you all on your way by midday tomorrow. It is time to choose sides, but know that all—all enemies of Secamelan will be crushed!” He glanced at Cheybal and added impassively, “I shall need a new commander.”

  Then he turned and marched back up the steps to the outer balcony.

  The guests looked to one another for advice and found only stunned incomprehension, as if discovering themselves trapped in a room full of strangers. Or adversaries.

  The prisoner was dragged roughly away.

  Chapter 20.

  The dungeon was so dark that what Lyrec knew of its shape and size he knew by feel alone. Straw covered the floor of stone. The walls were cold and moist and uneven like the walls of a cave. In one of the walls, a row of heavy iron rings had been hammered in; above these, a small shaft—the one potential source of light in the dungeon—let in a chill breeze as well as sounds from the yard above. Feet scuttled past, voices bellowed to one another, and uneasy horses whinnied and trod the ground while their jingling bits and reins and saddles were strapped in place. More distant than these but more constant was the sound of hammering: the raising of a scaffold.

  At one point as he stood there, unconsciously gripping one iron ring tighter and tighter, two voices called down to him. They sounded drunk, malicious, and he refrained from answering. There followed a queer spattering sound. Lyrec moved back from the shaft an instant before the pranksters’ urine cascaded to the floor. They laughed and called down to him again, this time saying he would do well to kill himself before the soldiers marched him to the noose; if they had their way, the crowd would throw the soldiers aside and rip him to pieces with their bare hands.

  A third voice called out from further away and the two pranksters scurried off.

  Another voice called down, “Are you in this hole?” It was Borregad.

  “I am.”

  “That’s a relief. I’ve shouted into every grille alon
g this wall. The others were either empty or stuffed with stupefied drunks. I had begun to think you weren’t being kept here at all and I’d have to contact you incorporeally—no easy thing with all the tension in the air. From what happened, I knew Miradomon was near, and I had no desire to accidentally tap into him, either. By the way, what smells here?”

  “You wouldn’t care to find out.”

  “This place is mad, do you know? A dozen times I’ve nearly been stepped on in the past few minutes alone. The whole city is alive with crazy people all dragging along sacks of armor—up that hill no less. They hardly say a word to anyone, either. They’re busy, but none too happy about it. Be glad they don’t know you by name. That fellow you killed, Cheybal—they had a great deal of respect for him. Tell me, was he possessed by Miradomon or what?”

  “I didn’t kill him. I tried to prevent it. He was the object of Miradomon’s assassination plot. At the very moment of his death, I came blundering in and Miradomon was all too delighted to let me take the blame. He hung this uniform on me and disappeared.”

  “‘Hung’ is regrettably accurate, you know. So he is now aware that we’re here?”

  “No,” replied Lyrec. “He thinks I’m some champion conjured by the Kobachs, which apparently delighted him all the more. I suppose he has some plan to link the Kobachs and Ladoman, and probably half a dozen other countries. Secamelan, the strongest, takes on all other neighbors.” He sat down in the straw. “Oh, it’s all my fault. What a dim-witted move to attack him with a sword. He melted it away without lifting a finger. What a fool!”