Dragon Heart (11 page)

Abruptly in Broga's mind's eye he imagined her carried off by gulls. Spreading wings and flying away. Turning into a great fish. His belly clenched. He could not see what this meant. Convulsively he flung the ring away. The soldiers had rigged the litter between the mules in tandem, and were waiting for him. He tramped by them with a curt wave and led them off the long way up to the castle.

At the castle's big main gate, four of his own men saluted him. The walk had calmed him and he stood to one side and watched without a shiver as the others carried in his father's body. He said to the sergeant, “Go lay it in the hall, in state, as befits a King.” But he hung back when the litter went on.

To the guard on the gate, he said, “Has my brother caught the Princes?”

The guard cleared his throat and glanced at the other men. “No, my lord. We were just talking about that, my lord. Nobody can find them.”

Broga looked around him at the gate yard. There was no other way out of the castle. “If they haven't tried to get through this way then they're hiding somewhere in this infernal place. What about the women?”

“They're locked up, my lord. I heard that myself from the tower guard.”

“Where is my brother?” Broga loved to see Oto getting something wrong. But first there was Erdhart, and Broga said, “Stand a continual watch, here, then; they will have to show up here sometime. Seize them then and send to me,” and went into the castle to care for his father.

*   *   *

Pal Dawd, who had come here as sergeant of the Archduke Erdhart's guard, was having some difficulty deciding who his officer was. Both of the Erdhartssons kept giving him orders, although Oto was to be crowned King, and perhaps that would solve it.

On Broga's order Dawd and his corporal Marwin laid out Erdhart on the stone table in the hall. Dawd sent the corporal up to the lord's chamber for his best cloak, and to find servants and water to wash the body. Broga was pacing around and around the terrace room like an ox driving a millstone.

“I want a railing built across that open edge. Maybe we can block it up entirely.” His voice rasped. “But first I'll throw every one of the children off the edge. Let them feel what my father felt.” Broga flung himself down on his knees beside the corpse. “Oh, God. Take him into Your pure bosom; let him find Your perfect peace.”

Marwin came back with the cloak, a fine brocaded cloth with fur and gold, but no servant had appeared with water. The body was filthy. Dawd went out to the next room, the big, round antechamber where all the stairs began, and looked for someone to help but there were only soldiers. Finally he beckoned over a couple of grunts and took them into the hall.

Broga was still praying, fervent, his fists clutched to his face. Dawd pointed the two men at the corpse. “Get water and wash him.”

Marwin came over to Dawd, his eyes sharp, and made a gesture with his head toward the corner. Dawd glanced at Broga, who was wholly bound up in his mourning, and followed Marwin over to the wall.

“You know,” Marwin said, his voice eager, “this is all coming apart, here.”

“Sssh,” Dawd said. Marwin faced him; over the other man's shoulder Dawd could see Broga and he looked for signs he was listening. Hunched into his prayer, Broga did not move, except his shoulders, which trembled. The men washing the body were making enough noise to cover a whisper. Still Dawd moved off along the wall, toward the front of the terrace.

Marwin pursued him. “Did you hear what they said, back there? They can't find the Princes. And Oto wants to be King. But who's to say? And these people hate us.”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm just asking you, that's all.”

Dawd looked out toward the sea. In the blazing late sun the sea was rising, its surface breaking into whitecaps, the long combers crashing over the shore rocks. A cormorant teetered on the wind near the edge of the terrace, so close he could see the black disk of its eye. The death of Erdhart weighed on him, the Emperor's brother, a man of the golden blood. They had come here thinking this tour of duty would be easy. Dawd remembered looking forward to this.

He had been born and raised in the Holy City, far to the east of here, where the water was a placid lake. He became a soldier because there was nothing else to do, for a lowborn man, except shoveling dirt. He was a good soldier; he understood his orders and obeyed them perfectly and he kept himself ready to fight. He had spent some time in the hard wars in the south, where the Empire was increasing over the savage desert tribes, and the move here, with the House of Erdhart, had been a promotion, even a chance to settle down.

“Do we follow Oto?” Marwin said. His voice dropped to a murmur. “Broga is the better man.”

Dawd wheeled on him. “We're Imperial soldiers. We do as we're told.”

Marwin snapped up straight as a plumb line. “Yes, of course.” Without moving his head, he shifted his eyes, not far enough to see Broga, far enough to indicate him. “I never had any doubt of you, sir.” He cocked up his forearm, his palm turned out, saluting. “Thank you for justifying my faith in you. Glory to the Empire!”

Dawd growled at him. “Glory,” he said, and flapped his hand, returning the salute. He gave another glance at the ocean, and went over to the body again. Naked, still damp, the corpse's skin had a ghastly greenish tinge. He helped the men slide Erdhart onto the beautiful cloak and lay him out on the table. Marwin went up again to the royal chamber for Erdhart's sword. Through it all, Broga prayed. Dawd went out to find a servant, remembered, and got one of the many idle soldiers to find him some candles. The soldier came back, eventually, with lamps, and they put them at Erdhart's head and feet.

Dawd's hands were shaking; he felt the coldness of the corpse under his fingertips even when he lit the lamps. He sent Marwin away and put the other two soldiers to standing guard. The ocean was booming under the terrace, the tide rising, Dawd thought, the water reaching out again for Erdhart, and he shivered, and he went out of the room.

In the big, round antechamber beyond, where all the stairs began, the idle soldiers had begun a game of bones. Dawd stood a moment wondering what to do next, and then, off on his right hand, at the foot of a staircase, he saw the littlest girl, the one everybody called the Goblin, half the size of anybody else, with her mop of frizzy red hair and her enormous blue eyes.

So even the girls were not really locked away. He went toward her, and for a moment she did not move; she stared at him with those piercing eyes, and then went off up the steps behind her. Dawd followed. On the next landing, ten steps up, she gave him a long look and then went into another passageway that led, not up, but off sideways through the wall.

He stopped, his gut contracting. He had not seen that long, narrow way before. He did not come here often and yet he was sure it had not been there before. But she was standing just inside, watching him. He went cautiously toward her.

At the very threshold of the passage, with the girl almost within arm's length, he put his foot out, half-expecting to meet solid, if invisible, rock. His foot went on beyond the threshold and came down on the floor. The girl went back another step. He crept after her.

“Come, now. Come to me. I won't hurt you.” If he caught her, he could get her back into the bedroom and Oto and Broga never had to know she had escaped. She watched him a moment, and stepped backward, and behind her in the gloom the corridor bent and she disappeared around the corner.

Abruptly a light glowed on the rough black rock of the passage wall. She was just there, just beyond that turn, and she had lit a lamp. Dawd went a few steps on, going well to the right, so he could see around the corner before he reached it.

The light retreated as he moved. When he saw her again she was standing in the middle of the narrow way, one hand on the rock, the lamp in the other. The passage was narrowing with each step, and behind her, he saw, it ended in a blank wall. He had her trapped.

He said, “Come, now. I won't hurt you. I'll just take you back to your sisters.” This was the one who could not talk, and he wondered, briefly, if she was deaf also, but he had seen others talk to her. He crept on cautiously toward her, to keep from frightening her, crouching to make himself smaller, whispering, “I won't hurt you. I want to help you.” And she turned toward the blank wall and was gone, and the lamp with her.

He stood in utter darkness, a black like nothing.

He was only a few feet from the staircase back down to the antechamber. He put out his hand, feeling for the wall, and his fingertips grazed the rock. Turning, he groped his way along, going back the way he had come in. When the corridor turned he would see light. He kept one hand on the wall always, so he would not lose his way.

The corridor did not turn. Under his feet it began to go downward. A sudden gust of damp, salty air blew into his face. He stopped. As if the rock closed around him he suddenly could not breathe.

Under his hand, the solid rock was warm, like flesh. It does not know me, he thought. I am inside and it does not know me.

He struggled not to scream. His legs were watery. He turned, and felt his way back along the wall. He began holding his breath, to keep the darkness out. He thought he felt the rock move, drawing closer, closing in around him.

Help me, he thought. Please help me. Not knowing who he called on.

He realized he had shut his eyes; he opened them again, and saw the rock wall before him, faintly lit.

He whirled around, sobbing with relief. The corridor rose up away from him, turning to the left, and a light bobbed steadily toward him. As he stood there, shaking, the tall girl, the Princess Casea, came around the corner toward him, a lamp in her hand.

She said, “What are you doing here? Come with me.”

She stretched out her hand to him, and he took it; the strength in her fingers surprised him. She led him back around the corner, and there was the stair landing, ahead of him.

“Oh,” he said. “I should have just kept on.”

She gave him a long, strange look. She said, “I have saved you. You must come when I call you.” She blew out the lamp and went away across the hall. Dawd stood in the hall, panting, wondering what had just happened to him.

*   *   *

Oto stood still, letting his man put on his doublet and arrange the pleats over the puffed breast. He said, “I've had a proclamation written up. Nothing particularly difficult. I'll send the herald down to read it in the marketplace. Then the day after tomorrow, we shall have the coronation.” He admired his embroidered sleeve, gold and green.

Broga made a sound in his chest. Oto said, “Do you object?”

“I think we should find the Princes first,” Broga said.

“Oh, we'll have them by then.” Oto watched the man arrange the ruffles of his sleeves. “Once they see what's happening, these people will give us no trouble.” At the moment, the main trouble they were giving was that all the native servants had disappeared. He was having to allot the work of the castle to his own men. He thought of sending for some of the men stationed down at the new fort to help out.

Broga said, “The Princes did not go out by the gate. But nobody can find them anywhere. How do you explain this?”

Oto frowned, and turned his eyes at the sergeant, standing by the door. This particular sergeant, whose name Oto could not remember, had served his father. Erdhart had trusted him, and he did seem more competent and intelligent than the rest. Oto said, “Why haven't you turned them up? Can't you search the place?”

The sergeant's square, fair-skinned face turned ruddy over the cheekbones. “I've searched, my lord. But they live here.”

“What does that mean? Are they still in the castle?”

The sergeant shook his head. “My lord.” His whole face was red now. Maybe after all he was just as stupid as the ordinary run of soldiers. Oto shrugged off the annoying memory of the men he had sent to map the place who had never found the end of it.

Broga said, “Catch them. Keep watch on the kitchen, especially; they must eat.”

Oto glared at him. “I give the orders.” He nodded to the sergeant. “Do your job. Find them. Go make sure of the Princesses.”

The sergeant blinked at him. “Yes, my lord.” He saluted. “Glory to the Empire.”

“Glory,” Broga and Oto said in unison.

Oto faced his brother again. It came to Oto that Broga was showing a selfish interest in all this; certainly he was plotting. Another reason Oto should proclaim himself King as soon as possible. He would send a copy of the proclamation to the Holy City. He nodded. “You have something to do, I'm sure?”

His brother stared at Oto a moment. “Yes, in fact,” he said. “The funeral of our father.” He turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

*   *   *

The long, steep passageway led Tirza out to the stair between the two rows of dwellings dug into the cliff. Below her was the beach, with its shops and stalls, and just to the south the broad common with the cypress tree. Only the local fishing ships floated on the blue water of the bay. She saw this with a little start of disappointment. Jeon had told her a ship had come from the south while she was gone; there had been strangers, new gewgaws, music, clothes.

The marketplace was full of people, moving like busy fish along the edges of the market, the shops and stalls. She knew them all. A red hat went by below her: that was Trollo, the piper boy, in the sack over his shoulder the balls and boxes he used in his juggles. She remembered the bright metal hats the Imperial men had worn, when she had seen them up the coast. She went down the steps; in the cliff houses as she passed, the women looked up from their soups and their brooms and smiled.

They liked her here. She was not ugly here. Nobody stared, or threw stones at her. The children who ran in a flood along the beach, screaming, who struggled along after their parents with buckets and baskets, did not come to harass her. She went by a makeshift stall rigged up on the beach, its slab of a counter stacked up with cheeses wrapped in cloth: a shepherd from inland, likely. Then Leanara's bakery, the oven door wide, the old woman bent over with her shovel to take out her round loaves. Her apprentice Suan leaned idle on the counter. They would give bread to Tirza if she only held out her hand. The aroma of the fresh baking made her stomach rumble. In the sail shop next door, cut into the wall of the cliff, the two sailmakers were arguing in ascending voices.