Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) (11 page)

“How should I know?” Valryk
retorted. “Sit your king up again. Play for real.”

“I’m
hungry
. Let’s go raid the
kitchens.”

Valryk’s fingers froze around the
head of his victorious shaddra. “Raid?” His glance slid from one guard to the
next.

“You’re to stay here, Highness,”
one of them said. “Queen’s orders.”

“Then
you
go get us
something to eat,” he demanded, angry.

The guard lowered a tolerant smile.
“I’ll send for a footman, if it please Your Highness.”

“It does! Go!” As soon as the guard
strode off for the bell rope, Valryk whispered, “Let’s raid.
That
way.”
He slipped out of his chair and dashed off toward the servants’ door before the
second guard could catch him. Kethlyn ducked a grasping hand, rolled out of his
chair, and ran after his cousin. They scrambled for the latch on the hidden
door, but the two guards near the windows sprang after them and pressed the
servants’ door shut. “Mother’s room!” Valryk shouted.

An arm swept Kethlyn off the floor.
He bit down hard on the muscled forearm. The guard yowled and dropped him,
swung a foot into Kethlyn’s arse and boosted him after the prince.

Valryk hooted a war cry as they
slammed the queen’s side door and turned the lock. They had only seconds before
the guards ran to the corridor and around to the chamber’s main door. Kethlyn
found the knob set in the plaster molding, and soon the boys were bounding down
the narrow servants’ stairs hidden in the walls. A maid climbing to change the
queen’s sheets barely jumped out of their way in time. Crisp sheets tumbled
from her arms and down the stairs.

Footmen and scullery maids bustled
about the kitchen’s long preparation tables. Squires waited on hand to take
trays of delicate delights and flasks of wine into the Great Hall. The ovens
blazed and roasting meat turned on spits. It took two undercooks to remove the
large tray of meat pies from the ovens and set it on a cooling rack.

The two boys crouched in the
doorway to the buttery, gawking at the wealth of food and the armada of
servants. Maids hurried past, sparing them little more than cursory glances and
brief frowns. “How will we raid the food now?” asked Valryk. “There are too
many watching.”

Tongue poking out the corner of his
mouth, Kethlyn calculated his route. True, he’d never raided the kitchen when
it was this busy, but trying was better than returning to the chessboard.
“Follow me,” he whispered and bolted from the buttery. On the edge of the
nearest table, trays of muffins and other confections waited for the decorative
touch of icing and glazes. Kethlyn swiped up half a dozen in his arms, sent a
dozen more rolling and skittering across the table, and, hardly pausing, sped
past a shrieking cook who wielded a wooden spoon. Valryk’s triumphant war cry
rose just behind him, followed by an outraged bellow, “Your Highness! Bring
those back!”

Scullery maids and squires leapt
from their path, mouths hanging open. Kethlyn shrieked his own wild cry as he
fled past the ovens and dived into the corridor beyond. He stopped long enough
to glance back for his cousin. Valryk stood in the doorway, stuffing little
cakes into his mouth.

“What are you
doing
?”
Kethlyn cried, panic pitching his voice. Nelda, the head cook, ordered a pair
of squires after the thieves. “When you raid the kitchen, you can’t
eat
here. We’ll get
caught
. Hurry!”

Valryk saw the pursuing squires and
ran after Kethlyn, arms hugging the rest of his booty. The twists and turns
brought them past Etivva’s quarters and her candlelit shrine to the
Mother-Father, then on to the ledger room. Kethlyn kicked the door shut and
snicked the lock. The squires hammered on the door and cursed the raiders, but they
needed a battering ram to break through that door of ancient andyr planks.
Victory. “Ilwyyyyythe!” Kethlyn bellowed at the ceiling.

“Bramoraaaaaan!” cried Valryk. “I
can’t believe we got away! Did you see? That fat cook almost caught me! Then
she saw who I was and squeaked and let go.”

Smug and breathless, they climbed
the spiral stair to the library, nibbling on their loot as they went. At a
table littered with last week’s math lessons, they finished off every cake and
muffin, then sat back groaning. “We have to try again tomorrow,” Valryk said,
“and paint our faces first.”

“Da will probably find out and
throw us in the dungeon.” Kethlyn was only half-serious. He might earn a
stinging backside for the raid, but it was worth it.

Valryk sat up straighter. “Ilswythe
has a dungeon? I’ll bet Bramoran’s dungeon is scarier than your dungeon.”

“I’ll bet it’s not! Just because
you’re the prince doesn’t mean you have the scariest dungeon.”

“Prove it!”

Kethlyn scrambled out of his chair,
and though their bellies were stuffed with sweets, the boys raced through the
corridors, mostly empty except for handmaids and valets, who didn’t dare stop
them. Downstairs, the doors to the Great Hall were shut. Muffled arguments rumbled
inside. Yorin, the head steward, stood at his post outside the door, handing
off orders to this squire or that footman. Spotting the boys creeping along the
corridor, he called, “Highness? M’ lord? Where are you supposed to be?”

“Run for it!” Kethlyn shouted. He
and Valryk fled out the great bronze doors to the courtyard, dodged a pair of
sentries, and stopped only when they entered the shadow under the gatehouse.

“Can I help you?” The sentry in
charge of the portcullis peered from the guardroom. “Oh, it’s the young War
Commander, is it? And the king, I assume.”

“That’s right,” Valryk said,
raising his nose and propping his fists on his hips.

“Well, beat it, both of you. I’m
already on report for getting distracted from me duty. That Captain Lissah is a
downright … well, never you mind.”

Another soldier of the garrison
barged into the guardroom. His cerulean tabard was askew, and his fingers
fumbled with the buckle of his helm. “Damn that woman,” he growled. “I haven’t
slept since yesterday morning, and I just got slapped with another watch.”

“You’re telling me,” the other
said. “I been posted here twice since midnight.”

“We won’t bother you, soldier,”
Kethlyn said. Neither paid any attention as he swiped a lamp from a hook on the
wall and tucked it behind his back. “You’re doing a fine job. Carry on.” He
backed from the guardroom, beckoning Valryk to follow. The two sentries were
deep in their complaints when the boys slid back the bolt on the dungeon door
and slipped into the darkness beyond.

For a long time, neither moved. The
void ahead stank of mildew and rotting straw and other things that belonged in
the middens.

“Are there prisoners down there?”
asked Valryk, voice small and echoing and close to Kethlyn’s ear.

“Not right now, but there’s ghosts.
Captain Maegeth says so.”

“Really? Whose?”

“The ghosts of elves, she says.” He
tried to remember how Maegeth phrased it. “A thousand years ago, hundreds of
elves were put down there. They were tortured and left to die, and now their
ghosts haunt the cells.”

“Let’s go see. Light the lamp.”

The striker hung from the lamp on a
slender chain. Kethlyn wasn’t used to lighting his own lamps, and in complete
darkness it took him a long time to make a spark. Valryk fussed and tried to
tell him how it was done, but wouldn’t try himself. When the wick finally caught,
Kethlyn turned it up high and raised it over his head. The light revealed the
long stairway gently curving down into the abyss.

“Well? Go on,” Valryk ordered.

Kethlyn had only been to the bottom
of the stairs once, but that was with Captain Maegeth and his platoon, and they
had all been armed. “
You
go first!”

“You have the light, stupid.”

“Don’t call me stupid! We’ll go
together.” Kethlyn waited until the prince started to take the first step down,
then he did the same. Making sure neither fell back or pushed the other forward,
they worked their way to the bottom. The guard’s desk was empty, the torch
brackets dark, the cell doors open. Something moved beyond the lamp’s circle of
light.

“What was that?” Valryk’s whisper
quivered, and he huddled so close to his cousin that their shoulders touched.

“It was just a rat.” ‘Just’ made
him feel a little braver.

“I don’t hear any ghosts. Do you?”

Should Kethlyn tell him that
Captain Maegeth’s stories were only meant to scare kids? He did have a bet to
win, however, so he kept his mouth shut. “You know what we oughta do? We oughta
catch one of those rats and put it in my sister’s bed.” Kethlyn giggled at his
own impish plan.

“I’m not touching a dirty ol’ rat.
You do it.”

Kethlyn started down the long
corridor between the cells, holding the lamp low, but the rats were quick. They
scuttled away, squeaking and dragging their fat gray tails just out of reach.
Kethlyn dived for one, skidding on his knees in the moldy rushes, but it turned
suddenly, fleeing into the nearest cell.

“There it goes!” Valryk pointed the
way. “Get it, get it!”

Kethlyn darted into the cell,
glimpsed the rat scrambling for the shadows behind the door. He shoved the lamp
into Valyrk’s hands, swung the cell door shut, and dived onto the rat. It
squealed, but he held on tight and lifted it triumphantly by its tail. What a
glorious day this had been! A successful kitchen raid
and
a prize to
torment his sister with. He swung the rat into the lamplight for inspection,
and Valryk edged away, mouth twisted in disgust. “Let’s get out of here.” He
found the door handle and tugged. Grunting, he tugged again. “It’s locked!”

“No, it isn’t,” Kethlyn said, panic
a lump in his throat. “A guard needs a key. It’s just stuck.” He dropped his
rat and tried the door himself. It didn’t budge. “Help me.”

They both grabbed the handle and
leant back with all their weight. Valryk let go and started jumping around in
circles. “It’s locked! You stupid, you locked us in!”

“It wasn’t me, I don’t have the
key.”

“The ghosts!
They
locked us
in.”

“There’s no ghosts down here, not
really, big baby.”

“How’d it get locked then?”

Kethlyn couldn’t reason that one
out. Maybe Captain Maegeth had been telling the truth after all. “She says the
ghosts glow blue and suck the blood out of children because they want to be
alive again, but it doesn’t work. They go hunting for somebody else instead.”

Valryk threw his hands over his
ears and clamped his eyes shut. “No! Shut up!”

Kethlyn turned slowly, holding out
the lamp, looking for bones or glowing faces, he knew not what. Except for he
and his cousin, the cell was empty. Rusty chains and open shackles dangled
against the far wall. Was one of them swaying ever so slightly?

“Look! There’s a window.” Valryk
pointed at the peephole high on the door. “I’ll climb on your shoulders. We can
scream for help.”

The boys took turns screaming
through the peephole, but no one came. Valryk finally slumped down against the
wall, laid his forehead on his knees, and sobbed. Kethlyn decided that until
Captain Maegeth arrested silver thieves or poachers, no one would venture into
the dungeon to find them. That might be days away, weeks even. He resorted to
kicking the door. It made a satisfying clunking sound, but no one heard that
either. When his toes throbbed, he sat down next to his cousin and watched the
lamplight flicker.

He didn’t remember falling asleep.
When he woke, Valryk lay curled up with his back to the wall, shivering. The
wick, turned up as high as it would go, put off scarcely any light. He shook
the lamp. The oil was gone. Slowly, the yellow flame dwindled to blue, then
went out. Teeth chattering, Kethlyn tossed down the lamp and pressed himself
against the wall. Something with sharp little claws scuttled across his hand. He
screamed.

A
dull glow shined through
the peephole and painted an orange square on the far wall. The square swept
right to left, then back again. Kethlyn woke in time to see it vanish. He sat
up in a hurry. Ghosts!

Voices murmured beyond the door.
Then one said, “No sign of them, m’ lord.”

Kethlyn shook his cousin awake,
then raised his face toward the peephole and cried out with all his might. Keys
jangled, the cell door knocked the boys aside, and torchlight stabbed their
eyes. A pair of strong arms swept Kethlyn up and squeezed the air out of him.
“What are doing down here?” Da. Kethlyn wilted and broke into sobs. “The whole
castle is searching. We thought you’d been taken. Highness, your mother is sick
with worry. Run to her. And you, young man…” Da didn’t finish the threat, just
hugged Kethlyn tighter and carried him out of the darkness.

~~~~

A
few days after the crowds
of highborns and guards, baggage trains and servants departed for home, Rhoslyn
was enjoying the quiet in her study. She had a long letter to craft to Aunt
Halayn, informing her of the decisions reached this year at Assembly and what
actions she was to take in response. Rhoslyn suspected that her aunt didn’t
mind the warm seasons she spent at Windhaven alone. Speaking with the duchess’s
mouth and acting with her hands, Halayn had the chance to reign supreme, for a
few months at least. In truth, Rhoslyn was grateful to have a competent and
cunning substitute occupying the ducal throne in her absence, even if the
arguments were usually bitter and prolonged upon her return every winter. So be
it.

In the corner by the door, Carah
sat at a miniature desk, making important notes and scribbles with wax colors on
cheap brown paper. While Kethlyn bent over his studies in the library or
watched his father drill his garrison, Carah helped the duchess. She was, in
fact, the official letter opener and wax stamper of Ilswythe, and Rhoslyn was
certain her daughter would learn to dictate business letters before she could
count to one hundred.