The Baker's Boy (7 page)

Jack was late. He
couldn't understand why he'd been so exhausted after meeting the king's
chancellor earlier. It seemed as if the man had drained all the energy from
him, much to his great misfortune: the morning loaves had been late to bake,
and were, by the time they were ready, more precisely called afternoon loaves.
Frallit's fury had been stoked to an inferno by that particular observation.
Even more infuriating to the master baker was the realization that he couldn't
beat Jack on the spot-he could hardly send a bruised and bloodied boy to the
king's chancellor.

Jack almost felt
sorry for Frallit, who was shown to be powerless in the face of genuine power.
The master baker might be lord of the kitchens, but Baralis was lord of the
castle. Still, Jack was sure Frallit would come up with some suitable
punishment for sleeping when he should have been baking. Besides an armory of
physical punishments, the master baker had a stockpile of humiliations at his
flour-caked fingertips. For the second time this day, Jack found himself
preferring the tried and tested sting of a sound thrashing to the blow of the
unknown.

Jack contemplated
the guard and realized that he wouldn't get far with chitchat. The man wasn't
going to believe that he, a mere baker's boy, had an appointment with the
king's chancellor. For some reason Jack felt like action-it would be good to be
the one in control for once. A faded tapestry hanging against the wall caught
his eye. He took a step forward and pulled hard on its comer. It fell to the
floor in a cloud of dust. The guard's face had just time enough to register
amazement and Jack was off, jumping over the tapestry, dodging around the guard
and running down the corridor.

Dust was in his
lungs, the guard was at his heels, stone raced beneath his feet. The chase was
on.

In between
wheezing breaths, Jack realized it hadn't been such a good idea-he didn't have
the slightest notion in which direction Baralis' chambers lay. It was
exhilarating to outrun the guard, though, to pit himself against another and
grab the chance for success. After a short while the footsteps receded and his
pursuer could be heard shouting obscenities from behind. Jack smiled
triumphantly-a man reduced to shouting obscenities was a man with not enough
breath to run.

Finding the
chamber was not as difficult as Jack thought. Staircases and turnings presented
themselves to him, and he knew instinctively which to take. It appeared that
the very castle itself was beholden to the great man. Its most dark and vital
passages seemed to lead to Baralis' door. Jack paused on the threshold, trying
to decide if a humble tap or a confident knock was called for. He'd just
decided that humility was probably his best course when the door swung open.

"You are late."
Lord Baralis stood there, tall and striking, dressed in black.

Jack tried to keep
his voice level. "I'm sorry, sir."

"What, no
excuse?"

"None, sir.
The fault was entirely my own."

"My, my, we
are an unusual boy. Most people would have a hundred excuses at their lips. I
will forgive you this time, Jack, but do not be late again."

"Yes,
sir."

"I noticed
you were admiring my door." Jack nodded enthusiastically, pleased that the
great man had misinterpreted his reason for dallying on the threshold.

Baralis ran his
scarred fingers over the etchings on the door. "You do well to admire it,
Jack, for it has several interesting properties." Jack expected him to
expand further on the subject, but Baralis just smiled, a guarded curve of lip
with no show of teeth.

Jack followed him
through what seemed to be a sitting room and then into a large, well-lit
chamber crammed from top to bottom with all manner of paraphernalia. "You
will work here," said Baralis indicating a wooden bench. "You will
find quill, ink, and paper on the desk. I suggest you spend today learning how
to use them." Jack was about to speak but was cut short. "I have no
time for mollycoddling, boy. Get to it." With that Baralis left him at the
desk and busied himself at the far side of the room, sorting through papers.

Jack didn't have
the slightest idea of what to do. He had never seen anyone use a pen before.
Certainly no one in the kitchen could read or write; recipes for breads, beers
and puddings were kept in the head. The cellarer was the only person who Jack
knew could write. He was the one responsible for keeping account of all the
kitchen supplies, but Jack had never actually seen him use a pen.

He picked up the
quill and turned it in his hands, then readied a piece of paper and pressed the
nib to it. Nothing. He realized he must be missing something. His eyes glanced
around the desk. The ink. That was it. He poured a quantity of the liquid onto
the page, where it quickly spread out. He then ran the quill through the ink,
making crude marks. He felt he hadn't got it quite right so tried again on a
fresh piece of paper, once more pouring the ink onto it. This time Jack managed
to trace some lines and shapes in the ink.

"You
fool." Jack looked up to see Baralis hovering over him. "You are not
supposed to pour the ink on the page. The ink stays in the pot. You dip the pen
into the ink. Here." Jack watched as Baralis demonstrated what he
described. "There. Now you have a go." Baralis left him alone once
more. Several hours later, Jack was beginning to get the hang of it. He had
mastered the exact dipping angle required to pick up maximum ink and could draw
signs and shapes. To practice he drew what he knew of: the shapes of various
loaves-the round, the platt, the long loaf. He also drew baking implements and
various knives and weaponry.

After a while
Jack's attention began to wander. He'd never been in a place of such wondrous
luxury. Walls lined with books and boxes tempted him, bottles filled with dark
liquids wooed him. He couldn't resist. He stole over to the wooded sill and
took the stopper from a particularly seductive-looking jar. A smell sweet and
earthy escaped. There was nothing to do but try it. He raised it to his lips.

"I wouldn't
do that if I were you, Jack," came Baralis' mocking voice. "It's
poison. For the rats."

Jack's face was
hot with shame. He hadn't heard Baralis approach-did the man walk on air?
Quickly replacing the stopper, he tried his best not to look like a person
caught in the act. He was almost light-headed with relief when someone else
entered the room. Jack recognized the huge and badly disfigured man at once.

"Yes,
Crope," said Baralis, "what is it?"

"The
king."

"What about
the king?"

"The king has
been hit by an arrow while out hunting."

"Has he
indeed." For the briefest instant, malice flashed across Baralis' face,
but just as quickly, his expression changed to one of deep concern. "This
is ill news." He looked sharply at Jack. "Boy, go back to the
kitchens at once."

Jack raced out of
the chambers and down to the kitchen, his mind awhirl with thoughts of the
king. He would probably be the first person downstairs with the news; he would
be the center of attention and Frallit might even treat him to a cup of ale.
The thought of ale wasn't as cheering as usual, and it took Jack a moment to
realize why: he was afraid. The look that had so quickly flitted across
Baralis' face had formed a memory too disturbing to ignore. Jack hurried on his
way. Baralis' expression would be one detail he would leave out of his account
to the kitchen staff-he was a smart boy and knew that such things were best not
repeated.

"There are
grave times ahead." Bevlin exhaled deeply and continued, his voice thin
with age. "Just over twelve summers back I saw a terrible thing in the
sky. A fragment of a star fell from the heavens. As it sped toward the earth a
great cleaving occurred. The two pieces lit up the sky with equal brilliance
before disappearing beyond the horizon in the east." The wiseman walked
over to the fire and stirred the embers. He had need of more warmth.

"I need not
tell you that such an event is a sign of great importance. At the time I had
little idea what it meant, and I have spent the past years looking for answers.
I read all the great books of prophecy, all the ancient scripts." Bevlin
managed a wiry smile. "Such works are always filled with vague predictions
of doom: dark clouds looming on the horizon, fatal curses upon the land-the
stuff with which parents frighten their children into obedience. I found little
of value in any of them; more often than not they are written with the
reasoning that if one predicts doom long enough, one is bound to be proven
right. Doom, I fear, is just as inevitable as leaves falling in autumn."

Bevlin placed a
pot of ale upon the fire and spooned some honey into it. "Of course, one
man's doom is often another man's triumph." He grated cinnamon into the
pot, stirred it once and then spat in it for luck. He let it warm a little
while and then ladled the mixture into two cups, handing one of them to Tawl.

"Marod's work
is different. He is emboldened to specifics. He was not a man given to
ambiguity like a cheap fortune-teller." The wiseman's hand settled on the
thick book. "Marod was chiefly a philosopher and historian, but, thanks to
the benevolence of the Gods, he had instances of foretelling. Unfortunately,
although he was a specific man, he enjoyed making references to other, more
obscure works known to him. Most of those works have failed to be passed down
to our time. They have either been lost, or destroyed: burnt by overly
fanatical clergy, eager to be rid of the works of heretics."

"I finally
managed to track down one such book mentioned by Marod. I paid a heavy price
for what was little more than a few pages with failed binding. However, in it I
found what I was looking for-a mention of what I saw in the sky twelve years
back."

"The pages
tell that it was a sign of birth, dual births. Two babes were begot that night,
two men whose destinies lie in shaping the world-for good, or bad, I do not
know. Their lives are linked together by an invisible thread and their fates
will pull against each other."

"There is a
specific prophecy divined by Marod, which I believe is relevant to one of the
two. You may be familiar with some of it-scholars have pondered its meaning for
years-but this is the original. Possibly no one else besides you and I will
ever know the true wording of the script:"

"When men of
honor lose sight of their cause

When three bloods
are savored in one day

Two houses will
meet in wedlock and wealth

And what forms at
the join is decay

A man will come
with neither father nor mother

But sister as
lover

And stay the hand
of the plague

The stones will be
sundered, the temple will fall

The dark empire's
expansion will end at his call

And only the fool
knows the truth."

Bevlin warmed his
hands against his cup and looked into the eyes of his companion. Tawl met his
gaze and, with the fire crackling in the background, an unspoken communion
passed between them.

"The world is
ever changing," said Bevlin softly, breaking the silence. "And it is
always greed that compels those changes. The archbishop of Rorn cares more for
money than he does his God, the duke of Bren grows restless for more land, the
city of Marls in its desperation for foreign trade has brought a plague upon
itself. Even now, as we speak, King Lesketh in the Four Kingdoms seeks to avert
war with Halcus ... it is not for me to say if he will succeed."

Bevlin and Tawl
remained silent for some time, both deep in thought. It was the young man who
spoke first, just as the wiseman knew it would be. "Why was I sent
here?" Bevlin suspected that the young man already knew the answer.

"There is one
thing I believe you can do."

"Tyren
expected you would set me a task. What is it?"

Tawl was so
willing, so eager, the wiseman felt an unaccountable sadness.

"Your job
will be to find a needle in a haystack."

"What do you
mean?" Tawl was mouthing the appropriate words, but Bevlin realized that
the knight knew the future was set, and all that was now being said was already
understood and decided.

"I need you
to find me a boy: a boy of about twelve summers."

"Where will I
find this boy?"

"There are no
easy answers to that question, I'm afraid."

"One of the
two?" asked Tawl. The wiseman nodded. "The one named in the
prophecy." Bevlin resisted the urge to talk further about the prophecy-the
knight would not be pleased with his reasons for believing it would soon come
to pass. "I have little for you to go on. The only advice I can give you
is use your instincts. Look for a boy who appears more than he seems, a boy set
apart. You will know him when you find him."

"And if I
find him?"

"Then you
will receive your final circle. That's why they sent you here, wasn't it?"
Bevlin regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. The young man before
him had done nothing to deserve offense.

"Yes, that's
why I came." The knight's voice was gentle. "These," he
uncovered his circles, "are all that matter now." Bevlin watched as
he pulled down his sleeve. Tawl was somehow different than other knights he'd
met. The commitment was the same, but it was tempered with something akin to
vulnerability. Valdis specialized in breeding a particularly single-minded race
of knights: unconditional obedience, no question of marriage, all income to be
relinquished to the cause. And what was the cause? The knights had started out
as a moral order, dedicated to helping the oppressed and the needy. Nowadays it
was discussions on politics, not humanity, that could be heard most often
filtering through the halls at Valdis.