Part 12 (1/2)

Far below the rare and ringing laughter of Sylvriss and Rgoric was a tiny suite of rooms that had once been servants' quarters. Now it served as prison for the Lords Eldric, Arinndier, Darek and Hreldar, having held them since their arrest.

The garish light of Dan-Tor's globes did not succeed in dispelling the dismal atmosphere that pervaded the crudely decorated rooms, and the confinement of the Lords away from the daylight and fresh air had gradually begun to take its toll.

For a time they demanded to speak before the Geadrol, but their stone-faced Mathidrin guards treatedthem with an indifference that was more dispiriting than any amount of abuse and rough handling. Over the weeks a sense of impotence began to seep into them like dampness into the walls of an ancient cellar.

Physically, Hreldar seemed to suffer most from their imprisonment. His round face thinned noticeably and his jovial disposition became sober to the point of moroseness. More alarmingly, to his friends, a look came into his eyes that none of them had ever seen before, not even when they had all ridden side by side against the Morlider. It was a grim, almost obsessive, determination.

However, it was Eldric's condition that gave them most cause for concern, for while his physical deterioration was not as severe as Hreldar's, he seemed to have aged visibly, as if he had been destroyed from within. No sooner had the cell door closed behind them than his behaviour began to change. Even his initial thundering and roaring had contained a note of desperate petulance. One morning he lay on his bunk without moving, his face turned to the wall, and from then on it took his friends' every effort to make him attend to even the simple necessities of life.

Arinndier too became worried and fretful, though it was more at the condition of his friends than as a result of his own privation.

Only Darek, thin-faced and wiry, and more given to the pleasures of study than those of the field, seemed to be unaffected by their captivity. His a.n.a.lysis of their conduct was cruel.

'I suppose having behaved like children, we must expect to be treated like children,' he said, sitting on a rough wooden bunk next to a slumped and indifferent Eldric and leaning back against the wall.

Hreldar turned to look at him silently, his face non-committal, but oddly watchful. Arinndier, however, sitting opposite to him, scowled. 'Children?' he queried sourly.

Darek looked straight at him, and then began to enumerate points on his thin, precise hands. 'Who but children would think the suspension of the Geadrol was anything other than madness or treachery? Who but children would think that four of us with a token guard could either reason with such madness or defeat such treachery? Who but children would see these . . . these Guards marching through the City and hear them called the King's High Guard and think it wasn't beyond all doubt treachery? And who but children would think they could walk into the middle of it and expect to walk out again?'

Arinndier reluctantly conceded the argument, but his reply was impatient. 'Every mourner sees the obvious, Darek. We acted properly. Cautiously and within the Law. We couldn't have foreseen what would happen.'

Darek's fingers snapped out accusingly, the sound falling flat in the small dead room. 'We're Lords of Fyorlund, Arin. Trustees of the Law and the people. It's our duty to foresee to look forward beyond the sight of ordinary people. How big a sign did we need? What could be bigger than the suspension of the Geadrol?'

Arinndier was in no mood for reproaches. 'What else could we have done, for Ethriss's sake?' he snapped.

Darek leaned forward. 'We could have mustered our High Guards, raised the reserves and marched on the City.'

Arinndier's irritation left him and he stared at Darek, stunned. Of all the people he might have expected to preach rebellion, Darek lawyer Darek would have been the last. The two men stared at oneanother for a long moment.

Eventually Arinndier lowered his head. 'You've been too long in these dismal rooms, Darek,' he said quietly. 'What conceivable justification did we have for such a step? You'd have been the first to cry that force attacked the very basis of the Law.'

A look of anger flashed briefly through Darek's eyes, then it faded and his voice became patient. 'Arin, old friend, listen to me. Force is both the reason for the Law and its very basis. People made the Law to control the use of force because force is a bad way of doing things. It's that simple. You don't need to be a lawyer to understand that. They made it over centuries of bitter learning, to protect themselves and their descendants from the darker sides of our own natures. And if you ignore its acc.u.mulated wisdom, you'll face that darker nature unarmed, and you'll walk on to the people's naked and pitiless sword.'

Arinndier s.h.i.+fted unhappily on his seat.

Darek spoke again. 'Think about it, Arin. If the Law itself is a.s.sailed by those who should sustain it, what else can be done? And, I repeat, what greater attack at the heart of the Law could there have been than the suspension of the Geadrol? And, seeing it, why didn't we act correctly? Why did we turn away our faces like Eldric's done here and pretend that nothing was happening?' He leaned forward and the movement made Arinndier look up. 'We're the people's sword-bearers,' he went on. 'And we've failed in our duty. Who knows what power blinded us? But now we're penned like cattle and Dan-Tor can do as he pleases. We have to escape. We have to act against him or we'll be condemned forever.'

'Indeed.' The voice was grim and powerful.

Both Darek and Arinndier started, and even Hreldar looked surprised.

The unexpected voice was Eldric's.

Arinndier looked at the old Lord intently. Eldric slowly straightened up and returned the gaze. There was life again in his eyes and it seemed to Arinndier that the aging that confinement had apparently wrought on the man was falling away as he watched. Darek's flint had struck a spark from the iron of the old man's soul. Arinndier felt a lump in his throat.

'Indeed,' Eldric repeated, before any of the others could speak. 'Having failed in our duty once, we mustn't do so again.'

'Eldric,' said Arinndier, his face broken in a confusion of emotions, and his hands reaching out to his friend.

Eldric raised his own hands in a gesture that forbade interrogation. 'I've been away,' he said coldly. 'It won't happen again.'

Arinndier looked at him and remembered the Eldric who never responded well to sympathy; the Eldric who had always preferred to tend his own wounds in private, like an injured animal. Gradually his composure returned and he took up Eldric's first remark as if the second had never been spoken, though he could not keep the relief and joy from his face.

'You may be right,' he said. 'But what can we do? We don't know what's happening outside. We don't even know why we've been arrested. Perhaps the other Lords are . . .' 'The other Lords are dithering, just as we did,' Hreldar interrupted, his voice contemptuous. 'Dan-Tor will be plying them with rumours and lies. Probably telling them that there'll be a trial or some such nonsense accusing us of treason of being the reason why the King suspended the Geadrol. He'll pick them off one at a time. They won't even see the blow that's felling them.'

Arinndier winced at Hreldar's harsh tone. 'That's conjecture,' he said feebly.

Hreldar's mouth puckered distastefully. 'Maybe,' he said. 'But do you think it's wrong? Can you see them doing anything other?'

Arinndier did not reply.

Darek gave a grim chuckle. 'What a considerable schemer the man is. If we remain here we can do nothing but serve his ends by our enforced silence. If we escape we must rouse such of the Lords as we can and turn into the very rebels he's probably telling everyone we are.' He nodded a grudging approval.

'It's not without a certain elegance.'

'It's not without a certain horror,' said Eldric angrily. 'Still, warned is armed. In future we'll see a little more clearly and make fewer mistakes for him to profit by.'

'If we have a future,' said Hreldar coldly. 'Besides, Dan-Tor's a man who profits from everything and anything. I don't think we've begun to get the measure of him yet.'

Eldric nodded in agreement. He stood up and stretched himself expansively. 'True,' he said, then, entwining his fingers, he cracked them methodically, as if freeing the joints of long-acc.u.mulated dust. 'But nor does he have the measure of us yet.'

Chapter 18.

Sylvriss closed the door quietly behind her and spoke softly to the servant standing outside. 'The King's sleeping. See that he's not disturbed.'

The servant bowed in acknowledgement. 'Majesty.' He watched the Queen walking away from him.

Was it his imagination or had he caught a glimpse under the Queen's silken hood of a face flushed and smiling, triumphant even? No. It must have been a trick of the light. Sadly, loved though she was by so many, the Queen rarely smiled. Ethriss knows, she'd little enough to smile about. The King demented for most of the time; Dan-Tor spreading his pernicious influence over everything, the Geadrol suspended; Lords arrested for treason; these d.a.m.ned Mathidrin terrifying everyone; and even rumours of troubles in Orthlund. So much dreadful change so quickly. None of us have got much to smile about. But the servant's face remained impa.s.sive. It was unwise to express thoughts such as these. Rumours abounded about people who had spoken against Dan-Tor or the King and had disappeared mysteriously. Of course, they were only rumours, but . . .? Who could one trust these days?

However, the servant had been correct. The Queen had indeed been smiling when she left her husband sleeping peacefully; smiling radiantly. Now, however, as she walked along to her own quarters, the smile became grim and determined. She pulled her hood closer over her face. Inside herself she could feel an excitement like the excitement of being First Hearer picking up the cry, distant and tiny, a faint sound on the very limit of hearing, the warning cry that had to be roared out along the road so that it could be cleared before the riders appeared.

'Muster,' she whispered involuntarily into the still air of the corridor, longing to cry it out loud in defianceof Dan-Tor and his scheming. She had truly seen her long-buried husband again and their morning together had evoked so many old memories that she had seized new hopes and hardened her new resolve. No longer would she accept the defeat that her life had so far offered, its hand so skilfully guided by Dan-Tor. She would not sink any further into helplessness. Nor would she ponder what deep wisdom in the King had made him do what he had done, or what strange folly in Dan-Tor had allowed it.

Suffice it that the turbulence it had caused had stirred many long-laid sediments, and now she felt her feet resting on a bedrock. Nothing, not even death itself would dash these hopes from her now, or deflect her resolution.

A bustling flurry came into view. Dilrap, like a wallowing galleon, emerged from a side pa.s.sage, his arms full of precariously balanced doc.u.ments and his round face full of cares. Trying to preserve his burden intact, and maintain some semblance of dignity, he was having a considerable struggle and did not notice the Queen.

'Honoured Secretary,' she said, somewhat regretfully, seeing no way to avoid the almost inevitable outcome. Dilrap started and looked round suddenly. The abrupt movement dislodged a large scroll from the middle of the pile he was carrying.

Slowly it started to unroll. Dilrap's eyes widened and a quiver ran through him preparatory to a reflexive lunge after the escaping doc.u.ment. The quiver ended in a violent twitching as his hand groped blindly underneath his load in a vain attempt to stop the accelerating scroll, while his chin clawed frantically at the top of the pile to steady an ominous sway that had begun to develop in the whole stack.

Sylvriss watched spellbound as the saga unfolded itself in front of her with the predestined order of a cla.s.sical tragedy.

The chin triumphantly trapped the topmost doc.u.ment and stopped the incipient sway, but the middle of the stack bellied forward, intent on explosive self-destruction. Chin clinging valiantly and hand flailing futilely for the lost scroll which was now laying a paper pathway along the corridor, Dilrap took a step forward as if to overtake the swelling bulge. Malevolently, his father's robe chose this time to embrace his feet and, with a woeful cry, Dilrap rolled to the floor amidst the fluttering shower that had been his charge.

Hitching her hood forward again and biting her lip to stop herself from laughing, Sylvriss bent forward and picked up some of the nearer scrolls and papers.