The White Mists of Power (4 page)

“You must really have offended Dakin,” Seymour said, then stopped. Byron looked up and his expression seemed as warm as it had when Seymour awoke. “He usually calls his hounds off when they get this deep into the forest.”

Seymour understood. He had grown up in Lord Dakin’s service, following his father. His father had never allowed Seymour to associate with any of the other servants. Seymour only gained friends–and knowledge of Lord Dakin–after his father had died.

“You met Rury.”

Byron leaned back in his chair. “I met Rury. He’s dead now.”

The words made Seymour’s hands cold. He had always known that Rury would face the hounds. Seymour hadn’t realized that one of the hunts he had heard had marked the death of one of the most courageous people he had ever known. “Hounds.”

“Yes.” Byron’s fists clenched and unclenched. Seymour could see the anger, still fresh. “Dakin raised the rents again, shortly after I arrived. Rury decided he had had enough. He convinced others in the village not to pay the additional fee. Dakin was having a quiet dinner one night, and I was getting ready to perform, when one of the retainers reported the problem. Dakin didn’t move. He was extremely calm. He had no idea who was behind it all, so he punished everyone. He imprisoned the head of each household that refused to pay tribute. Of course, no one was able to pay then, and a lot of families backed down. Someone betrayed Rury.”

Seymour pushed his bowl away. It clattered along the tabletop. “I always knew something would happen. Rury said things had to change. He said if they didn’t, there would be war, and war would bring down the wrath of the Enos.”

“It’s the Old Ones we have to guard against,” Byron said.

“You believe in the Old Ones?”

Byron shrugged. “The Enos who trained me did. That’s enough for me. For now. I suppose the time will come when I have to test that belief.”

“Did Rury?”

“No. No one stood up for him. Except me, in my own ineffectual way. I begged Dakin to examine his policies and make a compromise with the villagers. After all, he needs them as much as they need him. Without their labor, he has no wealth. But he doesn’t see it that way. I made him angrier. And he decided to go after Rury’s sister, Nica.”

“The herb witch,” Seymour said. He remembered her kindnesses. She had taken over the job after his mother died, even though she lacked formal training. Nica had always felt inferior, rather like Seymour. They shared that, at least.

“I hid her, found her a horse, and sent her to a friend of mine south of here. When Dakin discovered that Nica had disappeared, he decided to kill Rury. I think Dakin had other plans for Nica, or–I don’t know. I just know that he was infuriated. Rury died the next morning. He was no match for the hounds. He had been imprisoned nearly a month, and he could barely stand when they brought him out to the riverbank. Dakin made me watch the whole thing, and I could do nothing. He expected me to write a song about it, and I did. I sang it that night at the banquet. It was a rollicking tale, about the lord of the manor developing a taste for blood. I compared him to his hounds, I laid all those deaths at his hands. I kept singing until he grabbed my lute and smashed it against the table, and even then I didn’t quit. He knocked me out. When I woke up, I was in his dungeon, waiting for my turn with the hounds.”

Seymour clasped his hands together to prevent them from shaking. Dakin would never forgive the man. He wanted the bard’s blood. Dakin hated a personal insult, and Byron had insulted him more deeply than anyone had before. “Other gentry overtax their peasants,” Seymour said, wishing that he had never heard the hounds bay the day before.

“I know,” Byron shot Seymour a quick glance. “I get into trouble a lot. But I have a lot of friends. I can find someone to help you once we’re out of the woods.”

Seymour sensed that Byron was apologizing. “Once we’re off Dakin’s land, what you did won’t matter,” Seymour said. Unless it happened again. Seymour would have to make his own way in the city.

“Dakin’s hounds will find us soon, won’t they?” Byron asked.

Seymour nodded. “This hut is pretty visible.”

“The afternoon, then.” As Byron stood up, his movements were a little shaky. “Will you be able to get everything together by then?”

Seymour glanced around the hut. Almost everything belonged to the place. A few of the items he had made, but nothing that he wanted to keep. He would leave everything for the next needy person. “There’s nothing to take.”

“Except provisions.” Byron lifted the cloths Seymour kept near the door, probably looking for one large enough to carry things in.

“Byron?”

He looked up.

Seymour’s stomach was jumping. “I’ve never been away from these lands. We need to go to the city, but we can’t stay there too long. Lord Dakin’s land surrounds it. We might have to go somewhere else.”

Byron smiled, slowly and easily. “You know,” he said, “I’ve always fancied being bard to the king…”

v

Lord Dakin dismounted outside the stable. As his feet hit the soft ground, his legs quivered. He had been riding for over three days. He leaned against the stallion for a moment, smelling the sweet odor of horseflesh and feeling the sweat on the animal’s side. He had ridden the horse too hard. The grooms would have to give it a good rubdown and feed it well. He needed a bath and a meal himself.

He walked up the path to the great house. He was so tired that his body felt heavy. Damn the bard. So few escaped the hounds. He should have known that the bard would be one of them.

But the magician–who would have thought that Byron the bard would have found Seymour the incompetent? The incompetent who had twice deceived the hounds. That magician had been faking his poor performances all along. Dakin remembered the feel of the ebony stick beneath his hands, the sheer force he had used as he smashed the thing into small pieces. The hounds had gone wild. He and his men had to use branches to keep the animals from ripping the ebony as if it were human flesh.

Dakin passed the sculptured gardens, noting the gardeners hunched along the path, inspecting a plant that grew across the dirt. At least they were doing their jobs, and doing them well. He hated the incompetence, the arrogance, and all of the trouble he had had lately. He would love nothing more than to kill both the bard and the magician with his bare hands.

His retainers would find the bard soon. Judging from the blood-soaked rags Dakin had found in the hut, the bard was in bad shape. He wouldn’t be moving very quickly even with his two-day head start.

As Dakin approached the great house, he saw his personal secretary standing before the door. “What is it?” Dakin asked.

“Milord,” the secretary said, dipping his head. The movement was always a sign of bad news, as if the man expected Dakin to unsheathe a sword and behead him immediately. “You were to meet the Lady Jelwra in Nadaluci this evening.”

Dakin swore softly. The Lady Jelwra was not a person to ignore. She was after his southern lands for their river access. She had already taken the land from Lord Lafa that adjoined Dakin’s, claiming that it had belonged to her family for generations.

“I would like a massage and a large meal. Send word to the stable to prepare a different stallion. I exhausted the last.”

“Very good, sir.”

No, it wasn’t very good. Dakin pushed past his secretary into the coolness of the hall. He had been planning to stop the Lady Jelwra from usurping Dakin land, but he hadn’t known how to go about it. Now he was riding into the meeting exhausted and angry, frustrated from a failed hunt.

He would have to leave the bard until later. But when Dakin found him, he would kill him slowly and painfully. The hounds were too quick. Dakin would think of something that lasted much, much longer.

Chapter 2

Adric sat on a bench in the southeast corner of the courtyard. The sun shone light and thin over the palace’s high walls. If he squinted, he could see the spires of Anda beyond it.

He had been waiting since dawn for Lord Boton. The lord had promised him a trip into the city–Adric’s first time ever outside palace lands–and had even showed him his father’s seal on the order. The trip felt like a consolation prize. All of the other things he had asked for since he had seen the Enos–a better education, the opportunity to watch his father and the Council work–had been met with blank stares and polite smiles. Lord Ewehl had said crossly that no prince before Adric had asked for anything. Adric had replied, equally as cross, that he planned to be different.

The stone bench was cold, and his bottom had grown numb. He had flattened the grass separating the cobblestones with his feet. His fingernails were ragged from chipping at the mortar between the stones in the bench. He wondered how much longer he should wait. Perhaps he had had the day wrong. Perhaps Lord Boton had forgotten him.

Adric stared at the palace walls around him. When he had first arrived at the courtyard, only a few maidservants and a handful of retainers stirred. The windows above him were dark, hinting that the entire palace slept. Now he saw movement through the windows across from him in the west wing, his parents’ wing.

With his mother’s pregnancy, both of his parents had taken to sleeping late in the morning. Adric used to have breakfast with them. Now he didn’t see either of them until dinner time, if then. He spent his days reading in the palace’s small library or bothering the grooms in the stables. Once he had tried to follow Lord Boton on his rounds, but the lord gently told Adric he had no place in the farthest recesses of the palace. As Adric watched the palace awaken, he saw the serving children cross the courtyard. Some carried buckets of water on their shoulders. Others ran on some kind of mission. All of them working, all of them doing something important. He wished that just once he could be as useful as they were.

The smell of freshly baked bread filled the courtyard. Adric’s stomach rumbled. He had had a small breakfast–four stale biscuits and a soft apple–and he wanted something else. If he went into the kitchen, however, the carriage would arrive. Then Lord Boton would think that Adric no longer wanted to go.

The double doors leading to his parents’ wing opened. Two retainers stepped outside and held the door back. Adric’s father emerged, his mother beside him. The sun fell on them, illuminating his father and leaving his mother in shadow. His father’s doublet sparkled, and he stood tall and slim. Adric’s mother looked small and fragile beside his father. She had one hand tucked in the crook of his arm. The other hand rested on top of her rounded belly. The royal physician had told her that the baby was in danger and that she must spend most of her time in bed. But she had been seeing the herb witches who lived in the kitchen. They assured her that good food and exercise would help the baby more than anything. So Adric’s mother walked in the morning and slept in the afternoon. Adric had heard some of the serving girls talk, saying that although his mother ate a lot, she couldn’t seem to hold much food. He was forbidden to see her except at the meals she attended, and his father refused to answer questions about her health. Adric worried about her. He wanted a baby brother, someone to play with, but he wanted his mother more.

His father helped her down the single step into the courtyard. She said something and he leaned toward her to hear better. His father cared about his mother. Adric eavesdropped on servant’s gossip, since it was his only source of information, and he had heard more than once of a servant’s surprise at the king. His father never looked at another woman, unlike the lords of the council, and he banished those who even made such suggestions to scullery work or dungeon duty on the far side of the palace.

As his parents crossed the courtyard, Adric stood up. He brushed the mortar chips from his pants, took a deep breath, and crossed into the sun. His father stopped walking when he saw Adric.

“What are you doing out this morning, lad?”

Adric felt a little shiver of shock run through his belly. “I’m waiting for Lord Boton. He promised to take me to Anda.”

“The city?” His mother ran a hand over her face. Deep shadows circled her eyes and made her look older. “You’re too young to go to the city.”

“Your mother’s right, lad. You’d best stay here.” His father put a hand protectively over the hand his mother had tucked in the crook of his arm.

Adric swallowed hard. “But, Father, you signed the order. Lord Boton showed me the document yesterday with your seal.”

His father blinked and stared at the sun. His eyes were small against the lines of his face.

“I thought we agreed that Adric would see the city with you when he was older.” His mother’s voice seemed rough on the edge, tinged with panic. She had always been protective of him, saying the oldest child and heir was too valuable to risk.

His father shook his head. “I’m sorry, lad. I had forgotten. Lord Boton brought the order to me and I did sign it. I think he’s old enough, Constance. And with Boton, he certainly doesn’t need me.”

The edges of his mother’s mouth pinched together. “I don’t want you to go,” she said to Adric.

“I’m the one who asked to go. I haven’t been off the grounds, Mama. I would like to see some of the world.”

His father looked down at him. “Yes. I hear you’ve been making a bit of a nuisance of yourself, asking questions and wanting to follow the lords.”

His father’s cheeks puffed. “You have no need to learn
kingly
duties, boy, not as long as I am alive. And I plan to be alive a long, long time.”