“Did—did someone just come into the room?” she asked Ashe softly.
The Lord Cymrian stopped beside her. His dragonesque eyes narrowed slightly as he concentrated, reaching out with his dragon sense to the corners of the vast library. His awareness expanded between two beats of his heart. Every fiber of carpet, every candleflame, each page in each book, the breath of each member of the council, each drop of rain outside the keep was suddenly known to him in detail.
He detected nothing different. But now his blood ran colder.
“No,” he said finally. “Did you feel something disturbing?”
Rhapsody exhaled, then shook her head. “Nothing tangible.” She slipped her hand into her husband’s palm. “Perhaps I am just eager to quit this place and be alone with you.”
Ashe smiled and kissed her hand.
“As always, m’lady, I defer to your wisdom.”
In a remarkable show of restraint, he waited until the doors of the library had closed securely behind them before sweeping Rhapsody off her feet and carrying her, in a few bounding steps, to their tower chambers.
Inside the library, the damask curtains that lined the glass door to the balcony overlooking the Cymrian museum in the courtyard below fluttered gently, unnoticed by the councilors, who had immediately returned to their arguments, oblivious of the howling storm outside the library windows.
A heartbeat later, they hung motionless, still as death, once more.
2
Orange
Fire Starter, Fire Quencher
The night rain fell in black sheets, twisting into showers of dark needles on the wind before it spattered the muddy cobblestones of the streets leading to the Hall of Virtue, the towering stone edifice that housed the Judiciary of Argaut.
The seneschal paused for a moment at the top of the marble steps of the hall, listening as if to distant voices in the turbulent wind.
The streets of the city were silent, muted no doubt by the frigid wind and insistent rain. Even the wharfside taverns and brothels had doused their lamps, closing their shutters tight against the gale that blew in off the waterfront.
The seneschal stared out over the harbor, to the far end of the cove where the lighttowers burned, even in the downpour, serving as guide to the ships at sea, their hulls battered by the pounding storm. We well may lose one tonight, the seneschal thought, pondering the signals from the tower; the light was flashing in broken beams, gleaming with increasing brightness as more oil was added to the flame. He inhaled deeply. When death hovered in the sea winds, it was invigorating to the lungs.
He closed his eyes for a moment and turned his face up to the black sky above him, letting the icy wind buffet his eyelids, allowing the rain to sting his skin. Then he opened his eyes once more, shook the water from his face and cloak, and climbed the last few steps into the Hall of Virtue.
The great iron doors of the hall had been bolted against the night and the storm. The seneschal shifted the small burlap sack he carried to his lesser hand, grasped the knocker, and pounded; the sound thudded like a bell tolling a death knell, echoing for a moment, then was swallowed by the howl of the wind.
With a metallic scream the enormous door was pulled open, flooding the opening with dim light. The guard stepped quickly aside; the seneschal patted the man’s shoulder as he passed from the fury of the storm to the warmth of the echoing quiet in the palace’s vast foyer.
“Good evening, Your Honor,” the guard said as he closed the heavy iron door behind the seneschal.
“Has my lord sent for me?”
“No, sir. All is quiet.”
The exchange was the same as it was each night, the soldier thought as the seneschal handed him his dripping cloak and tricornered judge’s hat. The lord never sent for the seneschal; he never sent for anyone, in fact. The Baron of Argaut was a hermit, living in an isolated tower, and tended to in gravest secret by only a trusted handful of advisors, chief among them the seneschal. The soldier had been standing guard duty in the Hall of Virtue for more than four years, and had never seen the baron even once.
“Good. A pleasant evening to you, then,” said the seneschal. The guard nodded, and returned to his post by the door. He listened to the fading click of the seneschal’s boots as he crossed the polished marble foyer and made his way down the long hallway into the judiciary chambers. When the last echo had died away, the soldier allowed himself the luxury of breathing once more.
The candleflames in the wall sconces that lined the long hallway to the Chamber of Justice flickered as the seneschal walked past, causing the light that pooled intermittently on the dusky slate floor to dance frenetically, then settle back into a gently pulsing glow again.
At the end of the long central corridor he opened the door to the dark courtroom and stepped inside, his eyes adjusting quickly in the absence of light, then quietly closed the door behind him.
The seneschal’s eyes burned at the edges as he gazed lovingly about the place where so many judgments were handed down, where so many men and women stood accused, then condemned. The prisoner’s docket, the barrister’s podium, stood silent now in the dark, the echoes of the wailing that had occurred here today, and every day before today, vibrating invisibly in the air, leaving behind a delicious hum of agony.
The seneschal strode quickly across the floor of the shadowy chamber, past the empty witness gallery, pausing for a moment at the clerk’s desk, a two-compartmented, cagelike table with wooden slats above it. Draped over the slats was a long piece of parchment curled at the ends, stretched out to allow the ink to dry. Many names were neatly inscribed on the document, tomorrow’s court agenda, a list of condemned souls who did not know that their fate had been decided long before they had even been accused. The seneschal fingered the parchment with an air of bemused melancholy. No time for this. Ah, well.
His mind wandered to the street wench he had killed earlier this night beneath the pier, her body doubtless being battered now against the pylons by the raging surf of the storm. His thoughts then shifted to the sailor who would burn for the crime tomorrow, at this moment sleeping off his evening’s rum, oblivious in his drunkenness, the blood of a woman he had never seen drenching his clothes, clotting in dark, sticky pools. It was bound to be an exciting trial, and an even more exciting bonfire, especially if the rum vapors were still fresh on the bewildered man’s breath.
Such a shame that he would not be here to appreciate it.
The seneschal exhaled sharply, refocusing, silencing the building din of dark voices calling in the depth of his ears.
A slight movement in the burlap sack he carried brought him back to the task at hand.
Framing the bench where he sat daily in judgment was a red curtain, heavy damask that smelled of mildew and earth hanging behind his chair. The seneschal climbed the steps to the bench, then drew the curtain aside, revealing the stone wall behind it. He ran a finger over an all-but-unseen crack, felt for the handhold, then turned the doorway aside and stepped into the darkness of the tunnel behind the wall, closing it carefully behind him.
Down the familiar passageway he descended, his feet finding their way automatically in the blackness. A left turn, then three more to the right; his eyes closed to slits.
His body flooded with warmth when the greenish glow in the distance became visible. His steps quickened as he called into the darkness.
“Faron?”
From the floor of the catacomb steam began to rise, thin tendrils of twisting vapor hovering over the glowing pool.
The seneschal smiled, feeling the heat rise inside his own body.
“Come forth, my child,” he whispered.
The gleaming mist thickened, writhing in waves that reached outward, above, into the blackness that surrounded it.