He gazed at me unblinking, unspeaking, and I thought it must be to see if I was afraid. But after a moment it came to me that he wasn’t sure how to begin. When he did, his voice was soft and intense. “I didn’t know.” His hands fidgeted with his sword belt, but he did not drop his gaze or stammer. “I want you to believe me, Aidan. I had no idea. Until three weeks ago this night, I did not know you were in ... that place ... or anything of what was done to you.”
He must think I’ve gone mad, I thought, to try this tactic with me. His servants were still killing my friends, shackling my wrists, and laying on their whips.
“Of course I am responsible. I won’t deny it. The gods have given me duties every bit as mystical as those you professed, no matter how distasteful you may find the work of kings. I wanted you silenced. It was necessary. Those around me who are accustomed to carrying out my orders ... they heard my wish and they saw to it and I was well content. But never ... never did I mean for it to happen the way it did. I should have asked. Should have made certain. But ... well, I won’t make excuses. It changes nothing. I should have asked, but I didn’t.”
He moved to the table and poured himself a glass of wine. “Three weeks ago I told one of my aides to find you. You’ll appreciate this one,” he said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “I needed to ask you a favor. By the Seven ...”
When he faced me again, his ruddy color had deepened and his eyes glittered. “My aide was astonished at my request. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said, ‘he is disappeared. You know. We all assumed that you ... that he ... We understood that he was taken care of as you commanded.’ His smirking was insufferable. ‘He’s not been seen in all these years, so we presumed him dead or as good as.’ I couldn’t believe no one had told me. I looked into it, began asking questions I should have asked seventeen ... oh, gods, Aidan, seventeen years ...”
His dark eyes searched deep. I suppose he saw what he had done, for he dropped his gaze abruptly. At least he didn’t say he was sorry or that he wished he hadn’t made his desire so clear. He had already told me that it had come out as he wanted. That was enough to condemn him.
“I’ll not insult you by offering what you would rightly disdain coming from me, nor can I relax the restriction that you saw fit to disobey, but if there is anything else ... ask and it shall be done.”
I would have preferred to remain silent, but the rage that had been building as he spoke could not find its outlet until I knew the most important thing. And so he heard what voice I could muster, his face burning scarlet as I croaked, “Why? No one ever bothered to tell me why I had to be silenced. You never told me.”
Disbelief shot from his eyes directly into mine, shifting instantly to astonishment. He averted his face. A moment’s hesitation and he strode toward the door. By Keldar’s eyes, he wasn’t going to tell me!
“Devlin!” I wanted to strangle him.
Perhaps it was the sight of the harp lying useless on the table that made him give as much as he did, for he paused beside it for a moment, then spoke over his shoulder, a break in his voice making it sound as if he were truly sorry. “You were bad for my dragons, Aidan. You made them uneasy. I wish it could have been different.”
The door swung shut behind him.
Chapter 6
I walked out of my cousin’s house that same night. He chose not to prevent me. By the time I found my way to the front doors through dark, deserted rooms full of shrouded furnishings, the old physician was waiting with a cloak, a heavy leather purse, and an expression of great distress. He opened his mouth several times, but he must have been commanded not to speak to me, for nothing ever came out.
I wanted nothing from Devlin. If I’d had other clothes to wear, I would have stripped off the ones he’d given me, but necessity ruled, and I took the cloak as well. The leather bag of coins revolted me even more, but necessity ruled in that wise also. No one else would forfeit his or her life by helping me, so I would take Devlin’s blood money to use until I could fend for myself. I could not say I would rather starve. Only those who have never starved can say that.
It was a long, slow walk into the nearest village, but the old physician’s remedies and two days of uninterrupted rest had done marvels. Or perhaps my anger sustained me until I could take a room at an inn, eat a bowl of the landlord’s porridge for a predawn breakfast, and collapse on a sagging bed.
Even then I could not sleep. The consideration that my ruin had been a mistake, that the Adairs and Gwaithir and Callia had died for nothing, was infuriating to the point of madness. I made his dragons “uneasy.” Uneasy! By the Seven Gods, what did that mean?
Hours of reviewing our conversation and reliving the occasion of our last meeting before my arrest took me nowhere. It was well onto noon by the time I gave it up and slept the clock around once again. My dreams were filled with questions, but even more with rage. I killed Devlin more than once that night, cruelly, viciously, without remorse, and so vividly that I woke up sick and shaken, expecting to find blood on my hands. I had planned to be on my way that day, to hunt for some backwater town where I could start over again, where I could become someone else and forget everything that had been. But the insistent, bloody resolution of my dreams showed me how futile it was to attempt such a thing before I had made some peace with myself and whatever gods might exist to hear me.
So I used my cousin’s gold to buy a horse and a flask of wine, and I inquired where I might find a shrine dedicated to Keldar. I rode through the hot morning and turned off the road at the place I’d been told, winding slowly up a worn path to a grassy, rounded hilltop. In that place of unchecked winds and uninterrupted vistas stood an ancient stele graven with the closed-eye symbol of the blind god. At its base were laid faded bundles of wild thyme and rosemary, lovage and pennyroyal, herbs whose sweet fragrances would be carried on the back of the wind, finding their way to the god, bearing with them the prayers of those who left them.
I had no herbs, but I uncorked the wine—red and sour, as Callia had relished it—and poured half of it on the ground beside the herb bundles. I begged Keldar for the wisdom to unravel the puzzle of my life and find a path that was not solely the way of vengeance. I was mortally afraid. As a man who has lost one leg sees an enemy’s sword poised above the other, so deep was the terror of my dreams. I had never killed a man. To follow the way of vengeance—the only way that seemed clear—would surely destroy whatever was left of me. Yet on any other path I would be as blind as Keldar and risk stumbling back into the horror I had just escaped. If the blind god could help me find my way, then I had to ask.
The hot wind blew. The dry ground soaked up the wine. But my soul remained cold and silent, the familiar ritual providing no comfort. I sat leaning on the stele, drank the rest of the wine, and considered kings and dragons and prideful musicians who did not listen well enough when given warning. My imprisonment had been no mistake. Devlin had wanted me silenced, but not harmed, and he thought he’d gotten it—but how? To assert that mine had been the best-known name in Elyria and every neighboring kingdom was not false pride. How could I have disappeared so abruptly and my cousin not have known of it? What had been said on the day after I was dragged from my bed?