Sylvriss’s heart cried out to him and for him. He was so rarely in this mood and now she had nothing to say to him, nothing that would bring back to him those lost days when his tread through life was so sure-footed. All she could do was love the man and hope that in some way this would protect him. Soon, she knew, he could slip away from her into a mood of dark foreboding, or manic elation, or haunted persecution. Sadly, it had been these intermittent returns to normality that had drawn the lines of strain across her face. To see him thus, albeit a little lost and fretful, and to hope that it would last yet know it would not, was a bitter burden for her.
All the more reluctant had she been, therefore, to pick up the old standard that had so long ago dropped from her hand, but which had reappeared in front of her once again, ghostly but fluttering faintly.
Rgoric’s suspension of the Geadrol and the arrest of the four Lords had caused considerable political upheaval and was occupying a great deal of Dan-Tor’s time. While he was handling the many shuttles of intrigue that would weave the whirling threads of doubt and rumour into the pattern of his design, one small strand parted and fell from his loom unnoticed. He neglected the King.
Almost in spite of herself Sylvriss had seized the standard and held it high in her heart once more.
What attention Dan-Tor had now for the King was confined to keeping him quiet and stable so that he could safely be left. Nothing could accrue but disadvan-tage to have him bewildered and rambling at present. The King’s moods of normality thus became more frequent and it was this that persuaded Sylvriss that the true King, her King, lay still intact under the ravages of his illness; if illness it was, or had ever been. It was like the sight of a shoreline glimpsed between mountainous, shifting waves by a drowning swimmer. It was a re-affirmation. It bred courage and strength.
Slowly and deliberately she had set about reducing the medication that Dan-Tor had prepared for the King. Slowly was the word she said to herself whenever some small change occurred, be it setback or improvement. Past experience had taught her the dangers of both depression and elation. This opportunity must surely be her last, and youthful impatience had nothing to contribute. Now was the time for an experienced hand and a steady nerve if she was to win back her husband.
Relentlessly she lied to Dan-Tor about Rgoric’s con-dition whenever he asked, playing the ignorant stable-maid and wringing her hands at her own helplessness. Sternly she controlled herself when Dan-Tor undid her work with a casual dosage to quell the fretting King. And ruthlessly she set about using her personal esteem to ingratiate herself into the webs of intrigue and gossip being spun throughout the Palace and the City, until few things reached the ears of Dan-Tor that had not passed hers on their journey.
You came into Fyorlund like a silent assassin’s blade, she thought, but I’ll turn your point from its heart if it kills me. Deeper in her heart, unseen, lay the darker thought that to do this she might probably have to kill him.
She smiled at Rgoric. ‘I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘But I think days like that happen just to sustain us later. I think we forget about fathers getting angry because we’re slow, and friends quarrelling, and insects and creepy crawlies in the parks and forests.’
Rgoric looked at her. She felt him teetering towards sulky reproach at her reception of his reminiscence, and a small flicker of panic stirred inside her that, from such a small step, he might plunge catastrophically away from her into a dark and deep depression. She had seen it happen too often before.
Impulsively she giggled and put her hands to her face, childlike. Rgoric’s expression changed to puzzle-ment.
‘We weren’t so fussy about creepy crawlies that afternoon in my father’s orchard, were we?’ she said, looking at him conspiratorially. Rgoric’s face darkened thoughtfully for a moment, then slowly he moved from the self-destructive edge and drifted back into another time. A time of soft springing turf and the scent of ripening fruit, and a beautiful black-haired maid by his side, as besotted with him as he was with her. And she was still here with him. He smiled and then chuckled throatily.
‘Wife,’ he said with mock severity. ‘Calm yourself.’
Then they shared something they had not shared for a long time. They laughed. Ringing laughter that mingled and twined and rose up to fill the room like an incense to older and happier gods, laughter that shone and twinkled. The glittering lethal edge of the dagger that Sylvriss was making for Dan-Tor’s dark heart.
Chapter 17
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 Gead-rol, but their stone-faced Mathidrin guards treated them 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 deteriora-tion 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 petu-lance. 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 analysis 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?’