"Lord?" the rider asked.
"Never mind." Abivard scratched his head, wondering why on earth his brother-in-law thought he suspected him.
"Now, this is more like it," Abivard said to the tired-looking man who swung down off his horse in the courtyard to Vek Rud stronghold. "No letter at all from Nalgis Crag domain for almost a month, and now two in the space of a week."
"Glad you're pleased, lord," the messenger said. Instead of a caftan, he wore leather trousers and a sheepskin jacket: winter hadn't started, but the air said it was coming. The man went on, "This one is from the lady your sister. That's what the serving woman who gave it to me said, anyhow. I've not read it myself, for it was sealed before it ever went into my tube here."
"Was it?" Abivard said; Denak hadn't bothered with such things before. He gave the rider a silver arket. "You deserve special thanks for getting it here to me safe, then, for you couldn't have told me what it said, had anything happened to it."
"You're kind to me, lord, but if anything had happened to that letter, likely something worse would have happened to me, if you know what I mean." The messenger from Nalgis Crag domain sketched a salute, then rode out of the stronghold to start his journey home.
The seal Denak had used was Pradtak's: a mounted lancer hunting a boar. Abivard broke it with his thumbnail, curious to find out what his sister hadn't wanted anyone to see. As usual, he read her words aloud: "'To the dihqan Abivard his loving sister Denak sends greetings. " Her next sentence brought him up short. "'It were wiser if you read what follows away from anyone who might overhear. "
"I wonder what that's in aid of?" he muttered. But Denak had always struck him as having good sense, so he rolled up the parchment and carried it into the dihqan's bedchamber. No one to listen to me here, he thought. Then he glanced through the grillwork opening in the door that led to the women's quarters. He saw no one.
Satisfied, he unrolled the letter and began to read again. Denak wrote, "'Pradtak my husband recently walled off the chamber next to mine, which is close by the entrance to the women's quarters here, and had a separate doorway made for it alone. I wondered what his purpose was, but he spoke evasively when I asked him. This, I must confess, irked me no little. "
Abivard did not blame his sister for her pique. The likeliest explanation he could find for Pradtak's behavior was installing another woman in the special room, though why he wouldn't simply admit her to the women's quarters baffled Abivard.
He read on. "'My temper vanished but my curiosity grew when, after I heard through the wall that the chamber was inhabited, I also heard it was inhabited by a man. Pradtak, I assure you, is not inclined to seek his pleasures in that direction. "
"Well, what is he doing, then, putting a man into the women's quarters, even if the fellow is walled away from his wives?" Abivard asked, as if the letter would up and tell him and save him the trouble of reading further.
It didn't, of course. His eyes dropped back down to the parchment. "'With my door closed, I called quietly out my window, " Denak wrote, "'not certain if the masons had sealed away the one in the adjacent room. I found they had not. The man in there was more than willing to give me his name. I now give it to you, and you will understand my caution with this letter: he is Sharbaraz son of Peroz and, he claims, rightful King of Kings of Makuran. "
Abivard stared at that for most of a minute before he read on. If Sharbaraz had renounced the throne of his own free will, as Smerdis King of Kings claimed, why mure him up in a secret cell like a criminal awaiting the headsman's chopper? The only answer that came to him was stark in its simplicity: Smerdis lies.
Denak's next sentence might have been an echo of that thought: "'The first meal Sharbaraz ate after word of his father's overthrow reached Mashiz must have had a sleeping potion sprinkled over it, for when he awoke he found himself in a dark little room somewhere in the palace, with a knife to his throat and a written renunciation of the throne before him. Not wishing to perish on the spot, he signed it. "
Someone let out a tuneless whistle. After a moment, Abivard realized it was himself. He had wondered that a young man of whom his father had expected so much should tamely yield the rule to an elder of no particular accomplishment. Now he learned Sharbaraz had not yielded tamely.
The letter went on, "'Smerdis sent Sharbaraz here for safekeeping: Nalgis Crag stronghold is without a doubt the strongest fortress in all Makuran. The usurper pays Pradtak well to keep his rival beyond hope of escape or rescue. You may not be surprised to learn I read your latest letter to my husband; I grieve to hear how the Khamorth ravage my homeland in spite of the great tribute Smerdis handed over to them to stay north of the Degird. This tells me he whose fundament now befouls the throne has no notion of what the kingdom requires. "
"It told me the same thing," Abivard said, as if Denak were there to hear him. He had almost finished the letter. His sister wrote, "'I do not think any army has a hope of rescuing Sharbaraz from the outside. But he may perhaps be spirited out of the fortress. I shall bend every effort toward finding out how that might be done. Since the area in front of Sharbaraz's cell remains formally within the women's quarters, and since I am trusted with affairs here, I may be able to see for myself exactly how he is guarded. "
"Be careful," Abivard whispered, again as if Denak stood close by.
"'I shall take every precaution I can think of, " Denak wrote-she might be answering me, Abivard thought. "'Be circumspect when you reply to this letter. Pradtak has not formed the habit of reading what you write to me, but any mistake here would mean disaster-for me, for Sharbaraz King of Kings, and, I think, for Makuran. May the God bless you and hold you in her arms. "
Abivard started to put the letter with the others he'd had from Denak, but changed his mind almost at once. Some of his servitors could read, and this was a note they must not see. He hid it behind the wall hanging to whose frame Godarz had glued the spare key to the women's quarters.
That done, Abivard paced round the bedchamber as if he were a lion in a cage. What to do? echoed and reechoed in his mind, like the beat of a distant drum. What to do?
Suddenly he stood still. "As of this moment, I owe Smerdis miscalled King of Kings no allegiance," he declared as the realization crystallized within him. He had sworn loyalty to Smerdis on condition that Makuran's overlord had spoken truth about how he had come to power. Now that his words were shown to be lies, they held no more power over Abivard.
That, however, did not answer the question of what to do next. Even if all the dihqans and marzbans renounced Smerdis' suzerainty and marched on Nalgis Crag stronghold, they would be hard-pressed to take it-and would surely cause Sharbaraz to be killed to keep them from uniting behind him.
Then he thought of Tanshar's prophecy: a tower on a hill where honor was to be won and lost. Nalgis Crag stronghold was indeed a tower on a hill, and with the rightful King of Kings penned up there, plenty of honor waited to be won. But how would it be lost as well? That worried Abivard.
The trouble with prophecy, he thought as he read through Denak's letter again, was that what it foretold, while true, had a way of going unrecognized till it was past and could be seen, as it were, from behind. He wouldn't know if this was what Tanshar had predicted until after the honor was won and lost, if it was. Even then, he might not be sure.
"I have to talk with someone about this," he said; he sensed he needed another set of wits to look at the problem Denak had posed from a different angle. He started to call Frada, but hesitated. His brother was young, and too liable not to keep a secret. Word of Sharbaraz's imprisonment getting out could doom Peroz's son as readily as an army invading Nalgis Crag domain.