Guardians of the Keep: Book Two of the Bridge of D'Arnath (6 page)

my brother was built in large part on our common history. We had been two very different people

connected by the people, things, and experiences we had shared as children in this house. Yet our

attachment had been much stronger than I had ever imagined, surfacing at the last after so many horrors

seemed to have destroyed it. But I could see no way to stretch my affection for Tomas to encompass this

strange boy. Someone needed to discover what was troubling the child, but I didn’t even know how to

begin and was little inclined to try.

Any presumption that casual interaction might break down Gerick’s barriers was quickly dismissed.

My nephew seemed to have abandoned all the public rooms of the house. Except for an occasional

glimpse in the library, I saw him only at dinner. Formal and genuinely polite to the servants, he spoke not

a word to either Lady Verally or me.

“Has Gerick a tutor?” I asked Nellia over breakfast one morning. I had never lived around children.

A tutor might serve as a source of advice or insights.

“He’s had a number of them,” she said, “but none for long. He tells them how stupid they are, how he

can’t abide them as they’re no better than beggars. If they’re stubborn and put up with that, he’ll start

with the mischief, putting tar in their ink pots or lamp oil in their tea. Or he’ll put on screaming fits with the

duchess to make her send them away. Out of all the poor gentleman, only one ever stuck at his post for

more than a week. But didn’t the boy carry a tale to his mother that the man was getting overly friendly ...

in a nasty sort of way, if you take my meaning? So, of course, the man was dismissed right off. That was

almost a year ago, and none has taken up the position since then.”

And this was the boy that Ren Wesley claimed was polite and well behaved! “He doesn’t seem to

treat the servants so wickedly.”

“Oh, no! He’s as sweet a body as one could wish. Always polite and so grateful when you do him a

service. James— the young master’s manservant—he’s never had a cross word from the boy, and

spends more than half his time sitting idle because the child takes care of himself and his own things. He’s

ever so proper. Just not friendly as you and your brother always were.”

Strange. “Does he have any friends that visit?”

“A few times children have come to stay with their parents—even the king’s own daughter has been

brought here—but the young master might as well not live here for all he shows his face. From what I

hear, when the family goes to Montevial it’s much the same. It don’t seem right.”

“So there’s no one close to him, no one who could tell me anything that might help me understand him

better?”

Nellia shook her head and poured more tea in our cups. “The only one ever got on with him was

Lucy, his old nurse, but she’s been off her head for nigh on five years now. Of course, she couldn’t tell

you ought anyhow as she don’t speak. Then there’s the fencing master. The young master does dearly

love his sword fighting. I always thought it a sorry thing that he never let Duke Tomas teach him. The lad

would only work at it—and right fiercely too— when his lordship was away. He—the duke that

is—heard about the boy’s practicing. He hired the finest fencing master he could find to come and teach

the lad.”

“And has Gerick allowed the fencing master to stay?”

“Indeed so. Swordmaster Fenotte. But he’ll be of no help to you. He’s Kerotean. Speaks not a word

of decent Leiran. I just never understood why the boy wouldn’t learn sword fighting of his father who

was the finest in the kingdom.”

“Actually, I think that’s the most understandable thing you’ve told me.”

Nellia looked puzzled.

“Tomas would have had no patience with a beginner. If the boy admired his father, wanted to be like

him . . .”

The old woman nodded her head. “I’d not thought of it in that light. It’s true the duke, grace his

memory, was not humble about his skills.”

I laughed, with no little sadness. “Perhaps he had the wisdom to see it and spare the boy his

impatience.” My brother had loved his son very much.

One of my first duties in the house was to make some ceremony of Tomas’s death. King Evard

would likely mount an elaborate rite for his sword champion, but with Philomena confined to her bed and

Gerick so uncomfortable with me, I could not see us traveling to Montevial for such an event. Yet I felt

the need of some ritual of closure for the family.

Most Leirans had long lost interest in the only gods sanctioned by our priests and king—the Holy

Twins, Annadis the Swordsman, god of fire and earth and sunlight, and Jerrat the Navigator, god of sea

and storm, stars and moon. History, most particularly fear of sorcery, had wiped out any public

acknowledgement of other deities. And the cruelties of life had convinced most everyone that the Twins

must be more concerned with controlling the legendary beasts of earth and sky and monsters of the deep

than with the trials of mortals. But warriors like my brother and my father had found some solace in

thinking that Annadis and his brother would write the history of their deeds in the Book of Heroes and tell

their stories around their mythical campfires.

I had grown past blind acceptance of myth when I learned to think and explore for myself, and I had

lost all faith in supernatural benevolence when I saw the slit throat of my newborn son. Yet experience

had taught me the comfort of ritual, and it was not my place to refuse Tomas or his son the rite my

brother would have chosen for himself.

So I brought in a priest of Annadis, and Gerick and Philomena and I, along with representatives of the

servants and the household guard, sat in Philomena’s room and listened to the stories of the Beginnings

and the First God Arot’s battle with chaos and how, after his victory, Arot had given dominion over the

world to his twin sons. Rather than have the priest recite the entirety of my brother’s military

history—some of which I could not stomach hearing— I had the aging cleric list the matches Tomas had

fought to defend the honor of his king in his fourteen years as Evard’s sword champion. That evening,

Gerick and I stood on the hill of Desfiere outside the castle walls and watched as a stone was raised to

Tomas beside my father’s stone and my grandfather’s and the hundreds of others that stood on the

treeless hillside like a forest of granite. My nephew remained sober and proper throughout the day, so I

didn’t know if the rite meant anything to him or not. But I felt better after.

* * *

It was nearing four weeks of my stay when I began to sense I was being watched. At first I told

myself I was just unused to living with other people. Seventy-three house servants worked at Comigor:

clerks and maids, cooks and footmen, boot boys and sewing women and Philomena’s gaggle of personal

attendants. There were about half that number of outside servants, grooms and pot boys, a smith and an

armorer, carters and gardeners. Tomas’s personal guard numbered some ninety men; they lived in the

barracks across the inner bailey from the keep. And hundreds of other people lived on the estate and in

the villages close by. So plenty of eyes were on me every day. But a day came when I became

convinced that the creeping sensation was not just my imagination.

The day was hot and bright as only an autumn day can be, the sky a regal blue, the light golden, the

angle of the sun and the sharp edge of the wind hinting at the season’s change. I trudged through a deep

rift that split the grass-carpeted hills to the west of the castle, risking a stumble on the rocks that littered

the rift bottom and pricks and scratches from the draggle bushes in compensation for the shade.

As I walked, the hairs on my neck began to rise, the creeping sensation that had become so familiar

over the past days. Calling myself fifty names for foolish, I hurried my pace and then made a sudden stop

beyond the next bend of the rift. Peering back around the corner, I strained to catch some telltale

movement or hear a soft footstep. But I didn’t glimpse so much as a hare.

Feeling ridiculous, I tramped back toward the castle. But on the return journey, my eyes were

momentarily blinded by an arrow of light from the west battlements. I blinked and caught the glint again.

The third time, I smiled in satisfaction. So I wasn’t mad. The only thing out this way for anyone to be

observing with a spyglass was me.

The thought of a spyglass turned my thoughts to the Comigor spyholes. When I was ten and sorely

lamenting the disdain heaped upon me whenever my eleven-year-old brother ventured into manly pursuits

not permitted little sisters, my father had supplied me with a powerful weapon in sibling combat. One of

the former lords of Comigor, desiring to know everything that went on in his domain, had installed squints

into the Comigor walls and ceilings. The small holes were hidden in the decorative stonework or the

capitals of columns or in the intricate carving of a wooden mantelpiece or door frame. If one knew just

the right place to stand, in a niche or behind a column, or in the crawls left by stairs or corners or angles,

one could press eye or ear to the hole and gain possession of castle secrets. I almost laughed in relief. To

spy on the suspicious intruder was such a natural thing for a child. Perhaps I could turn the situation to

good purpose.

No spyholes opened into my bedchamber, thank goodness, nor into the little study I’d made from the

adjoining room in the north wing, but one of them overlooked the passage outside my door. The passage

joined the north wing to the northwest tower stair, and the spyhole was concealed in a stepped molding

that matched the rectangular wing to the circular tower. To look through the hole, one had only to lie flat

on the first landing of the tower stair and peer through a slot in the dusty wooden floor.

On a day when I had the clear impression that my shadow was with me, I dug about in a cluttered

storeroom until I found an old metal box that had a hasp, a working lock, and a key. I set the box in the

passage outside my bedchamber door in clear sight of the spyhole. Over the next few days I found

occasion to place several wrapped bundles in the box, making sure to lock it carefully after each entry.

Having installed no telltales, I had no idea if the box had been moved or examined, but I didn’t believe

my spy could get into it.

On a crisp autumn morning, I inserted a last bundle into the box and carried it up the tower stair. Only

because I knew to expect them did I notice the disturbed dust on the floor beside the lumpy shape of a

moth-eaten rug, crumpled in the corner of the landing. I climbed slowly past the hidden spy.

The narrow triangles of the tower steps spiraled about the walls, expanding into a landing as they

penetrated each of four levels. Tall arrowslits laid a barred pattern of light on the worn steps. A keen

observer might note that the walls narrowed near the top, the spiral of the stair closing just a bit tighter

than it should have. No more stairs existed beyond the fourth landing. Were an invading enemy to harry

him so far, a besieged warrior could make his last stand there with no escape but his blade. The enemy

could not know that the lady or the heir of the house had preceded this last defender into a secret place.

Pausing at the eighth stair past the third landing, and making a great show of sneaking, I twisted the

head of a stone gargoyle and pressed hard on the blank stone beneath the ugly carving. Though I worried

briefly that my scheme might be foiled by time and neglect, the stone slab soon swung away from me,

revealing a steep narrow stair between the inner and outer wall of the tower. Narrow shafts in the outer

stonework, invisible from below, supplied light and air.

Carefully I slipped through the opening and pushed the door closed, but not quite enough to let the

gargoyle slip back into position. I ran up the steps to the tiny room at the top of the tower, the secret

room where the lady and the heir could huddle terrified until their champions repelled the invaders, or

where they would die by their own hands if all hope was lost.

The wind gusted through a small door to the outside. Past the door, five more steps led up to an open

stone platform, centered by a firepit. This platform, hidden behind the crown of the tower, was the

highest point in all of Comigor Castle, commanding a view that stretched to the horizon in every direction.

The vast forest of Tennebar made a dark line in the west, while the snowcapped peaks of the Dorian

Wall were just visible far to the southwest.

I smiled as the door from the inner stair creaked slightly, and I counted the steps it would take him to

see where I had gone. . . .
Six, seven paces across the room and peer out the door. . . . Four, five

steps. Now peek around the low wall that faces the platform and open your mouth in

astonishment
.

“In this place only a bird can look down on you,” I said. I was perched on the parapet between two

merlons, eating an apple, my feet dangling over the wide world. “To my mind it’s quite the most

spectacular view in all of Leire.”

As I had thought it might, the wonder of the place stole away the boy’s determination to remain apart.

He was soon leaning over the wall on which I sat.