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In memory of Fiona Churchward Whitehouse, a bright light dimmed too soon
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
NOTABLE CHARACTERS
Old Kingdom of Zeidica
The King
Jelani of Osfahr, his dead queen
Salimbene, his heir
Barbazan, his physick
Duchy of Harcia
Aimery, Duke of Harcia
Balfre, his heir
Grefin, his youngest son
Jancis, Balfre’s wife
Emeline, Balfre’s daughter
Mazelina, Grefin’s wife
Jorin, Grefin’s heir
Ullia, Grefin’s daughter
Kerric, Grefin’s son
Joben, Balfre’s cousin
Waymon, Balfre’s friend
Paithan, Balfre’s friend
Lowis, Balfre’s friend
Terriel, a lord of the Green Isle
Alard, his heir
Robion, his nephew
Kierron, his nephew
Lord Herewart
Black Hughe, his youngest son
Curteis, Aimery’s high steward
Ambrose, Aimery’s Master Armsman
The Marches
Molly, mistress of The Pig Whistle
Diggin, her dead husband
Benedikt, her son
Iddo, The Pig Whistle’s barman
Gwatkin, The Pig Whistle’s stablemaster
Phemie, Molly’s friend and a local healer
Denno Culpyn, a trader
Wido, a Clemen Marcher lord
Jacott, a Clemen Marcher lord
Bayard, a Harcian Marcher lord
Egbert, a Harcian Marcher lord
Duchy of Clemen
Harald, Duke of Clemen
Argante, his duchess
Liam, his heir
Roric, his bastard cousin
Ercole, Argante’s half-brother
Lord Humbert, his chief councillor
Lindara, Humbert’s daughter
Vidar, a disgraced baron
Godebert, his dead father
Lord Aistan, Harald’s councillor
Kennise, Aistan’s daughter
Ellyn, Liam’s wetnurse
Master Blane, head of the Merchants’ Guild
Arthgallo, a leech
Damikah, a witch
Principality of Cassinia
Gaël, Prince of Cassinia
Leofric, his chief regent
Berardine, Duchess of Ardenn
Baldwin, the late Duke of Ardenn
Catrain, his heir
Brielle, her sister
Derrice, her sister
Markela, her sister
Izusa, a witch
PROLOGUE
Trapped by the weight of a single cotton sheet, Salimbene listened to the bedchamber’s sickness-tainted air rattle in and out of his chest. Something was about to happen, cataclysmic as an earthquake. His aching bones, his burning blood, the strange, knowing presence behind his eyes–they all told him. This night was an ending. His life, this life, was ending. Soon he’d be reborn. But as what, he didn’t know. He couldn’t see it. Not yet.
So he drooped his lacklustre eyelids low enough to deceive the physick… and waited.
Barbazan, done at last with his poking and prodding, his grunts and dire mutterings, retreated to the lamplit corridor beyond the chamber’s open door. The king stood there, magnificent in a fine blue robe and priceless jewels. Four days since he’d dared cross the chamber’s threshold. One more ominous sign.
“Is there hope?” the king whispered, too afraid to ask for the future out loud. His long, grey-striped beard was oiled and heavily perfumed, clouding him in a sweet stink. Even over the mingled stench of vomit and shit, suppurating flesh and useless incense, Salimbene could smell it: a blending of hyssop, sandalwood and jasmine. Royal scents, meant only for the great. “Tell me, Barbazan. Is there hope, or must he die?”
Pitilessly revealed by the corridor’s hanging lamps, the physick’s face folded and stretched, malleable with grief. Or was it revulsion? Shit and vomit were commonplace in a sickroom, no reason for disgust. But this strange, disfiguring illness also brought boils and pustules and endlessly weeping lesions. Not a pretty suffering, only ugliness and filth. A gradual, stinking decay that not even the most obscure unguents could halt.
“My lord king,” Barbazan said, carefully. Lamplight shone on patches of sun-browned scalp, visible through his carefully crimped, brittle black hair. “There is always hope.”
The king’s face twisted. “So you think he will die.”
“Whether your son lives or dies will be as Carsissus decrees, my lord king.” The physick’s tone hinted at reproof. “But I will fight to keep him.”
“And if that battle is won?” said the king. “Do you tell me he is not near to ruined with this affliction?”
A moment, then the physick looked down. His hands fell to his sides, hiding in folds of moss-green lamb’s wool almost as fine as that worn by the king. Barbazan made a rich living in service to Zeidica’s ruler.
“Alas,” he admitted. “But my lord king—” He looked up again. “You should not despair. You are a vigorous man, and your new queen is lush. Surely another son will quickly follow, to sit your throne in his time.”
“I do not understand this calamity.” The king sounded stronger. Close to anger. “Why am I punished, Barbazan? What sin is mine, to deserve this?”
Two frowning gazes slid into the chamber. Then the king shifted his resentful eyes to the physick’s guarded face. What he saw there made him wince, and swallow.
“Speak your truth,” he commanded. “Your words will not ruin you unless you repeat them elsewhere.”
“My lord king…” Barbazan shook his head. “You know I am counted a great man of healing. In my sixty-five years I have seen all manner of sickness and death. No mysteries of the body remain for me.”
“I do know it. Why else would you be trusted as physick to my court? Seek not for praise, Barbazan. Answer me instead.” The king pointed into the chamber. “What pestilence devours his flesh?”
“Great and gracious king, I cannot name it,” said the physick, full of sorrow and dread. “I have never seen its like in my life.”
“Meaning what, Barbazan?”
“Meaning your son’s affliction is not natural.”
“Not natural?” The king’s head lifted, as though he braced for a blow. “Do you tell me—”
“Alas, my lord king.” Barbazan’s words were almost a groan. “I fear your son’s illness springs from some poisonous canker of the spirit.”
A terrible silence. Then the king and the physick pressed their palms to their eyes, swiftly, that they might be spared the sight of evil. They spat on the corridor’s stone floor, expelling evil from their souls.
Watching them, feeling his heart labour in his wasted, painful chest, Salimbene felt a different, sharper pain. They were branding him unclean. They were calling him cursed.
The king wrapped his heavily ringed fingers about the diamond sunburst chain resting on his breast and squeezed until its gold
en links threatened to buckle. “You are certain?”
“Yes, my lord king,” Barbazan whispered. “Forgive me. I am.”
“And he cannot be saved?”
“I do not say that, my lord. But—”
“Should not be saved?”
Barbazan frowned. “A question for a priest, I think.”
“I am asking you, Barbazan.”
“My lord king, I—” The physick placed his capable hands together, palm to palm. “I am sworn to heal the body. Beyond that, my authority wavers.”
“Does it?” The king laughed, a harsh bark. “Then I envy you. Because my authority cannot waver. As Zeidica’s king I must be priest and physick both to my kingdom. And as its priest I must face every truth… no matter how painful.”
“What truth, my lord king?” Barbazan sounded fearful.
“That thanks to you I now understand my sin. My sin, Barbazan, was Salimbene’s mother.”
“His–his mother?”
The king’s lips pinched bloodless. “Yes. For when I married that woman, I took to wife a witch.”
“My lord king…” Uncomfortable, Barbazan shuffled his feet. “I know there were whispers. I dismissed them as the rotten fruits of jealousy. Instead of choosing a woman of Zeidica, your eye lit upon an outsider from Osfahr.”
“A witch from Osfahr,” said the king, his face dark. “They breed them as a dog breeds fleas in that cursed place.”
“But my lord–she was examined. No flaw was found.”
“She was a powerful witch. As full of secrets as ever she was with child.”
“My lord king…” Barbazan risked his life to touch the king’s arm. “If you knew her for a witch…”
The king knocked the physick’s hand aside. “Know? I did not know! She snared me in a web of wickedness, blinded me with her spells and evil conjures. It is only now that I see what has been hidden from me all these years. That rotting lump of flesh in there that you say is beyond all natural remedy? It is not my son.”
Barbazan’s mouth dropped open. “My lord?”
“She said he is my son, but she is dead and he is dying, unnatural, and you, Barbazan, can you swear to me that my seed gave him life?”
“If not your seed, my lord king, then whose?”
“No man’s! Is it not plain? She gave him life, with foulest sorcery.”
“Sorcery? Oh, no, my lord king—”
“Can you swear she did not?” Sweat glistened on the king’s brow. “Before the god of healing, Barbazan, with a sacred stone in your hand, would you swear it?”
Now the physick was sweating, salt trickles running down his temples and into the grooves in his parched cheeks. He looked like he was weeping. “My lord king, his face is yours when you were his age.”
“Are you deaf?” said the king, his eyes wild. “She was a witch. If her son wears my youthful face, it is her sorcery to blame. Her sorcery is to blame for all the ills of my life.”
“My lord king, what ills do you—”
“You are a fool,” the king spat, glaring. “You call me vigorous but in nineteen years she birthed no other child. I call that ill!”
“Your son’s birthing was bloody,” Barbazan protested. “Your wife’s body was ruined, after.”
“Another sign of sorcery! And it was sorcery kept me from discarding her when she was proved barren.”
Stepping back, Barbazan raised placating hands. “My lord king, I do not think we can—”
“Is it not strange that her son sickened on the first blood moon since she died?” The king was breathing heavily, making the dangled sapphires in his ears swing and flash in the mellow light. “The blood moon, Barbazan! A witch’s glory time, when all foul deeds are shrouded in murkiest night! If she did not conjure him to life with sorcery, why else would he fail when the moon rose bloody? Or do you say, physick, that his moral decay springs from my loins?”
Barbazan gasped. “No, my lord king.”
“No, my lord king,” the king said grimly. “And well for you that you do not say it, for there is more than one physick in this world.”
“Yes, my lord king,” said Barbazan, his voice strangled. “My lord king, these are weighty matters, far beyond my reach. I should return to your–to my patient.”
The king lifted a finger. “Wait.”
Still as death on his pillows, from beneath his lowered eyelids Salimbene watched the king stare at him. Watched his lips thin, and the leap of muscle along the bearded jaw that had softened with the passing years. And as he watched, saw his fate decided.
“Go, Barbazan,” said the king. “And never return. You are no longer needed here. See to my wife. I wish to know how many days must pass before my seed will fall on her fertile, natural ground.”
Barbazan’s shocked stare leapt into the bedchamber, and out again. “But–my lord king—”
“You dare dispute me?”
Shuddering, the physick bent almost double. “No, my lord king.”
“Barbazan…” The king placed a fist beneath the physick’s chin and forced the frightened man’s head up. “You said yourself, Carsissus will decide if he lives or dies. Is that not the truth?”
“Yes, my lord king,” Barbazan whispered. “That is the truth.”
Lowering his fist, the king nodded. “The solemn truth. For we are mortal, Barbazan, and flawed. The gods have no need of our interference.”
“No, my lord king.” Cautiously, the physick unbent himself. “I–I will see to the queen, my lord. And in this matter—” A final, flickered glance into the chamber. “I will trust the gods.”
“Silently trust,” said the king, his face full of dire warning. “Barbazan, you are wise.”
Barbazan withdrew and for a long time after, the king stood silent in the bedchamber’s open doorway. Salimbene waited, barely breathing. There had been a mistake, surely. Surely he had misunderstood. For seventeen years he and this man had lived as king and prince. Father and son. Friend and friend. Friends did not leave each other to die, alone and in miserable agony.
Fathers did not condemn their sons to that.
Still unspeaking, the king reached for the chamber door’s carved ivory handle. Tightened his jewelled fingers around it. Started to pull.
Salimbene sat up. The pain sank its talons deeper into his corrupted flesh, but he ignored it. With her dying breath his mother had warned him… but he’d refused to believe her. How could he believe her? He was the king’s son. His pride. His joy. His heir.
“Please, my lord. Wait. Speak to me.”
The king said nothing. The door kept closing.
“Father! You’d abandon me? Leave me to die? Why?”
The door’s closing paused. The king sighed. “A true prince would not have to ask.”
A soft, final thud of wood against wood. The chamber sank into deeper shadow, its only light the small lamp on the table beside the bed.
Stunned, Salimbene screwed his crusted eyes tightly shut. Betrayal was a dagger twisting in his heart. Salt tears flooded his eyes, unstoppable, and spilled to sting the weeping lesions on his face. But not for long. Soon enough rage rose to burn away the grief. To burn away kind memories, leaving nothing but hate. And with the hate came fresh strength.
Beneath his wool-stuffed mattress was hidden a great secret. His mother’s last and greatest gift.
Biting his scabbed lip, smothering the pain to a thin mewl, Salimbene kicked free of his sheet and half-rolled, half-fell, out of his princely bed. His linen sick-shirt tore free where seeping pus had glued it to his skin. Swift blots of blood spread across the older, yellower stains. He had to wait again, unevenly breathing on hands and knees, until he was strong enough to lift the mattress and grope beneath it. When at last his fingers touched the book of spells that had once belonged to his mother, Jelani of Osfahr, the true queen of Zeidica, it felt like a kind of coming home. Bound in gold-stitched calfskin, each stiff page covered with careful ink, no Zeidican would know what the book said.
Its words were written in Osfahri.
“Keep this safe from prying eyes, my love,” his mother had said in her native tongue, that they’d shared since first he learned to speak. “No one can know you have it. Your life is forfeit if it’s found.”
Bidding farewell to him on her deathbed, she was so thin he was sure he could see the bones and slowing blood below her skin.
“The key to my power, the same power that sleeps in you, is in this book, Salimbene,” she’d whispered, despite her suffering. “You feel the power waking, don’t you? You’ve had the dreams.”
Of course she’d known, without him telling her. Never in his life could he hide the truth from his mother. She was a witch. A sorceress of Osfahr. Since learning the truth of her as a child, just turned four, he’d held her life in his hands. But it had been safe there. She knew it.
“When the time comes, use your magic freely,” she’d told him, her sunken eyes brilliant even as the shadows closed in. “Never fear it. Salimbene, my precious son, one day you will be a sorcerer king, the most magnificent the world has ever seen. This is your birthright. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” he’d said, weeping. Not sure if he did believe, only desperate to please her. “But I know nothing of magic, of power. How will I—”
Seventy-two empty days had passed since she died, and still he could feel her thin, cold fingertips on his wet cheek.
“Everything you need is in the book, my son. Trust it. Trust yourself. But Salimbene… you must beware the king. After I’m gone he’ll be a danger to you.”
His father a danger? How could that be? Shocked, he’d tried to argue. But she wouldn’t let him. And even as her gasping breath failed, and her brilliant eyes dimmed, she fought to save him.
“Salimbene, I beg you. Do not trust the king! And know there is one more danger you must beware. The Oracle of Nicosia. It has the power to destroy you. Find it, my love, no matter the cost. Find it and destroy it. Only then will you be untouchable. Promise me, Salimbene. Promise!”
So he’d promised her, not understanding, and then held her close as she died.
Now, with her warning about the king come true, he pressed her book of spells hard against his chest, feeling his heart beat through the old calfskin and thickly inked rough pages, and stared at his chamber’s door. The king had closed it like a funerary closed the lid on a coffin. Mute as the grave he’d shouted: I have no son. My son is dead.