Shadow of the Father

 
Scribe’s note

 
This is a complete manual transcription of the print version of the book. There are most likely a number of transcription errors, so if you find any, either ignore them or point them out in the forum thread you found this in for me to find and fix.

Also, the print version of the book I based this transcription on actually contained a decent number of typos and grammatical mistakes. I tried to compensate and correct them as best as I could, but there are undoubtedly some that will have slipped past me, so
mea culpa
in advance. (And yes, this includes the apparently screwy chapter ordering, which I just copied as-is from the book.)

Now that I’ve sufficiently covered my ass: Enjoy!

 
ePub maker’s note

 
I've corrected the typos I've encountered, and inserted some missing words from my physical copy.

There was a problem with paragraph breaks in the coversion process from pdf to ePub, extras where there shouldn't be and some original breaks missing. Hopefully I've caught most of them.

 

For my father,

who taught me

“don’t be normal.”

 
If this is your first introduction to the world of Argaea, welcome. It’s my third full novel and umpteenth story in the Renaissance-era furry universe I created with the story “The Prisoner’s Release” back in Heat #1, years and years ago. The world then was the size of a prison cell, its population a fox named Volle and two jailers.

In Heat #2, “The Prisoner’s Release” concluded, bring us out of the prison cell and into the city of Divalia, the capital of the country of Tephos. From that story, the novels
Volle
and
Pendant of Fortune,
set before and after it respectively, came about. Both centered around Volle, a lord in the royal court at Tephos, and expanded on the Panbestian Church and its six major deities, imaginatively named Ursis, Canis, Felis, Rodenta, Mustela and Herbivora, as well as the royal succession in Tephos, which passes not from father to son, but circulates between the six Houses of the church.

Lordship, however, does pass from father to son. In
Pendant of Fortune,
we meet Volle’s first son, Volyan, and are witness to the conception of what will hopefully be his second. For years, I’ve known that Yilon was conceived that day, and would have his own trials and tribulations growing up, though he would not be in line to succeed to his father’s title. I had the first two paragraphs of his story written for a long time, and late in 2008, I had enough of the rest of the story planned out that I could start writing.

Shadow of the Father
explores new parts of Argaea and introduces new characters, alongside some old friends, if you’re a return visitor. It is a somewhat younger book than
Volle
; Yilon is several years younger than his father was at the start of his adventure, and has a bit more growing to do. It was a wonderful experience for me, finding out more about my world, and I hope you will enjoy it just as much. I think it is more than a worthy successor to
Volle
and
Pendant of Fortune.

Shadow
is the first novel in years that I wrote completely as a novel, following the episodic
Waterways
and
Out of Position.
I documented the writing of it at kyellgold.livejournal.com (it was called
Sins of the Father
at the time), sharing it with the community there. I continue to learn about writing with every book, a journey larger than Argaea that I hope I never come to the end of. As always, I deeply appreciate your company on this journey. It’s much more fun than making it alone.

—Kyell, January 2010

 
By the time the second month of summer had come and gone, the novelty of the locusts had faded, but Yilon still relished the bitter taste and crunch of them. They flew stupidly into the darkness of his black-furred paw, as though anxious for their short lives to be over. Volyan ate them cooked and honey-coated, but Yilon preferred plucking them from the air, like fruit from invisible trees. He wasn’t the only one, either; most of the population of the palace could be seen crunching locusts when walking outside, even the mice, rats and deer.

Yilon chewed on one he’d retrieved from his russet head fur as he walked beneath the shady vines out into the gardens. Despite the stifling heat, he still wore a full tunic, albeit a loose cotton one that breathed well. Volyan, he knew, would be wearing nothing but shorts as a grudging concession to propriety, one of many points on which they differed. Even if he’d had the older fox’s developed physique and stature, Yilon still would have worn a tunic. Often he wondered if they really shared the parentage they both claimed.

For example, Yilon would never have missed a history lesson of his own volition, certainly not to lounge by the fountain in the garden and entertain a pair of airheaded girls. But that was the first place he looked today when sent to find his older brother. A number of lords had sought shelter from the heat in the shady arbors around the fountain, while the younger generation splashed around in it. Volyan was with neither.

If he wasn’t in the garden, and he wasn’t in their chambers, then he was likely down in the armory practicing his swordplay. Yilon slipped into a side door of the palace and took a shortcut down the two flights of the Rabbit stair to the lower levels.

“Held up in History again?” said a voice behind him as he stepped off the last stair.

“Oh, right.” Yilon held out his paw. His friend Sinch, a short, smiling mouse, slapped it and then held his own out for a return slap.

“Sorry, I didn’t tell you. Father canceled my weapons practice today.”

Sinch looked around. “There isn’t anything but the armory down here.”

“I’m looking for my brother. I’m supposed to bring him back.”

“Oh.” Sinch pointed up the stair. “I just saw him leaving.”

“He wasn’t in the garden.” Yilon turned and hurried up the stairs, Sinch following.

“Not the garden. Out of the palace.” Yilon stopped on the landing. “Teeth and Tail,” he swore. He pulled himself around the bust of a rabbit to run up the second flight, not bothering to quiet the clicking of his claws on stone. “I’m not going into that tavern to find him.”

Sinch stood three inches shorter than Yilon on level ground. On the stairs, running up behind him, the mouse had to reach up a foot just to grab Yilon’s elbow. “He might not have gone there.”

“Of course he did,” Yilon said, shaking free. He grasped the rabbit statue on the main floor and whirled around it, dodging between servants and lords on his way further up.

Sinch ran up in his wake. “Did he know your father wanted to see you both?”

“Probably.” Yilon had already been thinking that if Volyan had found out about the meeting somehow, that he would’ve gone out of his way to avoid it. “I’m just going to see if I can see him on the street, and then I’ll go back to Father.”

The flight of stairs ended at the third floor corridor. Yilon spun to his left, hurrying past doorways until he got to a small archway on his right. He ducked into the shadowy space, not wanting for his eyes to adjust before finding the bottom of the ladder and swarming up. At the top, he whispered down, “All clear?”

“Clear,” Sinch’s voice floated up to him. He pushed the trap door open, flooding the space with light. Of course other people in the palace knew about the way to the roof, but Yilon liked pretending it was their secret. He clambered out into the shimmering heat, stepping aside immediately to let Sinch hop out. By the time Sinch had lowered the door closed, Yilon had already made it across the roof, peering out over the waist-high wall.

Below him and to the right lay the front gardens, filled with strolling lords and bustling servants. Around them rose the true palace walls, and beyond them, the bustling streets of Divalia. “How long ago?” Yilon asked as Sinch came up to his side.

The mouse rested his elbows on the wall. “Not long. Fifteen minutes, perhaps. He was leaving the armory, and he had on his vest, the yellow one, so I knew he was going outside.” They stared at the street ahead of them. If Volyan had gone that way, they should be seeing him soon.

Light sparkled to Yilon’s left, sunlight reflecting off the river. His attention drifted from searching for a fox in a yellow vest out on the street to watching a small barge float by. He wondered where it was on its way to, heading southward on the Lurine. Maybe Villutian, or Tistunish, or even…

He heard a soft whoosh and then the thunk of wood on stone. His ears flicked to catch the sound just as Sinch tackled him from the side, knocking him to the ground. “What the—” He struggled against the mouse, finally shoving him to the side. “Are you crazy?”

“Get down!” Sinch’s eyes were wide. He pointed to the small object, a few feet from them, that had made the sound.

Yilon had seen plenty of things like this, had been handling some just yesterday, in fact. But the arrows he shot were fletched with pigeon feathers, not black crow’s. He reached out and took the small shaft in his paws, turning it over. “It’s not from the palace,” he said.

Sinch shook his head. He hissed, “It came from out there! Someone shot at you!”

The arrow itself was perfectly ordinary. Yilon frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous. Who would shoot at me? It got away from someone, that’s all.”

“It almost hit you!”

He closed his paw around the arrow, brandishing it as if it were a pointer and he a tutor. “Do you know how good someone would have to be to get that close to me intentionally from outside the palace? Besides, it’s not a longbow arrow, and a regular bow wouldn’t be able to shoot that far.”

“So, what?” Sinch’s voice was high, frightened. “Someone snuck into the palace to shoot at you?”

Yilon tossed the arrow to one side. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “You can’t sneak into the palace. Well,
you
can. But you know what I mean.”

Sinch continued to look fearfully at the wall. He crept up to it and peered over it. “There’s rooftops across the way,” he said. “You could shoot a regular bow from there.”

The rooftops seemed too far away, but Yilon only had a glimpse before Sinch pulled him down again. “Let me!” he said.

“You’re being silly.” Yilon shook free of the mouse and brushed his clothes and tail off. Rather than look back over the wall, he strode quickly to the trap door. “I’m going back to Father,” he said. “If you’re unsure Volyan was going out, I’ll just tell him that.”

Sinch hurried after him, with glances back at the street and rooftops. “I’m pretty sure,” he said. “He never wears the vest.”

“And when Father’s done with whatever he wants to tell me, I’ll bring a bow up here and we can shoot arrows at the rooftops. Okay?”

He clambered through the trap door and down the ladder.

“Um,” Sinch said, “I’m not sure…” He swung through and shut the trap door above him, plunging them into darkness.

“We won’t hit them. That’ll prove that it’s just an accident.”

“But…”

Yilon reached the bottom of the ladder and stepped back. When Sinch reached the floor, Yilon put a paw on his shoulder and squeezed. “Don’t worry so much,” he said. “When we come back, we can maybe spend a little more time up there.”

He felt Sinch relax under his paw, turning to nuzzle it briefly. “It was really disturbing,” he said.

“It’s the roof of the palace. It’s safe.” He patted the mouse’s rear. “Now come on, I need to get back to my chambers or Father’ll throw a fit.”

They emerged into the third floor hallway, passing Lord and Lady Quirn, a bear couple who took up most of the space. Yilon squeezed by and hurried around to the Wolf Stair, springing down it with Sinch close behind.

“I’ll wait for you by the armory,” Sinch said as they reached the main floor. Yilon waved acknowledgment, dashing around the corner to his chambers.

“Sorry!” he said, throwing open the inner door. “I went to look for Volyan, but he took off, probably out at that…” He skidded to a halt.

At the desk sat his father, Lord Vinton, chair turned around to face the interior of the room. Leaning against the wall beside the desk, the breeze from the window ruffling his white cheek fur, his father’s lover Streak, a wolf in a green jerkin and vest, watched Yilon with amusement. On the other side of the desk, a short, thin fox ruffled through a sheaf of papers, apparently oblivious to Yilon. He wasn’t anyone Yilon had seen around the palace before, but he was dressed in traveling clothes: a leather jerkin with a faded crest on the front, loose leggings, and a small cap. And next to the desk, at one of the chairs around the small table there, his brother Volyan sat smirking, his arms folded across a yellow vest that was open enough to show off most of his chest.

“Have a seat,” his father said, gesturing to the empty chair opposite Volyan.

Yilon glared at his brother. He took one step to the side and slouched against the wall, next to the doorway.