The Legend of Broken (59 page)

“I am glad to hear you say so, Minister,” came the unexpected voice of Rendulic Baster-kin in reply; and Radelfer realized with some distress that his master must have been listening from the gallery above, for he was now midway down the great stairs. “And to dismiss such idle talk with such excellent dispatch,” the young lord continued, slowly descending the steps to the hall below—a carefully arranged bit of theatrics, Radelfer silently observed, one that would become habitual, in future years. “It gives me all the more pleasure in welcoming you into my home—and thanking you for coming under such … unusual circumstances.”

“Unusual, but understandable,” Caliphestros replied, bowing slightly—although not nearly so deeply, Radelfer knew, as Rendulic Baster-kin would have preferred. “If your wife’s and your son’s conditions are indeed as critical as I have been led to believe, it is of great doubt that Broken’s own healers would be equal to the task of diagnosing and determining any true cure that might exist. Except, of course, for the truly capable Gisa—who recommended my services, I understand, as a consequence of having had some past business with your lordship …?”

“How very knowledgeable you are, Minister Caliphestros,” the Merchant Lord replied. “Which is as well, for the situation seems now to worsen by the day. And so I trust that you will take no offense if I forgo further niceties by asking you to cast your no doubt expert eyes on the troubled members of my family at once?”

He held what appeared to be an inviting hand out toward the stairs: but the gesture was in truth less welcoming than redolent of his intention to demonstrate his greater status and his supreme power in his own household and kingdom. Second Minister Caliphestros seemed incapable of being cowed, however, especially by one so young, and only smiled, joining Rendulic Baster-kin on the stairs and walking with him up and toward the bedchamber then still shared by the master and mistress of the
Kastelgerd.
Radelfer followed some few steps behind: where, he knew, the increasingly confident and bold young man had also expected Caliphestros to walk. Sensing the onrush of some unidentifiable crisis, just as he had once been able to smell the coming of battle during his years as a Talon, the seneschal prepared for it by reaching instinctively for the hilt of a fine raiding sword that had for all his career as a soldier been at his side, but was now gone: in its place, he found only a small jeweled dagger that had become his sole weapon of defense when he became a glorified domestic servant …

Shown first into the chamber where Lady Chen-lun lay, Caliphestros had needed even less time than Gisa would have, Radelfer observed, to reach some unspoken conclusion concerning her condition, one that even so experienced a healer and scholar had found shocking. And, once his examination had been completed, he asked to see the stricken child immediately, and was taken to a distant, cramped nursery.

If the great scholar’s expression on examining Lady Chen-lun had been one of shock, his countenance on studying the infant was overwhelming sadness. The child had not yet been named; but the latest Lord Baster-kin had already and bitterly taken to calling him “Klauqvest” (with a cruelty, it seemed to Radelfer, which all too closely resembled that of Rendulic’s own father) because of the child’s fingers and toes, the bones of which had appeared malformed at birth, and were quickly growing ever more fused, like some crawling, shelled sea beast. Asking only a few questions as he examined the boy—whose pain was the true cause of his unending wailing, explained Caliphestros, rather than any fault of character or desire to irritate his parents—the Second Minister next inquired as to how the child was receiving sustenance: for his mother certainly neither wished nor was in any condition to nurse him. Rendulic Baster-kin explained that he had attempted to find a decent wet nurse, but that all such had been too terrified by the prospect. Finally, a drunken hag from the Fifth District had been discovered, who would take on the task, provided she was liberally paid and constantly supplied with wine. When Rendulic Baster-kin had asked Caliphestros if such was a fatal mistake, and in any way the cause for the child’s worsening condition, the Second Minister had replied that, while never a particularly sound notion, the use of a drunken hag as a wet nurse, in this particular case, was unlikely to make a dramatic difference: if she at least provided milk, that was preferable to slow starvation—although the latter might, ultimately, have been the more merciful course.

These words caused the Merchant Lord to stiffen noticeably. “And what does the minister mean by such a statement? Are the tales I have heard true, then, and is this—this
child
the result of unnatural relations between my wife and some spirit, some
alp
from Davon Wood?”

Caliphestros could only laugh weakly, as well as grimly. “Yes, such a tale is what the Kafran healers would doubtless have arrived at, sooner or later. Absurd as it is, it would be better than the truth, which they would be too unnerved to tell you …”

Rendulic Baster-kin had been standing by the small window in that small chamber in which there were few comforts, as far from the crib of his infant son as it was possible for him to position himself; but when this statement by the great scholar Caliphestros caused him to turn, Radelfer needed no more than little light to see that his face was already filling with, at once, greater sorrow, rage, and malice than he had ever seen the young man exhibit.

“‘The truth’?” Lord Baster-kin softly murmured. “You claim to know the truth, Minister—the same claim for which you mock Broken’s own healers?”

“My lord,” Caliphestros replied; and there was now genuine emotion, true sympathy, in what had before been the face and voice of an impassive man of science. “We can none of us declare, with absolute certainty, that we know ‘the truth.’ But I must tell you: never, in all of the thousands of afflicted souls that I have observed, have I ever heard a plausible argument made for the interference of magical or divine forces so childish and petty as elves and
alps,
demons and
marehs
,
†
unless the sufferers’ healers themselves were too terrified or too ignorant—or, as in most such cases, both—to admit that they did not know the true cause of the illness, and required some inexplicably persecutory intervention by such creatures behind which to hide their ignorance.” Caliphestros could see that his words were causing the Merchant Lord’s rage only to rise. “It gives me no pleasure to say this, but—”

Rendulic Baster-kin looked up, his eyes having become deep-set, malevolent weapons of their own. Caliphestros took a deep, steadying breath. “My lord—your father, I have heard from certain healers, was a victim of the pox. Is that so?”

Rendulic nodded quickly; Caliphestros had just given voice to the very nightmare that, of late and near every night, woke the Merchant Lord in sweats both hot and cold. “It is so …”

“Then,” the Second Minister continued, “it is necessary that I tell you that both your wife and this child may well be displaying signs of the pox, as well: your wife, only intermittently, but your son … The disease, I suspect, has cast the very form of his being. And it will only become worse as the years go on—although with care he may live, even if both you and he will wonder from time to time if such has truly been a blessing.”

Rendulic Baster-kin stepped back as if struck hard. “But—” He had begun to grasp at any other conclusion that his mind could formulate. “Our first son—Adelwülf—he is the very model of health and virtue!”

“And conceived when the disease had scarcely taken root in the Lady Chen-lun,” Caliphestros answered earnestly, “as well as born during a period when it had, for a time, retreated. There are many of us who have studied this illness, my lord, who have come to call the pox by another title: the ‘Great Imitator,’
†
for its ability to mimic other ailments, until the terrible truth becomes undeniable. And such may be the case here—it may be that what we have called ‘the pox,’ in the case of your father, your wife, and your son, may be some other disease. But to be safe, my lord—you must not attempt to conceive a child with your wife, until she is healthy once more, and for an extended period of time. You yourself appear to have escaped, as has your eldest son—that at least argues for, not the pox, but a pox-like disease. And it ensures you at least one healthy heir. But you must not risk your safety again, or the safety of a future child. You are simply too important to this kingdom.”

But it had already become clear that Rendulic Baster-kin saw only the worst in his predicament: Radelfer watched his young friend and master turn back to the window, as the Merchant Lord said, in a soft, bitter voice,
“Even from beyond the pyre, he strikes at me …”

Radelfer rushed quickly to the young lord’s side. “Did you not hear the minister, my lord? It may be some other illness, there may have been no such attempt to curse your life at the last—”

“I knew him, Radelfer,” Rendulic quietly continued, shaking his head to deny his seneschal’s protest. “It would be precisely his perverse idea of—of
immortality:
to poison his descendants for generation after generation … And so, whether he knew it or not, I would stake my life that he believed he was planting the seed of the plague in us all …” Without fully turning back about, the Merchant Lord tried to speak with as much composure as he could muster: “My … 
thanks,
Lord Caliphestros. We have, at least, solved one mystery, I believe: the condition of that”—he tossed his head in the direction of the crib—“that
thing
that was to be my son. And now, I must ask you to give me a measure of time alone. Radelfer will see you out, and arrange all payments.”

Caliphestros nodded. “No payment is necessary, my lord—and let us pray that I am wrong, as all healers are, on occasion. I shall take my leave, then, offering only my deepest sympathy—and my most emphatic advice that you heed my words, which are not mine alone, but the sum of knowledge gained by most learnèd men far outside the frontiers of this kingdom …”

Not waiting for an answer, Caliphestros moved quickly to the nursery door, where Radelfer intercepted him even more speedily. “Can you find your way back out, Minister?” the seneschal whispered. “I—I confess that I am afraid to leave my lord alone with either this child or his wife, after what you have said.”

Caliphestros nodded. “You are right, Radelfer, to take such precautions. Of course, I can look after my own departure. But you must continue to try to make him see that, even if his child and his wife have been so abominably cursed by his own vicious father, he must care for them, and not turn to the punishments which I know are first in the minds of all Broken nobles, when they are presented with such imperfection and perfidy.”

Radelfer nodded, urging the minister further along the hallway. “You speak of the
mang-bana
?”
†
Radelfer asked. “I confess, it is my own fear—for my master is, as you have witnessed, a young man of enormous passions, capable of reason one instant, and of …” The aging soldier did not seem able to complete this thought, bringing Lord Caliphestros’s hand to his shoulder.

“You are wise, Seneschal,” he whispered, “and your master is fortunate to have had your steadying influence. Remain here, if only as a kindness to my
own
conscience.” Caliphestros looked into the nursery a last time. “For the
mang-bana
may be the least of what will occur to him, once he has brooded on the subject at length. And with that—I fear I must bid you farewell …”

As Caliphestros moved more rapidly than Radelfer would have thought his silver and black robes would have permitted down the grand staircase and toward the front entrance of the
Kastelgerd
—for it mattered not if any servant heard those doors open and close, now—he heard the child within the nursery begin to wail once more, his torment rising again, and looked in to see his master moving toward the crib.

“My lord?” the seneschal asked carefully. “Are you well?”

The young lord shook his head. “Evil has been done, and there must be blame. There must be—
punishment
 …” As Rendulic continued to stare at the wailing child, he held out a desperate hand. “Do you know—I would comfort him, had I any idea of how to do it. Simply to be touched, said the great scholar of the Inner City, to be taken up and swayed, gently rocked to expel the air and vomit in his stomach, all that a child requires,
this
the child finds agonizing. And so—I cannot … I cannot bring myself to offer him such ordinary comforts, if it is at the cost of such severe pain. We must have a drunken bitch of a wet nurse to do it, for his cries will mean naught to her ears and heart, or whatever machine passes for her heart, until the inevitable day …” And then another thought, altogether different, occurred to Rendulic Baster-kin, and he looked to Radelfer:

“And yet, what if the great scholar who has just left us is wrong? What if this disease will resolve itself before the child must be left to the Wood? Or, worse yet, after he is thus outcast? Weigh the matter carefully, Radelfer—why should we pay that man Caliphestros greater heed than we do our own healers? He said himself that these are all issues of debate, of opinion—and has
he
arrested the deterioration of the God-King Izairn? No. Why, then, Radelfer?
Why heed him …?
”

The seneschal wished to utter the simplest reason why: that Rendulic Baster-kin knew himself, from personal and bitter experience, that Broken’s Kafran healers were fools, and that Caliphestros, while he could not stop the inevitable progression of the God-King Izairn’s decline, had at least softened that march of mortality. But, ultimately, the seneschal found that calming his lord was far more important than proving this point: and so, as soon as the drunken wet-nurse appeared, wiping grease from her mouth with the same filthy sleeve that she would shortly use to wipe the face of the unfortunate infant in the crib, Radelfer guided the somewhat stunned Merchant Lord from the room.