The Lion of Senet (15 page)

Chapter 22

Landfall Day dawned bright and hot, promising perfect weather and no chance that rain would force the Festival to be canceled.

The common was at the back of the Keep, a vast open area of lush green grass cropped close by the goats that roamed it when it was not in use for public functions. It sloped down from the castle walls until it opened out into a broad flat area lined by the trees of the Duke’s Forest on the far side. A line of wagons was camped on the other side of the park; the performers and merchants come to display their wares making their impromptu campsites. The tall wicker suns representing the twin suns of Ranadon were already set up, flanking a small stone altar. There were also long trestle tables being set up for the food that would be brought out later. Already, the mouthwatering aroma of roasting meat from the pits near the trees could be tasted on the breeze.

Dirk went riding with Kirsh, Alenor and Lanon to watch the preparations, but he could not enthuse himself about any of it. There was a solid post driven into the ground in front of each wicker structure representing the suns, and all he could think about was the unknown men who would be tied to those posts tonight, burned alive to keep the second sun shining overhead. The victims were not from Elcast, Dirk had been relieved to discover. They were two criminals named Hari and Linel, who Antonov had brought with him from Avacas.

Was the Age of Shadows so bad that it needed something as dreadful as human sacrifice to keep it at bay? Not according to Johan Thorn. Dirk still hadn’t decided how he felt about the renegade king. Or even if he believed him.

“Race you to the trees!” Kirsh shouted, kicking his horse into a canter.

Kirsh rode like he did everything: magnificently. Lanon let out a whoop and chased after him. They headed for the tree-line on the other side of the common, plowing through the brightly colored stalls being set up for the fair, and scattering anyone foolish enough to get in their way. A few angry merchants yelled at the boys as they thundered past, but the prince and the young lord ignored their curses and threats to report them to the duke. Alenor watched them, but she made no attempt to follow.

“When I am queen,” she said suddenly, “I’m going to put an end to this.”

Dirk looked at her in surprise. “But aren’t you afraid that will bring back the Age of Shadows?”

“I don’t care,” the princess said defiantly. “I’ll find a way to end it somehow.”

If Antonov had taken Alenor from her mother because he didn’t like the way she was being raised, then he’d failed miserably to turn her to his cause. She wore a look of savage determination. For a fleeting moment, he saw the steel that lay hidden beneath the fragile shell. There was more of her uncle in Alenor than anybody suspected.

Dirk decided that it wasn’t a good idea to mention it, though.

When they returned to the Keep, Balonan called Dirk over and informed him that Prince Antonov wished to see him in the Library. With a great deal of trepidation, Dirk made his way up the staircase. He didn’t know why the Lion of Senet wanted to see him, and feared it was because the prince had learned of his visit with Johan Thorn. He knocked on the door and opened it hesitantly as the voice within called permission to enter.

“Ah, Dirk,” Antonov said pleasantly. “Come in.”

“You wanted to see me, your highness?”

“I do. Come here, boy. Don’t stand there by the door quaking in your boots. I’m not going to bite you.”

Antonov smiled at him and Dirk found himself relaxing. Perhaps nobody had discovered his secret visit after all. The guards on Johan Thorn’s room had been Tovin Rill’s men from the garrison in town. He’d arrived carrying several vials that contained what looked like herbal remedies, and the guards knew he was Helgin’s apprentice. They hadn’t thought to question his right to be there.

Dirk walked the length of the Library until he was only a few paces from the prince. Although a big, powerful man, Antonov was both charming and disarming when he chose. He was sitting at the end of the table with a large unopened book in front of him. Its cover appeared to be made of solid gold and it was encrusted with gems. Dirk tried very hard not to gape at it.

Antonov noticed the direction of his gaze and smiled even wider. “You know what that is?”

“No, sir.”

“It is the
Book of Ranadon
—the original.”

“I’ve heard of it, sire. But I never thought to see it.”

The most prized possession of the Shadowdancers and, according to rumor, the true account of the High Priestess’s visions of the Goddess, the
Book of Ranadon
was something of a legend. There were copies, but supposedly the original never left Avacas. The cover alone was worth more than Elcast Island.

It was probably
not
a good idea, however, to tell Antonov that Master Helgin considered the
Book of Ranadon
to be a “load of lies, ignorance and gibberish not worth the parchment it was written on.” Or that his mother called it “the Book of Rubbish.”

“Would you like to read it?”

“
Sir?
” Dirk asked in shock.

“You can read, can’t you, Dirk? I’m assuming Helgin taught you that much.”

“Of course...” Something in Antonov’s eyes made him fear for Helgin. “He’s an excellent physician, sire. He used to be at court on Kalarada.”

“
Used
to be, Dirk,” the prince pointed out. “Don’t you think he’d still be there if he was as good as you imagine?”

“I ... don’t really ... well, I never really thought about it like that, your highness.”

Suddenly Antonov smiled again. “Well, I suppose you wouldn’t, would you? Come, boy. Let us see how good Master Helgin is. Read to me.”

He leaned forward and opened the book, flicking through the gloriously illuminated pages until he came to the place he sought, and then turned the book to face Dirk.

“From here,” he ordered, pointing to a paragraph about halfway down the page.

Dirk picked up the heavy book, cleared his throat nervously and began to read.

“And so it was that after ten years of the Age of Shadows, of droughts and famine, of bitter cold and cruel darkness, the Sundancer Belagren, pure of heart and purpose, was visited in a dream by the Goddess who revealed to her the Path of Light.

“ ‘Go forth,’ the Goddess instructed Belagren in her vision. ‘Dance in the shadows and bring my people back to the light.’

“And so Belagren became the first Shadowdancer. She gathered to her those who believed in her vision and then came to the people. She told them, ‘I have been shown the way to redemption!’

“No longer would Ranadon’s days be filled with darkness. No longer would the ground shake with Her wrath, nor cold and hunger plague Ranadon’s people. The seas would return; Her bounty would be plentiful once more.

“But there was a price to be paid before the Goddess would be satisfied that the people were ready to embrace Her truth once more. And the sacrifice was a terrible one. The Goddess demanded that a child of royal blood must be sacrificed to Her, at the ninth hour on the ninth day of Ezenor in the year ten thousand, two hundred and twenty-one. Then, and only then, would the Age of Shadows be banished.

“But some doubted the vision. The King of Dhevyn denied the truth, and others, fearing their sons would be chosen for the sacrifice, also declared the vision false. But the Shadowdancer’s message was welcomed in the hearts of true believers, and it was left to Prince Antonov of Senet, Protector of Dhevyn and husband to Princess Analee of Damita, to embrace the Goddess and offer the life of his youngest son.”

Dirk hesitated for a moment. This was rather different from the version his mother had told him. He read on:

“But alas, Princess Analee did not share her husband’s faith. She and her sister, the traitorous harlot Morna Provin, abandoned their children and fled to the Baenlands and the protection of the heretic Dhevynian king...” Dirk forced himself to maintain a steady tone. “Enraged by the Heretic’s attempts to prevent the return of the second sun, the Lion of Senet set out to vanquish the faithless Johan Thorn. The Dukes of Dhevyn who were still true to the faith flocked to his banner.

“The battle raged across the Kingdom of Dhevyn until the Heretic’s forces were struck down by the righteous. Then, having successfully defeated the forces of darkness, on the ninth day of Ezenor in the year ten thousand, two hundred and twenty-one, high on a hill overlooking the perfidious king’s defeated army, the Shadow Slayer performed the sacred rite and took the life of his own son.

“And behold, at that moment, the second sun appeared in the sky.

“The people threw themselves to the ground and prostrated themselves before the Goddess and her High Priestess, whose vision had proved true.

“From that day on, darkness was banished from Ranadon. The renegade king was deposed by the faithful, and his sister Rainan placed on the throne of Dhevyn. As a sign of her faith, the new Queen of Dhevyn asked that the Lion of Senet leave a force in Dhevyn to watch over her people, so that never more would her people bring the Goddess’s wrath down on Ranadon by straying from the true faith.

“And so it was, that led by the High Priestess of the Shadowdancers and Prince Antonov’s example, the people of Ranadon turned to the Goddess once more. And each day the darkness receded until, by virtue of the people’s faith, it was banished completely.

“All the islands of Dhevyn and the land of Senet wept for the sacrifice of the young prince. Princess Analee, unable to live with the guilt of her faithlessness, took her own life...” Dirk’s voice faltered and he glanced up at the prince. Antonov’s eyes were closed, his face lined with pain.

“Shall I keep reading, sire?”

Antonov opened his eyes and stared at Dirk for a moment and then shook his head. “That will do for now. You read very well.”

“Thank you, your highness.”

“But do you understand what you’ve read?”

“I think so, sir. The Princess Analee—”

“Your mother’s older sister.”

“Mother never talks of her much.” She never mentioned that she’d abandoned Rees and fled Elcast to fight alongside an exiled king, either, but Dirk thought it unwise to bring that up.

“Do you understand now, why lives must be sacrificed on Landfall Night?”

“I could understand why one might be sacrificed, your highness. But why so many of them?”

Antonov’s eyes clouded with annoyance. “The life I sacrificed to the Goddess was a prince, Dirk. Are you suggesting that the life of one peasant is equal to that of a prince?”

Dirk shook his head. “I suppose not, sire, but couldn’t you just find one man conceived of royal blood and sacrifice him, and let the rest live? It seems such a waste.”

“A
waste
?”

“Well, sire, I know that the Landfall Festival is an old custom. But until... well until ...
this
happened,” he said uncomfortably, pointing at the open book, “until the Shadowdancers came along, nobody killed anyone. Not that I heard, anyway.”

The Lion of Senet grew dangerously still for a moment, studying Dirk with his intense golden eyes. Then he nodded, as if some terrible decision had been made.

“We will discuss this later, Dirk. In the meantime, I must speak to your father.”

Dirk knew he’d said something wrong, but couldn’t work out exactly what. “I didn’t mean to offend you, your highness.”

Antonov smiled faintly. “You did not offend me, Dirk. I appreciate your candor. You may go. I’m sure you need to change before the festivities this evening.”

Dirk bowed hastily and backed out of the room, worried about something he could not define.

His last glimpse of Antonov as he closed the door behind him was the prince opening the
Book of Ranadon,
stroking the pages with a faraway look, as though he were back once again on that hill overlooking Johan Thorn’s decimated army, taking the life of his baby son.

Chapter 23

The Landfall Festival got under way later that evening. Dirk walked down to the common with his parents. Prince Antonov, Tovin Rill, Kirsh, Alenor, Rees and Lanon walked with them, dressed in their best finery. With a fine gold coronet hidden among her dark curls, and a simple blue gown made of several layers of silk so fine they appeared transparent, Alenor looked quite grown up. His mother wore a green gown made of Necia silk. It was the same one she had worn to the Festival for the past three years. Dirk always thought of it as her Festival gown. It was the only time he ever saw her wearing it. He was wearing new clothes, but that had more to do with the rate at which he had grown this past year than any notion of extravagance on his mother’s part. Kirsh and Prince Antonov wore expensive, hand-tooled, knee-high boots, white trousers trimmed with gold braid and short, heavily embroidered jackets that Alenor whispered were all the rage on Senet this year. Misha did not attend. He was too ill.

Once Prince Antonov had declared the Festival open, Dirk and Lanon were free to investigate the fair with Kirsh and Alenor. Duke Wallin, Tovin Rill, Duchess Morna and Prince Antonov moved among the people, smiling and talking and mixing with the population in a manner that was not possible on any other day of the year. The High Priestess was nowhere to be seen—presumably she was occupied with the upcoming ritual. Rees vanished from sight as soon as the formalities were over, looking for Faralan, youngest daughter of the Baron of Ionan and his bride-to-be as soon as she came of age. Kirsh took command of their little troop and led them in the direction of the food, determined to get the choicest cuts of the roasting bullocks. The smell was making Dirk’s mouth water.

“You should see the Festival in Avacas,” Kirsh declared as the others hurried in his wake. “We have fireworks, and acrobats and jugglers...”

“We have jugglers and acrobats, too,” Dirk pointed out.

“Not like the ones we have.”

Kirsh was not deliberately arrogant, Dirk decided. He just couldn’t help noticing the difference between his life on the wealthy and powerful mainland and their much more modest lives on Elcast. “What’s wrong with them?”

“I didn’t say they were bad. I just said ours were better.”

Lanon stopped walking and pointed to a shabby striped tent across the common where the acrobats were performing. “Let’s go see them then, and you can tell Dirk what’s so grand about Senet’s acrobats.”

Kirsh shrugged. “Very well. Let’s go watch for a while.”

He headed in the direction of the acrobats’ tent, with the others on his heels. When they reached the entrance, he marched through the flap and pushed his way through the spectators to the stage. There was a juggler in the middle of his act tossing a number of brightly colored clubs in the air to the tune of a vaguely familiar melody that a fat woman with several chins was belting out on a slightly off-tune flute. The juggler caught the clubs with a flourish and bowed extravagantly. The crowd applauded and a shower of copper coins flew over their heads to land on the stage.

“That was good,” Alenor said, a little defensively. Dirk wondered if she was defending the juggler or all Dhevynians in general. The fat woman noticed them with a shocked look, and leaned back to whisper something urgently through the curtain. Then she put down the flute and picked up a small drum and began to beat a complicated tattoo as a couple of stagehands began clearing the juggler’s paraphernalia and the coins from the stage. The juggler turned to the fat woman in surprise. He looked rather irked by the sudden change in the program.

“He was mediocre at best,” Kirsh scoffed. “Last year the juggler was tossing flaming batons.”

Lanon grinned. “Didn’t the Prefect cut all his fingers off when he discovered he was a thief?”

“Well, he might have been a thief, but he was a good juggler. Until he lost his fingers, at any rate.”

The platform was cleared now and the juggler muttered unhappily as he left the stage. The girl from the pool near the Outlet walked out from behind the striped curtains at the back of the stage.

Dirk’s eyes widened in surprise. She was the last person he expected to see here. He studied her closely for a moment, a thing he’d been too distracted to do yesterday when she emerged from the pool near the waterfall like some sort of water nymph.

Marqel was no older than him, he guessed. She was dressed in a long cape embroidered with intricate arcane symbols. This close to the stage, Dirk could see the edges of the cape were as frayed and shabby as the rest of the tent. Behind her walked one of the stagehands: a large, bearded, bare-chested man, whose oiled muscles glistened in the late afternoon light.

But it was Marqel who drew everyone’s eye. Her hair hung down in a thick blond braid. Her face was proud, her sapphire eyes slanted slightly upward in a face that showed a hint of great beauty to come. She was not particularly tall, but as she shed the cloak, revealing a lithe, muscular body in the first bloom of womanhood, the crowd fell silent. She wore a thin, short shift that was only marginally less distracting than when he’d seen her wade dripping and shameless from the pool. Her long, finely muscled legs and arms were bare, and around her upper left arm was a red tattoo that looked like an intricate set of knots. A Landfall bastard.

He glanced at the young princess and was not surprised to see her scowling. With some strange, unfathomable female instinct, Alenor had taken an instant disliking to Marqel. Perhaps it was their adolescent chatter all the way back to the Keep yesterday as she hurried along beside three boys lost in a fantasy world of pubescent delight sparked by the sight of a stunning naked girl emerging from the water like a vision out of a story-book.

Dirk had noticed the effect their banter was having on Alenor, and had urged the others to silence, but they sat up talking long into the night, reliving the moment over and over again. Kirsh had said surprisingly little. He just sat there, staring off into space, as if lost in another world.

The tempo of the drum picked up and Marqel cart-wheeled across the stage. The muscular man stepped forward and she ran at him, stepping into his cupped hands. He thrust her upward and she executed a faultless somersault, landing so lightly that, even as close as he was, Dirk could not hear her footfall. The crowd roared its appreciation as she stepped forward again.

This time her assistant lifted her onto his shoulders. She stood there for a moment, arms held wide, then bent down to grab the man’s hands. She kicked up into a handstand as he stretched his arms above his head. He walked across the stage as she changed the position of her legs—first a split, then one leg bent—then she closed her legs and arched her back. Dirk watched her in awe, trying to figure out how she knew exactly what point to hold the counterbalanced handstand to maintain a position that looked impossible. The crowd was impressed. The sound of coins landing on the stage, many of them silver, acted as a strange counterpoint to the tattoo of the drum. Finally, the man lowered the girl and stepped back. She flipped across the stage, then back again, as another assistant stepped out.

The two men clasped their hands together, testing their grip, then nodded to the acrobat. She moved between them, stepping onto their locked arms. She tested her balance for a moment and nodded. The men threw her upward and she somersaulted once, then landed on their clasped arms. They immediately threw her up again, and again she somersaulted, although this time she kept her body straight, rather than tucking in her knees. What came next left Dirk almost too dizzy to follow. Every time she landed, they would throw her up on the rebound, and every somersault was more complicated than the one preceding it. She turned and twisted. The crowd fell silent, wondering how long she could keep it up, wondering if she would miss the small landing platform the men’s arms offered. Wondering if one of them would falter and let her fall.

Finally, she twisted so many times Dirk was unable to count them, and she landed, not on the locked arms of her assistants, but on the floor in front of them in a deep squat.

She straightened and held her arms wide, welcoming the adulation of the crowd. Dirk clapped as hard as the others, thinking that the only person he had ever met who seemed so arrogantly sure of himself was Kirshov.

Then the acrobat looked down at the front of the stage. She cast her eye over Dirk and Lanon without pausing. Alenor also received little more than her fleeting attention. But when her eyes alighted on Kirsh, she smiled. It lit her whole face. Dirk glanced at the young prince. His eyes were filled with wonder—and some other emotion that Dirk could not name. The prince and the acrobat stared at each other for a timeless moment, then she looked away, turning her attention back to her audience.

“Ladies and gentlemen! I give you Marqel the Magnificent!” the fat woman boomed.

Marqel turned and bowed again to the crowd. A shower of coins landed and the two assistants dropped to their hands and knees to gather up the loot. Kirsh dug into his belt and produced a purse, then beckoned Marqel to the front of the stage. When the fat woman with the drum nodded her permission, the girl stepped forward to accept his offering.

“You must come to Senet to perform!” Kirsh gushed. “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.
You
are the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s not up to me, your highness,” Marqel replied. She was breathless from her performance. Dirk wondered how she had learned who Kirsh was. He hadn’t told her he was a prince yesterday by the pool. “You would have to speak to Mistress Kalleen.”

She squatted down and reached for the purse, her hand lingering on Kirsh’s for much longer than was necessary.

“I’ll do better than that,” Kirsh promised, no more willing to release her hand than she was to let his go. “I’ll speak to my father. I’ll see that you get his personal invitation.”

She smiled. “Then I look forward to seeing you again, your highness.”

Then with a suddenness that shocked him, Marqel snatched the purse from Kirsh’s hand and was gone before he could answer.