The Book of Athyra Read online

  The manor house came in sight—a wide, tall building, full of sharp angles. In the years since he had seen it up close, he’d forgotten how big it was, or else decided it was only the exaggeration of a child’s memory. Now he stared, remembering, taken again with the feeling that the magnificence of the house must reflect the power of he who dwelled within.

  The roof looked like the edge of a scythe, with dormers on either side like wisps of straw. The brick of the house itself was pale green, and high on the front wall were wide windows made of glass—Savn could even see light creeping around the edges of the curtains inside. He strained his eyes, looking for movement. He looked for and eventually found the gully he had daringly played in so many years ago, as close to the house as one could get without being seen. There were glass windows on that side, too, but he remembered quite clearly that if you kept your head down you were only visible from the one lonely window high on the side.

  Oddly enough, it was only then, looking at all the windows, that he realized it was becoming dark, and was surprised once more by how fast time went by in the cave. At that moment, more light began to glow around the far side of the house. He stopped where he was, and soon a servant appeared from around that side. Savn watched as the servant walked around the house using a long match to light lamps that were stuck onto the house at various points. When he was finished, the entire house was lit up as if it were burning.

  When the servant was gone, Savn watched the house a little longer, then resumed his walk along the road, directly toward the house, and up to the large front door. He felt very much as he imagined a soldier would feel marching into battle, but this was another thought he didn’t care to examine closely.

  He stood before the door and stared at it. It seemed like such a plain door to be part of His Lordship’s manor house—just wood, and it opened and closed like any other door, although, to be sure, it had a brass handle that looked too complicated for Savn to operate. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, opened them, and clapped.

  Nothing happened.

  He waited for what seemed like several hours, although in fact it was hardly more than a minute. Still, he felt his courage slipping away. He tapped his foot, then stopped, afraid someone would see.

  Why didn’t someone come to the door?

  Because he couldn’t be heard, of course; the door was too thick.

  Well, then, how was someone supposed to get the attention of His Lordship’s servants?

  He looked around, and eventually saw a long rope hanging down in front of the door. Without giving himself time to think, he gave it one long, hard pull, and almost screeched when he heard, from inside, a rattling sound as if several sticks or logs were rolling against each other.

  His heart, which had been beating fast for some time, began to pound in earnest. He was, in fact, on the point of turning and bolting, when the door opened and he found himself looking up at a slight, sharp-featured man in the livery of Baron Smallcliff. After a moment, Savn recognized him as someone called Turi, one of His Lordship’s servants who occasionally came into town for supplies. Come to think of it, Turi had been doing so ever since Reins had quit—

  He broke off the thought, and at the same time realized he was staring. He started to speak but had to clear his throat.

  “Well?” said the servant, frowning sternly.

  Savn managed to squeak out, “Your pardon, sir.”

  “Mmmmph.”

  Savn took a breath. “May I request an audience with His Lordship? My name is Savn, and I’m the son of Cwelli and Olani, and I—”

  “What do you want to see His Lordship about, boy?” said Turi, now looking impassive and impenetrable.

  “If it please His Lordship, about the Easterner.”

  Turi slowly tilted his head like a confused dog, and simultaneously raised his eyebrows. “Indeed?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You have information for His Lordship?”

  “I . . . that is—”

  “Well, come in and I will see if His Lordship is available. Your name, you said, is Savn?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you are a peasant?”

  “I’m apprenticed,” he said.

  “To whom?”

  “To Master Wag, the physicker.”

  At this Turi’s eyes grew very wide, and for a moment he seemed at a loss for words. Then he said, “Come in, come in, by all means.”

  The inside of the house was even more magnificent than the outside, especially when it became clear to Savn that the room he stood in—which contained nothing but some hooks on the wall and another door opposite the one he’d come in—existed for no other purpose than as a place for people to wait and to hang up their cloaks.

  “Wait here,” said the servant.

  “Yes, sir,” said Savn as Turi went through the inner door, closing it behind him.

  He stared awestruck at the fine, dark, polished wood, realizing that this one, unfurnished room must have cost His Lordship more than Savn’s entire house was worth. He was studying the elaborate carved brass handle on the inner door, trying to decide if there was a recognizable shape to it, when it turned and the door opened. He braced himself to face His Lordship, then relaxed when he saw it was Turi again.

  “This way, boy,” said the servant.

  “Yes, sir,” said Savn, and, though his knees felt weak, he followed Turi into a place of splendor greater than his mind could grasp. The walls seemed to shimmer, and were adorned with richly colored paintings. The furniture was huge and came in amazing variations, and Savn couldn’t imagine sitting on any of it. Bright light filled every corner of the room, glittering against objects of incomprehensible purpose, made of crystal, shiny metal, and ceramics that had been glazed with some unfathomable technique that made the blues and reds as deep and rich as the soil.

  “Watch your step,” said Turi sharply.

  Savn caught himself just before walking into a low table that seemed made entirely of glass. He continued more carefully, while still looking around, and it suddenly came to him that some of the crystal and metal objects were drinking vessels. He didn’t think he’d be able to drink from such objects—his hand would be shaking too much.

  The shape and color of his surroundings changed. He had somehow entered another room, which might as well have been another world for all the sense he could make of anything around him, until he realized that every one of the objects that filled the room were books—different books—more books than a man could read in his entire lifetime—more books than Savn had thought had ever been written. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. These were cases that had obviously been made just to hold them. There were tables on which they lay, carelessly flung open to—

  His gaze suddenly fell on a figure standing before him, dressed in a gleaming white shirt, which set off a bright red jewel suspended from a chain around his neck. The pants were also perfectly white, and baggy, falling all the way to the floor so that the figure’s feet were invisible. Savn looked at his face, then looked away, terrified. On the one hand, though he was big, it seemed odd to Savn how human he looked; the thought, He’s just a man, after all, came unbidden to his mind. But even as Savn was thinking this, he discovered that he had fallen to his knees and was touching his head to the floor, as if in response to something so deeply buried within him that it went beyond awareness or decision. As Savn knelt there, confounded and humbled, with the image of the Athyra nobleman burned into his mind, it struck him that His Lordship had seemed very pale.

  Unnaturally pale.

  Savn tried not to think about what this might mean.

  When His Lordship spoke, it was with an assurance that made Savn realize that Speaker, with all his shouting, raving, and fits of temper, had only pretended to have authority—that real authority was something stamped into someone from birth or not at all. He wondered what Vlad would say about that.

  “What is it, lad?” said His Lordship. “My man tells me
you have something to say about the Easterner. If you want to tell me where he is, don’t bother. I know already. If you are here asking about your Master, I’m not finished with him yet. If you want to tell me what sort of condition the Easterner is in, and what his defenses are like, that is another matter; I will listen and reward you well.”

  Savn’s head spun as he tried to make sense out of this strange collection of ideas.

  Your Master.

  Master Wag?

  Not finished with him yet.

  Savn managed to find his voice, and croaked out, “I don’t understand, Your Lordship.”

  “Well, what are you here for? Speak up?”

  “Your Lordship, I—” Savn searched for the words, hindered in part by no longer being certain what he wanted to find out, or if he dared ask any of it. He looked up, and his eye fell on someone who had apparently been there all along, though Savn hadn’t noticed him. The man, who Savn was certain he’d never seen before, stood behind His Lordship, absolutely motionless, his face devoid of the least hint of expression or of feeling, dressed in grey from head to foot, save for a bit of black lace on the ruffles of his shirt, and his high black boots. In some indefinable yet definite way, he reminded Savn of Vlad.

  Below the collar of his cloak was the insignia of the House of the Jhereg, as if Savn needed that, or even his colors, to know that this was the assassin Vlad had spoken of.

  Savn couldn’t take his eyes off him, and, for his part, the stranger stared back with the curiosity of one looking at an interesting weed that, though it didn’t belong in one’s garden, had some unusual features that made it worth a moment’s study before being pulled and discarded.

  “Speak up, boy,” snapped His Lordship, but Savn could only stare. Speech was so far from him that he couldn’t imagine ever being able to talk again—the command of His Lordship, compelling though it was, belonged to another world entirely; surely His Lordship couldn’t imagine that he, Savn, would be able to form words, much less sentences.

  “What do you have to tell me?” said His Lordship. “I won’t ask again.”

  Savn heard this last with relief; at this moment, all he wanted from life was for His Lordship not to ask him to speak anymore. He thought about getting up and bowing his way out of the room, but he wasn’t certain his legs would support him, and if it wasn’t the proper thing to do, he might never get out of the house alive. The complete folly of coming here hit him fully, rendering action or speech even more impossible.

  His Lordship made a sound of derision or impatience and said, “Get him out of here. Put him with the other one. We don’t have time now, anyway.”

  Another voice spoke, very softly, with a bite to the consonants that made Savn sure it was from the Jhereg: “You’re an idiot, Loraan. We could find out—”

  “Shut up,” said His Lordship. “I need your advice now less than—”

  “Indeed,” interrupted the other. “Less than when? Less than the last time you ignored me and—”

  “I said, shut up,” repeated His Lordship. “We don’t have time for this; we’ve got an Easterner to kill, and the troops should be in position by now.”

  “And if they find him before morning I’ll eat my fee.”

  “I’ll bring you salt,” said His Lordship. “We know where to begin looking, and we have enough manpower that it won’t take more than two or three hours.”

  At that moment, rough hands grabbed Savn’s shoulders. The Jhereg and the Athyra did not seem to notice.

  “He’ll be gone before you find him,” the Jhereg said.

  Savn was pulled to his feet, but his knees wouldn’t support him and he fell back down.

  “Unlikely, I’ve put a block up.”

  “Around three square miles of caves?”

  “Yes.”

  Savn was grabbed once more, held under his armpits by very strong hands.

  “Then he’s already alerted,” said the Jhereg.

  Savn was dragged away. He got a last glimpse of His Lordship, hands balled up in fists, staring at the Jhereg, who wore a mocking smile that seemed the twin of the one Vlad had put on from time to time. His Lordship said, “Let him be alerted. I have confidence in your . . .” and His Lordship’s voice was drowned out by a sound that Savn realized was his own boots scraping along the floor as he was taken off.

  He was completely unaware of the places he passed through, and wasn’t even aware of who was dragging him, despite the fact that he heard a man’s voice and a woman’s, as if from a distance, telling him to walk on his own if he didn’t want to be beaten flat. The voices seemed disconnected from the hands pulling him along, which felt like forces of nature rather than the work of human beings.

  They came to the top of a stairway, and the woman, laughing, suggested they throw him down. He thought, I hope they don’t, but knew he couldn’t do anything about it in any case.

  However, they continued to drag him down the stairs, and then through a dimly lit corridor, until at last they arrived at a large wooden door, bound with iron strips, with a thick bar across it as well as a locking mechanism. They leaned Savn against a wall, where he promptly sagged to the floor. He heard sobbing and realized it was his own. He looked up for the first time, and saw who had been dragging him—two people in the livery of the Athyra, both armed with large swords. The woman had a heavy-looking iron key. She unlocked the door and removed the bar. They opened the door, picked up Savn, and pushed him inside, where he lay face down.

  The door was closed behind him, and he could hear the lock turning and the bar falling. At first it seemed dark inside, since there were no lanterns such as there had been along the corridor, but then he realized there was some light, which came from a faintly glowing lightstone—a device Savn had heard about but never seen. It was high up in the middle of the ceiling, which was a good twelve feet overhead. In other circumstances Savn would have been delighted to have seen it, and studied it as best he could, but for now he was too stunned.

  He saw now that what he’d at first taken to be a bundle of rags was actually a person, and he remembered His Lordship saying something like Put him with the other. He looked closer, and as his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room, he recognized Master Wag. He approached, and realized there was something wrong with the way the Master’s arm was lying above his head. He stared, hesitating to touch him, and was gradually able to see some of what had been done to him.

  The room spun, the light faded in and out. Savn could never remember the next few minutes clearly; he spoke to the Master, and he shouted something at the closed door, and looked around the room for he knew not what, and, after a while, he sat down on the floor and shook.

  * * *

  She flew low, well below the overcast, starting out near to her lover, then gradually getting further away as their search took them apart.

  The Provider had told them to be careful, to be certain to miss nothing, so they covered every inch of ground below them, starting in a small circle above the cave-mouth and only widening it a bit at a time.

  She was in no hurry. Her lover had relaxed, now that the Provider seemed to be out of danger, and it was a fine, cool day. She never forgot what she was doing—she kept her eyes and her attention on the ground below—but this didn’t prevent her from enjoying the pleasures of flight. Besides, her feet had started hurting.

  She recognized the large rock, the nearby house, and the winding, twisting road as things she’d seen before, but they didn’t mean a great deal to her. For one thing, there was no meat there, living or dead. At the same time she could feel, in her wings and her breath, the difference in the feel of the air when she flew over fields or over forests, over water or over bare ground where only a stubble of growth was now left. All of these added to the pleasure of flying.

  She could always feel where her mate was, and they spoke, mind to mind, as they flew, until at last she looked down and saw one of the soft ones below her. This seemed strange, and after thinking about it
for a moment, she realized it was because he could not have been there a moment before, and she ought to have seen him approach. She swept back around, and there was another, and no more explanation of how this one had appeared. She recalled that the Provider could do something like this, and decided that she ought to mention it. She came back around again, and by now an entire herd of the soft ones had appeared, and they were walking along the road that cut through a thin, grassy forest.

  She called to her mate, who came at once. He studied them, knowing more about their habits than she; then he told the Provider what they had discovered. They watched a little longer, until the herd left the road and began to walk down the narrow, curving path that led toward the caves.

  Then they returned to the Provider, to see what he wanted them to do.

  16

  I will not marry an aristocrat,

  I will not marry an aristocrat,

  He’d treat me like a dog or cat.

  Hi-dee hi-dee ho-la!

  Step on out . . .

  COHERENT THOUGHT GRADUALLY RETURNED, bringing sensations with it like trailing roots behind a plow. Savn lay very still and let the mists of his confused dreams gradually fade away, to be replaced by the vapors of true memory. He looked to see if Master Wag was really there; when he saw him, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, as if he could shut out the sympathetic pain. Then he looked around, staring at anything and everything that wasn’t his Master and wasn’t so terribly hurt.

  The room was about ten feet on a side, and smelled slightly dank, but not horribly so. He listened for the sounds of scurrying rodents and was relieved not to hear any. There was a chamber pot in a far corner; judging from the lack of odor, it had not been used. Things could, Savn decided, be much worse.

  The light hadn’t changed; he could still see Master Wag huddled against a wall; the Master was breathing, and his eyes were open. Both of his arms seemed to be broken or dislocated, and probably his left leg, too. There were red marks on his face, as from slaps, but no bruises; he hadn’t been in a fight, he had been tortured.