Raven's Shadow (Raven #1)(49)

"And why isn't Avar here to do the honors?" asked Kissel. "I thought he was going to see the Emperor tonight after resting yesterday."

Avar was in Taela?

"He had some pressing business," grunted Toarsen, pushing Phoran toward the center of the bed. "He'll admit to coming in late tonight and greet the Emperor over breakfast."

When the men left him alone in his room, the Emperor opened his eyes and rolled off the bed. He walked to the full-length mirror and stared at himself by the light of the few candles that had been left burning.

Mud-colored, too-fine hair that had been coaxed into ringlets this afternoon hung limply around his rounded face, spotty and pale. Hands that had once had sword calluses were soft and pudgy, covered with rings his uncle had eschewed.

"Ruins your sword grip, boy," the regent had said. "A man who can't protect himself depends upon others, too much."

Phoran touched the mirror lightly. "But you died anyway, Uncle. You left me alone."

Alone. Fear curled in his stomach. Unless Avar was with him, the Memory came every night.

If Avar was in Taela, as Toarsen had claimed, he'd be staying with his mistress in the town. Phoran could send a messenger to bring him here.

The Emperor stared at his image in the mirror and rolled up the sleeve of the loose shirt he wore. In the reflection the faint marks the Memory left on him each night were almost invisible in the dim candlelight.

Avar planned to lie to his emperor: Avar, who was Phoran's only friend.

The Emperor made no move to summon a messenger.

Food came at irregular intervals through a small opening near the floor that Tier had somehow missed on his first, blind, inspection of the cell. An anonymous hand opened the metal covering and shoved a tray of water and bread through, shutting and latching the cover before Tier's eyes even adjusted to the light.

Still, he'd grown grateful for those brief moments, for the reassurance that he was not blind.

The bread was always good, flavored with salt and herbs and made with sifted wheat flour rather than the cheaper rye. Bread fit for a lord's table, not a prison cell.

First he'd tried to fit his situation into some logical path, but nothing about his captivity made sense. Finally he'd come to the conclusion that he was lacking some information necessary for a solution.

Only then had he raged.

He'd slept when he was tired, worn-out from anger and fruitless attempts to find a way out of the cell. When he'd realized that he was losing track of time he told himself stories, the ones he'd gathered from the old people of Redern, saved word for word from one generation to the next. Some of those were songs as well as stories, ballads that took almost an hour each to sing.

When the toll of the hours grew too great, he'd quit singing, quit thinking, quit raging, and given in to despair. But even that left him alone eventually.

Finally, he developed habits to fill the empty hours. He did the exercises he'd learned when he'd been a soldier. When he ran out of the ones he could do in his confined space, he made up others. Only after he was sweating and panting, he'd sit down and tell one story. Then he'd either rest or exercise again as the impulse took him.

But it was the magic that had given him purpose.

He'd known some of the things his magic could do. Seraph had told him what she knew - and, despite the danger, he'd used it some over the years. It helped that his magic wasn't the showy sort that people all knew about, like Seraph's. His magic was more subtle.

He could calm an angry drunk or give a frightened man courage with his songs. Such things as any music could do, but with more effect. When he chose, he could commit a song or letter to memory and recall it, word perfect, years later. When he'd sung at the tavern in Redern, he almost always gave his last song a push to cheer his audience.

It had made him feel guilty, because Seraph had given up her magic entirely. But she'd never seemed to mind, never seemed to miss the power that she'd set aside.

He could never have set aside his music.

There were some things he'd avoided. Some things were harmful to his audience; music alone shared the darker emotions with his audience, never magic. He was very careful not to use his magic to persuade others to his will - words were enough. And then there were the things too obviously magic to use in Redern.

Alone in the darkness of his cell, he'd succeeded in creating small lights to accompany his songs the first time he tried. They were flickering, faint things, but they comforted him.

Sounds were more difficult, even though he'd accidently called them once before. After a particularly nasty battle, he and a bunch of the other officers got roaring drunk and someone thrust a small lyre, part of the spoils, into his hands. The song he'd sung had included fair maidens and barnyard animals. He was pretty certain he'd been the only one who noticed that the moos and quacks of the chorus were accompanied by the real thing.

He had been trying to re-create the experiment the first time his visitor arrived.

The constant dark had honed his other senses, and the scuff of a foot on the boards above him stopped him midword. He'd sat silently, waiting for something more.

Finally, barely audible over the burble of the water that flowed under the grating in the back corner of his cell, he'd heard it again.

It hadn't been a rat; a rat was too light to make a stout board creak under its weight. He'd been almost certain that the noise was made by a person.