Raven's Shadow (Raven #1)(50)

"Hello," he'd said. "Who is there?"

The boards had given a small, surprised squeak and then there was nothing. Whoever it had been, he had left.

Some unknowable span of time later, while Tier was doing push-ups, he'd heard it again. He'd stilled, too worried that he would drive whoever it was off again if he made another move. He hadn't heard another sound, but somehow he knew that his visitor was gone. Desperate for company, Tier turned his thoughts toward enticing his visitor to stay.

Tier awoke with the knowledge that there was someone nearby. He hadn't heard anything, but he could feel that someone stood above him listening. He sat up, leaned his back against the wall, and began his story with the traditional words.

"It happened like this," he said.

If he pretended that his eyes were closed, he could think himself leaning against the wall at home telling stories to his own restless children so they'd fall asleep faster. Seraph would be cleaning - she was always in motion. Maybe, he thought, she would be grumpy as she sometimes got when Rinnie was tired and the boys were restless. Her face would be serene, but the tautness of her shoulders gave her away.

I wonder if she knows that something has happened to me? Is she looking?

It was an old thought by now, and held a certain comfort.

"A boy came to be king when he was only sixteen," Tier said, "when his own father died in battle. War was common then, and the kingdom he inherited was neither so large nor so powerful that the king could sit in safety and leave the fighting to his generals."

The story of the Shadowed was one he knew so well that he had once told it backwards, word for word, for a half-drunken wager. He'd missed one phrase, but his comrades hadn't noticed.

"This young man," he said, "was a good king, which is to say that he promoted order and prosperity among his nobles and usually kept the rest from starvation. He married well, and in time was blessed with five sons. As years passed and his sons became men, his kingdom waxed in wealth because the king was skilled at keeping the neighboring kingdoms fighting among themselves rather than attacking his people."

The floor above him made a sound, as if a listener were settling in more comfortably. Tier added his unknown listener to his audience.

A boy, he decided with no more evidence than his visitor's willingness to travel without lights. There were spaces between the boards that would have let light into Tier's cell, if his unknown guest had brought so much as a single candle with him.

He would be a boy old enough to be allowed to wander about on his own, but not so old as to have other duties to attend to; an adventurous boy who would venture into the dark corners where prisoners were kept.

"The king had many of the interests of his kind. He could hunt and ride as well as any of his men. He danced with grace and could play the lute. None of his guardsmen or nobles could stand long against him with sword or staff." Tier had always had some doubt about the king's prowess - what kind of fool would beat his king at swordplay?

Tier fought to picture the king in his mind, pulling out details that weren't in the story. He'd be a slender young man, like Tier's son Jes - but his hair would be the pure, red gold of the eastern nobles....

Seraph had told him that some of the Bards had been able to create pictures for their listeners, but his cell stayed dark as pitch.

"But what the king loved most was learning," he continued, in the proper words. "He established libraries at every village, and in his capital he collected more books than had ever been assembled together then or since. Perhaps that was the reason for what happened to him."

Tier found himself grinning as he remembered Seraph's contemptuous sniff the first time he'd told her that part. Books weren't evil, she'd explained loftily, what people did with the knowledge they'd gleaned was no judgment against the books that held it.

"Time passed, and the king grew old and wizened as his sons became strong and wise. People waited without worry for the old king to die and his oldest son to take the crown - for the heir was every bit as temperate and wise as his father."

Tier took a sip of water, experience guiding his hand to the place where he left the earthen bowl. He let the pause linger, as much a part of this story as the words which followed. "Had that happened, like as not, our king would have gone to earth and be as forgotten as his name."

"One evening the king's oldest son went to bed, complaining of a headache. By the next day he was blind and covered with boils; by that evening he was dead. Plague had struck the palace, and, before it left, the queen and every male of royal blood was dead."

Tier's voice trembled on the last word, because he heard, as clearly as he'd heard his own breath, a woman's voice wailing in grief. He'd done it - and he found the thread of magic that powered the eerie sound.

A board creaked above him, closer than the sounds of the mourning woman, recalling Tier back to the dark cell where there was no plague, no dead women and children.

"The king became haunted, spending hours alone in his great library. But no one took much note, because the plague had spread in short order to the capital city and then to the towns and villages beyond. A horrible, ravening sickness that touched and lingered until its victim died a week later, deaf and blind to anything except pain."

Cautiously he tried to feed energy toward the path that had allowed the woman's cry to sound. It seemed to him that he could feel the unhealthy miasma of evil coating the emptiness of his cell floor. He stood up abruptly, but the feeling ebbed as he stopped feeding the story. The control reassured him. It was only a story, his story.