House of Shadows (32 page)

Benne had been looking at the little flute. Now the man lifted his gaze to Taudde’s face and stared at him, motionless.

“What I ask in return,” Taudde told him, “is that you place service to me above any other loyalty you may owe elsewhere, until we depart Lirionne. I cannot guarantee I will be able to restore your voice. But I swear to you, if you pledge me what I ask, I will try.”

It took Benne a long moment to extract a paper from the packet, and when he did at last, his hand was shaking so that he tore it. When he wrote, he tore the paper again with the point of the quill pen.

The note read simply,
For that chance, I will do anything.

Taudde shook his head immediately. “In Kalches, we hold that it’s perilous to make so broad a promise to anyone, and ill done to accept it. Make a narrower pledge, man. I ask only for your service and loyalty while I am in Lirionne. Can you promise that, above any other loyalty you may owe elsewhere?”

Benne gave Taudde a long, unreadable look. Then he took another paper out, this time more carefully. He wrote for a
moment, hesitated, then added a few more words. When he offered this paper to Taudde, his expression was once more restrained, his mouth set and steady, his eyes unrevealing. But his hand still trembled, just perceptibly.

I owe no loyalty to anyone in Lonne. As Lord Miennes has died, I owe no service anywhere. I wish nothing but to accept what you offer, my lord. If you can restore my speech, my loyalty is yours, and I am glad to offer it. But I would ask, if my lord will permit me, what is your purpose in Lonne?

Taudde read this and nodded. This was much better, implying as it did a limit to the pledge Benne was willing to make. He said, truthfully, because it would be an ill thing to bind falsehood into an oath of loyalty and fidelity, “I am neither a spy nor a saboteur nor an assassin—I have no leave to be here at all, from my own people. I came to Lonne to strive to understand the sea, nothing more. Kalches has no coast, and I… there is a deep magic in the sea, especially perceptible near Lonne, that I desire to understand.” Though
desire
seemed a weak term to describe the heart-deep compulsion that had driven him to this coast. But he knew no words to describe the goad that his dreams of sea magic had become. “Now that my nationality has become known, I intend to leave Lirionne as soon as I may. But Mage Ankennes blocks me. Would you then be willing to stand out of the way as I move against Ankennes?”

Benne’s face hardened. This, he did not need to think about: He nodded sharply at once.

“You dislike the mage?”

Another nod, as decisive as the first.

“Why?”

But this seemed difficult to explain. Benne started to write, paused, crumpled up the paper and began again, but with no better result.

“Never mind.” Satisfied that the other man would not warn or assist Ankennes, even if he knew of Taudde’s move and found the chance, Taudde dismissed the question. “That will do.”

Benne made a gesture of acceptance and followed it with a deep bow: the bow of a man offering fealty, his palms flat on the rocks and his face touching the damp stone.

“Well,” said Taudde, moved even though he had expected the man to accept his proposal. “I will be glad of your service. As it happens, you may be of use to me at once. There is a woman, a servant in Cloisonné House. She has, I believe, evidence that links me to Miennes’s death. I believe she has taken it to the Laodd—she may have done so as early as this past dawn. Perhaps she might go to Prince Tepres, perhaps to someone else. You will understand that I wish to intercept her before she can make this evidence known to anyone there. Can you assist me in this, Benne?” Laid out like that, it scarcely seemed likely that anyone could help.

But the big man looked thoughtful. He wrote quickly.

Taudde read,
This woman is not a keiso, but House staff? I know where in the Laodd she will wait.
Taudde finished reading and looked up, cautiously hopeful. “This seems promising.”

Benne nodded, and got to his feet. He nodded toward the Laodd and looked at Taudde, clearly meaning
That way.

If there was anywhere Taudde less wished to find himself than the Dragon’s fortress, he could not immediately think of it. He made himself nod in return and lift a hand for Benne to precede him.

CHAPTER 12

N
emienne, returning to the Lane of Shadows from Cloisonné House rather later than she had hoped to, laid her hand on the door of Mage Ankennes’s house and then touched the head of the cat statue by the door. Of course, the door didn’t open. After several minutes, Nemienne gritted her teeth and rapped hard on the oak panels in the center of the door.

A moment later the lock clicked, and Ankennes swung the door open. His eyebrows rose as he looked down at her. Nemienne tried to look as though she was perfectly at ease, but didn’t think she managed it very well.

“I’ve had apprentices now and again in the past,” the mage observed at last, his tone mild. “Each had unique strengths and odd weaknesses. But I don’t recall any of them having precisely the idiosyncrasies you are displaying, Nemienne. Come in. Have you had breakfast? No? Well, then, perhaps while you do, you can tell me where you have been this time.”

Nemienne meekly followed Ankennes through the stubborn door, trying to decide just how displeased he might be with his current apprentice’s, well, idiosyncrasies. There were no new doors or windows in the hall, this time. Most of the current row of windows looked out into morning light high in the mountains, but the nearest showed a sharp-edged night that glittered with stars. The beech door and the door with the carved animals were both shut fast, but the black door was standing a little ajar. Mage
Ankennes gave it a look and pulled it shut as he passed it, with a swift glance at Nemienne. Nemienne flushed under that glance.

The mage made her rice porridge for breakfast, taking fresh bread out of the cupboard and butter out of the ice pantry while they waited for the rice to cook. Nemienne sliced the bread and spread it with butter. Since Enkea was asleep on the chair nearest the stove, Nemienne sat down on the stove’s hearth to eat the bread. The heat of the stove beat pleasantly over her, driving away the memory of cold. Nemienne bit into her bread and tried to decide how to put into words the thin piping and heavy darkness and great carved dragon.

“Did you go through the black door?” the mage asked her. He had sat down himself on the bench by the long table, where he could keep an eye on the porridge. His tone was not unkind, but his slate-gray eyes were chilly.

“No!” said Nemienne. The look in his eyes frightened her. She was relieved she could deny it. “I…” She paused, trying to make sense of the night’s events, conscious of how strange any explanation must seem to anyone who had not been there. Her family, despite the best will in the world, would not have really been able to understand the… the
feel
of the heavy darkness and the dragon’s cavern. But Ankennes was a mage, she reminded herself.
He
would understand. And yet, although this ought to have been true, she could not overcome a visceral reluctance to explain what had happened.

But that was silly. It was
stupid
. What, so far, had Mage Ankennes failed to understand? When had he ever been anything other than kind and patient? She said, trying for a firm tone but sounding hesitant even to herself, “I woke up in the dark—well, that is, I thought I was dreaming, but after a while I knew I was awake. There was music—at least, I’m sure there was, but it was very faint. I couldn’t really hear it—I don’t think it was really meant for me—but I found my sister Karah following the music. She stopped when I caught her hand, and then the music stopped, too. It was after that that I knew I was awake. I thought—I knew—we were
deep under Kerre Maraddras, but I don’t know how I knew. Enkea was there, and a kitten someone gave Karah. They led us…” Her voice trailed off. She found herself somehow reluctant to describe the cavern with the black pool and the great white dragon carved into its farthest wall.

“Music drew you into the dark?” murmured the mage. He got up briefly to stir the porridge, then sat back down and looked thoughtfully at her. His eyes were no longer cold, but they held a strange, predatory glint. He seemed to have found this account perfectly plausible, for some reason. He asked, “What kind of music?”

“Pipes,” answered Nemienne. “I don’t know—someone showed me a set of twin pipes Karah had been given, but they were ruined. But it might have been those I heard. I think it was.”

“Interesting,” said the mage, but though Nemienne waited hopefully, he did not explain anything of his thoughts. He merely waved a hand at her:
Go on
.

“Well…” Nemienne tried to organize memories that now seemed jumbled and uncertain. “There was the sound of dripping water. Of water falling into a pool. You know, the sound that’s always there in the dark…”

“Yes. And?”

“Well, Enkea led us to a place, a cavern, really big. There was a pool there, and water dripping into it, and… there was this carving…”

“The Dragon of Lonne.” Mage Ankennes leaned back in his chair and regarded Nemienne as though she had just this moment magically appeared in his kitchen, next to his iron stove, eating his bread. As though he had never really seen her before and wasn’t entirely certain he was pleased by the sight. “You found the dragon’s chamber.”

A shiver went down Nemienne’s spine, but she could not tell whether this was because of the memories of the cavern under Kerre Maraddras or because of the mage’s cool tone. She asked cautiously, “Do you know what… what any of that means, any of the things that happened last night?”

The mage lifted an eyebrow and served them both porridge without answering. The rice was perfectly cooked, but Nemienne, finding herself with little appetite, only stirred hers around in the bowl.

“You saw no one else under the mountain?” Ankennes asked.

“No,” Nemienne answered, and then paused. “There might have been somebody else. Right at the beginning. He wasn’t there later. I’m not… I’m not certain he was there at all.”

“He was,” the mage said, a trifle grimly. “Briefly.” He tapped the tips of two fingers against the table, lost in thought. After a moment, he added, “Your sister is fortunate that you have the inclination toward magecraft. And that you love her. Or I suspect she, like the man you so briefly perceived, would have followed the music you heard into a darkness deeper and more constant than even the darkness under Kerre Maraddras. I gather Enkea did not lead you out?”

Nemienne admitted the cat had not, and the mage sighed. “She has her own inclinations, that creature. How did you find your way out, then? Sideways as before, back to your sisters’ house? No? You emerged in Cloisonné House?” The mage was momentarily surprised by this, but then went on after a moment, “Well, that was one of the other houses Meredde Uruddun built, I believe, and its cellars delve perhaps a little deeper among the mountains’ roots than is wise. And your keiso sister might have pulled you toward her House, I suppose. One would not have expected her bond with Cloisonné to be so strong, but clearly she has been swift to make a place there for herself.”

Nemienne hesitated. They had not found themselves in Cloisonné’s
cellars
, and she didn’t think Karah had had anything to do with drawing them toward Cloisonné House. But she didn’t know how to say so. “I don’t—” she began.

“But it was well done of you to find a path out,” the mage added, and rose, collecting the empty bowls and dropping them in the sink. Then he offered Nemienne a hand up. “Come along, Nemienne. It may be as well to show you the ordinary method by which most
of us find our way into the heart of the mountain. I believe you may have rather an affinity for the dark after all, and possibly a natural inclination toward the Dragon of Lonne. That might be useful.”

Nemienne’s heart tried to leap up and sink at the same time. She discovered that she simultaneously feared and longed to look again at the dragon. She was sure Mage Ankennes meant to take her back to that cavern. Every detail of the dragon, every shift of the pale light across the powerful shoulder and elegant head and delicate antennae, was engraved in her memory. At the same time, she wanted to see it again and assure herself that her memory was indeed accurate and true. Distracted by this intense confusion of feeling, she let the mage draw her to her feet without speaking. Behind them, Enkea lifted her head and blinked after them with her emerald eyes, but did not volunteer to accompany them.