“Wait until your body’s gotten used to the change in pressure. We’ll need to move fast when we go.”
“And you think we’re on this Drevlin?” Alfred asked.
“Judging from our location when we fell, I’d say so. We were blown around some by the storm, but Drevlin’s the largest land-mass down here, and it’d be hard to miss. If we’d been blown off course too far, we wouldn’t be anywhere.”
“You’ve been here before.” Bane sat up straight, staring at Hugh.
“Yes.”
“What’s it like?” he questioned eagerly.
Hugh did not immediately reply. His eyes shifted to Alfred, who had lifted his hand and was examining it in puzzlement, as if certain it must belong to someone else.
“Go outside and see for yourself, Your Highness.”
“You mean it?” Bane scrambled to his feet. “I can go outside?”
“See if you can find any signs of a Geg settlement. There’s a big machine on this continent. If you can see parts of it, there’ll be Gegs living nearby. Keep close to the ship. You get caught by a storm with nowhere to go for shelter, and you’re finished.”
“Is that wise, sir?” Alfred looked anxiously after the boy, who was squeezing his small body out of a hole smashed in the hull.
“He won’t go far. He’ll get tired sooner than he realizes. Now, while he’s gone, tell me the truth.”
Alfred became very pale. Shifting uncomfortably, he lowered his eyes and stared at his too-large hands. “You were right, sir, when you said that Bane was not Stephen’s child. I will tell you what I know—what any of us knows for certain, as far as that goes, although I believe Trian has conjectured some theories to explain what happened. I must say that they didn’t seem to completely cover all the circumstances—” He saw Hugh’s face darken, the brows draw together with impatience.
“Ten cycles ago, a child was born to Stephen and Anne. It was a boy, a beautiful baby, with his father’s dark hair and his mother’s eyes and ears. You think that is odd, that I mention the ears, but it will become important later on. Anne, you see, has a nick in her left ear, right here, at the outer curve. It is a trait in her family. The story goes that long ago, when the Sartan still walked the world, one of their kind was saved from harm when a spear thrown at him was deflected by Anne’s ancestor. The point sliced off a part of the man’s left ear. All children born since have been marked with that notch as a symbol of the family’s honor.
“Anne’s child had the notch. I saw it myself when they brought the babe out for the showing.” Alfred’s voice lowered. “The child found in the cradle the next morning did not.”
“A changeling,” commented Hugh. “Surely they knew?”
“Yes, they knew. We all knew. The baby appeared to be the same age as the prince, only a day or two old. But this baby was fair-haired with bright blue eyes, not the milky kind of blue that will turn brown. And the child’s ears were both perfectly shaped. We questioned everyone in the palace, but no one knew how the switch was made. The guards swore no one had slipped past them. They were good men. Stephen did not doubt their word. The nurse slept in the room with the baby all night and woke to take him to the wet nurse, who said that she put to her breast Anne’s dark-haired boy. By this and by other tokens, Trian judged that the child had been placed there by magic.”
“Other tokens?”
Alfred sighed. His gaze strayed outside. Bane was standing on a rock, peering intently into the distance. On the horizon, black clouds flecked with lightning were massing. The wind was beginning to rise.
“The baby had a powerful enchantment woven round him. Anyone who looked at him must immediately love him. No, ‘love’ isn’t the right word.” The chamberlain considered the matter. “ ‘Dote on,’ perhaps, or ‘become obsessed by.’ We couldn’t bear to see him unhappy. A tear falling from his eye made us feel wretched for days. We would have parted with our lives before we parted with that child.” Alfred’s voice fell silent and he ran his hand over his bald pate. “Stephen and Anne knew the danger of taking this child as their own, but they—all of us—were helpless to prevent it. That’s why they named him Bane.”
“And what was the danger?”
“A year after the changeling was delivered to us, on the birthday of Anne’s true child, a mysteriarch from the High Realm came among us. At first we were honored, for such a thing had not happened in years—that one of the powerful magi of the Seventh House should so humble himself that he would deign to leave his glorious realm above and visit with us below. But our pride and our gladness changed to ashes in our mouths. Sinistrad is an evil man. He took care that we should know him and fear him. He came, he said, to do honor to the little prince. He had brought him a present. When Sinistrad lifted the babe in his arms, we knew—every one of us—whose child Bane truly was.
“No one could do a thing, of course—not against a powerful wizard of the Seventh House. Trian himself is one of the most skilled wizards in the kingdom, and he is only Third House. No, we had to watch with smiles plastered on our faces as the mysteriarch slipped that feather amulet around the baby’s neck. Sinistrad congratulated Stephen on his heir and left. His emphasis on that word sent shivers of horror through all of us. But Stephen was helpless to do anything except dote on the child more fiercely than ever, even though he began to loathe the sight of him.”
Hugh tugged at his beard, frowning. “But why would a wizard of the High Realm want a kingdom in the Middle? They left us cycles ago of their own free will. Their own kingdom is wealthy beyond anything we can imagine, or so we’ve heard.
“As I’ve said, we do not know. Trian has theories—conquest is the most obvious, of course. But if they wanted to rule us, they could bring an army of mysteriarchs down and defeat us easily. No, as I said, it doesn’t make sense. Stephen knew that Sinistrad was in communication with his son. Bane is a cunning spy. The boy has learned every secret in the kingdom and has passed it all on, of that we are certain. We might have lived with that, for ten cycles have passed and our strength grows. If the mysteriarchs wanted to take over, they could have done it before this. But something has happened that made it urgent for Stephen to rid himself of the changeling.” Alfred glanced outside to see the boy still occupied in scouting out a city, though he was obviously tired and now sitting on the rock instead of standing. The chamberlain motioned Hugh near, whispering in his ear. “Anne is with child!”
“Ah!” Hugh nodded in sudden understanding. “And so they decide to get rid of one heir, now that there’s another on the way. What about the enchantment?”
“Trian broke it. Ten years of study it took him, but he managed at last. Now Stephen was able to”—Alfred halted, stammering in confusion—“to . . .”
“. . . hire an assassin to kill him. How long have you known?”
“From the first.” Alfred flushed. “It was why I followed you.”
“And you would have tried to stop me?”
“I’m not certain.” Alfred’s brow furrowed, and he shook his head confusedly.
“I ... don’t know.”
A dark seed fell into Hugh’s mind and took root. It grew fast, twisting around his brain, flowering and bearing a noxious fruit. I decided to break the contract. Why? Because the boy is more valuable alive than dead. But so were a number of men I contracted to kill. I never before broke faith. I never before broke a contract, though sometimes I could have made ten times the fee paid me. Why now? I risked my own life to rescue the bastard! I couldn’t kill him after he tried to kill me!
What if the enchantment isn’t broken? What if Bane is still manipulating all of us, beginning with King Stephen?