Ninomar gulped at such treason.
"Ukarres!" the duke roared, spinning around. "Did you show him that letter?"
"Yes, he did," Shadow said. "You knew Aurolron--he always offered the small end of the egg."
There appeared to be a standoff. IceFire turned her head to look at something, and the spectators stiffened, but nothing more happened. The other birds were absolutely still, eerily so.
The duke stepped forward beside Ninomar. "Shadow," he said, "leave personalities out of this. We have matters of very grave import here. You say you know about Schagarn. I think that others do not. I also am summoned to court, and I would want to disclose those hidden things to His Majesty. Would you agree to allow me a hectoday to go to Ramo and return, without any change in the present status?"
Ninomar was getting very tired of hearing about this Schagarn and of not hearing about it.
Shadow shook his head. "l do not meddle in politics, Keeper, and I have no authority to do so. I will give you my personal opinion, though: Nothing is likely to happen within the next hectoday. But that is only my opinion, and it carries no weight."
"The king should know," the duke said.
"But who is the king?" Shadow asked. "You are the authority on the Rand. Do I return and tell King Vindax that he has your loyalty? Or do you support the usurper, Jarkadon?"
Nicely put, Ninomar thought. And he himself must make that decision also, on behalf of the few royal troopers he had with him. If his choice was not the same as the duke's, then he was going to be in the castle dungeon before three bells.
"I think I need time to consider," the duke said. "Again I offer you my hospitality, upon the honor of my house."
"And again I decline it. Decide."
The duke had gone very pale, and Ninomar suspected that he was not much better himself. Jarkadon's two sets of orders showed that news of his brother's survival would not provoke an abdication.
"You are accusing me of conniving in an attempt to murder Vindax," the keeper said at last. "Yet you want me to do homage to him? Would he accept it?"
Now it was Shadow who hesitated. "We did not know of the king's death," he admitted. He shrugged. "It makes no difference. Vindax agrees that you were not privy to the plot, so he will accept your fealty. But the assassin must be punished--he is adamant on that."
Now--and much too late, he knew--Ninomar realized that they were discussing Elosa. After NailBiter launched, her bird had been next to the prince's. He and the bishop had never even considered Elosa. A child? But she could have done it, and the prince could have seen, albeit too late to stop his launch. The official inquiry had failed, then, and there was another problem.
The duke was silent, and his shaded face was visibly running sweat. If he supported Jarkadon, then the proclamation of bastardy effectively named him as a traitor for fathering Vindax and he must turn against his own son as a pretender. If he supported Vindax, then his daughter was a would-be assassin and therefore a traitor and he would also be in rebellion against the established court.
So the duke must choose between son and daughter. And if Vindax was not his son--and the duke at least could not be in doubt--then he was certainly the true king, but the duke's daughter must be sacrificed...while if Vindax was truly his son, then he was still a traitor and he and the queen dowager could suffer traitors' deaths, regardless of who was on the throne...Ninomar's head was spinning.
"Go back to your Vindax," the duke said, "and ask a pardon. Bring it here--"
"No!" Shadow said. "Kneel now, here, before me, and pledge your unconditional allegiance to King Vindax VII, or I return and tell him that you are in league with the usurper Jarkadon."
This was a commoner speaking to the premier noble?
"Then your Vindax will remain forever an exile in Allaban!"
"What was done at Schagarn is ended," Shadow replied quietly. "What if Vindax joins forces with the republic to recover his throne? You threaten war, Keeper? Kneel and swear!"
The duke moved as fast as an eagle. Two steps, and he had snatched a bow from one tub and an arrow from another and the bow was drawn and the feather at his eye before Ninomar knew what was happening.
But Shadow had moved also--he spun around and leaped out into space and was gone, as the arrow passed where he had been.
Women and men screamed in unison.
Deliberately, IceFire hunched and launched and vanished; Ninomar had not noticed that she had been unshackled. Elosa wailed loudly.
But Shadow? Ninomar thought of that terrible drop and the smashed table, and he suddenly slid to his knees and vomited up great quantities of mulled wine. When he had recovered, people were streaming down the stairs and a few others were having hysterics and yet others had hooded the birds and slipped between them to peer over the edge and look down into the darkness at the body.
"Well, that is the end of him," he said aloud. "He must have been completely crazy all along, and the prince is dead."
There was a dry wheeze behind him. "He was not crazy," Ukarres said. "He has been to Allaban. That was not the end of him."
After a moment he added, "But it may be the end of us."
Chapter 13
"It served us damn well right!"
ON the day after he arrived at Allaban, Shadow had flown with Karaman to Femie, there to meet his prince.
He had been warned, but no warning could have fully prepared him. Karaman had not thought to mention the nauseating stench of gangrene, or the madness that days of unbearable agony put into a man's eyes, or the flatness of the bandages on a face whose nose had been killed by frostbite and so amputated. There was irony in that. Vindax would not look like the duke of Foan now, he would not look like anyone.
There was more horrible irony. His hands were bandaged stumps, and the doctors thought the rest of the fingers would have to go also, but he had lost no toes. So he had feet but no real hands; yet his arms were uninjured and his legs paralyzed. Sky sickness was caused by bubbles in the blood, Karaman said, quoting the ancient texts. At some point in her frenzy WindStriker had plunged down almost to the desert floor, to air of great pressure. Then she must have soared high again. Eagles could do that; men could not. The return to the depths at hot, suffocating Femie had not been made in time to prevent the damage.
The doctors thought that the patient might live but were still not sure.
Shadow stared in silence at the bundled horror on the bed and said a prayer that Vindax might die. Ukarres had indeed been lucky.
But honor required that he speak the prince's name, and the eyes opened in the gap left for them within the bandages. They stared for a long time blankly, as though there were no mind behind them. Then the lips twisted into a smile.
"I knew you would come," Vindax whispered. After that, Shadow was looking through tears and did not need to see the details.
Karaman cut the visit short; he made the return journey slowly, stopping frequently at isolated farmhouses to chat with old friends. He introduced "Citizen Shadow" to innumerable people, all of whom offered food and hospitality and wanted to reminisce about old times, it was not mere socializing, he assured Shadow--a gradual ascent was more wisdom from the ancient texts. Shadow was too shocked and depressed to care.
These easy-living rural folk rang no watch bells, taking their time undivided. When Karaman reached home with Shadow, they sat on the porch, Karaman in his ancient rocker, Shadow slumped on the couch. His body was telling him that it was time for bed, yet between him and the view of fields and sunlit orchards glimmered that anonymous bandaged head and its mad eyes, and he doubted that he would ever sleep again.