The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

She went inside the stables with Wolfhere. The light fled. So small a thing had the candle’s flame been, to cast so harsh a light onto his soul.

When she found out the truth, she would hate him. And she would find out the truth in the end, because the one person who knew everything still traveled with Sanglant’s army and had no better way to amuse himself. He would know. He would see Zacharias’ weakness, his fears, and his hopes. He would destroy Zacharias’ last chance for redemption, as long as he still lived.

Zacharias got to his feet and staggered like an old man to the door of the stable. It was dark inside, Wolfhere’s candle vanished entirely, although he heard a murmur of voices that faded. Half of the stalls were empty; at this time of year, and in a peaceful city, many of the horses had been put out to pasture beyond the inner walls. But soldiers stored other things here as well.

Groping, as quietly as he could, he found a stout spear leaning with its brothers in a stall. He slipped his fingers around it, eased it free, and crept out of the stable. Hands trembling, breath coming in gasps, he hugged the shadows, having to steady himself on the butt of the spear every time his knees started to give out. The haft kept wanting to spring right out of his grasp, but he clutched it tightly.

He would not lose Hathui, not after losing everything else.

Beside the great hall lay the old keep, said by the locals to have been built in the time of the ancient Dariyans, although Heribert had firmly proclaimed that it could not possibly have been built by Dariyan engineers: the technique and stonework were too crude. With a new hall and stables now built inside the ring fort’s restored walls, the old keep was considered too drafty and damp for the king and his court. But stone made good prison walls.

The two Ungrian soldiers standing guard at the entrance to the keep knew him by sight and let him pass. Up the winding stairs lay the tower rooms where King Geza kept certain prisoners who traveled with him wherever he went—his first wife, an unrepentant pagan whom he had divorced on his conversion to the Daisanite faith and whom he was forced to hold hostage so that her angry kinfolk did not murder him for the insult; an Arethousan priest who had poisoned a young Ungrian princeling but whom Geza dared not execute because of the priest’s connections to the Arethousan royal court; an albino boy who was either a witch or a saint, too crazy to be allowed to roam about on his own and too valuable to be given into anyone else’s care.

Others, too, slept confined in chambers, but they weren’t the dangerous ones, only hostages. Usually the dangerous ones were killed outright.

As he should have been killed, the day they captured him.

Zacharias used the butt of the spear to feel his way down the curving stairs to the lower level, where stone foundations plumbed the ground. It was cooler here, damp, smelling of mold and decay.

“Who’s there?” asked the guard in Wendish, rising from the stool where he waited out the night in the dank, dark dungeon. An oil lamp hung from a ring set into the wall. The light barely illuminated the hole cut into the plank floor and the ladder lying on the planks beside it. “Oh, it’s just you, Brother. What brings you here so late?”

Would his trembling hands and sweating brow give him away? He must not falter now. His glib tongue had always saved him before.

“My lord prince has sent me to interrogate the prisoner.”

“In the middle of the night?”

He raised a finger to his lips and beckoned the soldier closer, so that they wouldn’t wake the prisoner. “Malbert, when did you come on watch? Did you hear that an Eagle rode in?”

“An Eagle? Nay, I’ve heard no such news. From Princess Theophanu? News of Wendar?” Malbert came from the northern coast of Wendar, near Gent, and was always eager for news of the region where he’d grown up.

“Nay, she brings news from Aosta. King Henry is ill. He’s being poisoned by sorcery.”

“God save him!”

“Prince Sanglant doesn’t know whether to ride east or return to Aosta. I’m to ask the prisoner again of the eastern lands. See if he’ll talk, give us any information.”

Malbert snorted. “As if he would! He’ll laugh at you.” But not for long.

“If he’s groggy from sleep, he might reveal something. How many days to the eastern swamps. Where the griffins hunt.”

“Hasn’t the prince come to listen and watch? Where is he?”

“Well. Well. Just where most men wish they were in the dead of night. Heh, yes. He’s gone to his bed.”

Malbert grinned. “I wish I were in as sweet a bed as he’s in now. But I can’t come down with you. You know the rule.”

“It’s better if he thinks I’m alone. I’ve got this spear with me to keep him honest.”

He bit his tongue to hold back the frantic words that wanted to spill out: to silence him.

That was the only way. Hathui must never know.

Malbert had an open face and was himself too honest not to let his skepticism show. They all knew how disgracefully Zacharias had behaved in a skirmish before. “So you say. I’ll keep watch from above.”

They slid the ladder down through the hole until it rested on the dirt beneath. Malbert held the lamp over the opening to light Zacharias’ descent. With the spear tucked under one arm, he climbed down into the pit.

Although the prince had had the pit swept clean the day they had arrived here, it still stank of garbage, urine, and feces. Dirt squeaked under his feet as Zacharias steadied himself. Malbert lowered a second, newly lit oil lamp to hang from a hook hammered into the underside of the plank floor. Drops of water beaded on the stone walls, dripping onto the soil. The stink of closed-in air almost choked him, but hatred drove him on.