Prince Karl spent the afternoon before Davydd Verdsmitt’s much-anticipated premiere in a boring meeting of the King’s Council-although using “boring” to describe a meeting of the King’s Council was redundant.
Still, this one was even more boring than most, due in part to the absence of Lord Falk, who had not yet returned from his manor, though he had passed word to the Council through his secretary, Brich, that he “anticipated with delight the prospect of being in the audience” that evening.
Karl had had some hope that the meeting might be livelier than most due to the attempt on his life just three days before, and had looked forward to Falk’s report on his investigation into it, but with Falk absent, the matter was simply deferred and he was left slumped in the magnificently carved, richly upholstered, and hideously uncomfortable throne that was his reserved seat at the table, feeling his buttocks going numb and wishing that, just once, King Kravon would attend his own King’s Council meeting in his own Royal Person.
But that, alas, was about as likely as a bald eagle erupting from his blood-starved butt and warbling a popular pub tune.
When he had seated himself, he had given the usual fiction about the King being indisposed, when he knew very well, as did every member of the Council, that the King was at that moment sleeping off a hangover in his massive bedchamber high in the central tower of the palace, probably in the embrace of some beardless youth who might, if pressed, give the lie to the King’s reputation for being omnipotent. .. or potent at all.
Prince Karl tasted the bitterness of his own thoughts and felt ashamed. He’s my father, he thought.
Sometimes that unpleasant realization frightened him. When he became King, would he take after the old man?
We’re nothing alike, he told himself vehemently. We don’t look alike, we don’t think alike, we don’t act alike.
Which he supposed meant he took after his mother… but there was no way to know for certain, since she had died when he was born.
In the past, he had given tours of the Great Hall to groups of Commoner children from New Cabora, a task he enjoyed, because it represented a break from monotony, and at least some connection with the majority of the Kingdom that did not breathe the rarified, stultified air of the Palace. (He had been scheduled to give such a tour that very morning, but with Falk currently suspecting Commoners of having attempted to kill him, all such visits had been canceled.) He always envied the children, staring wide-eyed at everything he showed them, awed that the Heir to the King was personally conducting their tour. They might be Commoners, forced to live a life of drudgery without the comforts provided by magic, but they each had parents who loved them and cared what happened to them, and in that respect they were richer than he had ever been or ever could be.
Instead of a parent, he had been taught by a series of tutors, including Tagaza. Tagaza was closer to a father to him than his own: or perhaps Tagaza was more like his mother, and Falk his father, ready to correct and discipline as required. Although now that he was past eighteen, Falk’s authority no longer seemed as absolute as he had once thought it. He was the Heir, after all, and would be King.
I will be King, he reminded himself again that morning. But for now, he was just the Heir Apparent, and so, even though he had the grandest chair in the Council chamber and represented the Crown, he wasn’t permitted to speak. He was expected simply to listen and learn-though mostly what he learned was that it was a miracle the Kingdom operated at all, and had not long since devolved into squabbling satrapies.
The Council did not meet in the vast and echoing Great Hall, though the heavy oak doors Karl now faced opened into it. Instead, it met in this much smaller chamber, as close to utilitarian as any room in the Palace could be. Karl had long since exhausted every possible bit of interest to be gleaned from the examination of the meager furnishings: plain marble walls, plain marble floor, long wooden table, plain wooden chairs (except his, unfortunately). Instead, he studied the five Councillors. Of course, he’d examined them in minute detail multiple times as well, but this time, as he studied the Councillors, he found himself wondering if any of those who sat with him at the oval table could have been behind the assassination attempt.
Lord Athol, Prime Adviser to King Kravon, sat at the opposite end of the table from Karl, chairing the meeting as always. Enormously tall and enormously fat, he took up the space allotted to any two normal people, and it sometimes seemed to Karl that his bristling gray-streaked black beard took up the space of a third.
The fact the Kingdom managed so well without any significant input from its King was a tribute to Athol’s effectiveness. But Karl had never warmed to the man, who seemed to regard him as a child who couldn’t be trusted with anything important. Still, that very disdain argued against him having any reason to attempt to kill the Prince.
Lady Estra, the King’s Purse, sat to Athol’s right. She was a little on the small side, which made her look positively elfin next to Athol, though there was nothing elfin about her habitually sour expression, as pinched as though she had just bitten into an unripe crabapple. Perhaps it was being in charge of the Kingdom’s finances that gave her that expression; the previous King’s Purse, an elderly man who had died when Karl was a small boy, had had a similar look about him and used to terrify Karl whenever they crossed paths.
To Estra’s right, Karl’s immediate left, sat Lady Vin. Tall and thin, she had a natural expression that also tended toward the dour-though not as dour as Estra’s-but one she made up for with a ready, radiant smile that took twenty years off her age and made it impossible for Karl not to smile back.
As Goodskeeper, Lady Vin was responsible for agriculture and internal trade. She awarded the government contracts on which many merchants depended-and for which they were prepared to bribe government officials. Throughout the Kingdom’s history the Goodskeeper’s office had been more or less corrupt, depending on who was running it. At the moment, it tended toward the “more” side of that balance, but nobody seemed to mind because Lady Vin, despite rolling in presumably ill-gotten wealth, was so personally likable and generous.
Across from Lady Vin, to Karl’s right, sat Tagaza. As First Mage, he was responsible for the magical lifeblood of the Kingdom, including maintenance of the Barriers (not that any had ever been required), long-distance communication via magelink (for those Mageborn who could not manage the necessary spell themselves), and, most importantly, the MageFurnace, source of energy for the Lesser Barrier and other magic of the Palace. (He also had responsibility for the Cauldron, the vast lake of molten rock that powered the Great Barrier, but since giant lava lakes tended to look after themselves rather well, in practice that just meant maintaining the road to it and accompanying Falk on the annual trip north to inspect it.)
There was one other member of the Council, but he did not sit at the table with the others. In a corner of the room the Commoner sat at his own small table, papers strewn across it.
He had a name, of course, but it was never spoken. He was just “The Commoner,” the liaison between the Council of MageLords and the Commons. Chosen by lottery every four years, he had given up his personal identity for the duration. It was he who passed on the decisions of the MageLords to the Commons, and he who brought petitions from the Commons to the MageLords.
The Commons had its own Council, a group of twelve men and women chosen, again by magic-guided lottery, from an approved slate of candidates drawn up by the Prime Adviser’s office. The Commons Council had limited powers but was permitted to deal with matters of land ownership, roads and sewer systems, and the like. Anything outside its purview it sent to the MageLords via the Commoner.
Although the Commoner attended all Council meetings, he was magically prevented from saying anything about what he heard in the Council Chamber outside its walls. Within the chamber, he could only speak at specific times, or when asked a question. He was not permitted to take part in any discussion, or to express an opinion, without being invited, and he was seldom invited.
Karl had given him a sympathetic smile when he first sat down on his throne. He rather thought he knew how the Commoner felt. The Commoner had very slightly bowed his head, but made no other response.
At the end of his term, the Commoner would be greatly rewarded. If he failed to serve out his term, he would receive nothing. It gave him great incentive to behave himself precisely as the MageLords expected him to behave.
As well, at the end of his term, the Commoner’s memory of the meetings he had attended would be magically removed. As a discussion of which of two Commoner firms should have the snow-clearing contract for a bridge over the North Evrenfels River in Berriton dragged on, Karl rather wished he had that option.
The meeting was well into its fourth hour, and Karl feared he would never walk again, when Lord Athol finally said, “I therefore declare us adjourned. We will reconvene in three days, at which time Lord Falk will tell us of the preliminary results of his investigation into the attempt on Prince Karl’s life.” He smiled. “In the meantime, I expect I will see many of you tonight at Davydd Verdsmitt’s play.” There was a murmur of assent, then the Councillors began to get to their feet. Athol hurried to catch up to the King’s Purse. “Lady Estra, a word…”
Lord Athol and Lady Estra exited together, talking in low voices. Tagaza nodded to Karl as he gathered up his notes and trailed along. The Commoner remained where he was, reading over papers, as did Lady Vin, who was still studying the final report the Council had received. Karl stood and stretched, and Lady Vin raised her head. “Will you be at Verdsmitt’s play, Your Highness?”
“The first new play by Verdsmitt in three years, Lady Vin? You’d have to tie me up to keep me away.” Or assassinate me, he thought, and grinned a little sourly, wondering if Falk had considered that unlikely motive for the attack. He glanced up as Teran, relegated to the hallway outside during the Council meeting, came in to see what was taking him so long. “You will sit behind me, won’t you?” he said to his bodyguard, who stood a head taller than he did. “If you sit in front of me I won’t be able to see a thing.”
A grin flicked over Teran’s face. “I could slouch. But no, I won’t be sitting in front of you.”
“Nor in front of me, I trust,” Lady Vin said lightly. She stood and gathered her papers, then hesitated. “I… was alarmed when I heard of the attack on you, Your Highness,” she said, her voice warmed by concern, though whether real or feigned, Karl couldn’t tell. “It would be a tragedy if the Kingdom were to lose you.”
“Well, I certainly agree with you,” Karl said, keeping his own voice light. “But Falk has taken every precautionary measure. I’m reasonably confident that no attacks on my august person will disrupt tonight’s performance… or if they do, I promise to step outside and die quietly in the hall so as not to disturb the rest of the audience.”
Lady Vin laughed. “Your solicitude is appreciated, Your Highness. Fare well until this evening.” She swept out, leaving Karl alone with Teran and the Commoner.
Karl strode over to him, and he scrambled to his feet and bowed respectfully. “Please, sit down,” Karl said. The Commoner bowed again, and resumed his place behind the table. Karl glanced down at the papers there. “What are you reading?”
“More about the bridge contract, Your Highness,” said the Commoner. “I have some… concerns.”
Karl cocked his head. “You don’t think the Council made the right decision?”
The Commoner lowered his head. “As you know, Your Highness, it is not my place to say.”
“It is if the Prince asks you for your opinion,” Karl said softly. “And I’m asking.”
The Commoner’s head came up again, slowly. “Then, Your Highness. .. no, I do not think the Council made the right decision.”
Karl sighed. “As it happens, neither do I. The contractor was chosen because Lady Vin conducts non-government business with him. He gives her a very good price on that work, and in exchange she arranges for him to snare overpriced government contracts.”
The Commoner’s face went blank. “If you say so, Your Highness.”
“I’m not trying to trap you,” Karl said tiredly. “It’s obvious, and everyone knows it. But nobody cares.”
The Commoner raised his left eyebrow. “But you do, Your Highness?” he said softly.
“Yes,” Karl said. “I do. But I’m still only the Heir. When I’m King…” He spread his hands. “I don’t know what I can do then, either, to tell the truth. But I hope to do better than our current King. And I hope to craft a Council that does better as well.”
The Commoner’s right eyebrow went up as well. “I would… welcome that, Your Highness.”
“Well… I’ll let you get back to work,” said Karl, and headed for the big oak doors, Teran close behind.
In the Great Hall, Teran said, “That was an interesting conversation.”
Karl glanced over his shoulder. “You don’t think I should talk to the Commoner that way?”
Teran smiled. “Hardly. I think that’s exactly the way you should talk to him. But not many Mageborn would, and no MageLords. It’s particularly interesting considering Falk seems to think the Commoners were behind the attack on you.”
Karl shrugged. “All the more reason to try to make the point with any Commoner who will listen that I hope to be a different kind of King than they’re used to, isn’t it? Not that the MageLords will make it easy.” He reached back and rubbed his rear end with both hands; it was tingling now that blood flow had been restored to it. “Damn, I hate that chair.”
Teran laughed. “Not very Prince-like, Your Highness.”
“Even Princes get sore butts, Teran.”
As they strode through the corridors leading to Karl’s quarters, they passed the Royal Theater, a grandly named but rather small auditorium that held no more than a hundred audience members. The doors stood open, and Karl, glancing in, saw workmen on the stage, hammering away at set pieces lying facedown on the black-painted wood. He felt a thrill of anticipation. A new Verdsmitt play! He could hardly wait.
Falk had never shown any interest in plays of any kind, by Verdsmitt or anyone else, as far as Karl knew. He wondered why the Minister of Public Safety was making a special effort to be back for the performance.
He snorted to himself as they moved on down the hall, the sound of hammering following them. Of course, with a moment’s thought, he knew why. Verdsmitt was widely whispered to be sympathetic to the Common Cause, though how much of that was truth and how much merely a smear campaign by his less-known (and less-talented) rivals Karl did not know. Nevertheless, if Karl had heard those rumors, surely Lord Falk had, as well.
So why hasn’t he canceled the performance? Karl wondered. If he hadn’t, he had good reason for it. Falk did not simply overlook things.
“It should be an interesting evening,” Teran said, voicing what Karl had been thinking, and while such a thought could sometimes fill him with excitement, on this day, it filled him with foreboding.
Three hours later, following a light supper of hot barley soup and cold fresh walleye (there would be a surfeit of food at the reception following the play), Karl entered the Royal Theater, dressed in his finest white tunic and scarlet trousers. A featherweight gold cape floated from epaulets on each shoulder, and a golden circlet, with an enormous ruby centered in the middle of his forehead, proclaimed his rank. Glittering black calf-high boots and a ceremonial sword completed his faux-military ensemble.
He felt like a fool, really, but it was his duty as representative of the Crown to dress the part and impress upon the Verdsmitt Players the honor a Royal Performance represented.
Of course, for real honor, the play should have been attended by the King, but once again, the King was “indisposed.”
Karl had vague memories from when he was a small child of his father laughing uproariously at performances in this very theater. When had all that changed? He hadn’t seen his father in the flesh for
… what? Two months? In fact, the only reason he could be certain the old man was still alive was that the Keys had not come to him, an event which Tagaza had assured him he would not overlook.
“When the King or Queen dies,” the First Mage had told him, “the Heir to the Keys immediately feels faint and may even black out. There is reportedly a feeling of disconnection, as if the mind and body have been separated. Next, consciousness enlarges. Previous Heirs have reported that for a brief but overpowering moment they felt connected to every Mageborn in the Kingdom, a feeling followed by an equally overpowering sense of loss as the sensation passes and mind and body reunite. All of this frequently is followed by a splitting headache and nausea.”
“Charming,” Karl had responded. “The effect of becoming King appears to closely mimic the effect of eating bad mussels.”
Tagaza had diplomatically ignored that comment. “Next comes the Call, an irresistible urge to journey to the Great Hall, no matter how far away the Heir may be. In your case, of course, you will most likely be in the Palace, but even should you be, oh, driving a dog sledge across the northern wastes-”
“That seems unlikely.”
“-you will instantly turn your steps toward the Palace, and will not be able to rest until you sit upon the Throne. The compulsion will be lifted. And you, my prince, will be the new King. After which, of course, comes the coronation, but that is a mere formality.”
Karl sighed and settled himself in his high-backed, nicely padded (unlike that cursed Council Chamber chair) theater seat. None of that had happened; therefore, the King still lived.
But still he felt a pang as he glanced at the empty seat to his left, always reserved for the King, but never filled.
When had his father withdrawn so completely? And why?
He heard the rustle of brocaded gowns and courtly robes as those MageLords present in the Palace and some of their favored Mageborn followers took their seats behind him, as had Teran.
The house lights, magelights all, dimmed, leaving only the curtain warmers, flushing the rich red curtain with a dim glow. A lone figure, silhouetted against that glow, stepped in front of the curtain from stage right and made his way to the center. An instant later a spotlight, a particularly powerful magelight magically focused to a tight round circle of light, lit his face. The crowd murmured as they, like Karl, recognized Davydd Verdsmitt, the most famous playwright, Commoner or Mageborn, in the Kingdom’s history.
“My Lords and Ladies,” Verdsmitt said. He was an actor as well as a playwright, and his voice carried easily to every corner of the theater. “Welcome to the first performance of my new play.” His face, boyish and smooth-skinned though he was halfway through his fourth decade, crinkled into a grin. “And possibly the last, if it doesn’t go well!”
The audience laughed, Karl included.
“I will tell you nothing about it up front, so that its action and themes may be a surprise,” he said. “But I did want to appear before you to personally welcome His Highness Prince Karl, Heir Apparent to the Keys of Evrenfels. Your Highness, I am particularly pleased you can be with us tonight in light of the recent attempt on your life.”
Around him, the audience had stilled into frozen discomfort at Verdsmitt’s effrontery. If Verdsmitt noticed, he gave no indication. “We have a saying in the theater that the show must go on, Your Highness. Your presence here tonight, so soon after the attack, is proof to me that you are, indeed, a true patron of the dramatic arts, which, as an old actor and rapidly aging playwright, gladdens my heart.
“But enough prattle. Your Highness, My Lords and Ladies, Verdsmitt’s Masters of the Stage present the premiere performance of The Unlocking: A Romance of the Far Future.”
With that, the curtain swept up, and Verdsmitt stepped back onto the stage and into the revealed scene-a representation of the Great Hall.
But not the Great Hall as Karl had seen it just hours earlier. This Great Hall lay in ruins, and ancient ruins, at that. In the foreground broken stone and shattered bricks half-buried one of the great beams from the roof. The painted background showed a crumbled wall, through which could be seen trees and weeds growing wild in the Palace grounds. The sight shocked Karl, like a stinging slap to the cheek. A horrified murmur ran through the crowd.
As the play progressed, those murmurs grew in volume and displeasure.
In Verdsmitt’s play, the unthinkable had happened: the Barriers had fallen. That alone was close to heresy, but what was worse was the reason he gave for it. It was not because the thousand years had passed. Rather, in his world, magic had simply… failed. Vanished.
No, not just vanished, been driven from the world, never to return, by the appearance of… a Magebane.
Had the entire play consisted of nude actors engaged in an onstage orgy with farm animals, Verdsmitt could scarcely have offended his audience more. (Indeed, Karl suspected the former would have been wildly, if secretly, popular among the MageLords.)
Worse, the mythical Magebane, in Verdsmitt’s play, was a MageLord himself, and not just any MageLord, but the last King of Evrenfels-the last, because he chose to destroy the Keys, magic, and himself in order to usher in a new era in which there would no longer be any distinction between Commoners and MageLords, who, in the play’s “happy ending,” decided to build a new land together where there was no magic and no king, the people instead choosing their own rulers from among their own numbers.
The play ended, after only one act, with Verdsmitt’s character, the ex-Prime Adviser of the last King of Evrenfels, joining with a young Commoner to lift the beam that had fallen from the roof of the Great Hall and begin, both literally and symbolically, to rebuild the land.
Verdsmitt must have decided to limit the play to one act because he assumed no second act would be allowed to proceed, Karl thought. And indeed, as the curtain fell, the audience grumbled and muttered. No one applauded.
Karl knew he should be as horrified as the other MageLords; more so, in fact, as Heir. And yet a part of him found the play’s concept exciting rather than revolting. For him, after all, more than for anyone else, the Kingdom of Evrenfels, its Barriers, and the Keys that would one day come to him were a prison sentence, locking him into a future he did not want but could not escape. To imagine that those bars could be dissolved…
Of course it was a fantasy… but like many fantasies, it held a powerful appeal. And wasn’t theater about fantasy, about challenging what was with the possibilities and even the impossibilities of other ways, other worlds?
And with that thought Karl, seized with sudden fury and disgust at the brocade-bound, robed and stuffed Palacedwellers all around him, leaped to his feet and began to clap.
Teran stood first, as duty required, but everyone else followed a heartbeat later. You did not stay seated when the Prince stood. Nor did you refuse to applaud, and so applause there was, just enough to be almost polite, as the eight actors, five men and three women, took their bows. To Karl, they appeared pale and frightened…
… all but Verdsmitt. He bowed as though receiving the greatest accolades of his career, then joined hands with the rest of the cast and bowed again.
And at that moment, the first Royal guards burst onto the stage.
They rushed on from the wings, down from the back of the theater, from behind the set. Someone screamed, whether on stage or in the audience, Karl couldn’t tell, but it was over in a moment. The actors, hands bound, were dragged away. Lord Falk himself took charge of Verdsmitt, who accompanied the Minister of Public Safety into the wings with his head held high and even a hint of a smile on his face.
Karl watched it all in stunned silence, then was furious at himself for saying nothing. He was the Prince! He could have stopped the arrests-
But even as he thought that, he knew that he could do nothing of the kind. Falk would not answer to him. His orders, he would surely say, came from the King, and the King would certainly never gainsay him.
And then, to his shock, Teran seized his arms and pulled him toward the exit, almost as though he were under arrest himself. “What are you doing?” Karl shouted at him, pulling back.
“Please, Your Highness,” Teran said, a note of near panic in his throat. “Lord Falk ordered me to get you out of here when the arrest happened.”
That shocked Karl even more, and he let himself be pulled out into the hallway and toward his quarters, even as the rest of the audience spilled out behind him. But once they were in his sitting room, he rounded on Teran. “You knew about this arrest?” He remembered Teran’s comment that it should be an “interesting evening,” and his anger burned higher. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me?”
“Your Highness,” said Teran, looking pale. “I had my orders. From Falk.”
“I am your Prince,” Karl snarled. “And your friend!”
“Yes, Your Highness,” Teran said softly. “But Lord Falk is my supreme commander. If I failed to obey his orders…” His voice trailed off. “I cannot disobey his orders, Your Highness.”
“You can if I tell you to!”
“But you didn’t tell me to, Your Highness. You did not order me to tell you of Falk’s plans to arrest Verdsmitt.”
“How could I order you to tell me about something I didn’t know about?” Karl shouted.
Teran flinched, but stood firm. “Even so, Your Highness. And so I had to obey the orders I was given, by Lord Falk.”
In disgust, Karl spun away from him, strode to the sideboard, and poured a glass of asproga. “And what are your orders now?” he said, then downed the fiery yellow liqueur in a single gulp.
“Lord Falk requests that you await him here, Your Highness,” Teran said.
“Then perhaps you had better wait for him outside, so you can confirm you carried out your instructions,” Karl said coldly.
“Yes, Your Highness,” said Teran. He went out into the hallway, and closed the door.
Karl, upset with himself, furious at what he had just witnessed and at Teran’s part in it, stripped off his ridiculous finery, donning in its place plain black trousers and a white shirt. Barefoot, he padded to the window and gazed out over the Palace grounds. The night was moonless, but globular magelights on metal poles cast circles of cold illumination every few yards along the paths that wound through the formal gardens. Their illumination revealed nothing out of the ordinary.
He squinted. Unless…
Karl had an enchanted device known as a “magniseer” beside his window. Tagaza had provided it to him so that he could study the stars. Somehow it canceled out the faint shimmer of the Lesser Barrier, allowing him a clear view. But now he seized the chill metal tube and pointed it downward, toward the Palace grounds.
There. Near the bronze equestrian statue of Queen Castilla, down at the far end of the gardens. Karl pushed at the focus lever, and turned the knob that made it as light sensitive as possible. The action of the magic within drew energy from the air around the device, frosting the controls. Karl blew on his fingers to warm them, then took a closer look through the magniseer. Even with the adjustments, he could not make out any features of the two figures lurking in the shadow of the statue. Still, they were obviously hiding-waiting for a signal, perhaps.
A signal that Davydd had been taken prisoner? And then what?
Karl watched them for the next few minutes, but they did nothing but lurk. He straightened up to relieve his back just as he heard the door opening in the other room.
Instantly he pointed the magniseer up to the ceiling, and was at the bedroom door before Lord Falk finished closing the main door. “Lord Falk,” Prince Karl said in his haughtiest I-am-royal-and-you-are-not voice, “I demand to know what is going on!”
“Of course, Your Highness,” Lord Falk said. “That is precisely why I have come.”
“ On your orders, Teran came perilously close to dragging me to my chambers, Lord Falk. I am still Prince, am I not?”
Lord Falk spread his hands, though his face remained expressionless. Karl suspected Queen Castilla’s statue could show more emotion than Falk when he didn’t want to reveal anything. “I trust Your Highness will forgive him,” Falk said. “He was following my orders. I feared there might be some unrest following the arrest of Davydd Verdsmitt and his troupe. As it turned out, those fears were unfounded, Verdsmitt’s play having scandalized even his most ardent supporters in the Palace.”
“Are you mad, Lord Falk?” Karl said. “Davydd Verdsmitt is the leading playwright of the kingdom and much beloved by the Commons. You may have arrested him without any ‘unrest’ in the theater, but when word of this reaches the Commons-”
“Unrest among Commoners is of little concern,” Falk said. “While magic lives, the Commons pose no threat to the rule of the MageLords. And despite the fond wishes of radical Common Causers like Verdsmitt, magic is not going to fail.”
Karl’s eyes narrowed. “If you aren’t worried about the Common Cause, why have you arrested him?”
“Not because he is a threat to the Kingdom, Your Highness,” Lord Falk said. “Because he is a threat to you. It was he who ordered and organized the attack on your person.”
“ What? ”
“My source is unimpeachable,” Falk said. “Verdsmitt ordered the attack.”
“Three days before coming to the Palace to perform?” Karl did not try to keep the skepticism out of his voice.
Falk shrugged. “Hubris. He either believed we would never find out, or else he believed he is untouchable because of his fame. In either case, more fool he.”
“But why would Verdsmitt want to kill me?”
“My working assumption is, as I told you earlier, as a simple act of terror. But I’m sure his exact motivation will become clearer after a thorough interrogation. Which I had best be about. If Your Highness will excuse me…?”
Karl waved a hand. “Of course. Please keep me informed.” Falk bowed and took his leave. Teran looked in momentarily, then stepped back into the hall, closing and locking the door behind him.
Karl went back to the magniseer.
The mysterious figures still waited in the dark. But even as he watched them, they moved.
He didn’t know what he had expected them to do. Approach the Palace, perhaps, maybe attempt to free Verdsmitt, armed with enchanted weapons provided by the same renegade mage who had provided the one that had mysteriously failed to kill him. But instead they went the other way, to the shore of the lake; and then, as he watched, they got into a boat and rowed out onto the water.
Their course, he saw immediately, would take them to the wildest part of the far shore, a tangled jungle of cattails and rocks and brush that the Palace gardeners had left in its natural state.
There was nothing there. Nothing to interest Mageborn or Commoners. Unless…
How had Karl’s attacker come through the Lesser Barrier? Falk had suggested that perhaps she had been smuggled in as a Commoner worker, a servant for some MageLord. But Falk had provided no more information. That proved nothing, since Falk had little inclination to share information with Karl at the best of times. Still… what if the attacker had not been smuggled in? What if she had… somehow. .. come straight through the Barrier?
What if the mysterious renegade MageLord who had enchanted the crossbow was more powerful and connected than they had yet guessed.. . powerful enough that he could open the Barrier at will?
It wasn’t impossible. After all, the Gate, the only existing opening in the Lesser Barrier, had been crafted by a powerful ancient mage. Why couldn’t some modern mage have likewise figured out the secret?
Karl knew he should tell Teran about the two lurkers in the night, have him call out the guard. He knew what he was about to do was foolish beyond belief. But anger still burned in him at the cavalier way Falk treated and belittled him. If he could discover how the assassin had gotten inside the Barrier, it would give him an edge in his dealings with the Minister of Public Safety for years to come. And though he was not King yet, Karl already knew he needed every advantage he could get over the fractious and powerful MageLords and Mageborn that made up the government, from the Council on down to the regional governors and town mayors.
Besides Teran right outside his door, there would be other guards farther down the hallway, more guards at all the Palace entrances, guards everywhere…
… except right outside his window.
Karl had long ago discovered that it was a simple matter to climb down from his third-story window to the ground below. The cut stones that emphasized the massive solidity of the Palace also made excellent foot- and handholds. When he had been much younger, he’d frequently slipped down the side of the Palace and roamed the lakeshore and gardens in the dark, sometimes swimming in the moonlight, sometimes just lying on the grass and staring up at the stars through the shimmer of the Lesser Barrier. He’d never been caught, either, and so no one had ever thought to put a guard below his window.
The descent was easiest barefoot, and the night, as always, was warm. Karl went to his closet for a pair of boots-not the silly dress boots he’d been wearing in the theater, but his favorite pair of comfortable, ordinary boots-opened the casement, dropped the boots out the window, and then turned and lowered himself out of it as well, his toes finding the remembered cracks with ease. He descended quickly and quietly, although he had one bad moment when his right foot slipped-the cracks between the stones didn’t seem nearly as deep to him now as they had when he was ten. Still, he recovered without falling, and a few moments later stood, a little breathless, on the bedewed grass, damp and cool beneath his feet. He grabbed his boots and immediately slipped into the darkness of the line of trees that, framing the ornamental gardens, stretched down to the lakeshore.
Hidden in the shadows, he tugged on his boots while he peered across the lake. He could see nothing of the boat the two strangers had taken, out there on the dark water, but it had certainly been one they had somehow brought with them, for the four boats usually moored at the pier at the foot of the garden for the use of pleasure-seeking Palace dwellers bobbed right where they always were. Karl climbed into one, undid mooring ropes fore and aft, then unshipped the oars and pulled away from the shore.
It was cooler on the water and there was a little dampness on the seat. But he put the slight discomfort out of his mind. Rowing would soon warm him up, he thought, and so it did; by the time he had traveled a hundred yards, he was sweating.
With his back to the bow, he had a good view of the receding Palace, lit, like a jewel set in black velvet, by giant magelights. He watched for signs of alarm at his absence, or an attempt to rescue Verdsmitt, or anything at all out of the ordinary, but saw nothing. The Palace appeared serene, calm, and utterly unconcerned about possible threats.
The reflected Palace lights sparkled off the water all around him, his wake a glittering broken V-shape within it. When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw the shore as a nearing band of black. Some distance beyond, he could see the sparse yellow lights of New Cabora on the other side of the Barrier, slightly distorted by its shimmer, but between the Barrier and those lights was more parkland, a kind of snowy moat symbolizing the impassable divide between the Commons and the Mageborn.
He was suddenly horribly aware that he must be as visible as a wart on an actor’s nose, cutting through the reflections on the water, but there was nothing he could do about it except hope that the Commoners he pursued were looking ahead, and not behind.
A few moments later he stole another look over his shoulder, saw that he had almost reached the shore, backwatered with his left oar to spin the boat around, and then shipped his oars and used just one to scull over the stern until the bow grounded, with a wet squelching sound, on the lakeshore.
He clambered over the bow and promptly sank kneedeep into thick, gooey mud. He struggled forward, lost one boot and then the other, fell forward and plunged elbowdeep into the black muck. Crawling, he finally reached firmer, weed-grown ground beyond. Giving up his boots as a lost cause, he forced his way barefoot through a thick hedge of bushes that grabbed at his clothes like grasping fingers, trying with every step to be silent and horribly aware just how miserably he was failing.
Once he was through the hedge, thankfully, the going became easier. He could see almost nothing, though, the lights of the Palace cut off by the hedge, the lights of New Cabora more emphasizing the darkness ahead than alleviating it.
He stopped and listened. Was that a murmur of voices? He stretched out prostrate on the grass, lowering the horizon, raised his head slightly-and perhaps another fifty paces ahead saw the silhouettes of men against the city glow. They seemed to be working on something, heads close together. Light flared, so bright it hurt Karl’s dark-accustomed eyes, and must have hurt the mysterious men’s eyes as well, since he heard a sharp curse. The darkness that followed seemed even deeper and more impenetrable than before, but then there came another flare of light, softer, and a different color, too, a dim blue that Karl associated with magic… except that around its edges it flared red. As he watched, it swelled, expanding like the glowing rim of flame spreading out through a piece of paper set alight by a candle.
And suddenly he realized what he was seeing: a hole, an opening in the Lesser Barrier, burned through it by something the two men carried.
The moment the hole was big enough, the two men slipped through. They turned, and pointed the whatever-itwas at the Barrier. The hole began to shrink, like a puddle draining from the middle. Without waiting to see it closed, the men turned away and began crossing the snow-covered parkland toward the city.
Suddenly realizing that he knew nothing about them, that he had no proof to show Falk of their existence, much less their ability to slip through the Barrier, Karl scrambled to his feet and dashed toward the Barrier, determined to make it through that impossible breach before it closed.
He might have made it, if the Barrier had closed at a steady rate. But when it was just big enough that he thought he could still fit through it, it suddenly collapsed, the red rim racing in toward the center of the blue glow like the last dregs of water slipping down a drain.
It was too late for Karl to stop his headlong rush. Knowing he was about to crash into the Barrier, hard and cold as a wall of ice, he turned himself at the last second so that his shoulder would take the brunt of the blow, steeled himself for the impact…
… and went sprawling into the snow on the other side of the Lesser Barrier, passing through it as though it was so much thin air.
The sudden cold took his breath away. He yelped, heard a surprised shout ahead of him, and then the two men he had followed across the lake were on him, one slapping a hand over his mouth and twisting his arm behind his back, the other holding a dagger to his throat.
A light flashed in his eyes: not a magelight, but something yellower, a lick of flame attached to a short piece of wood. It only lasted a moment, then was blown out.
“It’s the Prince!” hissed the man who had lit the flame. The dagger point pricked his skin, and he held perfectly still.
“That’s impossible,” said the one holding Karl. “How did he get through the Barrier?”
“It must not have closed…”
Karl felt, rather than saw, the first man shake his head. “No. You know how it closes with a rush at the end. He couldn’t have made it through.”
“But he did.”
“Yeah.” A pause. “So now what do we do with him?”
“Not our call. Gag him, bind him, bring him with us. The Patron will decide.”
“Then let’s be quick,” said the first man. “We’ve been here too long already, and this damned snow makes it too light. One of Falk’s bloody patrols could be by at any second.”
“Right.” Karl, already shivering, was rolled over and his face pushed down into the snow. He felt his hands seized, jerked behind him, and bound together with rope or cord of some kind; then he heard a ripping sound as his own shirt was torn apart, exposing even more of his skin to the chill air, but providing a strip of cloth that a moment later was pulled over his mouth and tied tightly behind his head.
His legs were left free. His captors hauled him to his feet and forced him to walk, his bare feet sinking into the snow with every step, already moving beyond cold to a kind of agonizing numbness.
After a few more steps, though, he had no words at all, and few thoughts. There was only one unbearable step after another, shivering so hard his teeth would surely have smashed themselves to flinders if not for the gag keeping them apart, as he was driven like a Commoner criminal away from the Palace and into the streets of New Cabora.