Ken Scholes - Antiphon

Petronus wanted to protest, wanted to insist that he not be carried to bed as if he were a child. But as he opened his mouth, he suddenly felt the dampness of his robes, and the heat of shame flushed his face. His bladder had cut loose during the fit.

Hoping no one would see that he’d wet himself, the Last King of Windwir let his ragged men lift him and carry him to his cot.

Vlad Li Tam

Vlad Li Tam awoke from too little sleep and sat up in his narrow bed. The windowless room offered no light, though he blinked and rubbed his eyes as if it might if only he were patient.

When they’d returned to find the island and its Blood Temple abandoned, he’d gone through the massive building assigning quarters to his family. He was careful to be sure that this room became his once again, though he wasn’t sure exactly why. Perhaps it was an anchor to the pain of that time, something to keep the memory banked like a fire.

His recollection of those months was a blur of agony and terror. Nights spent huddled in the corner, sleeping fitfully, open-eyed with his back against the wall. And underlying those memories, Ria’s voice-filled with love and comfort-as she worked her knife or as she sat at his table and conversed with him while he lay twitching upon the floor.

Other voices joined hers. The voices of his children beneath the knives, offering up their last words to him as he watched, echoing long after their final breath as he waited here for the next day’s cutting.

My room.

He’d memorized it during his clearer moments, and that served him well now as he stood and pulled on his light cotton trousers and shirt. Barefoot, he padded to the door and let himself into the empty hallway.

He’d spent another day on the dock, fishing but not catching. At the end of the day, he’d discovered his bait had been taken at some point without his knowledge.

Still, he’d not been fishing for fish.

This afternoon, he’d force himself away and back to the paper-strewn table in his room. Back to the book his father had written and passed to Vlad’s first grandson, a secret history devised to bring down Windwir and establish a lasting Y’Zirite resurgence in the Named Lands. The plot was as carefully conceived as any Tam intrigue-perhaps even more so given that the network of conspirators stretched far beyond his family, into other families, into the Marshlands, and even into the very heart of the Androfrancine Order itself.

Vlad had spent his life weaving a web he’d thought was his own design, only to learn it was a carefully crafted manipulation by the man he’d respected, feared and loved above all others.

A man who had conceived of this plot, knowing full well that the price of it would be the near extinction of his own bloodline.

Somewhere out there, other conspirators continued this work. He’d seen their ships at harbor here-ships unfamiliar to the Named Lands’ most skilled family of shipwrights. Even now, his children scouted for them.

And yet all I can think about is the ghost.

He moved through the hallway slowly, listening to his feet as they whispered over the marble floor. When he reached the wide double doors, he pushed one open slowly to slip out into the moonlit night.

A young man separated himself from deeper shadows, silent on feet trained for scouting. “Good morning, Grandfather,” the man said.

Vlad looked at him and tried to remember his name but couldn’t. Before the cuttings, before his time here, he’d remembered every child, every grandchild and great-grandchild. Even those he lost along the way. He’d known their walk, their mannerisms, every little detail that might help him sharpen and fire them at the heart of the Named Lands as arrows for his hunting.

But since his time here, he’d found that his memory faltered. As if I don’t want to know.

“Good morning,” he answered. “How goes the watch?”

The young man shrugged and smiled. “Quietly.”

Vlad nodded. All of their watches had been quiet upon returning; still they set them. He looked down to the harbor, where one of his iron vessels sat at anchor. “I’m going fishing,” he said.

The guard inclined his head and slipped back to where he’d waited before.

Vlad looked to the moon-it was high but not full yet, though its light still cast shadows. He looked to the water below and saw its reflection dancing upon the surface.

Following the wide stone stairs down to the docks, he collected his tackle in the bait shed at the bottom and nodded to another guard.

I’ve become obsessed. The thought struck him, and Vlad felt some part of his old self stirring to life to examine this new realization. Standing apart from it, he saw clearly how unlike him this fixation was. He’d come here every day for months under the guise of fishing when he knew-and suspected his family knew, too-that he really was searching for ghosts in the water.

No, he thought, one ghost in particular. And today, after so many days of sitting and watching, it was time for a new tack.

Bucket, rod and tackle clutched tight, Vlad climbed down the wooden stairs to the lower docks and paused to take in the stillness of the predawn water. There, at the end of the lower dock, a skiff lay tied and ready. He walked to it, laid his tackle within, and climbed into the small boat.

As a boy on the Emerald Coast, he’d learned to sail at a young age. But growing up in House Li Tam left little room for those luxuries in the face of a first son’s training. In the end, he’d picked up most of his nautical experience fishing with Petronus and his father during the year he’d spent with his family in Caldus Bay. Of course, these memories lay over sixty years behind him now. Still, his feet remembered themselves, and as he found his place upon the rowing bench, his hands found the wooden oars and knew their work.

“Grandfather?”

Vlad looked up toward the whispered voice upon the dock. “Yes?”

In the dim moonlight, he saw yet another guard emerge now from shadow. “May I find someone to row you?”

Vlad smiled to himself. It was a simple inquiry, but the statement beneath it was clear to him. You are Vlad Li Tam, lord of House Li Tam. You should not be rowing about the sea alone in a tiny skiff.

“No need,” he said. He pointed to the mouth of the natural harbor. “I’ll not go far out of sight.” Still, he knew that once he put his back into the oars, a bird would flash back to their watch captain, who would in turn inform Baryk.

Protocol, of course, would be followed.

Dawn was hours away yet when the cracking of his back and shoulders joined the whisper of the oars into water and the creaking of the wooden boat. Overhead, stars throbbed heavy in a velvet sky and the slice of moon lent the faintest blue-green limn to the warm water. Careful to stay beyond eyeshot of the anchored iron ship and its own watch, Vlad took the skiff around the edge of the harbor and savored the feeling in his arms.

It wasn’t until he cleared the mouth and turned south along the shoreline that he finally paused and blinked at the empty night around him.

Why am I here? He’d started slow. First, an hour at the dock. Then eventually, half of a day. And lately, it had been the full day. Baryk and the others were handling the investigation and patrols, and Vlad knew they noted his increased withdrawal from that work. He even suspected that Baryk’s desire to leave was driven in part by Vlad’s gradual descent into this obsession.

Now, in the middle of the night, he found himself at sea. Months on the dock were no longer enough to satisfy his longing to see it again.

“Where are you?” he asked the waters in a quiet voice that frightened him.