Mercedes Lackey: Castle of Deception

“I’m not. Not yet. I’m apprenticed to a Bard, but—”

“A bardling,” someone said in a scornful voice. “He’s nobody.”

The squires turned away. Blatantly ignoring him, they set about changing their clothes or cleaning their boots, chattering and joking as though he wasn’t even there.

“Did you see me in the tilting yard?”

“Sure did. Saw you fall off, too!”

“The saddle slipped!”

“S-u-r-e it did! Like this!”

He pounced on the other boy and they wrestled, laughing. Watching them, totally excluded, Kevin ached with a loneliness more painful even than what he’d felt in the forest. As the horseplay broke off, he heard the squires argue over which of them was most skilled with sword or lance, or who would be the first to be knighted. A great surge of resentment swelled up within him. Listen to them boast! I bet there isn’t one of them who knows anything but weaponry and fighting, the empty-headed idiots.

But as the squires began to boast instead about the exploits of the knights they served, of Sir Alamar who’d taken on an entire bandit band and bested them, or Sir Theomard, who might be aging but who had still managed to slay three enemy knights in battle, one right after the other, Kevin’s heart sank. These boys who were his own age had already done more than he’d even imagined. As squires to their knights, they had almost certainly shared in those mighty deeds. They would probably soon be heroes themselves.

Kevin bit his lip as resentment turned to envy. No wonder the squires scorned him! Here he was, a bardling, a mere music apprentice, someone who hadn’t done anything. He must seem like a weakling to them, a coward, no better than a peasant.

A small hand shook his sleeve and he started. “Bardling?” It was little Arn. “Follow me, if you would. Master D’Krikas, Count Volmar’s seneschal, wishes to speak with you.”

D’Krikas? What an odd name!

Who cares how odd it is! At least I haven’t been forgotten.

The bardling followed Am through a maze of corridors, across the rush-strewn stretch of the Great Hall, and up a winding stairway, stopping before a closed door. “Here we are,” Am said, and scurried away once more. Kevin took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

“Enter!” a scratchy voice commanded.

Within was a cozy room, hung with thick hangings of deep red velvet and furnished with a scroll-filled bookcase and a massive desk, behind which sat a truly bizarre figure. Although it sat upright and had the right number of arms and head, it most definitely was not human. Kevin stared at the shiny, chitinous green skin, set off by a glittering golden gorget, and the large, segmented eyes and gasped out:

“You’re an Arachnia!”

“The boy is a marvel of cleverness,” the insectoid being chittered. “If he has satisfied his curiosity?”

“Oh, uh, of course—I’m sorry, I—I didn’t mean to stare.”

“Why not? You have plainly never seen one of my kind before. Why should you not stare?”

“I...”

Kevin blinked. The Arachnia had snatched what looked like a handful of sugar cubes from a small bowl on the desk and popped them into its beaked mouth. The crunching sound reminded him uncomfortably of praying mantises devouring beetles. In fact, now that he thought of it, the being did look a good deal like a giant mantis ....

“Now you wonder anew.” The dry chitter might have been a laugh. “Have you never heard that my kind are always hungry? For logic as well as food. Boy, time is a precious thing, and we have already wasted enough of it. I am, as I am sure you have already realized, D’Krikas, seneschal, major-domo if you wish, to Count Volmar.”

“My lord.” Belatedly, Kevin bowed, but D’Krikas, writing busily in a huge open ledger, hardly seemed to notice.

“Here are the arrangements that have been made for you. Yes, yes, I know why you are here. You are to be housed and fed with the squires, and you will be permitted to copy the manuscript in the library between dawn and dusk. You are not to intrude upon the count’s private quarters. You are not to bother any of the knights. You are not to interfere with any of the castle personnel. You are not to handle any weapons. You arc not to enter the tilting grounds. You are not to interfere with any of the servants. You are not to steal food from the kitchen ...”

As the list of prohibitions went on and on. Kevin thought wryly he could almost wish he was back with his Master—at least there’d been fewer rules!

I can’t stand this place! he decided suddenly. The sooner I finish the stupid job, the better.

“Master D’Krikas,” Kevin asked as soon as the being fell silent, “is there any reason I can’t continue my copying after dark? I mean,” he added cajolingly, “it would save precious time.”

“No, no, no!” the seneschal snapped. “Have you no idea of how expensive candles are? Have you? No! Burning candles so a human can do some copy work would be a waste of good wax.” D’Krikas stood, gray cloak swirling, tall, thin body towering over Kevin. “And no one your age, boy, can be trusted with open flame around so many fragile manuscripts!”

The seneschal folded himself back behind the desk. Once more writing in the huge ledger, D’Krikas said curtly, “That is all. You may leave.”

Kevin hardly wanted to return to the squires’ quarters. But where else was there? By now, it was too late to start copying the manuscript. And after D’Krikas’ never-ending list of prohibitions, he hardly dared go exploring! Since Am didn’t seem to be anywhere around, Kevin retraced his steps as best he could, and didn’t get lost more than once or twice.

Dinner, he suspected, wasn’t going to be any brighter than anything else that had happened this day.

It wasn’t. Dinner was a miserable affair served on rough trestle tables set up in the squires’ quarters. Even though the bardling had been assigned a seat among the squires, he’d might as well have been in the middle of a desert, because no one would talk to him. Kevin busied himself in trying to chew the stringy beef, and in trying to convince himself the squires’ coldness didn’t matter; as soon as he’d finished copying that cursed manuscript, he would never have to see any of these idiots again.

Once they had finished eating-and the food scraps and trestle tables had been cleared away, the squires disappeared, still without a word to Kevin. He gathered, from the bits of their conversations he overheard, that they were going off to wait on their knights.

Who are probably just as brainless.

Left alone in the now empty hall, the bardling shivered, grabbing for his cloak. The place seemed even more silent than before, and twice as chilly. Evidently Count Volmar didn’t believe in pampering youngsters, because there wasn’t a fireplace anywhere in the hall.

Never •mind, Kevin told himself. A true hero doesn’t mind a little discomfort.

Or a little loneliness.

The silence was getting on his nerves. The bardling took out his lute and practiced for a long, long while, trying to ignore everything but his music. At last, warmed a little by his own exertions, Kevin put the instrument back in its case and stretched out on the lumpy cot he’d been assigned. The hour, he thought, was probably still fairly early—not that there was any way to tell in here, without so much as a water dock or hourglass. But there wasn’t anything else to do but sleep. The pillow was so thin it felt as though the feathers had been taken from a very scrawny bird. “He one blanket was too thin for real comfort, but by adding his cloak to it, the bardling was almost warm.

He had nearly drifted off to sleep when the squires returned. Kevin heard their whispers and muffled laughter, and felt his face redden in the darkness. They were laughing at him. He knew they were laughing at him.