Carol Berg - Guardians Of The Keep

Strange. “Does he have any friends that visit?”

“A few times children have come to stay with their parents-even the king’s own daughter has been brought here-but the young master might as well not live here for all he shows his face. From what I hear, when the family goes to Montevial it’s much the same. It don’t seem right.”

“So there’s no one close to him, no one who could tell me anything that might help me understand him better?”

Nellia shook her head and poured more tea in our cups. “The only one ever got on with him was Lucy, his old nurse, but she’s been off her head for nigh on five years now. Of course, she couldn’t tell you ought anyhow as she don’t speak. Then there’s the fencing master. The young master does dearly love his sword fighting. I always thought it a sorry thing that he never let Duke Tomas teach him. The lad would only work at it-and right fiercely too- when his lordship was away. He-the duke that is-heard about the boy’s practicing. He hired the finest fencing master he could find to come and teach the lad.”

“And has Gerick allowed the fencing master to stay?”

“Indeed so. Swordmaster Fenotte. But he’ll be of no help to you. He’s Kerotean. Speaks not a word of decent Leiran. I just never understood why the boy wouldn’t learn sword fighting of his father who was the finest in the kingdom.”

“Actually, I think that’s the most understandable thing you’ve told me.”

Nellia looked puzzled.

“Tomas would have had no patience with a beginner. If the boy admired his father, wanted to be like him…”

The old woman nodded her head. “I’d not thought of it in that light. It’s true the duke, grace his memory, was not humble about his skills.”

I laughed, with no little sadness. “Perhaps he had the wisdom to see it and spare the boy his impatience.” My brother had loved his son very much.

One of my first duties in the house was to make some ceremony of Tomas’s death. King Evard would likely mount an elaborate rite for his sword champion, but with Philomena confined to her bed and Gerick so uncomfortable with me, I could not see us traveling to Montevial for such an event. Yet I felt the need of some ritual of closure for the family.

Most Leirans had long lost interest in the only gods sanctioned by our priests and king-the Holy Twins, Annadis the Swordsman, god of fire and earth and sunlight, and Jerrat the Navigator, god of sea and storm, stars and moon. History, most particularly fear of sorcery, had wiped out any public acknowledgement of other deities. And the cruelties of life had convinced most everyone that the Twins must be more concerned with controlling the legendary beasts of earth and sky and monsters of the deep than with the trials of mortals. But warriors like my brother and my father had found some solace in thinking that Annadis and his brother would write the history of their deeds in the Book of Heroes and tell their stories around their mythical campfires.

I had grown past blind acceptance of myth when I learned to think and explore for myself, and I had lost all faith in supernatural benevolence when I saw the slit throat of my newborn son. Yet experience had taught me the comfort of ritual, and it was not my place to refuse Tomas or his son the rite my brother would have chosen for himself.

So I brought in a priest of Annadis, and Gerick and Philomena and I, along with representatives of the servants and the household guard, sat in Philomena’s room and listened to the stories of the Beginnings and the First God Arot’s battle with chaos and how, after his victory, Arot had given dominion over the world to his twin sons. Rather than have the priest recite the entirety of my brother’s military history-some of which I could not stomach hearing- I had the aging cleric list the matches Tomas had fought to defend the honor of his king in his fourteen years as Evard’s sword champion. That evening, Gerick and I stood on the hill of Desfiere outside the castle walls and watched as a stone was raised to Tomas beside my father’s stone and my grandfather’s and the hundreds of others that stood on the treeless hillside like a forest of granite. My nephew remained sober and proper throughout the day, so I didn’t know if the rite meant anything to him or not. But I felt better after.

It was nearing four weeks of my stay when I began to sense I was being watched. At first I told myself I was just unused to living with other people. Seventy-three house servants worked at Comigor: clerks and maids, cooks and footmen, boot boys and sewing women and Philomena’s gaggle of personal attendants. There were about half that number of outside servants, grooms and pot boys, a smith and an armorer, carters and gardeners. Tomas’s personal guard numbered some ninety men; they lived in the barracks across the inner bailey from the keep. And hundreds of other people lived on the estate and in the villages close by. So plenty of eyes were on me every day. But a day came when I became convinced that the creeping sensation was not just my imagination.

The day was hot and bright as only an autumn day can be, the sky a regal blue, the light golden, the angle of the sun and the sharp edge of the wind hinting at the season’s change. I trudged through a deep rift that split the grass-carpeted hills to the west of the castle, risking a stumble on the rocks that littered the rift bottom and pricks and scratches from the draggle bushes in compensation for the shade.

As I walked, the hairs on my neck began to rise, the creeping sensation that had become so familiar over the past days. Calling myself fifty names for foolish, I hurried my pace and then made a sudden stop beyond the next bend of the rift. Peering back around the corner, I strained to catch some telltale movement or hear a soft footstep. But I didn’t glimpse so much as a hare.

Feeling ridiculous, I tramped back toward the castle. But on the return journey, my eyes were momentarily blinded by an arrow of light from the west battlements. I blinked and caught the glint again. The third time, I smiled in satisfaction. So I wasn’t mad. The only thing out this way for anyone to be observing with a spyglass was me.

The thought of a spyglass turned my thoughts to the Comigor spyholes. When I was ten and sorely lamenting the disdain heaped upon me whenever my eleven-year-old brother ventured into manly pursuits not permitted little sisters, my father had supplied me with a powerful weapon in sibling combat. One of the former lords of Comigor, desiring to know everything that went on in his domain, had installed squints into the Comigor walls and ceilings. The small holes were hidden in the decorative stonework or the capitals of columns or in the intricate carving of a wooden mantelpiece or door frame. If one knew just the right place to stand, in a niche or behind a column, or in the crawls left by stairs or corners or angles, one could press eye or ear to the hole and gain possession of castle secrets. I almost laughed in relief. To spy on the suspicious intruder was such a natural thing for a child. Perhaps I could turn the situation to good purpose.

No spyholes opened into my bedchamber, thank goodness, nor into the little study I’d made from the adjoining room in the north wing, but one of them overlooked the passage outside my door. The passage joined the north wing to the northwest tower stair, and the spyhole was concealed in a stepped molding that matched the rectangular wing to the circular tower. To look through the hole, one had only to lie flat on the first landing of the tower stair and peer through a slot in the dusty wooden floor.