Raymond E. Feist - A Darkness at Sethanon

Rounding the corner, the three found Arutha about to open the door to his quarters. The Prince halted, waiting for the three to come close, an expression of open curiosity on his face.

Gardan said, ‘Highness, Jimmy’s discovered something.’

Arutha said, ‘Come along. I have a few things I must attend to at once, so you’ll have to be brief.’

The Prince pushed open the door and led them through the antechamber to his private council room. As he reached for the door, it opened.

Roald’s dark eyes widened. Before them stood another Arutha. The Prince in the door looked at them, saying, ‘What …?’ Suddenly both Aruthas were drawing weapons. Roald and Gardan hesitated; what their eyes told them was impossible. Jimmy watched as the two Princes engaged each other in combat, the ‘second’ Arutha, the one who had come from within, leaping back into the council chamber, gaining room to fight. Gardan shouted for guards and in a moment a full dozen were approaching the door.

Jimmy watched closely. The resemblance was uncanny. He knew Arutha as well as he knew anyone else in the Palace, but while the two men fought a furious duel, he couldn’t tell them apart. The impostor even fought with the same skill with the blade as the Prince. Gardan said, ‘Seize them both.’

Jimmy shouted, ‘Wait! If you grab the wrong one first, the impostor may kill him.’ Gardan instantly countermanded his own order.

The two combatants thrust and parried, moving about the room. Each man’s face was set in a mask of grim determination. Then Jimmy raced across the room, no hesitation marking his lunge for one of the men. Striking out with his dirk, Jimmy knocked him backward. Guards flooded into the room, seizing the other combatant as Gardan ordered. The Knight-Marshal was uncertain what Jimmy was doing, but he was taking no chances. Both men would be held until the matter was sorted out.

Jimmy grappled on the floor with one of the Aruthas, who struck out with a backhand blow, stunning Jimmy and knocking him aside. That Arutha began to rise to his feet, then halted as Roald levelled his sword point at the man’s throat. The man on the floor shouted, ‘The boy’s gone mad. Guards! Seize him!’ Then, as he rose, he clutched at his side. His hand came away covered in blood. The man looked pale and began to wobble. He appeared on the verge of fainting. The other Arutha stood quietly, enduring the restraining hands of the guards.

Jimmy shook his head, clearing it from the effects of the second serious blow of the day. Seeing the condition of the wounded man, Jimmy yelled, ‘ ’Ware a ring!’

As the boy spoke, the wounded man placed his hand before his mouth, and as Roald and a guard seized him, he slumped down, unconscious. Roald said, ‘His royal signet is false. It’s a poison ring such as the others wore.’

The guards released the real Arutha who said, ‘Did he use it?’

Gardan inspected the ring. ‘No, he passed out from his wound.’

Roald said, ‘The likeness is unbelievable. Jimmy, how’d you know?’

‘I saw him in the sewers.’

‘But how did you know he was the impostor?’ asked Gardan.

‘The boots. They’re covered in muck.’

Gardan looked at Arutha’s polished black boots and the impostor’s mud-encrusted pair. Arutha said, ‘It’s a good thing I didn’t take a walk through Anita’s newly planted garden today. You’d have had me in my own dungeon.’

Jimmy studied the fallen impostor and the real Prince. Both men wore the same cut and colour of clothing. Jimmy said to Arutha, ‘When we came through the door, were you with us or already in the room?’

‘I entered with you. He must have come into the palace with the late celebrants and simply walked into my quarters.’

Jimmy agreed. ‘He hoped to catch you here, kill you, dump your body in one of the secret passages or down the sewer, and take your place. I don’t think he could have maintained the charade long, but if only for a few days he could have bollixed things up around here to a fare-thee-well.’

‘You’ve done well one more time, Jimmy.’ He asked Roald, ‘Will he live?’

Roald examined him. ‘I don’t know. These lads have a bothersome habit of dying when they shouldn’t, then not staying dead when they should.’

‘Get Nathan and the others. Take him to the east tower. Gardan, you know what to do.’

Jimmy watched while Father Nathan, a priest of Sung the White and one of Arutha’s advisers, examined the assassin. Each person who was admitted to the tower selected to house the prisoner was astonished at the likeness. Captain Valdis, a broad-shouldered man who had been Gardan’s chief lieutenant and had succeeded him as head of Arutha’s guard, shook his head. ‘No wonder the lads did nothing but salute when he walked in the palace, Highness. He’s your exact double.’

The wounded man lay tied to the bedposts. As before when a Nighthawk had been captured, he had been stripped of his poison ring and any other possible means of committing suicide. Nathan stood away from the prisoner’s side. The stocky priest said, ‘He’s lost blood and his breathing’s shallow. It would be touch and go under normal circumstances.’

The royal chirurgeon nodded agreement. ‘I’d say he’d make it. Highness, if I hadn’t seen their willingness to die before.’ He looked out the window of the room as the morning light began to pour through. They had worked for hours repairing the damage done by Jimmy’s dirk.

Arutha considered. The last attempt at interrogating a Nighthawk had produced only an animated corpse who had killed several guards and had almost murdered the High Priestess of Lims-Kragma and the Prince himself. He said to Nathan, ‘If he regains consciousness, use what arts you can to discover what he knows. If he dies, burn the body at once.’ To Gardan, Jimmy, and Roald he said, ‘Come with me,’ and to Valdis, ‘Captain, double the guards at once, quietly.’

Leaving the heavily guarded room, he led his companions toward his own quarters. ‘With Anita and the babies safely on their way to her mother’s, I need only worry about rooting out these assassins before they find another way to reach me.’

Gardan said, ‘But Her Highness hasn’t left yet.’

Arutha spun. ‘What? She bade me goodbye at first light an hour ago.’

‘Perhaps, Sire, but it seems a thousand details are still left. Her baggage was only loaded a little while ago. The guards have been ready for two hours, but I don’t think the carriages have left yet.’

‘Then hurry and make sure they’re safe until they’ve gone.’

Gardan ran off and Arutha, Jimmy, and Roald continued on their way. Arutha said, ‘You know what we face. Of all here, only those of us who were at Moraelin truly know what sort of enemy stands behind this. You also know it is a war without quarter, until one side or the other ends in utter defeat.’

Jimmy nodded, a little surprised at Arutha’s tone. Something in this latest attack had touched a nerve. Since Jimmy had known the Prince, Arutha had always been a cautious man, careful to consider all the information at his disposal in making the best judgments he was able. The only exception Jimmy had witnessed had been when Anita lay injured by Laughing Jack’s errant crossbow bolt. Then Arutha had changed. Now, as when Anita was nearly killed, he again seemed a man on the edge of possession, a man full of rage at this invasion of his sanctum. The well-being of his person and his family was in jeopardy and he showed a barely controlled killing rage toward those responsible.

‘Find Trevor Hull again,’ he told Jimmy. ‘I want his best men ready to move after sundown tonight. Have him come with Cook as soon as possible. I’ll want plans made with Gardan and Valdis.