Chapter One

THE DUKE AND THE CAPTIVE

“There has been no word, imperial one.” The messenger on his knees before the Duke fought to keep his voice steady.

The Duke, cushioned and propped on his throne, watched him, waiting for the moment he would break. The best a bearer of bad tidings could expect was a flogging. But delayed bad news merited death.

The man kept his eyes down, staring doggedly at the floor. So. This messenger had been flogged before. He knew he would survive it and he accepted it.

The Duke made a small gesture with his finger. Large movements took so much energy. But his chancellor had learned to watch for small motions and to respond quickly to them. He, in turn, made a more eloquent motion to the guard, and the messenger was removed. The boots of the guards thudded, and the lighter sandals of the messenger pattered between them as they hurried him off. No one ventured a word. The chancellor turned back to the Duke and bowed low, his forehead touching his knees. Slowly he knelt, and then was bold enough to look at the Duke’s sandals.

“I am grieved that you had to be subjected to such an unsatisfactory message.”

Silence held in the audience chamber. It was a large room with walls of rough stone that reminded all who entered that once it had been part of a fortress. The arched ceiling overhead had been painted a midnight blue with the stars of a midsummer night frozen forever there. Tall slits of windows looked out over a vista of sprawling city.

No point in this city was taller than the Duke’s hilltop citadel. Once the fortress had stood upon this peak, and within its walls a circle of black standing stones under the open sky had been a place of great magic. Tales told of how those stones had been toppled, their evil magic vanquished. Those same stones, the ancient runes on them obscured and defaced, now lay splayed out in a circle around his throne, flush to the gray flagged floor that had been laid around them. The black stones pointed to the five corners of the known world. It was said that beneath each stone there was a square pit into which the sorcerous enemies of ancient Chalced had been confined to die. The throne in the center reminded all that he sat where, of old, all had feared to tread.

The Duke moved his lips, and a page sprang to his feet and darted forward, a bowl of cool water in his hands. The boy knelt and offered it to the chancellor. The chancellor, in turn, advanced on his knees, to lift the bowl to the Duke’s lips.

He tipped his head and drank. When he lifted his face another attendant had appeared, offering the chancellor a soft cloth that he might dry the Duke’s face and chin.

Afterward, he allowed the chancellor to retreat. Thirst sated, he spoke.