Guardians Of The Keep

CHAPTER 36

Seri

Dia and I had both been summoned to service in the Gray House. We still slept in the dormitory with the sewing women, but instead of the sewing room, we reported to the Gray House scullery each morning at sunrise. A sour-faced Drudge named Gar assigned us to our duties, Dia to light the fires, prepare food for the Drudges, and deliver gray-bread to the slaves twice a day. I spent my days with a pail and rags, scrubbing floors and railings, polishing brass, scraping candle wax, and wiping layer upon layer of red dust from everything. It was a change from sewing, at least, and allowed me to see a great deal of what went on in that house. I was assigned to the lower floors, while two other Drudges cleaned in Gerick’s apartments. Just as well for the present. There was always a risk he would recognize me.

I saw him for the first time on my second day in the house. My task of the morning was to scrub a tiled passage that opened onto one of the inner courtyards. The dawn provided scarcely enough light for me to see what I was doing. In the way of Drudges and slaves, I shrank back into the shadows at the ring of approaching footsteps. Gerick strode past me and into the yard.

Though his build was still slender, he had grown two hands taller and his shoulders and upper arms had filled out. A green singlet exposed his deeply tanned arms, and his brown breeches, leggings and boots were well fitted. Alone in the fencing yard, he removed his sword belt, hung it on a hook on the wall, and began to warm up. His movements were like a ritual dance, done to no music I could hear.

He was beautiful. His shining hair fell softly about his sun-bronzed face as he stretched and spun, a few thin braids dangling in front of each ear, and even as his exercise grew faster and more violent, he showed no signs of the awkwardness one might expect from a boy so young. His features were composed, peaceful, his mind seemingly focused inward… until a Zhid warrior appeared across the courtyard.

“What shall we work on today, young Lord?” asked the newcomer. “You fall short in so many areas, it’s hard to know where to begin. Every day, it seems, our greatest challenge is to decide what you’re worst at.”

Gerick’s only response was to halt his exercise, buckle his sword belt about his waist, and stand waiting, his face now cold and expressionless.

Throughout the morning the swordmaster continued in this manner, casting insults, taunts, and humiliation. Gerick did as he was told, repeating moves a hundred times with no complaint, no argument, and no change in his haughty demeanor.

The stone walls of the passageway became a furnace as the sun grew high. The fencing yard would be worse, as it had no scrap of shade, but the rigor of the training exercises did not diminish. At mid-morning Gerick donned his leather practice armor, and a slave was brought to spar with him. The swordmaster faulted Gerick’s every move. Whenever he wished to pause the match, the Zhid would use a whip on the slave, a lithe, quick youth of eighteen or so.

After the third time the slave was left gasping in the dust by the swordmaster’s lash, Gerick spoke tightly. “If you have some reason to kill this slave, then do so and bring in another.”

“Shall I direct this practice like a nursery, then?” snarled the Zhid. “Childish sensibilities have no place in true warfare. Is this the weakness of your blood showing itself?”

Gerick strolled over to a barrel and drank deeply from a copper dipper. Then he returned to the sneering Zhid, who stood leaning against the wall. Almost before one could see it, Gerick had a knife pressed up against the swordmaster’s ribs. “You will direct my practice the way you think best, but if you ever speak to me in that way again, I will carve out your liver and have you staked out right here until your skin cracks like an unoiled boot. I’ve done it before with those who crossed me. Consider it.”

As quickly as he had unsheathed it, Gerick put away his knife, returned to the slave who waited in the center of the yard, and raised his sword in a ready stance. His face was expressionless again. There was no sign the incident had ever occurred.

The Zhid did not lash the slave again. When he wished the match to stop, he brought up a wooden staff between the two boys. One might think him chastened by his pupil’s rage, unless you saw his smirk when Gerick’s back was turned.

I had come near scrubbing grooves in the stones at the wide entry to the fencing yard. As I moved on down the passage, I could no longer see the yard, but the clash of weapons and the shouted instructions of the swordmaster continued throughout the morning. It was difficult to associate the cold-eyed youth in the fencing yard with the child I had met at Comigor. Even such a brief glimpse revealed a great deal that I didn’t want to know. No need to hear the deepening timbre of his voice to know there was nothing of the child about him any longer.

Gerick trained in the fencing yard almost every morning. Even if I wasn’t cleaning an area that allowed me a view, I would walk by, if only to catch a glimpse of him. I had no idea how to approach him. All midnight imaginings of revealing myself to a terrified child, grateful to be rescued from a villainous captivity, had crumbled on that first morning. And the days that followed did nothing to reverse my failing hopes.

Late one afternoon a ferocious wind storm hit the fortress, a howling, choking tempest of red sand that could flay human or beast. Gerick was in the stableyard when a horse broke from its tether, driven wild by the whirling sand. A young slave yanked Gerick aside, dragging him to the ground as the horse reared and kicked and galloped out of the yard. The slave had saved Gerick from certain injury, yet, once back on his feet, Gerick knocked the youth to the ground with the back of his hand and kicked him viciously. “Touch me again, and I’ll cut off your hands,” he said to the cowering youth.

On another day the entire household was called out to the Lords’ Court. We gathered in awkward assembly- Drudges, slaves, Zhid-to witness the lashing of a Zhid warrior, one of the house guards whom Gerick had found asleep at his post. The Zhid was bound to an iron frame. Gerick gave the warrior two lashes, and then turned the whip over to a burly Zhid. Cold and imperious, Gerick watched as ten more lashes were administered, and the torn and bleeding warrior was dragged away.

My companions chided me for my tears. “The guard deserved his punishment,” said Dia. “What if someone had come to harm the young Lord? The Worships have their duties just like us.”

I didn’t tell her that it was not for the Zhid I wept.

I quickly lost my fear that Gerick might recognize me. He took absolutely no notice of any servant, whether Drudge or slave. Two slaves were always within range of his call, but never did I see him acknowledge their existence by word or glance. It might have been the wind that fastened his cloak about him before he went out in the evening, or the weight of the air that deposited a cup into his hand at the end of his sword practice. Several times he came close to stepping on my hand as he walked past me, and once I rounded a corner and came near running into him. I was shaken, as his face was now almost on a level with mine, but his eyes never wavered from his destination, and he made no response to my mumbled apologies. I feared I might be too late to save him.

Then came a morning when I walked past the fencing yard, but did not see Gerick, only the swordmaster, fuming, his hands on his hips. “You, woman. Yes, you, dolt,” he shouted angrily to me. “Go to the young Lord’s chambers and find out why he leaves me here waiting. Be back apace or I’ll have you whipped.”

When I reached the top of the stair, a slave informed me that the young Lord had injured his knee and would not be attending his lessons. I reported this to the swordmaster, who summoned the surgeon. From the shadowed corners of Gerick’s apartments, I watched the Zhid Healer work his vile perversion of Dar’Nethi healing. The air grew heavy and dim, laden with the foulness of that enchantment.

Gerick threw Mellador out of his rooms, forcing the surgeon to carry the dead slave himself rather than wait for others to remove him. When Gerick was alone, he began speaking-to himself, I thought. But the oppressive air made me think of the Lords’ house, and the jewels in his ear gleamed bright and hot through the murk. He was speaking with the Lords.

After a moment, he gave a quick shudder, and looked around the room as if he had just returned from some other place. I didn’t move, but he caught sight of me, registering no more surprise than if I’d been a convenient chair or table. “Tell my slaves they’re wanted in my bathing room.”

I made my genuflection, but before starting down the steps, I looked back and saw my son standing alone in the center of his fine room. He had wrapped his arms tightly about himself and was shivering violently, as if he stood in the snows of Cer Dis rather than in the heart of the blazing desert. My heart clenched fiercely. He was not yet theirs.