Lord of the Rose

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Who are you?” demanded the woman. She held the door wide, allowing the full intensity of the setting sun’s rays to fall upon the warrior, illuminating him like an actor on center stage. Jaymes held up a hand to shade his eyes, squinting but made no reply.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her tone blunt.

The swordsman could tell that she was young, probably not yet twenty, and while obviously startled, was unafraid. Certainly she made no move to run away. Instead, she stood in the open doorway, peering at him through the darkness of the shed.

Jaymes shrugged, lowering the hand in which he held his dagger. “Just a wanderer,” he said. “I thought this would be a comfortable place to spend the night. I was getting ready to go to sleep-I’ve covered a lot of ground today, and I have to admit I’m tired.”

“You’re lying,” she said calmly. She surprised him by stepping into the shed and, even more shocking, pulling the door shut behind her. “You’re traveling with that dwarf and those gnomes, the ones camping in the apple grove, aren’t you?”

He peered at her silhouette against the faint steak of daylight coming through the crack in the door frame. He could make out a halo of golden hair. Beyond that he could discern few details: She was taller than average for a woman, and though she had a cape hanging off of her shoulders he guessed that she was slender.

She was courageous. Foolish, perhaps, but also very brave-of that there could be no doubt.

Her voice was confident, even arrogant and a little amused. It was the voice of a person who was used to issuing orders without having to worry whether or not those commands would be obeyed. It was the voice of a noblewoman.

Jaymes guessed she was traveling with the company of knights he had earlier observed. It occurred to him that she might be the reason for that large company, that she was important enough to warrant a sizeable and well-armed escort.

But she was still youthful, and acted as though this was some kind of thrilling adventure for her. She was overconfident in the way of one who had never experienced anything terrible. She conveyed a sense of secret delight, as if it pleased her mightily to be away from her escort, and to have discovered him here.

It was altogether confusing, and he felt at a loss. A part of him wanted to rush past her, throw open the door, and race away into the gathering dusk. He wasn’t entirely sure why he declined that course of action, but the greater part of him felt no urge to run.

With what he hoped was a subtle gesture, he slipped his knife through his belt at the small of his back and held out his empty hands, palms displayed, before him. Still, he said nothing

“I asked you, what are you doing here, why are you hiding?” she said.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he replied. “Is it so incredible that I’d simply prefer a roof over my head?”

She sniffed. “There are lots of roofs around here. Why would you choose a place that smells so bad to make your bed? Or is that you I smell?” she added.

He blinked. “My turn. Who are you?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Just a traveler, like you. I know this place-my father used to send me here when I was a girl. My mother and I would take trips to the plains. We would come here to the apple farm, then go to Lord Lorimar’s estate to stay for a fortnight at the end of summer. Of course, that was a long time ago, but when we came back through here and made camp in the grove, I felt a pang of nostalgia and decided I wanted to have a look around.”

His vision, temporarily obscured by the brightness when she first opened the door, had begun to make out a beautiful woman with rounded cheeks and large, inquisitive eyes. The sunlight striking her hair colored it like spun gold. The swelling of her bosom beneath the cape suggested a pleasing form. Her head was held high as she stepped toward him.

“You said your father would send you from your home to the plains? From where is that, may I ask?” he asked.

“I live in Palanthas.”

“He did not bring you himself? Why not?”

She shrugged, and for the first time there appeared a slight fissure in that self-confident facade. “I don’t know. He had important business in the city-he always has work that keeps him busy. That didn’t prevent me from doing some traveling. I had a good friend who lived in a manor on these plains. I would visit Dara Lorimar every summer.”

“You are more than a mere traveler, Lady,” Jaymes ventured. “You carry yourself like royalty. You are certainly brave-for all you know, I could be a robber, a common thief, or even worse.”

“There are some who say you are worse. Much worse,” she said dryly.

Jaymes shifted warily. Somehow she knew who he was, though how she had made that identification was beyond him.

“Oh, I recognized that dwarf,” she explained. “I saw him before, in the Gnome Ghetto of Caergoth. I was watching through a spyglass when the knights tried to capture you there. When Coryn the White whisked you away. When you killed that knight, cut off the hand of another one. They say it was you who killed Lord Lorimar and his daughter-my friend. Oh, I know exactly who you are or who you are supposed to be. You are the Assassin.”

“You know all that, and you’re not afraid?” Jaymes asked. “What makes you think I won’t kill you then?”

She stood blocking the door. Every muscle in the warrior’s body was twitching, urging him to make a dash, attack, hide, do something. Yet he stood there like a trapped deer, quivering, nostrils flaring. The woman before him was a slender reed, beautiful, truly, but obviously he could overcome her. Yet the warrior was unwilling to shove her aside and make his escape.

“Maybe you will kill me yet,” she said, her voice even, still unafraid. “Then we will surely know, won’t we? We’ll know that you’re a cold-blooded murderer who would shed the blood of a woman with no regret. Who will do whatever he needs to do to get what he wants. ‘This is the Assassin,’ they will all cry, and Captain Powell and his men will hunt you down and kill you.”

“That would be a little late for you, don’t you think?”

She shrugged. “I say to myself, what if they are wrong? What if you are not the one who killed the lord and Dara?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Lady Coryn. I know her, and I saw her help you in Caergoth, help you escape the very knights who serve the nobility of Solamnia. For ten years she has been an ally of our noble houses, helping to make this land strong and righteous again. She has risked her life many times to drive the Dark Knights out of Palanthas, to banish the beasts of Khellendros from the northern coasts. I have wondered why she would help you.”

“Well, she was my lover, once,” he said harshly, more harshly than he intended. “She has a tender spot for me.”

“Oh.” Finally something seemed to take her by surprise. Those large eyes widened, then narrowed. Her voice, when next she spoke, was cold. “Except I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you want,” he said. “I don’t care.”

He was eyeing the door, again considering the notion of pushing her out of the way and making a run for it, when loud male voices reached them. Many knights were approaching.

“Lady Selinda!”

“Your Highness?”

“Princess! Where are you?”

“What, you’re the daughter of Du Chagne?” he asked, astonished. “You are the Princess of Palanthas?”

She looked around in alarm then fastened her large eyes on the warrior. She was still remarkably unafraid. He stared back at her, waiting to see what this surprising creature was going to do next.

“Come here!” she said, pulling open the door and gesturing to him. “I know a place where you’ll be safe-trust me.”

Jaymes hesitated. Why should he trust her? The answer was obvious: With a single scream, she could bring doom down upon him.

“This way,” she said urgently. “Hurry!”

With those words to prod him, he followed her through the door. They emerged from the shed to see that none of the knights had reached the rear of the building yet. “This way!” she said, ducking her head and running. She moved with speed and grace in her leggings, and the warrior had to hurry to keep up with her.

Selinda led him along the back of the house, ignoring the shouts that grew more insistent-and nearer. They came upon a horizontal trapdoor, leading into a compartment underneath the rear of the house. There was a rusty iron bolt atop the door, which the young woman kicked open then reached down to pull up the hatch.

“This is a wine cellar,” the princess said. “There is a way out of here. You can escape through a tunnel, a long passage, that leads down to the bank of the stream. Hurry!”

He paused, his natural wariness balking at the sight of the shadowy flight of steps. “How do you know that?” he asked.

“I told you-I used to play here as a child. It was my favorite part of the whole estate. Now, go!”

Jaymes looked at her, frowning. After only a moment’s further hesitation he plunged into the dark space beneath the trapdoor, slipping down the steep wooden set of stairs and coming to rest on his rump on a dusty floor. The momentary flash of light around him vanished as she dropped the door of the hatch back into place.

He listened, expecting to hear the sound of approaching knights. Instead, he heard a metallic clunk and knew that the princess had fastened the outside lock on the door.

“Don’t be such an old maid,” Selinda said, shaking her head in the face of Captain Powell’s anger-anger, she knew very well, fueled by his genuine concern for her.

The knights had brought her hastily back to the camp, swords drawn, eyes wide as they explored the shadows to all sides. Despite her protests that she had not seen anything untoward, they acted as if they had snatched her from a menace in hot pursuit. They jostled her along so roughly that she arrived in the safety of the camp huffing for breath, her hair and garments in disarray.

Fortunately, in their eagerness to get her away from the ruins none of them had examined the rear of the house. She had been able to slip away from the trapdoor before she met her “rescuers,” so none of them spotted a hatch, its rusty iron bolt in place. The Assassin, as she had known he would, had refrained from making any noise that would have attracted their attention.

“This is the Sword of Lorimar!” the Captain of the Rose spluttered, gesturing to the tall blade that now lay on the table in his command tent. “That means that the Assassin is nearby somewhere! By Joli, if you had met him near that old ruin, you could have suffered the same fate as Lorimar’s daughter!”

“I appreciate your diligence, Captain. Your men made haste to find me and bring me to safety. Surely the crisis is past.”

“That is not the point-nor is the danger past,” fumed Powell. “From now on, you will stay safely behind in the camp where we can keep an eye on you. As to that wretched murderer, I can only suspect he’s miles away by now. A cur like that would certainly flee at the approach of a company of knights.”

“What about those you suspect of being his companions-the dwarf and gnomes? Surely he would not abandon them?”

The captain of knights shook his head. “That was my failing, Princess. When I found the sword, my thoughts were all of you and your immediate peril. I led the men to seek you and bring you back. I left only a skelton few on guard here. By the time we returned, those rascals had slipped away into the dusk. I can’t spare the men to chase after them in the dark, not when the real villain is out there somewhere.”

“He is the real villain, that warrior?” Selinda inquired. “Has the evidence been presented to a lord or a knightly council?”

“The evidence is plain, my lady!” Powell declared in exasperation, pointing to the sword. “That is the mark of Lorimar on the hilt. Giantsmiter is a unique weapon-the flaming blade of the gods, it has been called. When that fire is blazing, it can cut through stone, metal, anything. Witness how it felled the knights in Caergoth who went to arrest him!”

She frowned, thinking of that episode and its consequences. “Still, the circumstances of Lorimar’s death, and of his daughter’s, all the circumstances are somewhat murky, are they not? Is it known why this particular warrior wanted to slay them?”

The captain looked serious, and very tired. He appeared ready to brush away her question but apparently decided upon frankness. “I myself knew of Sir Jaymes Markham, when Lorimar was still alive. He was a maverick Knight of the Rose, but for many years presumed to be loyal. For some reason he wormed his way into Lorimar’s confidence and into a position of responsibility in the lord’s House Guards. He is the only one to survive that dark evening-his badge and breastplate were found at the scene. He stole the sword, Giantsmiter. If he is innocent, why did he do that? Why wouldn’t he come forth to bear witness against the true killer?”

Selinda frowned again, shrugging her shapely shoulders. “Perhaps you are right, or perhaps he had his reasons. There were others who desired Lorimar’s death, were there not?”

Captain Powell winced. “There are stories, my lady, circulating all through the knighthood, of course. Lorimar was a wealthy man, and he was hated by some in the knighthood for writing the Compact of the Free and coercing the signatures of many powerful lords.”

“I remember even my father complaining about it,” the princess noted.

“Rathskell of Solanthus hated Lorimar. He wanted to court Lorimar’s daughter, but Lankford refused the match. He humiliated Thelgaard, too, when that lord tried to claim Garnet with some concocted fiction-Lorimar made him look like a fool.”

“I always had the impression Lorimar was greatly admired,” Selinda said.

“True, my lady, greatly admired by some. He had allies among the Crowns and Swords. He was a fair-minded man, and the rank and file held him in the highest esteem. The people looked to him, even more than to your father-if you will forgive me saying so-as the hope of their future. There was even that nonsense about the prophecy-every two-bit charlatan preacher spread that around.”

“Dara, ‘Princess of the Plains’?” the young woman remembered. “That one day she would be the queen of a restored kingdom? I knew her very well. She laughed about that prophecy.”

“Perhaps, but the prophecy was widespread-that she would wed some mysterious Lord of No Sign. Who can blame the people for dreaming of the old days of empire? There’s not a veteran knight who hasn’t. But I think Lankford bore no illusions that it would happen during his, or even his daughter’s, lifetimes.”

“Why do you think he was killed?” Selinda probed uneasily.

“The long and short of it is he was a threat to others. Both the dukes of the Crown and the Sword had vowed to block his more liberal-minded ideas. I know for a fact that Caergoth was outraged when Lorimar also sought the hand of his daughter in marriage and was flatly denied.”

“What, Crawford wanted to marry Dara? How do you know this?”

“Your father himself told me. He doesn’t trust either of those lords. That was one reason he had such high hopes for the recent council.”

She turned around, apparently confused and distraught. “Yes, the goblins! They’ll wreck everything! They are a worse threat than this Assassin.”

“Ah, my lady, don’t worry. Goblins are a threat we knights can handle. Indeed, our orders live for such a challenge. Between Thelgaard, Solanthus, and Caergoth, those wretches will be wiped out-or so badly smashed that it will be a generation before they dare to show their faces on the plains again!”

“Indeed. Well, at least there is some comfort there,” Selinda said, regaining her composure. “Now, if you will excuse me, I will retire to my tent. All of this excitement has me utterly exhausted.

It was much later, when most of the camp was asleep, that Selinda rose from her cot, wrapped herself in a warm shawl, and slipped out of her tent. She had taken note of where the guards were posted and had no difficulty slipping past them, unseen as she started back toward the abandoned house.

And the Assassin.

Jaymes had nothing with which to make a light, so he blundered around the surprisingly large room in the darkness, groping with his hands, seeking any indication of the tunnel Selinda had told him about. The wine cellar was lined with massive kegs, most of which unfortunately sounded empty when he tapped them lightly with his knuckles. After several circuits of the room, he was convinced the place was surrounded by solid walls, the only entrance being the trapdoor through which he had entered.

Jaymes examined the stone wall behind the massive wine kegs but was unable to find a weakness, any crack or flaw in the solid masonry that might indicate a secret door. The princess had lied to him-there was no tunnel out of here, no secret passage connecting the wine cellar to the stream.

He had already tried the trapdoor and found, as he suspected, that it had been firmly latched from the outside. It rattled slightly but was solidly constructed and showed no signs of rot or decay. With the awkward angle forced by the narrow stairway and the fact that he was pushing almost straight up, he couldn’t budge the barrier. Perhaps a series of smashing blows might have eventually forced the door up, but the inevitable noise would bring a platoon of knights down on him long before he could shatter the latch.

He was slumped on the floor in disgust, leaning against the cold stone wall, when he heard the catch on the trapdoor released. Moving quickly and silently, he was waiting at the bottom of the stairs when Selinda stepped inside. He was ready to spring upward, to charge through the door and make his escape, but again something made him hesitate. He waited as she started down the steps, watched as she stopped to close the heavy door behind her.

Only when she had joined him on the cellar floor did she touch spark to the wick of a small lantern, finally casting some light around the dusty, moldy room.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll help you get away from here now.”

“If there was ever a tunnel out of here, it’s been covered over since the time you knew it as a girl,” he warned.

She merely smiled and went to one of the massive wine kegs, the last one along the far wall of the room. Reaching down, she twisted the spigot, and pulled. Jaymes felt chagrin as the front of the cask swiveled away, revealing a small dark passage.

“Follow me,” she invited.

“You should stay here,” he urged.

“No,” she demurred. “I’ll take the light. Besides, you might need help at the other end. Come this way.”

She started into the narrow passage, and he had little choice but to follow. He had to stoop to pass under the low ceiling, but the well-made tunnel was surprisingly dry. They padded along in silence for several minutes, and Jaymes found himself pondering many things about this puzzling woman before him. When they stopped for a short rest, he asked her a question.

“You were a friend of Dara Lorimar’s?” he said. “Why are you trying to help the man who is accused of killing her?”

“Because,” she said, after a few seconds thought. “Someday I hope to find out the truth.”

Selinda wouldn’t say any more, instead leading him along at a rapid pace. Finally they came to the end of the tunnel, where an old wooden ladder led up a shaft toward a sturdy trapdoor.

“That’s covered with a layer of dirt on the outside,” she said. “You’ll have to pound a bit, but it should open up and let you out.”

He ascended the ladder and did as she suggested, thumping with his fist until he felt the trapdoor loosen and shift. Placing his shoulder against the barrier, he heaved upward, heard the tearing of grass as the thing gave way. With a final heave, he pushed himself upward, rolling onto soft turf.

He wasn’t at the stream bank. Instead, he was in the apple grove, surrounded by a dozen knights who had no doubt been alerted by the thumping under where they stood. They surrounded him in a circle, weapons drawn, as Selinda came up behind him.

“Fetch Captain Powell,” she said. “I have brought him the Assassin.”