His cousin!
Unnerved, Alistair allowed himself to descend into a dark and dangerous brooding. And this brooding drove him outside, as was his wont on dark evenings. Out into the courtyard, making for the high wall overlooking Hanna and the northern sweep of Gaheris. If he saw two shadows scurry across the stones ahead of him, he did not notice. His head pounded with thoughts he could not quite think. Mastery and murder. Dreams and nightmares.
He hastened toward the narrow stairs leading up the wall, passing as he did so the marble doors of the family crypt. Moonlight shone upon the white doorposts of stone, carved with heavy embellishments and set with wrought-iron fastenings. Lady Mintha, he knew, had already arranged for the funeral. Even before her brother had taken to his bed, she had begun preparing for the interment. How eagerly she had awaited his death, the time of her son’s ascension!
Now everything was in place. Ferox would be sent to his final rest in the morning, soon after sunrise. And according to Mintha’s arrangements, the earls would then perform the ceremony to instate Alistair as one of their number, placing the shield of mastery in his hand and repeating the vows of brotherhood they had made to his uncle.
Alistair’s mouth was dry as he stopped before that grim door. Tomorrow, his uncle would pass through. How many more decades until Alistair too would be laid to rest there? Beside his uncle, beside his father. A counterfeit earl, a murderer. A fraud.
“Lights Above,” he whispered, “what are my life and death to be?”
Something scratched on the far side of the door.
Alistair stood and stared, telling himself he was imagining things. Things that sounded like claws or talons dragging from the top of the door to the bottom in a slow, deliberate stroke.
Then silence. Then . . .
Scratch!
Someone was picking at the wood with a fingernail, with a dagger point.
“Servants,” Alistair whispered. “Mother’s servants. Inside. Preparing for the funeral. Preparing his vault. That is all.”
Then came a voice that was not a voice so much as a thought in his head:
Let us out.
Alistair’s hand was at the door. There was no lock. Why lock away the dead? The dead do not rise.
Open the gate.
Alistair’s fingers trembled. He forced himself to grip the door latch. He would open it and look. He would see that there were no ghosts waiting to judge him. Then he would shut the door and return to his rooms and let the future deal with itself as it must.
“I will die in the dark,” he whispered, and his voice caught in his throat. “I will never be king.”
The door was heavy. It did not want to answer to his touch.
Let us out.
He took hold with both hands and pulled. The door resisted, screaming on its hinges.
Open . . .
A crack in the darkness.
Suddenly an enormous hand gripping a dagger shot out from the opening. The blade flashed in light that was not moonlight. Alistair screamed as he felt the cold bite and then the fiery burn sink deep into his shoulder, a snake’s bite full of poison. He fell back from the door upon the stone cobbles, and the knife pulled out with searing pain. His hand pressed to the wound. Blood seeped through his fingers, thick and warm.
The door pushed open. Alistair stared. He saw the looming figure standing there. He saw the dagger and the sword and the eyes like white moons.
“Oh no you don’t. Not yet.”
A withered hand, frail with mortality, reached out and shut the crypt door as gently as it might close the door to a nursery. A scream erupted from the far side, and a scraping and scratching like a thousand rats tearing at the heavy wood.
“Not yet,” whispered the old scrubber again as he leaned heavily upon the handle of his mop. He looked down upon the tall young man fainted on the stones and shook his head. “Soon enough. Then we’ll see what heroes rise to face the monsters.”
“Eanrin! Bard Eanrin!”
The scarlet poet stopped midsong and whirled about upon the dance floor to face the upraised throne of his queen. He saw her hand beckoning him, and with a flashing smile and a great bound, he presented himself before her, bowing with a sweep of his cloak.
“Fairest Bebo!” he cried. “How may I serve you? Do you desire a verse sprung from the spontaneity of my heart? Or a turn upon the dance floor with the merriest of your children?”
Bebo smiled quietly. Though she was queen of all the Merry People, she was more solemn than they. “Neither suits my present need, poet mine,” she said. “I have a question for your waiting ear.”
“You need only ask it!”