Lights and Shadows (The Prisoner and the Sun #2) Page 5

  “Everything’s fine,” Iliff assured him. “Lucious suffers me as well as can be expected. Outside of the meetings I see him little or not at all.”

  But this was not true, for Lucious continued to challenge him at every opportunity, most often on nights when he was late in returning to his cottage. Iliff’s only warning would be a cold prickling in his mind before rounding a bend to find Lucious awaiting him, usually with a handful of men in his company. The men were fellow blacksmiths and members of the militia, sullen types who kept to their workshops and who Iliff could not recall seeing at any of the town’s celebrations.

  “Well, well,” Lucious began upon one such encounter. “If it isn’t the Master himself. What say you, Master?”

  Iliff lifted his chest in order to hide the weakness in his legs. When he went to walk around them, Lucious blocked his way. The other men stood stone-like at Lucious’ back.

  “Why the hurry?” Lucious asked. “We’ve come all this way to hear about your walls.” Though his eyes pressed, he did not speak with the same aggression as he did at the Assembly meetings. He spoke, rather, with the air of someone in the majority for a change.

  “I gave my report at the last meeting,” Iliff said. “You were there.”

  “Yes, but admit it, that was for fools’ ears. Sure your walls are so high and so wide and so this and that, but where have you made them vulnerable, Master? Where have you made them weak?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  But in an odd way, Iliff did know. So many nights he lay awake, worrying over every detail of the walls in his mind, asking himself the same questions: Where were they weak? Where were they susceptible? Lucious stood sneering. Iliff looked past him to a cottage whose windows had just gone dark.

  “It’s late, gentlemen,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  Lucious and his men remained planted. Though Iliff was larger and stronger than all of them, he suddenly felt feeble. He edged around them, relieved when Lucious did not attempt to block him this time.

  “We’ll get the answers from you,” Lucious called at his back. “Whether you give them willingly or not, we’ll get them.”

  But Iliff never spoke of these encounters to the King. He did not wish to worry him, for one. And he had long since decided that Lucious’ badgering was a small price to pay for his inclusion in the community.

  Iliff’s meetings with the King would end on the bluff, on the rear wall that encircled the Keep. There they set their elbows on the wood parapet and looked over the lake below. Neither Iliff nor the King had seen the water kelpie since their arrival, and Iliff often wondered whether it had since returned to the swamp, whether it was submerged beneath the brown waters, awaiting another lost traveler. With the cool lake winds streaming over them, the King would often let out bits of his earlier years. His royal upbringing, the lands he once lived in, his marriage to the queen, the birth of Skye, then Stype. He spoke of pleasant times mostly, his voice mild and reflective. “Fortune willing, this Kingdom will endure,” he would say with a sigh.

  “Yes,” Iliff would answer. “And we will make it so.”

  * * *

  More years passed and the township grew. New cottages sprang up and greater lands fell under cultivation. But the rapid growth did not come from arrivals from the outside. Of the Fythes’ many qualities—their goodness, their work ethic, their love of song and dance, their aural colors—there was one Iliff discovered only after some time among them. They aged too soon.

  Iliff was not sure the Fythe themselves were aware of it, but for every year that passed, they appeared to mature by three to four times that. Iliff saw it most in the children, for even the ones who had been smallest on his arrival, who had climbed on and off his lap, now greeted him as young men and women, their colors softer, less mercurial. Some of them had even come to bear children of their own.

  Of all the former children, though, Skye’s transformation seemed the most remarkable to Iliff. But this was likely because he had seen her so seldom over the years. As heir to the Kingdom, she had spent her youth in the Keep alongside her brother, undergoing intense schooling and training. When Stype entered the King’s Guard, Iliff saw him more often, along the defensive walls or in the lower field practicing maneuvers, his strength and regal composure apparent even from a distance. But Skye remained high on the bluff, her remoteness making her seem almost ethereal.

  Owing to her royalty and seclusion, Skye became the object of much fascination among the townspeople. Most of them, including Iliff, only saw her at the annual celebrations in the Great Hall. There she sat on the dais beside the King, her golden hair carried up in a headdress, her hand resting lightly over her father’s. Though her colors quieted over the years—part of her training, certainly—her eyes remained the same brilliant blue, only more reflective now. And there was empathy in her gaze. When she looked out over the people, Iliff could tell that she was feeling them as well as seeing them, for indeed, this was a power that Fythe of royal lineage possessed. On such occasions, Iliff often heard the townspeople whispering about how special a ruler she would one day be.

  Two weeks following the town’s fifth annual celebration, Iliff set out for the high gatehouse for his regular meeting with the King. At their last meeting, Iliff had proposed building an inner wall around the Keep with an even larger gatehouse and taller guard towers, but the King had not been receptive to the idea. “We’ve a library to build yet and the marketplace to expand,” he said. “An inner curtain is not a priority now. Indeed, let us hope we will never have need for one.”

  And because Iliff loved the King, he did not pressure him, even though he believed their security should rest on more than hope. As Iliff walked, he considered how he might make the suggestion again.

  Upon entering the gatehouse, he climbed the staircase past the guards and emerged, at last, onto the top tier that overlooked the town. Expecting to find the King, Iliff was struck by the sight of his daughter sitting on the wooden bench in his stead, back straight, hands folded in the lap of her gown. She rose and dipped her chin at his entrance. She was tall for her people, taller even than the King, who had begun to stoop in his old age. Iliff hesitated, then bowed. He could not believe that this woman, so beautiful, so adult in her bearing, was the same girl who had awakened him on the lakeshore only a few years before.

  “Father is not feeling well,” Skye said. “But he asks that you might explain the walls to me, that you might walk me along them. I am being instructed in the defenses of the township.” Though she spoke with the refinement and distance of royalty, her softening eyes betrayed her recognition of him.

  “Of course, my lady,” Iliff said.

  They spent the rest of the day on the walls. Iliff told her their history, the innovations he had directed, and his thinking behind them. The King’s daughter mostly listened, her clear gaze absorbing whatever feature of the wall he happened to be pointing out. When she did speak, her insights proved profound. By the end of their walk, Iliff realized that she had come to understand the walls in ways that those who had labored on them for years still could not.

  It was nearly dusk when they arrived back at the high gatehouse. They lingered on the rooftop, watching the guards raise the drawbridges and rotate shifts. An old man, who Skye told Iliff had once been a captain, went along the far walk igniting the lanterns of the towers, his progress a wavering mote of light. It made Iliff think of the old man from the prison.

  “What will you do now that the walls are completed?” Skye asked.

  “Hm? Oh, they’re done now, yes,” Iliff said, “but still they must be maintained. It’s a task that requires constant attention. The slightest crack, the least fissure, can weaken the entire structure. There’s no other work for me now but the walls. Ever must they be maintained.”

  “And you are prepared to do this? To maintain them forever?”

  Iliff turned to her. He could not tell whether she was asking him as the
future queen or out of her own curiosity. Either way, the answer was the same.

  “As long as I’m living, my lady, yes.”

  Her gaze lifted and went beyond the walls to the fields and far woods and then all the way to the horizon, where the lands were darkest.

  “You have lived beyond these walls,” she said. “You have traveled in the lands out there.” Her voice seemed to follow her gaze. “Do you ever miss that?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “If I may ask, where were you trying to get to when I found you on the shore?”

  “Nowhere,” he said. “That is, I thought it was somewhere when I set out, but then I realized it was nowhere. Or at least nowhere I could ever hope to get to.”

  Her blue eyes glimmered at him through the dark. “Do you speak of the Sun?”

  Iliff’s mind went blank. “I—I’m sorry—how—?”

  She smiled and glowed gently. “You were sleeping when I discovered you that morning. Your dreaming thoughts were plain to feel. Don’t worry, I never shared them with anyone.”

  “What do you know of the Sun?” He worked to compose his voice.

  “Only the stories my mother used to tell me. She said that our people came from the Sun. Ages and ages ago. She said that we were immortals once, that we descended to this world to clear away the clouds. But we became so enchanted with this place that we forgot where we came from. And with each age, we became more and more forgetful, more and more mortal.”

  “Do you believe the story?”

  “It’s a legend, of course,” she said. “But as with all legends, there rings a deeper truth. Otherwise, why would we keep telling them?”

  “Is there more? I mean, to the legend?”

  “Yes.” She closed her eyes. “It says that there’s a great mountain somewhere in this world whose peak rises above the clouds. But it is distant and guarded by something large and fearsome. Those courageous enough to journey there, to get to the Mountain and climb to its top, will find the Sun and remember. They will become immortal again. Free of this world. Free of its living and dying.”

  “A mountain…”

  “Is this familiar to you?”

  Your path must be up. Ever up. For that is where the Sun is seen.

  Iliff shook his head.

  “I used to imagine going there,” Skye said. “Going to the Mountain. It was all I used to think about.”

  Iliff recalled the time he had seen her silhouette in the high window of the Keep, rimmed in candlelight, looking far away.

  “Do you still?” he asked.

  She started to speak then fell silent. The air about her wavered with light, then with dimness. Iliff felt guilty for having been so direct. He was addressing the future queen, after all.

  “You don’t have to answer, my lady,” he said. “I just…”

  “My fealty will always be to the Kingdom,” she said. When she turned to him, her light was resolute again. “But yes, I still imagine such things. Though I suppose it would be easier to believe that the Mountain is not there, that there is no Sun.” She smiled sadly. “It’s always easier to doubt than to believe.”

  * * *

  As Iliff walked back to his cottage that night, he could not help but imagine the Mountain with its towering peak. A familiar fervor moved through him. But when he remembered his failings, when he thought of the pain he had imposed and endured all those years ago, he waved the image of the Mountain from his mind.

  Though she does not appear so, she is still young, he reminded himself. She has seen little of the world. It is natural that she believe in such things.

  But he was old enough to know better.

  Indeed, he had lost his innocence long before, had seen the horrors that lurked in the pits and shadows of the world. Perhaps there was a Sun, perhaps not. Maybe there was some truth to the legend. But it was far more prudent, he thought, to protect the pockets of goodness that were known to be than to run a gauntlet of darkness in the vain hope of getting to someplace greater.

  Yes, now and forever he would stay and maintain the walls.

  Chapter 9

  That night Iliff was awakened by shouting. The cries began far away, near the west gate, it seemed, and rang across the lanes of the township. Iliff sat up. It was only when the shouts reached his cottage that he could make out their message.

  “Attack! Attack!”

  Iliff sprang from his bed and pulled on his boots. When he burst outside, lanterns blazed up in the windows of the neighboring cottages. People emerged into the lane in night clothes, their colors raw and startled.

  A young guard ran by. “We’re under attack!” he gasped. “Women and children, elders to the Keep, men to the armory!”

  A moment later, someone began clanging the bell in the town center.

  Iliff broke into a run. He moved with the swelling flow of people toward the bluff and then turned onto the main lane and skirted his way opposite those arriving from the west side of town. The night air showed red and gritty along their length. Young children cried out.

  Gilpin appeared soundlessly at Iliff’s side and matched his pace. They soon encountered other members of the wall crew.

  “Hurry now!” Iliff called to them. “Fan out along the line of assault. Call to your fellows if you see breaching.”

  It was not until they had passed the final cottages along the main lane that Iliff got his first look at the town wall. Expecting to find it fractured and overrun, he was stunned by the vast image of stillness. Indeed, all he could make out at first was the wall’s daunting height and length. But then, near the west gate, he spotted the dim forms of the King’s Guard behind the battlement. He could see them rising at intervals to fire off arrows before ducking down again.

  Iliff rushed to the towers that flanked the gate. He signaled his presence to the guards, then looked over the massive door. Though he could hear projectiles striking the other side, the oak door appeared as solid to Iliff as it had earlier that day. No cracks or seams.

  The crew members called back that their sections too were sound. “Stay and maintain a watch,” Iliff answered them. “Have the guards keep you abreast of the enemy’s position.” He then directed those nearest him to buttress the inside of the gate with the long lengths of timber set beside the door for the very purpose.

  Gilpin and three others helped Iliff with the first timber. Even in the dark of night, Iliff could see his friend’s pale color.

  “It’s the Garott,” Gilpin whispered.

  “Are we certain?” Iliff asked.

  “I just heard one of the captains say so.”

  Despair threatened Iliff’s strength. But he forced it down, placing all of his concentration into getting the timbers up into the brackets. He ordered the crew members just arriving to secure the gate on the south wall.

  Though he was anxious to ascend to the wall walk and see the conflict for himself, Iliff could not leave his post. He strained to interpret the murmurs and occasional shouts of the guards above him. It seemed that the attackers were shooting from behind barricades. They had made one advance on the wall, but their numbers were too few and the space between them and the wall too exposed.

  All at once, the shooting fell to a lull. Iliff got the final timber into position and backed away.

  “They’re retreating,” one of the guards called down.

  Other guards echoed the observation. The guards stood and peered over the battlement. They had tensed their colors dim during the conflict, but now the air around them shimmered. There was some discussion of pursuit, but Horatio, the senior captain, ordered them to hold their position. “We’ll send scouts out at first light,” he said.

  The tension that had gripped Iliff’s body began to ease. But though the rush of imminent threat was dissipating, a more profound anguish swam up in its place. He could see it in his fellows’ brooding colors as well.

  The Garott had found them.

  Iliff was just beginning to consider the implicati
ons when a section of the south wall seemed to blossom suddenly. Iliff’s chest stiffened. He tried to holler, but nothing moved. For a moment he was back in the forest, surrounded by smoke, breathless and beaten. Then his heart hammered and a sudden inrush of air shocked his lungs.

  “Fire!” he screamed.

  He took off toward the flames, still unable to comprehend their suddenness and height. In his periphery, guards raced along the wall walk. They stopped at intervals to fire down, but now the return volley was immense. Guards gasped and cried out as they were struck. Arrows careened off overhead.

  When at last Iliff and his crew reached the fire, its intensity pushed them back.

  Gilpin ran up with shovels and handed them around. Lowering their heads, the men scooped the wet earth and heaved it toward the blaze. But though they worked furiously, the blaze showed no sign of flagging. The fuel that fed it had had more than four years to cure. Iliff could hear the timbers cracking. He looked up to find vertical spaces opening between them. Though the cement that made up the core of the wall was four feet thick, Iliff knew it would not withstand the heat. By the time the timbers burned away, it would be gray and brittle, easy to fell.

  More guards arrived from the Keep. They ran up in formation, steel swords in hand. The King’s son led them. Iliff wiped the grit and sweat from his eyes and looked back toward the roaring wall.

  “We should pull it,” Gilpin called in his ear.

  Iliff grimaced, then nodded.

  He shouted for the others to carry on and ran up to meet Stype. He’d had little contact with him over the years, not since their time in the camp when he was still a boy, smaller than Skye even. Now he stood tall, his blue eyes radiating from inside his helmet. His eyes moved from the flames to Iliff. It was all Iliff could do to keep from looking away.

  “The wall,” Iliff said. “We have to pull it. It will cause a breach, but the fire will spread otherwise.”