Download - The dream of the dead first chapter
THE PLACE
Eighteenth day before Letsa. Year 570 after the Havoc
My Twin. I couldn’t have wished a more faithful one. He
seemed to know his duty even when he still didn’t wear the
sha’al. When I put it in him, my Twin gave himself to me
completely, with all his self. He can only be happy when I am
happy, and bringing me happiness is the only thing that can
make him feel it.
Happiness, or the sensation the Shalhed take as a human
emotion, of course.
A Shalhia’ Diary
His Twin had gone away.
The pain was not physical, just like when it was him who tried to get away from
her. But he felt it there, in his chest, in his nape, in his joints. An unreal, vague
uneasiness and nevertheless so real that it was the only important thing in the world.
The only existing thing for the Shalhed.
“Shalhed. Twin” he murmured bitterly as he scratched unconsciously his chest,
his eyes lost on the thin sheet of wood that separated him from… From what?
From the other Shalhed. Locked up in the rooms they shared with their Shalhias,
their Twins, tied to them with a bracelet identical to the one that shone on his right
wrist. Unable to feel anything that wasn’t them. Nameless, like him. Shalhed. Only that.
Twin.
Or perhaps someone else remembered which had been his name?
He looked down, focusing on the silver ring that hugged his arm. He didn’t
touch it. He could still remember the upheaval, the shivers, the strong suffering he had
beard the first time he tried to take it off: the first command she had given to him. For
him to learn how to obey, for him to learn what the bracelet was, for him to learn what
he was. The sha’al is a part of you. The sha’al is you. And he was only a Shalhed. The
Twin of his Twin. A part of her.
It had been, it still was a torment like the one a man would suffer if he tried to
rip his heart out from his own chest. No, not the heart. The stomach, the guts, maybe the
lungs. But not the heart. A Shalhed has no heart. His Twin neither does.
“Twin.”
The door was open.
Kal. My name is Kal. The mere thought made him squirm in agony. He didn’t
cried out, nor whined, nor pulled a wry face. He was so used to the suffering.
In the doorframe, his Twin was watching him. Expressionless.
Pain.
My pain. Mine. The only thing he really owned. He raised his head and looked
up at her, defiant.
“Twin” repeated her, “take your sha’al off.”
Without turning the face away from her, he reached his wrist with his hand and
pulled the silver bracelet.
The world sank and rebuilt itself with pain. His muscles burned, his bones
shattered to splinters, the blood boiled inside his veins. His eyes exploded in his sockets,
and every joint in his body dislocated. Even the floor he collapsed onto, crying out with
pain, hurt.
In the reddened mist of the agony he was provoking himself, he heard her voice.
“Twin” she said, “let it go.”
Just as he didn’t hesitate in trying to pull it off when she commanded him, now
the Shalhed instantly released his hand from the silver ring. The suffering dissapeared;
its memory did not. He laid trembling on the naked stone floor.
“A Twin belongs to his Twin” she hissed on his ear. “A Twin is his Twin. And
his life is obedience.”
The Shalhed raised his head.
“I obey” he replied. “Always.”
“Not in your mind.”
In my mind I’m still me. A sudden stab of pain went through his body again. He
held stubbornly his Shalhia’s gaze without a single grimace. Kal.
“And your mind belongs to your Twin too.” She straightened with her eyes stuck
in his eyes. “Remember it.”
LANHAV (NOVANA)
Seventeenth day before Letsa. Year 570 after the Havoc
Seek pleasure in life: soon the Lady of the Shadows will come
to pay you a visit.
Proverbs
From the window, he could see the canal that restrained the Tinhal like a rein the city
used to dominate the river’s brisk steed. The cobbled shores gleamed soaked. The ones
near the water were covered in moss; the furthest ones, shining with wetness, were
polished by the footsteps of men, horses and carts, slippery, treacherous. Even from this
altitude one could make out the foam, the swirls made by the Tinhal’s strong current,
while it struggled to release itself and run to meet the river Hexene and, together, set out
on their long journey to the sea.
Danekal didn’t look away from the river when he heard someone clearing his
throat audibly at his back. He clenched his jaw, his eyes nailed to the turbulent, greyish
water, a reflection of the sky, covered with clouds that stole all colour from Lanhav and
turned it into a grey, dull city.
“Your Highness.”
At his right, a few hundred steps from the window he looked out, a grey-stone
bridge bent over the Tinhal: the New Bridge that connected the north of the city with
the strip of land on which stood the Island, the center of Novana’s capital. Nobody
crossed the bridge at this moment. The only touch of colour was painted by the soldiers
stationed on both sides, a blue and red brush-stroke in the boring grey stain of the city.
Under the window, on the other side of the yard, there was a straw roof; beyond that, a
double row of triangular battlements, and the water.
“Your Highness” the voice repeated. Danekal closed his eyes for a moment,
inhaled and mended his face to make it a mask of serenity. He turned around.
“How is he?” he asked. The little man bowed his head briefly and then
straightened every inch his short height allowed him. His eyes were wide-open, and he
seemed unable to stop twisting his fingers. He opened and closed his mouth, searching
for the right words.
“Your Highness” he implored for the third time. He cleared his throat. “Your
Highness, I…”
“Just fucking say it, man!” rankled Danekal, moving away from the window,
relieved for being forced to quit looking at the gloomy sky, at the melancholic
monotony of the stone. “Will he live?”
The healer, whose name was Yosen, gulped. Danekal felt a sudden knot in the
pit of his stomach. He had to force himself to stand there, impassive, when all he
wanted to do was start running towards his chambers’ door.
“It’s difficult to say, Your Highness” said Yosen at last, trembling. That
frightened Danekal: Yosen was as unemotional as the Commander of the Royal Guard.
“The wound was infected, and it had started to poison his blood. I’ve been forced to…”
He hesitated. “I’ve been forced to amputate his leg” he confessed in a tiny voice.
Danekal swallowed a curse and clenched his fists. He waited. A moment. Two.
“So?” he demanded. “He’s short a leg, all right. Have you saved his life by
doing this?”
The little man twisted his fingers again.
“I don’t know, Your Highness. It’s possible, but it also could not… The
infection…”
Danekal quieted him with a gesture. He knew perfectly well what the healer was
going to say. His voice reached him the same, even when the man had not articulate
them. It’s spreading.
“Is he going to die?” he asked in a whisper.
“H-he’s in The Three’s hands, Your Highness” said Yosen, struggling to make
himself smaller than he already was. “If the Gods will it, he’ll heal. If they don’t” His
glottis jerked again, “he will die.”
He will die. Danekal nodded. Yosen bowed briefly and, turning around, went
almost running towards the door. When he reached it, he opened it and spun to face
him.
“If I’m allowed to make you a suggestion, Your Highness” he murmured,
clenching his fingers on the wooden door, “maybe you should come and see him. Just in
case… just in case he…”
“Sod off, Yosen” Danekal interrupted. The healer closed his mouth, leant his
head and left the room, closing the door at his back. Danekal stood there motionless,
opening and closing his fists with anger, looking at the closed door that seemed to mock
him back. He looked away and his eyes landed on the tapestry hung in the wall at his
right, whose pictures were barely visible under the greyish light from the window. The
washed-out faces of the knights and ladies embroidered with thread and wool seemed to
scorn towards him, too. He clenched his jaw.
“He’s a strong man” he muttered. “He’ll live. He’ll live!” It was an order, he
didn’t know if given to himself, to the nobles and courtiers that laughed from the
tapestry, or to the Gods who smiled from the cloudy sky. He cast a spiteful look to the
window and, breathing hard in an attempt to soothe himself, he walked to the door and
yanked it open.
The usually empty hallway was now full of people, maybe too much. Servants
running up and down the passage with anxious-looking faces, nobles strolling in a fake-
relaxed pace, the Queen’s ladies lazing around their King’s rooms making it clear with
their popeyed gazes and their innocent expressions that they really had nothing better to
do. Danekal frowned in their direction, and they followed him with their eyes, without
turning a hair, up until he opened the door they framed with their silky dresses, their
fans and their lace handkerchiefs. He got inside without bothering to shove them aside,
without bothering to give the guard any explanation, without bothering to knock.
The strained atmosphere punched him when he opened the second door, the one
that led to the bedroom. He restrained the urge to rub his nose. A sharp smell, of sweat
and fever. A bittersweet odour, of illness. He ran his eyes over the room: the carpeted
floor, the canvas-covered window, the walls covered with tapestries and the huge four-
poster bed in the center, the canopy, the silky draperies matching the embroidered coat
of arms that hung over the headboard. He looked away from the blood-soaked white
sheets piled in a corner.
“These are your King’s rooms” he pointed out, addressing to nobody in
particular. “The least one could require is that they were clean.”
A dull murmuring, quick footsteps and a bow. The servant, dressed in black and
white, hurried up to collect the stranded sheets and, with another bow, he ran for the
door. A woman looked up from a chair near the enormous bed.
“Danekal” she said, her face blank. She didn’t move. Her hand was set over the
clean sheets covering the body in the bed: a big, strong body, whose form was visible
under the blanket. A one-legged body.
“Mother” he murmured, bending his head to her. He took a step, then another,
and finally he walked around the bed to approach her and bowing to kiss her in her
forehead. She tried to stop him. Danekal grimaced. Do you really want me to respect the
protocol even in my father’s bedroom?
“Have you arranged the preparations for Sihanna of Phanobia’s visit?” she asked
unpredictably. Danekal blinked.
“How is he?” he inquired in turn, disregarding her question and pointing with a
wave at the postrated man of the bed. His voice sounded maybe a little harder than he
had wanted it to be. He smiled weakly with regret.
“He’s febrile and short a leg” she answered. “Have you talked to Tranlovar?
Have you instructed him to begin preparing the Phanobian Queen and her entourage’s
chambers? A feast, a tournament, a reception worthy of a Royal Visit?”
Danekal frowned.
“Mother” he whispered, “I’m asking you if my father is going to live or die. Do
you think I give a shit for somebody’s visit?” He took air deeply. “I don’t fucking care
if it’s the Queen of Phanobia, the Triast of Tula or the Emperor of Monmor!”
Isobe, Queen of Novana and Light of Lanhav by The Three’s Grace,
straightened up in her chair and looked her son with half-closed eyes and a stormy
expression on her wrinkleless face. The blue silk pearl-embroidered dress, and the silver
hairnet that held her reddened hair, provided her with a higher majesty than her title.
She was shorter than her son, but at that moment she seemed far taller. She moved
closer until they were separated only by a hand.
“Worry about the things you have to worry about, Prince of Novana” she said
quietly. “To heal your King is not your duty: that’s why healers are for. But it is your
duty to keep his kingdom whole and in peace, for him if he gets well, or for you if you
succeed him.”
Danekal boiled with rage and helplessness. He had to force himself to quieten
his voice and soothe his face. He didn’t even felt his failure before he spoke again.
“Anyone can take care of a fucking visit! We’ve got visits every month. This
time being a Queen who visits us means nothing: Queens sleep in beds, as you should
know too well.”
His voice might have been higher than he intended, because Isobe clicked her
tongue.
“You must watch your language when you speak with me” she demanded in a
warning whisper. “I don’t want anybody to think the future King of Novana is a yokel.”
“I’m too old for you to soap my mouth, Mother.” Danekal glanced at the bed:
not a move, not a whine.
“You’re too old for me to remind you what you have to do with your future
kingdom, too. Responsibility cannot be delegate nor shared, and you know it.” The
Queen sat down again and unnecessarily fixed the folds of her dark skirt. “Go and talk
to Tranlovar. Make sure he knows what he has to arrange for Sihanna’s arrival. And
then, if you want to, come back. But only if you promise me you will behave” she
added.
Danekal struggled with his own anger, and after a moment he nodded.
“I’ll go and talk to the head butler.” He kissed her forehead again and looked to
the huge bed. His father’s head was sunken in the feather pillow, and he had a gaunt
face, hollow cheeks and closed, black-rimmed eyes. Danekal gulped and forced himself
to look away. He waved and turned over his heels.
A swirl of silks and laces greeted his leaving from the chambers of Tearate the
Second, King of Novana, Lord of Lanhav, Sovereign of Lenvania, Venver, Teilhil and
Sendala, Conqueror of Hongarre, Protector of the Islands of Somlo and Desa, Light of
Lanhav. By The Three’s Grace, he remembered to add while he headed the path he’d
just covered the other way around.
“Go and find me Tranlovar” he said sideways to one of the servants that
accompanied Isobe’s ladies in their vigil.
“As you command, Your Highness.” The whisper of her clothes, another bow.
He had seen too many of those since his father named him Heir of Novana’s throne that
he was almost capable of being unaware of them. But so many curtsies, so many
salutations, so much ceremony was beginning to annoy him. He grimaced with
displease and kept walking through the wide corridor.
The light leaked by the only window opened in the wall; it couldn’t get to
dissipate the corridor’s semidarkness, in which brown-coloured, sickeningly sweet
smelling candles burned at regular intervals. He hurried by the hallway until it
converged with another, wider and better ventilated.
“I’m here, Your Highness.” The voice came from his right, from the Queen’s
antechamber. Danekal didn’t stop, but he made a greeting gesture to the man that trotted
towards him. “Your Highness, I…”
“My chambers. Now” he answered over his shoulder, hastening his pace.
“What? Excuse me, Your Highness” gabbled the butler, tripping with his own
feet. “I thought we were going to your father’s study.”
“I don’t want to begin usurping his domains this early.” Tranlovar’s silence was
more eloquent than his babbling. You’re making a mistake. He smiled. And I have so
many more mistakes to make, you know…
Tranlovar made an effort to keep his pace, but his fabbly, potbellied body made
if very difficult for him to maintain Danekal’s strides’ speed. When they reached the
Prince’s rooms, after the long stroll through the stretched corridors that crossed the
Tower of the King, Tranlovar was puffing like a mule and his face was soaked in sweat.
Danekal gestured towards a chair and waved to the servant that had entered the room
after them.
“Wine” he ordered. “Before the butler crumple and my carpet ends smeared with
sweat and drool.” He sat in another chair and leant his back on it. “Do you like my
carpet, Tranlovar? It’s from Monmor. Brought from Yinahia itself. A gift, from the
Emperor.”
The chief butler collapsed over the back of the chair and wiped off his forehead
with a lace handkerchief every bit as ornate as those that used the Queen’s ladies.
“It’s exquisite, Your Highness” he muttered breathlessly. “The Emperor of
Monmor was very kind to send it to you. A charming gesture.”
“Of course. But damn him if I know why he sent it to me instead to my cousin
Angarad. He is the one which Monmor owes, not me.” He crossed his legs, his right
ankle over his left knee, put the elbow over the chair’s arm and sighed. “That fucking
kid knows exactly what he’s doing. Gods curse him” he complained. “You cannot
imagine how I wish to make him eat the frickin’ carpet.”
Shocked, Tranlovar opened his mouth to protest, but Danekal cut in on him with
a gesture.
“I haven’t brought you here to talk about my carpet. Now that it’s not in danger
to end full of you anymore, let’s go straight to the point.”
“As you wish, Your Highness.” The butler bent his head, and Danekal groaned
softly.
“Sihanna of Phanobia” he continued. “Mi mother wishes everything to be ready
for her arrival. A reception, the chambers, all those things. Do it, will you?”
“Of course, Your Highness.” Tranlovar sipped his cup of wine after another nod.
“A feast. And a tournament, I think. Yes, it would be nice.”
“Forget about the tournament” Danekal blurted out, rejecting a cup with a sharp
wave. “A feast, yes. Those phanobians could be very upset if we don’t give them the
means to fill themselves up and get drunk in the exact moment they put a foot in
Lanhav. But I don’t plan to spend hours or days entertaining my nobles and Phanobia’s
while my father bleeds to death by the hole where his leg used to be. By the way” he
added, “bring the Commander of the Royal Guard to me the moment he turns up in the
fortress. I want him to find the ones who made this. I want them to pay for it. After they
explain me why.” This time he had to make a great effort to control his voice. Deep
inside he felt shaken, full of rage, helpless, hopeless.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Why” repeated Danekal, looking and not seeing the tapestry hung on the wall at
the butler’s back. Why. And who. Hongarre’s clans, one of his neighboring countries,
his own courtiers? He laughed with no hilarity. Probably, the least worrying choice was
the first.
“Your Highness” said Tranlovar, hesitant. “Your Highness, maybe…” He
cleared his throat. “Maybe we should begin the preparations for His Majesty’s funeral
rites, too. These things take a lot of time” he hastened to add when he saw the anger
shining in Danekal’s eyes. “The Triasta…”
“The Triasta can go fuck himself” he grumbled, leaning forward and feeling a
sudden fury that drowned his previous grief. “My father is not dead. And he’s not going
to die, you hear me? He’s not going to die” he stressed as a prayer.
Tranlovar cleared his throat.
“Your Highness” he said, lowering his voice until it was less more than an
anxious whisper. “You must prepare to take the throne. I know this is not what you
wish. Nobody wishes your father to die. But it is possible that he does.”
To his own surprise, Danekal didn’t felt rage, nor fury, nor even a brief spark of
anger. The butler’s words only made him feel pain. He trembled. Uncertain, he reached
for Tranlovar’s cup of wine. He brought it to his lips, but he was unable to drink.
“What about the Shah?” he asked, hiding his mouth’s shaking behind the cup.
“Could the Shah save my father’s life?”
The butler leaned to move closer to him and fetch the cup from his hands. He set
it in the table and cast a brief sideways glance at him before he looked down to his own
hands.
“What are you trying to say, Your Highness?”
“Could you…?” He hesitated and looked away, feeling gilty. “Could you get me
a Shalhia? Could she…?”
Tranlovar breathed out a whining sigh.
“There are no Shalhias in Lanhav, Your Highness” he informed unnecessarily.
Of course there were no Shalhias in Lanhav. Otherwise, Danekal wouldn’t have to ask
him to bring him one. “The Triasta wouldn’t like to know what you’re thinking. It was
him who advised him to cast them out of the city. Although he hasn’t proclaimed their
heretical nature yet…”
Danekal groaned.
“The Triasta can go fuck himself. Get me a Shalhia. Pick her wherever you like:
Drine, Istas, or Lenvê, which is closer.”
“I should bring her Shalhed too, Your Highness. They are inseparable. The one
will not come without the other. The Shalhias are really possessive with their…”
“I don’t care if you want to bring a dozen of dancers from Qouphu” exclaimed
Danekal. “As long as one of them is capable of using the Shah, I don’t give a shit.”
“Your Highness…”
“I said bring her to me, fuck!” he yelled.
“Your Highness” said Tranlovar in a soft voice. In spite of everything, he didn’t
seem intimidated by his Prince’s rage. “The Shah cannot heal. It only destroys. The
Shalhias can only use the Shah as a weapon.”
“How do you know it?” demanded Danekal, straightening in his chair, shaken
and so angry that he was almost unable to think. “How do you know it, Tranlovar? How
do you know it?” he claimed, incapable of thinking in another phrase, incapable of stop
saying that one. He felt a tickling down his cheek. He blinked, furious. And then,
suddenly, he realized he was crying.
He wiped out the tears with a slap and collapsed over the back of the chair. Then
he bit his knuckles while he struggled to control himself. Stupid, stupid… He inhaled.
What a King I’m going to be, crying like a little girl all day long. A sob got stuck in his
throat. He clenched his teeth. Wisely, Tranlovar looked away and concentrated on his
cup until Danekal sighed.
“That would be good for nothing, my lord” said the butler gently. “Everything
that can be done, Yosen will do. If you want to provide your father a service, pray for
him.”
Danekal nodded. Pray for him. But will The Three listen? Or may I pray the
other Gods too, every one of them, until I find one who would answer my prayers? Or
until the King would die. He sighed again. Get a grip, you idiot.
“Better get going, Tranlovar. The Queen’s going to freak out if Sihanna of
Phanobia arrives and there aren’t at least a hundred servants ready to take care of all her
wishes. She could even decide to cut out our legs, yours and mine. Oh—” he said,
suddenly remembering, “and please send a messenger to Evan of Lenvania and make
sure he comes back to Lanhav as soon as possible. Just in case…” He swallowed his
words before he could say them out loud. Raising the cup, he took a sip. “Just in case I
need him by my side.”
The chief butler smiled. “I’ve taken the liberty to send the message already,
Your Highness. My apologies if I’ve overstepped the mark.”
Danekal snorted. “Get out, Tranlovar” he murmured, emptying the butler’s cup.
“You know too much, you son of a bitch.” But he smiled too, although not too
effusively. Tranlovar bowed, ignored the Prince’s grunt and left the room.
© Virginia Pérez de la Puente, 2013 © Editorial Planeta, S.A., 2013 Avda. Diagonal, 662,664, 7ª planta, 08034 Barcelona (Spain) www.planetadelibros.com www.edicionesminotauro.com