“Yes, ser,” Gosser said, “er, yes, um, my lord?”

  “Address him as ‘your grace,’” Ser Beornric said.

  “Yes, your grace,” Gosser said quickly. “Me mum wanted me to come south with her and the others, but I just couldn’t leave the horses. They’d’ve died without someone feedin’ ’em, cleanin’ up after ’em, and lettin’ ’em stretch their legs now and again.”

  “How many horses?” Aefric asked.

  “Twenty, your grace,” Gosser said. “I’d be more ’n happy to tell all about their names and habits. If’n your grace’ll let me serve him, ’stead o’ killin’ me.”

  “You don’t mind that I’m an Armyrian duke,” Aefric asked, “rather than a Malimfari noble?”

  “Your grace keeps me safe and fed,” Gosser said, “and lets me look after the horses, and I’ll serve ’im good and proper.”

  He nodded eagerly.

  “What does keeping you safe entail?” Ser Beornric asked. “Do you have a room in the keep itself?”

  “No, ser,” Gosser said. “Got a little room next to the storeroom in the stables. ’s all I need, ser.”

  “Ser Beornric,” Aefric said, “I’m not inclined to think this boy’s an assassin.”

  “Neither am I,” Ser Deirdre announced. “He doesn’t have the balance for it.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Ser Beornric said. “Though with your grace’s permission, I’d like to hear the report from the duchess’ soldiers before we welcome him.”

  They waited briefly for Aefric’s soldier to run back up the hill. Wasn’t even panting for breath. Ser Beornric was keeping Aefric’s personal guard in good shape.

  “Your grace,” the soldier said with a bow. “Sergeant Pakes confirms that Gosser was here when Ashling’s forces moved in. Says the boy caused them no trouble, and has done an excellent job of tending the horses. The sergeant recommends keeping him on.”

  “That’s settled then,” Aefric said, gesturing for his soldiers to lower their spears. “Welcome to my service, Gosser.”

  “Thank you, your grace,” Gosser said eagerly. “Can I introduce you to the horses now?”

  “Later,” Aefric said. “First, how well do you know the castle?”

  “Hardly at all, your grace,” Gosser said with a shrug. “Kicked me out o’ the kitchens when I was a lad. Been in the stables e’er since.”

  “All right, then,” Aefric said. “Show my soldiers around the stables and tell them anything you think we should know about the stables, the castle, the castle grounds and Kivash itself. Otherwise, I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Yes, your grace,” Gosser said with a bow so fast and deep he staggered a step. “Thank you, your grace.”

  Gosser led four of Aefric’s guards back to the stables.

  “I know this looks excessive,” Ser Beornric started, but Aefric spoke over him.

  “That’s all right. I have more experience exploring ruins and evil strongholds than recently occupied castles, but I expect the dangers can be much the same. Traps and hassles left by people who don’t particularly want me here.”

  “Just so, your grace,” Ser Beornric said.

  The four guards returned from the barracks then.

  “Enough bunks for forty, total,” one guard said. “Including officers’ quarters and a private mess stocked with plenty of food.”

  “We should stop and eat something,” Ser Beornric said, and Aefric realized that likely none of his knights or soldiers had eaten since he had last eaten.

  “All right,” Aefric said. “As soon as we’re all together. It looks as though Ser Yrsa is finishing up down there.”

  “And here come the rest of the knights,” Ser Deirdre said, Then, louder, she addressed those approaching knights: Sers Temat, Micham, Vria and Wardius. “You missed the fun. We captured a stableboy.”

  “Did he give you much of a fight, Deirdre?” Ser Vria asked, which got a round of laughter from all the knights, including Ser Deirdre.

  “No surprises in the rest of the courtyard,” Ser Temat said. “Two gardens in the back. One for roses, and the other for vegetables. At least, that’s what I think they were. Someone tore them up pretty badly.”

  “Sheesh,” Ser Deirdre said. “Did they salt the soil, too?”

  “I don’t think so,” Ser Wardius said. “They just didn’t want us to enjoy what they’d grown. Didn’t even take any of it with them. It was all scattered around the ground. Roses and vegetables both.”

  “I don’t think they were allowed to take anything but what they wore,” Ser Beornric said. “And they may have been searched to make sure they didn’t try to make off with gold, silver, or jewelry.”

  “Seems a bit excessive,” Aefric said.

  “Terms of surrender,” Ser Beornric said, as though he didn’t consider it excessive at all. “We can check with the duchess’ soldiers, but I’m pretty sure the nobles were offered their lives and the chance to leave for the ransom of the castle and everything in it. Including wealth.”

  Down below the iron gate closed with a boom, and Aefric heard the scraping of bars being set.

  Ser Yrsa came up the hill then with thirty of the soldiers who would be stationed here, with the remaining ten starting their first shift of guard duty.

  “Now,” Aefric said to Ser Beornric, “we can eat.”

  They didn’t take too much time with lunch. Some of Aefric’s soldiers had done their share of field cooking, so they were the ones chosen to roast a few chickens and soften some wheat rolls with heat and butter.

  They offered to try to do something with the vegetables in the barracks root cellar, but their main idea was a stew, and that would take too long.

  They did break out a cask of day beer, though, which was very well received. Good and crisp as any IPA Aefric had enjoyed as Keifer, back in Oregon.

  This day beer even had a touch of raspberry to it. Not so much as to distract from the taste of the beer itself, but more as an undertaste.

  The beer helped make up for the fact that the roasted chickens were on the bland side, and those rolls had clearly been trending towards stale.

  Nevertheless, now fortified with food, Aefric’s party split into three groups.

  The soldiers who would remain here as castle guards began settling into the barracks.

  The soldiers of Aefric’s personal guard began going thoroughly over the courtyard, and establishing a rotation for their own rest while they were here.

  Aefric and his knights — now including Ser Yrsa once more — approached the main doors of the castle itself.

  The double-doors came together to form an arch twice Aefric’s height, and together they were just about as wide. They were made from beechwood that had been bleached so white they seemed to fit in with the stonework.

  Ser Beornric took out the keys.

  “Not yet,” Aefric said, and began leading his knights on a circuit of the keep itself. Checking out the smooth white stone. Noting the height of the nearest defensive wall, over which, here atop the hill, he could see only sky in all but two directions, where he could see the turrets of other castles in the distance.

  That wizard’s tower was not visible from here. And the two white stone castles that Aefric could barely see, those likely included the one Ashling had claimed for herself and the one she’d given to King Colm.

  The windows of Castle Hrafnvigi itself started at the third floor. Smallish, arched things, with closed shutters. Below the third floor, only arrow slits.

  Whoever had designed this castle had certainly been concerned about defending it. But the lack of natural light was disappointing.

  Aefric had been spoiled by the huge windows of his apartments at Water’s End. But then, that castle was large and grand enough to make this one look like a grass hut.

  Castle Hrafnvigi had crenellated towers at each of its four corners, as well as crenellations along the top of the keep that implied battlements there as well.

  In the back of the keep, near the two gardens, was a single door of bleached beechwood. It was locked, and Aefric left it that way for the time being.

  Sad, the state of those gardens. They hadn’t just had their plants yanked out of the ground. Oh, no. The soil had been hacked at viciously with hoes, and the remains of the plants left to rot on the torn dirt.

  The gardens looked as though they’d been murdered by a spurned lover.

  Aefric shook his head as he surveyed the carnage.

  “Ser Yrsa,” Aefric said, “do you think Baron Osmaer would be willing to come down and see what he can do with this?”

  “I’m sure his lordship would be pleased to right these gardens,” Ser Yrsa said, “and bless them in the name of the Green Lord.”

  Aefric nodded and turned back to the castle then…

  …and spotted something his knights had missed in their survey of the grounds.

  “What have we here?” he said, approaching a spot along the stone of the wall that looked almost the same as the rest. But not quite. There was something…

  “I see it now,” Ser Vria said. “I think that’s a hidden door, your grace.”

  “I think you’re right,” Aefric said. And sure enough, he could just trace what looked like the outlines of a door.

  “How do you see that?” Ser Yrsa asked. “Looks the same as the rest of the wall to me.”

  “Look at it from the corner of your eye,” Ser Deirdre said, apparently able to see it now herself.

  “Nothing,” Ser Yrsa said.

  “I don’t see it either, your grace,” Ser Beornric said, getting agreement from Aefric’s other knights.

  Aefric stilled his thoughts.

  There it was.

  “Magic,” Aefric said. “Just a hint. A whisper. And subtly woven, so that even an experienced magic-user like myself or Ser Deirdre had to practically stand on top of it to notice it.”

  “And Vria here has those eldrani eyes,” Ser Deirdre said. “Useful as they are pretty. Bet they get you into all kinds of trouble.”

  “Now and again,” Ser Vria said, fluttering her lashes.

  “We have to swap stories later,” Ser Deirdre said, while Aefric focused his attention more sharply on the door.

  Yes. It was a door. And yes, magic was involved in hiding it…

  And also in locking it…

  Yes.

  There. Slipping and sliding along the borders of the door. Traces of power that hid the grooves … that bound the door closed … that would not yield without…

  “It’s a password lock,” Aefric said. “Anyone who knows the password can open it.”

  “We’ll need a guard stationed inside,” Ser Yrsa said, “once your grace moves in.”

  “No,” Aefric said. “Comes to that, I’ll spend the time to change the password. Speaking of which.”

  He looked at Ser Beornric.

  “Have to assume the previous owners have keys,” Ser Beornric said, grimacing. “I’m sorry, your grace. I should’ve thought to bring a locksmith.”

  “No need,” Aefric said. “There must be one on the north side of the river who was never Malimfari.”

  “Deirdre,” Ser Yrsa said.

  “I’m not one of your soldiers, you know,” Ser Deirdre said casually.

  “Ser Deirdre,” Aefric said, turning to face her. “Right now I must consider the security of my new castle compromised. For all I know, the departing nobles tossed full sets of keys to prominent local thieves and agitators. By now, copies could be in the hands of everyone in Kivash who means me ill.

  “I know the skills you possess at studying a city and its people,” he continued. “I know you can find me a trustworthy locksmith, to ensure my safety. And once we have finished clearing this castle, I would appreciate your beginning the next day by doing so.”

  “Your grace does know how to flatter a girl,” Ser Deirdre said, smiling and fanning herself with one hand. “As though I could resist those big blue eyes. Of course, your grace. I’ll see to it at my first opportunity.”

  “Thank you, Ser Deirdre.”

  She said something else as he turned away. Her words were too soft for him to catch, but he heard Sers Vria and Arras snort with laughter.

  He considered asking what was said, but decided he was better off not knowing.

  There wasn’t much else of interest to be found during the rest of Aefric’s circuit of the castle, leaving him and his knights once more standing before those white beechwood double-doors.

  Ser Beornric started toward the doors, keys at the ready.

  “A moment,” Aefric said, holding up a cautioning hand.

  Ser Beornric frowned and stepped back.

  Aefric closed his eyes and extended his free hand toward the double-doors. Stretched forth with his senses…

  Yes. He was right.

  The doors in this case were easily seen. No attempt had been made to hide them. But that just left more subtlety for the magic of the wards that guarded them.

  Anyone who tried to open those doors right now, while those wards were in place, would trigger…

  What kind of response?

  Aefric drew a deep breath. Eased his mind outward through the flows of magic inherent to Qorunn, and from there into those subtle wards.

  How many times had Aefric done this over the years? While exploring lost tombs and ancient ruins, even while breaking into the castles and keeps of fell necromancers and demonolotrists and the like?

  Too many to count.

  It didn’t take him long to determine that the trap here was quite simple, and explosive. It had some power to it, too. Enough to kill everyone and everything within about five paces, and wound badly about three times that distance.

  But all the effort had gone into powering the fiery explosion and hiding the ward. Nothing had been put into protecting it from a magic-user paranoid enough to check even an innocent-looking door.

  The spell hinged on a password: raudrtonn.

  Aefric could disable the ward simply by speaking that word. But the ward would have been left in place, and he had no intention of letting anyone stumble into something so dangerous.

  So Aefric went over the structure of the spell three times, until he was certain of what he was seeing.

  The entire ward hinged on that one word, which wove its way through the spellwork, leaving the structure weak just behind it.

  Simplicity itself then, to strike just behind the moving word with a jolt from the Brightstaff.

  He flared pure emerald power at the right spot.

  The ward collapsed.

  Aefric double-checked, to make sure there hadn’t been another ward hiding underneath. He’d seen that once in the tomb of that hideous undead wizard Nevca.

  Nevca had layered his wards four levels deep, which made the two times that the wards went five layers deep all the more dangerous…

  “All right,” Aefric said, letting out a deep breath. “Ser Deirdre? Would you like to attempt something dangerous?”

  “Always, your grace,” she said, stepping forward.

  “Return to the hidden door in back, and try the password raudrtonn. See if it admits you.”

  “At once, your grace,” Ser Deirdre said, and turned to do so.

  “Micham. Wardius. Accompany her,” Ser Beornric said, which got a snort of dissatisfaction from Ser Deirdre, but if she hoped that Aefric would overrule Ser Beornric, she was in for disappointment.

  “All right, Ser Beornric,” Aefric said. “Now it’s time to open the door and see what we have here.”

  3

  Aefric was more excited than he expected to be, as Ser Beornric stepped forward to unlock the bleached beechwood double-doors of Castle Hrafnvigi.

  Aefric could feel that old twitching in his guts, and it wasn’t from his roasted chicken lunch. It was the same twitching he’d felt during his adventuring days, every time he was going to begin his descent into some new hazard.

  Hardly the same sort of circumstances, though.

  Back in his adventuring days, the group would have been small. No more than four or five, himself included. Usually one or two who were good with swords, another who specialized in subtlety and swiftness, and, when possible, a cleric of some stripe or other.

  Though true clerics had never exactly been commonplace.

  Aefric was hardly surrounded by an adventuring party now. Five of his Knights of the Lake, including Ser Beornric, plus Ser Yrsa. All of them the type most comfortable fighting from the front lines, in heavy armor.

  And this was hardly his usual adventuring circumstance. A hot summer afternoon in the middle of a bustling port city. Looking to enter not some lost tomb or ancient ruin, but his own castle.

  Well, a castle he’d been given. It wouldn’t feel like his until he’d at least been through the place. Made sure it was safe. Seen what all he could find within.

  And yet, there’d been enough tension so far to help juice his old adventuring instincts. Warships in the harbor. That talk with Zoleen. Finding that secret door at the back of the castle. Disarming the trap-wards here at the front.

  And those last couple of things were the closest Aefric had come to the kind of exploring he thought of as real adventuring since before the Godswalk Wars.

  Ser Beornric hesitated with the keys just short of the lock.

  “Your grace,” he said, frowning, “might there be some more mundane trap waiting for this key?”

  “Not likely,” Aefric said. “The magical trap I disarmed would have been enough to fry any mundane trap they set up, which would be counterproductive. But I can check, to be certain.”

  Aefric had been hesitant to check, because he’d been trying to maintain a certain sense of decorum since becoming a duke. And the method he’d developed for checking, well, it always made him smile like a fool.

  There was something about the process that just appealed to the child in Aefric.

  He brought the Brightstaff in front of himself, held it with both hands, and gazed through its yellow diamond at those double-doors, while whispering the right words of power.

  Through the facets of that yellow diamond, he saw five different images of the double-doors.