The dream of the dead first chapter by Virginia Pérez

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.”

PART I

SHADOW

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 fakerelaxed 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 fourposter 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.