Brokedown Palace

Chapter One The Horse First, consider the river. It began in thunder; a cascade from Lake Fenarr, pouring over the lip of Mount Szaniszlo. From there it cut a deep, straight path through the center of Fenario, eventually joined by other, lesser rivers. It cut a gap in the Eastern Grimwall, after which it turned south toward the sea, passing beyond the ken of Fenario's denizens. Once, when Miklos was eleven, he had been in a mood of pleasant melancholy and had gone down to the near bank, to a secret place between the Palace loading docks and Midriver Rock. There, hidden by rushes and reeds, he had sat holding a single yellow flower that he had wanted to present to his middle-older brother. But his brother had been busy and had brushed him off, which was the reason for his melancholy. So he had taken the flower and thrown it into the river. The idea was to watch it as it floated out of sight, while thinking of how the world mistreated him. With luck, he could bring tears to his own eyes, which would cap the event nicely. But the River, perverse thing that it was, had carried the offering back to him, spoiling the gesture completely. It always did things like that. Now, remembering this, Miklos decided that the River ought to rise from its banks and sweep his wounded, broken body away, out of sight to the east. But it wouldn't. Miklos was twenty-one years old, and dying. Next, the palace: It loomed over the bend in the River, over the city of Fenario, over the River Valley, over the land, and over Miklos's left shoulder. It had stood for nearly a thousand years if you count the hut. Nine hundred and fifty years if you count the fort. Seven hundred years if you count the Old Palace. Four hundred years by any way of counting, and that is a long time. And for all of that time, back to when it was merely the hut where Fenarr had dwelt, the idol of the Demon Goddess had watched over it. Miklos craned his neck to look at the Palace and to try to forget the pain. It jutted up against wispy night clouds and a few halfhearted stars. The central tower resembled a stiletto; the River Wall resembled a blank, gray shield. Above it and above him, jhereg circled ominously, their cries harsh and distant, commenting on his state and, obliquely, on the Palace itself. It looked its age. The nearest tower had a perceptible tilt, and he'd overheard his eldest brother, the King, speak of the way the wind played games with it. The River Wall was cracked and breaking. Its bones were showing. Are my bones showing? he wondered. Enough of them are certainly broken, and I'm bleeding in enough places. There are probably a few bones coming through the skin. The thought would have made him retch, but he hadn't the strength. Now, observe the interior: Start at the bottom. The Palace had been built without a basement of any sort, but tunnels had been dug during the long siege when the Northmen came down from the northern Grimwall Mountains and swept over the land more than three hundred years before. The siege had lasted five years, and by the end of that time the whole area beneath the Palace, and beneath much of the surrounding city, was riddled with cunning tunnels that were used to sneak food in, or to harass the Northerners, or to spy out fortifications. When the enemy was finally driven out, the tunnels were promptly turned into wine cellarswhich is one of the reasons that the wines of Fenario are known for thousands of miles around. Let us move up from the cellars. The walls throughBrust, Steven is the author of 'Brokedown Palace', published 2006 under ISBN 9780765315045 and ISBN 0765315041.