Free A Darkness at Sethanon by Raymond Feist Page A

his dirk, Jimmy knocked him backward. Guards
flooded into the room, seizing the other combatant as Gardan ordered.
The Knight-Marshal was uncertain what Jimmy was doing, but he was
taking no chances. Both men would be held until the matter was sorted
out.
    Jimmy grappled
on the floor with one of the Aruthas, who struck out with a backhand
blow, stunning Jimmy and knocking him aside. That Arutha began to
rise to his feet, then halted as Roald levelled his sword point at
the man’s throat. The man on the floor shouted, “The
boy’s gone mad. Guards! Seize him!” Then, as he rose, he
clutched at his side. His hand came away covered in blood. The man
looked pale and began to wobble. He appeared on the verge of
fainting. The other Arutha stood quietly, enduring the restraining
hands of the guards.
    Jimmy shook his
head, clearing it from the effects of the second serious blow of the
day. Seeing the condition of the wounded man, Jimmy yelled, “
    “Ware a
ring!”
    As the boy
spoke, the wounded man placed his hand before his mouth, and as Roald
and a guard seized him, he slumped down, unconscious. Roald said,
“His royal signet is false. It’s a poison ring such as
the others wore.”
    The guards
released the real Arutha who said, “Did he use it?”
    Gardan inspected
the ring. “No, he passed out from his wound.”
    Roald said, “The
likeness is unbelievable. Jimmy, how’d you know?”
    “I saw him
in the sewers.”
    “But how
did you know he was the impostor?” asked Gardan.
    “The
boots. They’re covered in muck.”
    Gardan looked at
Arutha’s polished black boots and the impostor’s
mud-encrusted pair. Arutha said, “It’s a good thing I
didn’t take a walk through Anita’s newly planted garden
today. You’d have had me in my own dungeon.”
    Jimmy studied
the fallen impostor and the real Prince. Both men wore the same cut
and colour of clothing. Jimmy said to Arutha, “When we came
through the door, were you with us or already in the room?”
    “I entered
with you. He must have come into the palace with the late celebrants
and simply walked into my quarters.”
    Jimmy agreed.
“He hoped to catch you here, kill you, dump your body in one of
the secret passages or down the sewer, and take your place. I don’t
think he could have maintained the charade long, but if only for a
few days he could have bollixed things up around here to a
fare-thee-well.”
    “You’ve
done well one more time, Jimmy.” He asked Roald, “Will he
live?”
    Roald examined
him. “I don’t know. These lads have a bothersome habit of
dying when they shouldn’t, then not staying dead when they
should.”
    “Get
Nathan and the others. Take him to the east tower. Gardan, you know
what to do.”

    Jimmy watched
while Father Nathan, a priest of Sung the White and one of Arutha’s
advisers, examined the assassin. Each person who was admitted to the
tower selected to house the prisoner was astonished at the likeness.
Captain Valdis, a broad-shouldered man who had been Gardan’s
chief lieutenant and had succeeded him as head of Arutha’s
guard, shook his head. “No wonder the lads did nothing but
salute when he walked in the palace, Highness. He’s your exact
double.”
    The wounded man
lay tied to the bedposts. As before when a Nighthawk had been
captured, he had been stripped of his poison ring and any other
possible means of committing suicide. Nathan stood away from the
prisoner’s side. The stocky priest said, “He’s lost
blood and his breathing’s shallow. It would be touch and go
under normal circumstances.”
    The royal
chirurgeon nodded agreement. “I’d say he’d make it,
Highness, if I hadn’t seen their willingness to die before.”
He looked out the window of the room as the morning light began to
pour through. They had worked for hours repairing the damage done by
Jimmy’s dirk.
    Arutha
considered. The last attempt at interrogating a Nighthawk had
produced only an animated corpse who had killed several