Free Antiphon by Ken Scholes Page A

Tam

    Vlad Li Tam awoke from too little sleep and sat up in his narrow bed. The windowless room offered no light, though he blinked and rubbed his eyes as if it might if only he were patient.
    When they’d returned to find the island and its Blood Temple abandoned, he’d gone through the massive building assigning quarters to his family. He was careful to be sure that this room became his once again, though he wasn’t sure exactly why. Perhaps it was an anchor to the pain of that time, something to keep the memory banked like a fire.
    His recollection of those months was a blur of agony and terror. Nights spent huddled in the corner, sleeping fitfully, open-eyed with his back against the wall. And underlying those memories, Ria’s voice—filled with love and comfort—as she worked her knife or as she sat at his table and conversed with him while he lay twitching upon the floor.
    Other voices joined hers. The voices of his children beneath the knives, offering up their last words to him as he watched, echoing long after their final breath as he waited here for the next day’s cutting.
    My room.
    He’d memorized it during his clearer moments, and that served him well now as he stood and pulled on his light cotton trousers and shirt. Barefoot, he padded to the door and let himself into the empty hallway.
    He’d spent another day on the dock, fishing but not catching. At the end of the day, he’d discovered his bait had been taken at some point without his knowledge.
    Still, he’d not been fishing for fish.
    This afternoon, he’d force himself away and back to the paper-strewn table in his room. Back to the book his father had written and passed to Vlad’s first grandson, a secret history devised to bring down Windwir and establish a lasting Y’Zirite resurgence in the Named Lands. The plot was as carefully conceived as any Tam intrigue—perhaps even more so given that the network of conspirators stretched far beyond his family, into other families, into the Marshlands, and even into the very heart of the Androfrancine Order itself.
    Vlad had spent his life weaving a web he’d thought was his owndesign, only to learn it was a carefully crafted manipulation by the man he’d respected, feared and loved above all others.
    A man who had conceived of this plot, knowing full well that the price of it would be the near extinction of his own bloodline.
    Somewhere out there, other conspirators continued this work. He’d seen their ships at harbor here—ships unfamiliar to the Named Lands’ most skilled family of shipwrights. Even now, his children scouted for them.
    And yet all I can think about is the ghost.
    He moved through the hallway slowly, listening to his feet as they whispered over the marble floor. When he reached the wide double doors, he pushed one open slowly to slip out into the moonlit night.
    A young man separated himself from deeper shadows, silent on feet trained for scouting. “Good morning, Grandfather,” the man said.
    Vlad looked at him and tried to remember his name but couldn’t. Before the cuttings, before his time here, he’d remembered every child, every grandchild and great-grandchild. Even those he lost along the way. He’d known their walk, their mannerisms, every little detail that might help him sharpen and fire them at the heart of the Named Lands as arrows for his hunting.
    But since his time here, he’d found that his memory faltered.
As if I don’t want to know.
    “Good morning,” he answered. “How goes the watch?”
    The young man shrugged and smiled. “Quietly.”
    Vlad nodded. All of their watches had been quiet upon returning; still they set them. He looked down to the harbor, where one of his iron vessels sat at anchor. “I’m going fishing,” he said.
    The guard inclined his head and slipped back to where he’d waited before.
    Vlad looked to the moon—it was high but not full yet, though its light still cast shadows. He looked to the water below and saw its