Dragontiarna: Thieves

by Moeller, Jonathan

  Specifically, to destroy mortal lives.

  It was time to get started.

  Aeliana slipped away from the Prince’s Palace and vanished into the crowds seething through the streets of Cintarra.

  She would return, though.

  And when she did, perhaps the blood of Ridmark Arban would be upon the blade of her dark soulblade.

  ***

  Chapter 4: The Archbishop of Cintarra

  Calliande Arban rode with Prince Accolon’s escort as they headed for the Great Northern Gate.

  She was glad to see Mara and Jager and Third again. Mara and Jager had accompanied Calliande on the quest to Urd Morlemoch and back, and Third had been with Calliande and Ridmark during the deadly battles in Owyllain against the Seven Swords and the Sovereign. Friendships forged in such crucibles lasted a lifetime. For that matter, in the maze of political intrigue, greed, and dark cults that surrounded the court of Cintarra, the prowess of Third as a warrior and the loyalty of the Anathgrimm would be invaluable.

  They took a different route to the Great Northern Gate, and Calliande did not like what she saw.

  She had spent much of her life in or near Tarlion, the chief city of the realm of Andomhaim. Tarlion was large, but it was orderly. The demands of the High King’s court and the various merchant enterprises in the city ensured that Tarlion never developed a large pool of unemployed men and women dependent on charity. When Calliande had been discussing the problems in Cintarra with Antenora, her apprentice had said that it had been common for the cities of Old Earth to develop large numbers of idle, desperate men, and those men had frequently overthrown their rulers.

  Now it seemed that Cintarra was overflowing with idle, hungry, desperate men with nothing to lose.

  Calliande frowned as she looked at the tents and carts filling the alleys. Could not the lords of the Regency Council see what they were doing? Were they so greedy, so short-sighted that they had not realized the dangers? It was certainly possible. Her time as the Keeper had shown her again and again that human nature rarely disappointed the cynic.

  Yet she wondered if the destruction was deliberate. If the Drakocenti cult wanted to throw Andomhaim into chaos, starting a revolt in Cintarra was a superb way to do it. The attempt on Accolon’s life had been only one step of a far larger plan. Perhaps another step was the growing unrest in the city.

  The street opened into Cathedral Forum, a large market square before the gates of Cintarra’s massive, soaring cathedral, a church only just smaller than the Great Cathedral in Tarlion. The shops of the forum catered to the needs of the various scribes and clerics who worked in the cathedral, selling ink and paper and so forth. There were, of course, two taverns. More than one scribe had told Calliande that writing was thirsty work, which seemed odd given there was so little sweat involved.

  There was a small crowd before the massive doors to the cathedral, and the Crown Prince’s column rode past it. Calliande half-expected to see another encampment of displaced villagers, but instead, she saw a half-dozen churchwardens in solemn black robes, cudgels in hand. The churchwardens stood in a half-circle, facing the small crowd.

  They guarded an exhibition of criminals.

  A woman stood barefoot and wearing a rough gray dress, her head shorn. That was the traditional punishment for an unlicensed prostitute taken in sin. Next to her was a pair of wooden stocks, and a plump naked man was bound within them, his face and backside smeared with mud and dung thrown from the crowd. No one had thrown any rotten vegetables. Likely food was too precious to waste inside Cintarra. A placard affixed to a wooden pole proclaimed the crimes of the man and the woman. As Calliande had guessed, the woman was guilty of unlicensed prostitution. But to her mild surprise, the man was a priest. She was also surprised that while the priest had been spattered with mud and dung, the woman had not, and the churchwardens were preventing the crowd from throwing anything at her.

  “Just like my brother,” muttered Ridmark. “A mixture of fanaticism and mercy.”

  At the bottom of the placard, Calliande saw that the sentence had indeed been pronounced by the court of Caelmark Arban, the archbishop of Cintarra, and one of Ridmark’s older brothers.

  Or one of his surviving older brothers, she thought, remembering how poor Valmark Arban had died in the courtyard of the castra.

  They rode on, and Calliande swept the alleyways with the Sight, watching for dark magic. She saw none, and the only magical auras she observed came from Ridmark’s soulblade and from Accolon’s. But the Sight flickered and jerked, seeming to follow lines of possibility into the future. None of the Keepers of Andomhaim had ever been able to fully control the Sight, and sometimes it showed the past and potential futures of its own volition.

  Right now, the Sight showed her the simmering potential of bloodshed that hung over Cintarra like a haze. Glimpses painted in red fire and shadow danced before her Sight. In one she saw a mob of enraged villagers charging towards the Prince’s Palace, killing everyone unfortunate enough to be caught in their path. In another she saw Cintarra ablaze, dark shadows stalking through the streets, blood dripping from their blades.

  The visions were disturbing enough that Calliande pulled back the Sight, focusing it on the search for dark magic.

  She didn’t need the Sight to tell her that Cintarra teetered on the edge of ruin.

  They rode out of the Great Northern Gate, and Ridmark and Sir Peter paused to confer. Messengers were sent north along the road to summon the rest of Accolon’s force, and the Crown Prince’s escort turned to the northwest, riding over the empty grasslands outside of Cintarra.

  A short time later, Mara’s castra came into sight.

  The Anathgrimm refused to sleep in an unfortified camp, and Mara visited Cintarra so often that the late Prince Cadwall, God rest his soul, had granted her permission to build a permanent castra outside of Cintarra’s walls. It had no towers, but it was a square courtyard encircled by a low stone wall about twelve feet tall. A ditch ringed the wall, lined with sharpened stakes. Inside Calliande saw houses of lumber and thatch, barracks for the visiting Anathgrimm soldiers, and a larger barn-like structure that served as Mara’s hall when she visited.

  “Here we are,” said Jager, bringing his horse alongside Calliande and Ridmark. “Our home away from home. Not quite as pleasant as Marhosk, true, but good enough.”

  “Not as luxurious as the Prince’s Palace,” said Ridmark. Calliande remembered how Morigna used to tease Jager for his love of luxuries and comfort.

  “Quite true,” said Jager. “However, I am much less likely to be knifed in my sleep here. You might have noticed that I’m not terribly popular with the Regency Council.”

  “Why is that?” said Ridmark.

  “Jager makes too much money from his trading,” said Mara, her voice quiet. “They can’t forgive him for that. Furthermore, he’s a halfling. Most of the halflings in Cintarra are domestic servants or tradesmen. A halfling merchant is something they have a hard time accepting, but Jager’s too clever, and he has the Anathgrimm to back him up, so they have to deal with him.” She smiled a little. “And a few of them have figured out that he was the Master Thief of Cintarra.”

  “Aye, though this Wraith fellow is threatening my claim to that title,” said Jager.

  “You’re not the Wraith, are you?” said Ridmark.

  “Certainly not,” said Jager. “I’m respectable now. The Prince Consort of Nightmane Forest. I can’t go around robbing Cintarran merchants. No matter how much they might benefit from the experience.”

  They rode to the gate, and the Anathgrimm standing guard lowered a drawbridge over the trench. Inside the castra Ridmark saw Anathgrimm warriors going about their tasks, cleaning weapons and training in various drills.

  “Ridmark,” said Mara. “Archbishop Caelmark is here.”

  Ridmark blinked in surprise. “He is?”

  “We weren’t expecting to find you in Cintarra,” said Mara. “Jager, Third, and Selene and I only
arrived yesterday. We’re here to speak with our trading partners. The archbishop requested a meeting with us.” She gazed at Ridmark with unblinking green eyes. “He’s concerned the Regency Council is leading Cintarra to ruin and wanted to speak with us about possible solutions.”

  Calliande wondered if that was a euphemism for violence. Though Caelmark Arban was usually too blunt to bother with euphemisms.

  “We have a tale for you as well,” said Ridmark. “While we were in Cintarra, a cult tried to kill Prince Accolon, and rifts opened to another world. Creatures came through and attacked.”

  Mara and Jager blinked at him. Even Third looked surprised.

  “Well,” said Jager. “I daresay that will be quite a tale indeed.”

  Accolon paused to give a flurry of orders to Sir Peter. The men were to encamp within sight of the walls of Mara’s castra and to build a fortified camp surrounded by a ditch. There would be grumbling about that, but Calliande approved. Given the unsettled situation in Cintarra, it would be good to have a fortified refuge outside the city.

  As the orders were given and the rest of Accolon’s force moved, Mara, Jager, and Third rode into the castra. Ridmark, Calliande, and Accolon followed, leaving Sir Peter and Vegetius to oversee the camp. They reined up in front of the hall at the northern end of the castra, and Anathgrimm soldiers came to take their horses. Two more strode forward and opened the doors to the hall.

  The interior looked like a cross between the hall of a pagan orcish chieftain and a particularly large barn. The floor had been built of flagstones, and wooden rafters stretched overhead. A dais had been constructed at the far end of the hall, holding a rough stone throne of the sort that the Anathgrimm liked to build for their Queen. Four members of the Queen’s Guard, the Anathgrimm assigned to defend Mara, stood like armored statues before the dais.

  Two people waited with the Anathgrimm, a man in a black robe and a woman in a blue gown. The woman was gesturing as she talked, jewels flashing on her fingers, and the black-robed man looked at her with a mixture of polite interest and confusion.

  Calliande grinned at his expression.

  But the former urdhracos known as Lady Selene of Nightmane Forest, daughter of the dark elven lord called the Confessor, often had that effect on people.

  Even, it seemed, Caelmark Arban, the grim Archbishop of Cintarra.

  Both Caelmark and Selene turned as they approached. The archbishop was just shy of fifty, and he had Ridmark’s hard features and cold blue eyes, though the hair beneath his red skullcap had turned entirely gray. Caelmark was thinner than Ridmark, the gauntness of the ascetic, and a strange light sometimes seemed to shine in his eyes, the iron-hard light of absolute certainty. As the Archbishop of Cintarra, Caelmark was one of the most powerful men in Andomhaim, but he didn’t look the part. His black robe was of rough material, and he wore simple leather boots. The only sign of his exalted rank was the golden ring upon his left hand.

  “Ah, cousins!” said Selene, smiling her mad grin. “You’ve returned.” She had silver hair that she had let grow to her waist in the years since she had come to Andomhaim from Owyllain, and currently, it was arranged into an elaborate coiffure of braids that shone like a platinum crown around her head. Her eyes were the same shade of silver, eerie in her gaunt face. “And I see that you have brought guests.”

  “I have,” said Mara. “It seems that Prince Accolon, Lord Ridmark, and Lady Calliande just arrived this morning.”

  “Brother,” said Caelmark with a grave expression, and he extended his left hand. He had a deep, resonant voice, one that could fill a cathedral with the thunder of his preaching. Ridmark bowed over Caelmark’s hand and put a brief, dry kiss on the ring, and Calliande followed suit. Caelmark’s expression softened when he saw Calliande. “And you, sister. It is good to see you again.”

  “And you, Caelmark,” said Calliande.

  She was always surprised that Ridmark’s brothers seemed to like her better than they liked Ridmark himself. Not that Ridmark was enemies with any of his brothers, though he wasn’t particularly close with them. Perhaps they still thought of Ridmark as the madman who had run off into the Wilderland to die in pursuit of the mad quest of the Frostborn, only to return and save the realm. For her part, Calliande found Ridmark’s brothers oddly fascinating. Part of it, she knew, was that she had been an only child herself, so she didn’t fully understand the relationship between siblings. (Ridmark, she had realized years ago, was better at resolving fights between Gareth and Joachim than she was.) Part of it was how they were all so similar to Ridmark, and yet so different.

  Nevertheless, of Leogrance Arban’s five sons, Calliande was convinced that she had married the best of them.

  Caelmark bowed to Accolon and greeted him, and Accolon returned the archbishop’s greeting with calm dignity.

  “Though I expect that only dire business has brought the Shield Knight and the Keeper of Andomhaim to Cintarra,” said Caelmark.

  “You are correct,” said Ridmark.

  “The whore and the priest outside the cathedral?” said Calliande before they could start discussing the Regency Council. There were more urgent matters, but she found herself curious.

  “Were the churchwardens keeping order?” said Caelmark. Calliande nodded. “Good. It is a small matter, but nonetheless one that must set an example. The church of Andomhaim permits priests to marry if they choose, for St. Paul said it is better to marry than to burn, but a married priest may not become a bishop nor hold any high office. But this priest was caught in the act of hiring a prostitute. They must make a public penance of their sin before they can return to the church.”

  “I am surprised you punished the priest more harshly than the whore,” said Calliande. “She kept her clothes and was not bound, but the priest was naked and locked in the stocks.”

  “Do you find that surprising?” said Caelmark. “You should not. By their ordination, priests must be held to a higher standard than the laity. Else corruption and heresy shall spread through the body of the church of the Dominus Christus like cancer through flesh. And the woman was hungry and desperate, one of the thousands who have come to Cintarra after her village was enclosed. A lighter punishment was sufficient for her.” His expression darkened. “But not for the priest, who should have known better. Public sin cannot be tolerated in the clergy. But once they have completed their penances, the woman shall be free to go and sin no more, and the priest will be welcomed back into the church. Though he shall remain under supervision, of course.”

  If Ridmark had turned to religious mania after Aelia’s death instead of the quest of the Frostborn, Calliande suspected he might have turned into a man like Caelmark. Yet for all Caelmark’s iron-hard fanaticism, everything he did was leavened with a streak of mercy. He took the Dominus Christus’s teachings of forgiveness and charity just as seriously as he took everything else. It was well, Calliande thought, that Caelmark followed the faith of the Dominus Christus. Had he turned to the worship of a blood god like the orcish Mhor or the cult of the Enlightened, Caelmark Arban would have been a butcher without pity or conscience.

  “And, I concede,” said Caelmark with a sigh, “that political considerations entered into the punishment as well. The problem in Cintarra is very bad. Worse than those fat fools on the Regency Council can comprehend. So far, only the alms of the Cintarran church have kept famine from overtaking the city, but our resources are at their limit. If a priest was seen to have gotten a lighter punishment than a laywoman…aye, the consequences could be grim.” His keen gaze turned to Ridmark. “I suspect something of the same reason has brought you and the Crown Prince here.”

  “You must have used a gate to travel here from Tarlion,” said Third. “That was the only way you could have gotten here so swiftly, and you would not do so without serious cause.”

  “No,” said Ridmark. “We have quite a strange tale to tell you. Calliande?”

  Calliande nodded and described the recent events in Castarium
– the Drakocenti, the goblins and ogres, Valmark Arban’s death, and the men of the Frankish Empire. She started to gloss over Accolon’s time in the monastery, but the Crown Prince interrupted and insisted that she tell everything. Calliande thought it a good sign. He had accepted what had happened and was not trying to lose himself in prayer and fasting.

  Mara, Jager, Selene, Caelmark, and Third all gazed at Calliande in silence when she had finished.

  “I am grieved to hear that Valmark fell in battle,” said Caelmark.

  “He died bravely, as a Swordbearer ought,” said Ridmark. That sent a wave of unease through Calliande. She knew that most Swordbearers tended to fall in battle. She also knew that she and Ridmark were both mortal, and one of them would die before the other, whether in battle or through simple old age.

  She just hoped it would be a good long while yet.

  “And I sent him to Tarlion,” said Caelmark. “Had I not, perhaps he would now live.” He sighed. “Still, those rifts might have opened anyway, and he would have fallen in battle nonetheless. But at least Valmark succeeded in his mission. The High King’s attention has turned to the dangers in Cintarra. What did you do with his body?”

  “It is in the crypt beneath the chapel of my castra in Castarium,” said Ridmark.

  Caelmark nodded. “We should return his bones to Castra Arban, to lie with our ancestors there.” For a moment he looked older than his years, and then the grim archbishop subsumed the brother of Valmark Arban. “But we may mourn later. The rest of your tale is remarkable…dragons and goblins and this Dragontiarna Knight.”

  “More dragons, though?” said Selene. “The first time in Owyllain was bad enough. I didn’t think to see any dragons here in Andomhaim.”