Seeker of Secrets

by Deck Davis

  Turning away from the portrait, he stared at the cold wooden flooring. That was where he’d sleep tonight. The more uncomfortable the better, because if his back was hurting, then at least it was a distraction from his thoughts.

  But as he looked at the flooring, he noticed something else. A shape leaning by the wall, over in the corner where the shadows were darkest.

  He crossed the room and he picked it up, and he saw that it was a giant book, larger than five or six normal books put together. On the front of it, in gold writing, was its title.

  Guildmaster’s Quest Log.

  A flutter of excitement hit him. He sat down on the floor with his legs crossed and the quest log in front of him, and he turned the pages. Inside it, the pages were covered in scrawled ink handwriting. At first Joshua found it hard to read, and he wondered if it was the handwriting itself or the mix of alcohol in his stomach.

  The more he concentrated, the clearer it became. Each page was dedicated to a quest, where Jandafar had recorded what the quest was about, what the rewards were, which heroes he’d sent, and what the outcome was.

  Hungry to devour the information, Joshua flicked through page after page, reading about parties of heroes sent to forlorn mountains and deserted mineshafts, where they flushed them free of rogue imp clans, basilisks, demons, and hex-flies. He read about the rewards they received, some of which were bounties of gold, others were rare swords and staffs.

  And then he read about which were successful, and which weren’t, and he saw the names of heroes who had fallen in duty.

  He flicked through to the last quest, and after that, half of the book’s pages were empty.

  Empty, and ready to be filled in by another guildmaster.

  Joshua went to the dorm room, where Kordrude was lying on his back in one of the beds, with a book opened on his chest but his eyes closed and dribble around his beak. He grabbed a quill and ink from his bag beside his bed, and he raced back to the guildmaster’s room, stumbling across the hallway.

  He settled down with the book in front of him and he started writing. In his drunken handwriting he recorded the first quest of their heroes’ guild, starting with how Carlisle had come to see them.

  In the box designated for which heroes he’d sent, he recorded his and Benjen’s names. For the rewards box he wrote two gold, eight silver, five bronze, and twelve jars of thrip honey.

  Finally, in the box at the bottom of the page, which was left for him to describe the state of the heroes after battle, he wrote:

  One hero, Benjen, died.

  And that was the log of the first ever quest of Joshua’s guild. Would it be the last? He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to answer the question yet. Maybe he’d have more strength in the morning.

  As he put the quill on the floor, he felt himself welling up. He held the tears in as best as he could, but it was hard.

  While he fought against his sadness, text appeared in front of him. Dark text, heavier than usual. He knew what it was.

  “It’s you again, isn’t it?” he said. “You damned gods.”

  Blessing of Grief

  The Gods have taken pity on your sorrow, despite your past abominations.

  He perked up. Did this mean they were removing the Condemnation of Abominable Ritual, which made him more susceptible than most people to dark magic?

  As he read on, he saw that no, it didn’t.

  For your grief, you have received:

  - a one-use minor blessing of happiness

  It was the same blessing that Kordrude had received when his wife died, and the old crowsie had said that it didn’t even take the edge off how he was feeling.

  Even so, Joshua used this blessing straight away, and as a gentle warmth flowed through him, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  He was the first to wake up the next morning. Sunlight shined through the guildmaster bedroom windows and cast a line of yellow on the floorboards, illuminating over the quest log book he’d found the night before.

  There was still so much to do before he’d get chance to log a second quest, since he’d need to recruit heroes to do the questing for him, and the guildhouse wasn’t ready to house heroes yet. He didn’t even have the guildmaster class.

  That made up his mind. He needed to go to Ardglass to get a class book from the library so that he could find out how to earn it. But first, there was Benjen to think about.

  Benjen was still in Beula’s house, and Joshua felt bad that he was down there in her cellar. Not only that, but Beula and her children were having to sleep upstairs where it’d be cramped and the buzzes from the thrip nests would keep them up all night. It was too much of an imposition to even put on a friend, let alone a woman he’d only met the day before.

  Beula could become a friend to him, though. He sensed it in the way he was drawn to her, but maybe everything that had happened had soured things before their friendship even started. It wasn’t a great way to meet, was it? With the fight on her field and then asking her to keep Benjen’s body there because Joshua couldn’t face doing something about it yet.

  And even now, he still couldn’t face it. He just wasn’t strong enough, and that was why he’d never be an actual hero; heroes faced up to what scared them the most. Joshua always thought that he would, too, but now that it was tested…

  Don’t start down that path of thoughts, he told himself.

  He would go to her house later, but he needed to put it off as long as he could. He needed to keep busy, to stop his thoughts straying back to the same image of his best friend. He just needed to take today to gather himself, and then he’d do the right thing and go to Beaula’s house.

  He washed and then got dressed, putting on his least dirty trousers and shirt and then lacing up his boots. He was about to leave, when he saw something on the floor.

  It was Benjen’s armor. Joshua had been wearing it throughout everything that happened on the field, but he wasn’t sure what to do with it now.

  He wouldn’t sell it, obviously. He’d have starved before selling one of Benjen’s family heirlooms. Should he send it back to the village?

  No, he knew Benjen wouldn’t have wanted that. Looking at the armor now, he knew exactly what Benjen would have wanted.

  And with that, Joshua put on the leather breastplate and fixed the straps, and the armor shrank to fit around him. As it did, text appeared in front of him:

  Current Resistances:

  Ice Damage: 4/50

  Arrowheads: 6/50

  Blunt force: 9/50

  Storm: 2/10

  He didn’t know where the armor had gotten arrowhead and blunt force damage resistance from; perhaps it was from whoever had worn it before Benjen. But Joshua knew where the ice and storm resistance came from; it was from their journey here, where whenever the weather was bad, whenever it was raining or windy or there were hailstones, Benjen had opened his coat and let the weather pelt his breastplate.

  That seemed so long ago now, but even thinking about it made Joshua certain he was doing the right thing. Benjen wouldn’t have wanted Joshua to send his armor back home - he’d have wanted him to use it. And he wouldn’t have wanted Joshua himself to go home, either. If he did, it would have all been for nothing.

  The armor made him feel better because it gave him an edge in fighting that his current skills and classes sorely lacked. Sure, he’d increased his negotiator class and he’d found out that it would be useful in helping him increase his seeker knowledge. He’d also gained two single-use seeker abilities through his binding, and a blessing of luck from the gods.

  But then, he’d also earned a condemnation from the deities, too, in the form of added weakness to dark magic. He just hoped that as guildmaster, he’d never personally have a reason to face dark magic.

  With the armor fixed on him, he left the guildhouse. Outside, he found Roebuck and Firemane where’d he’d tied them, just outside the front doors and with two ward bowls in front o
f them, which Kordrude had used his level 1 witchery to make so that critters didn’t bother the horses during the night. He loaded two leather bags onto Roebuck, these filled with the odds and ends that they had scavenged from the guild so that they could sell them.

  He reached over to Firemane and he stroked his head. The poor animal looked sad, and Joshua pulled him closer and hugged him, even though he didn’t know if horses really enjoyed hugs as much as humans.

  He was just about to climb onto Roebuck and set off down heroes’ hill, when he heard a voice.

  Well, not a voice, exactly, or at least not one speaking words. It was a voice making a strange set of roars and squawks.

  He went around the guildhouse and to the back, where he found the stables. There he saw Faron the Wingless, the great hulking dragon with her missing eye and little nubs where her wings were once set. Her great white eye stared at him, but there was a strange look in it; it was moist around the edges.

  Kordrude was in front of her, sitting on a bale of hay. Joshua hadn’t been the first one to wake up, after all.

  Faron made a series of long noises to Kordude, who nodded solemnly.

  “She wants to know why you’re upset,” Kordrude said. “She can sense it in you. Dragons are an unemotional bunch usually, but Faron seems to be sensitive. Would you like me to explain it to her?”

  Joshua nodded, and then watched as the crowsie and the dragon had an unintelligible back-and-forth of sounds.

  Faron’s eyes moistened a little more. Joshua noticed that they were bloodshot.

  “Is she upset too?” asked Joshua.

  “She isn’t feeling well. The whelps inside her are moving too much. It causes her incredible pain, carrying three young dragons.”

  “Tell her that I’ll buy some meat for her.”

  Kordrude relayed the messaged to Faron, who gave a wheeze of hot breath, and then answered in dragon-tongue. “She thanks you, Joshua,” said Kordrude, “and she says she is sorry for your friend.”

  “Thank you,” said Joshua, to Faron. Then, he realized that he’d done what Kordrude had warned him not to; he had spoken to Faron directly. She hated it when people addressed her in anything other than dragon-tongue.

  Rather than stand up and stomp on him in fury, Faron let out a whine, and her giant lips moved into what, even though he couldn’t believe it, seemed like a somber smile.

  “You didn’t need to get up yet,” said Kordrude. “In fact, rest might be best for you. If you like, I can prepare a tincture that my grandmother showed me to make. It is witchery, but only a minor potion. Nothing bad. It will help you sleep.”

  “Thanks, but I need to do something. I’ll go mad if I sit around. I’m going into town.”

  Kordrude nodded. “I’ll stay and attend to Faron, and then start on some minor repairs. That is, unless you want to plan the repairs yourself, guildmaster?”

  Joshua smiled at hearing his title, even if he hadn’t earned the class yet. “You go ahead. I’ll see you later.”

  As he left them, he heard the crowsie and the dragon settle into a gentle conversation, sounding – incredibly – as if they were becoming friends.

  Although he rode Roebuck to Ardglass, he let Firemane come with them too, since the horse seemed sad at the prospect of being left alone. He held Firemane’s reins in his right hand but there was no need, because the horse trotted along with them, occasionally putting his head close to Roebuck to get a reassuring nuzzle from the older horse.

  As a treat, he left the two animals in the Ardglass stables, where he knew the stable boy would feed them snacks and give them lots of attention. With that done, he filed down the single-spaced alleyway and emerged into Ardglass market.

  Here, the market was full of drunkards, and the herb and meat market stalls were doing a great business by selling their snacks to men and women who had the kind of appetites you could only get through drinking lots of beer.

  It must have been one of the ale festivals that Jitsog the innkeeper had told him about. There were more stalls here than the last time he’d visited, and these had mini barrels of ale with different stickers on the front, and the beers had names like The Goblin’s Golden Surprise, which sounded horrible, and Kentish Country Ale.

  Beyond the market and at the top of a sloping hill was the old Church of Orogoth, though the fake priests had left it now and there was a wooden sign out front saying that it was for rent. As well as that, some masons in the centre of the market area were chipping away at the statue of the dragon, probably so that they could move it. Maybe they were planning on selling it, since such a carving would be worth a lot of gold.

  Something stuck out to Joshua as he looked on what appeared to be a normal festival day. As he looked at the people and the market stalls, everything seemed a little richer in color that usual; from the sky blue of a beer-seller’s shirt, to the rich golden-orange of the beer in one festival-goer’s glass.

  The noises around the market square were louder too, but at first it was an unintelligible medley of conversations, the voices of the drunks and the vendors and the Ardglass citizens and traders mingling into one so that it was impossible to pick them out.

  Then, as Joshua focused on different people, he noticed something. When he stared at a pie stall vendor and looked at him intently, the hubbub of noise faded. It became like background noise, and one voice rose about the rest. It was the pie vendor’s.

  “Get…steak….ale…for…”

  Not all the words were coming through, but nevertheless, Joshua was certain of one thing now; after levelling his negotiator class in Beula’s field and increasing his perception to competent level, he found it easier to cut through unnecessary noise and hear what he needed to hear.

  The only problem was that at just the competent level, he needed to be closer than this to hear everything.

  He looked through the crowd now, looking at people’s faces and trying to channel in to their conversations. Like before, he only heard every few words of their sentences.

  To fix this he walked over to the crowd until he was standing on the edge of it, so that he was a part of the swell of people. The noise was louder now, and being so close, he was sure he’d be able to hear specific conversations better.

  But there was a problem. Now, when he tried to focus, he couldn’t tune out the other conversations so that they were background noise.

  So, at this level of perception, he couldn’t be too far away, but he couldn’t get too close, either.

  With that in mind, he moved away from the crowd and went and sat on a bench near where the masons were chipping away at the base of the statue of Orogoth.

  From there he was able to let the din of chatter fade into the background, and he focused on conversations. This distance was a little better, though he could still only pick out one out of every two words.

  Despite that, he felt like he was onto something; that there was something waiting at the end of this if only he persevered with it.

  It was after listening to smidgens of a sixth conversation that something happened.

  Skill Gained: Eavesdropping

  [The art of listening into private conversations without being noticed. Although primarily a thief skill, eavesdropping can, and often is, utilized by other classes.]

  Eavesdropping added to Negotiator class as Novice 1/10.

  A new skill! It was interesting that eavesdropping was added to his existing negotiator class, but as a fresh skill. All his other negotiator skills were at competent level to match his class level.

  This was why getting a class book was so important before earning one. For some classes, there might be 12 different skills involved, but you may only need to earn 6 of them to get the class.

  The problem then was that you were missing 6 important skills. And if you earned them later on, say when you were at level 3 or 4 of whatever your class was, your new skills would still be at novice level.

  In other words, levelling a class from 1 to 2 and so on
dragged all of your existing skills up to that level. If you got new skills after that, you’d have to level them the hard way.

  Joshua had used a class book from his father’s study as a reference for learning the negotiator class, but he didn’t remember it mentioning eavesdropping. That begged the question, what other skills had he missed?

  Still, a new skill was a new skill, and Joshua was happier than he’d expected to be.

  Benjen used to train for new skills all the time, and not so that he could level them up. Benjen always said that the rush of getting a new skill was what he wanted; that warm energy that flowed through your veins when the smoke text told you what you had achieved.

  Joshua had never really felt that but maybe that was because deep down, he hadn’t wanted any of the skills he’d learned. They were necessities more than anything.

  Now, though, with his perception and eavesdropping skills combined, he sensed the beginning of something.

  That was mainly because it wasn’t just the sounds that his perception had changed. When he looked at the crowd, he saw something that left him feeling a little startled. To the far left of the crowd, away from the stalls, were a man and a woman.

  They were there for the ale festival just like everybody else, but there was something different about them. All around them, there was a soft yellow light. It glowed like a halo, except it was surrounding both of their bodies, and not just above their heads.

  Joshua waited, but he didn’t see anyone else pay the couple the slightest bit of interest. Could only he see the halo of light? Was his increased perception drawing his attention to the couple?

  He focused on them, and he smiled when he realized that now he’d earned the eavesdropping skill, he could focus in on conversations and hear every single word. From this distance, at least.

  He turned his eavesdropping and perception back toward the man and woman who had a faint glow around them.