A Blight of Blackwings

by Kevin Hearne

  Lorson had mentioned that he’d come here from across the ocean, so I was most likely looking at his native language, but…

  “This place doesn’t make any sense,” I muttered to myself.

  There were two more floors of additional riches, no doubt, and not a single explanation for why anyone would want to live here in isolated luxury. People with such expensive tastes usually wanted someone else around to see how finely they were living. Traditional hermits were notorious for settling in extremely humble caves with very few possessions. About all I could conclude about Lorson was that he had been a nontraditional hermit. Unless he had been exiled here.

  Something about the room itself was bothering me, nibbling away in a dark corner of my mind, dimly felt but unseen. I spun around, looking for anything that didn’t belong in a library, but got nothing except a reinforcement of the observation that it was a strangely shaped room, more like a long, extra-wide hallway than a space planned to be a library.

  Before I could speculate, Abhi and Curragh called out and I answered. They showed up moments later, even as I heard Olet’s heavy footsteps clomping down the stairs.

  “What did you find?” I asked.

  “It’s basically storage and plumbing and stuff like that,” Curragh said. “Lots of dusty boxes, no weird smells. There might be spiders.”

  “There are definitely spiders,” Abhi said. “Poisonous ones too. Anything interesting here?”

  “Yes. An atlas! Not just of our continent, but the whole world! It tells us what, if not exactly who, is across the oceans! Can you believe it? And it proves that the northern passage exists and can be navigated, as long as one doesn’t have to worry about krakens.”

  “What about krakens?” Olet said, entering the room with Koesha.

  “They’re the only thing standing in the way of the northern passage. Koesha should be able to get home if Abhi can keep the krakens away. And if it becomes safe, think of what it would mean for trade! What was upstairs?”

  “Proof that Lorson was a liar. This is his house. There’s nobody else coming. There are three bedrooms but only one is lived-in—and it’s the fancy one. The others don’t even have sheets on the beds and the closets are empty.”

  “Toothbrushes?”

  “Ha! Just one.”

  “So strange. I feel like we’re missing something, though.”

  “An explanation, yes,” Olet said.

  “Right, but I mean this house is missing something. It has a room full of teapots and ceramic cups but it doesn’t have something it should have, and it’s bothering me. I just don’t know what it is. And this library. It’s not right.”

  “What do you mean?” Abhi said. “It’s full of books, like a library should be.”

  “Indulge me, okay? Just…look at this room and see if you see anything out of the ordinary, all right? I don’t want to say anything to prejudice your thoughts. Give it a look.”

  Everyone stood in place or turned around, scanning the room. With any luck one of them would be able to identify the bothersome detail that was escaping my consciousness. If they had no luck, they would merely think I was stranger than they already did.

  Before long, Koesha began to circle the room, glaring at the books as she went. She wasn’t reading them, so she must be looking for something else.

  Curragh was the first to notice something, however. “This room isn’t right.”

  “How so?”

  He pointed at the single window with the reading chair. “There should be more than one window. You don’t build a long room like this with only one natural light source. Whole room is out of balance. And stunted.”

  “Stunted?”

  “If this room was supposed to be built symmetrically, then there shouldn’t be a wall right behind you,” Curragh said. “In fact, the missing window this room should have would most likely be placed behind that wall. So there’s—wait.” He strode to the window, pressed his nose to the glass, and looked right. “Yes. There’s another window. There’s another room behind that wall.”

  “There can’t be. There’s no door. Unless the entrance is on the other side.”

  “I can go look,” Abhi volunteered.

  “This thing!” Koesha said, pointing to a book near me. She had progressed to my side of the room and stopped. She often said that exact phrase when she wanted to know the Nentian word for something.

  “Book?” I guessed.

  “This is book,” she said, looking at me for confirmation.

  “Yes.”

  She pointed to another and said, just to make sure, “This is book.”

  “Yes.”

  “All books,” she said, sweeping her arms wide, “have dirt. But not dirt.” She rubbed the tips of her fingers together and blew on them. “Small dirt. What is that thing?”

  “Dust! Small dirt is dust. The books are dusty.”

  “Yes. All books are dusty. But not this book.” She pointed to one above her head—above mine, really, and more easily reached by Olet—which shone with frequent use. The letters on the spine were gold-lined and glinted in the light so that I couldn’t make them out.

  “Olet, can you read the spine of that? I can’t see it.”

  The giant woman strode over, towering over Koesha, and said, “Your pardon.” Koesha scooted to the side and Olet squinted at the volume’s spine. “Not sure if I’m saying this right, but it looks like Zanata Sedam.”

  That meant nothing to me at the time. “Can you pluck it out, please?”

  “Sure.” There was an audible click as she did so and then a creak and groan from the bookcase as it shifted next to me.

  “What the—”

  Koesha clapped in delight and said something happy. Then she shouldered past me, apparently knowing exactly what to do, and hauled on the edge of the bookcase. It was a bit heavy for her, so Olet handed the book to Abhi and pitched in. The bookcase was set on a rail-and-roller system hidden from view up near the ceiling, and a portion of the case kicked out and slid in front of the other, revealing a room behind where Curragh said the window should be, and was.

  “Aha!” I exclaimed. “That’s what was missing! An office! All this stuff to read and nothing to write with.”

  “I have questions,” Olet said.

  “I think we all do,” Abhi said.

  “First, who builds a secret room inside a secret house on a secret island? Second, what kind of secrets require such a room?”

  I clapped my hands and rubbed them together in anticipation. “I can’t wait to find out.” There was a mess of correspondence on the desk and many crates of files. He appeared to favor a sepia ink and an old-fashioned quill. “But thanks to Curragh and Koesha for figuring out it was here. I don’t think we would have otherwise.”

  Koesha hummed happily and said, “You are welcome.”

  Curragh tried to answer Olet’s questions. “Maybe this was a precaution against exactly what happened—him dying and no one being around to protect this place. He simply didn’t want his records to be found.”

  I stepped inside and examined a shelf of knickknacks and goodies mounted above the writing desk. There was sealing wax, boxes of matches, pots of ink, and a mysterious pouch next to a pipe. I opened the pouch, took a whiff, and handed it to Olet. “Tobacco.”

  “Excellent!” Olet said. “Looting this guy is already making my day. In fact, I think I’d better get on that and let you rummage around here. You’ll tell me what you find later?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Abhi, will you take Curragh back downstairs and inventory everything there?”

  “Uh,” Curragh said, obviously trying to think of an excuse he could make to get out of it.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t let the spiders get you,” Abhi rea
ssured him. “Everyone is going to be very polite and respect boundaries.”

  “Good,” Olet said, nodding. “I’m going to take Koesha down to the docks and see what’s there. We’ll be back as soon as we can and compare notes.”

  That left me alone to make sense of the office. I began with the desk, pulling up the comfy chair, which sat a bit high off the ground for me, but that was all right.

  It quickly became clear that I’d need to sort the correspondence into Brynt and the unknown language similar to Uzstašanas. That was a shame, since there was a tantalizing journal written in the unknown language. Nothing in Hathrim, though, at least not immediately visible.

  Once I had a stack of Brynt letters in front of me, I began to peruse them. After reading the one on top, I had to do so with my jaw dropped. They were a mix of Brynt and the other language, addressed to the “Immortal Lorson,” greeting him from Pelemyn and informing him that the pelenaut continued to be foolishly occupied with the well-being of his people, or unaware of their plans, or otherwise unprepared for what was to come. Once I realized that these letters were speaking of the Bone Giant invasion—and, furthermore, that they came from someone in Pelemyn who was obviously a spy—I organized them by date and then attempted to piece together what happened and see if I could figure out who was writing them. The signature, Vjeko, bore no significance to me, but I knew I had to inform the pelenaut quickly if he was not already aware of this traitor in his midst. I also needed to understand how Lorson was involved. Was he the mastermind behind the whole thing?

  The letters followed a frustrating pattern. The greeting and first line about the pelenaut were in Brynt, and the closing was also in Brynt, but the bulk of the letters were in that indecipherable tongue.

  But I did get to an interesting missive listing the Brynt cities attacked in the invasion, with their status written down afterward.

  Festwyf: Destroyed

  Fornyd: Abandoned and then repopulated in the single act of intelligent leadership by the Brynts, so it remains

  Sturföd: Destroyed

  Grynek: Destroyed, but army buried in the Granite Tunnel by Raelechs

  Pelemyn: Remains (tidal mariner sank fleet)

  Gönerled: Destroyed

  Göfyrd: Destroyed, but army subsequently drowned by tidal mariner

  Setyrön: Remains (tidal mariner sank fleet)

  Möllerud: Destroyed

  Hillegöm: Destroyed

  Bennelin: Destroyed, but army subsequently lost to juggernaut

  In sum, we have weakened Brynlön significantly but only destroyed one Raelech city, while losing all forces except for the one at Möllerud and the other two deployed to the north.

  That “we” was damning evidence of espionage. The writer of this letter was an enemy of both Brynlön and Rael, and Lorson—who was obviously not immortal—had been one too.

  This letter had been written before the army at Möllerud had been destroyed. But what forces had been deployed to the north?

  I doubted this communication had been one-way. Lorson had to have written back—but if so, how were the deliveries made? I hardly expected it to be in person. Someone was acting as a courier.

  My best guess, based simply on the location of the island’s docks and the language involved, was that the courier was coming by boat from Brynlön rather than overland. Unless there was some other northern port about which no one knew. A possibility, considering how much we didn’t know already.

  Koesha’s crew was working hard on a seaworthy icebreaker vessel that would leave as soon as it was finished, regardless of the weather, which Abhi was going to enchant against krakens. I knew they were going to go east to prove the feasibility of the northern passage to their people, and I thought perhaps I’d go with them if Tuala or some other courier didn’t return before then. They probably wouldn’t mind dropping me off at Pelemyn first. They could meet the Brynts and take on a cargo of trade goods.

  Plus, as much as I was enchanted by Malath Ashmali and the potential it had, I thought I’d rather not be around firelords anymore. Olet joined my nightmares the night before along with Gorin Mogen and Winthir Kanek, and together they all set me on fire. I felt my skin melting and smelled burning hair before I woke up. I know she’s not like the other two—except that she did burn someone when she got mad enough. She had legitimate cause, unlike Mogen and her father, but still. My imagination was preoccupied with what she could do to me rather than what she would do, and as a result, I got very little rest.

  Perhaps, with some distance and some diverting mysteries to solve, I’d dream of something else.

  I kept going through the letters. Most of it was in that unreadable script, but the last letter was signed off in Brynt in a stunning fashion:

  May you thrive in the power of the Seventh Kenning,

  Vjeko

  I blinked and sat back in the too-big chair, flabbergasted. “So is that…what he did? That thing he did to La Mastik was the Seventh Kenning?”

  I froze, replaying the events of Lorson’s attack in my head to make sure I hadn’t misinterpreted. Then, following a hunch, I went to the crates of documents stacked along the wall and started looking at the files inside. All matched the handwriting in the journal on the desk, and the numbers, at least, were readable. All I paid attention to were the dates.

  It only took a couple of crates to determine that they were arranged in chronological order, about ten years to a crate. I stood back and counted.

  “There are twenty crates,” I breathed, a little terrified at what that meant.

  Cursing in six languages, I began to move them aside to get to where the oldest one should be, on the bottom right.

  The journals in there were yellowed and a bit gnawed on by bugs, the ink faded after so much time, but I could make out the date of the first journal I pulled out, written in the same crabbed hand that filled the pages of Lorson’s latest journal. It was further back than I’d expected; it was more than three hundred years ago.

  Lorson had lived for more than three hundred years. Perhaps here, perhaps elsewhere before moving to the island. And we saw him grow visibly younger while La Mastik grew visibly older. The Seventh Kenning, therefore—at least Lorson’s particular manifestation of it—allowed one to extend their life at the expense of another’s. It’s not that he ever stopped aging; he could just turn back the clock every so often and enjoy unnatural strength. How strange, I thought—or, perhaps, how perfectly logical—that while every other kenning advanced the age of the user, the seventh reversed it.

  Well, at least I knew one of the secrets he was keeping up here. But where was the source of this Seventh Kenning? What god would ever allow such a thing? And how many more monsters like Lorson were out there?

  * * *

  —

  “That’s all for now,” Fintan said, throwing down a pellet and dispelling the seeming of his former self. An upswell of protests rose from Survivor Field, and the bard spoke over them. “But I’m sure you have plenty to talk about, eh? That was a story. And all true. More tomorrow!”

  He grinned and waved as the roar of the crowd grew louder, supremely pleased with himself now that he’d delivered some revelations to which he’d obviously been building for some time. Our great enemy finally had a name—some ancient evil bastard who wished us all dead. But now he was killed instead. I could see people yelling both at Fintan and at one another as they put the pieces of the truth they had together, the grim satisfaction that Lorson was dead and charred to ash, and the utter fury that Vjeko had yet to be identified or caught. So far as they knew, anyway. I had a few more pieces than my fellow citizens, which might be, in this one peculiar instance, the slightest mark in favor of being a spy.

  “Nice!” I said, and waved at the bard from the top of the stairs as he turned,
triumphant, to bask in congratulations. I assumed that Rölly would like to speak to Fintan soon, because that was the very information we’d been asking for—who had Vjeko, the Wraith, been writing to all this time? I wanted to see if the Wraith and Approval Smile would be more willing to answer questions now that their co-conspirator and perhaps leader was dead, and I couldn’t do that with the bard in tow, so I left him behind to enjoy others’ reactions to his revelations.

  Then I recalled that when we had breakfast at Tallynd’s house some days ago, Fintan remarked to Rölly that he had already shared something with him in private about events in the north: Had it been Lorson’s existence? I was willing to bet it had. Which meant Rölly had known all this time and had deliberately waited until now—perhaps for political reasons, perhaps for the purposes of espionage—to reveal it. I didn’t know what game he was playing or why; I just knew enough to realize he was playing a game. Which really meant I shouldn’t try to play. Who knew how deep the secrets ran?

  When I arrived at the palace and asked to see Rölly, I was told in no uncertain terms that he was occupied for the rest of the evening and not seeing anyone until further notice. Same answer when I asked for the lung.

  They were probably doing precisely what I wanted to do: asking the Wraith to talk again. I couldn’t fault them for that.

  Thinking back on the bard’s earlier assurances, I could see how this news, while a bit late, wasn’t crucial to our survival. Lorson had been dead for the winter. But I was positive that the Wraith hadn’t known that any more than we had, because he wouldn’t have used me to send him a letter otherwise.

  Frustrated but having plenty to think on and realizing I would have to be patient, I went home to try to connect the dots.

  An early knock on my door proved to be a pair of longshoremen in Rölly’s livery waiting to deliver an enormous gift basket of jams, marmalades, and preserves for my morning toast, along with a fresh loaf still hot from the oven from my favorite baker.

  The note that came with it was from the pelenaut. He wrote that the reason for the basket would be made clear later in the day, but he wished to thank me on behalf of a grateful nation.