by Sever Bronny
Chaska leaned closer, voice a nervous murmur. “I’m afraid she’ll … break up with me if I say anything like that.”
“All you can be is honest. That’s all we can all hope for.” Augum shrugged, not really meaning to be so off-hand about it. “I always thought loving someone meant accepting them as exactly who they are.” He had picked up the idea from Sir Westwood’s books. The old knight had loved books and encouraged him to read. Augum had read many wonderful tales and missed reading very much. And he loved all the stories, but most especially those glorious ones about adventure and love and mystery and danger—
“Right. Uh, thanks …” Chaska got up, looking as dejected as before. “Need to catch up on some sleep,” he muttered before striding upstairs.
Augum wondered if he had perhaps been hoping to hear something else. Unfortunately, he was emotionally exhausted and too distracted by the shadow to be of any more help.
Mr. Goss continued to quietly sit near. Augum felt a flush of shame that he did not have the courage to tell the man about the shadows.
Charissa, who had broken off a terse conversation with Bowlander, began to stride over. Her eyes were red and she was holding herself, but the last thing Augum felt like doing was talking to her. “Excuse me—” he blurted before she even opened her mouth. He strode to one of the side doors, hoping for the shadow to follow him. He had to get it over with already, he had to confront it. Villagers bowed as he passed.
“Prince Augum—”
“May the Unnameables light your path, Your Royal Highness—”
Augum inclined his head as he went, feeling awful for his rudeness, but his focus was on that shadow, a shadow that silently stalked him like a creature from one of Sir Westwood’s books about mythical monsters.
He slipped through the door and hurried on past the servant quarters filled with tired people who had stayed up late to help in the search, or perhaps to help clean the party up. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the shadow of Erika Scarson rapidly gliding after him. He continued on, ducking under the rope that had been placed above the cellar steps, prohibiting entry to all but servants.
“Shyneo,” he said, lighting his palm as he descended. The torchlight down there was dim, but at least the place was removed enough to allow for a confrontation without arising too much suspicion. Last thing he wanted was for everyone to think him crazy.
He strode by the columns, by the dark gates to the dungeon and the crypt, with the iron-worked letter A … and turned in the opposite corner, flaring his five lightning rings.
Erica Scarson the specter glided over, dark robe fluttering. “You are amusing me, dear nephew.”
“I’m not your nephew.” How many times did he have to go through this stupidity?
She floated steps away, swaying like a cobra. “No, you’re not. You murdered my nephew.”
“Robin’s past came to haunt him. He was slain by those he had murdered.”
“As so shall you be,” came the deadly whisper. “As so shall you be …” In a flash, she shot forth, slashing at him with ridiculously long claw-like fingernails. He raised his shield before shoving at the air. “BAKA!” making her disappear in a whoosh.
Augum glanced around, hearing his five stripes crackle around his arm. Erika laughed, the sound reverberating distantly. Where was she? He strode to the sound, finding himself facing the tall double gate to the crypt. She was inside, floating somewhere among the stone monoliths and sarcophagi.
“Your entire ancestral line lies here,” she said, voice echoing from amongst the tombs. “And you shall join them, if there’s anything left of you to bury …”
“Are you alive?” he asked. The question had been on his mind since facing those specters last night. “Did you die in Antioc? How can this be? What are you?”
The ethereal voice came from the darkness. “I am all-knowing revenge, Augum. I will be with you for all eternity. And every time you cast Annocronomus Tempusari, I shall strengthen. Did you think you could get away with casting such a powerful spell without repercussions? Hmm, dear boy?”
Augum felt weak. There was simply no way he could handle a lifetime of torment like this. No way.
“And the others will come for you too,” Erika’s voice echoed, slowly fading. “Oh yes, and they shall want their revenge as well. And they shall have it. Madness, Augum Stone, is your destiny now. If you live, you will know madness as only the dead know it …” The voice died out, bouncing from crypt to crypt, deep in that ancient darkness where his ancestors lay in eternal sleep.
An Ancient Puzzle
Augum glanced about the vast and dark cellar. Wherever he looked, he could swear he saw a shadow dip out of sight just in time. Was this his life now? Was this permanent? If so, Annocronomus Tempusari’s consequences and side effects were not worth the price at all.
But then after giving it more thought, he realized some things were worth the price. Solia. Solia was worth the price. As were the lives of his friends. He would bear it and bear it silently, but he would also warn the girls. And speak to Mrs. Stone. Yes, he would speak to her as soon as possible on the side effects of the spell. How were they affecting her? Was she seeing shadows too? He had to know. He had to know!
But for now, while he was down here in the cellar, he might as well check out the runic clue. He strolled over to the bronze servants’ plaque with all the castle runes, barely noticing the floor had been swept. Mrs. Stone had already trained the servants on the basic ones—torchlight, heating, ovens, etc. He searched about, finally finding the letters DRC tucked up in a corner of the plaque.
“Dominus runesermo castla,” he whispered reverently. “The master runeword to the castle …”
Mrs. Stone mentioned the shape of the runeword—the actual etched enclosure the letters DRC rested in—as being the clue, but Augum couldn’t make any sense of it. The letters had been etched over a checkered rectangle, with every other square filled in. That could mean anything, a game board, a set of rooms, or—
He squinted and brought his face close. There was the tiniest mark in one of the squares, so tiny it was nothing more than a speck. But as Augum examined it even closer, he realized it was a letter, specifically an X. A thrill ran through his being. Maybe that’s why the pattern made no sense to Mrs. Stone—her vision was too poor to see the X!
He counted the tiny squares. Three by four, twelve in total, half of which were filled in. But what did it mean? He stepped back, crossed his arms, and tilted his head in thought. What did it look like?
“A floor,” he blurted, uncrossing his arms. “That’s a top-down view of a floor!”
“Bravo, you idiot,” echoed a nearby sneering voice.
Augum didn’t bother turning around. “Took you long enough.”
“It’s only just begun, gutterborn.”
“I’m busy right now.”
“ ‘I’m busy right now’,” Robin Scarson mocked.
Augum’s fists curled. Why can’t anything stay dead, damn it? “Want your nose broken again? Or another boot to the face?” He was feeling immature, but relished that moment in the arena when the entire crowd saw him kick Robin’s face in.
“Ooo, I’m scared.” Robin snorted a laugh, the sound garbled, as if there was blood in his mouth. Augum recalled his throat being slit by Mya.
“Can’t seem to grow up even after death, huh?” Augum spat. And he couldn’t grow up while still living, it seemed.
“It’ll be infinitely more fun tormenting you. Now you’ve entered my world, gutterborn. And to think they call you ‘Prince’. What a jape. You’re as stupid and cowardly as the day—”
Augum whirled about, slamming his wrists together. “ANNIHILO!” A thick bolt of lightning connected with a pillar, cracking it.
There was nobody there except for a laughing voice, chortling, “Moron …”
Augum wondered how Robin knew he was a prince. Were ghosts really “all-knowing”? Where these shadows even ghosts, or something else alto
gether?
“And keep yourself disappeared,” Augum muttered, returning his attention to the clue. It had to be a room in the castle, one specifically with three by four tiles, or twelve total. Most of the castle had checkered marble flooring, but he couldn’t recall seeing a room with exactly twelve tiles. That kind of room would be rather small, something like …
A servant room.
“You’ll never find it,” Robin’s singing voice echoed.
“Shut up,” Augum snapped as he hurried off, excited by the prospect of tracking down an ancient clue and eager to keep his mind off the darting shadows that trailed him wherever he went.
He started with the kitchen above, feeling awkward as he glanced about the dingy floors while servants worked, not least of whom was Priya, Jengo’s betrothed. The mostly young girls and boys addressed him by title while bowing or curtsying, exchanging curious looks.
“Uh, hello,” he said, feeling awkward. Although he was a prince in their eyes, most of his life he thought himself gutterborn. Yet their lot in life was service. Every one of them, as far as he knew, were Ordinaries, the divide never more so pronounced than here in one of the grubbiest rooms of the castle. Whereas he was studying advanced arcanery, able to move things with his mind and even reverse the flow of time, they scrubbed pots and pans and cooked and cleaned. And some of them were the same age as him. Was the yawning divide bridgeable? Could he ever play a game with them and feel equal? It was hard to reconcile it all in his mind. Even standing there in the kitchen, he felt immature and inexperienced and full of pretention. “Giving airs” as the highborn would say.
“Is there anything we can help Prince Augum find?” Priya asked, never raising her eyes. She was Head Cook and had stopped preparing the next meal to pay her respects, as had they all.
For a moment he just gaped stupidly as they stood there, hands folded in front of their service aprons, eyes meekly on the floor. All “knew their place” and awaited his wishes. Augum wanted nothing more than to tell them to relax and treat him as a fellow Ordinary. But the divide would remain. Even if he’d been a servant, he’d still be a warlock. As Sir Westwood used to say, “Sithesia never has and never will be a fair place. No kingdom treats its citizens well. No kingdom is perfect. All kings have subjects, all castles have servants. Remember that well, young Augum.”
Priya glanced up with a worried expression. “Prince Augum?”
It occurred to him he was keeping them from their duties. “Sorry to intrude,” he mumbled before striding out of there as if the place was on fire. That unsettling feeling of being unhinged dug itself in deeper like a stubborn thorn. He did not enjoy being a prince if it meant division. If he was going to become the castellan of this castle, he needed to reconcile that class divide somehow. He needed to transcend it.
If he survived what was to come, that is. For now, he was most ill-equipped to even ponder such difficult things.
He next went to the servants’ corridor on the east side of the castle, where he dipped his head into some of the rooms (the ones that were open), peering at the floor and counting, searching for that elusive combination of three by four tiles. Except none of these matched the clue—even the servant rooms were too big. He tried some of the tiny service rooms, but found them to be bare stone flooring.
“Can I be of assistance, Your Royal Highness?”
Augum turned to see a frightfully pale middle-aged man that he momentarily mistook as a specter. “Oh. No, thank you, Clayborne.”
“Very well. Perhaps the prince would find the accommodations in the upper castle a touch more … inviting.” Annelise and Gabe’s father stared with his pink eyes. The message was loud and clear—he was intruding on their space.
“Excuse me,” Augum said, hurrying off.
Clayborne gave a short, stiff bow. “Your Highness.”
Instead of returning to the foyer, Augum ducked through a small cobbled entranceway at the end of the hall into the dark and musty confines of a battlement, where he knew he’d find a spiral staircase. Inside, he shone his blue palm light around the ancient circular room. There were no windows but it had a high stone ceiling brimming with old cobwebs. Several ransacked trunks lay toppled on the stone ground, dusty and forlorn for who knew how long. And there, near one wall, as in every battlement, was an ancient iron-worked spiral staircase that led below to the cellar, as well as all the way up to the outside terrace minarets on Augum’s floor. This was, he guessed, how the servants and guards traveled about the castle in olden times.
“His Malevolence is going to slaughter the three of you maggots like cattle,” Robin gurgled from a dark recess.
Augum, who was about to start climbing the staircase, allowed his foot to hover in the air above a step. “How could you know that?” he asked suspiciously. “How could you know we’re planning on facing him together?”
“All-knowing, gutterborn, get used to it.”
Augum raised his shining palm in the direction of the corner, but he saw nothing there except cobwebs. He rubbed his forehead in exasperation before resuming the ascent, unable to make sense of any of it. Worse, that niggling feeling that he really was losing his mind ate away at the back of his troubled mind.
He went from floor to floor, searching every large closet and storage room, but even if there were tiles, none matched up to the three by four squares he needed. One particular door he opened revealed a mammoth beast of a man—Beef, as the bandits had called him—who immediately lunged at Augum, forcing him to defend himself.
“Panjita thinks His Highness has deranged himself from all that witchery,” Ms. Singh said.
Augum caught himself fighting nothing at all. He gaped at the empty room before him.
“Perhaps His Royal Highness should spend less time fighting shadows and more time concentrating on saving the kingdom, as is his supposed charge.”
“Yes, Ms. Singh,” he mumbled, feeling stupid. “Excuse me,” and made his way past her.
“Harrumph,” she said, waddling off, cane tapping at the ground.
Augum sighed before searching on. He even went to the ruined library, where he stood before the giant and majestic round stained glass window, staring out at the sprawling Ravenwood. Somewhere down there Mrs. Stone was casting spells and tiring herself out. He raised his chin, eyes on the horizon. And somewhere out there, his father was plotting. But who would strike first?
Augum turned his back to the window, gazing at the many destroyed books and loose parchment stacked in teetering piles. The floor had been swept, the damaged books placed back onto the shelves, the torn parchment pages stacked in neat bundles bound with rope for future arcane repairing. He fondly recalled repairing the two library tables, the chairs and that dusty desk with Bridget and Leera last year, back when they were first learning the spell.
“Those times are gone,” Erika hissed from behind him.
“Leave me alone.”
“It’s best you get used to me, the fun’s only just begun, kiddo.”
Augum turned but found nobody there. Sighing, he paced along the intricately carved lion-motif bookshelves, pondering the clue. Rectangle of twelve squares. Three by four. The tiniest X carefully etched into one square. What did it mean?
Most of the books were in the old tongue, hardly readable. Reading them would be like talking to Fentwick. Wouldst thou fancy a duel, mine lord? and so on. He didn’t have a millennium to go through them all, let alone repair them first, for nearly all were moldy and torn. The good ones had been stolen.
His eyes fell upon a particular book titled Principus Arithmetikus. He idly plucked it off the shelf and opened it, finding most of its pages torn or missing.
“But I could repair one,” he said aloud.
“If ye ain’t too daft, ye darn witch,” Sal the country bandit muttered.
Augum saw the flash of a cleaver and instantly raised his shield. There was a distinct thunk, yet when he allowed his shield to disappear, Sal was gone. He shivered thinking of th
e pain a cleaver slice would have done.
Augum smacked his fist into his knee in frustration. Please, couldn’t they just leave him alone for a short while!
He forced himself to calm down with a series of deep breaths, then splayed his hands over the old tome. “Apreyo.” Small pieces of parchment zoomed from the piles, reforming with the book, until it was whole again. He placed his back to the wall to examine it in safety, keeping a wary eye out. The tome was ancient, hundreds of years old, maybe even a thousand, judging by the faded and crude coloring. And it was fist thick, with some of the tiniest handwriting Augum had ever seen. Yet it was also precise, with tiny charts and graphs and figures to demonstrate mathematical principles. Sir Westwood had taught him basic arithmetic, so some of it made sense.
He enjoyed flipping through the first few chapters, recognizing some of the functions. But then a particular chart caught his eye. It presented a large rectangle within which were smaller and smaller rectangles, each proportional to the last. He read the inscription underneath.
“ ‘Rectangula principus au rationa.’ ” He frowned, puzzling over what it meant. Then he got it. “It’s talking about ratios,” he whispered to himself. His mind began connecting the web of clues. Atrius Arinthian was fond of arithmetic, he remembered that much. It was one of the things he insisted on teaching his children, giving it almost as much weight as arcanery. Mrs. Stone had mentioned something about the master runeword being accessible only to a true descendant of the Arinthian line. Would that descendant have to know arithmetic? Was that part of the requirements? If so, then …
“You is too dumb to figure it out, gutterborn,” fat Dap drawled. “How’s about a punch to that snotling face?”
