by B. T. Narro
Or perhaps he was ready to give up if I did not agree here and now. I believed him that this was an opportunity, but I knew there had to be more to it than he let on.
“How did you know to find me here?” I asked.
“There are many people who know something about sorcery and are loyal to the king. We received a message from one of them.”
“Someone who isn’t Scarlett.”
“That is correct. She was going to take you down a different path. She cares only about this city and the immediate threats to the people here. I, on the other hand, have the entire kingdom to worry about. If you wish to remain in Tryn for the rest of your foreseeable future and learn from an amateur mage, then you may find her again. But if you wish to be part of something greater, as I sense you do, then you will come with me to the castle and meet the king himself.”
I still had many questions, like what Scarlett meant earlier about Barrett making another powerful enemy. There was a lot to take from that single statement, but I wasn’t going to lie to myself any longer. I knew I would be following this man to the castle. I could ask more questions on the way.
“I’ll pack my things.”
“Excellent,” he said with a victorious smile.
CHAPTER TWO
Barrett’s two guards followed me to the inn where I had been staying. I needed to figure out what I would do after I arrived at the capital. If this didn’t turn out to be the opportunity Barrett had made it out to be, then I needed a plan.
There was a more immediate problem, however: my horse. I had purchased my mare from an older gentleman in Bhode. He’d no longer needed the animal after his daughter married and left the town. She’d been the only one who’d taken care of the horse, a quiet woman who was older than me but who I never got to know very well.
There was another young woman who I spent more time with—a few weeks of confusing, kindled romance in the midst of it—though she had a childlike tantrum and even threw a fork at my head when she found out I was leaving for good. I supposed she thought we would marry, and I do know why. She was the only girl around the same age as me. We never got along that well, though, and I had stopped showing any passion for her when my father had started to become ill.
I would’ve liked to bring my horse with me to Newhaven, but she was quite finicky and unused to the reins of a carriage. When I mentioned her to the guards, I was told that Barrett was already off finding a new home for her. She would be taken care of and given back to me if I wished to return here. I figured that meant he was handing her off to Byron Lawson, the lord of Tryn.
It seemed that Barrett was in a rush when we were about to leave. “Everyone will have already arrived by the time we do,” he told me as he opened the door to the carriage for me. “They will be waiting.”
I had hoped to speak to Barrett more during the trip, but he closed the door and did not join me in the carriage.
The curtains were already drawn when I entered. I started to open them, but Barrett told me, “Keep them shut and stay quiet.” Then I heard him climb into place to drive the carriage.
It would be a full day of travel, with breaks for the horses. Everything I owned was with me. I had a cloak and a warm tunic that had seen me through the harsh winter last year, but most of my other clothing didn’t fit as well as it used to years ago. I wanted to replace some of the tighter shirts, but I only had six buckles and five pennies left. It wasn’t much. A loaf of day-old bread in Tryn was one penny, and the room at the cheap inn I had chosen cost five a night.
Two possessions of mine that would not change hands anytime soon were my two swords. My father had brought them from Tryn to Bhode when he moved there with my mother. They were finely crafted, managed well by us over the years and actually hardly used, I was realizing, as I now thought about them again. I remembered fighting pretend opponents with my sword more often than actually striking anything, and my father hadn’t done much with his.
My father and I had sparred with wooden practice swords instead. They were both worn down worse than some of the old pennies that the townspeople of Bhode traded back and forth. I hadn’t seen a reason to bring them with me, so I’d left them behind, along with a few other things I would never see again, like my father’s clothes. I knew some people cherished mementos of loved ones, but just about everything reminded me of him already. A shirt wasn’t going to change anything. He was still gone.
The hours passed by as I sat alone in the carriage. I was tired of long journeys, even if this one was only going to take a day. I didn’t see myself returning to Tryn anytime soon. I had barely explored the city, but it was the capital and the forest near Newhaven that interested me more. Curdith Forest probably wasn’t any different than the woods in my backyard, but there was history to the southern forest.
Neighbors of mine in Bhode, an older husband and wife who were Formationists, liked to talk about Basael and the demigods. They often used the gods to answer any question my young mind could come up with about sorcery. I remembered one time sitting in front of the old couple’s fireplace, completely entranced, as the man and woman told me story after story about each of the demigods. My father had ridden out of town that day, I can’t remember why. But I would never forget how excited I was to tell him everything I had learned.
My father had a thick beard that, when he frowned, crinkled in a way that sapped my gleeful wonder like wrapping me in a wet towel. He’d told me that none of these stories could be taken as fact and that I should forget them. He also made sure to leave me with different neighbors the next time he had to go somewhere alone, which wasn’t very often.
I’d spent most of my days beside my father, and I did forget all of the tales about Basael and his demigods, except for one important thing. It was something even my father agreed to be fact.
Very long ago, all elves used to live in Curdith Forest, but something monumental flew down from the stars and struck the middle of the forest. The destruction was so great that it was called the Day of Death. The small number of elves who survived traveled south and made a new home far away, in Evesfer. They still lived there, in a forest city called Dreil, where humans were not welcome.
After the Day of Death, Curdith Forest was destroyed. It’s been said that there is still a great crater in the center of the forest, but no one has seen it for lifetimes. These days, the forest was dense with strange trees that could not be found anywhere else on Dorrinthal, but it was really the bloodthirsty beasts of the forest that prevented anyone from making their way to the crater.
It was my father who told me all of this, which led me to believe even now that it had to be true. Gage didn’t believe in these types of events unless he had good reason. It was Curdith Forest and the strange things he had seen there that made him and my mother choose to travel away from it and raise me in a place they deemed to be safe. That, and the surge of illegal sorcery. At least that’s what he’d told me. Whenever I asked more about this illegal sorcery, he said he didn’t know anything about it, only that the people who used it were dangerous. It didn’t seem like my father to run from something he didn’t understand, but eventually I stopped asking about it.
Their deaths, both of which I believe were preventable at the hands of a good healer, demonstrated to me just how wrong they were about moving for reasons of safety. It is not safer to be so far removed from the rest of the world unless you believe man to be inherently dangerous. It was one subject in which my father and I always disagreed. He told me war was inevitable. If two men with crowns atop their heads wanted to send thousands of soldiers at each other, there was no stopping them.
He didn’t live long enough to hear about the rebellion. The people of Lycast had stood up to and even killed their own king when he’d tried to send them off to war. Barrett had mentioned that the current king had led this rebellion to fruition. I wondered if my father had heard of this man, Nykal Lennox.
We rode through the night. I made a pillow out of my clothing and
slept through most of it.
I awoke later in the morning as we came to a stop.
“Jon, you may leave the carriage,” Barrett announced.
I heard the sound of a river nearby. I opened the carriage door and had to shield my eyes from the morning sun. Winter was coming, and yet there was no sign of it that I could feel. By now in Bhode, there was a chill to the air that the sun could not break. But here, the only thing in the air was the fresh smell of grass, and water, and…horse manure. I wrinkled my nose as I glanced at one of the animals relieving itself.
“You may rinse your face in the river if you wish,” Barrett said. “We’ll arrive in a few more hours. Your breakfast can be eaten in the cariole, but don’t make a mess.”
I looked south with my hand over my eyes. The road to Newhaven was clear. Strewn across the land were large farms, where horses and cattle grazed. I thought I could spot Newhaven near the coast, a speck of gray between the rolling hills.
I strolled toward the river with a smile on my face. It was a lovely day. This weather was rare in Bhode during this time of the year.
“Be quick,” Barrett called after me.
I knelt down over the stream of clear water and washed up. I was just about done when Barrett started calling to me again.
“Come back. Quickly! Come on!”
With cold water dripping down my face, I hurried back toward the carriage. “What’s wrong?”
“Quiet. Get in.” He held the door open.
I looked around with worry.
“Get in!” he repeated.
I saw one woman waving to us from no less than a hundred yards away. She had come out of her farmhouse and spotted us.
“What? You’re worried about her?”
One of the guards, who still wore much of his steel armor, started to push me into the open carriage.
“All right!” I said. “I’m getting in.”
The guard let go and allowed me to step into the cariole on my own. I turned around before they shut the door.
“What are you worried about?”
But Barrett closed the door abruptly, forcing my head back.
“You are not to be seen by anyone,” Barrett said from outside. “It will be explained later.”
But plenty of people in Tryn had seen me speaking with Barrett and then leaving in one of his carriages. I supposed it was the people around Newhaven whose gazes he feared more. I didn’t understand why, but I had a lot of time to figure it out.
The most dangerous answer was that he planned to do something to me in which witnesses would be a problem. But if something was going to happen it would’ve been during the night, away from both cities. Barrett didn’t mean to harm me.
It was probably what I had assumed from the beginning. He planned to use me somehow, but why could I not be seen if that was the case? Probably because whatever he wanted me to do was not something he wanted people to know about. There was some solace in the idea that there were seven others just like me who I would meet soon. This was an opportunity for all of us, Barrett had said. It might’ve been foolish to think so, but I believed him, at least for now.
Really, anything was an opportunity compared to living out the rest of my life in Bhode, where I was likely to marry a woman who would throw utensils at me when she became upset.
The ride resumed as I took the cloth napkin off my awaiting breakfast. It was a bowl of beans and thick slices of brown bread. I ate quickly and hungrily, using my recently filled water pouch to wash it down.
When I was done, I shut my eyes and focused on this buzzing energy within my body. It was this that had inspired me to be where I was now—on my way to the capital with nothing to turn back to. “Upper F,” Barrett had called it. But that was just the description of it in the language of spells. It meant nothing specific except for one very important thing. It really had to do with the magical arts.
I was tempted to open the curtains when I heard the city sounds of voices and foot patter, but part of me had grown to trust that Barrett knew what he was doing. He had found me in Tryn, after all, and he had come quite far for me. This matter had to be of some importance.
“Councilman,” said someone ahead of our stopped carriage.
“Open the gate,” Barrett ordered.
I heard iron groaning, and soon we were heading right through the city. I could hear it all around me, curious voices as to who was in the carriage. I could imagine their reaction if they were told the truth. Why, it’s the great Jon Oklar of Bhode!
The image of their confused faces lifted a chuckle out of my stomach.
Some people recognized Barrett driving the carriage, the salutation “councilman” ringing out here and there. I imagined busy men and women stopping along the crowded streets to bow. I even heard a group of children.
“Look it’s the king’s councilman!”
“Councilman Barrett!”
“Hello, young lads.”
After we passed, one chirped up, “He spoke to me!”
“No, he was looking at me!”
There was no fear in their voices, a complete contrast to the people of Tryn. There was one similarity between them, however. All denizens reacted to Barrett as if he could alter the course of their lives on a whim. I wondered which city had the more accurate view of him.
I supposed I would find out soon.
CHAPTER THREE
Eventually the carriage stopped. The loud creaking and groaning of something large began moving in front of us. I knew little about castles, but I figured it had to be a drawbridge.
My suspicion was confirmed when it came to rest with a deep thud and our carriage started up once again. But shortly after, we stopped. I waited as I listened to murmured voices.
I heard the drawbridge lifting back up to close behind me. Eventually, I made out Barrett hopping down from the driver’s seat. He finally opened the door to the cariole.
The massive walls of the castle on either side of us draped us in shadow. I didn’t quite understand where we were. We had crossed over the drawbridge, which now rested in its vertical position and blocked entrance to the castle, but on the other side was just another wall, this one as tall and thick as the outer stone barricade.
It was only after Barrett led me around the carriage that I saw a gate of sorts. It was arced like it could serve as an entrance, but beams of iron crossed over one another, barring any passage. I didn’t see how they could be moved.
“This is a portcullis,” Barrett explained.
Just then, it began to lift up and disappear into the arch high above. There must’ve been a crank and a wheel somewhere.
Marvelous, I thought.
When it had nearly disappeared into the arc of the passageway, I followed him through where I saw a large guard huffing near the wheel I had predicted.
The guard lowered his head before the councilman as Barrett ignored and walked past him. I offered my thanks, though the guard only looked at me curiously, his eyes drifting down to the old sack of my belongings in my hand and my two sheathed swords in my other. Apparently, even this guard within the castle had no idea what someone like me would be doing here.
I found myself walking behind Barrett through a large courtyard. There was a well off to my left side with a decorative statue atop it of what appeared to be a woman in armor. I figured the statue represented someone relevant to the history of Lycast, but I had no clue who it was. The castle keep had to be the tall structure of stone directly across the courtyard. I figured the king spent most of his time in there. I wondered if I might see him through one of the windows, but I didn’t catch a glimpse of anyone inside as I followed Barrett toward it.
The inner wall of the castle wrapped all the way around the courtyard, enclosing the keep and a number of buildings built with wood. The largest of them was just left of the keep. I had heard the term great hall before and figured this was the one. It was three stories tall, still shorter than the keep, but it was so long that a hundred
people could probably dance on its first floor without fear of bumping into each other. I had no doubt that important visitors to the king would visit, if not sleep in, the great hall.
On the other side of the keep was a more modest structure that resembled a massive inn. It was the third largest building and probably served as apartments for the castle workers. I could not guess what the other structures had within them, and my mind was too preoccupied to wonder. I wanted to figure out why this whole place was strangely quiet.
There was no one else in the courtyard besides me, Barrett, and the guard who’d let us through the portcullis. The two guards who had come with Barrett to collect me from Tryn had stayed back to stow the horses and carriage, most likely storing them somewhere outside the inner wall but within the outer one. I hadn’t seen the stables, but this castle in its entirety was huge.
Although it was magnificent, I felt myself growing nervous as I looked around. I had too many questions and curiosities to appreciate the massive size of the buildings or the sheer amount of wealth on display. I had heard that the castle had a dungeon underneath it where prisoners were kept. The keep, out of all the structures in front of me, seemed the most likely to be connected to an underground dungeon because it was the only one made out of stone.
Barrett led me toward the building to the right of the keep, which I had figured was the apartments of the castle workers and possibly the guards. It was two stories tall, with windows of glass that were in common with every structure here. The roof was made of slate tiles, an expensive and sturdy material you’d never see in Bhode and was rare even in Tryn.
There was one entrance to the large apartment building. The inner wall encapsulating the courtyard seemed to block access to the backside of each structure. The door was shut but not locked. Barrett pushed it open and walked in first. Then he waited by the door like a gentleman for me to enter so he could close it after me. If he was acting polite to alleviate my concerns, then it was working.
