by D. L. Kramer
A knock at the door interrupted them and the door opened to let Adie and Gharald in. Both still looked tired from the battle and clean up after, and Paki noticed now Gharald had gotten a slight cut under the right side of his jaw at some point, though that seemed to be the only wound he'd received.
"The smithy's roof is back up," Gharald said, taking a seat beside Lord Bavol. Adie stood behind Kile's chair.
"They're almost through burning the bodies," Adie said. "Then they should be able to move inside to finish cleaning up."
"We can take care of the inside," Desan assured them. "You've done more than enough already."
"Ye've only got thirty men left here," Kile pointed out. "Ye need the extra manpower right now."
"Valin has never fallen," Desan said evenly. "She has held her own, on her own, since she was built. She doesn't need help now."
Paki glanced at Kile and noticed the contemplative look on his face.
"Don't be a fool," Lord Bavol grumbled. "Our whole purpose here is make sure Valin stays allied with us and doesn't fall into the Archbishop's hands. Her position on this river is too important. If that means staying in those woods for ten years to make sure she gets rebuilt and can hold her own again, then we'll do it."
"Really, it's not necessary," Desan insisted.
"There's still a chance Rial could have gotten out of the river further downstream," Adie suggested. "I think we ought to send scouts several leagues down to see if there's any sign of him."
"I can take care of Rial," Desan sank back into his chair. The impatient tone in his voice couldn't be denied now.
Paki definitely knew something was wrong by the look Mo'ani and Lord Bavol exchanged, he guessed they were starting to think the same thing.
"What's going on here?" Lord Bavol asked.
"There is nothing going on here," Desan said. "I appreciate all your help. We would have been invaded again if you hadn't taken care of the church soldiers outside the hold--" He was interrupted when the door opened again, letting in Lady Bavol and Rial. Desan's eyes flashed, though Paki couldn't be sure what with.
"I believe Lord Valin should be involved in this meeting," Evaine said. "After all, it is his land and keep that's at stake here."
"You're alive?" Desan demanded, trying to make his voice sound relieved. Paki decided he wasn't a very good liar.
"What happened to you?" Lord Bavol asked, eyeing Rial up and down. Rial was still wearing the oversized clothes they had found for him and while Paki expected him to be nervous or even afraid, he seemed unusually calm. Evaine had hold of his arm, but it seemed to be more for convenience than to reassure him.
"I managed to get out of the river," Rial stated, his tone as calm as he looked. "They gave me some clothes up at Lord Bavol's camp." He didn't mention how he got from the river below Valin Hold up to Lord Bavol's camp in the woods. Paki wondered if the calm demeanor stemmed from any coaching Lady Bavol gave him before bringing him into the room.
"Go to your room and get changed into something more appropriate," Desan ordered. "I'll have someone escort you up--"
"That won't be necessary, Desan," Evaine said, meeting Desan's eyes with a steady gaze. "I'd like to hear Lord Valin's account of what happened, and I'm sure the rest of you would as well." She looked from one person to another, then motioned Rial to a chair. "From the beginning," she prompted.
Rial took the chair she had indicated. He looked at Paki first, then around the room at everyone else, pausing for a moment on his uncle before looking at Mo'ani.
"The church guards first showed up about nine weeks ago," Rial started. "At first, they were trying to break down the gates and they started the mine." He paused, and Paki couldn't tell if he was trying to find the nerve to continue or if he just wasn't sure what to say after that. "Go on," Evaine urged him, placing her hands on his shoulders. A movement caught Paki's eye and he realized Adie was readying herself to move quickly in Desan's direction if she had to.
"After the first week," Rial continued. "One of the officers in charge of the siege began talking to my uncle."
"About surrender?" Mo'ani asked. His eyes were studying Rial in much the same way he had studied Paki when Kile first brought him to the Stronghold.
"No," Rial looked up at Paki and Paki nodded at him, then he looked back at Mo'ani. "About allying Valin Hold with the Archbishop," he said quietly.
Everyone turned to Lord Desan, whose eyes gleamed as he stared at his nephew.
"What nonsense," he scoffed. "I told you he had become hysterical. He thought he saw his parents in his dreams."
"It doesn't sound like nonsense to me," Adie said. "You'll forgive me, Lord Desan, but you've always had a problem staying with something if you think it's a lost cause."
"Go on, Rial," Mo'ani looked back at the boy. Rial took a slow breath, looking at his uncle again, then back at everyone else.
"He came to my room, with a sword drawn, intending to kill me," Rial paused to look at everyone again, as if wondering if they'd believe him over Desan. "I didn't know if any of the few Mo'ani I could trust were still alive, so I didn't dare run downstairs."
"Paki?" Evaine asked. "Would you please tell Lord Mo'ani what you and Sewati saw?"
Paki nodded his head, then looked at Mo'ani and Lord Bavol. Desan's gaze shifted to Paki, but Paki found he wasn't afraid of him. Desan's attempt to intimidate him only angered him.
"Bear and I were waiting where you told us to," Paki said, looking at Lord Bavol. "We watched the fight, and just after the church guards surrendered their officers, we saw Lord Valin and Lord Desan appear on the top of the tower. Lord Desan had a sword drawn and seemed to be trying to corner Lord Valin. Trying to get away, Lord Valin jumped from the tower's wall into the river. Lord Desan watched him go under, then left. When we saw him resurface, we rode ahead of him and I pulled him from the river." It seemed like an awfully simple action now, Paki thought.
"Bastard," Lord Bavol growled, turning a black glare at Desan.
"Is that true?" Mo'ani asked Rial. Rial nodded his head slowly.
"Did he say anything to you after you saved him?" Evaine asked Paki.
"He said he had jumped in the river because he thought his chances of surviving that were better than his chances of surviving his uncle's sword," Paki finished.
With a shout of anger, Desan leapt from his chair, lunging for Paki. Paki was surprised as his reflexes kicked in and he easily jumped out of Desan's reach as Kile and Gharald tackled him. Wrestling Desan from the table to the floor, it took both men to hold him down.
"Trying to kill your own nephew and the rightful Lord of Valin Hold for a few pieces of church gold?" Mo'ani asked, his eyes hard. With surprising speed, he had also jumped away from the table when Desan lunged forward. He motioned to Kile and Gharald, and they picked the struggling man up, holding his arms behind his back. "You, yourself, said Valin has never fallen, Desan," Mo'ani said evenly. "Did you think to change that?"
"You can't prove anything," Desan said through clenched teeth.
"Can't we?" Evaine asked, her voice as hard as Mo'ani's eyes. "You don't know Sewati, Lord Desan. He's searching for your copy of that treaty as we speak. If it's here, he'll find it."
To Paki's surprise, Lord Bavol chuckled. "So that's what he's doing?" he asked Kile, then looked at Desan. "You're as good as dead," he promised.
"He won't find anything," Desan growled. "There's no treaty here. Can't you all see that boy's mad?" He motioned to Rial.
"Go lock him someplace," Mo'ani ordered. "And post a guard outside the room."
"There's another office without windows just down the hall," Kile said. "He'll be in there." He and Gharald both pushed Desan forward as he struggled to free himself.
When they were gone, Mo'ani turned to Paki. "It's a good thing you can move fast," he said.
"I didn't know I could," Paki shrugged, slightly shaken by the turn of events.
"Combat reflexes," Lord Bavol said. "Sign of a swordsman."
"Ar
e you all right?" Evaine asked Rial.
Rial nodded his head slightly. "What'll happen now?" he asked.
"Well," Mo'ani sat back down in his chair. "If Bear can find that treaty, what happens to him is up to you. This is your land, and he would be proven a traitor to it."
"What if no one can find the treaty?" Rial asked.
"Then it's still up to you, but the worst thing you could do to him is banish him," Lord Bavol answered. "You have to have proof of treason to kill him."
Rial nodded his head solemnly. Paki found himself pitying the young boy. Rial seemed to have so much weight on his shoulders.
"I think I'm going to go help Bear," Paki said, standing up.
"All right," Mo'ani nodded. "Let me know if you need any help."
"I'll go with you," Adie volunteered.
Paki led the way to the door, opening it for Adie, then closing it behind her. They started down the corridor, heading for the stairs leading to the upper level.
"You handled yourself very well in there," Adie complimented.
Paki shrugged. "Lord Desan just made me angry when he tried to scare me," he said. "As soon as everyone started offering to help and he kept turning them down, I knew for sure Lord Valin was telling the truth."
"You doubted it before?" Adie asked.
"I didn't know," Paki admitted. "I had to see what Lord Desan's reactions were before I could be sure."
Adie smiled as they started up the stairs to look for Bear. "Well, maybe between your common sense, Bear's craftiness and my experience, we can find this treaty."
"I hope so," Paki said. "I also hope Lord Valin doesn't let his emotions stop him from doing what he has to if we can prove his uncle guilty of treason."
"So do I," Adie agreed.
They found Bear in another office on the upper level. Stacks of papers were pulled off nearby shelves and now lay on the floor. Pictures were taken off the walls and now leaned against a chair. Bear was sitting in the chair behind the desk, looking through a wide drawer beside him. On top of the desk sat a variety of quills, an inkpot, a dagger and a stack of paper.
"Any luck?" Adie asked as they entered the room.
"Not yet," Bear answered, digging further into the drawer. "You'll never guess whose office this was though."
Adie picked up one of the papers on the desk and looked at it. "Whose?" she asked.
"Remember that lord--or whatever he was--Mo'ani sent here when we caught him and his wife in the village?" Bear closed the drawer and leaned over, opening another one.
"He was supposed to help rebuild the village," Paki said.
"I remember him," Adie said.
"Apparently Lord Desan made him some sort of advisor," Bear lifted a stack of papers out of the drawer and set them on top of the desk. "I figured since he had moved into such an important position so quickly, if Lord Desan were going to trust anyone with information about this treaty, it would be him."
"Good possibility," Adie agreed. She sat on the corner of the desk and began looking through the stack of papers Bear had just put there.
Paki turned his attention to the first stack. "What about his wife?" he asked, flipping through the papers. "Any sign of her around?"
"Not around here," Bear said. He reached over and removed a piece of parchment from the papers Paki was looking at. He turned it around and handed it to Adie. "She was the rider Desan sent to the Stronghold."
Paki and Adie exchanged looks as Adie took the piece of paper.
"Wasn't she left there almost alone?" Paki asked.
Adie's eyes moved over the parchment. "She did stay there, but she wasn't alone. Meda promised to watch her, and Isak was due there within a day or so. If anything looks wrong, he'll stay and help keep things under control."
"Could either of them really do anything if she was there to cause trouble?" Bear asked.
"Meda could make her read every book in the library," Paki offered. "That's what she does to anyone else who gets into trouble."
Adie smiled. "I understand Meda's father was a weapon smith. She knows her weapons and how to use them. I've never seen Pater Isak with a weapon, but the way he acts around them, I'd be willing to bet he's held a sword or two in his life."
Paki raised an eyebrow at her. "The only weapon I've seen Meda use is her tongue," he said. "At least around Kile."
"His speech has never been his top concern," Adie chuckled.
Paki finished looking through the parchments and set them back onto the desk. None of them had contained anything other than day to day events before the church guards laid siege to Valin. As he moved them back to their original spot, something caught his eye. Picking up the dagger, he examined it.
The hilt was formed in a twist and the quillon ended in snake's heads. The pommel, also, was in the shape of a snake's head. What had caught his attention, though, were the flecks of vibrant blue stones set in the snakes' eyes.
"What is it?" Adie asked.
Paki handed the dagger to her. "The eyes," he pointed out. "It's the same stone as that pendant Mo'ani wanted me to have."
Adie accepted the dagger and studied it. She turned it to the light, trying to read the faint etching on the blade.
"What's it say?" Bear asked.
"I can't quite make it out," Adie turned the dagger, trying to find a better angle to read it. "Maybe Evaine can read it, she has excellent eyes."
"Well, there's nothing here," Bear said. "That's the closest thing we've found."
"Let's take this down and see if anyone can make out what it says." Adie stood up, still trying to read the dagger. "It's definitely not a smith's mark though."
She led Paki and Bear out of the office and back down the stairs. They noticed two Mo'ani outside one of the doors as they made their way down the corridor, and Paki guessed that's where Lord Desan was.
Back in Desan's office, talk had turned to rebuilding Valin Hold.
"Did ye find anythin'?" Kile asked as Paki closed the door behind them.
"We don't know," Bear said. He sat and leaned back in the chair beside Rial, pulling his black hair out so it hung over the back of the chair.
Adie walked around and handed the dagger to Evaine. "There's engraving on the blade," she said. "But it's too faint for me to read."
Evaine accepted the dagger and walked to the window, turning it toward the light. She studied it for several seconds.
"Well?" Lord Bavol asked.
Evaine looked up at her husband for a second, then back to the dagger. "It is very faint," she agreed. "I can just make out a few of the first words. 'Herein' and 'thy path'," she said. Walking away from the window, she handed it back to Adie.
"May I see it?" Rial asked, looking up at Adie. He still seemed to be unusually calm, even for just confronting his uncle.
Adie handed the dagger to him, then sat on his other side. "So what was this about needing a new well?" she asked.
"The well inside the hold's about gone dry," Kile said. "We'll have to look for a new place to dig one."
"With the river nearby, that shouldn't be too hard," Paki guessed.
"The digging of it won't be," Mo'ani added. "The hard part will be getting the villagers to come back down from the forest."
"I'll be stayin' again," Kile said. "Gharald can handle the trainin' at the Stronghold for a couple more years."
"Are you sure?" Gharald asked.
Kile nodded his head. "Besides, sooner or later the Archbishop'll try puttin' another BishopLord in 'ere. I thought I might drop in and give 'im my regards if 'e shows up while I'm 'ere."
Mo'ani shook his head slowly. "Let's not start that circle again," he advised Kile. "I'm keeping several of the men from the Stronghold here," he decided, then looked at Bear. "Tuketu will be going back to Bavol, I'd like Paki to stay here for a while. You can either stay here or go back."
Bear sat up. "So, I can either stay in a burned out hold and break my back rebuilding it, or I can go back and break my back doing other things?"<
br />
"Something like that," Mo'ani nodded his head. "Either way, your next year or so will decide if you're taken as a student."
"Is this what you were all looking for?" Rial's voice cut in on their conversation and everyone turned to look at him. The dagger lay on the table in front of him, it's pommel lay beside it, and in one hand, Rial held a folded, then rolled, piece of parchment. He handed the parchment to Adie, who opened it.
"It's the treaty," she said after reading through it. She passed it to Evaine, then looked back at Rial. "Very good," she said. "How did you know to look inside the dagger?"
Rial started twisting the pommel back onto the dagger. "The blade says 'Herein lies thy path, let none steer thee from it, else this blade end thy life'," he said. "It was given to a BishopLord who once lived outside the valley here. His instructions from the Archbishop were hidden inside it."
"How do ye know that?" Kile asked. "Ye were just a lad when ye're parents were killed, so I doubt they would 'ave told ye."
"My tutor told me about it," Rial explained. "He told me the dagger was taken from the BishopLord when my grandfather threw him off the land. He said no one knew what happened to the dagger, but it might still be around the hold."
"You're a very smart young man," Lord Bavol said. Evaine had given him the treaty and he had read through it then passed it onto Mo'ani.
"This more than proves his guilt," Mo'ani said, handing the treaty to Kile.
"What do I do now?" Rial asked.
"As long as you're convinced of his guilt, you can sentence him to death," Mo'ani said. "Or you can banish him."
"He's the only family I have," Rial said quietly, looking down at the dagger in front of him.
"It's obvious the Archbishop is worth more to him than you are," Lord Bavol said.
"Blood runs thin after a betrayal," Evaine said gently to Rial. "With the exception of Matthios," she smiled faintly. "None of us want to influence your decision, but there are things you must consider." She leaned forward slightly. "Ask yourself if you could ever trust him again, and if you'd want your child left alone with him should anything happen to you when you're older. If you can answer yes to either of those questions, then don't sentence him to death."
