Transcendent (Ascendant Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  Grimla took off his hat and rubbed the back of his neck, as if he were actually pondering how best to bring the mine back to operation. What he was really doing was wondering what his favorite tavern in the town would be serving for lunch. Roast chicken would be nice; he was quite hungry. “The first thing you should do is hire a different engineer. I intend to seek a job in another mine.”

  “What?!” The supervisor exploded angrily.

  Grimla held up his hands. “I know how to extract metals from rock, that’s my training. A mess like this,” he pointed to the mine shaft, “you need experts. A team of them. If the mine will soon be flooded to the third level, if could take a year, or more, before you can dig an ounce of gold from under this mountain.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Koren lifted his bag onto a shoulder, and stepped down off the carriage. This was as far north as he could go along the river; from here he needed to go west, and over land. From Istandol, he had taken passage on a boat that was going up the river; near it mouth, the river was wide enough that a boat could use the prevailing westerly winds to sail north, and then the river opened into a vast inland sea. It took the boat most of a week, beating back and forth against contrary winds, to reach the other side. That was as far as that boat could go, for there were waterfalls and rapids on the river north of the freshwater sea. A carriage took him past the rapids, then he boarded another boat to cross a large lake that was almost a sea by itself. From one side of that lake, he couldn’t see the other shore, and it would take the boat three days get to across. He stowed his single small bag of gear in a cubbyhole and stood by the railing, relaxing and watching the boat’s crew go about the business of getting the single-masted boat ready to depart. He knew enough about sailing to study the way the mast and sails were rigged. Everything on the boat looked old and tired; the sails were frequently patched, and ropes had been spliced again and again. Still, to his inexperienced eye, the boat was well cared for by the crew, and he was confident it could handle any storm they might encounter out on the lake. He thought. He’d never before seen a lake so big that the other side was over the horizon. Shouldn’t a body of water so big be called a ‘sea’, rather than a mere ‘lake’, he asked himself. The question reminded Koren of how little he knew about the world, a world he had seen more of in the past two years than in all his previous life. A life that had been confined to Crebbs Ford, and a few miles around that tiny village.

  Koren resisted the temptation to tie knots in extra pieces of rope that were laying around; knots that only a sailor would use. Instead, he relaxed, leaning over the rail as a landsman would do. As he himself did, when he first came aboard the Lady Hildegard, before the real sailors trained him properly. He dangled over the railing, casually watching fish swimming around the mussel-encrusted pilings of the pier, and people on the dock. His attention was drawn to a coach rapidly making its way along the dock, with the driver cursing people to get out of the way. Where was the coach going, Koren asked himself? The dock ended shortly after the ship he was on; past his ship, the only thing on the dock was a beat-up fishing boat that was having a new mast fitted. That, and stacked barrels that were waiting to be packed with dried and salted fish. Koren watched the coach rocking and lurching its way along the dock with a mixture of curiosity and amusement; part of him was hoping the foolish coach driver did not realize the dock soon ended, and the coach would go splashing into the water. Although, he would feel bad for the horses, and he would feel obligated to jump into the chilly water with a knife to cut the horses loose, so his amusement faded and he was frowning when the coach skidded to a stop opposite the ship he was on. Then he became briefly amused as a well-dressed but queasy looking nobleman stepped unsteadily out of the coach, swaying on the dock like he was going to be sick. “Damn fool driver!” The man exclaimed. “Ahoy the ship!” He waved toward Koren. “Hold! Hold the ship! I am coming aboard!” Then, to Koren’s consternation, the man pointed toward Koren. “Boy! You there, boy! Come here, I need help with my luggage.”

  Koren looked to both sides, then behind him. Was the man speaking to him?

  “You! Idiot boy, come here!” The man demanded.

  Koren realized that the man thought he was part of the ship’s crew. And Koren had gotten his fill of serving noblemen while he was in the royal castle. If he helped the nobleman with his luggage, the man would of course not offer to pay him; royalty rarely did. And the man would expect Koren to be at his beck and call throughout the three-day voyage. Pointing to himself, Koren replied “I’m not part of the crew. I’m a passenger,” and he held up his pouch of coins and rattled it.

  However many coins he had in the small leather pouch, and the amount was no insubstantial, it did not compare to the enjoyment he got from seeing the expression on the man’s face. Seeing that was beyond any price. As the man stood fuming, red-faced, Koren casually strolled along the ship’s railing, away from the gangway.

  His amusement was not to last, for as two sailors from the ship hustled down the gangway to assist the man with the luggage that was piled high atop the coach, two other men came around from the far side of the coach. On their jackets, they wore the castle-and-sword symbol of the Royal Army of Tarador.

  Koren was trapped. He could not now get off the ship, having already paid for passage and stowed his meager possessions. It would look terribly suspicious, and attract unwanted attention, for him to get off the ship now. Instead, as he watched the two Royal Army soldiers help the sailors get the heavy luggage down off the coach, he retreated toward the stern of the ship, out of the way and hopefully out of mind.

  Koren was able to keep away from the nobleman, who he learned was Baron Wicksfeld of Rellanon, for the first two days. Rather than taking his meals with the other dozen passengers, Koren had made friends with the ship’s crew, having told them that he was a sailor himself. He enjoyed eating meals with the common sailors, swapping stories of voyages, although Koren did not mention the encounter with pirates. And because he quickly learned that sailors on the lake assumed that salt-water sailors looked down on them, Koren had expressed admiration for the excellent condition of their little ship, and how finely it sailed across lake waters that he found to be surprisingly rough. The crew found Koren to be an eager listener to the stories they had all told a hundred times, and they regaled him with tales of terrible storms on the lake, of ships being out on the lake too late in the season and becoming trapped in ice, and of strange monsters that supposedly lived under the cold, deep and dark waters of the lake. Listening to the sailors, and paying attention as they showed him the finer points of handling their little ship on the vast lake, was a pleasant way to pass the time during the otherwise dull voyage.

  Then, the second afternoon, a violent thunderstorm swept across the lake toward them, and Koren was obliged to go below with the other passengers. In the cramped wardroom, he was unable to avoid meeting the two Royal Army soldiers. One of them handed Koren a hunk of rough bread with sausage and cheese.

  “Oh, no, thank you.” Koren protested, but the man insisted.

  “Go ahead, take it. We owe you,” he said with a grin at the other soldier.

  “Um, thank you,” Koren mumbled.

  The soldier poured himself a mug of wine, and waved the bottle toward Koren, but Koren shook his head. The man laughed. “We’ve been stuck babysitting Baron Wicksfeld for the past four months, and we’re heartily sick of it. He was on a diplomatic mission to Krakendale,” one of the minor kingdoms that lay between Tarador and the rugged mountains that led toward the Indus Empire. “You, young man, took His Lordship down a notch, and I’d give a week’s pay to see that again!”

  “Same here!” The other soldier laughed. “His Lordship has been confined to his cabin, sick as a dog and mewling like a baby since we left the dock. And I think half of what has made him sick, was a cheeky young man who refused His Lordship’s most urgent request.”

  The first soldier offered a hand to shake. “John Devero,” he said
.

  Koren shook the man’s hand, and also the other soldier, named Steve Nygard. Koren had known a family named Nygard in tiny Crebbs Ford, and he almost blurted out the fact, before reminding himself that he was no longer Koren Bladewell of Crebbs Ford. “Kedrun Dartenon,” he lied, using the name of a soldier who had died during the battle of Longshire. A soldier who had died to protect Koren.

  “Where are you from, Kedrun?” Devero asked.

  This was a question Koren had feared, and a question he had prepared for. He could not say he was from Winterthur province, for he might encounter someone also from that area of Tarador. With his northern accent, he could not claim to be from any southern province, so he had decided to say he was from LeVanne. He had walked through LeVanne, although in his time there, he had tried his best to avoid meeting or being seen by people. “Durstwell, in LeVanne,” Koren said, and hoped that would be the end of it. Durstwell was a town large enough that, if he met someone who also claimed to be from there, Koren could reasonably claim not to be familiar with that family. Durstwell was also where major east-west and north-south roads crossed, so if he was pressed by a skeptical inquisitor, he could claim that his family were roving merchants, who only used Durstwell as a home base.

  “Durstwell!” Nygard said excitedly. “I have a cousin from near there. Tell me,” he looked at his companion and reached for the wine bottle.

  Koren tensed. If either of the soldiers caught him in a lie, he could be in great trouble. He was still dressed in sailor fashion, his hair was longer, his skin tanned by long days at sea under the bright sun of the South Isles, and he tried to act older than his few years. So he hoped that his appearance, and the passage of time, would not have the Royal Army wondering if the young man in front of them could be the Koren Bladewell they had been ordered to find. There was no reason for the two Royal Army soldiers to even imagine that the young sailor they were talking with might be the dangerous, traitorous jinx who almost killed the crown princess.

  He needed a lie, a good one, and he had chosen the best lie he had been able to think of. Still, he tensed, waiting for Nygard’s question.

  The soldier did not seem to be in any hurry, for he took his time pouring wine, bracing himself against the table, lest he spill wine due to the ship’s rocking in the storm. “Tell me, what have you heard about this hell wolf?”

  Koren inwardly sighed with great relief. Although he had never been to Durstwell, never been near the place, had never even met anyone from that town, he did know much about the area and its history. For that, he could thank the royal library in Linden, and the pleasant afternoons he had spent quietly reading with the crown princess. Ariana Trehayme had probably thought indulging his love of books was a good way to improve a peasant boy’s poor reading skills, but Koren had only cared that he could read about exotic places he had never been. To Koren Bladewell, who had spent most of his life within twenty miles of his home, even Durstwell was exotic. The reason he knew anything at all about Durstwell was because of a story he had read, an old legend of a horrible monster wolf that terrorized the countryside. The account Koren had read stated that the legend went back over a hundred years, but people in the area still reported seeing the ghostly wolf on the night of a full moon. Koren laughed. “My father told me heard that story from his father, and his father from his. Everyone in Durstwell knows someone who claims to have seen the hell wolf, but no one claims to have seen it themselves. Or, at least, no one that anyone believes.”

  “You never saw it?” Devero asked with a wry smile.

  “No. I went out one time with friends, because someone said they saw the hell wolf up by a pond, and there were giant claw marks on a tree, and clumps of black fur there.” Koren pulled that directly from the book he had read. In the book, one of the boys almost drowned in the pond; Koen left out that part of the story.

  Nygard took a sip of wine. “And? What did you find?”

  “We found it exactly as it was described-”

  “A giant hell wolf?” Nygard was surprised.

  “No,” Koren winked. “A bear. Nothing more than a black bear had clawed the tree. But, at night, and after too much beer or spirits, it could have looked like a giant wolf.”

  “Ha!” Devero slapped his companion on the back. “Was it a bear, or was it a beer?”

  Nygard laughed also.

  “What is Krakendale like?” Koren hastened to change the subject. The three of them discussed their travels while the storm outside blew itself out. The two soldiers, who had never been to sea, wanted to know everything Koren could tell them about the South Isles, and he regaled them with tales of endless sunshine, clear water and palm trees swaying in warm tropical breezes. By the time the storm had moved on and they were allowed back on deck, the Royal Army soldiers were no longer curious about where ‘Kedrun Dartenon’ came from.

  Koren once again took his dinner with the ship’s crew, and the soldiers were grumblingly forced to dine with His Lordship once again, so he did not see the two men until the middle of the next morning as the ship approached the shore. They stood by the railing, eating scraps of biscuit left over from breakfast, and talking about future plans. To the dismay of Devero and Nygard, Baron Wicksfeld had a private coach waiting to take him and his escorts further up the river. North of the lake, the river was too narrow and fast-flowing for boats to go north; all passengers and cargo headed north needed to use roads rather than water. Koren would not be traveling by private coach. He would be purchasing passage on one of the slow carriages that plied the road beside the river, and hoping his backside would not get too sore from sitting in a lurching carriage on a bumpy road, day after day.

  He said goodbye to the pair of friendly soldiers, and even helped them with His Lordship’s heavy luggage, then they were gone, and Koren hefted his one bag of meager possessions. He needed to bargain with the line of carriage drivers waiting by the dock; not because he lacked money, but because it would seem odd if he did not.

  Ariana’s chief advisor requested an immediate audience with the crown princess, who was busily engaged in sorting her closets. She had too many dresses, far too many, and far too many that she did not like and would never wear. That morning, while rejecting all three of the outfits her maids had brought for her to choose from, she decided that she would take all the clothes she never intended to wear, and donate them to charity. It was, she declared, the least she could do for the war effort. And, she told herself with a smile, there would be that much more room in her closets for clothes in the future. Someday. Someday when the royal treasury was not stretched so thin; someday when the war was over.

  Gustov Kallron was ushered into the private rooms of the crown princess, and instructed to wait at the table by the window that served as Ariana’s study. He had barely sat down when a door opened, and the princess walked in, wearing a very plain dress and with her hair still slightly damp. She waved for her maids to depart and shut the door behind them. “You have news, Chief Advisor?” Her eyes twinkled.

  “I have questions, Your Highness. The news, I suspect, is yours.”

  “Oh?” She asked as innocently as she could manage.

  “Yes,” Kallron continued. “It seems that Duke Bargann has suffered a calamity; his main gold mine has collapsed and flooded. The damage is severe enough that it may take a year to dig down far enough to reach the gold seams.”

  “That is extremely unfortunate. For Duke Bargann.”

  “It is extremely unfortunate. Bargann is heavily in debt; the loss of the mine could cause him to default on his debts. Including his substantial debts to the Falcos. That was stupid of Bargann; the Falcos are also overextended, and cannot provide any additional loans to Bargann at this time. If Bargann cannot pay, the Falcos could take action, of some form or another.” Including, Kallron suspected, assassinating the current Duke of Farlane, and replacing him with someone more suitable to the Falcos.

  “Oh my!” Ariana popped a sweetcake into her mouth. “That is ter
rible, just terrible. Whatever will poor Bargann do?” She shook her head with a smile.

  “He will seek new allies, Your Highness. Allies with deep pockets, who can bail him out of his predicament.”

  “Interesting. Well, this shows the foolishness of getting one’s self too deeply in debt, I suppose.”

  “Highness,” Kallron asked with an admiring smile, “you would not have had anything to do with the unfortunate collapse of that mine, would you?”

  “Me?” Ariana laughed. “Why, I have been here in Linden the whole time, and before that, as everyone knows I was at the summer palace. I would not know the first thing about how to make a mine collapse. Although, I was very gratified to hear that no one was injured.” That had been her greatest fear; not that her plot would fail, but the innocent, hard-working miners would suffer. They had already been forced to seek work elsewhere, and she felt bad about that.

  “Mmm hmmm,” Kallron did not sound entirely convinced of her innocence. “Speaking hypothetically, if you were to have been involved, what would have given you the idea to block Bargann’s access to his gold mine?”

  Ariana poured herself a cup of tea, and Kallron indicated he did not want any for himself. “A wise man once told me,” the princess said while staring her chief advisor in the eye, “that most questions of power in this world are about money. And this wise man told me that I should pay attention to the finances of the dukes and duchesses, if I wish to understand them. That is how I knew that Duke Bargann is deeply in debt, and he relies on gold from that mine to keep himself afloat.” Her smile turned to a frown. “Is that river truly so important to Bargann?”

  What she referred to was the source of the dispute between the Barganns and the Falcos. Twenty one years ago, shortly before Rills Bargann inherited the ducal throne of Farlane, the Rhane river had flooded a wide area of the valley that lay between the territories of the Barganns and the Falcos. When the flood receded, the channel through which the river flowed had changed, and a half-mile strip of territory that formerly belonged to the Barganns now lay within the Falco’s Burwyck province. Before his death, Rills Bargann’s father had attempted to regain the land from the Falcos by negotiation, but had been rebuffed by Regin Falco. Rebuffed rudely, in the eyes of the Barganns; the two provinces had almost come to war, with their ducal armies mobilized along their common border. Ariana’s father had been forced to send the Royal Army to intervene, and Rills Bargann stull fumed quietly about the insult. That was why he had spent so much money to increase the size of his ducal army, to build defenses, and in an attempt to gain allies in his dispute with the Falcos. Twice, he had brought petitions before the Regency Council for the original border to be restored between Farlane and Burwyck, and twice his requests had been rejected. Rejected in humiliating fashion.