by Steven Poore
Arca paused again. It would be a miracle, Cassia thought, if this tale was done before nightfall. It was engrossing, despite his halting monologue, and it was uncannily similar to that of Verros and the Old King. She wondered if he might have heard it years before and, befuddled by the years and by drink, conflated it with his own experiences. But his story was populated with characters that surely could have come from nowhere but his soldiering past. Guhl was a mercilessly focused man of no fixed principles, driven by the lure of treasure. Arca described him as dark, of both mind and body, with the cunning and hunger of a mountain wolf, and Cassia was able to picture him instantly.
The other soldiers in the company were less well-defined, as though they had faded from Arca’s memories, but he spoke of them fondly, and tantalising glimpses of their personalities shone through his words. Breal, a tall Northman, stooping at every doorway to avoid the frame; Gunt, who had stepped on a nail while barefoot and limped around the palace wincing in pain; Tovemor, a hulking giant who climbed the walls without the aid of the knotted sheets, his belt studded with curved knives he took from the murdered guards.
Arca seemed to grow a little as he recalled them, fresh life drawing his emaciated frame from its hunched position. His voice was still raspy, but he spoke louder, punctuating his phrases with a few wavering gestures. The wheezing cough that afflicted him became less pronounced. The soldier he had once been was visible once more, a ghostly apparition beneath his skin.
The tale progressed, with the company accumulating trinkets and silver jugs in the rough sacks they had brought with them, until at last they reached the palace’s grand hall. Here servants slept on woven mats between the pillars, and lanterns hung from high pins, creating flickering shadows in the dark colonnades. Guhl split the company in two and they crept down either side of the hall, picking their way between the mats and the huddled shapes. When one or two servants stirred in their sleep, Arca paused in mid-step, his breath frozen in his throat, one hand hovering nervously above the hilt of his knife. But the servants did not wake, and the company gained the steps that led to the next tier of the hall with no difficulty.
Now their adventure became more dangerous, for these were the Queen’s own apartments and her personal guard stood watch through the night. The company had to wait in uncomfortable silence while Guhl sent the sneak thief Yonn to scout ahead. The echoes from the great hall were a potent reminder that a servant might awake and discover them at any moment, and Arca found himself at the rear of the cluster of men, peering back into the gloom, imagining he could see movement in the furthest recesses of the hall.
There were two guards outside the Queen’s bedchamber, armed with short spears and wicked longswords, Yonn reported when he returned. And there were another two pairs of guards patrolling the enclosed garden between these apartments and the annexe Guhl believed housed the treasure chambers. There seemed no other way through. The company slumped, deflated: they would never be able to fight their way out of the palace if the alarm was raised, but the odds against sneaking past half a dozen elite guards were slim.
Arca spied a small corridor that seemed to lead around the side of the gardens, and they took that route instead. The corridor turned sharply, several times, until it ended abruptly at a sternly decorated door, stained deep crimson. Guhl pressed up against it, and after what felt an age, he nodded, his hand dropping to the bronze latch. The door swung inward and he disappeared into the gloom. Weighed down by the fact that the night was passing, Arca hurried after him.
The room was pitch black, no glow of moonlight reflected from the gardens. Arca came to a halt and Breal collided with him, hissing a curse. A scratch of flint, ahead in the darkness, marked Guhl’s position, and a few seconds later the faint nimbus of light expanded as he found a candle. The silhouettes of tables and tall shelves loomed around the room.
“He was like a ghost, stood there in the middle,” Arca said. “But we paid him no heed – this was the treasure chamber, or so we thought. All kinds of strange devices laid on the tables and on the shelves all around us. Silver, brass, gold and iron. Great glass lenses. Other things . . . I never knew what they were. And books. And scrolls, rolled up in gold-rimmed cases. Just one of those would have bought me a house on the Castaria’s eastern shores.”
Cassia could picture the room. She looked up, aware the day was flying away from her. The crowd on the temple steps was changing, and the prostitutes were taking their places further up; again they stared down at her with narrowed eyes. “Sir, did you find the treasure Guhl wanted?”
He shook his head. “Let me get to it, girl. Let me get to it.” He abandoned the bowl at last, and spat onto the steps between his feet. “We lit more candles. The room never seemed to get any lighter, as though the darkness sucked all the light away. Guhl went through the shelves, and Yonn and Attis picked over the tables. I wanted to join them, but something felt wrong. My head was tight. I stayed by the door and kept watch on the corridor.”
Every sound the company made seemed to echo through the room. Arca winced with each scrape, cough and clatter. He imagined the guards approaching through the darkened gardens, how they would fall on the intruders without mercy. This was no way for a soldier to fight, and he had no desire to die like a common thief.
He opened his mouth to tell Guhl his misgivings, but the words refused to come. He counted the shadowed members of the company with mounting alarm. They should have numbered eleven, excluding himself, but twelve men moved about the room. Again he tried to speak, but it was as though his jaw was frozen. Guhl, focused on his search for the Queen’s treasure, was oblivious to the danger.
You will not find what you want here. A voice cut through the darkness. The soldiers spun, dropping into crouches, blades glinting in the candlelight, scrolls and trinkets abandoned on the tables and shelves.
Show yourself! Guhl snarled.
Light bloomed at the far end of the room. The man held up a shuttered lantern, and the candles the company had lit guttered and died, snuffed out by invisible spirits. Arca saw the shape of the man’s robes and his mantle, and the staff he held in his other hand. Although the lantern obscured the details of the man’s face, his eyes burned clear, sharp and hard, resting on each of the intruders in turn. When that gaze turned on Arca, he shivered, feeling his fingers loosen their grip on the hilt of his knife. It took an almost physical effort of will to keep from dropping the weapon.
Helleans, the man said. He had seen right through their disguises. Is one empire not enough?
I don’t want an empire, Guhl said.
The lantern moved to illuminate him more fully. Arca was relieved the man’s attention had turned elsewhere. No, you do not. But, again, you will not find what you are looking for in these rooms.
Guhl backed against one of the shelves. He held his knife close to his chest, as though the other man might reach out to seize it. How do you know what we seek? Who are you?
He appeared from nowhere! Yonn said. He must be a god – or a dragon!
Neither, the man replied, in a sardonic tone. These are my chambers, and you are not welcome. Leave now, or I shall regret the consequences.
Arca paused and looked across at Cassia. “A strange thing to say,” he noted, “and that is why I still remember it.”
She hung eagerly upon every word now. Even with a lack of clear description it was plain the man was Malessar himself. How many men could say they had faced down the man who murdered the North? She had no idea how Arca’s story might help her locate him – after all, he surely would not still be in Kebria after all these years – but right now that did not matter.
“We did not realise,” Arca said. “Not until later. If we had known – even if we had known – I think Guhl would still have challenged him. I saw him duck down, and spring forward. Yonn and the others followed him.” His sigh caused his shoulders to slump once more. “And so did I. Only a step. That’s all I had time to do. He shouted a word, and swung the lantern hi
gh, and we were all blinded. It was like staring at the sun. We cried out in pain and terror. I reached for the wall, so I could turn around and flee, but it was not there and I stumbled to my knees. I felt sand between my fingers. Sand!”
He curled his fingers in the air before his face. “It was quiet. I felt the wind touch the back of my neck and I knew I was not in the palace. I was too scared to move. Scared I might be surrounded by silent enemies, or magical traps. Or by a sheer drop. I could not even bring myself to call out for my companions. I did what I could: I crawled over the ground, blind and helpless, until I found the shelter of a thorny bush. I lay there and prayed to every god I could name.”
The deep silence that followed was heavy with shame and embarrassment. Cassia thought no soldier would ever want to admit to such helplessness for fear of being branded a coward. Arca was much braver than he probably felt himself to be.
“I might have slept. I don’t know. But at last my eyes recovered and I saw it was not long past dawn. I lay at the edge of a field, not far from the city walls. There was a great haze on the horizon, in the north and the east. Vaile’s armies.”
For a while he had just sat there, so shaken by the brush with the warlock – who else could it have been but Malessar? – that he could not decide how to proceed. He dared not return to Kebria, in case Malessar had alerted the palace guards, but he was painfully aware that he and the rest of Guhl’s company had deserted the legions to carry out this raid. Vaile would be less than sympathetic to their plight.
In the end it was Guhl who decided the matter. He staggered across the fields, his clothes torn and ragged, his face set in grim anger. He too had been cast out of the city by magic, buffeted by winds that ripped the air from his lungs, but rather than lie whimpering in the dark as Arca had done, Guhl had crawled through the night, plain luck and the taste of the air guiding his way. Ceresel had favoured him, this time.
Of the other men of the company, there was no sign at all. Arca never knew what had happened to them.
I will not let this stand. Guhl ground out the words.
There are only two of us now. How can we fight against such magic?
Guhl brooked no argument. Two can go unseen, where twelve cannot. Even a warlock will be helpless against a knife in the back.
They took a mule from a farmer who was too slow to realise his danger. Taking it in turns to ride the beast, they reached the gates just before noon. Now their appearance worked in their favour, for they looked so pale, panicked and worn that the guards simply waved them through.
Kebria was in chaos, and Guhl swept through it unerringly, swift as a javelin and with the hunger of a starved hunting-dog. At the palace gates he claimed to be a native guide who had escaped Vaile’s ranks to bring news of his formations to the Queen herself. A loyal Kebrian, he told the guards. Honest and true. That they believed him at all was testament to his exhausted condition, for where could these two beggars have come from but the vanguard of the invading legions?
Once inside the palace Guhl and Arca turned on their escorts and rolled them into the shadow of a kindling shed, stealing their tabards and the bright scarves the Kebrians wound about their necks and waists.
They marched through the palace unmolested. The servants and courtiers were far too busy to worry over a pair of guards. Guhl led the way down the long colonnade of the great hall, and Arca kept his gaze lowered rather than acknowledge the activity there. Generals competed to advise the Queen, while her own advisors fought to make their voices heard. It seemed Kebria might surrender without the need for a siege, which only added urgency to Guhl’s mission.
When they reached the warlock’s rooms, they discovered the reason for the clamour. The shelves were empty, the tables bare. Malessar had left Kebria without warning or reason, just as he had done at Stromondor centuries previously. Again Arca guarded the door, the leather-bound hilt of his knife damp and sticky with sweat, while Guhl prowled the room. He kicked the few remaining items across the floor: a battered tin jug skittered between the shelves, the sound ominously loud in the empty chamber.
The bastard. Damned coward. We might have been rich!
Arca was privately glad Malessar had gone. He held no illusions about his ability to defeat such a man. But he said nothing while Guhl raged. There were other riches to steal before Vaile’s legions plundered the city.
A glint of something, in a corner beneath one of the tables. Unwilling to leave the door, Arca pointed it out to Guhl instead. It turned out to be one of the gold-rimmed scroll cases that had once filled the shelves. Perhaps Attis or Breal had dropped it before the warlock banished them, and it had rolled away, out of sight. Guhl tucked the case into his belt.
There was not much left to tell. Arca’s tale trailed off, along with her interest, with Guhl’s realisation that the majority of the Queen’s vast treasure had already been removed from the city – safe from the grasping hands of the Hellean Empire. Guhl and Arca bent their efforts to rejoining the legion without arousing Vaile’s suspicions, and their hunt for plunder was suspended. Only after Vaile and the other noble generals had taken their shares were the ordinary soldiers allowed to scavenge what remained. The pickings were slender indeed. There were no sheets of gold, no dragonscale sandals.
“All he gained was that one case,” Arca said. He shook his head. “He was bitter ever after. All hells, was he bitter!”
Cassia felt a little disappointed by the tale. She had expected to hear more of the warlock himself, yet he had made only a fleeting appearance, just as he did in so many tales. It seemed there was nothing new to learn of him. He lived behind the scenes of the world, like an insect beneath a rock, scurrying away when exposed to the lights of humanity.
But at least Arca had seen him, however briefly. It proved he existed, that he still lived, as recently as those Kebrian campaigns. And he was dangerous too, Baum was right.
And Baum believes he is in the city now. I can’t give up on this. What a tale it would be to see Malessar defeated at last – for Meredith to take revenge for the North! A story that would be told over and over, even by the guilded men of Hellea . . .
Arca looked across at her. “And here, I’ll tell you. That case is still in Hellea.”
She blinked, her interest reawakened. An artefact! Surely Malessar would want it back? “Does Guhl still have it?”
“No. He’s dead.” Arca bowed his head in the direction of the old temple to Pyraete, now home to the army of clerks who manned the hiring halls. “Ganx took him in the end. Years back. His creditors took his chattels. They wanted mine too, but I had nothing left by then. May their cocks rot off. I thought he would have stripped it, sold the gold, but the damned fool kept it in one piece. He owed some useless bastard scribe for penning two petitions, and the scribe used it to pay off his own debts to the library.”
“The library?”
Arca waved across the square, toward the Emperor’s palace. “Over there.”
“Would you show me, please, sir?”
He coughed, a rasping noise that was almost a laugh. “Not a chance. I hate the place. Filled with braying donkeys and useless arseholes who love the sound of their own voices. Talking about talking about things. Drives me to drink.” He raised his arm to Cassia. “Help me up, girl. The cold’s settling in my bones. Ultess will be wondering about us.”
q
The building was anchored at one end of a wide avenue that was almost a market square, looking back toward the walls of the Emperor’s palace at the other end. A wide set of steps had been built into the man-made hill the library sat upon. It was lower than the palace buildings, for nothing could be raised in the Temple District that was higher than the Emperor, but for all that the library looked more like a fortress than a seat of knowledge. The estates built by Factors in the North were built in such a fashion, to ward them from outside attacks. Cassia wondered if the effect here was intentional. Do they seek to keep people out, or to keep the knowledge within?
/> The steps were busy and Cassia paused, suddenly uncertain. Even this early in the day men gathered to discuss weighty matters. They ascended in twos and threes, dressed in plain, heavy robes, heads bowed to listen or to speak, looking like a great convocation of priests or pilgrims to the Seat of the World. Cassia had never seen the like. Not a single man amongst them could be described as young.
I would not stand out more if I ran naked up those steps, screaming at the top of my voice.
She sighed and almost turned away, but the stubborn, prideful part of her soul that still wanted to search out a new story, pin down the warlock, and watch Meredith take the North’s revenge on him urged her forward. And I will take my revenge on Hellea’s bloody guild as well, she told herself. Cassia shifted her grip on her staff. She had brought it with her hoping it would make her appear more mature. She pushed her shoulders back before starting towards the steps once more.
She felt as though everybody was watching her, and it was difficult to not look around. She waited for somebody to call out, or put a hand upon her shoulder to prevent her going further. Her muscles tensed to pull away and run, but nothing happened. The stone under her feet was worn in places, bowed where it had seen the passage of so many men. Cassia had not asked how old the library was, but she remembered a tale which mentioned that the ancient kings of Hellea had once lived upon this site, many centuries ago in the Age of Talons. The present Imperial Palace must be a relatively new construction.
Halfway up the steps, her confidence returning once more, she paused to look back. She could see over the palace walls from here, into the formal gardens beyond. Stone figures lined one of the paths – more of Malessar’s shieldmen, she decided. On an artificial hill in the centre of the compound, towering over every other building in the Temple District, was the palace. Pristine whitewashed walls, steep roofs supported by slender fluted columns, flags and pennons rippling across the skies – the palace radiated a godlike aura.
