‘They have still attacked one of our villages,’ said the general solemnly. ‘The king’s subjects have been injured, even killed. These intruders must be punished.’
The chancellor had made his point. Elster wasn’t about to be plunged into war, it seemed, and that alone was enough to bring relief to all who stood around the throne. He didn’t dispute Westly’s call for revenge, however. The Nedermen would still be driven from the village by force.
‘How many have been killed?’ Nicola asked the messenger, who stood waiting rather forlornly to be dismissed from such powerful company.
‘None that I saw, your highness.’
‘Have any of your villagers been harmed at all?’
‘Er … only the mayor. He had a bucket of water poured over his head.’
At this Pelham couldn’t restrain an unkingly laugh. ‘More an injury to his pride than his hide. These invaders don’t sound like vicious men.’
‘Why did they pour water over the mayor?’ asked Nicola.
‘Because he wouldn’t let them into his shop, your highness. He was afraid they wouldn’t pay for what they wanted.’
‘Invading armies never do,’ said the king with a wry frown.
A different story was emerging now, and since Nicola was the one who’d started to draw it out, the men left her to continue her questions.
‘So these soldiers didn’t charge into the village wielding weapons? They came seeking supplies.’
‘At first, yes. They wanted food and drink mostly, although their leader went searching the lumberyard for seasoned timber. The mayor was sure they’d take it all without paying so he ordered the villagers to bar their way. That was when they drew their swords.’
‘Father,’ Nicola said, ‘this sounds more like men eager to repair their ship and get back to sea. They mean no harm to our people; they may not even be thieves if we give them a chance to pay for what they need. Hold back your forces and let their leaders explain themselves. If you attack, people will die on both sides and we may find ourselves at war with Neder after all.’
‘The princess makes a strong argument, Pelham,’ said the chancellor.
‘So she does,’ agreed the king, and before General Westly left the Great Hall to join his men, he was given entirely new orders.
‘You may have saved many lives tonight,’ the king told Nicola as they were leaving to return to their rooms, the chancellor close on their heels.
She nodded silently at the compliment and gave thanks that the dim light of the corridor hid her blushes. There was no denying it though: she was pleased with herself.
‘I wouldn’t have asked my questions if the chancellor hadn’t asked his first,’ she replied. She turned to him and said, ‘I see the value of your spies now.’
‘They tell us many things,’ he agreed, though the nod he sent towards Nicola had a meaning that only they knew.
‘And the more we know, the easier to see beneath the surface of things,’ added the king. ‘Judging by tonight, you already know that.’
Father and daughter parted at the top of the stairs and Nicola found herself with the chancellor for company until they reached the next floor.
‘Some of the information my spies send me doesn’t reach the king,’ he said. ‘It stays with me alone, or perhaps I share it with one other and no one else.’ Dropping his voice to the merest whisper, he went on. ‘I’m certain my son would have made you a fine husband, Nicola, but I’m even more certain that you will be a fine queen.’
CHAPTER 25
Arminsel
BEA STRODE PURPOSEFULLY TOWARDS the great tree, glancing over her shoulder every few paces to see that Marcel was still following. Had she convinced him? His right hand lay stiffly open by his side, his elbow bent a little so he could quickly pass the palm across his face.
Fergus was watching for them, and came hurrying across the grass shouting, ‘Marcel, at last!’
His words brought Gannimere out from amid the tree’s roots. ‘Your elf friend has done us all a great favour. Welcome once again, Marcel.’
‘Bea says I’ve misjudged this tree of yours. She says it holds the spirit of her mother and many more of the dead as well. I’ve come to see for myself.’
The wizard saw his hand ready at his side, a challenge as much as a precaution. Bea could almost see the tension between them, holding them apart, yet tying them together at the same time.
‘You have no cause to fear me,’ Gannimere told Marcel. ‘You’re the last person I’d ever want to harm.’
There it was again, Bea thought. It was as though Gannimere had known Marcel all his life. But how could he when they had met only here in Baden Dark?
‘Since you’ve come to inspect Arminsel, you should see it properly,’ said Gannimere grandly, and the intensity of light in the massive cavern doubled, then doubled again, far brighter than Marcel had managed so briefly when they first caught sight of the tree.
Until now, the tree had seemed like a place for the dead alone. With so much light, it came to life, revealing the greenest of shoots among its high branches. Bea picked out the massive limb where she had dangled in such fear and wonder. They could see all of the tree now: the main trunk stretching to the vault so high above them; the many branches growing out from its sides, twisting upwards, downwards, then coiling back onto themselves before they continued higher and higher. They no longer looked like huge snakes in combat.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Fergus, and his words carried all the more meaning since he had little use for beauty.
‘Amazing,’ a voice breathed from behind Bea. She forced her eyes away and turned to watch Marcel as he took in the full extent of the great tree. His eyes darted everywhere, high and low, trying to see into the intricate network of branches and roots thicker than his own body, then scouring the shimmering bark.
‘What do the Squirrel Men do?’ he asked as one scampered from a knothole to the tip of an outlying branch, so much like a real squirrel they might have been out on the mountainside under a sunny sky.
‘Squirrel? Ah, the Grechie, yes, there are more than I’ve ever bothered to count. They keep the tree healthy, snapping off unwanted shoots and eating the insects that feed on living wood even here so far beneath the earth.’
‘If they climb around on the bark, don’t they hear the dead speaking, like I did?’ Bea asked.
‘Oh yes, they hear the voices and they love to repeat what they hear to one another. Terrible gossips, all of them, but once they have spoken of something it leaves their minds and so they can never become wise. Look at them work. Industrious, aren’t they,’ said Gannimere, enjoying himself. ‘But mischievous, there’s no doubt about that. Watch long enough and you’re sure to see a fight break out. The naughtiest are banished by the rest to forage for whatever they can find in the darkness far from here until they have learned their lesson.’
Marcel had moved forward in his wonder, no longer careful to keep a distance between him and Gannimere. Though Bea stood between them, Marcel didn’t see her, not through any elvish trick on her part, but because he had eyes for only one thing.
Gannimere spoke again. ‘You were right that Arminsel is a place for the dead, Marcel, but death is neither good nor evil. Most who come here are good-hearted and what they feed this tree is the essence of those good hearts.’
‘Arminsel feeds on the dead!’
‘You might say that,’ Gannimere conceded, ‘but not like worms and beetles. The dead visit Arminsel only after they have abandoned the body. Most are buried in the earth, of course, making it all the easier for them to find the way.’
‘Why do they come here first?’ Marcel wanted to know.
‘So they can embrace the peace of death without the hopes and worries that clutter a living mind. Nothing from life is of any use in death so the spirits of the dead leave all they have learned behind them.’
‘Then Arminsel is a storehouse of knowledge.’
‘And wisdom, which is the pu
rpose of knowledge,’ Gannimere added. ‘But the tree is more than a simple repository, Marcel. It is a means for sharing that wisdom with the living.’ He looked up again, inviting his companion to do the same.
‘When I first saw the branches reaching up through the rock I thought they fed all kinds of poison into the soil above, breeding war and misery,’ Marcel said. ‘The sages in Noam talked about a single source of all evil —’
‘And you listened to them, it seemed. Do you still believe such legends?’
Marcel broke away from the tree to stare at Gannimere. ‘I … I don’t know.’
‘Your little friend told you of her mother. Doesn’t that convince you? All beings who walk the earth above are granted wisdom of one kind or another — a few more than the rest, it’s true, but that matters little in Baden Dark. What the tree takes from the dead it sends back to the living, through the earth, just as your sages imagined it, but for the good of what lies above us, not to bring harm. You begin to see now, perhaps. Without Arminsel, humans, elves and the other beings like them would live in ignorance, little better than the beasts they hunt or the heads of grain they cut from the meadows.’
Marcel was eager for the wizard’s words now, like a parched man only an arm’s length from water. ‘Tell me how it works.’
Gannimere was in no hurry though, Bea noticed. He had found the way to reach Marcel: not with promises or threats but with the hint of knowing more. It had always been Marcel’s strongest impulse and she wasn’t sure whether the clever wizard was using this to convince him or to deceive him.
‘When a spirit comes to Baden Dark, it still carries the cares of the world left behind. It lingers near the tree, becoming used to death and what it means to pass into eternity. You have met some of them — the spirits who take a little longer to accept their fate. They are reluctant to surrender themselves to Arminsel and sometimes they manage to escape into the Mortal Kingdoms where they play tricks on the living.’
‘Ghosts,’ Bea whispered.
‘Yes, that’s the name we have for them, but in the end they all come to the tree and pass over all they have learned from life. Not in words, nor in any way the living can understand. Not even I know how it happens. Once the essence of their lives is relinquished to Arminsel, they are no longer human or elf. The spirit is free to go into eternity without a care.
‘What you see here is only part of it. The branches spread out above us into the soil, drawing down the spirits of the dead and passing back the wisdom they leave in its wondrous fibres. That way, the Mortal Kingdoms can make each life rich with the wisdom of those who have gone before.’
‘Rich?’ Marcel asked.
‘Not in gold or power,’ the wizard said with a sneer. ‘Such things are worthless. The spirit does not bring them to Arminsel. You know the riches I’m speaking about.’
‘My mother,’ said Bea. ‘What she left in this tree, the wisdom you let me share — it was more precious than any gold you could have given me.’
‘There are other kinds of knowledge, some that could bring great power,’ said Fergus.
‘Ah, you think like a soldier, young man, just as you carry a soldier’s weapon. And of course you’re right. Bea only wanted to know what her mother had learned of life and, since she has a good heart, what she took from the tree enriched her heart alone. But what if others came here, with hearts as black as Baden Dark? What would they take from Arminsel?’
He was facing Marcel once more but got an answer from Fergus.
‘They’d come seeking power and the knowledge they took from this tree would be for building new weapons so they could win that power on the battlefield.’
‘Can anyone who comes here find out all that Arminsel holds in its branches?’ Marcel asked.
‘There is nothing to stop them.’
‘Except you.’
Gannimere bowed. ‘That is my honour.’
‘My head is spinning,’ said Fergus. ‘I don’t think I can quite hold it all in. How long has this tree been growing in Baden Dark?’
‘Since before there were spirits to nourish it.’
He might as well have said forever.
‘It hasn’t always been guarded then,’ Bea pointed out. ‘Who found out it was here?’
‘A great wizard, long ago,’ said Gannimere. ‘Like your Circle of Sages, Marcel, he sensed there was something powerful beneath the soil and his magic led him here.’
‘Did he have a name? Who was he?’
‘His name has long been lost to anyone in the Mortal Kingdoms,’ said Gannimere. ‘But he saw the danger that your friend Fergus pointed out, and ever since there has been a guardian here in Baden Dark.’
As he spoke, his eyes once again fell on Marcel. At last, Bea saw why he was so interested in the young wizard.
‘You want Marcel to be Arminsel’s guardian, don’t you?’
‘When I die, yes,’ said Gannimere. As ever, his eyes were locked onto Marcel. ‘What do you say now? Do you still suspect me? Do you still plan to destroy Arminsel?’
All three were startled when he said this so plainly. Marcel turned an accusing eye on Bea and Fergus, but Gannimere spoke again quickly.
‘Don’t blame your friends. They haven’t betrayed you. I guessed your purpose the moment you vanished and asked only that they help me find you, to tell you the truth. So, Marcel, I ask you again: do you believe all that I’ve told you?’
Marcel tore his eyes away from the great tree and let them rest on his companions again. ‘Thanks to Bea, yes, I believe what you’ve told us about Arminsel.’ Then, his eyes sought out the wizard. ‘I don’t believe you though, Gannimere,’ he said bluntly.
The man’s eyebrows lifted almost to his hairline. ‘But everything I’ve told you —’
‘Nothing you’ve said has been a lie, but there’s one thing you deliberately didn’t tell us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You made it sound as though there’s been a long line of successors since the first wizard discovered Baden Dark, but if that was so, its secret couldn’t have survived for five centuries. Men are not like elves, they don’t hide in shadows and keep their stories to themselves. Word would have spread somehow, especially in Noam where the most skilful sorcerers gather. No, I don’t believe there’ve been other guardians over the years. The nameless wizard who discovered Arminsel, the one who saw how it must be protected from ordinary men, it was you, Gannimere.’
CHAPTER 26
The Book from Baden Dark
‘WHAT ARE YOU SAYING, MARCEL?’ Fergus asked in confusion.
Bea couldn’t make sense of it either. Marcel couldn’t possibly be right. ‘Long Beard said the elves had been guarding Baden Dark for generations, stretching back through more grandfathers than he could count,’ she reminded him. ‘If it was Gannimere who brought them to this mountain, he must be five centuries old.’
It was ridiculous. Gannimere was somewhere between Kertigan and her grandfather in age, a man in his prime. She pointed this out to Marcel too, and he let her speak, as he let Fergus scoff at the suggestion. His only reply was to watch Gannimere intently.
‘Five hundred years,’ said Gannimere. ‘I don’t count them like mortal men.’
‘You mean it’s true!’ Bea cried. ‘But how?’
Gannimere merely nodded towards the great tree.
‘Arminsel has such power?’ she asked in awe.
‘Not the tree itself, no, but think for a moment of what I have told you. All that has ever been known resides in its fibres and all of that wisdom is there for me to explore. Do you understand now?’
Perhaps she could, but that didn’t change her astonishment. She stared at Gannimere, searching for wrinkles in his skin. His hair showed touches of grey around the ears, but the rest was an earthy brown. His backbone was as straight as Fergus’s. It couldn’t be true.
Then she saw Gannimere’s eyes upon Marcel, as they so often were, dark and elusive. The eyes are a window to the ma
n within, and she’d been aware of something strange in them from the first moment, something not quite right. She’d seen eyes like that only once, set deeply into the sockets of another wizard: Lord Alwyn.
‘You’ve found a way to live forever, yet you speak of dying,’ Marcel said.
‘Is that so strange? I’m weary of life after so many years. I envy the spirits who come here seeking the peace of death. It’s time I went into eternity with the rest. You have seen the reluctant ghosts who linger before their final journey. Sometimes I think I am one of them; a living ghost who has resisted that peace longer than any.’
Bea’s mind had taken in so much she worried her head would explode. Yet one thing stood out, more important to her than all this talk of lives measured in centuries. ‘You want Marcel to take your place?’ she said.
‘He can’t,’ said Fergus, as though his cousin had been asked to do no more than walk across the stream. ‘Marcel already has a use for his magic. He’s Master of the Books for his father, the King of Elster. He can’t keep coming here, to Baden Dark, to be sure Arminsel is safe from intruders.’
Gannimere heard him out patiently then replied in the same calm tones. ‘The guardian of Arminsel must give up all ties with the Mortal Kingdoms. Just as I have done, Marcel will remain in Baden Dark for the rest of his days.’
‘Marcel, you won’t agree, will you?’ said Bea immediately.
She could have named a hundred reasons to support Fergus, but at the head of any list was one simple truth. If Marcel was here in Baden Dark, he wouldn’t be with her in the Mortal Kingdoms. Their friendship would end and, if she honoured her pledge to Long Beard, she wouldn’t even be allowed to utter his name. She couldn’t tell him these things, not the way they came to her.
‘We need you, Marcel, all of us,’ she said instead. ‘Tell him no.’
‘They’re right, Gannimere,’ Marcel responded.
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