by James Abbott
One of the plants twisted its black-petalled flowerhead towards Elysia as she walked by. The thing was watching her; or rather the old women were using it to watch her from elsewhere. She rarely wandered through the garden, knowing that someone, somewhere, would be following her every move.
Yvindris paused in the centre by the fountain. The old woman stood a little shorter than Elysia, who even at seventeen summers was now taller than most of the sisters. It was another reason she felt different from everyone else – not merely mentally, but physically. Yvindris’s pale, wrinkled face was shaded by the hood of her flowing rich, blue shawl, her eyes concealed in the darkness. One of her eyes had been replaced by a red witchstone, and Elysia never knew what properties it had given her.
From her sleeve Yvindris produced a pale-blue witchstone and handed it to Elysia, before gesturing with a crooked finger towards the fountain. ‘With this water elemental, I want you to stop the flow today. Do not do anything with it. Merely stop it. See if you remembered the lines of text from yesterday.’
Elysia sighed, stepped towards the ornate stone rim and peered into the rippling pool of water. About two yards away, in the centre of the pool, a stone fish rose up and from out of its mouth came a stream of clear water. Aside from their voices and the occasional shrill bird cry, the bubbling fountain was the only sound here.
She clutched the stone in her right hand, surprised by its weight and density, and calmed her heartbeat.
Yvindris peered over her shoulder. ‘I hope you remember the formal words,’ she hissed. There was more than a hint of glee in her voice. ‘You have failed twice before. Your reputation as a failure will see you go to a poor clan and the time for allocation is almost upon you. A poor clan is no life for a sister, I can tell you.’
Because you’ll end up back here as a one-eyed hag? Elysia wanted to say. It was an unspoken rule that many of the less fortunate sisters ended up back here as tutors.
Elysia squeezed the stone and muttered the chant in an ancient, Fourth Era tongue, trying her best to remember the forms of words that were no longer spoken beyond the bridges of Jarratox. She searched her mind to recall the right words, all the while feeling the breath of the old sister on the back of her neck. A heat began to spread through her body, a tightness in her chest . . .
‘Two words are incorrect,’ Yvindris snapped. ‘Round the vowels and pronounce the endings more clearly.’
The water in the pool began to bubble, not become still, and steam started rising from the surface. The stone fish started shaking erratically.
Yvindris placed a hand upon Elysia’s shoulder for her to stop talking, and her words ceased.
Elysia was breathless, her legs felt weak.
‘You are too angry,’ Yvindris scoffed.
Is it any wonder, with you looming over me?
Elysia merely shrugged her shoulders, handed over the blue stone and turned back into the bright courtyard, blinking as if she had just woken up from a deep sleep.
Nearby, the other girls barely concealed their laughter at her failure.
‘Why can you not do what is a simple task for a sister of your advanced learning?’ Yvindris’s words were neither soft nor harsh, just the same emotionless monotone that most of the old matrons used with her. Only Birgitta was any different.
‘Perhaps I’m just not going to be very good,’ Elysia muttered, ‘and I will fail the sisterhood.’
‘That is not for you to foresee,’ Yvindris replied. ‘The matriarch has always been wary of you. It is not any lack of power that stops you, oh no. You’re quite potent. Rather it is your attitude. You do not see the point in what we do. You do not care enough about getting things right.’
Elysia sighed. ‘Should we not question what we are shown? Is the world not an illusion? That’s what we’re taught all the time. Those are the words above the archways as you enter the Forgotten Quadrangle.’
‘The ways of the sisterhood can be trusted,’ Yvindris continued. ‘We are of the earth. We are part of the fabric of the world. Illusions do not apply to us.’
Elysia peered down to the smooth flagstones beneath her feet. If she questioned things, the answers would come in the form of another lecture. It had always been the same, and by now she had worked out that the best method was to ask nothing and find her own answers later.
A noise caught her attention and she looked up. On the far side of the garden a door opened violently, striking against the stone wall. A dozen figures, all wearing sun-yellow robes, strode from one part of the enclave across to the other. There was silence as they went. The older sisters seldom moved in large groups on the settlement, and certainly never with such a sense of urgency.
‘You look worried,’ Elysia said, watching Yvindris carefully.
‘I am, child.’
Child?! At seventeen summers, is it any wonder I get so angry when you keep calling me a child?
‘What’s concerning you?’ she replied.
‘Our future. The world’s future.’
‘The future can never happen,’ Elysia quoted the Eighth Era mystic Faraclyes.
‘I see you have learned something then,’ Yvindris muttered.
A bell began to ring, a sound that Elysia had never heard in her entire life here.
‘I must go,’ Yvindris snapped. ‘Return to your quarters.’
The old woman pulled up her robes and scurried from the courtyard. Elysia looked across to the other novices and saw that they had stopped laughing. The strange, watching flowers had their heads bowed and moved no longer.
A Dark Court
Men whispered in dark corners. Messages were exchanged. Before long a meeting was arranged.
Two days later, in a remote part of the keep, Valderon, leader of the Chained Dead, stood before Xavir. No one else was even near these quarters. The two guards who permitted the meeting in exchange for Landril’s smuggled herbs were probably too sensible to enter the cell to keep an eye on them. Perhaps they hoped the two gang leaders would kill each other.
‘What do you want with me, gangman?’ Valderon grunted. He refused to use Xavir’s title Hell’s King – king had connotations for Valderon that he openly despised.
‘Gallus struck a blow to Davlor’s face,’ Xavir told him. ‘Tylos witnessed it.’
‘The black man is reliable enough.’ Valderon sighed, his dark eyes glimmering with tension. He was a big man, as tall as Xavir. His shoulders were still huge despite eating prison gruel. There were no grey hairs in his dark mane yet. ‘Petty squabbles among boys,’ Valderon grumbled. ‘This is why you summoned me?’
‘No.’ Xavir watched Valderon’s every move. The last time they had met they had been surrounded by their own men in the courtyard, and nearly every guard stood on standby, spear or arrow pointed their way.
‘Then what do you want?’ Valderon asked, rubbing his dark, dishevelled beard.
‘An end to it all,’ Xavir said. ‘To put an end to these pointless protection and retaliation scraps once and for all. To stop fighting over nothing, and begin fighting over something.’
Valderon rose and cracked his knuckles.
‘Calm down.’ Xavir waved him back, careful for the gestures to not be perceived as dismissive. ‘I have not come to fight you.’
‘Then how do we end things, as you say? Speak.’
‘Are you at peace here?’ Xavir asked.
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ Valderon spat.
‘Is this it? I don’t know what rank you held before, but I suspect that you were military. I don’t know what you did to end up here, but is this all you want to do for the rest of your life, to die in some gaol on the far end of the continent?’
Valderon looked at him appraisingly. ‘This isn’t so bad. You should know, being a fighting man yourself. You must have been on campaign. We’ve got it easy compared to that. Regular food. No worries over where to sleep. No pressures of men’s lives being in your hands – at least to no great extent. A man can be at
peace here.’
‘A man can go insane, too,’ Xavir said, contemplating his own night terrors.
‘With any luck,’ Valderon replied with a grim smile.
The leader of the Chained Dead stepped into the partial light of a barred window, revealing the faint scar along his cheek, above his thick black beard. This wound had come from long before Hell’s Keep. It was whispered that Valderon had once been in the First Legion, one of Cedius’s finest regulars.
‘I need to leave Hell’s Keep,’ Xavir announced.
Valderon gave a coarse, guttural laugh. ‘Of course. Well, just stroll out the front gate.’
‘I’m serious,’ Xavir replied. ‘I must go.’
Valderon frowned at him. ‘Why do you want to get out now?’
‘There are things happening and my help is needed.’ Xavir would say no more on the matter.
‘As you say,’ Valderon replied. ‘Do you have any idea how many guards stand between you and freedom?’
‘Two hundred and four,’ Xavir replied, ‘at my last estimation, and all of them armed. Not to mention fourteen locked, barred gates and the witches at the bottom of the slope. I’m sure the cook has a blunt knife somewhere in his armoury.’
Valderon gave another slight smile at that, and the tension eased slightly. ‘So how exactly do you propose to leave?’ he asked.
‘With your help.’ Xavir could tell he now held the man’s interest. ‘We’re going. Both of us. Together. And we’re taking as many of our men with us as possible.’
A moment of silence. Valderon laughed loudly then quietened as he saw the seriousness on Xavir’s face. ‘Speak, man of hell. Let’s hear you out.’
*
It had not been easy to convince Valderon of the plan. That it relied mostly upon Landril, who didn’t look the most capable of beings, did not exactly help their cause. But when Xavir explained the spymaster had managed to sneak into Hell’s Keep purely to deliver news and smuggle Xavir out, Valderon was impressed.
‘I dislike spies, Goddess curse their sneaking ways, but this one seems to have balls,’ Valderon admitted.
‘Hell’s Keep,’ Xavir told him, ‘depends upon routines. Routines can be exploited and that is what our plan does so well.’
‘If it is so easy, then why not just go on your own?’ Valderon asked.
‘I never said it would be easy,’ Xavir muttered.
Valderon nodded. ‘It will not be difficult to create a diversion, at least.’
‘Like any war this depends on the flow of men. Where they are and at what hour of the battle. Numbers are a secondary factor. The guards outnumber us certainly, two to one at least, and they are armed and we are not. But they cannot be everywhere at once and we can easily take their weapons off them when they are dead. I have seen those who have come to serve here recently and their calibre is not as it was many years ago. The good soldiers are needed elsewhere.’
‘You’re a warrior,’ Valderon said with a piercing stare. ‘I knew as much.’
Xavir gave no reply.
‘When does this begin?’
‘With your agreement, in three days’ time, in the courtyard. Landril has calculated the formula the guards use for deciding which prisoners go into the courtyard. We are seldom in there together, for obvious reasons, but in three days myself and Landril will be there, as well as a good number of your men. We just need your consent and for you to direct them.’
‘How can I know you’ll not let me rot in the cells?’
It was a fair question, and one Xavir had anticipated. ‘Trust means very little around here, of course. But you know I cannot get out of here without a man of your calibre. We need you armed, swiftly, and to lead your men as if you were a warrior once again. As I say, either both of us leave together – or we’ll both die in here.’
‘What of the Bloodsports?’
Xavir shrugged. ‘They are ten men, where our gangs total forty-two. Together we form the majority faction. I would be glad of their help, but for now it is best that they know nothing. There was an escape attempt two years ago, and I think it might have been successful if the Bloodsports had not let the guards know. You’ll understand if I do not wish them to be a part of this plan.’
Valderon said nothing.
‘We’ll quickly become hunted men,’ Valderon said, contemplatively.
‘At least by being hunted we will feel alive.’
Once again there was an upward curve to Valderon’s lips. Xavir extended his arm towards Valderon, and the gang leader shook it, clasping firmly at the wrist. It was a casual gesture, one shared by so many warriors who served in the armies of Cedius the Wise. In that unspoken moment there was an acknowledgement that they shared more than others realized.
Elysia
Birgitta burst into Elysia’s room and spoke breathlessly. ‘They’re up to something.’
‘Who?’ Elysia asked, rising from her bed where she had been sprawled, trying to commit a scroll to memory, to perfect what she had failed at earlier.
‘The sisters,’ Birgitta said. ‘By the source! That’s what the recent bell was for – did you hear it earlier? Many of the older sisters have already been recalled from their clans. They came last night or this morning.’
‘Why aren’t you there?’
‘Because I, as a mere tutor, have not been invited.’ Birgitta folded her arms in mock offence. She was wearing a long, blue robe and a darker blue tunic underneath. There was beautiful but subtle detailing all across the chest and around the neck of the tunic, a minor rebellion, given that such adornments were frowned upon. Birgitta was between forty and fifty summers – young for one of the tutoring sisters – and she had bright, messy blonde hair which had a silver sheen to it that suggested she was much older. Her features were small, her eyes, nose and mouth, all of them delicate so that in the right light she looked vaguely like a doll. Hidden by her robe was a wiry, youthful physique. One of the reasons Elysia liked Birgitta so much was that she refused to grow feeble and frail like many of the sisters around here, who deemed that exercise was beneath them.
‘What’s everyone up to?’ Elysia asked. ‘What’s going on?’
‘We’re going to watch.’ Birgitta held out her hand. ‘Come on.’
‘Watch what?’
‘I don’t know yet, little sister. But we can find out.’
The two sisters headed out into the corridors, Birgitta leading the way down the stairs, and into the main thoroughfare. There was no one else around, which was unusual for the late morning; a time where early lessons were completed and the sisters were permitted leisure time before the quiet study of the afternoon.
Birgitta paused suddenly and turned to face an old limestone wall. Elysia, who did well not to step on her heel, was about to ask why, when the woman drew a black witchstone from her pocket and placed it into a hole that Elysia could barely see.
A doorway, stuttered into existence.
‘Quick, in you go,’ Birgitta said.
Elysia stepped cautiously into the void while Birgitta retrieved the stone. A moment later they were in total darkness surrounded by a musty, damp smell. Birgitta muttered, and a line of stones began to glow one by one, a ripple of white light spreading up ahead, illuminating a long, narrow corridor.
‘Where are we?’ Elysia asked. ‘Are we even allowed to be in here?’
‘You’re too cautious! By the source, have I taught you nothing? If you risk nothing, then you will end up just like the others. You should be thrilled about a secret passageway.’
‘Well I am, in a way . . . But where is this?’
‘Within the walls. The sisters can quickly walk from one part of Jarratox to the other without being seen by means of these tunnels.’
‘Why do they need to be secret about it?’
‘The sisters don’t like terms like secret. They pride themselves on being open and honest – or at least that is what they tell others. What I’m about to show you will prove that it is a lie.’
>
‘Should you be showing me this?’
‘You’re old enough to decide for yourself,’ Birgitta said. ‘Now, come on.’
They continued following the glowing stones for a short while.
Elysia could hear the muffled sounds of chattering.
‘Is this passage underneath some of the sisters’ rooms?’ she asked.
‘This part is,’ Birgitta said, pausing to perceive their location. Elysia could tell they were standing at some kind of crossroads, but the lights in front of them began to fade, their power seeping away slowly.
Birgitta gestured to the right and another line of stones began to glow.
‘How did you do that?’ Elysia asked.
‘The stone,’ Birgitta replied, showing her the same black stone she had placed into the wall earlier. ‘The stone knows where I want to go.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Good,’ said Birgitta mysteriously, and added, ‘Now keep your voice to a whisper from here on.’
Elysia nodded and followed the older sister. The sound of voices became slightly fainter, then, after they’d climbed up a spiral stairwell, it became much louder once again.
Eventually the two of them stepped out into a low-roofed corridor. It featured a small, decorative iron grille to the stonework on the outside, allowing in a slit of natural light to capture dust motes and cobwebs. There was a similar grille a little further on, on the left, only this time it faced down into a dimly lit auditorium.
‘This is a conclave of sisters,’ Birgitta whispered, her footsteps light on the boards. ‘They have not held one for ten years or more.’
She directed Elysia towards the grille. The two of them sat down on the floor and pressed their faces against the ironwork.
