A Dragon In the Palace

by William King

  “No matter where your gifts lie, the Church can find a use for them.”

  “Of that I have no doubt,” I said. I remembered what Mistress Iliana had once told me of the recruiting methods of the Church when it came to sorcerers and I felt myself grow more afraid.

  I watched the gulls settle atop a waterspout gargoyle and cursed the day I had found out I had a talent for magic. It seemed to be causing me nothing but problems.

  The most annoying part of it was that I was not able to work any magic. Perhaps if I could it would all prove to be worthwhile. I remembered my mistress destroying the monsters back at Ghazan, and thought of what it would be like to wield power like that. I thought of the influence and confidence of Master Lucas. There was an attraction there too. I could not see myself in either role.

  “It is something to bear in mind,” said Frater Jonas.

  “That I will most assuredly do,” I said. Red bounded down from my shoulder and began to scamper along beside us, investigating every crack in the stonework, tugging at every bit of moss, sniffing at things, investigating his surroundings. It was all new to him and fascinating.

  The three of us continued to walk along the battlements until we came to the place where the walls turned west and we had a clear view down into the harbour. I counted a number of piers thrusting out into the blue water. At every pier many ships lay at anchor.

  Some of them were huge merchant vessels. Some were mere fishing smacks. Most of them had lateen sails. A few of the larger ships were square rigged. Jonas followed my gaze. “Those are Siderean traders. I came here on a ship just like them.”

  “How long did it take?”

  “Almost a month. Something to do with winds and tide, and the fact we stopped in every small port along the coast.”

  “It must have been interesting,” I said. The idea of sea travel frightened me, but looking at those ships I began to understand something of its fascination. I thought of all the places those traders must have been and still had yet to go.

  “I saw a lot of coastline and listened to a lot of cursing and got a lot of reading done. The most excitement was when a lookout thought he spotted a Black Ship. That was frightening.”

  “A Black Ship?”

  “They are the terror of the Dragon Sea. Slavers of the worst sort, some claim they come from the Shadow Kingdoms. Others that they come from the Moon.”

  “The Moon?”

  “Don’t laugh. Stranger things are possible? Portals exist that connect our worlds to others.”

  “Why would strangers come from other worlds to seek slaves on ours?”

  “Why do demons come to our world to seek souls?” Jonas countered. Remembering my own dark dreams, and the things Mistress Iliana had told me, I had no comeback to that.

  “It might all just be stories anyway. The Black Ships are mysterious and they purchase slaves in all the ports that accept their trade, and no one ever sees those slaves again. Who knows where they go?”

  “The ports that accept their trade?”

  “They are forbidden in the harbours of the Sunlands. Though that does not stop people dealing with them. I have even heard rumours of people being kidnapped from the streets of Solsburg and sold to them. Those might just be stories too.”

  Something in his manner told me he did not really believe that. Jonas frowned a little and fell silent.

  “It’s a great harbour,” I said after the moment of silence stretched for many heartbeats. Red bounded onto one of the battlements, preened his wings and then sprang into the air, hovering near us, slowly gaining height. Both Jonas and I stopped to watch him. The young inquisitor smiled at the sight.

  “Solsburg is a great harbour,” said Jonas. “But it’s nothing compared to Trefal. That holds ten times as many ships. And many of those ships dwarf the caravels down there. The galleons of the Trans-Oceanic treasure fleet are like moving castles.”

  “What are they?” I had heard vague rumours, of course, but Jonas had actually seen these vessels.

  “They bring gold from the colonies in Terra Nova. A fleet sets out every year and it brings the ransom of an Emperor. That will make Siderea the greatest power in the world soon.”

  There was a note of unwilling pride in his voice. I tried to imagine what a floating castle would look like, particularly one filled with gold. All my imagination provided was an image of something similar to the ships in the harbour below, scaled up to the size of a small mountain and with battlements like this palace. It did not seem very believable.

  “Gold is not the only thing that makes a kingdom powerful,” I said, nettled a little by his words.

  “Gold can pay a lot of soldiers and buy weapons and ships. It can buy the services of mages and scholars too. Do not underestimate its importance, my friend.”

  I thought about the gold coin that Mistress Iliana had paid my parents for an indenture that would take seven years from my life. That had just been one small coin. I was imagining shiploads of those. I had no idea how much a soldier would be paid or a war wizard for that matter but I saw that Jonas had the right of it.

  “I will not,” I said.

  “Gold can build a lot of churches and pay for a lot of charity as well,” Jonas added. “It can make the faith strong as it needs to be.”

  “Needs to be?”

  “The Old Ones stir. The Shadow Kingdoms make ready for war. Their troops have already entered Umbrea on a number of occasions. They raid the Duke’s vassals. There are rumours that a necromancer has siezed land in the south.”

  “I know about the Shadowlanders,” I said. I wanted to impress him the way he had impressed me. “I’ve seen them.”

  “At Ghazan.”

  “Yes.”

  “That must have been frightening.”

  I was tempted to say that it wasn’t but something about the young inquisitor's honesty impressed me. “It was. I would not care to have to face them without Mistress Iliana or Spider and his men present.”

  “Nor would I.” He looked at me genuinely curious. Red circled high overhead. I hoped he was not going to fly away. I also remembered Master Lucas’s warnings. I did not want some overenthusiastic chicken breeder taking pot shots at him. Not that there seemed much chance of that. He was a long way off.

  Worried, I focused my attention on him. I felt him soaring above us in the same way as I felt my breathing. It was just as present and just as hard to describe. “Your mistress used war magic against them, didn’t she?”

  “A green fireball of some sort. I have never seen such destruction.”

  “It sounds like balefire.”

  “I think that is what she called it.”

  “It is a deadly spell, often used on battlefields.”

  “You have studied these matters?”

  “I am training to be an Inquisitor. It is one of many things I have studied.”

  “It was awesome.” I was basking in my mistress’s reflected glory.

  “That I do not doubt. The spell is forbidden in Siderea and the rest of the mainland Sunlander kingdoms like Taurea.”

  “Forbidden?”

  “No mage may use it against human soldiers on pain of death.”

  “Why?”

  “It is too destructive. Too murderous. No one wants to see knights slaughtered like cattle.” I could think of one I would like to see dead but now did not seem to be the time to point that out.

  “You said in the mainland kingdoms. Is it forbidden here?”

  “No. Particularly not when used against the warped beasts from the Shadow Kingdoms.”

  There was a vehemence in his voice that had not been there before. When he talked in this way he sounded like an inquisitor. “What are they?”

  “They were men before they were exposed to dark magic and the power of the blight. The rulers of the Shadow Kingdoms use that to warp humans into other things.”

  “Why would anybody do that? What purposes would such monsters serve? They seemed hard to control?”<
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  “It is done as a punishment, and the monsters can be terrifying foes for mortal men,” said Jonas. “The Old Ones do similar things. It is how many of their children were created, the merfolk and the skinturners and other such.”

  I thought about the warnings my mistress had given me about speaking about such things and here I was doing so with a servant of the Inquisition. I wondered if this conversation would be reported back and used against me. “Those monsters were terrifying enough for me,” I said.

  “They are far from the worst things to come out of the Shadow Kingdoms. The Lords of Shadow create many monsters. But come, this is a sorry subject for conversation on such a fine day. Let us talk of something else. Tell me about where you grew up.”

  “There’s not a lot to tell. Really. It was on a freehold in the Bleak Lands near Khorba. I was a shepherd mostly. I looked after sheep and goats and my little brother and sisters.”

  “I miss mine,” said Jonas and he sounded as if he meant it. I realised then that he was a lot further from home than me, and in some ways was on a similar journey. “Maybe I will go back some day.”

  I had the strong feeling that he never would, and that made me afraid, for it was all too easy to imagine the same thing happening to me. “I am sure you will.”

  He looked sad and then shrugged and smiled. “I hope so.”

  We made our way back along the wall, as we walked, he began to point to objects and say the words in Solari and the Siderean dialect. As he did so, he pointed out the resemblance between some of the words, and the fact that our speech was a highly modified version of old Solari. He claimed that the difference was that our speech had mutated from its source over the long centuries and cross-pollinated with local dialects and strains of the Eldrim tongue. I saw no reason to disbelieve him.

  “You are saying that people simply add words over time, or change them and that’s why languages change and new ones develop.”

  He nodded pleased that I understood. “Yes. You’ll hear local slang words in the city. And sometimes new things are developed and those need new words.”

  “New things? I thought the ancients knew far more than us.”

  “You saw the Sentinels of Asurean’s Gate on your way here, so you know that is true. But they did not know everything and sometimes we find out things that they did not, or at least did not write about?”

  “Like what?”

  “Certain discoveries in the field of alchemy,” Jonas said. He spoke reluctantly and I did not push him, curious as I was. “Certain countries.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are places described in their books that are no longer there. There are countries in existence now that did not exist back then. There was an entire continent once out in the Great Ocean, the homeland of the Solari. It is gone now.”

  “Oh that,” I said. “That is mentioned in scripture.”

  “When it vanished it left chains of islands behind, and new islands emerge from the sea where it sank.”

  “New islands.”

  “Burning mountains that rise from the waters of the ocean. Over time they become new lands.”

  “Burning mountains?” I thought of the stories I heard about the Deserts of Ash that surrounded the Shadow Kingdoms. Legend said that those wastelands had been created by the ash spewed forth by burning mountains. “Those are the products of evil sorcery, are they not?”

  “Not always. It seems that they are natural phenomena too. They exist where no sorcery touches, in places that had never been shadowed by blight.”

  “That is the first I have ever heard of it.”

  “The King-Emperor of Siderea’s Navigators mark such places on their maps. When first they set out for Terra Nova they used old charts from the days before the World Ocean was closed. They found that the charts were sometimes right and often wrong.”

  I thought about what he was saying, the World Ocean had been closed. I knew that it had happened, of course, it was mentioned in scripture, but I had never really thought about what it meant. I had never seen ships or the sea when I heard those sermons. I had just imagined some sort of magic curtain or an Interdict of the Holy Sun. I suddenly wondered about what had sent men scudding across the ocean in ships. There were so many questions I wanted to ask. So much that I wanted to learn.

  It struck me with the force of a blow that I was glad to be in Solsburg among people who might be able to answer my questions, and did not appear adverse to helping me understand the world around them.

  Red descended and landed on my outstretched arms then snuggled down into his sling once more.

  I glanced at Jonas and once again took in his inquisitor's robes. Of course, they had their own reasons for wanting to do so. I had much to learn about many things if I wanted to survive and prosper here. And I would need to do so under the eye of the Inquisition.

  Chapter Eight

  Mistress Iliana said, “That is enough for today.”

  I looked at her. The lesson had seemed very short. It was barely an hour before mid-day. “Mistress?”

  “I have other duties than supervising you this morning. The Duke wishes to consult me concerning some new magical threat.”

  That sounded ominous. “Threat, mistress?”

  She nodded her head and considered her words carefully. “It appears the incursion we encountered at Ghazan was not the only one. It looks like the Shadow Kingdoms have invaded the southern part of Umbrea.”

  My thoughts immediately went to my family. They were a lot closer to the border than we were, and they were a lot more vulnerable too.

  It was as if Mistress Iliana could read my thoughts. “It’s in the far south, and it may not be anything. Some of Duke Marco’s vassals are troubled by rumours of a necromancer having set up court in the ruins of Sathalal.”

  The name of the ruins meant nothing to me, but the word necromancer did. “That’s terrible, mistress.”

  “It might be. It might be nothing. It may just be some shepherd saw something. It may be some noble desires a pretext to annex the land. There’s no need to panic just yet.”

  I remembered the conversation we had overheard the time I had been introduced to the Duke. I doubted things were as simple as she was trying to make them sound. “Will we have to go there, mistress?”

  “It’s possible, but not soon. It takes months to organise an expedition on the scale that might be called for.”

  Months did not seem so long to me. Mistress Iliana said, “What will be, will be. There is nothing either of us can do about it at the moment. Things will become clearer as more reports come in. In the meantime, you have other duties.”

  “What would you have me do, mistress?”

  “Today Master Lucas is doing his rounds. You will accompany him and learn from him.”

  “I have yet to master the light spell, mistress. I am unlikely to be able to cast anything he teaches me.”

  “There is more to being a wizard than casting spells, boy.”

  “I thought spellcasting was what made wizards wizards, mistress.”

  “I am going to take that as an ill-advised attempt at humour. Enter!” She spoke a moment before there was a knock on the door. The rapping was hastily cut off and the sour-faced girl I had seen with Master Lucas and the Duke came into the room. She glared at me for just a moment but her expression became carefully bland when she turned her face towards my mistress. “Ah, Octavia, punctual as always.”

  Was there a note of mockery in my mistress’s voice? It was hard to tell.

  “Thank you, Mistress Iliana. Master Lucas has asked me to bring his new pupil down to the sick rooms.”

  I did not like the sound of that at all.

  “Very good,” said Mistress Iliana. She turned to me and made a shooing gesture. “Off you go!”

  I rose from the desk, took a last glimpse at the wax tablet with the rune of light on it and made my way towards the door. Octavia gave my mistress a respectful nod, then followed
me out of the door. As soon as it was closed she said, “Wait, boy. You must walk two steps behind me.”

  Her tone reminded me of Vorster’s when first we met. She had the aristocratic accent and the arrogance. Of course, they all did. “Why?” I said.

  “Because you are the junior here.”

  I shrugged and took up position behind her. Her lip curled and she looked down her nose at me as she swept by. Red chose that moment to make a small farting noise.

  Octavia turned and glared at me. “Your pet is disgusting.”

  I said nothing and that just seemed to make her more angry. Red flexed his wings, bounded on to the floor and scampered along behind her. His head was held high and his little snout was in the air. If I had not known better I would have thought he was mocking her.

  She shook her head and proceeded along the corridor, taking a direction I had never gone before and walking quickly as if she hoped to leave the two of us behind. I stretched my legs to keep up and did my best to memorise the route we took. I suspected that I would be finding my own way back.

  We entered a huge square containing a garden. Covered walkways passed around the edges, leading into large rooms. Inside the rooms, people slept on cots. White robed servants came and went, bearing trays of food and water.

  Master Lucas emerged from one of the chambers. Behind him was the beefy, bored-looking noble youth in the white robe. Standing beside the older man I noticed how big he was. He was so broad he looked shorter than he actually was. He studied me lazily while his master beamed.

  “I am glad you could both join us,” Master Lucas said. His smile became slightly colder when he considered the girl. "You are just in time for the final part of our rounds. Octavia, if you would be so kind as to lead the way into the Dependant’s Chambers.

  “Of course, Master Lucas,” Octavia said. With her master’s eyes on her, she smiled warmly at me. Her tones were smooth and ingratiating.

  She led the way into a large darkened chamber, in which a number of people lay on straw pallets. The air was stale and there was a faint smell of sickness in the air. Master Lucas looked at the nearest body, bent over it and said, “Fredrik, how are you feeling today?”