Scriber

by Ben S. Dobson

  Then, through the breached wall, I saw a burst of orange spark to life atop a nearby hill. Flames.

  The fireleafs were burning.

  “They did it!” Wynne pulled her sword from a man’s back and pointed it at the distant fire.

  I had no time to appreciate the victory. The voices of the Burnt changed pitch, became wails of agony that tore at my mind, and I screamed as their pain set my body ablaze.

  The rebels surrounding us faltered, staggered; many fell to their knees. One collapsed limply to the ground, then another—either their fireleaf was the one burning, or the same pain that consumed my body had shocked them from their hosts. I did not know which, and I did not care.

  The refugees did not let the opportunity go to waste. Some ran, easily escaping now that the Burnt were distracted. Others who had been fleeing turned to attack their weakened pursuers with rocks, sticks, cooking tools—whatever was at hand. Wynne and Deanyn went to their aid, their blades making short work of the rebels who were still able to fight back.

  The Burnt who could still retreat fell back towards the opening in the palisades. Those that could not physically escape deserted their bodies, too mad with pain to be subtle about it—they dropped by the dozen, littering the camp with discarded corpses.

  And still I burned. It was not like the flames the Burnt had forced upon me in the past; that, I now understood, had been only remembered agony, a memory of the suffering they had once known. This was what had caused those memories. The Burnt did not force me to share their torment—they were too distracted to do anything of the sort—but I felt it all the same. I was lost in an inferno of pain, the pain of thousands of spirits burning together, reflected and magnified through the strange connection that they shared. The connection that I somehow shared with them.

  The pain, though, was not nearly the worst of it; worse, far worse, were the emotions that came with the fire, the anguish and terror and loss. Clawing at my temples, I fell to the ground, assaulted by memories of things I had never seen. Pain. Men in brown carrying burning brands. Fear and pain. A forest of green turned red by flames. Sorrow and fear and pain. A huge figure, a giant silhouetted in fire. Hate.

  For a moment I thought that last image was Bryndine—I had never seen anyone else so large, so broad of shoulder, so heavily muscled. But no, the golden hair was too long, and there was a more masculine shape to the massive body. And then I saw the firelight glint off the iron crown on the figure’s head.

  Erryn. This was no recent memory; I was seeing the Burning, a thousand years in the past.

  I heard a loud wooden creaking as the city gates opened behind us, but it was far away, unreal. My entire existence was the agony of burning, the pain of a thousand minds joined with my own. I might have felt hands lifting me, voices shouting in protest, but that was all a dream. The only reality was fire, and soon it burned me away into nothing, and the world went dark.

  Chapter Thirty

  Erryn’s Promise has often been imperfectly kept. Though the King is meant to serve the people, the people rarely have the courage to stand against a King who does not. The Justices of the White Hall are sworn to remove a King who has been judged a Promise-breaker, but in practice that is often a difficult task, as the Justices are adjudicators and gaolers more than true soldiers.

  Worse still than simple Promise-breakers are the Kings who have defied the Promise while convincing the people that they were upholding it, such as Ullyd the Forgetter. A King who claims to act in the best interest of his subjects can do nearly anything in the name of Erryn’s Promise, if the people are foolish enough to allow it—and too often, they are. When a King has the people’s support, however misguided that support is, it is nearly impossible for the Justices to intercede. In the worst cases, the Justices are fooled themselves.

  In this way, the Promise has been the Kingsland’s greatest weakness at times, just as it has been our greatest strength at others.

  — From Dennon Lark’s The Promise of a Kingdom

  “Wake up.”

  A sudden impact and a sharp pain in my side shocked me into consciousness. I did not know where I was, but the moment I woke, even before I opened my eyes, I became aware of invisible voices all around me. I must still be in Three Rivers, at least, I surmised. The whispers of the Burnt suffused every inch of the capital and the surrounding land.

  As my vision focused, I saw that I was lying on the floor in a white room. A man in King’s Army browns stood over me, poised to kick again. I groaned and held up a hand to show him I was awake, but it didn’t stop him; his foot lashed out and caught me in the ribs, knocking the wind out of me.

  “On your feet, traitor,” the man said.

  Standing was a painful proposition, but I did my best, hoping to avoid another blow. Disobeying every instinct my aching body had, I rose to my knees and then to my feet, nearly falling over again when a rush of dizziness stole my balance away. The soldier caught me by the arm before I toppled.

  It took me a moment to determine my location. The room was entirely empty, and the white walls were featureless and austere save for a single barred window, too small and too high for me to see through. It was only when I saw the steel bars that blocked the entrance in place of a door that I knew where I was. The White Cells—the dungeons beneath the White Hall.

  The soldier dragged me from my cell into the hallway, where several other uniformed men waited. Bryndine was with them, and they were taking no chances with her—she was bound in irons and her scabbard hung empty on her back. Six men surrounded her and held her chains, all clearly chosen for size and strength, though none came within a foot of Bryndine’s height. The single man gripping my unbound arm was almost humorous in contrast, though the situation was anything but.

  Bryndine nodded at me in greeting, as she might have if we encountered one another on the street instead of in a prison surrounded by guards. “Scriber Dennon. You are well?”

  I inclined my head slightly, scared to speak aloud in front of the guards. Apparently my fear was justified, because the largest of the soldiers did not approve of Bryndine’s question. “Shut up, bitch,” he said, and drove a meaty fist into her stomach. She did not flinch. The man winced and surreptitiously rubbed his knuckles; I held back a spiteful grin.

  “Good,” said Bryndine. “We have been—”

  “I told you to shut up!” The man drew his sword and struck her hard in the side with the pommel.

  Once again, Bryndine absorbed the blow. Her jaw clenched, but otherwise she showed no sign of discomfort. She turned her gaze on the man, cold and calm, and said, “I will speak when I wish. My uncle has summoned us”—she placed a slight but meaningful emphasis on her relation to the King—“and I do not think he wants me or the Scriber beaten to the point that we cannot answer his questions. But by all means, strike me again. The choice is yours.”

  The big soldier glared up at her. “Don’t think the King’ll save you. He hangs them that work for the rebels, you’ll be no different.” But he sheathed his weapon, all the same. “Let’s go. He’s waiting.”

  The soldiers led us out of the dungeon and through the White Hall. The stark white corridors were empty save for the soldiers guarding the White Cells—the white-cloaked Justices who presided over the courts and warded the cells were nowhere to be seen. Their vow to keep the King’s power in check, I suspected, had not been popular with Syrid of late.

  As we walked down the great white stairway that led from the White Hall to the street just outside the Kingshome, Bryndine explained what had happened while I was unconscious. After the Burnt fled, the city gates had opened and the First Company had emerged, surrounding the camp and demanding that Bryndine and all who travelled with her be given into their custody at once. Ralsten and his men had tried to fight back, but they had been vastly outnumbered. Unwilling to let them spend their lives uselessly, Bryndine had laid down her arms and surrendered herself.

  “I am not certain who else they took,” Bry
ndine said. “They kept us separated. The women I sent to burn the fireleafs had not yet returned; they may have eluded capture.” Her hands were bound, so she tipped her head towards the men surrounding her. “Most of these men, I think, are… in control of themselves. They did not fight like the Burnt. But they think us traitors. Uran and my uncle have convinced the city of our guilt, though I do not know what crime we are meant to have committed.”

  The soldiers did not try to silence her again, though much of what she said drew angry stares, and they handled us roughly in place of actually striking us. Even when it became clear that they would not hurt me for speaking, though, I said nothing. There seemed little point in discussion. We were prisoners of the King, and the King was of the Burnt. We would be dead by day’s end.

  We were taken through the gates of the Kingshome, but not to the small receiving chamber I had seen on my last two visits to the palace. No, the soldiers led us directly through the main doors and down the tall, arched hallway that led to the throne room. The King had summoned us to stand before Erryn’s Chair. There was only one reason I could think of for that. He means to pass sentence on us.

  The throne room was massive, over a hundred feet long and at least half that in width, with a high vaulted ceiling supported by slender marble columns. Sunlight streamed in from the dozens of windows that lined the walls, so that the room was always bright during the daylight hours. When the King passed judgements or made proclamations to his people, he did so from Erryn’s Chair, and the throne room was built to allow hundreds of citizens to witness such events. It was filled near to bursting now. Citizens of Three Rivers crowded into every inch of free space, clamouring for a view of Bryndine and myself. Guardsmen in King’s Army tabards lined the brown velvet carpet that led to Erryn’s Chair, keeping the throng from blocking our path forward.

  The people screamed at us as we passed by. “Traitors,” they cried, and “Blasphemers!” They shouted obscenities at Bryndine, calling her the Bloody Bride, accusing her of terrible, entirely imagined crimes. They threw curses at me as well, though less often—mostly I was beneath their attention, despite the fact that some of my crimes were real. I may have desecrated holy ground, but I was not as exciting a target as the King’s niece. Some spat, but the guards kept them far enough away that it rarely reached us, and when it did it only spattered against boots and trouser legs.

  At the far end of the hall, King Syrid sat upon Erryn’s Chair, watching with a blank face as we approached. The throne of the First King was enormous and beautiful—carved, legend said, from the trunk of the first fireleaf Erryn had burned, orange-yellow wood shot through with veins of red and spots of charred black, varnished to a perfect shine. The back and the arms of the chair curved and twisted with the grain of the wood, curling into points like tendrils of fire. Above the King’s head, the burning tree of the Errynsons was carved into the wood in exquisite detail, each leaf and lick of flame sharply defined.

  The King’s councillors stood to the right of the throne. Uran Ord was closest to Syrid, his head still bandaged and misshapen. Prince Alyn was next in line, and then Korus. The Eldest Brother and Sister were at the King’s left side, and Sister Olynna shot me a satisfied look that was almost a smirk. And with all of these powerful people, for reasons I could not fathom, stood Logan Underbridge, trying his best to look important and dignified.

  The King raised his hand as we drew near, and eventually the hall fell silent. Silent, at least, to anyone but me. The whispers of the Wyddin did not cease. Their voices filled the room—and the palace, and the city—so thoroughly that it was difficult to distinguish one source from the next, but when I focused on the King I could sense the silent screams flowing from him, a strong current in a vast ocean of noise.

  “Bryndine Errynson and Scriber Dennon Lark,” said King Syrid, and there was nothing in his words or manner of the shrewd, sharp-tongued King I had met before. The eyes that had once darted ceaselessly were still; his voice was cold and empty. “For giving aid to rebel criminals, for plotting against your King and his councillors, and for seeking forbidden Elovian sorceries, you and your companions stand accused of treason against the Kingsland.”

  “We have committed no treason,” said Bryndine, holding her head high. “We have done our duty and kept our oaths.”

  “Lies from the mouth of a traitor,” the King said coldly. He grasped something in his hand and held it up for all to see—a small scrap of paper. “You sent this message from Ryndport. It is full of vile, treasonous accusations against the High Commander. Prince Alyn will confirm that it was written by your hand.”

  In Ryndport, I had rarely seen Prince Alyn without a smile on his face; he was not smiling now. The Prince was lost to the Burnt, as his father was. Alyn had been a warm, kind man; this was not a man at all, just a thing wearing a man’s skin. “She sent the letter with one of my birds, though I did not know what it said at the time,” he said. “Moreover, when they came to Ryndport, they brought the rebels with them, and while the Burners gathered at our walls, my cousin and the Scriber were seeking books of magick. The same magick the rebels use.”

  Shocked murmurs and gasps rippled through the crowd with each accusation. When Uran Ord told of Bryndine’s actions in Waymark, her supposed betrayal of the King’s Army, the murmurs grew into outraged shouts; by the time Sister Olynna and Brother Cyril accused us of defiling the Old Garden in our search for “forbidden knowledge”, the people were screaming for our heads. It’s the Forgetting come again, I realized with horror. We are going to hang for reading the wrong books.

  When Korus began to speak, my horror gave way to anger.

  “Of course, the Council forbade Scriber Dennon’s blasphemous pursuit,” he said, and when he looked at me, his lips curled into a slight, self-satisfied smile. It was that smile that told me the truth of the matter: Korus was not one of the Burnt. He is doing this out of spite.

  “But he rebelled against that ruling,” Korus went on. “He was determined to find the power that destroyed Elovia—”

  I could not stay silent any longer. “We are both sworn to uncover the past! Have you forgotten that oath? How can you condemn another Scriber for seeking the truth of our history?”

  “He is condemning you for treason and dark magicks,” said Uran Ord. He nodded to the guard holding me, and the man struck me hard in the stomach, stealing my voice and my breath away.

  Korus looked down at me and wrinkled his nose in disgust, making a show of it. “As I said, Scriber Dennon was determined to find the magicks of the Sages. He has been looking into Elovian writings for years. It would not surprise me if he helped the rebels learn their sorcery.”

  “Thank you, Scriber Korus,” the King said. He motioned for Logan to step forward. “This man has known Scriber Dennon for five years, and was in Waymark during the rebel attack there. If you would, Master Underbridge.”

  Logan puffed his chest out proudly. “If it pleases yer Majesty, I got plenty to say ‘bout the Scriber. And the Bloody—beggin yer pardon, uh, the Lady Bryndine.” He paused, looking at the King with a stricken expression.

  As though he cares what you call her, Underbridge. He’s about to have her killed. I would have laughed, except that his stupidity proved he was not being controlled. He was the same Logan I had always known, and he was doing this of his own free will. Like Korus, like the crowd begging for blood behind us. These are the people she wanted to save. This is how they reward her.

  “Go on, Underbridge.” Syrid motioned for him to continue.

  “Well, the Scriber was always a shifty sort, never much fer talkin’, kept to his books. Don’t surprise me none if he’s been up to some godless business, all this sorcery and whatnot. Night afore the attack came, he met yer Majesty’s niece, snuck her into his house. Next night, she comes back and the Burners come right after.

  “We seen ‘em doin’ some ritual or such too, after the First saved us. Josia, she went to stop ‘em and the Bloody Bride killed ‘er
on the spot. Josia’s the one who seen ‘em that first night they met too, I’d wager they wanted to stop her talkin’.”

  I did laugh then, but it was a rough sound, raw and bitter. “Mother below, this is a farce. Bryndine saved your life, Logan. All she has done is try to help you, all of you!”

  The audience roared in outrage, and the guard struck me again, a vicious backhand across the face. My head snapped to the side. Spots floated before my eyes, and I could taste blood.

  “I have heard enough,” Syrid announced. “You are both guilty, that is clear. It breaks my heart to do this to my brother’s only child, but I must sentence you to death. You will hang tonight, along with the other women who were captured.”

  It was no less than I expected, but the words still made my heart batter against my chest, trying to escape my doomed body. All the rage and defiance drained out of me in an instant.

  Bryndine, though, showed no fear. She looked her uncle in the eyes without shame and said, “Then I will die without regret, beside soldiers truer than any in this room.”

  The crowd jeered, but Bryndine ignored it. She turned to face the people, and though six men held her chains, all of them together could not hold her in place. “If there are any true Army men here,” she said, “you will join Lieutenant Ralsten beyond the—”

  “Silence her!” the King commanded, the voices of the Burnt screaming along with him.

  Bryndine’s voice cut off as one of the soldiers jabbed her in the gut with the butt of his spear. She gasped and bent forward over the haft of the weapon, and he struck her full across the face with a steel gauntleted hand.

  But Bryndine Errynson was not so easily cowed. She straightened, spat the blood from her mouth, and spoke on in a clear, strong voice. “The people locked outside the gates have done nothing wrong. My uncle has left thousands to die. He has betrayed the people and broken the Promise. He has no right to the crown!”