“And Hissop and the chapel priests paid for that.”
“No, they paid for their treachery. The riches of Temple will pay to re-arm the Barony.”
“Has it occurred to you that Lord Lamaliere might have been complicit? It was under his seal.”
Landen shook her head. “No one I spoke to could place the man in the city all winter. He squatted in Tide’s Watch like the rest of the lords did in their halls, and waited to see how my father’s madness would shake out.”
A silence stretched on for a moment, then became suddenly awkward when Chaddin said, “Our father’s madness.”
Landen winced slightly and nodded her agreement. By now they had reached their horses, guarded by still more knights, and mounted their saddles. Once they’d put a few streets between themselves and the slowly emptying Temple of Braech, she said, “Perhaps it is time to call them in and feel them out.”
“If you wish, but I would prefer to have more men under arms answering directly to us within the walls before inviting the lords and their retinues.”
“You have a point. All the more reason to empty the temple quickly, then.”
It was Chaddin’s turn to wince, though he said nothing. No sooner had they clattered through the portcullis into the large courtyard of the Dunes, than a corpulent figure was making its way towards them. Clad in a voluminous green robe of crushed velvet, belted in gold—more of which looped broadly around his neck—Lord Sundegard, Castellan of the Dunes, waved a tiny roll of paper in one age-spotted thick-fingered hand. He panted out the necessary honorifics, and Landen only caught something about a pigeon, and the word Innadan.
Landen awkwardly took the roll of paper and pried a seal of red wax from it, unrolled it carefully, and held it to the light. She turned to Chaddin, no small bit of shock in her wide eyes.
“The Peace Congress is on. Standing Guard Pass.”
Lord Sundegard cleared his throat noisily. “Peace Congress, m’lady?”
“Aye, Lord Castellan,” Landen answered him. “A Peace Congress attended by Hamadrian Innadan, Unseldt Harlach, and Byron Telmawr at the least. It says nothing of Gilrayan Oyrwyn, but it does not rule him out.”
“It’s a trap, my lady,” Sundegard ventured, the folds of his neck wobbling indignantly. “Surely you must go in force.”
“The Congress will also be attended by Allystaire Stillbright, who is its architect,” Landen replied, shaking her head. “I pity the man who tries to spring a trap upon him there.”
“This is the so-called paladin who was the death of your own lord father, and yet you would trust him?”
Chaddin leveled hard eyes on the prattling, fat castellan, who ignored him utterly. Landen, however, cut the man off. “As I have no doubt already said in your hearing, my lord,” she began coldly, “Allystaire Stillbright is indeed a paladin, and we are indebted to him for our very lives. Surely you have heard the proclamations read that rescinded the Anathemata upon the worship of his Goddess, and the further proclamations expressly allowing said worship throughout Barony Delondeur. So, yes, Lord Sundegard, I trust the man as much as I trust anyone. Now,” she said, putting a snap into her voice that even had Chaddin straightening his spine. “You will have preparations to make for the party that will leave for Standing Guard Pass in a fortnight, and messages to send to the Lords of Tide’s Watch, Ennithstide, and the Salt Cliffs.”
“Of course, my lady,” Sundegard panted, bowing. “I’ll see to it at once.” The man scrambled off, wobbling beneath his robes.
“Oyrwyn had Allystaire as his castellan,” Chaddin observed, as he and Landen watched the fat man waddle off. “And we have Sundegard. How did we not lose the war a decade ago?”
Landen laughed lightly. “He is not so bad if you know how to handle him.”
“I haven’t the strength,” Chaddin replied. “What do you think no word from Oyrwyn means?”
“We will find out at Standing Guard Pass,” Landen said. “And until then, we will hope that everyone comes in peace.”
* * *
If winter had given up its long battle with spring in the Baronies, it was a distant and maligned memory far to the southwest on the Keersvast Archipelago.
Though it was not her first visit, the Marynth Evolyn could hardly take it all in. She cherished the memory of sailing in, though it was two weeks past now. The Guild Pilot who had come aboard took them on a long route. While the Pilot’s job was to bring them past the reefs that formed the great city’s stoutest and most famed defenses, not all of those routes took a simple thirteen-bench longship beneath bridges that arced high enough to allow for the passage of caravels and thirty-bench sword-ships.
The city had spread out before her, gleaming pink coral and cool blue marble in its oldest sections, exotic Concordat woods mixed into the newer. The Grand Temple of the Sea Dragon that she was now quartered in was a massive blue marble edifice in one of the very oldest sections of the city. The scores of islands that made up the city were linked by bridges and causeways, and the city had, over hundreds of years, organized itself into rings, with the wealth congregating further in. Braech’s Temple was located on its own island, separated from the very innermost ring by only a few score span of seawater.
Evolyn stood at one of the windows overlooking this stretch of water, made quiescent by the artifice of Keersvast’s builders, the craft of Guild of Reeftenders and Pilots, and the power of the very Temple she stood in.
“Braech is the Father of Waves,” she murmured. “Did he mean for men to try to master them like this?” She murmured these thoughts, but should have kept them to herself. Never know who’s listening anymore, or whom they serve. She paused in her thoughts, watched the tamed sea gently slosh between man-made wonders. And whom do you serve, Marynth Evolyn?
The thought took her unaware, as if it hadn’t been her own.
Symod, was her first answer. And Braech. She had little time to ponder any further, for a Temple Guardsman, dressed in ornate scale armor, came into the room and addressed her with a bow.
“Honored Marynth.” An archipelago man, his Barony tongue softly accented, he bowed deeply, in a manner that curled her lip with disgust. “A pilot awaits to convey you to the first circle. Will you require a guard?”
The sly tone of his words, the undisguised lift of an eyebrow. The man hoped to gain favors, whether hers or Braech’s or both, she did not much care.
“No,” she answered, putting as much ice in the single syllable as she could manage. He turned and walked away, his unctuous bearing hardly becoming a man under arms and sworn to Braech.
Unblooded tradsemen’s sons playing at being guardsmen, she thought, as she waited a respectable length of time before exiting the chamber with its view of the captive sea, and going in search of the pilot. She was startled to remember, before she reached the entry hall, that she’d first heard the words from the man she was now working to destroy.
The pilot proved to be both less and more ornamental than the guardsman who’d seen an opportunity in her. Less, because his competence was clear and bracing, and more because he was clearly an elfling of some half or quarter blood, and arrestingly fair. His auburn hair was cut into the scalplock she’d seen many of his sort affecting on the archipelago. By shaving the sides of their heads and exposing the slim points of their ears they seemed all the more exotic to her, though she wasn’t sure that was the intention. Many wore tattoos inked into the scalp as well, and this man was no different, with a vividly blue seahorse—complete with saddle and stirrups, though no rider—cunningly inked into the flesh on the left side of his head.
“Kiawan,” he’d said as he made a small bow. “And you are the Marynth Evolyn?”
“Aye.” She’d extended a hand in a bold, Barony fashion, and when he took it in his, she found his flesh strangely cool, even cold. Despite that she fancied she could feel the pulse of blood beneath
his skin. “To what do I owe the visit of a Pilot?” Evolyn could guess, but wasn’t quite ready to hope.
“I have been dispatched by a gentleman of means to convey you to a jetty some distance inward.” The elfling—his chin was too broad, his cheeks too full, his shoulders too broad to be full blooded elf—smiled as if sharing in some secret knowledge with her. “He was very insistent that the meeting happen immediately. Hinted that a confluence of the stars demanded it.”
“Very well,” she muttered her reply. She cast about for thoughts to bring color into her cheeks, and settled on the slim but tightly muscled arms and chest of the elfling, well displayed by the simple blue-dyed leather vest he wore. Let him think it’s an assignation, she told herself. No reason for anyone to know otherwise. “I must fetch something first. Where should I meet you?”
He gave her the number of a quay and a jetty and bowed, turned smoothly on one heel and strolled out of the Temple, showing at least a hint of the fabled elven grace he’d apparently inherited.
Evolyn moved off determinedly, though not hastily, to her chambers.
* * *
Soon enough, the Marynth Evolyn Lamaliere was stepping off of Kiawan’s slim boat. He lifted a hand to aid her, and she pointedly ignored it. In formal clerical robes and carrying a heavy bundle against her chest with both arms, Evolyn was still, by Braech, the daughter of the Lord of Tideswatch, and had grown up on and around boats.
She stepped nimbly onto the stone steps that led up onto the jetty and then up the proper walkway, mindless of their saltwater slickness. “Wait for me and there is a gold link in it, Kiawan,” she tossed back as she took the steps nimbly.
Once upon the street that overlooked the rows of quays that handled the vast amount of boat traffic this deep into Keersvast’s center of power, a man stepped forward out of the crowd.
“Marynth Evolyn,” he said, his voice curiously lacking inflection. “Do follow me.” The man was dressed as a merchant of substance, wearing soft suede boots—a sure sign that he did no work upon the open water—along with hose and an ornate doublet. His chest bore a large device she didn’t recognize, a fish capering upon the top of barrel, which she took to be the sign of some merchant house or other. The man had turned swiftly away from her, but in the falling light she thought she’d seen an unusual green that seemed to move in his eyes.
He led her to what passed for a nondescript building for being this far inward, coral faded with the patina of age and salt carried against it on the wind, a few windows of thick, lightly purpling glass of significant age. Thick curtains were drawn behind them, making it impossible to see if the house was lit.
The man who led her to it said nothing else as they walked. Once at the door, the merchant knocked quietly, then turned and shuffled away.
The door swung open noiselessly. Evolyn stood, watching the dark entryway for a moment. Then, with a quick prayer to Braech, she walked in.
The door closed behind her; she could tell only by the rush of air and the slight click as it closed. It left the room entirely dark, and Evolyn felt something like panic rising in her chest.
Two dark points of green light suddenly appeared at eye level a few feet before her.
There was a dry, chuckle, followed by its faint echo.
“I do forget that most of you haven’t the Seeing Dark.” Each word was followed by a hollow reverberation of itself. Several candlepoints of light flicked into existence at once, all over the interior of the room. She found herself standing in a sparsely-appointed house. Chairs were scattered about, but no tapestries or paintings hung on the walls. Aside from the curtains draped across the windows, scattered tables and chairs, the house was entirely unfurnished.
“Are we to discuss matters standing?”
Evolyn’s attention was snapped back to the man—if man he was—standing in front of her. He wore a heavy dark robe that shrouded a frame so thin as to be nearly emaciated. His hands were tucked into opposite sleeves, and beneath the peaked hood of the robe, only his mouth and chin were visible. These, too, were shockingly thin, the skin drawn so tightly over the bones that their outlines were clear.
“As you would, Eldest,” she muttered, bowing slightly, the thick, cloth-wrapped bundle in her hands impeding her motion only slightly.
“And what have you brought me? Does a temple think it can buy the power of the Knowing with a book?”
“It is not merely a book, Eldest,” she replied, even as chills stroked her spine from the odd, echoing answer each of his words received. By then he had turned and walked deeper into the house, leaving her no choice but to follow. “It describes the most powerful and ancient of Braech’s secrets.”
“Let me share with you Braech’s secret. He does not exist.” The sorcerer had turned on her and lifted a hand, the fingers protruding from his sleeve like bones, or the bare branches of a sapling. “There is only power, to be shaped and molded to the ends of those learned enough to see it. That you and your ilk insist on assigning names and principles to the raw force of the world never ceases to be bothersome.”
“I am not come to debate theology with you,” Evolyn replied, more fiercely than she’d intended. “I am come to discuss our common enemy, and the manner of destroying them.”
They’d reached an inner chamber with a single table. The candlepoints had continued to flicker into being as they’d walked, illuminating the way they’d come down a narrow hallway. Papers lay scattered upon it. In the half-light Evolyn thought she saw a well-rendered map of the Baronies, with notations she could not read drawn carefully upon it in two places; one, in the eastern reaches of Barony Delondeur, past the Thasryach; the second, in the middle of Barony Innadan.
“And why would I need common cause with a Temple to see any enemies of the Knowing into the ground?”
“Because Allystaire Stillbright has killed three of your kind,” Evolyn said, “according to our reports.”
“Then your reports are wrong. This Stillbright has killed but one of us, the weakest and most foolish. Something much greater and more powerful than a mere knight was the downfall of the others.” He paused, the words trailing in the air, along with the power that seemed to leak from his eyes and his mouth when he spoke. “The Negation.”
“If you mean the boy, then yes, he is quite dangerous. A dozen of my fellow priests engaged him, will to will. And lost.”
“A dozen like you would be as stingless gnats to the Negation,” the Eldest replied. “Show me this book, these rituals of which you are so proud.”
Evolyn laid the book carefully down upon the table, unwrapped it reverently. It was bound in cloth-wrapped wood, with a heavy lock holding it closed. She produced a key from her belt, turned it in the lock, and opened it, her fingers searching for the thin silver bar that served as a mark. She pushed it across the table towards the sorcerer, and was glad when the bilious green of his eyes and mouth turned to it and away from her.
The respite was short-lived. The sorcerer turned his eyes back towards her, and they opened wide and blazing.
“The principle is sound. Reclaim the power and redirect it. Yes,” the sorcerer said, and she swore there was an excitement in the echoing voices that she hadn’t thought the man, if man he was, capable of. “I will assist you. When do you plan to depart?”
She swallowed hard. “I am trying to round up as many of the Dragon Scales as I can before I set sail. The more Holy Berzerkers I bring to the fight—”
“The better your chances. Yes, yes. It is quite obvious. It also does not answer my question. When do you plan to depart?”
“A fortnight.”
“I will meet you in your temple in Londray when you arrive. Be gone.”
She started to reach for the book, but the sorcerer placed one claw-like hand upon the cover. Lines of green power pulsed beneath the skin of his hand, which was webbed with cracks like poorly kept leat
her.
“Is it your temple’s custom to offer gifts and then to take them back?”
“It was not a gift. We struck no accord as to its purchase.”
“Let me offer you an accord then, Marynth Lady Evolyn Lamaliere,” the Eldest said, his hand still perched on the tome she’d first seen on Symod’s desk a lifetime ago. “If you do not attempt to take this book, I will not melt the eyes from your head, nor boil the blood in your heart, nor will I rip the weak muscles of your body free from your bones, all the while keeping you alive to experience the most exquisite of pain. Do you accept?”
Accept, said the echo of the voice that emanated from him and yet not from his mouth.
“Yes,” she said, and Evolyn wondered how she kept her voice even. “Take the book as a token of Braech’s esteem.”
“I need not the esteem of a deity that exists only in the deluded minds of idiots and madmen.”
“Very well, then. Do we have an accord?”
“There is one more condition. The boy is to be killed at all costs before I will move against the rest of them.”
“We have tried assassins before,” Evolyn replied. “When it was just Allystaire and the woman. They failed. Now with the dwarf and the boy, I cannot see a path to success that way.”
“If assassination failed, send some of your precious berzerkers. The paladin is going to kill them all anyway. Why not see if they may achieve any small success in the time that is left to them?”
“It is possible that they could be drawn out and exposed, under the right circumstances. But how am I to pass the message in time? Even if a messenger set sail tonight, we would have no answer before it was time for me to sail.”
“Leave that to me. Where is Symod?”
“Camped along the Valdin river with the army he is building,” she said.
“Sketch to me the basics of a plan, and then leave.”
“No.” The word was out of her mouth before Evolyn knew what she was saying. If I am damned, then Father of Waves, let me be damned for following you as I know how, she thought, and pressed on, the Eldest remaining blessedly silent. “I will not, for anyone, design a stratagem by which we hope to murder a boy by skullduggery. Work out a plan with Symod. The time has come to fight our enemy as the Sea Dragon wills, strength against strength. If we are not strong enough to destroy Stillbright and his companions, then we deserve to lose. I will not help you.”
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