The pride in Saul’s eyes said it all. Garrett remembered his old friend best as a warrior, but from what Andelusia said, Saul was at present a bookworm, spending most of his days haunting the old library beneath Gryphon Keep.
“Poor old Dank.” Saul shook his head. “Did you know, Garrett? He lived for decades down in the cellars. He left a thousand years of dust and literature down there. Grim stuff, most of it. I could spend my entire life reading and still be lost. I found sheaves of paper older than Graehelm and books of lore from days better off forgotten, all of it spread over at least a half dozen languages. It is too much for just one man, and now I am quite obsessed.”
“You should see it, Garrett,” said Andelusia. “Books everywhere, scrolls as old as Grandwood. I had no idea until he showed me.”
“Perhaps another day,” said Saul. “If you can manage the dust.”
“Perhaps.” Garrett nodded. “We have so few books in Mormist. It is a wonder I remember how to read.”
Restless, Rellen shifted in his chair. The mention of Dank nettles him, Garrett knew. Not surprising.
“So then, Garrett, what do you have in mind?” Rellen cut in. “You are a free man. All your belongings are on your back. Tales of your deeds could fill a man’s ear for days. What will you do in Gryphon? Marriage? Children? Soldiery? Tell us.”
He pondered the question. For all his wisdom, he had not constructed a plan beyond tonight. “Would that I knew. There are no wars for the moment, so swashbuckling is out of the question. I have no consorts or the charm to win a wife, so that leaves marriage by the wayside.”
“No charm?” Andelusia huffed. “Half the ladies of Gryphon would swoon if you walked past. A hero needs no charm, and it is not as though handsomeness escapes you.”
“Ande,” groaned Rellen. “Fill his head with that and he will start floating.”
Like a husband and wife already, he thought. “The truth is; I came back to see you three, and beyond that…nothing.”
“We could hammer together a house for you,” Rellen suggested. “A nice den with a view of Grandwood? Maybe a tilting yard and a spare room for whenever you decide to make Garrett the second? I could make you captain of the guard if you wanted. How famous would we be with you, the destroyer of the Furies, teaching Gryphon’s lads to fight? They would come from every corner of Graehelm just to see you. They might even pay, and mother would be proud of me for stumbling into some gold.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged.
“Maybe?” Rellen snorted.
“Maybe.”
“You really have no plans?” Andelusia pried.
“Peace and quiet. A few feasts like tonight. A few long walks through Grandwood. This is all I yearn for. In Mormist, they say the best place for a man’s sword is above his mantle. I believe it.”
“I like the idea.” Andelusia’s smile softened him. “Do as you will. Nothing set in stone. Garrett’s mantra. Mine too.”
“We could toast to that,” added Saul.
“So be it,” conceded Rellen. “A toast it is.”
The four friends leaned across the table and clinked their goblets together. The moonlight fell upon them just so, the pale shafts from the hall’s highest windows pooling like milk about their chairs. A moment I shall not forget, thought Garrett.
“Quite a night, this,” said Saul. “I have gone and drank too much.”
“We should keep at it until morning,” said Andelusia.
“No. Enough for tonight.” Rellen pushed his goblet away. “Garrett, your old room is right where you left it. If you can remember, that is.”
“Up the side stairs, next to the great window,” added Andelusia.
The evening was at its end, Garrett knew. A moment more of contemplative quiet, and the four friends pushed back their chairs and rose, stretching the stiffness from their arms and legs.
“Someday soon.” Saul was first to say his goodnights. “I will show you what secrets lie in the cellars of Gryphon.” The burly beast of Elrain retreated, meandering toward a small, rickety door in the corner of the hall, which led to the library below. Dank’s old chambers, Garrett knew. Saul fancies himself a wizard.
“Good to see you, friend. Been too long.” Rellen hugged him. “I always knew you would come back, but I wondered if I would be a withered old man before you did. We shall talk again tomorrow, when the wine and mead are out of me.”
Too sleepy to summon his usual humor, Rellen lumbered like a bear toward a pair of tall, oaken doors at the back of the room. “Goodnight, Garrett,” he called before leaving. “Ande, show him to his room if you like, else he’ll get lost before he finds it. Father built this place to be a labyrinth, you know.”
Rellen and Saul were gone, and the hall descended into a comfortable quiet. The servants moved here and there like breezes, clearing the platters and cups away. An elderly couple conversed at the far end of a far table, smiling and still in love. The moonlight in the windows wandered off, but in the heart of the hall, Andelusia and Garrett remained. She tiptoed around the table and hugged him hard, standing on her toes to press herself into him. Rellen forgot to marry the girl, he thought as he held her. She hides her disappointment well.
“Follow me.” She winked.
“Rellen will miss you,” he said. “It is a long walk. I can find my room well enough.”
She took his hands and tugged him away from the table. “My room is not so far from yours.” She swung around him as if to dance. “Besides, Rellen’s tower is not mine, not yet. It would be improper, since he and I are not married.”
“Something I assumed would be solved tonight.”
A shadow dimmed her face, though only for a moment. “Me too. I wondered when he would stop the feast to announce it. Maybe he changed his mind.”
“He would never…”
“I am a common girl, after all.” She stepped back. “His mother likes me well enough. She says Rellen may do whatever he like, having defeated the Furies at Mooreye. But he remembers his father. Emun would never have approved.”
“Emun is gone. What matters is that Rellen loves you.”
“I know,” she said. “Which is why I am so patient.”
Away she tugged him, toward an archway at the side of the hall. Beyond the portal, she brought him to a shadowed set of stairs, lit only by a few fragments of moonlight shining through an arrow slit. She led him up the curling stair, careful to disturb none of the keep’s servants, speaking softly with every footfall.
“I have a favor to ask,” she said as they climbed.
“Anything.”
“About Rellen.” She slowed. “He is lonely…too lonely, these days. It bothers me to see him glooming. I was hoping, praying actually, you might take him for a trip. Something simple, something short, but maybe something to cure his restlessness. An adventure would raise his spirits.”
She is right. Rellen is restless. He never wanted this life. “He has changed,” he agreed. “I see it in him.”
“He dwells on the war, on his father’s death, on his mother’s sadness. He lets it sit on him like a lump of coal. It drags him down. Sometimes it even poisons things between him and me. He sits in his father’s empty tower for days, and it feels like an abyss I cannot climb out of. I feel horrible for him, but what can I do?”
“It was doomed to happen.” He halted beside her at the top of the stairs. “He was never meant for lordship. He should be out in Grandwood, striding through the wilds. He should be in Ardenn, guarding against the Yrul. The chair is his prison, and the wilds his freedom.”
“So you will help him?” She clutched his hand, eyes full of hope.
“Of course.” He had already decided on that much. “I will pick the right moment to propose it to him. His mother will want my head for taking him away, but if nothing else, I will do it for your sake.”
“Thank you.” She let her hand fall from his. “I mean it. Thank you.”
She backed away from him, afterward dancing down
the long and dark hallway toward her room. She is perfection. He watched her go. I shall never let her come to harm, nor her husband-to-be.
Journal, Part II
The western wilderness
The streets of Denawir were ripe with flowers. The summer air was salty and swimming with pollen. There was no avoiding it. I had to leave.
I have written so before, but this will surely be my final entry. I am almost out of ink, and my pen, worn to nothing but a nub, will soon perish on my final page. Out here in the wilderness beyond Thillria, I have little to do besides walk, eat, and sleep. I write to quell my boredom. Had I the wit, I might have been a poet. But no…I had best keep to what I am good at.
The way north is not as easy as I hoped. If I had a better feeling for my next destination, I would reach it far faster. As is, I have trudged through every field and forest, and stopped at every crumbling inn. A tiresome trip indeed. I sweat. I stink. I have no horse. My feet ache and my eyes are tired from their daily beating by the sun. My shabby shoes and itchy shirt annoy me. I am a pauper for at least a little while longer. I do not enjoy it. Good riddance soon enough.
In reading my past entries in this sad little book, one might conclude I have never had any friends. A fair enough guess, considering my narcissistic approach, but not entirely true. There was one friend, just one. He was a lad from my childhood, which seems a lost era it was so long ago. We met in Romaldar. He was a young knight of House Myklokain, and I an orphan. Together we pranked our neighbors and pilfered the local vendors, and though I may have wished otherwise, our mischief was the only thing we had in common. His tastes were for swordplay and young woman, while I preferred to poke around the Romaldarian academy, where books and history were in hearty supply. When we parted ways during adolescence, we both assumed it was done, that we would never see each other again. We did not mind such an abrupt, absolute end. We were that way. Neither of us cared much for family or friends.
But many years later, a strange, unexpected thing occurred. My Grimwain, so brash and intolerant to his people, came to be exiled. He was stripped of his title, his lands, even his promised wife, suffering a quick stroke of Romaldarian justice that reduced him to nothing. They sent Grim eastward across barbarian lands. They drove him into the wastes between nothing and nowhere. His punishment was not unjust, but perhaps mild when one considers the horrors he may or may not have inflicted upon his people. To the people of his native land Grim seemed a maker of so much suffering that on the eve they cast him out, his countrymen celebrated like never before. Parades were held, flowers were lofted into the wind, and such revelry took place that the date of Grimwain’s banishment is now widely regarded as a national holiday. His status as nephew to the King is the only thing that saved his life, though perhaps that tiny mercy has doomed him, depending on how one views what is soon to come.
Grim survived many years in exile before he and I met again. It was on the far edge of Triaxe, where the shallow rivers slither out of the wild hills. I encountered him at his floorless, straw-roofed hut. He was not young anymore, nor was he the same as I remembered. He was pitifully poor. He had only his shirt, his swords, and his hatred. He lived in misery, and his heart was turned so fully against his former people that he nearly slew me just for uttering the word, ‘Romaldar.’ Our meeting again was not by chance. I knew every detail of Grim’s misfortunes, every foul rumor and ill turn of tongue that had led him to his lowly state. One might think I paid him a visit out of charity, but no, that was never the case. He required no such kindness, not from me. The truth was simple. It was I who needed help.
Today is many years from the date of Grimwain’s exile, but he remembers it like it was yesterday. He is not the forgiving sort, nor the kind of man to suffer indignity with a smile. He was and is a soldier of the purest sort, and the deeds his country worked against him remain as fresh as yesterday in his mind. Vengeance poisons him, but perfection drives him, and during these long years I believe I have managed to refine him. Oh, how Grim has changed. Often I wonder, especially during these lonely nights on the road, whether I have created a monster. With my help he might as well be a god. He is so elegant in what he does, almost perfect, and for this reason he is my only ally. I trust Grim. I need him. I left him in Thillria, but I know upon my return all will be as it needs to.
Many months will pass before Grim and I speak again, and many opportunities for things to go awry. I have considered that the road ahead is very much fraught with danger, both obvious and unforeseen. I could be mistaken for someone I am not. I could fall ill or lose my way in the tracts of this treeless, barely lived-in country. I doubt any of this will happen, but as now comes the most difficult part of my journey, I must not fall unawares. I am too close.
Tonight I lie beneath the cloudless heavens with only the silver-skinned moonlight to write by. The stars are as bright here as anywhere, seeming like a million pinpricks in the fabric of the darkness beyond. There are no cities, no farms, no stray manors to glare and diffuse the night. I can think of only one word for it: peaceful. It would be pleasant, I suppose, to share it with someone else, but I prefer it alone. I can relax upon the earth. I can write in this old book and pretend to fathom just how I got here.
These days I do not delve into much else besides this diary. I brought other things with me, most notably the Page, but I cannot help but take up my quill and give all my attentions herein. I should attend to the Page, for its writings are integral to my success, but this journal of mine drives me to distraction. There is something soothing about setting one’s thoughts to paper, and in my case, without friends or lovers, it feels doubly so.
Perhaps this journey is not so unpleasant. Out here at night there is no one to trouble me. There is wildlife, of course, with belching toads, cooing owls, and a host of crickets to lull me to sleep, but no men. This is a rare thing, a precious thing. A day’s trek through Thillria, Romaldar, or southern Graehelm would force me through a dozen cities, a dozen foundations of unhappiness and decay. A shame, that. There should be more places of quietude, more places where man’s influence is absent. Once I am King, I will fix this. There will be no more cities. There will be no more men.
A last thing before my pen departs. This very eve, as I rehearse for the next leg of my journey, I admit I am nervous. Odd, very much so, for me. This challenge is one I have faced before, though now the stakes are much greater. I do not feel endangered as much as curious. I wish to know these people of Graehelm, and I pray my inquisitiveness will not spell my end. If excitement should claim me, or if I reveal too much, too soon, it could ruin everything. And so I must remember; no one will deny me my ends. I will be King, by any means. I must play this next part perfectly, and I shall.
Odd Man In
Dust reigned in the cellars beneath Gryphon Keep. Cobwebs stretched their frail wings across the low, arched ceiling. The staleness in the air hung ever present, and the gloom felt deep as any crypt. It was in these musty rooms Saul of Elrain busied himself. Day after day, night after night, he lit his lantern, sipped from his tea, and pored over texts older than any living man.
It was early afternoon eight days after Garrett’s arrival, and Andelusia sat at Saul’s table with Garrett at her side. I should come down here more often, she supposed. All these books. All this history. I wish I could have met this Dank they talk so much about.
“…now this book.” Saul set a huge tome in the center of the table. “This one is among the oldest.”
She marveled at the musty thing he produced. Its binding, black and unmarked, was hard as wood, so much that when Saul opened it, the old tome creaked and shuddered like a door grown weary of its hinges. He pulled his fingers gently across one of the pages, and the dust gathered under his nails like loam beneath a farmer’s spade.
“See these characters?” Saul held a candle close, lighting the waiflike words. “The language is pre-Graehelm. Old Dank probably knew it, but I had to spend two months just translating one chapter.”
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