The Fall of the Dagger (The Forsaken Lands)

by Glenda Larke

  “The disappearance of shrines and those folk with witcheries doesn’t help,” Deremer said. “People are angry about that. What does it mean? Where did they go?”

  Mathilda raised an eyebrow. “I was hoping you might be able to tell me!”

  “I don’t have a direct line to Fritillary, wherever she’s hiding.” He sighed and gave Genet another pointed look. “For all I know, Her Reverence may indeed be insane. If anyone knows what happened to the shrines, Pontifect Fritillary does, and she should tell us.”

  “Well, she hasn’t told me,” Mathilda snapped. If ever she met Fritillary Reedling face to face, she would tell the impudent upstart of a farmer’s daughter what she thought of her.

  “May I advise then,” Deremer continued smoothly, “that you inform her that we need answers? We need to know what happened to the shrines and to people with witcheries. Did sorcery destroy them? Where is Va in all this? People will lose their belief in Va-faith if something doesn’t give them hope soon! She’s hiding when she should be fighting. She’s failing us all.” He looked across at Genet once more. “You tell her that, sister. Tell her to write to me if she is unable to pay me a visit.”

  Mathilda heard both anger and anguish in his voice and her own optimism faltered. “Her last message was to be patient.”

  He rolled his gaze up at the ceiling in an extravagant gesture of exasperation. “Maybe she’s out of her mind. Ardrone is as good as gone. As soon as Fox and his numerous sons have consolidated their hold on the Principalities, they will turn their attention to us. Tell me, please, just how do I protect my men from this black smutch I hear about? It confuses the brave; scares them into throwing down their weapons and makes them run like frightened mole-rats.”

  “If we get more arquebuses or those wheel lock pistols…?”

  “Certainly they might be a way of killing sorcerers from a distance. But it’s not so easy. We have no skills at making them. The black powder arms we have, we imported overland from Pashalin, and they are very expensive. We need the balls and the powder as well. In another year or two, we might have enough skilled workers to make our own, and we need to find out more about how to make gunpowder…”

  “But you’re not sure we have the time.”

  “No, I’m not. Your Grace, tell the Pontifect I need to talk to her. I need to know what the plan is, because right now, all I can see ahead is ultimate defeat. We need people with witcheries. Without them, we have nothing. Without shrines and their unseen guardians, there will never be another person granted a witchery.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” Mathilda said. “What I don’t understand is this: we might not have many pistols or arquebuses, but you do have some. Why don’t you just send an assassin to kill Valerian Fox from afar? Shoot a ball at him when he comes out into the street! Someone with an arquebus can kill without getting close enough to be coerced.”

  “Do you think we haven’t tried that? A dozen times! More. And every time the man who volunteered turned his weapon on himself when Fox appeared. And died by his own hand. Coerced from a distance, without a word being spoken that the assassin could hear.”

  “You once told me coercion diminishes his power and that’s why he uses his sons to do it for him,” Mathilda said.

  “So I believe.”

  “Then send more and more assassins,” she cried, “until he is so weak he can be killed!”

  Deremer levelled a look at her that made her shiver. “Your Grace, I grieve for every man of mine who dies thus. But still I might yet do as you suggest – but for one thing. Every time his power is diminished by such a murder, he seeks out more and more children. And those deaths sit ill on my conscience these days.”

  There was a long silence, during which none of them moved. Then she said quietly, “Tell me, do you know of the whereabouts of the lawyer, Gerelda Brantheld, and that lad of hers?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “He had an interesting witchery. An ability to see the contamination of sorcery. Able both to identify a sorcerer, and to see someone besmirched by sorcery.”

  “Ah. I did not know that.”

  “I believe you have done your best, Lord Herelt, under difficult circumstances. You have, in fact, begun to redeem yourself and your family.” Her slight emphasis was meant to remind him that his entire extended family had forfeited any rights to her consideration. If they wanted to live and prosper, they had to continue to risk everything.

  She stood and extended her hand, indicating the audience was over. “Sister Genet will see that Pontifect Fritillary is informed of all that we have discussed.”

  “Have you ever met her, Your Grace?”

  “No.”

  He bowed deeply over her fingers. “Your Grace.” He straightened, and retreated four steps, before turning to leave the room.

  She waited until he had gone and the door was closed before she spoke again. “What did you think, Sister Genet?”

  The nun stepped out from the shadows to stand at her side. “A tormented man.” There was both pity and sorrow in her tone.

  “He deserves to be tormented for what he has done!”

  “If a child is brought up to believe something from birth, no matter how dreadful that thing, he accepts it as the truth. Told his duty was to spend his life performing a dreadful task, he believed it necessary.” She shook her head in sadness. “It was a soul-destroying thing, to be born a Deremer.”

  “You are more forgiving than I.”

  “You have reason. You are the mother of twins.”

  “Never speak of that, or I’ll see you dead!”

  Genet did not appear abashed. “Speak of it or not, it does not change the truth.”

  “If someone were to hear you…” She choked at the thought. What would the Lowmian court and nobility do? Condemn her for the deception? Condemn her for casting out her daughter? She didn’t know, but her position as an Ardronese princess acting as a Regent was a precarious one. There were a dozen men high in the royal court who would be delighted to have her denounced as too immoral to be a Regent. There would even be those who would separate her from Prince-regal Karel. If that were to happen, she’d die of grief.

  “Your Grace, his information has presented us with an interesting conundrum.”

  “What conundrum is that?” she asked, irritated.

  “How did Prince-regal Karel gain his smutch?”

  She felt all the colour drain from her face, leaving her faint.

  Genet, her face expressionless, continued, “Valerian Fox has never been here, or seen your son. The whole devil-kin thing was never what we thought it was. So how was the prince contaminated?”

  “I would have thought it obvious! One of his sons was the man who came and threatened me just before Karel’s investiture. He coerced his way into the solar and he coerced me. He said he was a devil-kin and he did something to Karel.”

  Genet regarded her steadily from under her wimple. “Long before that, while Regal Vilmar was still alive, the Pontifect sent Agent Gerelda to look at Prince-regal Karel…”

  “You’ve been misinformed! Go, you wretched woman! Send your messages to the Pontifect. Tell her the Regala wants answers – how do we win this war? Where are the shrines and the witcheries to aid us?”

  She turned on her heel and left the room. Outside the door, she began to shake. Prince-regal Karel didn’t have a black smutch of contamination. He was the contamination. She knew it for sure now. He was Valerian’s son. He was a sorcerer.

  And she – cankers and galls, she’d been a stupid child, allowing Valerian Fox to touch her. No, you mustn’t think like that. It was never your fault! He coerced you into his bed. No one can resist coercion, can they?

  Taking a deep, calming breath, she headed up to the nursery. She needed to see her son.

  If only she could stop shaking…

  When he saw her, he came running, his arms held out, calling, “Mama, Mama! Come look what me did!”

  He
had raised a pile of carved wooden blocks into a wobbly tower, complete with turrets and crenellations. As she duly admired his handiwork and tousled his golden hair, so silky and fine, she wondered at the pain of the love she felt. She would do anything for this child. Anything.

  He looked up at her and smiled, proud of his accomplishment. Then, as she watched, he kicked the bottom block and the tower collapsed on to the wooden floor with a clatter. He laughed. “Look. All fall down! All deaded! Me killed them all.” When he looked up at her, she saw Fox gazing back. His eyes, his lips.

  The stab in her heart festered as her dread spread, freezing her smile into something false.

  No, Karel is mine. All mine.

  Then the unwanted memory of another child, Karel’s twin. Her pain deepened until she almost cried out. They did this to us. Prime Valerian Fox. Regal Vilmar Vollendorn. The Dire Sweepers. Herelt Deremer.

  She would not rest until they were all dead, every one of them.

  11

  The Lost Man and the Stolen Princess

  “Who are you?”

  He roused himself. Feeling ill, he looked around. He was standing beside a horse cart laden with root vegetables, driven by the elderly man who’d asked the question. A man he’d never seen before.

  “Pardon?” he asked.

  “Who are you?”

  He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. “Where the flubbing hells am I?”

  “This here’s the road to Beck Crossways. I’m taking the load from my farm to market. Did yer want a ride?” The elderly carter rubbed a hand across his forehead as if his head ached. “I think I must have nodded off…”

  “I don’t know why I’m here. I was…” But he couldn’t remember what he’d been doing or where he’d been going. “Do I know you?”

  “Never saw you before in my life. Been into the grog, have you?” He shook his head, more a gesture of bewilderment than answer. He couldn’t remember anything.

  “So, d’you want a ride to Beck Crossways?”

  He shrugged. “Mayhap I do.”

  The farmer indicated the space on the driving seat. “Hop up, then. Me name’s Sprig.”

  “I stay overnight here,” the carter told him, pointing, when they reached the outskirts of Beck Crossways. “In the common field, with the other folk who come a ways to sell their crops. Sleep under the cart, I do.”

  Sprig made no offer to share the space, so his passenger alighted from the cart, saying, “Thank you for the ride. Much obliged.” He’d tried to extract as much information as possible from Sprig before they arrived at Beck Crossways, but questioning had confused the carter, and finally he’d sunk into a sullen silence.

  As he turned to go, Sprig stopped him. “The pack,” he said. “That’s yourn, no?”

  He looked at the battered leather bag tucked under the seat without recognition. “Oh, aye.” Slinging it on to his shoulder, he nodded his thanks, and headed down the road towards the first of the houses of the market town while the farmer turned the cart, full of its turnips and mangelwurzels, on to the common.

  His hand dropped to touch the hilt of his sword. There was comfort there in that touch, although he couldn’t have said why. The truth was he remembered nothing of his past, not his name nor why he’d been heading towards Beck Crossways, let alone why he felt so… bereft.

  The town had no wall. If he remembered his history, it was five hundred years since there’d been as much as a skirmish here. There, he could dredge stupid history of past kings and battles out of his addled pate, so why couldn’t he think of his name? He swore, the foulest words he usually kept for someone trying to kill him.

  Someone trying to kill him.

  Was that a memory? Maybe.

  He knew the steel in his sword was the finest Ardrone had to offer. He knew how to fight; and he was good at it. If he pulled that sword out of its scabbard, it would fit into his grasp as if it belonged in his hand. He knew that he had an important task, and that knowledge scratched at his memory as if it wanted to claw its way to the surface, but…

  No, he couldn’t remember.

  He looked down at his clothes. He was dressed like a fobbing farmer, yet he wore a sword. Why did his head feel like it was stuffed with sheep shit?

  Think, you dewberry! The tote. Look inside…

  Good quality leather, he noted. Deer skin. Something told him it was not what he usually carried. His own would have been grubbier, more worn and made of heavier cowhide. It was late afternoon, and the only other person he could see was a lad with a flock of geese in the field, so he stepped off the rutted road, to sit on the grass and examine the contents of the bag.

  His investigation revealed a round of hard cheese, a dagger, a woollen blanket waxed on one side to make it waterproof, a pair of well-worn gloves, an extra length of leather thong, a small tub of liniment, a spoon, a tin cookpot, and the wherewithal to sharpen his sword – oil, whetstone and file. There was also a fine leather purse. He tipped the contents of the latter into his hand, and his jaw dropped. What the sweet cankers was he doing with all that cabbage? Beggar him speechless, there was a glint of gold among the silver and the brass! Hurriedly, he rammed the more valuable coins into his fob. They’d be safer there.

  Everything else felt familiar to him. When he handled the whetstone, he knew it was his. But the money? He doubted that he normally had access to that kind of coinage, yet every time he tried to think about who he was, or where he was going, or what his mission was, his brain fogged up. It was like trying to see through a window streaked with rain: nothing was clear. Thoughts disintegrated, leaving tantalising hints, but nothing more. His past was just a bad taste in his mouth and his future was an acrid smell pinching his nostrils.

  Something was terribly wrong.

  When he stood up and continued on his way into the town, he slung the bag across his chest. He wasn’t going to risk losing it.

  The public buildings of Beck Crossways gathered around the cobbled marketplace, windows watching over the bustling preparations for the next day’s market. He sat on the edge of the horse trough near the pump to observe, hoping to recognise someone, or something.

  It didn’t happen.

  Before the daylight disappeared, he ambled across to the inn, only to find that on the eve of market day every bed was taken, so he paid a few coppers to doss down in the livery stable instead. He slept with his pack in his arms.

  He woke early with the same nagging feeling that there was something desperately important he ought to be doing. At the baker’s, he bought a heel of stale bread and ate it with a slice of his own cheese, washing it all down with a mug of cheap beer. He had more money in his purse than he’d probably ever had, yet he couldn’t bring himself to spend it.

  By the time he’d finished, the town square – now packed with carts and makeshift stands – was thrumming with the commerce of the day. He noticed Sprig the turnip grower there, but didn’t approach him.

  His horror at his inactivity began to overwhelm him. He could feel his temper rising, like hot water bubbling under a copper lid. To subdue it, he left the square and walked the streets of the town. He had no memory of any of them. The day crawled by.

  He returned to the square in the early afternoon and seated himself near the pump again, next to a knife sharpener, an elderly man with a grindstone and a lad to turn the wheel. “Your sword need an edge?” the fellow asked.

  Removing it from its sheath, he ran a finger down the blade. No nicks, freshly oiled. He shook his head. “I take good care of it,” he said sliding it back into its sheath, and knew that to be true.

  A minute or two later, there was a stir at one end of the square. A troop of horsemen had ridden in, paying scant attention to the people already there. They made no attempt to avoid the crowd, but rode straight into it. The leader, a young, pale man wearing black, looked neither to right nor left, but set his mount straight at the livery stable opposite. The crowd peeled away from them like a wave before the prow of a boat
. The others wore dirty grey coats, giving the impression of a uniform, but they were a slovenly-looking lot, with dull expressions and hard about the eyes.

  The young man’s darkness bit into him, sending cold shivers skittering across his skin. He leaped up from his seat, dry-mouthed, hunting within for the cause of his fear. The retreating crowd buffeted him, sweeping him along, out of the way of the horses.

  He looked back over his shoulder. In the centre of the mounted troop was a woman with a child, sagging with fatigue. His initial stir of pity for her blossomed into a hard tug of emotion, paining him. She didn’t see him. He doubted she was seeing much at all. She was too scared, too miserable. Her fatigue appalled him, and he knew that her tear-streaked child mattered – but he couldn’t have said why.

  None of them spared him a glance as they rode by to the inn.

  Something of his turmoil must have shown on his face, because a large man wearing the red apron of a butcher grabbed him by the elbow to steady him. “Are you all right? Those bastards, they care for no one!”

  He managed a nod. “Who are they?”

  “Not come across them before? You’re a lucky one, then. Grey Lancers. Protecting us from the Horned Plague and Primordial heretics, bless ’em. Trouble is, sometimes we need protecting from them too, I reckon.” His tone was more resigned than resentful.

  “Who’s the man in black?” he asked.

  “Don’t rightly know.”

  “If they wear black and lead a troop of lancers, they’re a Fox, so I’ve heard tell,” the knife sharpener said. He shrugged. “And if you ask me, that’s reason enough not to ask questions.”

  Fox? He’d heard that name before. The Prime of Ardrone, Valerian Fox. The name bothered him, but the memory skittered away like a timid cat from an outstretched hand. “And the woman and child?” he asked.