The Fall of the Dagger (The Forsaken Lands)

by Glenda Larke

  “What’s marry? And what’s a – a – term-grunt?” Piper asked, which left them laughing.

  Respectable the procedure that afternoon may have been, elaborate it was not. Their simple vows were said, while touching the branch of the shrine-oak known as the wedding bough. The ceremony was witnessed only by Saker and an old man who happened to be praying at the shrine. The shrine keeper was nowhere to be seen.

  After that, they signed the registration book at the town cleric’s office – in practical terms, that was all it took: a few minutes of their time. When they stepped out into the empty street, dusk had dimmed the sky and lamps were being lit inside the portside houses, the light shining through windows to make twinkling paths across the water.

  “Wedding ceremonies last at least three days in Chenderawasi,” Ardhi remarked. “Are you sure we are married?”

  “You have it on the best authority,” Saker said. “Me. Don’t try and wriggle out of it.”

  “I had a big wedding once,” she told them, slipping her hand into Ardhi’s. “Believe me, it’s not the event that matters.”

  Saker glanced down at Piper, standing at his side, holding his hand. “I do believe it would be best if I look after you tonight, Piper, my love. Would you like to hear the story about the kitty who sailed to the Summer Seas by accident?”

  “Yes!” She raised a dimpled face to his and grabbed his hand. “Yes!”

  “But before that, we have something to show you,” he said. “Let’s go back to the oak shrine.”

  The underside of the tree shrine was lit by several candle lamps hanging from boughs, and the keeper greeted them unhappily when they returned. She was a tiny woman, a head shorter than Sorrel, with a tangle of grey hair in a matted mass down her back. She wrinkled her nose in distaste when she saw Piper. “This is the child?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Saker replied.

  Ardhi lifted Piper up to sit on one of the low boughs. She’d picked up an acorn from the ground and was playing with it.

  Cob Thyme tilted her head, looking at her. “There’s no doubt what she is?”

  “None.” Saker removed the leather thong from around his neck, unstoppered the bambu and tipped the piece of Chenderawasi plume into his palm.

  Piper glanced up and saw it. She reached out to seize it. “Pretty! Mine?”

  As her hand closed over the piece, she went rigid with shock, then screamed. She opened her fist and the feather drifted to the ground. In the centre of her palm, a black smudge had appeared, an ugly, grimy mark. She stared at it in shock. “Don’t like that! Don’t want!”

  “She means the smutch, not the feather,” Sorrel said, as she gathered the child into her arms. “Hush, darling, everything’s fine.” Over the top of Piper’s head, her gaze pleaded for help.

  Saker picked up the feather. “Piper, sweetheart, this will take the smutch away, if you let it.”

  Piper had buried her head in Sorrel’s shoulder, and after a moment she peeped out to look at him. “Feather’s pretty. Can I have it?”

  Hold out your hand like this, palm up,” Ardhi said, showing her.

  She did as he asked, and Saker laid the feather on top of the smutch. “The oak tree gave you an acorn for one hand,” he said, “and now you have a feather from Ardhi’s land in the other. Think about how beautiful they are, and that black smutch will go away and it will never come back, because you don’t want it there, do you?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t like it.” She brought her cupped hands together, enclosing the feather and the acorn tight in her grip.

  Above their heads, wind swept through the tree, swaying the branches and rustling the leaves. One of the lamps blew out and the others oscillated, sending shadows eerily dancing. Out of nowhere, biting cold swept along the boughs and spilled to the ground. Leaves fluttered down, a few at first, a patter of them, then more and more into a shower, their stalks beating against their faces, until there was a storm of whirling, curling leaves and twigs. A hail of acorns followed.

  “What have you done?” Cob screamed at Saker.

  Piper howled. Ardhi and Sorrel bent over her protectively, Ardhi holding his kris in his hand.

  Cob shook a fist at Saker. “You’ve killed it! You slaughtered my tree!”

  Saker pushed Piper into Sorrel’s arms. “Get her out of here,” he cried as acorns bounced off their heads and shoulders.

  She and Ardhi ran for the open ground with the child. Behind them, Saker grasped Cob Thyme by the arm, thinking to help her out from under the oak.

  She resisted, breaking away. “Don’t touch me,” she said, turning towards the trunk. “I die with my oak!”

  He hesitated. A branch cracked like the sound of a gunshot and fell, snapping other branches as it crashed from the canopy down through the tree. When it hit the ground on the other side of the trunk, he felt the thud of it reverberate through his feet. All but one of the candle lanterns blew out.

  “Cob!” he called. “Come with me.” He dashed after her, but overhead another branch broke and fell, sending shards and spears of wood pouring down from above. The bulk of it fell between him and Cob, fracturing into smaller splinters as it bounced on the ground. He caught a glimpse of a figure against the trunk of the tree, but just then the last candle lantern was knocked down, more branches snapped and the shrine was plunged into darkness, full of tumult and turbulent fury.

  He stumbled away, tripping and blundering until he was out in the open and Ardhi was grabbing his arm, asking if he was all right. Before he could reply, another crack of the dying tree shattered the night and the whole area lit up with light, as delicately beautiful and mellow as a witchery glow. The remaining great boughs and limbs of the shrine-oak were a skeleton against a starry sky, edges gleaming with a delicate tracery of blue. Translucent light enveloped what was left of the tree and expanded outwards until they were all bathed in the glow.

  Piper stopped her crying. She held out her hand, the same one that had clasped the feather. Her palm glowed until it looked as if she was pulling the light from the tree, and indeed gradually the light did fade, limb by limb. As each branch and twig lost its colour, it disappeared, melting away into the darkness. The last vestige of glowing light was a band connecting a surface root to Piper’s outstretched hand. The child, unmoving, was entranced. Finally that last beam of blue left the tree.

  “Mama,” she said, “I like that pretty colour!”

  The light winked out into her palm and there was a moment of pitch darkness when they all saw the after-image of the glowing tree. Townsfolk arrived then, hustling from nearby houses, carrying lanterns, everyone asking in alarm what the noise had been. Had a branch fallen? They’d heard such a cracking…!

  “The oak,” Sorrel whispered to Saker and Ardhi, horrified. “It’s not there.”

  She hadn’t spoken loud enough for anyone else to hear, but someone behind screamed. “Where’s the oak? Where’s the shrine?”

  Where the tree had stood, there was just a heap of leaves and a few broken branches, the ones that had fallen first. Of the bulk of the oak, of the trunk, of Cob Thyme, there was no sign. Someone began to wail.

  Sorrel turned to Saker in panic. “Did – did Piper – did sorcery—”

  For a long moment, shocked beyond measure, he didn’t reply. Then he said, “Piper, show me your hand, the one with the dirty mark.”

  Piper happily held out her closed fist. Saker unfolded her fingers. The mark was gone. Of the feather and the acorn, there was no sign.

  Ardhi frowned as a larger crowd began to gather, the number of lanterns doubled and the babble and wailing around them increased. “Her sorcery didn’t destroy the tree, did it?” he asked in a whisper. He was more puzzled than believing.

  “No,” Saker said softly. “My guess is that the unseen guardian chose to sacrifice the oak and the shrine to destroy Piper’s sorcery. It was done using sakti and witchery.” He looked around. “Take them back to our rooms, Ardhi. I’m the Prime and I
have to calm people – account for this somehow. Find some lie to tell…” He put an arm around Sorrel. “Everything will be all right.”

  “But why—? Why like that?”

  He shrugged. He had no idea.

  Va only knows.

  By the time Saker returned to the Va-faith cloister, it was an hour past dawn. He found Ardhi and Sorrel in the dining hall, alone.

  “Where’s Piper?” he asked.

  “She has charmed the nuns,” Sorrel said, “and they have taken her into the kitchen to eat griddle cakes. She’s fine. In a much better state than we are.”

  “The shrine really has gone,” he told them. “But there’s a young sapling already shooting up where it was, amidst all the broken branches.”

  A tear trickled down Sorrel’s cheek.

  He laid a hand over hers. “In time, there’ll be another tree, another shrine, probably with the same unseen guardian.”

  “It’ll be a long while, though, won’t it?”

  “Fifty years perhaps, before the new oak will have gathered enough power to grant witcheries.”

  “And Cob Thyme?” she asked, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand.

  “Her remains were there in among the debris. The shrine will have a new keeper one day.”

  “Oh, Va.” She inhaled, eyes closed. “That blue light…?”

  “I believe the unseen guardian converted the power of the Way of the Oak within the tree into that witchery glow, then used it to douse the sorcery in Piper.”

  “The guardian sacrificed the tree and the keeper? Is that what we have to look forward to in order to save Prince-regal Karel? Another shrine dying? Another shrine keeper dead?”

  “We can only hope there will be a similar unseen guardian from a water shrine who will be prepared to do the same thing for Prince Karel. And seeing that we know now that unseen guardians communicate with one another, I think it likely that will happen.”

  “That’s…” Grief-stricken, she groped for the right words. “That seems so… extreme. A whole shrine gone. A keeper killed!”

  “The guardian could have murdered Piper. It was his – her? – choice to kill the shrine instead. We made that choice possible because we had the feather. They could sacrifice a child, or one of their own. Either way sorcery died.”

  There was a long silence as the three of them exchanged glances.

  “I am so grateful,” Sorrel whispered. “Such a sacrifice… What can I say?”

  “Piper has been blessed,” Ardhi said. “And so have we.”

  None of them gave voice to their shared thought: what if a different shrine guardian made the opposite choice when it came to the prince-regal?

  They stood at the stern of the packet as it sailed out of Betany harbour bound for Ustgrind, capital of Lowmeer, watching as the figure of Saker on the wharf grew smaller and smaller. Seagulls swooped and screeched around the bay, tens of them at first, then larger numbers. Terns skimmed the water, wingtips clipping the wavelets as they crisscrossed the white foam of the ship’s wake back and forth, wailing cries without end or purpose. In the sky behind the town, ravens and jackdaws and crows circled and argued in twisting, streaming flocks.

  Piper clapped her hands. “Birds! Look at all the birds!”

  “Sweet Va,” Sorrel muttered, disturbed. “He’s doing that.”

  “It can’t be deliberate.”

  “No. Oh, rattle it, Ardhi – this is tearing him apart. He can’t control his pain and the birds feel it. Why did he have to stay? He didn’t want to be Prime.”

  “No.”

  She caught his unease. “You know something I don’t?”

  “Not really, but I’ve been thinking. There’s only one answer that makes any sense. King Ryce wanted him to be Prime. Fritillary favoured it too, once she knew he wouldn’t work directly for her. One of them forced him.”

  “I don’t think Fritillary would have forced him. And how could Ryce have done so? Saker could just have said no!” “But he didn’t, did he?” He looked down at Piper. “Did King Ryce know she is Regala Mathilda’s daughter—?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Juster knew,” he pointed out.

  “And Juster and Ryce are friends – oh, we have been blind.” Her eyes blurred with tears. “Of course Ryce could have forced him. ‘Do what I want, or I take Piper away from you all. I’m her uncle.”

  “Could he know that Sorrel Redwing is wanted for murder in Ardrone? That would be another hold over Saker.”

  “I—” She paled. “It’s possible.”

  “Saker agreed to the price. There’s nothing we could have done.”

  “But why didn’t he tell us?”

  “He thought it better that we be upset with him than that we know the extent of his sacrifice.”

  She winced.

  “It’s not the end of the ternion,” Ardhi said gently. “We’ll all be together again. He limited his royal service to ten years, don’t forget.”

  He rested a hand on Piper’s head as the figure on the wharf dropped away behind. Above, the seabirds wheeled and screamed on the same wind that dried Sorrel’s tears as they ran down her cheeks.

  42

  Guarding the Future

  At Fritillary’s request, backed by a letter of introduction from Prime Saker Rampion, temporary accommodation at the Lowmian Faith House was made available to Ardhi, Sorrel and Piper when the packet sailed into Ustgrind a sennight later.

  Prime Mulhafen personally made them welcome. “The Regala is already expecting you,” he assured them. “A letter from Pontifect Fritillary came a few days ago, asking me to arrange an audience for you when you arrived. I’ll send a message today to say you are here.”

  “Your Eminence,” Sorrel said, “we do have one more request of you. Our departure was hurried. Not so long ago, we were in hiding, and then we took part in the battle of the River Ard. We have little luggage and do not have appropriate clothing for a visit to the Lowmian court. I wonder if you could advise us—”

  Before she had even finished the question, he had the answer. “Oh, we have entire rooms devoted to non-clerical clothing! You are welcome to take whatever you will, at no cost.” She must have looked astonished because he explained, “All acolytes and novices have to divest themselves of their street clothing when they enter our ranks. Much of it we give to the poor, but the more elaborate clothing… I will arrange for you to be shown what we have.”

  Three days later, a sealed letter was delivered to Sorrel from the Regala, saying she would meet with her, alone, in Ustgrind Castle the following day.

  “Alone?” Ardhi asked, glancing to where Piper napped on their bed. “I can understand that she might not want to meet me, but doesn’t she want to see Piper?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “I don’t like the smell of this.”

  “Surely if she doesn’t want to see her daughter it’s a good sign for us. She will leave Piper in our care!”

  “I want to come with you.”

  “Mathilda is not going to do anything to me, not when the Pontifect, two Primes and her brother the king all know we are here with their blessing.”

  “I’m coming with you, nevertheless. And so will Piper.”

  “Making a statement, are we? A family.” She hugged him tight. “We can see how far you get, I suppose…”

  As they threaded their way through crowded streets the following day, she was amused to notice that although people still dressed in unadorned garments, there was one change that reeked of Mathilda’s influence. Colour – even bright red – had crept into the women’s head-dresses. Just as astonishing was the way hair was beginning to escape from under coifs and snoods and wimples to flutter boldly at the edges of a face, or cascade in curls down a back. Men’s fashion was apparently only one step behind, for they now adorned their sensible black hats with ribboned cockades of colour, and she’d seen several rich merchants with coloured lace or embroidery around their cuffs and collars.


  Oh, Mathilda, how ever did you do it? Regal Vilmar Vollendorn would be glaring on the other side of his royal tombstone!

  She was now clad in a dress of fine grey linen which had perhaps once belonged to a well-to-do burgher’s daughter, worn with a cloak lined daringly with red silk, while Ardhi resembled a sober young man from a wealthy merchant family, with gold buckles on his shoes and a gold pin in his velvet cap. Piper was more plainly dressed in her ordinary clothes, with her circlet covered by the high neck on the bodice. They had all agreed that she continue to wear it all the time, just as an added precaution.

  At the castle’s main gate, and then again at the entrance to the inner bailey, they were admitted without question on the strength of the Regala’s letter. At the door to the keep, however, the guard questioned Ardhi and Piper’s presence and sent a messenger up to the Regal’s solar. In the end, Ardhi and Piper were conducted to a waiting room on the ground floor, while Sorrel was taken upstairs to the Regal’s private reception room. The footman who accompanied her, Machiel, was someone who had once known her well.

  “I didn’t think we’d ever see you again,” he remarked. “We heard you stole something from the Regal’s solar and ran away!”

  She raised a sharp eyebrow. “Now does that sound at all likely? I would not repeat that calumny, if I were you. I’m here at the Regala’s invitation and a rumour like that would reflect badly on the Regala’s wisdom.”

  He paled. “Of course. Forgive me.”

  “Gossip – it’s horrid, isn’t it?” She smiled to show there were no hard feelings and chatted to him about what had happened to various servants since she’d left.

  Mathilda was waiting for her. Once Machiel had gone, and the door was closed, Sorrel sank into a respectful curtsey. “Your Grace,” she said. “I’m glad to see you in good health.”

  “Oh, don’t start that,” Mathilda said. “I am so sick of protocol!” She came forward to take Sorrel’s hands in hers. “I have missed you, and I worried myself sick over what happened to you. I want to know everything, from the moment you left here. Everything. The Pontifect has been infuriatingly vague.”