by Travis Kerr
Raine came to the door a moment later, carrying a small bundle in her hands. "I've brought you clean sheets, a blanket, and two pillows," she started, then glanced around the room.
"I forgot just how much dust was in the unused rooms," she commented. "There's a straw broom downstairs that you can use to clean up. It's in a closet in the back of the kitchen. There are also a few rags there that you can use to dust off everything else in here. I don't know if you want to do that now or wait until after we eat, but I would recommend you clean things up a bit before you go to bed tonight. Do you want to get the firewood from Raiste's room now?"
Bane shook his head. It wasn't really all that cold yet, in his opinion. He had gotten used to traveling outside in the elements. In here, where the wind couldn't reach him, it didn't feel cold at all. Most likely he would close the window before going to sleep that night, but he didn't think he would need much else.
"Is there any sort of lamps or lanterns in here?" he asked instead. The sun had gone down completely by this point, and though the light from the moon shone brightly into the window, he knew it was only a matter of time before it had moved on, plunging the entire room in a blanketing darkness. He would need some form of lighting before that happened.
"The people who lived here before must have used some other form of lighting," she answered. "Possibly some of the technology from ancient times that no longer works. I don't really know. When Raiste first came here he added the oil lamps downstairs, and I had put one in my room when I came. We'll have to put one here in this room too, now that you're here. I don't know if we'll be able to get to that tonight. We should probably get you that firewood after all. Even if you don't need it for the heat, it can still provide you enough light to see by."
Bane had no other choice but to agree. They had too much to do that night before they could sleep as it was. He followed Raine to the end of the hall, where she had said Raiste slept. The inside of Raiste's room was not much different than his own, though not nearly as much dust. A large stack of firewood, small logs that would easily fit into the small fireplaces that seemed to be in each of the bedrooms, was placed next to the fireplace. Bane took about half of the logs, surely enough for a few days, and brought them back to his own room.
Raine, who had left him once she was certain that he had found what he needed, met him at the door to his room. She carried a small bottle of fish oil in one hand, the same that they had used in the lamps that now lit the rooms downstairs, and a handful of dried grass to use as tinder in the other. Undoubtedly his companions had kept a supply of the precious oil stored away, awaiting their return.
Once Bane had placed a number of the logs in the fireplace she poured a small amount of the oil over the top of the logs and put the tinder underneath the pile. Bane took out his knife, cut several small chips of wood out of one of the remaining logs, and handed them over to her. These she placed over the tinder. Once the tinder caught fire it would catch the smaller pieces of wood and, with the aid of the oil, the fire underneath should not have any trouble lighting the rest. As dry as the firewood was, she knew it would not go out once she lit it.
"If you're not going to clean in here now, you might as well wait until you are ready to start working in here before lighting it," Raine suggested. "Otherwise it will just be burning in here without any real reason."
"I think I'll wait until after I eat to start cleaning," he replied after giving it a moments thought. "I'm starving!"
Raine laughed. "Well, I'm sure that Raiste probably has dinner ready by now."
The two of them went downstairs, Raine leading the way. When Bane walked into the living room he noticed a definite difference between this room and the others he had been in. The walls were dark brown, made to mimic hardwood, though Bane could see that it was clearly made of some other substance.
The fireplace, a huge structure of dark red brick, was easily three times the size of the fireplaces in the bedrooms upstairs. Bane wondered where the smoke from all those separate fireplaces went. He had only seen two smokestacks from outside, but admittedly he hadn't really been looking for them.
Like the rest of the rooms he had been in, the floors seemed to be made of shining, heavily waxed wood, or a very good imitation of it. In this room there didn't appear to be any dust on the floors at all. Bane spied a broom in one corner, leaning lightly against the wall.
Raiste must have already swept up in here while we were upstairs, he thought.
Several chairs lined the walls, each boasting a small table between one and the next. Near the center of the room, facing the fireplace, was a large, brown leather sofa. Directly in front of the fireplace lay a bearskin rug, made from the skin of a massive white animal.
That thing is huge!
At first Bane thought the coat of the animal must have been dyed that color, but then he recalled one of the lessons his mother had taught him. Far in the north such creatures actually existed. He just barely remembered that lesson; he had not really paid much attention to it at the time.
While she had said they were larger than any other bear alive, she had also said that they lived in the frozen wastes at the very top of the world. He never planned on traveling to such lands, so never expected to actually see one. He didn't think it was a lesson he would ever need to remember, and was surprised that he recalled it now.
Could this be one of those monsters, he wondered?
The creature's head was still attached, and glass eyes stared vacantly from its skull, frozen in time forever. Claws, nearly as long as his fingers, protruded from paws as large as his head.
Surely whoever had killed such an amazing beast must have been a great warrior indeed.
Above the fireplace hung a thick spear, perhaps nine feet long overall, with a foot long, teardrop shaped blade on the end. Two additional blades stood sentinel from the base of the spear tip, reminding him of the horns that sat upon his father's head. Bane understood what the two blades on either side of the main tip were for, though he was not sure how he knew it.
They are for holding fast whatever the hunter hits with his spear, so a fast moving, heavy animal can’t ride up the spear and gore the man behind it.
"I'm afraid there's not much variety in our dinner tonight," Raiste said as they walked in.
He gestured to a spit that sat over the fire. From it a small pot on a hook hung from one side, and the carcass of some unknown animal was impaled on the other.
"I've made a vegetable stew for Bane and I from the food that Raine had bought. I also took out one of the salted pork pieces for you, Raine. I know you had hoped to save them, but we didn't have enough time to hunt tonight, and you need to eat something. I tried not to use too much of it," he added apologetically.
"Thank you," she said simply. "I would have suggested the pork if you hadn't already started it. Tomorrow I'll do some fishing, and maybe a bit of hunting. Are those salt barrels still in the back of the kitchen?"
"Yes, and we didn't even have to worry about there being any bad meat in them. It looked like something got into them while we were gone, and whatever meat was inside is gone now. That's a blessing really. If anything had been left, we might have had to throw away the entire barrel. We can safely store whatever meat we take, enough to last us through the winter.
"Bane, tomorrow I'm going to show you some of the various edible plants around here. You've already seen the orange grove, and that's in the farthest reaches of the lands where I've found fields that were once cultivated. I'm not sure if the orange grove was part of this estate, but I do know that several things were once grown around here, much of it in the immediate vicinity. I'll show you things that are close, and we can go out to the orange fields the day after. There are literally hundreds of mason jars down in the basement. I think that the people who live here bottled their own produce, or they had servants who did that for them anyway. Regardless of what they used them for originally, we can still use the jars they left behind."
&nbs
p; Bane's first bite of the amazing stew made him once again think of something his mother had said to him. "A stew is only as good as the spices you put in it," she had said.
Raiste had certainly learned that lesson somewhere along the way. The vegetables in the stew were nothing out of the ordinary, however the spices that his friend had added fit together in a perfect blend.
Raine seemed to be enjoying the pork just as much as he was the stew, though Bane had no idea if the meat was heavily spiced or not. The group hadn't been using many spices before their trip to the city. It seemed that Raine must have purchased enough to last them through the winter when she did her shopping. Why his companions waited this long to use the spices was beyond him.
Perhaps they just didn’t feel like rummaging through the packs to find them while we were traveling, he guessed. Regardless of the reasons, he appreciated those spices now.
Trick joined Raine in her meal. The small creature had been hidden from Bane's sight since they had first arrived. It had flown in the door when Raiste opened it and had disappeared. Now that there was food available their little friend joined them, laying along the back of the leather couch right behind Raine's head.
From time to time as she ate she would feed him small pieces that she broke off for him. There was certainly enough to go around for now, and Bane was certain that they would have more coming in the next day. Raine would either go hunting or fishing, while Raiste showed him places to gather food he could eat. He was certain that the woman would bring something in.
She hasn’t failed yet anyway.
Once he was finished eating, Bane grabbed the broom from where it sat in the living room corner and headed upstairs to his room. The moon was still shining into his room slightly, enough that he could make out the outline of the furniture and the fireplace at least. A moment later, with a quick strike of steel to flint, he had a merry little blaze going.
The light wasn't as bright as he would have liked, but it was enough for him to clean up a little. He could take care of anything he missed the next day, once the sunlight outside provided better lighting. He quickly swept as much of the dust as he could into a little pan, emptying it out the window each time it was full. After he had loaded the pan over a dozen times, he decided that he had removed enough of the dust that he could sleep there for the night.
I can clean more tomorrow.
Putting his bags on the floor, he fitted the sheet to the bed, placing the blanket over the foot of the mattress. He was fairly certain that he wouldn't need the blanket that night. The fire, small as it was, had heated up the room quite well. Even with the open window it was still warmer than he was comfortable with. Still, he was certain that sleeping in a bed after spending so much time traveling was going to be more comfortable than what he had gotten used to, regardless of the temperature.
By the time he had finished, the fire had died down to little more than coals, giving off little light. He considered adding another log or two and stoking it up again, but decided against it. He no longer needed its light, after all, and the room was already too warm as it was.
The only thing adding more wood to the fire would do is make things even less bearable.
Instead he went back downstairs to join his friends in the living room. He found this room to be a little too warm as well, though the fire had already burned low. Unlike his room upstairs, this room was alive with light. The same bright lamps that had been lit before, four on each side of the room, kept the room quite bright.
Raine sprawled on the couch, her feet draped over one of the arms, idly munching away on a piece of the pork Raiste had cooked. She didn't seem to be greatly interested in the meat, but was instead just enjoying the taste, snacking. Trick still sat behind her, curled up in a ball, apparently sleeping.
Raiste lounged on one of the chairs reading a book. The cover of the book was flat black, with small lettering edged in what appeared to be gold. The print was too small for Bane to make out. The assassin looked up from his reading and gestured to a chair nearby, bidding Bane to sit.
"I've been reading through some of the histories pertaining to battle mages in the past. You would find some of this quite interesting, I think. Unfortunately, nothing I've read so far was written by the mages themselves, but was instead written by others sometime later. I think some of it might help you. For instance, I was just reading a story about a battle mage named Lance, they don't have a last name for him, who could supposedly use any weapon instinctively when he used his power. Here there's another who can, using his power, hit a target the size of a coin at a hundred yards away with a long bow. I haven't found anything yet on someone who can draw an attacking spell into their weapon and then recast it yet though. I know that somewhere I’ve heard a story about that power, but so far I haven’t found any actual accounts of it. As far as I can tell you're the first to have that magic."
"Where did you get a book on magic out here?" Bane asked. "Do you have other books hidden away somewhere?"
"There is actually," Raiste answered with a wolfish grin. "There's an entire library in one of the other rooms. It didn't have any books on magic in it originally, but I've added to the collection over the years. Some of the books were ones I remembered reading during my childhood and had taken an interest in. Others were just books I thought I might have need of someday, such as this book on magical histories. It's not as useful as I thought it might be, not really. While it does give references to some of the abilities that mages have had, it doesn't tell us anything about how they controlled their power. Only a handful of the stories talk about battle mages. There's really nothing here that's going to help you I'm afraid, at least nothing I've found so far."
"You had already told me that would probably be the case, so I'm not concerned. When I used my power it seemed to just appear. Maybe I have to be in that type of danger for my magic to work."
"I don't think that's the case," Raiste replied, setting the book down on the small table that sat between their chairs. "Certainly it seems that it was that type of extreme situation that first brought it out, but a mage should be able to control their magic at will, invoking it any time they wish. I see no reason why it should be any different with you. In fact, if you couldn't control your magic it could become a liability. If you can't rely on your magic to work when you need it to, it's useless."
"That would make sense I guess. Still, there are plenty of people who don't have magic, and they get along just fine."
"True, but they don't have one of the most powerful mages in the world hunting them either," Raiste reminded him. "I'm sorry I had to get you involved in this, but now that you are there's nothing that can be done about it. Besides, you're a battle mage. Eventually your magic would have come out, and then you would have been hunted anyway. The mages will want you either working for them or dead. With our skill and your magic, we have a chance at getting out of this alive. If we're real lucky we might even find a way to fight back against them. First, we have to find a way for you to control your magic, and we need to know exactly what you can do with it. Tell me everything you can remember about what was going on when you used your magic during that battle. Even if it seems unimportant, tell me about it anyway."
"I've already told you everything. One of the soldiers moved to attack me, and suddenly I was surrounded with that blue light. You said you could see it too, the light I mean. There's nothing that happened that I haven't told you about."
"Well, I'm sure we'll figure it out eventually. It's not something we need to figure out right away. We have all winter. There won't be any time to work on it over the next few days. We'll be too busy storing what food we can get to last us through the winter. Just give it some thought while you're working. I'm sure that there's something we're missing, I just don't have any clue what it might be."
"Where are those books at?" Bane asked. "I might as well relax, and I've never really read anything just for my own amusement. Maybe I can find something that might ca
tch my interest."
"From the main hall, it's the second door along the back wall," he answered. "You'll have to take a lamp with you. There are a couple of lamps in there, but none of them are filled at the moment. Just be careful with the flame in there. Many of those books could be from the original owners of this building. At the very least they've been here for centuries. Some of the older ones are in poor condition, so please be careful with them. There are even some that are made of a similar material to the sheets that were covering the furniture. They don't seem to have any damage at all. I can't say for certain, but I suspect that they could have come from the time before the Mage War, during the Age of Technology."
Bane walked to the room his friend had suggested, pulling the lamp next to the door off its post and taking it with him on his way out of the living room. He had never actually heard of a library before, but had gleaned enough information from his conversation with Raiste to guess what he had meant. Even knowing that the man kept his books there, it did nothing to prepare him for the reality of what he found.
The room was huge, at least as large as the living room, and was packed from wall to wall with books. Bane would never have suspected that so many books could even exist in one place.
There must be thousands of different books in here, he thought, his eyes widening in amazement as he looked around.
He glanced at the titles along the spines of various books, avoiding the books that looked too old to handle safely. He quickly realized that he had no idea what order these books might have been in, or if there was any order to them at all.
"The books directly in front of you are non-fiction books, books filled with information or true history. You can learn about nearly anything you want to know from them," Raiste informed him from the doorway.
Bane hadn't heard him coming. The man is as silent as a cat when he wants to be.
