by Damien Black
‘You are cruel to inflict this pain on your sire – he’s suffered enough in his life as it is,’ she said, partly meaning it. For all his temper and rumbustious habits, the Eorl of Dulsinor was at heart a good man, she felt. He could be fierce and deadly towards his enemies, ruthless even, but for more than thirty years he had ruled his lands with an even hand – and he loved his only child with a deep and abiding passion.
Her mistress stared at her reproachfully, and for a moment Hettie feared she had overstepped the mark. But then she said: ‘You are right, Hettie – it is cruel, what I plan on doing to father. But then what he plans to do to me is crueller still! I have my whole life in front of me, he has had much of his, aye and triumphed throughout for the most part! I wouldn’t hurt him to preserve my freedom for all the world if it could be avoided – but Reus knows I have tried and tried, and he will not have things otherwise! He has left me with no choice.’
‘But, you don’t even speak the language!’ Hettie wailed. She was reaching the end of her stride, like a panting courser with no energy left to run. She felt her spirited assault on her mistress’ madcap plan faltering.
‘Oh but I do, Hettie,’ replied Adhelina, turning back to face her with a sly twinkle in her eyes. ‘I’ve always been good at learning languages, you know that. Why, I taught you to read - ’
‘Oh, I recall. What a fun summer that was,’ interjected Hettie, rolling her eyes. Even now she found time for their old humour.
‘You’ll thank me for it one day,’ retorted Adhelina with the air of an old sage. ‘And anyway, as I was saying – I also learned to speak Imperial tolerably well, it’s not that different from our tongue as you might think actually, in fact it’s related to - ’
‘My lady, please, spare me the discourse on philology,’ sighed Hettie exasperatedly. ‘Learning to read was quite enough, I pray you!’
‘Clearly it has done you no harm, if you know what “philology” means,’ retorted Adhelina again. She was smiling now.
Meeting her eyes Hettie felt sure that she could never be parted from her dearest friend. And by the looks of things her dearest friend could not be dissuaded. And that meant...
‘Oh my lady, you do not fully realise, I think, what it is you ask of me!’
Adhelina’s smile turned into a beam. ‘Then you’ll do it? You’ll help me to escape!?’ She lowered her voice instinctively as she said the last word. That didn’t stop Hettie from feeling terrified at the prospect of what they were contemplating.
But she spoke the abject truth when she said: ‘Oh my lady, dearest Adhelina, of course I will! For don’t you know that I had rather go to the gallows than be parted from you? My father served yours loyally with his life, and I’ll do the same for you – you know that full well! And that means if I can’t talk you out of this reckless nonsense – well, I suppose I’m coming with you!’
‘Oh Hettie, I knew you would! I knew you would!’ exclaimed Adhelina, reaching over the table impulsively to hug her and nearly knocking over the cups and teapot.
For the next few minutes her mistress was all of a babble – the excitable and strong-willed girl of their childhood – as she pulled the map across the table to explain her plan in detail.
‘Meerborg lies about a hundred miles north and east of here, as the raven flies,’ she said, pointing to a stylised image of what Hettie supposed was meant to be a cityport nestling against a sea of blue on the old hide map. ‘If we ride swiftly we should be able to get there in three days, although we may have to detour if getting off the main road gives us a better chance of shaking off my father’s knights when he sends them after us.’
Adhelina paused and bit her lip thoughtfully. ‘I’m not sure yet which of those will prove the best course – I’ll have to think on it.’
Hettie’s mind – when it was not reeling at the thought of her liege lord’s best warriors tearing frantically up the highway in search of them both – was on more immediate concerns.
‘Yes, that’s all well and good for when we’re out of the castle,’ she said. ‘But how do we get out of it? You mentioned something about a secret tunnel just before you started on the map…’ Her mistress was difficult to keep up with when she was in one of her wood moods.
The smile returned to Adhelina’s full lips. ‘Yes! Old Berthal told me all about it when he taught me the castle’s secrets! The loremasters say that when Goriath built the castle, he realised that he’d made it so impregnable it might one day prove the undoing of the very masters it was meant to protect. After all, castles under siege have been known to be starved into submission, without a single wall being taken by force. So he designed a safeguard...’
‘Which was?’
Adhelina reached for a second map. This one was made of parchment, and depicted the castle grounds from an aerial view. It seemed odd to Hettie – why would anyone want to draw a building from a bird’s eye perspective? She had heard tell of ancient maps, drawn by the sorcerer kings who had once ruled the Known World, as they gazed down on it from their flying carpets... she shuddered. She didn’t like the map, and told her mistress so.
Adhelina only laughed. ‘No! Dear, superstitious, and frankly rather silly Hettie – it isn’t a wizard’s map!’ she chided. ‘It’s an engineer’s plan – this one is actually an old copy of the original made by Goriath when he built this place. I found it in father’s library – you know he never uses it much, I hardly think he can even read. Anyway, engineers use these when they want to design the castles and manors they are going to build, so they can work out how to build them... do you understand?’
Hettie stared at her mistress blankly. She did have some peculiar interests.
Adhelina shook her head. ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Just look here – do you see the part that says Inner Ward?’
Hettie nodded. That much she could understand at least, thanks to her mistress’s girlish attempts to play the old loremaster when they were younger.
‘Well,’ Adhelina continued. ‘Have a look here, do you see where it says Lord’s Quarters?’
Peering closer, Hettie nodded again. She was beginning to get the hang of this – her mistress was pointing to what must be the south wing of the Inner Ward, right next to the turret where they lived.
‘So, inside on the ground floor as you walk in, there’s the staircase leading up to father’s private chambers,’ Adhelina explained. ‘As you know he doesn’t use them much nowadays, he just has his own bedchamber at the top of the west wing, next to his solar. Anyway, you remember how under the staircase there’s a rude sort of fresco, statues of the old kings of Dulsinor, the really old ones, from back when the Griffenwyrd was called Dulsenar and it was a petty kingdom in its own right?’
Hettie had to think a moment. But she remembered well enough – her duties rarely took her to that part of the castle, but the statues were distinctive. Old and brooding they’d always seemed to her, graven milestones marking the passing of a fallen age.
‘Yes,’ she ventured. ‘There were four of them, weren’t there?’
‘That’s right! One for each of the petty kings who reigned before and during the time the castle was built – Ludvic the Founder, Alaric the Reckless, Ulmo the Besieged and lastly good old Ludvic the Builder himself! Well, Berthal told me that one of them is actually a secret doorway - ’
Hettie couldn’t resist interrupting. ‘Oh let me guess – King Ludvic the Builder himself!’
‘No!’ said Adhelina, shaking her head, her eyes sparkling. ‘That’s the clever part! It’s neither of the Ludvics – the ones you’d most expect it to be. It’s old Ulmo!’
‘That doesn’t make much sense!’
‘No, it does when you really think about it,’ countered Adhelina. ‘The secret tunnel was only meant to be used as a last resort, when all was lost, allowing a lord, his family and closest retainers to flee the castle under siege... Well what better scion to guard that escape route than Ulmo the Besieged? The sages say he resisted his foes
for more than a generation before they packed up their armies in despair and went home. He ruled Dulsenar in peace for the rest of his days after that.’
Hettie nodded again, hoping her mistress wasn’t about to launch into another impromptu history lesson. ‘I see, yes – that does rather make sense, I suppose. So... how does this secret door open?’
‘There’s a catch hidden on the statue – or rather it’s part of the statue itself. Very few know about it, but Berthal told me because he said as the future mistress of Graukolos it was important that I know the escape route. The secret door opens onto a flight of stairs that wind down, deep below the castle into the very bowels of the hill on which it stands.’
Hettie nearly shuddered. Her mistress’ dramatic figure of speech wasn’t welcome. She did not like the idea of going deep underground – the ill rumours circulating the castle about the theft of some ancient artefact kept below the Werecrypt had heightened her natural fear of strange places. Strange, dark places all the more so.
‘Don’t worry!’ exclaimed Adhelina, seeing the troubled look on her face, before lowering her voice again. ‘Goriath knew a great many things – some say he was the greatest engineer the Free Kingdoms have ever known. If he built an escape tunnel, it’ll be safe to use. We’ll need to bring tapers to light our way, that’s all.’
Hettie frowned disparagingly. She too had heard that the Stonecrafty knew a great many things – including blasphemous pagan sorcery. And there seemed to be enough rumours of that emanating from the Werecrypt as it was.
Heedless, her mistress continued. ‘The tunnel exits around here,’ she said, pointing to the southern edge of the great hill on which the castle rested as it was marked on the map. ‘From there we should be able to get away in the dead of night without anyone seeing us.’
Hettie nodded slowly. Her mistress seemed to have thought everything through. But then one other crucial thing occurred to her.
‘What about horses?’ she asked flatly. ‘I’m supposing we can’t get those down the tunnel, even if we could get them from the stables without anyone asking questions. And we certainly aren’t going to get very far on foot.’
Her mistress looked up again from the map. Her eyes were gleaming again. A look of devilish cunning crossed her face as she replied: ‘Well, my dearest Hettie, that is precisely where you come in...’
Sir Urist’s face was tight and drawn as the herald announced the latest arrivals to the castle. He knew already by their names and provenance that they would not come bearing glad tidings.
But then what tidings had been good of late?
He had stood, stony-faced, as his rival Sir Balthor had delivered his report to the Eorl in his solar three nights ago. The shadows had lengthened, making the menagerie of animal heads look like dread beasts as they loomed over them from the cold grey walls in the torchlight.
Balthor and his men had searched everywhere they could within five leagues, asking tradesmen at Merkstaed, monks at Lothag, and peasants and vassals alike in the scores of villages and manors that dotted the lands about the castle.
All to no avail. The only thing out of the ordinary had been a few reports of an indefinable presence, some strange shadowing of the soul claimed by those living near the Glimmerholt.
That would have been nothing so unusual in the peasant folk – fearful villagers tended to shun the woods, which they claimed were the preserve of nature spirits and other devils of the earth and soil.
But even one or two knights living in the area had mentioned a similar thing – and the Eorl’s noble-born vassals were usually quick to dismiss any superstition that got in the way of their hunting privileges.
Of the fragment itself, not a whisper. No one had seen any signs of earthly thieves making off with what might have been a clandestine booty. But then what earthly thief could have pulled off such a theft, Urist wondered?
Sir Balthor and his men had overtaken and searched several groups of wayfarers during their three-day search: a few parties of merchants and one band of wandering freeswords who had almost made trouble, then thought better of it when they realised they were dealing with the greatest knight in Dulsinor (that was Balthor’s version at any rate – did the man never pass up an opportunity to sing his own praises?). But busy (and valiant) though they might have been, the Eorl’s trusty knights had returned empty-handed and none the wiser.
After that there had been nothing left to do but despatch a messenger to Strongholm to warn the King of the Northlendings that some unknown entity had apparently taken a determined and highly illicit interest in dangerous ancient artefacts.
Urist knew it was the only thing Wilhelm could do to make amends for his laxness. A sister fragment was kept somewhere in the far reaches of Northalde, under the watchful eyes of the Argolian monks. There were said to be one or two others that formed part of the same set, but no man in the Griffenwyrd knew where in the Known World they might be, assuming they even existed. And if even the learned Father Tobias could not say, who else would know?
What Urist and Tobias did know was the old legend that said the stones would wreak ruin on the world if reunited. Wilhelm knew it too, and that didn’t sit well with a lord whose age-old duty had been to help prevent the calamity from ever happening by guarding the fragment in his trust.
Lesser scions might have dismissed it as a mere fairy tale of yore, hardly worth fussing about. But Wilhelm – and Urist near loved him for it – was a good Eorl who took all his responsibilities seriously. If his ancestors had sought fit to believe the old stories and act accordingly, he would not be one to disagree.
And yet Wilhelm had been unable to maintain the guard on the Werecrypt – and now the thing was gone, on his watch. Damned superstitious soldiers – but could one really blame them? Superstitions weren’t always ill-founded, after all… It had long been whispered that Hardred the Melancholy, the Second Eorl of Dulsinor, and his successor Weregrim the Mad had both incurred torment for daring to venture into the forbidden chamber that lay beneath the Werecrypt, both victims of their own curiosity. Weregrim had abdicated a hundred and fifty years ago and gone tearing off raving mad into the wilderness, foreswearing the realms of men. He’d died some years later in a priory, it was told, ranting on his deathbed of dark kingdoms to come. Since then the Eorls of Dulsinor had learned to be less curious.
Recalling his liege lord’s troubled mien after he had sent the messenger on his way, Urist suppressed an anxious sigh. They could only pray that the Argolians and other guardians, wherever they were, had proved more vigilant...
They might not find out any time soon. A day ago word had reached them of a fresh civil war in Northalde – the old southron pretender’s heir was up in arms, prosecuting the same grievous cause as his father Kanga had during the War of the Southern Secession.
That was what came of trying to keep a kingdom together, Urist reflected. More trouble than it was worth – far better to call a spade a spade, as the Vorstlendings had done for two centuries now. A shaky coalition of rivalrous baronies, that was all a kingdom was at heart.
The war in Northalde meant there was less chance of Wilhelm’s messenger being listened to, assuming he even got to Strongholm now. Word had also come from Meerborg that her erstwhile trading partner Urring was hosting a war fleet – what with all the galleys being mustered to the rebel cause, there would be nary a berthing space for an honest merchantman.
In light of all that, perhaps more pressing – and earthly – problems were welcome, thought the Marshal ruefully as Sir Malthus of Gorr, knight of Upper Thulia, and Sir Ugo of Veidt, knight of Ostveld, strode purposefully into the Great Hall.
Four winters had passed since the two neighbouring Griffenwyrds had made their last bloody foray into Dulsinor, burning and slaying where they could until checked by the Stonefist’s forces.
On that occasion he had punished his enemies harshly, making them pay dearly for their warlike presumption. The Eorl of Ostveld he had beheaded with his great w
ar-axe as he knelt bleeding in the dust on the banks of the Graufluss; the Eorl of Upper Thulia had suffered the ignominy of seeing half his best knights slain, including his two sons, before Balthor’s lance had driven him from his charger and sent him hurtling to the ground. The fall had left him crippled, and now he had to be carried in a palanquin wherever he went, just like the effete electors of the Empire were said to do. A sore blow for any haughty liege to bear.
Perhaps not being a kingdom made little difference after all: barons always found a reason to go to war. But then that was good for the knights who served them – internecine warfare had made Urist the man he was today.
The Lanraks had ridden to their aid on that occasion too, and Sir Urist felt it was little coincidence that clandestine talk of uniting both houses had begun in earnest shortly after. Storne’s crafty steward Albercelcus was always one to smell an opportunity – and he always made sure that any aid from the House of Lanrak came with a hefty price attached.
But in this case, Urist felt, the burden of cost would fall on their neighbours in Ostveld and Upper Thulia.
Hence this visit.
Both men, stalwart vassals known to Urist and many of the knights gathered about the hall, kneeled before the Eorl’s high chair before he bade them rise and speak their minds.
As one they informed him of the purpose of their visit. Their liege lords had learned of the Stonefist’s plans to marry his daughter to the Herzog of Stornelund, and would have it known by all and sundry that they both opposed the match on the loftiest grounds.
‘Oh really?’ boomed the lord of Dulsinor, so all about the hall could hear him. ‘And what lofty grounds might those be?’ His voice was as contemptuous as it was loud. Urist’s hopes for a diplomatic audience began to diminish rapidly.
This question was answered by Sir Malthus, a short, rotund knight with a toad-like face made all the more ridiculous by his finely trimmed black beard and mustachios. He was not pretty, but no one doubted the strength of his thews.
