by Jem I Kelley
Savernake leaned back aware he’d now caught the children’s interest. “Gain this ledger and we will learn of Tanest plans. If there are designs on Haverland, they will surely be detailed within.”
Aden examined the diagram of the prison on the parchment. His finger traced the route to the tower where the prison governor’s chamber lay in the topmost room. He pictured the man working at his desk. “A diary ledger?”
Savernake nodded. “Yes, a tome bound with a covering of strange leather and containing pages detailing great mysteries.”
“You and or your goblins can’t get it?”
Savernake shook his head. His lips tightened causing his expression to become grimmer than normal. “I think my learning leads Tanest to admire yet at the same time not fully trust me. You must have noticed that I am rarely allowed beyond the doors of this underground dungeon, nor are my goblins. Yet… you children have limited freedom to wander because of the small jobs you do for Tanest.”
Aden felt his stomach sink. Mr. Savernake wanted them to fetch the diary ledger. He momentarily felt a feeling of being used, before cursing himself for such a thought. Mr Savernake had been a good friend to him and until now he had asked for nothing in return.
Aden turned his head to see Bliss’s jaw had dropped.
“Us?!” said Bliss her dark face showing horror.
Savernake's expression was sombre. “The decision is yours, I can’t force you. But if Haverland is under threat obtaining the diary ledger and learning its secrets might help somebody tackle that threat.
“What if he’s there when we sneak into his chamber?” said Bliss.
“He journeys tomorrow to the east of the country,” replied Savernake. “He’s not expected to return until days after your release from this place. His chamber will be empty.”
Aden felt mixed feelings. After the harsh months here a chance to strike revenge against the Dazarians would be sweet, but the danger involved in reaching the chamber… “The door will be locked. Even if we could get up there without being caught, we wouldn’t be able to get inside.”
Mr Savernake made a movement with his hand at the side of the table and a secret drawer popped into view. He removed an object and held it within his closed fist. “Snattit stole a shell today. This wasn’t his first theft. He has an unfortunate urge to take objects belonging to other people. Allied with incredible dexterity this makes him an expert pickpocket. One week ago Tanest came to the laundry to seek a cleaning of bed linen. We later discovered Snattit knocked into him and obtained a key. I had the key returned, but not before making a copy.”
Savernake opened his hand. Resting on the palm was a key. “You can imagine what this is.”
Aden felt his mouth go dry as he pictured the door to Tanest’s chamber. “There’s the prison guard’s mess-room at the bottom of that tower.” He pointed to the diagram and the room beneath it. “It guards the staircase.”
Savernake smiled and closed his hand over the key. There was a determination to his eyes that Aden hadn’t witnessed before. “I have the key to Tanest’s chamber and have already devised a plan to get you there safely. Your success is certain. If you decide to fetch me the diary ledger, we may be able to learn the nature of the Dazarian plans against Haverland.”
Chapter 5 – The Tower
Two weeks passed after Savernake gave the children the key before the opportunity rose for them to enter the tower and Tanest’s chamber. Mareek, the chief guard, had come into their cell that afternoon, thrown the children brooms and told them to sweep the yard.
“We’ve got perhaps half an hour I reckon,” said Aden later, resting his hands on a broom handle and staring at the base of the tower. “It’s going to be awkward with Mareek still in the guard’s mess. But, at least he should be the only danger, it’s as Savernake, said the tower is out of sight of the gatehouse.”
Bliss followed Aden’s gaze from the bulbous base of the tower to the pinnacle that held Tanest’s chamber. “Savernake was right about the shutter on the second floor too. It’s open.”
Mr. Savernake’s plan was simple. With so many guards sick lately, he’d said few sentries would patrol the prison walls. If the children could get time to themselves in the compound they would be able to make their way to Tanest’s chamber unseen.
The only way to bypass the guard’s mess at the base of the tower would be to climb the drain gulley which ran down the outside of the tower, and clamber through a pair of wooden shutters which opened onto the second floor.
‘The shutters open on to the stairs, as you must have noticed those times when you’ve taken Tanest his meals,’ Savernake had said, ‘and they’re not barred. Like most shutters in this place they will be left ajar if the weather’s clement, to encourage airflow. All you need do is climb the gulley, clamber through, and you’ll find yourself above the guard’s mess. Then, walk up the stairs to Tanest’s chamber on the third floor. Use the key to enter. Find the ledger and leave. The only danger will be when you are climbing the gulley outside of the tower. Be quick and you will be fine.’
The way he’d explained it had made it seem simple but as Aden stared at the tower and in particular the guard room at its base, he felt his legs go weak. If they were caught it would be the torture room for them. Branding irons, thumb screws and worse.
“I guess Haverland’s future could depend on this,” he muttered a tinge of reluctance in his voice.
Bliss licked her upper lip. “Let’s go then,” she said, and strode forward.
Aden hesitated, for he feared the consequences of being caught in Tanest’s chamber. Then an image of Haverland came to him, with its cobbled streets and ordinary folk. More images of home flooded his mind. He saw the faces of his parents, Bliss’s parents and all his friends. An image of he and Bliss handing out warm bread to the market traders during a winter morning caused his throat to tighten. He had to do this thing for Haverland.
He caught up with Bliss and the two of them strolled across the compound yard towards the tower. Aden stared at the wooden shutter near the bottom of the tower - the one opening onto the guard’s room. As he approached he heard voices, including the harsh words of the chief guard - Mareek.
“Shame the staircase isn’t on the outside, it would make things a lot easier,” said Bliss staring at the gulley. “If we're heard making a noise whilst climbing we’re dead.”
“We’d better not make a noise then,” replied Aden.
Bliss paused. “Do you think Mareek would tell on us if he caught us climbing? He’s never harmed us. I think he likes us.”
“He does. But he’d rat on us without a second thought if we broke the rules.”
Bliss put her hands to her hips. “That time a lizard man stabbed you he beat it up so much it never walked again.”
Aden felt the puncture scar near his right shoulder and recalled the horror of the attack. He shuddered. Yes, Mareek had hauled the lizard-man off and smashed it within an inch of its life. He’d warned other prisoners to lay off the children too, which they had.
“So he gives us better treatment. If he caught us trying to get in his boss’s room though, none of that will count.”
They reached the drain gully, a wide groove that ran up the tower side. Aden heard the voices of Mareek and another guard clearly on the other side of the wall, in the guard-room. He craned his neck to follow the line of the gulley to near the second floor wooden shutter and swallowed. It looked tough, especially if one had to be quiet. He’d climbed drainpipes before but this would be harder.
He braced himself inside the gully and edged up. In the shade of the building the surface stones were warm to the touch; later in the day he guessed they would have burnt his skin. He put a foot against the gulley side and pushed himself further. Bliss followed.
Two dozen footholds later he’d reached the second floor wooden shutter and stretched fingers towards it, when the ground floor shutter slammed open.
Aden shot a look down and saw the top o
f Mareek’s head. The man leaned on the sill of the guardhouse below (and to the right), with a fat cigar in mouth. Aden braced himself and prayed.
“You’re right,” muttered Mareek. He blew out a stream of smoke. “Ee’s Tanest’s favourite all right. Cleave him I would otherwise. Smash his head with me axe...”
Mareek talked to someone inside the guard’s mess. “…Half-ogre or no, I ain’t scared of the green skinned oaf.”
Aden felt the tobacco smoke burn his eyes and he heard a voice, to which Mareek replied.
“Right mystery that… Tanest don’t even let me look inside. Only that Gnashlok… I hates the creature. He needs chopping. If you ask me, they’ve managed to breed a juicy bird and they’re hoping the Yeccozin will flow.”
More words from the guard inside the room and Mareek replied.
“Yeah, and when he does, I’ll chop ‘im quicker than he can blink.”
The conversation finished and Mareek rested, smoking his cigar. Its bitter fumes drifted up to Aden causing his eyes to water and his nose tickle. He wanted to cough and fought the urge.
As Mareek puffed below, the muscles in Aden’s legs burnt like fire with the strain of holding him there. White-hot pain stretched from foot to hip and he wondered how long he could keep his grip. His toes, dug into the gaps between stone blocks cramped now and he feared the worst.
Mareek coughed and Aden jumped. The chief guard tapped his cigar and then disappeared. The wooden shutter below, closed.
Aden’s left foot slipped, causing him to brace harder with his hands in panic.
He paused, terrified Mareek had heard.
Heart racing, he gripped the shutter and eased into the second floor of the tower where he brought life back into his toes and arms.
Bliss came through with the same look of terror on her face as Aden felt.
“Grokkin hell,” she whispered. “That was close.”
They eased the shutter back and crept up worn steps to the topmost floor of the tower.
Spikes studded the door to the Governor’s office. It sported a ring door handle and below this, a keyhole. Aden went to put Savernake’s key into the hole. Bliss grabbed his hand.
“Wait.”
She placed her ear to the door and strained to listen. After a moment, she stood back. “I thought I’d check. Go on.”
Aden tried the key. The lock was clumsy and hard to turn and it took him a few goes before he heard a satisfying click. He put his hand to the iron ring, jumping back as a sensation raced up his arm.
Bliss stared at him, her eyes showing puzzlement. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s cold!” Replied Aden. The ring was freezing. A cold iron door ring in a hot country like this was bizarre, thought Aden. “I don’t like it.”
Bliss shrugged. “We’re here now. We might as well see what’s inside.”
Aden gripped the iron ring with cloth of his prison uniform to protect his fingers. Feeling his mouth go dry, he opened the door and a cold gasp of air drifted through the opening.
“C’mon.”
He crossed into the room, feeling the chill air bring goose pimples to his arms.
Bliss followed, and Aden shut the door behind them.
“Let’s see what we can find.”
Bliss turned and letting out a startled cry, jumped backwards into Aden. “Be quiet,” he whispered harshly. “Mareek might hear you.”
Bliss steadied herself and stared at what had spooked her.
A chain ran from the ceiling into a skull and from it hung suspended a full set of human bones with hints of dry flesh at the joints. Aden tried not to think why Tanest would have a skeleton in his room. He ignored the tingling fear which swept across his scalp and tapped Bliss on the shoulder, then whispered. “Are you okay?”
Bliss nodded and gave him the thumbs up sign.
Aden cocked his head and listened for movement from Mareek in the guard house, two floors below.
Nothing. No movement, no sound.
He relaxed. “The skeleton can’t hurt you. It’s just an ornament.”
Bliss pulled herself away and stared at the bones. “This is seriously weird”
Aden saw a room lay loosely divided into two areas. One area held a king-size bed with ebony covers and sheets. In the other there was a writing bureau, paperwork, ink quills and a skull.
The sloping skylights above, underlined the status of the room’s owner. Four of them lent the room ochre light. Panelled windows, small squares of shaded glass, hung in a lead frame. Outside Lord Kesskran’s palace, Aden thought, these might be the only glazed windows in Dazarian. Glass was a rare and precious substance the knowledge of its manufacture only recently having spread from the East, and few in the West having perfected its simplest applications.
“Posh,” said Bliss casting around with saucer-like eyes.
The room was cold. Not as a room in the desert should feel, thought Aden. “Let’s be quick. Don’t touch anything which looks dangerous. I’ll take this side of the room, you that.”
Bliss’s jaw firmed with determination, and she shook her head causing her curls to bounce. “Gotcha.”
Aden approached the bureau and realised the ledger Savernake described was not there. He found paperwork to do with running a prison though, and most of it flew over his head.
He rifled amongst expenses, building costs, reports on prisoners, but nothing secret or unnerving. Aden wondered if Tanest kept the real secrets elsewhere.
“Hey!”
It was Bliss.
“What?”
Hidden behind the hanging curtains of the four poster bed stood a giant urn. Runes covered the terracotta surface. “This must be the thing Savernake and Tanest were talking about when we overheard them,” Said Bliss.
The vessel was open, its lid hanging to one side. Aden felt apprehensive about what might lie inside. In his imagination a clawed creature sat waiting to strike the unwary.
He approached the urn, swallowed, rose on tiptoes and glimpsed inside. It was empty. He rested back on his heels and scanned the room. If there ever had been anything inside the urn, it was no longer there.
“Well?” Said Bliss.
“There’s nothing inside.”
“Nothing at all?”
“No.”
They continued their search for Tanest’s diary ledger.
Aden searched a bookcase. Leather-bound tomes covered topics such as ‘Espionage’, ‘Artefact-Worlds’, ’Military Strategy’, ‘The Amari’, ‘Novagorad History’, ‘Ancient Sorcerers’ and ‘Torture Techniques’. There was no diary however.
He looked around the room and sighed. “This is hopeless.”
Bliss came over to him. “Perhaps that time Savernake saw the diary ledger was when Tanest had been working with it. Perhaps normally he keeps it locked away?”
“Yeah, I’d figured that. But where?”
“There must be a secret room in the prison.”
Aden spread his hands wide. “But where do we start looking?”
Bliss swore under her breath. “I don’t know. Grokking hell. After all the trouble we took to get here. We’ve still got to go back down that gully.”
Aden felt a sense of defeat envelop him. All that risk for no reward. It wasn’t fair. “We’d better go.”
He unlocked the door to the stairs and using the cloth of his shirt, pulled at the cold ring a fraction. “It’s all clear.”
Bliss stared at the skeleton. “You don’t frighten me any more,” she said and tugged at the ribs as if to prove as much.
‘Click’.
Aden tried to fathom where the noise came from. His jaw dropped when he realised its source. Pulling the skeleton had activated a mechanism, for the bookcase slid now, without noise, until it revealed a dark recess.
Bliss stared wide eyed at the secret space. “Grokkin’ eck, Aden! I’ve found a secret room. Better lock the door again.”
Aden did so and then stared at the dark entrance revealed by Bliss.
A secret room! Of all things, and to think it was found by accident.
Chapter 6: The Secret Room
Aden followed Bliss through the secret entrance-way through a short tunnel, into what turned out to be a tiny room chocker blocked with objects.
There sat two chests: a brass-clasped affair filling the width of the room, and a small one atop it. Above the chests, objects lay piled on a shelf. On the right wall a rack held a cutlass and sword. A rack on the opposite wall held sections of polished armour. Piled in a wooden box on the floor beside the chests were several dozen objects which caught Aden’s attention. Artefacts.
“Stone me!” He said.
All the artefacts glowed with a pale light. Aden shut his eyes, and counted to five. He opened them, and the artefacts were still there. Bliss lifted one and Aden watched his friend examine the thing.
What Bliss held resembled a small athlete’s discus. About the size of her palm and fashioned of a pale milky substance, it sported a dark blue pattern on its surface. Within the milky substance of the disc lay a thin metal structure. Tiny cogs whirled in a soundless high speed blur. A brass circular button sat flush against the outside centre of the disc, and a black dot marked one edge of the button. A black dot also lay on the body of the disc beside the button.
Bliss traced her finger across the disc. “An artefact disc! I’ve never seen a real one before.”
Aden had never seen one before, either. Their homeland, Haverland, owned thousands of artefacts but few people saw one. Stored deep under the Haverland palace, soldiers kept a constant watch on them. Guarded by strong vaults and even more soldiers were those few artefacts that ‘worked’. A working artefact was worth more than its weight in diamonds. What were artefacts doing here, in Dazarian, he wondered? And why weren’t they better protected?
