The sight made me remember my previous visit to the inner city. A long winding march up to the castle, dressed in coats of polished steel. The sun shone down so hard that a mere glance at the twenty of us could blind you. We each carried the royal banner on pikes as tall as houses, displaying the colours of our new battalions. Not long after, we knelt in a row before the King and took our vows of entry into the Household Regiment or the King's Own. His soldiers, touched by his hand. Loyal to no other. Faithful unto death.
Then I shook my head clear of reminiscences. Different time, different country, different me.
Between the Northerners and the city's general atmosphere of xenophobia, it wasn't safe for our little party to go about in public. The people would crucify a steppe girl like Yazizi the second they laid eyes on her, slave or not. Her people were raiders, and they'd harried the North even more than the South for centuries. She needed to be kept under wraps.
Still, the woman and I had our errand to run, so Sir Erroll must stay behind and watch her. Faro the squire went where Erroll went. That left three of us making our way into the inner city, and I suggested we travel separately to avoid attention. Three Southerners walking alone might raise eyebrows where two and one could go unnoticed.
My body meandered as much as my mind, through the broad streets and tight alleys of the inner city until I arrived at Scholar's Hall. Barred iron gates blocked my way, as well as a sign which declared that classes were in session and absolutely no one would be allowed on or off the grounds. Right next to it, however, the gate guard happily let a tall, graceful lady and her young companion through the wicket, while his eyes wandered all the way up and down her dress. She spotted me out the corner of her eye and asked the guard in a sultry, absent-minded voice if he'd mind letting in one more body. He nodded his head and beckoned me in.
“Milady,” I greeted her. She returned it with a smile.
“Byren, I'm glad you made it. Did you have any difficulty getting here?”
“Nothing worth mentioning. Do you know who we're looking for?”
“I've never met the man, but I know his name. That should be enough.”
I held the low oaken door for her, as a man ought to do. She strode through like a true noblewoman, head held high, cloak pulled back over her shoulders to show her fine red dress. We came into a small, dim anteroom lined with wooden chairs and bookshelves full to bursting. The only light seeped in from a dusty window high up the wall. A bespectacled old man sat behind a desk in the middle of the room, dressed in clothes that were probably very fine a hundred years ago, scribbling away at pages and pages of lists. All written in the holy tongue, of course, which was just so much gibberish to me.
Only after finishing his page did he deign to look up. His expression changed the moment he realised we weren't truant students begging for a reprieve.
“May I help you?” he inquired in a voice quavering with age.
“You may,” the woman said imperiously. “I'm looking for Professor Aemedd, I believe he teaches history here. Could you direct me to him?”
The scribe pushed the spectacles back up his nose. “I'm sorry to say, madam, Professor Aemedd is giving a lecture at the moment. You must come back later.”
Leaning over the desk, she directed the full force of her pride at him, and he quailed. She spoke in a hard, autocratic whisper, “I will not. You may direct me to Aemedd's office, where I shall wait for him, and I expect a message to be delivered to him not to keep Lady Silbane any longer than necessary. Is that understood?”
The scribe mumbled that he would, of course my lady, and scrambled out the back. Moments later a much younger man ‒ a senior student, if I guessed right ‒ appeared to guide us through the long, silent passages of the Hall.
It seemed less dusty here than in the anteroom, the walls hung with lots of fine paintings donated by patrons and former students, thick carpets piled on top of each other on the floor. Occasionally we passed doors to great classrooms where the voices of teachers droned on in the holy tongue.
Academies always put my hackles up. Too quiet, too mysterious, too strange. I was raised as a common boy, I never read or wrote a word until I was made sergeant. Books still seemed strange and outlandish to me. Not only that, but life here seemed so quiet, dull, and repressive. Even farmers knew how to drink a few pints and dance until morning, under the right circumstances.
Our guide stopped at a particular room and unlocked it with a heavy brass key. The door was a heavy, iron-banded thing, unmemorable except for the small silver plaque to the side, engraved with the name 'Aemedd of Leora' in delicate floral script.
We went inside and waited for our man to show up.
Aemedd of Leora was a painfully thin man even under the thick red robes. Bald as an egg, wrinkled in places and smooth in others, which made it difficult to guess his age. He moved like a collection of sticks roughly glued together, almost creaking as he bowed to kiss the woman's hand. I offered my own hand to shake out of politeness. He looked at it for a moment, then took it limply, a stiff smile on his face. He didn't even waste a glance on Adar; the boy brooded alone in the corner, a sad figure with his scabbard dangling not an inch above the floor. The nail marks on his face had turned dark red with scabbed blood.
“Lady Silbane, I understand?” Aemedd purred.
She dipped her head elegantly. “And this is my Contractor, Sergeant Byren, formerly of the King's Own.”
The scholar raised a semi-curious eyebrow at me. “A Contractor? Very good, delighted to meet you. How may I assist?”
“Let us not mince words, Professor. We wish to discuss a certain item you have in your possession. A helm. Rather a special piece, if rumours are to be believed.”
“I would be skeptical of loose lips if I were you, Milady.” Aemedd's rigid smile never changed, but his eyes narrowed into an even lazier expression. She'd piqued his interest, or at least put him on his guard.
“Even loose lips can tell the truth, Professor. Let me make my point.” The woman sighed, “Adar, draw your sword, please.”
Beady eyes went wide, and Aemedd jerked back, throwing up his arms to ward off an attack. Adar paused with his sword halfway out of its sheath. I could see the scholar's expression change as he caught a glimpse of burnished bronze, the simple but elegant lines of blade and hilt. The woman gestured at me and I folded back my cloak to show the gleaming breastplate underneath.
The woman rounded on Aemedd with her hands on her hips and a new sharpness to her words. “My dear Professor, you'll catch flies with your mouth like that.”
“Come to my private chambers,” the scholar said abruptly. He moved past us and pushed open a hidden door in the wall of his office, waving for us to follow. I glanced at the woman, shrugged, and went after him.
We went down a cramped and creaky spiral staircase, the carved wood cold and damp. We emerged into a high, wide room with rows of dirty windows pouring in light through the angled ceiling. Antique brass sconces lined the walls bearing half-burnt candles and congealed waterfalls of wax.
The main feature of the room, however, was an unbroken procession of huge, solid-wood cupboards below the high sconces. Some bore books, others displayed various bits of ancient stone and pottery, some out in the open, some behind glass. Still others had curtains built in to hide the contents. The only other concession to funiture was a small round table in the middle of the room, surrounded by stools. Every footstep created a thunderous echo against the heavy stone all around us.
Aemedd went to one of the cabinets on the western wall and unlocked it, brought out something gleaming and bronze on a velvet pillow. He set it down reverently on the edge of the table.
The helm couldn't have been more functional. It consisted of a simple oblong bowl for the head with a large, sweeping neckguard and cheek plates, leaving only thin slits for the eyes and mouth. A fat vertical crest had been raised along the middle of the bowl which might have once held a plume. The whole thing was beaten from a s
ingle sheet without a hint of waste. Although the bronze was spotless, free of scratches or so much as a speck of corrosion, something about it suggested it had seen battle before. A lot like my armour.
“Fascinating little piece, isn't it?” the scholar cooed, a strange hunger in his eyes as he fawned over it. “I've collected stories, but never really believed it had counterparts that weren't lost forever. Yet here you are.” He shook himself and smiled. “I don't expect any of you know how old it is.”
The woman shook her head. “We'd love to hear more. Where did you find it?”
Aemedd's eyes lit up as if she'd just given him a bag of sweets. He took a deep breath and began.
“I was on a long expedition to perform archaeological digs in the Catsclaw mountains. In particular, there's a valley there which holds a sprawling bronze-age temple complex, carved out of the local stone. Although much of the complex had been pillaged beyond recognition and largely buried, it was a treasure house all by itself, but then we discovered a fascinating structure at the heart of the complex... A mausoleum filled with reliefs and inscriptions in a style unlike anything any of us had seen before. It's similar in craftsmanship to many other bronze age arts in different cultures, but the imagery... There's nothing else like it. Here, I have some examples in my collection.”
He went to a different cabinet on the western wall, whose doors swung out and slid back into the wood on clever hinges. Inside was a long glass case filled with chunks of sculpted stone, and bronze so ancient it had gone completely green and fragile as old paint, little more than flakes holding together out of nothing more than habit. Among the bronzes I recognised pots, knives, cups, everything one needed for daily life a thousand and more years ago.
These things I understood when I saw them. The stone inscriptions, however, resisted every attempt to make sense of them. My eye couldn't make shapes out of the artful spiralling lines which Aemedd said combined into drawings. It somehow blurred away from itself until it became visual nonsense, except... Except, as my eyes watered over, one image did become clear. A hunched old man with a staff who appeared over and over in every relief.
Aemedd continued, “The best was yet to come. When we were combing the pristine mausoleum, we stumbled upon a secret chamber dug into its very foundations. It was undisturbed by human hands since it was sealed thousands of years ago. I went inside with two of my fellows from Kingsport Academy. We expected to find a tomb of some sort, but instead there was a hoard of bronze unlike anything we'd seen before. Everything was made of it. Tools and weaponry and art, heavy bronze statues of men and horses, even chariots and furniture. However, the star piece was sitting on a small stone pedestal in the middle of the room.
“You understand, everything around us had decayed like you can see, all green and gnawed apart by time. But not the helm. The helm was pristine. To this day it's as perfect as when it first went into that tomb.”
I asked, “How is that possible?”
“I don't know. Something must have been forged into it, some additive or technique lost to our smiths.” He shrugged. “Ore from the Catsclaw mines has been known to have unpredictable results in smelting. It could be a property of the materials.”
“Or magic.”
I immediately wished I'd held my tongue. I was not a superstitious man and I shouldn't be going gullible now. Magic, I reminded myself, was a word for lovers and charlatans. The scholar spared me only a brief, disgusted glance.
“It's a well-forged item made by a gifted armourer, but I highly doubt it contains any supernatural influence.”
“Forgive me, Professor,” the woman interjected. “This has been very interesting. Do you know if there are any more pieces like it?”
“If you'd asked me that question an hour ago, Milady, I would have said no. Now I have to wonder. These pieces all seem to be part of a single set, and the craftsmanship is beyond priceless. Only a a king or a high priest could've commissioned something like this. In fact...” He started shuffling through his cupboards, which held drawers upon drawers filled with parchment, each less organised than the last. “Just last month I received a letter from a fellow at Kingsport suggesting he might be on the trail of another complex like our mausoleum, this one at the edge of the Harari steppe. Ah!” He pulled out a single sheaf and showed it to the woman. A crude map occupied the bottom half. I got a good look but couldn't read the spidery, scribbled annotations in the holy tongue. “I wrote a reply immediately. He ought to have sent me another letter by now, though I've yet to receive it.”
“That doesn't sound good,” I said. “If the Harari took him, they might already have his scalp woven into some horse-lord's trophy.”
“Then I'll trust you to save us from a similar fate, Master Byren,” remarked the woman. Silk-soft fingers touched my arm. I clenched my jaw against the spasm of lust it provoked. “Once we're rested and ready to travel, we have to get to this new mausoleum as fast as possible.”
Aemedd let out a brief, genteel little laugh. “'We', Milady? I never agreed to accompany you.”
“Of course, Professor. We would be honoured if you joined us, but we can make the journey alone if necessary.”
The scholar smiled wide, closed-lipped, and his eyes narrowed to lazy slits. “Then I shall have my affairs in order and my things packed in three days, Milady. Now if you'll excuse your humble servant,” he clasped his hands together to plead, “would you mind terribly showing yourselves out? I should go arrange my leave with the headmaster immediately, and a thousand other little things...”
One more fly into the web, I thought, and hid my amusement behind a discreet cough.
I got stuck with the job of taking Adar back to the Fire and Wine. The woman decided to stay in the inner city and found rooms for herself and Sir Erroll. She offered to do the same for me, but I begged off, knowing that someone would have to mind the children. There was also the guilty little part of me that wouldn't stop thinking about what happened with Yazizi. Ordinarily a man like me wouldn't have a prayer of tumbling a girl so young, not without money changing hands. I didn't want to be too far away in case I got another shot. However, I had to wonder how I could have her and keep myself from getting emotionally entangled with this group at the same time.
All of it preyed on my mind, distracted me from noticing Adar's nervous but determined glances at the scenery. I had no idea anything was going on until he bolted.
“Hey!” I cried after him, but he ran on down the road like a rocket made of knees and elbows, Hell-bent on escape. He teetered past horses and pedestrians in the busy street, narrowly missed dying under the wheels of an oxcart, and I cursed his name as I took off in pursuit.
I didn't waste any breath shouting. I just imagined there was a cavalry charge behind me and ran. My strides were twice as long as Adar's, but the boy put on a burst of desperate speed to keep me at bay. He dodged a Northern woman with a basket full of half-rotten apples. I bowled over her and sent her foul-smelling crop into the street, where a dozen people jumped on the bruised, mouldering apples and shovelled them into their mouths. The woman wailed screamed that she'd find me and butcher me like a pig.
Adar reached a corner with more branching alleys than I could count. He might have gotten away from me if ‒ at that moment ‒ his scabbard hadn't gotten tangled between his legs. It tripped him up beyond hope, and he flew face-first onto the cobbles. Then he sprang to his feet again, all youthful energy and determination. His legs pumped as fast as they could.
Too late. With one final lunge my fingers grabbed his tunic and lifted him by his collar. His feet left the ground kicking and squirming.
“I won't go back!” He twisted around to punch me. “You can't make me!”
“Where would you go, you stupid boy?” I asked him coldly. “A lad like you alone on the streets? You'd be dead before sunup.” His response was a clumsy crotch kick, which I turned aside with the an effortless brush of my knee. I twisted his tunic into a noose and let him choke for a b
it. “Do that again and I'll cut your bollocks off.”
Tears welled up in his eyes, and he started to sob. Gagging, gurgling, “I never wanted to l-l-leave! Why won't they let me go h-home?”
“Why the Hell do you think? You're her ward. Her responsibility. Of course she's‒”
“Not her,” he blubbered. “Everyone, my m-m-ma, my da and the elder, all of them!”
I hesitated. That sounded like a story I ought to hear. This group had been full of strange surprises so far, and I couldn't afford to keep myself in the dark.
My curiosity, a long-sleeping beast, had awoken.
“Why?” I asked, feigning sympathy. I put him back down but didn't let go, kept him next to me the rest of the way. We still had a good walk ahead of us, through the cramped, dirty streets of the outer city. It was a different route than the one I'd taken to get to the inner city. I didn't want to go near that particular gate again, even if the other one added a couple of miles to the trip. This neighbourhood smelled of cheap incense attempting to cover up the unpleasant scent of rot and death, and failing.
“I‒” Adar vacillated. His chest still heaved with quiet sobs. “You wouldn't unders-stand.”
“Try me.”
He let out a long, miserable sigh.
“They never t-t-told me I was l-leaving. I only met Lady Silbane for half an hour while she spoke with my ma, my da and the elder. At the time I didn't understand what they were talking about. Two days later, the elder just took me aside and told me, 'It's time for you to go, boy.'
“He said I was warded to the Lady, and was to follow her anywhere. And he said not to come back until I fulfilled the prophecy. My parents would deny me and stone me if I set foot in the village before then. I was to just take the sword and go. Be the promised one.”
Adar's voice evened out as he spoke, although it would be more accurate to say it went dead, along with his face. There was an awful stillness there, and I didn't like it. I felt my forehead wrinkle into a deep frown.
Written in Blood Page 5
