The sodalist watched as his newly freed friends took turns rushing to a basin set in the healing room to disgorge the food they’d eaten. Their tender stomachs, so long without food, could not bear the feast. They’d simply eaten too much, too fast. When their stomachs were again empty, they leaned against the wall to catch their breath.
“Ready,” Sutter said, pulling on the leather bracelet with the strange loop over his middle finger. “To the Heights.” Still holding a crust of bread, he took a bite.
Tahn smiled. “Glutton.”
The door opened and Mira stepped in. She conversed with Vendanj and Grant in a low tone. She then opened the door, looked into the hall, and nodded to Vendanj.
“Come,” Vendanj said. “It is time. Keep silent. The halls of Solath Mahnus are alive with argument over the regent’s decision to exercise her right to free Tahn and Sutter. The league has called her action into question. Soon she will be forced to add her guard to the search for us, while they convene a formal council.”
Grant laughed. “Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of her sovereign right to grant amnesty?”
Vendanj nodded. “Nevertheless, it is true. It is the time we live in. They search for Tahn and Sutter even now. We are safer if we go unheard and unseen. Quickly.”
Mira led them down the hall and across a mezzanine. As they went, Braethen realized suddenly—for the first time—that he was actually in the great halls of Recityv. Walls of rich marble flowed into ceilings with intricate carved designs. The floor shone in the light of a hundred lanterns. Here and there islands of wide, deep chairs sat grouped in circles on burgundy carpets cut in great squares. In their midst, small tables held bottles of mulled wine and boards of bread and honey butter.
They descended a stairway into a second hallway. Recessed alcoves on either side of them harbored statues, empty suits of mail, and occasionally a door into another room.
At the hall’s end, another stair spiraled down. Mira still led them, and in short order they arrived at a workroom. Large tables stood laden with mallets, steel rings, sharp shafts, and rolls of leather. Along the walls, pegs were hung with unfinished suits of armor, saddles, tack, and harness rigs, lengths of hide still curing. To the right blazed a forge with water troughs beneath it to cool heated metal. The entire room was redolent with the smell of armor oil and rawhide. A dense, humid heat thickened the air, as well as the smell of a man’s labor.
At this hour, the room was empty save for three men. One held something in the blistering fire of the forge. As Mira started toward a broad open entrance opposite them, the man put a piece of red-hot iron into the water, a gout of steam and a loud hiss rising from the trough.
The other men beat at folds of doubled leather, driving studs into them at even intervals. They worked without their shirts, thick stomachs glistening with sweat beneath corded chests and shoulders. Each swing fell precisely where they intended it.
One of the men working at his leather looked up as they passed two tables away. He continued to hammer, uninterrupted, grunting at a casual nod from Vendanj.
The far end of the armory was open to ventilate the fires and keep the men cool. The wind was blowing hard, sending strong gusts into the armory. Ten paces from that open yard, Mira abruptly stopped, drawing her swords in an impossibly quick, dual motion. Braethen heard Grant pull his own weapon. In the blink of an eye, four leaguemen walked into sight, blocking their passage into the stable yard.
“His leadership was right. Look what we have found.” One of the leaguemen laughed as they all drew their swords.
“We’ve no quarrel with you,” Vendanj said. “But we have urgent business, and will not be delayed.”
“Will not,” the leagueman mocked. “Sheason, you are going to the pit for this. And if you raise your hands to draw the Will, you will be put to death. Do you understand your choices?”
Mira leaped forward, blades slicing the air. Sparks rose from the furnace in the wind, streaking the air like light-flies around her as she moved. Before the leagueman could defend himself, she had her blade at his throat.
“I will cut your throat if you utter another insult,” Mira said. To the remaining leaguemen, she said, “We are leaving. If you try to stop us, your friend will die.”
“Hurry,” Vendanj called.
Braethen ran with the others into the stable yard, where they found their horses ready.
They had all mounted when the leagueman gambled on Mira’s threat and began to shout an alarm. His cries rose on the still night air. Down distant alleys, running steps echoed toward them from every direction.
Braethen waited for the Far to dispatch the man, his stomach roiling at the thought. Instead, she severed the tendons above the ankles on both his feet—he would not be following them. Then she jumped onto her own horse. Vendanj clucked twice, sending Suensin into a gallop toward the stable-yard gates. The clop of hooves rose like applause across the stone mall.
They rode hard and fast, the cobblestone underfoot too slick for iron-shod hooves to stop. A horse-length from the barred doors, Vendanj shoved a flattened palm toward the gates, casting them open as though straw in a summer storm. Into the street they poured, turning south along the outer wall of Solath Mahnus. Warning cries rose behind them, but they soon were lost to distance and the rush of blood in Braethen’s ears.
Around a sharp turn, the cobbled road ended, passing to soil. Braethen chuffed a sigh of relief as their horses’ hooves quieted in the dirt.
They raced under a full moon that lit their way. Around them, the city had begun to fall to sleep: fewer lights shone in the windows, fewer dogs barked at their passage.
After just a few minutes, Vendanj pulled up abruptly, jumping from his saddle and taking two running strides to a door with a faint yellow glow at its edges. He rapped lightly at the lintel as Braethen and the others came to a stop and looked down in confusion. This was no cathedral. Mira gestured them off their horses, gathering the reins and pulling the mounts into a covered alcove beside the house. Grant assisted her, his eyes searching the night with the same intense awareness as the Far.
The door squeaked, drawing Braethen’s attention. He saw a sliver of an old face between the door and its jamb, sallow cheeks beneath a shock of snow white hair. An expression of unhappy surprise was clearly evident on the portion of face Braethen could see. But the man opened the door to admit the Sheason. Vendanj half turned and silently gestured them to follow.
All responded save Mira and Grant, who looked a perfect pair, aware of one another but their focus outward into the Recityv night.
Braethen had just cleared the door when Vendanj shut it fast and directed the sodalist to watch the street through the window. The Sheason then stepped into the direct glow of a lantern hanging from a rafter. He eyed their host carefully. The old, tired-looking man stared back with arched brows.
“I need a telling, Garlen, and I need it with the pass of one quill’s dip into your ink.” Vendanj spoke fast but clear.
“What else,” the man replied. “I should know the sound of Suensin’s hooves by now. Each time they clatter to my stoop, you expect some words. And in a hurry.” A recalcitrant tone entered the old man’s voice. “As things go, just talking to you could earn me some stripes. And on from that, those bumble-fools at council may decide the author’s craft is like to yours and put an end to the meager coin I can still earn from tight-fisted merchants.”
Braethen stared. An author. He’d been so focused on his task he’d completely missed the house full of books and parchments. Within this cluttered home tucked away in a squalid quarter of Recityv, tables overflowed with scraps of parchment and books in various sizes, some bound in animal hide, some in cloth, others wrapped in twine; crowded shelves bowed from the weight of their volumes, sitting like a series of thin smiles; trunks sat open on the floor where the contents overflowed their lids; and amidst it Garlen seemed to bring a perfect order to it all. Braethen thought that he might be looking at the mind of
the author, a vault of accumulated knowledge, the thoughts and impressions of a thousand historians, stories preserved throughout the ages, stories wrought by Garlen’s own pen, and everything a knot, a riddle, a mess to Braethen, yet all of it an extension of the mind of this ornery old writer.
“Please, Garlen,” Vendanj said. “I haven’t time to debate the decay of a society that doesn’t esteem your skill. And I’ve always made generous payment for your work.”
“You’re the only one,” Garlen shot back, wheezing as he climbed a short stair and perched atop a high stool set beside a lectern that rose two full strides from the ground.
“We must go north and east,” Vendanj went on. “The words must tell of a place at the edge of what is known in common history. Or else to your memory.”
“Now we come to it.” Garlen smiled and winked. “To me you come when my age suits your purpose, but younger pens dally at your scryer’s beck when other concerns press you.”
“Nonsense,” Vendanj shouted. “There’s not another pen in Recityv I trust or use. None sharper, none quicker. And haste is the nut inside, my friend. Those same bumble-fools at court trail us this instant, surely due to lies from the mouths of leaguemen.”
“Don’t end there, Vendanj,” Garlen sputtered through a laugh. “Say it all. We’ve Quiet in the land. Patient shadow-stuff that bring with them a taint, a taint not just of foulness but of secrets mankind has ignored for far too long. I’ve put it on parchment a thousand times, my friend. A thousand times this cycle alone. Fellows and anais alike clap slavishly, but fail to place a copper in my hand for my clever tales and elaborated histories. They all hold to the texts that bear the regent’s sigil, you know. The lies about our safety.”
“I know, Garlen. But enough! Can you write it?” Vendanj may as well have thrust his fist into the lectern. The force of his cry rattled in the fibers of the wood.
Garlen raised his chin and one eye squinted. Upon his writing perch at the impossibly tall lectern, his white hair glowed in the light of the lamp hanging close by. His spectacles caught a glimmer of the flame inside. The author peered for a dreadful moment at Vendanj, testing the Sheason’s patience. Then he pointed a quill at him.
“You’re going to Restoration.” He paused, twisting the quill in his fingers. “It is a dangerous place, my friend. Not a place to go gallivanting off to with such a tribe as this.” The quill swept across the room to indicate all those from the Hollows and Penit.
Vendanj opened his mouth to speak.
Garlen stopped him before he could utter a word. “Yes, I can write it. Or near to it. I’ve seen the Soliel. Wandered like a lost pup in the places most men won’t write about.” The author became quiet, his gaze reflective. “But I’ve not written of such things, ever. What lays claim to that region of the Far is better left alone.” Then, as though waking, Garlen spoke up. “But yes, I can write it! I’ll take double on what you usually pay. And I’d have you make mention to your cathedral hootenanny that we tone-deaf louts find plenty of song in the spoken word alone.”
Vendanj said nothing to that. Finally, he added, “We need to get to Naltus.”
A look of concern touched the author’s face. “I’ve not been there. I’m not sure I can write that telling accurately. But I can put you on the Soliel. From there—”
“Do you have Hargrove’s Collected Works?” Braethen interjected.
A’Garlen looked down from his perch, squinting into the dimness near the window where Braethen stood watch. “Who’s that? What do you care about my book collection?”
“Do you have it?” Braethen demanded.
“No author considers himself—”
“Where?”
The author began to point, and Braethen dashed to a bookcase to the man’s left on the far wall. He scanned the books and found it quickly. There were eight volumes. He fingered the bindings in a blur, and pulled down the second book. With an audible crack, he opened the tome and flipped by memory a third of the way through the pages. He scanned, his mind and heart racing with remembrance and urgency.
“Here!” Braethen passed the open book up to A’Garlen. “Halfway down the left page.”
The author took the book with a look of skepticism, but read the printed page. His face took on a conspiratorial smile. And before he did anything more, he reached down. Braethen took the author’s grip, one he knew well.
“I thought so,” the old man said. “Thank you, lad. Of course, this is pedestrian language, and won’t do for a telling.” He harrumphed. “But it gets me what I need.” He shook his head, and cast a gleefully wicked eye over Braethen and the rest. Then the diminutive man stretched his arm up to draw back his sleeve, and made a grandiose movement of dipping his quill in an inkwell. His gaze flitted over the top of his glasses toward Vendanj as he withdrew the instrument, seeming to ask if the Sheason really meant to use what the author was about to produce. Vendanj nodded gravely.
As Braethen returned to the window to watch the street, the Sheason caught his arm and gave him a brief grateful nod. For Braethen, it was a world distant from the feelings of disappointment he’d once felt over his choices and aptitude. He settled one level deeper into the skin of a sodalist.
Garlen looked down at his lectern, put his quill to parchment, and began to write. The scratch of the quill against the parchment came loud. But Garlen never looked up once. His hand moved with practiced ease to the inkwell, but so quickly that it scarcely seemed anything more than another stroke in his current word. No pause came, no waiting on something more to write. The scribbling was feverish but not panicked. Braethen watched the author’s eyes look beyond the page under the quill to whatever he created. In those moments, Garlen’s gaunt cheeks seemed robust and his elderly eyes clear. Braethen’s skin prickled at the sheer thought of what the man might be creating inside his mind and committing to parchment.
No one spoke or moved. None wanted to break the spell of silence. In the quiet, the only sound was the solitary quill roughing its way with black ink over a patch of vellum. That sound seemed to Braethen immeasurably lonely, and in the same instant impossibly important. It reminded him of his father’s work, and somehow, so far from home, his esteem for A’Posian grew manyfold.
The sodalist stood near the door, one hand idly draped over the sword at his hip. Penit smiled as he stood next to Wendra. The boy appeared to revel in the idea of words, of story being written out. Braethen had almost forgotten that Penit had until quite recently earned his way by using the words of authors and acting the parts of characters in an author’s scenario. Wendra herself had an odd expression on her face. Braethen thought he’d seen it come upon her when Garlen mentioned the cathedral.
But he watched the man with quiet reverence. Vendanj waited on the author with perfect attentiveness, the Sheason’s face upcast into the soft glow of the old man’s lamp.
Braethen did not know how long they’d stood waiting, watching Garlen create his telling. However long it may have been, it seemed an instant. The author was creating words that Braethen—from his years of study—knew could be sung in order to bridge great distances. The legends of tellings were like legends of the Far.
Suddenly the door burst open. Mira swept past Braethen to Vendanj, who did not look away from Garlen.
“A mob searches the next street,” she said in a quiet, urgent voice. “They come here next. If we don’t leave now, we will be overmatched.”
Vendanj appeared not to hear her. And Garlen could not be disturbed. The author was alone with his words in a room full of strangers.
“Shall I run a decoy south? Grant and I could lead them false long enough for you to reach the cathedral.” Mira looked up at Garlen. “Is he near to finished?”
Vendanj raised a hand to silence her. That same moment, fighting broke out in front of the house. Mira bolted from Vendanj’s side and into the street as clashes of metal and heaving grunts told of swordplay beyond the door. Shouts of alarm rose up.
“Ove
r here,” one man called in a fierce bellow.
Rearing horses whinnied loudly, and frantic hooves echoed in increasing volume toward them. Scuttling boots pounded the soil of the road; the clink of armor and blade jangled Braethen’s nerves. The shouts and calls became furious. Oaths accompanied the sounds of sword blows. Protestations echoed down the hard-packed dirt of the street.
The Sheason looked up at Garlen again. The author’s quill still leapt across the page, undisturbed by the combat outside his door, unperturbed by the intrusion of voices and the threat of weapons in his own house. The fight seemed to rage closer to the stoop, impacts slamming the walls from without. Panes of glass rattled in their frames and wall hangings bumped occasionally, displaced momentarily by the force of a blow. A shrill cry rose—the sound of a mortal wound. The rumble of a mob, the shriek of dissonant voices, and the tumult of blind aggression advanced toward them. Still Garlen wrote; still Vendanj watched him write. Neither could be disturbed.
Someone came to the door, hollering an oath of death. The words gurgled in his throat, Mira’s blade cutting short the imprecation. A hollow thud followed as the man fell across the entry.
Tahn looked up and saw a maniacal look in Garlen’s eyes. His lips worked over his yellowed teeth. The hair upon his head and in his ears seemed to stand on end. It was as though he experienced a chill, yet he did not stop. His quill worked now at such a pace that it sounded as one long stroke, the individual letters and words indistinguishable from the whole.
“Here!”
Garlen dropped his quill into the inkwell and dusted the parchment with sand to dry it. Then he rolled the parchment with stubby fingers. The author lashed it with a braid of horsehair and tossed it at the Sheason.
Vendanj caught the scroll with a deft hand, and swept it into the folds of his cloak in the same motion.
The lantern rocked slightly over Garlen’s head. The author leaned out over the lectern he used to write upon. “Never forget that you asked this telling of me, Vendanj. I am glad I don’t know the names of your company.”
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