The Great Restoration (A Tale of the Verin Empire Book 2)

by William Ray

  To his right, Gus saw a large parlor filled with portraiture and elegant furnishings in keeping with the main hall’s opulence, made strange only by the presence of a large stone box. Nothing seemed to indicate this was anything other than the residence of a wealthy man of business with a slightly eclectic interest in antique art.

  Concealed doorways marked the entrances to servants’ passages in all the usual places, although strangely no footman or other domestic appeared and took notice of the stranger creeping inside. Gus supposed that meant attention was elsewhere, and they weren’t expecting any other visitors. A wide staircase swept upwards to the second level, and there he heard voices.

  Creeping up the stairs, he nosed around the upper level until he found a side passage through which the voices came. The side passage was an interior space with no windows and was hung with various ornaments of ostentatiously Elven origin. There were paintings, strange wooden masks, and other odds and ends. Glints of elfsteel marked the collection as legitimately antique rather than simply the Elven-styled work of Modernists.

  Moving quietly towards the voices led him around the corner to a small chamber with no furniture and at least two dozen Wardens standing in a broad cluster, chatting amongst themselves in collegial tones despite their covered faces. Pulling back against the wall, he peeked around the corner and scanned over the robed figures for one wide enough to be the round-bodied engineer. None of them quite matched his proportions.

  There was a shiver, like a sudden draft of cold air that Gus felt within himself rather than against his skin. It seemed to strike everyone at once. All conversation halted, and in eerie unison, the Wardens all turned to face away from him towards the front of the room. In a wave from front to back, the Wardens fell to their knees, save for two towards the front.

  Those two Wardens grabbed a pair of wooden sculptures and pressed them together into a sort of throne, and then they too fell to their knees. Although he saw no one, Gus could hear the tapping of footsteps from the room ahead, and all the gathered Wardens pressed their hooded heads to the floor in obeisance. Stepping from some hidden alcove towards the front of the room, their Elven lord emerged, facing the hallway Gus peered in from.

  The elf was slender beyond healthy human proportions and moved through the room with unearthly grace. Gus could see the elf’s face was very angular, his chin coming to a definite point that gave him a vulpine cast as he gazed out over his gathered servants. His pale gray eyes were downcast, with a twinkle of satisfaction as he admired the servility of his kneeling followers, and his thin lips curled into a self-satisfied smirk.

  The green silks the elf wore were cut in similar style to his Wardens, but the opulent fabrics used seemed to mock the congregation abasing themselves in rougher woolens upon the hard marble floor. As the elf walked softly between the rows of his followers, Gus caught a glimpse of the slippers peeking beneath his robe and realized the tapping footsteps he had heard before must have belonged to someone else still hidden from view.

  Gus surveyed the dozens on the floor, wondering if there was any way he might slip past them to see who lurked in whatever hidden passage the elf had emerged from, but no solution came to mind. Then his hopes of remaining unnoticed were dashed as the elf’s sharp, reedy voice called out, “Mister Baston! What a pleasant surprise it is to see you here after so much effort has been put in to seek you out.”

  That last part seemed like a barb aimed at someone else, so Gus merely smiled and stepped fully into the hall and stood in the doorway of the Wardens’ meeting chamber. The elf’s voice was different, more strained and higher pitched, but its cadence and tone were unmistakable to someone who knew to listen for them, so Gus replied, “Sorry to have put you to the trouble then, Mister Sylvester.”

  There was a soft gasp from someone amid the kneeling wardens, apparently unaware of his host’s true identity. The elf grinned, his sharp jaw making the smile look predatory as he stepped between his followers and towards the doorway. Although the proportions of his face were inhuman, his features resembled those of his human guise—like the distorted reflection of a fun house mirror.

  “You seem strangely intent on spilling all my secrets,” he said and then slightly twitched the fingers of his right hand. It was clearly a signal to someone, although as far as Gus could tell, he was the only one who could see it.

  The kneeling Wardens, faces still to the floor, began to chant softly as if in prayer. The foreign words were meaningless, but Gus could feel the rhythm of the syllables tugging for his attention. Like a good song, the chanting filled him with an urge to just hum along until he could mimic the words himself. It tickled the mind like something once known and recently forgotten.

  Gus took a sharp breath to break his focus on the quiet prayer, and said, “You know Verin girls are lovely.”

  The elf lord tilted his head in curiosity and said, over the chanting, “You are an odd one, Mister Baston. You’re being quite troublesome.”

  “That’s how I make my living. I’m just here for Doctor Phand though; if you release him, then I’ll be on my way.”

  Sylvester chuckled, and the chanting stopped as his mild laugh echoed around the room in the throats of his kneeling followers. They all instantly hushed just as he spoke, “He’s here of his own accord, Mister Baston.”

  The elf snapped his long, slender fingers, and Doctor Phand stepped out of the same hidden alcove from which Sylvester had emerged. Phand was still wearing the dinner jacket he had been in when he was kidnapped. He looked rumpled and dazed but physically unharmed. His eyes, however, were unfocused, and his voice stilted as he intoned, “I need to stay, Mister Baston. Just two more days would be most appropriate.”

  Gus nodded; after seeing Emily and then Saucier, he had expected nothing less. The elf had arranged Louis’s murder, had set Gus to take the blame for that and the kidnapping, and then somehow abducted Emily from Khanom. There needed to be some sort of justice for all that, but Gus looked around at the room full of mesmerized Wardens, each one with a knife on their belt, and he did not like his chances.

  “So he’ll stay just long enough to miss that signing deadline, right? I don’t care about your local politics, Sylvester, or your grand restorative or whatever else. The reward on him doesn’t say anything about getting him home before your deadline.”

  It was true enough, and the words made Sylvester’s inhuman grin sharper with a glint of triumph in his eyes. All that remained was for Gus to make some sort of threat of disclosure that might get him out alive, which would hopefully leave him with custody of Phand in a couple of days. While he paused to think over how to phrase it, there was a deep, low rumbling, like a distant storm or perhaps a small earthquake.

  The others didn’t seem to notice it, but it came from somewhere deep below the house, and hearing it, Gus grinned back at Sylvester and was pleased by the flicker of surprise in the elf’s eyes. “Unfortunately, though, you messed with me and mine, and I’m afraid that I can’t have. That cabbie in Gemmen you had them kill was a friend of mine.”

  The elf shrugged and nodded in unconcerned confession to the murder. Gus smiled and waited for something to come of that rumbling, but it just stopped. He began to worry he might have overplayed his hand. Sylvester opened his mouth to respond, so Gus quickly added, “And then you kidnapped Emily, and tried to—”

  “Emily?” the elf interrupted, not seeming to recognize the name. He glanced down at one of the robed figures bowing at his feet, and Gus guessed that one must be Dorna. She seemed to shrink down a bit, cringing beneath her master’s questioning gaze, even though with her face to the floor, she couldn’t possibly see it.

  Sylvester sighed, shook his head, and then said, “Is that who that was? My apologies, Mister Baston, I was told she related to the search for Doctor Phand, but my plans for you ended in Gemmen. It seems the subsequent attempts to curtail your further involvement may have been handled … inappropriately. I do dislike loose en
ds.”

  The figure Gus took for Dorna flinched at the words. There was another rumble, deep below, but nothing more, so to drag things out a bit longer, Gus said, “I know what this is about. Your first vote for the tower was just a dodge—you’ve been trying to stop it all along.”

  Sylvester nodded again and said, “You know, despite your reputation, you’re actually somewhat good at this, Mister Baston. It is about Phand’s tower. Those meddling mortals seek to build an iron tower atop the Elven queen’s palace—”

  “No. That was across the street. They’re building it on the old Embassy building.”

  The elf frowned when Gus brought up the Embassy building, and Gus knew he must be hitting close to the mark. Realizing that, the pieces began to fall together in his mind: the Elves accepted no foreign embassy at the queen’s summer court, but the Elven city of Khanom had sat atop another, older city. The Embassy building wasn’t there for ambassadors visiting the Elven court; it was for ambassadors visiting from the Elven court.

  Grinning at Sylvester, he said, “The old Duer embassy connected the Elves to the city below. You’re worried they’ll dig out the foundation for the tower and find the tunnels.”

  Sylvester laughed, and again that laugh was eerily echoed by other voices as the Wardens mirrored his good humor. “Very clever,” he said, eyes fixed on Gus.

  Raising his voice slightly, Sylvester adopted a tone that made it clear he addressed the entire room as he said, “When my people left, we knew it was only a matter of time. Humans are short-lived and thus short-sighted. We would bide our time until humanity was on the verge of collapse as you’ve been so many times in your history.

  “Thus, the Great Restoration—we would return, ushering in the renewal of true civilization, sweeping aside the old order to bring about an age of peace. Alas, some guidance is required in the interim, so I have remained to gather followers and make ready.”

  Sylvester’s monologue was a sales pitch, but Gus recognized right away it wasn’t aimed at him, and he bet that meant at least some of the Wardens were not entirely under Sylvester’s spell. That seemed promising, but Gus wasn’t sure what to do about it.

  The rumbling below had not resumed, and he wondered how much longer he could stall. Forcing a bit of cocky swagger, Gus said, “This thing with the tower isn’t about the Elves at all though, it’s just about the treasure hidden down in those Duer tunnels.”

  The elf stiffened at the mention of treasure but kept his sharp smile, and in a light tone as if it didn’t matter to him at all, he replied, “There are treasures there, left hidden for me in the ruins below—something we might use to capitalize upon humanity’s endless greed. Unfortunately, it seems that in their greed, your rulers were cleverer than expected; their ‘treasure trove’ law claims any Elven riches discovered in Aelfua are prizes of war to be seized by your government.”

  Whether it was a lie or a mistake, the elf’s answer was certainly not for the soon-to-be-murdered investigator, Gus was sure. As much as they seemed under his control, there was no reason to give a speech explaining himself unless some of his followers could break free. Gus glanced around the kneeling Wardens, searching for any sign that they might recognize their master’s duplicity.

  Sylvester sighed and went on, “That meant I could not sell them directly of course, and thus many great works of art have had to be rendered down into base metals in order to realize their value—truly a loss for the ages and another tragedy brought about by the greed of men.”

  The elf’s fingers twitched his signal, just as they had before, and the kneeling Wardens all rose to their feet, chanting the same soft words in Elven. Gus felt it tug at him, the way a good song would drive men to tap their toes in time with the beat.

  The first few syllables seemed strikingly familiar, and one was almost like the Gedlunder word for ‘give’. The other words weren’t anything like ‘fish’ or ‘roof’, and they tickled at the back of his mind like something familiar but forgotten. He paused, listening to the second repetition, trying to remember the words.

  Fighting against it, Gus shook his head and then hummed a bit of the fiddler’s song, focusing on Claude’s incomplete lyrics. Verin girls are lovely. The Tuls will keep you warm.

  Sylvester watched him, a bemused smile stretched across thin lips. “You seem unusually resistant, Mister Baston,” he said, his voice only slightly louder than the chants of his followers. “Not by blood, I think. What’s holding you back from joining us, hmm?”

  Gus gritted his teeth and grinned at the elf as he replied, “Ogria Girls.”

  Sylvester simply chuckled and said, “They were Verin girls before. Which is it? I suppose I’ll just have to ask this ‘Emily’ about it.” He made a minute gesture with his hand, and the Wardens all reached down, drawing daggers from their belts in a single synchronized hiss of metal.

  Their chant continued, beating at Gus, and the rhythm of it began to throw off the pacing of Claude’s lyrics. The fiddler’s tune was difficult to keep going in the best of circumstances, and trying to hold on to it amid Sylvester’s wyrd distraction began making Gus dizzy.

  Moving as one, the Wardens all turned to face him, drawn blades gleaming in the gaslight.

  “I do have a bit of news you might be interested in,” Gus managed, and Sylvester tilted his head curiously, somehow subtly signaling the Wardens, who instantly fell still and silent. It felt as if a sudden pressure had been removed, and Gus sighed in relief, holding up a finger to request a moment while he caught his breath. As he did, he heard a lighter pair of footsteps from the direction of the hidden alcove, which made him grin a bit as he said, “It’s a bit of a good news, bad news sort of thing.”

  “And what is that, Mister Baston?”

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about the treasure trove law because the stuff you found wasn’t left by the Elves. It belonged to someone else.”

  The elf’s thin lips curled up as his inhuman grin broadened. “Really, Mister Baston? That is good news!”

  Towards the back of the room, the Warden that Gus earlier guessed to be Dorna turned her head sharply, looking at Sylvester in seeming surprise. The rest of the Wardens kept their collective gaze fixed upon Gus, knives still in hand as their master continued, “I’ll have to consult with my attorneys on how best to capitalize it, of course. And your bad news?”

  Really hoping he wasn’t overplaying his hand again, Gus said, “That’s also the bad news, I’m afraid.”

  The elf looked confused, and as he started to ask for more, Miss Aliyah Gale emerged from the alcove and said, “They belong to me.”

  Sylvester turned from Gus to face her, and the eyes of his mesmerized Wardens followed suit. She stepped confidently into the room, still dressed in the elegant fashions that had adorned her in the Duer city below, and Gus briefly wondered if she dressed herself or was just some doll bedecked by the monster. She looked utterly unconcerned by the cultists and their drawn knives as she walked towards the center of the room, her eyes focused on the various decorative objects hung upon Sylvester’s walls. “I am pleased to see not everything was destroyed.”

  Because he was listening for it, Gus heard the deep rumble far below, and it seemed to be growing louder. Unsure what might happen in a clash between the elf and Miss Aliyah Gale, Gus decided to focus on his own mission. The Wardens were all facing the center of the room, so he circled to the edge, and when not one head turned to follow his movement, he hugged the wall and made his way back towards Phand.

  “The irony is, I might never have seen them again if you hadn’t been trying so hard to stop the tower,” she continued. “After I lost the initial vote, Doctor Phand hired one of my surveyor teams to examine the park, so I was able to examine his plans. It won’t expose my secrets. In fact, it’s quite a bit safer than anything else that might go there. An empty park would always be filled eventually. Now, it will be a monument to the city’s strength and remain long after the
exposition.”

  Sylvester’s smile was fading, the elf uncertain, and at some unseen cue his followers took up the Elven prayer once more. Gus felt it creeping in to the corners of his consciousness, and Doctor Phand began mumbling through it as well, although he seemed unsure of the words. Gus grabbed the engineer’s arm and tried to pull Phand away from the others, but the mesmerized engineer resisted.

  Their knives were still out, although the Wardens were just standing in place as Miss Aliyah Gale strolled through their midst towards the room’s entrance. Peering out and into the hallway, she said, “I’ve been looking through my collection recently, trying to determine what all had been taken. Some of the missing items were quite old, like these Elven trinkets you’ve kept for yourself.”

  She seemed entirely unmoved by the chanting, and Sylvester frowned slightly, clearly having expected some sort of reaction from her. The rumbling below that accompanied her conversation seemed steadily louder. Miss Aliyah Gale was important within the city for her wealth and business acumen, and judging by Sylvester’s expression, Gus doubted anyone knew of the thing she actually represented.

  Donning his smile again, the elf replied, “Perhaps we could reach some sort of agreement? The treasure was under an Elven city, so I’m hardly to blame for the confusion, and what’s done is done, after all.”

  Miss Aliyah Gale continued as if Sylvester had never spoken, “Others were quite a bit older. Some of those missing keepsakes were acquired before the rise of your queen.”

  Sylvester glanced uneasily downward at the rumbling beneath their feet, and some of the chanting faltered when a few of the Wardens were distracted by it as well.

  “A few missing odds and ends were even made before the Elves first awoke on these shores—older than the forests that cover these mountains, crafted by artisans in times and styles lost forever to the ages.” Her words were delivered in a cool voice, like a teacher lecturing students. The second voice resounded clearly now, an angry snarl that rose from the depths.