by Jon Kiln
The moment a commander could no longer order men into harm’s way, he became a danger and a liability as a leader, Berengar thought. Berengar thought again that he had tried to step away from war, but the world and the King had not allowed it. Berengar realized that if anything happened to Belsh now, he would think back to this moment that he could have left him in the apartment.
Berengar rubbed at his chin, making up his mind. “Let’s away, soldier.”
“Yes, Captain.”
They mounted their horses and rode through the city to the eastern gate where eight members of the Elite Guard waited. They took formation and continued out of the city. They pressed on through the afternoon, eating provisions as they rode.
When the road grew dark, he heard the men whispering and fought the temptation to ask them what they were going on about. Berengar kept his eyes open for the landmarks and for trouble. As he spotted the gates ahead in the darkness, the whispers grew more pronounced.
He hissed back over his shoulder. “What is it?”
“Is this where it happened?” one of the men asked.
It took Berengar a moment, but then he pieced together the meaning. He had not been to the gate of Caffrey’s estate when the ambush had occurred. He often wondered if he would have survived. He had escaped plenty of close and near impossible moments before, but so had the men who fell that night during the attack.
Nisero still insisted that he had survived by mere luck, but Berengar tried futilely to convince his Lieutenant that there had to be more than luck in the equation of his survival that night of Forseth’s great betrayal. Still, Berengar was not there and he had little place to refute Nisero’s assessment of the situation.
By the time Berengar had come here himself with Nisero and Arianne, they were on the run and came to threaten Lord Caffrey to extract the truth. Looking back, the idea of getting truth out of Caffrey, even under threat, seemed laughable.
This was the place of deepest darkness for the Elite Guard, even though the entire compliment had been recruited following the execution of those that had turned on their brothers, under the murderous treachery of Captain Forseth.
He was still smiling as his body fell, Berengar thought.
“I hate being here at night,” another said.
Berengar let out a long breath.
If he had thought about the timing, he would have made camp sooner and finished the ride in during the morning. Now it was too late.
“Find your courage,” Berengar directed. “There is no more curse here than there is anywhere men turn their dark hearts against the Elite Guard, the King, and the kingdom. You should treat every acre of the world as you do this spot, both in being ready for threat and ready to conquer as Lieutenant Nisero did that night.”
“Yes, sir.” The men intoned with more force and enthusiasm than Berengar believed they really felt.
To be fair, he was putting more fire behind his words of encouragement and reprimand than he truly felt. As they turned the corner and left the road, he felt a chill travel through his spirit. The entire world felt haunted to him. That was surely the punishment for daring to live too long by the sword.
Torches lit on both sides of them, illuminating the trail and driving back the night. The horses startled and fought their riders, twisting from side to side.
This is it, Berengar thought. He would now find out whether he would survive the ambush on this spot or not. This land and location were truly cursed.
Guardsmen stepped out into view with the color and crest of their order. This did not comfort the Captain as it had been the members of the Elite Guard that had attacked on this spot the first time.
“Captain,” one of the men bearing a torch said.
Berengar’s hand went to his sword as his heart thudded in his chest at a near painful tempo. “Yes.”
“Lieutenant Nisero is waiting for you, sir. Would you like us to see to your horses?”
Berengar coughed and grimaced, hiding his relief. He dismounted as did the men with him. “Yes, thank you. We have a long journey that begins tomorrow. All the men and horses need to be fully supplied and ready. Include extra mounts to switch while riding and to carry additional gear.”
“Will we need cold weather gear, sir?”
“I’m not certain yet, but prepare as though we do unless I tell you otherwise. The entire Guard is coming. This property will be turned over to the regular army for guarding in our stead. Prepare to seal the house and other buildings upon our departure in the morning.”
“Yes, sir.”
Berengar handed off the reins. “Belsh, you are with me. Men, the rest of you unload and get your sleep. I want you sharp, rested, and free of all curses.”
There were chuckles.
Belsh followed Berengar through the gate and they approached more torchlight and guards around the main house. The Captain looked up at one of the broken windows they had used for their entrance. The exit from the top of the library was at the back of the house.
The men saluted as Berengar and Belsh entered the house and weaved through the grand rooms toward the library.
“I thought we were being attacked,” Belsh said. “I had heard the stories and I had passed that way many times carrying messages. I had never approached at night and the torches coming up gave me quite the start.”
“Fear is something you have to control, soldier,” Berengar said.
Berengar felt the chill pass through him again, but kept that fact to himself.
Two more Guardsmen opened the doors as they entered the library.
There was a man sitting in the high backed chair facing a quarter turn away. Books and charts were spread out on the table around the room. The arm of the chair was torn open and discolored stuffing hung out of the rip.
For a moment, Berengar’s eyes saw Nisero in the chair, but his mind told him it was Lord Caffrey waiting for him.
Nisero stood. “I thought you might not be coming once the hour grew late, but I waited anyway assuming the news would bring you out right away.”
“Are you channeling the spirit of Caffrey in his old chair?”
Nisero looked back at the chair and up at the Captain. “It had not occurred to me. I’ve been supervising scholars, scribes, and sages poring over the archives in this library for so long that I stopped thinking about it as ever being Lord Caffrey’s seat. I’ve even slept there some nights waiting for the sages to finish. I think the magic has diluted from continued exposure.”
Berengar felt the exact opposite from his time in the palace. He suspected he would have been equally haunted had he spent that time here—maybe more so.
“The torch men at the gate gave us quite a start.”
Nisero nodded. “I do not wish to let darkness own that section of land any longer.”
“I understand.”
He wondered if the chair held so little sway of the Lieutenant’s superstitions because all the dark madness was concentrated at the spot of the ambush for Nisero. Berengar thought that being posted so near it for so long could not have been entirely easy.
“What was the King’s reaction to the news?”
Berengar strolled about the room, with Belsh following at his heels. “He wants us to go with the full complement of the Guard to retrieve the first piece of the Great Artifact, and continue to find every piece after that until we have the whole thing.”
“Oh, is that all?” Nisero replied sarcastically.
Berengar chortled lightly. He peered at a few of the books on the shelves before continuing. “If we can seize Caffrey and cut off his influence in the conflict to the south, I’m sure the King would like that as well.”
Nisero stared at Belsh for a moment. “We are certain that Caffrey is behind the southern uprising then?”
“The King is certain, which makes it as certain as any order we might receive.”
“We have been at this a long time with Lord Caffrey out in the wind,” Nisero said. “He was collecting and
studying these manuscripts for decades at least. One of the sages thinks Caffrey was centuries old and had developed knowledge of elixirs for immortality.”
“Is that so?” Berengar said with one eyebrow raised.
“That is what one of them thought. I had to ask him to leave as he would not let that idea go and kept searching for that formula. He had to be thrown bodily out of the gate.”
“And the others?”
“Most thought manuscripts were missing. There is no telling how much Caffrey carried away in his escape,” Nisero admitted. “Sometimes they found volumes they sought in other places in time, but sometimes the pieces did not turn up.”
“He was not a strong man,” Berengar pointed out. “How much could he have carried?”
“He was gone when soldiers arrived for him, Captain. There is no telling how many men, horses, or wagons he might have had with him.”
Berengar looked up around the shelves on two dark levels of the library behind them. A sheet of canvas covered the broken window on the top level.
“It appears a lot was left behind. He could not have taken much with the shelves still full.”
Nisero followed Berengar’s gaze. “I suspect he left it all to confuse and slow our search from the volumes of information left behind to search through.”
Berengar tilted his head. “Did one of the scholars suggest that theory?”
“No, Captain, it is my original thought.”
Berengar raised his eyebrows. “An original idea, Lieutenant? The world is still full of wonders, it seems.”
“There were pages missing from some volumes,” Nisero said with a smile. “I had the sages focus on the tomes that showed signs of tearing, and that proved quite fruitful.”
“Carrying pages away instead of whole books. That seems like a crafty move, although it is hard to picture Caffrey destroying his own books.”
“I like to think the necessity of it quite vexed him.”
“I suppose you must take what comfort you can in an assignment such as this. Show me what you found that prompted this message.”
Nisero turned and approached one of the tables. He looked back and saw young Belsh standing awkwardly. Berengar waved him forward vigorously and Belsh moved to a position at the end of the table with his arms folded behind his back. It looked uncomfortable to the Captain. He was going to say as much but he suspected the boy was already nervous, so he let it lie and turned his attention back on the Lieutenant.
“The information is spread through multiple sources and languages,” Nisero said as he waved a hand over the charts, pages, and books spread over the table. “We have the translations provided and annotated by the scribes. I recommend we bring the key materials with us and a few scholars to assist with other runes we might find along the journey.”
Berengar leaned his weight against the table, causing some of the loose pages to flutter. “I assume you have the individuals picked out and they can be ready by morning.”
“I do,” Nisero confirmed, “and they will, sir.”
“Good enough,” the Captain said. “Do we have a complete enough knowledge to know where we are going first?”
“We believe the first piece is in a vault at the root of Faithcore castle to the far west.” Nisero pointed over several pages and maps. “There are a series of secret passages and combination puzzles to get to the piece of the artifact claimed to be hidden there, and we seem to have all we need to recover it.”
“Faithcore?” Berengar narrowed his eyes. “Is that the castle in which we did battle with Solag, the daughter of Bandit King Zulag?”
“That is the place. The maps at least up to the points you and I explored, appear to be accurate. It adds credence to the secret passages beyond our discovery and may mean the piece lies still undiscovered and unrecovered.”
“If Caffrey had this information, wouldn’t it bear the conclusion that he recovered that piece in the time he has been away from here?”
Nisero shrugged. “It is hard to say. The information was not consolidated. It did not appear purposely scattered either. If he had it put together, he probably would have mounted an expedition for the piece long before. The scholars seem to think he was in the process of vetting out the details, but the notes we found did not seem to show he had connected all the dots.”
“The notes were left behind?” Berengar asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Did they appear planted?”
“We don’t believe so, but it is possible.”
Berengar stared down at the maps of the castle. He thought about the dark passages full of water and the dungeon full of bones. He remembered his battle with Solag and resisted the urge to reach up and touch the scar she had left him as they fought in those dark places. In his mind he saw her mad eyes staring back from the darkness and he shivered. He saw her stepping backward off the edge of the cliff and vanishing during their final fight.
“Could he have mounted an expedition in secret and have the artifact already?”
Nisero considered this for a moment. “If he can stir war with the east, lay low the Elite Guard, and muster a second army from the south as the King suspects, then there seems to be little that would be impossible,” Nisero finally said.
Berengar’s jaw tightened. He stared down at the maps and books, but was no longer really seeing them. “Do you think this object is even real?”
Nisero ran his hands over the materials on the table. “There appears to be an incredible volume of information, if it is not real, sir. That being said, I suppose we will find out when we reach the root of Faithcore castle and see what is there.”
“What will we find, if it is all true?”
“There is some conflict on the details.” Nisero stepped around and flipped a few pages of loose, gold-edged paper. They were next to a broken binding, and Berengar recognized the pieces as the remnant of the book that was broken the night they laid upon Caffrey and the last time they saw him. Berengar remembered how upset he had been at the destruction of that book in particular.
Nisero continued. “The legends of Faithcore sometimes include the Great Artifact and sometimes not. This text implies that Faithcore used the artifact to rid the world of dragons. Beyond defeating them, he shifted them out of existence. Faithcore touched the power of the gods, according to the text. He became fearful of his own capability and the lust for it born inside him. He destroyed the artifact through its own great power. Even so, he was only able to break it into four pieces. One of the corners is hidden below the castle and the others were hidden elsewhere. The paths to them were hidden as well.”
Nisero turned another page and Berengar saw a crowned king holding aloft an object that was obscured in rays of light. As flickering light shone off the rays inlaid in the picture, he saw that the drawings were made using gold leaf instead of ink.
Berengar was impressed with the artistry. “What is the conflicting information?”
“Some sources say three pieces, others as many as seven, and one says twenty-seven pieces,” Nisero explained. “Some texts talk about portals to other worlds. There is disagreement between sources on what the powers of the Great Artifact includes. There is talk of reversing time and other notes on raising the dead.”
“My mother,” Belsh said, “told the Faithcore story with five pieces for the broken artifact. It tamed the dragons. Then they turned to stone as they slept.”
Berengar chewed at his lip.
“My mother did not include the artifact in her telling,” Nisero said.
“What about you, Captain?” Belsh asked.
“My mother did not tell me stories. She told me to do chores. Perhaps these contradictions mean what contradicting stories usually mean.”
“What is that?” Belsh asked, intrigued.
“That the stories are not true,” Nisero said.
Berengar nodded. “I suppose we have a castle to visit to know for sure, but no matter what we find, our search for the pieces and fo
r Caffrey are not likely to end there.”
Nisero rubbed at his eyes and then scratched at his head through his hair. “I can have the sages come give you a more detailed report on the findings before we leave, Captain.”
“Let’s keep it simple,” Berengar said. “I know we go to Faithcore. I can get the rest as I need it.”
Nisero stretched until his back crackled. “Sometimes I think Caffrey never left and he is hiding here in some secret chamber we have failed to find.”
“That is an unpleasant thought.” Berengar scanned the shelves again imagining secret rooms behind them.
“Would you care to stay in one of the bedrooms?” Nisero led the way as they walked out of the library. “It might be good for your back, before we are to make camp in the open again.”
Berengar did not want to spend more time in this mansion than necessary. “I’ll sleep outside tonight with the men.”
Chapter 3: Home is Where Your Dead Are Buried
They rode wide around the capital as they moved west the following morning. The size of the party and support personnel did slow them considerably from a solely military ride, but they were preparing for a longer campaign.
Berengar sent word back to the King detailing the parameters of the first phase of their expedition. Belsh offered to carry the message, but Berengar told him to remain with the company.
They passed the capital and made camp in an open field. There were a few burned shells of buildings, but no surviving structures.
Nisero looked about at the trees and then pointed at one of the charred, overgrown foundations. “Is that where the inn was that we stayed in the last night before we gathered forces and retook the capital?”
Berengar looked out over the dark ground. “Where?”
“There,” Nisero gestured again. “Where the structure once stood. This is where we awoke to find your son-in-law outside awaiting us after the innkeeper apparently betrayed the King to his own men.”
