The Sigil Blade

by Jeff Wilson

  Tolvanes opened his mouth in an aborted protest. He seemed a little flustered as he accepted that he was going to have to wait to discuss what he felt were pressing matters. “I suppose it isn’t the best time or place,” he acknowledged, giving Edryd permission to leave.

  It was a short trip across the courtyard to the room he had stayed in before. Irial was seated in a chair that was near the window at the back of the room. Her face was full of color and her hands were balled up, tensely gripping the ends of the arms on the chair. She stood stiffly as he entered.

  “What are you doing, I told you I would buy you time didn’t I?” she demanded.

  “I’m sorry,” Edryd began to apologize.

  “No you’re not. What I was doing, it wasn’t without cost. Don’t you understand the risk I am taking to protect you?”

  “I do understand, and I appreciate all of it, but I don’t want you or anyone else taking those kinds of risks,” Edryd replied. He really hoped she would understand.

  “He is a danger to you,” Irial responded.

  “I understand that, but…”

  “No, you understand he is dangerous, but you don’t know everything you should. He is dangerous to you in particular. If you accept his training, it will darken you. You will change, and not for the better.”

  Edryd didn’t know what to say to that, or why it should matter so much to Irial. Seoras was an unlikeable person, and clearly dangerous, but he wasn’t exactly the embodiment of evil that she was portraying. Edryd reasoned that Irial must know more about the man than he did though, and he had already decided to trust her.

  “I don’t see a way around it,” Edryd said. “Last night, you told Logaeir that you were worried Seoras might decide it was a good time to visit. If I don’t do this, Seoras will only come and seek me out, and I don’t think you or Eithne need him as a house guest.”

  Irial fidgeted with an ornament attached to a silver chain around her neck. She was thinking, and clearly unsettled.

  “If he is as bad you say, I am not the only one who needs to be protected,” Edryd pointed out. “We can protect each other.”

  “And how do you propose we do that,” she replied. She obviously thought him very naive.

  “Seoras feels that you need a guard when travelling in town, and I have agreed to be that guard,” said Edryd. Irial’s eyes widened. “I will continue to stay at the cottage, and I will make sure you are safe whenever travelling to or from the estate.”

  Edryd was not sure what he expected, but he worried that Irial would find the idea insulting and reject it. Irial’s face contorted into an unusual expression. Edryd tried to interpret the reaction but he couldn’t tell if it was relief or annoyance, and ultimately decided that it was probably both.

  “If you are going to follow me around, don’t think I won’t put you to work,” she said.

  Chapter 11

  Irial Rohvarin

  Edryd had at first questioned the sincerity of Irial’s threat to make her new protector earn his keep, but those doubts had been dispelled over the past several weeks. He had been thoroughly disabused of any notion that he was in any way in control of his own time. Irial put him to work often, and had demonstrated no undue concern as to whether he was sufficiently recovered.

  If there was a burden to carry, an errand to run, or any other sort of work which could be aided through the use of his menial physical exertions, she showed no reluctance to task him with it. For his part, Edryd was grateful. Every humble undertaking he finished pleased him more than the last, and with his strength recovering at a reassuring pace, Edryd felt full of unexpected energy.

  Training sessions with Seoras were the low points each day, and as low points go, these were deep. It was terrible to confront failure each time he tried what Seoras called ‘shaping the dark’. Edryd had hidden from his teacher the clarity with which he could sense the displacements that occurred when Seoras warped the forces that gave power to his techniques, but Edryd had no need to hide his own skill at shaping the dark. He had no skill. If he was frustrated, so was his teacher. Seoras remained stoic and said little, but the window that looked in on his teacher’s mind remained open. Edryd could clearly see the confusion and disappointment.

  He was acquiring a detailed inventory of his teacher’s capabilities, which was valuable in itself, but other than that the training was unproductive. Seoras demonstrated, and then left Edryd alone for hours at a time with instructions to reproduce what he had been shown.

  Over the course of a few weeks, Edryd had witnessed amazing things. He had watched Seoras gather tension within the dark and impart that energy into a moving weapon, increasing its momentum. He had seen Seoras absorb, store, and release energy from violent impacts, seize and manipulate objects from a distance, and use subtly patterned displacements to project sounds, and alternately, to dampen them.

  In what he said was key to developing a strong connection to the dark, Seoras had instructed Edryd on concentrating through a focus—a sword with a particularly pure and consistent alloy was ideal—to become more attuned. Edryd had watched Seoras do this for the better part of an afternoon, but apart from producing a particularly strong field of displacement, this attunement had no observable effects. Edryd had made sincere attempts at all of these things and shown aptitude for none of them. All except for the last of these abilities, with which he believed he had once had some success, only that had been before An Innis, with a true sigil blade, and it was still a very painful memory.

  Today, Edryd was learning something Seoras said would be crucial in order to advance his combat training. Remembering the sword Seoras had shattered in his hands, Edryd well understood why it would be an essential ability, but it was also one for which he had no hope that he could master.

  Laid out on the most central of the marble benches at the edge of the courtyard were a collection of thin glass cylinders. In the way that iron or steel ingots were worked into tools by a blacksmith, these delicate lengths of glass were the most basic refined material used in glassblowing. There were no such craftsmen in An Innis, and for that matter, there were none in Nar Edor. To Edryd these were expensive treasures, known to him only in books, produced in lands that lay beyond the extent of his very limited experience. How Seoras came by them, Edryd could not guess, but it was reasonable to assume that their history included one or more acts of theft as part of stolen cargos, only to end up forgotten for some number of years in a warehouse belonging to one of the harbormasters.

  Edryd was meant to strengthen a length of glass until he could swing one against the marble bench without breaking it. He had seen Seoras prove it was possible. It looked like nothing more than an entertainer’s trick, but the clear pattern of displacement Seoras summoned to life around the thin glass rod had been enough that Edryd did not dismiss it so lightly. He had been working at it now for several hours. All of the lengths of glass that Edryd had been supplied with remained safe and unbroken. It was going to stay that way too. Edryd had complete confidence that any attempt he made would only result in a scattering of broken shards of glass across the ground. He wondered what Seoras would make out of his reluctance to even make an attempt.

  Edryd knew he was not doing it right—and at this point he couldn’t even imagine doing it right. He could sense the dark, and even his place within it, but he felt no connection. Seoras insisted this was wrong. Everyone and everything was linked. The bonds were at times strong in some, and in in others they were weak, but it was always present. You could only become attuned by grasping and understanding your relationship with the expanse of dark that underpinned all of creation. If you could perceive the dark, you could shape it. There were no exceptions. Edryd hated to be the embodiment of an argument that contradicted this theory, but it wasn’t something he could change. None of this was ever going to work, and there was no need to destroy these fragile things just to further prove the futility of what it was he was trying to achieve.

  He had more tim
e, but Edryd had given up a while ago. Carefully gathering the glass together into a bundle, Edryd headed for the stables and settled the glass back into the crate they had been pulled from. Forcing all thoughts of this most recent failure into the furthest recesses of his mind, Edryd concentrated instead on something more pleasant as he made his way to a wooden building not far from the bathhouse. The pleasant scent of lavender and orris root filled the damp air of the laundry. Edryd loved this smell, strongly associating this simple mixture of scents, with Irial. It was infused into her hair and skin from the weekly washing of the estate’s linens and clothing.

  “If you’re here, you are going to help,” she ordered.

  Familiar with the process, Edryd gathered armloads of damp sheets and carried them outside, where with an efficiency born from practice, he began hanging them on a suspended line to dry in the sun. If he finished quickly, he and Irial could spend more time together on the trip back. By midafternoon everything was dry, folded, and neatly stacked, and Edryd helped distribute the finished laundry to all the appropriate places. Finished, they met in the barracks common room and shared a late lunch.

  “I’m ready to leave if you are,” Edryd said, as he finished off a biscuit drizzled in honey. He was always happy to leave the estate. When she was working at the property, Irial tended to be formal and even a little highhanded. In her home, to a degree, she seemed a little cautious. Outside of those environments though, what Edryd chose to see as her natural personality would surface, and he would feel more like a respected friend and less like a subordinate or a houseguest.

  “I do need to make a visit in town,” Irial replied, satisfied that everything that needed doing had been done. As she stood, Irial arranged a short pale white cloak over her shoulders, slung the strap of a leather bag over her head and across her chest, and hung a woven reed basket in the crook of her arm. “It will be out of the way, but we have time.” Irial looked overburdened, and Edryd felt awkward not carrying anything at all. At least this meant his hands would be free in the unlikely event he needed to respond to some unexpected danger while they travelled through the streets.

  Edryd followed Irial out the gates and took up a protective position beside her as they headed through the periphery of the town. People were growing accustomed to seeing them together. Not so long ago, the streets emptied before them when they passed. People still shied away and kept a healthy distance, but there was no longer as much urgency in their efforts to avoid contact. Edryd’s ego suffered no small amount of damage when Irial explained that these reactions had more to do with her reputation than it did with the menacing guard she travelled with. The townspeople, who were convinced that Irial practiced forbidden rites and commanded evil powers, believed that associating with her was a sure way to risk inevitable harm of an unnatural variety. The natural conclusion then was that Edryd was bound to her, taken by the darkness that created the Ash Men and returned from the dead with a sworn obedience to Irial that had been forged through a dark contract.

  The negative attention did not seem to bother Irial. It did, however, deeply amuse her. She laughed quietly when a self-important looking tradesman stopped upon seeing her, turned around as though he had forgotten something, crossed the street, and then ultimately turned back in the direction he had originally been headed. The sight of otherwise confident and self-assured men and women feeling intimidated by Irial, whose height did not reach far past most of their shoulders, was entertaining when you were not yourself one of the people terrorized by the experience.

  “I didn’t think I would, but I am beginning to appreciate the benefits of having my own personal guard,” Irial said. “I never realized how often I was sending Tolvanes out for things, instead of going myself. I certainly wouldn’t ever have braved these streets when they were this crowded.”

  “You could have had Hagan or Cecht accompany you,” Edryd suggested.

  “That would have felt less safe than going out alone,” Irial said. “Hagan maybe—if he could be persuaded to bathe—but I wouldn’t go anywhere with Cecht.” Irial’s shoulders tightened, becoming tense even thinking about Cecht. Edryd held neither of these two in any high regard, but Irial had known both of them much longer, and her low opinions of both Hagan and Cecht, strongly bolstered his own reasons for retaining a grudge.

  “You are more tolerable in most respects, but only marginally so,” Irial remarked, watching Edryd for a reaction.

  “Tolerable?” Edryd responded as he widened his eyes and smiled. “I could not have guessed that I held a place so high in your esteem, or that my reputation had undergone such an improvement so quickly.”

  “Well I doubt everyone would agree with me,” she laughed.

  “More than a few wouldn’t,” Edryd agreed, thinking that the citizens of An Innis would hardly tolerate him if they knew him to be the nominal leader of the Ascomanni, and the living scourge of this dreadful island and all who lived upon it.

  Irial had grown comfortable talking with him on these trips, but she never spoke of her past. Edryd didn’t pry. He assumed that Irial would share only what she was comfortable with and only in her own time. She afforded him the same courtesy. It wasn’t altogether fair though. Rumors regarding the important recent events in his life were not what could be called secrets, having been broadly shared, and dispersed as fast as that information could travel, carried by ships sailing across the oceans.

  Edryd shook his head. It continued to be an unaccountably strange experience whenever he heard descriptions, some invented and others real, retelling the murderous exploits of the Blood Prince. Much to his relief, though Irial knew him to be the subject of those stories, and also knew that there was a great deal of truth in most of them, she seemed little interested in it. She let him be the unremarkable contracted protector he was more than content to be.

  “Uleth?” Edryd asked, recognizing the route they were taking. Uleth was an elderly friend of Irial’s who shared her interest in all things botanical. She had sought out his expertise, Edryd had learned, for assistance in his treatment.

  “I need to return a book,” she explained, confirming Edryd’s guess. Though left unsaid, it could be assumed that she also intended to borrow something new from Uleth’s library, to take the place of the book she was returning.

  Unimpeded throughout the remainder of their trip, Irial and Edryd soon arrived at Uleth’s home. The stone walls of the building were in need of repair, but it was remarkably clean in comparison to its neighbors. A low walled enclosure protected a carefully tended garden in which there were prominent plantings of flowering herbs, including yarrow, black horehound, anise, rosemary, mint, and sage. Edryd was sure that if he asked, Irial could have identified dozens of other plants that were represented in various parts of the garden and detailed their medicinal uses.

  An irregular chunk of iron, affixed to the entrance with a knotted rope, was apparently intended as the appropriate means by which to announce their presence. Edryd used it to knock twice on a thick, dark monstrosity of segmented oak that served as the front door, and together he and Irial waited awkwardly for a good long while. Edryd knocked again, more forcefully this time, and as he did so the door cautiously swung open, seemingly under its own power, as Uleth invited them inside.

  “I brought a couple of loaves of bread,” Irial said, extending the basket from her arms.

  “Set them in the Kitchen,” Uleth instructed.

  “And I’m also returning a book,” Irial said, handing the basket of bread to Edryd, and pulling a smallish book from her bag. The book’s pages were protected by wooden covers wrapped in green fabric which were in turn protected by metal pieces that adorned the corners. The center of the book was embellished with a silver medallion fitted with colored pieces of glass. The arrangement left no room for doubt; this was an object of value.

  “Theredan’s Study of Affliction,” Uleth said aloud.

  It was a very suspicious sounding title, not inconsistent at all Edryd th
ought, with a book of spells and hexes.

  “It’s a medical book,” Irial explained, noticing Edryd’s sudden intense interest.

  “I know,” Edryd responded. “It just looks and sounds like the kind of thing that would lend credibility towards the prevailing notions people have about your assumed dealings in the arcane.”

  Flashing a look that let him know she was not amused, Irial tucked the book under her arm. “I consulted it while keeping you from succumbing to your illness,” she said. “I suppose you would rather I hadn’t?”

  “I don’t know. Did anything in it help?”

  “No,” Irial admitted. She turned away without saying more and headed for the library. The unsubtle show of disapproval reminded Edryd of her sister. Irial and Eithne did not share much if anything in the way of a physical resemblance, but they were similar in other ways.

  “The kitchen is this way,” Uleth said, breaking Edryd’s attention away from Irial.

  “Of course,” Edryd replied. He had forgotten about the basket that Irial had handed off to him.

  Edryd followed Uleth down a hallway that led to a small kitchen in a back corner of the house and removed the loaves of bread, setting them on a small table in the middle of the room, before placing the basket down beside the doorway. Uleth continued to stand when Edryd took a seat. Edryd was a little uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure what he would have to talk about with the man.

  “I remember when she was a little girl,” Uleth reminisced. “Her family was a prominent one, and her father was an assemblyman. That was twenty years ago, before the Concursion of course.”

  Edryd was immediately interested. This was a rare opportunity to learn a little more about Irial. If that information came bound up somehow with the history of An Innis, he didn’t mind.

  “By the Concursion, are you are talking about Beodred and the collapse of his alliance?” Edryd guessed. He didn’t know what concursion meant.