The Sigil Blade

by Jeff Wilson

  Eithne wrinkled her nose in frustration. “Edryd met an Ældisir once,” she said, “and Irial has seen lots of Huldra.”

  Edryd smiled as if he had won something. “You are losing credibility, Logaeir,” he said.

  “Seems I didn’t have any to begin with,” Logaeir complained. “People have been calling me a liar and arguing with me all day.” This last part he said with a mock injured look directed at both Krin and Neysim. “But I know something that I’ll bet isn’t in Edryd’s book. I know how to destroy them.”

  This caught everyone’s attention, drawing in Irial as well from where she had been experimenting on some complicated mixture in a wooden bowl. Logaeir took a seat beside Edryd and placed the broken knife in the center of the table. Everyone else huddled around.

  “Herja’s skin was covered in a resin. I managed to collect some of that coating on this knife.”

  Eithne pulled herself up and leaned over the table, inhaling the sweet balsam scented air through her nose. She looked back at Irial and said, “It smells just like you described it.”

  Logaeir waited a moment, hoping someone would ask him how he had collected the sample on his knife. He liked telling that story. When no one did, he sighed with disappointment and proceeded to explain what he had discovered.

  “This stuff has at least one interesting property,” he said as he took a candle from the table, and ignoring a shout from Irial telling him to stop, he held the lighted end beneath the tip of the broken knife, immediately producing a bright orange flame.

  Logaeir looked around the room gauging the reactions. Irial’s posture slumped, staring hopelessly at the still burning end of the knife. He had the attention of the others, but they all showed only moderate interest.

  “This is your plan to kill a draugr?” Edryd laughed. “I want to be there to see it—Herja wreathed in flames and chasing you down like some angry living torch.”

  The comment must have caused Logaeir to picture the image as well, for he shrank reflexively for a moment, and a shiver traversed his spine.

  “I’m not suggesting it would kill her,” Logaeir clarified. “But she has some kind of metal infused inside her body. With enough heat, it would melt, and then she would only be wishing that it could kill her.”

  “That flame is barely even transferring heat to the knife,” Neysim observed. “How is it going to melt a draugr?”

  “We trap her in a room with plenty of fuel, and light it up like a furnace,” Logaeir explained.

  A moment passed while everyone mulled over the suggestion. Ruach decided now was a good time to add his input. “Doesn’t it strike anyone how completely unworkable that sounds?”

  “I’m not saying I have the details worked out,” Logaeir admitted.

  “An odd sort of discussion,” Krin laughed, “us sitting around a table sorting out how to murder a woman.”

  “Maybe murder isn’t the right word, seeing as this wouldn’t actually kill her,” said Edryd.

  “More to the point, she’s already dead,” said Logaeir.

  “She is no longer even on An Innis, probably wouldn’t interfere if she were,” Krin pointed out.

  “Herja will be back though, and perhaps others as well,” Logaeir said. “Even small things like knowing the properties of this resin could be useful to us then.”

  “Now that you have destroyed the only sample,” Irial complained, her voice bitter over the lost opportunity, “we can learn nothing more of it. I have been trying for days to reproduce it with no success, and you have just ruined the little bit that you risked your life to acquire.”

  Logaeir pulled from a pocket in his coat, a thin splinter of wood tightly wrapped in a leaf, and offered it to Irial.

  “Of course it wasn’t the only sample. I had already removed and saved most of the resin.”

  Relief spread across Irial’s face as she accepted the volatile substance. She began to unwrap it slowly, but quickly rolled it back up, too fearful to examine it near the light of a candle or a lamp. With unsought help from Eithne, who was quite interested in the project, Irial found a small clay jar in the kitchen, dropped the sample in, and sealed the lid tight with wax.

  “Let’s move on to our real purpose,” Krin suggested to Logaeir.

  “We will be attacking in force, ten days from today,” said Logaeir to everyone. “When that happens, you need to make sure Aed Seoras remains on the sidelines,” he added, looking at Edryd.

  Irial looked worried, and Edryd thought he knew why. Aelsian might not get here before the attack. The mood turned serious in reaction to Logaeir’s words, and everyone watched Edryd expectantly, waiting on his response.

  “You think I can control Seoras?” Edryd laughed.

  “I hear you spent some master and apprentice time over on the mainland,” Logaeir said, carelessly mocking Edryd. “Plan out another forest excursion, challenge him to a fight, or pretend that you are escaping. I don’t care how you do it; just keep him away from the fighting when it starts.”

  Edryd felt warmth rising in his chest. Logaeir had a skill for setting him on edge, and his taunts were becoming ever more childish.

  “If Seoras wanted to impede any of this, he could have ended your plans long ago. What makes you think he would even want to interfere?” Edryd challenged.

  “He may not want to, but if we do nothing, he will get drawn in. Esivh Rhol won’t let Seoras remain unaligned once the fighting starts, and if he has to choose a side you can be sure it isn’t going to be ours.”

  “He does not take his orders from Esivh Rhol,” Edryd disagreed, feeling uncomfortable with the argument he was making. It sounded too much like he was defending Seoras, which did little to contradict the implication Logaeir had made a moment ago, suggesting that Seoras and Edryd had become friends.

  “He may not listen to orders from Rhol,” Irial said, mediating the disagreement between Edryd and Logaeir, “but he cannot ignore him either, and he will fight on their side, not ours. Until we have actually overthrown the Ard Ri we must consider Seoras to be a potential enemy.”

  “Oh I consider him an enemy all right,” Edryd said, “but I also know that he does not care who rules An Innis. I don’t see him standing in your way.”

  “This was a part of our bargain,” Logaeir reminded.

  “And I intend to keep it,” Edryd promised. “Aed Seoras will be kept out of the fight.”

  Satisfied, Logaeir stood up. “We have to get back,” he said. “There are preparations at the encampment that have to be made.”

  “I need to speak with Edryd before we go,” Neysim objected, only just remembering not to call him Captain Aisen.

  “Then you will have to remain here,” said Logaeir. “We will be exchanging information daily now, so you won’t be stuck for long.”

  “Give us a moment,” Ruach insisted.

  “A moment,” Logaeir relented.

  Neysim and Ruach both stood, and together they pulled Edryd aside in a corner of the room. Together, they relayed a condensed version of the situation at the Ascomanni encampment. Edryd voiced his support for the plans that they were already following, and after deciding that Neysim would remain here, as there was more that he wished to discuss with Edryd, Ruach left with Krin and Logaeir through the hidden passage under the floor in the adjoining room.

  Edryd was pleased to hear that Logaeir had isolated his soldiers from the rest of the Ascomanni. They would appear even more impressive in a group, and remain less susceptible to Logaeir’s manipulations. If that meant his men would have less personal influence with the Ascomanni crews, so be it. The Ascomanni were about to learn what a company of Sigil Corps soldiers were capable of on a battlefield, and Logaeir was not going to be able to keep his men from being drawn to it.

  Chapter 18

  The Purpose of Power

  The room had grown quiet after Logaeir departed with Krin and Ruach. Edryd returned to the seat he had occupied earlier, and Neysim joined him across the table. Irial
began dousing lamps until the room was cast in shadows by the light coming from the fire in the center of the room. Edryd’s back was to the light, making it difficult to read his expressions in the darkness. Neysim wished he had chosen a different seat, one that would have forced Edryd to turn to the side.

  “Commander Ledrin asked me to deliver a message,” Neysim said.

  “Tell me what he had to say,” Edryd encouraged, his feelings towards his former commander exposed by a tension in his face that was hard to miss, even in the dark.

  Neysim eyed the young girl who had quietly but unobtrusively taken a seat near them. Edryd had not even seemed to notice her.

  “She will find a way to listen in, even if we send her away,” Edryd said. “I’m not meant to keep any secrets from her either. She made me promise.”

  Neysim was still reluctant. He did not think that Edryd was serious.

  “Eithne will be discreet, won’t she,” Edryd said with a careful stare in the young girl’s direction. Turning back towards Neysim, he added for good measure, “I’m sure she won’t repeat anything, and will keep everything we say in strict confidence.”

  Eithne stood, and with a grand show of silent annoyance, she crossed the room to join Irial who was pretending to repair a tear in her blue cloak. Eithne wouldn’t be able to confuse Edryd with this routine, but Neysim might be easier to fool. Edryd could see from Eithne’s posture that she had not given up on listening in on the pending conversation. She had a keenly honed talent for observation, and would certainly overhear the discussion and share with Irial anything that the woman might not catch herself. Neysim seemed satisfied though, and deciding that he did not care, Edryd let him begin.

  “The situation is dangerous,” Neysim said. “Fourteen thousand are encamped on the planes near the capital under King Eivendr’s banner. Another eight thousand are quartered in the capital itself.”

  “And you have what, maybe four thousand if you raised the entire Corps?”

  “About that many, yes,” Neysim agreed. “Ledrin had his doubts, but your decision to entrust Lord Teveren with raising your liegemen has worked. He is in command of three thousand, with the expectation that those numbers will grow to five or six.”

  “I don’t know if you can call them my liegemen, when their masters ran to Eivendr in fear of me and begged him for his protection,” Edryd said. “And I didn’t entrust Teveren with anything. He was the only one of our vassal lords who did not betray me. In fact he tried to warn me I was in danger. For that, I gave him the opportunity to choose a side, nothing more.”

  “It is well that you did,” Neysim said. “If Teveren had opened his borders to the king’s armies, it could have cut us off from our support in the south, and we would be drawing our battle lines much closer to home. Eivendr would have taken advantage and attacked weeks ago.”

  “Nothing says that couldn’t still happen,” Edryd pointed out, “Teveren could turn on us. He may have rediscovered his loyalty in a fit of conscience when he refused to take part in a plot against my life, but it doesn’t alter the fact that it was Teveren who organized the efforts to replace me with my brother to begin with.”

  “We are keeping an eye on him, and he knows it,” Neysim assured Edryd.

  “This is sounding like a battle Ledrin would easily win,” Edryd concluded. “The numbers are not on our side, but the quality of the soldiers in the Sigil Corps more than balances things out.”

  “King Eivendr seems to agree. He isn’t moving yet. Ledrin does not believe we will face an attack until the king has raised a force of at least forty thousand. The numbers should ultimately reach as many as fifty thousand.”

  “That might be enough, if they can manage so many,” Edryd thought out loud, imagining the way the battles might unfold. “I suppose Ledrin thinks I have a responsibility to return to Nar Edor and help him force the issue before Eivendr can finish raising his army?”

  Neysim’s answer surprised Edryd.

  “Ledrin wants Eivendr to raise his fifty thousand,” Neysim said. “It will take months, and it will bankrupt him in the process. If the king succeeds, he will have a force that is too large and too fragmented to control. Were we to face an attack right now, the outcome could be difficult to control, and there would be horrible bloodshed on all sides. But if we can continue to stall long enough, Ledrin believes that the king’s armies will ultimately collapse without a battle. Either way, Eivendr will fall.”

  “Time is on your side then?”

  “That is the current thinking, yes,” Neysim agreed. “The last thing Ledrin needs is for you to return, or for a bunch of Ascomanni to enter into the conflict. Either would heighten the fears that are motivating the nobility and provoke a strong response, but both at once would completely enflame them.”

  “Eivendr isn’t foolish.” Edryd said, forgetting for a second that he was countering an argument that supported his intended refusal to return. “He won’t wait. He will balance his resources and act when he is at his strongest.”

  “Not while his supporters are not certain of the outcome, and not with any urgency while the target of their war isn’t even in the country. Your disappearance has worked strangely in our favor and kept things from escalating as quickly as they might have done otherwise.”

  Edryd felt a release upon hearing these words, inwardly reacting to the absolution of a guilty burden, a constant source of anxiety from which he had never felt completely free in the months since departing the shores of Nar Edor. Feeling misused at the time, Edryd had made the decision to leave, and had done so selfishly. He had tried to reconcile that choice by insisting that it was for the best if he removed himself from the middle of the conflict, trusting that it would help settle things down, but Edryd had not truly believed his own rationalization for abandoning his responsibilities.

  Discovering that his absence from the country had in truth forestalled the onset of a bloody war soothed Edryd’s conscience, even if it did reduce his personage to a nuisance that the country of Nar Edor could do without. Edryd felt better, but only until he saw the lie in Neysim’s story.

  Neysim surely believed that he had spoken the truth, but he was an instrument in another man’s deception. Ledrin was not trying to forestall a war; he was trying to win one, and he had a strategy for doing so. The commander would not feel satisfied with a victory in a small battle that would only serve to provoke an even larger response from the nobility. He wanted to crush as large an army as could be raised against them, and take control of the country.

  Ledrin might have sought his return, if he believed that he retained enough of his former influence over what had been a young and impressionable heir. But if Edryd were to return now to Nar Edor as the Blood Prince, bringing allies with him, Ledrin would no longer be in complete command. He would lose the pretext under which he now carried out his own plans, while pretending that he was acting solely in defense of House Edorin and in the interests of its dispute with the King of Nar Edor.

  “If he wants me to stay away, why has he sent me help?” Edryd wondered. “I would have been quite content had he refused.”

  “Officially, he didn’t send us,” Neysim explained. “And it isn’t that he doesn’t want you to return. He does, just not until after we have Eivendr over a barrel so to speak. We want him prepared to negotiate.”

  This did make things more clear. Ledrin did not need his help, not with the fighting or with planning the future of the country, but he would need the heir of House Edorin to legitimize his actions once he had taken power.

  “Ledrin needs to understand. I am never going to be his puppet,” Edryd said. He was angry, but he made this declaration calmly. “I don’t intend to ever return.”

  Neysim looked troubled. “We are all hostages,” Neysim said, “whether of rich and powerful men, superior officers, the gods, or simple men and women whom by choice we have promised to protect. It doesn’t matter which of these we serve. We are all at the mercy of our masters.”
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  “You may be at peace with your place in the world, Neysim,” Edryd said, a sad calmness making his voice quiet, “but I have not found my own. Nar Edor is no longer a home to me. I will not willingly give it, or men like Ledrin or Eivendr, my trust. Doing so cost me more than I could spare.”

  Neysim understood the depth of meaning behind Edryd’s words. The heir to House Edorin had lost every one of his living relatives. Ledrin, who had once held his trust, had used him for his own purposes, and in the process destroyed his deep faith in the Sigil Corps. Even the common people, to whose interests Neysim might have appealed, saw this man as a foreigner, most of them wanting the head of the Blood Prince displayed on the end of a spike every bit as much as the king did.

  Neysim was all the more troubled for understanding these things, and he sympathized with, but could not admire, this broken man who had cast aside his very name. The finality with which Edryd had spoken, confirmed now to Neysim, that he had witnessed the end of the Edorin line.

  “Ledrin told me you felt this way,” Neysim said.

  “But yet you still have something to ask of me,” Edryd discerned. Neysim was older than Edryd, but he looked like the younger of the two of them. Harsh events in his young life had awakened Edryd to realities that had aged him, and he looked at Neysim now as though he wished to share wisdom which he knew the other man was not yet ready to understand.

  “You will no longer follow Ledrin or serve Nar Edor or its king,” Neysim said. “I understand that now, but I hope that I may yet appeal to the ideals that you share with your brothers.”

  “What would you want of me?”

  “The Sigil Order needs a navy,” Neysim said.

  The request was clear, and plainly expressed. Ledrin did not want Edryd back in Nar Edor. He wanted Edryd to remain in An Innis with these men, starting the first stages of the expansion of the Sigil Order, beginning with the integration of the Ascomanni. Though Edryd didn’t expect to remain on the island long enough to see such a plan through to completion, and he had little desire to do anything to help Ledrin, Edryd did not reject the idea. He talked with Neysim about it throughout the night, focusing on working out ways to build a chapter of the Sigil Corps here in An Innis. Esivh Rhol’s palace, which had been promised to Edryd once the Ascomanni seized control, would be an excellent base for the organization. Edryd was more than a little surprised by how much the idea excited him.