The Sigil Blade

by Jeff Wilson

  “Not the same place it was when I last visited,” Pedrin said to Esivh Rhol as they entered a large open room with couches and pillows arranged around three of the walls. “It seems a little… empty somehow.”

  Esivh Rhol also looked different than he had when Pedrin had last seen him. He was a less self-assured, and bore the look of a frustrated ruler facing the erosion of his declining sphere of influence and power. The Ard Ri had encountered draugar before. You could tell by the way he remained inwardly terrified, yet managed to hold himself together, straining to appear as if everything were normal.

  “I have but six courtesans left, and only two young girls in training,” Esivh Rhol said, acknowledging that his fortunes had undergone a few reversals.

  Pedrin Eksar glanced quickly at a draped opening in the back of the room that led to the women’s quarters. “Amongst many other pleasures, I’m sure,” he said. He could have been referring to assortments of strong wines, stores of fine food, mind altering tonics, or a few of the other more hidden and less reputable indulgences this place had on offer. Pedrin had come prepared with a large sum of money and he was thinking about all but the last of these. Pedrin was no model of virtue, but he really didn’t know what motivated some of Esivh Rhol’s darker and more prurient obsessions.

  “The son of Aedan Elduryn is here,” Áledhuir pronounced loudly, interrupting and making everyone flinch in response to the deep broken resonances emanating from his throat.

  Pedrin wished the draugr had let one of his thralls speak instead, as he usually would have done. The garbled and barely intelligible sounds had such a frightful dampening effect on the atmosphere.

  “Lord Aisen? Here?” the Ard Ri declaimed, mistakenly believing that he was being accused of sheltering the man.

  “Not, in this room, here,” Pedrin clarified, hoping to forestall any attempt by Áledhuir to speak again. “But we have reason to believe he is here on An Innis.”

  “He is not on the island,” Esivh Rhol said. “He is supposed to have taken over the Ascomanni, but I have it from a reliable source that the man calling himself the Blood Prince is a fake.”

  This was getting them nowhere. “The real one is also on this island,” Pedrin said, “he is calling himself Edryd.”

  Recognition shone in Esivh Rhol’s eyes. His lips parted as if to speak but nothing came out.

  “Tell him to say something,” Aodra prodded in a voice only Pedrin could hear.

  “It’s obvious you know something,” Pedrin said, urging the Ard Ri to continue.

  “He has been training with Aed Seoras. I thought he was going to be made into a thrall.”

  Pedrin could detect what only someone who had spent three years with the draugar could have both seen and understood. There was surprise in Áledhuir’s expression.

  Áledhuir exchanged a look with an empty part of the room. Aodra, Pedrin realized.

  “Why would he train him,” she wondered.

  Pedrin almost answered, thinking no one else would have heard her, but he supposed that she had been speaking to the other draugr as well. The two draugar had suspected Aed Seoras of possible complicity in this to begin with, or they wouldn’t have made the effort to keep him uninformed regarding their arrival, but they had not expected to learn that Seoras was actively training Aisen. Pedrin was imagining the violent confrontation that was about to happen between the draugar and Aed Seoras. He was going to want to be there to see it, albeit from as safe a distance as possible.

  “He is with Seoras now then,” Áledhuir concluded, already making plans to leave for the estate which the shaper kept as a place for visiting draugar and for training men to serve as their slaves.

  “Yes,” said Esivh Rhol. “I mean no,” he added quickly after a confused pause.

  Pedrin stifled the urge to ask ‘which is it then?’ It wouldn’t have amused anyone but Pedrin.

  “He is staying in some hovel halfway across the island,” the Ard Ri explained, “with that evil spell casting woman who works for Seoras.”

  “Take me there now,” Áledhuir ordered.

  Esivh Rhol looked like he wanted to argue, or suggest some alternative, but he didn’t dare show defiance. Pedrin understood the feeling all too well.

  Esivh Rhol obediently stood and left the room one way, followed by the draugar and the three thralls, and Pedrin exited another, through the draped entryway in the back. He might have been expected to go with them, but no one said so, and he felt like things were getting much too complicated. He could well be missing something interesting, but half an island away sounded a good deal further than his aging body wanted to walk, and he did after all have money that needed to be spent.

  ***

  The fleet navarch had learned the bad news only hours ago from one of the scout ships in his fleet. The ship he had been pursuing had slipped into An Innis just ahead of them. As he had promised to do, Aelsian had dealt with Captain Hedrick. He did not want that man in command for what was coming, and Aelsian could not stay aboard to remain in command at the moment either. Aelsian promoted the officer of the watch, and for good measure he moved Hedrick, now no longer holding the rank of a captain, to one of the other two Ossian ships that had joined them.

  Nine more warships would be here tomorrow, and another half dozen support vessels soon after that. As Aelsian watched the Retribution pull alongside, he reflected upon what an inadvisably poor moment it was to be leaving his fleet, but hopefully he could accomplish the delivery of the item which he carried in good time, and be back soon enough.

  Looking with derision through the darkness at the red sails on the Ascomanni ship, Aelsian allowed Logaeir to help him cross from the Interdiction, and then he helped Ludin Kar across in turn.

  Ludin Kar gave Logaeir a judgmental appraisal. “Never one to trouble himself about the consequences of his actions,” he said.

  “I’m going to make this right,” Logaeir said. “We are pushing the attack forward to tomorrow night.”

  It was refreshing to see Logaeir accepting responsibility for what was happening. So much so that Aelsian decided not to let him know that this wasn’t his fault alone.

  “I appreciate that, but tomorrow is going to be too late,” Aelsian said.

  “Ruach is on his way with a boat,” Logaeir said. “He left before we got word, so he won’t actually know the situation, but with any luck we still have some time.”

  “I need to see him,” Aelsian said. “I have something he needs.”

  Logaeir eyed the cloth wrapped object in Aelsian’s arms. It didn’t take much imagination to see that it was a sword, and once you knew that, well the rest was obvious too.

  “That’s where we are going. I will get you there as quickly as we can.”

  ***

  Bringing a lamp to the table in the corner at the back wall of the cottage, Edryd settled into a chair and took out the small leather bound book. Having read it through multiple times already, he only pretended to be reading it now. Eithne had yet to read it once, and on more than one occasion she had shown that she was curious. Predictably, she ended up in a chair beside him. She had only glimpsed bits and pieces after a series of partially successful efforts to steal a look at the contents of its pages.

  “Irial had a little white book a while ago,” Edryd said, trying to sound as if he had only a minor passing interest. “Logaeir said he knew the man who wrote it. You wouldn’t know what happened to it would you?”

  “She hid it,” Eithne said. Apparently it was a bit of a sore point.

  “In her room?”

  “No, I would have found it if it was in there.”

  “So you don’t know where it is then.”

  “No, but I don’t need to. I already read it,” she bragged.

  This was good news. Not as good as finding the book itself, but he had found a way to confirm what was inside.

  “I don’t imagine it was interesting,” Edryd said, carefully watching for Eithne’s reaction.

&
nbsp; “Maybe not to some people,” Eithne answered, and then said nothing more. Edryd had not hidden his interest as well as he might have thought. She was not about to tell him anything for free. He would have to buy what she knew with information of his own.

  He opened the book to a page with a drawing and showed it to Eithne.

  “That’s what Herja looks like?” she asked.

  “I haven’t seen her myself,” Edryd said, “but these are not draugar. These are what they were when they were alive, before they became what they are now. She probably would look something like this though.”

  “They almost look like people, except most people aren’t so pretty as this.”

  If he hadn’t picked up on it before, Eithne’s interest in the book was now evident. He would have little trouble bargaining for what he wanted to know.

  “They are different in other ways of course,” Edryd said, sounding as if he were parceling out some exclusive collection of secrets. “You can’t see it in the drawing, but the book says that they have varying shades of smooth grey skin.”

  “What color are their eyes?” Eithne wondered. She was more curious than ever now.

  “All the different normal colors,” Edryd said. “Usually green though, and once in a while, yellow or red.” He had made all that up, the book had nothing to say on the subject, but for some reason, he did imagine that their eyes were green.

  “Irial told me that Herja’s eyes were white and cloudy,” Eithne said, becoming a little suspicious.

  “That’s because she’s dead,” Edryd said without having any idea whether that was true or not. Eithne accepted the explanation as making perfect sense and moved on to demanding more.

  “What else?”

  “Tell me about Irial’s book,” Edryd said, “and then I might tell you a little more.”

  “Shouldn’t you already know about it? You are in the Sigil Order aren’t you?”

  “Let’s pretend I don’t know any of the kinds of things I should,” Edryd said. This suggestion brought a smile to Eithne’s face. “What could you tell me then?”

  “First,” she began, “sigil knights always had a sigil sword. You don’t have one, but if you did you would use it to kill sorcerers and destroy constructs.”

  “Everyone knows that.”

  “Everyone does not know that,” Eithne protested. “People did, but some of them have forgotten.”

  “Maybe so,” Edryd agreed, “but I would bet that there were more interesting things in there than just that.”

  “It said that the people in the Sigil Order were all men, monks who meditated in hidden places. When a monk showed abilities, he trained with an Archon. Just by being around the Archon, he would awaken, and he would become a sigil knight.”

  It was a simple and straightforward explanation, and it didn’t resemble in any way the Sigil Corps in Nar Edor, not in Edryd’s experience. “I hate to tell you, the Sigil Corps isn’t like that,” he said.

  “That’s because there are no more Archons anymore,” Eithne said, displeased that he had contradicted her. “When they left, there was nobody to train more sigil knights.”

  That deserved a more thorough explanation, but Edryd didn’t expect he would get one. Eithne seemed to have thought she had told him all there was to tell based on her estimation of what was and was not important to the subject.

  “Did it say how this awakening happens?” he asked, hoping there was somehow something more to it.

  “It said it was like a way stone.”

  “A what?”

  “A magical rock,” Eithne said. “It attracts iron, and it makes tools that help you navigate in a ship” she added as if that explained everything.

  This seemed to be straying far from anything that might prove helpful.

  “The Archon was like a powerful lodestone,” Eithne continued, changing the name she was using for the rock, “and if the monk stayed near, he became powerful too. Over time, it awakened the monk to whatever potential he had.”

  This definitely was nothing like the Sigil Corps. It did neatly explain some of what had been happening when he trained with Seoras, only it was all backwards.

  They continued to exchange this kind of information until well after it had gotten dark. Edryd learned all about the incredible things that he was meant to be able to do, and all the known deeds that the Knights of the Sigil Order had purportedly done in the last age. Eithne, unsatisfied with receiving the information she wanted about the Huldra and Ældisir filtered through Edryd, begged to read the book for herself, but Edryd made it clear that this would only happen if she could find Irial’s book. Then she could trade for it.

  Irial spent the evening a short distance away, pretending that she wasn’t paying any attention, but she clearly was enjoying herself. She was the only one who could easily settle everything by producing the book, but she was not about to do so. In the end, long after it had gotten dark, Edryd tucked the book which he had stolen from Seoras into his coat, deciding that it had been enough for one night.

  Alone in his room afterwards, Edryd struggled to get any sleep, troubled by something he couldn’t place. It was the sort of feeling that you might generally have been well advised to try and ignore, and Edryd tried hard to do precisely that. Whatever it was though, the feeling steadily grew as he lay awake in bed. He focused on what it was that he could feel, but not see, and in trying to understand it, was able to get a sense of the direction of the thing that troubled his mind. Something was getting closer, travelling towards them down the road from the settlement.

  Edryd got dressed in the dark, relying on memory and on his ability to perceive things through their influence on the dark in order to navigate his way through the cottage. The ability was coming to him more quickly now, but it wasn’t of much use in detecting long dead objects like the leg of a chair, which produced what he felt was an unbearably loud noise against the near silence of the night as he crashed into it.

  The sound woke Eithne up. She cautiously stepped out of her room and into the open hall to investigate. Edryd could see her clearly. What threw him was the reason that he could see her. Eithne was filtering the dark around her in a way that normal people did not. It was subtle and weak, but Eithne had an attuned ability to shape the dark. Eithne could see Edryd too, and knew it was him, even in the darkness.

  “Wake Irial up,” Edryd whispered. “Don’t make a light and try not to make any noise.”

  He had frightened Eithne, and he regretted that, but he knew that there was a very good reason for her to be frightened, even if he didn’t truly know why.

  Edryd focused his attention on the roadway above the cottage with mixed success. He didn’t know what was coming, but he suspected that they were most likely men from the city. Aed Seoras was not among them. Edryd was confident that his link to the shaper would have made Seoras easy to identify if he were part of the group. There were too many of them. That was the problem, perhaps a dozen or more in total, one person overlapping another, until he couldn’t be sure of anything.

  Something stood out though. Two at the front, were putting distance on those behind them, with three more between them and the main group. Edryd wondered why he could distinguish these more readily than the others. It wasn’t just that they were closer. There was something familiar about the group in the lead, or perhaps it was just the one at the very front.

  “Edryd,” Irial said softly. “What is it?”

  His concentration broken, Edryd lost his focus.

  “I’m not really sure,” he said.

  Irial didn’t press him for more. She went to her room, and hurriedly exchanged the robe which she wore over her shift for a warm woolen dress. Eithne too, following her older sister’s cues, went to her own room to get dressed in preparation to leave.

  Focusing again, Edryd located the two nearest enemies. They were leaving the road now, slowing down as they began heading toward the cottage. About a hundred yards from the cottage, they stopped a
nd spread out, waiting for the others. Edryd felt confident that he could still help the girls escape down the tunnel. Whoever this was, they couldn’t know it was there. Then something happened that changed his mind. The two hidden figures, first one and then the other, became intensely prominent, blinding him to everything else.

  They were shapers. Edryd recognized what was happening. He had seen Seoras use a similar mixture of techniques to muffle lights and sounds, and disappear in the process. As had been the case with Seoras, Edryd only saw them more clearly for all their efforts to hide. One of them seemed even more familiar now, but he did not know who they could possibly be. He no longer felt certain that escaping out the tunnel would work.

  Irial and Eithne were back, looking at him with well-placed fear. Whoever these people were, they were here for him. Far from protecting Irial and Eithne, they were in danger because of him.

  He didn’t have time to explain. “I am going to pull them away,” he said.

  Without waiting for anyone to object, Edryd stepped out the front door. He began walking toward the road, keeping a fix on the two shapers and trying but failing to stay calm. He stopped, and made an effort to look like he was admiring the stars and enjoying some fresh air. He felt very stupid. This was no kind of plan. The two shapers did not move.

  Edryd continued walking and soon he was directly between them. They let him continue, planning to trap their prey between the two of them and the other men coming up the road. That suited Edryd’s purposes for now. The unguent smell of balsam emollient, carried to him by the wind, gave Edryd a critical piece of information. These were not shapers; they were draugar.

  He kept his own pace slow, waiting for the creatures to react. When the draugar finally began to move, Edryd did to, running for all he was worth in the direction of the road. He didn’t stop when he reached the road, but he was forced to slow down as he crashed through the thick undergrowth that grew on its other side. Edryd turned east, away from the town and from the other men who were approaching.

  Edryd knew the creatures were still pursuing him. They had demonstrated considerable speed out in the open, especially on the road, but the small trees and thick patches of low growing plants seemed to impede them. He had heard that draugar avoided contact with living things. Perhaps it was true. If so, he had made a good choice of terrain.