Mar scanned the room again. The gray light apparently radiated from all directions, the walls, floor, and ceiling. He was not sure, but thought there might be other colors diluted into the gray, wafting like smoke from hazy design-like spots upon the walls.
“Waleck! Bring the other lamp!”
Footsteps hurried up the stairs – Waleck’s leading and the three other men in a group behind -- and the yellow light from the lamp flooded the room, banishing the gray. Mar blinked his eyes as the strange gray luminescence vanished, wondering what weird trick of perception had generated it. The wasteminer halted beside Mar.
Waleck swung suddenly and pointed a stiff arm.
Whitewash covered the dressed stones of this wall. On this massive canvas, someone had used charcoal to draw two huge symbols. One suggested the outline of an old style wine jar with snaking handles, but the unknown artist had inverted the jar and drawn a jagged slash across it. The other was simply a square drawn with dashed lines.
“The Vessel and the Cube,” Waleck declared, “But overturned and broken. Some ward associated with Enchantment…”
The old man spun and flung a wave at the next wall. It sported a single design of seven six-point stars in a spiral formation, largest to smallest, with the largest in the center and the smallest at the tip of the spiral on the center of the left arm. A bold double circle surrounded the star spiral.
“The Significant Ritual of Seven, associated with the disciple of Ethereal Transport. But it is a mirror image! The key star should be on the right and the two circles imply containment.”
The third wall held a simple collection of vertical bars. The bases of the bars were level, forming a line, but the lengths of the bars varied in sequence, indicating a rolling curve. Added above it was an unbroken rigid line that paralleled the implied curve.
“I do not recognize this. The bars may represent change. But that bold line would infer that the curve is fixed and unchangeable. Perhaps some counter to Transformation?”
On the final wall, above the doorway, were written words in an unfamiliar alphabet, similar to Imperial Script, but subtly different. These had been painted in red, but the color was now dulled and faded.
“Uyrekt, Zcdergk, Chk’de! The three primary chants of the Seers! But they are written backwards! This is it! This is the room! All of these are wards against the intrusion of Magic!”
“Scholar,” Kahle interjected, “These wards, as you call them, would they still have strength after all this time?”
Waleck turned to face the innkeeper, not bothering to suppress his exuberance. “Of Course! Manifestations of ethereal magic do not expire unless designed to do so. If these wards had been constructed as temporary, the symbols would have faded at expiration. I assure you, this room remains invisible to most offensive magical attacks.”
Thuylesh spoke up. “Why not just rub them out? Wouldn’t that do the trick?”
“By all the Gods no!” Waleck burst out, looking horrified and outraged at the same time. “That would be catastrophic! When a magical construct is destroyed, all of its stored ethereal energy is released at once. Most, if not all, of the inn would be annihilated!”
Rynthrahl grinned evilly. “That would put a kink in the cash flow, eh, Kahle?”
Kahle shot his cousin a sour look. “Yes, no doubt. Can you remove these ‘wards’, scholar?”
Waleck shook his head sadly. “Unfortunately, no. Our studies have not led us to the point where we can actually manipulate the ethereal energies. After much more study, we hope to be able to develop techniques—“
“So you cannot actually make any…” Kahle paused, as if hesitant to pronounce the word, “… spells?”
None of the innkeepers had moved very far into the room or attempted to examine the wards. When it had become apparent what lay within, they had once again migrated together into a defensive clump.
Waleck appeared ready to expound, but closed his mouth and allowed his eyes to roll over the innkeepers slowly. After a short moment, he settled for a simple, “No.”
The rather tense air that had sprung up on the tail of Kahle’s question evaporated.
“It would not do,” Rynthrahl offered, “for this to get about.”
“Bad for business,” Thuylesh agreed.
Kahle looked at Waleck pointedly.
“The nature of our studies requires us to be discrete.”
Rynthrahl grinned savagely. “I once saw a mob stone a witch to death on the isle of Phregnhos. Quite a sight.”
Waleck’s expression grew still. “No word or our studies here shall be passed.”
Kahle raised his eyebrows in Mar’s direction.
“My apprentice is fully committed to the discrete nature of our research.”
Kahle polled his relatives with a glance, apparently their longstanding custom, and received a shrug from Rynthrahl and a reluctant nod from Thuylesh.
“There is nothing here for us,” Kahle told Waleck with evident distaste, “but a secret best left hidden. Can your man seal the door again?”
“I should think so.”
“Then, in the morning when you depart, do so. You can send your man down later for supper – its seven thay for the regular plate, wine extra. I would rather you did not eat in the common room.”
“I understand completely, good innkeeper. We do have need of a few other items…”
“Rynthrahl has some skill at procurement, and provides additional services to our guests from time to time.”
Rynthrahl nodded. “’Additional Services’ ain’t cheap, scholar.”
“This will not present a problem.”
The three innkeepers glanced about the room for another moment and then with a nod from Kahle, departed. Now that they had discovered the nature of its contents and discerned that it presented no opportunity for profit, they apparently had no further interest in it.
Mar waited until their footsteps had faded, then spoke. “So this is it?”
The old man turned, for once, just Waleck. “Yes. The Phaelle’n will not be able to detect the Text here. We will be safe until the morning.”
“What then?”
“We should be able to move through the Lower City unmolested. I believe that it will take as much as a whole day for the monk’s device to register the Text again once it is unwarded. We will cross to the Old City and, as I said before, seek information on this ‘Mother of the Seas’ in the Viceroy’s Library.”
All of the old man’s assertions struck Mar as suspect, but he questioned only the last. “The Text is older than Khalar. Why should we find this ‘Mother’ in the Library?”
Waleck sighed.
“The Viceroy’s Library is the only imperial era library to survive the Three Cousins Wars intact,” the old man explained. “The Great Library at the Imperial Seat was drowned with all the rest of the city when Zharmtes broke the dykes at the start of the Second Rebellion. The library at Mhajhkaei was looted during the First Restoration. The library at Khorphen was burned for fuel during the Siege of—“
“You have told me all this before,” Mar pointed out.
Waleck rewarded Mar with an exasperated scowl. “Then you should realize that the largest collection of imperial works and ancient books still in existence is here in Khalar. Not only that, but the Viceroy’s Library has continued to grow and gather volumes since the Empire faded away.”
Waleck paused and smiled wryly. “Odd as it may seem, the largest store of knowledge in the entire world sits in the Old City on the Plaza of the Empire.”
FOURTEEN
1622 After the Founding of the Empire
The village men came creeping through the cornstalks well after moonset. Many were heavy from drink and stumbled in the dark, cursing.
Little Telriy shook her gran’s shoulder, trying to rouse her. She knew this was not right. The thick smell of the fresh cut hay all about brought a sneeze to her nose and she rubbed it furiously, thinking she must be quiet.
&nbs
p; Gran had made her bed in the winter loft above the barn. The old woman had declared their little house just too little for all of them: mama, papa, and the new baby twins. Telriy had wanted to join her, despite mama’s disapproving frown, because sleeping in the barn had seemed such an adventure.
Gran was abruptly awake, seizing her arms in her bony hands. The old woman’s crystal eyes seemed to glow in the dark. “What is it child?”
Frightened now, Telriy pointed mutely out the unshuttered loft door toward the farmyard below. The village men were crossing the yard, tramping the herbs and late vegetables in mama’s garden. Mama would be so mad. She loved that garden.
Gran hissed in pure anger.
Suddenly light blossomed across the yard as papa appeared at the door of their house, holding high a lantern. The village men froze. Some were carrying froes and axes. Others had pieces of lumber.
One of the village men, Charista’s papa, Telriy thought from the gravelly sound of his voice, spoke, “Give us the witch, Rhen, and we’ll spare you.”
“Get off my land,” Papa growled back, madder than Telriy had ever heard him.
“Take him!”
Telriy would have screamed, but gran’s hand covered her mouth, as the village men swarmed over papa, their clubs and tools swinging. His lantern fell, bursting on a sack of pea shells that had been intended for the hogs. A fire leapt up.
Gran snatched her up, clutching her tightly to her thin chest, and ran toward the back of the loft. She shinnied down the ladder, kicked the back door of the barn open with an unshod bony heel and began sprinting across the plowed earth of the field where papa was going to plant cabbages come first of the year. She jarred Telriy with every step, but the child did not complain.
Gran was weeping, her hot tears falling on Telriy’s face. Over and over again she moaned, “She would help them. Stupid girl. I told her, but she would help!”
FIFTEEN
“Remember,” Waleck cautioned without turning his head. “Say nothing.”
Following the prescribed two long paces behind, Mar did not reply. The old man had issued the same warning no less than three times this morning; no answer was required or expected.
Waleck chose a circuitous route through the Lower City, perhaps to discourage pursuit, though there was no sign of that. At one point, he followed the curving street that paralleled the levee next to the river, and the Blue Ice Bridge was visible in the distance upstream.
The bridge across the Blue and its twin across the Red had been constructed by the Empire when the lands within ten leagues of the new outpost of Khalar had been thickly populated with unsubjugated tribes. Facing repeated harrying attacks, the General-of-Legions in command had argued for the construction of the bridges to enable improved communication and rapid troop movement between the central fortress on the promontory and the satellite forts on the opposite riverbanks. After making his case before the Emperor himself, the general had been assigned four legions of engineers. It had taken these four thousand a little over two years to design and construct the companion structures.
Each bridge was a marvel of middle-period imperial stonework and the two were the largest and longest such bridges known to exist. Forty cantilevered spans built on massive piers stretched between the bank abutment and the central channel. There, three soaring arches made of keyed stones reinforced with iron rods leapt across the deep water. The central-most arch rose to five manheight above the surface of the river, high enough to allow barges to pass.
With roadways built to allow a full troop in square – ten men abreast -- to march unimpeded between their crenellated sidewalls, the bridges could easily accommodate even the largest wagons or the mobs of pilgrims that flocked to the Plaza of the Empire on holy days.
Mar shifted his burden to the opposite shoulder. The package was an armlength long and half that tall and wide, but was only a large wooden box filled with sand. Waleck had directed Mar to wrap it in light canvas, but had not felt that any further identification or labeling was necessary. The wasteminer had insisted on the sand, however, certain that the posture of a bondsman carrying a heavy package could not be convincingly feigned. While Mar was inclined to agree with the old man on that point, it did not change the fact that he was developing stabbing pains in both shoulders.
Rynthrahl had appeared again in the warded room near sunset the previous day and had shortly departed, bearing the Gheddessii robes, forty thal of Waleck’s scrap earnings, and a memorized list of items. The results of his nocturnal expedition had been their current attire.
Waleck was dressed in fine, but otherwise nondescript, clothing. Pinned prominently upon the breast of his maroon wool jacket lay a silver sigil embossed with the seals of the Viceroy and the (more or less) extinct Merchants Guild. Below this were attached two ribbons, one yellow with green striping, the other brown with red striping. The sigil served as his Imperial license to operate as an independent merchant. The ribbons were Sanctions from the two largest Merchant houses in the Old City and in effect gave substance to the license. He wore no other emblems of rank, so most would assume him to be a factor for a merchant of much higher station. This status would rate him deference from the Guard (they would not know which powerful patron they might be insulting) but was not of sufficient consequence to generate a fanfare that would draw unwanted attention.
Mar wore a well used but not worn set of workman’s clothes: heavy cotton trousers, undyed linen shirt and tunic, leather boots. His appearance differed little from the common workmen of the Lower City, many of whom they had passed already this morning bound for their labors. The singular significant element of his disguise was a brass armlet above his right elbow. The armlet marked him as bound to servitude under Imperial Statute and was stamped with the name “Kryn”, the Viceregal Seal, and the dates of his servitude. Mar had noted with interest that three years remained on the contract, indicating that he had been bonded as a child, presumably the offspring of bonded parents.
He had one more item that most workmen would carry but that was forbidden to bondsmen. He had caught Rynthrahl on the stair while Waleck had been engrossed in a mumbling study of the northern wall. The gray-haired former brigand had understood exactly what Mar had wanted and had hardly bargained. He had taken twenty thal and returned with a genuine boot knife – flattened handle, no guard, six-inch stiletto blade -- and sheath. Mar had tucked the knife securely in his right boot and the added weight gave a slight, but outwardly unnoticeable and thoroughly comforting, awkwardness to his step.
Waleck, with a last turn, led Mar onto the Promenade of the Blue Fortress. The Promenade was one of the few imperially designed roadways in the Lower City. It was wide enough for wagons, though wagons and carts needed a special permit to travel it, and paved with brick instead of cobbles. Almost unique in the Lower City, the Promenade had sloping gutters with functioning sewers underneath. It ran directly east from the Plaza of The Empress Venhtrenerex Memorial to the massive walls of its namesake. The avenue passed through two sets of triumphal gates, crossed the bridge and became the Emperor Djajhansr's Way, which led into the center of the Old City.
Mar knew that there was no question of seeking some other route. No ferries had ever operated across the Blue Ice and the Guard strongly discouraged the fishing boats of the Lower City from docking at the wharves on the Red.
Swimming was not an option. Although the water was warmer at this time of year and the distance perhaps achievable for a good swimmer, the east side of the Blue washed against the granite bluffs of the promontory. The bluffs were undermined and fractured and not impossible to climb, but certainly difficult after an exhausting swim. Add that it must be done at night, as the dual towers at the east end of the bridge overlooked the bluffs, and the chances of success seemed bleak indeed. Mar had considered the route on more than one occasion, but had not believed, until the night of his escape, that he could survive the swim.
“No matter what influence the gold of the Phaelle’n
has bought with Hwraldek,” Waleck had said late the previous night, “the bridge will not be closed to the merchants. The rest of the Council would not permit that.”
In periods of civil unrest, economic uncertainty, political intrigue, or, most commonly, Viceregal pique, the Army, who controlled the bridges, shut them to non-military traffic. The closure was never absolute, with exceptions made for essential travel. In practice, the Imperials defined ‘essential’ to include all the functions of trade. The exchange floors, warehouses, commodity markets, and docks were all situated in the Old City. The metal works, foundries, furnaces, and all the other mundane markets – produce, fabric, grain -- were in the Lower City. Commerce dictated a continual flow of traders, marketers, and messengers from the one to the other.
“But,” Mar had countered, “these monks would know to watch the bridge.”
“Not openly. The Army would resent the presence of the Guard, or even merchant armsmen, for that matter. High-General-of-Legions Ghraff is sensitive of his prerogatives and the Viceroy will not risk an incident.”
Mar had not questioned that judgment. He knew that armed confrontations between the Guard and the Army occurred from time to time.
“We could wait till thirdday?” Mar had suggested. Anyone could join the flocks of pilgrims that flowed to the Plaza of the Empire on thirdday. Mar was quite good with the esoteric chants of the Tyrephii Sect, among others.
A look of impatience had flashed across Waleck’s face. “Do you know what day it is, Mar?”
He had not. Every day had been the same in the Waste and there had seemed no point in keeping track. He had shaken his head.
Waleck had snorted. “Today is fifthday, Waning. We cannot wait twelve days to reach the Library. We must locate the Mother of the Seas and leave Khalar today.”
“Old man,” Mar had reminded, his final attempt to dissuade Waleck, “The Army can execute summary judgment.”
“Yes,” Waleck had agreed. “If we are discovered, we will die. But do not concern yourself, Mar. We will not be discovered.”
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