The Ancient

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Each believes that to be the path toward securing the holding, likely.”

  Callen nodded her agreement with the assessment.

  “Then my visit with the flagship captain last night might prove more irritating to Delaval than I intended,” Bransen said, his smile wide.

  That smile grew all the wider later in the day when the trio started out of town. On a hill on the northeastern section they watched the Bergenbel privateers raise their sails and glide away from Palmaristown, heading north toward the open waters of the Gulf of Corona. At a nearby smithy, where they sold old Doully (for they could not bear to force the aching donkey to continue the journey), they found confirmation that the departure of the ships was the talk of the town, with many whispering that it would prove a harbinger for disaster.

  “Ethelbert’s bought them,” explained the blacksmith, a hulking giant of a man with a red face and hair black and matted. “Word’s out that they might have been spies from the dog, come here to survey Palmaristown’s defenses.”

  “You are expecting an attack?” Cadayle asked.

  “Preparing for it,” the smith replied. “Who’s to know what the dog Ethelbert will do? King Delaval’s got him squeezed to the Mirianic.”

  They let it go at that, with Cadayle handing Bransen, in Stork guise, over to Callen and saying her farewells to Doully. They were some distance from the smithy, on an open stretch of ground reserved for visiting caravans, before any of them dared broach the subject.

  “Just as you had hoped,” Cadayle said.

  Bransen grabbed the soul stone in his pouch and clutched it tightly. “If there were only a way for me to let Delaval know that it was the idiot Yeslnik’s coin that bought off his privateers, my satisfaction would be complete.”

  “It’s early in the day,” said Callen. “You will think of something.”

  That brought a shared laugh from the three, but Bransen cut his short, and stuttered it and twisted it around, when he noted the approach of a city guardsman. With help from his two companions, the Stork staggered out through Palmaristown’s northeastern gate, and down the open road toward Chapel Abelle, the seat of Abellican power.

  A strange and unexpected feeling washed over Bransen at that moment. Suddenly it seemed real to him, this search for Brother Bran Dynard, his father—no, not his father, he decided, for that honor remained with Garibond. To this point, Bransen had considered this journey north a diversion as much as anything else, a delay against facing the hard truth of his road south. He had latched on to the idea of finding his father as much so that he wouldn’t yet have to face the Jhesta Tu mystics and their answers (or more pointedly, their possible lack of answers) as out of any real desire to find and know the man who had sired him.

  Now, though, with the road straight and clear before him and the last real city left behind, the idea of finding Brother Dynard suddenly seemed very real—and Bransen wasn’t even sure what that meant. Would the man acknowledge him? Would the man crush him tight in a hug and be overcome with joy that his son had found him?

  Did Bransen even want that? What might such a joyful reunion mean to the memory of his beloved Garibond?

  So many questions swirled in Bransen’s thoughts the moment that road came clear to him, the moment the idea of finding Brother Dynard became real to him. Questions of how he might react to the man, of how the man might react to him, and most of all, as time and wobbly steps passed, of why.

  Why hadn’t Brother Dynard returned for him?

  Callen had many times called Bran Dynard a good man; Bransen could only hope that the answer to his most pressing question would bear that out.

  Brother Honig Brisebolis rambled through the streets of the lower city, huffing and puffing and warning everyone to get out of his way. Wide-eyed and obviously in great distress as he was, few would pause to argue those commands from the three-hundred-pound rotund monk. Nor did the guards at the city’s higher, closed gate hesitate at the monk’s approach, rushing to swing wide one of those double doors to let the important Brother Honig ramble through without slowing.

  Honig did pause just past the gates, however, as he stood on the crossroad. To the right, the south, lay the road that would bring him to Laird Panlamaris’s palace, while the left road led straight to the square before the Chapel of Precious Memories. Honig’s news would prove important, critical even, to both Laird Panlamaris and Father Malskinner.

  “Laird Panlamaris might swiftly dispatch warships to intercept,” he said aloud, trying to sort through his jumbled thoughts.

  He turned left anyway, realizing that his first duties were to the Church and not the laird. He gathered up a head of steam, gasping for breath but not daring to slow.

  “What is it, Brother Honig?” Father Malskinner bade him a few moments later when he burst into the man’s spacious private chambers.

  Honig tried to answer, but couldn’t find his voice for his gasping, and wound up leaning on the father’s desk for support.

  “Did you meet with Captain Shivanne?”

  Brother Honig nodded emphatically, but still couldn’t quite reach his voice.

  “Brother Honig?”

  “They raise sail!” he blurted at last.

  A perplexed Father Malskinner stared at him for a moment before rising from his desk and moving to a window that overlooked the river. As soon as he glanced out, he saw the truth of it, as all three privateers had their sails up and engaged. The father turned fast on Honig. “What is the meaning?”

  “Shivanne makes for the gulf and beyond,” he said.

  “But Laird Delaval’s soldiers and supplies have not even yet arrived.”

  Honig shook his head. “She will not wait. She laughed at my protests!”

  “Laughed?”

  “She was paid, Father. Well paid. ‘A better offer,’ she said.”

  “Ethelbert? Here?”

  Again Honig wagged his head in the negative. “Captain Shivanne teased and would not say, other than to assure me that it was not Ethelbert, nor any agent of the foul Laird of Entel. A privateer, she called him, this man who brought her a treasure beyond Laird Delaval’s offerings.”

  Malskinner stared at him pensively. “A third party in the mix of this war?” It sounded even more improbable—to both of them—as he spoke the words aloud.

  “A thorn, more likely,” Brother Honig said. “She said he wore a mask and suit of black, exotic material.”

  Malskinner’s eyes went wide.

  “She said that he moved as a shadow, and worked his blade with the skill of a master. A most magnificent blade, she assured me. A blade unlike any she had ever seen, and one, she promised, that would lay low a laird or would-be king.”

  “The man from Pryd Holding,” Malskinner said with a nod of recognition. He moved swiftly for the shelving behind his desk, where he kept all the correspondences of the last months. In a matter of moments, he held the ones that had filtered up from Pryd Town, and the related messages sent out by Prince Yeslnik of Delaval, warning of a most notorious and dangerous figure known as the Highwayman.

  Malskinner drew a deep breath as he read the last of those notes, the one informing him that Laird Prydae had been killed by this desperate fellow, who had then set out on the open road, destination unknown.

  Flipping through some of the back parchments, the father of the Chapel of Precious Memories found the letter of detail sent by Brother Reandu on behalf of Father Jerak of Chapel Pryd.

  “Bransen Garibond,” he said to Honig as he digested the letter. He looked at the portly brother. “Of Pryd Town. It is rumored that he was connected to Brother Dynard and an exotic woman of Behr.”

  “Dynard?” Brother Honig echoed, shrugging and shaking his head.

  “An insignificant brother,” Malskinner explained. “He traveled to Behr and was there corrupted by the seductive ways of the beastly barbarians. Father Jerak properly dispatched him to Chapel Abelle, to see if his soul could be salvaged.”

  “Yes,
yes,” Honig said. “Killed on the road, if I recall.”

  “That was the rumor. I know not if Chapel Abelle ever confirmed it or not.”

  “We must tell Laird Panlamaris of this.”

  “At once,” Father Malskinner agreed. “Have him send word far and wide to beware of this creature.” He glanced back at the note. “And tell them to look for a damaged and small man.”

  “Damaged?”

  Malskinner shrugged as he read through the description of Bransen, of his storklike gait and his drooling and stuttering. “An alter ego, a disguise of weakness, it would seem,” he said.

  “Your pardon, Father,” came a voice from the doorway. Father Malskinner looked over to see Brother Fatuus poking his head in. “I could not help but overhear.”

  “Come in, Brother Fatuus,” Father Malskinner said. “We are discussing a potential problem that has come to Palmaristown. You have noticed the privateers lifting their sails to the wind?”

  “That is why I have come, Father. What did I hear regarding a disguise?”

  Father Malskinner bade him approach, and handed over the letter of detail from Brother Reandu.

  “Go to Laird Panlamaris,” Malskinner ordered Honig. “Tell him everything and warn him to alert his guards to this storklike person.”

  “I have seen him,” Fatuus said suddenly, and both of his brethren spun about to regard him as he stood there, mouth agape, holding Reandu’s letter. “This man, Bransen. I saw him only yesterday. I tended him with a soul stone, though to little effect, and bade him come to us this very night before Parvespers.”

  “The creature described in that letter?”

  “Perfectly described. He was named as a hero of the war, and so I went to him generously, as per your commandments on this regard.”

  Father Malskinner leaned back, then sat on the edge of his desk and nodded slowly. “It is true, then. The Highwayman has come to Palmaristown.”

  “The Highwayman?”

  “A rogue of unusual talent and troublesome ways, it would seem,” Malskinner explained. “It was he who paid the privateers to sail from us, by their own admission.”

  “Why would they divulge such information?” asked Brother Fatuus.

  “Captain Shivanne freely told me,” Honig interjected. “I went out to her this morning, as arranged, to tend to her crew. They were already readying for sail, and when I inquired, she told me. Indeed, I would say that she was rather proud of her gain—proud enough to rattle a bag of coins and jewels before me, and to tell me of her unexpected benefactor.”

  “Let us hope that this Bransen, this Highwayman, feels secure enough in his disguise to take you up on your offer of appearing before us,” Malskinner said to Fatuus. “If so, we will take him quickly and with as little excitement as possible.”

  “Brother Reandu, speaking for Father Jerak of Chapel Pryd, takes pains to find kind words for this rogue,” Fatuus said as he perused the remainder of the long letter.

  “Laird Delaval would not likely see things in that manner,” said Malskinner, and he waved Honig away. “Nor will Laird Panlamaris, who will face the wrath of Laird Delaval for allowing the ships of Bergenbel to sail unladen with Delaval’s men and supplies. Find this man if he remains within Palmaristown, and if he does not, find out where he went. Perhaps if we offer him to Laird Panlamaris, that he might offer him to Laird Delaval, our failures will be forgiven.”

  Bransen didn’t show up at the Chapel of Precious Memories before Parvespers that night, of course, and indeed, word came back to Father Malskinner even before the twilight ceremony that the man and his two female companions had exited the city through the northern gate, on the road to the central highlands.

  Where lay Chapel Abelle.

  The next morning, Brother Fatuus rode out that same gate, spurring his horse to the east with all speed to deliver Father Malskinner’s warning to the brothers of Chapel Abelle.

  So hasty was Fatuus’s ride that he didn’t stop to inquire about the curious Highwayman at the scattered farmhouses he passed, and so it was on his second morning out that as he rode hard down the lane past a small barn, three sets of eyes stared out at him.

  “The one who tried to heal you with the gemstones,” Cadayle said.

  “He rides as if powries are chasing him,” Callen added.

  “Powries? Or the Highwayman?” asked Bransen.

  SEVEN

  Tedium Undone

  Every day’s one and the same,” Mcwigik lamented, dipping his paddle silently into the water beside the small craft. “Weren’t for the changes in the damned moon we’d not know that time’s passing.”

  “Yach but she’s passin’,” said Bikelbrin, sitting opposite him. “Feeling it in me bones, I be.”

  “And meself in me broken nose,” Mcwigik agreed and brought his hand up to touch his flat, wide nose, a bit flatter and wider still from the smash he’d been dealt twenty-eight days earlier. He had put a piece of white, gummy sap from the small, wide-leafed trees common to the islands across the bridge of his nose to secure it while it healed. He hadn’t worn that gum bandage for a few days, but had put it back on just before the scheduled return to Chapel Isle. Pragganag and the others understood the reminder to be for Pragganag’s benefit.

  “Are ye to babble all then way, then?” said an irritated Pragganag, who was sitting in the back, testing the balance of his wooden-handled metal-bladed hatchet— one of the very few implements of metal still left intact after a century on the steamy lake. “Ye’re to let the whole o’ Mithranidoon know we’re about, and won’t it be the kitten’s mewl to be chased by a fleet o’ barbarian longboats?”

  “All with sense’ve gone to bed,” Bikelbrin replied.

  “Which is saying what for ourselves?” asked Mcwigik, and Bikelbrin and three of the others in the small and stout craft laughed, the fourth being Pragganag, who narrowed his eyes so much so that his bushy eyebrows pretty much stole them from view as he glowered at Mcwigik.

  Mcwigik took no note of him, and reached up to grab his bandaged snout.

  “Yach, but that monk smashed ye good, what?” said Bikelbrin, and he and the others turned to Pragganag.

  “Aye, and me nose’s still for hurting when I’m laughing,” Mcwigik said.

  “Good thing yerself’s the one what’s telling the jokes then,” Pragganag deadpanned, and the laughter began anew, Mcwigik joining in most heartily. As fierce a race as walked the world, powries typically relished these moments of ribbing, even if the best jabs came at their own personal expense.

  The boat quieted then as the powries went back to paddling.

  “We should build ourselves a barrelboat,” Mcwigik said after a short pause, referring to the open-sea powrie craft, which resembled huge casks and kept most of their bulk beneath the surface. The interior of a barrelboat consisted of a series of benches set before pedals, and the tireless dwarves propelled their craft by pumping legs, with the pedals geared to turn an aft screw. Many a ship’s captain had blanched white upon spotting a barrelboat, or even flotsam resembling such a craft, whose primary attack mode was, with typical powrie finesse, the ram. “Put her out on the lake, and wouldn’t that make all the men shiver?”

  “Ye can’t be thinking it,” Bikelbrin replied. “Ye might be making the trolls happy, but ye’d be startin’ a war for winning, and not just for playing, don’t ye doubt.”

  “Aye,” one of the others chimed in, “ye send a barbarian boat to the bottom and give her crew to the trolls, and all the islands’d join against us and come a-calling. Our rock of Red Cap ain’t that big.”

  Mcwigik offered an exaggerated nod to show that he wasn’t being serious. He knew as well as any the agreed-upon protocols of the islands, and primary among those was the edict that no combatant, not powrie nor Alpinadoran nor Abellican alike, would be dropped under deep water. For Mithranidoon’s opaque gray waters hid terrible things indeed behind her constant wall of tiny bubbles. Great fish and serpents had been spotted often, and
the glacial trolls seemed to know immediately whenever someone went under.

  No one survived Mithranidoon’s deep waters for long, and the civilized “warfare” between the islands demanded certain rules of engagement.

  “It’d be good to feel the screw beneath me feet again, is all,” Mcwigik replied with a tone of concession.

  “Aye,” Bikelbrin and one other agreed, for only they and Mcwigik among the six on the boat had ever experienced such a thing, or had ever seen the world beyond the banks of this lake. The bloody caps had been on Mithranidoon for more than a century now, and though their numbers had dwindled a bit, from eighty to seventy-six, they had been fortunate to recover the hearts of almost all of the more than forty who had been killed—fallen to trolls and storms and barbarians—in the early days, before the silently agreed-upon protocols. The heart was key to an untraditional and magical form of powrie reproduction. Using it, an appropriate mass of stone (and the plentiful lava rock of Mithranidoon was perfect for the task), and a month of ancient magic in the form of sacred songs, the powries could create life itself, giving “birth” to the fallen dwarf’s successor. Not often practiced on the Weathered Isles, where female powries were plentiful, Sepulcher, as this magical rebirth was called, had kept the strength of the community of powries on the lake, though they had but three females remaining among the lot of them—for Sepulcher, for some reason that no dwarf had ever figured out, almost always led to a male child, whether the hosting heart had come from a male or female.

  Returning from their last trip to Chapel Isle, they had prepared and buried Regwegno’s heart and some rock and begun the process. This very afternoon, right before they had departed, they had felt the first rumblings from the Sepulcher (the term also was used to describe the physical grave-womb). Regwegno’s son would climb free five months hence, and judging from those initial trembles all expected this one would prove a scrapper to make his sire proud.