The Secrets of Starellion- the Court of Lincoln Hart

by Ember Lane

  That much was pretty clear to Lincoln, after all it had rejected him.

  “So, who’s it for?”

  “The one who shouldn’t be. The one who doesn’t exist. The one that confuses them.”

  Lincoln looked around at his sleeping companions, but Warrior merely chuckled.

  “Not them…

  “Look for the one that puts joy in your heart,

  The one who is close, even when you’re apart,

  Look for the one whose flame you can’t douse,

  The one who must find the Prince of a Cheated House.”

  Lincoln heard chuckling in his mind again.

  “Not bad for a warrior, eh?”

  “Not bad at all,” he said, and wondered what the hell it meant. “And I take it I have to figure this out on my own?”

  “That you do.”

  Warrior has offered you a quest. Get the note and its key to its rightful owner, else they will fail in their quest chain. Reward: Unknown. Do you accept? Y/N

  Lincoln accepted and stashed the box in his sack. Looking around the mess of battle surrounding him, he decided it was something to solve at a later… Provided he had the time that was.

  Griselda woke first, though clearly groggy. She rose carefully, testing her foot, but soon trusting it and shrugging, as if surprised it was mended. She picked up her ax, inspecting the bones of the sliced mutant girl, then the remnants of the lizard-like creatures.

  “We should collect up the gold, maybe the silver? Do you have alchemy?” Griselda picked up one of the metal bat wings. “What kind of twisted brain splices mind and metal?”

  Lincoln grunted. “The Variant? Now that is one land I want to avoid.”

  Griselda tossed a wing at him, then crouched down. “I used to think the underground—the deep, deep—I used to think it was just all…” Her eyes lit up with a faraway, longing look. “All heat, fire, soot, smoke and hard rock, rock that would blunt even scarletite picks. So, what do you think I learned?”

  She pulled her water bottle out of her sack, took a slug, and offered it to Lincoln.

  “You tell me,” Lincoln mumbled.

  “I learned that I was using the wrong pick. Up here, on the surface, scarletite is the metal everyone seeks, probably because of that pretty pink tinge. Pretty ain’t no good in the bowels of the earth.” Griselda reached into her sack and brought out a dull, gray bolster—a chisel—with a flat head about two inches across. “This has a tenth scarletite, the rest steel. You won’t get stronger, and up until now, it’s a closely guarded secret.”

  Lincoln took it and turned it over and over in his palm. It looked curiously unimpressive, looked like badly forged steel, dull, lifeless. “Why are you telling me this?”

  Griselda grabbed the chisel and smashed it into the stone they were sitting on. It exploded in a shower of splinters, leaving a small crater in the flag. “It looks like a normal steel chisel, yet there is so much more to it than that. Why am I telling you? Because you have that metal, that steel, and part of that is your doubt. Cherish it, nurture it, but make damn well sure you don’t dither.” She tossed him the chisel again and then jumped up, rousing Swift, then Flip, Belzarra, Crags, Jin, and Cronis. “We call the mix Idonelll. I will teach Thumptwist the way, and you can beat the greatest shields, the hardest armor, and forge bars for your gates that no ram will break.” She spun around and laughed. “As long as we get to leave this place.”

  Flip shook the sleep from his head and pulled at his raggedy hair. Looking around, he whipped out his sack, and pushed himself up. “Anyone else?” he asked, pointing at all the metal wings and gold.

  Cronis grunted. “Hunting for loot again? Are The Five Isles so poor that you need every copper?”

  “I drank the same number of ales as you when we arrived in Joan’s Creek, but didn’t hand over my fortune for the privilege. We’re long-lived, you and me, Cronis, and long-living has taught me a very important thing.”

  “Dare I ask?”

  “My dear spendthrift, careless friend, life is simple. Coin is a curse, but lack of it’s worse. Given the choice, I’d rather be rich and unhappy than poor and unhappy, and I always strive for what I’d rather. What metal is this?” He tossed a wing at Cronis.

  Cronis inspected it. “Linium by the looks of it. Lightweight, ideal for wings, I guess. I wonder what the Variant looks like now? A playground for every type of dread creation, or a place of experimentation and advancement?”

  “Speaking of advancement, since when does a builder have chaos magic at his beck and call?” Belzarra asked, brushing herself off. “Like I said before, and I’ll say again, are you nine?”

  Lincoln wondered exactly what she meant. Nine what? What magical significance did that number have? Was it some kind of secret sect? The Order of the Nine? Nine lands… Nine ships… Nine countries in Mandrake… “Nine what?” He waited eagerly for her reply.

  “Nine years old!” she barked. “By Lamerrel, only gnomes and children use chaos magic. It’s useless, it’s childish.”

  “It’s highly complex and extremely difficult to learn,” Crags argued, and then sat up. “A true practitioner can even approximate the very rough effect of a chaos spell. A master can even guess the duration to within a while of when it will start, or stop, or whatnot.”

  “Have you got any?” Belzarra asked.

  “Any what?”

  “Masters or true practitioners.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Crags asked, and winked at Lincoln. “Tell me, how many years would it take you, how much mana would it consume, and what level spell casting would you need to put…” Crags tapped his feet. “Let’s say four monsters and seven adventurers and a mighty wizard to sleep?”

  Belzarra puffed up, looking down her nose at Crags. “Spell casting…levels 8 to 10, with magic in the mid-teens. I’d say ten to fifteen years.”

  Crags walked up to her, puffed his chest out and grinned. “See, that’s the beauty of chaos magic. Lincoln doesn’t know a thing, is level-1 magic and hasn’t even got spell casting. He’s never taken a magic class in his life, and up until today, had forgotten all about the spell Digberts gave him. So, whose magic is better?”

  He’s got a point, Lincoln thought.

  “Much about magic is the control of it,” Cronis grumbled. “Why do you think we avoid it? What if you accidently destroyed the world?”

  “Hasn’t every bit of magic got a consequence? Isn’t there a price to pay? What was the consequence of Lincoln’s little bit of magic? We won the fight, didn’t we?” Crags appeared to be getting into gear, arguing for the enjoyment of it as much as anything.

  “What if the monsters had woken first and eaten us?” Cronis snapped.

  “Then,” Crags replied, but hesitated at first. “Then, this argument would never have happened,” and he folded his arms in victory.

  “No Order of the Nine then,” Lincoln muttered, a little disappointed. “What’s next?”

  “It’s still childish,” Belzarra snapped.

  “Lacks control,” Cronis growled.

  Swift walked the perimeter of the square. It turned out there were two alleys running away from each of its corners, all following the direction of the square.

  “Looks like they’re all quite lengthy. You want me to scout them?”

  Lincoln shook his head. “My gut tells me that room means something.” He pointed up to the room the mutant had emerged from. It was still lit, glowing with a yellow light, but the doom that had emanated from it had gone, replaced by an almost welcoming feel. He looked around at the others for their opinions. A shrug here and there told him that, like him, no other option appeared to entice. Swift marched off toward it, vanished into the shadows but soon emerged, waving them forward.

  He took them up another stairwell, at its top, a gloomy, narrow corridor lined with shadows and stone.

  “What kind of a test is this?” Cronis grumbled.

  “I don’t like it,” said Jin.
“It’s too tight to fight.”

  “There’s only two ways out, forward and back, if one of them becomes blocked…” Swift hissed.

  “We’ll be trapped,” Belazza added.

  Griselda rolled her eyes and nudged Lincoln. “You can always find space to swing an ax.”

  Lincoln thought he heard laughter, then the chink of metal on metal, but discounted it. It sounded strange, it sounded…elegant. A feeling of dread hatched in the pit of his gut.

  Swift put his hand up and stopped. “You hear that?” he whispered.

  They all fell silent. Lincoln squinted, then blinked and squinted again. “The corridor’s gotten longer,” he said under his breath.

  “Much longer,” Griselda murmured.

  Up ahead, now a long way down the corridor, a light spilled out of an open room, but as they strode toward it, the light receded.

  “Hear what?” Flip said. “Ooh…” He turned with a broad grin plastered over his face. “This should be interesting. Sounds like a dinner party.”

  “What should?” Belzarra asked, as Cronis pushed by her, Flip, Jin, then Swift.

  Once at the front, the wizard appeared to strain his ears to hear. Then he took a few steps as if to sneak up on the light. This time, they did draw closer. Lincoln felt the corridor chill and saw his breath misting on its air. Belzarra pulled her coat collar up, drawing it tight around her neck. “I prefer monsters to specters,” she muttered.

  “Move closer, Cronis,” Jin said.

  “In my own time!” Cronis shouted back, abnormally aggressive, a strain to his pitch. “It can’t be, no, no.” He sank to his knees.

  Lincoln couldn’t be sure, but he thought the glow came closer as if the room was moving toward them now. The voices grew louder. Lincoln made out a sharp voice, a male voice, his words chopped, stiff, and forthright. Laughter rang out again, this time clear, distinct, followed by a throaty threat—female—certainly female.

  “No!” Cronis shouted, and started crawling forward on all fours, seeming to think the better of it and scrambling up, running, stumbling, crying, “Master!”

  A third person, a man’s cool and even voice sounded out. He sounded sure, safe, and Cronis wailed as he closed the open door, standing in its light, kneeling again, and looking in.

  “How could you, Master?” he wailed.

  Soon, they all crowded around a distraught Cronis. Swift helped the wizard up and into the room. Lincoln followed, though not quite understanding what he was seeing.

  The room was an ample size, an oval table occupying its center. A man sat with his back to Lincoln. Clearly an older man, he had a shining, bald dome surrounded by long, gray hair that flowed over and into a gray, hooded cloak. Lincoln could see no more of him, barring a bony, old hand that was wrapped around a golden wine goblet. The chair opposite the old man was vacant, and the balcony doors behind it were open. It looked very much like the mutant-loving god Morlog had seen sitting there before she’d fought them outside.

  A man and woman sat at either side of the table and midway down. Like his clipped voice, the man held himself taut, tight, as though the very idea of relaxation appalled him. He was neat in every way. His short, black hair was perfectly combed, his tanned skin was flawless, his eyebrows manicured, and his lips were dark pink. His olive jacket was fully buttoned and holding his neck rigid, though Lincoln suspected there was little need, and the man’s elbows were poised at ninety degrees, cuffs hovering off the table.

  “We must be one hundred percent sure that he will be out of the game before we move. He’s devious, Cendyll, very devious,” the neat man said, addressing the woman over the table.

  It was clear to Lincoln that they were witnessing another scene, and that its actors were completely unaware of their presence. Though what kind of challenge it presented was still hidden. Only Cronis seemed affected, and he was midway down the room, behind the woman called Cendyll, just staring at the man facing away from Lincoln.

  “Taric is out of the play; his wings have been clipped by Pellevere. Really, Gabbidon, do you have to be as stiff as your shirt?” Cendyll answered. She was a truly earthy-looking woman, with long, blond hair, skin like a pearl, heavy-lidded eyes, and a sweet smile. Her gown looked like it was made from the finest cotton, and a long, gold chain hung from her neck. She turned to the third, older man. “What do you think, Scholl?”

  Cronis sagged as that name was mentioned, as his old master was announced. Tears were now a constant flow on his cheek.

  “I’m of two minds,” Scholl replied. “You all know my thoughts, and therefore you know that I would be content to just play my game and live my life with my people on my own, on Trappas Shyl, but alas, we don’t play well like that.”

  “We all know your game, Scholl,” said Gabbidon. “It was a very impressive way to remove Merissia.”

  “Merissia,” Scholl replied. “Merissia was given up by The Thrace and not by my hand. Her own people rebelled. No, it was not my doing—look to Taric for that subterfuge.”

  Tear stains streaked Cronis’s old, ruddy cheeks as they dried to rage. “You said their game wasn’t yours,” he hissed at Scholl, but it was clear that Scholl could not hear him.

  Gabbidon picked up his wine goblet and held it up, the room’s light spreading from it. “You play the peaceful diplomat, but I think you are truly the assassin’s employer. You might not slit the throat, but you provide the knife.”

  Scholl scoffed. Lincoln moved down the room to get a glimpse of the man, this god Cronis idolized. He was impassive, stoic, his long, gray hair was complemented with a matching beard that took over his look becoming his most prominent feature, next to his radiant, blue eyes—soothing eyes—eyes you could trust. Lincoln could see how one would easily fall under his spell. “We all have our qualities,” Scholl said, carefully. “What of our friend, Morlog?”

  Cronis fell to his knees. “No!” he cried. “How can you betray me?”

  “Let Belved consume that one,” Gabbidon replied. “He will be weakened by it, and all the time they fight each other, they leave us alone to prepare.”

  Cendyll laughed. “When they come to pick us off, they will find us united and strong. What of Poleyna, surely she is as much, if not more, of a threat to our plans?”

  “I have an old friend looking after her. His head will need turning back, but he will be mine when the time comes.” Scholl raised his goblet, as did the other two. “As long as our alliance is strong, we will prevail. A third of a planet should be enough for any of us.”

  Cronis launched himself at Scholl. His tears had turned to rage, a deep, coursing rage, but his old god wasn’t truly there, and Lincoln dove and caught him. The wizard slid down Lincoln’s body, his feeble rage spent, his world at an end.

  “Scholl, not Scholl,” he wailed. “He was the best of them—the one to trust. He sent me here, for what? To help? All the time I wasted waiting for her! All the while he plotted—plotted and planned.”

  Lincoln knelt by the fallen wizard. He picked him up and brought him close, and he let Cronis sob into his shoulder. The figures vanished; the table vanished, but the lamps stayed.

  “Not Scholl,” Cronis whimpered.

  17

  Cronis’s Confusion

  Cronis refused to move. He reached into his sack, brought out his barrel of ale, a mug, and his pipe. Shuffling back against a wall, he poured himself a drink and primed his pipe. His tears had dried, but whether they’d run their course or not, Lincoln couldn’t tell. In fact, it was hard to judge the mage’s mood as Cronis stared at his hairy toes.

  “There has to be some other explanation,” he said, almost like an opening gambit in a chess game. “Maybe he’s just stringing them along, trying to hold on to his peace as long as possible.”

  Flip slumped down next to him, almost reluctantly, taking a while to slide down the wall. Morose and maudlin certainly didn’t suit the Prince of the Five Isles. He reached into his coat and withdrew a battered, silver tankard
, filling it from Cronis’s barrel. “It seemed to me, old friend, that Scholl was the schemer. His cards were held close, but he was master of that pot.”

  That was exactly the sense Lincoln had gotten. The other two gods had definitely deferred to Scholl, but he chose to stay silent. In this situation he was the outsider, not welcome—too fresh to the land. He’d known each of them less than a blink of an eye, so definitely not his place to offer his opinion.

  Cronis perked. “If in charge, he’d have been in charge for an aim, an ideal, a way to achieve the peace. Maybe it’s the only way—maybe he’s been forced into this?” He glared at Flip, pleading for backup, but Flip just slapped Cronis’s bony knee as though his words didn’t even merit a riposte.

  Grunting then drawing in a lungful of pipe-smoke, soon blowing it out in passive acceptance, Cronis mused on. “Of course, I’ve been around a few years. I know when I’m thinking like a starry-eyed suitor who’s just caught his love kneeling before another.” He looked across the room at Lincoln. “So, what is it, Builder? Is Scholl a wanton wench or a scheming idealist?”

  Lincoln’s plan of tactful nonintervention appeared instantly doomed. He wasn’t one to brush a question aside when it needed answering. He knew what he’d seen, and in Scholl he’d seen a ship’s captain steering a boat through stormy seas, not someone who let fate’s drift carry him. His voice had been assured, his words precious with none wasted.

  “I think you should forget your old god or take his side. As someone recently said to me, don’t dither.”

  One of Cronis’s eyes widened in intrigue. “A politician’s answer that is essentially no answer at all. Turn off your politic attribute and lay out your gut for me to claw through.”

  Well, I tried… Lincoln thought.

  “I saw a room, same as you,” he said, pulling a mug out of his sack and tossing it to Flip, joining them as he primed his pipe. “I saw three folks, three cold, calculated schemers plotting the annihilation of their brothers and sisters. I saw one who’d set up some follower or the other and who had so little respect for that person that the consideration they’d have their own opinion didn’t even merit a second thought.”