10: The Southlands

Autumn heat lay heavy on the Southlands, a vast expanse of grass and heather that exhaled dust. The lack of landmarks unnerved Tad, who had spent his entire life in places from which he could see other places. Towns, farms, distant hills, stands of trees had always been his guides. The endless plain capped by the endless sky left him feeling lost and very, very small. This is what sailors must feel like, he thought, surrounded by water everywhere and nothing to steer by.

He was usually last in line, leading the packhorse, squinting and choking on the debris of everyone else’s passing, trying to follow without getting lost in the cloud. The road was hardly any different from the rest of the landscape, except that it was raised up a few feet and banked on either side with stone. Over a century of neglect hadn’t yet broken the foundations of the highway, but the surface was waist-high in vegetation.

In better times, when Aspera had been bigger, there had been farms and hamlets along this road. Smaller roads had branched off from the highway to lead travelers to yet more towns and more farms. According to Geranicus, the Southlands had never been prosperous, yet over a hundred thousand people had lived here, mostly scattered in small settlements. In the 990’s, a decade of drought, disease, and civil war had broken the kingdom, leaving it vulnerable to raiders and monsters. King Tygar had put the realm back together though drastic measures, including forcing people to move from the periphery to the inner duchies. He was unpopular for it, but time had proved him right. His actions made the kingdom defensible again, and the kingdom began to recover.

At night the party made camp, usually in the ruins of a village or a farmhouse that had a working well. Basil was tasked with finding these, and Tad liked going with him just to get away from the choking dust he usually rode in. The elf had a surprising knack for finding good camp sites. He could spot the remains of a stone dwelling from hundreds of yards away, solely from some imperceptible (to Tad) differences in the grass. When they found a possible camp site, Tad and Basil would search systematically for a well. If they didn’t find one they would move on. Once, Tad had discovered a well by falling into it, and Basil had found him hanging onto the edge with his fingertips. That was how Tad learned the proper use of the ten-foot pole.

In their camp sites, there were enough loose stones to make a decent fire pit, but it was seldom necessary to build one. It was more typical to find a circular paved area surrounding a built-up hearth, laid down without mortar. Basil said the hearths were left by elves, who went through the Southlands in early Winter to hunt elk for meat and skins. Before the snows became too deep, his people would head West towards their desert home and dwell there until Spring.

In the fading evening sun, Tad would have lessons with weapons, during which Aidan would take care not to fracture his skull again. Some nights, during the first watch, Minzerec would teach him Astronomy. The arcanist had a magic circle of glass which made things far away seem close. He mounted this on a clever little stand that let it turn and tilt to look at any part of the sky, and Tad would spend hours peering through it under his direction. The dwarf smoked his pipe and lectured him about how stars were born and died, and Tad learned to read star charts and find any body in the sky that was visible. What he missed from the daytime sky, the night sky had in abundance: features and guideposts by the thousands.

On the nights he didn’t study the stars, Tad shared the third watch with Basil. The elf tried to teach him how to meditate. If he could learn to do it properly, Basil claimed that “the world will open to you”. Tad didn’t think he was making much progress in these lessons: mostly, he seemed to struggle against boredom and sleep.

In his bedroll at night Tad’s dreams took a turn away from long-clawed monsters in the night. Instead, he dreamt of a night sky that wheeled and rippled like a strange sea, and his world was a ship that sailed on it. Near the big wheel that turned the ship there were people fighting, and he could hear shouting, and metal ringing against metal. A blackness moved against the stars, in which Tad thought he could make out the shape of a giant raven, it’s wingtips shimmering bronze in the starlight. He thought something had caught fire, because smoke was stinging his eyes. But when he woke, it was just the breakfast fire.

Riding through the lost duchy, farther from home than he thought possible, next to the strange little man who had plucked him out of a ditch last winter, looking at the distant peaks of mountains he hadn’t even known existed, Tad felt a little sick to his stomach. There were things bothering him he didn’t know how to say. “Mister Brightstar, I’ve been thinking.”

“A dangerous pastime, my boy.” Tad’s master took a deep breath, as if steeling himself for some complex task. “What has been on your mind?”

“Father Ambrose and Earkey can heal with the Gods’ power. How many people can do that?”

“In Aspera? Besides our friends here, only the Heirophant and his champion. If there are others then they’re hiding it.”

“And Nadia and Aidan, they’re famous fighters. And the duke himself sent them.” Mr. Brightstart nodded, as if seeing where Tad was going with all of this. “And I think Minzerec works for the Arcane Council.”

“Now what makes you say that?”

Tad shrugged, “I don’t have any proof. But sometimes, when he talks about arcane things or about the Academy, he acts like he’s in charge. He thinks people should just do what he says, and trust him that he knows best.”

Mr. Brightstar nodded several times. “Minzerek Granitehelm is an enforcer for the Academy. It’s a little like being a rider or a peacekeepr: if someone breaks the rules about using magic, then it is his job to catch them.” Tad thought about what the rules about using magic might be, and set those questions aside for the moment.

“And I don’t know anything about Mister Basil, but he’s probably important too. I mean, he’s always drunk, but his armor is good and he has enough money for wine, so he’s not nobody.” Tad waited for some response or encouragement from Nolan, but it didn’t seem to be forthcoming so he continued. “And that spell on the sisters, I heard Minzerec say it was really big magic. The Harrels and the Hemmets had a contract, and the Harrel family is being called to do whatever it is they’re supposed to do, and the magic called the sisters.” Tad’s mouth was picking up speed now, like it sometimes did. “So that means the sisters are related to the Duke of Corak, only they’re not in the geneology. So they’re like those unrecognized kin that Lady Calanth was talking about, right?”

“Is that all that’s on your mind?” Nolan asked him wrily.

“Yes sir. And the thing about one of Sammit’s relics. Can you imagine holding one in your hands? Except for the throne. I guess you’d have to sit on that. And it can’t just be lying around somewhere. It’s been gone for hundreds of years. It has to be hidden, and guarded somehow, with enchantments and stuff, like that shrine we did over the summer, but bigger?”

“And your point, apprentice Thaddius?”

“Well, it’s all pretty big isn’t it?”

Nolan looked at the boy’s eyes, wide and shining, and sighed. He had utterly ruined the child for a simple trade like weaving. Whatever happened now, there was little hope for the simple, quiet life for Thaddius. “Might be nothing,” he offered, “but it could be big. Very big indeed.”

On the featureless terrain, which Tad came to think of as the Sea of Brown, days passed like weeks. It seemed like the longest ride of Tad’s life, but it was only eleven days until a line of hills could just be seen in the south. Somewhere in those hills, he knew, lay Stamfield, once the seat of the southern duchy of Aspera, and ancestral home of the Hemmet family.

Two days after the hills first came into view, their road took a gentle turn to the southwest, to angle into them. The hills had grown, an beyond them were the dim blue shapes of mountains. According to Lady Calanth’s map, the road would wend its way through the valleys to take travelers to whatever remained of the city of Stamfield.

People used to live around the bend of the road, at least according to the stone marker engraved with the words “Hemmet’s Bend”. But whether that was the name of a large road house, a nobleman’s estate, or a hamlet was unclear. All that remained was a tall squarish building, maybe the ruins of a tower, with no roof, and a lot of tumbled-down masonry all around it. Not even elves made camp here, at least not often enough to build a hearth. Basil built a fire-ring in the shadow of the ruins, and the party made camp around it.

The next morning, when dawn should have touched their camp at the bend in the road, there was only a diffuse illumination. The very tips of the hills to the Southwest shone bright with sunlight, but the rest of the world remained in twilight.

Turning East, all Tad could see was was an impenetrable grayness. It was as if a mist hung there, unmoving, shading them from the rising sun. To the north and the south, it stretched like a barrier, a wall miles high. Tad let his eyes follow the mist to the ground, and then tried to measure the distance from it to his own feet. With a shock, he realized that he was only a few hundred feet away from it. His eyes returned to the wall and tried to scaled its heights: Tad’s mind stuttered to a stop, confronted by something so vast that it couldn’t be grasped.

Thaddius had once seen a potter, working at her wheel with a lump of wet clay, press her thumbs into it and suddenly draw it up and out into a new shape. That’s what he felt like when this new Idea, unformed and frightening, too powerful to resist, disordered everything he thought he knew.

For days, he had just ignored that part of the horizon while this thing had grown. There must be some magic at work that made people look the other way, but from this close it wasn’t working. Tad was breathing heavily, and his fists were clenching and unclenching. Excitement and confusion assaulted him at the same time: here was something so profound, nobody wanted to look at it.

He was standing on the very edge of the world. It shouldn’t be possible, but there it was right in front of him. It shouldn’t be there. Worlds were supposed to be spheres. He should be able to walk forever, and come back to the same spot. Minzerek had explained it to him. Yet here, it all just dissolved into nothingness.

“I said, come back to the fire, boy.” Mr. Brightstar’s hands were turning him around and leading him to the camp, then pushing a hot cup into his hands. “Drink. It’ll take your mind off of ... things for a minute.” Thaddius allowed this, but without particularly caring about it. What was tea, when compared with the vast emptiness of the end of the world?

“Why isn’t he talking?” It was Aidan. She sounded alarmed. She cupped his face in her hands, none too gently, and forced him to look at her. His cheeks flushed so hot he thought the skin would burn, then cooled just as quickly. “Father, come look at him.” From this close, Tad could see her dark eyes were rimmed with a miniscule fringe of gold.

“Just sit him down over there,” Ambrose pointed with the spoon he was using to stir a pot of beans. Once Tad was settled, facing the fire and with his back to the end of the world, the Bishop started tearing dried meat into small bits and adding them to the pot. “He’ll come around, he just needs a few minutes.” Minzerek came to look at him briefly, but didn’t say anything. He just peered at Tad with eyes like polished orbs of stone.

The party gathered around and sat, some on fallen debris from the tower above them, and others on the bare ground, so that Tad found himself part of a circle. They talked of inconsequential things, like how much longer it would take to reach Stamfield, and whether they would need to hunt to replenish their supplies. Bishop Ambrose dished out the beans into bowls to be passed around, and Tad discovered he was famished. He gulped down his tea with a grimace and ate furiously.

A fine song this would make: They were a band of famous heroes, breakfasting on beans around a tiny fire at the end of the world. The humor in that idea did as much to bring him back to near normal as tea and breakfast had. Apparently, the antidote for mind-shattering news was the mundane.

“How come nobody knows about ...,” Tad waved his hand ineffectually towards the thing at his back, “... that.” They all just looked at each other, for so long that Tad began to wonder if anyone was going to answer.

It was Earkey who took up the question, at the same time pouring himself a generous measure of the bitter tea. “What makes you think they don’t?” Tad tried to think of any time he had ever heard that the world suddenly came to an end, just two weeks ride from the kingdom, but he could remember nothing of the sort.

“Thaddius,” said Mr. Brightstar, gently, “do you remember when we took the boat up from Reeland? They taught you a song about the Great River.”

Tad thought hard: it had been just a few weeks after Mr. Brightstar had taken him on, and he hadn’t yet learned to commit everything to memory. They hired passage on a barge, pulled upriver by giant horses that plod along the right-hand bank. They slept on top of bales of wool, because the only cabin was taken. It was dark, and winter, and very cold. The wind that came from downriver iced painfully through his blankets and made him whimper.

To ease him, the bargemen sang him a song. It was a simple learning song, full of bad grammar, which told the settlements along the western shore. But of the Eastern shore, there was just one verse:

The Eastern shore none may see,
Cloaked in mist it always be,
Hidden by her sorcerous hand,
The queen of faeries holds that land.

“This is the same mist that always sits on the other side of the river?”

“The very same,” said Earkey, but he did not elaborate. They were going to make him work it out on his own.

“Rivermen see a fairy mist. Ocean maps show monsters breathing smoke, or the seas spilling over in giants waterfalls. I see the end of the world. People make up their own explanations, but it’s all the same thing.” For some reason, Tad’s eyes landed on Minzerek. “So what is it, really?”

“Yes Minzerek,” echoed Earkey, “what is it, really?”

The dwarf had his wizard face on. Tad knew they would receive only partial truths. Minzerek would tell them only as much as he thought they should know, or as much as the Academy would allow. “In the vernacular of Aspera, it is the Veil.”

“I thought the veil was the separation between life and death, this life and the hereafter given by the gods.” Tad looked at Bishop Ambrose for confirmation, but Ambrose was watching Minzerek.

The dwarf stroked the braids of his beard, several times, before answering. “A linguistic confusion. A not entirely accidental one.” He poured himself the dregs of the tea, no doubt wishing for a good beer instead. “What do you know about the third Emperor?”

“He called himself the Golden Emperor, but he was a madman.”

“He was also astonishingly gifted, what today we would call a divergent talent. To aid in his insane conquests, allied with forces of chaos. Demons that aren’t even from this world, summoned from a place of pure chaos. They would have torn the world apart, so Arcane Council created a barrier to hedge them out. It has been protecting us ever since.” When Minzerek sipped his tea, the beads in his beard clicked against the cup. Tad wondered for about the dozenth time the significance dwarves gave to their facial hair, but again had to leave that for some other time.

“On the other hand,” Earkey offered, “our own lore about the barrier is a little different.”

“I don’t think we should be teaching Thaddius superstitions, do you?” Minzerek appealed to Mr. Brightstar, “He has enough to think about already, without adding folklore.”

“Oh, I think he can handle a little more,” said Mr. Brightstar. “And you should have more respect for Gnomish lore, Minzerek. I’ve seen six-hundred-year-old texts that match their modern copies, perfectly.”

“Well,” continued the gnome, “you might have heard that we come from another continent. Our homeland was invaded by Sidir, your Golden Emperor, and he forced us to worship him as a god. All other religions were banned, and clerics were hunted down and killed. The same was true all over the world, wherever he ruled. He wanted to be immortal. To become a god, he made people treat him like one. Terrible punishments were meted out to anyone who opposed him.”

“So he was talented, and he was crazy.”

“Not as crazy as you might think. Prayer and sacrifice are powerful forces.” Minzerek scoffed audibly, but Earkey pretended not to notice, “All of that directed at someone like Sidir, who knows what he could do with so much devotion?

“In our writings, the Ghaucia and the Arcane Council created the barrier to shut the world off from divine magic. By keeping him from using divine magic, they stopped his ascention. The gods allowed this. What’s more, they were subtly involved, guiding those who made it.”

“So all of that,” Tad waved his hands, “was to keep a man from becoming a god? And the gods planned it?”

“The mortal hands of clay have drawn a line
which gods in secret anger have surveyed
to topple throne of one man's gilded hate
and those who through inaction gods betrayed.”

All eyes were on Aidan, who had spoken those lines. “An oracle said that, when Ghaucia tried to undo the Veil. Or the barrier, or whatever we’re calling it. I think she meant that the Academy was just the hands that built it. The gods inspired it, and the gods will see to it that it comes down. When they’re ready.”

“That’s similar to our lore,” agreed Earkey.

Tad already had more to think about than would fit in his head, but one question begged to be answered. “So what happened to Emperor Sidir?”

“All of the histories agree that Sidir blamed the Fey for his sudden loss of power. He gathered an army, forded it over the Yeron river, and went into the Feywold. His army was turned back by the barrier, of course, but Sidir went right through it and was never seen again. Nobody really knows what happened.”

“Turned back,” whispered Tad. He hazarded a look over his shoulder at the looming barrier. “What happens when an army marches right at it?”

With two clicks of her tongue Nadia summoned Nightbow, and vaulted onto his back. She brought the charger around to Tad, and offered him her hand. “Want to find out?”

Minzerek stood in a sudden fury, “This is irresponsible! You do not toy with the great magics!”

“Oh, go comb your beard! If your Veil is so great, then we’ll be right back.” Tad grabbed Nadia’s proffered hand, and she swung him easily up behind her. “Hold on tight.”

With a light touch, Nadia pointed Nightbow at the gray wall and sent him into a canter. When the barrier loomed over them so hugely that it blocked out the sky, Thaddius had a moment of near panic. He was sure it would swallow them, and never spit them back out. Tad held Nadia as hard as he could, but he refused to close his eyes.

It did swallow them, and within a few seconds Tad felt disappointment: it wasn’t any different at all from being inside a bank of fog. The same tall grass hissed and rustled as they passed through it. The same damp morning air streamed past their faces. The only difference was the fog itself. Nightbow took a stride, then another, then another, and suddenly they were clear of the mist. At first, Tad thought they had gone through it. But the camp site right in front of him told a different story: they had come out right where they had gone in.

“It does that every single time,” said Nadia. “Nobody can get out, and nothing can get in.”

Basil’s voice floated to them from the camp, “If we have educated the boy enough for one morning, perhaps we can move on?”

9: Leaving Aspera

Their last night at Nearshore was a strange combination of a dinner party set against preparations to escape the area by first light. It started with a closed meeting in the remains of Lady Calanth’s library: other than Mr. Brightstar and his party, only the Princess and Thaddius were present. Tad hadn’t exactly been invited: had trailed close behind Mr. Brightstar and then done his best not to attract any attention to himself. He positioned himself in the shade of a leaning bookshelf, and stayed as still and as quiet as he could manage.

The library had suffered grievously under Calanth’s geas, its two stories of books, scrolls, tomes, codexes, and curios disarranged into piles of various sizes. A pair of ancient-looking bronze chandeliers shined down on twelve-foot-high shelves, now mostly stripped of their contents, arranged around a central cluster of comfortable chairs and the occasional writing table. The second story was a gallery. It housed a great number of portraits, alternating with cabinets and bureaus that neatly organized a great many interesting objects. More than half of these had been rifled. One cabinet, an ornate piece blackened by age, was the only half-emptied thing in the entire library: it must have been where the Princess had found the Harapa crow figurine.

Tad had seen several private libraries in his brief months with Nolan Brightstar: most of them consisted of a few dozen tomes, each of which their owners counted as minor treasures. The Arcane Academy ran schools throughout Aspera, and indeed the entire world, but even the largest school might have only a few hundred books. The contents of Lady Calanth’s library was thousands of volumes that had taken nine hundred years to accumulate. Toppling it all over the floor was like spilling chests of jewels into the street and hammering them with rocks.

Pulling his mind off all the spilled books, Tad focused on Aidan, who was holding an unrolled missive bearing the seal of the Duke of Corak. She read aloud, “Whereas the treaty between the noble descendants of Harrell and the once-enobled Hemmets of Stamfield has been honored for seven hundred years; Whereas We are called upon to give aid to the former Duchy of Stamfield in the name of our common forbearers; Whereas Stamfield has held for us these many years a history that must not be forgotten; Whereas the Riders Aidan and Nadia, servants to the Throne, daughters of Magi Seraphina Baroness of Ardengard, daughter of Magi Issyren who was Baroness before her;“ and here Aidan sighed, her patience sorely tried, “Whereas the Throne and the Heirophant are in accord in the Right Course of Action; ... It goes on like this for another six inches,”

“Skip to the end, I think,” agreed the Princess, “the rest is all protocol.”

Aidan took a deep breath, “... we command the Riders Aidan and Nadia to act as our Agents and journey to Stamfield, once a Duchy under the Throne; As Our Agents they shall render such assistance as will satisfy the terms of the aforementioned Treaty; Lastly, our Agents will recover the Item which obliges Us to Stamfield, thus dispatching the Treaty altogether. To these ends, our Agents are to gather to themselves companions of such ability and courage as their own, who shall if they accept the Task swear to its completion as best as they are able.” She passed the scroll to Earkey, who began to examine the seal and read it for himself.

“There is also,” added Nadia, “a bit about us having salvage rights among the ‘former Duchy’, but the people who live there might have other ideas about our taking off with all their gold.” There was some laughter. At that moment Tad was hit with the notion that these were people who had carried off a fair amount of treasure in their time.

“Second order of business,” spoke Lady Calanth, very business-like, “is to determine who will go. The Sisters have royal orders and a powerful geas, in addition to their considerable honor. As for the rest of you, there is no requirement to join such an adventure. If you pursue this quest, you commit to it’s aims of your own free will. Only your honor and the duty of comrades binds you.” The Princess moved to a writing desk prepared with an ink pot, a quill, and a short length of parchment. “Sign, and pledge yourselves to the goals presented, that the Duke may know who has taken up the Task.” She eyed each person present with a merry eye, as if she were about to deliver a joke, “Or else abstain, and no word of dishonor will be spoken over it.”

Of course they all signed. All except the Princess herself who, in spite of her past trials, was not the sort to go on great adventures of her own accord. Tad was not of age yet to sign any contracts, but Mr. Brightstar signed for him as his legal master. It thrilled Tad, knowing his name was there, even if it was preceded by “Mr. Nolan Brightstar, Gentleman Adventurer, and his servant....”

----

Guests began arriving in the late afternoon, well before the packing was finished. They mostly drove up in carriages, but a few of Lady Calanth’s closest neighbors decided to simply walk the distance over the fields. Among the first to dismount at Nearshore’s front door was Father Quinn, the priest from Walter’s Bailey, and with him was none other than his eminently annoying acolyte, whom Tad had met earlier. The moment her was off the carriage, she started walking towards the stables.

Resolving to ignore her, Tad turned to his duty. It had fallen to him to gather all the common baggage and lay it out for Nadia, and then check it all off of a list. There was feed for horses and humans, a modest quantity of cooking gear, tents made of a very sturdy cloth, a few hundred feet of expensive silken rope, an impressive number of bolts and arrows, a sack of charcoal, and an assortment of other supplies. Nadia, with help from Horesemaster Lewis and his apprentice, divided it among the eight mounts and packed it all carefully. The largest share went to the single packhorse, but each mount received some portion of everything: this practice was to prevent disaster in case the packhorse was lost. Realizing that the girl was drawing close to him, Tad pronounced that all items were present, and that he was going to check on the horses.

Tad fled into the dark of the stables, found the tools he needed, and proceeded to examine each animal that would be going on the journey. He went from one stall to the next, checking their coats and manes for any debris, then checked their hooves. As they had already been through the hands of the blacksmith in town, Hank the stableboy, and then inspected by Lewis, there wasn’t much to do. Tad saved Nadia’s Nightbow for last, intending to hide in the warhorse’s stall until the bothersome girl was gone from the area.

The Arducian permitted Tad to approach the stable, which he did slowly, then the huge animal shook its head until Tad agreed to rub him above his eye ridges. Nightbow leaned his forehead against the boy’s chest and snorted a few times, then Tad began to rub his hands along the stallion’s neck in long firm strokes. Every animal liked to be touched a certain way, and this is what Nadia had taught Tad to do, so he could groom the horse for her.

The big animal blew into the boy’s chest a few times, then began to nicker softly. “Hi Nightbow,” said Tad in a soft voice. “Looks like Nadia was already here. I guess I don’t have to do anything.” For a moment, Nightbow seemed to relax completely in Tad’s hands, but suddenly he tensed, and gave Tad a firm shove in the chest. The boy took two steps back, lost his footing, and landed hard on his backside with big “whuff”. The great stallion stamped and chomped in his stall and shook his mane with pleasure. Thaddius couldn’t help but laugh along with big brute: the horse had played him a good trick.

Someone else was laughing, too. The acolyte girl was standing nearby, covering her mouth while she giggled. “I’m Valda,” she said, when she finally stopped laughing. She had exchanged her robes for a modest blue frock embroidered in black. The motif was, like everything around Walter’s Bailey, horses, done in tiny detail with the finest thread, galloping around her ankles. From his position on the ground, Tad could see she still wore the same boots as earlier. Her only jewelry was a thin bronze chain around her waist, from which hung a little medallion bearing the icon of Te, the Mother Goddess.

“Hi Valda,” he responded, his aching behind momentarily eclipsing his dislike of the girl, “I’m Thaddius. But people just call me Tad.” He got back onto his feet and dusted off the seat of his pants. “And this big fellow is Nightbow. Don’t let his good looks fool you,” he glared at the animal in mock anger, “he’s a monster.”

“Oh, I know,” said Valda, performing a brief curtsey in Nightbow’s direction. “He bit Ernie Pick today. All afternoon, Ernie’s been telling everyone that he was almost killed by the savage Arducian. But I think Ernie should learn to keep his hands to himself.” Nightbow chomped twice more in reply, and then turned his attention to his hay, having had all the human conversation he wanted.

“Well,” said Tad into the growing silence, “I still have a lot of packing to do before the party.”

“Ok,” said Valda, with too much enthusiasm, “I’ll help. I’m good at packing.” And for the next hour, Tad could not get rid of her. She followed him into his quarters, which was far from proper, and promptly began refolding all his clothes. Once he made it clear she could not touch any of his or Mr. Brightstar’s things, she took control of the packing list. The items were checked off the list once as they were gathered together and organized on the floor, and then again as they went into the appropriate backpack or saddlebag.

Some of the items were of a questionable character, which caused Valda’s voice to drip with disapproval. “A crowbar?”

“It’s a lever, for moving heavy things,” explained Tad, placing it next to his lantern.

“Lockpicks?”, she read archly.

Tad unrolled a length of cloth to reveal a neat line of sewn pockets, each one occupied by a curiously bent length of metal. After verifying that each tool was present, he rolled it back up and tied it firmly closed. “In case someone loses a key,” he said. Tad shrugged: it could happen that way.

“I see. And you would never use them to open something without permission?”

“Don’t be silly,” he tried to reassure her, “it would be much easier to break the lock.”

“Next item on the list,” read Valda, “is a hammer. And ten spikes.” She waved the list around in exasperation, “Just what kind of ‘Gentleman Adventurer’ are you?”

“Legally, I’m an indentured servant,” said Tad, repeating his master’s words from the other day, “so I guess I’m not any kind of gentleman.” He put the heavy hammer and iron spikes in their own leather drawstring bag, and arranged the bag on the floor next to the crowbar. “We use the spikes for climbing,” he said in a reassuring voice. He didn’t tell her that the spikes were also very handy for breaking locks.

“Mmmm,” murmured the girl, “You’re not planning on using any of this in Walter’s Bailey, are you? My aunt is the Mayor, and she’d be really angry.”

“We only steal from ruins,” said Tad, which almost seemed to satisfy her.

Valda stayed until it was time for Tad to wash and dress for dinner. He had to remind her that such a task usually required removing one’s clothing, and she finally left him alone. Tad shook off the clothes he was wearing and put them aside for tomorrow, then gave his dress shoes a quick polish. After they were sufficiently cleaned and blackened to a low shine, he washed himself at the basin. He put on his white shirt, his good pants, his shoes, and finally his long jacket with the bone buttons. Looking very much the apprentice of a Gentleman Adventurer rather than a mere indentured servant, he went down to dinner.

----

There were thirty places set that night at the Princess’ table, enough for the Baroness, the Mayor, the Priest, the local Arcanist (who ran the town’s school), prominent breeders and tradesmen, wealthy farmers, and a few people whose main achievements in life seemed to be that they were in some way related to the hostess.

Typical of polite gatherings, most of the guests had brought a single attendant: either a trusted servant, an apprentice, or in some cases a young relative who badly wanted to attend. Mr. Brightstar sat almost directly across from Father Quinn, which similarly put Tad almost directly across from Valda. Their jobs were pretty simple: fetch and carry anything that was needed, most commonly plates of food, and keep the masters’ goblets filled. Do anything else one was asked. Speak only when spoken to. Other than all that, just stand behind their masters’ chairs and wait. Without much to do during the courses besides stand still, it was an opportunity for Tad to observe and memorize.

The appointments were, Tad thought, beautiful without being gaudy, rich without being showy, elegant rather than ornate. All in all, very much like the Princess herself. But the conversation was as polite and careful as any gathering at the most ornate houses in Corak.

There were toasts and speeches, including a brief but very fine one from the Bishop, and a stunning amount of gold was pledged for Saint Engel’s new basilica. Lady Calanth’s physician told a vaguely funny story about a man who thought he had a pox, but who had been victim of a practical joke: his friends had painted colored dots on him in his sleep. It was poorly told, but people near the doctor laughed anyway. Thaddius happened to glance to the other side of the room just then, and caught Valda looking at him just in time to see her turn red and look away.

“I was in Soubous for three months during my Grand Tour,” the dowager Woolom was saying, “in my day a young person of means saw all the great cities of the West, and one of our party was abducted by the Academy. It seemed young Timeas had gotten ahold of something he shouldn’t have -- probably from that dragon he killed near Vohanis.”

“As it happens, I am familiar with the case,” interjected Minzerec. “He had copies of a few pages from a very dangerous text.”

“Well, the wizards sure got him for it!” The old bird was comfortably into her cups. “They stormed the playhouse during Anamogea’s Iyeru and Tygea. In the third act! Put him into wizard cuffs and hauled him off, and we never saw him again. Common born, but quite talented. Very promising young man.” Woolom jabbed her dinner knife at Minzerec and the town’s resident Arcanist accusingly, “And his family never got a satisfactory explanation. Never!”

“Now see here, madam,” protested Arcanist Dassha, the general practitioner stationed here by the Academy. He was a thin, middle-aged man with cropped black hair and a little pointed beard that bordered on the absurd. His olive skin marked him as a native of the Principalities, probably Eboa. In his plain black wizard’s robes he looked like a villainous school teacher. “Everyone knows you don’t mess around with dark magic, especially if you aren’t even a wizard. The enforcers have to be stern with people, for everyone’s protection.”

“I bet you wouldn’t feel the same if our priests dragged off some of your apprentices for heresy and locked them in a dungeon somewhere.” Woolom’s face nearly lit up at the idea, “Serve you right to get a dose of your own brand of justice.”

“We fight heresy with fact and example.” said Father Quinn soothingly, “Faith can’t be coerced.”

“Not to mention the treaty,” rumbled the dwarf Minzerek. “Aspera leaves arcane matters to the Academy, and the Academy allows Aspera its religion.” At these words, all conversation at the table died. Most rational people would have been abashed at the sudden hostility in the room, but Minzerek merely looked around him as if nothing were the matter. The only person who seemed the least bit happy was Woolom.

The wizard was too smart not to know what he had done, which meant he was putting on the arcanist’s inscrutability. Tad watched the dwarf, with all limited skill he possessed, for some sign of discomfort. Arcanists were said to keep their emotions in an iron box, but not even dwarves were made of stone.

“I think you may want to reconsider the wording of that last statement,” said the Bishop with care, “in the interest of continued amity between the Arcane Academy and the Kingdom of Aspera.” There it was! A bit of beard on Minzerek’s left cheek pulsed once, twice, and then he moved his jaw a little to the right to relax the offending muscle. Something had definitely moved him.

To his credit, Minzerek recognized his error and strove to make amends. He stood formally, and apologized. “As always, Bishop Ambrose, you are wise. I misspoke, and badly. I should have said that we leave divine matters to those who understand them best, just as Aspera leaves arcane matters to the Academy.” Then he sat, as calm as if nothing had happened.

“Thank you,” said Lady Calanth, “for the clarification.” Indeed, nearly everyone seemed to relax, and conversation slowly returned to the table. Only the Sisters didn’t seem satisfied, in fact they had a moment of shared anger, yet they were willing to let the incident pass.

Over the pear tarts, Valda started acting positively strange. She would catch Tad’s eye, then smile at him, then look away and pretend he wasn’t there. Sometimes during these odd exchanges, she would bob up and down slightly as if wanting to dance. Or needing to pee. After several minutes of this, Mr. Brightstar turned towards Tad and raised his eyebrows, as if to say, “what the heck are you doing”? Tad did his best to pass the very same look over the table to Valda, who obediently settled down with a barely suppressed smile.

“So what’s next,” asked a wealthy breeder, “for Bishop Ambrose and his companions?”

“We’ll be heading West, through Straight, then turning Northwest towards Ardengard,” came the ready answer from Mr. Brightstar. “Our Riders have family there.” Tad noticed that Mr. Brightstar did not say they were going to visit Ardengard, only that they were turning in that direction.

“Taking the faith to the outer baronies then?” said the doctor. “That’s some dedication. You’d get better collections for your Basillica in the larger cities, your Grace.”

“I think going farther afield is a great idea,” said Earkey. “The Basilica will be a symbol of faith to all Aspera, not just people in the cities. Why shouldn’t the frontier get to see a proof of faith?”

“Just so,” said the Bishop. “By the way, I see a lot of blue tile roofs in Walter’s Bailey. Have you been importing the clay from Ardengard, or do they make the tiles there and ship them down?” This launched the conversation in a new direction, towards trade and taxation, and away from the group’s travel plans.

Again, Valda caught Tad’s eye, but now they were watery as if she were about to cry. He couldn’t understand, for the life of him, what was wrong with that girl.

Nearly all the packing had been finished before dinner, but there were a few last-minute details. A scribe, in the employ of Lady Calanth, discretely handed a scroll tube to Mr. Brightstar, who in turn entrusted it to Tad, who took it upstairs to add to their baggage. On impulse, Thaddius switched the contents of the tube with that of another, which contained a partially completed manuscript. If someone should try to steal details of their planned journey (to an old city deep in the Southlands, Tad noted) all they would get was an incomplete treatise on “The Origins of Cave Dwellings Among the Hightable Cliffs”. Tad strapped the shiny new tube, which now contained the manuscript, onto the outside of Mr. Brightstar’s backpack. The old battered tube, containing a map and some other papers, he stuffed deep inside his own backpack.

After dinner there was dancing, to the tunes of a troubadour family from Tasep. To Tad’s disappointment, the dancing was of the politely choreographed sort rather than the wild elven kind. All were invited to dance but, as there were too few men present, Tad and two other boys were pressed into service against their will. Tad was partnered with the dowager Woolom, who seemed to like it when people called her “dowager” to her face, for an intricate and lengthly dance that involved numerous changes but always brought one back to his original partner.

“Ah, I get the young adventurer, Mr. Thaddius Poole,” said the garrulous woman. She was sixty-ish, swathed in several layers of ornate cloth, a great strand of pearls, gray hair piled two feet high, and yet still able to trod the polite dances. “I trust you’ve been taught the Pavadona. You won’t let me down, will you?”

“No ma’am,” said Tad with a bow, and he hoped not too awkward a one. Dowager Woolom favored him with the slightest of curtseys, and the dance began.

The Pavadona was a slow dance, but to be danced well it had to be done lightly and easily: and that was something Tad could do well. What was more difficult was the conversation, which the girls seemed to carry on without care but with which the boys had to struggle. “So boy,” began The Dowager, “where are you really going tomorrow?”

It was an easy question. People asked him this all the time, and the answer was always the same. “Wherever my master goes, madam.” She would have to try harder than that.

“That’s not an answer,” she said in a disapproving voice, but she didn’t seem genuinely upset.

“No ma’am,” responded Tad yet again, “but it’s the only answer you’re going to get. Ask something else.”

“That’s a rather saucy answer, young man. I’ve a mind to tell your master.”

“Go ahead. He’ll say the same thing.” Tad was warming to the rascally old lady, but before they got a chance to talk more it was time for the change, and the ladies all switched places, leaving the men with new partners.

Before him now was none other than the mayor of Walter’s Bailey, a thirty-ish woman who danced with the fingers of one hand twined in the hair at the back of Thaddius’ head. It was intimate to the point of being a little creepy, especially with the mayor’s husband dancing just a few feet away. “You’re in an awful hurry to leave our little town, Mr. Poole. Why not stay a little while?”

“I just go with Mr. Brightstar, Madam Mayor. You have to ask him and the Bishop about where we’re going.”

“A smart boy like you, I’ll bet you know exactly where you’re off to.” Tad thought of the map, hidden in his backpack, then cursed himself inwardly. She would know that he knew.

“I thought so. Is it Thrace? Did they offer the Bishop something to go preach there?” That was so far from the truth that, for a moment, Tad forgot to dance. “I thought so,” said the mayor, misreading his confusion. “The Count does this every time we get something really good.” She was evidently very angry, because her intimate caressing fingers had turned into claws. Just as he was in danger of losing some of his hair, Tad was able to hand her back to her husband in exchange for the Dowager.

They dallied for a few measures, just long enough for Dowager Woolom to ask Tad what he’d been learning lately (“fighting and history, mostly”), and then it was already time to exchange her for a new partner.

It was Valda, who fairly flew into his arms. “Do you think she’s pretty?”

“For a woman her age, I guess” shrugged Tad, “but I think I like her.”

Her voice dropped a note. “What do you like about her?”

“Well, she’s the sort to tell you exactly what she’s thinking.”

Valda snorted, “She’s not like that at all. She’s a great liar -- you can’t trust anything she says.” They performed a series a steps together, giving their feet a little more lift than was strictly necessary. It was a relief to be with someone his own height. “People think they can trust her just because she’s pretty.”

“You really think Dowager Woolom is good looking?” asked Tad. It was Valda’s turn to look confused, and in a few more steps he exchanged her for the older woman.

“Are you having a good time, Madam Woolom?”

“You can’t divert me, boy. I see you making light feet with little Valda, and on the eve of your departure no less. And they say I’m a rogue and a scoundrel.”

“I haven’t done anything improper with Valda!” insisted Tad.

“Then you are worse than a scoundrel,” she accused him, “you are a tease!” By the next change, he was so baffled he barely noticed that not only was he dancing again with Valda, but that she was out of place. She must have thrown some other couple into disarray by being there.

“Not the Dowager, silly! I was talking about my aunt.” When Tad didn’t respond she added, “The Mayor. What do you think of her?”

“Oh,” said Tad, “I think she’s scary.” After that they fairly flew through the steps, and Valda somehow conspired to keep from changing partners again until the end of the song.

Tad danced the next several songs, each time with whatever partner the hostess gave him, and still Valda passed through his arms at every opportunity. After an hour, thinking of having to ride at first light, Tad left the floor looking for Mr. Brightstar to beg permission to go to bed. That was when a small hand grasped his and pulled him into a shadowy corner. It was Valda, and she had both of his hands in hers, and before he knew it her lips were on his. It took a few heartbeats for him to realize that she was kissing him! Some large fuzzy presence filled up his brain and blotted out all sensation except her thin lips on his, and his continuing shock that somehow, in her world, she thought this was a good idea.

It seemed to go on for a long time, although it couldn’t have been for more than a few seconds before her mouth released him. She must have sucked his breath right out of him, because he knew he wasn’t breathing right. Sometime during this operation, she had backed up against a wall and pulled him along with her, and he found himself leaning against Valda pinning her there. His arms had gotten around her and were trapped between her thin body and the wall. If she was as uncomfortable as he was, then she was doing a good job of pretending otherwise.

“Promise you’ll think of me,” she whispered earnestly, “when you’re in the Southlands.”

Tad thought that she had some nerve kissing him, especially after the way she was been so haughty just hours before. And what did she want from him, exactly? And how did she know about the Southlands? And if she thought he was going to moon over her for weeks on end like one of those Riders, who you sometimes read about, who fall in love with courtly ladies, then she was crazy. He wasn’t coming back here, and if he did he would do his utmost to avoid her.

“I promise,” said Tad’s mouth, quite rebelling against his good sense. She kissed him again, and this time all he could feel in the whole world were her soft and lively lips. They moved around and around, and made his own lips move in ways they shouldn’t have. They definitely weren’t supposed to move like that.

Valda broke their grapple suddenly, both of the lips and the arms, with an audible pop. Just as suddenly as she had grabbed him, she was walking away buoyant and satisfied, as if she had just accomplished some kind of personal achievement. The girl turned a corner, looked over her shoulder at him, and then was gone.

For a while, for longer than she had kissed him, Tad stood looking at what she had pushed into his hands during their tryst (he supposed that was the right word for it, “tryst”): a length of blue silk embellished with strands of green and silver thread. Utterly bemused, he went up to his room, stuffed it deep inside his pack, and threw himself onto the bed to sleep. With any luck, he would forget the whole matter before dawn.

----

The next morning he and Mr. Brightstar and the rest of their group was up before the sun. There wasn’t much in the way of leave-taking: just a quick but hot breakfast, courtesy of Calanth’s excellent cook, and a transfer of their baggage onto the horses, beautifully turned out by Horesemaster Lewis. In a matter of minutes they were mounted and away, with Tad taking up the rear of the formation. They rode through Walter’s Bailey, where a few early risers waved at the Bishop and called out to greet him. Thaddius feared Valda might be among them, but to his great relief she was nowhere to be seen.

They rode West at a brisk pace, through the city of Straight around noon, after which the road turned Northwest. They kept riding, past a large number of farms and a small caravan, until they encountered a fork in the road: onward lay Coldmyr Lake and, eventually, the Barony of Ardengard. The road branching South, sturdily built but neglected for decades, would lead them across the border and into the Southlands.

It was at this modest crossroads that the party dismounted and checked their arms. Riding around in the early Autumn heat wearing armor was uncomfortable and tiring, but only a league south lay the border of Aspera. Beyond that there was no law. It was all fine and good to let your guard down a little when riding on the King's Road in times of peace, especially while accompanied by two well-known and easily-recognized Riders. It was another thing entirely to neglect one's safety in the wild.

Basil exchanged his tattered robes, much cleaner since their visit to Nearshore, for a padded jerkin and a long shirt of fine chainmail. It looked too delicate to be useful as armor, but cloaked as it was in flowing green and yellow overgarments it had a kind of grand flair. The elf would have looked every bit the ancient elven warrior if it weren’t for his rusted and nicked sword. The Bishop donned his own, more mundane, chain shirt and ensured his knobbly staff, or cudgel as he insisted people call it, was where he could lay his hands on it. Earkey put on a suit of metal scales that seemed so large for his size he would surely fall over.

Nolan and Tad had ridden all day with their leathers on, and didn’t need to change. Tad strung his crossbow, and made sure his sword and dagger were still where they belonged. The sisters always rode armored in metal-studded leather no matter how safe their path, but they took the opportunity to loosen their weapons and take up lances from the packhorse. Their business ends were nearly two feet of diamond-shaped steel, narrowing to a newly honed and deadly-looking point. Lancing was, Tad had been told, harder than it looked but an extremely effective tactic. Each sister had brought three of the long heavy spears, just in case something big needed to be poked at from horseback.

Meanwhile, Minzerec looked on this preparation with the supreme disinterest of one who puts faith in his own mind over base tangible things like pointed sticks and bits of iron.

Basil produced a thick metal flask, sipped from it, and passed it on. In silence everyone drank, except for the Bishop who touched it to his lips ceremoniously. Nadia was last in line and, when she was finished, passed it to Tad. When he didn't take it right away she pushed it into his hand and, compelled by an urge not to disappoint her, he took a mouthfull and swallowed. Something harsh and flammable hit the back of his throat and up into his head, then went down his throat and set his lungs on fire. He coughed and wheezed so hard he nearly fell off his horse, and several pairs of hands had to steady him and thump him on the back until the fit passed.

Thus buoyed, the group turned resolutely South.

8: In Honor of the Gods

It took most of the day for Tad to realize that Mr. Brightstar and his friends were killing time. They managed to find so much to do that they seemed purposeful, but all their activity was just keeping impatience at bay. After breakfast the entire party rode into town on their horses except for Tad and Mr. Brightstar, who borrowed a two-wheeled cart from Lady Calanth. Tad got to drive the cart all the way to town while his master sat silently on the bench next to him, uncommonly still except for the bumps in the road.

Before he even entered Walter’s Bailey, Tad understood that it was a horse town. The expansive fields of oats and alfalfa, plus the numerous stables with round pens beside them, indicated a thriving economy based on the noble beasts. Within the town, it seemed like every business had a horse-related name, every sign featured some kind of horse, and there were more horses in evidence on the streets than people. What surprised Tad most about the town was the scarcity of horse manure, but this riddle was quickly solved. Within the first hour of his visit he saw three different crews cleaning the streets, shoveling the manure into uncovered wagons and carting it away for compost. It was a nearly round-the-clock operation, operated at public expense but to great effect.

The Sisters didn’t get far into town before their princely mounts made them the center of attention. Dozens of people had questions about the Arducians, or simply wanted a closer look. One foolish young man ventured too close to Nadia’s Nightbow, and got bitten and knocked down for his poor judgement. Most of the curious knew better than to do the same: Warhorses were fiercely loyal to their riders, but were otherwise dangerously temperamental. Tad could usually handle them because the Sisters had “introduced” him properly and over time, but strangers were best advised to keep their distance. Aidan and Nadia each had to take turns watching the animals while the other did her shopping, just to to make sure nobody strayed too close accidentally.

Like any thriving town of a few thousand people, the public life of Walter’s Bailey took place in the town square. One side of the square was bordered by the main street, and on the opposite side was a fine stone building where the Baroness kept her offices and, above them, her residence. The Throne’s law and the safekeeping of every citizen within twenty-five miles was her special concern. The baronal seat was a large enough building that the town’s Mayor and a large meeting hall took up part of the left-hand side. The other two sides of the square were occupied by the town’s temple on one side, and a row of businesses on the other.

The square itself was busy with the morning market when they arrived: purveyors of this and that, mostly foodstuffs, sold goods out of stalls or the backs of wagons. Some arrangements were made quickly, with a friendly greeting and a swift exchange of goods and coin. Other sales took more time, and a lot more noise. Tad watched an old gnome with dyed black hair argue loudly and with a full palate of verbal color with a gray-haired human man twice his size. The item at stake was a pretty blue shirt, suitable for a young woman of gnomish proportions, and the disagreement was over a quarter-copper. After a few minutes watching the masterful display, Tad decided that neither party cared aught for the money: they knew each other and enjoyed the conversation.

There were forty-one sellers, and at least three hundred potential buyers that Tad could see. From the prices he could hear and and a survey of the goods leaving the market, plus a guess at how many people would visit on that day, Tad tried to guess how much silver would trade hands in the four hours the market was open. He wondered if he should count the exchanges that took place between sellers, like the butcher buying bread from the baker, and the baker buying shoes from the cobbler. After deciding that such events should be counted, he figured what a 1/8th tax would be on everything he was seeing, and came up with about three hundred silver for the morning. It sounded like a huge amount of money to him, enough to feed a tradesman and his family for half the year. Maybe his figures were wrong, he thought, and resolved to ask Mr. Brightstar about it later.

Earkey was purchasing provisions, from a variety of sellers, enough to last the party for two weeks. Tad hauled the supplies to the cart, where Avra loaded them and kept watch. The sisters went off looking for a blacksmith to mend some tack and a few other minor items, and the Bishop was doing something with the local priest. Mr. Brightstar had managed to disappear, most likely into the large tavern adjacent to the square, to gather news. Minzerek was probably shut up somewhere with the local arcanist. Thaddius had to move all the supplies alone from the sellers Earkey bought them from, to the wagon.

Tad was sweating under thirty pounds of oats when he noticed the gathering of people. Instead of leaving the square when their shopping was finished, people were lingering by the temple. By the time the market closed, Tad had heard the news a hundred times over: Bishop Ambrose would be gracing their local temple with a sermon and with a working of miracles. All of a sudden, Tad got impatient with Earkey’s haggling, and wished he would just forego the few extra silver: it wasn’t as if the party was short of coin.

Someone breathing noisily came up from behind Thaddius, just as he was handing off coils of silken rope to Avra, and tried to touch him near his money belt. It wasn’t something Tad saw coming, or that he had time to think about. He just knew someone was touching him without a good reason, and acted as he would on the streets of Corak: he swung around on one heel and grabbed the offending wrist, then turned it hard until its owner gasped in pain and fell to his knees to prevent his arm from breaking.

“Ow,” she cried, “let go!” Her arm, Tad corrected himself. The person before him was a girl, a hair taller than himself if she had been standing, in a shapeless blue temple robe. Her long brown hair was bunched up at the back of her neck, and her brown eyes made him think of a hurt puppy. She was very thin, like she had just grown a lot and parts of her hadn’t caught up yet. Tad figured she wasn’t likely to take anything from him while he was watching her, so he let go. “Brothers’ anger,” she said hotly, “what’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with you, trying to grab people like that from behind?” Tad countered, “I thought you were trying to steal from me.”

“I was trying to get your attention,” she said, like it was obvious he was being stupid. “You didn’t need to break my arm off. Or are you going to stab me now?” The last remarkable statement was emphasized with a look at his right hand, which rested on his dagger. (Always carry a weapon, boy, especially when you don’t think you need one. That’s what Mr. Brightstar had told him just that morning.)

In spite of her thinness, she showed signs of being well cared for: she was clean, and the clothes that peeked out from under the temple robe were of good material and weren’t very worn. Her shoes were low boots with inch-high heels, nearly new. She had family who loved her, and the smell of clean leather and lavender marked her as someone who spent time around horses but didn’t sleep in the stables. “I might,” he declared Thaddius, “if you keep sneaking up on me.”

“I wasn’t sneaking. I was trying to get your attention.” Her inflections were subtle, layered, and numerous. All at once she managed to convey the idea that she never snuck up on people, that sneaking was far beneath her, that he was stupid for thinking that she was sneaking, and it should have been obvious to anybody that coming up behind someone and grabbing them was a perfectly normal activity and didn’t deserve to be met with violence.

Something about this girl was really annoying Tad. “Well, you have it. What do you want?”

“I want an apology,” the girl declared, “for trying to break my arm and stab me to death.” She had stepped back, as if there was a chance he really would stab her, and she was standing her ground bravely. It was just silly, and it made him want to laugh.

“You should announce yourself before grabbing people from behind, or else you deserve what you get.”

“I want an apology,” the girl insisted.

“And I want out of this sun,” said Earkey, tossing the final parcel into Avra’s waiting hands, “so maybe you should apologize. Then the young lady can deliver her message, and we can all get inside.”

If it had been up to him, Tad would not have given in. But Earkey seemed serious about it, and Avra was watching him with those merry elfin eyes. For whatever reason, they seemed to think he should apologize, so he would. “I’m sorry I thought you were a thief,” was the best he could bring himself to say under the circumstances.

His adversary either didn’t like his apology, or else she was hiding the fact she was very pleased with it. But Tad wasn’t going to get a clarification because the girl said, “Bishop Ambrose wants you, in the temple,” then turned and tromped off towards the big stone building, her hands balled up into fists.

“Looks like you made a friend,” said the gnome bracingly. Tad followed after the girl, trying hard to look like he knew where he was going and wasn’t following her.

----

What the Bishop wanted from Tad was someone to stand next to him in acolyte’s robes and pretend to pay attention during the service. Tad didn’t understand why Ambrose didn’t use one of the locals, someone who knew what to do. Instead, Tad had to be directed where to stand and what to hold, and felt very out of place. His vestment was black, to more closely match the Bishop’s dark brown, while the dozen other acolytes wore blue. Tad resigned himself to following along and pretending he belonged there.

The temple itself was impressive for a mere barony. The building was a big stone box three stories tall. The exterior walls were stone arches with semi-circular tops, filled in alternately with removable hardwood panels and stained glass windows. The center of the building was topped by a modest dome, covered in bright blue tile. Inside, the temple was one big room, large enough to hold a few hundred people. Statues of the gods were arranged throughout the temple, each with His or Her own altar for offerings. They were facing outward from the center, where the mother goddess Te was depicted in white marble veined in blue, with waves of water erupting around her feet: the moment of creation of the Yeron River and all the lands of the West.

Emerging from the waters beside her were her sons Avegar and Lochus, defenders of Aspera, also known as the Brothers. Avegar was the patron god of Valor and Mercy, and a favorite of Riders. Offerings of silver and braids of horse hair covered his alter. Lochus was colder and more foreboding, the god of Law and Strength and, said some, Tyrany. Although few would admit to favoring him, candles and incense and silver were on his altar. The Brothers competed against each other over everything, except when Aspera itself was at stake. Only then did they work together, and together they always prevailed.

The highest-ranking gods ringed Te and her progeny, on tall plinths. The creator of the Dwarves, whose name was a secret but who was openly called the Eldest Beard, was depicted with his hammer upraised over an altar shaped like an anvil. The elf-god Shihabba stood facing East, his bow in one hand and the other raised in benediction. The gnome god, whose name Tad couldn’t remember at the moment, stood facing south with his all-revealing lantern upraised in one hand. Beyond these gods were several lesser deities, patrons of this and that, all of them worshipped almost exclusively by humans.

Today the focus was on Saint Engel, who had a small niche near the north wall where he leaned on his great club and kept watch out a stained glass window. Thaddius thought the statue looked like a gardener he knew in Corak, but he kept that opinion to himself. He was the patron of Hard Work and Zeal, a defender of Faith, and he looked like someone who would begrudge a man a day of rest if it was used for anything but paying proper homage to his fellow deities. The huge wood panels on that side of the building had been removed, to enlarge the potential audience to include people outside the temple.

They needed all the space they could get. The temple was filled with the citizens of Walter’s Bailey, hundreds of them standing shoulder-to-shoulder, spilling outside and all the way into the street, and more were still arriving as the service began. A wooden dias, shorter than the god’s pedestal, had been moved next to Saint Engel’s statue. It was here that Bishop Ambrose held forth speaking eloquently of the need to guard one’s Faith, to do one’s utmost with the life he was given by the Gods, and to not fear death. It must have been a speech he made often because he was quite good, Tad thought. Not at all his usual stiff self.

Even Ambrose’s strong voice could not reach all of the people outside, so he spoke in fragments to let his words be picked up and passed on by the crowd. Like water, his sentences rippled and flowed out, and in time a smaller wave of them came back to him in the murmurs of the most distant worshipers. It took time, but not a word was lost.

The sermon closed with a prayer, in which the Bishop sang a versicle and the thousand voices chanted an enthusiastic response. This exchange went on for a few minutes, the several hundred voices filling the temple’s heights. Tad, who had never experienced a full service before, pretended to mouth words when the audience did and hoped that somebody out there was fooled.

After the prayer, the local priest spoke for the first time since turning the service over to Amrose. “Your Grace, we have a woman in our congregation who broke her leg a year ago, and it healed crooked. Will the Gods make her whole again?” People had come to see miracles, and miracles they would have.

“They may, Father. Bring her forward.” And the crowd produced the woman in question, Mrs. Marsten, for there was no doubt in their minds just whom the priest had meant: she was a sturdy woman of about thirty years who looked like she had spent her life washing other people’s clothes, and who put copper onto the Gods’ altars instead of silver. But the crowd pushed her forward eagerly, and before she could fully realize what was happening she had been lifted (on account of her bad leg and cane) by the crowd onto the dias. Whispers of her name rose and spread and echoed: the good washerwoman Mrs. Marsten would be blessed. She was a widow, had children to feed, worked hard and was humble. People knew her.

Ambrose prayed over the woman and anointed her with blessed water, as Tad and the girl he had mistaken for a thief moved to flank her. The congregation was dead silent: the Bishop’s voice could be heard, with uncontested clarity, throughout the temple. Tad and the other helper grasped the woman’s hands to support her, like they had been instructed. Her hand was sweaty, and trembled in his. It occurred to Thaddius then that nobody had asked Mrs. Marsten if she wanted to be healed, but the woman was caught and couldn’t get away without making herself out to be ungrateful. Ambrose finished his prayer, and touched the woman lightly on her shoulder.

Thaddius hadn’t known what to expect, or else he might have held on harder. There was a surge of warmth, which passed over the dias and down into the onlookers, and then Mrs. Marsten writhed so violently that she completely escaped the acolytes’ grasp and went flopping onto the dias like a landed fish. They went down on their knees to try and help her stand up, but the best they could do was hold her down until her convulsions stopped.

When Mrs. Marsten finally rose, with only a little help, she was almost a different woman. Not only had her bad leg become straight, but twenty years of hunching over buckets of dirty water were erased from her shoulders. Her step was graceful and lively. Her movements were free of pain and stiffness, maybe for the first time in a decade. Even if the whole town hadn’t witnessed it, people would have known something profound had happened to her. A cry of praise shot like lightning from the assembly. The Gods were present! Praise them! Thaddius was caught in the rapture, and he yelled out with the rest of them without thinking. We are blessed! Praise them!

The exultation ended as suddenly as it had began, leaving only a ringing noise high in the dome where something was vibrating in sympathy with all the clamor. Tad spied Aidan and Nadia in the crowd, near the center of the temple. They had said their parts of the prayers along with the townsfolk, and appeared properly respectful, but they were not awed as everyone around them. They had seen this before, Tad realized, and perhaps much more. But that knowledge didn’t quell the huge feeling in his chest.

After Mrs. Marsten, there were other miracles. Ambrose and Earkey both created divine food in great quantities (which manifested as flaky and slightly sweet wafers) onto giant silver trays. The mounds of sacred food seemed to float among the people as they handed the trays to each other overhead. Everyone took small pieces from the piles and placed them reverently in their mouths, passing the remainder to their neighbors. As the trays worked their ways around the temple and towards the crowd outside, Earkey created a flame that did not consume fuel or burn, but which shed light like a normal fire. He put the fire into the gnome god’s lantern, and declared that it would never go out. Then Ambrose cured two men of a deadly sickness that paralyzied the lungs, and would have killed them in a few weeks if not sooner.

It was while the Bishop was curing the lung disease that the messenger arrived, dressed in a tabard of Duke Frederick’s colors. The man was in the street, at the very back of the crowd, covered in the dirt of a long ride hastily made, bobbing up and down on tiptoes looking for someone. Tad used the Rider hand-cant to signal the Sisters, but in small gestures to avoid much attention: “I see a messenger. That way. Far.” The sisters, a head taller than nearly everyone, shifted about until they could see the man. “I see one, will engage,” signaled Nadia, and the two women shouldered their way toward the messenger.

After the second man was cured and Tad could let go of him, he looked for the Sisters. Nadia was reading a scroll, and Aidan was trying to get his attention. “All of us move forward,” she motioned, which Tad took to mean it was time to leave. He passed this on to Ambrose and Earkey verbally. After some searching, Tad spotted Avra and Mr. Brightstar standing next to Shihabba, whose sole offering was a boquet of rare herbs. “All of us move on, that way,” Tad canted at them.

Within minutes, the service was wrapped up and the party was mounted. “We have orders,” was all Nadia had to say, and the party quit town without a second thought. Only Tad looked back. Trusted lay people were taking away the heavy boxes used for offering money to the temple: they had overflowed, and were being replaced with empty ones.

It was a nice town, Tad decided, but he was unlikely to ever visit it again.

7: In the Grass

Face down in the grass, covered in sweat and dust, Tad inched forward with all the patience his recent training could give him. He moved only when the wind blew, or when horses came and went, and hid him momentarily. Twenty-five paces away Mr. Brightstar was, for all appearances, standing in a field enjoying the afternoon air with a crossbow in his hands. Once in a while he would shoot a padded bolt into the grass seemingly at random.

Tad had a similar crossbow: if he could land a solid shot before being “killed” by his master, then he would win the game. Up to now Tad had always lost, but he wanted badly to win. Just once, he wanted to be the one to sneak up on Nolan Brightstar. But he would have to be patient.

Avra Basil, looking uncommonly sober and neat, strode over from the house to stand near Mr. Brightstar. When the elf had the halfling’s undivided attention for a moment, Tad moved forward.

“You are training the human boy again?”

“Yep.” Nolan punctuated this with a thunk as he sent another bolt swishing into the grassy field. “Every day.” There was a creak and a click as the weapon was reloaded.

“I came to ask you Nolan, because you see more than most.” Now another pair of eyes were sweeping the hillside, searching for tad. And these were elf eyes, which rumor had were sharper than any. “How is it the geas affected the sisters and the princess if the covenant is, as the dwarf states, a blood-bound oath?”

“Five hundred years is a long time, Avra, even for elves nowadays. There could be thousands of forgotten descendants of the Hemmets.” Thunk. Swish. “Maybe you should be asking Minzerek these questions.” Creak ... click.

“I tried, but he uses words only a wizard can understand.” Both men watched the grass intently for a while, and Tad’s muscles began to cramp from being still. “The sisters say their mother, the Baroness of Ardengard, felt no compunction. And Calanth says the same of her line. They three were the only ones to be compelled.”

“Princess Calanth had the box. And the sisters,” Thunk. Swish. “are some of the better Riders in the kingdom. Far better than the silver-hoarding nobility in Corak, to be sure.” Again there were sounds of reloading.

“They were chosen by the geas,” said the elf thoughtfully, “for what they could contribute. A very intelligent geas, which chooses its subjects. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

“No,” said Mr. Brightstar, “never.” And for a moment the two men looked at each other.

That was Tad’s moment, and he was so excited about it he couldn’t stop shaking. He stood and, taking careful aim at Mr. Brightstar, let loose with a shot that went so wide it nearly hit the elf instead. Panicking, Tad tried to reload but couldn’t get a proper grasp on the string. He looked up just in time to see Avra with his bow and Mr. Brightstar with his crossbow, aiming at him with with smiles on their faces. The last thought Thaddius had, before the arrows hit him, was that they were enjoying this way too much.

The twin impacts lifted Tad entirely off his feet and threw him onto his back. For a moment he couldn’t breathe, and all he could see were the sky and bright spots floating in front of his eyes. Then there was Avra’s face, slightly blurry. “It was an admirable approach, young human, but your attack is pitiful. To attack unseen is the hunter’s advantage. To come boldly is the warrior’s. Use more stealth, or be more fierce. In between is ... not so good.” Avra nodded at the halfling and took his leave.

Nearly an hour later Thaddius was again within range of his mentor. And, this time, he was determined to wait. He spent a long time watching his master through the sights of his crossbow, aimed between silently parted blades of grass. His master, as was his habit in the late afternoons, was sipping from a flask of wine in between random shots into the grass. Eventually, Tad felt sure, something would happen to distract him.

Distraction arrived in the guise of Rider Aidan, dressed in breeches and a simple tunic, hair loose, and armed with only a dagger. It was disconcerting to see the normally armored and axe-wielding woman walking peaceably in the field like a commoner. “Nolan, I’d like a word.”

“Shoot,” said the halfling, sending a bolt into the grass. “but no talking in the afternoon without something to cool the tongue.”

Aidan took the offered flask and drank. “A halfling custom?”

“Common sense,” said Nolan, taking back his flask. “now what is on your very tall mind, Rider Aidan?” Thunk. Swish. Reload. “Or should I say, Lady Aidan?”

“Please,” she waved away the idea with the greatest indifference, “everyone knows we’re bastards. We’re three generations of women of uncertain parentage.”

“Funny thing about bastards,” said Mr. Brightstar significantly, “anyone could be the father.” What was that expression that passed over her face? Was it contempt, of the need for husbands and fathers? Was it satisfaction, of knowing something others don’t? Tad was almost sure his master hadn’t seen it, focused as he was on finding himself.

Aidan, Lady or not, stuck to her present business. “You can’t take your apprentice on this trip. It’s too dangerous for him.”

“Legally, he’s my indentured servant.” Thunk. Swish. “So I only have a minimal obligation for his safety.”

“You can’t bring him. We have no idea what we’re facing.”

“That is why it’s called adventure,” insisted Mr. Brightstar, “because you don’t know what will happen. ” Creak ... click. “Anyway, I can’t leave him behind. What will he do? And he needs his lessons.”

“I think he can do a lot better than learning to be a sneak thief.”

“I prefer gentleman adventurer. I hardly ever steal anything.” Thunk. Swish. “From anyone living, that is.”

“And what do you think will happen when the fighting starts? He isn’t even grown yet.”

“He’ll HIDE.” Thunk. Swoosh. This bolt landed less than a foot from Tad’s face, but he didn’t so much as blink an eye, so intent was he on keeping his aim on Mr. Brightstar’s heart.

“What,” said Aidan with exasperation, “are you shooting at?”

“Tad, I hope.”

“He’s out there? Where?” She shielded her eyes against the sun and scanned the field.

“It’s rather the point that you don’t know, isn’t it? That’s why it’s called hiding.” Nolan worked the mechanism of the crossbow, “Or maybe he fell asleep. Or one of the horses stepped on him.” For some reason the trigger mechanism wasn’t catching.

“I’ve spoken to Lady Calanth,” pressed Aidan, still looking for Tad, “and she’s willing to take him on in her household. He can do the horses for her, or be a valet or something.” Tad for a moment considered changing targets, but the movement might give away his position.

Mr. Brightstar turned to face the tall woman in anger, “You haven’t the right! I’m not letting her turn him into some kind of ... houseboy.”

And that was when Tad shot him, right in the chest. The little man went toppling backwards with a cry and landed hard somewhere out of sight. Aidan bent over Nolan pityingly, “Oooh, that’s going to hurt tomorrow.”

Tad carefully cocked his bow, while sputtering sounds came from Mr. Brightstar general direction. “It hurts a lot right now,” he groaned. “And I’d watch out if I were you.”

“What do you mean?” Aidan straightened up and resumed looking for Thaddius, who was loading his crossbow as fast as he dared. “You don’t think he’ll shoot me by accident do you?”

“No, not by accident,” said the disembodied voice.

Understanding hit her face before Tad was truly ready, so he was forced to rush the shot. The bolt swished through the blades of grass and hit her hard in the upper arm so hard the shaft snapped. Aidan’s eyebrows flew up into her hair in surprise and, Tad thought, approval. But then things started to go badly.

Aidan bowed over Nolan briefly, and Mr. Brightstar’s sword appeared in her “uninjured” hand. She crouched, disappearing in to the grass. Tad could hear her moving, swiftly. She was coming for him, and it was going to hurt. He reloaded as fast as he could, and barely got the padded bolt into place before she found him. She exploded out of grass and bore down on him, sword in hand, the joy of battle on her face.

And Tad froze. For a heartbeat, he was caught in the certainty that his life was over. He was going to die in the princess’ hay fields, brained or sliced open by a madwoman for the sheer joy of it.

Then something kicked into life in Tad’s body, an animal instinct to preserve his life no matter what the cost. He rolled away from her attack as her blade cleanly cut through a yard of grass. He kept trying to move away from her, backpedaling, but she moved with him, not letting him out of the range of her sword, never letting him up. Then she was standing right over him, sword poised for the killing blow.

Tad aimed his crossbow straight up and pulled the trigger. The bolt hit her solidly, right there, and she didn’t even flinch. They just looked at each other for a moment, Aidan standing with the small sword in her fist, and Tad on the ground with the spent crossbow still in his hand.

“You did not just do that,” she said, and clubbed him with the pommel of Mr. Brightstar’s sword.

----

Tad woke suddenly, like one does when he realizes he has overslept and is late for something. Somebody was shouting.

“I’ll thank you for not killing my apprentice until AFTER he’s trained,”

“I thought he wasn’t your apprentice. And he’s fine,” she said encouragingly, “Look, he’s breathing.” Tad was hauled up onto his feet so fast his head spun. While getting his decidedly wobbly legs under him, he tried to remember what was so important that it had woken him up. “See, he’s standing.”

“Only because you’re holding him up. Let me have him, you’d break a fence post if you leaned on it.”

“He shot me.” Aidan draped one of Tad’s unresponsive limbs over Nolan’s shoulders. “Twice.”

“Good, you deserved it.” The halfling took Tad’s weight and got him moving towards the big house. “Come on boy, let’s get you some rest.”

Tad suddenly remembered what was so important. “I don wanna be a valay,” he tried to say very carefully, “don make me a valay, okay? Bein' house boy is boring. Sounds dumb.”

“Fine,” sighed Aidan, “you can come. Come and be a sneak thief for us.”

“Genlman venturer,” slurred Thaddius.

“You tell her, kid.”

6: Deeds and Dinner

The notables of the party were graciously received by Lady Calanth’s staff. Tad, on the other hand, was sent to the stables where he spent the rest of the afternoon grooming horses, first for his own party and then some belonging to the Lady. Horsemaster Lewis watched Tad critically at first, but soon gave him more animals to work on while a boy named Hank mucked out the stalls. “It seems my only reward for hard work is yet more work,” thought Tad ruefully.

But in truth he didn’t mind these horses. The princess, it seemed, bred the kind of fine riding horses favored by wealthy tradesmen and minor gentry -- beautiful animals of gentle temperment. He got all the burrs out of the manes and tails, brushed the coats until they shone, cleaned out the hooves, and did everything else that was required of him.

When the sun began to set, Tad and Hank and Lewis retired to the tack room at the back of the stables. There, by the light of an oil lamp, Lewis schooled the boys in the commendation knot. “This is how Riders put beads and medals into the mane. If you know how to read them, you can tell the whole history of a mount by what his Rider has woven in.” He used a thin hooked rod to pull strands of hair through a bead, then looped those strands around others to hold the bead in place. Tad watched Lewis carefully, then repeated the motions several times until he had a knot that actually held his bead in place. “Not bad,” nodded the horsemaster, “now do a whole row.”

While Tad and Hank practiced, the horsemaster told them about the commendations, which belonged to the horse rather than the Rider. First, a lock of the Rider’s hair was woven in with the mane, along with the Rider’s emblem. A miniature shield with a heraldic design denoted service to a particular noble or house, and beads directly beneath it represented years of service: one white bead for each year. Military campaigns each had their own special bead, which was long and stripped with different colors. Special or heroic service was marked by a medal, a very thin disk made of copper or silver about twice the size of a coin, stamped with the insignia of the noble who had been so ably served.

As he spoke, the lamplight showed all of the lines in Lewis’ weathered face. There was, in his recital, a kind of ritual. He had learned these things as a boy, had lived them as a Rider for many years, and had taught them to generations of younger men. When Rider Lewis passed into the lands of the Gods, those he had taught would pass on the same knowledge in the same way: gathered around lamplight after a day filled with the horses they loved so much.

“Do you come from an equestrian family, young Thaddius?” asked Lewis, breaking the spell.

“No sir, my kin were farmers. The only horse we had was for pulling wagons and things.” Tad felt a stone form in his gut when he thought of the home he could never go home to, because it was no longer there. If he could just concentrate hard enough on what his hands were doing, he knew the clenching feeling would go away.

“And how was it you ended up with your Master Brightstar?”

“I found him in a ditch, with some other children.” Mr. Brightstar entered the circle of light as if by some magic. “A troll went on a rampage through his hamlet, and Thaddius dragged a bunch of children into the ditch, out of sight. Saved the lot of them.”

Tad could feel the hot tears starting again, for about the thousandth time since That Day. Under the cover of putting away his tools, he turned away so the men could not see him cry. “By the time it was over, the only family he had left was an uncle who didn’t want him. It would have been a waste to leave him there, so I took him on.” Mr. Brightstar made it sound like someone had dropped a few coins, and he had simply picked them up.

Tad had lost everything at once, except for an uncle who drank too much and abused him at every turn. The few weeks he spent with his last remaining relative had made Tad wish the man had been killed like his parents. Tad tried not to wish terrible endings on his last living relative, like lying dead in a ditch, or being eaten by the giant wolves of the Angsul, or being swallowed by a dragon, but sometimes it was difficult.

Mr. Brightstar’s hand on his shoulder brought Tad back from his morbid thoughts. “Go get cleaned and dressed for dinner. And bring your Geranicus.”

---

Though she didn't look very well, the Lady Calanth was very beautiful in a silk black frock cinched with a wide black belt. That, and her long straight black hair and white skin made Tad think of a ghost in mourning. Her walk, although slow, was as smooth and graceful as if she were barely there. For reasons he could not fathom, Tad wanted to stand taller when she was near, and from the way they shifted when she entered a room, her servants felt the same.

After several minutes of trying very hard not to look at her directly, Tad finally gave in long enough to commit her face to memory. The Lady was in her early twenties, around the same age as Aidan and Naida, but a head shorter and without the same hardness in her arms and neck. She had the same heart-shaped face and straight nose as the doubty sisters, but instead of spending her years training for battle she had spent them training to do ... whatever it was princesses did.

She was, Tad would later learn, actually in mourning. Her family (she was a niece of the new Duke of Corak) had married her to a far-away lord in order to cement some alliance or other. So she journeyed up the Stair, over the desert, and into the principalities of Soubous to join her groom. It was in those weeks that she had met Mr. Brightstar and his friends, all of them being in the same caravan for a while. Their acquaintance had been short-lived however, as Mr. Brightstar’s party turned North at Vohanis (an infamous city) while the rest of the caravan, and Lady Calanth with it, continued West.

Once she arrived in far-off Ustolia and was married, the Lady Calanth had been treated as little more than a slave by her husband’s family. In spite of their noble name, that family was in deed as ignoble as any group of bandits or highwaymen. Her misery was destined to be brief, thanks to a rebellion against the hated nobles. In short order she was a widow and, for a little while at least, a penniless vagabond.

Calanth had quietly made her way back to Aspera and took up residence in a nearly-forgotten country house, named Farshore, there to sit out her required days of mourning. Distanced from a father who had sold her for political coin, free of a despised husband, and unencumbrered by anything resembling real grief, the Princess was enjoying an un-looked-for compensation: freedom to do as she pleased.

She had been free, that is, until a few nights previously. About the time Nadia and Aidan were riding out the gates of Corak, Lady Calanth succumbed to an urge to search her house. Not knowing what she was looking for, but certain she would know it when she found it, she had systematically dismantled most of the rooms in her house. She had explored, opened, emptied, overturned and, in some cases, broken anything and everything that might have been hiding the mysterious object of her search. When her friends and servants tried to restrain her she sickened, until they relented and allowed to get on with the destruction of her property.

It was the library which finally yielded results, in the form of a wooden box. This she guarded, lying on her sickbed, until it was put into the hands of the Sisters. In the few hours since then, her illness had broken and she began to get better.

The people might all be gathered in Lady Calanth’s house, but the real host this evening was the thing that had brought them together. The box now sat by the Princess’ place at the head of the dinner table, its dark finish reflecting the candlelight. It was the size of a stationery box: large enough to hold a supply of paper, pens, and ink. It was plain rosewood, without embellishment but of perfect workmanship. In a library, such a thing could be safely hidden for generations.

Dress for the guests was informal, both because of the Lady Calanth's illness, the disarray of her house, and the limited amount of space in the travelers' saddlebags. The Bishop dressed in the only wardrobe he possessed, a dark brown coat that buttoned along his left shoulder and down one side, and was long enough to reach his polished boots. From a silver chain around his neck dangled the sign of his order wrought in iron: a square bisected vertically with a cudgel symbolizing Order and Zeal.

The sisters had put aside their breeches, boots and protective leathers to don modest dresses in green (for Nadia) and blue-gray (for Aidan), and had adorned themselves with necklaces made of perls interspersed with beads of some exotic semi-precious stones. Minzerec wore a wizard's robe of deep purple, trimmed in arcane symbols embroidered with gold thread.

Earkey, who sat next to the physican, wore green pants, a white shirt stripped in green, a purple vest, and a brown jacket trimmed at the collar and cuffs with black fur. The back of his jacket had the figure of a silver dragon on it, painstakingly constructed from tiny scales of real silver sewn on individually. A green gem made up the fearsome creature's eye. When the gnome moved or a breeze blew by, the dragon shimmered. He was by far the most colorfuly dressed diner.

The Lady’s physician and the horsemaster were dressed much like Earkey only taller and with less flair. They were, in short, minor country gentlemen having dinner much as they would on any other night.

The elf, Basil, hadn't brought a change of clothes. The servants nearly had to strip him by force so they could wash his things, and had loaned him Asperan garb. Without his flowing robes and headwrap that hid his ears, however dirty they might have been, he looked even more out of place than normal. In drinking his third goblet of wine while everyone else was on their first, he was showing restraint Tad hadn’t witnessed before.

"The Harrells are related to all of the other royal families in Soubous and Aspera, of course," Lady Calanth was saying. "When I was younger I was insufferably proud of that. But when you realize just how many of us there are it becomes a lot less special. And that's not counting the unrecognized kin." Tad wondered what "unrecognized kin" were, exactly. Back home you had either belonged to a family or you didn’t. "I know I've read about a connection to a Hemet somewhere in our family histories, but I can't place it. It isn't in the last hundred years, I'm sure of that."

"Maybe before the reconstruction. It could be a noble line out of Ild-Eldir. Before it mostly fell into the ocean of course," offered Earkey.

"Actually,” added Mr. Brightstar, “I think Thaddius can help us to narrow down the time frame. My lady, if you would be so kind." The mystery box was passed down from Lady Calanth to Mr. Brightstar, who handed it backwards to Tad, who was standing with the other servers. "Have a peek inside and tell me what you think."

Tad stepped forward, suddenly aware of the nine pairs of eyes (not counting the servants), all focused on him. He chose to ignore the writing on the outside of the box for the moment and removed the lid. Inside was a kind of crow-like bird in flight, about nine inches from wingtip to wingtip, crafted in bronze. It was so realistic it looked as if a real bird had been captured in time and instantly turned into metal. When he looked closer, he could see that every individual feather had been defined in minute detail.

Using a napkin from the table to avoid touching the precious piece, Tad picked it up and turned it over. The heaviness of the thing belied the the feathers, which looked as if they could catch the wind at any moment. Underneath, the figure wasn't flat, or less detailed, or in any way inferior. It was just the same bird seen from below. He examined the edges of the wing for tell-tale signs of the molding typically used for this kind of work, but the only disturbance he found was that of the air that ruffled the very tip of the animal's feathers as it flew, frozen in time.

"It is fifth century, most likely between four sixty and four ninety-nine,” pronounced the boy.

Beauchamp, the Lady's healer, snorted. "What kind of parlor trick is this, Mr. Brightstar?"

"It isn't a parlor trick sir,” responded Tad, trying to keep that note of defiance out of his voice, the one that sometimes got him into trouble with his tutors, “it's a Harapa, from the master's own hand. I recognize it because my cousin was a journey silversmith, and I spent time in his workshop. I would have appenticed with his master if he had had room for me."

"Young man, almost being an apprentice silversmith does not make you an expert on bronzes."

"No sir. But Harapas are special, you can’t miss them. Nothing like them at all, not in bronze anyway. I've seen two others: one in my cousin's master's workstop, and another while traveling with Master Nolan." Tad put the piece lovingly back in it's box. "So ... Did you find out what the enchantment does?"

The whole table erupted into a wordless noise of disgruntlement. Thaddius had definitely said something wrong. Mortified, he tried to appologize to his master. "I'm very sorry sir," he said as queitly as he could while still being heard over the other voices, "I didn't mean to make people mad."

Far from being angry, Nolan waved away the appology. "Oh not at all, you're doing a splendid job."

The noise at the table died down as Minzerec lifted his hand for attention. "Young Thaddius, if you please. Perhaps you can explain to a room full of educated and accomplished people ... how is it you know the object is enchanted when I myself could not detect it?"

"Well sir, that's part of the legend. When Harapa worked on his masterpieces he did it in secret so nobody could steal his techniques. He never signed them, because he wanted them to be perfect. He never repeated himself. And he charged so much money that only Wizards would buy them. I guess for some reason his stuff was good for enchantments. The candlesticks I saw would burn candles really bright, without ever using them up, so maybe that part of the legend is true."

Nolan passed the box down to Aidan, "Aidan, if you please?" She picked up the bird and commanded it to "Speak." The thick bill began to move and a raspy voice cawed out in a high gravelly voice:

Old King Samit’s most feared power
crushes armies, topples towers
sinks ships, forges woe
lights the dark,
undoes foes.

The Old Rook lies in bronze retired:
exiled Magi, hunted liar.
Before you seek what he concealed
ask this:
Is truth always best revealed?

Thaddius stood there, under the eyes of everyone, skin tingling and his mind racing. King Samit was the first king of Aspera, twenty-three centuries ago. He had just read about the man days ago, in his Geranicus. Samit had been a deadly warrior and, according to Geranicus, a great ruler. But he didn't have power like a priest or a mage, not unless you counted ...

... "not the relics of Samit, sir? Do you think it's talking about one of them? I thought they were all supposed to be lost."

"An interesting turn of phrase. Why don't you refresh our memories from your book?"

Tad produced the book from his jacket pocket and thumbed backward from his bookmark ("At War With the Imperium") until he reached a small subheading in the first third of the little tome.

"Read it out loud enough for us down here," called Calanth from the far end of the table.

Thaddius began,

The Relics of Samit

Samit claimed his rule was by divine right, as evidenced by possession of three holy relics. These were given to him by the priests of the temples at Oxhed, Nychanter, and Corak, as a symbol of his fitness to rule and the favor of the gods. As we will see later, much of the romance of the First King surround these mystical artifacts, and the deeds he performed with them.

The most famous of these was the sword Enercrist, with which he subdued his enemies. The sword could cut through even the thickest of armor, drive away fear, and destroy undead. The second relic was the throne from whence King Samit dispensed justice. No lie, deceit, or disguise could endure its presence. The last relic was the royal scepter, which had the power to break any magic at the King’s will.

When Samit died his three sons divided the relics among them. Over the the course of several centuries their families guarded the items jelously until wars and subterfuges caused all the relics to be lost.

Enercrist

The most famous relic was the sword Enercrist, which was willed to the King's oldest son Jamyt. His precise reasons for willing the great sword to his eldest son was never explained, but the course of history suggests there was some logic. As the best recognized of all the relics, it was reasonable to give it to the son who would be king. King Jamyt also had a very combative personality, much like his father before him, and possession of the sword suited his temperment.

Enercrist was last wielded by King Levonitas the Younger when he ejected the Empire from Aspera c.330 CE. That war ended when King Levonitas and the emperor's War Marshal met each other on the field of battle in personal combat. Levonitas carried the day, but the sword was broken during the fight.

Records state that the shards of Enercrist were entombed with its last master, deep under Oxhed. Rumors persist that the pieces of Enercrist are kept in the royal armory, or that the sword was never broken at all. But these are entirely unsubstantiated.

The High Seat

Samit willed his throne to his youngest son Ulstrom. Still a very young man then, Prince Ulstrom had what his father called "good horse sense", and in his adult years the youngest prince was known for his insight and his keen sense of justice. In time he became High Justicar of the realm. He ran an itinerant high court, constantly touring the kingdom to hear cases instead of remaining in Oxhed. Samit's throne went with Ulstrom as he traveled his circuit, and in time acquired such monikers as “the High Seat”, and “Seat of Justice”.

All of this left Ulstrom's brother the King without a throne to sit on. King Jamyt built a grander one out of rare woods and precious metals, more fit for a king in its appearance. Later kings tried to take possession of the High Seat, which was ultimately spirited away by Ulstrom's descendants. It resurfaced again briefly after Asperian independence from the empire, but disappeared again in the fifth century.

Orb of Nychanter

Samit's middle son Kagan received the scepter. It was a rod of cold iron capped with a platinum design on the bottom, and at the top a massive diamond shaped into a many-faceted orb. Although seldom seen, the Orb was reportedly in the possession of Kagan's family in the palace of Nychanter where it was never publicly displayed (perhaps because of its obvious intrinsic value).

The Orb was verifiably seen at least twice after Samit's death. Once it was used to defeat the enchantress Kotmar when she tried to lay a spell on the entire keep. It was used again during the war against Emperor Mosyph. It gave the emperor so much trouble that he confiscated it, but it was returned to Kagan's descendants as part of the terms of Asperian surrender.

The Orb reportedly remained in the care of Kagan's descendants until 989, when floods washed away the palace along with most of the city. But in fact there are no documented sightings of the orb after 1 BCE.

"So which of these do we think is the most feared?" speculated the Bishop.

"The sword" said both of the sisters.

"The scepter," said Minzerec with his usual certainly.

"The Throne," pronounced Lady Calanth at the same time as the others.

Thaddius took the bird from Aidan, then put it back into its box and gingerly closed the lid. On it was inlaid in gold script:

Whiterose Hall holds for you what should not be lost, but can not be used.
You hold for us, when we can not hold for ourselves.
This our covenant is signed in the blood of Hemet’s sons.