by Randy Nargi
“Not fail me? Rowe, all you’ve done is fail me—right from the start. No, I’m afraid that I have serious doubts about your ability to even locate Talessa Kreed, let alone recover the aona.”
“Just give us one more chance, Master Kodd.”
The mage didn’t say anything for several moments. He just fixed Mortam Rowe with his beady eyes.
“I suppose you’d want me to arrange to for your travel down to the Wilderlands, eh?”
“No, Master. We’ll find our own way.”
Harnotis Kodd fluttered his hand. “Very well. Go. Try to prove me wrong.”
“Thank you, Master!”
“But mind me, Mr. Rowe. Fail me again and it will be you who is hunted.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Once Sward was able to travel, Bander and the mage took a public portal to Hamwick, bought some horses, and then—after Bander made sure they were not being followed—they set off west on a sleepy country lane, past fields and farms and the occasional hamlet and homestead.
As usual, the exact location of Valthar’s lodge had been obscured in Bander’s memory, but he used the ‘green man on a red door’ trick to get them to Valthar’s home.
“This is where that old scamp lives?” Eton Sward asked as they stood in front of the vine-covered stone lodge. “He must be wealthier than I thought.”
The door creaked open and Valthar stood there, scowling and leaning on his cane. “What are you two vermin waiting for? Enter!”
“Good to see you too, Devil Dog.”
As they walked into the hall, Valthar shoved something into Eton Sward’s hand.
“Ho, what’s this? I didn’t know you missed me so much.” He held up what Valthar had given him—a silver wristlet.
“Put it on and keep it on,” Valthar said.
“Not quite to my taste, Devil Dog. But I do appreciate the sentiment.”
“It’s to protect us against divination, you rumpkin!”
“Divination? I hardly think anyone will bother with that.”
“No, he’s right,” Bander said to Eton Sward. “I instructed Langer to report that you had died in the fire.”
“You what?”
“But when they don’t find your body, it won’t be long before someone starts looking for you—magically.”
Eton Sward nodded and slipped on the wristlet on. “We’re far enough from the Steading that divination wouldn’t detect me, but better safe than sorry, I guess.”
Valthar said, “Yes, but if the Guild really wanted to look, they’d have every mage in the Empire cast the spell. Someone might be close enough to find you.”
“Fair enough.”
“Now come in and make yourself comfortable. We have much to discuss.”
“I will join you momentarily,” Bander said. “Someone needs to tend to the horses.”
He went out and led the horses back to the stables, rubbed them down, and made sure they had grain and water. Then he used the outhouse and returned to the lodge.
Inside, Bander found Eton Sward and Valthar relaxing with glasses of uskbow in front of the fireplace in the great hall.
“This one actually doesn’t look worse for the wear,” Valthar said, nodding at Eton Sward.
“That’s easy for you to say. You were not almost ripped from limb to limb. Tell him Bander.”
“I already did,” Bander said. “You both know as much as I do—which isn’t much.”
“Grab yourself a glass, Bander,” Valthar said. “I’m serving the good stuff. Unlike our deadbeat friend here. And while you’re up, tend to the fire, won’t you?”
Bander added a few logs to the fire. A little more than two weeks into the new year and the air was as cold as in the dead of winter. Cold and uncomfortable. Hamwick didn’t get much snow, but the air was damp year round, so the fire was very welcome. As was the uskbow.
“So what do we know of these assailants then?” Valthar asked.
“There were two of them, of course,” Eton Sward said. “One slight and one nearly as big as Bander.”
Bander shook his head. “Not nearly as big as me. Not really. At most, Keave stood six feet tall, and I doubt he topped two hundred and a quarter pounds.”
“How can you be so sure?” Eton Sward asked.
“He spent a good amount of time perched on my chest. Which was not pleasant.”
“And this was the mage?” Eton Sward asked.
“Possibly,” Bander said. “All I know is that Keave dove over the wall a moment after I had tossed his friend Mortam Rowe. But if one of them cast that teleport spell, it must have been Keave. Rowe was unconscious at best, but most likely dead from the blow I delivered.”
“Right,” Valthar continued. “Two men. One big, one small. The big one may be a mage—possibly even a battle mage.”
“But he was definitely a brawler. I never saw anyone move that quickly.”
“So perhaps a swift spell?” Eton Sward asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe his speed was natural. Maybe not.”
“Anything else about this Keave?” Valthar asked.
Bander shook his head. “He was dressed normally. Dark clothes. Nothing ostentatious. He was relatively clean—”
“And the other man?” Valthar asked. “Mortam Rowe?”
“He was definitely the leader. A slight man. More refined.”
“How do you know?”
“His speech patterns. His movements. How he carried himself.”
“I can confirm that,” Eton Sward said. “He was very polite. Right up until the time he struck me with his truncheon. Which, by the by, he spoke to lovingly and referred to as Belle.”
“What?” Valthar asked.
“I cosh you not, friends.”
“I saw it, too,” Bander said. “In fact, I threw it in the lake.”
“Why? We might have used it to track them.”
Bander shrugged. “I was not in the best of moods.”
“What else?” Valthar asked, taking a swallow of uskbow.
“Accents,” Bander said. “Slight, but Northern to be sure. I’d place them in Lhawster.”
“Well then—”
Bander interrupted Valthar. “You forgot the most important thing. They knew exactly who I was, where I’d been, and knew that I was in possession of an aona.”
They kept talking until dark and then Valthar served them a stew made from leeks and potatoes. It was surprisingly tasty, and Bander told Valthar so.
After dinner the three of them returned to the great hall and continued their discussion in front of the hearth.
At the end of the evening, there were still more questions than answers. All that they could conclude was that there were suddenly more parties interested in aonae and likely someone at Prichard’s had informed Rowe and Keave that Bander had been given one as a reward. But that didn’t explain how they had been tracked to Irfals.
The idea that more people were aware of aonae seemed to greatly dismay Valthar.
“And why is that so surprising?” Bander asked.
Valthar glanced at Sward. “As far as I know, Sward here is the only other person alive besides me who is studying the time temples.”
“I find that difficult to believe,” Bander said. “If these temples and amulets do what you say they do—”
“Please, spare us your naysaying,” Valthar said. “The hour is far too late for that.”
“My point is that time travel is a rather significant power. I would think the Guild would be devoting considerable resources to both acquiring these aonae and understanding the mechanics of the time temples.”
“Well, they’re not!” Valthar muttered.
“My dear Bander, do you have any idea of how many magical artifacts the Guild has in its possession?” Eton Sward asked. “How many they are studying?”
“A lot.”
“A lot indeed. Thousands. Many thousands. And that’s a conservative estimate.”
Bander didn’
t say anything.
Eton Sward continued, “And do you know how many lore mages are active in the entire Guild?”
Bander knew that—throughout the whole of the Empire—there were roughly two thousand Guild-sanctioned mages. But he had no idea of how that broke down among the various specialties.
“I’d say no more than five hundred,” Valthar said.
“236,” Eton Sward said. “That’s all the lore mages in the Guild. Most of them are at Delham. There’s a few at Skydagger, and we lost a good number at the Esoterium when Waterside fell.”
The memory of that tragedy was still painful for Bander. It was something that might very well haunt him for the rest of his life.
Eton Sward continued, “So two hundred or so researchers and several thousand artifacts to research—”
“But someone must prioritize them,” Bander said.
“Of course. Right now Hartigan Luce in Three Rivers heads up Lore. And there’s Faran Marr, of course. But every one of those 236 magical researchers has his or her own desired projects.” Eton Sward took a drink. “I just wish all my books hadn’t been destroyed. At least we’d have something more to go on.”
“They haven’t all been destroyed,” Valthar said. He rose stiffly and shuffled to a table. He picked up a book and presented it to Eton Sward. It was Burritch’s Travels.
The mage was almost in tears. “Thank you, Devil Dog.”
“I promised to keep it safe, didn’t I?” Valthar huffed.
Bander turned to him. “So you’ve had the book for several days now. Have you discovered anything?”
“What’s there to discover? We know Burritch found the Temple of Fate. His descriptions are certainly good enough for us to find it as well.”
“On the contrary, Burritch’s descriptions are woefully inadequate,” said Eton Sward. “He mentions a valley with some exposed stone. And then a canyon with some old structures up on a ridge. We don’t know where exactly he tried to cross the Crantochs. We don’t know which valley he entered and which canyon and which ridge. And damned if I’ll travel 300 miles into the jungle without knowing where I’m going. We are not young men any more.”
Bander glanced over at Valthar. “If I recall correctly, you were reading me the passage where Burritch first enters what he calls the chapel…”
“Indeed, and if you can restrain yourself from running off again, I might endeavor to read it again.”
“Please do.”
Valthar took the book back from Eton Sward and spent a few moments trying to find the proper place and then began to read aloud.
Captain Wabsel was loath to enter the structure and none of our bearers would lay camp within a hundred yards of the edifice, but Jinton Holm and I girded ourselves and entered the Chapel.
It was smaller than Aravat to be sure, but there was a central tower squarely built in the Providian fashion with machicolations and lancet windows and the building was arranged in a distinctive cruciform design.
“Just like every other temple in the world,” Eton Sward said dismissively.
Valthar continued reading.
Inside we found a long pillared hall with graven images leading to an altar of black stone, fifteen hands long and five wide. Rows of tall windows, all missing their glass, lined the walls of the central hall.
Holm approached the altar, drawn to it as a thirsty man is drawn to a spring. He rested his head upon it and closed his eyes as if in a deep slumber. At the time, I did not think of it, instead content to scour the rest of the structure: the transepts, the nave, the chantries, and the central tower. Alas, all had been long abandoned and bereft of any antiquities. The building was a mere shell, mostly lifeless and empty.
After several hours, I beckoned Holm to depart, but he refused, intending to spend the night there in the hall. I would not leave him there alone, so I retrieved our bedrolls, and we set up camp ’neath the black stone altar, while the remainder of our company slept under the stars, some distance from the Chapel.
In the morn, the spell that had held Holm enthralled must have lifted, for he awoke bright of eye and with good humor. We bade the ancient fane farewell and continued on our westward journey.
“That is all Burritch wrote of the temple,” Valthar said.
“If it was a temple at all,” Eton Sward said. “The description is inconclusive.”
There was something in Burritch’s narrative that struck Bander as significant, but he could not quite put his finger on it. Right now, it was just a nagging notion.
“A cross-shaped stone building with a tower, transepts, and a nave,” Valthar said. “Of course it was a temple. The Temple of Fate.”
Eton Sward shook his head. “Very well, I’ll grant you that Burritch might have discovered some sort of temple-like edifice, but it most certainly was not the Temple of Fate.”
“Bah!” Valthar waved at Eton Sward dismissively.
“I once did a survey of the architectural records,” Eton Sward said. “Throughout the Empire there are or were 319 temples, fanes, shrines, or kirks that fit that general description. Our ancestors were an extremely superstitious lot, you know.”
Valthar did not have an immediate retort to that, so the three men sat in silence for several moments.
Then Bander said, “I still find it difficult to believe that the aonae are not a Guild priority and I happen to be sitting with the only two men in the entire Empire who are interested in aonae.”
“Well, we are,” Valthar said.
Eton Sward leaned back in his chair and let out a long sigh.
“What?” Valthar demanded.
“It may be true that we are the only two men in Harion with an interest in aonae, but we are not the only two people with such an interest.”
“Stop speaking in riddles, Sward.”
“There is a woman—a rather unsavory woman—in Malverton. She has at least three aonae. Reportedly.”
“What? Why would you keep this information to yourself?” Valthar’s eyes flashed.
Eton Sward looked into the fire. “She’s no scholar.”
“Who is she?” Bander asked.
“Her name is Talessa Kreed. She claims to have a rather famous ancestor.”
“You jest.”
“No, she represents herself as a direct descendant of Arrington Kreed.”
That was difficult for Bander to believe. Arrington Kreed was perhaps the most famous explorer of all time, but he died three centuries ago. Not many outside of a few renowned family dynasties could actually trace their lineage back that far.
“What’s she doing in Malverton?” Valthar asked. “Is she looking for the temple as well?”
“She lives there, apparently. I don’t know much more, other than that she fancies herself an explorer like her famed ancestor. But the locals know her as a smuggler and an infamous criminal more than anything else.”
“Sounds like someone you might be familiar with,” Valthar said to Bander.
“Not necessarily,” Bander said. “Especially if she operates outside the Empire’s borders.”
Over the decade he served as Imperial Investigator, Bander had become familiar with many of the Empire’s most notorious criminals. But it had been four years since he retired and the criminal ranks were ever-changing.
He asked, “Does she know what the aonae do?”
Eton Sward rubbed his eyes. “Damned if I know. Maybe she just collects them because she thinks that they are pretty, but somehow I doubt it.”
“I wonder if she knows anything about the place Burritch described,” Bander mused.
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Valthar said. “We need to travel to Malverton with all haste and ask this Talessa Kreed ourselves.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Malverton Trading Post stood roughly two hundred miles south of Vale, right on the edge of the misty Tengan jungle which ran to the end of the continent. Malverton was situated on a wide, slow-moving river—the Urfantis—wh
ich ran southwest from the Manitorn Hills.
The ancient city itself—if you could call it that—was generally considered a wretched place, filled with more villains than honest citizens. Several thousand people packed into a decrepit, waterlogged jumble of ramshackle buildings, stacked one on top of the other.
Centuries ago, Malverton had been an exciting frontier town, buoyed by trade coming from the river and overland route to the southern port city of Querrin, but these days it was much more efficient for goods to be sent by merchant ship directly into Rundlun’s harbor. Malverton had devolved into a run-down nest of thieves, smugglers, and other assorted scum.
Eton Sward had put Valthar in contact with a mage in Vale who could open up a portal to the edge of Malverton, no questions asked. Bander sincerely hoped that was true—especially given how much Valthar had paid the man.
As they pushed their way through the crowds of downtown Malverton, Bander noticed Valthar coughing and wheezing.
“Are you unwell?”
Valthar waved his hands. “I had forgotten how bad it was down here. It’s like trying to breathe soup.”
“Take shallow breaths until you get used to it.”
Valthar was right. The thick, foggy, humid air was unnatural, and buzzed with the sound of strange and unfamiliar insects—a good number of which probably found their way into Valthar’s lungs.
Shops and residences stacked high likes crates in a warehouse rose along narrow, canyon-like streets, blocking out the already-anemic sun and shrouding the town in dull shadows.
“Are we walking in the right direction?” Valthar asked.
“I have no idea,” Bander said. “I haven’t been here in at least fifteen years. The city looks completely unfamiliar to me.”
“I think it’s over here,” Eton Sward said. “Near the statues.” He led them to higher ground where the streets were marginally less muddy and the smell was marginally less pungent.
Finally they arrived at their destination, a large three-story inn perched on a hill overlooking the river. The Crown of the Jungle may not have lived up to its grand name, but it certainly appeared sturdier than most of the other inns in town. A room here cost quite a bit more, but Bander wasn’t too worried about that, since Valthar was paying.