“Not afraid?” The dwarf’s face was dark as a storm cloud. “Tell me, Nail, what was it you saw when you gathered the ax and stone from under the cross-shaped altar at Roahm? What was it you saw carved on that altar?”
Nail didn’t feel as glib as before. He knew exactly what carvings the dwarf was referring to. How can he know what I saw? How can he know the altar was cross-shaped?
“I was there with Nail in Roahm.” Stefan spoke up. “I didn’t see anything.”
Roguemoore still stared at Nail with a questioning, cold gaze.
“There were carvings on the base of the altar, Stef.” Nail looked at his friend. “I didn’t see them at first either. You and Gisela had already left the room when I heard a noise and turned back and looked into that tomb. The altar was moving, slowly sinking into the floor . . . and carved into the base were many foul carvings.”
“Carvings?” Stefan questioned. “Of what?”
“Nameless beasts of the underworld.” His statement was followed by a deathly, sickly silence.
“Everything is now cursed,” Liz Hen muttered.
Dokie did the three-fingered sign of the Laijon Cross over his heart.
“They were just ancient carvings,” Nail said. “I wasn’t frightened or anything.”
Roguemoore fixed him with another hard stare. “You should have been.”
Nail was frightened now, all right, frightened of the look in the dwarf’s eyes.
“Let me explain something,” Roguemoore went on. “The mines where these ancient weapons of Laijon are hidden are tied to the history of the Five Isles and the nameless beasts of the underworld in more ways than any one of us might realize. Especially at Deadwood Gate like Culpa has said. But like everything, most stories of those bygone ages have been forgotten. Make no mistake, there is a seductive nature to the mines. You will all feel it once you enter.”
The fire crackled loudly and the dwarf’s voice dropped an octave. “Gold was always known to exist in the Glacier Range, and the Autumn Range, and near Deadwood Gate, also silver, iron ore. We may find that every mine in Gul Kana may hide a lot of things besides silver and gold within their bellies. In ages gone by, something far more sinister was going on in Gul Kana than just gold mining. The mines became a place where oghuls practiced dark magics. Caverns full of secret druid cults competed with covens of oghuls and Vallè witches and worse. Those mines were all abandoned for a reason. Evil lives in these dungeons we are aiming for. And I mean an evil none of us want any part of, an evil that is capable of ripping us to shreds in more ways than one.”
“You’re scaring me,” Liz Hen said.
“I mean to scare you,” the dwarf answered her.
Dokie stared at the fire with a pale face and dull, sunken eyes. Liz Hen put her arm over his shoulder, fright in her eyes too. Even Beer Mug’s tail had ceased its wagging.
Roguemoore kicked a stone into the fire, then looked up with a searing gaze. “There is an ancient text, even more ancient than The Moon Scrolls of Mia or The Way and Truth of Laijon. A text penned in an ancient, forgotten tongue, whether a dwarven or Vallè language, or a combination of both, I do not know. But my brother Ironcloud, along with another friend, work on deciphering the secrets of this ancient writing. It is called The Angel Stone Codex. Ironcloud was to bring what information he’d gleaned to our rendezvous point at the Turn Key Saloon. The codex speaks of times before humans even arrived on the Five Isles. It speaks of these things hidden in the deeper and darker places of the world.”
“More blasphemy.” Liz Hen did the three-fingered sign of the Laijon Cross over her heart. “Angel Stone Codex. Naught but more blasphemy. Can’t nothing in it be true.”
Roguemoore ignored her and continued. “The dwarves used to be great miners. That is, until my ancestors were scared from the caverns they created. Now we dwarves are but peaceful farmers in southern Wyn Darrè. Before there was a Laijon or Warrior Angels, my ancestors discovered that there are secrets buried deep in the fabric of Gul Kana and all the Five Isles, subterranean currents of evil weaving to and fro under every mountain range, beneath every town and castle and keep and fertile valley. Disturbing secrets. Secrets kept by the Vallè. Secrets hidden by the church of Laijon, hidden even by the Blessed Mother Mia, and even secrets hidden by those bawdy old dwarf miners themselves. And worst of all, secrets that I fear the oghuls have not forgotten. The Hragna’Ar prophecies of oghul-kind are so old they have no beginning. You mix all those secrets into one boiling pot and you’ve got yourself one stew, ripe for all manner of fiery deprivation and death. According to what few things Ironcloud has so far discovered within the pages of The Angel Stone Codex, those ancient dwarves found their doom—”
The dwarf was cut off as Dokie hunched forward and belched up a stream of vomit straight into the fire.
“Now look what you’ve gone and done.” Liz Hen bolted to her feet and patted Dokie gently on the back. “You’ve scared the poor boy completely sick.”
† † † † †
As Nail sat on the lichen-covered boulder, looking at Ava’s turtle carving, he was acutely aware of the lingering effect of Seita’s touch. It was with some jealousy that he watched the Vallè prepare to shave Stefan next. Nail’s friend sat astraddle a thick deadfall spruce. Seita sat astraddle the same log, facing Stefan, a thin silver dagger in one hand, her other hand wetting his face with the damp, warm rag.
After dinner, Liz Hen and Dokie had retired to bed atop one of the canvas tarps, burying themselves under heavy blankets. Godwyn and Roguemoore had retired too. Culpa and Val-Draekin remained at the fire. Stefan and Nail had removed their makeshift armor and retreated into the trees about thirty paces away from camp, leaving just enough firelight to shave by. Seita had accompanied them into the darkness.
Initially, as Stefan began to shave him, Nail had been less than inclined to let Seita help. But Stefan happily moved aside when the Vallè asked, and she had taken over with a deft, gentle hand. And as she had shaved him with the sharp silver blade, Nail couldn’t help but take keen notice of her nearness. Her eyes were as pure as melted gemstones, like the blue angel stone Gisela had found in the altar. Only Seita’s jewel-like orbs were wild and green and reflected with perfect brightness in the dim firelight. She had been near enough to him that he had felt her warmth and sweet breath.
Once Nail’s shave was done, he’d let Stefan have the seat in front of Seita. And when Stefan removed his shirt so she could shave better around his neck, Nail felt unexpected pangs of jealousy lance through his heart. Without armor plate or a shirt to cover him, Stefan’s chest was rippled with muscle, his arms sinewy and rigid as stout garden vines. Nail knew he cut a much more muscular figure than his friend. But he wasn’t the one sitting half-naked in front of the Vallè maiden now. You’re a damn fool, thinking jealous thoughts like that, Nail. But how could he not?
Seita hadn’t really spoken much to Nail during his shave, but she was opening up to Stefan just fine. “I watched you carve Gisela’s name into the white bark of an aspen when we were setting up camp.” She nodded toward the tree just behind Stefan, the tree that now bore Gisela’s name. “Her name is carved into your bow. Plus, I’ve watched you carve her name in numerous places along the way. The surface of the newly polished table at the Turn Key Saloon, the mizzenmast of the Duchess of Devlin. I saw you scratch her name into several rocks in the gorge whenever we’d stop for rest and drink. And now the tree behind you. Are you marking our path?”
Stefan remained silent, the Adam’s apple of his throat bobbing slightly.
“Do you think her ghost follows you?” she asked.
“It’s just something I do,” Stefan muttered, trying to keep his head steady for her blade. Even from where he sat, Nail could detect the slight watering of his friend’s eyes.
“You must have really loved her,” Seita said.
Stefan did not answer.
“What was Gallows Haven like?” she asked him next.
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br /> “Like nothing,” Stefan answered softly, lapsing into silence.
“Tell us what Val Vallè is like,” Nail said, hoping for Stefan’s sake the girl would not go back to talking about Gisela and Stefan’s carvings or Gallows Haven. Only sorrow resided down those paths.
“Val Vallè is only where I was born,” Seita answered. “I spent little time there. I’ve lived mostly in the court of the king in Amadon. With Borden Bronachell. Now his son, Jovan. I live there with my father, Val-Korin. Ambassadorship is my father’s heritage, and will probably be my heritage as well someday.”
Nail really hadn’t thought of a follow-up question, and he was irritated with himself over his first question. Seita hadn’t divulged any new or interesting information he wasn’t already privy to, anything she hadn’t already told them on their voyage north from Lord’s Point.
“Roguemoore and Godwyn told both Val-Draekin and me that you were curious about who your real parents are,” Seita said to him. “Is it true you do not know your own heritage?”
Nail was thrown wholly off guard by her question. A twinge of anger rose up within him. Anger that the dwarf and the bishop had told the two Vallè he was a bastard. Anger that they’d been discussing him without so much as a by-your-leave.
“It’s true.” His answer was a bit more haughty than he would have liked. “I have asked some people what they might know of my parents.” He could feel the resentment and discontent in his words as they spilled forth unbidden. “All I get are lies. First from my master. Then from Roguemoore. They know more than they let on.” Hawkwood was also likely full of lies. He didn’t know why he had just unleashed such bitterness and information on her.
“So why don’t you ask the dwarf about your parents again now?”
“Why would I? I was born, and they are gone. What of it?”
Seita, done shaving Stefan, began cleaning her knife. She did not follow up on Nail’s parentage but asked a different question that threw him immediately off guard again. “You have seen a Vallè like me before, a maiden with blond hair?”
Nail’s gaze crawled nervously to Stefan, hoping his friend remained silent.
But Stefan answered anyway. “On the trail above Gallows Haven. We saw someone who looked exactly like you. She rode a black mare with red-glowing eyes. The same mare we found dead in the elk trap weeks later, the one Liz Hen talked of.”
Seita’s bright green eyes turned to Nail. “And that girl on the black mare said something to you, Nail. Do you remember what it was she said?”
Of course he remembered. You are not of my blood, the Vallè had said. Still, they will be coming for you. It was meaningless gibberish. Or was it? How could he know?
“Well, do you recall?” Seita pressed.
“No.” Nail stood, eyes lingering on the Vallè maiden, then Stefan. “I do not recall.”
Alone, he made his way quietly back toward the fire.
* * *
Raijael’s blood shall not be drawn by the hand of man, or he would not be the Angel Prince. He shall remain spotless and uninjured until the end. Praise be to Raijael, master of the last day of Fiery Absolution.
—THE CHIVALRIC ILLUMINATIONS OF RAIJAEL
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
GAULT AULBREK
1ST DAY OF THE ANGEL MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON
AMADON, GUL KANA
He was cold. He was hungry. Savagely hungry. But the rotten food and other things being hurled at him were less than appetizing. If this were to be the end of him, he was beginning to feel the first inklings of sadness and regrets, something he had never felt before. He couldn’t stop thinking of his vanished faith in Raijael and Laijon. Or how he felt about Ava Shay. Or how he missed his stepdaughter, Krista. Or his wife, Avril.
Naught but two short years together, and after all this time, he longed for Avril. He had a clear memory of the day and place they had first met. He a knight of Sør Sevier ranging the Nordland Highlands, she a lonely cloaked figure upon a windswept plain, a babe cradled in her arms. He could still recall the very spot where he’d found her, a harsh but strikingly beautiful place, a dusky ridge of sharp rock and dry peat in a long, hollow valley just north of Stone Loring. When he died, he was to have had his ashes spread there. It was a location he had picked out and hand-written in the Chivalric Illuminations, a special spot where his comrades in arms were to have left his burnt remains. For it was the lone place in the entirety of the Five Isles he’d first discovered joy, the one place his mind always drifted toward for comfort.
He was facing backward in the oxcart, tied to a massive ten-foot-high oak stump, his back pressed against the rough, knotty pole, allowing him to look out over the angry mobs following the cart, lining the streets. Hawkwood was tied on the other side of the same oaken pole, facing forward. They were being paraded through Amadon toward the Hall of the Dayknights and Purgatory. Early on, as they’d first rattled out of the castle, Gault had taken a blow to the temple from a heavy cabbage that had threatened to black him out. He kept his lone unhurt eye pried open and struggled to clear his head. Hammerfiss had stepped from the crowd and stitched his swollen eye open. He was not happy with his fellow Knight Archaic for that. Spades had stayed down there on the cobbles, tossing a coin and watching his humiliation with a joyous gleam in her eye.
He was covered in slime and feces. Meanwhile the tall white marble buildings of Amadon rose up glorious all around him, temples, cathedrals, palaces, gladiator arenas. Hundreds of buildings, each more grand and glorious than the next. All made of exquisite marble slabs cut hundreds of feet high and hundreds of feet square. And the teeming throngs of this majestic city lined the streets, continuing to jeer and curse. “You are no gladiator!” some in the throng chanted. “Squireck will behead you!” And they laughed at him. Laughed and laughed. Even mocked his dead wife. Mocked his stepdaughter. They even mocked the fact that he loved her so much and she wasn’t even of his own loins. But not wanting to show weakness, Gault just smiled back at them, a big grin. But he knew his bitterness was all but evident at the corners of his mouth.
Show no flaw. Show no vulnerability nor fragility.
Aeros Raijael came drifting out of the crowd then. The Angel Prince carried a glowing green gem in one hand, an ox-horned battle helm in the other. Lonesome Crown! The angel stone! Gault felt desire well up within his very soul. He had wanted to possess the helm and stone ever since seeing Aeros take them from King Torrence on the Aelathia Plains. “They belong to you, Gault Aulbrek!” Aeros tossed Lonesome Crown and the green angel stone up into the cart. “You will soon be in the arena. Use the stone to your advantage! Never take off the Gladiator’s helm—”
Gault was jerked awake to a deeply rooted sense of disorientation and dread, that and the sound of heavily armored knights crossing stone cobbles. It was cold. And he was hungry. The footfalls grew louder, and suddenly several dark forms entered the chamber.
It was Leif Chaparral and Jovan Bronachell, some twenty other spear-weilding Dayknights marching into the room behind them, a handful bearing torches.
“Where is Hawkwood?” Leif’s voice clapped like thunder through the vaulted chamber. “Where has he gone?”
“But Ser,” one of the two Dayknight guards lined up against the far wall began, “you know very well that—” In two limping strides Leif was across the room, slapping the black helm off the guard’s face with a gauntleted hand. As the helm clattered on the floor, the knight stood helmetless and ashen, fear rising in his face, round eyes bouncing from Leif to the king.
Gault sat up straight, fully awake now.
Leif raged, “I bring our king down into Purgatory to speak with the prisoner only to find the prisoner not in his cell! Where is Hawkwood?”
The Dayknight guard bowed, looking woozy from the blow to his face. “Pardon, Ser Leif, but—” Leif’s gauntleted hand slapped him across the face again and the guard crumpled to the floor in a heap of black armor, unconscious.
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sp; Stiff and aching, Gault gathered himself off the floor. He stepped to the bars of his own cage, face pressed to the cold iron, basking in the flickering warmth of the many torches of the Dayknights behind Jovan. Things were getting interesting. And Gault was up for anything to break the dread boredom of Purgatory.
The other guard looked like he wanted to speak, but he didn’t. He stood rigid at attention. Leif shouted at the man, “I do not care which one of the two of you colluded to help Hawkwood escape from this cell, or if it was both of you. Either way, you will pay!”
“How can Hawkwood be gone?” Jovan yanked Leif around by the shoulder of his heavy cape. “How could he have escaped a second time? I put you in charge of this.”
“Hawkwood was here, Your Excellency.” Leif’s voice held only a tinge of anxiety. “The last I saw him, he was here. In the cage adjacent to Gault’s.”
But as both Gault and Leif and the guard well knew, Hawkwood had lived in the confines of that barred cell for all of about three minutes before he’d vanished like smoke in the darkness. The only ones oblivious to the truth were Jovan and the twenty other Dayknights behind him. In fact, most every Dayknight that came down into this place was told that Hawkwood was held in a cell somewhere else in the dungeons. It looked like Leif’s subterfuge was finally unraveling.
“Hawkwood likely went out the same way as Tala and Glade.” Leif pointed to the dark gap under the column across the room. Yes, it appeared like it was finally Leif’s day of reckoning and he was covering his tracks—with confidence, too. Gault detected not a stitch of fear in his voice. His gross ineptitude has created one colossal mess after the next and yet he carries on undaunted.
Leif was still pointing. “That is the route your sister and my brother took when they had their little adventure down here. We still haven’t figured out how to close the gap. Glade said it had something to do with the torches along the wall, but no amount of poking and prodding the torches has so far closed the gap. But I imagine this man and his unconscious friend knows—” He whirled back to the guard still standing at attention. “For they would have been here when Hawkwood made his escape. Hawkwood was chained in that cage with these two knights as guard. They have failed us. This man and his companion lying on the floor have failed us!” Leif looked at Jovan. “What would you have me do, Your Excellency?”
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