by Anthony Ryan
Sihlda took the jar from me and held it out until I dropped the coin into it. “It came into my hands a long time ago, but that is a story for another time.” She set the jar back into position in its finely carved alcove and replaced the lid. “A humble relic for a man who valued humility above all things. For he saw that when we humble ourselves, we are redeemed.”
Shifting her gaze from the jar she captured me once again, her eyes snaring me as easily as the manacles that had so recently bound me to the chainsman’s cart. “Are you willing to humble yourself, Alwyn? Are you willing to be redeemed by Martyr Callin’s example?”
A faint, forlorn chorus of lies rose and died within me. Telling this imprisoned luminary of the Covenant all she wanted to hear was certainly a good strategy, but I found I had no desire to spin yet more lies. Not for her.
“I don’t know,” I said with simple honesty. “Deserving as I am of my place here, still I lust only for escape, for freedom.”
“Freedom.” The word brought an amused lilt to her tone, though her gaze remained implacably serious. “And what would you do with it?”
More honesty, spilling from my mouth in a torrent, surprising myself with the passion in my voice. “I have scales to balance. Accounts to settle.” My jaw ached as unbidden fury put a clench to my teeth. “I have people to kill! Though I know this condemns me in your eyes, I’ll not deny it.”
“Who?” she enquired with a curious arch to her brow. “And why?”
So I told her. All of it. Every detail of my sordid life of villainy. Of the crimes I had visited upon others and those visited upon me. I listed every one of my intended victims. My still festering grudge against Todman, should he still somehow draw breath. The brother of the soldier I had murdered, and all of his comrades, for trying to hang and fillet me. Lord Althus Levalle for his hypocritical brand of mercy. The chainsman, whose murder of Raith and test on the road had left the most recent and raw marks on my growing tally of vengeance.
Finally falling silent, rendered flushed and breathless by my diatribe, I expected soothing words from the Ascendant. She would, I knew, seek to counsel me in the folly of vindictiveness. Lecture me in the emptiness of revenge for it was sure to just bring more violence into my already brutalised life.
Instead she thought for a short interval, lips and brow drawn in contemplation, then said, “It strikes me there are several names missing from your list.”
I straightened, looking at her in bafflement. “Missing?”
“Yes. If you truly wish to balance the crimes committed against you, then it seems most of them result from the attack at Moss Mill, do they not?”
I gave a dumb nod and she paused again for brief reflection before continuing, “Deckin Scarl’s reputation made itself known even here. It occurs to me that he was far too wily an outlaw to blithely place himself in a trap. Unless you imagined that Crown Company happened upon your band by mere chance that night?”
“I know we must have been betrayed,” I said, “but couldn’t fathom by who. Perhaps one of the villagers ran off to tell the sheriff’s men—”
“And somehow the king’s own soldiers managed to launch a well-planned attack that very night? No, they were waiting for Deckin’s arrival and probably had been for several days, if not weeks. Meaning they had been told of his plans far in advance. I imagine there is a very short list of people who knew enough to lay such a trap. Also, it might be worth pondering not just who died at Moss Mill, but who wasn’t there to die that night.”
It took only a few seconds for my mind to churn up the answer, the words bubbling forth in a cloud of angry spit. “Erchel’s kin! They weren’t fucking there.”
“Alwyn!” She spoke the admonition in a curt snap, giving a meaningful glance at the relic in the alcove.
“Sorry,” I said in automatic contrition.
Sihlda inclined her head in forgiveness and said, “You might also want to consider the people you didn’t see die that night and whose head was not impaled atop the castle wall. The absence of knowledge can often tell you a great deal.”
The people I didn’t see die… There was Todman for a start, and not just him. In fact, for the first time it occurred to me that beyond Hostler and Gerthe, the tally of gangmates I knew for sure had been slain at the mill was fairly short. The fates of many remained unknown. It was a long list of potential traitors and parsing the guilty from the innocent was not something I could do while toiling my life away in a mine.
“I can see your frustration,” Sihlda said, breaking the increasingly busy stream of my thoughts. “Your desire for recompense. Tell me—” she angled her head, a genuine curiosity colouring her voice “—why should a man like Deckin Scarl inspire such passion for justice?”
My anger settled to a low boil then, the bland inquisitiveness of her question bringing a reflective calm. For a second I was a lost boy in the forest again, staring up at a large bearded stranger through teary, desperate eyes.
“Because…” I began, finding I had to swallow before I could push the words past a choked throat. “Because no one else ever cared about me.”
“Ah,” was her only response before her face once again took on the intent and sincere face of a true Ascendant. “The freedom you lust for, I can give it to you.”
“How?”
Her features took on the same hard inquisition I had seen when she quizzed me on Covenant lore, head angling with catlike appraisal once more. I knew there to be considerable intellect at work as she stood in silent calculation, as well as a certain ruthlessness. Ascendant or not, wise and kind or not, one did not survive a place like this on such things alone.
“Should my trust in you prove misplaced,” she said, retrieving her torch and turning away, “I will not be able to protect you from Brewer’s wrath. He is a true and devout servant of the Covenant, but his… lapses can be both spectacular and ugly.”
Gesturing for me to follow, she strode away into the most shadowed depths of this naturally formed cathedral. “Your freedom will, of course, be won through your acceptance of the Covenant,” she lectured as I trailed after the bobbing course of her torch. “But also through a great deal of learning and bodily effort. More of the latter than the former, I’m afraid, but even the faithful need to eat. Much of your labour will be spent hewing ore from rock and carrying it aloft in return for the food that sustains us. As our group is more productive than the others, we receive more and better food than those unfortunate souls who choose to shun our devout ways. That food, and our adherence to the Covenant, provide the strength needed for this.”
She came to a sudden halt, obliging me to draw up short lest I collide with her. We had ventured at least a hundred paces from the glow of the other torches, birthing a sense of being adrift in a formless void, so absolute was the gloom. But it was far from silent. Water cascaded in a rapid torrent somewhere, enough of it to leave a fine misting on my skin. As Sihlda raised and extended her torch, the light played over a curtain of water rushing through a fissure in the rock overhead.
“The Siltern River passes directly above this spot,” Sihlda told me, pointing at the gloom beyond the cascading water. “Its eastern bank lies fifty yards in that direction. When I first came to this place years ago this waterfall did not exist. The cascade that formed it was concealed within many tons of rock. You see, Alwyn, what the faithful can do if their devotion is sincere and sustained?”
I saw it then, the odd regularity of the rock visible through the falling water, the straight edges and sharp gouges that told of stone subjected to pick and chisel over many years. The wall took on a deep curve beyond the cascade, creating a funnel of sorts that ended in a small dark opening. Stepping closer I let out a breath, rich in hopeful excitement at what I saw. The tunnel was small, just large enough to allow a full-grown man to crawl on hands and knees, but it was unmistakably a tunnel.
“How far does it go?” I asked, crouching to step through the curtain of water, heedless of the chill.
“Four and a half years,” I murmured, my excitement dwindling. It is the curse of the young to experience time as the glacial turn of seasons. To my youthful, vengeance-hungry heart four and a half years seemed a veritable eternity.
“I will not attempt to compel you to this,” Sihlda told me with calm reassurance. “If you wish, you and your friend can make your own way within these walls. But, whatever schemes you may have hatched, I assure you they won’t work. The guards here are too well paid and too fearful of their lord to be bribed and his ancestor designed a perfect cage. The only route to freedom is here.”
She paused to offer another faintly sorrowful smile before turning away and starting back towards the exit. “Come now, you have time to settle into your quarters and share a small meal before the evening shift. At mealtimes it is our habit to read from the few scrolls we possess. Perhaps you would care to take a turn.”
“I can’t read,” I told her, following with much the same doglike devotion as before and would, in truth, maintain for the next four years.
Ascendant Sihlda came to a halt then, letting out a faintly disgusted sigh. “Well that,” she said, glancing back at me, “simply won’t do.”
PART II
“Don’t you ever ask of yourself, Scribe, ‘Why do I serve the Covenant and the king? What rewards do they bring me? What in life have they provided that I did not provide myself?’ The Covenant claims to preserve your soul while the king calls himself the protector of your body. Both are liars and your worst sin resides in your service to those lies.”
From The Testament of the Pretender Magnis Lochlain, as recorded by Sir Alwyn Scribe
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I’ve often pondered the human capacity for forming attachments to people with whom one has almost nothing in common and Sir Eldurm Gulatte stands as a singularly fitting example of this enigma.
I was born to a whorehouse, he to a castle. I inherited nothing except, so the pimp told me, my mother’s incautious tongue, while upon the death of his father Sir Eldurm found himself the owner of both said castle and the Pit Mines it had been constructed to guard. He was therefore one of the wealthier nobles in all of Albermaine while I, at the juncture of our first meeting, remained a penniless outlaw condemned to a life of back-breaking, underground toil. Perhaps the only thing Sir Eldurm and I had in common, thanks to Ascendant Sihlda’s patient tutelage, was the ability to read. However, yet another point of difference arose in the fact that, after nigh on four years in the Pits, I could both read and write very well, whereas he, affable dullard that he was, remained a decidedly poor hand at both.
“‘You set my loins afire,’” I read, trying not to stumble over the imprecise, blotchy scrawl on the parchment he handed me. “‘Your lips are like…’” I paused as my eyes tracked over several words which had been scratched into obscurity by a frustrated quill “‘… two delicious red morsels of the finest meat.’”
I lowered the parchment to raise an eyebrow at Lord Eldurm. He stood at the window to his upper chamber, the highest point in the castle, arms crossed and one finger pensively scratching his anvil-like jaw. He may have had all the wit and charm of the outhouse he resembled, but the flowing blond locks and well-sculpted features were certainly a match for the knightly hero he longed to be. His attempts at wooing fair maidens, however, fell far short of a balladeer’s ideal.
“Too…?” he began, fumbling for the right word.
“Florid,” I supplied. “Perhaps, my lord, ‘rubies set upon a satin cushion’ would work better.”
“Yes!” He nodded, moving to thump a large and enthusiastic hand to the table. “By the Martyrs, Scribe, Ascendant Sihlda was right in speaking so well of you. Outlaw you may be in the sight of the Crown, but you’re the finest poet in all the realm to me.”
He laughed, loud and hearty, something he did a lot in those days. For a fellow who had spent his entire adult life overseeing one of the most wretched and despised places in all Albermaine, he was an oddly cheerful soul. Sometimes it pains me to think of his eventual fate, but then I recall the consistently tall pile of corpses waiting at the gate to be carted away every month, and his fate pains me less.
“I am gratified to be of service, my lord,” I said, setting the parchment down and reaching for a quill. “Might I enquire as to the young lady’s full form of address?”
“Lady Evadine Courlain,” Lord Eldurm said, his earnest expression softening into wistful longing. “The Rose of Couravel.”
“A formal title, my lord?”
“Not as such. But her family crest is a black rose, so I think she’ll find it duly flattering, don’t you?”
Even a brainless bull manages to find the right hole once in a while, I thought, inclining my head in approval. “Indeed I do, my lord.” I dipped the quill and began to set out the letters, smooth flowing lines appearing on the parchment with swift precision.
“My word, Scribe,” his lordship said, “you’ve a prettier hand even than the Ascendant.”
“She has been my most excellent tutor, my lord,” I replied, not lifting my focus from the task at hand. This was my first visit to this chamber, my first time within the castle walls in fact, although my skills had enabled a few brief sojourns beyond the gates before today. Few of the guards could read and those that did had little skill in writing. Taking on scribing duties for the garrison had been Ascendant Sihlda’s first stratagem in winning preferential treatment for her congregation. Now, with her knees protesting more and more at the climb to the gate, the duty fell to me, along with a new name. To Sihlda, Toria and others I was still Alwyn, redeemed former associate of the legendary Deckin Scarl. To the guards, and now this noble lackwit, I was simply Scribe.
“If I might suggest, my lord,” I said upon completing the letter’s formal opening, “‘Know that you have stoked a fire in my heart’ might be more… seemly than the mention of loins.”
“True,” he agreed, face darkening a little. “And probably wise. Her dread father is sure to read it before it gets anywhere near her dainty hand. And the lady herself is of a distinctly devout character.”
Although my ears were always greedy for any information that might offer an advantage, I resisted the impulse to ask about this dread father and his feelings towards his would-be son-in-law. A servant, Sihlda had cautioned me more than once, must know their place, Alwyn. And that is what you are now, at least until our day of deliverance arrives.
I was not the only servant drawn from the ranks of those who laboured in the Pits. Most of the maids, stewards and cooks who saw to the endless needs of a working castle were inmates, spending their days aboveground but always pushed back through the gates come nightfall. I had heard a great deal about the cruelties of Sir Eldurm’s father whose reign of terror had included regular, often fatal, floggings and compelling the more attractive prisoners to whore for the guards. His son had instigated a far less harsh regime, influenced to no small degree by Ascendant Sihlda who had known him since childhood. His comparatively enlightened attitude, however, didn’t accommodate any slackening in the ritualised strictures that governed life in the Pit Mines, both for the prisoners and the guards. It was the most salient point of honour to the Gulatte family that they had never allowed an inmate to escape and Sir Eldurm had no intention of breaking that tradition. Nor was he likely to take a kind view of an overly inquisitive scribe, pretty lettering or no.
It took me until sunset to finish the letter. Textual finery requires time and focus, but Sir Eldurm’s copious verbiage also needed a good deal of editing before achieving a modicum of coherence. When complete, the letter stretched to four pages filled with ef
fusive professions of love and devotion, which should have stirred my thoughts to bitter ridicule, but instead engendered a sense of pity.
While I did what I could to mitigate Sir Eldurm’s clumsy phrasing and somewhat desperate entreaties that Lady Evadine provide his heart the comfort of just one brief reply, I knew this to be a hopeless exercise. I had, of course, never set eyes on Lady Evadine Courlain. I knew nothing of her family or how she had come to meet and garner the affection of this young and earnest noble. I knew only that she resided somewhere in the city of Couravel and, based purely on the contents and tone of Lord Eldurm’s letter, was as far above him in station and beauty as a swan is to a toad.
Pleased with my work, he duly pressed his seal to the wax and sent me off with a chit for an extra portion of rations. I collected my riches at the gate. Meals in the Pit were almost always dry fare, since it wasn’t easy to carry a slop-filled bowl down the slope, and the guards were not stingy. Even in the dark days when Sir Eldurm’s father held sway it had been recognised that miners with empty bellies are wont to produce scant ore. So at least starvation wasn’t numbered among our many hardships.
After collecting my two sacks of sundry vegetables and a small portion of meat, the origin of which it was best not to enquire after, I was obliged to spend a few moments checking the sergeant’s ledger of arrivals and deaths. By long-standing arrangement with Sihlda, he would prepare a first draft of the weekly return to be checked for spelling and obvious errors. Once corrected, it would be transcribed into the official record and presented for Lord Eldurm’s approval.