Gill supposed it could be a belek. They rarely came as far down from the mountains as Villerauvais, and never at this time of year, but he supposed they could inflict wounds such as those on the carcasses. Might a rogue one be stalking the demesne? It seemed unlikely, but more plausible than the alternatives he was coming up with. A belek didn’t explain the scorch marks, though. The fireball, he reckoned, could be put down to bad wine and an over-active imagination. Guillot had seen equally strange things while drunk, only to discover the next morning that they had occurred nowhere but in his head.
“What did it look like?” Guillot said. “The shadow?”
Philipe blushed. “Don’t rightly know, my Lord.” Another nudge from his wife. “Feels foolish saying it out loud,” Philipe said, “but it reminded me of how dragons are described in the old stories.”
“Dragons?” Guillot said, doing his best not to laugh.
Philipe shrugged.
“Dragons,” Guillot repeated, looking back at the charred bones, wondering if perhaps the time had come for him to have all the seigneury’s vines pulled up and replaced with something that could not be fermented.
* * *
No banneret in the king’s service could be expected to give up easily, all the more so when the Prince Bishop was involved in handing out the instructions. Dal Sason was inspecting fruit at a market stall when Guillot walked back into the village. The visitor greeted Guillot with a nod and a warm smile, which Guillot made no effort to return. He still felt sick and now had the added worry that either his demesne was under attack by dragons or his vassals were going mad. Perhaps he had imagined the whole thing? His mother had always said if something seems too good to be true, it probably is, and the thought of insanity being the explanation did indeed seem too good to be true at that moment.
He couldn’t forget the old stories of the Chevaliers of the Silver Circle, that gilded fraternity of decadent wastrels. He’d thought the older Chevaliers were simply trying to frighten him with the hocus-pocus of their midnight initiation ceremony at a strange, ancient carved stone in the crypts beneath the old citadel in Mirabay. He had thought them nothing more than an idle ceremonial bodyguard to the king, a place where a safe career could be made while he settled down and started a family. The Chevaliers had seemed like the perfect solution for a country nobleman of modest means and his beautiful young wife in a big, expensive city. The fame he had won with his victory in the Competition had opened the path to advancement and he had seized it with both hands.
Guillot was drawn to the Chevaliers. As a boy, he had loved the old tales of their deeds, of dragon-slaying and derring-do—stories of Andalon, Ixten, and Valdamar, the most famous of the dragon-slaying Chevaliers. As a man, he had never been under any illusion as to what their modern brethren represented. He even questioned how much of the old stories was true. After all, he’d never seen any dragon remains. Even after so long a time, with so many said to have been slain, surely some trophies would remain? So far as he knew, none did.
While stories of the Chevaliers had filled his head with too much nonsense to completely discount Philipe’s tale, he could not quite believe it. As he watched dal Sason squeeze and smell fruit and vegetables, he wondered how much more the man knew than he was letting on. Questions would have to wait, however. He felt terrible and knew that only sleep would ease his suffering. Dal Sason and the mystery in the fields would keep until morning.
CHAPTER
5
Amaury dal Richeau, the Prince Bishop of Mirabay and the Unified Church, First Minister of Mirabaya, blinked the sweat from his eyes and launched into a fast combination of cuts and thrusts, driving the salon master back down the fencing gallery.
“Excellent, my Lord, excellent,” the fencing master said as he retreated.
Amaury smiled at the praise. The salon master—an Ostian by the name of Dandolo—was regarded as the best private trainer in Mirabay. He was always frugal with his compliments, irrespective of his trainee—professional duellist or nobleman—so to get it was worth one of Amaury’s as-rare smiles.
Out of the corner of his eye, the Prince Bishop could see one of his assistants appear at the gallery’s doorway. The momentary distraction allowed Dandolo the opportunity to riposte and score a hit, and the Prince Bishop stretched another smile and nodded to acknowledge the blow.
“I think that will be enough for today, Maestro,” Amaury said, raising his rapier in salute. He waited until Dandolo had returned the gesture before turning to his assistant.
In his clerical robes, the assistant looked out of place in a fencing salon, but at least he had the presence of mind to offer Amaury a towel and a glass of water. He took both, then wiped the sweat from his brow and took a drink before speaking.
“What is it?”
“The king wishes to see you, your Grace.”
“Of course he does. Did he say why?”
His assistant remained silent.
“Ah,” Amaury said. “Silence can often say far more than you might think. There’s a lesson in that. Tell him that I’ll attend him directly.”
With a nod, his assistant left. Amaury placed his training sword in its leather sheath and went to the changing room. As he peeled off his sweaty fencing clothes, he could not help but glance at the place on his hip where he had carried a wicked scar for the greater part of his adult life. The memory of it, and of the resultant ruination of his career, would be forever with him, even if the physical damage was all but gone. A less powerful man might have had to explain the disappearance of a severe limp, of a lingering injury that had ended any hope of a career as a swordsman or soldier, but not he.
No one had so much as raised an eyebrow when he started walking normally again. The leg was far from perfect, merely healed to the limit of the healer’s magical ability, but with a little luck, his plans would come to fruition. Then he could personally finish what the Order’s healers had started. He wondered why people had been content to live without magic for so many centuries. Indeed, they positively hated it. If only they knew the benefits it could bring, he felt certain their opinion would change. A few repaired joints, a few cured children, and they would welcome magic back with open arms. He needed to be careful picking the time, but it was growing near.
He would not be able to keep his order of mage-warriors secret forever. The old king had known of them, as did the new one. No secret known by three men was much of a secret, even if one was dead. The young monarch’s scrutiny of his recently inherited kingdom had been inconvenient for Amaury, but thankfully King Boudain the Tenth had seen the sense in his project. He’d set it in motion soon after discovering a treasure trove of ancient and forbidden knowledge in a great vault beneath Mirabay’s cathedral. The archive had re-opened the way to the practise of magic, something that had been outlawed for centuries, since the bannerets of old had overthrown the mages who had, in their turn, usurped the empire. The opportunity had been too tempting to pass up, so he had, in secret, established the Order of the Golden Spur. The Spurriers. He had known it would be a long-term project, one that would take decades to bring fully to fruition.
Training new mages properly was a lengthy task. Work had to start when the candidates were children, and they would be of little use until they were grown. Some progress could be made with adults, but the later one came to magic, the less power one would ever be able to wield. That was Amaury’s own curse. Parlour tricks were the most potent magics he could create, and he knew he was too old to ever get any better.
The books spoke of those born with a natural affinity for magic. He had found one or two such people, but no one with the kind of power he had read of. The books also spoke of the Cup—and that could change everything. He had to find it first, however, and that was proving more challenging than he liked. He knew he had to be patient—never his strong suit. But the day would come when it was in his possession, and the power the Cup would bring with it would be awesome. No nation in the world would be abl
e to stand against Mirabaya. No leader would be able to deny the absolute primacy of the church. Amaury’s absolute primacy.
As he took his bishop’s robes from the locker, Amaury wondered if he would have achieved even a fraction of his wealth and power if he had lived his life with a sword in his hand, rather than a prayer book. It seemed unlikely. Not until he’d been cured had he fully realised how much he had missed fighting with a sword in hand, though only now, after several months of practise, did he feel he was approaching any sort of competence. His skills were still a long way from what they had once been, but to have reclaimed anything at all was deeply satisfying. Nonetheless, it wasn’t seemly for the Prince Bishop of the Unified Church to be frittering away his time in fencing salons, so he had done his best to keep his hobby a secret.
Covering himself in a hooded cloak, he left by the back entrance. It was only a short distance to the palace from the salon, so he wouldn’t keep the king waiting for long. He briefly considered taking the elevator up to the palace, which sat on a hill overlooking the city. The elevator was a wooden contraption used to haul supplies and the less mobile members of the king’s court up to the top of the hill and powered by oxen turning a great windlass at the top. After a moment, the Prince Bishop decided to walk the winding avenue up the hill’s side. Since having his injury taken care of, he enjoyed the novelty of walking with ease.
The palace guards knew him on sight and waved him through every checkpoint between the main gate and the king’s private office. Only then did he stop, knock, and wait to be invited in. Boudain the Tenth sat behind a desk piled so high with papers that Amaury struggled to see him without standing on his tiptoes. The young king seemed to want to directly deal with every matter his father had left to others, and Amaury wondered how long that would last.
“You wish to see me, your Highness?”
The servant who had shown Amaury in slipped out silently, leaving the two men alone in the dimly lit room.
“I do. I received this note by pigeon this morning.” King Boudain scratched his neatly clipped beard as he scanned his desk. He pushed a rolled note toward Amaury before sitting back and waiting.
Amaury unrolled the note, scanning for the general gist rather than reading it. His stomach sank; returning to the beginning, he began to read properly. It irritated him that the king had received word of these events before he had—he maintained a very expensive network of spies and informants to make sure he was always the first person to know what was going on. Now it seemed the new king had managed to make his own intelligence services do some work—for the first time in generations. He had gotten halfway through the note when the king spoke.
“I presume this is our problem made real?”
The paper spoke of a rural hamlet completely reduced to ash. It was described as being “nothing more than a smudge on the ground.” The sheet was stamped at the bottom with a small staff, skull, and sword—the sigil of the Intelligenciers. If nothing else, it was evidence that in his short reign, the king had shown the strength to bring one of his more independently minded hunting dogs under control. If that trend continued, he could become far more difficult to manage than his father was.
“It seems likely,” Amaury said.
“You assured me this wouldn’t become an issue.”
“We’re venturing into the unknown, your Highness. There will always be problems that we cannot foresee.”
“This could become quite a big one. More so if your little secret army is discovered. The people aren’t ready for magic, and you know as well as I do how the citizens of Mirabay respond to things they don’t like.”
It had only been about a year since the last riot, and Amaury remembered it well. A group of rioters had broken into his house on the south bank of the River Vosges and tried to set the place on fire. Amaury believed the riot was an expression of discontent with an ageing and increasingly dissolute ruler. He expected the change of monarch would put to rest that type of behaviour and give him peace for a decade or so—enough time to put his plans in motion. A major upset to the city’s population could change that in a matter of minutes. Nonetheless, he didn’t like the king’s implication. Boudain had known about the Spurriers since taking the crown, and had been more than happy to have them developing in the background.
“It’s your secret army, your Highness. You agreed with me that it was vital to the kingdom’s security. Both the Ostians and the Estranzans are reported to have used mages recently. It will only happen more frequently, and when it does, we do not want to be left behind. Great foresight and initiative, I believe you said when we first discussed it. We have access to records that give us a great advantage. We would be fools not to put their contents to use.”
Amaury sat down, forcing the king to move the papers on his desk to maintain eye contact. He wondered if he was taking a liberty. Although he’d known the king most of his life, for most of that time, he had been a prince. When they came into power, Amaury knew, some people got all sorts of foolish notions of having to assert themselves. He had yet to work out if Boudain the Tenth was one such person, but there was only one way to find out.
“In any event,” Amaury said, “I’m sure it won’t come to that. This is only a minor hiccup that will be dealt with in due course. It won’t alter the timeline of our plan. The Spurriers won’t be revealed to the people before they are ready to accept the idea.”
“Minor hiccup?” the king said. “You woke up a damned dragon. A real, fire-breathing, people-killing dragon. It’s already started its rampage. A small rural village we can keep quiet. What happens when it attacks a major town? It’s been so long since one has been seen, I dare say most people don’t even believe they ever existed. Think of the panic it will cause.”
“If it lives, it can be killed, your Highness, and kill it we will. We have the resources at our disposal. It’s only a matter of time.”
The king sat back in his chair. “I’m entitled to be nervous. The first year or so of a new reign is always difficult, and what you are endeavouring to do with the Spurriers will turn a millennium of tradition and law on its head. This … could change everything. The first king in centuries to have to deal with a dragon? This could define my reign. It could put a stop to your plans.”
What we are endeavouring to do. Our plans, Amaury thought. If things went wrong, he wasn’t going to take the blame alone. King or not, Boudain would share the consequences. If this boy thought he could leave a man like Amaury dangling in the wind when the going got tough, he was sorely mistaken.
“I understand, your Highness, but this is not the time to vacillate. Quite the opposite. We must double our resolve and see it through. If we do, it will all work as I have planned. To put your mind at ease, I can tell you that I’ve already taken steps to deal with this. With luck, the next news you have of the dragon will be of its slaughter. In the worst case, we’ll lose a few more remote hamlets, and have some old wives’ tales and rumours of strange goings on in the countryside to dismiss as being ridiculous. Better still, with a little time to apply my mind to it, I’m sure I can come up with a way to turn it all to our advantage.”
Boudain steepled his hands before his mouth, then let out a sigh. “What steps?”
“For the time being, I’d like to keep that to myself. Rest assured, I’ve consulted the ancient texts in the cathedral library and found a workable solution.”
“Some giant, dragon-killing ballista?”
Amaury laughed. “No, your Highness, nothing so crude. I hope you will be pleasantly surprised when I’m in a position to reveal what I’m working on.”
* * *
Amaury sat in the study of his town palace, overlooking the River Vosges and the twinkling lights of the old citadel on the island that sat at its centre. The Cathedral was hidden behind a packed cluster of buildings, only the tops of its two steeples visible, silhouetted against the stars. The Prince Bishop held an old document, one that could get a lesser man sent to the Inte
lligenciers’ dungeons. It might even be enough to get him sent there, should he be caught with it. Although the information it contained was little more than a story, it came from a time when magic had reigned supreme, and was thus considered as illegal as anything could be.
It recounted the early days of the Chevaliers of the Silver Circle. Amaury had wanted to count himself among their number ever since he first heard of them. They had been the doyens of bravery and chivalry in Mirabaya since the days of the Empire, until they were all but extinguished by a bad-tempered, young country nobleman. Admittedly, by that time, little about the Chevaliers held true to their original fame. They were a bunch of arrogant, debauched ingrates who lived off a fat royal pension and spent their days gambling, whoring, and causing trouble. Amaury’s ambition to be a Chevalier had been erased the first time he met one.
The Chevaliers originally formed in the later days of the Empire, to deal with a problem largely peculiar to what was then called the Imperial Province of Mirabensis. Dragons. Although at that time a dragon could be encountered in any mountainous part of the Empire, there seemed to be a higher concentration of them in the peaks in western Mirabensis. The emperor had come to the provincial capital and established the Silver Circle, formed of the bravest bannerets in the Empire. They had already been magically enhanced in any number of ways by the Imperial Magi during their initial training as bannerets, as all bannerets were in those days, but these select few received further boons to equip them to hunt down and slay dragons. They became both mage and swordsman, and over the course of the next few centuries slew every dragon in the Empire. Perhaps every dragon in the world. Except this one, it seemed.
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