Dal Sason thrust twice, probing attacks that Guillot limply parried, making sure to bring his sword slowly back to guard. The moment was near. Dal Sason’s eyes narrowed, and he exploded into a series of powerful attacks, cutting at Guillot rather than thrusting. Gill shied back from the first, parried the second, then riposted with everything he had left. His sword was buried up to the hilt in dal Sason’s chest before the younger man realised what had happened.
“Not so slow after all,” Guillot said. He pulled his sword out with a twist to make certain dal Sason wouldn’t come at him again. Dal Sason dropped to his knees, sword falling from his limp fingers. Blood bubbled from the corners of his mouth and he fell to the muddy cobbles.
“I was beginning to think you were all right,” Guillot said. “Seems my judgement is as bad as it ever was.”
He stood over dal Sason until the life left the banneret’s eyes. As his excitement faded, Guillot felt light-headed. He realised he had pushed his body far beyond what it was able for. He balanced on his sword, sweat dribbling from the end of his nose. His heart started to slow, then jumped back to full speed as he recalled Solène. He had to free her from Arnoul’s mob. After the fight he had just been in he didn’t fancy his chances, but he had to at least try.
He had no idea where they would take her—they would need several hours to build a pyre big enough to kill someone, so they would need to put her somewhere for safekeeping.
An uncertain face stared at him from the street entrance to the stable yard.
“I was about to help you,” Solène said, “but you didn’t need it.” She walked into the courtyard and stood looking down at dal Sason’s body. “It would have saved us both a lot of bother if I’d let him die of his injuries, wouldn’t it?”
“I know I’m a cynical git,” Guillot said, “but I meant it when I said that the world is a better place without some people in it.” He looked at her sharply. “How did you get free?”
She shrugged. “Just because I won’t use magic to kill doesn’t mean I won’t use it to protect myself.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“We should ready the horses and leave. I want to see the secret room you told me about. Also, it won’t be long before nine sheep become nine very angry men again. I’d like to be far away from here before that happens.”
Guillot laughed and called for the stable boy.
PART THREE
CHAPTER
45
Seeing sheep ambling about on Trelain’s main street was not terribly unusual—it happened every market day—but for Guillot, knowing that only minutes earlier they had been an angry mob made it a very bizarre experience. Solène didn’t cast the animals so much as a glance as they rode out of the town, but Guillot’s eyes were glued to them, wondering what it would look like when they turned back into people. He wondered at the confusion it would cause, and how people would react. On consideration, he was glad they wouldn’t be around to find out for themselves.
That Amaury thought himself so powerful that he could dispose of people at his convenience was enraging. That he had sent someone to kill Gill was even more so. Amaury had always been an arrogant little shit, but Guillot had to admit that he had been too, in his younger days, which was probably why he and the Prince Bishop had been friends once upon a time.
His first taste of battle had begun to knock that arrogance out of him. His second had finished the job. Gone were the legion of adoring fans lining the arena at the Competition. Gone was the glamour, the excitement, the ceremony. It was all blood, guts, mud, and watching people you knew and considered friends getting chopped to bits and dying in agony, far from home and the people they loved. All a big attitude did on the battlefield was get you killed. It had nearly done for him, but he prided himself in having been self-aware enough to learn his lesson quickly. He might have been better with a sword than the men around him, but he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head, and when he needed them, his comrades were there.
Amaury never learned that lesson. The injury he sustained in the Competition’s quarterfinal—from a blow Guillot had delivered—had ended his days with a sword in hand. It struck Gill that his former friend had probably resented him since their days at the Academy, where he had been the big fish until Guillot came along. Since then, despite his best efforts, Amaury had always been second-best.
With the power he had now, and the resentment he seemed to harbour, Guillot was surprised that Amaury hadn’t sent a hired sword to pay a call on him before, one night when he was lost in the bottom of a bottle. Perhaps out of sight was out of mind, and it wasn’t as if Amaury hadn’t been occupying himself in other ways, climbing the slippery slope of power.
If Guillot survived what he had to do next, he would pay a visit to the Prince Bishop. Despite the other man’s old injury, Guillot would call him out.
“I’m not going to turn you into a sheep, you know,” Solène said, after a long silence.
Guillot smiled. “Sorry, lost in my thoughts is all. Do you really think my death would have been enough to make the people accept the presence of mages?”
Solène shrugged. “The Prince Bishop’s been pushing the story of the last Chevalier of the Silver Circle riding off to slay the dragon and save the nation pretty hard. People are convinced that you’ll do it. If you do, you’ll be very, very famous.”
“No pressure, then,” Guillot said. “Still, he might get his wish.”
“We’ll find what we need in this secret room,” Solène said. “If we don’t, perhaps there’ll be enough that I can cobble something together that will give you what you need.”
“That’s not the most confidence-inspiring thing you’ve ever said.”
“Many things can be done to a soldier to make them better. Meddling with a body is tricky, and I’ve not done anything like that before—no one alive has. Instructions would be better than experimenting.”
“I’m in complete agreement with that,” Guillot said.
“Still, it went well with dal Sason. That’s something, although it is easier to fix what was broken than change things to work differently.”
“You’re really not filling me with any enthusiasm for this idea. I think I’d rather take my chances with the dragon. It didn’t get me the last time…”
She chewed on her lip and stared into the distance. “You’re right. It’s risky to try without instructions. It could take years of trial and error to get the ritual right, and even longer to determine and formulate the enhancements most suited to dragon fighting. Best to just face it with your armour and sword. Like you said, that kept you alive the last time.”
He thought about the plates bundled up on the saddle behind him. The heat of the dragon’s flame had made the metal brittle. It was little better than the ceremonial suits made of paste they used to wear in his Silver Circle days. “When you put it like that,” Guillot said.
* * *
They crested the rise leading to the piles of rubble that had once been the old manor house of Villerauvais. Guillot realised that this was a sight he would never grow used to. He wondered if he should rebuild, but what was the point? Villerauvais was gone. Without the village, there was no seigneur, and no need for a manor house. Assuming he survived the ordeals he had before him. If the dragon wasn’t enough, he now felt compelled to deal with the Prince Bishop, and that wasn’t the act of a man looking forward to a long life.
“What did it look like before?” Solène said.
“It was taller.” He realised he was being churlish, but the feeling of failure at seeing every part of his heritage wiped out was profound. “It was never much of a place compared to some. Villerauvais wasn’t a rich province, but the house was probably grander than the place deserved. It was larger once, but parts were knocked down over the years as they fell out of use and into disrepair.”
“How old was it?”
“The remains you see? I don’t really know. My family first came out here during the Empire.”
“One of them helped found the Silver Circle?”
“Supposedly, although after what I found under the ruin, I’m more inclined to believe it. I think Valdamar is buried down there. At least, there’s a tomb with his name on it.”
They let their horses graze on the lawn by the remains of the house, and Guillot escorted Solène down the steps to the hidden chambers.
“This is it,” he said, gesturing to the broken door at the bottom of the stairwell. “I bought a lantern in Trelain. Let me fetch it.”
Solène raised an eyebrow.
Guillot smiled sheepishly. “Oh, of course. Well, let’s go in then.”
They walked into the inky pool of darkness. Solène muttered something under her breath and an orb of cool white light appeared above them, growing in strength until the muttering stopped. Light fell on the first part of the chamber, illuminating the first few statues.
“Do different spells have different words you have to learn?” Guillot said.
“No. They don’t need words at all, really. Magic is shaped with thoughts. Sometimes words give form to thoughts. When you’re good enough, and can control your mind precisely, you don’t need them. Sometimes I find speaking them aloud helps me focus on what I want to achieve.”
He nodded slowly. “Well, this is it. The altar is at the far end, the tombs in the chamber beyond.”
She cast another orb of light, then another, until the whole chamber was as bright as if the roof had been lifted off, letting in the sun.
“These are magnificent,” she said, walking forward to take a closer look at the statues.
“I presume they were all Chevaliers,” he said. “The paintings are even more impressive.”
“They are,” Solène said, moving closer to one. “There’s a lot of magic here. It’s why everything’s in such good condition. This looks as if it was painted yesterday.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Guillot said. “I didn’t have nearly so much light the last time I was here.”
“If the paintings were protected against the elements, maybe everything here was.” She advanced down the chamber until she reached the altar, and the two statues depicting the ritual with the Cup.
“I’ve seen this before,” she said. “In the Rule of the Chevaliers of the Silver Circle, the only text about them that I was able to find. It had a drawing of a ceremony where a magister placed a drop from the cup on the initiate’s tongue.”
“What would happen if you drank a whole cupful?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure if the quantity you drink matters, only the intended result. Maybe it does, though. Who knows? Best stick to what they did.”
“Would there be any harm in trying?”
“I might end up turning you into a puddle of gore with only a drop, and you want to try drinking the whole thing?” she said.
“I take your point. The engraving is in the next chamber.”
They went through, and Solène created another orb of light. It made the room seem far smaller than it had when Guillot had nothing but a flickering torch to light his way.
“That’s Valdamar’s tomb?” she said, nodding toward it.
“It belongs to someone with that name, anyway.”
“My father used to tell me stories about him,” Solène said.
“Mine too,” Guillot said.
“Do you think one of those statues outside is of him?”
“I reckon so.”
She reached out and placed her hand against the memorial plaque, as though touching it would somehow give her greater connection to a man long dead.
“The engraving is on that wall there,” Guillot said.
As Solène glanced over and furrowed her brow, another sphere of light appeared, making each carving clear and precise.
“This is how they used to write Imperial,” she said. “Back in the days of the Empire.”
“When did you learn how to read it?”
“A few days ago.” She shrugged. “Magic has its uses.”
“Is it what we’re looking for?”
She remained silent for a moment, her eyes tracking along the lines of writing. Then she smiled. “It is.”
Guillot felt a wave of relief. Not only would he not have to run the gauntlet of magical experimentation, he would not be marching to almost certain death the next time he went dragon hunting.
“What does it do?” he said.
She chewed her lip for a moment. “I … I’m not really sure. I thought it would make you faster, stronger, more resilient, but I can’t see how any of what’s written here would do any of that.”
He shrugged. “I suppose there’s only one way to find out.”
“You’re willing to take the chance?”
“Whatever it was doesn’t seem to have killed any of them,” he said, nodding toward Valdamar’s tomb. “At least, not right away.”
“You have the Cup?”
“Of course,” he said. “Does it matter what we fill it with?” Now seemed as good as any a time to allow himself a sip of something potent.
“The engraving says the purest water. Know of any pure water around here?”
Setting his disappointment aside, he nodded. “There’s a stream not far from here. It comes down from the mountains uninterrupted. It’s as fresh a water source as you’re likely to find.”
“I want to look around a little more first. See if there’s anything else here that might be of use.”
In the improved light she had created, she surveyed the tombs one by one, and then, satisfied she had not missed anything, they returned to the main chamber.
“It’s like a hall of heroes,” she said. The rows of statues, with the magnificent paintings behind them, now illuminated to their full glory, made for an impressive sight. “They went to a lot of trouble to create the magic that keeps this place in good condition. For a spell to last so long, the power they had must have been immeasurable. Look!” She pointed to the feet of the statues. There were small nameplates engraved into the bases. “Andalon,” she said. “Ixten,” she added, pointing to another. “Valdamar. It’s amazing to think they were all here.”
“Even more amazing to think I spent my childhood living above it all and never knew.”
She walked up to the painting behind Valdamar’s statue and studied it so closely her nose almost pressed against it. “There’s something odd here,” she said. She closed her eyes, frowning in concentration.
The room filled with the sound of grinding stone, and the painting slid back from the wall, opening a passageway into a chamber behind.
Guillot shook his head, amazed. “What did you do?”
“There’s a lot of magic down here. I influenced it. Shall we take a look?”
He walked forward eagerly, then stopped, one foot in mid-air. “What if there’s a trap?”
“A trap?”
“Well, if they’re trying to protect something down here, maybe they took precautions to make sure the wrong people didn’t find it?” Guillot said.
“That strikes me as paranoid.”
“I’d rather be paranoid than in the bottom of a pit of spikes.”
Solène sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. “I can’t feel anything unusual in there—no hidden empty spaces or concentrations of magic.”
“You can do that?”
Solène nodded. “The Fount lines objects. If there’s an open space, I can feel the way the Fount’s shape changes. That’s how I knew there was something behind the painting.”
“Still,” Guillot said, “let’s be careful. There might not be a trap, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe. This space is old, and the house above it has been destroyed. The structure might not be as stable as it seems.”
She nodded and Guillot advanced into the passage revealed behind the painting. It was dark at first, but then one of Solène’s light spheres appeared overhead and his jaw dropped.
Before him stood a wooden mannequin wearing the most mag
nificent suit of armour he had ever seen. He walked up to it, careful to watch where he placed his feet. The idea of a trap still hadn’t left his mind, although he was now equally worried about the roof falling down on him. Surrounding the armour were other things a warrior might use on a daily basis—a saddle, a chest, and a wooden stand that looked as though it was intended to hold a sword, but which was empty.
“What’s in there?” Solène called.
“Come and see. It’s safe. I think.”
He heard her come in behind him as he took a closer look at the armour. It was made from Telastrian steel, something he had never seen before. He had never known it to be used for anything other than blades—until he had found the Cup. He couldn’t even begin to imagine the value of an entire suit of armour made from the precious metal. What was more, the workmanship was magnificent. It wasn’t of a fashionable style, but if it fit him, it would likely serve him far better than the scorched suit packed in his saddlebags.
As if the natural beauty of the metal was not enough, the armour was finely engraved and inlaid with a brighter metal that Guillot took to be silver. It seemed that whatever magic had kept the place secure for so long had stopped the metal from tarnishing.
“There’s another chamber behind the next statue,” she said. “And the one after. I think it’s safe to assume there’s one behind each of them. What do you think they were for?”
“This looks like Valdamar’s private chamber, where he kept his war gear when he wasn’t using it,” Guillot said. “I suppose they each had their own room. I’d still like to know why it’s here at all, under my family home.”
“What’s in the chest?” Solène said.
Guillot lifted the lid with his foot, expecting a crossbow bolt to whizz out of a hole in the wall. The chest creaked open, but there was no bolt.
“Papers,” he said, with disappointment. “In perfect condition, though. Like everything else here.”
Solène walked to the chest and picked over them. “This is a diary,” she said. “Valdamar’s personal diary.”
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