Banner of the Damned

by Sherwood Smith

  Lasva smiled, hands open in self-deprecation. “In truth, my ancestors have worked hard to avoid conflict.”

  “And yet you haven’t been ground to dust. If we didn’t brandish swords left and right you can be sure our enemies would grind us to dust—eh, son?”

  Ivandred struck his fist to his chest.

  The king turned back to Lasva. “So, I hear someone down south gave you a little fun to break the journey.”

  Lasva bowed, hands at Harmony, and smiled.

  The king eyed her, grinned, and turned to Ivandred. “I want your report on what happened at the river.”

  Ivandred’s concise words were shorn of emotion. He ended with the numbers of dead and wounded, and then the number of dead on the other side, which caused the old man to crack out another whinny as he dipped a broken rye biscuit in the turkey juice. All the fear, the effort, seemed as distant as those bland numbers.

  The king grunted from time to time. At the end, he poked the knife point toward Ivandred. “Who were those in green? Jevair vows they weren’t his.”

  “They weren’t. Too sloppy.”

  “Totha?” the king asked, leaning toward him.

  “Perhaps, though it was not Totha forest-green. Dyed to look Jevair.”

  The king scowled. “Damned soul-rotted presumption!” He coughed and sat back. “I want you to go down there and crush Totha. It’s time to remind the jarls that we keep our promises.” He threw down the last bit of bread and opened his hand toward the room. “Here they are, the Western Ride under two flights of Fourth Lancers. They are not here just to eat up my sister’s food and make merry now that you are home.”

  “The First Lancers?” Ivandred said.

  The king’s jaw worked. “In the north. Where they belong, watching those treacherous Olavair snakes. If you are any kind of commander, you can use what I give you. Go on! I want you back by Convocation! Olavair needs to hear that, ribbons or not, you haven’t forgotten you are Marloven.”

  Ivandred stilled.

  “I’ll take your princess to the city, where she can use those Colendi treaty skills New Year’s Week.”

  Ivandred rose and saluted. The old man saluted back then lifted his wine cup in both hands, slopping the red liquid as Ivandred gathered his commanders with a glance. The king slurped wine as Ivandred and all the warriors in the room except the king’s guard clattered out, leaving some two hundred half-eaten meals, Ivandred issuing orders as they went.

  When the king had drained the cup, he set it down, wiped his face on his sleeve, and whispered to Lasva, “Come, Colendi princess! Send your woman for your gear. Andaun gave me transfer tokens.”

  “Can you not let her rest, Brother?” Ingrid-Jarlan said.

  “Heh! If I can stand it, she can.” The king wheezed a laugh.

  “May I summon my staff?” Lasva said, rising.

  “Staff! What more d’you need? You’re not commanding an army. I’ve got two women of yours already tearing up the old queen’s suite. I gave them a free hand. Yes, I promised your sister, and I keep my word, as she’ll discover. But you don’t need another pack of women.”

  “If I may, I would like to explain to my people that I will send for them. May I take one, at least?” Lasva gestured my way. “My… my first runner?”

  Marnda looked shocked, then her face mottled with anger.

  The king waved a hand. “Yes, yes, first runner, of course! The rest can catch up by wagon. We’ll find a use for ’em later.”

  The jarlan made a subtle signal with her forefinger, and her first runner handed her jug to me with a glance eloquent with apology, then touched her hand to her heart and beckoned with the other to Lasva. “I will show you the way.”

  Marnda followed close on their heels with a fearful, almost furtive look back, but no one paid her the least heed. I hesitated, then stooped to set the jugs on the table, my heart pounding. The king also ignored me and began to talk to his sister. His hoarse voice faded behind me as I ran to catch up with the others.

  This time I did not struggle to conquer my anger with Marnda, determined to take my place. Indignant questions piled against my tongue: how could I possibly obey Queen Hatahra’s orders if I was left behind? How would I catch up, if no one gave me a transfer token? How long would be this wagon ride, especially in winter?

  When I reached the doorway to Lasva’s chamber, Marnda was already pulling things together. After weeks of living in tents, we were all very good at fast packing and unpacking. I could tell Marnda knew I was there, but she did not even look at me, as if she could erase my existence by ignoring me. Lasva sped across the stone floor, her tiny, gliding, court steps so odd in this huge chamber with its fresco of stylized dancing horses. “Emras,” she murmured, and in Old Sartoran, which Marnda did not know, “she fears that I am in danger, and she was my heart-mother all my life…”

  What about the queen’s orders? I looked past Lasva to where Marnda worked, her movements quick and sharp. Marnda knew my orders. Yes, she did know my orders. In the time it would take for me to catch up with them by conventional means, surely she would be able to watch out for signs of Norsunder as well as I could. (I was still feeling uncertain about magic.) Marnda was the one I had to talk to, anyway, in order to write to the queen.

  All that was reasonable, but there remained the duty imperative. And yet here was Lasva, waiting for me to decide, as Marnda worked on desperately, as if her hands packing things would make her wish into reality.

  It was Lasva’s permitting me to decide that caused me to relent. This was a temporary separation, I reminded myself. And there was a good chance I could learn things from the king’s sister.

  I bowed my acceptance.

  Lasva touched my hand. “Thank you.”

  Having established her place as Lasva’s guardian, Marnda said to me, “We will make things ready for your arrival.”

  They left, going back to the hall, where a drum roll was in progress.

  There was no purpose in my following. No one seemed to need me. So I stayed upstairs, where Anhar and Pelis met me. “What happened? Where are they going?” and finally, “Are we safe?” Anhar asked.

  Pelis was picking up things Marnda had flung aside in her haste. She straightened up. “We’re safe. Enough.”

  Anhar sat on the bed Lasva never got to sleep in, her hands clasped tightly. “What do you mean? Is Princess Lasva in danger?”

  Pelis sighed. “It’s happened just as Lnand said it might. Only it happened sooner than anyone thought. Anyone except old Marnda. As if she could scold that king into proper behavior!”

  “What do you mean?” Anhar looked skeptical. “Prince Ivandred has to go back to that place we passed. That I understand. But at least the princess doesn’t have to be in the middle of the fighting. So why is she in danger?”

  I saw it then. “Lasva is a…” I groped for the right word.

  “A hostage,” Pelis said.

  Anhar’s eyes widened. “A hostage? I don’t understand.”

  “Because the king sees love as a weakness, and Ivandred is in love. So the king can use her to control his son,” Pelis said, hands warding Thorn Gate.

  NINE

  OF SECRETS WITHIN SECRETS

  N

  ext morning, one of the jarlan’s runners summoned us to a room where we were startled to discover the rosebud carpet hanging on the wall like a tapestry. I stopped as if I’d walked into a wall and held my breath so that I would let no mirth escape. How could I laugh at the jarlan for not knowing what the rosebud mat was for, when I could not identify the purpose of the room we’d been brought to? There was no bed or bath, yet it did not look like any parlor I’d ever seen. There was only the plain, low wood table surrounded by cushions. On the table lay a slate, chalk, some ink, and a rough-looking straw-colored paper. Until I’d entered this castle, I’d never considered how uncomfortable it would be not to know a room’s purpose. I did not know where to position myself.

  “This tapestry i
s very beautiful,” the jarlan said, entering from a side room. “I will look at those rose shades all through winter, and be reminded of summer. However, your mistress only had time to give it to me and not to instruct any of us in the care of such delicate weaving. It seems too fragile to hang long, so does it remain up for a season? And when I store it away, should it be laid in with attar of roses?” She turned expectantly from me to Anhar to Pelis.

  Anhar looked down, hands tightly pressed in The Peace. Pelis said, “Anything you wish, my lady, ah, Ingrid-Jarlan.”

  The jarlan uttered a short laugh, then said, “Let us try another trail.” She turned to me. “Someone said you are a scribe. In this kingdom, scribes make copies. Why would a princess bring a scribe across the continent, unless she thought she was coming to a land of illiterates? Or do scribes serve different purposes in Colend?”

  My guise now gone, I outlined scribe duties. She listened with the same narrow-eyed detachment I’d seen in Ivandred when he looked at the maps, then said, “If I had to define what I am hearing, and what I am not hearing, it seems that you are in fact the princess’s first runner.”

  Not certain how to answer, I made The Peace.

  “And so, Seneschal Marend, or Marnd—”

  “Marnda.”

  “Marnda usurped your place because her function changed?” The jarlan leaned forward. “Or because your queen did not retain her?”

  I hesitated, reluctant to suggest that Marnda thought Ingrid-Jarlan’s brother, the Marloven king, the primary danger to Lasva. And Marnda’s action had been so odd, so desperate, as if she could defend anyone! She’d sounded like a madwoman, or one bespelled. How to put any of that into words, especially in a language I knew so ill?

  The jarlan drummed her fingers on the table, then said, “When the seneschal sees how big Choreid Dhelerei is, she will probably not want to be a runner. I expect you will be summoned soon, and all duties and perquisites will be straightened out. Before that time, perhaps you might employ yourself learning more of our language and custom. The archive is directly above us.” She pointed toward the ceiling. “I will have someone open the vents.” This was a clear dismissal, so I bowed and left as she turned to the dressers. “Now, for you two. Until I receive orders, I can put you to work, which will define your duties and perquisites while you are among us, but first, what exactly is it that ‘dressers’ do…?”

  The archive had once been part of a private suite for Ivandred’s ancestors, at the front of the castle overlooking the main court. The doors were beautifully carved, animals in flight: raptors and horses.

  The first door opened into a scrupulously clean chamber with that atmosphere of emptiness that suggested it was seldom used. The air was still and frigid. An old-fashioned bed framed with more wood carvings of horses was the only piece of furniture. I understood that the bed, alone in that bare room, was significant, but not how. Beyond it was another set of tall carved doors, and here I found the archive in a long room with high windows, below which shelves were set. Between these were narrow spaces where shields hung. The floor was bare stone, with two low tables in the center, the legs oddly shaped, like raptor legs, with talon feet. Flat cushions lay all around the tables.

  I was surprised to find this archive at least as large as any in Colend. Were these hand-bound books and scrolls all about nothing but horses and war? I felt the first breath of heat from hidden vents. Sliding my hands inside the sleeves of my woolen robe, I walked along the shelves, which were not labeled as ours were. Small sigils along the top of each bookshelf indicated types: a lily above Twelve Towers’ copies of royal records; a scroll for plays—none newer than a couple of centuries; a poppy for records of the lands along Halia’s north shore. The adjacent wall turned out to be made up entirely of very old records of the Venn.

  I decided to start with what I knew, which was An Examination of Greatness, my reasoning being that I was so familiar with the Sartoran translation, having rendered it in Kifelian, that if I read the original, I might master their language the faster. So I stopped at the crown sigil, which turned out to be extremely old records from the Iascan days. Most of it was written by either the once-royal family Cassadas, or their scribes. These were all previous to Elgar the Fox and his contemporaries. I did not find anything on Adamas Dei of the Black Sword, though I recalled references to his having lived somewhere in this region, or one nearby.

  The bells clanged discordantly: midday. The entire morning was gone, and nothing to show for it but dust on my cold fingers.

  I ran downstairs and spotted a pair of runners vanishing at the other end of one of the long halls. The prospect of returning to my search got me through a boring meal of cabbage rolls and rye biscuits. I knew no one, though I looked for stable hands, hoping I’d at least see Birdy. But maybe they had their own dining area.

  After the meal, when I turned the wrong way down a hall, I spotted his dark hair among a lot of blond heads. He said in Kifelian as I neared, “We stable hands are in dormitories, too.”

  I did not tell him that I had a private room. I put my hands together to gesture commiseration.

  He went on quickly, “But I get Restday evening free, and our perquisites—it’s much like pay—extends to the town pleasure house.”

  “They celebrate Restday here?”

  “That’s what I was told. Anhar and I want to know if you will meet with us at Barleywine House at Hour of the Lamp?”

  I signed assent and turned away, almost stumbling into the jarlan, who looked at me in surprise. I said quickly, “I thought I would compare An Examination of Greatness against the original, to learn your language the better. But I could not find it in the archive room. Is there another archive?”

  “Examination… ah.” She passed her fingers over her lower face, her gaze blank. Then she said, “You will find it under the eagle sign, at the very end.”

  “But does not that section begin a full century after the time in question?”

  Her brows lifted. “You are observant. I did not think anyone knew our history outside of our own people! You will find it there because it is regarded as a record of instruction,” she said.

  I waited, and when she did not offer to explain further, I made The Peace and ran upstairs. The archive was empty and perceptibly warmer. I looked for the eagle sigil. When I found nothing labeled An Examination of Greatness, I took down each book one after the other, until I reached one called Indevan of Choreid Elgar’s Reorganization of the Academy, as dictated to Savarend Montredaun-An, the Fox. And below that, a drawing that was just recognizable as the Fox Banner that Ivandred and his lancers carried, only the fox face was flatter, rounder, the ruff not flame-like but more like thistledown. It still had the strange bird eyes.

  I opened it and found a life of Inda Elgar at the beginning, only compressed into a skimpy summary of the main events. Most of the book was detailed instructions for teaching warriors, right down to how meals should be served, and what the boys (it said boys) should wear.

  None of this had been in the book I translated.

  I paged back again, looking for one of the many Elgar battles so vividly described in the record that I had translated. I found one—with no details offered, only a reference to a ballad that used Someone’s story based on Someone Two’s letters. There was also a dismissive reference to another ballad sung to a “stolen” melody and riddled with errors in service to the Olavairs, like Elgar’s having been born in Lorgi Idego. Idego? I remembered a place along the north coast of Halia had been called Iday-ago, but the Marlovens had changed the name to something else. Obviously the change of names during Elgar the Fox’s day hadn’t stuck.

  I put the book back. How strange that there were what seemed to be two versions of the same record. Perhaps there was yet another.

  The room was warmer, and I had nothing else to do. So I walked back to the shelves with the oldest ancestral records, and one by one took them out. The earliest were the toughest to read, being written in ei
ther a phonetic Old Sartoran that was spelled according to local pronunciation, or in Venn, which I’d once tried to learn on a dare, then never used again. Gradually the books appeared in a writing more recognizable as the modern Marloven, with Sartoran vowel marks. In none of these did I find references to Inda the Fox, though I found many instances of the names Indevan, Algara, Algara-Vayir, Choraed, and Elgaer.

  I stopped when the ancient inks became impossible to read. Dark was falling swiftly. I looked around. No waiting glowglobes. Obviously this room was too seldom used to warrant such an expensive luxury. However, lanterns sat in protected sconces high up on the walls, waiting to be lit, and there were also trimmed lamps on the two central tables. I raised my hands, delighted with this chance to practice my fire spell. Then I glanced at the windows above—and realized my light would be seen from without. How foolish would that be, to hide my secret all this way, just to have all those guards on the castle walls see light flare in the row of windows?

  So I dropped my hands. It was then that I sensed the elusive presence of magic.

  I want it understood that at this point I could have abandoned this quest to find the missing record. I had little interest in Inda Elgar, and none in their war academy, either historically or presently. But the anomalies were interesting, and so was the presence of magic that could not be accounted for in a room full of books and scrolls.

  The bells rang the watch change, which was also the call for supper.

  The next morning was Restday. I returned to the archive, which was full of weak, wintry morning light.

  Restday. I still carried Lasva’s golden case. The Restday letters had tapered off to one every week or so from Darva, always asking how Lasva was. It had been a week since the last. I would have to check when I returned to my room.

  I walked the perimeter of the archive, the only sounds my breathing, and the hiss of my house slippers on the stone floor. Shelf after shelf, row upon row of books filled with hidden secrets, lives I’d never heard of, actions and decisions and customs unknown. But at that moment my goal was to explore that hidden magic, not to read and to learn.