Gods & Dragons: 8 Fantasy Novels

by Daniel Arenson

  Salick paused before answering. “Garet, a Hallmaster is not a king. He or she is chosen from the other Masters. They can choose someone else, if there is dissension.”

  Garet thought about this. “But, Salick, wouldn’t such a fight keep the Banehall from fighting the demons, and Torrick unprotected?” The image of the ruined stall in the marketplace rose in front of his eyes, and he shuddered.

  “Not necessarily,” Salick replied. “Each Master is responsible for his or her own patrols and trains their own students—above a certain level, of course.” She adjusted the green sash around her shoulders. “But someone has to control the rest: who takes a watch in case of sickness, whether or not the division of duties is fair, and who should take on special jobs like training Blacks and Blues or keeping records and such.”

  Dorict turned from where he was listening at the door and added, “The Hallmaster is also the Banehall’s voice when we talk to the King and his lords.”

  Garet nodded, understanding a bit more of this new world.

  “Then a Hallmaster’s power is really limited,” he said. Salick shrugged. “It depends on how many Reds support you.”

  The noise swelled in the hallway again, and Salick twisted her hands nervously. “Maybe it was a bad idea to send Marick into this kind of chaos. Do you think we should…?”

  Before they could decide whether not to set out and rescue their companion, the door flew open and Marick dragged in a harried looking Boronict.

  “What is it, Salick?” the anxious young Gold demanded. “I’m…we’re all in the middle of something here!”

  “What is that ‘something,’ Boronict?” Salick asked, grabbing his arm to keep him from leaving again. Marick slammed the door and put his back to it, a determined look on his face.

  “I suppose you’d better know, since it’s partly your fault,” Boronict said, a wry smile on his face.

  Salick stiffened. “How can you accuse us of…”

  “Hold on, Green. It’s not you. It’s your Master! He’s set the wolf among the sheep tonight.” The young man wiped his forehead and gratefully accepted the cup of water Dorict handed him. “Master Mandarack has convinced Training Master Corix and several other Reds to vote on a new leader for Torrick Banehall!”

  “Well, it’s about time,” said Marick, still guarding the door. “All Furlenix does is eat and eat and then eat again. This Hall’s gone downhill since I left!”

  Dorict rolled his eyes at this arrogance, but Boronict bowed, a touch of irony in his voice. “No doubt we have lacked your noble example. Though I believe most people think that the disappearance of petty crime has almost made up for it.”

  Marick blushed and, surprisingly, bowed in return.

  Boronict continued. “Many of the Masters have been dissatisfied with the leadership of this Hall.” His eyes flashed and his voice rose. “The King and nobles have taken away many of our privileges in favour of their profit. As long as few demons attacked, we could manage without proper walls between neighbourhoods, without enough horses for patrols of the mining villages, even without enough labour to keep up our own hall.” He looked at the door, anxious to be gone. “Salick, the Reds know that Furlenix is not the Master to face this great change in the Midlands. By the end of this night, there may be some bent noses, and maybe one or two broken ones, but there will be a new Master in this Hall!” He strode to the door and picked up Marick, gently depositing him to one side. “I hope it’s Corix. She’s not the most pleasant person to work with, but then, these are unpleasant times.” With that, he darted out the door and back into the arguments and shoving in the hall.

  The shouting continued long into the night. The four young Banes listened intently whenever the wash of sound increased or when they heard furniture breaking. Finally, as the city watch called out the third hour past half-night, a silence descended on the Banehall. Marick stuck his head outside the door, despite Dorict’s hissed warning.

  “Not a soul in sight,” Marick reported. “I’ll be back!” With that, the boy sped down the hall before Salick could catch his shoulder.

  “Demon take that boy!” Salick hissed and darted after him.

  Garet and Dorict looked at each other. Both were more cautious than the others, but tonight they were just as curious. With a slight movement of his chin, Garet suggested, and with an answering grimace, Dorict agreed. They moved out into the corridor as quietly as they could, though their footsteps seemed loud in the new silence.

  They caught up with Salick at the top of the main staircase. She held a wriggling Marick, staring over the balustrade. Dorict wrapped a thick arm around Marick’s neck and muttered threats in his ear. But his friend tore free and pushed his face between the slats. A crowd of Reds with a dusting of Golds on the fringes huddled around the woman who had been talking to Mandarack earlier. With her short, iron-grey hair framing a severe face and her fists planted firmly on her hips, she made an imposing figure. The others quieted as she began to speak, raising her voice to reach those in the back and, unintentionally, the four students on the upper landing.

  “Furlenix has agreed to step down as Hallmaster and take the position of Archivist. Taraox will leave that position to supervise the Blacks and Blues, and Praxilit will replace me as Training Master.” Her eyes swept the crowd in front of her, stopping here and there to momentarily pin a single, reluctant man or woman. Garet could see a few backs stiffen at the uncompromising tone of their new Master, but Corix held them with her narrowed eyes, her short hair seeming to bristle at any sign of resistance. Daunted, the Reds murmured agreement and began to disperse, the Golds trailing in their wake like fall leaves.

  Salick pulled them away and quietly led her small group back to their room. She pushed them inside and closed the door, warning them to get some sleep. Her attitude was one of extreme concentration.

  “Salick,” Marick called as the door swung closed, “do you think this is happening at the other Banehalls?” His tone lacked its usual confidence; he sounded like the child he was, in need of reassurance.

  Only Salick’s hand was visible, curled around the edge of the door. It was a small hand, but it was tracked by scars that Garet realized must come from constant training with weapons. Salick’s voice came softly through the narrow crack. “Not yet. Things are most dangerous here, on the edge of the Midlands. The others won’t feel the change, not yet.” With that half-comfort, she closed the door and left the three boys to think their way to sleep.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE FALLS

  The excitement of the night before and the few hours of sleep before dawn left the Banes tired and subdued as they waited for Master Mandarack in the front entrance of Torrick Banehall. Garet and his two young friends had eaten quickly in the kitchen under Salick’s impatient eyes. She had been up even earlier than they had, or perhaps had never gone to bed, for her eyes were red and puffy, and she yawned between orders to the other three to hurry up, “lest the Master be kept waiting.”

  Breakfast was cold tea and dry bread, left over from the night before. Dorict stayed behind to beg a packed lunch from the yawning cooks while Salick and Garet carried saddlebags down the stairs to the front hall. Marick had disappeared. He joined the rest in the front hall some time later, looking pleased and secretive. Salick gave him a calculating look but was prevented from investigating by Mandarack’s arrival. He was accompanied by Corix and a scattering of tired, grim Reds. Garet saw that Corix’s red sash was now trimmed with a black border.

  “The Gold you met yesterday, Boronict, will be taking you to below the Falls shortly,” Corix informed the younger Banes, “just as soon as I’ve had a talk with him.” Her grey eyes, no less sharp for the bags under them, swept the young Banes, lingering for a long moment on Marick. “He will accompany you to the villages below the Falls but no farther.” With a slight, stiff bow to Mandarack, who returned it just as precisely, she turned and, dividing the Reds like a wind cutting through the prairie grass, disappeared back
into the depths of the hall.

  Marick stepped out from behind Salick and grinned at the new Banemaster’s back. Salick took this opportunity to cuff him lightly on the back of his head.

  “Oww! Salick, I didn’t do anything! I…” he started to hide behind Dorict, but one glance at his friend’s face sent him to Garet’s side instead. “Besides, we’d better set off if we want to make the Temple by dark, and if I know this Hall, the horses won’t be hitched yet and the cart will have a broken wheel, and…”

  Garet yawned and grabbed him by the elbow, dragging the still-protesting boy out the door as the party, following Mandarack, left the Banehall. A clammy fog had settled on the town, and for a moment Garet missed his old wool shirt. His new vest left his arms bare save for the thin, shiny cloth of his tunic.

  Despite Marick’s misgivings, the canvas-roofed cart was in one piece and hitched to a pair of large grey horses. Boronict joined them in a few minutes, silent and wrapped in a great black cloak.

  Once out the gates, he turned the horses away from the road they had come up on the day before and took a rutted path towards the west. As they got farther and farther from the city walls, two things changed: a heavy mist rose and the great roar of water made normal speech impossible.

  “That’s the Falls, of course,” Marick yelled in Garet’s ear. “We have to go down the Miner’s Trail to the bottom. Unless you’d like to swim over!”

  The Trail was a dizzying succession of narrow switchbacks, all wrapped in mist until, for one glorious moment, the wind shifted and cleared the air for a view of the Falls.

  Garet was glad of the sight, though it was terrifying in its grandeur. Far above them now, the North and South Ar joined and launched themselves together from a channel cut into the cliff top. All white foam and noise, it beat into the pools below, falling five times the height of the walls of Old Torrick. The wind died and the mist returned, but Garet knew he would never forget that one glimpse.

  At the bottom of the trail, they heard the ring of hammers on anvils and the shouts of men and women, but saw nothing more than the ten feet of road ahead of the cart. Boronict kept driving until they came out of the mist on the road to Shirath, the sound of the Falls now soft enough to talk over. The Torrick Bane climbed down from the wagon and stood without speaking.

  “Thank you for the help,” Salick said as she jumped down to join him. The other Banes followed.

  She smiled and waved her hand back at the wall of mist. “If we tried to get through that on our own, we’d have been very lost or very wet! You’re a good guide. Maybe Corix would let you take us all the way to Shirath.”

  No smile answered her jest and the younger Banes crowded around Boronict pelting him with questions. “Heaven’s shield! What’s wrong, Boronict?” piped Marick above the rest, and the young man looked sadly down at him.

  “I’m afraid you will have to go on without me. You see, my life here has ended. I can no longer stay at Torrick Banehall.”

  Salick’s arm dropped and she gasped out, “But why? What could you possibly have done to get tossed out? Is Furlenix back in charge?”

  Boronict shook his head, raining drops of water upon his interrogators. “No. It’s Corix who’s sent me off. You see, the reason you had to wait for me at the Banehall was that she wanted to see me about a,”—the young man’s face turned a deep red—”well, about a love letter!”

  Marick’s mouth dropped open and the colour drained from his face.

  Boronict put a limp hand on the young boy’s shoulder. Marick flinched. “You see,” he continued sadly, “someone left a letter on her desk professing a passionate love for her.”

  Garet couldn’t help blurting out, “But you couldn’t have written such a letter, Boronict. You and Corix…” He couldn’t finish, but shocked murmurs showed that the idea of the steel-spined Banemaster inspiring a romantic passion in anyone—and most especially in a young, good-natured man like Boronict—was impossible. Mandarack stood beside the cart, listening in his calm way.

  “Well, Garet, that’s the problem. You see, someone signed my name to that letter. Corix was furious. I’ve never seen her so mad. And now I must leave Torrick Banehall forever.” A tear welled in his eye, and he stood with his head hung down, hand still on Marick’s shoulder.

  Marick grabbed Boronict’s other hand and erupted in a torrent of words. “Oh no! Boronict. I wrote that note! I didn’t think Corix would really think it was from you. Oh, it was just a joke! Please, let me write another note, or I could even go back with you and explain it to Corix. Oh, Boronict you can’t stop being a Bane because of me! Ow!”

  The hand on Marick’s shoulder was suddenly clamped on the back of his neck. “Which is as much as Master Corix and I thought, my little friend.” Boronict was grinning from ear to ear.

  Marick wriggled but couldn’t break the young man’s grasp. “That’s unfair, Boronict! You never would have found out if you hadn’t lied to us about getting kicked out of the Banehall. That was a cheap trick!”

  Boronict’s smile did not fade. “High praise—from a master of cheap tricks! But I wasn’t lying about leaving the Banehall.” He released Marick and opened the heavy cloak. Instead of a gold sash hanging from his shoulder, a blood red sash was revealed.

  Marick’s mouth dropped open and even Salick was struck dumb. A dry voice spoke behind. “Congratulations, Boronict. When Master Corix told me she intended to promote you and send you to Bangt as part of the new Banehall, I thought it was a very reasonable decision.”

  Boronict bowed at the compliment and smiled down at Marick. He extended his hand. “No hard feelings, Marick?”

  The young Bane closed his mouth with an audible snap and ruefully held out his hand. “I can see that I taught you Torrickers too well when I was there. Good luck in Bangt.”

  The other Banes joined in the congratulations. Garet offered his own warm regards, for he liked the friendly manner and sharp wit of the young man. When the group had quieted, Boronict snapped his fingers.

  “That’s right. Garet, Master Corix sent this for you to study on your way to Shirath. The rumour is that you can read.” He pulled out a small book from an inside pocket of his cloak. Its cover was moist from their passage near the waterfall, but Garet could make out the words on the cover: The Demonary of Moret.

  Marick groaned when he saw it. “That old thing! I swear, Garet, I almost went back to the streets rather than try and puzzle out what old Moret was talking about.”

  Salick interrupted. “Garet,” she instructed him, in her serious ‘teacher’ voice, “that is the first book that Blacks study at the Banehall. You will be tested on its contents before you can wear the Blue.”

  He looked at the slim volume in his hand. Many times on his father’s farm, he had dreamed of reading a book. His mother had spoken lovingly of the books her own merchant father had collected. Some passages concerning the great battles between famous heroes and equally infamous dragons she could still recite from memory. Now he had such a book, in his own hands. Garet felt at once close to his mother and yet achingly distant. Tears welled up in his eyes as he thanked Boronict. Salick, perhaps sensing his emotional state, told him to put the Demonary safely in his pack. Gratefully, he left the others and brushed past Mandarack to huddle over the luggage until he could control himself.

  By the time he returned, the Banes were ready to take their leave of Boronict. The luggage was loaded into the cart and the canvas rolled back to admit the warm sunshine. The iron-rimmed wheels ground against the stones of the road as they set off towards the next city on the river, Shirath.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SYMBOLS AND STARS

  The slow, steady progress of the cart was a relief to Garet. After so many new experiences, painful, frightening, or merely confusing, finally he had a chance to digest it all. The cart soon left the cobbled lanes of the mining villages and now travelled on the great paved road that Dorict told him stretched from the Falls, past Shirath, to the great sea
itself.

  The road was a marvel to Garet. Used to hill paths and mud tracks, he had never imagined as great a construction as this. Three carts wide, it sloped from a slightly raised centre to gravel-filled drainage gutters at the edges. Every foot was paved with squared and smoothed stones, though it was rutted in some spots from centuries of use. The first Overking of Solantor had commanded each city to contribute to its construction. Every city of the South was either on it or only a ferry boat ride away from it. For six hundred years, the goods of the cities and the mines had passed from the falls to the ocean on this highway.

  “Why not use another boat?” Garet asked Salick.

  “There are some stretches of shallows and rapids that would stop us or turn us over,” she replied. “And there are rare cases of water demons this far up the river. Believe me, Garet, you do not want to try and fight a demon from a rocking boat!”

  Dorict curled up and dozed against the luggage. Marick sat in the driver’s box and honed his wits by pestering Salick. Mandarack sat stiffly across from Garet. The old man’s eyes were closed, but Garet felt sure that he was not asleep. As the wheels turned, the harvest sun beat down on the cart’s canvas, the grain-drying sun to the people of the Plains. But here there were no homesteads or farming villages. Save for swatches burned bare by lightning strike, the land nearest the road most resembled the prairie in its tall grass and late summer flowers. Farther back, groves of ancient apple trees endured the birch and aspen growing in their midst. Those ghostly orchards and the hedges that marched single-mindedly straight across the fields were the only clues that this land had once been farmed. Now the road cut through a wilderness that only half-remembered its civilized past. Wild rose and poplar trees grew in the ancient furrows. Behind it all, green mountains flanked the broad river valley.

  Twisting to get the sun off his face, Garet opened his pack and, after gently moving Dorict’s elbow, took out the Demonary. The cover was of blackened leather, tooled and pressed to form the symbols of the title. Although the edges were frayed and the spine shiny with bending, each page was complete and unstained as he fanned the pages. He held it reverently and promised himself to keep it just as well as its previous owner. He opened the book.