The Path of Flames (Chronicles of the Black Gate Book 1)

by Phil Tucker

  Kethe laughed. For a moment the world returned to some semblance of normal; she could almost imagine her father in the stable with a handful of his other Wolves, a feast set in the great hall to welcome the men home, and her mother descending from the keep to welcome and toast them in their latest victory.

  Ser Wyland glanced about the inside of the bailey and up at the keep. “How is your Lord father? I’ve not heard from him since his summons to join the campaign. The Solar Portals are a riot of confusion, and I could barely pass through to Ennoia from Sige.”

  Kethe swallowed, and like that, the moment passed. Even Ser Wyland couldn’t bring back the past. “He died fighting the Agerastians.” Her chest felt as if it had turned into two blocks of wood, and her voice was the strained groan that would be made by grinding them together. “With all the Black Wolves. Two weeks ago now.”

  Ser Wyland’s eyes widened in shock and his jaw clenched. He looked as if she’d slid her sword smoothly into his chest. He didn’t say a word as he searched her face and then slowly lifted his head to stare past her blankly at the far wall. “Two weeks ago.” His voice was hollow. Kethe watched him, heart racing, feeling anew her pain and sorrow. Before her eyes she saw Ser Wyland master himself, absorb this news, internalize it, and then look back down to her. “I’m so sorry.” She saw pain in his dark eyes. “You have my sincerest condolences, my Lady.”

  Kethe felt strangely adult and grave. Was it wrong to feel so thrilled at having Ser Wyland focus so intently on her? If only she weren’t coming from a training bout in the woods, but rather were clad in an elegant gown. She tried for a sorrowful smile. “I’m so glad that you’ve returned to us, Ser Wyland. We feared you dead with the other Wolves. Your presence has been sorely missed.”

  Ser Wyland nodded gravely. “I was on a pilgrimage in Sige. Too far out in the mountains for word to reach me in time. I’ll never forgive myself for not being by your father’s side. But perhaps I can still honor his memory by doing your Lady mother what service I can render.”

  Kethe nodded mutely. At that point Brocuff and Hessa rode in through the gatehouse. Ser Wyland looked up, and a wry smile returned to his face. “Constable!”

  “All right, you men. You want the castle to fall while you’re out here mooning like fools? You’ve seen a real knight before. Back to your posts!” Brocuff’s bark sent the soldiers scrambling, though a number of them called out final welcomes to the knight before they ran away.

  A groom helped Hessa dismount, but Brocuff simply slid from his saddle and strode over, a big smile on his square face. “Ser Wyland! I never thought I’d be so happy to see your offensively handsome face.”

  Ser Wyland laughed and clapped Brocuff on the shoulder so hard the constable stumbled. “Watch yourself, Constable, or I’ll give you a hug that will snap your spine.”

  “Just you try it,” said Brocuff, grinning. “I’ve not bathed in weeks in anticipation of just such an attack.”

  Ser Wyland raised his gauntlets in mock surrender. “I yield! You’re a master of defense. No wonder Lord Kyferin handed the defenses of the castle to your capable armpits.”

  Brocuff guffawed. “Where are you coming in from?”

  “My pilgrimage to Ethering Woods.” The knight smiled sadly. “There’ll be time to catch up once I’ve presented myself to Lady Kyferin.”

  “Aye, fair enough. She’ll be glad to see you.” Brocuff tugged on his ear. “We’re in dire straits. It’s good to have you with us.”

  Ser Wyland nodded and looked up to the keep. “Thank you, Brocuff.” He took a deep breath, then sighed. “Lady Kethe? Will you escort me to your mother?”

  “Of course.” Curses. She’d wanted to wash up first. Ser Wyland might be too gentlemanly to remark on her disheveled and unladylike appearance, but her mother would notice right away. She’d have to stay back by the door and slip away as soon as she could.

  “Lady Hessa,” said Ser Wyland, turning as her companion emerged from the stables. “I’m glad to see that you still grace Kyferin Castle.”

  Hessa simpered and curtseyed, then threw in a giggle for good measure. “Oh, Ser Wyland, having you back is like finally seeing sunlight after an interminable night. We’ve all been so afraid, haven’t we, Kethe?”

  Kethe’s smile froze, but she forced herself to nod. “Oh, yes. Some of us have been terrified.”

  Ser Wyland raised an eyebrow, but he gave no further sign of noticing the change in their tone. “You’re too kind. Now, shall we ascend? I must pay my respects.”

  Hessa smiled, took a step forward, and tripped artfully right into Ser Wyland’s arms. He caught her smoothly, but found that she’d taken a strong grip of his arm and was now beaming up at him. Ser Wyland paused, raised an eyebrow in amusement, then smiled and began to escort her up to the barbican. Kethe shook her head and followed a few paces behind, listening as Hessa giggled and complimented Ser Wyland and asked an endless stream of questions.

  They passed through the barbican and up past the drum towers to the keep. Kethe’s mind turned to practical details. Brocuff would take care of the remnants of her sword, stashing them in Elon’s smithy along with her leather training clothes. She hoped Elon wouldn’t investigate the blade too closely—the constable had agreed to claim she’d struck a rock, but she knew Elon was too sharp to fall for that lie if he did more than glance at the sword.

  When they reached the entrance to the Lord’s Hall, Hessa stepped reluctantly away to make room for Kethe, who took Ser Wyland’s arm with a nervous smile. It felt surprisingly good to stand by his side, to feel lithe and feminine. Was this what Hessa was urging her to embrace? A life spent with a man just like this, tall and strong and wonderfully handsome?

  She raised her chin as they stepped forth into the light.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Magister Audsley stepped into his tower room and closed the door behind him. He pressed it firmly into the jamb, then turned and leaned back against it with a sigh. Eyes closed, he inhaled the scent of his private domain, allowing the familiar smells to sink into his being and soothe away the stress: sandalwood incense, the mellifluous complexity of a thousand parchments and papers, old leather, the ghost of coal smoke, spices and his own familiar scent. Ah, now this was bliss, to have a corner of one’s own. Everyone else in the castle lived atop one another, sleeping like logs in the woodpile, stepping over each other when they had to leave the great hall to relieve themselves, rubbing elbows and hearing every biological eruption, eructation and ejection of effluvium. Not Audsley King, however; as a Noussian and the castle’s resident expert on all things literary, cosmological, alchemical and mythological, he’d earned himself an entire level of the Ferret Tower.

  With a sigh he opened his eyes, adjusted his precious spectacles, and pushed away from the door with his ample arse. The Ferret Tower had been one of the last built, and unlike the cruder, square towers such as the Wolf and Stag, his was circular so as to not provide a besieging enemy with a convenient corner to bombard with catapult stones. This was an advancement that he was most pleased to take advantage of, because the circularity of his chamber provided him with all manner of philosophical metaphors. It was lamentably true that there was no fireplace to be had, much to his firecat Aedelbert’s dismay, and this, alas, was the large room’s true failing; during the winter months his rich brown skin grew ashy and he could see his breath plume before him as he turned his pages with fingers made numb despite his quite expensive calfskin gloves—but it was his, all his, and he wouldn’t have traded it for the choicest spot before the great hall’s fire and all the lamb crackling in the world.

  “Aedelbert?” he called, and stepped lightly across his rug, rounded his central table and stopped at the far side of the room. He’d covered this section of the wall’s curvature with a storage system whose design was his own: a wooden honeycomb that reached to the ceiling, within which he kept his smaller scrolls and maps. It had taken the carpenter two months to carve and assemble. Now, where was th
at map? He held up his hands as he hesitated, fingers rippling, then took out an old, faded green scroll case. He undid the copper clasp, popped it open, and with great care drew out the heavy vellum roll within. Was this it? Ah, yes. Ah, yes, indeed.

  He turned back to his table and hummed as he cleared a space, moving aside a pile of precious books, a number of rocks he was trying to categorize, the deformed skull of a calf, then unrolled the scroll with great care.

  “Ah,” he sighed. “Beautiful.” And it was. Regardless of the precious information it contained, the scroll itself was a work of art. Deep cobalt blues were inked smoothly onto its surface, while small stoneclouds were carefully delineated everywhere, their orbits marked by dotted lines of gold ink. Fine calligraphy identified each stonecloud, its nature and history, while unique glyphs along the orbiting line marked where it would appear during which month. His master’s master, the Magister Plune, had acquired it in Aletheia itself, the largest floating stonecloud by far in the Empire. He’d paid three ingots of gold for it, but that had been a symbolic exchange. There was no putting a price on such beauty and information.

  “Aedelbert? You’re missing out. Come see.” He heard a sleepy chirp from somewhere under the voluminous covers piled up high on his bed. “Very well, your loss. Now,” said Audsley, leaning forward over the table and placing his finger just above one of the stoneclouds. “You. You, I say! Reveal yourself unto me!” He squinted down at the cramped writing, humming lightly as he took in the information, then moved his finger, never actually touching the vellum, to follow the accused stonecloud’s orbiting line. Out and over, till he reached the glyph for their current month. Beneath that lay the sign for Ennoia, followed by a notation that marked the stonecloud as moving over Kyferin Castle’s domain. “Yes, yes,” he muttered. “Indeed! And quoth, verily, and poom poom pah!”

  He carefully laid a heavy book on each of the map’s corners and then hurried over to another section of wall, where a large, plain wooden board hung, truncating the curvature of the wall. Reaching out, Audsley opened a vertical container affixed to the board’s left edge, and with great care unfurled a map across the board, then clipped it to the far side. He took a moment to smooth out the heavy vellum, then linked his hands behind his back and considered the expanse of the Empire.

  The map was more beautiful than Lady Kyferin, though not by much. The seven realms of the empire were depicted in their order of Ascension, from chthonic Bythos in its dark and oppressive caverns up to Aletheia’s empyreal might. This portrayal was little more than a pious conceit, for only Ennoia and Agerastos could reach each other without the aid of a gate.

  As always, Audsley’s gaze lingered on his home city of Nous, painted just below the peaks of Sige. The conical city emerged from the azure waters of the Illimitable Ocean, and he blinked as old memories arose to assail him. Inhaling briskly, he turned sternly to the realm in which he was destined to spend the last of his days. “Ennoia, three days ago.” He picked up a long, thin wand and pointed imperiously at where the city was marked. “Given its trajectory and speed…” He did the sums quickly in his head. “That should place the stonecloud about… here.” He moved his wand hesitantly up and to the right, then tapped where a small symbol was marked ‘Kyferin Castle’. “Not an exact pass. Oh, no, let it be noted that I’m making no definitive statements! But… from the top of the keep, it should be eminently visible! Indeed, indeed.”

  He chewed his lower lip as he studied the map a moment longer, then his eyes strayed as if by their own account to the island of the heretics, just off the southern coast of the Ennoian mainland. He frowned. The island looked perpetually poised to attack, its splintered, circular coastline sweeping together to form the bristling flanks of an invading host, perforated only by the straits of Bohesus which allowed entrance to the great inland sea on whose shore the city of Agerastos stood.

  Audsley tapped his lips with his wand. To think! What gall, what hubris, to destroy their Solar Gate and remove themselves so decisively from the Ascendant Empire! They’d practically demanded the invasions that had followed, the last of which had been led by Lord Kyferin himself. Enderl had captured Agerastos and returned victorious, but the Empire’s grip of the island had slipped and been cast off only a decade later. Such a pity!

  Audsley sighed and turned to his shelving, where he drew down a massive tome with great difficulty. This he set down on a broad book stand and absent-mindedly turned the pages. He could lose hours browsing this Stonecloud Atlas, but this time his mind remained on Agerastos and the destruction of its Gate. He’d been but a boy when word had shaken the Empire. Thirty years? And now the land was besieged by war, death, and a future so uncertain he hated to think of it. Blasted heretics. They’d earned their centuries-long punishment twice over.

  Sighing, he opened the atlas to the right stonecloud’s page. A talented artist had rendered it in charcoal shades long ago, down to the craggy edges, the teardrop underbelly, the flattened top with its undergrowth single abbey, the mass of twisted trees and their trailing roots. Beautifully done. If only all the stoneclouds were so portrayed. Some were little more than blobs or vague sketches; they had not been seen in centuries and were thought to perhaps have broken free of their orbits to wander off the edge of the world or crash into the ocean or mountains without anyone being the wiser. Ah! To be a stonecloud hunter, filling the blanks using monocular, mathematics, and sheer determination to track his floating prey! To be the man that, say, located Starkadr, the lost stonecloud of the Sin Casters themselves! In his next life, perhaps.

  Audsley sighed and squinted down at the annotations. This one was but a small body of rock, only a quarter of a mile in diameter, and devoid of water. Slight vegetation. A small abbey had been built upon it almost two centuries ago by Nethys, the famous sister of the Third Ascendant, only to be abandoned a few years after her death and then inhabited intermittently by bandits and hermits. Audsley’s gaze dropped to the last entry, written in his own hand seven years ago.

  The Stonecloud of Nethys passed a half mile west of Kyferin Castle at an estimated altitude of one hundred feet, having lost several hundred feet since its last sighting. Momentum was smooth, with a constant speed of fifteen miles per hour. Its dimensions remained constant with the last measuring, and I espied no movement or life upon its surface. It would seem that the bandit Tycsco has quit it since last it passed us by. Its loss in speed and height is of concern. If it continues to lose height in such manner, we may only see it one or two more times before it crashes to the ground.

  Audsley pursed his lips. That had been his first entry in this great tome. He remembered the day clearly. The light had been poor, but he’d also been crying. Magister Yeon had passed away the night before, his wasting disease finally claiming his last breath and ushering him into Ascendance. Audsley had barricaded himself in here, his master’s room, bereft and gutted, and had spent the entire night taking down scrolls and opening books, not reading but deriving a simple comfort from the feel of the paper beneath his fingertips, the scent of ink and the mystery of the painted metals. At dawn he’d resumed his duties in a rote manner, his limbs heavy, his mind numb, only to realize that the stonecloud was to pass by within a few hours. He’d notified Lord Kyferin as to the stonecloud’s imminent passage, his voice shaking in the great hall, and then climbed to the keep’s roof to take his observations even as the castle went on alert in case Tycsco should attempt a raid. None had been forthcoming, and Audsley had retired to his master’s room to make his annotations, the Kyferin’s mocking thanks still ringing in his ears. That was when he’d discovered Aedelbert, smoky gray and no larger than a kitten, lost and fierce and too weak to fly back out through the window. He’d scooped him up and sat down to cry, hugging the hissing little firecat tight even as he’d realized that this room was now his own, a final gift from a master he’d come to love.

  He sighed. Old memories. He closed the tome, took up his satchel, checked that it had parchment, quill and
ink, then hunted around behind his bed until he found his white-oak traveling case. Breathing lightly, he set it on his bed and sprung the catches, opening it to examine his leather-bound monocular. This alone was worth more than the orbital map and the skycloud atlas combined. Such treasures were entrusted to his care! He shook his head, marveling. To think! And nobody else in the castle, except for perhaps Father Simeon and Lady Kyferin, appreciated how valuable these items were. What a world.

  He snapped the case closed, then pulled on his heaviest cloak, slung the satchel over his shoulder, and took up his monocular case. “I’m going out, all right?”

  A sleepy chirp was his only response. He hesitated at the door, eying the satchel’s strap. It had nearly worn through. He’d have to fix it soon. Fingering the frayed leather, he surveyed his quarters. Had he forgotten anything? He did a quick review, and then nodded decisively. All ready. He shook out his shoulders, cast a last look around his room, and then departed.

  ~~~

  Half an hour later he reached the top of the keep. Panting for breath, sweat running down his back, face flushed, he stopped just below the heavy trapdoor. Damn it. He’d hoped it would be open. He steadied his breath, placed one shoulder against the boards and pushed. The trapdoor rose an inch and then stuck.

  Audsley grunted and considered putting down his monocular case, then gritted his teeth and shoved harder. The door rose another inch, then another. Suddenly it lifted easily and disappeared, and he let out a cry and almost fell, stumbling up the steps and into the cold air.

  “There, there, ser.” A gruff voice, and somebody steadied him by the shoulder. “No need to get into a lather.”

  “Oh, well, I—thank you. Most opportune, indeed.” Audsley squinted at the figure, then pushed his spectacles up his nose and tried for a smile. The guardsman was a grizzled older man with the face of a bloodhound and the flat eyes of a veteran. Just the kind of man he could never make a conversation with. “How is everything? Brisk morning, isn’t it? Bracing.”