Harper found that he was content and involved in his job. What they were doing might be driven by the Lords, but it was helping the people of Hemtark and beyond. Their success rate was high, and while the services of Mortarlo were sometimes employed to get information, it was usually only in cases where lives hung in the balance and time was critical. Occasionally Harper was even sent by Pandral to extract information out of a prisoner using his own ‘skills’ because Mortarlo was not having success. This practice was far less palatable to him, but Harper understood the need. And if he kept his emotions under tight control, he found he could use his energy strings to rip through a captive’s mind, once the pain Mortarlo inflicted had caused their shields to drop, while keeping his energy dormant.
Over the months, Harper also engaged in many nighttime forays looking for information. Of the twenty-eight Lords living in the Central Tower, he had successfully searched the offices of twenty; only the eight living in the White Tower had not yet been trespassed upon. However, he had uncovered no evidence of the Source anywhere. He needed to get access to the White Tower.
As he and Conlan talked it through in their monthly conversations, they agreed that, given the complicated security, the only real way for Harper to get into the White Tower was to get Pandral promoted into it. With this in mind, Harper put even more effort into solving the cases they were given, even those of a morally dubious nature. After all, every case solved was another step forward for Pandral, and Harper had a strong feeling that time was of the essence. Rumours of what had really happened at the North Tower had started to surface and were fast becoming fact. Through his nocturnal wanderings, Harper knew that many of the Lords had received letters from family and friends demanding that someone take a stand against Alaric’s heir and the power of the Avatars. The element-driven storms and snow that beat against Hemtark and Mydren as a whole, over the winter, had not helped the people’s mood. The weather caused many deaths and a lot of damage, and after the last two milder winters, this came as a shock for the ordinary people. The demands for the Lords to deal with the Avatar menace were growing, tensions were mounting and, while he refused to fully admit it, the black sticky mass of terror that sat in Harper’s stomach was also growing.
Shyla offered a respite. When he had left after the first time, he had never meant to return, but over the weeks that followed, Harper found himself thinking about her often. And with his higher salary, he could afford a night with her once a month—if he spent money on almost nothing else. And so, this became a regular arrangement. They would talk, make each other laugh, share a meal and then, still clothed, Harper would wrap her in his arms, and for one brief night he would give himself to deep, relaxed sleep. Shyla never pushed him to have sex; she seemed happy with the arrangement, telling him that compared to some of her ‘guests’, his needs were a joy to fulfill. There was some guilt over the thought that Amelia would not approve, but she was not there, and she would never find out. Besides, she loved him; enough, Harper felt, that in the circumstances, she would not want him to forgo the comfort that Shyla was giving him.
“There you are, Harper. Oversleep, did we?” Pandral said from behind his desk in his private study. Closing the door behind him, Harper headed for the tray that was perched on the edge of Pandral’s work surface and began helping himself to the food on it.
“The sun is not yet up,” he said testily. “It is still night.”
Pandral snorted. “If it is not morning, why are you eating my breakfast?”
“Because you are a Lord of Mydren, and when you tell Bengi to get out of bed to make you breakfast, regardless of the time, the poor boy has no choice but to obey,” Harper told him, purposely stuffing a cake into his mouth in one go, a show of bad manners that was sure to annoy Pandral.
“You are in a foul mood this morning,” Pandral noted with an arched eyebrow.
“I refer his Lordship to my previous point; you had Bengi wake me up in the middle of the night!” Harper snapped, peeved.
Pandral smirked. “One of the unexpected joys of my status is being able to keep my men on their toes.”
“Well I would rather be flat on my back,” Harper retorted.
“So if you cannot indulge your laziness, you are instead indulging your gluttony?” Pandral asked as Harper violently shoved another cake into his mouth.
“Exactly right,” Harper said, spraying the desk with cake crumbs. Pandral stared at him, Harper stared back, and they both burst out laughing.
“Sit down, Harper. If you insist on eating my food, at least do so with a modicum of civility,” Pandral said, waving him to the chair in front of his desk. Harper sat. From the many long hours that he had already spent sat working in this very chair with Pandral, the cushion was now pleasantly and familiarly moulded to his rear. And for some reason this made him smile. Pulling the breakfast tray towards him, Harper poured tea for himself and his Lord, adding the honey to Pandral’s and giving it a stir before handing it over.
“If it makes you feel any better, I did not have Bengi wake you up just to flex my power over you,” Pandral said. “I actually have something I need to tell you.”
“And it had to be now, did it?” Harper asked, reaching for another cake.
“I did not realise how early it was,” Pandral replied, a soft growl of apology through the words.
Harper rolled his eyes. “I am not surprised,” he muttered. “Have you slept at all?”
“I have been summoned for an audience with Lord Avery in the White Tower later today,” Pandral said, ignoring Harper’s question, or perhaps thinking the statement was explanation enough for his lack of sleep.
Harper froze, the cake half in and half out of his mouth. Slowly he lowered the treat back to his plate. Lord Avery was as high as the Lords of Mydren went. While some claimed he never left the White Tower, others told tales of seeing him around Hemtark, but as nobody knew what he looked like, these stories were given little credence. There were other rumours about him, about how the man was ruthless, unpredictable, vicious and cunning, with a knowledge of everything that happened in Mydren, even things that were going to happen in the future. Harper looked into Pandral’s face and, through long association, could see the fear others would miss.
“Perhaps he wishes to thank you for all your hard work,” Harper suggested.
Pandral gave him a tight smile. “I very much doubt it.”
“We have closed three big cases this moon,” Harper said. “That last one has stopped a huge group of horse rustlers and returned Lord Killip’s prize stallion to him. We have six ongoing cases, all of which are being worked on and all of which have leads and possible solutions that we are investigating. You have made no mistakes, Pandral.”
“None that I am aware of,” Pandral murmured.
“You have made no mistakes,” Harper said again, more forcibly. “This meeting, whatever it is, can only be a good thing.”
Pandral smiled. “Thank you, my friend. Now, since you are already awake, I need your help ensuring all of these case files carry the reports we got in yesterday so that I can make sure Lord Avery has the newest information about them, should he ask.”
Harper nodded. “Very well. But we are going to need more tea and cakes.”
Harper waited for Pandral in his study while he was gone to the White Tower. Although he had claimed to need peace and quiet to read a file, he actually spent the time pacing and, he admitted to himself, worrying about his friend. When Pandral at last walked into the office, Harper jumped. Pandral’s expression was distant and he smiled absently as he closed the office door and sat at his desk.
“Is everything well?” Harper asked, his fear lurching inside him.
“What do you know about Avatars?” the Lord asked, lifting his head to look at Harper.
The question came as a total shock, and Harper’s fear, normally held deep inside him, burst free, surging through him. He felt a cold sweat encase his body.
Pandral gave him a wry
smile. “I see you know something then.”
Harper nodded, walking stiffly to the chair and sitting before his legs gave way beneath him. When Pandral spoke again he sounded excited and just a little afraid.
“Lord Avery has given me… us… the task of tracking them down. All our other cases are to be put on hold while we do this. We are to be given another twenty men to help us. If we succeed, I will be promoted to the White Tower.”
Harper stared at him, open-mouthed as the fear dropped back. Of all the ways he had imagined getting the information he needed, having a starting point land neatly in his lap had not been one of them.
“I have no doubt you have heard the rumours,” Pandral continued. “But I have just been made aware of the facts. Avatars are magical beings, not human. They are creatures of great power and very little control.”
Harper dug his fingernails into his hand as they rested on his lap, the pain helping him focus on Pandral’s words whilst keeping his expression neutral.
“A man called Conlan Baydon has created four of these formidable monsters, one for each of the elements, and with them at his side he can call upon the power of the elements whenever he chooses. Last winter he destroyed the North Tower.”
That was last winter…? I’ve been away just over a year… It was not that Harper was unaware of the passage of time, just that, as a rule, he tried not to dwell on it. Yet occasional things caught him out. Swallowing down the homesickness that rose within him, Harper forced his concentration back to Pandral, who was still speaking.
“In doing this he killed three of the four Lords in residence and many of the Protectors, by luring them into the forest with false promises. Some of the Protectors escaped, although no one has seen or heard from the fourth Lord since.”
Daratus! Harper thought distractedly, wondering where the vicious man had crawled off to.
“Once the North Tower had fallen, this Conlan Baydon crowned himself king, claiming he is the descendant of Alaric, of all people. And then he disappeared. Lords Avery and Tarplan believe that he is slowly building followers, using his Avatars to mentally influence men to join his cause and fight for him.” Pandral stopped, holding Harper’s gaze. “Well?” he asked.
“How much of what you just told me do you believe?” Harper asked.
Pandral gave him a knowing smile. “I have questions. The most important of which is—if these magical beings are all powerful, what does Conlan Baydon need an army for?”
Harper smiled, loving his friend for his analytical brain, his desire to understand and his ability to recognise nonsense when it was fed to him.
“I get the feeling there is more going on in all this than we are being told,” Harper said.
“It would not be the first time I have been lied to by a Lord of Mydren,” Pandral agreed. “The files and information they have on this group will arrive later today. Maybe we will learn more from those. In the meantime, I want you to go down to the Hall of Records and bring back the newest map of Mydren you can find. We will need to consider areas in which they might be hiding.”
The files proved to be many and thick—pages and pages of notes, reports, letters, maps and comments. It took Harper and Pandral over a month just to read everything and make logical sense of it all. At first they discounted nothing, but on their second sweep through they discarded the fanciful and the absurd, like the woman who claimed an Avatar murdered her chickens and the man who insisted the Avatars were talking to him in his head. Along with reading the files, Harper spent a lot of time training their new men in the way he and Pandral liked things to be done. The extra men were accommodated in a spare dorm building near Harper’s old unit’s tower, as there was no space for them in Pandral’s quarters. Harper soon grew to hate the stairs he had to walk up and down several times a day to move between Pandral’s office and his men.
After he and Pandral removed the rubbish from the files, they tried to put things in chronological order, which proved to be a little difficult, seeing as Mydren had no real standard date notations. While the moons were numbered, as were the days within them, and there was a number for the relevant year, not everybody across Mydren seemed to use the same numbers, and many towns and areas handled the imperfect nature of the celestial calendar in different ways. So three different reports, from three different places, could well have been done on the same day yet all carry slightly different dates. Pandral bemoaned the mess, stating that life would be far easier if the whole of Mydren was forced to use one single notation, so that day, moon and year could be consistent. Harper took the opportunity to suggest going one step further and breaking up each day up into individually identifiable units. Pandral laughed, telling him it was a good idea, but asking him how he intended to measure the units. Harper had enjoyed the look of impressed astonishment on Pandral’s face as he explained the concept of a sundial.
While Pandral was finding going through the files frustrating, Harper was delighted with what he found. There were no direct references to the Source, but there were notes and codes all the way through the reports. At first these made no sense, so he began with the report that talked about the information sent backwards and forwards between Lord Daratus and Lord Avery as Conlan had led them across the mountain to the North Tower. All the way through these reports was the notation ‘SS’; sometimes all that was written was a single word. ‘SS-Ball’ appeared often. Taking a mental leap, Harper experimented with the assumption that ‘SS’ indicated the Source. He then tried to build up a picture of what the notes said about the information the Source was providing. Given the frequency of the notations, the Source seemed to have had a lot to say on the subject of the Avatars and their activities, but it was rarely coherent. Notes such as,‘SS—Flying balls out of a setting sun’ and ‘SS—Snow is burying the once burning rubble’ made chilling sense to Harper, but other notes, like ‘SS—The sun rides hard on the silk’, meant nothing. It’s like having string theory explained to you by a magic eight ball. Yet over the weeks a pattern began to emerge, and Harper began to understand that the Source was not able to see them all the time and seemed to operate better at night. Only snatches of conversation and impressions of where they were and what they were doing were caught and reported back. The most coherent, structured information had come when the Source was in Moylan’s mind, but even then, while there were several pages of notes, they were not easy to understand. Harper could make sense of quite a few comments, or thought he did, but he had the advantage of having been there and having lived through it. How the Lords had been able to use this information accurately was a question he could not answer.
At their monthly conversation, Conlan had suggested that there were other files in the White Tower on the Source and that all that existed in the files they had were the abridged notes.
“Pandral, what do you think these notes mean?” Harper asked one morning. They were still working their way through the files, but they had read enough to know that they needed more detailed information, and Pandral had recently sent their men out to look for witnesses. The men had been told to see if they could find any eyewitnesses to the fall of the North Tower, or anyone who claimed to have met an Avatar and sounded sane. The office felt empty with the men gone, but Harper found that he was getting though the information more quickly without their distraction.
Standing and stretching, Pandral moved to Harper’s side and looked as he pointed at some of the ‘SS’ marks. Having only met with frustration recently and needing input from a fresh set of eyes, Harper was hoping Pandral might see something he had not.
“I have seen them,” Pandral said. “They do not seem very… sensible.”
“But you have a theory about them?” Harper said, seeing the thoughtful look on his friend’s face.
“I think the person making the notes is seeing it all from a distance. From our point of view it appears as gibberish, because the comments are all out of context. But the person is seeing things as they happen, and their notes
are written on the reports of the time. However, we do not get reports quickly, so it could be many pages later before the report appears that references the comments that were made at the time,” Pandral said.
Harper stared. That was what he was missing. He had been scrutinising the reports, trying to make sense of the comments written on them, but the two pieces of information were not in the least bit connected. Due to the repetition of certain phrases and his focus on the words he did have a clue about, he had missed this basic concept. Pandral was looking at him, expecting a response.
“That is brilliant,” Harper told him with sincerity. “I have found the comments confusing in the most part, but I shall review them with this time difference in mind and see if they make any more sense.” He paused, considered. “You realize, of course, that if the Lords have someone who can find Conlan Baydon over long distances, then they have someone who practices magic.”
“Yes,” Pandral agreed. “The thought has occurred to me. They have not gone out of their way to hide the input this person has had, but they never mentioned them to me. My conclusion is that this person is not working as well for them as they did in the past. If they have a magic user who can locate Conlan Baydon, why would they need us to find him?”
“Maybe this magic user has been watching their target so long that they associate themselves more with them than the Lords, and have stopped providing information?”
Pandral shrugged, but Harper could see the thoughtful look on his face as this concept was put away in his mind for future consideration should more evidence present itself.
Armed with Pandral’s insights, Harper started looking at the Source’s notes with fresh eyes. While many of the comments still seemed to be utter rubbish, slowly—and mostly by matching the comments to his memories rather than to the reports—Harper gained some useful insights. The Source had been able to find them only once the connection between Conlan and the four Avatars had been triggered. And when Harper had left the others, the comments from the Source had almost totally dried up, which meant that his friends were currently safe. Further, while conversations may have been listened in on, the Source did not speak English, which might prove to be an effective way to guard their plans.
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