She saw concern in his face. “Don’t fret for me, Lord Nephril, for I sense some understanding growing within me. Not whole as yet, no, but gaining a foothold, which I suspect has been hastened now by your presence.”
He told her of what he’d only recently learnt himself, of Leiyatel’s forging anew the way to Nouwelm and its crucial Repository, but how no one from there had yet come south. When he arrived at their pressing need to venture there themselves, Penolith brightened.
“You’ll need bearers and supplies. Do you know for how long, exactly, and how many?”
Nephril tried hard to remember his own journey, so very long ago, but could only snatch fragments. He couldn’t be sure but he thought Storbanther had made mention of some fifty leagues.
“How far can a man walk in a day, Lord Nephril?” Penolith asked, to which he steeled himself.
“Not just a man, mine dear, but also the stretch of a woman.”
She looked bemused, blinking rapidly, but then her eyes widened. “Woman! What do you mean, woman?” Her eyes now looked like those of an owl. “You can’t seriously be expecting… No. No, you can’t really believe … that…”
“The party must hath authority, Penolith, one with standing amongst those of Nouwelm. Thou art Galgaverre’s Guardian…” She stood so quickly her chair fell heavily to the floor, the loud crack echoing around the chamber.
“It’s impossible! You can’t expect Galgaverre to be left without its Guardian. What are you thinking?”
“Please, Penolith, please seat thyself. There be no other way.”
She now shouted, “You’re mad, quite mad. How in the blazes do you expect the place to function if I’m not here, eh? Have you any idea…”
Nephril was on his feet, somehow grown, spitting words along his outstretched arm, its finger pinning her brow. “Thou art Galgaverre’s Guardian and I am thy Lord. Dost thou not hear mine words and know their provenance, hear them as the wheel thou hast so solemnly sworn to be?”
It was as though he’d forcibly struck her; she reeled back a pace or two, sending the chair skating across the floor, and sagged to her knees as she lifted her arms against him.
The lightening that streaked across his eyes suddenly calmed and he lowered his arm. Penolith unfroze and slumped to the floor, stunned, Nephril carefully squatting down before her.
When he again stretched out his arm, he did it slowly and tenderly took her arm, hoping he’d not damaged the wheel too much, not hurt the woman within.
“I do not wish to command thee, Guardian, for I know thou wilt see sense if I can only get thee to listen.” He stroked her arm. “If thou cannot bring thyself to leave this place, and so bring sanction to our party, thou wilt condemn the Certain Power to a mortal end. Think, Penolith, think on that, think of thy vows, thy lifelong chastity to her cause alone. Without Leiyatel thy life will hath no meaning, will be but an empty vessel.”
“And the realm lost, eh, Lord Nephril? Dica’s downfall finally arrived at?”
“Come, mine Lady,” he said, a hard-won lightness filling his voice. “Lift thyself to thy rightful dignity, grasp thy resolve as thou now grasp mine hand, and so find firm future for Dica.” He lifted her hand and she rose with him, but looked uncertain, resigned at best.
“I will be by thy side for much of the way. Together we can do this thing for Leiyatel, can bring redemption and hope for her realm, and so acquit our own longstanding omissions.”
Quietly, the Guardian avowed, “I will try, Lord Nephril, try my hardest, but I am uncertain. I don’t know if I’ve the strength to do this, not really. I know I must, but the knowing and the doing seem at such odds.”
Nephril beamed at her, but his words left her bemused. “Oh, I am sure thou wilt find the strength in good time, Lady Guardian, there in the true woman within.”
18 End of an Era
The Guardian’s Residence seethed with activity; priests coming and going at Penolith’s bidding, Storbanther forever running up and down the stairs to the library, Drax in and out furthering preparations, Pettar and Melkin trying to keep track of their rapidly growing stock of supplies and equipment. The dining table had been commandeered as both debating chamber and document store, its surface quickly becoming cluttered, mired and finally buried, despite regular clearing for their frequent meetings.
It had to be said that much of the initial momentum was in large part Storbanther’s doing, a natural extension of his simple delight at hearing of the Guardian’s enrolment. He’d been adeptly supported by Nephril of course, who saw great benefit in it as a distraction for Penolith.
She seemed to have a never-ending commitment to meetings. Each had to be considered and a surrogate chosen, or the occasion cancelled or postponed. So extensive were her engagements that she was often brought near to despair, her resolve, to Nephril’s acute eye, sometimes wavering worryingly. Unobtrusively, he lent his support and so quietly bolstered her purpose.
At first she’d dealt solely with routine matters, leaving Storbanther to search out answers and ideas arising from the journey itself. They came so thick and fast, though, that Storbanther was soon overwhelmed and finally had to petition for an aide, for which Melkin immediately volunteered. Penolith was by now so fraught she’d readily agreed, certainly surprising Storbanther but without doubt greatly pleasing Melkin himself.
Understandably, there’d been all sorts of problems that had sent them both scurrying in search of answers amongst the ranks of books. So much so that Storbanther had soon resorted to using Melkin as his adjutant, leaving the Steward more or less free to roam at will through Penolith’s cherished library. Melkin had soon found half-hidden stacks of long forgotten and discounted crates, squeezed in all over the place.
As soon as he saw them, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and his palms became cold and clammy. As though he could see right through the crates themselves, he knew, with what he thought was unerring certainty, that he’d at last found that adumbrated hoard, that bounty at the end of his own rainbow.
He could hear Storbanther rummaging about amongst the shelves on the far side of the gallery, far enough away for Melkin to risk delving into an already opened crate. Although its contents were closely and tightly packed, seemingly cemented there by the accretions of passing centuries, two small, red, leather-bound volumes lay suspiciously loose on top.
Furtively, he checked he was still alone and then lifted the topmost. It had the familiar feel of a well-loved volume, its soft leather binding sensuously supple in his hand. As he caressed it, a bookmark gently brushed his hand. He was about to reveal the pages it kept when the sound of approaching footsteps startled him.
He thrust the book into his tunic and turned, as innocently as he could, to find Storbanther staggering towards him beneath a pile of tomes. When the man peeped around the stack, he laughed and warned, “Tha’s won’t find what thee’s after in there, Steward-Cum-Lately. Nah, stuff thee seeks is likely away over…” A knowing look filled Storbanther’s face and his eyes darted from Melkin to the crate, then back again.
Storbanther carefully placed his stack of books on the edge of a table and closely eyed Melkin. “Of course! Should’ve remembered.” He peered into the crate, briefly, lifted its lid from beside it and slid it back on. “Melkin Mudark! Aye, should’ve kept thee’s previous purpose in mind.” He was by now grinning in an oddly off-putting way. “Thee were after old scripts then, if I’m not mistaken, eh? Ancient Bazarran stuff in t’old tongue.”
He struck his forehead and groaned. “Bloody Norah! Bleeding obvious, now I think on’t, put two and two together like. Eh? By the Certain Power, I’ve been reet slow.” He grinned at Melkin. “What, wi’ Lord Nephril turning to thee like he did, cos’ he’d lost ‘is wit in t’language. Ha! To the very folk who could again read t’founding father’s words.”
Melkin was uncertain. There was clearly wry humour in Storbanther’s words, but somehow it was shallow and elusive.
Finally, St
orbanther confessed. “Kept too cloistered we did. Should’ve looked outward in us preoccupation, but more’s the pity, we just blithely carried on into yet another omission.”
Melkin’s guarded look made Storbanther smile. “Lord Nephril’s told me all about thee’s labours, made it quite clear how we’ve overlooked one of us biggest assets; thee’s relearning o’ t’lore, like, and building a college to nurture it.”
Before Melkin could begin to guess where Storbanther was going with it, an almighty ruckus erupted from the chamber below.
As they hurried down the stairs, Melkin saw an arc of people standing silently around Drax and an unknown man. The stranger was tall, muddy and dishevelled, plainly a Royal Messenger of the King’s Heraldic. It was the look on Nephril’s face, though, that made Melkin’s blood run cold, but his lordship’s words that froze his heart.
“The long line hath ended. Dica’s fall be unstoppable now and wilt soon draw to a close.”
Nephril sat down heavily on a chair and seemed to shrink; back arched crookedly, gnarled hands drawn up, head cranked to one side, eyes heavily hooded. No one else spoke. They all stared at Nephril’s lowered face.
The words he eventually spoke fell leadenly to the floor. “Two thousand years, or thereabouts. A long time in anybody’s book. A long and noble line now sadly severed. The end be plainly writ, as foretold … as dearly hoped for in Bazarral … and elsewhere, as I have lately found out.” He was by now looking steadily at Storbanther’s bemused face.
When he turned to Melkin, he managed a thin smile. “Thy day will soon be upon thee, a new age I have no doubt.”
He lingered awhile on the Steward but then let his eyes find Guardian Penolith. “Twixt the two, the old and the new, so thou must grasp at thy fast-failing chances.” His sight finally turned inwards, his breathing slowed and he sighed, long and heavily.
Nobody spoke, nobody disturbed the persistent hum now filling the chamber, not until Lord Nephril set his face firm, levered himself up and announced, “There are duties I need to attend to, inviolable oaths charged upon mine honour as Master of Ceremonies, and a need mine heart doth crave of its own free will. King Namweed cannot be borne to his final standing in mine absence, and so I must soon leave.”
He turned to the messenger, and more through habit than conviction, thanked him for his duty well done. He then turned to Penolith. “We must chart our course, must conjoin times and places accordingly, for soon I must leave thy journey’s devising to other hands.”
Penolith snapped from her shock and grew noticeably alarmed, but Nephril soon soothed, “Fear not, mine dear, for thou hast able support in Steward Melkin. He will aid thee well in thy deliberations. Trust to his keen wit and good sense.”
When he spoke no more, but sat lost in his own thoughts, Penolith protectively slipped back to being no more than a Galgaverran wheel, attentive only to their coming journey.
Although Melkin had rarely ventured beyond the castle’s walls, his practical turn of mind had quickly unearthed no end of problems. He’d soon pared them down to the essentials, though, to the ones he thought Nephril could readily answer before having to leave them.
When his lordship’s mind did eventually re-join them, Melkin asked, “Do you reckon we can be sure to find our way to Nouwelm, Lord Nephril?” Nephril looked puzzled. “Was there a clear road all the way, you know, when you last journeyed there?”
Nephril chortled before making it clear he’d only ever got as far as their own side of the pass, perhaps two thirds of the way, and only the once, and sadly couldn’t really remember much about it. “The toil and the aching limbs, and the wonderful views of course, but as to the mechanics, well. It was after all two millennia ago.” He looked apologetic as he spread his empty hands and shrugged his shoulders.
He did remember a little more then; they’d had aid of a guide or steersman or the like. “I think I was led there on what seemed a well-made road, much of it flagged or laid to stone. Although I do remember having to pry heavy clay from mine boots some nights.”
“So,” Melkin said, “we’ve no guide now for a journey of some fifty leagues, along a route that will take us through dense forest, over hill and moorland, and finally across a high mountain range. And all that on a road only partially metalled some two thousand years ago!”
The others had paused and were now listening, their hearts steadily sinking. “Hmm. Maybe,” Melkin ventured, “maybe that’s why we’ve not seen anybody come south from Nouwelm, and perhaps why it’s long been known as the Lost Northern Way.
“The road was well marked, though, Melkin,” Nephril noted. “It had way-mounds along its sightlines, particularly on the higher reaches, and each with its own mensal-marker.”
“Mensal-marker?” Melkin queried, to which Nephril described something that sounded like a stone birdbath, except that where the bath would have been was a flat tablet within which two arrows were inscribed, each with their own attendant numbers.
“Number or numbers, Lord Nephril?”
“Numbers, Melkin, a number of, if thou gets mine drift, and other numbers and letters around their rims. Quite busy little faces they were, something that struck me at the time and does now come to mind.”
Having built his life on the backs of books, Melkin quite naturally wondered if the meaning and use of the markers might very well be found in the Guardian’s library, in some treatise or other, but Storbanther was quick to pour cold water on the idea.
“Ain’t nowt o’ t’sort here,” he scoffed. “Nowt but texts regarding t’running o’ Galgaverre, all writ in middle Dican or later, and crates o’ library salvage, as thee’s already seen. As to that clutter, well, nowt o’ use there ‘cos no Dican has ever ‘ad much interest in t’dead languages, certainly not Bazarran ones. No, never been owt o’ t’old scripts kept ‘ere, ya know, stuff o’ t’period that might ‘ave dealt wi’ Nouwelm or t’mensal-markers. After all, what use would it ‘ave been to anyone?”
Melkin was beginning to harbour a growing mistrust of auguring rainbows. His disappointment obscured Storbanther’s next words, and so when Melkin again heard him, he just happened to be in the middle of explaining, “…as a result, much of it were destroyed, although there’s still a few Dican references to old myths and t’like. Nowt about Nouwelm or its road, though, not that I know of.”
Melkin remembered the volume he’d hidden in his tunic and found it too tempting. He left them to their speculation, climbed down the spiral staircase and out through the door and onto the paved square. He stopped, uncertain where to go next.
The corner of the Guardian’s Residence was close by, away from which ran a boundary wall. Melkin found it overlooked a warren of small yards and cloisters, the occasional green-robed figure of a priest quietly tending vegetable plots or laying things out on the roofs of stone middens.
Melkin looked back at the door, saw he’d not been followed, sat on the wall and withdrew the russet volume. With shaking hands, he fumbled it open at its bookmark but was disappointed to find Middle Dican text. As he read, though, it became clear it was a translated extract from some much earlier work.
It was a history of sorts, a recounting of the rise and the later start of the fall of their once great realm. It also seemed in part to deal with Nephril’s place in it all. It was the first time Melkin had ever come across a reference to their Master of Ceremonies and so he soon became absorbed, absorbed enough that he failed to notice Nephril himself until his shadow dimmed the pages. When Melkin looked up, startled, Nephril said, “I see thou hast found a piece of Storbanther’s clutter.” Melkin looked a little shamefaced and guiltily offered the volume up.
“What hath we here?” Nephril said as he sat by him and turned the book around to read. At first he flicked through, but soon became engrossed himself, drawing the script nearer in his deepening silence.
When Melkin peered closely, Nephril’s face gave little away, only his eyes darting back and forth and his mouth silently forming
words. Melkin tried to imagine such a long life as his, but found it impossible.
Nephril, though, began to give a hint when, in a roundabout way, he explained, “To read of mine self doth always seem strange, the more so when the tale be so old, almost as though a telling of some other. Time, eh, young Melkin, time! What be such, really, eh? Nothing more than an accretion of events, a stuffing of the mind until nearly all be forgotten in its overwhelming mass.”
He looked down at the text again. “Repetition doth stymie yearning. ‘Tis but purpose that gives real meaning, young Melkin, only purpose.”
“Purpose, Lord Nephril? Is it the king’s interment that’s now given you that or our journey to Nouwelm?”
Nephril smiled. “Nay, neither in themselves hath weight enough. No. I have seen many kings to their mausoleum, a great many, and so ‘tis nothing but more froth, if truth be told.”
He stood and peered east, towards Baradcar, a distant ring of towers its only evidence. He shot Melkin a mischievous look. “After such a long life as mine, purpose must be fashioned large to displace such accretion. Nouwelm doth certainly offer one route thereto, but no more than a route.”
He slammed the book shut and quickly slipped it into his robes. By the time Melkin saw where Nephril now looked, Storbanther was almost upon them. “It would appear,” Nephril quickly finished, “that mine purpose be about to move on afoot, eh, Master Melkin?”
Indeed he’d been right. Storbanther carried the Guardian’s growing concern, alarm almost, that she and Lord Nephril hadn’t yet agreed their plans. She’d finally sorted out her diary, trodden carefully through her seconding of authority, and so was now free to fret about the journey itself. Now she was in dire need of Nephril’s calming presence, and so his Lordship followed Storbanther back to the chamber, leaving Melkin alone once more.
For a little while longer, he looked out again at the eternally humdrum activity of the Land of the Guardian Priests.
Of Weft and Weave (Dica Series Book 2) Page 18