The Barrow

by Mark Smylie

  “Why have you stopped?” he asked Arduin as he and Erim approached.

  “It’s late afternoon already, and everyone is tired of travel on the open road,” said Arduin from his perch atop his destrier. “Can we not stay within Erid More proper this night, perhaps at an inn?”

  “We should at least cross the Eridbrae while we still have the light, Lord Arduin,” Stjepan said, careful of who was within earshot to hear the name and title. “There should be an inn on the other side, as well, though perhaps of simpler fare than we might find here.”

  There was some grumbling amongst the nearby knights at that. “But your man Gilgwyr has already headed into the town itself,” Arduin protested. Stjepan’s frown grew deeper and he craned his neck; sure enough, the coach’s rumble seat was half-empty, with a sheepish-looking Leigh giving Stjepan a little wave. Stjepan’s mind was filled with black thoughts, and Arduin actually pulled his horse back a step or two at the expression on Stjepan’s face.

  “Then even more reason to get across the river as fast as possible,” Stjepan said quietly. He turned to Erim, handing her a full purse. “Pay for the bridge crossing, yeah? And then let our Lord Arduin pick whatever inn he wants on the other side, preferably to the north.” He handed her the reins of his horse and stalked off into the city.

  For a clerk, that man can look exceedingly well versed in murder, thought Arduin, shaking his head with a snort. But then he remembered the rumors that had attached themselves to Stjepan during the troubles at the University years ago, and the fate of Rodrick Urgoar to which he had himself been a witness, and he stifled his laugh, and simply watched Stjepan’s back recede into the darkness of the gatehouse.

  “I’m so glad I found you, as I fear this is my only chance,” said Gilgwyr.

  He was in a dark antechamber on the first floor of a house within the town proper of Erid More, above a cheese shop. The antechamber did not belong to the cheese shop below it on the ground floor, but rather to an alchemist and enchanter who had taken the first, second, and third floors of the building as his shop and home, and hung a discreet sign in front of the first floor window, that of a crudely drawn vas hermeticum, an egg-shaped vessel sometimes used in alchemy. Gilgwyr sat at a round ebony-wood table across from the alchemist in question, a short Danian man by the name of Sayle Lyradim, dressed in deep, dark indigo robes with gold embroidery at the sleeves and hems. The top of the man’s head was bald, quite not on purpose, and he had grown a long and full salt-and-pepper beard to compensate. The hair of his eyebrows had practically disappeared, and his eyes appeared plaintive and unprotected as a result.

  “Only chance at what?” asked the alchemist, studying Gilgwyr intently.

  “My only chance to send a message, of course,” said Gilgwyr. “I . . . I had a terrible dream the other night. A veritable nightmare. It has made me . . . concerned about my loved ones back in Therapoli. I am traveling quickly to the west and do not know when I will next be in proper civilization, to send or receive a message by mundane means, and so it is to the high and hermetic arts that I must turn.”

  “Ah, a Sending, then, or a Reading?” asked Sayle.

  “A Sending, I think,” said Gilgwyr.

  “Then you have come to the right place, as I am familiar with the Incantation of Sending and the rituals which can make it effective,” said the alchemist. “For ease of purposes, I use a variety of trained messenger pigeons; I trust that will be satisfactory, or would you prefer to commission the summoning of a spirit, or a dream-vision?”

  “I am afraid my time in your lovely town is short, so I guess we’ll have to go with the pigeon,” said Gilgwyr.

  “Excellent,” said Sayle, and he excused himself. Gilgwyr could hear him walk up the wooden stairwell to the top floor of the house, and then slowly return, bearing in his hand a birdcage. Within it was a gray and blue pigeon, selected for this most important task for its speed and intelligence. Sayle set the cage down at the edge of the table. “Now, to whom are we sending the Sending?”

  “Sequintus Eridaine, enchanter of the Sleight of Hand, a gentleman’s house of leisure on Flint’s Lane, off of the Wall Street in Therapoli,” said Gilgwyr.

  “Well, that makes this more difficult, as the High King’s city is quite far from here. That will make the Sending more expensive, as well . . . ?” Sayle trailed off, his missing eyebrows raised.

  “Money is no object,” Gilgwyr said with a smile.

  “Excellent. Do you perhaps know his mother’s name?” asked Sayle, making notes in a small grimoire.

  “Sadha Tilas,” said Gilgwyr.

  “Excellent,” said Sayle, writing again. “This is perhaps too much to hope for, but do you perhaps have some token of his?”

  “I do, by chance,” said Gilgwyr, and from a small pocket inside his coin purse he produced a small lock of white hair.

  The alchemist had been expecting the answer to that question to be no, so he froze in surprise, hovering over his grimoire, his mouth partially open as though he were about to speak, staring at the lock of hair for a moment. He looked up at Gilgwyr, and Gilgwyr smiled at him. Sayle blinked once, then twice.

  “Ah, excellent. Well done,” said Sayle finally, putting his writing quill down and gingerly taking the lock of hair into his hand. “Always good to be prepared.” He set it down in the center of the table, and retrieved a candle in a silver candleholder from a sideboard. The casement windows were made of leaded glass, a sign of some wealth, and ignoring the light rain outside he opened the nearest set before returning to the table and placing the candleholder next to the lock of hair.

  “Is your message prepared?” Sayle asked as he reseated himself across from Gilgwyr.

  “Yes,” said Gilgwyr. “Ready when you are.”

  Sayle removed the pigeon from its cage and held it gently but firmly in his left hand. He drew himself up straight-backed, closed his eyes, and slowed his breathing. He mumbled at first, over and over, then as the minutes dragged to ten his voice grew louder: “Nos nuntias est, velocitasa et intento a la prevista. Entruventa si destina inven et vera parlare le oratora que se enchargano a consenga. Heraldo, estes velocit et vera! Sweet herald! Swift wings and steady aim be your gifts and watchwords! Three hundred miles due east, to Sequintus Eridaine, of the blood and son of Sadha Tilas, at the Sleight of Hand, on Flint’s Lane, off of the Wall Street in Therapoli Magni, speed straight and true!”

  When his voice was practically a shout he opened his eyes and held up the lock of white hair to the flame of the candle, and singed the hair until it was a small mass of embers. He held the pigeon near the burning hair so that it could inhale the acrid fumes.

  “Quickly!” said Sayle. “Tell our chosen herald the message you wish to send!”

  Gilgwyr leaned over and whispered into the pigeon’s ear: “Sequintus, old friend and mentor, greetings from your apt pupil! My dreams have been troubled by pain and fear, and I am filled with worry! Send word to me that all our Friends are safe, so that my mind may rest at ease!”

  “Go! Fly! Fly!” Sayle cried, and he flung the pigeon up into the air toward the windows. The pigeon took to wing in time to sail through the open panes. Sayle and Gilgwyr both rushed to the window to see the bird fly gracefully up into the rain-filled skies above the town and then straight to the east, moving swift and sure. “Morning Star, Sun’s Herald, watch over your littlest messenger!” Sayle said solemnly as he watched the bird disappear.

  “Well done, Master Sayle,” said Gilgwyr, patting the alchemist on the shoulder. He glanced down into the street and saw Stjepan’s familiar hat and tabard outside; he was speaking to two rough-looking men in front of the tavern across the street. Gilgwyr drew back from the window, and slowly pushed the casement panes shut, drawing the curtain over the view.

  He turned to the alchemist. “Now, why don’t we settle our bill?” he said with a smile.

  “Stjepan, old boy, come looking for me?” Gilgwyr asked casually as he stepped up behind Stjepan, adjustin
g his cloak and hat against the rain.

  Stjepan glanced over his shoulder at Gilgwyr, then turned back to the two men with whom he had been talking. “Well. Speak of the Devil, and here he is,” he said to them, and they nodded at him and they all shook hands.

  “Well met, Coura Negra,” said the shorter and uglier of the two.

  “Fortune follow you,” said the taller and prettier.

  “Good fortune and good hunting, gentlemen,” said Stjepan, tapping the brim of his hat, and the two men stepped back into the tavern.

  Stjepan turned and contemplated Gilgwyr with a flat stare and a slight smile. Gilgwyr grinned back at him. “I suppose we should be going; don’t want to keep everyone waiting, eh?” Gilgwyr said.

  “No, I suppose not. Erim’s leading Arduin and the rest across the Erid bridge to find an inn on the other side,” Stjepan said, and then he led the way out through winding streets to the gatehouse and the great barbican.

  They were about halfway across the bridge over the Eridbrae when they heard fire bells ringing out from the town behind them. They stopped and looked back. Smoke was rising from something burning in the town center, the heavy wisps and tendrils struggling to rise against the rain.

  “Huh. What do you know? A fire, somewhere in the town,” said Stjepan flatly. He looked at Gilgwyr.

  “Lucky for them it’s raining?” offered Gilgwyr with a shrug. Then he turned and kept walking.

  Stjepan looked back at the smoke, mixed black and white, curling through the light rain and the gray-white sky. He closed his eyes and listened to the wind, to the raindrops striking on earth and stone and rushing water, to the ringing of distant bells, to the sound of metal scraping sharply over bone. He sniffed the air, smelt fresh rain and wet earth and the familiar ancient river, smelt fire and ash and from somewhere near the hint of something dead and rotting. He took a deep breath to stifle the anger and hate that brewed up within him. His gaze fluttered open as he gazed back at the town of Erid More, and he sighed before turning away and following his companion over the bridge.

  Arduin was livid, even apoplectic, barely able to formulate a coherent sentence thanks to rage and exhaustion. He stared at Stjepan incredulously, not believing what he had heard the man say. His lips and mouth moved, and his throat made a groaning, muttering sound, but no words came out. He struggled, and then finally sputtered: “W . . . w . . . what do you mean, we have to keep going?”

  They stood in front of an inn with the sign of a ram’s head and curled horns. It was a clean and friendly-looking compound, with a high stone wall about the main building and several outbuildings. The inn was one of several in a sprawling stone hamlet called Acyrage on the western bank of the Eridbrae right by the bridge, held by a knight in the service of the Earl of Erid More. Green farmland and rolling hills rose along this side of the river, along with a towpath running north along the riverbank. Sirs Helgi, Holgar, and Theodras stood off to one side, trying very hard not to be noticed by their Lord in his fury. Arduin turned and looked in desperate longing at the inn; despite the light drizzle that fell upon his hood (or indeed perhaps because of it), the inn was the most inviting thing he’d seen since their night in one of his family’s hunting lodges. “You said we could stop right across the river,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “I’m afraid there’s been an . . . incident in Erid More,” said Stjepan, rubbing the back of his head wearily as he adjusted his dripping hat. “It might be best if we put some miles between us and the town.”

  Arduin’s gaze swung back over the hamlet rooftops toward the bridge and town. He frowned. Is that smoke? he wondered. Is that what those bells are all about?

  “One of the guards approached me in the market and was asking too many questions about you and your knights, my Lord Arduin,” said Gilgwyr smoothly. “He didn’t quite believe the story we’d told him. I’m afraid I was very . . . curt in answering his questions.”

  Arduin looked back and forth between Gilgwyr, smiling nonchalantly, and Stjepan, grimly silent. “King of Heaven!” Arduin swore. “The Six Hells will be too good for the likes of you two.” He looked up at the sky, letting the rain falling on his face. He tried to find the energy to argue with them, but he knew for safety’s sake that their only recourse was to movement. He sighed, feeling defeated. “Fine, what do you suggest?”

  “We should head up the river a bit as if we’re headed to Westmark and then cut cross-country to Woat’s Inn on the West King’s Road,” said Stjepan. “There should be a country road that cuts up through Dagger Vale.”

  “Woat’s Inn? That is a vile place,” said Arduin with a frown. “I’ve been there before, back when we used to make the journey to the Tournament of Flowers each annum.”

  “Vile it may be, but it might be the only safe place for us to stop anywhere along the West King’s Road. The Woats generally don’t care who you are or what you’ve done, so long as you have coin to spend. It’ll have plenty of fresh food and water, and fodder for the horses. We can use the baths there, resupply for the run to the Wall, even change out our horses if necessary,” said Stjepan.

  “True, no argument on the provisioning there,” said Arduin. He just wanted to go to sleep on a soft bed of down somewhere, and not wake up for a day or two, and at least he could do that at Woat’s Inn.

  “I have some contacts there, as well, my Lord,” said Gilgwyr. “I should be able to find us a crew for the last leg of the journey, to aid in our travels.”

  “Why would we need more men? We’ve been doing fine so far,” Arduin asked, his frown deepening.

  “Aye, but when you’re after a wizard’s barrow in the Bale Mole, you either go in quick and quiet by yourself, or you go in with a small army. Right now, particularly with that coach, we’re too many to slip in all quietlike, but not enough not to get mistaken as easy prey,” said Stjepan. “The hills are not as bad as the Wastes of Lost Uthedmael, but it takes a special kind of insanity to risk the danger. Gilgwyr’ll find us a crew at Woat’s mad or desperate enough to help guide us, or word of where we can hire one on our way up to Mizer.”

  “Oh? And have you ever been into the Wastes, or the Bale Mole, then?” asked Arduin, and he regretted asking the question before the words had left his mouth.

  “I have, my Lord,” said Stjepan. “I was attached to King Derrek of Warwark’s household in ’67 when he rode into the Lost Dav Wold and then up into the Bale Mole, and again in ’69 when he routed a Thessid Imperial regiment encamped at Lost Av Lúin, and chased some of their Djar Maelite allies almost back into the Bora Éduins.”

  Arduin’s knights traded appraising glances. Arduin sighed. I have to learn not to ask questions to which I do not already know the answers, he thought dryly. For all I know he’s just making all of this up.

  “Right,” Arduin said with a stiff smile. “Find us a way to Woat’s Inn, then.”

  From Acyrage they traveled north-north-east for a few miles along the roads and towpaths that ran up the Eridbrae toward Westmark, the capital city of Erid Dania, passing through or near clusters of thatched-roof stone houses and walls. They passed fields of winter wheat and new potatoes, leeks and rhubarb and spinach, and Danian Forest sheep and brown-and-white Danian cattle grazing at pasture. Stjepan then turned them northwesterly onto country farming roads, heading higher up into the hills and away from the river. As night fell the rain worsened, and they passed out of cultivated farmlands and into the wilds of a broken hill range, following a well-worn shepherd’s path by fizzling torch and lantern light. The path led them through wooded copses and past small ruins, then down into the Dagger Vale and across the Daverbrae at an easy ford. Coming up the other side they split off the main path to follow a lesser path due north until they saw the lights of Woat’s Inn up ahead.

  Stjepan would have preferred that they swing to the west and onto the West King’s Road, so that they could approach the inn as though they were coming from the west and the castle of Burnwall; arriving at close to midnight
at this particular Inn was hardly unusual, but coming up out of the Dagger Vale might draw some attention. But they needed their lanterns and torches in the rainy dark, without the stars to guide them, and so would likely be seen anyway should there be a lookout at work, and the wet and cold and long day’s march had everyone close to falling out of their saddles from exhaustion. So he led them directly to the Inn, deciding not to care if anyone noticed that they were coming up out of the Dagger Vale.

  To describe Woat’s Roadside Inn as an inn did not, perhaps, do it justice; better to say instead that it was a version of the caravanserai that could be found crisscrossing the wastes and deserts of the Great Midlands to the west or the deserts of the Thessid-Golan Empire in the south, a massive complex of buildings and walls that could potentially house men and animals by the hundreds, if not thousands. Though unlike the caravanserai of other parts of the Known World, Woat’s was made mostly of wood with a bit of stone and, having grown piecemeal over the many years, was laid out somewhat haphazardly rather than by plan. The wall that surrounded its perimeter was mostly stone, but in some places the stones had fallen away and been replaced by wooden walls and fences of dubious construction, so its defensive value was nominal at best. Several large wooden gates led into the interior at seemingly almost random points along the wall.

  The central feature was a long and ancient great hall, part stone and part wattle-and-daub framed with timber and much patched throughout. It was surrounded by stables, kitchens and smokehouses, smithies and farriers, a stone bathhouse, storehouses, a common sleeping hall (which during the heights of Tournament Season was for women only) and a long two-story wood boarding house with smaller rooms for rent, and then the “King’s Hall,” the fanciest looking building on the lot, with an ornamented gabled roof and leaded glass windows. Despite its name kings almost certainly did not stay there. One might have stayed there once, perhaps by accident, as royalty and high nobility could expect far better accommodations at the castle of Burnwall to the west, where they would be hosted by Prince Hektor, son of King Eolred, or in the capital city of Westmark to the east. But some amongst the more adventurous earls and barons of the Middle Kingdoms had been known to take the house for the night.