Taerak's Void (Fantastica Book 1)

by M. R. Mathias

  There was a painting of a fortification that meagerly sheltered more people from another hard winter. A tapestry showed little more than a building lined hard pack surrounded by crude picket fences and scattered log homes.

  Naming of a King, The First Reach, and Antol Outpost were names of other pieces of art, but a series of four paintings of ships captivated Braxton's attention. The collection was called Voyage of the Seekers, and the paintings themselves were named, Departure, Search, Determination and, finally, Home. Home was a hopeful rendition of the seeker ships finding Scarlee. Braxton decided it should have been called Hope instead, since Scarlee was never found.

  There were fierce and bloody battle scenes between kingdom men and the larger, wild-eyed gothicans. There was another of a pack of kobl's scavenging a battlefield littered with broken bodies. A tapestry that showed Narvoza men and gothicans parlaying in truce was larger than the rest, but beyond it were more depictions of war.

  There were also more recent paintings of all the coastal cities, New Scarlee, Halden, Sonley, Stell, Ardis, and Ream.

  One painting in particular caught Braxton's attention. It was one of the small, stumpy dwarves coming down from the mountains. They appeared curious and wary. There were many of them, but still some of them seemed as skittish as deer, equally curious and ready to flee from the newcomers to their land. The brass plaque said the scene took place in the twenty-eighth year of King Londing's rule of Narvoza near what is now called the Rich. Braxton remembered that the Rich was where the Uppervale River had flooded several times, between Camberly and Stell, leaving behind a highly productive farming area.

  Braxton couldn’t help but smile when he came upon a tapestry entitled Uppervale. Dirty miners headed down a dark shaft near the lake. It was the very same lake where he and Davvy had survived the octerror. In the image, the unscarred valley unfolded in the background. Braxton couldn’t image Uppervale without all the farms, and no road cutting through, but there it was. Instead of river boats, there were crewed rafts on the river, and where busy docks were now built, there was just one swing plank extending out from the shore.

  Braxton found himself just now getting to the middle of the building. He'd only been through half of one floor and most of the morning was gone. Luckily, this was where he was supposed to be. A small line had formed in front of what appeared to be some sort of information desk, behind which sat behind a woman with a pleasant smile.

  She wore a tidy brown uniform robe and directed people to their destinations with patient hand gestures. Braxton was a little relieved at seeing he wouldn’t have to get information from a harsh lesson master or some haughty intellectual. He shuffled into the line and wondered how the great and renowned Barthalmuel had turned a soft young slip of a girl into a hairy, big-eyed lumpkin, and how he had made a whole table full of drunken merchant men float about the room, table and all.

  The wizard had also turned a cage full of lizards into a flock of terrified sparrows, which fluttered through the common room. One of them landed on Braxton's shoulder and turned back into a lizard. The magician had given Braxton a strange stare when this happened. Braxton quickly got the lizard off his shoulder and set it on the table before him, where it immediately turned into a white dove and flew right out the Inn's front door. Braxton remembered this appeared to surprise Barthalmuel. He'd waited after the show to talk to the wizard, but something—

  "Sir," the lady behind the desk said pleasantly. "How can I help you?" Braxton snapped back into the moment and smiled at her.

  "Two things." He pulled out the scroll from Master Finn and unrolled the parchment for her.

  She read the paper and looked curiously at him.

  "Translating unrecognizable text on some coins. What's the second thing?" She handed him back the page.

  "Maps.” He grinned.

  "Maps?" she repeated. Her face grew curious.

  "Old maps," Braxton clarified, trying to think of how he could explain what he was after without being too revealing. "Seeker maps, I think."

  "Those would be old," she agreed. "I can put you on a list to see a master scholar, maybe. I could possibly get you in seven to ten days from now, but only since you have a letter from Master Finn."

  Braxton huffed out his disappointment, then he made a desperate face.

  "The maps.” She twisted her mouth as if she were contemplating him. "I can show you some of the maps in a moment if you'll wait there." She pointed at a statue a few paces away. It was a small version of the Ancestor’s Dream, this one, only three times as tall as Braxton.

  "My relief comes shortly, and the map room," she wrinkled her nose distastefully, "the map room is not used very often and is quite untidy. I'll have to clean off a table for you."

  "Thank you," Braxton said, feeling hope return to him.

  He studied the marble statue more closely now that he didn’t have to be at Camberly's outer wall to see it all without straining his neck. The young man had knee-high boots and wore typical frontier clothes: soft looking pants, a light long sleeve pullover shirt with a lace up collar, and a leather vest over it. The sword was remarkably like the one Braxton had found in the cavern, and his hair, like Braxton's, was straight past his shoulders and kept out of his eyes by a braided leather band similar to the one Braxton used to wear when he was hunting.

  "You resemble him," the lady chirped from behind him.

  He said the first thing that came to his mind, and its significance was overwhelming. "That is because, like him I am living the dream. It is me. In a sense."

  Braxton introduced himself, and she said her name was Beatrice Jame. "Just call me Bee." And she led him down the hall.

  The map room wasn’t as bad as Bee made it sound, and Braxton got the feeling she had ulterior motives. It was becoming clear she was attracted to him. She wasn’t giving him this personal attention for nothing, he figured.

  She lit one lamp, then another, and placed them in wall pockets that somehow increased the illumination without throwing the flickering glare of the flames across the room as an open lamp would have.

  The room itself was large, as big as Braxton's farm house, maybe bigger. Rows and rows of racks of long sticks were stacked in some sort of order. They ran the length of the room, save for the end by the door. On the sticks, large parchments were rolled, and a few of the papers hung loosely. Two wooden tables with comfortable looking padded leather chairs took up the space near the door. These walls were lined with shelves where functional and the shelves were filled with books, eight or ten to a set.

  Bee cleared off the table farthest from the door by gathering all the materials on it in one scooping armful and heaped them onto the other table. She pulled out a chair for Braxton and scurried down one of the long isles between the racks. Braxton sat in the offered chair and dug out the crude copies of the maps he'd made the night before. He found himself a little embarrassed by how sloppy they were drawn and realized that, while tracing them, he had been thinking more about the beautiful red-haired mercenary who'd clobbered him in the stable yard than the task at hand. He would probably have to get the original maps out to make an accurate comparison, but he figured he could rule out a lot of places from what he had drawn.

  Bee returned and unrolled a huge map, as wide as Braxton was tall. She positioned it directly in front of him, and he had to stand in the chair and look down on it to see it all at once.

  "This is a modern map made from all the different shoreline maps that the seekers brought back. It has been combined with some of the modern city maps." When he sat back down, she leaned over him rather closely. Her scent was pleasant, and her ample bosom pressed against his back and shoulder softly. "See the grids here and here?" She indicated the marked lines that made squares over the entire map. "Each square has its own map, and you can view them individually, if you wish. Just mark down the ones you wish to see. Oh—" she went to a shelf and opened a box and returned with a charcoal pencil and a sheet of parchment, "I have some t
hings to attend, but I will be back soon to get the individual maps you mark here. Please, do not take them off the racks yourself."

  Braxton was overwhelmed. "Thank you," was all he could manage to say as she scurried out the door. He looked at the map again. He'd never realized how big Narvoza was, or maybe how small Uppervale was. There was an awful lot of areas marked as unexplored. North of the Dragon Teeth Mountains, on the western coast, was an unexplored area called the ice fields. A bit of the land to the south and east was marked Nepram, which was a neighboring kingdom. It was bigger than Master Finn ever let on, though most of Nepram was the marshland known as the Denizen Swamp. East of the swamp was a peninsula where three cities Braxton had never heard of until earlier today were marked: Baily, Sparn, and New Scarlee.

  To get to the eastern peninsula by land, one would have to cross a forest called Wilderkind. Further up the eastern coast were places marked the River of Ice and the Bay of Ice, and north of that were more ice fields. It would take years to compare his maps to all these. He didn’t even know how big of an area was on his. He would have to get them out and really look hard.

  After further inspection, and comparing what he saw on his hurried hand drawings, he eliminated three fourths of the larger map fairly easily.

  What if the water lines on his maps weren’t seas, only lakes? In the giant open space between the northern teeth and the Bay of Ice, there could be thousands of lakes.

  He took a few deep breaths to settle himself. He had five hand drawn maps, and two of them were obviously islands. Looking for them would be pointless for they could be anywhere. Another one was what looked to be caves and tunnels. There were lengthy, written paragraphs with arrows pointing at specific landmarks on it. These didn’t help him because he couldn’t read the language they were written in. That left only two maps to compare.

  He could do this. It would just take some patience and a little concentration.

  "Did you find what you were after?" Bee's cheery voice piped through the door. She had a tray with meat, cheese, and hard bread on it, along with two goblets of what smelled like fruity wine. The idea of food made Braxton realize how hungry he was. It was probably after midday. "Thank you very much," Braxton said.

  "It's alright, I like you." Bee smiled devilishly, then added, "Don't worry, you're way too young for me to chase around." Blushing slightly, she cleared her throat, then sat down and pushed the tray at him. "Eat."

  "Thank you.” Now he was the one blushing. She wasn't that much older than him. Had his nervousness been that obvious? He looked at his maps, then pushed them aside and took a piece of meat, placed it on a piece of bread, and began munching it. As he ate, the door cracked open and a young man poked his head in.

  "Master Bee?" He asked her nervously. "Are you here?"

  "Yes, Pogl, what is it?" she answered sternly.

  Braxton was confused for a moment, but then it dawned on him that Bee wasn’t just there to give information, she was a real lesson master. He imagined only disheveled old men like Master Finn could obtain that coveted rank. Pogl's next words dispelled Braxton's assumption completely.

  "It seems several masters are furious that you cancelled your lecture." He pranced nervously. "What should I tell them, Master Scholar Beatrice?"

  "Tell them I'll make it up in a few days.” She looked up at nothing, twisting her face in thought. "If that doesn’t satisfy them, then tell them to file a complaint with the head master. But Pogl, please tell Master Martrin to come here immediately." Pogl ducked out of the door and closed it, obviously trying not to make a sound.

  "Well, I guess the cat is out of the bag," she said to Braxton. She reached across the table and took his hand in hers. Braxton immediately felt a strange, yet pleasant unease. She wanted him, that was now obvious, and it was also obvious she also wanted to help him.

  "I really don’t have time for this, but you and the strangely marked coins Master Finn mentioned interest me greatly." She let go of his hand and smoothed her robe. "Now, what is it you are looking for in these maps?"

  Braxton decided he could trust her. Her attraction worried him a little bit, but this was an adventure, after all. As long as she was willing to help, he would play her game. She isn’t that much older, he thought, and she is very pretty.

  He reached back to her and took her hand this time. He looked deep into her eyes, searching for anything that might cause him not to trust her. "You have to promise me you'll not talk about what I'm about to show you. You can't tell anyone else, ever."

  At that moment, she might have promised to fly around the moon for him. "I promise," she said.

  Braxton first took out the book, but then he surprised himself by pulling the medallion he'd also found out from under his shirt to display. Her mouth fell open, and as she leaned down to look at it, tiny sparkles flashed from the gemstone. "Oh my," she stammered. "It's incredible."

  He told her the story of the Octerror and how he found the medallion, the maps, and the book in the cavern, all in a satchel. He left out nothing, save for the details of the battle. He even mentioned Dendle and the blue-gemmed ring that shared the same markings, which was also taken from the cavern. But he didn't say that Dendle was half-gothican because he didn't think it mattered.

  When he was finished, she looked to be in a daze. She hopped up and retrieved an ink pot, a quill, and a stack of parchment from the shelf.

  Her expression changed, and she huffed out a sigh. "Oh poo, I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone."

  "It's all quite overwhelming," she finally said, sitting back down. Braxton had put the medallion back under his shirt, but her eyes kept moving toward it. "I'm not sure I can help you if I have to keep all this secret."

  "The medallion and the maps have to be kept secret," Braxton said, not sure where the thought came from, but sure that it was true.

  "That leaves the book," she said flatly. "What about the skeleton? Shouldn't it be retrieved and studied? What if it isn't a human skeleton?"

  The idea that it might not be a human skeleton never crossed Braxton's mind. "What else could it be?"

  "Too big to be a dwarf, too small to be a gothican. It could be a big kobl or an elf? Who knows? That's why it has to be studied."

  "It's not a kobl, that’s for sure." Braxton said, thinking back, trying to remember more detail. "It had clothes, boots, and stuff." He stopped in sudden shock. "An elf? What the hell?"

  "You've been taught kingdom history, not nearly all of our people's history. There was a time before Narvoza even existed. There are elves in the kingdom, you know."

  Braxton was wide-eyed now, listening for more. Master Finn had taught of elves, ogres, trolls, and orcs in the old world, but never had he indicated that elves were here, too.

  "It isn't surprising you don’t know," Bee said informatively. "The elves don’t want to be known. Their birth rate is so low that, in all, they barely number a thousand. They live isolated on the Isle of Jolen, south of Halden in the forgiving sea." She pointed it out on the map. It wasn’t labeled, but a small land mass was represented.

  "What are these?" He pointed to the cities labeled on the finger-like peninsula on the eastern side of Nepram.

  "Those are where the King of Nepram established outposts for exploration. Now they are only supply towns for the lumber and fishing boats that sail around that coast. New Scarlee is rumored to be full of mercenaries from both Narvoza and Nepram, who are supposed to be venturing into the Wilderkind forest to map and explore. But those are old rumors, and no word has come from there in years. Our kingdom and Nepram aren't exactly happy neighbors anymore. They may know more and just haven't told us, but I doubt it. They are always struggling to farm the rocky soil, sometimes begging King Barden to give them farm land, or stores, in aid.

  "They are our own people," Braxton protested. "Why wouldn’t we help them?"

  "That is a question that would take most of a week to answer.” She smiled and opened the book he'd sat on the table. "This is th
e question of the day."

  The door opened and a serious looking man of middling years stepped into the room. "You sent for me, Master Bee?"

  "Yes, Master Martarin.” She scowled. "Quite a while ago." She looked at Braxton and indicated the book with a look that seemed to be seeking permission to show it to the man.

  Braxton nodded his approval but narrowed his eyes as he did so. The look clearly wasn’t lost on her.

  "Come take a peek at this and tell me what you think," Master Bee commanded.

  The bit of fear showing in Master Martarin's expression faded as he walked over to take a curious glance. His expression first went blank, then it slowly turned to that of astonishment.

  "May I?" He asked politely, then picked up the book. First, he examined its leather worked cover and bindings. "Simply amazing." He gasped. "I've never seen a book bound this way."

  He held it out, turning it over and over, examining every detail of the exterior, not the text.

  "What language is it?" He asked after a moment, now clearly impressed.

  "As I was just telling Lord Braxton here, that is the question of the day."

  Lord Braxton? What is she up to? It didn't matter, he decided. Lord Braxton had a nice enough ring to it.

  "I trust you'll speak of this to no one.” Braxton gave him a look.