Torrodil

by Luke Geraghty

  She nodded and thanked him, watching as he walked ahead into the dining hall.

  ‘Good gracious, Elder Finn. I’ve told you not to do that with a partridge, living or dead. What will our guests think?’

  Anna hovered in the cloister awhile, the smells and sounds of the feast blocked out, the light clinging to the trees.

  Seven – The Trickster

  Sundown at the Illuminate Order monastery. Cesar and Mateo are fighting in the monastery gardens, re-armed by a kind donation from the weapon store. Andres is teaching Tommy some longsword manoeuvres while Anna meditates with Lysander, the tranquillity of the garden disturbed by clanging metal.

  ‘It’s hopeless,’ says Anna, opening her eyes.

  ‘Focus. Shut out the aches of the world and let your mind lapse.’

  Anna tries. The sound of the swords grows louder, building and building, until the crescendo forces her eyes open.

  ‘Will you knock it off. I’m trying to concentrate.’

  ‘Use the training room,’ Lysander suggests to the boys. ‘Ask one of the monks for directions.’

  Tommy mutters under his breath, ‘Moody mare’

  Quiet falls over the garden. Light dims and she searches the dark recesses. Her eyes are adjusting, her hands fumbling around for solid surfaces, the hinges of every locked door loosening, tendrils escaping and rushing forward. Her other senses are amplified. There are odd dripping noises she had not noticed and she can feel smears on the walls in unexpected places. She runs in her mind house and her feet come upon broken glass. She tries many doors, tendrils and hands inching closer in the murk. This door’s locked. Try another. Locked too. The windows? Barred. And then she realises she is not alone. There are inmates with her. She stumbles into one. She runs round and round, trying to see their face but she cannot. Daren’t they face her? And when Anna angers, when she draws in the Aether and hurls the person across the room, they laugh and turn around. Their face is Bale and he atrophies to dust. Anna opens her eyes, breathing heavily.

  ‘You see him, don’t you?’ enquires the monk, not snooping but giving her a chance to talk about it.

  ‘How did you…?’

  ‘One does not need to be clairvoyant to see that it preys on your mind.’

  ‘Every time I close my eyes, he’s there. The pain on his face…’ Anna retreats, unused to this wistful fluff. ‘I didn’t care, Lysander. Not in that moment. I thought of how I tried to help him; how he betrayed me. And I felt nothing watching him burn.’

  ‘This man. He does not feel malice. He cannot chase you in the night or harm you. He is gone and the words he speaks to you are not his, do you understand? You live. Whether you believe that is the will of your Shaper or a fortunate accident is up to you, but either way you must endure. Relinquish your guilt and let him go.’

  Laughter from inside disturbs Anna momentarily. She twists her neck in its general direction. Boys playing, happy and energetic to her sluggishness. ‘I can’t enjoy this power. I can’t control it. What if the next time I get angry I set somebody on fire?’

  ‘You haven’t done it yet, have you?’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean I won’t. All it has brought me is unhappiness and it’s spreading to everyone else. Tommy can’t go home. We’re under constant threat. I wished for adventure – for a better life – not for this.’

  Lysander lets a breeze wash over him. The vibrations of voices in harmonious song flows into the garden and out. ‘I do not believe in an omniscient being in the sky, Anna. This puts me at odds with the greater part of the people in Torrodil. But I do believe that we are tested. Perhaps this is your test. How I see it you have two options: sink to the floor and rust from crying, or accept that yours is an unenviable lot, but one that is yours and yours alone. Take ownership of it and do not renounce that ownership lightly.’

  Anna fails to mask a sniffle and Lysander passes her his handkerchief.

  ‘You learned all this from books, huh?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Lysander shifts his gaze to the sky. ‘Nightfall is almost upon us. Come, let us speak with Elder Francis.’

  ‘As I said, dear boy, it is not who solves the problem, but how. Still, I would advise against all six of you going, for that will undoubtedly lead to complications,’ said Elder Francis. ‘Take Mateo and Cesar. Let the other two continue to train. I will watch over them, I assure you.’

  ‘Who is this Trickster?’ asks Anna.

  ‘A thief,’ replies Lysander. ‘We haven’t been able to catch him. Upon my suggestion, Elder Francis arranged for an urn to go on display at an estate a couple of miles north. There are too many visitors during the day, not to mention guards, for the Trickster to attempt to steal it.’

  ‘But you’re betting he will try tonight?’

  ‘It is logical. We know the house. It is my belief that he will take the least guarded entrance, which is through a series of interconnecting tunnels that lead to the rear garden.’

  Anna can already see where this is going: they’ll stand around watching the urn and making daisy chains and braiding one another’s hair until the Trickster arrives. Sounds like a simple enough plan. Wait a minute. The older man is looking weirdly in her direction. Either he’s chockfull of partridge and feeling the strain or something’s up.

  ‘Although I did arrange for the urn to go on display, generating much interest and considerable profit for the Hamiltons, I could not very well inform them of our true purpose without exposing the existence of this Order.’

  ‘You let us five in here easily enough.’

  ‘I do not think five wanted criminals make the most reliable of sources. Your head would likely be awaiting the gallows shortly after you confessed our existence to the townspeople.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘We will have to enter the same way the Trickster intends: through the tunnels,’ said Lysander. ‘From there we can gain entry through the back door. One of our monks works for the Lord. He can sneak us in.’

  ‘An undercover monk?’ questioned Anna wryly. Lysander told her it was impolite to laugh.

  ‘You must go now,’ said Francis, hiding his amusement. ‘It will be dark by the time you get to the Manor. Take Cesar and Mateo. I will inform the others.’

  Torchfire led the four on, their silhouettes jutting out behind on walls of soil. Embedded stones and rats’ eyes glinted in the darkness, vanishing into gloom as quickly as they had appeared. The group skulked down one tunnel after another, getting lost in the twists and the turns, drops of Lysander’s sweat cooking on the torch. Mateo suggested marking the walls to indicate the direction they were taking and it was promptly taken up. Eventually a draft stroked at the group’s ankles, indicating an exit was close by. Coming up into the crypt in the manor’s garden, the damp was dispelled and sweetness fragranced the air. A muddy footprint stared up at them from the floor. It is an overconfident thief who hides their footprints in tunnels but leaves one out in the open to mock.

  Engraved tombs of marble reflected the torchlight as the group followed the stairs up to the next floor and the surface. Spiders spun webs in corners. One stuck its head out of a broken tomb to see what the fuss was about, having made its nest among the skeletal remains. Sensing humans, it flitted back inside to safety.

  Under moonlight, the group hurried, steps muffled by grass. Lysander extinguished the torch in a pond and they hid amongst a small copse of trees, scanning the house.

  ‘W-w-where is your friend?’

  ‘I don’t know. He should be there.’ Lysander pointed at an unguarded door. ‘The Trickster must have gotten past.’

  ‘Maybe we’re too late,’ said Anna.

  ‘We’ve come this far. We have to go in,’ said Cesar, tired of taking orders rather than giving them. ‘I am quick; let me go.’

  ‘And if you get caught you’ve got nobody to lend a hand. We’ll all go,’ said Anna.

  ‘Do you have to argue with everything I say?’

  ‘I don’t have to, n
o.’

  ‘We don’t have time to squabble,’ said Lysander. ‘Anna is right, we’ll go together. We have weapons to defend ourselves and she has…’

  With noticeable sarcasm, ‘An unenviable lot?’

  ‘Talents.’

  The group approached the manor and opened the back door a smidgeon, trying to eavesdrop. Guards gossiped, but not nearby, so they crept inside. Their first sight was of a pot boiling over on the fire. Their second sight was of a man, limbs splayed across a kitchen table. There, in plain view, was Lysander’s undercover monk. A short feel of the neck revealed him to be unconscious. Like the Order, the Trickster did not kill, nor need to. It was reckless, however, to leave the henchman wannabe out cold for any passers-by to see, though they deduced from the bubbling-over pot that the cook was probably hunched double with a ladle somewhere.

  Footsteps at the other end of a corridor.

  ‘S-someone’s coming.’

  ‘Great,’ blurted Anna. ‘We’ll have to move him.’

  Lysander calmly examined the kitchen. He moved to inspect a side room. ‘There’s a larder here. Get him up. Quickly.’

  ‘Mildred, is that you?’ asked the guard, pacing closer and rattling like a sack full of silverware.

  The two Venecians and Anna grabbed the portly monk by his splayed limbs, hoisting him off the table and into the air, sending a colander crashing to the floor. When the colander began rocking from side to side, generating a protracted grumble, it half-convinced the group to abandon the body and flee.

  ‘You better be cookin’ me something and not that overstuffed canker. “Oh, Lady Hamilton, you are enchanting.” Yeah yeah, wait till she’s got a few brews in her. She’s a real charmer then.’

  The three ran with the henchman wannabe and placed him delicately down on the larder floor. Puffing from exertion, the group crouched and turned their bodies to wood, trying to meld with the shadows.

  ‘Now what’s all this then. Mildred, your pot’s boiling over! Where are ya, ya daft cow?’

  Cesar goes to peer round but Lysander stops him by extending an arm, knocking an onion off a shelf which Mateo catches three inches from the ground.

  ‘Who put him in charge?’ whispers Cesar to Anna.

  The guard takes the pot off the fire and grows suspicious. Where is the cook? He opens the door and looks outside. Where are the guards? There’s a priceless urn upstairs and everyone’s either gone walkabout or the alternative, which no guard wants to face. Not alone. He steps towards the larder. If I was going to hide a body, I’d hide it there.

  The group can hear his footsteps. One. And another. Rattling closer, headed directly for them. Cesar and Mateo keep their hands over their sword hilts; Lysander readies his staff; Anna considers a carrot for a weapon. The heavy tread of his boots say he is seconds away from sticking his head round that doorway.

  ‘What do you think you’re playing at coming into my kitchen with those muddy boots?’

  The guard shifts his head left. ‘There you are,’ he says, blaming his paranoia on the second pint.

  ‘Look at this mess,’ says Mildred. ‘I cleaned this floor three hours ago. Out. Now.’ She exhales noisily. One hopes the phlegm clogging up her throat will not conveniently make its way into the stew.

  ‘Have you seen Steve or Marc?’

  ‘No, I haven’t, but knowing them they’re raiding Lord Hamilton’s tobacco supply. Go on, off with you.’

  Mildred takes the lid off the pot, studies its contents, stokes the fire and goes to the larder to grab a few ingredients, where she receives a blow to the head and takes a nap next to the monk on the stone floor.

  The companions move stealthily from the kitchen to the hallway, wary of being clobbered with china. The halls are lit by oil lamps, hinting at the Hamiltons’ affluence. Lysander stops the band before they enter the entrance hall, creeping ahead to listen. Guards outside the front door. Talk of debauchery between a wet nurse and the Lord. Laughter and applause from gentry in a neighbouring room. But no commotion. Has the Trickster stolen away into the night?

  Lysander motions for them to come forward. Together they tiptoe up the main staircase, tastelessly decorated in purple-patterned carpets. A granite priest in an alcove looms over them, gnarled staff in hand, the index finger of the other curled in their direction. His prying eyes follow them as they make their way upstairs.

  On the first floor the group moves quicker, sensing that there is no time to dawdle. Lysander knows the layout better since this part is open to public viewing. He deduces that the Rosewater Urn will take pride of place in the left wing gallery.

  A woman comes out of a bedroom and the group cram into what was presumed to be a room, but turned out to be a broom closet. Smooshed in, breaths quiet, door not so kind, squawking like a protective bird mother. It’s impossible that she hasn’t seen. If she knows, they don’t. The door comes to a standstill without the squawk and they cannot show their happiness because they need to wait until she passes through. Which she does. Eventually. Delaying them by stopping to muse on the ‘wonderful’ bronze door handles.

  On the verge of the gallery, a peculiar sweetness coils in the air once more. Beneath them a slumped guard sleeps, lips tinged blue, fragments of a linium vial at his feet. Lysander smells the vial.

  ‘Poison.’

  A loud crash from the gallery. The group sprint into the cavernous display room, realising the guards will have heard it. A sign informs that the left archway will lead to pottery; the right to sculptures. To preserve this art for future generations, and to ensure the Hamiltons can make as much money as possible, please do not touch.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ shouts Lysander to the Trickster, who stands at a raised pedestal, back turned. A triangular window allows a halo of moonlight to rest atop his hood.

  The Trickster steps over a breastplate-wearing guard and grabs the Rosewater Urn from the pedestal, running a finger round a meander pattern on the lid. He is clothed in an olive-green hooded cloak, rich in texture, with black boots of the creamiest leather in Torrodil. Mateo would appraise them as quality footwear, had the timing been better.

  Trickster places the urn back on the pedestal and turns, countenance shrouded by the Night Mother herself. From his belt he pulls a set of long daggers with blades that do not discriminate between flesh and bone. Vials of various colours are situated in small, evenly-spaced compartments on the belt.

  Cesar draws his sword. ‘If he insists.’

  With a roll of his eyes, Lysander chastens him, telling him that is not the only solution.

  ‘It is the one I prefer.’

  ‘Lay down your weapons,’ says the monk to the Trickster. ‘We can end this amicably and there may be time for us to get out before the guards arri—’

  The Trickster throws a vial at Lysander’s head and he smashes it with his staff, unleashing an itchy cloud of green vapour that makes the companions’ eyes water and skin prickle. Before they have time to act the Trickster is cutting through the fog in a swirl of blades, aiming for Lysander’s chest. Cesar catches the daggers with his sword, deflecting the attack and pushing the Trickster backwards. Mateo has joined his comrade and together they swing at their aggressor, time after time finding their swords evaded. The caped thief seems to bend the very air around him, stretching and curving like an elastic wind. His daggers are an extension of his body, working with his feet to thrust the attackers away, but not to mortally wound. Mateo takes a sweeping kick to the back of the knees and capsizes onto Cesar like two Venecian ships in the Wrecking Waters.

  Lysander lands a blow to the Trickster’s stomach, winding him. Daggers glide out of his hands and across the polished floor. Monk reaches to unmask. Peels the hood back. Goes to yank it off and takes a headbutt to the nose.

  Clutching his chest, the Trickster runs up the stairs and meets an airborne Cesar with enough bread and butter in his belly to break a donkey’s back. Boy takes an impromptu piggyback ride with his new pal, who stumbles on the st
airs for a few seconds until the weight buckles his knees.

  ‘Not so agile now, are you?’ retorts Cesar.

  His foe emits a grunt of exertion.

  ‘And not so talkative either. Mateo, I have found you a friend!’ At which point Cesar gets tossed over the Trickster’s shoulders, praying that he doesn’t land on his face, anything but the face.

  ‘I hate to break up this meeting of minds but we’ve got company,’ says Anna, running towards the fighting with six guards on her tail.

  ‘Truce?’ asks Lysander.

  The Trickster gathers his fallen daggers and gives a curt nod.

  One of the Manor watchmen catches Anna and shoves her to the left, saying, ‘Get out of the way, wench!’ He gets a Webbing Vial to the mouth that spreads a translucent mesh over his mouth and nose. Being able to neither speak nor breathe, he drops his sword and scratches helplessly at his face.

  A guard swipes at Lysander, who catches the blade on his wizened wooden staff, giving it a fresh notch of battle. Pulling the sword, trying to dislodge it, Lysander pulling back, trying to do the same, but the sword won’t budge. They abandon their arms and engage in fist fighting, which is second nature to a monk of the Order, leaving the guard black and blue and out for the count.

  Seeing his fellows bested with ease, a guard decides that the weak woman will make a consolation prize. Lysander watches as the sword drives through the air to her heart. The Trickster takes great pleasure in pitching a dagger at the lily-livered man’s hand. When it connects he erupts in a shrill shriek, flinging it around in anticipation of someone pulling it free, for he cannot bear to look. Tracked by the groups’ eyes, the Trickster walks over and rips it out, proceeding to uncork a Vial of Slumber and pour it down the man’s gullet.

  ‘Who are you?’ asks Anna.

  Taking a vial from his belt, the Trickster lobs it at the bunched up companions, who cough from the Vial of Choking, vision obscured. Running, grabbing the urn from the pedestal, bypassing the smog on his way down.