by Elliot Burns
Elena walked over to a wall. There was a series of alchemical lamps fixed to the stone. Elena fiddled with one of them, but it didn’t turn on. “Damn things need replacing,” she said.
“You did well,” said Mav, looking at Jack. “Really. He tried not to show it, but I think you got to him.”
“I’d like to believe that, but it looks like things are a lot worse than before his visit. Bruce made it clear that Veik wants something from me, and that he’s going to bully me to get it.”
“You didn’t cower to him. Bruce will respect that, and he will report to Lord Veik that you won’t succumb to scare tactics,” said Elena.
“I hope so. Did you see the mark on his arm?”
“Describe it to me,” said Elena.
Jack told her about the tattoo he’d seen on Bruce’s arm. Elena covered her mouth with her hand and thought about it.
“I’m sensing this isn’t good,” said Jack.
“Bruce Frier is a memory splitter,” she answered. “Remember what I told you about the tachers and what they do to people who don’t pay debts? Bruce can do that too, evidently.”
“If I’d known it was that mean bastard knocking on your door, I would have told you to pretend you aren’t home,” said Mav.
“I don’t understand all the play-acting,” said Jack. “If Veik’s so powerful, why doesn’t he just march here with a bunch of guys with swords and beat me?”
“When you entered the game,” said Elena, “Veik’s stats and his kingdom reset. He’s in the same position as you; he needs to build up his skills and his lands. Not only that, but losing to Alfie will have made him cautious. He was too attack-minded against Alfie, and it cost him dearly. He knows that beating you is the last chance he’ll get to win the game for a long time, and he’ll be a lot more devious about it this time.”
“We have a problem, then. Bruce must have seen how unprotected we really are. He’ll tell Veik that I hardly have any watchmen, and that I don’t have any soldiers. How come he could he just waltz right up to my castle, anyway?”
“You don’t have a border patrol, and your two watchmen can’t cover everything all at once. You need border security as soon as you have enough flek,” said Elena.
The twenty hours he’d spent awake were beginning to catch up with him. Jack wanted to wrap this up and go to bed, but a thought nagged at him. “Let’s boil this down. Veik won’t make a move on my land until he’s completely sure that he’ll win, right? He’s too scared of losing to take risks.”
“Correct,” said Elena. She was still trying to make the alchemical lamps work, and it seemed that with each second that they eluded her, she became more annoyed.
It dawned on Jack. If this is like a chess match then so far, the game hadn’t started. When it did, he needed to move first. He couldn’t let Veik make the opening play. And if it was like chess, he expected the pawns to fall first. Who were the pawns in this situation? Veik certainly wouldn’t attack openly. He was going to play a patient, devious, game, and that gave Jack time.
“Let’s not waste time. I need to get ready. I need flek, I need defenses, and I need an army. Most of all right now, I need a drink.”
Mav got up. “Now you’re talking my language,” he said. He walked over to Elena and he hit the alchemical lamp nearest her with his palm. The lamp sparked to life, and like a chain reaction, the ones adjacent to it followed.
Chapter Thirteen
After a week in Royaume, he’d learned that fighting in the forests wasn’t the only thing that could tire him. Every morning and afternoon, Elena drilled him on the history of Royaume and on lordly etiquette. She was trying to teach him how lords should act and speak, and the words they should use. It was like stepping into an acting role, he decided, and he needed to learn the script. It was a pity he’d never taken a drama class.
Despite how tired he felt, he found that as Royaume’s suns set and night took hold, he couldn’t sleep. It was a common feeling. Back home, he used to spend hours at night listening out for sounds from Mum’s room to make sure she was okay. He had learned to function on a few hours’ sleep.
He sat with his back against the head of his bed. On the floor next to him was a pile of adventure books. He’d mentioned to Elena that he enjoyed them, so she’d pilfered a heap of them from the library and left them in his room. It was a nice thing to do after she’d spent all day relentlessly teaching him.
He was making progress, he decided. Another field of crops had ripened, and after the crops were sold, Jack had netted an extra two hundred and sixty flek. In the building room, he spent two hundred and eight flek on creating a weapon shop, and an extra fifty on turning one of his unoccupied peasants into a weaponmaster.
This left him with two hundred and four flek, but it had been a good investment. The weaponmaster, a barrel-bellied man with bulging arm muscles and who seemed to sweat constantly, had crafted a new blade for Jack’s dagger. When he fitted it to his weapon, its stats increased.
Shine Steel blade fitted
+10 ATT [Total: 20]
Together with his fortified steel hilt, it made his dagger’s attack power twenty points. Added to his base attack of thirteen, it meant he could deal thirty-three hitpoints of damage with a standard attack.
That night, he about picking up a book, but his mind resisted. He was too weary for words that night. Instead, he traced his gaze across his room, before settling on his coat, which he’d folded over a chair. There was a strange looking bulge in the right pocket, and for a few seconds, he wondered what it was.
The crystal. Mav had put it in his pocket and told him to watch it when he was alone. He left the bed, made sure his door was locked, and then picked up the gem.
As soon as he touched it, his bedroom began to fade away. The colors separated into particles and drifted to the floor, settling like soot. Bright colors seeped into his vision. Fragments of colors that slowly linked together to form a coherent image.
The crystal memory started in a village. This village was full of cobblestone houses with tightly thatched roofs. Smoke trailed from chimneys, and the air smelled of freshly-baked bread. The sounds of children playing came from somewhere out of view. The village was set against a backdrop of snow-peaked mountains, reminding him of photographs of Swiss skiing resorts.
A stone road cut through the centre of the village. The slabs of rock were uneven. Four people pushed a cart down the middle, and the wooden wheels jutted up and down on the bumpy surface. Doors of the houses to his left and right opened as the villagers looked to see who their visitor was.
Three of the strangers were men who wore tight leather vests and had swords sheathed at their thighs. There was no sign of a sigil on their attire. At the head of the cart was a tall, slender person wearing a brown robe with a hood drawn over their head.
“Leathers for sale!” shouted the figure. It was a woman. “Get your purses, pouches, satchels and bandoleers!”
A couple of the villagers, having no interest in spending flek, slammed their doors. Others left their doorways and examined the various pots, pans and candle holders on the cart.
“A fine day for shopping,” said the merchant. “But look with your eyes, not your hands.”
She drew back her hood to reveal a cascade of flowing red hair as soft as silk and as red as a rose. Jack looked on in shock, when he realized that it was Elena. Jack lost his breath for a second, and he wondered if he could trust his eyes.
No, there was no doubt about it. He’d spent so much time with her now that he’d recognize her angular, pale, face anywhere. What was going on?
The crystal memory ended. After a displacement of colors, Jack found himself back in his bedroom. He set the crystal on the seat of the chair and glanced again at his door to make sure it was locked.
What was going on with Elena? And how did Mav know about it? He needed to speak to him.
He left his bedroom and stood in the draughty hallway. Lanterns flickered on the stone wal
ls and warded away the darkness. He pulled up his map and saw Mav’s icon displayed on it. This was strange; the thief wasn’t in his bedchamber, but instead seemed to be in the room above Jack’s kingdom stone.
He took a spiral staircase down to the first floor. He found Mav crouched on the floor near the hidden kingdom stone room door. He was staring at it intently as if he saw something that Jack didn’t.
“Trouble sleeping?” he asked.
Mav slowly straightened up. In the giant oval windows behind him, black shapes fluttered against the glass. The darkness seemed to stream in through it and cover Mav’s face in shadow.
The thief started to take lumbering steps toward him. It reminded Jack of the zombie-like creatures he’d seen the first time he’d met him. The closer he got, the more the shadows slipped away from his face. There was something strange afoot here; Mav’s eyes were glassy, and a peculiar smell wafted around him. It was almost metallic.
“Heard noises from the stone room,” said Mav. His speech was slow as if he was in a dream.
What was he to make of this? He was so tired that his brain couldn’t process it.
“Noises? Are you sure that’s all?” Jack asked.
“That’s all.”
“What’s going on, Mav?”
Mav pointed at the wall to his right. There was nothing there.
“Do you have something you want to tell me?” said Jack.
“I’ll go to bed now,” said Mav.
He walked across the room, stumbling every few steps. When he passed Jack he almost fell into him but caught himself at the last moment. He straightened up and shuffle away.
Jack didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he couldn’t let Mav walk around in this state, whatever it was. He was bound to trip and hurt himself.
He put his arm around Mav’s shoulder. He guided him through the castle as if he were a parent escorting a sleepwalking child to his bedroom. Keeping Mav balanced, he pushed open the thief’s bedroom door and led him over to his bed.
Mav rolled onto it, making no effort to move underneath his quilt.
“I’m not tucking you in,” said Jack.
He left the thief and walked back to the stone room. There, he looked at the walls. Whatever Mav had pointed at, Jack couldn’t see it. He heard nothing save the gentle whistling of the wind as it snuck through crevices.
Back in his bedroom, he latched the door. Something was wrong with Mav, and Elena was keeping a secret from him. The way the thief had acted had worried him; it was how his mum used to behave when her episodes began. He shuddered at the memory of her haunted expression and slow, mumbled words.
He didn’t know what he should do about the thief. He needed answers from him, but he’d been in no position to give them. This left him with a single, worrying question.
Could he truly trust either him or Elena?
Up to now, they hadn’t done anything wrong. He guessed that whatever secrets they held, they were entitled to them as long as they didn’t harm him. Who was he to turn up here and start to pry into the lives of others? He really had no choice but to trust them.
Still, he would be cautious. He opened his map. Elena’s and Mav’s icons showed them to be exactly where they should be now; in their bedrooms.
He slumped onto his bed and stared at the ceiling. If sleep was elusive before, it had galloped away from him now. Sighing, he reached to the side of the bed and grabbed an adventure book from the top of the pile.
Chapter Fourteen
The peasants kept late hours, judging by the faint shimmer from their window lamps far beyond the castle. Jack supposed that after working all day, some of them would want a few hours of leisure time before they hit their beds. The three moons of Royaume were clear that night. They were pearly white and lined up in a row, each smaller than the other, like a set of Russian dolls. In the distance, near the mountains, a light glowed at the peak of a hill. He wondered if someone lived there, or if they were camping under the stars.
Fiery spheres of light shot into the air, disintegrating when they reached the clouds. An orange ball shot up over the mountain peaks and aimed toward the heavens. Jack knew what the spheres were. He could almost hear his uncle telling him about the religion of his fantasy world, and knowledge of the spheres came back to him. The balls were fired by worshipers of Orange, a religious sect who prayed to the sun. This was their way of showing their god that they still thought of him, even when it was dark.
The castle was quiet at night, and he almost felt alone since he, Mav and Elena’s rooms were so far apart. Elena’s was out of the tower and along a corridor. If he walked by her room and listened, he would hear the rustle of paper as she turned the pages of a book. Mav had taken a chamber far across the castle on the ground floor, in a room that was originally meant for storage. After years of dungeoneering, he felt more comfortable in tight spaces.
Jack was still toying with whether to move to a room away from the tower. His current chamber felt too remote. He wanted to be near the meeting room and kingdom building room. If a crisis emerged in the middle of the night, he didn’t have to risk injury walking down the crooked steps of the tower.
He had started to commit the layout of the castle to his memory now after days of exploring. It was strange, but it was starting to feel like home. There was a pleasing quality to the air; something wholesome, despite it being a rundown wreck.
He guessed that the wholesome feeling extended out into his lands. He knew from Elena’s lessons that Holuum, where his lands were located, was a large section of Royaume. There was something pleasing about his little part of it. Everything was green here; the flowers, the grass, the vines.
Despite his growing ease with his surroundings, he still couldn’t sleep. Doubts about Elena and Mav nagged at him. Not only that, but a pain throbbed in his head. Since he’d started using his building chair more often, he’d started getting headaches. They rarely reached the heights of a migraine, but they were enough of a nuisance that they stopped him sleeping.
No sooner had he sat down on his bed, then noises from outside drew his attention. At the window, he saw twelve strange carriages pull up to the castle drawbridge. Eleven of them seemed to be formed around one in the middle, protecting it. Drivers whipped reins to steer the horses, and on the backs, armored mercenaries wielded crossbows.
How had he not heard their approach? The din made by an army of carriages would be hard to miss. Not only that, but why hadn’t the watchman alerted him to the approach of his guests? He loosened his dagger in his sheath. He opened his bedroom door.
“Mav? Elena?” he shouted. “I need you guys awake. Meet me at the drawbridge.”
He checked the window again. To his amazement, eleven of the carriages faded away like mist, leaving just one behind. A figure got out of it. He stood amidst the night time darkness and seemed to be staring at the drawbridge. Little twists of blue light rose off him like smoke. The visitor walked to the castle door and knocked.
Jack was the first to the drawbridge. The antechamber of the castle was a cavernous space. Though he always expected to feel a draught walking through it, the wind never reached him. Old tapestry banners bearing the Halberd crest hung from stone walls. Several open doorways lined the room like ventricles that led to the rest of the castle. He guessed that in its heyday, this part of the fortress would have teamed with people; servants attending to the lord and his staff, and soldiers standing guard against intruders.
He wondered if Elena and Mav had ignored his call, but a check of his map showed the tacher heading his way. The drawbridge was down, and the rusted pulley system that operated it was to his right. If Jack wanted to stop his night time visitors, using it would help; you couldn’t approach the castle door if the bridge was up. The problem was that it was a giant pain in the arse to operate, and even without the bridge drawn, the entrance to Castle Halberd was blocked by an oak door thick enough to withstand a battering ram.
Three raps sounded
on the wood. He held his dagger tight in his right hand. There was still no sign of his friends, and the echoes of their footsteps hadn’t reached him yet.
A muffled voice spoke to him through the wooden door. “I mean you no ill,” said a man. “There is just one carriage; the rest was an illusion for self-defense. I am quite harmless. I request an audience with Lord Halberd.”
“People who mean no harm generally wait until morning to knock on someone’s door. What the hell are you doing here in the dead of night?”
“I find that conversations bear more fruit without four inches of wood between the contributors. I have a proposition that may benefit the lord.”