by Tammy Salyer
By their urgency and the students’ clear concerns, it was quickly apparent to Griggory that something was amiss. Upon spotting Chief Prelate Lutair, he flagged the old man down.
“Chief Prelate, excuse me, if you don’t mind.”
The man glanced toward Griggory, his iron-gray eyebrows drawing together sternly, looking as if he’d bitten into a lemon the size of a dragør dropping. Griggory girded himself for a lecture. “Where’ve you been, Master Dondrin?”
“Er, preparing notes for the first day’s instruction?” It was mostly true. He had been taking notes all morning, mental notes that was, on the dragørflies’ behavior.
“Well, classes are cancelled now, you know.” The Chief Prelate’s sour expression worsened, making him look as much like a prune as a lemon-biter. Griggory gave himself a mental back-pat at his ability to keep his descriptions of the Chief Prelate wholly fruit-based, but forced himself to refocus on the elder when he growled, “The Fenestros has gone missing. The thieves, most likely those greedy Ivoryssians, are determined to start a war if it ruins us all, I expect.”
Griggory stared at the elderly Prelate. A Fenestros, a powerful gift from Vaka Aster, something only the Knights Corporealis had access to, could not just “go missing.” Their Order kept the Fenestros secure, and they were a force, stronger and, more importantly, more revered than anything else in the whole of Vinnr—save Vaka Aster herself, and of course, the dragørs. No one would dare to steal from them, nor could they conceivably manage to if they did dare. Not without losing vital parts of their anatomy, anyway.
“War? Should I, should I…” he stammered.
Chief Prelate Lutair helped him along with a terse, “Go back to your apartment, Master Dondrin, finish your ‘notes.’ The Knights have asked the Prelates and acolytes to remain in their dorms or homes while they search the city.” At that, Chief Prelate Lutair bustled off.
Griggory stood in place for a moment, considering the outlandishness of the morning’s happenings. Eventually, however, with nothing else in the city to harness his immediate interest, he decided he would indeed finish his notes. But not in the dingy, cramped room he’d been afforded by the Conservatum. Rather in his preferred “office” on the other side of the wall. It didn’t look like he’d be needed for the day, after all. He just hoped he’d remembered to cap the honey jar. Otherwise, the little flying rapscallions likely had eaten it all by now, and Griggory still hadn’t had any breakfast of his own.
He retraced his steps through the market, which was itself in the beginning stages of chaos as news of the missing Fenestros spread. The Fenestros stones, five in total, could be used for innumerable purposes, though it took a great deal of deep study to even begin to know how to harness their potential. Fist-sized milky crystals, shot through with yellow and blue veins of some wystic ore, the Fenestrii were considered invaluable gifts to all peoples of the world of Vinnr, but the Knights were the only ones favored by Vaka Aster with their keeping and use.
Which meant, if one had been stolen, the thief could make little use of it unless they were a very learned Prelate or a Knight themselves.
On his way through the market, as his mind continued playing with this observation he stopped at a vendor’s stall that was filled with tart early-spring apples and a few berries, along with knots of fall’s leftover garlic and a small selection of vegetables. As he absently perused the wares, he barely noticed the vendor until she spoke.
“You look hungry, sir, but you don’t look like you’ve got the crimsons to pay to eat. I hope you’re not here for charity.”
He blinked and finally noticed the stall keeper. She was a pretty woman, younger than him, and all teasing smiles rather than glowering suspicion.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said quickly. “I was, ehm, having trouble deciding.”
She looked at him in confusion, then said, “Elder Veros, is it? You must be from the Conservatum.”
It was his turn to be confused, then he realized he’d spoken in the old language, Vaka Aster’s first gift to her creations. The Conservatum required Elder Veros be spoken, but most common folk outside the Conservatum spoke the Yorish tongue. He smiled sheepishly and repeated in Yorish, “Sorry, yes, I mean no. Well, yes, I’m from the Conservatum, and I’m hungry, but no, I’m not looking for charity.”
She eyed him up and down, then gave him a kittenish grin. When she did, her checks, spotted with freckles, dimpled sweetly. She reached into a burlap bag sitting at the back of the stall. “Here, for you. I keep the best apples for the splendid Resplendolents.”
“Splendid Responledo…oh, a play on words, I see. Ha-ha!” He laughed a bit too hard, realizing he was being flirted with and not quite sure what he should do about it. Women on more than a rare occasion seemed to like something about him—that was, until he bored them to death with his endless fascinated ramblings about whatever current subject possessed his mind. He was adept at mixing with the creatures of the world that he needn’t banter with, but seemed to be terrible at mixing with people themselves.
She made it easier on him, or perhaps she thought she was, and leaned close. “I can’t let a man as tall and spruce as you waste away before my eyes, can I?”
Clearing his throat to buy himself time to think of a response, he instead settled on giving her a small bow. “Thank you, madam. You’re too kind.” As he reached over his shoulder to retrieve his coin purse from his knapsack, he realized, again, that he’d left it behind. Turning as red as the Lœdyrrak sunset, he excused himself. “Oh, sorry, I seem to have forgotten—”
He pulled his hand back, preparing to do the only thing left for him to do—run from the overtly awkward moment—but her smile grew wider and she clasped his hand, dropping the fruit into it. “The crimson of your cheeks is all the payment I need, pet. Now enjoy your apple. I insist. And if you like, stop by tomorrow with some real coin, and you can have all the apples you can eat. And whatever else catches your eye.” She winked at him.
Flushing redder, he tore his eyes from her pert smile, quite similar to Knight Gwinifeve’s, and rested them on the apple. It was a brilliant, smooth red and wide as his palm, nearly the size of a Fenestros.
Sparing him from more drawn-out embarrassment, his mind, as it so often did, suddenly happened on a new train of thought. A Fenestros was missing and Knight Gwinifeve…she’d been in an awful hurry this morning, hadn’t she?
“Thank you again,” he blurted, then spun quickly around and stretched his long legs in a pace, nearly running after all, toward his secret breach in the wall.
Chapter Four
On his trip through the market, Griggory wondered more about the Knight. Where had she been going, and why the secrecy of a hood? No one in Yor Province was a threat to the Knights. So if she had need of secrecy, it wasn’t due to fear for herself, he was sure. And if the Fenestros had just been taken, why hadn’t she been with the rest of her Order, helping develop their plans for finding it? Was she, perhaps, already searching?
Only a Knight could tap the full power of a Fenestros; only a Knight would have access to one. He didn’t want to give the thought free rein, but he couldn’t seem to squelch it either. Had Dye Gwinifeve taken the Yor Fenestros?
He reached his disorderly stack of old crates and mouldering lumber that hid the secret tunnel. Fulfilling his suspicion, the pile was indeed different from how he’d left it. Knight Gwinifeve was well over two hundred turns old, gifted long life by Vaka Aster, and would have had a great deal of time to explore Umborough’s nooks and crannies. It was more than a little likely she’d have known of this breach herself. That, or she’d followed him sometime in the past, perhaps to feed her own curiosity about him, whom many thought was a curious man.
Quickly working his way through the scatter, he reached the tunnel and hurried through. On the Weald side of the wall, the sounds of the city were instantly muted, and the quiet helped him regain his focus. He could see no sign of Gwinifeve, but it felt less urgent now. Maybe his imag
ination had gotten the better of him and she hadn’t come this way. Still holding the apple the pretty merchant had given him, he took a bite and chewed thoughtfully as he looked around. In a few more bites, the apple was only core, and he tossed it aside before heading up the path to his knapsack.
He found it next to the shade tree he’d left it by. The honey jar, as he’d feared, was nearly empty, only a quarter cup or so remaining at the bottom. Before he stooped to pick it up, a slight movement caught his eye, and he glanced up. The tree above, whose pinnate leaves were ordinarily a deep green, was awash with a rainbow of colorful dragørflies. They adorned every branch like confetti, resting on their spindly legs. Their usually rapidly beating wings were splayed and waving lazily. It seemed the entire swarm, some dozens, had partaken of his honey bounty and were now sleeping off their gluttony, fat and happy.
The sight made him grin widely, and he didn’t lament his stolen nectar. After a moment of observation, he replaced the cork lid of the honey jar and packed it away, then rifled in his pack for a hunk of bread.
As he was slapping the crumbs from his hands, the far-off rumble of the dragør parent gloating over its new hatchling rolled through the Weald again, making him pause, deep in thought. He had enough food in his pack for three days, if he chose to eat lean. His cloak would shield him from the cold, and though he wouldn’t be comfortable, he’d manage. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d sacrificed a little convenience for the promise of wonders and fascination. The Conservatum’s classes wouldn’t resume today. Perhaps in the time it took him to seek a brief look at the dragør hatchling, he’d come up with a plausible excuse for his absence that would allow him to keep his part-time position. And if not, well, he’d get by. One did not survive as an itinerant traveler for twenty-plus turns if one wasn’t capable of improvising and adapting to hunger and the general drawbacks of vagabondage. Work would always be around in one form or another. But a dragør hatchling? Once in a lifetime, if that.
Without another moment of consideration, Griggory set off into the Howling Weald, a forest that spanned across the realm of Vinnr’s northern reaches from one province to another, so vast no person could explore it all in a single lifetime. Unless that person were a Knight, of course.
Chapter Five
By late afternoon he’d reached Lake Cuffdeach. The shores on the south side comprised billions of knuckle-sized and smaller rocks that had been churned smooth by the endlessly lapping waters of the lake. They were every color imaginable, as if he’d happened upon the world’s largest chest of gemstones. He could barely make out the far shore from where he stood, and a cold wind blew from the western Morn Mountains, fluffing the lake’s surface into small waves.
Kneeling to refill his water cask, he kept his eyes open and roaming the surroundings. Dragørs may have been the biggest predator in the world, but they weren’t the only one. Yet, from experience he knew most creatures would not bother a man unless they were hungry or threatened. It was other men he most had to fear, and bandits who accosted travelers on the Great Province Byway south of the Weald often hid in the forest.
He was far from the first person to visit this lake, and a small footpath followed the shore all the way around it. He didn’t see any footprints in the soft dirt that began where the smooth stone left off. But when he looked closely, he did find hoofprints. A rider had been through here, and recently.
Standing straight, he looked in the direction the prints led, narrowing his eyes as he focused on the distance. Then, along the western shore a good half-mile farther, he saw what he thought was the horse in question. It stood next to the lake, drinking.
Bandits rarely worked alone. Though he could only see one horse, that didn’t mean more weren’t about. His journey so far into the forest had been along deer and other animal paths, which were narrow enough he hadn’t thought to look for signs of someone on horseback. He could easily slip back in the underbrush on the same kinds of paths and quickly be hidden.
Or, he could slip back into the underbrush and move closer to his fellow traveler. And because his nature demanded he satisfy every fleeting curiosity that overcame him, that’s what he did.
By the time he was alongside the bank where he’d seen the horse, though farther back in the denser forest growth, it was gone. But that wasn’t a deterrent. He could smell horse now, and he imagined he would easily be able to follow its prints and other signs of its passage. No person who valued their life would stay out in the open for long in the Weald, turning themselves into beacons for flying dragørs to grab a quick lunch, and it was hard to hide the passage of a beast the size of a horse through the thick growth of forest. Broken branches that grew too close to avoid, snagged tail and mane hairs, and the imprint of its hooves in loamy soil would make following it barely a challenge.
Before long, he found the signs he sought. For the rest of the day, he followed the traveler, staying well enough back he wouldn’t be heard. They were going in the same direction he would have been going anyway, deeper into the Weald. At no point was the person joined by others, which only piqued Griggory’s curiosity more. What possible reason would a single person have for a journey into the dark, dangerous reaches of the Weald? Besides, of course, a simple desire like his own to perhaps get a glimpse of a dragør hatchling. To most, this would seem a foolish, even suicidal pursuit. But to Griggory, it was a calling.
And to this traveler? He assumed that few others who might have heard the rumbling joy of the new dragør parent would have been able to identify it as such. If this traveler was in the Weald for the same reason Griggory was, that alone meant they were potentially someone of like mind. Before long his curiosity to know who they were and what their purpose was had grown, unnoticed, into a fixation.
Still, he wasn’t an incautious man. He wanted a good look at his quarry before approaching them. And based on their relentless forward progress, with no pauses or slowing, it would be some time before he’d get a chance for a closer observation.
The trees this deep in the Weald were ancient, much more ancient than the walls of Umborough. They soared overhead like monoliths, bigger than any he’d seen in any other place during his worldwide ramblings. The canopy impeded almost all direct light from Halla, so when night finally came, it didn’t so much fall quietly as it suddenly went black inside the forest.
When Griggory realized he could no longer see his hand in front of his face, he finally conceded his chase for the day. His stomach rumbled, but the noise was drowned by the many night sounds of insects and creatures beginning their nocturnal missions.
He realized he’d been so lost in thought that he hadn’t planned for such an abrupt end to his day, and he had to stop where he was to dig out a rush light from his pack. It sparked quickly from the coal he kept in a horn, and he searched about for a hollow or clearing he could tuck himself into for the night.
It didn’t take long to find a spongey moss-lined indent in the base of a towering cedar. He fit inside the space as if it were a cave, wrapped himself in his cloak, munched on some cheese and bread, and closed his eyes.
As his thoughts drifted into dreams, the deep bass rumbling of the dragør vibrated through the night and wrapped itself around him, turning his dreams into wild things.
Chapter Six
His slumber was short-lived and rudely ended as the sound of an animal crashing through the underbrush startled him into instant awakeness. He tensed, the night’s blackness still shrouding him completely, waiting for whatever might come. Instinctively, he knew better than to try to run. He’d be lucky to get more than a yard before catching his foot on a root or smacking his bean on a branch and knocking himself senseless.
Hunkered in his hollow, he hoped that the oncoming beast would simply pass him by. The animal trail he’d been following was a few yards away; as long as he remained still, he had a chance to remain unnoticed.
Moments later, he first caught the scent of a horse, then of…the citrus-touched musk of Lœdy
rrak he’d given to Gwinifeve?
Almost as quickly as he noticed it, the rushing horse was past and moving briskly away. Whoever was riding it was using no light, but somehow their direction was as sure and relentless as it had been during the day. He scrambled to his feet, his first thought to go after them. But that seemed unwise. They were running from something, and a horse could run faster than a man, even in the dark. If he followed, whatever was chasing them would then be chasing him, and he’d be the first overcome.
As quickly as he’d risen, he crouched back down inside his hollow, barely breathing as he waited for whatever else might be out there.
He waited the rest of the night. Other than the sounds of small things and bugs, which resumed their night noises again soon after the horse and rider had passed, he heard nothing else. Dawn was softer in coming to the floor of the Weald than night had been, and he watched in strained wonder as the light began to sift through the trees, blinking through a light mist rising from the forest floor and weaving itself among the foliage like fine lace.
Nothing had eaten him, he happily noted, and so he stood at last, the kinks and soreness of a night spent on alert making his joints pop and muscles creak grumpily. The deep moss of the hollow had held his body heat and kept him warm, at least. All things being equal, he’d spent nights in more discomfort than this on his journeys.
Just as he began pondering whether to continue his search for the dragør and its hatchling or follow Knight Gwinifeve, if indeed it had been her, a roar that could shatter buildings resounded throughout the forest. Every bird and every animal within it screeched in fear, and the sounds of hundreds of bird wings flapping and thousands of small paws running, fleeing, flooded the air and earth around him.