The Crown Tower: Book 1 of The Riyria Chronicles

by Michael J. Sullivan

  He had a new mount, thanks to trading the heavy tow horse for a pretty rouncey named Dancer, who sported two rear white socks and a white diamond on her forehead. He had new clothes too—wool and leather, sturdy and warm. In no time at all the rain made them feel like old friends. For two days he had traveled, hood up and head down, but never lost the haunted sensation.

  With the city far behind, he entered farmlands of brightly painted barns that faded to gray the farther north he went. Soon the barns disappeared, as did the fields, and he found himself on the third morning in a thick wood. The tunnel of oak, thrashed by another storm, cast a leafy bed of red and gold over the road. Big leaves, bright and beautiful against the black mud. Something about the wet always brought out the best colors. Trunks and branches became ink-black, but the otherwise dull leaves were yellow as gold and red as blood.

  Hadrian drew his horse to a stop and waited. He was alone, but it didn’t feel that way.

  The air was still. He could hear the patter of water dripping from the trees, the deep breath of the rouncey, and the jangle of the bridle as she shook her head. She didn’t like stopping. Dancer felt uneasy too.

  This was how bad things always started in stories told at campfires or around small tavern tables. The young man rode deep into a forest. He was alone in the gray stillness, and all he could hear was the sound of dripping water, the hush of leaves, and then … A hundred things could follow. The man would see a light in the trees and follow it to his doom, or he would hear the pursuit of some creature stalking him.

  “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” Hadrian asked Dancer. “Ask Sheriff Malet in Colnora and he’ll agree with you.”

  He gave a gentle nudge and the rouncey started forward again. The moment she did, Hadrian caught sight of movement. Not a falling leaf—something big, something dark, moving somewhere behind the bright colors. He turned and stared. Only trees.

  “Did you see that?” he whispered.

  Dancer continued to plod forward.

  Hadrian kept his eyes fixed on the spot but saw nothing. Soon he was carried too far down the road to matter, but he continued to cast nervous glances over his shoulder. In the stories the stalker would be half-man half-wolf, a troll, or a ghost. And if it were one of Packer’s tales, it would have been a goblin wearing a waistcoat and a tall hat. While his imagination could conjure many possibilities, at least he knew it wasn’t a goblin. Perhaps a highwayman? A lone rider like himself, with new clothes and tack, would prove a tempting target. He continued to travel, keeping an eye to the wood and an ear to the breeze, but nothing ever revealed itself.

  What little geographical information Hadrian retained from his nights before the hearth with Packer ended mostly with Colnora, as did his personal travels as a soldier. He was still in Warric, still in the kingdom of Ethelred, though near the north end. Sheridan was north of Warric—he knew that much. Somewhere along the road, but exactly how far he didn’t have a clear idea, and he wasn’t certain if there would be a sign or indication of the school along the way. He had passed several trails, which he ignored, guessing a university would be along the path most heavily traveled. The only thing north of Sheridan that Packer had ever mentioned was a land called Trent. The old tinker had described that place as a mountainous realm settled by violent people. Hadrian didn’t think he’d overshot, but he’d done stupider things.

  By midmorning he entered a small village of simple thatch-roofed homes, zigzagging fences, and stone-cleared fields. No inhabitants were visible in the drizzle. He considered tapping on the door of a house that had smoke rising from the chimney when he spotted a man wheeling a manure cart.

  “What village is this?”

  The cart driver looked up slowly, as if his head weighed more than most. Hadrian recognized the body language. He’d encountered it often, usually in the company of a well-armed troop. Fear. The reaction was no less irrational than a deer’s flight, and Hadrian was certain that if this man and his cart could bolt with the speed of a whitetail, he would have already been gone. Hadrian had been in the employ of many armies, and none had questioned the right to seize such a village. The commander would take the best home for his headquarters. He’d give the others to his lieutenants, driving the previous owners out into the elements, keeping even their blankets. Pretty daughters were allowed to stay. Should the father object, he might receive only a beating—if the commander was in a good mood. But commanders of war-faring men were rarely in good moods. Hadrian could not recall if he’d ever stayed in this particular village. They all appeared alike, just as all the battlefields blurred meaninglessly together in his mind. Fear was a taught lesson, though, and Hadrian guessed this man had seen or felt the pain of men on horseback before.

  Hadrian dismounted and softened his tone. “Pardon me, sir, I didn’t mean to startle you. I am merely passing through and hoped you could lend me directions.”

  The man stole a peek at his face.

  Hadrian smiled.

  The man smiled in return. “Windham.”

  “Is that the name of the village, or yours?”

  The man looked embarrassed. “Ah, the village, sir. My name is Pratt, sir.”

  “Nice to meet you, Pratt. And what river is that?”

  “The Galewyr, sir.”

  “And that would make this what kingdom?”

  “We’re standing in the province of Chadwick, in the kingdom of Warric.”

  “Still in Avryn, then?”

  The man looked surprised. “Of course, sir. But that far bank begins the kingdom of Melengar.”

  “Still in Avryn?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The man set the cart back on its haunches and wiped his face with the crux of his sleeve. “Are you headed to Trent, then?”

  “No, to Sheridan. I’ve just been traveling for several days and thought I might have overshot.”

  “To Sheridan? Oh no, sir. You have half a day’s ride before you.”

  Hadrian looked up at the leaking gray sky. “Wonderful. Anything you can tell me of the road ahead?”

  “I don’t cross the river, sir.”

  “Are there hostilities between the banks?”

  “Oh no, Ethelred and Amrath have been peaceful neighbors for years. There hasn’t been a guard on the Gateway Bridge as long as I’ve lived here, and I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve just never had an occasion to cross. Bib the Potter, he’s been over. He sells his clays in the city of Medford. Goes twice a year, he does. That’s the royal seat of Melengar. It’s just up that way.” He pointed across the river and slightly to the left of the bridge. All Hadrian could see was vague gray shapes curtained off by the rain. “On a clear night in winter when the leaves are gone, you can see the lights of Essendon Castle, and on Wintertide morning you can hear the bells of Mares Cathedral. Bib, he brings back salt and colored cloths, and once he even came back with a wife. A pretty girl, but”—he lowered his voice—“she’s lazy as a milkweed. He can’t get her to fix a meal, which is just as well since she also can’t cook any better than a woodchuck. Bib’s place is a wreck now.”

  “So to get to Sheridan, do you know how I would go?”

  “Certainly. I ain’t never been, but plenty of folk going both ways through here. I talk to a few. Not many as nice as you, but I’ve talked to some. Seems the road splits just past the river. No sign or nothing Bib says, but the left heads to Medford—that’s the King’s Road. You want to stay right all the way up through East March, past the High Meadowlands. Bib’s never been that way—he only goes to Medford—but others say the school is near the Meadowlands, off to the east a bit.”

  “Well thank you … Pratt, is it?”

  “Yes, sir. Where you coming from, sir?”

  “Colnora.”

  “I heard of that. Big city they say. Not sure why people would want to live so close to one another. Unnatural really. And it’s people like that who come up here to escape Maribor’s wrath when he lets them know it. That’s what happened
when that plague came through here six years ago. Plenty good folk died, and it was them that brought it. If it weren’t for Merton of Fallon Mire, we’d all be dead, I suspect. How are things down there now?”

  “Strange, Pratt. Wet and strange.”

  By evening, the sun managed to cut holes in the clouds, and slanted shafts of light streamed into Sheridan Valley as Hadrian approached. That Maribor-chosen look gave Hadrian hope his luck might have changed, but he wasn’t holding his breath.

  Hadrian had been on a miserable streak ever since receiving the letter. How it found him in the wilds of the east was a miracle—or a curse. He was still working that one out. He had been deep in Calis in the city of Mandalin—the big arena with the white towers—which always had the best crowds. He performed three fights that night but remembered only the last one. Maybe he would have felt the same way afterward even if he hadn’t read the letter. He wanted to think so to restore some of his self-respect, help ease his guilt. The notion that it took his father’s death for him to quit suggested a connection and made him culpable. The idea was irrational, but sometimes those were the best kind. He wasn’t responsible, but he wasn’t innocent.

  Pratt’s directions proved accurate, and the moment Hadrian spotted the bell tower to the east, he figured he had found his goal. He couldn’t remember a more pleasant valley. University buildings circled the shaded common like the stone monoliths in the jungles of the Gur Em. The tribal shrines had the same mystical quality, both sacred and inscrutable. These were just a lot larger. At the center stood a huge statue of a man holding a book in one hand and a sword in the other. Hadrian had no idea who he might be, perhaps the school’s founder. Maybe it wasn’t a statue at all but the giant who had constructed the mammoth buildings, somehow turned to stone. At least that would explain the stone halls. Hadrian hadn’t seen any exposed rock for miles, and it would take ten heavy horses and a greased sled just to move one of the blocks, much less stack them four stories high. If it wasn’t a giant, he couldn’t think of any other way to account for the place.

  As he ambled into the circle, he spotted dozens of young men all dressed in gowns. They moved along walkways, careful not to get the hems of their robes wet in the lingering puddles. A number paused to look his way, making Hadrian uncomfortable, as he had no idea where to go. He had expected the university to be a single building, likely no more than one room, where he could just knock and ask for the professor. What he found was a good-sized town.

  Reaching a bench, he dismounted and tied Dancer to the arm.

  “Are you intending to be a student here?” one of the older boys asked, looking him over.

  Hadrian got the impression from the wrinkled nose that the student didn’t approve. The boy had a haughty tone for someone so young, small, and weaponless. “I’m here to see a man by the name of Arcadius.”

  “Professor Arcadius is in Glen Hall.”

  “Which one of these…” He looked up at the columned buildings that appeared even taller with his feet on the grass.

  “The big one,” the boy said.

  Hadrian almost chuckled, wondering which ones the boy thought were small.

  The student pointed to the hall with the bell tower.

  “Ah … thanks.”

  “You didn’t answer me. Do you expect to attend this school?”

  “Naw—already graduated.”

  The young man looked stunned. “From Sheridan?”

  Hadrian shook his head and grinned. “Different school. Easier to get into but literally murder to pass. Hey, watch my horse, will you? But be careful—she bites.”

  He left the boy and three others standing bewildered by the bench, watching him cross to the big doors of Glen Hall.

  Inside, the architecture continued to amaze him. Hadrian had spent most of his years since leaving Hintindar living in military camps. His scenery had been limited to tents and campfires, forests and fields. He’d seen a few castles, usually while storming the walls, but remembered little. A hundred men swinging sharpened steel and firing arrows made it hard to observe the subtle nuances of chiseled stone and carved woodwork. The closest thing to what he saw here would have been the arenas—the ones he fought in near the end after he’d left the jungle. Grand amphitheaters with ascending tiers filled with stomping feet and clapping hands. They had some of the scale but none of the quality. Glen Hall made him feel he should remove his boots.

  The ceiling was three stories above the entrance, where a chandelier holding two dozen candles burned pointlessly, given that tall windows cast radiant spears across the marble. Voices echoed down from a grand stair that was wide enough for five men to walk arm in arm. He moved across the polished foyer, his boots clacking, and peered around corners. The only face he saw was that of an old man captured in a painting as tall as himself. He paused, wondering how a person went about making a portrait of that size.

  The bell in the tower began to ring and the pensive mood shattered, replaced by scuffling feet and excited voices. A herd of young men rumbled down the stairs. Gowns of various shades poured through the front doors or peeled off to the side corridors. Hadrian pressed himself against a wall as if caught in a canyon during a stampede.

  “No, that’s not right. Professor Arcadius said Morning Star was the stone that glowed,” one boy said. He was either tall for his age or one of the oldest.

  “It was magnesia,” replied the one walking with him, holding a book to his chest. He was shorter and thin as a willow; Hadrian almost mistook him for a girl.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Care to wager?” The boy with the book took hold of the other’s arm, causing the flow of traffic to break around them. “You take my chores for a month?”

  “I’m the son of a baron. I can’t scrub floors.”

  “Sure you can. I’ll teach you. Even the son of a baron can learn how to scrub floors.”

  The baron’s son smirked.

  “All right, Angdon, how about we trade meals for a month?”

  “Are you insane?”

  “It’s not poison.”

  “It would be to me. I don’t know how you eat that slop.”

  “You’re scared because you know I’m right.”

  The baron’s son pushed the other to the floor and stood grinning. “I’m not afraid of anything. You’d best remember that.” He turned sharply, intent on making a dramatic exit. He would have succeeded except that Hadrian was standing in his way and Angdon, the baron’s son, walked straight into him. “Watch where you’re going, clod!”

  “No, sorry, the name’s Hadrian.” He stuck out his open hand and accompanied it with a smile.

  Angdon glared. “I don’t care who you are. Go away.”

  “Love to. Could you show me how to get to Professor Arcadius’s office?”

  “I’m not your personal escort.”

  Hadrian could see the anger in the boy’s eyes. The kid was mad, but Hadrian was older and taller. Angdon had also noticed the swords and was smarter than the boy near the bench, since he decided not to press the matter.

  “It was Morning Star,” Angdon called over his shoulder while walking away.

  “Magnesia,” the other boy muttered.

  “Friend of yours?” Hadrian offered his hand, pulling the fallen student to his feet.

  “Angdon is noble,” the boy explained.

  “You’re not?”

  The boy looked surprised. “Are you joking? I’m a merchant’s son. Silks, satins, and velvets, which”—he slapped at the material of his gown with a miserable look—“are now filthy.”

  “Hadrian.” He held out his hand again.

  “Bartholomew.” The boy shook, giving up on his gown. “I can show you where the professor’s room is if you like.”

  “Awful nice of you.”

  “No problem, this way.”

  Bartholomew trotted up the stairs, taking them two at a time. When they reached the second floor, he turned down a corridor, then another, and stopped
before a door at the end of a hall. He beat on the wood with the bottom of his fist. “Visitor for you, Professor.”

  After a short delay the door pulled back to reveal the face of an elderly man with a white beard and spectacles. What Hadrian knew of Arcadius was limited to boyhood memories of a stranger who visited his father on a few occasions. He would appear unexpectedly, stay with them for a few days, and then leave, often without saying goodbye. He performed magic tricks to amuse the children of the village, making flowers appear and lighting candles with a wave of his hand, and once he claimed to have made it rain, although it had already been quite cloudy that day. Hadrian had always liked the old man, who was soft-spoken and friendlier than his own father. When Hadrian was six years old—shortly after his mother died—Arcadius visited for the last time. He and Danbury had talked late into the night. He never came back after that, and his father never spoke about the old man.

  Hadrian stepped forward. “Hello, I’-m—”

  Arcadius raised his hand, stopping him, then stroked his beard while his tongue explored the ridge of his teeth. “The thing about the old is that we never change so much as the young. We slip in degrees, adding rings like trees—a new wrinkle here, a shade less color there, but the young transform like caterpillars into butterflies. They become whole new people as if overnight.” He nodded as a smile grew. “Hadrian Blackwater, how you have grown.” He turned to the boy. “Thank you, Bartholomew. Oh, and it was Morning Star—but the white kind, not the red.”

  The boy paused, stunned. “But…”

  “Out you go.” The old man shooed him. “Close the door on your way in, Hadrian, won’t you, please.”

  Hadrian took a step and then paused. Chaos hardly described the interior of the office before him, which appeared as if mayhem incarnate had been locked behind a door. The room was a warehouse of oddities, but mostly it was filled with books. Hadrian had never seen so many in one place. Shelves ran to the ceiling and each was filled, so more books were piled in stacks like pillars that teetered and swayed. Many had fallen, scattering the volumes across the floor like the remains of some ancient ruin. Among them stood barrels, bottles, and jars of all sizes. Rocks and stones, feathers, and dried plants were stuck in every visible crevice. An old wasp nest hung in the corner above a cage housing a family of opossums. There were other cages as well, housing birds, rodents, and reptiles. The room was alive with squawks, chirps, and chatters.