Of course I spent all my time watching over them. I wouldn’t go into detail about these terrible days during which my thoughts were a thousand leagues from the actions of my ancestor, if a certain event hadn’t connected this tragedy to the centuries past.
In his last moments, my father insisted that I record his last will and testament. I was to finish a few tasks he had begun, all seemingly insignificant to me but important in his eyes. He didn’t want to leave anything unfinished as he left this world.
Among other requests, he made me make a strange promise: to burn Maz Achem’s journal if it ever fell into my hands.
The wind was knocked out of me. Maz Achem’s journal! He had written a journal!
I agreed to my father’s request, already having resolved to read the text before destroying it, since this wouldn’t break the vow I made. And then I avidly questioned him about it.
He wasn’t even sure that the journal existed. According to family memory, Achem, unable to convince the Emaz, unveiled part of its contents to one of the grand priests as a last resort. This event purportedly spurred his ultimate dismissal from the Temple.
This new trail was promising. But during the dékades that followed my parents’ death, I no longer had much interest in anything.
Not long after, I received a letter from a certain Xan, from Partacle. He had heard the news and offered his condolences. He also invited me to join some kind of celebration reuniting the descendants of the wise ones who had, a century before, taken part in the strange voyage to the isle of Ji.
Still too burdened by grief, I responded with a short letter of thanks, declining the invitation. My passion for this old story had been put to rest. Furthermore, I was terribly afraid to leave Ith and to meet with strangers.
Of course things are different now.
Someone hired the Züu killers and designated me a target. I had to flee Ith, to seek refuge in a modest temple near Mestèbe, a dékade’s voyage away.
I visited the house that sheltered my ancestor during his final years. It still belonged to a branch of the family, some distant cousins I never knew. I discovered that they had already been assassinated by the Züu.
The journal wasn’t there. Or was no longer there. Or worse, never existed.
There is only one way to know for sure.
BOOK III: THE JUDGMENT OF ZUÏA
The rain violently battered the poorly assembled slate tiles, and the cacophony was deafening. In the full darkness that was the ninth and penultimate deciday, it was easy to imagine that an army of sprites was dancing a jig on the roof. And that, at any moment, it could collapse under the weight of a single portly dancer.
Two men argued underneath the porch of a small farm, a few miles from wealthy Lorelia. One was stooped, small, and for some reason must have preferred to keep his breath smelling foul because anyone else would have rinsed out their mouth several times with an extract from the roses of Manive, if they reeked as he did.
The other man was young and good-looking, of medium height, and could count his friends on one hand. Of which the first man was not one. The tone of their strange conversation intensified with each exchange.
“I’m not asking for much, anyhow. Two nights. Just two nights in your warehouse. You won’t even have to worry about us! Come on, what difference does it make if you rent it out to store merchandise or to people?” asked the young man.
“It’s very different,” the little one responded, hopelessly searching for convincing arguments. “It’s much more dangerous. And… it’s out of the ordinary, that’s all.”
“I don’t see how it’s any more dangerous than smuggling past the gates of Lorelia!” the younger one lied.
The short one frantically signaled for him to lower his voice, as if they were right in the middle of a meeting of royal tax collectors. The younger man seemed to be enjoying himself.
He chanted, “Junian wine! Beer from Cyr! Spiced oranges! Statues from Jérusnie! Cloth from Phar!”
“Stop it!”
“Ezomine stones! Oil from Crek! Goranese blades! Jewels! Raji the Ferryman’s warehouse welcomes any merchandise you can offer, without paying the smallest tax to the Crown! Not a single tice for Bondrian! Yes, Raji can smuggle and store anything, except for friends.” His tone dropped at the last pronouncement.
“Stop, please, stop. It’s not funny at all. You’re going to cause problems.”
“Show me where there’s a collector around here.”
Raji looked into the shadows of the surrounding countryside. His eyes hovered over the jokester’s companions, who had all stayed in their saddles, at the edge of the shadows, and didn’t look like they wanted to intervene. The rain seemed to be the least of their worries. In fact, they were already soaked to the bone.
The little man ran his hands through his gray hair one more time, unable to tame it. He cursed Dona, the goddess of merchants, who didn’t seem to be on his side this night. “What have you gotten yourself into anyway?” he asked, embarrassed. “Did you kill someone?”
“You guessed it,” the other one responded. “The Count of Kolimine.”
“What?” Raji exclaimed, his eyes bulging with fear.
“And his dog. I really regret having to kill the dog.”
The smuggler stared at the young man dumbly, not knowing if he should believe him. He had been the victim of Rey’s comedy acts many times before.
One of the horsemen separated from the rest of the group and approached them. Raji stiffened and put his hand on the handle of the dagger at his belt, just as he realized, not without surprise, that the horseman was a horsewoman.
She stated calmly, “Master Raji, we have no intention of bringing you trouble. We simply would like to take shelter from the rain, and give one of our own, who is slightly ill, a chance to rest. I would be grateful if you offered us your hospitality.”
The diminutive man, turned suddenly shy, hopped from one foot to the other in nervous thought. His “clients” were rarely this respectful. The whole affair didn’t please him. It was obvious that these people were running from something dangerous, but he didn’t know how to refuse them.
“Fine, fine. Just for tonight, that’s it! And I don’t want to see any of you walking around outside. Horses, men, women, children, you will all stay hidden right up until you leave. Now, I’m going to try to go back to sleep, if you don’t mind. Rey, you know the way.”
Rey wondered how Raji could sleep with the racket from the rain on his slate roof. He watched him disappear into the little house and close the door, and then he turned to the horsewoman.
“Corenn, your intervention vexed me,” he said smiling. “I was not yet ready to show you how gentlemanly my friends can be.”
Most of the other horsemen had dismounted. An armed man, clothed entirely in black leather, shouted at Rey, “What was that all about, that act about the collectors? You can’t do anything normally, can you?”
“Normally? What does that word mean, Grigán?”
“Cut it out with your nonsense. Where is the warehouse?”
“Not far. Follow me.”
“Bowbaq fell asleep on his horse,” remarked a young woman with dark hair.
“Poor horse. Wake him up, Léti,” Corenn asked her niece.
The young woman gently shook the giant northerner’s arm, and then more and more vigorously. Bowbaq looked enormous on his horse as he groaned something unintelligible while rubbing his eyes. Then he descended off his saddle, if that was the right word to describe the movement that brought him to the earth, which was barely a foot lower.
A young Kaulien-looking man approached Rey, who was leading the group. Yan, who normally had such an honest and open face, wore an expression of a secret conspirator that made the actor smile before Yan even asked his question.
“You’ve smuggled before?”
“I’ve done my share, yes. Like anybody who travels often, I think. You buy here; you sell there. No harm to anyone. Right, Grigán?”
“Maybe. I’ve done it on occasion. But at least I never needed a warehouse. Nothing premeditated or on such a large scale.”
Rey didn’t bother to respond. He preferred to not have to broach these snippets of his past in front of Corenn, Bowbaq, or Léti. He brought them to a wooden building that had all the characteristics of a stable and entered, followed by his friends. Grigán left the door open, long enough for him to light an oil lamp by the feeble light of the crescent moon. Then he surveyed the place, as he always did.
“This isn’t very big, and the rain is leaking through all over,” Bowbaq commented with a sleepy voice.
Corenn replied, “We need some peace and quiet for a while. Your wound needs to heal.”
“But I don’t feel it anymore, Corenn,” he responded while gently massaging his side. He froze in the middle of his gesture, and then doubled over in pain. The horseback ride hadn’t made things any better. Grigán and Yan rushed over to hold him up.
“Rest assured,” Rey interrupted, “the warehouse is beneath our feet.”
He showed them the proof by pulling up an enormous trapdoor, which had been concealed beneath a thick cushion of moist straw. Léti gazed at the dark chasm opening near her feet.
“We’re going to spend the night in there?”
“I’ve done it before,” the actor responded. “It’s a lot more comfortable than it looks.”
Grigán objected, “I don’t like it. This Raji doesn’t really inspire much confidence. He could very easily lock us down here.”
“No such risk. It’s not just a cellar; it’s also the departure point for a tunnel that brings you straight to Lorelia. They don’t call Raji The Ferryman for nothing.”
The warrior mumbled away his doubts and walked down the shoddy stairs to have a look for himself. Bowbaq admired his courage, while Léti remarked with disgust, “It must be teeming with bugs down there.”
“Bowbaq surely knows how to convince those pests to leave us alone,” the actor said jokingly. The giant didn’t bother to respond. Rey didn’t seem to understand that Bowbaq’s erjak powers could only be used with mammals. He could never reach the spirit of some cockroach, reptile, or other primitive species. Even with a rodent, the connection was very difficult.
They patiently waited for Grigán, who was clearly taking his time, to come back. Finally, he returned.
“So?”
“It should work,” the warrior admitted almost grudgingly to Rey.
“I told you so. It’s clean, sufficiently ventilated, and very well isolated. Did you really think someone would leave a fortune of merchandise to rot in a grimy hole?”
They decided to settle in before wasting any more time. The horses were unsaddled and fed, and their loads brought down to the hiding place. When they had made their last trip, Grigán closed the trapdoor with an apprehensive frown. Afterward, he spent a good amount of time pacing about, smoothing his mustache. The warrior wouldn’t rest easy until they left the place.
Yan’s eternally curious spirit pushed him to explore the surroundings. It was a stunning cellar, both by its size and the obvious care taken in its layout. Even though the walls gently curved, the rooms were arranged in rectangles. All three rooms added together couldn’t have been smaller than forty by twenty-five yards.
The biggest section was the one situated right below the trapdoor. The walls there were rudimentary, simply supported with thick planks of hardwood. The ground was covered in a thin layer of fine sand, and the ceiling was reinforced with enormous crossbeams. Though the place wasn’t pretty, at least it felt like a solid shelter. Even the thundering rain was now only a distant murmur.
Torches had been installed along regular intervals. Grigán had already lit several, which gave enough light for them to appreciate the sight before them. Thousands of pounds of merchandise, most of it wrapped in cloth for protection, waited there: boxes of all sizes, chests, bags, and barrels. The items sat on shelves, or in niches carved out of the wall, or were simply piled on the ground in disorder.
A simple board separated the first room from the second, but the finishing of the smaller room was distinctly superior. The walls were completely built up, the ground covered by wooden slats, which made a more than respectable floor. The ceiling had been leveled out and whitewashed. Taken together, these touches gave the room sufficient insulation, making it easy to preserve the most perishable items. Rey suggested to his friends that they sleep there, but the decision had already been made.
Stored there were exotic vegetables and fruits, and Yan found them less interesting than the mysterious objects in the first room.
The last room was sealed off by a heavy oak door, furnished with an impressive lock. It was bolted.
“Do you know what’s in there, Rey?” Yan asked.
“Of course, I already opened it. It’s a tiny room. Raji stores his most valuable merchandise in there, as well as his own treasure. It’s obviously the main reason he was hesitant to let us in.”
Yan thanked the actor, cutting off the conversation. He was unsure if he wanted to know what Rey meant by “I already opened it.”
The last detail about the cellar was the famous tunnel to Lorelia. The entryway was usually blocked by a secret door secured by a wooden beam, but Grigán had cleared the way should they need an escape. The tunnel was large enough for three men to walk side by side without bumping into one another, though nothing guaranteed that it would remain that wide along the whole tunnel. Yan wandered down the tunnel a dozen yards before Grigán asked him to come back. Which immediately prompted Léti to rush after Yan, until she encountered a wizened old rat. She and Yan both returned of their own accord and asked that they close the door and seal it with the beam.
Bowbaq was already sleeping when Corenn and Léti installed a makeshift partition, using a curtain, and disappeared behind it, wishing the others a good night. Grigán made one last round and finally let himself rest a bit. Rey came back from the first room with a bottle of Junian wine, offered some to Yan, and then set about finishing it himself, following the young Kaulien’s polite refusal. He nodded off, shortly thereafter.
Yan dimmed the lamp and got comfortable, letting his mind wander as he waited for sleep to overtake him. It had been only two dékades since he had left his small, native hamlet of Eza. Since then, he had been insulted, knocked unconscious, robbed, hunted, and threatened with torture and death. He had taken part in several fights and had seen men fall to the ground, never to rise. He had rid himself of an enemy by throwing a rock at his face. Several times, he had narrowly escaped death. His close brush on the cliff was especially strong in his mind; he could still see Léti’s panicked expression, suspended forty yards above the reefs.
This memory snapped him out of his reverie completely. He had the impression of reliving it. His despair, his powerlessness… and then his sudden rage; his fierce desire to save her, as if every morsel of his being existed only for this reason. And he had succeeded. That had happened only nine decidays ago. Not even a full day. His Will was still just as strong. Concealed, sleeping, but supreme. He knew he would never be the same, and yet not knowing what this meant, he still rejoiced in it.
Corenn had said that something had been triggered in him. That they would need to have a long conversation soon, that she would help him understand. He could barely wait.
Since the day before, they hadn’t had any time for it. After escaping the trap sprung by the Züu on Ji, they had returned to Berce to collect their horses. Grigán chased away two thieves who were posted near their horses without even drawing an arrow. Bowbaq and Rey, who had been on foot until then, had stolen two horses from the assassins. Then the little group distanced itself from the dangerous village.
Choosing their itinerary had been a long discussion. Grigán grudgingly resigned himself to staying with Rey’s so-called friend, someone whom the actor presented as being reliable and generous, a man of rare integrity. But the debate between the warrior and Mothe
r Corenn surrounding their destination afterward had been long, very long.
Once again it was Rey who came up with the idea. Lorelia was his hometown, and he knew it like the inside of his pocket. The Small Palace market was among those places he had come to know particularly well.
In the Small Palace all trade was unregulated, as long as the Crown was guaranteed a large commission on any deals and no one posed a threat to it. In this market, the heirs would be able to meet the Züu on neutral grounds. And perhaps barter for their safety.
As an accomplished diplomat, Corenn didn’t want to overlook any bloodless opportunity to escape their sentence. Grigán absolutely refused to do business with the assassins and thought it would be less dangerous to jump directly onto an open blade than to meet with the Züu. For him, this idea was a complete folly.
For once, Rey kept himself from intervening in the discussion between the group’s two leaders. Corenn had the last word, and the warrior spent the rest of the day brooding. He couldn’t understand how the Mother could always get her way without even raising her voice.
The heirs were going to appear before the Züu. Yan’s last thought before falling asleep was to wonder if that was really a good idea.
Léti opened her eyes slowly, surprised for a moment that she couldn’t see the bright sun, before remembering that they were underground. Even though it was almost pitch-black—the only light source, an oil lamp, was blocked by the curtain—she could tell that the day had begun.
She stood and stretched languorously. Corenn was not yet awake. Léti skirted around her sleeping body, quickly slipped on some clothes, and ventured out from behind the hanging curtain. After barely more than four steps, Grigán shot up from his bed, blade in hand. She signaled to him that it was she, and the warrior lay back down with a surly grumble.
She approached Yan on her tiptoes. He was still sleeping, like Corenn. She remembered the faintness that had taken over his body, after his intense effort to save her. His rest was more than merited. Léti sat next to him and watched him with a tender, pensive face. Yan hadn’t asked for her Promise, which meant he didn’t love her. But he was still her friend, and she owed him her life. Even if she had to marry someone else now—Rey’s image furtively caressed her mind—Yan would always be her best friend.
The Orphans' Promise Page 2