Bloodspate: A Song of Agmar Tale

by Frances Mason

  Corin was getting bored with the mythology lesson. He preferred the honest skill of thievery to this strange magic and talk of gods. He said, “I think I know enough now.”

  “No knowledge can ever be enough. You will come to understand this.”

  “Will you honour your word and release me?”

  “Knowledge will set you free.”

  “And you are knowledge.”

  “Why, yes. But how?”

  An idea had been slowly dawning on Corin, and now he stated it, “You’re the Labyrinth?”

  “I am. Oh, I do like you, thief. Remember, only borrow what you have taken. Return it later.”

  “That was my intention. You have no treasures here worth stealing.”

  “Hmph! Knowledge is treasure, the greatest of treasures. Empires rise and fall, but as long as knowledge remains the light will never fade.”

  “I meant no offence. But I prefer gold.”

  “Ah, though the world grows old the young do not change.”

  “We can’t be born with wisdom, now, can we? except maybe if we’re a library.”

  “Oh, delicious flattery. You must visit again. Take my greetings to Jared and Javid. It has been too many seasons since those men of science have walked my halls, too many moons since they have browsed my shelves. Such men know the value of my treasures.”

  “You do know everything,” Corin flattered.

  “Go, thief, before I change my mind.”

  “One more thing.”

  “Ask.”

  “Why didn’t you trap me sooner?”

  “My knowledge is without bounds, but my power is limited. I have this power here, but not everywhere in my halls.”

  “I am privileged to pass this way then.”

  “You are, thief. And I to meet you. I will guide you. But before I lead you back to your boat I want you to see something.”

  “More musty tomes? I mean, treasures.”

  “Something that you must understand, wielder of Blood-spate. One of the lost is found, perhaps more. Even here, in this oasis of ideas amidst the unthinking world, the troubles that world will face begin to manifest. Even the gods may not understand these changes, yet you and other mortals like you must, or the light may fail in that darkness which approaches.”

  “You speak cryptically.”

  “It cannot be otherwise. Even I do not see all.”

  “I thought you knew everything.”

  “Everything that has been I know. Everything that is I know. Everything that can be known I know.”

  “So you don’t know what may be in the future.”

  “The future is always uncertain. Many paths lead from the present, but only some will be taken. Directions pile on misdirections. If the future were more direct so would I be. Follow.”

  All the lights suddenly went out. Then through one doorway a lamp flared into life. Corin walked towards the light. As he reached it, it dimmed, and through another door another light flared into life. He followed the lights through the labyrinth up and down stairways and ramps beside which handcarts piled with books and scrolls rested, through corridors, across rooms with stuffed shelves, and floors connected to ceilings by precarious towers of books, walls hidden by barrels stuffed with scrolls, past storerooms and around silent cloisters and skirting dormitories where monks or nuns dozed. After a while the lights that led him went out, but he could see a faint small glow in the distance.

  “Make your way quietly, thief,” the Labyrinth whispered, “you may have my leave, but the Orders of the Leaves are proud of their privileges, and may not be so understanding.”

  “You mean they’ll skin me alive and make a book out of me?”

  The Labyrinth chuckled. “Ah, to have you in my shelves, forever mine.”

  “You have a disturbing sense of humour, Labyrinth.”

  “Quiet now.”

  Corin approached the glow, which was another lit room, but without other lights leading the way. As he neared the room he saw lecterns in neat lines dimly lit by a distant source, some with closed books on them, some with two open books, and small pots and quills. “It is a scriptorium,” the Labyrinth whispered in answer to Corin’s unspoken question, “here the copyists and illuminators work to stock my shelves with the treasures of many cultures.” At the far end of the room, in a circle of light created by one of the Labyrinth’s magical lanterns, several figures clustered in a small ring, their heads bent down towards another.

  Coming closer, up to the doorway, he saw there were five people, three monks and two nuns or, at least, two monks, two nuns, and another man, who was sitting between them on the floor, cross legged and naked. In the hands of the sitting man was a book, and he stared at it as if uncomprehending. The others spoke quietly to each other, stopping to listen occasionally when the sitting man looked up and spoke. Then they would speak haltingly with him, until he became frustrated by something they were saying, and looked down at the book again, again puzzled. Corin saw that the book was upside down. But the seated man didn’t seem to comprehend that. Corin didn’t understand what they were saying. He moved closer, silently, wrapped in shadow. Still he couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. He moved closer, edging through the doorway, and from the shadow of one lectern to the next.

  Soon he could hear, though still not understand. The naked man spoke in a foreign tongue. The library was famous across the kingdom of Ropeua, indeed across the whole known world of Thudalth, so it was not unusual for scholars from distant parts to join the Orders of the Leaves. Corin thought the language sounded familiar. The two monks and the two nuns alternately spoke haltingly with the naked man, apparently questioning him in his own tongue. There was a vaguely musical quality to it; as with some languages of traders from the Silk Sea, but richer, more varied in its tones, and with those tones layered with each other in a harmony that he would have thought impossible for human vocal chords to produce. Agmar’s fighting song was somewhat like it, only less complex. The questioning monks and nuns now spoke to each other in Low Ropeuan.

  “There is no doubting the language,” said the elder of the monks, “but what it means I cannot guess. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”

  The younger monk nodded. “It is remarkable that any man should speak it so fluently, Reverend Father.”

  “But not unprecedented, brother,” said the elder of the nuns.

  “No, Reverend Mother,” agreed the younger nun.

  Apparently the two elders were the abbot and abbess.

  “What do you mean?” the abbot asked.

  “A woman appeared near the cells of the sisters a week ago. She was naked and confused also. When she was brought to me she was distressed, and said she couldn’t see tomorrow. She said it in this language, and yet the world did not change. But she vanished before I could question her further. It does not bode well.”

  “This one says that what was clear is now obscure, yet he doesn’t have the knowledge of what was clear. It makes little sense in itself, but with the language, and the woman you saw, I fear it makes too much sense.”

  “Only they could speak so clearly in that language.”

  “And yet it aids them little. And there is something wrong in that.”

  “But perhaps inevitable. Kemthi guide us.”

  “If She can. And Pulmthra teach us.”

  “If He may.”

  “I fear neither may be possible at this time.”

  “Yet the sands of the hourglass fall. This time will pass like any other.”

  “Let us hope; for ignorance is the darkness no light but knowledge can dispel, and if the light of knowledge fails….”

  No one dared say what might follow, perhaps fearful that nothing might.

  Corin backed away from the room, and followed the lights that led the way back through the Labyrinth to the boat. When he moored the boat back at the edge of the caldera lake the sky was already greying with the approaching dawn, and the birds were chirping in the trees ne
arby, oblivious to the darkness spoken of in the Labyrinth of Leaves.

  Chapter 11: Heart of Fire

  The night was overcast. Though the moon was only just past full its prismatic light didn’t disturb the shadows on the rooftops of North Bank.

  Corin had given the Codex of Metma and Jared’s magical gem to Agmar to deliver to the twins. Roberto had seemed amused by his tale of the talking labyrinth, but his laughing grey eyes had grown serious when Corin mentioned Blood-spate and the Heart of Fire.

  Now Corin retraced his steps of the night he had shadowed the Lord of Law to the portal by which he had entered the cellar in the Courts of Law. It would be a simple enough matter to disarm the traps on the chest again, since he was the one who had rearmed them. Then he would have the ruby. He hoped the Labyrinth was right, that it would heal his pain. He occasionally felt the burning return, but found that touching the hilt of the sword lessened its intensity, washing a sense of relief through his body. The river god’s benediction, he supposed.

  Touching the hilt of the sword also had another effect now, more disconcerting. Before he had cleansed the sword with the nymph’s tears it had only screamed of blood. After he had cleansed it he had heard a low murmur, like a voice heard through a wall. Now, instead of a low murmur, he heard that voice clearly. It had an intelligence very different from the primal scream for blood. He couldn’t quite believe that it was real, but he had seen so much outlandish magic in the last few days that he had begun to suspend his disbelief.

  He touched the hilt of the sword. In his head he called, “Blood-spate?”

  “Seltien.”

  “Is that your name?”

  “It is a name. But I am incomplete. Only the heart can make the horn complete. Only the sword of kings can rule the river.”

  “And who rules the sword?” he wondered.

  The voice heard his thought though it hadn’t been addressed to it. It said, “Only a king.”

  “Not me, then.”

  “Only a king.”

  “Can you be a bit more specific? If you tell me, maybe I can find this king for you. Is it the old king, a future king like prince Arthur, some other king in a distant land?”

  “Only a king.”

  “Only a king, only a king, only a king. Only a stupid sword.”

  The sword’s tone became petulant. “Only a stupid thief.”

  “Not just any stupid thief. The greatest stupid thief in Thedra.”

  “Only a king. Find the heart. Make us whole. Find the king, and rule the river.”

  “Don’t be impatient. I’m going to get the heart. But why would I want to rule the river?”

  “Rule the river.”

  “You said I can’t.”

  “Only a king.”

  “I give up.”

  The sword groaned its disapproval. Understanding its words would have to wait. He had more important things to do than riddle away the night with a voice in his own head. There were thieves to rob and a guild to defy. There was one huge ruby to fetch. A heart to find and a heart to heal.

  He had reached the place where he had entered the portal the other night. Soon he could satisfy one of the blade’s desires. Soon it would heal his own heart.

  But the black void wasn’t there. The portal was gone. He probed the tiles with his toes. They were solid. No hole in the roof. The tile-work didn’t seem recent. The tiles were all of the same age. He wondered whether he had come to the wrong place. He looked up, surveyed the rooftops. He had been disoriented in the Labyrinth by magic, but here he was in his element. Here he knew exactly where he was. There was no chance that he was in the wrong place. Perhaps the portal had been moved. It made sense. If it had been his portal, if he knew how to create such things, he wouldn’t have it sitting in the one place indefinitely where it could be easily discovered. So he searched the rooftops nearby. But he found nothing, other than a few ordinary holes in roofs.

  He would have to get into the thieves’ guild by the front door, so to speak. But, while he loved a challenge, he had never been suicidal. After all, you don’t fight desperately to survive on the streets only to give up on life. If society wanted you dead, that was all the more reason to live, if only to defy the world that had trodden you down, to thumb your nose at their authority, to laugh at their rules, to dishonour their willing daughters and filch their hidden riches.

  He crept across the rooftops towards the tall cylindrical shapes of the theatre and the baiting pit. There against the theatre’s southern wall was the House of Delights, where Rose and the other whores worked and lived. He would have to go through its entrance to get to the stairway leading down to Ilsa’s Inn. He had to get into the tavern without being spotted, which would require some creative climbing indoors, since there was only a single narrow stairway down from the entrance hall to tavern and brothel. It had only been under duress that the Lord of Law and his vassals had let the King of Cripples and his stinking minions take Corin away the other night. They had failed to kill him in South East Quarter, and would likely be more careful in the future. But with so many of them killed by him and Agmar, if he entered their domain and was discovered they would likely throw all their considerable forces against him. And if they could they would likely capture him and make his death slow and painful.

  When he arrived opposite the entrance there was something unusual going on in the square. There were hundreds of men with torches. It was unusual for the city watch to interfere with the guild. There were too many corrupt magistrates too easily bribed. Anyway, this lot were heavily armed and armoured. They looked like a professional fighting force rather than the amateurs of the city watch. This must be something else. Corin approached by rooftops as close as he could to the disturbance.

  A herald stood in the middle of the square that faced the brothel and tavern entrance. His livery was that of a minor lord from the east and Corin saw now that the soldiers were liveried in the same colours. The herald held out an unrolled scroll and proclaimed in a loud voice that carried clear across the square and echoed in the streets beyond, “In the name of the king, these dens of iniquity are forever closed. The perversity of actors and poets and the disorder they provoke will not be tolerated any longer. Forthwith, all who do not leave the lives of depravity they have favoured are subject to arrest and imprisonment. As the gods wish so His Majesty, Richard IV, in his wisdom and piety knows and commands, this thirty fifth year of his noble reign and the three thousand seven hundred and third of the era of our kings – may they rule in the distant planes long after they depart this mortal realm.” A liveried soldier unrolled another copy of the scroll and hammered the parchment to the door.

  Observing more carefully, Corin noted that the soldiers were not only at the entrance to the brothel and tavern, but also were moving to the entrances of the theatre and the baiting pit. Patrons poured out of all these places, along with thieves and whores and actors. It wasn’t unusual for the entertainment precinct to be shut down. Depending on the behaviour of these soldiers it might complicate matters, but it might also simplify them. Corin noticed one disturbing fact and cursed the soldiers silently. The brothel building was now brightly lit. The soldiers were affixing torches to brackets along the wall which were usually left empty. He crept along the rooftops in both directions, but saw the guards had even brought tradesmen to attach further brackets to each end of the building. Apparently they anticipated thieves trying to enter.

  He might enter by the theatre, which was connected via its galleries to the brothel, thence by stairs to the blockaded entrance hall and stairway down to the tavern, if they weren’t also blocking the entrance to the theatre. But he could try to climb from the opposite side of the theatre. When he checked he found however that they had set up a perimeter of soldiers all around the walls of the theatre. Even the baiting pit was completely surrounded. He returned to the roofs opposite the brothel to consider his options.

  The denizens of the brothel and the tavern, those that were not e
lsewhere breaking and entering, came out of the door, more soldiers behind them. Corin recognised many of their faces, apprentice thieves, journeyman thieves, masters at law and many manglers, some fractious with the guards, though most intelligent enough to know when they were beaten. Standing over a shopkeeper or a child thief wasn’t the same as fighting a professional soldier. He saw Sandy and Rose and other whores, many pulling on more clothes than they liked to wear. Only the Lord of Law and his vassals were nowhere to be seen. Corin assumed they were within the hidden tunnels of the guild. Maybe other thieves were too. The ones being led out must have been caught drinking in the tavern front to the guild tunnels.

  He saw Agmar coming out of the theatre. Some of the men-at-arms tried to arrest the bard, but he roared at them and took his giant two handed sword from his back and they backed off. Corin climbed down from the roofs in a dark spot and fell in with the bard. Agmar looked at him askance after a while. “How long have you been there?”

  “Oh, a while. Do you want your purse back?”

  “Scoundrel!” He playfully backhanded him and Corin dodged under the swipe, placing the purse in his hand.

  “So, what’s going on?”

  “With the playhouse?”

  Corin nodded.

  “Some anonymous poet,” Agmar said, smiling wryly, “implied that the wife of a certain minor noble was more than generous with her favours. The noble petitioned the king. The queen is now a follower of the puritan sect and urged her husband to close down the theatre. The king decided to close down everything. Never mind, so many nobles frequent the brothel’s lovely ladies that an opposing faction will quickly form and persuade the king that the poem originated at court and the whores are innocent of debauchery and the thieves are upstanding citizens and the actors only lie late in bed.”