by Greg Curtis
“We need him. We are facing your mother and her power has grown enormously. If we are to get the globe back, we will need to go through the sewers after her. A panther would be an ally there. Especially after so many people have been killed. We need any knowledge of the globe we can get. And we need his willing cooperation as we need his gift. Only a morph can operate the device. Now, thanks to you girl, we don't have one.”
And really Argen thought, she knew that. She had to. It was the fact that as a morph he could operate the device that had brought them all this way to begin with. But what was the point in trying to track down a morph to help them if all she was going to do was try to kill him? Briagh would just run harder. He understood that she was angry. She had every reason to be. But if she couldn't control herself, all she would do was make a mess of things. As she already had.
Judging by the silence and the way she suddenly couldn't meet his eyes she finally knew that. Or else she was hiding her true overpowering wrath still.
“We can give chase.” Gian stepped in abruptly, doing his best to be constructive and spare Elan's feelings. He was her bodyguard, appointed by the Court when they realised they could not stop the Princess in her madness. Sometimes though it seemed he took his job a little too far. Because he tried to protect her honour and her pride as well as her life and liberty.
“It's too late.” Argen shook his head sorrowfully even as he pointed to the distance where tracks could be seen in the snow covered fields. “He's left the road, turned north east. And he's travelling fast, on four legs, across country. He won't slow. He'll be in Wynde Par long before we could hope to catch him even if we had horses. And now that Elan has attacked and tried to kill him he will never trust us. He won’t aid us.”
“This one's gone. We should return to the city and hope the others have had better success.”
Argen doubted it though. Three morphs had been detected fleeing the city through the arcane means of the wizards. But this one had been the best of them. He was the only one that they knew of who had fought the wolf mother. The one who they might have had the greatest hope of turning to their cause. Now that hope was gone.
“We should hunt him down!” Elan abruptly burst back into life.
“And then what girl? Kill him? For no crime? For saving an arcanist and a bar maid?”
Actually, he suspected the young man had committed some crimes. He tried to hide it but under his canvas trousers he was carrying a lot of coin. And there had been stories for several years wandering around the Court of impossible thefts being carried out. Of animal tracks being found at the scenes. Argen suspected he knew where the young man's coin had come from. But there was no point in mentioning it. Especially not here. Elan wanted to kill him still. Just as she wanted to kill all morphs. She hid it as she hid so much else. But the hatred that burned in her heart for them was obvious to him.
“How would that help us? How would it be in any way right?” He tried to be gentle, but sometimes he knew he just wasn't very good at it. It was age he supposed. A man became cranky after sixty. And his tolerance for the errors of youth diminished. Especially when they refused to learn.
“He might not have been willing to help us anyway. His distrust ran deep.” Gian stepped in once more to defend his charge.
“The same would be true for all morphs, though in his case there is I think more. There is loss in his past. Family perhaps killed. The distrust runs to the very bone. He would not be the only one, however.”
And therein lay the irony of this entire tragedy. Morphs had been persecuted for generations. The fear and hatred of them ran deep. So they had run and hid, while those who should have spoken up for them had not. Now those who had persecuted them needed their aid. It would not come easily.
Worse, one of them might actually be responsible for what had happened. Elan might actually be right in that. One of them might have intentionally cursed the royal family. Argen didn't know if it were true but he feared that whoever had been involved – whoever’s blood had been contained within the globe – had chosen to drive the family mad. He would know more when he knew how the device worked. Hopefully though he was wrong. Perhaps it had simply been that the device simply hadn't worked as it was supposed to. Either that or that they simply hadn't been able to operate it correctly. They would know more if and when they found Barachalla.
But he could not put out of his mind the thought that hatred was a powerful thing. It had driven the princess to attack a man simply because he was a morph, even knowing he had done her family no wrong. Hate could have driven a morph to cause the royal family harm ten years before.
Argen still wasn't clear though if it was only a morph who was responsible. For a start he doubted that whoever the morph was he would have known how to operate the device. That would have required a technologist. Barachalla. And surely he thought, the royal family must have chosen to let the device be used on them? After all, according to what he knew the technologist had to have his hands on it at the same time as the morph. Though they could perhaps have been tricked.
“Good!” Elan couldn't help herself as she spat out the curse.
“Good child?!” Argen was tired of the petulance. More than tired of it. Finally he let his annoyance loose. “These are innocent people for the most part. Persecuted for generations for no reason save the fact of their birth. Even if one morph deliberately harmed your family and it was not merely an accident, it was only one. At most a single one of them would have struck a blow against the leaders of those who have unfairly persecuted them for centuries. But you would have the entire people killed?”
“Your father would be ashamed of you. Your mother too. Before this curse came upon them they were good people. They tried to do what was right. Perhaps they were not always successful but they tried. You however, have just given into hatred over and over again.”
“You do not speak to me like that Priest!” Elan bit back, her face white with anger.
“I will speak to you as I see fit Princess!” It was Argen's turn to vent a little of his frustration with her. To release it like a head of steam. “I am a priest of the Great Sage and I speak his wisdom. And his wisdom tells me that you know nothing of justice or law. Nothing even of morality. In time you will make a rotten queen. You consider nothing of the teachings of the Great Sage. You consider not the consequences of your actions. There is nothing in you save wrath. You are still nothing but the ten-year-old child who returned home to find her family cursed and immediately gave her soul to vengeance.”
And that was her sad reality. She had never moved past that tragedy in her life. He understood that even if he couldn't accept it. At some point everyone had to undertake personal growth. Otherwise their life was wasted. Elan was travelling down that road. It upset him as someone who had once been her teacher. He had taught her of the Great Sage when she had been a child. He had shown her the path to wisdom. And he had actually quite liked her. But that happy, quick witted young girl seemed to have gone, leaving behind only bitterness and anger.
“And vengeance costs. Consider now that not only have you deprived us of an ally in the fight against your mother, you have also destroyed any hope you might have had of the curse being lifted by him.”
“There is no hope!”
Ahh! Now there, Argen thought, was the truth of the matter. She had lost all hope. All she had left was anger and a burning desire to blame someone for her pain. She didn't even care who. Doubtless she had been like that for a long time. It was probably why she'd stopped accepting tuition from his fellow priests. And yet even as he wanted to tell her that there was always hope, he couldn't. She was right in that. There was very little. To tell her there was any would almost feel like speaking a lie.
“We will return now to Abylon, and when we arrive you will travel immediately to your brothers and apologise to them for trying to take away whatever slim hope they might have had of being cured!”
He would have added an apology to her m
other to the short list, but when she no longer recognised her own family and would set her wolves on them if approached, it wasn't really possible. Besides, he didn't know if the wolf mother was alive or dead. No one did. Which in itself was an added problem in their quest for a cure. If she lived, then the globe was probably with her. If she was dead it could be anywhere.
“And if by chance one of the others has found a morph and brought him or her back with them, you will not harm them. I will have them guarded properly and the Court told of your treachery. That morph is the only hope your family has.”
Elan didn't respond to him. But her face had turned bone white and her knuckles gripping the hilt of her sword were the same. He could see the fury behind her eyes. She wasn't used to being ordered around, and undoubtedly didn't like it, especially when a priest did it. Fortunately, she decided better than to draw on him. Instead she turned and wordlessly walked away. Back toward the camp.
In time Argen hoped, she would at least see the wisdom of what he was telling her. Still, he pulled his coat a little tighter around him. The chill from the morning wind was terrible. The chill he felt coming from her was worse.
Chapter Thirteen
Argen was in his study when he heard the knock at his door. Every priest of the Great Sage had their own small study – it was expected of those who followed the path of wisdom. But not every priest had a study so overly filled with books and tomes and sheaves of paper scattered everywhere. Maybe it was something to do with age. Maybe it was simply his nature. But for some reason he could never throw anything away or file it in the temple's library. As a result he sat in his chair at his desk, completely surrounded by shelves covered in writings.
Now of course his small desk was piled high with new works. These were all the writings that had been pulled out of Master Barachalla's old chambers in the palace.
The man had loved to write. Unfortunately, much of what he had written had not been of much use. It seemed that the royal technologist had been a frustrated romantic and dreamer. While some of his writing was on his experiments, a lot more of it concerned his speculations on the divine, the nature of the world and the future after his great discoveries had been made known. He had a lot of dreams, and strangely a number of them had concerned the fairer sex despite his age. A particular lady who he had only referred to as “she”. Of course, he had probably been a much younger man when he had written them.
“Yes?”
“Father Argen?” A man's voice called out. He sounded nervous.
“Yes,” Argen answered tiredly. Who did the man think would be sitting in his quarters?
“It's Marclan, Master Barachalla's apprentice. The imperial soldiers said that you wanted to see me?”
“Yes! Come in! Come in!” An apprentice! Argen hadn't expected that. He'd asked the soldiers to find him anyone who had any knowledge of the technologist.
In an instant Argen's mood lifted and he got up and hurried across his quarters to open the door. He had been wanting to speak with the technologist's friends or acquaintances for some time, though he had feared it would not happen. Master Barachalla had disappeared from the city soon after the tragedy with the royal family, and no one could tell him where the technologist had gone or when. But maybe his apprentice could? Maybe he could even tell him if the technologist was still alive.
The door creaked open, reminding Argen that he really had to get some oil for the hinges. Standing at the door was a young man looking slightly awkward and out of place. He was extremely tall and thin, like a collection of sticks as the saying went. For some reason he was dressed as a clerk rather than a technologist, and was wearing an uncomfortable looking suit with a collar that looked tight enough to strangle him. But at least he was here. Now that the Court had finally opened up the gates to the rest of the city, he had been able to send out people to find the technologist. Unfortunately opening up the gates had proved less successful then he would have hoped. Both for him and the Court.
The Court had done it in the hope of restoring a little life to the city, finally having decided that the need for stability, order and calm was actually greater than the danger of word of the king's death escaping. But they had been too slow, and by the time the criers had started heading out again and the Court's words had reached the people, there were few people left to hear them. It didn't matter how uplifting a proclamation was if no one heard it.
In his case though the delay in opening the gates was only a minor issue. He was ten years too late to speak with the technologist. A few weeks didn't matter particularly. His agents had found the technologist's home outside the Imperial Quarter. It was a rather imposing house in the Merchants Quarter and seemed to have survived both the wolves and the fires. But as for Master Barachalla himself, he was long gone. It seemed that he had only remained there for a matter of months after the tragedy, before leaving the city completely. And he hadn't left a lot behind in his house.
Now though, he had the technologist's apprentice. Surely if anyone knew what had become of him he did.
“Come in! Come in!” Argen welcomed him in again when he realised the young man wasn't moving, and then when even that didn't seem to get him moving, Argen grabbed his arm and started guiding him towards the seats.
A priest didn't have a lot of furniture normally and his quarters were particularly humble. His bedchamber was divided into three parts – a study, a sitting area and a place for his bed – but at least the chairs were comfortable. And in time he even managed to get the young man to sit in one. But he still looked just as awkward sitting there in the heavy, leather armchair as he had standing in the doorway. The problem was that he was simply too tall. A giant stick insect of a man, he seemed to perch all around the chair, but was unable to sink into it. It didn't help that he was staring wide eyed around the tiny room, almost as though he expected to be attacked at any moment.
“So you were Master Barachalla's apprentice?” Argen opened the conversation by going to the reason for his wanting to see him. He didn't like the pleasantries that seemed to be so popular in polite society. In fact, he found them both pointless and annoying; the more so as he grew older.
“Yes, Father. But only for a short while. After he left the palace.”
“Oh!” Argen was disappointed. But really he thought, looking at the young man, it made sense. He was surely only twenty or so. At the time of the tragedy he would have been only ten. What he would know of what had happened would have been limited anyway. “And I suppose he told you nothing of why the palace released him?”
“He said that the Princes were no longer in need of his tutelage and the Princess had been sent away.” The young man gulped appreciably as if he was in trouble for some reason.
“And did he tell you anything of his experiments?”
“No Father. Mostly he taught me of the basic principles of the scientific arts and he encouraged me to study hard. But he did believe he was close to a major discovery. He hid himself away in his chambers a lot of the time as he worked on it.”
A discovery? After the tragedy that had befallen the royal family? That did not sound right to Argen. He might have imagined that the technologist would have been excited about a potential discovery before things had gone wrong. But after? In the midst of a tragedy? Maybe the discovery was a cure. He would have asked directly but Argen knew that to ask would be to reveal that the royal family had been cursed, and he could not do that. He did not agree with all that the Court did, but he understood the need for secrecy about the royal family. Instead he circled the subject.
“Did he say what the discovery was?”
“Only a little Father. He said it had to be kept secret. But he did say that his first experiment had failed. But that he knew what had gone wrong. That the second would work if all the same ingredients were used. He was very clear on that. But he would not tell me what the ingredients were and he did not ask me to purchase any.”
Of course he hadn't! Argen knew that just as h
e knew what, or rather who the “ingredients” were. The royal family and the morph. In his roundabout way the technologist was saying there was hope. Not to undo what was done, but rather to complete the experiment. And if that was done, maybe the royal family would be restored to health and the morph as well? But he could not say that to the young man. He could not know. Argen knew he could ask no more questions about that. But he was suddenly curious about another matter.
“You're related to Master Barachalla?” He could see it in the young man. The tall, thinness of him and the awkwardness. It was more pronounced in the young man but Master Barachalla had been the same. And if you took away the boy's thick crop of black hair on his head, there was something in the face too.
“Yes Father. He was my grandfather.” The young man nodded, looking even more uncomfortable than before.
“Was?” That was the only word that Argen heard. “Your grandfather is gone from this world Marclan?”
“I'm not sure Father.” Marclan abruptly looked away at the shelves unable to face Argen. “He booked passage on a ship heading for the southern islands. He said there were some ancient ruins there that he needed to explore and that he would be back within a year. But he never returned.”