Ascendant

by Craig Alanson

  The next day, Koren went to the stables to feed, exercise and brush Thunderbolt. For much of the morning, he walked around in a daze, for he had slept hardly at all, his mind filled with thoughts of evil wizardry and demons. As he filled Thunderbolt's feed bucket from the oats bin, he asked the stable master “Sir? Do you think horses get tired of eating the same food, every day?”

  “Huh?” The man asked, looking up from his account books. “They’re horses. Why? Is Thunderbolt off his feed?” The stable master did not want to hear of any problems with Koren’s horse; that devil beast had made his life difficult every day from its birth until Koren came into the stables.

  “No, no, he eats fine, sir. It’s, he likes it when I bring him carrots, and apples, but mostly he eats these oats, and hay. It’s not very tasty.”

  “Tasty? What? Koren, what’s this about?” The stable master put aside the account book and rose from the cubbyhole he used as an office.

  “It’s nothing, Paedris just said last night that he is tired of eating bland food. He meant, our food, here in Tarador.”

  “Oh, is that all?” The stable master cuffed Koren on the shoulder. “You should talk to Martel, you know Martel?”

  “Yes, why Martel?” Martel was a friendly stable hand, a man with glossy dark hair and a full mustache he seemed to be proud of.

  The stable master shrugged. “Martel is from Estada, like Paedris.”

  Koren blinked. “I thought he was from Stade.” He pronounced the word ‘shtade’ in the Taradoran accent.

  “Ha ha.” The stable master chuckled. “Stade is what we in Tarador call Martel’s homeland. They call it Estada.”

  Koren found Martel unloading bales of hay from a wagon, and pitched in to help. “Martel? You’re from Estada, right? Paedris told me last night that he misses the food from your land.”

  Martel grunted. “The food here is what we feed to babies in Estada, it has no flavor. My wife, ah! She came here with me, she can cook real food! You should come to dinner at my house, I will show you what good food tastes like.”

  The dreary winter dragged on, and nothing much of importance happened around the castle. Koren was pleased to see that, compared to winters in Crebbs Ford, the season in Tarador’s capital city was milder. Milder did not mean it was warm, in fact, having more rain than snow seemed to make the air more damp, and the cold seeped into Koren's clothes, somedays worse than any cold he'd known in snowy Winterthur province. The cold dampness saturated the gray stones of the wizard's tower; Koren had to keep fires roaring in the stoves on both the floors of both the wizard's living and sleeping quarters, and the laboratory where he spent most of his time. The floor where Koren slept had no nice iron stove, just a small fireplace that seemed to let most of the heat go up the chimney. His little room was just warm enough in the evenings, but by the time he woke up in the mornings, he hated to crawl out from under the heavy pile of blankets of his bed. Fortunately, as a boy growing up in Winterthur, he had learned a few tricks to deal with cold mornings. When he went to bed, he rolled up clothes for morning and tucked them in next to him, so they would be warm when he put them on. And he had a small iron sort of basket that would hold hot coals overnight, usually there were one or two coals still glowing a dull orange in the morning, which he could use to get a fire started. His routine was to get dressed while still under the blankets, then wrap himself in a blanket and scurry across the floor to get a fire started. Once flames were flickering in the fireplace, he ducked back in bed for a quarter of an hour, while the fire raised the temperature of the room to a tolerable level. After that, he went up the stairs to stoke the fires in the stoves for the wizard, put water on for coffee, and went across the courtyard to fetch breakfast from the royal kitchens. The cooks there always had a covered tray ready for the wizard, while Koren could usually count on a bowl of porridge and maybe a buttered roll. Sometimes there was also an egg, or a piece of fruit for Koren, and he was always sure to thank the cooks for that. It still seemed like a bit of a miracle to Koren, how he got food at the castle. To get milk, he did not need to lead a cow into a barn, and get a pitcher, which he had first scrubbed clean and rinsed with boiling water, and sit next to the cow milking it. Instead, the royal kitchens had milk in cooled ceramic jugs. For butter, he did not have to skim the cream off the top of a pitcher, and spend what seemed like forever plunging a churn up and down to make butter, here it was ready in earthen crocks. Even his simple morning porridge was not oats he had gathered from a field during harvest season, the oats here were in big wooden bins. He didn't even have to start a fire, and cook the porridge by himself, the royal cooks did that for him, all he needed to do was bring a bowl for the cooks to ladle fresh steaming hot porridge into. And then they spooned fresh cream on top, and a couple cubes of maple sugar! Koren thought he was in heaven his first week living in the castle.

  Winter evenings, when he lay in bed after putting out the candle, watching the fire slowly dying down to embers and feeling the cold creeping in, Koren considered how lucky he was to be inside, safe from the nasty weather, with a bed, and warm clothes and blankets, and a fireplace, and hot food waiting for him in the morning. He would not, he had realized after the second snowfall, have survived the winter on his own in the wilderness. The few supplies his parents had left him with were not enough for him to have made warm clothes, and construct a shelter, and assure enough food to last until springtime. As miserable as winter was in Linden, it was colder in the north, and without the royal carriage to whisk him from LeVanne, he would not have been able to walk much further south, not on his own, and with having to stop along the way to hunt, fish and forage for food. That thought had caused Koren to cry himself to sleep one particularly gray, cold and dreary night. When his parents had abandoned him, Koren had foolishly thought at first they had been careful to leave him with the means to survive on his own. He now knew they had not cared whether he lived or died, only that they were well rid of him, forever.

  That was a hard thing for a boy to realize, alone on a cold and dark night.

  As the Winter wore on, Koren and Ariana continued to search the ancient scrolls for hints of where they might find the Cornerstone. Some days, Koren genuinely was eager to tackle the puzzle of what had happened to the Cornerstone. Most days, however, what he cared about was being in the royal palace, where he had a break from his duties, and where it was always warm, and well-lit by lamps and large windows, and there was always plenty of delicious food at Ariana's table. And there was also an opportunity to spend time with Ariana, with her smile, and her perfumed hair, and the way she tilted her head, and her voice that was music to Koren's ear, and the way she delicately bit her thumbnail when she was reading, and the way the curly locks of her hair kept falling forward around her face, and she would either toss her head, or brush the hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear, and-

  And Koren needed to concentrate on reading.

  Reading the dusty old scrolls so far had done nothing but make Koren sneeze, until Ariana found a scroll about plans for expanding the castle, hundreds of years before the battle when the Cornerstone was lost. The plans showed there was a wide vault that ran almost underneath the Cornerstone’s chamber. The vault had originally carried water, but the plans showed the vault had been blocked at both ends, and abandoned. Maybe, Ariana had said excitedly, the enemy had cut a hole in the floor, lowered the Cornerstone into the vault, and then replaced the floor!

  When the princess and the servant boy found time to search for the Cornerstone, they looked for a way into the old vault. Mostly, Koren searched on his own, when he wasn’t running errands for the wizard. When Ariana was able to join him, she had to bring along her personal guard, a gentle, older man named Duston who had retired from being a soldier. Duston’s job was to keep Ariana, and her dignity as a princess, out of trouble. Including, avoiding scandals such as her sneaking around the castle with a handsome young boy. Duston had a daughter of his own, older than Ariana, and, although h
e took orders from Carlana, he felt the young princess needed freedom to be a girl. So, unless she was actually in danger, Duston pretty much let Ariana do what she wanted, under his supervision.

  After two months of exploring the back walls of storerooms, and crawling in tight spaces between walls, Koren found what he thought must be a way into the old vault. At the end of a narrow crawlspace, there was an iron gate, with a lock corroded with centuries of rust. Koren met Ariana and Duston there one cold winter evening, after the princess had supposedly gone to sleep.

  Koren pulled tools out of a leather bag. “The lock is rusted shut, but one of the hinges is broken. I brought a hammer and chisel to knock the other hinge open.”

  Ariana picked up the hammer, and looked at the gate. “Won’t that make a lot of noise?” She gave the hammer to Koren.

  “Yup, but the guard above us is wearing iron-soled shoes.” Koren pointed at the low ceiling, and put a finger to his lips.

  Ariana could hear, faintly through the rock, the clicking of a heavy man’s shoes on a stone floor. They counted; the guard took eighteen steps in one direction, turned, and took eighteen steps back.

  “You go back outside, and warn us if the guard stops.”

  “Us?” Duston asked skeptically.

  “Uh,” Koren said uncertainly, “I can’t hold this gate by myself.”

  “Please, Duston.” Ariana pleaded, in the little girl voice that she had been using to manipulate men since she was barely able to walk. “It won’t hurt anything. Besides, I’m the crown princess, this gate belongs to me, doesn’t it?”

  Duston scratched his short gray beard while he thought. “Your mother, the Regent, may disagree with you there, young missy.” He winked and smiled. “But she’s never going to know, is she?”

  “OK!” Ariana said with a grin, and walked back down to the entrance, which was behind stacked crates in a dusty storeroom. She counted “..sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, turn, and, one, two-“

  Koren tapped the chisel with the hammer, knocking the hinge pin upward slightly. He tried to tap in rhythm with the faint sounds of the boots above.

  “Seventeen, eighteen, Koren, stop!” Ariana whispered.

  “Almost there.”

  The guard resumed his patrol, and Koren resumed tapping with the hammer, in time with the footfalls. “Almost there, Duston, hold the gate up a bit.”

  “Ugh, it’s heavy for my old bones, hurry it up, if you can.”

  Just as the pin came out, and the gate sagged against the wall with a clanging sound, Ariana called out a warning. “The guard stopped walking!”

  Koren sit still, his heart pounding. If they were caught, he could be in serious trouble. As the crown princess, all Ariana had to worry about was a scolding from her mother. Koren might be banished from the castle. He sighed with relief when he heard the guard above resume patrolling.

  “Come, on.” Koren called out, squeezing around the broken gate, and sliding down into the old vault. The crown princess was right behind him.

  “Yuck!” Ariana said in disgust, lifting her shoe off the floor.

  “Tsch.” Duston exhaled in dismay. “I’ll need to be cleaning those shoes before morning, lest your mother notice you weren’t snug in your bed all night.”

  “The floor is wet. Must be water still seeping in from below. Be careful.” Koren led the way, holding his torch out in front of him. The flickering flames cast eerie shadows on the curved walls of the old vault.

  “How much further?” Ariana asked, trying to step around the slimiest of the puddles. She would ask Nurellka to clean the shoes.

  Koren looked up. “We should be right under the hallway that leads to the Cornerstone chamber. But I don’t see any signs that someone cut a hole in the roof. Look, the stones fit so close together there isn’t any mortar between the blocks.” He held the torch near the floor, and scraped slime away with his foot. “And there aren’t any marks like there should be, if a heavy object was dragged down here.” Now that they were in the vault, he could see it was barely wide enough to hold the Cornerstone. It had looked so much larger on the old scrolls.

  “Let’s keep going.” Ariana suggested. “The other end can’t be far.”

  The floor of the vault sloped downward, and the puddles grew deeper as they walked further into the vault. Koren had to brush spider webs away with his torch. Finally, they came to the end of the vault, a solid stone wall. If the Cornerstone had ever been there, it wasn’t there now.

  Ariana could sense Koren’s disappointment. “Maybe it’s behind this wall?”

  “There’s something carved into the stones here.” Koren said. He wiped the grime away from the stone with a rag. “Oh!”

  “What is it?”

  Koren snorted. “It says ‘Nestor was here, the Cornerstone is not. May you who read this inscription have better fortune’. And there’s a date, but I can’t read it.”

  “Nestor was the second Trehayme king of Tarador.” Ariana exclaimed. She reached out and traced the carving with her fingers. “My ancestor wrote this with his own hand.”

  “We’re not the first to search this vault for the Cornerstone.”

  “No,” Ariana laughed. “Did you think we would really find the Cornerstone?”

  Deep in his heart, Koren thought they would find the Cornerstone, that somehow it was his fate to find it. In fact, somehow he had been certain he would find it. “Yes, I guess so. You didn’t? Then why search for it?”

  Ariana shrugged. “It’s more fun than doing needlepoint.” She stuck out her tongue.

  “Don’t be discouraged, young man, you got a lot further than I did, back when I was your age, and searching for the Cornerstone myself.” Duston held his torch close to the inscription, and traced Nestor’s name with his finger in awe.

  Koren shook his head. Finding Nestor’s mocking inscription had taken all the fun out of searching for the Cornerstone. “Let’s go, it’s cold down here.” He grumbled.

  It was not until a week later that Ariana had another opportunity to invite Koren to lunch in her library. The table was laden with delicious treats, but Koren saw that Ariana had books and scrolls piled on top of a desk. “How about this one?” Ariana suggested. “It’s a record of how the original castle was expanded-“

  “This isn’t about that stupid Cornerstone again, is it?”

  “I thought you liked looking for the Cornerstone.”

  “I did, when I thought we had a real chance to find it. If King Nestor, with all his troops and advisors, couldn’t find it, what chance do we have?”

  Ariana bit her lower lip, and looked down to blink away a tear. She had so wanted to have a nice afternoon with Koren; the day was sunny and warm enough for the windows to be cracked open, the light breeze brought in scents that held the promise of springtime, Ariana had gone down to the royal kitchens herself to make sure her table was set with Koren’s favorite honey cakes, but he had hardly touched the food. "Koren, what's wrong?"

  “Nothing.” Koren said, feeling a little guilty. He saw the honey cakes, and knew Ariana had gone to extra trouble to make him happy. “I’m tired, is all. This morning Thunderbolt was cranky and wanted to go for a long ride, and I didn’t have time, because Paedris almost blew up his laboratory yesterday, and I had to straighten up.”

  Ariana had heard the explosion, and seen the yellow smoke rising from the highest chamber of the wizard’s tower. “What was he doing?”

  Koren managed a smile. “I never ask. It’s better not to. Can I see that scroll?" The two sat quietly for a while, reading scrolls, or rather, Koren was engrossed in reading a scroll about the early days of the wizard’s council, and Ariana was watching Koren. Whenever he looked up, she glanced away, pretending she was looking at a scroll, or a map, or nibbling on a honey cake. But she was looking at Koren, the way his thick curls of hair fell in front of his eyes, the curve of his jaw, the way his eyelids slowly blinked while he was reading. Her hero, the boy who had saved her from a bear, a raging r
iver, and a pack of bandits. All by himself. And she couldn’t even tell people how very brave he was, for that would draw the enemy’s attention to him.

  Ariana had heard about girls getting foolish crushes on boys; from listening to her maids, those silly girls fell in love with a different boy every week. Ariana was sure what she felt for Koren was different, of course it was. The boy she had a crush on was a true hero. But other girls probably thought their own crushes were true love, also. And true love was a romantic notion that a crown princess, and certainly not a queen, could not spend much time dreaming about. Queens married for political advantage, not for love. She sighed, loud enough for Koren to hear.

  “Huh?” Koren asked. “Did you say something?”

  “No. Um, Koren, do you ever think about getting married, someday?”

  “Married?” A boy, who was not tired, and not intent on stuffing himself with honey cakes and reading about wizards, would have recognized the dreamy look on the crown princess’s face, but Koren was very tired, and getting very stuffed with honey cakes. “No, I never thought about it, not really.” Why did girls always want to talk about such things? “How about you?”

  The dreamy look fell from Ariana’s face. “Mother says I’ll marry the son of a duke, whoever offers the best alliance within Tarador. Or maybe a prince from another kingdom. I’m sure mother will find someone suitable, someone horribly boring.” She made a face.

  “But, when you’re queen, you could marry anyone you like!” Koren said with surprise. What good was being a queen if you couldn’t do whatever you wanted?

  “It’s not like that. I have to think about what’s best for Tarador, not only about what I want.”

  “I think that stinks! If I were king, I would marry any girl I liked.”