by Mike Shel
“And yet you are back. We were not informed of your withdrawal from Boudun and the League’s business. Why did you skulk off without a proper farewell to your monarch?”
Sweet Belu, I can hear the axman sharpening his blade.
“Apologies, Your Highness. I assumed my withdrawal was beneath your notice. If I erred, I am deeply sorry.”
“We like to know what becomes of those whom we raise to knighthood, Sir. We did so ourselves, did we not? No duke or earl bestowed the honor, we trust?”
“You did, Your Majesty. I am warmed by your memory of it. You saw fit to knight me yourself in the year 763.”
“So long ago? Funny.”
Silence. Auric counted individual specks of dust on the marble floor, loath to look up.
Funny? Will she say nothing else?
The silence stretched out like a creeping, ominous cloud. Auric finally risked a glance up at the throne. The queen seemed to have lapsed into some sort of fugue, staring off into space, a thin line of drool descending from a corner of her craggy mouth. At long last the two sackcloth-clad servants near the throne took pinches of powder from their buckets between thumb and forefinger and snapped them over their candles. Multicolored smoke and sparks erupted in the air for an instant, flashes of light and a loud crackle startling the crowd of onlookers. Geneviva emerged from her awkward fugue and continued as though nothing untoward had occurred.
“Funny. We do not recall the reason we knighted you, Sir Auric. Was it reward for some successful foray into the Barrowlands?”
Auric felt his pulse quicken, imagining everyone in the throne room could hear the thrum of blood pumping through his veins. He hesitated before finally responding, feeling his face flush. “No, My Queen.”
“Well, what was it then? Must we draw forth every word you speak?” The threat in her voice was palpable, like a snake coiled for the anticipated strike.
Auric dared not hesitate. He swallowed, cringing inwardly, and answered. “My height, Your Majesty.”
She frowned. “Refresh our memory. Tell us the story.”
“Your Highness, that day I had the privilege of attending court with my League comrades, recently returned from an expedition into a Busker king’s grave in the Duchy of the Karnes—a long-dead ruler called Kellem of the Golden Tongue. We had found a considerable cache of treasure buried there and presented you with the Crown’s lawful share. It just so happened that several knights from the Karnes were also present in the hall for the occasion, and you noted that all of them were quite tall. You asked why none of the knighted subjects present were men of short stature, and found this to be an injustice. At that time, you saw fit to honor me with a knighthood.”
The raucous laughter Auric expected—laughter at Sir Auric the Short—did not wash over him. Then the realization dawned on him: who would laugh, when laughter may end in a dungeon cell or the chopping block? At that moment, he was reminded of Lady Hannah’s tearful words to him and his inability at that time to explain to her the absurd folly of his title.
You are an anointed knight of the realm! If that is enough for me, why shouldn’t it be enough for you?
Auric heard Gnaeus stifle laughter, watched the queen’s savage red eyes light on the young man for a lethal moment. The young swordsman shifted nervously, then gave an elegant bow.
“I see,” she responded at last, as though the explanation was reasonable. “What is it that brings you back to our court, and who are these notables who stand with you?”
The queen had apparently moved on.
“My Queen, we seek a Letter of Imprimatur: your generous permission to enter the Barrowlands, there to return a relic which has been the source of considerable mayhem at the Citadel.”
“I am aware of the illness that Belu’s priests cannot assuage.” He detected a volatile edge in her tone, grateful he was not its target.
“These four skilled and resolute souls are chosen by the Syraeic League to accompany me on this mission, should we receive Your Majesty’s gracious approval.” Auric introduced his companions, Del, Gnaeus, Belech and Lumari each in turn bowing low to the throne.
“I can name their professions based on appearance alone, Sir Auric! Sorcerer, swordsman, swordsman, alchemist!” She pointed at the four in turn with her fan, as though playing a parlor game. “Are we not correct?”
“Your Majesty is most perceptive.” He thought it unwise to apprise her of Belech’s use of a mace rather than a sword.
“You believe that returning this relic to its filthy Djao ruin will put an end to this epidemic at the Citadel, Sir Auric?”
“I do, Your Highness.”
“Would you be willing to wager your life upon this assumption?”
Auric recognized this was the point at which he’d satisfy the woman, or hang them all. His heartbeat quickened, and he steeled his resolve. He looked directly into the face of the monarch of all Hanifax and its dependencies. It was a breach of protocol, and he knew so when he did it, but he couldn’t keep his eyes averted any longer. Looking into the red, predatory eyes of his mad queen, he answered.
“Your Majesty, I do not know for a certainty that placing that cursed relic back in its original setting will remedy anything. However, it is the best guess of the Syraeic League scholars, your own sorcerers, and our religious consultants. My daughter is among the afflicted. I do more than wager my own life on it. I wager hers.”
The silence in the throne room was absolute. The queen frowned, flapped her fan open and closed in rapid succession.
Does she call for ax or scribe? wondered Auric, feeling a profound and surprising detachment from the scene, as though he floated above it. One way or another, this trial would soon be over. He saw a flicker in her alien eyes; a wink of light. Or did he imagine it?
“Sir Auric, we grant you permission to enter the Barrowlands for this noble purpose. What’s more, the Crown will bear the expense of transporting you to your destination. Kedrech! What is the earliest of our warships available for a journey to Serekirk?”
Kedrech consulted with a balding man who appeared with a ledger from behind the canopied throne, attired in the dark blue uniform of the Royal Navy. With short, quick nods he dismissed the officer and turned back to the queen. “Most of Your Majesty’s fleet in port is either occupied with other pressing duties or in dry dock for repairs. However, the Birth of Lalu is due in from patrol along the western reach in a week, my queen,” the crown prince announced.
A week? An eternity! Auric’s mind raced for a way to decline the queen’s tardy gift, but he could work out no safe gambit.
“The Birth of Lalu, then,” said the queen with her cemetery grin. “Very well, Sir Auric. We will see to it you receive your Letter of Imprimatur. Gods be with you on this expedition.” Queen Geneviva waved him away, a curt, final dismissal.
“Forgive me poking my head into another’s business, Your Majesty,” came a euphonious voice.
The Countess of Beyenfort.
“What is it, my dear?’ asked the queen, smiling with her gravestones at Ilanda, who was again front and center.
“Your warship, the Duke Yaryx, ferried me and my party from Harkeny and sits idle in the harbor, waiting to return me home. But since I will be staying with you for at least a fortnight, surely the Yaryx can serve Sir Auric’s purpose rather than waiting for the Lalu. I would be happy if you would release Captain Hraea to serve the Syraeic League’s urgent need.”
“How generous, my darling girl. Of course. Make it so, Kedrech. Fetch the scribe to write the order and I’ll sign it.”
Auric looked at Ilanda Padivale, attired in an absurdly frivolous gown suited for some celestial wedding that would never happen. A skilled actress, playing her part flawlessly to secure military aid for her city, and now placing at his disposal a Hanifaxan warship to transport him and his colleagues to the Barrowlands. He felt
gratitude swell his heart, but wondered at the reason for this kindness.
Auric gave a bow to the Countess of Beyenfort. She in turn gave him a small smile and curtsied with an exaggerated, flowery flourish.
8
The Golden Egg
“I was sure I’d shit myself,” said Belech. He exhaled, loosening the frilly collar from around his neck as they cleared the palace.
The five of them walked the crowded streets of Boudun as a nearby bell tower rang the noon hour. Lumari tapped together glass vials, lost in her own thoughts. Del looked at Auric with something like awe, apparently impressed by his success with the potentially lethal audience they had just left behind.
“Yellow Hells,” marveled the sorcerer. “She is…sha’shaebbaat’ca.”
“Huh?” Belech grunted.
“It’s a Djao term…difficult to translate,” she answered, her voice shaking a bit. “The queen…” Del trailed off, at a loss for words in any language.
“The entire tableau was a horror show,” interjected Gnaeus. “But Sir Auric, that was illuminating! You must feel great pride, having vanquished the unjust height restrictions of knighthood.”
“I never asked you to use the title when addressing me, Gnaeus,” retorted Auric with sudden annoyance. “If you wish to laugh, laugh. I’ll join in myself. It is laughable. But I’ve done more than crawl around in a few Busker mounds, cutting down some shambling thing tripping over its own grave clothes!”
Gnaeus readied an indignant response, but Auric waved him off.
“Gods, boy, I know you’re a capable field agent. No matter how desperate we are, Pallas Rae wouldn’t send you if she didn’t think you ready for the true darkness we’re headed for. But mark my words: you’ll leave offerings at every roadside shrine we pass on the way home—gods make it so—that Sir Auric the Short was in the Barrowlands before. Because what you’ll see beneath the earth north of Serekirk will make your previous forays seem like a sweet dream of Belu’s Blue Heaven!”
Auric increased his pace to get ahead of the others, needing the illusion of solitude.
“It’s just the strain talking, lad,” Auric heard Belech offer Gnaeus. “The man just had a tense chat with the queen, after all.”
“With that queen,” added Del.
Lumari’s vials went clink, clink, clink.
Auric did his best to shut out their conversation as they walked the circuitous route back to the Citadel. Stupid to explode like that, he thought. Though a vision of the queen’s feral red eyes still hovered before him, he found he was more troubled by his responsibility for this group of young Syraeic agents, with shaking hand and night terrors making his own heart unreliable. And what of Belech? What would Auric say to Hannah should anything happen to the old soldier? The baroness had a deep affection for the man. Auric had been at the hearth in Dyrekeep on more than one occasion when the affable soldier shared stories about her father on campaign, his bravery, the way his men had loved him. Hannah delighted in those tales. And it finally struck him now how Belech’s presence on this journey reflected the depth of her affections for Auric himself.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, Auric thought. Was there any guarantee he would make it home himself to face the wrath of Hannah?
Auric and Pallas Rae sat in the comfort of his sleeping cubicle at the Citadel. She was drinking mulled wine while he sipped a cup of aromatic tea. The room was identical to the one he had occupied after returning from the Barrowlands for the last time, lone survivor of a Syraeic expedition that had descended into the wrong Djao ruin. The inquiry and debriefing had gone on for days, during which time he recounted in excruciating detail the entire bloody debacle. For months after that, he stayed roaring drunk, locked away in his slovenly cubicle. At first it was to blot out the recurrent dreams, the reliving of the horror night after night. Then it was to free his tongue so that he could drive off with curses the well-meaning procession of priests who came by to counsel him, to walk him back to sanity.
“Rot all gods! Belu! Marcator! Vanic! Bloody Chaeres! If only all the gods had but a single heart, I would run it through!” He remembered yelling those blasphemous words at the back of one cleric, a kind and unassuming priest of Chaeres who made the mistake of visiting him when he was already deep in drink. The next morning, he woke hungover and disheveled. When he looked in the mirror he found the haggard face of Samic Manteo scowling back at him. Had he fled the piss-stinking backwater of his birth for Boudun and the Syraeic League, only to descend to his father’s pathetic end?
He hadn’t touched wine or liquor since. Within two weeks he had resigned his commission with the League, sold most of his gear, and was headed with his accumulated fortune to a little town west of Boudun called Daurhim. Three peaceful years passed. He had found love and liberation from his nightmares for a time.
Now, on this night, the night before sailing out of Boudun on the Duke Yaryx and back to the accursed Barrowlands, he sat again in a Citadel sleeping cubicle. A novice had come to the chamber with Pallas Rae, carrying their steaming beverages on a tray. Rae had with her a lidded box the size of a human head. Auric knew what it contained, but he said nothing, allowing their conversation to wander from one topic to the next: the queen’s marked physical transformation these past few years, the decay of the empire’s western wing, the way the eastern dukes and earls vied for petty advantage and squabbled with one another. She told him some other stories she had heard about the Countess of Beyenfort; the ways she navigated the stormy waters of court once or twice a year to aid Harkeny, which was all that stood between the Korsa nomads and the remainder of Hanifax’s once-proud eastern provinces.
“The empire has been on the edge of ruin for nearly seventy years,” said the lictor at last. “Yet somehow it keeps staggering forward. I’m not saying we aren’t in decline. I just wonder if our utter collapse is still a thing far off. Some powerful force protects Queen Geneviva from all manner of harm and intrigue. Maybe that same entity protects the empire from complete dissolution as well.”
“Perhaps,” said Auric, scratching his chin, “but somehow that gives me no comfort. The empire shows signs of escalating decay, as I witnessed in the throne room yesterday. Sooner or later, the Azkayans will tire of their own fratricidal strife and look west, as they always do. Can you imagine the fiasco of trying to marshal our eastern armies if the Serene Banner of Azkaya marches against us once more?”
“The dukes would bicker and bloody one another’s noses over whose flag got the position of honor on the field until the Azkayans were crossing the Blue Straits.”
“Gods save us from infighting aristocrats,” said Auric, eyes moving to the wooden box.
“Yes,” said Rae, taking her cue. “But we’ve talked long enough about matters we don’t control. As I’m sure you’ve surmised, I’m here to hand over your charge.”
She reached for the wooden box, which had been sitting on a side table while they chatted, never completely fading from either’s awareness. She undid the metal clasp that secured the box’s lid and opened it gingerly on its well-oiled hinges. Rae looked at Auric as if to speak, but seemed to change her mind. She reached in and pulled out the Golden Egg.
The name was apt. The shining brass object, the size of a cantaloupe, was indeed egg-shaped, save that its base was flat so that it could be set upright on a surface. Auric had expected something plain, but whoever had made the thing had fashioned artful ribs encircling its form horizontally. A vertical seam cut the object in half, with a pair of fat hinges on one side and three clasps on the other. Each clasp was secured by a miniature padlock of delicate appearance.
“A lovely container for something so vile,” observed Auric.
“It was made to the sorcerers’ exact specifications,” she answered. “They insisted the ribs were necessary and offered an incomprehensible explanation that involved a dozen words spoken in Middle Djao. Sometimes I th
ink they make up that gibberish on the spot when they don’t want the uninitiated to pry. At any rate, since Agnes put the relic in this container, we haven’t had a single new case of the plague. Each day, a priest of Belu has blessed the thing and placed a holy invocation binding evil on it as well.”
“Speaking of which, where is our priest for this endeavor? The Blue Cathedral promised to name a cleric for us before the day was out.”
“Ah,” said Rae, shaking her head. “I received a note before dinner. The priest has been chosen and will be here tomorrow morning before dawn. Some ritual detained him. Or her. Haven’t gotten a name yet. All I know is that it isn’t one of the clerics who’ve been tending our sick here, which is just as well. I don’t know when any of them last slept.”
“I suppose we’ll have time to get acquainted aboard the Duke Yaryx, though I would have preferred to meet the cleric sooner.” Auric’s sight drifted to the Egg, sitting on the side table. “And I must confess I’d like to set eyes on the Besh relic before we leave as well,” he said, a knot in the pit of his stomach.
“Yes, but we don’t dare open it,” Rae said, reaching into her robe. “Besides, those feeble-looking locks are ensorcelled. They’re broken by speaking a corresponding command word for each.” She pulled out a slip of vellum and handed it to Auric. He examined its three words, written in spidery script.
“Marcator’s Fist—bloody Djao tongue,” he cursed, pointing at a word on the paper. “Look, this one is nothing but a string of vowels with a lonely consonant dropped in seemingly at random. I’ll give this sorcerer’s babble to Del.”
Lictor Rae laughed, the sound warm and familiar. Auric smiled back. They sat in silence for a time, before Rae at last broke it. “Thank you for committing to this task. I know Agnes’s welfare was a significant component of your decision, but I sense that is not all. You still feel some kinship for the League—or rather, its human membership. We are a brotherhood,” she said, old, watery eyes focused on him intently. “Though you may have left the family, the family is always a part of you. As are those who no longer live.”