I shook my head and accepted the water when he offered it. “I used to think the same thing,” I replied, trying hard to keep my breaths measured. “But the truth, as usual, is a little different from preconceptions.”
The soldier looked confused. “Would you mind elaborating on that, sir?” he asked after a moment’s pause. “Our wizards were all physically frail before they fell two months ago…and they were also quite a bit older than yourself.”
I nodded as I swallowed the water, and while it wasn’t cold, it was wet and that’s all my body needed. “In Veldyrian,” I began, “wizards come in every shape and size. I kid you not, I saw one that was only a half head shorter than Baeld, and from the look of him he could lift both of us with one hand,” I said, holding my hand above my head for emphasis. The soldier looked confused, and I caught myself. “It’s a phrase we use where I’m from,” I hastily explained, silently cursing myself for the ‘I kid you not’ colloquialism, “it means ‘I’m very serious,’ or the like.”
He nodded. “If you don’t mind my asking,” he pressed timidly, “what makes you wizards so different from ours? I’ve never seen anything like what your Master did last night.”
That was a very, very good question. In fact, it was one to which even I had not yet received a satisfactory answer. I spread my hands wide and shrugged my shoulders, “I can’t tell you,” I said as truthfully as I could.
The soldier stiffened visibly. “I understand,” he quickly replied, “wizards and their secrets, say no more. Ready to continue, sir?”
He obviously could not understand but since neither did I, I stood and tested my lungs. They still burned, but I was pretty sure I could make the next six flights before needing another rest. “I believe so. Thank you for the water,” I said with a nod.
We continued our climb and just as my breathing started to shift to gasping and those annoying little stars began flitting around the periphery of my vision, we found ourselves standing at the highest room in the tower: the High Sheriff’s Office, whose door was emblazoned with the familiar eagle holding a pickaxe and shield symbol, but this one was a finely worked, presumably solid gold figure the size of the white wooden door itself.
The soldier knocked and we waited until it was opened by the guard stationed on the other side, who ushered me in without speaking. My guide remained outside, and the door was closed quickly after I entered the room.
The room itself was spacious, but not huge, probably measuring thirty feet in diameter. The circular shape of the tower made a three hundred sixty degree view of the surrounding lands possible through the many windows of this particular floor. It really was breathtaking being this high up in a building which hadn’t used cranes, steel, or concrete to construct. The windows, which looked to have been paned in stained glass, were actually extremely thin panels of translucent stone which had been fitted into a leaded frame.
The tower tapered gradually from the base, which was at least twice as wide as the top, and I could make out the inward angle of the walls easily enough. The appointments of the office were simple, but functional. There was a large desk built of the same white wood as the door positioned near a fireplace, and behind that desk sat the High Sheriff of Coldetz.
I had been assured on multiple occasions that she was only ‘Acting’ High Sheriff, as the position had been given to her under circumstances which were quite unusual. Her father had been elected to the post for his third five year term, and his Second was to take over in the event of his death.
During the first battle seven months ago, both her father the High Sheriff and his Second were slain. Her father died on the wall, while his Second fell to more questionable circumstances, but I had been unable to discover the exact details of the latter.
“Wizard, thank you for coming,” she said formally, looking up over a pile of papers and clay tablets she was reviewing. Paper wasn’t durable enough for bringing reports from the more rural areas, so the majority of their outlying villages used clay tablets instead of parchment or vellum for carrying reports.
I nodded, thankful that the stars had disappeared from my vision. “I came as soon as I could,” I assured her as I walked toward the desk, which had one chair placed opposite her position.
She returned the stack of papers and tablets to the table and pushed them aside before leaning forward in her chair with her elbows resting on the desk. “Have you learned anything from our Court Mage’s records which might help you?” she asked brusquely. The dark semicircles under her eyes told a story of long-worn stress, and the pile of correspondence on her desk was likely the least of the problems on her mind. Even though we hadn’t ever seen eye-to-eye, I admired anyone who stood in the center of chaos like this and refused to quit.
I sat down in the chair opposite her slowly, carefully bending my knees so that I didn’t collapse from exhaustion. After I found myself safely seated, I found her hard gaze and nodded. “We haven’t learned much, but I think we are getting a sense of who, or rather, ‘what’ might be at the heart of these attacks.”
She just stared at me with her impressive, yet still entirely feminine jaw clenched tightly before leaning back in her chair and reaching into a drawer. What she produced piqued my interest; it was an apparently very old, silver-bound, ivory scroll tube nearly two feet long.
“I did not know at first if I could trust you,” she began, and fixed her eyes on me again, “and I still do not know if I can, but you and your Master did more for us last night than our entire defense force managed during any of these attacks.”
I had never been good at receiving compliments, so I shook my head, “Sheriff, I told you before that I believe in what you’re doing here. Everything I’ve done has been to protect Coldetz and the people who rely on it.” I had learned as a child that sometimes going with the truth, even when it’s likely to get thrown back in your face, is the only thing to do.
She snorted and her eyes flared with renewed life. “You mean to protect the Gods’ Blood beneath our walls,” she snapped, “please do not take me for a fool. I know I have no choice in the matter, but do not mistake me for someone who does not understand why you are really here!”
I couldn’t blame her for mistrusting me. If the situation was reversed, I probably would have tried to kill the Imperial Envoy (meaning myself) as soon as he arrived, and taken my chances with the ravening horde of supernatural monsters who appeared every full moon to lay siege to everything I held dear.
“Sheriff,” I began slowly as I leaned forward, placing my forearm on the desk, “if the Empire knew of this place before my arrival, there is no chance in hell that a single wizard barely out of his apprenticeship, with nothing but his personal guard and herald, would have made first contact with you.”
“Still you cling to the lie that you are a lowly apprentice,” she scoffed. “I saw what you did on the Middle Wall, and what your men did at your side. Your own powers far outstrip even our greatest Court Mages, and your master brought the entire invading army down with what appeared to be nothing more than a swipe of his staff!”
I hesitated before replying. “I assure you, there was quite a bit more to it than that,” I bit out through gritted teeth, “but he didn’t act alone. I don’t understand the magic he worked last night, and I have no idea where he is right now!” I stopped myself before pouring even more gas on the fire.
She was fuming, but we both knew that we had to work together, if for different reasons. She needed me to stop these attacks from destroying Coldetz, and I needed her to cooperate so we could avoid having the Empire come in and tear out the local government root and branch. The mythicite was just a bonus as far as I was concerned—at least, it had been at first.
“You demand that we submit ourselves to your authority,” she hissed, “and relinquish our most precious commodity in return for your ‘protection’ from these attacks.” She stood abruptly with the scroll tube still in her hand. “How do I know that you are not the ones responsible for all of this?!”
I took a deep breath, but I was just about past the point of no return. I stood slowly and fixed my eyes on the scroll tube she was brandishing like a sword. “Lady,” I said as coldly as I could, “let me assure you that if the Empire wanted your little castle and whatever happened to be in the surrounding, oh, hundred miles, they would take it.” When she pointed the tube at me as a prelude to further arguing, I raised my hand and continued, “My class of six years ago at the Wizard’s College numbered thirty two, and wizards live a very, very long time. If the Empire wanted to bring you to your knees, I doubt it would take more wizards than you can count on one hand, and I would be shocked beyond belief if any of you lasted even a week!”
That seemed to give her pause, so I pressed the advantage the best I could. “Now that my master is AWOL, I am literally the only thing standing between you and immediate Imperial subjugation.” I paused to let that sink in before finishing, “I don’t think I need to explain just how unpleasant that could be.”
We glared at each other over the desk for what seemed like a long time, and I couldn’t stop myself from gasping for breath. The stress of the sudden shift in the conversation on top of the actual physical exertion I had just undergone was pushing my frail body to the limit.
Eventually, she sat down in her chair and I followed suit, glad for the reprieve. God, I hated being so physically weak!
“Still,” she began in level tone she was obviously working hard to keep control over, “you demand that we submit ourselves to the Empire and become Imperial subjects all but in name.”
I shook my head. “Our petition is for Coldetz to become a Protectorate of the Empire,” I corrected her. “You would retain your own local government and sovereignty. Since you have such rich natural resources, Coldetz won’t even have to pay any taxes; in fact, the Empire will pay you far more for the mythicite than you could get anywhere else and they will be heavily invested in protecting your stores, ensuring a measure of stability you couldn’t hope to achieve on your own.”
She bared her teeth. “All at the price of our freedom,” she spat.
“I agree, it’s a terrible choice,” I said bluntly, which seemed to take her by surprise. Seizing on the opening, I leaned forward. “I’m not a politician, and I’ve never been good at public speaking, so I’ll just put it as bluntly as I can,” I said with a hard edge in my voice, “I despise the Empire for the same reasons you do. They come in with their iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove when you’re at your lowest and ever-so-politely suggest that you to sign your life away. But I can’t think of a better way,” I said with more than a little despair creeping into my voice. “The part that kills me is that somehow I’ve become their errand boy, when all I want is to get away from them!”
She clapped her hands in mock applause. “A touching performance,” she sneered, “and just what I would expect of an envoy from your Empire—or any other empire for that matter.”
I shrugged my shoulders emphatically. “I don’t really care what you expect. We have an agreement in principle and on paper,” I said, stabbing my index finger down on the desk, “which is why I’ve put myself squarely between three impossible adversaries: an Empire fueled by the most impressive magic I’ve ever even read about; a supernatural force which probably isn’t alive, and therefore can’t be killed; and a kingdom of people who appear content to let themselves be annihilated rather than make a tough choice!”
“I have already told you,” she retorted with considerably less vigor than she had previously displayed, “Coldetz has no king, we have never had a king, and we never wish to have a king,” she said before hastily adding, “or even a queen! Therefore, we are not a kingdom.”
I raised my hands in a ‘slow down’ gesture. “I know that, but I still don’t know how to refer to Coldetz and the surrounding area. I meant nothing by it; it was a slip of the tongue,” I did my best to assure her.
She locked eyes with me, and I was quite certain she was trying to read me like a poker player tries to read an opponent while sniffing out a bluff. “We are a Free State,” she said finally, “governed by our own populace, in accordance with traditions handed down for hundreds of years.”
I nodded knowingly. “Where I come from, our government was similar and we called it a ‘Democracy.’”
She cocked her eyebrow immediately, and I once again damned myself for the slip. I really had to be more careful. “Where you are from is an Empire, is it not?” she demanded coldly.
I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes at my slip. “Yes, well in school we study all kinds of governments,” I sad half-truthfully, “and I was taught that a self-governed society like the one I had been raised in is a Democracy or a Republic. It depends on a few factors which really don’t matter right now.”
After a few agonizing moments of silence, she stood again and walked around the desk, presenting the scroll tube to me. “Our sages found this and they think it might be of some assistance,” she said stiffly.
I accepted the ivory tube and examined its markings. The inlays looked like mother of pearl, and they didn’t form any letters or other characters with which I was familiar. The ends were capped in silver, and I was now all-too familiar with opening and closing different types of scroll tubes.
“It looks old,” I mused, “really old. The markings appear to have been made with mother of pearl, which places its origins as likely somewhere near the coast, and the patina of the silver makes it several hundred years old at least depending on how well it’s been stored.” I never studied archeology of any kind, unless you count watching television shows about high-end pawn shops or museum scouts, but I guess some of it had stuck in my brain.
“Just over five hundred years old,” she confirmed. “It was already in the archives of the castle when we declared our independence as a Free State three hundred fifty years ago.”
I carefully unscrewed the cap and sniffed the air inside the tube. It was musty, which indicated that it had been at least decades since the thing had been opened. “What is it?” I asked as I reverently removed the rolls of vellum from the tube.
The High Sheriff chewed her lip before replying. “It is a record of discovery,” she said eventually. “It is very detailed, having been made by a local wizard of some repute. That is all I know from its description in the archive’s catalogue, as I believe no living person has ever seen the contents.”
I moved to lay the scroll out on the desktop, and noticed with a smirk that she had already cleared a proper-sized area before we had even begun arguing. She clearly had already made her decision to trust me before I had even sat down.
“And why do you think it can help us?” I asked as I looked over the first sheet, which was a square roughly two feet on a side covered in barely legible writing. Wizards and Doctors apparently have more in common than just long internships, I thought wryly as I flipped to the second sheet.
She pointed at a detailed diagram on the second sheet which I hadn’t yet noticed, but when I focused on it I understood exactly why she thought it might help.
A thorough sketching which would have made Leonardo DaVinci proud clearly showed what could have only been one of the ‘flyers’ we had battled the night before, complete with bat-like wings and scorpion-like tail.
Chapter V: Departure
“Who drew this?” asked Pi’Vari with obvious appreciation for the quality of the work. I had brought the tube and its contents back down to our common quarters in the gatehouse.
“A wizard from five centuries ago,” I replied pointedly.
Pi’Vari looked up immediately. “Five centuries?” he repeated.
I nodded. “The markings and patina of the tube, as well as the accounts and records of the castle’s custodians support the age, as do the assertions of the High Sheriff,” I said, rubbing my eyes. The trip down the stairs had been easier than the trip up, but after the magical exertion the night before and all that climbing, my frail body desperately needed rest, and I wa
s having real difficulty keeping my eyes open.
Pi’Vari nodded slowly. “And the inlay work points to having originated from the coast,” he mused before turning serious. “Could this truly be his work?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I really don’t know, Pi’Vari,” I replied wearily, “but what I do know is that our course is clear.”
Aemir raised his hand like a child at lecture. “Pardon my interruption,” he began in his thick accent, which reminded me quite a bit of an Indian man I had once known, except Aemir’s voice was much smoother and deeper, “but of whom do you speak?”
Pi’Vari looked at me as if asking permission, which I gave with a nod. “A wizard who traveled the world in the centuries before the city of Veldyrian was founded over four hundred years ago,” Pi’Vari explained. “He is well-known to these lands as something of a legendary figure—a sort of peasant hero, if you will.”
“What fate befell him?” asked Aemir, who had spent many nights regaling us with legends from his own lands.
Pi’Vari shook his head. “No one knows for certain, as he simply vanished almost exactly five hundred years ago,” he said mysteriously. “His home was a coastal city which was destroyed hundreds of years ago by the Empire when they refused to become Imperial subjects, and it is believed that he spent his final days traveling the lands in search of important phenomena to catalogue.”
Aemir cocked an eyebrow. “What sort of phenomena did he consider important?” he asked, obviously intrigued.
Pi’Vari looked back down at the sketching pointedly before answering. “The kind we still do not yet fully understand, like this,” he answered with a wave of his hand at the sketches. He locked eyes with me before continuing, “The Empire would pay quite handsomely for these works, even if they do not belong to Sbeegl and are instead simply high quality pieces of the period. Pre-Imperial era collections of knowledge, literature and art are extremely valuable, and the subject matter is…unique.”
Revelation (Seeds of Humanity: The Cobalt Heresy) Page 6