by Jim Galford
The magic was invisible but effective. When the spell hit the magister, the man went rigid, then gasped and fell limply to the ground. Softly, he exhaled and went still.
“A traitor, as I said,” Therec told the soldiers as he pulled his gloves back on. “The king will issue a statement about this after I have spoken with him. Dispose of the body as you would any other soldier of Altis.”
Therec began walking away, his feet unsteady from the exhaustion that came with channeling magic. He felt dizzy but exhilarated from the challenge. Much longer and Dorus would have beaten him by sheer endurance. The man had been far stronger than he had expected.
Smiling to himself, Therec made his way back toward the city’s keep.
He had a statement from the king to write, granting him all of the duties Dorus had been given in the king’s passing.
*
Therec waited nearly a week before deciding to act on the knowledge that Dorus had been hiding something in the plaza. He gave it time for the soldiers and commoners to stop gossiping about the battle, which had left much of the plaza burned and broken and sent at least one soldier to the infirmary. Once things calmed and Therec’s contacts within the city were hearing nothing further about him, he decided it was time to investigate.
The days had mostly been passing slowly as Therec kept an eye on Ilarra, making sure she did not slip from the keep and cause trouble. He made it a point to be overly polite to her each day, attending meals with her and her guards, but the girl still unnerved him.
Arlind had not helped Therec in dealing with Ilarra. The woman had gone on a lengthy rant about the girl being unnatural or some such. Therec had sent her away in frustration, not really sure what to make of the magister’s ramblings. He had trusted her to deduce more about Ilarra, but Arlind had been exceedingly useless in that matter.
Even without believing Dorralt, Therec could feel power in the girl and wanted to know what her intentions were. She had remained stubborn about her ignorance, giving him nothing to work with, and not willing to talk since her visit with Arlind. In time, he kept telling himself, he would unravel her plan. She might work with Dorralt’s clan, but she was no trained Turessian. Finesse would reveal all without the need for brutality the uneducated preferred when dealing with a captured spy.
Wrapping a heavy grey woolen cloak over his shoulders to cover the red and gold outfit he wore, Therec began down the hall toward the outer doors of the keep. The outfit was still difficult for him to tolerate, but each time he dressed in the southern styles, it became less abrasive.
He made his way onto the streets as the sun was setting and a light dusting of snow fell over the area. The locals had mentioned in passing that the winter was a mild one, but it still made Therec feel far more at home than he had since the day he had arrived in Lantonne.
Therec detoured far into the northwest section of the city under the guise of doing some basic shopping. He picked up fresh bread—one of the few things that Lantonne did better than Turessi—and a long coil of rope from a fisherman, then turned south toward the plaza where he suspected the city’s secret weapon lay, assuming Ilarra had not found it first and given up its location to Dorralt and Altis.
By the time Therec arrived in the plaza, the sun had fully set and the city’s magically lit streets had taken on a heavily shadowed appearance. A novel idea in Therec’s mind, they actually did little to light more than the middle of the wide streets and give a false sense of security to the citizens. He had talked to several of the city guards and learned that the lights had done nothing to curb crime at night in the city, though many people believed that they had.
The plaza itself was empty when he entered, making him feel far less nervous about being confronted. He had been concerned that even at night he might be watched by the citizenry as he tried to recover the mysterious item.
Therec slowly crossed the plaza toward the stairs meant for guards to get onto the upper walls. In doing so, he passed the torn stones where he and Dorus had fought. The damage was incredible to Therec, having been too wrapped up in surviving to notice the last time he had been there. Paving stones all around the area had cracks in them that a child could fall into. Had he not known the cause, he might have guessed one of the nearby stone buildings had collapsed to create that much damage. Shaking his head in dismay at so much destruction for such a pointless reason, he continued past, making note of it as something to have repaired.
The stairs to the battlements were, thankfully, empty, which gave Therec more confidence in his actions. It took him hardly any time to run up them and come out on the high walls of the city. Therec paused at the top of the steps to look out over the city…his city, in a sense.
To the south and west, the vast plains stretched out farther than Therec could see, even with the bright stars and rising moon. Here and there, regions of heavy tree cover stood out against the rolling fields of tall, dead grass. It was lovely in its own way, drawing Therec’s thoughts to the vast hilly lands of Turessi. The partial snow cover of the ground intensified the feeling of similarity, making him wonder what the weather was like back home and whether his family was safe.
A thought passed through Therec’s mind, envisioning his wife and son beside him on Lantonne’s walls and looking out at those plains. It was a sweet dream, and if he could manage to bring them to him, he would. Given the mystery about what had happened to the council, he had no intention of returning to Turessi until he was sure things were back to normal or he had the military might behind him to retake the lands.
Turning a little more toward the east, Therec could just barely make out the torches of one of the city’s work camps. The place was still now; the weather did not allow for much farming. During better weather, the camp had been designed to allow the farmers and others from Altisian lands that had come to Lantonne a chance to work toward citizenship.
Therec was rather amused by the camps and the opportunity they offered foreigners who in his own land would have been executed or relegated to a life of slavery. Turessi’s clans were not merciful to outcasts or other clan’s survivors during warfare, so the idea of accepting in Altisians had struck him as a merciful compromise.
The Lantonnians normally would have allowed those refugees in without question. But given his position as the king’s voice, he had halted that swiftly upon seeing how many barbaric people wanted entry to the city. Sooner or later, he intended to visit the place and see what sort of rabble would eventually find a home within the city, and thus, require him to act in their interests. He dearly hoped there were not too many wildlings or orcs among them…the city already had more than it could handle, in his opinion.
Finally satisfied with the view of the city and its surroundings, Therec moved along the wall until he stood directly over the portion of the tree sculpture he intended to study. There he stopped as a guard patrol passed by and offered his greetings to the men as they continued on past.
Once the guards were far enough away, he swiftly tied the rope into a simple harness around himself and fastened the other side to the battlement’s edge. The knots were ones he had used in moving through the mountains of Turessi and should be strong enough for the far simpler task of scaling a city wall.
It had been years since Therec had climbed mountains, but he hoped he remembered enough to keep from falling off the walls. If he did slip, he prayed to the dead he would die in the fall and not have to answer questions about what he had been doing.
Therec checked the walls one more time for anyone coming, then climbed over the wall. Slowly, he lowered himself a foot at a time until his feet came down on the uppermost branch of the stone tree sculpture. Looping the rope over the branch to keep from falling too far, he began lowering himself again, repeating the process until he was at the branch that had caught his eye, about twenty feet down from the battlements.
Steadying himself on the smooth stone, Therec clung to the branch above for support. His rope was nearly at its limit, so
slipping would be a sure test of his knots—not something he intended to do.
He shifted around on the sculpture, trying to find the exact spot he had seen, which was tricky to do from memory, in the dark, and from a totally different angle. Once he was sure that he was close, Therec knelt as best he could, using the rope for support. He searched around the branch for some time, trying to find anything out of the ordinary about the stonework or the wall behind it.
Therec was about to give up when he noticed there was a small inscription close to a split in the branch he had overlooked as a chip or scratch initially. In the dark, he had trouble making it out, especially given how worn the stone was. He took off a glove and touched the markings in hopes that his fingers might read better than his eyes.
Therec sat straight up as his fingers told him something he had not expected. Tracing the markings again, he confirmed he had not imagined the first impression.
The stone was engraved with a Turessian rune-word, or something close enough to one that it felt entirely out of place in these lands.
Leaning close to the carving, Therec blew on the stone to clear some of the dirt and broken stone away. Having a better view of the symbol removed any doubt that it was Turessian, though the word was not one he recognized. Around it, he could see the stones were fitted as though he were looking at a hatch of some kind. This, he surmised, was the lock for that door.
Therec stared at the symbol for a long time, trying to sort out what he was looking at. Then, in a moment of epiphany, he realized he was seeing a word that had been written by a Lantonnian with no knowledge of Turessian runes. It was a bad copy of a word he did know, as would anyone from his lands. Touching the carving, Therec said softly, “Turess.”
Nothing happened.
Therec wondered if there might be more to the marking than he had expected. He then realized he was being foolish. If the sculptor had attempted to create a Turessian rune-word as some kind of latch, he might have anticipated a Turessian would use it.
Using the ancient language of Turess, Therec repeated his peoples’ founder’s name. This time, the rune flickered and the stone popped free.
“Clever southerners,” he said to himself, grinning as he slid aside the stone. “Lock it in a way that only one or two scholars in the region have any hope of figuring out. I doubt they expected a Turessian to ever be on their walls.”
Far overhead, Therec heard footsteps and cringed at the thought of explaining what he was doing. He waited and hoped the guards atop the wall would not notice the rope on the inner side of the battlements. Thankfully, they soon passed without a word spoken.
Therec waited a little longer, just in case, then leaned forward on his narrow ledge, trying to see into the opening in the sculpture. In the dark, he could not see anything and dared not use magic to light it up, lest half the district see him.
Holding the rope tightly, Therec took his other hand off the stone branch and reached into the opening. He felt around a while, finding only rough stone and dust until, at last, his fingertips brushed something with a much different texture.
Struggling to keep his balance while grabbing at the item through the tiny opening, Therec slipped and caught himself halfway off the branch, twisting his other arm painfully in the stone opening. The rope held at the battlements, but the harness around his body loosened dangerously. He knew it would not hold him if he fell completely, but he could not retie it without getting back up to the battlements first.
Therec let the rope slide a little more, giving him a better angle to reach into the hole. He finally caught hold of the object inside and slid it out toward him. He soon was able to pull it from the hole, revealing it to be a four-foot polished wooden stick.
“A walking staff,” he mused quietly in disbelief, shaking his head. “I hope this was worth the trouble.”
Therec slid the staff into the back of his belt, hoping it would be snug enough that he would not drop it. Then he climbed back toward the battlements, trying to keep all of the rope’s strain on his arms to keep the harness from loosening further.
By the time he reached the top of the wall, Therec’s arms shook and sweat from the strain covered him. He had not exerted himself so much in years and desperately hoped he did not ever have to again.
With one last pull, he hoisted himself over the battlements and flopped to the top of the wall, grinning as he felt the staff clatter alongside him. Laughing at his own stupidity for even attempting the climb, he sat up and saw four city guards were standing in front of him, staring.
“My people climb the peaks for fun,” he explained quickly without actually lying, at least about that. “The mountains are too far, so I decided to climb the walls. I think I underestimated how much smoother the walls are than mountainsides. I don’t think I’ll do that again anytime soon, or you’ll be scraping me off the plaza stones.”
The soldiers laughed at him, but told him to have a good evening as they walked away. Only one of the men so much as glanced at the staff, but said nothing about it.
Therec lay with his back against the battlements until the soldiers departed, then hugged the staff to his chest as he went back to the keep as quickly as he could without drawing attention.
The hardest part of the return came when Therec reached the keep. He forced himself to slow to a casual walk, using the staff as though it were nothing new. He knew that most of the servants might not give him a second look, but he could not risk any of them gossiping. By the time he reached his room, his whole body felt on the verge of trembling with the effort of moving slowly.
After throwing the bolt on his room’s door, Therec went to the desk near his bed and laid the staff across the table near the room’s flickering candle. Therec sat down and stared at the wood of the staff, trying to find anything that might warrant the paranoid defenses of Lantonne, but at first, he could find nothing. The wood was old and worn as though from normal use, but aside from some damage near both ends, he could not see anything special at all.
Picking up the staff, Therec stared at one end and then the other, trying to determine whether the damage itself was a clue. From what he could see, it looked as though the staff had once had fittings on both ends to keep it from splintering, but they were long gone. Given most staves intended to be kept for more than a few days had a metal cap on at least one end, it was hardly a clue.
Bracing himself for another shock like when he had attempted to study Dorralt, Therec cast his simple magical detection spell, shifting his vision to view auras. What he saw surprised him even more than Dorralt…because he saw nothing. There was nothing at all on the staff. Any magic there was hidden as well as the hiding place where it had rested. He had never encountered any methods for hiding magic in the past, making it all the more intriguing.
Therec shifted his vision back to normal and stared in confusion at the staff. Either Dorus had managed to deceive him in death, or he was missing something that had been cleverly hidden. Another possibility was that both the king and Dorus were entirely mistaken about the staff’s value.
Setting aside the staff, he dug through the drawers of the desk until he found a piece of chalk. Using that, he traced a series of symbols on the floor in a spot he knew could be easily covered with the room’s rug if he was disturbed. The large ring of Turessian rune-words soon covered a ten-foot section of stone, and Therec finished the last symbol with barely a nub of chalk left between the tips of his fingers.
Therec got up from the floor and studied the symbols for several more minutes, searching for any mistakes. He found several minor ones and touched them up with the remnants of the chalk. Once he was satisfied, he placed the staff at the center of the ring, situated such that many of the jagged symbols pointed in at it.
“Show me the truth of the item before me,” he said aloud, putting a hand over the ring of symbols. Then, tracing the symbols in the air as he poured in magic from the spirits, he focused on the staff and waited for hints about what he might
be looking at.
Normally, the enchantment would give Therec a glimpse of the magical patterns of the item or a momentary vision of the item’s last owner. These tended to be enough to determine the purpose or powers of a magical item, given a little more research. This time, nothing happened as the spell completed. It was as though the magic fell apart around him. It was not that he had cast it wrong, but the power went somewhere else, flowing from him away into nothingness.
Therec stood there, hand over the staff, trying to figure out what to do next. Then, without warning, the magic he had channeled washed back over him and knocked him backwards. His consciousness seemed to collapse in on itself, forcibly pushing him toward a state of near-sleep.
Blinking, Therec found himself standing in the middle of a snow-covered expanse, though he felt no cold. The world seemed to waver and fade in and out, with details such as trees or mountains in the distance popping into existence as though brought into form as an afterthought.
He turned slightly in place and found he stood alongside a group of five people, all wearing heavy winter clothing in grey or black, complete with thick hoods that covered their heads. Standing behind them, he could see nothing of who they might be, other than the person in the lead held the very staff he had just tried to identify.
Therec knew the vision could end at any instant and concentrated on taking in as much detail as he could manage. The staff and its bearer were his primary focus. Anything else, he would try to make a note of, but could not concern himself too much.
The staff was clearly newer in the vision, the wood polished and undamaged. Brass fittings covered both ends of the staff, engraved with rune-words that Therec could not read, though they did appear to be vaguely Turessian. Like the markings on the walls below Lantonne, these were older than any he had read before and were in a dialect that would take more time to read than he likely had available to him. A simple leather wrap around the grip was the only other adornment he could see on the staff, other than faintly-etched words down the wood.