The first door he came to had a hefty rusted padlock hanging from an equally thick and rusted hasp mechanism. Mordon stopped and inspected the lock, wondering what could have required a lock of this size to protect. He was not about to risk his new sword in an attempt to open the door, however. Looking carefully around the door at the jamb and then the hinges, Mordon realized he would need a pike or strong metal bar before he would be able to gain entry. He wondered if he could do that as quietly as was necessary. It was all too interesting how this chamber had been neglected by the invading army. Maybe their need for instantaneous blood and food outweighed their desire to enter. Their curiosity must have been piqued as his was now.
There was nothing he could think of in the cistern chamber strong enough to break that lock or hasp, and he was still unwilling to consider his Wilson blade at this point. He would have to enter the blacksmith shop at the rear of the castle and rummage for a bar: he strongly doubted the army or Scatley had left behind a useful pike. Mordon inspected the hinges thinking the pin could be removed. The old carpenter had taught him enough to see the hinge was constructed so the door would open either in or out. That meant there was probably a hefty bolt secured into the jamb under the large hasp. Looking back to the hinge he could see the blacksmith had riveted the thick pin at both top and bottom. It was unlikely a file would have been left behind either.
The door consumed his full attention, so intriguing an aspect of concealed treasure may lay behind its surface. Mordon guessed the height of the room behind the doorway must be between the ceiling of the king’s level and the roof of the north wing. He had descended some 18 feet from the height of the roof. The steps were less than a foot in height.
Turning away from the locked door, Mordon began counting steps as he descended the tower. The next door he came to was swung wide upon its hinges, exactly 23 steps below the locked door above. He looked up and saw the ceiling was nearly 18 feet from the flagging of the level on which he stood. There was a lot of space between the ceiling of this level and the roof. Mordon almost gave in to the desire to find something heavy so he could pry the hasp from the door. But he was not a man easily swayed from an intended mission. If he could find something below him in the library wing, he would bring it with him. The search for the library continued.
Mordon stood in the arch of the doorway and inspected the wide hall before him. It was a lot longer than he expected. The flagging of the stone floor ended a good hundred feet away to his front. The doorway in which he stood was at the farthest point away from the stairs. Large arched windows that had once held leaded glass stood open to the weather: the owls had more than the broken front doorway to leave the castle. Standing as a statue in the dimmer light of the arch, Mordon counted doors on both sides of the wide hall. There were five doors on the west side and the same on the east.
There were no bones in the hall. The family members must still be in the chambers in which they were slaughtered. It made him feel uneasy walking by so many open doors. There was absolute silence in this wing and level of the castle. The high arched wooden beams of the ceiling supported scorched and blackened planking. The fires of two years ago, had left their marks upon the high ceiling; blackened and discolored but not weakened. Circular blotches of soot still lay on the flagging where burnable items had been dragged from rooms and set ablaze. Ragged pieces of furniture and cloth still sat where flames had discarded them. All the doors he could see had been ripped from their hinges.
It was strange standing where Mordon stood, he had thought he would feel the guilt emerging once more but did not. He knew if he hadn’t escaped to where Wiciff’s eyes directed him in that instant, he wouldn’t be standing where he was today. The castle felt intensely empty, it seemed as deserted as any of the structures still standing in Widley. He had come here for a reason, one he knew was necessary.
Easing away from the safety of the tower steps, Mordon kept to the east wall. The first doorway approached on the right. He was surprised to find the chamber inside entirely empty; not a stitch of anything. Not wanting to lose the clear view of the hallway, Mordon stood half in and half out of the doorway. A quick glance around showed him nothing. Reentering the hall, it took only 12 steps to the next doorway. Inside was someone’s bed chamber, two years in the past. It could have been any one of the family member’s chamber. The bed was massive. It was clear the invaders had tried to hack it into burnable pieces without success, and even drug it from the wall where he guessed it had once stood. There was a sturdy wooden closet tipped from one wall that had obviously received the same treatment as the bed. Any smaller pieces of furniture must have been burned in the fire outside the chamber. There was nothing of value Mordon could see anywhere.
Back in the hall, he strode silently to the next doorway and then the next; both looking much like the bedchamber he had first inspected. The last doorway on the east he approached with little caution. There did not seem to be any need for caution at this point. He could feel in his bones there was only him in the castle. The last doorway was in no better or worse condition than the ones prior. Preparing himself for what he was about to see, Mordon looked over the railing down into the large entry foyer. He drew in a quick breath. There were no bones anywhere. Any bits of ragged cloth, weapons beneath bodies missed by the departing killers, personal jewelry worn at the time of their deaths were all missing. With his eyes Mordon searched every nook and cranny of the foyer . . . it was clear of the bones and everything else he expected and knew should have been there.
He rested his hands on the balustrade and leaned as far forward as he dared. It was clean where ever he looked. Someone had removed completely any indication of the lost souls from the foyer. How could this have been done with him living only feet from the front doorway of the castle?
Three days after the killing, there had been soldiers and castle employees nearly stacked on the flagging and on up the stairs. His eyes, as well as his nose, were certain of it.
Mordon turned and ran as silently as he could to the wrecked doorways on the west side of the level on which he entered. All the rooms were the same, torn and hacked but no bones anywhere.
With much less caution than he normally was willing to chance, Mordon ran to the stone stairs and descended to the foyer. All about him the floors were clean. What craziness was this? He had witnessed the bodies strewn all over this area. Now there was not even dried blood. The rains of late fall and spring could not have entered nearly far enough to have scoured the floor clean. The vermin could not have eliminated all trace of what had happened here either.
Scatley and his men would have made a torrent of sound if they had done this. There was no reason for Simper to come back here and clean the castle. None of his men would have helped him do such a chore for no reason. The bastard Nolton would not come here; it would be too much effort on his part. So who would have done this and how without his knowing?
In a state of confusion, Mordon stumbled in the direction he thought the library existed. Widley, and now the castle, were starting to make him feel he was coming undone. This game of being a ghost was starting to unravel. Maybe that was just what he was, a ghost with no connection to anything. It was an odd feeling flowing through his mind and body as he approached the door in memory. He stood in its archway a long moment before shaking his head and stepping into the chamber.
It was a high-ceilinged room with two sets of stone steps on opposite walls, leading up to a shelf nearly 10 feet higher than where he stood. There were broken tables and shattered oil lamps littering the floor. At one time there must have been five long tables stretching across the chamber. All that was left now was broken pieces and splinters. Mordon looked up to the shelf where row after broken row of shelving had been hacked and chopped to pieces. There were no books in evidence anywhere. Swearing softly, he felt a compulsion to climb the nearest stone steps to the next level. He was in such a disorienting fugue he did not consi
der Scatley or the new element in the city. His steps were leaden as he climbed to the higher level. There would be nothing here to find, not in a hundred years.
Mordon discovered a narrow ally running behind the broken shelving between the remnants of the shelving and the high stone wall. Torn pages and bindings ripped from books littered the ally. He picked up one page and read what he could. It had come from a book written in a foreign language, which to a man raised in Widley that was exciting in itself. Disappointed in not being able to read what was on the page, he dropped the soiled paper and walked further into the despoiled higher shelf of the library. At the end of the first long section, Mordon came to an area of the mezzanine where the shelving had been broken free from the planked ceiling, collapsing three deep against the back wall. What he saw through the shattered shelving made his spirits soar.
He could just make out a cabinet layered with flat drawers. How could he dig through all this debris without making any noise? Mordon laughed deep in his broad chest.
Very carefully you fool.
He did not know what he would find in those drawers, but he sincerely wished to find out what they contained. With the patience of Azrith, he began moving pieces of the shelving obstructing the objective of his desire. Slow cautious movements brought sections of shelves away from the pile. He stacked what he removed in any empty space he could find. He was successful at remaining quiet. It surprised him he could remove a large area without undue noise. He had heard nothing from the library doorway or out in the hall. Only the owls were hooting their normal conversation between the two of them. Their most vocal time seemed to be after waking from their morning slumber.
Mordon removed everything but one solid piece of the upright pinioned against the stack of drawers by the weight of two shelving pieces on top of the third. He tried to use the strength of his back and legs to separate the two towering shelving structures. Nothing wanted to move. The weight of the thick wooden boards seemed pegged together rather than the separate structures they were. Mordon stood back and studied the entire pile of remaining shelving.
He climbed with caution the solid first layer of wooden shelving. No wonder they did not want to move, the top shelf of the first two layers were driven under the next. Mordon put his hand on the top of the second shelf and pushed; it separated from the first with ease. His weight must be making the difference. He pulled a broken piece from the shelf behind him and wedged it between the first and second set of shelves. Climbing down, it was now almost easy in comparison to pull the shelving from the second. He swung the set up and then down onto the solid remnants still standing behind him without making any additional sound. Mordon repeated what he had done until he was standing in front of the cabinet of wide drawers.
The effort had caused him to develop a healthy sweat. Wiping his moist hands on his pants, he drew the top drawer outward. Seeing actual maps before him reminded him of when Wicliff had taken him to the armory for the first time. He had wanted to touch every weapon in the chamber. The cabinet contained layer after layer of intricately hand drawn maps. He had no idea what the maps depicted, only that they were exactly what he had wanted to find.
But what was he supposed to do with them now? He pulled the drawer entirely from the cabinet and hefted the weight, if they only weighed a certain amount he could carry them all back to the cistern chamber in one fell swoop. He didn’t want to risk exposing himself on multiple trips after the events of yesterday. Mordon drew each drawer forward and inspected the top map with interest. Scanning the maps made him feel a twinge of anger knowing he was less than knowledgeable about a lot of things. There was an entire world out there he knew nothing about.
Looking at his new treasures made his thoughts return to Wicliff. Wicliff had wanted him to be schooled along with the castle children. His request had been rebuffed with shock that anyone would hazard such a ridiculous application. It was an absurd demand anyone be instructed along with the king’s children. It seemed the king’s minister had all but had a heart attack because of Wicliff’s simple request. The request had nearly lost Wicliff his station in the garrison. He still appreciated the man for trying.
Looking at these colorful maps brought about a desire in his breast to learn all he could learn from them. He may be unschooled, but he could read the names of all rivers and cities on the top map. He gently let the fingers of his right hand traverse the surface of the old paper. The cities and mountain ranges seemed to flow up his arm into his mind. Mordon was as excited as he allowed himself to be, staring at the knowledge under his hand.
CHAPTER 5
One of the owls hooted its ghostly call from the ceiling in the foyer. The other owl answered from a different location somewhere in the high beams of the main floor within the castle. Mordon intently listened with nerves tightly drawn, as he had not seen any other exit from the library other than the door he had entered. This chamber was a trap, worse still than the garrison quarters. He felt panic rise inside of him. He could just make out the doorway through the skeletons of the shelving. Someone or some animal had disturbed the two owls from their sleep.
Mordon’s taunt muscles would send him forward to fight in the blink of an eye if asked to do so. He remained tense and motionless, hovering over the drawer he had removed from the cabinet. If he was discovered up here on this shelf by more than two or three men, he may never see the cistern again. Mordon smiled to himself, if he was going to die this morning, at least he would not have to clean up after the bats anymore.
Something black and bright like polished silver flashed across the doorway in the hall. For all the speed of the flickering object, there had been no sound. Mordon half expected to see others chasing whatever had flashed in and out of sight so quickly, but did not. He tried to replay what he had seen into a recognizable image. There had been a cape of light black material fluttering and whipping in the air as it sped by the doorway. Legs… he had seen two legs covered in highly polished material, it had to have been a type of armor he had never seen. Thinking further, he remembered the head had been covered in the same black material as the cape.
Wearing a hooded cape was nothing new. The soldiers now long dead wore woolen capes in the colder months of the year. It was part of the uniform for the king’s guard; their summer capes were small and made of a light material but were red in color. Now that he thought of the image he had seen, size registered as well. Whoever it had been was smaller than he was. Mordon weighed slightly over 15 stone. The figure he had seen would be considerably less than his weight. The man would be close to the size of Wicliff or 10 stone.
One thing Mordon had learned in the years of training and combat was that one’s size belied his effectiveness. Skill and determination were the elements needed for a soldier to be deadly. Sheer strength and size often led to a man’s downfall against a skillful opponent of lesser build. Mordon’s skill as a swordsman had been brought to a fine degree of acclaim simply because of his reflexes. The use of sword had come naturally to him at a young age and the years of training had honed those skills to a degree of perfection. He had been lucky his size had not affected the fine nuances the sword required.
“One thing at a time,” he whispered.
It bereaved him to think of leaving the precious maps behind. He knew he might have to fight his way from the library and castle, and carrying a roll of maps would hinder any moves he would have to make defending himself. But if he left them all here, they may disappear as quickly as his ale mug had last night, or as fast as the individual in the hall had just vanished. Mordon groaned with the conflicting desires and needs bouncing around inside his head. He finally began opening the drawers and withdrawing the relatively thin layers of maps, placing the thin stacks on top of those he had at his front. When all eight drawers had been emptied, Mordon rolled them into a tube six inches thick. He tied the roll of maps together with a length of light line he always carried with him, learning early
on in his scrounging that a bit of twine was nearly as important as his sword. The light cord he habitually carried had come from a bin in one of the mercantile shops on Compton Street.
Checking to see if the cord was secure, Mordon slung the roll of maps to his back with the cord fitting snugly across his broad chest and shoulder. He shrugged once so the roll would settle, unexpected shifting resulting in sound may be deadly. Without preamble, the tall man moved with utmost caution back down the narrow cluttered ally to the stairs he had ascended earlier. At the head of the stone steps he silently drew the Wilson blade from its sheath, holding it loosely in his right callused hand. Expecting to be attacked at any moment, Mordon descended to the floor of the library and stood statuesque at the base of the stairs, tightening his grip on the pommel.
It was as quiet as being in one of Donderly’s subterranean vaults. Sidestepping the debris, Mordon stepped with building tension to the side of the doorway. He stood next to the stone wall on his right so he could see down the hall in the direction in which his new element had vanished. The hall was empty for as far as he could see.
In the direction he was looking, the hall ended at a stone wall with two archways. The lower archway on the right led to the kitchens and storage areas used by the kitchen staff. The larger archway on the left led to a rather grand hall used for banquets. The king and his family had seldom used the hall for their daily meals. They instead used a much smaller dining chamber through the archway leading to the kitchens.
Mordon had been through that doorway two years ago. What he had seen there had turned his stomach. He wondered if all that space had been swept of bones as had the foyer and upper chambers of the king’s family quarters. Now was not the time to be exploring.
Whoever the killer was had gone somewhere in that direction. If he could just make it back up to the tower steps, he would feel much less concerned. Anyone who could move as quickly as the man in the black cape could move would be a deadly rival in the open, but would have much less advantage in the tight confines of the tower at the rear of the upper floor.
Mordon of Widley Page 5