Shielding the flame with his hand, Guillot descended the stairs. His first obstacle was a heavy oak door reinforced with riveted iron bands. It was badly scorched, but had otherwise survived the dragon’s wrath intact. What had not survived the passage of time was a handle of any sort. Where Guillot would have expected to find one, there was only a small, round hole in the wood. It invited him to stick a finger through, and considering that he was in the perceived safety of what was once his family home, he was tempted to do exactly that. The voice of caution screamed in his ear, however; as a boy, he had heard too many tales of children putting their hands where they didn’t belong, and being trapped by evil spirits, sorcerers, monsters, or whatever the story’s villain happened to be.
He took his dagger from its sheath and carefully probed the hole. Quite why anyone would want to booby-trap a cellar door was the question, and after several moments, he was confident nothing waited on the other side to take off his finger. He knelt by the hole and peered in, trying to cast as much of the torch’s light in as he could. He could see the void in the centre of the door where the old locking mechanism had been sandwiched, but it too was gone, with what looked like a wedge of wood in its place. He poked at it with his dagger for a moment, but it was hammered in tight, and time had sealed it to the surrounding wood.
He stood, and with impulsive abandon, put his boot to the door. The dry oak gave with a loud crack and the door creaked open. He took a deep breath and waved his torch into the open doorway.
CHAPTER
35
Solène regretted not having sought more mentions of the cup before she left the archive the previous evening—she had tossed and turned all night thinking about it, and had barely a thought for anything else all morning, much to Maestro Foulques’s displeasure. Even dal Drezony had grown impatient with her, and sent her off for an early lunch when it was obvious her mind was irretrievably elsewhere.
She reached for the Fount as soon as she got to the archive, and in actively looking for it, realised how weak it was down there. Remembering dal Drezony explaining that underground, surrounded by rock, the Fount would be dulled, she felt a sense of satisfaction that she could now sense this for herself. Weak though it might be, there was plenty of magical energy available for what Solène wanted to do. She focussed on her desire for information on an old, magical cup, imagining it contained in a folio of papers, then in a scroll, and finally in a book. Though she held each thought for several moments, there was no result.
Adding thoughts of the Chevaliers to the mix, she tried again. The clump of leather-bound paper hitting the floor brought a smile to Solène’s face as she walked toward the sound. What awaited her looked like a ledger. A neat, clerical hand had inscribed a list of names—none of which she recognised—with dates beside them. These too looked unfamiliar, leading her to assume that this was how they had recorded dates during Imperial times. She flipped several pages and discovered that she held bound correspondence; the ledger at the beginning was a record of sender, recipient, and the date of sending. She noticed two vacant spots on the shelf. One from this book; the other, she assumed, something the Prince Bishop had taken to study.
Back at her desk, she dived straight in. The letters discussed the possession of an ancient artefact that had been in the safekeeping of the Imperial College of Mages since the first days of the Empire. The writers were considering moving it to Mirabensis—Mirabaya as it had been known back then. It took a moment for the pieces to come together in her mind—if it had been used to initiate the Chevaliers, it must have ended up in Mirabaya. She decided to follow the thread carefully, to learn all she could.
There was a subtext to the letters, which in the earlier part of the tome at least seemed to be between only two correspondents, one at the Imperial capital, Vellin-Ilora, and the other, quite possibly in the chamber where she now sat. It felt voyeuristic to think she might be on the very spot where some of the letters were written, to be peering into someone’s private thoughts and concerns, albeit from one and a half millennia away.
The Mirabayan writer appealed to his superior in Vellin-Ilora for assistance in a crisis, the specifics of which were not detailed. Solène presumed this was because the circumstances were well known to both of them, though each mention irritated her as they offered only hints. According to this man, the situation was so dire, it called for the use of the Amatus Cup. Solène was familiar with the name Amatus. He was the first mage, the man who began the science of magic.
The correspondent in Vellin-Ilora was reluctant to resort to the Cup. It seemed even at that point, there was some doubt as to whether it actually did anything, or if it were simply an object that had assumed importance from its association with a hero of the past. Either way, they did not want it leaving Vellin-Ilora unless absolutely necessary.
Solène let out a sigh of satisfaction as she turned a page and finally saw mention of the cause of the great crisis. At that moment she felt a great affinity with the man who might have written the letter not far from where she now sat, for their problem was the same. Dragons.
The letters continued, with the Mirabayan correspondent pointing out that he was sending copies to the emperor himself. He said the Cup was never used, and was no longer needed by the College of Mages. He went on to detail how it could benefit the men being sent to deal with the crisis, how it could be used to grant them the additional abilities they needed.
So that was it—the answer she was looking for. The Cup could give a man or woman additional powers and skills. If they were going to all those lengths to find a weapon to defeat the dragons, it meant the weapons they already had weren’t up to the job. They had to create a new type of banneret because neither the old ones, nor the most powerful mages, were able to defeat the beasts.
That presented a problem, though. How was she supposed to defeat a dragon if the powerful mages of old couldn’t manage it?
She skipped through the remaining letters, pausing only to read one signed by the emperor. It stated that the Cup would be transported to Mirabensis for use by a new organisation of bannerets dedicated to the fight against dragons and under the full supervision of the College of Mages—the Chevaliers of the Silver Circle. That explained the presence of mages at the initiation ceremony. It also confirmed the Cup was sent to Mirabay.
The correspondence ended with a letter outlining the delivery process—shipment from Vellin-Ilora to the Port of Mirabensis, then transport up the River Vosges to Mirabay. When Solène closed the book, some questions had been answered, but an equal number of new ones had arisen. If the Cup had reached Mirabay, where was it now? If they found it, how would they use it?
Finding the Cup, if it still existed, seemed to be the next course for her research, if she hoped to bring the Prince Bishop information he could use. Once they had the Cup, then they could worry about figuring out what to do with it.
Perhaps records of the Silver Circle would provide the answers she needed. She stood and reached for the Fount, focussing her thoughts on the Silver Circle, the Amatus Cup, on books, documents, and scrolls, and on various things such records might be called. She waited for the familiar sound of a falling book, but there was nothing. She tried again, and noticed the book on the Chevaliers’ rule twitch on the desk, but nothing else. One final try, more forceful than any of the others, left her feeling dizzy. She sat, wondering what to do next.
CHAPTER
36
The light from Guillot’s flickering torch was an eerie companion as it jumped around the walls of the cellar, in one moment casting things in a warm orange light and in the next, abandoning them to darkness. He wished he had a magelamp; there had been several in the manor house, but it was unlikely any had survived the fire. With the meagre light he had, it was difficult to tell the size of the space, but it was large, with walls of finely cut stone and a groin-vault ceiling. Care and considerable expense had gone into the construction, making the fact that it had been sealed up all the more in
triguing.
He had the fleeting worry that it was to keep something from getting out, but he doubted his family would have continued to live there if something dangerous lay beneath their feet. Even if that had been the case, it would be long dead.
A face appeared out of the darkness and a shriek of fright left Gill’s mouth before he could stop it. The initial flash of panic subsided as he realised what he was looking at, but it took several more moments for his heart to slow. It was, of course, a statue. Composure reclaimed, he stepped closer for a better look. The work was outstanding, and the life-size statue was an equal to any of the monuments he had seen in Mirabay. The features were so lifelike it was as though a living man had been turned into marble. The figure was of a man of a similar age to Guillot—certainly no older than forty. His tight, neat beard was definitely not of the current fashion, and his hair was styled in thick curls.
The stone face’s expression was serene—almost angelic—but as Guillot took in the rest of the statue, he realised this was a monument to a man of war. He wore armour of an unusual style, and a broad-bladed sword with a single cross-guard was strapped to his waist. A museum in Mirabay contained old Imperial-era statues, and this reminded Gill of them. Why would anyone want to shut up such a work in the darkness of a cellar? Indeed, what was a statue like that doing in a place like Villerauvais at all? Guillot’s eyes widened when he spotted something that the inconsistent and flickering light of his torch had not revealed until now—a circle of silver metal on the armour’s marble breastplate.
Waving the torch, Guillot gasped to see another statue standing beyond the first, and another beyond that. Despite the frustrating lack of light, he worked his way along the line of statues, which were arrayed with their backs to the left wall of the room, filling the spaces between the ornate pillars that supported the roof. He counted six before stopping. He had not reached the end of the room, which he still could not even see in the torchlight. Turning, he plunged into the darkness, heading for the wall on the other side, counting paces as he went. At twelve, he found himself staring into the face of another statue—which was flanked by still more. How many were there?
His torch flickered and the flame dwindled. It had eaten away at the wood and he knew soon it would die altogether. He didn’t want to be stuck down there when it did, so after a final look at the statue before him, he made his way back to the entrance.
Guillot’s eyes protested at the daylight when he emerged from the cellar and he shielded them with one hand. In the other, the torch sputtered out in a tendril of black smoke from a meagre glowing ember at its tip. His mind raced, his imagination particularly grabbed by the silver circle on the statue’s breastplate. He had always known a distant ancestor of his was a founding member of the Silver Circle, but the cellar seemed to indicate far more than that. Why would an individual Chevalier keep statues of his comrades in a crypt below his manor house? If there had even been a manor house there when the crypt was built. The masonry below looked old, very old, and far more substantial than the house had been. The older parts of the house had gone back at least a dozen generations. Why would something this large have been built so far from the capital?
He sat on the top step, staring down into the darkness. He went through the possibilities, from as mundane as discovering more about his family heritage, to discovering a great dragon-slaying sword of wonder. He knew the latter was too much to hope for, but the discovery excited him in a way he had not felt in a very long time, and he was glad of the distraction from dwelling on his rash failure and the loss of so many lives.
First, he needed a better light source. He could return to Trelain to fetch a proper lantern, but that would take up too much time. There was no chance of finding anything of use in the village, so he would have to make do with whatever he could find. He could ride to a nearby stand of trees to cut some wood, but it would be green, and the smoke it gave off would fill the cellar until it became a homemade version of the dragon’s cave. He realised he hadn’t checked the kitchen cellar. Something might have survived down there.
Nursing the remaining smouldering fragments from his first torch, he hurried to the stairwell by the lonely fireplace. The stairway’s construction was startlingly similar to that of the secret cellar. He had been down into it countless times, but had never considered it might be much older than the rest of the house. His hope that there would be something useful stemmed from the fact that it was deep below ground—which kept the wine at optimum temperature and slowed the melting of the ice in the cold-room annex. When he was a child, each winter men brought great blocks of ice down from the mountains, packed in insulating straw, and lowered them into the cellar through a hatch somewhere on the grounds, probably long overgrown now.
He had gone only a few steps before the glow of the ember at the end of his stick was the only light he had. However, he knew his way around, so it was enough to let him find what he was looking for. He laughed in satisfaction when he found the brandy rack. There were a couple of bottles remaining, and they were intact, protected from the heat of the fire by the depth at which they were stored. He pulled a large section of planking from an empty rack, tucked a brandy bottle under his arm, and reached daylight just as the glowing ember started to burn his hand.
He dropped the ember, set down his bottle, and made for his horse. Taking a blanket from his saddlebag, he cut two large sections from it. He broke the plank into two thick, baton-length pieces, and wrapped a piece of cloth around one end of each one. Finally, he uncorked the brandy bottle. The smell hit him almost instantly and he hesitated for a moment, but his curiosity at what lay below overwhelmed his fading need for alcohol. He liberally doused the cloth in the brandy until the label on the bottle caught his eye and he grimaced when he saw the date.
At over two hundred years old, the bottle would have been worth at least a hundred crowns in Mirabay, and it seemed like a shameful waste to set it afire. However, needs must, and he was glad that he had not known of the bottle’s existence when Jeanne had cut off his access to wine.
Returning to the remnant of his first torch, Guillot touched one of the new torches to its fading glow. With some gentle blowing, the flame took hold, coating the soaked cloth in a refined blue flame. That done, he returned to the secret cellar—the alcohol-powered flame cast far more light into the darkness than his previous torch, but made for an eerier experience. The first few statues on either side of the chamber were visible, continuing their timeless vigil. Newly revealed were the frescoes painted on the walls behind them.
Although Guillot knew he could never be accused of being an art aficionado, he liked to think he had a discerning eye, and to him, the quality of the painting was exceptional—easily on par with the statuary—and would do credit to a great museum or even the king’s palace. They depicted great battles between man and dragon, and Guillot noted that some of the Chevaliers depicted in the scenes bore a strong resemblance to the statues before them. What tragedy had led to them being hidden here for who knew how long? He advanced down the cellar—might it more appropriately be called a hall?—eager to see what lay at the far end. Armed with a spare torch and the bottle of fuel, which he was trying not to think of as drinkable alcohol, he had no fear of being caught down there in the absolute darkness.
He walked past rank after rank of noble-looking statues, his predecessors in the Silver Circle. He wondered what they would think of what the Silver Circle had become—or if, stories to the contrary, perhaps that was what it had been like all along. The silver ring pressed into the breastplate of each statue’s armour was new to Guillot. Neither he nor any of the Chevaliers he had known had one on their ceremonial or service armour, not that the latter saw a great deal of wear, and wondered when they stopped using it.
Guillot reckoned he was well beyond the boundaries of the old house when the end of the space appeared out of the gloom. When he approached the feature at the end of the hall—two more statues flanking what looked like
an altar of some kind—his jaw dropped.
One of the statues held out an open hand, palm up; its other hand held a stick, or straw. A small object resting on the open palm caught Gill’s attention. Despite it being carved from marble, he knew it. Small, nearly spherical, with an inscribed rim. He scrabbled in his purse and coaxed out the odd little cup he’d found in the dragon’s cave. There could be no mistaking it, they were one and the same.
Reaching up, Guillot placed the cup next to its stone doppelgänger. Of course, there might have been many such cups. Perhaps it was the preferred style at one time? Why anyone would make a cup from Telastrian steel was a mystery to him, but a mystery that might be starting to reveal itself.
What significance did this scene—the two statues, and the altar—have to the old Chevaliers? What role did the cup play? How had it ended up in the dragon’s cavern? He shook his head and rubbed his brow. As fascinating as it was, it raised more questions but answered none. It also occurred to Guillot that Leverre had been very interested in taking possession of the cup. At the time Guillot had found it irritating and curious, but not enough to become overly suspicious. Now, though, it made him wonder. Did Leverre know more about it than he had let on? Once again he felt as though there was far more going on than he was aware of. It wasn’t a feeling he liked, and if past experience was anything to go by, it usually ended badly for him. It was what he hated about Mirabay, why he had left, and why it took a dragon attack to get him to go back.
He doubted there would be any way to determine the meaning of what he was looking at or to learn anything about the silly-looking little cup. So much had been forgotten. If the Chevaliers had stayed true to themselves, it was unlikely Guillot would be the only one left, and the dragon would likely be dead.
Dragonslayer (The Dragonslayer) Page 25