by Jeff Wilson
Once he was sure that the Ard Ri was dead, Edryd inspected the door set in the back wall. Contrary to expectation, the door was not locked. He pushed it open and stepped inside. He was in an antechamber to a much larger space which was accessed through a broad open archway. Upon the end of a large canopied bed which dominated the center of Esivh Rhol’s bedroom, lay a simple red dress made of fine silk cloth. It was sized to fit a young child. From where he stood, Edryd could hear her crying, but he could not see Eithne.
Moving through the archway, Edryd found her huddled in a ball, trying to hide in the corner. All of her clothing, everything but a short simple shift, had been taken. Upon seeing Edryd kneeling down and gently trying to reassure her that she was safe, Eithne’s terror turned into teary eyed relief and she ran towards him. Throwing her arms around Edryd’s neck, she locked them tightly as if her safety rested upon holding on.
“I knew you would come,” she said. “I told them what would happen, but they didn’t believe me.” She stated this not as a confirmation of the faith she had held that he would come, but with the conviction that came from truly having known.
Edryd worked free from her grip, and looked her over to confirm that she had not been physically harmed. She had no injuries, and now that she felt safe again, she was probably handling the situation better than he was. Edryd removed his dark coat and wrapped her in it, the metal emblems pinned under his collar chiming as they made contact with each other. The coat was far too large for Eithne, and its length trailed behind her when she walked, but she needed something, and he was not about to use anything that might have belonged to the late Ard Ri.
Taking Edryd’s hand, Eithne followed him into the anteroom and then to the door that led back to the banquet hall. Edryd sought out an alternate exit but he could find none. The remorse and shame hit him now. If he were given the chance to change what had just happened, he would not have done anything different, but Edryd did not feel prepared to enter that room again and confront the deaths that he had caused. More importantly, he could not bear for Eithne to know. She certainly could not be allowed to see any of it. Edryd remembered something now that filled him with even more shame. Irial had once told him that if he trained with Seoras, that it would darken him. He knew this now for the truth that it had been. He had ignored her warning, and the cost for having done so had been steep.
“You have to promise,” Edryd said, “that you will not open your eyes. You have to keep them closed until I say it is okay to open them, no matter what.”
Eithne obediently shut her eyes and Edryd took her by the hands and pulled her arms up and around his neck where she held on tightly. He could no longer see her face as he carried her, but he could tell that her eyes were still shut by the tension in her brow pressed up against the side of his head. Edryd opened the door and began to pick his way through the carnage.
He was in a hurry to leave the room, but Edryd took his time as he circled around the debris from the battle, carefully avoiding all of the fallen bodies. Everything was as it had been, except that reservoirs of blood had now expanded beneath some of the bodies of the men that he had killed. Esivh Rhol was still dead, and Áledhuir was still in two pieces, but something else seemed to be missing. As he neared the entrance that led out into the hallway, Edryd realized what it was that had changed. The first two men he had killed were still there, but he couldn’t see the weapons that he had killed them with. It wasn’t a trick of the light, the translucent blades disappearing when viewed at a certain angle, they were gone.
There was no evidence that anything else had been moved or taken, no other sign that anyone had been there, but it was enough to heighten the need Edryd felt to leave and find somewhere safe. He was down the hallway and had gone the length of another intersecting corridor before he told Eithne she could open her eyes. He realized he had not thought things through this far, and had no idea where it was he should go. There would be fighting in the city and no path leaving the palace was likely to be safe. Unhappily, he accepted that the best option for now would be to remain in the palace.
The confusing passageways, down which they travelled, often turned in unexpected ways and were frequently broken by archways that opened upon an unending series of small and large rooms. Among these were included the living quarters that housed staff, a few finely appointed rooms which were reserved for guests, multiple kitchens, and grand open spaces suited for large parties to gather for entertainment. Finding a small bedroom that could be secured from within and easily defended, Edryd let Eithne down.
“We will need to stay here for a while,” Edryd said. “Your Uncle Logaeir is causing trouble in the city, but we can leave after it settles down.”
Eithne, with an inclination of her head, indicated that she understood.
Edryd sat exhausted in the lone chair in the small room, and Eithne took a seat on the bed. She had not spoken since leaving Esivh Rhol’s room. He was reluctant to speak himself.
“I’m sorry,” he managed to say before his emotions robbed him of his ability to continue. “This, all of this, it was my fault,” he said once he collected himself.
He could see from her reaction that this was not what she wanted to hear. She needed reassurance and words of comfort, not some weak apology for something she did not blame him for.
“I can’t fix this,” he admitted, “but I promise I will make it better if I can.”
“Not just for me,” she said. “You are going to make it better for everyone.” She smiled when she saw that she had just taken away some of his sadness. A short while later she curled up on a corner of the bed, and using Edryd’s coat as a blanket, she fell asleep.
***
The risks so far had been well within what could be managed under the constraints of Logaeir’s plans. The heavy initial fighting had taken place on the other side, but once Oren and his men joined the battle in support of Sarel Krin’s attack, it had turned into a decisive victory for the Ascomanni. Logaeir, while in the process of attacking the southern pier, had fared less well. He had not been reinforced quickly enough, and nearly all of his men were dead.
Logaeir had anticipated these difficulties, and knowing what he would face he had surrounded himself with the most violent and most dangerous of all the men the Ascomanni could boast to have in its ranks. These men had been ideal for the nature of the dangerous undisciplined fighting that had taken place on the southern pier. Their losses had been acceptable, perhaps necessary even. Paring down their number meant there would not be so many counted among these the least manageable and most bloodthirsty of the Ascomanni warriors, with which he would need to contend once the battle was over.
Their initial objectives taken, Logaeir ordered a pause to consolidate the positions that they now held and make the necessary preparations to organize the next stages of the attack. With the arrival of the Retribution and two other ships, Logaeir now had another one hundred twenty three fresh Ascomanni fighters to replace the thirty that had fallen beside him in the initial assault. Meeting up with Oren and Krin, their combined forces were about three hundred men. That number could swell to closer to four hundred Ascomanni if they needed to call in reserve forces that were remaining with the ships.
It was now time to turn their attentions to the scattered assets guarded by the four harbormasters, who were each jealously protecting their own properties. This predictable self-interested behavior, which had been an assumption in all of his strategies, effectively deprived the harbormasters of any chance to mount a credible resistance to the overwhelming forces that Logaeir would bring against each of them in succession.
The homes and properties of a man named Jedron Feld were the first to fall. In an entirely bloodless affair, Logaeir accepted the surrender of all his men. There had been inside help, including key men in Jedron Feld’s employment induced by means of bribery and other persuasions to aid the Ascomanni cause.
Kedwyn Saivelle was the next target. In terms of raw numbers and enth
usiasm for their employer, none of the other overlords could match Saivelle. Logaeir’s men had long ago scouted the hidden positions of Saivelle’s outermost guards. Oren and his men took to the rooftops and used that information, and their powerful Edoric longbows, to silently pick apart the deadly arbalest wielding snipers who occupied positions of advantage in and around their master’s properties.
Logaeir then mounted assaults on the ground. The battle stalled at times, with the defenders using fortified positions to offset inferior numbers, but the men in white cloaks turned these fights into a route each time they joined the battle. In the end, terrified of Oren and his men, the last of Saivelle’s forces threw their master out before them and begged for mercy. In this engagement, the Sigil Corps Soldiers had proven to be everything Logaeir expected, fulfilling their roles in ways that exceeded what Logaeir had actually planned.
Verden Dressore was next on Logaeir’s list. Word of Saivelle’s fate having reached him, Dressore gave up without a fight. He had always been weaker than the rest of the harbormasters, so this wasn’t much different from what had been expected.
Sidrin Eildach was all that remained now. Being wiser than the rest of his counterparts, he understood this was a battle that he could not win, but he also knew that he had enough strength to give him a position from which to bargain, and he acted accordingly. He and his men barricaded their strongholds and refused to come out. A messenger was sent offering assurances to the Ascomanni that Eildach was willing to negotiate away his empire, giving it up without a fight, if he could secure a place for himself and his men in the new power structure that would be replacing the old one. Eildach could be practical like that. He had seen such radical shifts before and he had always survived them.
This suited Logaeir’s needs perfectly. He had more than enough men to spare to besiege the last of the harbormasters indefinitely, and it was actually a matter of great advantage for Logaeir to occupy the Ascomanni forces with this final obstacle for as long as possible. Settling for something less than a complete outright victory was fine, if it deprived his men of the freedom to rampage through the town once there were no more enemies to defeat. Logaeir would have to start his negotiations for Eildach’s surrender by sending the man a thank you note.
In all the fighting, Logaeir estimated that there had been eighty Ascomanni who had fallen. There were perhaps between three and four times that number dead among the defenders who had opposed them. He had asked Oren, who had refused to answer, how many the Sigil Corps could take credit for. Logaeir’s own count would have placed their contribution as at least a third of the enemy dead, and for all of that, Oren had not lost anyone. None of his men were even injured. The white cloaks of the Sigil Corps soldiers were stained crimson with blood, but it all belonged to their enemies. The men on every side of the fighting had begun to look upon them with awe.
The success was making Oren increasingly difficult to manage. Leading his group of ten Sigil warriors, Oren was now acting on his own, and had become less willing to take any orders. The fighting had seemed to place him in a particularly foul mood. Logaeir, in the time that he had known Oren, had always imagined him as the type who enjoyed battle. The officer had certainly shown a passion for combat training. That he seemed so repelled by his own handiwork on the field of battle, was a surprise.
“We are leaving for the palace, Logaeir,” Oren said, as they stood outside the gates of Sidrin Eildach’s home.
“Not yet.”
“You have this well in hand. It is time my men and I do what we came here for. We are taking our due.”
Logaeir made his frustration abundantly clear in his response. “Don’t expect me to rush in to help you if it goes wrong.”
The bulk of Esivh Rhol’s forces were already dead. They had fallen defending his fleet of ships and in the counter offensive trying to retake the northern pier from Krin, so it was not without reason that Oren felt that he and his men could take the palace on their own. So far though, no one had encountered the draugar or their thralls and it was becoming increasingly likely that they would find them at the palace. If they did, the small company of professional soldiers would not be enough to confront that threat. “There is too much unaccounted for,” Logaeir cautioned. “Do no more than scout the area. I will have men ready to assist at first light.”
“Take too long, and the fighting will be over before they make it,” said Oren.
It would do no good to warn Oren about the draugar. Oren was already well aware. He understood the risks, and reminding him now would only make him more determined to rush to confront the danger. Believing that his captain would be in need of their help, nothing was going to stop or delay him. Logaeir watched the soldiers leave, and unable to do anything to stop their progress, he made all possible haste in putting together a complement of Ascomanni warriors to follow them.
***
Edryd, feeling grateful that Eithne was sleeping peacefully, left her alone in the room. He brought a chair with him into the hallway and positioned himself where he could see anyone approaching, and where it would not be obvious which door he was guarding. The clarity of vision with which he had been gifted earlier was gone. For a while it had seemed as though he had lost the ability to perceive the currents of the dark altogether, but he realized that this was wrong. He had simply been blinded by a bright light in the darkness. That light had illuminated everything for a time, but once its guidance faded, it took time to adjust to the loss. Even then, the world would forever seem a darker place for having had the experience of knowing what he had lost.
It was an altogether boring vigil. The palace was silent and almost completely empty. No sounds of the chaos in the city could be heard here, and the few people inside the palace, did not leave the shelter of their rooms. When someone finally did come, Edryd cursed his luck. It was Aed Seoras. Edryd was worried, as he had no idea what Seoras intended. Remaining seated, Edryd tried not to betray his anxiety, but his concern surged when he noticed that Seoras was carrying a long simple sword in his hand. He had the Edorin Sigil Blade. It made Edryd painfully aware that he no longer had a weapon of his own, but that concern was of almost no merit when compared to the more important problem. If the sword had enabled Edryd to manifest the powers which he had called upon during his battle with the draugr, just how impossibly strong might Seoras become when wielding it?
“Honestly,” Seoras said, “leaving something like this lying about. How you manage to survive in this world I couldn’t guess.”
It seemed to Edryd that Seoras was impossibly blind to just how much his student was at the mercy of the master shaper’s power right now. Seoras made an even less accurate judgment based upon Edryd’s behavior, wondering how powerful Edryd must be that he could leave the sigil sword behind after a battle as though it were some trifling thing of only minor importance.
“I failed to see the truth all this time,” Seoras said, shaking his head, “and in my arrogance presumed to be able to teach you.” He held out the sigil sword, offering it to his pupil.
Edryd gingerly accepted the weapon, not quite wanting it, but grateful to get it away from his master. The sword seemed happy, somehow, to be back in his hand, but nothing happened as he took hold of the weapon. There was no expansion of his mind, no enhanced perceptions, and no external clarity.
“I said that if you lived through this, that we would have a debt to settle,” said Seoras.
“You were angry,” Edryd pointed out, “so I didn’t take that to have meant that you owed anything to me.”
“I was angry,” Seoras acknowledged, “and I remain so, but it is clear to me now that I did, and still do, owe you a great debt.” Seoras seemed relieved as he said this, as if at the release of some painful restraint. He was definitely pleased about something, but Edryd couldn’t begin to guess what.
“I could have used your help today, had you been serious about balancing that debt,” Edryd said.
The shaper’s eyes hardened. He
did not appreciate the criticism, or perhaps his reaction was covering some other emotion. “I was prevented,” was all Seoras said.
“I cannot accept that,” Edryd said. “If you cared about Irial or Eithne, nothing should have prevented you from protecting them.”
Seoras became harder still. “No one said I cared anything for either of them,” he said, glancing in the direction of Eithne’s room. Despite Edryd’s efforts to conceal it, Seoras knew exactly where she was.
Edryd pulled back. He didn’t need to have an explanation, not right now at least, and the last thing he wanted to be doing was to make this man angry.
“I have questions about what happened,” Seoras said, “and I have answers for you too, information that you need to know.”
Edryd waited for Seoras to continue. He was certain he would not have the answers that Seoras sought, but he was willing to hear what the man had to say.
“There is no time to talk now,” Seoras said, sensing that their time would be short before it would be interrupted by the arrival of Edryd’s friends from the Sigil Corps. “We will need to talk where there is no chance it will be overheard. I want you to meet me tomorrow in the ruins on the coast,” Seoras said, before leaving abruptly, eager not to be seen by anyone else.
Edryd’s immediate inclination was to refuse this request, but Seoras had been assuming compliance, not asking for it. There would have been no point in expressing any objections to the proposed meeting. If Edryd decided tomorrow that it was unwise, he simply wouldn’t go.
Chapter 23
The Broken Oath
Oren and his soldiers appeared almost before Seoras had left, but by an act of providence, or more likely as a result of the latter’s desire to remain unseen and his skill in doing so, the soldiers had not crossed his path. There had been no fighting. Upon reaching the palace gates Oren had found Hedryn waiting, anxious to offer assistance, with the extent of his abilities to provide such service, evidenced by the corpses of a good half dozen of Esivh Rhol’s men in the courtyard, among them Hagan and Cecht. This Hedryn had done in keeping with the task that Edryd had given him to keep the entrance to the palace clear. Those few remaining guards who had been in the palace but had not already fallen victim to the Blood Prince, were also dead. Seoras had seen to that, killing any man who hadn’t had the good sense to flee.