Undaunted, he struck the lock plate several times with the edge of his hand and tried again. Still, the last pin refused to move. Rising, he drew back and flat kicked the door for all he was worth, making dust jump from the inset stone casing and sending a stinging jar up his leg. This time the pin jumped half its length, lodged with a protesting squeal, and finally gave when he bore down on his knife, bowing the blade till it threatened to snap. The bolt yielded to his prying grudgingly, almost as if it resented being forced to surrender its age long duty. When he stood to attempt to push the door open, the rustle of sliding gravel warned him of Waleck's return, and he went to assist the old man up the hill with his burden of tools.
"We may not have to break the door down, after all.” Mar informed Waleck matter-of-factly as he relieved him of a large sledge and settled it upon his own shoulder. "I managed to slide the bolt free with my knife."
Waleck nodded, displaying no surprise. Mar suspected that his trade was no secret to the old scrapper and this seemed another minor bit of confirmation.
Waleck gestured.” Have at it then.”
As Mar moved to the door Waleck warned in afterthought, "Be ready to flee. Such sealed rooms as this are said to hold dead air, and tales are told of overly eager men who perished when they rushed in too quickly. Stand away after you have broken the seal and let fresh air purge the foul."
Nodding absently and working to suppress his own childish eagerness, Mar placed his hands above the lock and applied pressure tentatively. The door did not budge. Bunching his shoulders, he pushed more strongly. Again, it refused to move. Bracing his feet, he applied all of his weight to the recalcitrant panel, but still without effect.
Wordlessly, Waleck handed him a long iron bar. Mar jammed the pointed end of the bar into the thin crack between the door and its casing, worked it back and forth till he had a third of a fingerlength of the bar wedged into the crack, and then pulled back against it.
For several long breaths, it appeared that this tactic would prove equally fruitless, but then with cruel slowness the crack began to widen. The glue of centuries of disuse fought Mar's efforts as the door crept inward, but the strain of his back and shoulders proved stronger. Without warning, all resistance failed and the door slammed inward, throwing Mar over backward and pitching the heavy bar into the side of a cracked keystone. As a sudden rush of rotten air boiled outward from the dark opening, Waleck snatched him to his feet and dragged him bodily away. They waited at some distance along the side of the hill until Waleck judged it safe to return, and then edged cautiously forward to peer inside.
The shaft of sunlight admitted by the doorway illuminated the room within poorly, and it took several moments for Mar's eyes to adjust to the gloom. Once they had, however, there was little to see. The room was small, no more than ten paces to a side, and the walls were devoid of other openings. The room was a barrel vault, with a high ceiling formed by heavy arches that rose from the granite cap beam atop walls to a tight central peak. This construction explained the survival of the room; the inherent strength of the design had allowed the room to support the many thousandweights of rubble that rested upon it, despite the settling and ground movements of centuries.
However, that strength had been utterly wasted, for there was no treasure, or anything else for that matter, within the room. Only mortared cracks stared back at them from the walls, and the floor supported naught but a thick layer of fine, powdery dust.
Waleck gave a broad, unconcerned shrug and turned his attention to the door once more. He swung it back to examine the rear face. “All bronze,” he mused. “At least the exterior is. I am certain that this prize will yield fifty weights or better. I might have to hold some of it back to get a good price. Sell it a few weights at a time.”
Mar made no comment, knowing the old man expected none. He turned back to the room. He was habitually suspicious and tended to reject the apparent. He allowed his eyes to roam repeatedly from one side of the dim vault to the other. Thievery had taught him that a first glance always missed something.
"I think there’s something there, Waleck," he said quietly, trying to determine the nature of the small dark blot low against the floor in the far corner.
Waleck, bending down to pick up the sledge, glanced curiously back to the doorway. "Well, fetch it, so that we may see what it is," he encouraged, straightening.
Mar ducked his head and entered, leaving deep, fragile tracks in the dust as he crossed the room. Though the air sighing through the doorway was furnace hot, the interior retained a welcome chill, and he paused after a few steps to enjoy the refreshing respite. His eyes adapted fully as he did so, and it became immediately apparent that his discovery was a small box or chest of some kind. He quickly crossed the room and knelt before it. Fearful that it would crumble at his first touch, he gingerly placed his hands upon it. The wood was smooth and rough textured, but dry to his hands. It proved also hard and firm as he applied pressure to cradle it in his arms. It was no bigger than half an armlength to a side, and light ‑‑ much too light, he realized with a mental shrug, to contain anything of any significance.
As Mar exited the vault, Waleck’s face brightened. Almost reverently, Mar carried the chest into the open and set it down on the approximately level surface of a stone block embedded in the side of the excavation. Waleck joined him, his quick eyes studying the find.
Made of unfinished planks, now blackened with age, some ancient had nailed the chest in the form of a simple box. No joiner had made it; a skilled craftsman would have accomplished a tighter fit. Hand hammered brass strips the color of river bottom mud had been tacked on, almost haphazardly, to reinforce the corners and served as the sole ornamentation. There was no latch or lock visible.
“The dryness has preserved it,” the old man commented almost in awe. “I have never seen its like here or even heard of anyone finding such before. A pity that it is not better made. We might have sold it as a curiosity were it of better quality.”
Waleck grinned. “Still, what might it contain? Open it, Mar. Let us see what treasure you have discovered.”
Calmly, Mar reached down, caught the protruding lip with his fingers, and tipped the lid back.
"Ha! Nothing!" Waleck exclaimed with a chuckle. He sobered abruptly, as if struck by a thought. "But there was this chest ‑‑ there may be something more that we have overlooked. It might pay to examine the room more closely."
Mar moved to accompany him.
Waleck waved him back. "No, there is no need to waste your time as well. I will have a look. You study how we might get the door down and cut into pieces. I would like to have it down by sunset."
Mar settled back without bothering to acknowledge the order as the old man disappeared into the dark opening, but he did not immediately turn to comply with the old man’s instructions. Instead, he let his eyes fall back upon the chest, pondering.
It did seem more than passing strange that this one worthless item should he left in a room built to withstand even the ravages of time. The room and this chest had survived the terrible catastrophe that had ended the city's life so completely, and it was easy to fantasize that someone had prepared the vault for just such an eventually. After all, in the dramas there was always some wise individual with the foresight to escape disaster, preferably with his wealth (but not, necessarily, his kin) intact. Why could not such be the case now?
Because the dramas, Mar’s rational self replied, had nothing to do with reality. It was clear that someone had removed whatever valuables had resided in the strongroom in the far distant past and had left the chest simply because it was not worth carrying off.
But still...
Mar leaned over the chest and allowed his eyes to catalog every seam and splinter, every knothole and highlight, every raised grain and irregular cut of the interior space. He had trained his eye to seek out hidden compartments ‑‑ the rich attempted to secure things in the most obvious of places ‑‑ but he still felt a quick s
urge of delight when he recognized the discrepancy.
The interior depth did not match the exterior dimension, lacking a fourth more than a full fingerlength, and he knew from carrying it that the bottom was not recessed. A false bottom was a common, if somewhat foolish, method of hiding valuables in Khalar; it was a wonder that the tactic had not gone out of fashion, so often had he himself profited from such.
Now, how to open it? He ran his fingers across the top lip, then down inside. Midway down the front, he detected a tiny, rectangular protrusion that gave slightly when his hands passed over it. He pushed this, heard a barely audible metallic CLICK!, and saw the bottom jump fractionally. He pried the thin panel up with his fingernails and lifted it out. Thin slats of wood segregated the revealed space into compartments of various sizes, but all were empty save the largest. This contained a cylinder of brilliantly untarnished brass about two and a half fingerlengths long and one wide. He picked it up.
The cylinder was smooth and unmarked, the burnished brass apparently unsullied by time. So keen was the workmanship, that Mar could not detect a seam along its length, nor hammer or roller marks anywhere upon it. One end was closed and also seamless, but a plain overlapping cap tightly sealed the other. He had his hand upon his knife, with his mind set upon opening the thing, when Waleck abruptly returned.
"I found nothing more ‑‑” the old man began, stopping when his eyes caught sight of the cylinder. "What have you found?" he questioned eagerly.
Mar handed Waleck the cylinder. "Only this. It was hidden beneath a false bottom in the chest. What do you think it is?"
Waleck took the cylinder and turned it slowly in his hands. "Something once valuable, surely, to have been concealed in such a manner, but not necessarily of any value now. It is too light to hold coin." He held it out and indicated the knife in Mar's hand. "Open it and we shall see."
Mar braced the closed end of the cylinder against his thigh and levered at the cap with the point of the knife. With a slight popping sound, it sprung from the cylinder and skipped across the ground. Instantly, pale green smoke began to crawl in lazy tendrils from the opened end.
With a lightning swift movement, Waleck struck the cylinder from Mar's hands and pulled him away, rescuing him from an unsure danger for the second time that afternoon. The smoke, however, dissipated quickly, leaving no odor, and appeared to have been as harmless as had the earlier effluence.
Somewhat irked by the unsolicited and unneeded aid, Mar retrieved the cylinder without waiting for the old scrapper's approval.
It proved to contain a tightly packed roll of paper. Mar slid the crisp, pristine roll from the cylinder, and, battling the curl of the pages, spread it wide. Waleck looked on from a pace away, his eyes burning with a bright intensity.
"There's writing on it,” Mar told the old man.
“Hmmm. What script – can you tell?”
“Well, it looks like Old Formal, but it’s different. The angle of the capitals is stronger and some of the letters have odd embellishments. Some of them even look as if they are written backwards. I can recognize most of the words, but the spelling is off.”
Waleck eyed him uncertainly. "You can read?"
Mar accepted the question without offense. What little Waleck knew of him would not indicate a scholarly bent. Formal education was a prerogative of the Patriarchs and the wealthy, but Mar had had an occasional tutor when he was much younger, a scholar or a sot depending upon the time of day. Later he had consumed every book he had managed to steal. In answer, he flattened the thick sheaf and began to read aloud the lines scrawled in a sloppy, barely legible hand.
"Here be the first,
Be it enough to excite your Thirst?
This is one of thirteen,
And there is much more to be Gleaned.
Say it be so,
That more, of all things Magical, you must Know.
Then find the keys.
Seek ye foremost the Mother of the Seas.
OYRAEBOS
It was not a poem, just a sloppy bit of rhyme without reason. Mar had some difficulty pronouncing the name printed exactingly at the bottom of the page, but Waleck, displaying an impatience that was unlike him, corrected his garbled syllables with a surety born of familiarity.
"What else?" the old man demanded with a strange edge to his voice.
Mar slipped the sheet aside and scanned the next. It was clearly distinct from the cryptic note, being made of a finer bond of paper. The ragged left edge and archaic block printing that covered it testified that it had once been a portion of a larger work, a bound book most like, apparently ripped out in some haste. His eyes traced the print down the page. The style was different, perhaps a much older version of the script of the note.
"READ IT!” Waleck urged stridently.
Mar licked suddenly dry lips once and began, stumbling over unfamiliar words. "Magic: A guidebook to Theory and Techniques ‑‑ there's a dark blot where something, has been marked out ‑‑ Chapter One: General Introduction ‑‑ The Foundation Discipline, ENCHANTMENT..."
An inarticulate outburst from Waleck halted Mar. Turning questioning eyes to the old man, he was astonished to discover the other's normally subdued expression twisted by an agonized look that was an incredible combination of anger and … fear.
With a savage yell, Waleck sprang forward with a speed that Mar would have thought impossible of him and clawed the cylinder and its contents from his grasp. Before Mar could utter a word of protest, the old scrapper spun about, vaulted the edge of the hole, and leapt down the hill, sending a growing wave of soil and stones ahead of him as he skidded on the loose material of the slope. Waleck paid no head to Mar's belated shouts ‑‑ gave no sign, in fact, that he even heard them ‑‑ and broke into a run when he reached the track.
Confounded, Mar stared at the old man's retreating back. His immediate impulse was to chase Waleck, but he hesitated, unsure, and by the time he had finally made up his mind to do so, the old scrapper was already out of sight. Mar decided, after a moment of bemused thought, that it was probably wiser to remain where he was. If the old man wanted the cylinder that badly, let him keep it.
Yet, as he stood there staring pointlessly down the gully, he could not help wondering why Waleck had reacted as he had.
It was not long before it occurred to him that the wasteminer, astonishingly, had gone insane.
THREE
Eighthday, Waning, Second Autumnmoon, 1642 After the Founding of the Empire
Four days after burying her grandmother, Telriy walked down out of the hills, trudging through the dust of the late autumn. The trail was no more than a goat-track; few of the people thereabouts had need of wagons. She reached the town of Gh’emhoa an hour before dusk.
The town, surrounding a sheltered cove, was not large but it squatted on the coastal road and so there was an inn. A pair of potted ferns blocked open the tall double doors of the common room. Telriy stepped through and paused to allow her eyes to adjust to the dim light.
“Gods blessing on your day!” the voice was pleasant, matronly. The same description could be applied to the large woman who offered the greeting. “You can lean your staff in the corner, if you like.”
Telriy’s grip tightened slightly on the browned hickory. “I should hold on to it.”
The woman shrugged. “You’ll be wanting something to eat?”
Telriy swept a swift glance through the room before answering. Gran had beaten care into her. There were six large tables and a head high fireplace with a banked fire. A matched pair of rocking chairs book-ended the fireplace. Doors at the back led into the kitchen and a narrow stairway at left presumably gave access to the rooms. Three men – farmers and not sailors by their dress and speech – chatted over cups at one table. A family of a husband, wife, and three small quiet children were occupied with a meal. Nothing struck Telriy as obviously dangerous.
“Yes,” Telriy answered. “How much is it?”
The woman smiled
a professional welcoming smile. “It’s a brass tupence for the squash and cabbage. Beans and bread are a penny extra. A portion of baked fish goes for ten pence. Water is free and wild grape wine is twenty pence a glass. If all you’ve got is iron pennies, double all the prices. What can I get you?”
“Cabbage and squash and water, please.”
The woman smiled patiently.
Telriy took her small purse from her belt pouch. She opened it and fished out a small brass coin. “This do?”
The woman took the coin and eyeballed it. “Haven’t seen one of these in a while. It’s one of those old Aehrfhaen coins, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I know an old coot who’ll pay a silver for it. Tell you what, you can have anything on the menu, within reason, a room with a door that locks from the inside, and breakfast in the morning. That’s worth most of a silver. What do you say?”
Telriy nodded. The woman’s honesty, though welcome, surprised her. She had planned to sleep in a field as she had the last two nights. She had had no idea what her coins would buy and knew that she had to make her small purse last as long as possible. She could not guess how long her journey would be.
The woman smiled again. Smiles came easy to the innkeeper’s face, but seemed genuine. “Good! Welcome to the Seaside Inn. I’m Syhle. My children and I run the place. Find a seat and I’ll fetch your supper.”
When Syhle returned, she brought two heaping plates and was accompanied by a grown daughter bearing two glasses, assorted silverware, a tray with bread, and a pitcher of water.
Telriy had taken a seat at one of the empty tables nearest to the fireplace and farthest from the other patrons. Syhle adroitly placed one plate before Telriy, landed the other on the opposite side of the table, and then sat down on the bench on that side. With no wasted motion, the daughter set the remainder of the table and departed.
Key to Magic 01 Orphan Page 3