by Ember Lane
“Well, we have Jin—he’s over there, a dark elf by all accounts, but more brooding dark rather than drow-dark. Accomplished at the bow, staff, sword, daggers, brawling, pretty much most things I can think of—not sure on his magic, but reckon there’s some there, somewhere.”
Griselda nodded. “Sounds qualified, and definitely drow-brooding, he’s got all the auras. Next? We got a caster?”
“Belzarra Mistprowler, she’s—”
“I know who she is,” Griselda said, openmouthed. “Huge choice, great choice. So we’re sorted on the casting.”
“Then there’s Swift—an apachalant. He’s fast, has high stealth, almost to rogue quality, but not quite. Bow, blades, can’t say he’s bad with a sword, but doesn’t look the type.”
“Okay, so we can work on a strategy for him. So, that’s me, you, Belzarra, Jin, and Swift. Who’s the sixth and seventh? I heard Cronis is only allowed to observe, which is weird.”
“Very,” agreed Allaise. “Especially when you know who set the quest. It appears his mistress is protecting her favorite son.”
Lincoln wasn’t overly happy with that explanation. He preferred weird. Weird covered everything without having to delve too deep. The idea that Poleyna might be protecting Cronis lent him the thought that clearing Starellion might actually be too dangerous for the old wizard. In which case, they had zero chance of survival.
“Just weird,” he muttered. “Flip—The Prince of the Five Isles is the sixth.”
Griselda’s mouth dropped open, but she soon recovered. “Not exactly a team player, but a mighty recruit. The seventh?” Griselda pressed.
Lincoln briefly wondered what Griselda’s temper was like.
“Crags Trollhunter—a gnome ranger.”
Griselda took the news well. She looked calm. Lincoln had almost forgotten about the hatred dwarves and gnomes held for each other. Crags, after all, got on well with Ozmic and Grimble; even Thumptwist had warmed to the little fella—after chasing him out of the forge the first few times. But Griselda…well…she’d been underground for an age.
Lincoln chanced another glance. Nope, still mulling.
Then she growled. It was a deep, unearthly growl that vibrated through Lincoln’s ribcage—newly healed—which shuddered down from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. Her eyes narrowed, her cute little nose wrinkled, and her thin lips peeled back to reveal her pearly white teeth, all set in a grimace.
“Gnome!” her voice rang out, but somehow settled on the table like a heavy cloud and kept hitting Lincoln in the gut. “Gnome!” she growled again. “You want me to fight on the same side as a gnome!”
Lincoln tried to think of a suitable reply. He discounted, If you don’t mind, almost right away, and, Just a little one, was probably making light of a fairly sticky situation. He almost went with, Why, should we take two? But decided not to inflame the situation. Instead, he poured petrol on it and tossed a torch on top.
“My team, my choices. You were the only one forced on me. The gnome stays, he’s been nothing but good to me, he’s in my house—House Mandrake—for what it's worth, and he was another one of Poleyna’s conditions.”
Griselda screamed at the top of her voice, a lung-busting volley that nearly shattered the windows.
“Wow!” she purred. “My knees have gone a bit weak. You’re all man, Lincoln Hart.”
“Eh?”
“Forced on you!” Griselda’s tone flipped. “What do you mean, forced on you?” She thumped the table, and stared him out.
Talk about mixed signals…
“Well, I was going to have Ozmic or Grimble, one of them, or maybe it was Dunaric; either way, somewhere along the line…your name came up.” He was babbling, definitely babbling. It had all been going so well.
“And those three would have been happy to accompany the gnome?”
“I, I, I believe so,” Lincoln said, searching the room for his earlier courage, fairly sure it must still be in the tavern somewhere, but worried it might have scurried back to Sanctuary.
“You do realize gnomes and dwarves are technically at war? That we have a kill-on-sight order. You do know that, don’t you?”
Lincoln smiled. It held on his face for a few seconds, but then it followed his courage and vanished. “But it’s a war that’s unlikely to ever happen, so it’s pretty pointless.”
He wondered if he’d stolen Alexa’s mouth, hers had a habit of running off and saying silly things at the wrong time.
“Why?” Griselda growled, clearly in control of hers.
“Well, female dwarves, and correct me if I’m wrong, it must vary from world to world, aren’t the female dwarves the fighters, and don’t they live deep underground?”
“Yes, what’s your point. Spit it out.”
“Well,” Lincoln said, draining his mug and signaling another. “I don’t know a vast amount about gnomes, apart from the fact they’re widely hated, but aren’t they stuck in a chaos portal?”
“They are.”
“Do they like the underground?”
She laughed at that. “No more than about ten feet deep if they’re burrowers.”
“So, your paths aren’t likely to cross…ever…” Lincoln added.
“Hardly.”
“So, what’s the point?”
He waited with baited breath, wondering if he’d done enough. Griselda mulled it over. “But they have crossed. They’ve crossed now!” And she smashed her fist down on the table.
“For a common cause, a noble cause,” Lincoln told her. “I built Sanctuary as a refuge for all races. If war breaks out, we will defend everyone here. If the dwarves favor us with their axes, they can protect its bowels. I founded this place for the weak, the feeble, the sick, and the just plain scared. It is a place where true warriors can defend them, not murder and pillage.” Lincoln was fired up now, he was as much explaining it all to himself as Griselda, but as it spilled out, he felt his surety coming back. “I don’t care what race, what sex, what age those pledges are, if they are The House of Mandrake, if they pledge to uphold my values, all are welcome.”
“And if they say they’ll fight, but won’t pledge to your house?” Griselda asked, her words like daggers.
Lincoln mulled over that, but briefly. His outburst had cleared his mind of the fog that politics had cast over his original ideas. He realized it now. House Mandrake was the key, and the key was House Mandrake. He pulled out his sack and hovered his hand over it, summoning the key he’d been given as a reward for opening Darwainic’s tomb.
“I know what this is now,” he said, his voice hushed, the tavern, silent. “This is the key to Starellion. This is the key to peace in Irydia. House Mandrake is that peace. It is a set of laws that we will lay down. This key has seven wards. Seven of us will fight for Starellion. I hope seven will emerge, and then us seven will forge the law—and we will call the law The Wards of Mandrake. There will be seven of them, as there are seven veils to Alexa’s quest. So yes, I require all who venture into Starellion to swear to this dream, to this purpose, to House Mandrake.”
You could hear a pin drop in the tavern. Lincoln looked around. No one moved.
Me and my mouth! he thought, but he felt good. A weight had cleared from his mind, and he had clarity of purpose back. Yet he knew that her rejection would weaken him, weaken his ideal, his vision, Joan’s dream, but he had to stand.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jin drop to one knee, his head bowed.
Jin has applied to join your guild, The House of Mandrake.
Lincoln let slip a relieved smile. Of any in the tavern, he was the least likely.
You have approved Jin. Jin is now part of your guild.
You have promoted Jin to officer. Jin now has the power to recruit members.
“House Mandrake!” the dark elf shouted and then raised his mug.
Elleren has applied to join your guild, The House of Mandrake.
Allaise has applied to join your guild, The House
of Mandrake.
Pete has applied to join your guild, The House of Mandrake.
Dunaric has applied to join your guild, The House of Mandrake.
Ardreth has applied to join your guild, The House of Mandrake.
Gillian has applied to join your guild, The House of Mandrake.
Thumptwist has applied to join your guild, the House of Mandrake.
The notifications kept coming. Jin started approving folks, Lincoln promoted Allaise and Pete. He saw his guild numbers rise as word spread outside. But then it petered out, and stopped, and Lincoln knew that his speech had only touched those that already lived within Joan’s Creek.
He turned to Allaise. “It was a good dream. It was a pure dream, maybe this land isn’t ready for it yet.”
Griselda has applied to join your guild, The House of Mandrake.
He looked at the dwarf, the celebrity dwarf—the dwarven champion, and he accepted her application by just mouthing, thank you. She stood and walked over to the bar. Pete filled her mug and she went out onto the stoop.
“House Mandrake,” she cried, and Lincoln knew he had the beginnings of his army.
A flurry of notifications came in, but he promoted Griselda and let her approve each one. By the end of the afternoon, House Mandrake’s ranks had swollen to over five hundred. By the time word spread to Sanctuary, they were over four figures, and word had only just started to filter underground.
“You will have difficulty keeping that secret now,” Jin told him.
9
Preparation
The morning mists were still slumbering low under the fading moon when Lincoln woke Allaise, and they left their hut. He quickly instructed Bethe on her day’s chores, but that consisted of a small cottage-building program up in the hills for dwarven visitors, and another upgrade to the tavern and feasting halls…for dwarven visitors. They picked their way through the comatose bodies of the numerous dwarves that hadn’t managed to find shelter, or hadn’t bothered to seek it, after the previous day’s celebrations had morphed from out of hand to pure chaos.
He’d last seen Griselda getting carried away by Pete. The giant had become terribly possessive about her—she wasn’t quite the hardnose she made out to be, and turned into a fairly soppy drunk who bemoaned her fame and the fact that she was unlovable because of it. Griselda appeared to be able to do many things, but hold her ale like a true dwarf was not one of them. Last he’d seen of them, she was passed out in Jack’s workshop, and Pete was sitting guard.
It had been a strange turn of events. He certainly hadn’t set out to ask the dwarves to join his house, but it seemed that the emotion of Griselda’s arrival had ripped through a lot of sensibilities. He also wondered if he wouldn’t get some kind of blow back from the dwarven hierarchy. Surely their king wouldn’t take too kindly to a good portion of them swearing fealty to a builder.
Jin had told him that Darwainic had never united the races of Mandrake, and that his house had been one of pure bloods only, humans only. Lincoln couldn’t ever remember the dark elf being so positive about something, but he thought that all the elves and even Forgarth would swear in the end.
“It’s because you’re pure—your motives—they’re plain to see. If you can get a ruling council that holds those qualities, you’ve got it figured out.”
Lincoln had his own ideas about that. He wanted a council that didn’t want to rule—that hated the idea of it. He wanted citizens that regulated themselves and didn’t have to have a council to tell them what to do. What he really wanted was to uncover the secret of utopia—how to stop folks being just plain nasty to each other, but he knew that was where his ideal world would fall apart.
Most everyone could be an ass at some point every day. He just had to work out how to—reduce the assery.
Allaise and Lincoln crossed the little bridge over Joan Creek’s river and headed toward Sanctuary. No one was around yet, and only the glint of copper in the moonlight told him that some bots were tending the fields. Lincoln was in no hurry; that wasn’t why he’d gotten up early. He had his day’s mission, and he didn’t want to get bogged down with everyone else’s problems. Allaise had quickly dashed over to Pete and popped a note in his hand. It told the half-giant that they would meet Griselda’s train as it arrived at Sanctuary’s town hall at dusk. Lincoln scoffed; Yep, Griselda was set to make another entrance.
If ever there was a turning point in his game, his ambition, he knew Griselda’s arrival would vie for the most significant slot. There was little chance of him keeping this place secret now, and he already feared for its future. It wasn’t like he could ask Griselda and her army to come up from the bowels of the earth and fight with them. From what she’d told him, some hadn’t seen the sunlight for an age. Even Griselda, who apparently regularly visited the surface dwarves, had to hide behind a veil during the day.
“So, do you think that whole Mandrake thing was a bit of a mistake?” Lincoln asked Allaise as they reached the edge of the farms and started hiking through the grasslands.
“All things are a risk. Even if word gets back to Muscat, he’s still got to breech the forest—and you have Kobane and Apachalant there now. He has to muster his forces, march north, and leave his southern flank weaker. In the face of Sutech Charm’s boats prowling the Ethmiall Carafore, without word from Addison, how can he risk that?”
“So, what would you do?”
“If I were to hear about a castle suddenly springing up in my kingdom? Apart from wondering how it happened? Best guess, I’d send an emissary, and find out what’s going on. Get information, see if we have a friend or foe, but without that person swearing fealty, then I’d assume the worst. If Muscat can’t spare the forces, one of his banners will. The promise of this place as a prize will make many an unimportant lord’s mouth water.”
“So we have a bit of time then,” Lincoln surmised.
“Soldiers are not as brave as legend makes out, nor lords as foolish. Besides, it’d take weeks for an emissary to get from Brokenford to here and back. More if we kill the first few.”
He took her hand, and they walked through the dawn, his mind awash with dread scenarios. Passing through the tunnel, they marched straight over the bridge and on to the top of Starellion. Its fields looked more mystical than usual, mist laying in their hollows, kissing their crops and swirling through lofty orchards. The edge had been cleared and a stone walkway exposed, which ran the length of what was plainly a battlement. For the first time he saw Starellion for what it was, or rather what it could be. He saw the birth of a castle from the ruins of a legend.
Walking up to the beacon tower, Lincoln spotted Shrimp and another apachalant clearing more of the stone battlement around it.
“Ho, Shrimp!” he called, and before the cry had completely left his mouth, the young lad was in front of him. Shrimp feinted a punch to Lincoln’s gut.
“You here to spar?” he said, dancing around, shadowboxing him.
“Improving my skills, definitely, just not those ones.”
“Atreman gone,” Shrimp pointed out. “Someone’s gotta keep your training up. We got time?”
Lincoln shook his head. “Divination.”
“Well.” Shrimp pointed to his eyes. “There’s only one way off here, and that’s that bridge over there. I’m a gonna keep my eye out, and the minute you start heading toward it, you’ll see me waitin’, staff in hand.” Shrimp pounded his fists together. “Just so you know.” And he winked. “Now, gotta get clearing this; Swift wants it fifty yards back—wants some trebs and ballys up here, and stacks of boulders and bolts.”
“Fifty yards?”
“Comes to a battle, folks’ll need somewhere to eat, to grab a few winks.”
Lincoln summoned Echo. The sudden appearance of the city guide made Shrimp jump back. “Whoa! That’s some kind of witchery! I’ll never get used to them.”
“Echo, can you spare Shrimp a few bots?”
Echo looked the apachalant up and down. �
�Provided we can come to some arrangement with your steward, we can. His instructions are very random, and I find myself ignoring most. Now you're back, can we…demote him?”
Lincoln laughed. He’d heard Finequill called many things, random probably suited him the most. Though he could be a little pompous, the ceratog certainly dithered. It was as though his ideas came to him, and before he’d had a chance to see it through, he’d had a better one.
“We can put some shackles on him,” Lincoln told Echo.
“In that case, I’ll use the bots that are building Mrs. Finequill’s baths.”
Six bots appeared instantly. Shrimp jumped off the battlements onto the scrub and retreated a dozen yards, creeping back as he got used to them being there.
“Get over your fear, they’re yours to use as you see fit. They’ll work day and night. Echo, what level’s the beacon tower, still 3?”
“It hasn’t been upgraded.”
“Then divert another couple of bots to upgrade it all the way.”
“All the way?”
“To 10.”
Lincoln inspected the newly cleared walkway. Though he’d often walked this exact path, though he’d stared out over the forest numerous times, he’d never considered the possibility that part of the castle would have been buried under years of neglect. Now, looking behind, he could clearly see the hump of accumulated mud running back toward the mountain. It was going to be quite the job to move it all.
He grabbed Allaise’s hand and pulled her toward the beacon tower. Climbing up, he saw Sollen the apachalant looking out, looking south.
“Anything?” Lincoln asked, feeling nervous for the first time, knowing it was now when and not if they would come.