There was no shortage from which to choose.
Except there weren’t quite as many as he expected.
And the battle was over far sooner than he anticipated.
###
A few hours later, Tyrcamber met with Duke Hulderic and the others for a council of war.
Castle Grimnir had returned to its lord, and all the duchy of Valstrasia had been liberated. The banners of the House of Grimnir, blue with the sigil of a red horse’s head upon them, flew from the ramparts once more. The castle’s garrison of goblins and ogres had been hunted down and slain, and as far as Tyrcamber knew, there was not a single goblin, ogre, or muridach left within the lands of Valstrasia.
Which concerned him a great deal.
There ought to have been more.
And there was no sign of the Signifier, the dark elven lord who had tried to rule Valstrasia as his own princedom.
“Damned if I know,” said Sir Olivier de Falconberg, Knight of the Order of the Griffin and one of Tyrcamber’s four best friends.
Olivier was somewhere in his late thirties or early forties, with a bushy brown beard well on its way to turning gray and a face tanned and lined from long hours under the harsh light of the sky fire. Like many Knights of the Griffin, he wore leather armor and carried a bow, making it easier for his mount to bear him aloft into battle. Tyrcamber had met him years ago, during Duke Faramund Berengar’s campaign against the xiatami, and Olivier’s bluff good humor and mocking tongue had remained unchanged during all the bloodshed and battle since.
Olivier’s mount sat next to him, calmly eating a dead goblin. Nakhrakh and his gnolls had claimed the slain of the battlefield and were even now eating the dead to recover their strength. Hulderic, ever practical, did not mind, since that meant his castle would soon be cleansed of the enemy dead. But none of Nakhrakh’s gnolls had dared challenge Olivier’s mount over her choice of meal. Thunder Cloud was a griffin, with a leonine body the size of an ox and the head and wings of a great eagle. Her beak was sharper than any razor, and her claws were just as deadly.
“I’ve flown for twenty miles in every direction, my lords,” said Olivier, speaking Frankish with the accents of the Imperial Free City of Falconberg, “and there’s no sign of the Signifier, his dragon, or his remaining troops.”
Hulderic grunted. “He must have fled across the River Bellex. Maybe he thinks to fortify himself within the forests of Carnost, or to flee back to the Goblin Wastes and Urd Mythruin.”
“That’s what I thought as well, my lord,” said Olivier. “But the Signifier still has at least fifteen hundred goblins amd five hundred ogres with him. A force that size couldn’t swim across the River Bellex quickly, and they would need rafts to cross the river in haste. There’s no sign of them anywhere, no trace they crossed the river. It’s like they just vanished.”
“A dark elf, a dragon, and two thousand of his soldiers do not simply vanish,” said Hulderic. He looked annoyed, but he knew better than to insult Olivier. Without the aid of the five Imperial Orders, Hulderic never would have been able to reconquer Valstrasia.
“I agree, my lord,” said Olivier. “I’ve been scouting for the Order for twenty years, and with Thunder Cloud for ten of those.” He gave the griffin’s muscled flank an affectionate pat. Thunder Cloud, her attention on the goblin viscera she was consuming, did not deign to notice. “There’s no way I could have missed two thousand enemy soldiers. And a dragon? Cloud here can smell them. Nothing smells like a dragon, and Cloud doesn’t like dragons. She’d have smelled him.”
“Then where did they go?” said Angaric.
“Damned if I know,” said Olivier again.
“We had better find out,” said Tyrcamber. He looked at the Duke. “My lord, I suggest we send mounted patrols up and down the river for at least twenty miles both north and south. Once Thunder Cloud has finished digesting her meal, she and Sir Olivier can take to the air again.” He took a deep breath. “And I can take my…other form and search from the air as well.”
“Most likely, the Signifier realized he did not have the forces to overcome us,” said Daniel, “and he retreated across the river with whatever he could salvage.”
“I agree,” said Tyrcamber. “Except he has not shown himself to be a competent commander during this campaign. Everything seemed to indicate that he was making a last stand here, that he thought he could repulse us. Perhaps he was cleverer than we thought, and he decided to escape while he still could.”
“Or,” said Angaric, “the weaselly bastard has some trick up his sleeve.”
“That is my fear,” said Tyrcamber. “If he does, I should like to be ready for it. I…”
Right about then, something strange happened.
Ever since the siege of Sinderost, ever since his…change, Tyrcamber’s senses had been different. He could feel the magic burning inside of him, could feel the power of the Malison within his veins. One of the Seven Spells that Rilmael had taught mankind, the Sense spell, allowed its user to detect the presence of magical forces. Ever since his change, Tyrcamber had been constantly able to sense the ebb and flow of magic around him, as if he held a low-level Sense spell at all times.
And now he felt the power flowing through the courtyard.
He took a step back in alarm and drew Kyathar, the crystalline blade bursting into flames at once.
“What is it?” said Hulderic. “Are we under attack?”
“I sense no foes nearby,” said Daniel, whose mind magic let him detect the presence of living foes.
“That’s not it,” said Tyrcamber. “There’s some sort of magical spell nearby. I’m not sure…”
A bolt of azure lightning seemed to spring out of nowhere and strike the ground between the central keep and the curtain wall.
The lightning bolt ripped open a hole in the air.
Tyrcamber could think of no other way to describe it.
It looked like a ragged, square-shaped hole, maybe about fifteen feet wide and fifteen feet high. Ghostly blue fire danced around the edges of the rift. Through it, Tyrcamber saw…
It was so strange he didn’t know what to make of it.
He saw a dusty road leading to a tall stone wall crowned with battlements. There was a closed gate in the wall, sealed with a pair of heavy double doors of oak and iron. In the distance, past the wall, Tyrcamber could just make out the churning waves of the sea or perhaps a large lake.
It was almost like looking through an open doorway.
Except the sky on the other side of the doorway was wrong.
It was a flat shade of pale blue. Tyrcamber had never seen anything like it. Puffy white clouds floated along the blue sky. Those were common enough. Tyrcamber had seen some floating overhead yesterday, stark against the sky fire, though the light of the sky fire had made them glow an ominous orange. An old memory stirred in his head, something he hadn’t believed when he had heard it the first time. Humans were not native to this world and had found their way here from another place called Old Earth. There had been no sky fire on Old Earth, one of his teachers had claimed, and the sky there had been blue during the day and black at night.
That was such a bizarre thought that Tyrcamber had disbelieved it, but through the strange rift, he could see a blue sky.
Was the rift a doorway to Old Earth?
“What the bloody hell is that?” said Hulderic. He had drawn his sword and was pointing it at the rift, and Tyrcamber felt the faint ripple of power as the Duke held magic ready to strike.
“I do not know,” said Sir Daniel, casting the Sense spell. Tyrcamber likewise worked that spell. He could feel the currents of magic around him without really trying, but he still could detect more by concentrating with the Sense spell. “I have never seen or sensed anything like it before.”
“Nor have I,” said Olivier, “and I’ve flown and fought from one end of the Empire to the others.”
“I might have,” said Tyrcamber.
They all looked at him.
“At least, something like it,” he conceded.
“When?” said Hulderic.
“During the siege of Sinderost,” said Tyrcamber. “The Guardian Rilmael used a spell to transport us closer to the fighting.” He did not want to tell the others about Guardian’s Isle. Rilmael wanted the place kept secret, and the memory was a painful one for Tyrcamber. “The travel magic…it felt similar to this.”
“Travel magic?” said Hulderic. “The Guardian created this thing?”
Tyrcamber wished that Rilmael were here now. Perhaps the Guardian would know what the rift really was.
“I doubt it,” said Tyrcamber. “I’ve never seen him do anything like that.” Though that was not saying all that much. Tyrcamber had known Rilmael for ten years, yet the cloak elf had been the Guardian for nearly fifteen millennia.
“Travel magic,” said Daniel, his voice growing thoughtful. “I wonder…”
“Well, out with it, man,” said Hulderic. “This is no time to be bashful.”
“I suspect this might be a magical gate of some kind,” said Daniel.
“A gate?” said Hulderic, taken aback.
“A portal that allows swift passage from one place to another,” said Daniel.
“You remember the histories, my lord Duke,” said Angaric. “The first Emperor Roland was once Count Roland, a knight in the service of the great king Charlemagne upon Old Earth. Roland’s forces were attacked in the mountains, and during the fighting, a magical gate appeared and drew them to this world. They were our ancestors.”
“I know the history, Sir Angaric,” said Hulderic. “But no one has seen one of those gates since.”
“But they must occur naturally,” said Angaric. “Else how did our ancestors come to this world? Perhaps this is another such gate.”
“A natural gate,” said Tyrcamber. “Or maybe the Signifier created it.”
They all looked at him.
“It makes sense,” said Tyrcamber. “How did the Signifier escape? Perhaps he opened one of these gates and fled to safety.”
“If he did that,” said Hulderic, “then what is to stop him from creating another, strolling into the castle, and butchering us all as we sleep? Or what will keep him from opening a gate within the walls of Sinderost and seizing the Imperial capital for himself?”
No one said anything for a moment. The gate, or rift, or the hole in the air, whatever the hell it was, did nothing, and nothing emerged from it.
“We need to find out,” said Tyrcamber. He turned to one of the nearby serjeants. “Bring my horse.” The man bowed and ran off.
“What?” said Angaric. “You’re not going through that thing, are you?”
“It seems that someone must,” said Tyrcamber.
“If that gate closes,” said Daniel, “you could be caught on the other side.”
“I could,” said Tyrcamber, “but the gate seems stable, does it not? The flow of power…I expect it to remain in place for several days before it collapses.”
“It could be dangerous on the other side of the gate,” said Daniel. “Foes might await.”
“Aye,” said Tyrcamber. “And if enemies do await us, who better to face them than me?”
No one had a good answer for that.
“I’ve an idea,” said Olivier. “If you go through the gate, me and Thunder Cloud will follow in a few moments, and we’ll take to the air and look around.” He pointed at the rift. “Someone had to have built that stone wall we see there, so there must be people living there, aye?”
“Or goblins,” said Angaric.
“Or worse things,” said Hulderic.
“We need to know more,” said Tyrcamber. “If the Signifier wants to flee to some new world…well, we might as well let him, if we can close the gates behind him.” Though the thought of allowing the Signifier to find new kindreds to enslave left a sour taste in Tyrcamber’s mouth. “But if he can open these gates at will, we need to know now. Unless anyone has a better plan, I will ride through the gate and look around, and Sir Olivier can follow in a few moments.”
No one, alas, had any better ideas.
“God be with you, Sir Tyrcamber,” said Hulderic as the serjeant returned with a horse. “I will summon Nakhrakh and some of his warriors and hold them ready to attack. If we see you get into trouble, or if Sir Olivier returns with a report of danger, I will send the gnolls to your aid.”
“Thank you,” said Tyrcamber, swinging into the saddle of his horse. He did not bother to point out that would put the gnoll mercenaries at risk while leaving Hulderic’s troops intact. “Sir Olivier, follow me in five minutes.”
Tyrcamber donned his helmet, gave his horse a gentle tap with his heels, and the animal started forward. In some ways, horses had better senses than humans, but his mount seemed indifferent to the gate. That was probably a good sign.
At least, Tyrcamber hoped that it was a good sign.
He rode into the rift.
***
Chapter 16: Golden Gaze
Tyrcamber felt a moment of strange, whirling disorientation, almost like vertigo. His horse had only taken a few steps through the gate, yet it felt as if he had traveled much, much farther. Tyrcamber had sensed something similar when Rilmael had used his magic to transport them to Guardian’s Isle.
His horse must have felt something similar because the animal let out a distressed snort and began to pick up speed. Tyrcamber tugged on the reins with one hand and stroked the beast’s neck with the other. The horse came to an abrupt stop, quivering, and stamped a hoof a few times, but did not panic and bolt.
Tyrcamber looked around, trying to take in his surroundings.
It looked so…normal, and yet so strange at the same time.
He was on a dusty road that led to the gates of what looked like a mid-sized town. On either side of the town, the sea rose and fell in swelling waves, the scent of salt heavy in the air, and Tyrcamber supposed that the town occupied a peninsula. Likely one side of the peninsula or another had access to a decent harbor. The town’s wall was built of stone, and it looked strong enough, though with no watch towers for siege engines.
Tyrcamber looked in the other direction and saw the plumes of smoke. He recognized the sight of burning barns and villages.
Suddenly he had a good idea of where the Signifier and his dragon might have gone.
The town could have been one of the countless towns somewhere along the coast of the Empire. Granted, the architecture seemed…older, perhaps even archaic, the way some of the oldest human-built structures in Sinderost looked, with more brick and clay tile than the men of the Frankish Empire typically used in their houses. But it wasn’t that different.
The sky, though, was unbearably strange.
Tyrcamber gazed at it, trying to make sense of the sight. As he had noted from the courtyard of Castle Grimnir, the sky was a solid shade of blue. Dozens of puffy white clouds floated overhead, one of them obscuring a brilliant sphere of light so bright that Tyrcamber could not look at it directly. That sphere of light, whatever it was, illuminated everything that Tyrcamber could see. He remembered what Rilmael had told him once, how worlds revolved around enormous balls of blazing fire called stars.
The sun! That was it. The ball of light had to be this world’s sun. The scriptures spoke of the sun and the moon, though Tyrcamber had never seen them. Rilmael had claimed that their own world had a sun, though it was hidden by the light of the sky fire. Since Tyrcamber had never seen it, he had never given it much thought.
He wondered why his world had sky fire, and this one did not. Rilmael had said that the sky fire was an aspect of the Malison, though he hadn’t explained further, and Tyrcamber had not been curious enough to press the matter.
Tyrcamber turned his horse, trying to decide how to proceed, and saw the men watching him from the ramparts.
They were humans, that much was plain. They held bows and crossbows and watched him with wary eyes. Soldiers, then. Some of the men wore chain mai
l and blue tabards adorned with the badge of a silver shield. The men-at-arms of the lord of the town, Tyrcamber supposed. Some of the men wore a motley assortment of armor, leather and chain mail mixed together. Likely the town’s militia or watchmen, called out to face the threat of whatever had set those fires to the…north, was that it? Tyrcamber vaguely recalled that the scriptures said the sun rose in the east and set in the west, much the same way the sky fire began to darken from the harsh yellow-orange of day to the cool blue of night in the west. That meant the smoke was coming from the north. Unless the sun was setting instead of rising, in which case the smoke was coming from the south.
Tyrcamber realized that the men on the walls were pointing their weapons in his direction. Well, he could hardly blame them for that. They had just seen a golden-armored horseman emerge from a hole in the air. In their place, Tyrcamber would have been suspicious as well.
He sheathed his sword and turned his horse, steering with his knees, and lifted his hands to show that he was holding no weapons.
“Greetings!” he roared in his loudest voice, speaking the Frankish tongue. “I am Tyrcamber Rigamond, Knight of the Empire, and I wish to speak with the lord of this town!”
There was no answer. Belatedly Tyrcamber wondered if the men of the town even spoke Frankish.
###
Ridmark stared at the golden-armored knight.
“That armor looks elven,” said Ridmark. Was that an elf on the horse? Perhaps another one of the Liberated? The Guardian Rhodruthain had mentioned that some of the nations of the Liberated had traveled to other worlds to escape the dark elves and the urdmordar. Perhaps some of the Liberated had ended up on the world of the goblins and the dragons.
The knight turned his horse, looking around. Ridmark could not see the knight’s expression beneath the winged helm, but Ridmark’s impression was of a man who was baffled by what he saw.
Dragontiarna: Knights Page 23