Magic's Genesis- The Grey

by Rosaire Bushey

  The threat of snow did not disappoint and as it began to fall, a wind from the north pushed the flakes at their sides. As the day progressed, so did the wind until the last of the leaves were blown from the trees and tiny pebbles of ice and dirt combined with the snow to lash at their faces forcing them to push onward with their left eyes closed and leaning heavily to the left to stay upright. Even the horses were slowed by the weight of the wind.

  On an impulse Lydria conjured her rock shield and was mildly surprised when she found it protected her from the wind and its assorted small projectiles as well. She was quickly enveloped in a quiet warmth. The wind, no longer reached her ears and the sudden lack of ice made her face feel warm. Her reverie was interrupted by Krieger who trotted up beside her and leaned his face inside her shield so that he could whisper to her.

  “If you are trying to show the world that there is something different about you other than your blue collar, I couldn’t think of a better way to do it. The wind and snow collide with your shield as if there were a wall by your side. If you were to stand still, there would be a drift at your feet in minutes.”

  Reluctantly, Lydria let the wind and ice hammer back at her face. Before burying her head in her traveling cloak, she turned to look at Krieger and smiled.

  Krieger smiled back.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Lydria’s party spent the first night outside in the open and then pushed through the following day and into the early evening before arriving at another cabin. Inside they made a fire and put a large iron pot over a tripod and soon, a rich venison stew filled the small space with its aroma. Haustis dipped a finger to taste the rich gravy and Lydria watched as she closed her eyes and smiled, drawing envious looks of anticipation from Haidrea and Krieger who had just entered from tending the horses.

  Lydria reached out her thoughts to Kimi but the bobcat wasn’t nearby. It worried her when she couldn’t be with him and she wondered if parents often felt the same way about their children. He was clever, Lydria knew, and could take care of himself and his thick mottled orange fur would keep him as warm outside as they were inside.

  Haustis motioned for Lydria to help Haidrea lay out their things to dry and busied herself collecting the bowls and wooden spoons sitting on a small shelf under a thin, high window. The window’s position, Lydria noted, allowed the fading light of day to enter the room and a similar window on the opposite wall caught the rising sun. But the windows were set high and were too narrow for any but a child to squirm through. Seeing that this cabin too was bristling with weapons, she wondered if anyone would be foolish enough to attempt robbery.

  When Krieger settled by the fire they ate and Haustis asked them to join her to seek out the spirits’ advice. Despite the fine weed and pipes, no new omen came to them and Haustis accepted that her earlier vision of peril might be the last she would see.

  “Tomorrow we will enter the town early. The gatekeepers are known to me and will not hinder our passage and we will go straight to the castle. Lydria, it may be best that you keep a scarf around your neck and a veil over your eyes while we travel. You and your father are not unknown and while news of your father’s untimely death was met with grief in Bayside, the lack of news concerning your whereabouts has led to speculation and gossip.”

  “Gossip?”

  “People are strange, you know this. Anything they don’t know for a fact they will gladly entertain any number of foolish stories to satisfy their curiosity. As I have heard, you have been trapped by foreigners and hauled off to the southern deserts; you’ve been kidnapped by the Eifen to teach them our language; you’ve run off with Lem and are having his children…”

  “Lem?” Haidrea smiled behind her hand and finally laughed out loud and even Lydria was forced to join in.

  “When we are there, what is our plan?” Haustis asked, ever mindful that being inside a castle was akin to being in a prison for her.

  “I have an audience with the king before midday,” Krieger said. How he had managed to contrive an audience after being so long away was curious, but a quick rocking motion of Haustis’ head cautioned Lydria against pursuing the question they both longed to have answered.

  Krieger continued, “We must make the king see that Wynter cannot be trusted and has a powerful weapon at his disposal which could endanger the entire kingdom. The trick is that we can’t mention what this weapon is, we must be vague and yet still provide enough information to make the situation undeniable. Your meeting with Wynter, Lydria, will be important. The facts, as you are to relay to the king, are that Wynter ambushed your party, and as a result all were slain, and a great furrow has been torn from the wilderness. You do not need to say Wynter was responsible, but you should imply he was.”

  “You leave out a great many details, Krieger.” Lydria felt as if she’d somehow been asked to swindle an old lady out of the contents of her larder.

  “The key, Lydria, is that you must not lie. There are men in the king’s court who can spot a liar; I, myself, am quite adept at this skill and any could be trained if they knew only the clues. But we need not lie, we just need to present the facts in such a way as they will result in the king doing what we want – and making him feel like he is the one who wants it.”

  “What is our job during this charade,” asked Haustis, motioning with a finger between her and Haidrea who sat straight and quiet as ever, watching and listening to the machinations being built around them.

  “You are here as representatives of the Eifen. The king has some respect for your people regardless of what many believe. Some do not believe the Eifen exist, but he knows, and he has been made to appreciate your bravery and ferocity as warriors. He also understands Eifynar lies somewhere in the forests along his northern border. Further, he likely knows a member of your people gives aide to Wynter. He will take a great interest in the Eifen.”

  “Will he not be angered by such treachery,” Haidrea’s voice was hard and she barely opened her mouth to utter the short sentence. Her brother had been very close to her, Lydria knew, and his betrayal Haidrea took upon herself. “Will the king not look at Eifynar and see it as a place that gives aid to an enemy?”

  “No, he will not.” Krieger’s tone was certain which gave some comfort to Lydria but seemed not to have the same effect with her friend. Krieger noticed it as well. “Treachery and betrayal is not unknown among either of our peoples, Haidrea. In fact, it is far more common amongst our own than it is among your people. But your father’s disavowal of Nethyal has traveled far and word has almost certainly reached the castle and the king. One thing Ahlric understands very well is that for the leader of any people to publicly disavow a member of his own kingdom is a serious matter. For that disavowal to be made against his own son -- that is practically unheard of. Your father has too much to lose to not make amends.”

  Haustis reached out and gripped Haidrea’s left hand with her right. Haidrea did not flinch from the affection, but Lydria saw she gripped the older woman’s hand back. It was a moment Lydria did not try to join. As close as she had become with them, there was something about this moment she knew needed to be between Haidrea and her grandmother.

  “How long will we stay?” Lydria asked, hoping for an answer that would see them back in the cabin the next evening.

  “We must stay until the king makes a decision. It could come swiftly, it could take days. Sometimes the king makes his own mind and issues orders to be followed immediately. Other times, he delays and seeks the advice of his ministers. In most normal events, I find the second way the best course of action. But we are not dealing with normal events. I will urge quick action. Still, we may be some days in the castle and when we leave it again, we may be among hundreds who travel north.”

  Lydria looked to the others. Haidrea and Haustis had let go of each other’s hands and where Lydria would normally expect to see a woman in Haidrea’s position wiping away tears, she saw only a steely resolve. She had seen it before in soldiers under her father
’s command, usually after they had watched a comrade die and accepted the fate of the dead man as their own. Men like that often became impetuous in battle and performed acts that many called heroic and courageous. They led desperate charges and fought against long odds. Cargile had always told his daughter that these men sought death as the only sure way to ease their suffering minds and hearts. Calling them heroes eased the minds and hearts of those who wanted to live. For her part, Lydria hoped that Haidrea was stronger than those men.

  THIRTY-THREE

  For all Krieger’s confidence that getting into Bayside would be easy, it turned out they were treated no differently than any other traveler or trader who came through the gates. He admitted he had miscalculated the number of people who arrived for market and so the four of them tried to blend in with those waiting for the eastern gate to open. Only when they arrived at the gate did Krieger open his cloak slightly to show a pin with Ahlric’s insignia that picked him out as a member of the royal household. From that point, they moved swiftly.

  The early morning streets were quiet, and the rising sun did little to clean them. They traveled in the middle of the road to avoid the splash from the chamber pots being emptied from the second-floor windows over-hanging the street. Small brick ditches were built into the sides of the cobbled street, but little care was taken to ensure the contents of pots landed there. Even when they did, the splash often found its way to those who traveled too close to the road’s edge.

  The main road from the gate, Lydria knew, was one of two cobbled roads in the city. It crossed from the east gate to the west gate overlooking the bay after which the city was named. A second road ran from the castle, at the northernmost point of the city to the south gate, both converging at the center in a large square cobbled space where traders and farmers gathered each day. In the square criers could be heard remarking on the news, or delivering royal decrees, or pronouncing the schedule for the administration of justice. At this time of the morning, however, the only noises were the shuffle of feet along the dew-slick stones, and the grumbling of people who weren’t fast enough to evade the intermittent rain of human waste.

  Market stalls were being set up along the intersection of the two roads and noise from the sellers was creeping up as if following the sun. Slightly to the north of the square to the east, there was some gallows off the main road so as not to interfere with the view of the castle, or from the castle. Because of this, royals who wished to witness an execution, came to the square which resulted in a robust day for traders.

  The castle itself had been under construction of some kind for as long as Lydria could remember. Every day hundreds of men pushed and rolled enormous granite blocks through the streets on logs that were moved from back to front by men and horses. The stones came from quarries to the south and the location of the town, Cargile had told her, was the result of the location of the quarry. It was a straight line from the quarry to the castle – and the quarry doubled as a defensive measure. Masons pulled stone from the quarry carefully, digging the massive trench in such a way as to force any army from the south to squeeze through a gap between the quarry and lake on one side, or the quarry and a small series of rugged hills on the other.

  As Lydria entered the center of town, the group turned north past the gallows. Lydria told Haidrea what she knew of the building as she seemed in awe of its size. “The foundations have been dug very deep and rest on the bedrock below the dirt. Granite and stone are used to build the foundations and walls you see.”

  “Is it all stone inside?”

  “I’ve never been in the castle. My father had, though, and he said it was a very fine place, and that it would be a bloody job to make your way inside unasked.”

  “Your father was correct,” Krieger joined. “The men who laid down the castle so many years ago, used all their knowledge of defense and built all of it into this space. What you can’t see from here is the amount of space there is inside the hills to the north of the castle. The occupants of this castle could withstand a siege for years.”

  “Is this building not finished?” Haidrea asked, never taking her eyes from the walls which grew larger with every step.

  “It is finished enough to stand fast against an enemy, but it would not yet endure long against a determined foe with time and men to spare. The thing about castles, Haidrea, is that they are built to withstand all known weapons, but it takes several generations of men to build a castle. It takes far less time to devise a better weapon. And we will never have enough time to make a building defensible against the likes of Wynter.”

  With the name of Wynter still lingering in the air to remind them of the seriousness of their task, they continued in silence, and were motioned through one guard point and then a second on the far end of a bridge that connected the castle to the path. The bridge was a thick wooden structure designed to hold the weight of wagons and stones from years before when the foundation had been set down. It would be nearly impossible to throw down such a bridge, thought Lydria. The space under the bridge was deep and cut out of the ground with straight steep sides that would be nearly impossible to climb. This was the first pit that provided stones for the castle, Krieger told them. At the bottom were jagged rocks embedded in the earth. There was some water at the bottom as well, but the ravine was a long way from becoming a moat, if that was indeed the intention of the space.

  After crossing the bridge and moving under the raised portcullis, Krieger pointed out the defenses in the stone archway they passed under before continuing through another raised portcullis to the courtyard beyond. The courtyard was vast, with stables and houses, farriers, blacksmiths, bakers and other buildings built along the inside of the wall. Seeing Krieger, a boy ran out from a stable and took the horses allowing the three women, and Krieger to enter the castle proper through a small, guarded tunnel to the side. Lydria looked to Haustis who was pale and looked nauseous as she moved deeper into an unnatural world. Seeing Lydria’s concern, however, the older woman smiled and nodded that she was fine.

  Inside the castle it was, as Krieger had anticipated, cold. They made their way, single-file up a narrow winding staircase that seemed to go on for an unnaturally long time before arriving at a platform with a locked door. Using the small light from a narrow hole in the wall above them, Krieger opened the door with a nimbleness that suggested he could have done it as easily blindfolded. The doorway emptied into another landing with a stone wall to the left and front and a locked door to the right. Through this door more stairs curled upwards in the opposite direction and Krieger motioned for them to remain silent. This time, the climb was quick and through one more door at the top, they entered a large chamber where Krieger told them they could drop their gear and rest on one of the many cushioned chairs and benches.

  The room had three doorways including the stairwell they had just entered, which from inside, looked like a solid stone wall. Lydria marveled at the skill that could make a door disappear so completely. Krieger saw Lydria examining the wall and showed her a stone which she could only reach with help, that could be pushed to activate a latch allowing the door to open. The other two entries were sealed with heavy wooden doors reinforced with iron bands.

  “Welcome to my home,” he said. “Through that door is the castle and through the other you will find a sleeping area. You are welcome to make yourselves at home here while we wait. I will have food sent up and prepare for our visit to the king.”

  Lydria and Haidrea began to put their things away, but Haustis motioned for them to stop. “We do not know what to expect here. Carry your belongings with you always. The spirits warn of danger and I think we should listen carefully until at least we are out of this place.”

  A banging on the door startled them all, including Krieger. On the other side a voice rang out as he began to unlatch and open the door. “Lord Krieger, you and your guests are requested to join the king in his quarters at once.”

  “Thank you, Lyle,” Krieger said to the
red-faced boy on the other side who had obviously just run up all the steps. “Sorry, milord,” the boy said, “but the guards told the king you had entered the castle walls and he’s in ever such a hurry to see you. It appears there’s mischief afoot up north.”

  Sending the boy on his way, Krieger looked at Lydria. “Remember, not a word other than what we discussed.” He motioned for the women to precede him out of his room and he smiled at Haustis as he saw they carried all their small belongings with them. “You would do well in court, Haustis.”

  “Not for one hundred of your tubs of weed,” she replied and walked stiffly past him.

  As they walked down the hall toward the king’s chambers, Lyle intercepted them again. “Milord, the king has bidden you come to the throne room.” After delivering his message the youngster sped off down the halls again. Krieger stopped for a moment and raised his eyebrow before continuing.

  “Is there something wrong with the throne room?” Lydria asked.

  “No. Probably not. However, it is an odd place to meet. Normally only the council meets in the throne room. I requested a private audience and I would hope this will not be a council meeting. Keep your scarf on, Lydria, we are almost there.”

  Rounding another corner and down a quick flight of wide, straight stairs, Krieger paused briefly before a pair of guards watching over a set of double doors. Judging by the guards’ shiny metal halberds and ceremonial armor, it was evident the room they guarded was Ahlric’s throne room. With a quick look to Haidrea, Haustis and finally Lydria, Krieger nodded to the guards who swiftly and smoothly opened the doors. On the other side, as if he knew they were coming, a herald announced the arrival of his Lordship Krieger, King’s Counselor, Surveyor of the Royal Territories, and Captain Commander of the King’s Emissaries.