I’d already had enough shocks to my system today, but this one threw me for yet another loop. It was nice to have the position of Dame, but I hadn’t planned on having to act as the landlord or general manager for fifty families. Yet again, I hadn’t thought things through all the way, and the medieval customs of Andeluvia were continuing to trip me up. And to top it off, if I had to manage land two day’s ride away and still attend court, that meant I’d be signing on for a commute that would make even the most hardened resident of Los Angeles wince!
“Might I offer a counterproposal, Sire?” I asked urgently. The King nodded, so I went on. “I really don’t have a lot of experience or interest in, ah, ruling over a bunch of people. If you want me to serve you in my capacity as a forensic investigator, it would be best if I remained on site. Here, at your palace.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You really wish to have no grounds, no estate of your own?”
“That is up to you, your Majesty, but if I may…I’d really appreciate it if you simply granted me a tower. There’s this one room I already use a lot.”
“Yes, the one with the corner turret. I’ve heard the pages discussing the exotic visitors you host there.” Fitzwilliam considered for a moment. “It will come with unique challenges, that much is sure. Is this really what you wish?”
“That’s what I wish, Sire.”
“Then I will craft a pronouncement making it so,” he stated, and I heard the unmistakable tone of dismissal creeping into the King’s voice. “While I do not expect you to attend all of the gatherings of the royal court, I want you here for the next couple of meetings. I will send the Lord Pursuivant to you tomorrow morning to brief you on your duties there and henceforth.”
“I look forward to learning how your court works,” I said humbly, as I got to my feet.
“Oh, it’s not difficult. But you are a near constant topic as of late, and the nobles are restless. Your presence shall either assuage their concerns or draw the poison to the surface.”
Well, that gave me the warm and fuzzies inside.
I cleared my throat as I asked, “If I may, Sire, why does my name keep coming up as a topic? My mission to the griffins is past.”
“Your mission is in the past, yes. But your assertions continue to roil the court. And I must admit, I am holding on to my skepticism about these ‘creatures of the dark’ that you claim are on the move.”
Fitzwilliam’s admission floored me. The griffins could close their eyes, at least until recently. Yervan’s disappearing dragon tracks could call Sirrahon’s presence into question. But the King had witnessed the evil of the demonic Old Man of the Mountain, and had even helped me destroy it.
“You are skeptical? But why, your Majesty?”
King Fitzwilliam gave me a strange, melancholy look.
“Because I choose to view the sun as rising, not setting, Dame Chrissie. As I have just admitted to you, I do not yet command the love, fear, or respect of my most powerful lords. I have only their obedience, and even that is given grudgingly. At its core, this kingdom is perilously weak. If we are soon to be under siege by forces of the dark, then we shall surely fall.”
“Sire…”
“If you truly love Andeluvia, then bring proof before my throne and my lords that there are things moving out beyond the shadows,” he entreated me, as I moved to go. “Elsewise…enjoy your Damehood as you may. If you are right, there may not be much time left to do so.”
Chapter Twelve
On television, forensics offices are staffed by crime scene investigators who somehow always manage to be perfectly coiffed and made up. They get the luxury of working on one crime at a time for the duration of a fifty-minute show. And they all employ the absolute latest in huge, touch-sensitive digital displays to chart out witnesses, evidence, and their latest theories as to who was actually the guilty snake-in-the-grass.
Nobody mentions that those displays are pretty damned expensive for a publically funded M.E.’s office to purchase. Since these departments pinch pennies until they squeal, I never got to work on a touch-screen. The best the OME in Los Angeles ever provided me was a cork board that looked as if it had been gnawed on by a group of teething chipmunks.
Here in Andeluvia, cork was something used to seal up bottles, not to hold pushpins. So I was down to using chalk on a big slate board. At least that was available in quantity. Galen’s laboratory was a quarter of the way around the palace perimeter, but he’d had his slate boards pre-mounted on a wheeled frame so he could move them between his lab and his study. It was child’s play – or centaur’s play, to be precise – for him to wheel over a board from his section of the palace to my turret room.
I found to my delight that Galen’s board was also height adjustable, with a series of slides and pegs that allowed us to lower it from centaur height to human height. When that chore was taken care of, the wizard stood back and chatted idly with Liam and Shaw while I scratched out a series of lines and diagrams with a piece of chalk.
“The way the incident was conveyed to me, Dayna threatened to sever the man’s testicles,” Galen intoned, referring to my incident with Sir Varad. “It made quite the impression.”
I was shocked, but I didn’t let it show. Apparently rumors involving ‘Dame Chrissie’ didn’t move ‘as fast as a galloping horse.’ They moved at warp speed.
“Really?” Liam asked, surprised. “I heard that Dayna chopped off the knight’s manhood and tossed it out a window.”
That made my face flush. I forced myself to continue writing on the board, though it was becoming decidedly difficult to concentrate.
“Thou art delirious, Fayleene!” Shaw broke in. “Thy sources are misinformed!”
“My ‘sources’, as you put it, are searching the palace’s rose garden as we speak for something to re-attach to Varad’s…stump.”
“‘Tis a ridiculous rumor,” Shaw insisted.
“Thanks, big guy,” I said gratefully.
“She doth know better,” Shaw continued. “A wound to one’s manhood ‘tis terrible indeed, but not uniformly fatal. Dayna t’would have maimed or gutted her opponent, in proper griffin fashion.”
“True, true,” Liam said, nodding.
“One cannot contest the point,” Galen agreed.
I put my head in my hands and let out a groan.
“Guys,” I said. “Let’s not put too much stock in these rumors, okay? The fact is, I used Sir Ivor’s help to throw a scare into a drunk.”
“Alas, that is a far less interesting story,” Galen sighed. “I shall be sure to take pains to point out the correct sequence of events to any who ask or repeat the rumor.”
That made me pause for a moment. It occurred to me that, given my treatment at the palace since I’d first come here, a little speculative fear might go a long way. A very long, long way.
“Actually,” I mused, “Let’s allow things to stand. I’m truly curious how they’re going to be interpreted by the fifth or sixth iteration.”
“Very well.”
“Now that we’re done with the sideshows,” I announced, “We need to discuss some of the things that we’ve been dealing with over the last couple of months. Does anyone have to be anywhere this evening?”
Shaw timidly raised his paw. “Nay, Dayna, but heavy thinking requires that both the mind and the stomach have something to gnaw upon.”
No sooner had the griffin mentioned food than my stomach growled an assenting ‘Aye!’ to that thought. Between breakfast and now, I’d had a single sip of wine. My stomach couldn’t have handled more, between my investiture, confronting the owls, confronting Sir Varad, and reporting to the King.
“Dinner is a great idea,” I said. “Galen, maybe you could ask one of the pages?”
“I could,” Galen considered. “But since you are now a member of the royal house, your request might carry more weight, therefore lending more speed.”
“I don’t know about that. I mean, the King did grant me this tower as
my ‘estate’, but I–”
“He did?” The centaur looked pleased. “Not only are we practically neighbors, you definitely have household privileges.”
The wizard trotted over to the doors, threw them open, and bellowed for one of the pages. To my surprise, one of the robin’s egg blue boys came at a run. He almost tripped over his shoes as he bowed to me.
“What is your wish, Dame Chrissie?” he asked timidly.
“I need dinner for myself and my three noble guests,” I ordered. “The royal kitchens should have something for a centaur and a human, but I want a trough of your best greens for the Protector of the Forest. And a large quantity of meat for a griffin from the Air Cavalry, and it doesn’t have to be cooked. Get it here fast, we’re starving and my griffin friend might just choose to eat you instead.”
The boy looked horrified and ran off.
Liam chuckled and said under his breath, “Welcome to my world.”
Galen shut the doors behind us as I went back to the board. At the very top I’d written ‘THE OLD WAR’ in all-capital letters. Below that, I’d drawn lines to several boxes: MAGNUS, ROCKY, WYETH, SIRRAHON, ‘HIM’, PENDANT, CODEX, DESTRY, THEA, BELLADONNA.
“Grimshaw,” I said tentatively. “We may need to mention the events connected with a specific reeve. If that will discomfort you, we can discuss it at another time.”
Shaw’s easy jocularity disappeared in an instant. “Dost thou worry about causing me pain? I am a griffin, and the names thou refers to do not exist in mine own kind’s history.”
I nodded, my emotions a jumble inside as I did so. Liam and Galen looked grim, but they had nothing to add. Sighing, I turned and pointed to the words at the very top of the board.
“Right before we gave our report on the Reykajar Aerie, Shaw identified a pattern he saw in the major events since I’ve arrived in your world,” I began. “Good King Benedict’s murder nearly led to war between humans and centaurs. The death of Quinval, Liam’s predecessor, was a precursor to the destruction of the Fayleene woods. The goading and guidance of Hollyhock led to the near-annihilation of the griffin aerie. As Shaw himself put it: There is a hand of darkness moving pieces on the board. The resumption of this War is a goal. I believe each of these boxes represents a piece.”
“Rekindling this Old War canst not be the end goal,” Shaw objected. “War itself ‘tis but the use of combat to force the decision of an issue.”
“Yes, and that’s just one of the things that has been bothering me.” I jabbed a finger at the first couple of boxes. “We were lucky enough to take Rocky and Magnus off the board before they could do more harm. But Sirrahon and Wyeth worry me. They’re both still out there.”
“They are indeed,” Liam muttered. “Both haunt my dreams. Yet that is all we have seen of them.”
“Which means we can’t monitor or locate them easily,” I said. “And I’m completely at a loss about how to find the mysterious ‘him’ that Hollyhock mentioned. Before she died, Holly pressed a pendant into my palm. I still keep it, but I’ve asked Galen to examine it six ways from Sunday for clues, or any dirty tricks that might be hidden inside.”
“Negative on both counts,” Galen put in. “The pendant appears to be naught but a simple silver alloy.”
“The Codex is an even bigger source of frustration for me. You all know that demons and dragons were stated as being part of the coalition that made up the losing side, the so-called ‘Creatures of the Dark’. And that the griffins and Fayleene were part of the coalition of the ‘Creatures of the Light’. There are several other peoples mentioned on both sides in there. But even with the texts I borrowed from Zeno, I haven’t been able to translate any of the runes, save one: the pouquelaye. Destry’s people were on the side of the Light, and I believe that his mind warping capabilities were either built-in or bred for.”
“That would explain his people’s distress over his inability to function at night,” Galen said. “Those abilities are very potent. And very dangerous.”
“Tell me about it. However, he’s far too young to know much about the Old War, or any of the powers behind it. I suppose that we could try to contact Destry’s dam. But the ethereals aren’t too happy with me, since I couldn’t figure out a way to cure him.”
“I still would like to speak with him about his powers,” Galen mused. “Have you seen him since the day at the beach?”
“Only once. The day after, he visited me in Los Angeles, where I told him of my suspicions. Since then…well, a couple of days ago I got a postcard from Tristan Da Cunha. That’s a remote island in the South Atlantic, thousands of miles from where I live. All he said was that we were in his thoughts, he was doing fine, and that he was continuing to travel the world, observing and learning.”
In a way, Destry’s postcard raised yet more questions in my mind. Was he searching for his purpose in life beyond being a ‘weapon’, or something more? Who or what was he observing around the globe?
A knock at the door interrupted my impromptu lecture, but I was more than happy to see a group of pages bearing food enter, once Galen opened the door. They carefully kept out of Shaw’s reach as they placed platters, silverware, and pitchers of drink on the table and floor.
Galen and I were brought a gigantic roast chicken to share between us, along with a platter of grilled turnips the size of baseballs, a tureen of fragrant greens in a cream sauce, and a bright yellow cake studded with golden slices of quince fruit.
Fitzwilliam’s grocers must have had a run on poultry, as they brought an even larger pair of turkeys, both fire-blackened and dripping juice. Shaw pounced on the birds, tearing into his food with such gusto that it made Liam tug his trencher of greens and fall berries a couple of paces away. I nudged his bowl of water over as well, then helped myself to a cup of the sweet white wine that accompanied most Andeluvian meals.
Conversation ground to a halt as I joined in the carnage. Flavor-wise, Andeluvian fare tasted a little basic to my palate. Food simply was ‘meaty’, ‘salty’ or ‘sweet’, but it did stick to your ribs, and on days like this, I had zero complaints.
Shaw, not surprisingly, finished first. Using his stout black beak, he crunched through the hollow bones of the poultry, devouring each bird in only a handful of bites. He sighed contentedly, waiting until I’d finished two separate servings of dinner and a slice of the cake to ask a question.
“Dayna, ‘tis a marvelous thing, this board of yours. But all we have discussed…does it not simply tell us what we do not, nay, what we cannot know? T’would it be impertinent to ask what we can do against these forces of shadow?”
“It would be very pertinent,” I said, as I looked back up at the names on the board. “I have an idea. And that’s what I want to talk about next.”
Chapter Thirteen
I picked up my cup of wine and went back up to the board, tapping my finger on the next-to-last name on the board: THEA.
“Right now, I believe that Albess Thea may be the answer to the question of ‘what do we do next’ in our struggle. Which makes it all the more interesting that the Noctua are pushing so hard to keep us from her.”
“What makes you think that the Albess is the key piece in the design?” Liam asked.
“Because she has been pivotal in almost everything that has happened between all of us.” I gestured towards Liam. “I’m almost certain that she was the one who told you, at the lowest point in your life, not to despair. That your life was precious and had meaning.”
An amazed look crept onto Liam’s deer face. “If so, I am in her debt.”
“Then I am also indebted,” Galen breathed. “I never thought on it before…but when I arrived to become the court wizard under Benedict, even the Good King could not shield me from the cruel invective and insults from those here who mistrust centaurs. I had decided to return home, to face the shame of my father and my family. But it was the Albess who convinced me to stay on.”
“T’was the Albess that gave me the advice t
hat led to the defeat of the Old Man of the Mountain,” Shaw added.
“And it was the Albess who did two things for me,” I said. “First, she was the one who gave me the clues to solve Benedict’s murder. And second…she was the one who convinced Parliament to bring a forensic investigator to your world to begin with. In fact…”
I paused. Then my brain did one of its weird clicks.
“If there is a hand of darkness moving pieces on the board…” I breathed, “Then who’s to say that there isn’t a hand of light doing the same thing?”
“What do you mean, Dayna?” Liam asked.
“I mean…that I want Thea back. I think we need to get Thea back.” I tapped my chin with a finger as I looked up at the last name on my board. “Belladonna may have said as much.”
“The High Elder?” Shaw sputtered. “But thou hast dealt with her, thou knowest that her thoughts stray to madness and lunacy!”
“Actually, I don’t think she’s mad. Yes, she’s eccentric. And ridiculously paranoid. But I don’t think she’s a few peas short of a casserole anymore. When I spoke with her, after the battle in the Lair of the Elders? She sounded suspiciously sane to me.”
“You think her insanity is an act?” Galen inquired. “A put-on for those who might usurp her authority?”
“I won’t say it’s all an act…but it might be the best she can do to cope with the signals different parts of her brain are sending her.” I thought about how Belladonna kept her leonine fur scrupulously clean, but let her avian feathers go without preening. “I think that she’s been driven half-mad by prophetic visions. Visions which are a hell of a lot more compelling than anything I’ve gotten from the soothsayer’s guild.”
My wizard friend let out a horsey snort. “I doubt that we can find any guidance in the prophecies of a half-mad griffin reeve.”
“Even if they are true,” Liam argued, “Prophecy by nature is hard to pin down. It is said that by the time one understands it, it is far too late to fight it.”
A Perjury of Owls Page 7