Book 9: Chapter 3
AFTER A HOT BATH and a light dinner, I made my way up to my room and stretched out on my bed with a feeling of profound satisfaction. The day had been busy from start to finish — just like every one of the preceding days, going all the way back to my arrival in Gondreville.
A week had already passed since the end of the spring holiday, but the city didn’t seem to want to let me go. And I still had a number of urgent matters to attend to before leaving. As such, I spent those days running around like a hamster in a wheel, from early morning until late in the evening.
After a series of meetings, conversations, and arguments with the influential citizens of the town, I only had one thing on my mind: to give my overworked brain a little break, and finally catch up on sleep.
Rain was drumming methodically on the windows outside. The embers of a dying fire were still crackling in my fireplace, sending soft shadows flickering up and down the walls. I had already closed my eyes, hoping to pass out as quickly as possible, when suddenly Selina burst into the room.
Of the three sister fairies, the lunari was the only one who had come with me to Gondreville. Ignia and Vaira had remained in the Margraviate, where my people were in much more urgent need of their skills than I was.
“I hope you’re just coming to wish me a good night,” I said quietly, without opening my eyes.
“Trevick’s here,” replied Selina in a worried tone of voice. “They found something.”
My eyes snapped open, and I swung my legs out of the bed and sat bolt upright. The feeling of exhaustion disappeared instantly.
“Where is he?” “Waiting in the stables,” replied Selina. “He refused to come into the house.”
After arming myself, I threw a cloak over my shoulders, then took off with the lunari for the rear courtyard of the mansion, where the stables and other auxiliary structures were located. Sigurd was already there, fully ready for battle.
After walking into the stable, I took a quick look around. The air smelled of straw and horse sweat. I spotted the energy structure of a first-born at the back end of the feeding area, right outside the stall farthest from the entrance. An instant later, a stocky little figure emerged from the shadows. It had a mussed-up, scraggly beard and dark eyes that were set very close together — and judging by the gloomy look on his face, Trevick, the elder of the local clan of brownies, was worried about something.
“You need to see this with your own eyes,” he said, bypassing any greetings or lengthy formalities.
None of the brownies I had met had ever stood out for being particularly tactful. And Trevick was definitely no exception.
“Where?” I asked.
“In the artisans’ quarter,” he replied. “In the attic of an old coach shop. It’ll be easier just to show you. No sense flapping our gums and wasting time.”
* * *
The old “coach shop” was actually a complex of buildings with a courtyard of its own, and it was located close to the city wall. The rain had stopped, leaving the air filled with the smell of chimney smoke and evaporations from the drainage ditches.
Like all the buildings around it, the coach shop had long ago been abandoned. But I didn’t think that state of affairs would last long. In fact, there probably wouldn’t be any vacant buildings left in Gondreville before long. If everything went according to plan, the city would soon become overcrowded, and people would start building outside the fortress walls.
We walked up a narrow staircase into the attic, where two more brownies were waiting for us. One of them nodded toward a door; it was open just a crack, and it led into a neighboring room.
The lunari was still walking along next to me, and suddenly, she winced and wrapped her arms around herself.
I laid a hand on her shoulder, then quietly turned to her and asked:
“Did you feel that too?”
“Yes,” she nodded quickly.
I could see the tension and fear frozen in her eyes.
“But it’s not Death Magic, and it’s not Barrier Magic either,” she added, sounding even more anxious.
She was right. Whatever was behind that door, it was emitting faint emanations of some totally unfamiliar type of magic.
I gave the lunari a gentle squeeze on the shoulder, hoping that would reassure her, then kept moving.
Bending my head a little, I stepped across the threshold and found myself in a small room that was filled with all sorts of old junk. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dried-up bird droppings, mixed with feathers and down.
I could smell blood, along with the heavy odors of rot and damp. And I could see characteristic gray-brown stains on the floor. Dismembered birds were lying in a heap against the opposite wall.
If it hadn’t been for the faint aura of mysterious magic (which was still making my hair stand on end), I might have thought that the brownies had brought me over to check out the leftovers from some small predator’s dinner.
I switched to true vision, and saw two more first-born. One was standing against a wall to my right; the other was sitting on the rafters up above. But it wasn’t them who attracted my attention.
On the far wall of the room, a blood-red magical seal was just about to fade from existence. Only a few tiny morsels of power were still radiating out into the gloom, like dying embers in a fire.
I stepped in closer and looked at the bloody lines on the wall. The seal was complex: circles, woven into a series of fanciful patterns and text. At the center of it all was a mysterious symbol.
I discovered that there were shallow grooves in the brick beneath the blood-red lines. Apparently, while it was active, the magic had eaten into the surface of the wall like a powerful acid.
“Are you familiar with this magic?” I asked, still staring at the seal.
“Yes,” said a quiet (but very confident) voice from above.
I looked up. A short, gangly first-born was sitting on the neighboring rafter. He was wearing an appropriately-short, shapeless cloak made of feathers. It had a hood that covered his head. In the faint light, all I could really see were his narrow eyes, and a pair of thin hands that he was pressing against his chest as if he was clutching some invisible item.
Hm... He definitely wasn’t a brownie...
“This is Ruke.” Trevick introduced the first-born to me. “He’s a Nester. Ruke keeps an eye on the local birds. He came to us and showed us this place today.”
“I thought all the first-born had left Gondreville,” I said.
“So did we,” Trevick shrugged.
“He kill them all... Take their blood...”
The Nester’s voice was quiet and hoarse. He was clearly having difficulty speaking. To me, it seemed like this particular first-born probably hadn’t spoken a human language to anyone for a long time.
“Do you know who did this?” I asked. “Did you see them?”
“I not see.” Ruke’s voice suddenly cracked. He was clearly anxious. “Birds see. They say to Ruke.”
“Was this a human?”
“No.” The Nester started shaking his head furiously from side to side. This made him look even more like one of his avian pets. “Old magic. Exile make it.”
I turned to look at Trevick. The elder brownie just shrugged and rolled his eyes. He was obviously pretty skeptical about what the Nester was saying.
“The Exiles are an old horror story,” he grumbled. “First-born who once took the side of evil during an ancient war. Nobody’s seen one for hundreds of years.”
The Nisse had once mentioned some sort of internecine conflict between the first-born — something that had happened long before the Shadow had made its appearance. And now it seemed that one of the characters from that war had reemerged from oblivion.
I took a step forward.
“Do you know what these runes mean, Ruke?” I pointed to the bloody drawing.
“No,” said the Nester, shaking his head again. “But Ruke know Exile fly from city.”
“The birds told you?”
“Yes,” Ruke replied softly. “Birds.”
Trevick let out a skeptical grunt and turned to me with a derisive expression in his eyes. It seemed like the brownie elder didn’t have a very high opinion of the Nester. This made me recall that Lorin had a similarly dismissive attitude toward them.
“Ruke know nothing more.”
With that, the Nester retreated into the shadows, obviously intending to leave the attic.
“Wait,” I said. “I might need your help.”
The Nester didn’t say anything, but he didn’t leave either.
“I need birds for the post. I can see you know how to talk to them. I — “
“No.” The Nester interrupted me as he flitted easily onto the farthest rafter.
“Listen...” I leaned toward him a little bit.
“No,” he repeated.
With that, he slipped smoothly off his rafter, and before I could say anything else he dissolved into the shadows, with no more than a muffled flap of wings somewhere outside the building.
“Ugh, these damn birdheads,” sighed Trevick. The other brownies chimed in with grunts of agreement.
“What do you think this is?” I asked Trevick.
“Well, maybe he came back to the city too soon,” the elder brownie snapped, before adding: “On the other hand, though... Nesters may be as dim-witted and easily spooked as the birds they tend, but until recently, we used to think aurings were a fairy tale too. And now here I am, talking to one. Whoever this pigeon murderer is, I can tell you for certain that what I’m seeing on the wall in front of me right now is a Blood Magic seal. Despite the fact that that knowledge has long been considered forgotten. The world is changing. And the changes aren’t exactly the kind to cheer me up. That’s what I think about all this, Fox. And I have nothing else to tell you.”
Trevick looked around, then frowned.
“I’m gonna smell like bird shit for a week because of this.”
Without saying goodbye, Trevick turned and walked out of the attic with the rest of the brownies.
After watching him go, I took a small notebook out from behind my belt. Then I took a seat next to the wall and started copying the design of the magical seal onto a blank page. Thanks to the artist’s talent that I had inherited from the original Max Renard (which I still practiced from time to time), the sketch turned out pretty nicely.
Selina and Sigurd were standing there, motionless, behind my back.
“Blood Magic, then,” said the stryker.
“As if we didn’t have enough dark forces to deal with,” I snickered.
The lunari didn’t say a word. I could physically sense how badly she wanted to leave the place.
“Maybe we should postpone our departure?” This wasn’t Sigurd’s first attempt to dissuade me from that particular course of action.
He, like the rest of my comrades-in-arms, was none too happy about the idea of going to Herouxville.
“On the contrary, my friend,” I shook my head as I finished tracing the last symbol onto the page. “Delaying any longer would mean ceding the advantage to the enemy.”
“What about this, though?” Sigurd nodded at the wall.
“Looks like the dark forces aren’t the only ones whose attention we’ve attracted,” I said as I slipped my notebook and charcoal pencil back into the inside pocket of my cloak. “I doubt that this exile, or whoever this actually was, decided to come to the city just to check out the new monument. Whatever the case, we need more information. And that’s why we can’t afford to delay our departure any longer.”
* * *
Our unit had been scheduled to leave Gondreville at noon the following day. But we ended up getting delayed at City Hall. The members of the city council had gathered to bid us farewell, along with several hundred of the townsfolk.
The Vestonian nobility had turned out as well.
“Is your invitation still open, Your Lordship?” A red-haired Viscount asked. This was Carl III’s representative in Gondreville.
“It certainly is, Monsieur!” I replied with a smile. “The gates of Fort de Gris will always be open for His Majesty’s devoted servants.”
In reality, I hadn’t actually invited anybody at all. The nosy Viscount had invited himself. I even had a pretty good guess as to who specifically had chosen this man for his mission: the jester had clearly played a key role in the whole thing.
“Excellent!” The Viscount exclaimed, before adding: “It’s just a shame we won’t be able to see one another there.”
“Alas, His Majesty’s will is my command,” I replied.
“And how long will your campaign last?”
“Sorties into the Shadow are unpredictable,” I replied. “It could be several days; it could be several months. The world beyond the Barrier changes with every flow, and predicting when paths will open, or when new resources will appear, is frankly impossible. But I’m sure you’ll find plenty to occupy your time in my absence. I can’t promise you any glittering balls. But I’m certain that the hunting will be very much to your liking: the forests of my Margraviate are positively teeming with game.”
I couldn’t help but notice that many of the nobles’ eyes lit up after I said this.
“And if anyone cares to try their luck and take a little risk,” I added. “There’s always the chance that you’ll run into a Shadow beast who’s managed to slip the Barrier. I’m sure the esteemed mages from the Amber Guild would give you a good price for any such trophies.”
The mention of Shadow beasts had something of a dampening effect on the ardor of the Viscounts and Barons. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a little smile on Sigurd’s face.
After saying my farewells, I quickly hopped back down the main staircase. I jumped up into Storm’s saddle, straightened my back, and waved out at the crowd who had come to see me off. With that, I turned my mistral toward the gates leading out of the city.
After finally leaving Gondreville, our train moved out toward Shadow Pass, picking up speed gradually as it went. After about three hours, we turned off the Imperial track, took an old road down the side of a hill, and made our way into a small, isolated hamlet.
A big pair of gates slammed shut behind us as soon as we were all inside. I jumped off my horse, stretched out, and took a look around.
The hamlet’s residents definitely hadn’t just been sitting around over the preceding few months: I could sense order and discipline in the place. An old belltower, darkened with age and overgrown with moss, rose up to roughly the height of two full-grown men. I could see fresh beams and brackets in various places, which testified to repairs having been made pretty recently.
Next to a house that looked like a small fortress sat a tiny, almost miniature smithy. I could hear the steady rhythm of hammer blows echoing out from inside.
The soldiers from my escort were already hurrying to find accommodations for the horses. Several of the “townspeople” came out to join them: in actual fact, these were Glenns from some of the units I had sent out to patrol the roads.
Posts like this, located all along the length of the Imperial track, served as temporary bases for our soldiers. Here they could shelter from inclement weather, restock their stores of food, change out their horses, or catch a few days’ rest.
Jacob the Gray’s nephew Thomas over to me. The headman had recommended that I regard Thomas as his substitute whenever the headman himself wasn’t available. And the young man had given a good account of himself during my absence in the Shadow. My seneschal had taken notice of him and immediately put him to work on some important business.
True, Hans had to butt heads with Jacob about this, since the old man was loath to let the young man leave his side for too long. In the end, however, Thomas ended up getting an official promotion. He went from headman’s assistant to Official Assistant to the Margrave’s Seneschal. As such, he was responsible for keeping supplies flowing to our units who were patrolling the Imperial track.
By the way — I ended up making contact with the waterman after all. It turned out that he had helped Jacob the Gray hide Thomas’ sister Helena from the Scarlets. The girl was a witch. It was she, together with the waterman, who had done most of the collecting of Shadow resources from the river. Long story short, my assumption that there was another person involved in the little enterprise turned out to have been correct.
Despite this little bit of truth coming to light, however, there were still quite a few patches of mystery in Jacob the Gray’s background. Neither the lunari nor I had any doubt about one particular detail: Thomas and Helena definitely weren’t his blood relatives at all. I had no intention of pressuring the old man, however, because it seemed highly unlikely that his secrets were the sort that would pose a threat to me.
“Is everything ready?” I asked Thomas as I walked toward one of the houses.
“Yes, Your Lordship,” he replied, nodding at the coach with my seal on the side (and the four mistrals hitched to it) as he did so.
“Good,” I said. “A short rest, then we’ll be on our way.”
The werewolf in charge of the escort unit for our procession caught up with me next to the house, and reported that we weren’t being followed.
Which was excellent news.
I walked into the house to find Gunnar already bustling around the lunch table. He had galloped ahead and arrived about an hour before us. The fact that we were on campaign hadn’t prevented him from setting a table according to all the rules of capital-city etiquette.
A silver basin, full of clean water and accompanied by a bar of herbal soap, was waiting for me on a nightstand at the entrance. After washing up, I wiped my face with a fresh towel and sat down at the table.
A bowl of thin-sliced vegetables and diced meat, drenched in a thick, rich, caramel-brown sauce, appeared before me on the table. I took a deep breath in, savoring the delicate aromas:
“I’m afraid I won’t get to have another lunch like this for quite some time.”
At this, Gunnar leaned in toward me.
“Your Lordship, I could easily — “
“Don’t even start,” I cut him off. “You must remain at Fort de Gris and wait patiently for your master to return from the Shadow.”
Sigurd was sitting opposite me, devouring his lunch with gusto. He didn’t say a word the entire time. He knew that there was no point arguing with me.
My return to Herouxville would be a secret one. Basic equipment and weapons had already been prepared. And I wouldn’t be riding one of my expensive mistrals, either — I’d be riding a common nag. Lorin had selected the perfect horse: an animal that wouldn’t let me down in terms of performance, but also wouldn’t attract attention along the way.
It was vital that the King should think I was still tucked away in my Margraviate, carrying out his orders. That was why it wasn’t Maximillian de Valier and his entourage who were heading back to the capital: it was a certain Jack Todd, a lone mercenary who hailed from the Foggy Isles.
* * *
I pulled the reins to bring Tycho to a stop. Up ahead, near the track, a small caravan of several wagons had pulled off to stop for the night.
The sun was already setting. Bursts of laughter, quiet music, and the neighing of horses were echoing through the evening air.
The wagons had been drawn up into a semicircle, leaving room for a fire in the middle. Judging by their brightly-colored tents, I had happened upon a camp of traveling artists.
Two young women were busy around a large kettle that was suspended over a fire. My nose picked up the enchanting smell of meat stew and baked turnips.
A little farther off, a tall woman in a flowery shawl was untying knots in a big pile of rags (at least I think that’s what it was). Someone was singing a happy tune somewhere next to the wagons. And there were children running to and fro throughout that same area, ducking and diving happily through the wheels and tongues of the parked wagons.
I climbed down off my horse and patted her on the neck. For just a moment, I stopped and stared at the whole candid scene. It was another sort of life — simple and understandable. For that brief moment, it felt like I had gone back into my own past.
Nobody was paying me any attention. I carefully unbuckled a backpack from my saddle. And no sooner did I do so than I heard Selina’s quiet voice.
“Finally... I’m sick of this dusty bag.”
“Well, we passed a fork in the road two hours ago,” I laughed. “You can still catch up to our train and head to the Margraviate in comfort.”
“No,” came the reply from the backpack. “The elders of my Clan won’t talk to you if I’m not there.”
I just chuckled and shook my head.
Then, grabbing Tycho by the reins and slipping the backpack carefully up onto my shoulder, I started walking forward at a leisurely pace.
I had already been spotted. A short, gray-haired man was already coming to talk to me. The tall woman in the flowery shawl was walking next to him, as was a big, black-bearded man who, from a distance, had initially looked more like a huge hunk of rock.
We finally came to a stop a few yards away from one another. They took a careful look at me. Their eyes lingered on my armaments (they were basic, but they were weapons nonetheless), as well as the fox tail on my right shoulder.
As expected, their greeting was pretty guarded. But we were on the Imperial track, which was being patrolled by werewolves and Glenns. These patrol units had already swept aside any marauders.
Eventually, the gray-haired old man began to speak in a courteous tone of voice:
“I’m Maître Brisot. These are my people. You may have heard of our theater troupe before. We’ve performed for the Margrave de Valier himself! And with whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”
I smiled. Interesting, I thought... When did they perform for me?
“Jack Todd,” I replied, in my best Islander accent. “Returning home after being wounded. I spotted your wagon circle here, and I’d rather not spend the night on my own.”
Then, slapping the bag at my side, I added:
“I’m not coming empty-handed. I have something to add to the pot.”
The travelers exchanged a glance. Then gray-haired Maître Brisot turned to face me again. The guardedness in his eyes had relaxed a little bit.
“We honor the Commandments of the Winds and Roads! And one of them says...”
He cleared his throat, then broke into a melodramatic quotation:
“To the traveler who has sought out your fire in the endless black of the night, thou shalt give the warmth of thy fire and a morsel of thy bread. That the spark of kindness may burn in the hearts of men, and the God of Wanderers not avert his blessed face. Be our guest, Jack Todd.”