Banner of the Damned (62 page)

Pelis was picking up things Marnda had flung aside in her haste. She straightened up. “We’re safe. Enough.”

Anhar sat on the bed Lasva never got to sleep in, her hands clasped tightly. “What do you mean? Is Princess Lasva in danger?”

Pelis sighed. “It’s happened just as Lnand said it might. Only it happened sooner than anyone thought. Anyone except old Marnda. As if she could scold that king into proper behavior!”

“What do you mean?” Anhar looked skeptical. “Prince Ivandred has to go back to that place we passed. That I understand. But at least the princess doesn’t have to be in the middle of the fighting. So why is she in danger?”

I saw it then. “Lasva is a…” I groped for the right word.

“A hostage,” Pelis said.

Anhar’s eyes widened. “A hostage? I don’t understand.”

“Because the king sees love as a weakness, and Ivandred is in love. So the king can use her to control his son,” Pelis said, hands warding Thorn Gate.

N

How could I laugh at the jarlan for not knowing what the rosebud mat was for, when I could not identify the purpose of the room we’d been brought to? There was no bed or bath, yet it did not look like any parlor I’d ever seen. There was only the plain, low wood table surrounded by cushions. On the table lay a slate, chalk, some ink, and a rough-looking straw-colored paper. Until I’d entered this castle, I’d never considered how uncomfortable it would be not to know a room’s purpose. I did not know where to position myself.

“This tapestry is very beautiful,” the jarlan said, entering from a side room. “I will look at those rose shades all through winter, and be reminded of summer. However, your mistress only had time to give it to me and not to instruct any of us in the care of such delicate weaving. It seems too fragile to hang long, so does it remain up for a season? And when I store it away, should it be laid in with attar of roses?” She turned expectantly from me to Anhar to Pelis.

Anhar looked down, hands tightly pressed in The Peace. Pelis said, “Anything you wish, my lady, ah, Ingrid-Jarlan.”

The jarlan uttered a short laugh, then said, “Let us try another trail.” She turned to me. “Someone said you are a scribe. In this kingdom, scribes make copies. Why would a princess bring a scribe across the continent, unless she thought she was coming to a land of illiterates? Or do scribes serve different purposes in Colend?”

My guise now gone, I outlined scribe duties. She listened with the same narrow-eyed detachment I’d seen in Ivandred when he looked at the maps, then said, “If I had to define what I am hearing, and what I am not hearing, it seems that you are in fact the princess’s first runner.”

Not certain how to answer, I made The Peace.

“And so, Seneschal Marend, or Marnd—”

“Marnda.”

“Marnda usurped your place because her function changed?” The jarlan leaned forward. “Or because your queen did not retain her?”

I hesitated, reluctant to suggest that Marnda thought Ingrid-Jarlan’s brother, the Marloven king, the primary danger to Lasva. And Marnda’s action had been so odd, so desperate, as if she could defend anyone! She’d sounded like a madwoman, or one bespelled. How to put any of that into words, especially in a language I knew so ill?

The jarlan drummed her fingers on the table, then said, “When the seneschal sees how big Choreid Dhelerei is, she will probably not want to be a runner. I expect you will be summoned soon, and all duties and perquisites will be straightened out. Before that time, perhaps you might employ yourself learning more of our language and custom. The archive is directly above us.” She pointed toward the ceiling. “I will have someone open the vents.” This was a clear dismissal, so I bowed and left as she turned to the dressers. “Now, for you two. Until I receive orders, I can put you to work, which will define
your
duties and perquisites while you are among us, but first, what exactly is it that ‘dressers’ do…?”

The archive had once been part of a private suite for Ivandred’s ancestors, at the front of the castle overlooking the main court. The doors were beautifully carved, animals in flight: raptors and horses.

The first door opened into a scrupulously clean chamber with that atmosphere of emptiness that suggested it was seldom used. The air was still and frigid. An old-fashioned bed framed with more wood carvings of horses was the only piece of furniture. I understood that the bed, alone in that bare room, was significant, but not how. Beyond it was another set of tall carved doors, and here I found the archive in a long
room with high windows, below which shelves were set. Between these were narrow spaces where shields hung. The floor was bare stone, with two low tables in the center, the legs oddly shaped, like raptor legs, with talon feet. Flat cushions lay all around the tables.

I was surprised to find this archive at least as large as any in Colend. Were these hand-bound books and scrolls all about nothing but horses and war? I felt the first breath of heat from hidden vents. Sliding my hands inside the sleeves of my woolen robe, I walked along the shelves, which were not labeled as ours were. Small sigils along the top of each bookshelf indicated types: a lily above Twelve Towers’ copies of royal records; a scroll for plays—none newer than a couple of centuries; a poppy for records of the lands along Halia’s north shore. The adjacent wall turned out to be made up entirely of very old records of the Venn.

I decided to start with what I knew, which was
An Examination of Greatness
, my reasoning being that I was so familiar with the Sartoran translation, having rendered it in Kifelian, that if I read the original, I might master their language the faster. So I stopped at the crown sigil, which turned out to be extremely old records from the Iascan days. Most of it was written by either the once-royal family Cassadas, or their scribes. These were all previous to Elgar the Fox and his contemporaries. I did not find anything on Adamas Dei of the Black Sword, though I recalled references to his having lived somewhere in this region, or one nearby.

The bells clanged discordantly: midday. The entire morning was gone, and nothing to show for it but dust on my cold fingers.

I ran downstairs and spotted a pair of runners vanishing at the other end of one of the long halls. The prospect of returning to my search got me through a boring meal of cabbage rolls and rye biscuits. I knew no one, though I looked for stable hands, hoping I’d at least see Birdy. But maybe they had their own dining area.

After the meal, when I turned the wrong way down a hall, I spotted his dark hair among a lot of blond heads. He said in Kifelian as I neared, “We stable hands are in dormitories, too.”

I did not tell him that I had a private room. I put my hands together to gesture commiseration.

He went on quickly, “But I get Restday evening free, and our perquisites—it’s much like pay—extends to the town pleasure house.”

“They celebrate Restday here?”

“That’s what I was told. Anhar and I want to know if you will meet with us at Barleywine House at Hour of the Lamp?”

I signed assent and turned away, almost stumbling into the jarlan, who looked at me in surprise. I said quickly, “I thought I would compare
An
Examination of Greatness
against the original, to learn your language the better. But I could not find it in the archive room. Is there another archive?”

“
Examination
… ah.” She passed her fingers over her lower face, her gaze blank. Then she said, “You will find it under the eagle sign, at the very end.”

“But does not that section begin a full century after the time in question?”

Her brows lifted. “You are observant. I did not think anyone knew our history outside of our own people! You will find it there because it is regarded as a record of instruction,” she said.

I waited, and when she did not offer to explain further, I made The Peace and ran upstairs. The archive was empty and perceptibly warmer. I looked for the eagle sigil. When I found nothing labeled
An Examination of Greatness
, I took down each book one after the other, until I reached one called
Indevan of Choreid Elgar’s Reorganization of the Academy, as dictated to Savarend Montredaun-An, the Fox
. And below that, a drawing that was just recognizable as the Fox Banner that Ivandred and his lancers carried, only the fox face was flatter, rounder, the ruff not flame-like but more like thistledown. It still had the strange bird eyes.

I opened it and found a life of Inda Elgar at the beginning, only compressed into a skimpy summary of the main events. Most of the book was detailed instructions for teaching warriors, right down to how meals should be served, and what the boys (it said boys) should wear.

None of this had been in the book I translated.

I paged back again, looking for one of the many Elgar battles so vividly described in the record that I had translated. I found one—with no details offered, only a reference to a ballad that used Someone’s story based on Someone Two’s letters. There was also a dismissive reference to another ballad sung to a “stolen” melody and riddled with errors in service to the Olavairs, like Elgar’s having been born in Lorgi Idego. Idego? I remembered a place along the north coast of Halia had been called Iday-ago, but the Marlovens had changed the name to something else. Obviously the change of names during Elgar the Fox’s day hadn’t stuck.

I put the book back. How strange that there were what seemed to be two versions of the same record. Perhaps there was yet another.

The room was warmer, and I had nothing else to do. So I walked back to the shelves with the oldest ancestral records, and one by one took
them out. The earliest were the toughest to read, being written in either a phonetic Old Sartoran that was spelled according to local pronunciation, or in Venn, which I’d once tried to learn on a dare, then never used again. Gradually the books appeared in a writing more recognizable as the modern Marloven, with Sartoran vowel marks. In none of these did I find references to Inda the Fox, though I found many instances of the names Indevan, Algara, Algara-Vayir, Choraed, and Elgaer.

I stopped when the ancient inks became impossible to read. Dark was falling swiftly. I looked around. No waiting glowglobes. Obviously this room was too seldom used to warrant such an expensive luxury. However, lanterns sat in protected sconces high up on the walls, waiting to be lit, and there were also trimmed lamps on the two central tables. I raised my hands, delighted with this chance to practice my fire spell. Then I glanced at the windows above—and realized my light would be seen from without. How foolish would that be, to hide my secret all this way, just to have all those guards on the castle walls see light flare in the row of windows?

So I dropped my hands. It was then that I sensed the elusive presence of magic.

I want it understood that at this point I could have abandoned this quest to find the missing record. I had little interest in Inda Elgar, and none in their war academy, either historically or presently. But the anomalies were interesting, and so was the presence of magic that could not be accounted for in a room full of books and scrolls.

The bells rang the watch change, which was also the call for supper.

The next morning was Restday. I returned to the archive, which was full of weak, wintry morning light.

Restday. I still carried Lasva’s golden case. The Restday letters had tapered off to one every week or so from Darva, always asking how Lasva was. It had been a week since the last. I would have to check when I returned to my room.

I walked the perimeter of the archive, the only sounds my breathing, and the hiss of my house slippers on the stone floor. Shelf after shelf, row upon row of books filled with hidden secrets, lives I’d never heard of, actions and decisions and customs unknown. But at that moment my goal was to explore that hidden magic, not to read and to learn.

I closed my eyes and groped along the shelves, brushing my fingers
high and low in slow deliberate arcs. When I reached the space between two of the bookcases, there was a brush of invisible silk.

I opened my eyes. The shelves were stocked with rolled maps on one side, and on the other, guild records. I’d walked past both several times. The wall between the shelves had the most boring of all the shields, flat, and dull. But when I tried to focus on the details it was indistinct. Illusion!

I stretched out my fingers… and they passed through the shield to brush stone. The sense of magic flared. I moved closer, felt for the illusion again, and found a pattern of what I can only describe as blue-ice points. I stepped back, committed the wall and the plain shield to memory, then snapped away the illusion. Before I did anything else, I remade the illusion. I’d never made one that lasted any longer than a bubble, but I knew how to do it.

It worked.

Behind the illusion, a door had been fitted into a plastered wall so neatly the outline was just barely visible, one end covered with stiffened paper to hide the hinges.

I looked around for a handle, then remembered the icy points. I brushed my fingers slowly over the door until I found the pattern.

Someone had gone to considerable trouble to hide this door. I hesitated, then shrugged away the implicit warning. I was curious, a puzzle-seeker, not a political conspirator. I would remove nothing, destroy nothing, I just wanted to solve this magical problem, because solving it would aid in my quest to understand magic and thereby to follow the queen’s orders, even if I couldn’t be with Lasva.

There was a great deal I had figured out about the book I’d memorized, extrapolating from how the fire spells worked. If you could summon fire, you could employ similar patterns but substitute water for fire. More difficult were the spells for shifting wood, and even stone.