The Sigil Blade (37 page)

Given the attention that the man had shown towards the money which Pedrin carried, he might have been concerned that the dockworker’s greed had set some plans in motion, if he were not so absurdly well protected. Aodra was somewhere beside him, Pedrin guessed, while Áledhuir hung back in the shadows. The tall draugr had a way of not being seen when he wanted to avoid being noticed. Pedrin suspected that Aodra helped him with that. She could make you see what she wanted, or hide things from your senses, with all manner of illusory manipulations.

Three thralls also travelled with Pedrin as he made his way into the city and up the sloping streets. The thralls also seemed to slip from your awareness if you were not paying attention, as if they were beneath notice and not really there at all. They rarely spoke, except amongst themselves or to the draugar, and when they did it was as agents acting on behalf of their masters. Aed Seoras had trained these men, but they were weaker versions of their teacher. They seemed to wear down quickly in their service to the draugar, responding to the strain of supplying to their masters a reserve of strength and stability that was soon exhausted by the demands placed upon them.

Pedrin tried not to think about the thralls as they climbed higher. He had an unpleasant feeling of kinship with them, an association he did not care to make. He didn’t want to understand even as much as he did about how these men were tethered to their masters. He too served the draugar, but in a lesser way that did not exact quite as heavy a toll.

As they came nearer to Esivh Rhol’s palace, Pedrin began to distract himself with notions of how he would spend the money he had brought with him. It was a welcome diversion from thinking about the thralls and the draugar. He was still running these ideas through his head when they stopped at the heavy wooden gates set inside of the white outer walls of the palace. Guards let them through a passageway beside the gates, and they followed a finely dressed servant as he walked over white marble floors and past brightly washed stone colonnades.

The interior was warmed by a complex of heated baths, and the air was perfumed everywhere with pleasant scents. Pedrin welcomed all of it. He appreciated the perfumes in particular. They were a much needed contrast from the sickly sweet smell that came from the salve that the thralls regularly applied to Áledhuir in an effort to preserve his decaying skin.

“Not the same place it was when I last visited,” Pedrin said to Esivh Rhol as they entered a large open room with couches and pillows arranged around three of the walls. “It seems a little… empty somehow.”

Esivh Rhol also looked different than he had when Pedrin had last seen him. He was a less self-assured, and bore the look of a frustrated ruler facing the erosion of his declining sphere of influence and power. The Ard Ri had encountered draugar before. You could tell by the way he remained inwardly terrified, yet managed to hold himself together, straining to appear as if everything were normal.

“I have but six courtesans left, and only two young girls in training,” Esivh Rhol said, acknowledging that his fortunes had undergone a few reversals.

Pedrin Eksar glanced quickly at a draped opening in the back of the room that led to the women’s quarters. “Amongst many other pleasures, I’m sure,” he said. He could have been referring to assortments of strong wines, stores of fine food, mind altering tonics, or a few of the other more hidden and less reputable indulgences this place had on offer. Pedrin had come prepared with a large sum of money and he was thinking about all but the last of these. Pedrin was no model of virtue, but he really didn’t know what motivated some of Esivh Rhol’s darker and more prurient obsessions.

“The son of Aedan Elduryn is here,” Áledhuir pronounced loudly, interrupting and making everyone flinch in response to the deep broken resonances emanating from his throat.

Pedrin wished the draugr had let one of his thralls speak instead, as he usually would have done. The garbled and barely intelligible sounds had such a frightful dampening effect on the atmosphere.

“Lord Aisen? Here?” the Ard Ri declaimed, mistakenly believing that he was being accused of sheltering the man.

“Not, in this room, here,” Pedrin clarified, hoping to forestall any attempt by Áledhuir to speak again. “But we have reason to believe he is here on An Innis.”

“He is not on the island,” Esivh Rhol said. “He is supposed to have taken over the Ascomanni, but I have it from a reliable source that the man calling himself the Blood Prince is a fake.”

This was getting them nowhere. “The real one is also on this island,” Pedrin said, “he is calling himself Edryd.”

Recognition shone in Esivh Rhol’s eyes. His lips parted as if to speak but nothing came out.

“Tell him to say something,” Aodra prodded in a voice only Pedrin could hear.

“It’s obvious you know something,” Pedrin said, urging the Ard Ri to continue.

“He has been training with Aed Seoras. I thought he was going to be made into a thrall.”

Pedrin could detect what only someone who had spent three years with the draugar could have both seen and understood. There was surprise in Áledhuir’s expression.

Áledhuir exchanged a look with an empty part of the room. Aodra, Pedrin realized.

“Why would he train him,” she wondered.

Pedrin almost answered, thinking no one else would have heard her, but he supposed that she had been speaking to the other draugr as well. The two draugar had suspected Aed Seoras of possible complicity in this to begin with, or they wouldn’t have made the effort to keep him uninformed regarding their arrival, but they had not expected to learn that Seoras was actively training Aisen. Pedrin was imagining the violent confrontation that was about to happen between the draugar and Aed Seoras. He was going to want to be there to see it, albeit from as safe a distance as possible.

“He is with Seoras now then,” Áledhuir concluded, already making plans to leave for the estate which the shaper kept as a place for visiting draugar and for training men to serve as their slaves.

“Yes,” said Esivh Rhol. “I mean no,” he added quickly after a confused pause.

Pedrin stifled the urge to ask ‘which is it then?’ It wouldn’t have amused anyone but Pedrin.

“He is staying in some hovel halfway across the island,” the Ard Ri explained, “with that evil spell casting woman who works for Seoras.”

“Take me there now,” Áledhuir ordered.

Esivh Rhol looked like he wanted to argue, or suggest some alternative, but he didn’t dare show defiance. Pedrin understood the feeling all too well.

Esivh Rhol obediently stood and left the room one way, followed by the draugar and the three thralls, and Pedrin exited another, through the draped entryway in the back. He might have been expected to go with them, but no one said so, and he felt like things were getting much too complicated. He could well be missing something interesting, but half an island away sounded a good deal further than his aging body wanted to walk, and he did after all have money that needed to be spent.

***

The fleet navarch had learned the bad news only hours ago from one of the scout ships in his fleet. The ship he had been pursuing had slipped into An Innis just ahead of them. As he had promised to do, Aelsian had dealt with Captain Hedrick. He did not want that man in command for what was coming, and Aelsian could not stay aboard to remain in command at the moment either. Aelsian promoted the officer of the watch, and for good measure he moved Hedrick, now no longer holding the rank of a captain, to one of the other two Ossian ships that had joined them.

Nine more warships would be here tomorrow, and another half dozen support vessels soon after that. As Aelsian watched the
Retribution
pull alongside, he reflected upon what an inadvisably poor moment it was to be leaving his fleet, but hopefully he could accomplish the delivery of the item which he carried in good time, and be back soon enough.

Looking with derision through the darkness at the red sails on the Ascomanni ship, Aelsian allowed Logaeir to help him cross from the
Interdiction
, and then he helped Ludin Kar across in turn.

Ludin Kar gave Logaeir a judgmental appraisal. “Never one to trouble himself about the consequences of his actions,” he said.

“I’m going to make this right,” Logaeir said. “We are pushing the attack forward to tomorrow night.”

It was refreshing to see Logaeir accepting responsibility for what was happening. So much so that Aelsian decided not to let him know that this wasn’t his fault alone.

“I appreciate that, but tomorrow is going to be too late,” Aelsian said.

“Ruach is on his way with a boat,” Logaeir said. “He left before we got word, so he won’t actually know the situation, but with any luck we still have some time.”

“I need to see him,” Aelsian said. “I have something he needs.”

Logaeir eyed the cloth wrapped object in Aelsian’s arms. It didn’t take much imagination to see that it was a sword, and once you knew that, well the rest was obvious too.

“That’s where we are going. I will get you there as quickly as we can.”

***

Bringing a lamp to the table in the corner at the back wall of the cottage, Edryd settled into a chair and took out the small leather bound book. Having read it through multiple times already, he only pretended to be reading it now. Eithne had yet to read it once, and on more than one occasion she had shown that she was curious. Predictably, she ended up in a chair beside him. She had only glimpsed bits and pieces after a series of partially successful efforts to steal a look at the contents of its pages.

“Irial had a little white book a while ago,” Edryd said, trying to sound as if he had only a minor passing interest.  “Logaeir said he knew the man who wrote it. You wouldn’t know what happened to it would you?”

“She hid it,” Eithne said. Apparently it was a bit of a sore point.

“In her room?”

“No, I would have found it if it was in there.”

“So you don’t know where it is then.”

“No, but I don’t need to. I already read it,” she bragged.

This was good news. Not as good as finding the book itself, but he had found a way to confirm what was inside.

“I don’t imagine it was interesting,” Edryd said, carefully watching for Eithne’s reaction.

“Maybe not to some people,” Eithne answered, and then said nothing more. Edryd had not hidden his interest as well as he might have thought. She was not about to tell him anything for free. He would have to buy what she knew with information of his own.

He opened the book to a page with a drawing and showed it to Eithne.

“That’s what Herja looks like?” she asked.

“I haven’t seen her myself,” Edryd said, “but these are not draugar. These are what they were when they were alive, before they became what they are now. She probably would look something like this though.”

“They almost look like people, except most people aren’t so pretty as this.”

If he hadn’t picked up on it before, Eithne’s interest in the book was now evident. He would have little trouble bargaining for what he wanted to know.

“They are different in other ways of course,” Edryd said, sounding as if he were parceling out some exclusive collection of secrets. “You can’t see it in the drawing, but the book says that they have varying shades of smooth grey skin.”

“What color are their eyes?” Eithne wondered. She was more curious than ever now.

“All the different normal colors,” Edryd said. “Usually green though, and once in a while, yellow or red.” He had made all that up, the book had nothing to say on the subject, but for some reason, he did imagine that their eyes were green.

“Irial told me that Herja’s eyes were white and cloudy,” Eithne said, becoming a little suspicious.

“That’s because she’s dead,” Edryd said without having any idea whether that was true or not. Eithne accepted the explanation as making perfect sense and moved on to demanding more.

“What else?”

“Tell me about Irial’s book,” Edryd said, “and then I might tell you a little more.”

“Shouldn’t you already know about it? You are in the Sigil Order aren’t you?”

“Let’s pretend I don’t know any of the kinds of things I should,” Edryd said. This suggestion brought a smile to Eithne’s face. “What could you tell me then?”

“First,” she began, “sigil knights always had a sigil sword. You don’t have one, but if you did you would use it to kill sorcerers and destroy constructs.”

“Everyone knows that.”

“Everyone does not know that,” Eithne protested. “People did, but some of them have forgotten.”

“Maybe so,” Edryd agreed, “but I would bet that there were more interesting things in there than just that.”

“It said that the people in the Sigil Order were all men, monks who meditated in hidden places.  When a monk showed abilities, he trained with an Archon. Just by being around the Archon, he would awaken, and he would become a sigil knight.”

It was a simple and straightforward explanation, and it didn’t resemble in any way the Sigil Corps in Nar Edor, not in Edryd’s experience. “I hate to tell you, the Sigil Corps isn’t like that,” he said.