The Sigil Blade (45 page)

“We will need to stay here for a while,” Edryd said. “Your Uncle Logaeir is causing trouble in the city, but we can leave after it settles down.”

Eithne, with an inclination of her head, indicated that she understood.

Edryd sat exhausted in the lone chair in the small room, and Eithne took a seat on the bed. She had not spoken since leaving Esivh Rhol’s room. He was reluctant to speak himself.

“I’m sorry,” he managed to say before his emotions robbed him of his ability to continue. “This, all of this, it was my fault,” he said once he collected himself.

He could see from her reaction that this was not what she wanted to hear. She needed reassurance and words of comfort, not some weak apology for something she did not blame him for.

“I can’t fix this,” he admitted, “but I promise I will make it better if I can.”

“Not just for me,” she said. “You are going to make it better for everyone.” She smiled when she saw that she had just taken away some of his sadness. A short while later she curled up on a corner of the bed, and using Edryd’s coat as a blanket, she fell asleep.

***

The risks so far had been well within what could be managed under the constraints of Logaeir’s plans. The heavy initial fighting had taken place on the other side, but once Oren and his men joined the battle in support of Sarel Krin’s attack, it had turned into a decisive victory for the Ascomanni. Logaeir, while in the process of attacking the southern pier, had fared less well. He had not been reinforced quickly enough, and nearly all of his men were dead.

Logaeir had anticipated these difficulties, and knowing what he would face he had surrounded himself with the most violent and most dangerous of all the men the Ascomanni could boast to have in its ranks. These men had been ideal for the nature of the dangerous undisciplined fighting that had taken place on the southern pier. Their losses had been acceptable, perhaps necessary even. Paring down their number meant there would not be so many counted among these the least manageable and most bloodthirsty of the Ascomanni warriors, with which he would need to contend once the battle was over.

Their initial objectives taken, Logaeir ordered a pause to consolidate the positions that they now held and make the necessary preparations to organize the next stages of the attack. With the arrival of the
Retribution
and two other ships, Logaeir now had another one hundred twenty three fresh Ascomanni fighters to replace the thirty that had fallen beside him in the initial assault. Meeting up with Oren and Krin, their combined forces were about three hundred men. That number could swell to closer to four hundred Ascomanni if they needed to call in reserve forces that were remaining with the ships.

It was now time to turn their attentions to the scattered assets guarded by the four harbormasters, who were each jealously protecting their own properties. This predictable self-interested behavior, which had been an assumption in all of his strategies, effectively deprived the harbormasters of any chance to mount a credible resistance to the overwhelming forces that Logaeir would bring against each of them in succession.

The homes and properties of a man named Jedron Feld were the first to fall. In an entirely bloodless affair, Logaeir accepted the surrender of all his men. There had been inside help, including key men in Jedron Feld’s employment induced by means of bribery and other persuasions to aid the Ascomanni cause.

Kedwyn Saivelle was the next target. In terms of raw numbers and enthusiasm for their employer, none of the other overlords could match Saivelle. Logaeir’s men had long ago scouted the hidden positions of Saivelle’s outermost guards. Oren and his men took to the rooftops and used that information, and their powerful Edoric longbows, to silently pick apart the deadly arbalest wielding snipers who occupied positions of advantage in and around their master’s properties.

Logaeir then mounted assaults on the ground. The battle stalled at times, with the defenders using fortified positions to offset inferior numbers, but the men in white cloaks turned these fights into a route each time they joined the battle. In the end, terrified of Oren and his men, the last of Saivelle’s forces threw their master out before them and begged for mercy. In this engagement, the Sigil Corps Soldiers had proven to be everything Logaeir expected, fulfilling their roles in ways that exceeded what Logaeir had actually planned.

Verden Dressore was next on Logaeir’s list. Word of Saivelle’s fate having reached him, Dressore gave up without a fight. He had always been weaker than the rest of the harbormasters, so this wasn’t much different from what had been expected.

Sidrin Eildach was all that remained now. Being wiser than the rest of his counterparts, he understood this was a battle that he could not win, but he also knew that he had enough strength to give him a position from which to bargain, and he acted accordingly. He and his men barricaded their strongholds and refused to come out. A messenger was sent offering assurances to the Ascomanni that Eildach was willing to negotiate away his empire, giving it up without a fight, if he could secure a place for himself and his men in the new power structure that would be replacing the old one. Eildach could be practical like that. He had seen such radical shifts before and he had always survived them.

This suited Logaeir’s needs perfectly. He had more than enough men to spare to besiege the last of the harbormasters indefinitely, and it was actually a matter of great advantage for Logaeir to occupy the Ascomanni forces with this final obstacle for as long as possible. Settling for something less than a complete outright victory was fine, if it deprived his men of the freedom to rampage through the town once there were no more enemies to defeat. Logaeir would have to start his negotiations for Eildach’s surrender by sending the man a thank you note.

In all the fighting, Logaeir estimated that there had been eighty Ascomanni who had fallen.  There were perhaps between three and four times that number dead among the defenders who had opposed them. He had asked Oren, who had refused to answer, how many the Sigil Corps could take credit for. Logaeir’s own count would have placed their contribution as at least a third of the enemy dead, and for all of that, Oren had not lost anyone. None of his men were even injured. The white cloaks of the Sigil Corps soldiers were stained crimson with blood, but it all belonged to their enemies. The men on every side of the fighting had begun to look upon them with awe.

The success was making Oren increasingly difficult to manage. Leading his group of ten Sigil warriors, Oren was now acting on his own, and had become less willing to take any orders. The fighting had seemed to place him in a particularly foul mood. Logaeir, in the time that he had known Oren, had always imagined him as the type who enjoyed battle. The officer had certainly shown a passion for combat training. That he seemed so repelled by his own handiwork on the field of battle, was a surprise.

“We are leaving for the palace, Logaeir,” Oren said, as they stood outside the gates of Sidrin Eildach’s home.

“Not yet.”

“You have this well in hand. It is time my men and I do what we came here for. We are taking our due.”

Logaeir made his frustration abundantly clear in his response. “Don’t expect me to rush in to help you if it goes wrong.”

The bulk of Esivh Rhol’s forces were already dead. They had fallen defending his fleet of ships and in the counter offensive trying to retake the northern pier from Krin, so it was not without reason that Oren felt that he and his men could take the palace on their own. So far though, no one had encountered the draugar or their thralls and it was becoming increasingly likely that they would find them at the palace. If they did, the small company of professional soldiers would not be enough to confront that threat. “There is too much unaccounted for,” Logaeir cautioned. “Do no more than scout the area. I will have men ready to assist at first light.”

“Take too long, and the fighting will be over before they make it,” said Oren.

It would do no good to warn Oren about the draugar. Oren was already well aware. He understood the risks, and reminding him now would only make him more determined to rush to confront the danger. Believing that his captain would be in need of their help, nothing was going to stop or delay him. Logaeir watched the soldiers leave, and unable to do anything to stop their progress, he made all possible haste in putting together a complement of Ascomanni warriors to follow them.

***

Edryd, feeling grateful that Eithne was sleeping peacefully, left her alone in the room. He brought a chair with him into the hallway and positioned himself where he could see anyone approaching, and where it would not be obvious which door he was guarding. The clarity of vision with which he had been gifted earlier was gone. For a while it had seemed as though he had lost the ability to perceive the currents of the dark altogether, but he realized that this was wrong. He had simply been blinded by a bright light in the darkness. That light had illuminated everything for a time, but once its guidance faded, it took time to adjust to the loss. Even then, the world would forever seem a darker place for having had the experience of knowing what he had lost.

It was an altogether boring vigil. The palace was silent and almost completely empty. No sounds of the chaos in the city could be heard here, and the few people inside the palace, did not leave the shelter of their rooms. When someone finally did come, Edryd cursed his luck. It was Aed Seoras. Edryd was worried, as he had no idea what Seoras intended. Remaining seated, Edryd tried not to betray his anxiety, but his concern surged when he noticed that Seoras was carrying a long simple sword in his hand. He had the Edorin Sigil Blade. It made Edryd painfully aware that he no longer had a weapon of his own, but that concern was of almost no merit when compared to the more important problem. If the sword had enabled Edryd to manifest the powers which he had called upon during his battle with the draugr, just how impossibly strong might Seoras become when wielding it?

“Honestly,” Seoras said, “leaving something like this lying about. How you manage to survive in this world I couldn’t guess.”

It seemed to Edryd that Seoras was impossibly blind to just how much his student was at the mercy of the master shaper’s power right now. Seoras made an even less accurate judgment based upon Edryd’s behavior, wondering how powerful Edryd must be that he could leave the sigil sword behind after a battle as though it were some trifling thing of only minor importance.

“I failed to see the truth all this time,” Seoras said, shaking his head, “and in my arrogance presumed to be able to teach you.” He held out the sigil sword, offering it to his pupil.

Edryd gingerly accepted the weapon, not quite wanting it, but grateful to get it away from his master. The sword seemed happy, somehow, to be back in his hand, but nothing happened as he took hold of the weapon. There was no expansion of his mind, no enhanced perceptions, and no external clarity.

“I said that if you lived through this, that we would have a debt to settle,” said Seoras.

“You were angry,” Edryd pointed out, “so I didn’t take that to have meant that you owed anything to me.”

“I was angry,” Seoras acknowledged, “and I remain so, but it is clear to me now that I did, and still do, owe you a great debt.” Seoras seemed relieved as he said this, as if at the release of some painful restraint. He was definitely pleased about something, but Edryd couldn’t begin to guess what.

“I could have used your help today, had you been serious about balancing that debt,” Edryd said.

The shaper’s eyes hardened. He did not appreciate the criticism, or perhaps his reaction was covering some other emotion. “I was prevented,” was all Seoras said.

“I cannot accept that,” Edryd said. “If you cared about Irial or Eithne, nothing should have prevented you from protecting them.”

Seoras became harder still. “No one said I cared anything for either of them,” he said, glancing in the direction of Eithne’s room. Despite Edryd’s efforts to conceal it, Seoras knew exactly where she was.

Edryd pulled back. He didn’t need to have an explanation, not right now at least, and the last thing he wanted to be doing was to make this man angry.

“I have questions about what happened,” Seoras said, “and I have answers for you too, information that you need to know.”

Edryd waited for Seoras to continue. He was certain he would not have the answers that Seoras sought, but he was willing to hear what the man had to say.

“There is no time to talk now,” Seoras said, sensing that their time would be short before it would be interrupted by the arrival of Edryd’s friends from the Sigil Corps. “We will need to talk where there is no chance it will be overheard. I want you to meet me tomorrow in the ruins on the coast,” Seoras said, before leaving abruptly, eager not to be seen by anyone else.

Edryd’s immediate inclination was to refuse this request, but Seoras had been assuming compliance, not asking for it. There would have been no point in expressing any objections to the proposed meeting. If Edryd decided tomorrow that it was unwise, he simply wouldn’t go.

Chapter 23

The Broken Oath

O
ren and his soldiers appeared almost before Seoras had left, but by an act of providence, or more likely as a result of the latter’s desire to remain unseen and his skill in doing so, the soldiers had not crossed his path. There had been no fighting. Upon reaching the palace gates Oren had found Hedryn waiting, anxious to offer assistance, with the extent of his abilities to provide such service, evidenced by the corpses of a good half dozen of Esivh Rhol’s men in the courtyard, among them Hagan and Cecht. This Hedryn had done in keeping with the task that Edryd had given him to keep the entrance to the palace clear. Those few remaining guards who had been in the palace but had not already fallen victim to the Blood Prince, were also dead. Seoras had seen to that, killing any man who hadn’t had the good sense to flee.

Favored by these circumstances, all of which had proven contrary to the far more cautious expectations with which Oren and his men had begun their assault, the Sigil Corps had taken possession of the palace unopposed, and it was now being used as their base. By morning, it was also serving as one of several locations for treating men injured in the fighting. At Edryd’s request, someone had been sent to bring Uleth, who was doing a thorough and competent job at directing the task of attending to the most seriously injured men.

Uleth still had some of Irial’s old clothing, a dress and some shoes that she had once worn when she had been a child, and he had sent Neysim to go and collect them for Eithne, along with a number of medical texts. Near the end of the afternoon, when the city had settled down enough that it was safe to do so, Edryd left the palace along with Eithne and Uleth. Together they followed the familiar road that led east towards the cottage that Irial and Eithne had called home. Eithne held Edryd’s hand tightly as they walked, trying to be strong, and remaining very quiet. Edryd understood her feelings. He wished they were going somewhere else and that he did not have to face this loss, or at the very least that Eithne should not have to bear it too.

Smoke rose in the air trailing off to the east.  It was too far towards the south and east to be coming from the cottage, but it was still reason for concern. Eithne saw it too, and looked to Edryd for reassurances that he could not give her.

“We should gather flowers,” Edryd said, as they came to the place where he and Irial had often left the roadway, seeking out a variety of wild plants which grew there.

“What kind?” Eithne asked, very much in favor of the idea as she brought her hands up, letting go of Edryd’s hand in the process. She was obviously eager to be off, needing only the least push of encouragement.

“Find some mountain iris,” Edryd suggested, “and some of her other favorites as well.”

Edryd thought that Eithne might run on ahead, but she remained with him, and together they walked towards the streamside meadow. He had formed such pleasant memories with Irial on those occasions when they had visited this place, and he could picture her now, enjoying the natural peace that could be found here. Edryd helped Eithne across the stream once they reached it, and she was soon roaming the boundaries of the meadow in search of beautiful flowers. Uleth arrived just behind them.

Choosing his customary spot, Edryd sat down upon the ground. Uleth remained standing, watching Eithne, who was carefully moving amongst and choosing out selections from the many flowers that grew here.

“Irial would have loved this place,” Uleth said.

“She did love it,” Edryd responded. He then fell silent for a moment, feeling something he did not know how to express. “I wish everyone could have seen her as I did. If they had, they would all mourn as I do.”

Edryd looked to Uleth, who turned and answered, “She may have been feared and hated by those who remained in An Innis, accounting her a worker of evil spells, but years ago, Irial helped a great number of the disempowered victims of this island escape to the settlements.” By this Uleth meant the people who now lived under the patronage of the Ascomanni encampment at Darkpool, former citizens of An Innis who had fled to escape enslavement under the rule of the harbormasters. “Those men and women owe Irial their lives, and they are among the many who will not soon forget her.”

Uleth sat down a short distance from Edryd and proceeded to tell him more. The slave ships of An Innis had developed a reputation for being disease ridden nuisances, harming the prices the men of An Innis could expect to obtain in the markets. To combat this, they took to separating out sick slaves before departing. If the cause of illness was suspected to be one of the plagues that had ravaged An Innis in years past, those slaves would be killed. In desperation to escape their fates, even knowing it could mean death to do so, men and women began to feign illness to avoid being taken and sold.

Irial was known by then as a healer in An Innis. Uleth had trained her. She begged for permission to treat these men and women who had fallen sick, but their masters refused. They preferred not to assume the risk of the diseases spreading further.

By this time there were already rumors about the returned and whispers of cursed men and women walking the world as corpses after their deaths. Irial played upon these fears by telling the men who would one day become the harbormasters that this is what they were facing. She told them that only she could make certain that the dying would remain dead. If they did not allow her to do her work, she swore that when these men and women returned from death, they would seek out those who had wronged them and take their revenge.

“She hadn’t planned anything beyond trying to frighten them,” said Uleth, “and none of slave masters believed her.”

“But then something happened to them. Something that changed their minds,” said Edryd.

“Krin happened to them,” Uleth said, confirming Edryd’s guess. “All in the course of one night, he killed the slave masters of three different ships, stealing and escaping in the largest of them, a slave ship called the
Black Strand
.”

“And that was the beginning of the Ascomanni?” Edryd asked.

“No, just the beginning of Captain Krin, the Ascomanni came later,” said Uleth.

The old man went on to explain that Krin had not left any witnesses behind, only rumors. Those rumors became stories that were the fulfillment of Irial’s warnings. Dead victims of these ships had returned, or so people believed, and they had killed the masters who had bound them in life. This became the accepted truth in An Innis, and so they all then heeded Irial’s demands that she be allowed to calm the spirits of the sick, so that they would not return seeking revenge.

The cottage was just one of several buildings prepared as places away from the city, where Irial could help ease the suffering of the dying, and prevent their return once they succumbed to the final stages of their illness. For those who had become sick, she tried to heal them. For those who recovered, and those who had only pretended to be ill, Irial arranged in secret for their escape to a base Krin had set up to the south of An Innis. They made use of the tunnels hidden under the homes where she cared for them to avoid being seen. The people she cared for were all expected to die. No one would miss them when they escaped.

“Did no one wonder why everyone died?” Edryd wondered. “Were none of those who recovered ever seen by people in the town again in the years since?”

“But they were seen,” answered Uleth. “That only reinforced the notions of the returned, making them ever more into things to be feared. They could not return to live in An Innis if they had wanted to, which they did not. Instead, by subterfuge, and with caution and care, we had their loved ones feign illness as well, marking them in places with dyes and paints to simulate disease. Irial rescued more than a hundred in this way.”

Edryd understood now. Irial had through her kindness, created the Ascomanni. She was the benevolent patron to these men and women, who in a sense, had truly passed on from their former lives and yet lived on thanks to her intervention. It made sense now why she had been so connected to the Ascomanni, and it explained how she had developed the reputation which had made her an outcast.

“There are those that cared about her deeply,” Uleth said. “I believe you will soon see how great her influence was felt.” Edryd could feel that Uleth’s grief was greater than his own. She was family to him. He had raised her as a daughter, and he missed her now as only a father could.

Their conversation was interrupted by Eithne’s return. She held bundles of beardtongue, aster, and mountain iris, collected from across the meadow. The attractive purple and blue flowers were beautiful, bringing out the sapphire in Eithne’s eyes. Edryd, seeking to confirm what he had seen the night before, envisioned Eithne through the effects she had on the currents of the dark. She manifested as a beautiful pure light, which interacted with the darkness in the way that only a shaper could.

Edryd understood now as well, why Irial had insisted that he must be the one to help Eithne. Irial had hoped that he would guide Eithne and protect her while she began to understand her potential. As he thought on this, Edryd was shaken by a fear as powerful as any he had ever experienced, feeling painfully unequal to the task with which Irial had entrusted him. He could not afford to fail Irial in this. He had promised her that much.

Turning towards Uleth, Edryd began to suggest that they should leave, but there was no one there. Edryd was still relying on his ability to perceive the dark. He should have been able to confirm Uleth’s presence, even if he had moved somewhere else. As Edryd concentrated on finding the man, his attentions were taken eastward. Eventually he found himself focused on the ruins. No, not on the ruins, but on the forests which encircled and hid them, it made no sense.

Edryd tried to return to what he could physically see and hear. At first, although the meadow, Eithne, and everything else began to return into focus, Uleth was not there. Edryd was struggling to pick up on even a hint of the man’s presence. Finally, concentrating fully on only what he could physically see, Uleth was there once more, having not moved from where he had been to begin with. Edryd wondered for a moment if Uleth could be shrouded. It didn’t seem likely, but it was the only explanation he had right now.

There was another possibility. Edryd concentrated once more on seeing the man through the dark, and he found it, an insubstantial pattern that mimicked the presence of a person.  Uleth was the mere image of a man. It could fool the senses, but it wasn’t really there. Edryd immediately thought of the Ældisir and the false images she had made him see. Somewhere inside, he felt a confirmation that he was right to draw this connection.

“I thought maybe some lanceleaf too,” Edryd said to Eithne, so that he could buy a moment to speak with the illusion that was Uleth. Eithne set the bundled flowers down and bounded away in search of the yellow flowers Edryd had named.

“You are not real,” Edryd said. Thinking about it now, Edryd could not recall visibly seeing this man interact with anything. Uleth had unlocked the door to his home, but had not opened it. He had made Edryd carry the basket with the loaves of bread into the kitchen, instead of accepting them when they were offered. Edryd had seen Uleth tend to sick patients, but he had only examined them, directing others in the treatments.

“I would say that none of us are,” Uleth answered. The conversation began to remind Edryd of the book he had read in Irial’s cottage. The one Eithne had tried to explain to him.  “I could not fool one who sees so clearly for long,” Uleth said, sighing deeply, having understood that it had always been only a matter of time.

“You are a shaper,” Edryd said.

“No, I do not shape,” Uleth corrected, “or at least no more than other men. Less than any other man, I should say.”

“Then by what power do you do this?” Edryd asked, believing that he was being lied to.

“Men shape the dark, but only as part of a greater design,” Uleth explained. “We are all part of the shape. If you know the design, it can be made to suggest something else, all without ever touching it.”

Edryd thought he almost understood some of that, but the idea seemed more of an illusion that even Uleth.

“A man is a pebble,” Uleth continued, “sunk in the current of a stream if you will, that circles and flows around all of us. As pebbles go though, you are I think, a very important one. I tremble to speak with you like this, out of a fear that I might dislodge you from your place in the pattern.”

“Who are you?” Edryd asked, having become timid with awe.

“One of the Ascetics,” Uleth answered, “though, I do not know that I can call myself one any longer. I will have been the last, once I am gone. I had thought I might train Irial, so that she could carry some of my burden. I count it a kindness to her that I never did, and in any event, that opportunity has passed.”

Edryd recognized the name Uleth spoke of. It belonged to a group of sorcerers who upheld an oath that forbade certain aspects of their arcane arts as a penance for wrongs committed by their ancestors. They had been destroyed over five hundred years ago by the dark sorcerer Ulensorl. Perhaps not all it appeared.

“Train Eithne,” Edryd said. “She seems to have the mind for such things.” Edryd did not know whether she really did, he just knew how smart she was. He had, he was ashamed to admit, suggested this idea because of how heavily he had begun to feel the responsibility that Irial had given to him. Surely Uleth was a more capable teacher.