“Get up!” Conlan snarled through gritted teeth, watching the retreating grey uniforms.
Eleanor pulled herself to her feet. She was still trembling and could feel the skin under her right eye starting to sting and swell. He grabbed her by the back of her collar, marched her down the street and shoved her into the nearest alley. When they were safely in the dark shadows of the city’s slums, Conlan let go of her collar and spun her round to face him.
“What was
that
about?” he demanded angrily.
“I wasn’t concentrating,” she admitted, feeling embarrassed and foolish.
“I nearly had to give you a thrashing, and you’re telling me you lost concentration?!” Anger contorted his face, his scar making the expression menacing.
“Why didn’t you?” Eleanor asked, watching the anger drain from him.
“You’ve suffered enough. I won’t add to it if I can help it.”
Eleanor felt this was a strange reason coming from a man who had once threatened to stick a sword through her head. He was giving her that look, but Eleanor did not feel like discussing what she was thinking.
“What did you tell them?” she asked instead.
“I told them you were a particularly inept servant, prone to daydreaming.”
“Particularly inept servant... well that’s not far from the mark. You didn’t beat me though; they just accepted it, seemed to think it was funny – what did you say?”
Conlan looked uncomfortable. “I simply suggested that there were better ways to punish you that would be more fun if you were in one piece.”
Eleanor remembered the feeling of the stick moving slowly down her body, the meaning clear. She raised her eyebrows at him in surprise. “That was very clever.”
“I can be occasionally.”
Eleanor ignored his sarcasm. “I take it the Protectors don’t consider it part of their job to protect servants from being raped by their masters?”
“No. If I’d tried to beat you to death in the street they might have stopped me or perhaps asked me to take it behind closed doors, but there are far too many rich, powerful, well-connected people here. They wouldn’t want to risk offending someone over something as minor as punishing an incompetent servant,” Conlan said.
“That sucks,” Eleanor muttered.
Conlan nodded. “So why weren’t you concentrating?”
“I was testing a theory. I was feeling for other people’s energy, but every single person I passed, including those two Protectors, has a shield just like yours and Gregor’s.”
“So it’s normal?”
“Well it’s not exactly a large pool of data, but the people were of a fairly good cross-section of your society, so yes, with the current information I have I’d conclude that this is a natural part of who you are, but it doesn’t change the fact that it has to go.”
“So we’re back where we started?”
“Yeah, but now I have a new bruise and a headache,” Eleanor said, gently pushing the palm of her hand against the swelling.
“Well don’t look at me for sympathy!” Conlan said, turning and walking down the alley and further into the slums.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Eleanor muttered at his back as she trudged after him.
They moved through the alleyways in silence. Eleanor clutched the large book tightly to her chest; its stiff, heavy weight and slightly musty smell were comforting and distracted her from the throbbing in her head. As they walked past the hovels, she caught glimpses of some of the inhabitants through open doors and glassless windows. They huddled around mean fires, their slow movements and blank looks speaking of hopelessness and dark despair.
Conlan’s right, these people deserve better
.
They reached the outer wall without further incident and passed quickly out of the gate, the bored-looking Protectors waving them through without a second glance. Rand was where they had left him, happily eating grass. After rooting in his saddle bag, Conlan wordlessly thrust a small jar of Will’s homemade sticky, jelly-like antiseptic into her hand, waiting as Eleanor gingerly applied some to her face, the sting receding. She smiled gratefully, handing the pot back. He nodded and mounted, hauling Eleanor up behind him. Clutching the book tightly against her with one arm, she put the other around Conlan’s waist and laid her throbbing head against his back as they rode off.
They rode until the sunset, and with each mile they put between themselves and Baydon, Conlan relaxed further. The sun dipped below the horizon and Conlan pulled Rand to a stop. They set up camp a little way off the track. Eleanor lit a fire, put water on to heat and saw to Rand while Conlan went to find them something to eat. Her chores done, she sat cross-legged in front of the fire and placed the large book on her lap. The cover was black leather, worn and cracked in places; there was no title, just a large five-pointed star inside a circle embossed in silver on the front. Eleanor traced the points with her finger, then she carefully opened the book, trying not to bend the spine further. The pages crinkled under her hand, whispering their secrets, the paper was a soft brown colour, with small dark-brown spots of age in places. Eleanor was surprised to discover it was hand-written in a steady, even, flowing script that with disappointment she realised she had no hope of reading.
This must be the written language of the Dwarfs.
While the words were a mystery, as she flicked through the pages Eleanor found all sorts of beautifully rendered ink pictures. Near the beginning she found a picture of a man which filled half the page, and even in black and white there was something about him; he had a neatly trimmed beard and a half smile on his face. His intelligent eyes captured her. Eleanor found it most disconcerting; there was something very familiar about the face, but with annoyance she found she had no idea what it was. Moving on through the book she found other pictures; some she recognised, like the mountains she called home, and some she did not, although they all looked like amazing places to visit. There was a picture of a waterfall so high that the water boiled into mist at the bottom as a result of the force of its drop. Another picture showed vast savannah planes, the horizon shimmering in the heat. She also found pictures of what looked like the Talismans they needed; a wand, dark wood twisted round a silver core, a pointed crystal at one end and an egg-shaped one at the other; a sword, a five-pointed star etched into its blade and large stones decorating its hilt; a large oblong diamond on a thick chain; a chalice, tall and elegant, and a crown. It did not look very impressive – a simple band with symbols etched into it – and it was hard to see from the picture but it appeared to be made of silver.
Well, at least we know what to look for
. The book also contained maps, each one of which she studied carefully, hoping to find some indication as to where they could find the Talismans, but nothing obvious revealed itself. However, the illustration at the end of the book held her attention. It was a map of the whole of Mydren and it indicated one huge continent. Eleanor could see the mountains of home cutting a dark swathe across the top of the map and running like a backbone south through the entire length of Mydren. She traced five large rivers that dissected the land, meeting at a central point in the south where a single massive river headed out to sea. There were several large forests shown on the map, and from the distance they had travelled she tried to work out which one was Millar’s Forest.
“Find anything interesting?”
Eleanor jumped at Conlan’s question as he stepped silently out of the darkness. Settling next to her, dropping his collection of ingredients carefully in front of him, he pulled his small, sharp knife out of his boot and began chopping and peeling.
“I need you to teach me your language,” she said, not taking her eyes off the book.
He stopped chopping and stared at her with his unfathomable look.
“What?” Eleanor demanded.
“I was wondering just how good your memory is,” he said softly.
He’s worried about me figuring out what his grandfather said.
Her curiosity flared again. She smiled. “I have a great memory, but you can stop panicking, I don’t remember anything your grandfather said – without meaning, the words just don’t seem to stick.”
Bingo!
Eleanor thought as Conlan’s face revealed both his relief and his discomfort that she had known what he was thinking.
“So, will you teach me?” she asked.
Conlan nodded thoughtfully. “OK, but can we eat first?”
After dinner, Conlan presented her with a couple of cookies wrapped carefully in a napkin; they were from the tray of food his grandfather had provided, but she had missed the opportunity to try them. She offered him one, but he simply smiled and insisted they were for her. Resting her back against the fallen tree trunk they had made their camp in front of, Eleanor nibbled the cookies, trying to commit the sweet, delicious taste to memory. Conlan opened the book at the first page and began reading. Running his finger under the words, as if reading to a child, he read the first sentence in Dwarfish. His voice gave the harsh, snarling language a beauty and resonance it did not really possess. He stopped and read the sentence again, translating into English as he went, then he read it again in Dwarfish. After a while, Eleanor recognised what he was reading – it was the story Conlan had told them about the elements and Alaric, the first King of Mydren. Having to repeat the same line several times, they did not get very far into the story, but they did get as far as the picture of the man with the beard.
“Who’s that?” Eleanor asked.
“Alaric,” Conlan said.
Eleanor stared at the picture, unable to shake the feeling that she was missing something.
Their journey home passed uneventfully. Conlan was more relaxed and Eleanor enjoyed the comfortable companionship they shared, as well as keeping up her sword practice. He took their time together to teach her about Mydren. Eleanor was impressed by the scope of his knowledge on everything from the local flora and fauna, to setting up camp and caring for Rand, to the political structure of the Lord of Mydren’s inner council. He was far more patient with her attempts to learn Dwarfish than he was with her attempts to learn to fight. While her stuttering, stammering ineptitude left huge scope for him to mock her, he would only gently correct her. It was not a particularly difficult language structure to learn – the grammar and sentence building were remarkably close to English – but it was just slightly more formal. However, Eleanor found the pronunciation ridiculously complicated, and the rules about when and where one added growls and snarls were incredibly difficult to learn, as they seemed to revolve around who one was talking to and what emotion you wanted to layer into the words. In an attempt to help her learn, Conlan had stopped talking to her in English almost completely, talking to her throughout the day in Dwarfish. Since she wanted to talk to him, to learn about the world she lived in, this actually became Eleanor’s biggest incentive to use the language. By the time the mountains of home were in sight once again, he was reading the book in Dwarfish, with Eleanor only interrupting occasionally when there was a word she failed to recognise.
After the story of Alaric creating the Avatars, there were stories of some of the adventures they had had together and how they had shown him the noble virtues. Eleanor found these stories fascinating, as they gave the Avatars much more depth. They were not just tools Alaric used to tame the environment; they had tried to improve the lives of those around them. The book also talked about the Talismans the Avatars had fashioned, but any real information was sadly lacking. While the explanations of what the Talismans were and how important they were to the Avatars left Eleanor in no doubt as to how much they needed them, there was no mention of how they were used. There was also precious little information on how they were meant to work together beyond what they already knew, and there was no mention at all of shields or how to remove them. The way the book presented it, the Avatars were able to connect with Alaric long before they created the Talismans, which enhanced their power. When she mentioned this, Conlan pointed out that his grandfather had thought they needed the Talismans, and since they still had no way to get rid of his shield, at least it would give them something to do while they figured that problem out. Towards the end of the book, the style of writing changed and the tone of the book became almost like a diary, the author writing about the betrayal of the king and how his last loyal servants had tried to carry the six sacred objects to safety. The author became very cryptic about where the objects had gone, saying only that they were ‘taken to their hearts’. According to the author, all the servants had succeeded, except for the one carrying the crown. He was captured and the crown fell into the enemy’s hands.
“Conlan, how are we meant to find these things?” Eleanor asked in Dwarfish.
He looked at her, confused, and then gave her an amused smile.
Eleanor sighed. “What did I say?”
“You just asked how we were going to find tree stumps,” Conlan said, reverting to English.
Eleanor closed her eyes and tried the sentence again. Conlan nodded, switching back to Dwarfish. “You are not going to pass as a native any time soon, but that was much better, and to answer your question I do not know about the other Talismans, but I have seen that wand before.”
“Where?”
“The
Jektar
have it.”
“What does
Jektar
mean again?” Eleanor asked.
“Elves,” he said in English.
“Real Elves?” Eleanor asked, images of handsome, lithe men running through her head.
“Yes, although their blood line has become as corrupted as their features,” Conlan said grimly, the Dwarfish allowing him to add an undercurrent of distaste for the topic of discussion.
“Corrupted?”
“It takes a lot of strength to wield magic, Eleanor. Occasionally there are humans born with the natural ability, but not often, and those that are tend to end up dead or under the control of the Lords of Mydren. The Elves are highly magical beings who use both natural and unnatural magic, but through the ages they have mixed their blood line with humans and the magic has twisted and distorted their bodies and – in some – their minds.”