Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 (15 page)

Paper Leaves

I
t was often said that the city of Windberth was impregnable to an army. In truth, no foe had yet found the chance to challenge this claim, and the last Heiland city which had claimed this, Highreach, had certainly proved a disappointment to the many who dwelt therein.

Windberth was, under the best of circumstances, rather difficult to reach no matter how innocent the purpose of the traveler. Although it was the capital of Heiland, its relative remoteness and lofty perch were perhaps more suitable to the hunter birds nested atop its spires than to the dwellings of men, which made it a less favorable destination than its status should have implied.

Adria had come to believe, in the years since she had left, that the effect was desired. The city, after all, was not large, and had no room for further growth within its walls. It was designed for imposition, and for the remoteness her father and the Matriarch enjoyed.

It bore the unapproachable elevation of a ruler who had never been close to his people, and the aloofness of the unnameable god of the Sisterhood, whose High Temple shared the citadel with the royal keep and a bastion housing the elite Knights of Darkfire’s First Battle contingent.

Windberth was also a particular oddity among the cities of Heiland in that it had been completely planned and constructed before a single soul had lived within its walls. Its origins, though only twelve or thirteen years past, were a curious mixture of history and myth.

Like the ghost stories of Kaye, Adria had chosen not to believe much of it as a child. After her time with the Aesidhe, though, she was more inclined to give such stories credence. She had heard the tale more than once by now, and though it was likely hearsay by necessity, something in the spirit of it rang truer the more Adria learned of the world beyond her childhood towers.

The citadel itself, with the spires of its keep and the High Temple rising up above the battlements of its concentric curtain walls, had been built first. It rested flush against the mountainside on a second plateau overlooking the rest of the city.

This plateau, like the one below, had been partially natural, and the rest had been cut away. In fact, much had been excavated behind and below this, to provide for the vast space needed for construction, as well as the massive amount of solid stone blocks and slate tiles required.

Even as construction of the citadel began, the town with its own significant fortifications was already planned, and the materials needed for its construction were brought in from across Heiland and beyond.

Only outside and beneath the plateaus, in the area at the foot of the cliff and north of the Old North Road, were any workers allowed to live. A village in its own right sprung up out of the earth here, built from the lumber harvested in clearing the foothills.

In these structures the more prominent among the workers lived for the five years it took to complete the project — the castellan and his engineers, the master smiths, and representatives of the Matriarch of the Sisterhood and the Grand Marshal of the Knights of Darkfire.

The journeyman masons, carvers and smiths, along with all their apprentices, laborers, support workers and hangers-on inhabited a ring of tents and ramshackle outbuildings amidst the trees and against the facing cliffs alongside the road.

Construction had begun soon after Lord Ebenhardt’s return from the War of Scars, and while many among the Heiland nobility had remained abroad for the war and the spoils of its aftermath. The citadel city arose while the armies of her father conquered county after county in Northern Heiland, and was paid for in ransoms, tribute, and the pillage of lesser lords.

When Ebenhardt and his Knights of Darkfire returned victorious from the fall of Highreach, they brought with them the means to finish the last of the spinnerets, the mandate of the One True God, and a newly-minted crown of Heiland.

By the time the last of Heiland’s lords returned from the War of Scars, Windberth was completed, the great cities of the east resigned to the King’s rule, and little choice was left but to swear fealty to Ebenhardt and the House of Idonea. Those who remained independent and defiant were brought to heel within months, or else fled to foreign lands and shores.

Preinon Idonea, it was said, was the first to bend his knee, and was welcomed as Duke of Heiland, and Marshal of the Violet West — where the core of his lands had remained untouched by the king.

But that is another story,
Adria thought,
with an equally unpleasant end
.

The reputation of the citadel city of Windberth was twofold, and sealed quickly in rumor and legend. Built entirely of stone, the city was impregnable to fire, and the base of its walls too high for any but the greatest of war machines. Even then, its iron-boned roots were joined fast to the bedrock of the mountain itself.

But what truly caused the whispers of awe to reach every corner of Heiland was the manner in which supposed deeper secrets than iron and stone were protected — a manner which had convinced more than a few of the yet-defiant nobility to give oaths.

As the legend went, King Ebenhardt Idonea, known to many as the Dark Fire of Heiland, proclaimed a day of celebration upon completion of his great citadel city.

All those whose hands had carved stone, forged iron, or led caravans of materials from afar; those who had cooked meals for the workers, brewed ale for the respite of almost two thousand evenings — all those whose hands had helped raise Windberth in any way, were given such a feast as none among them had ever seen. Tumblers, players, and musicians were brought in, tobacco and wine and ale were handed freely, and a hundred whores were loosed to wander from one cot or bedroll to the next.

Just before dawn, the First Battle of the Knights of Darkfire surrounded the entire village and encampment of workers, while those who had so recently reveled slumbered within.

It was said to appear as if the stars fell. Arrows wreathed in flame pierced through hide tents, blankets, and flesh. Wooden huts and houses toppled in fire and ashes. Masons, smiths, and foresters, their wives and women, and the children they had borne in service to the citadel ran screaming against the ring of knights, only to be spitted on their lances, or split open by their swords. Their purpose fulfilled, the builders of the now-King’s city expired as one. And the fire, so high and so great, was said to awaken half of Heiland with a false Northern Light.

Only a few of the smallest inner circle were spared, a handful who had any knowledge of the city and the citadel. Even these, it is said, were bound by such oaths of King and Matriarch that death would be a small price for indiscretion.

Nonetheless, Adria had often to wonder at the truth of the tale, and very early on had wondered, assuming all had died in the camp, who might have told this story to begin with, with so few survivors, and these sworn to secret. She’d heard of those who claimed to be hunters watching from a distance, or lone survivors left for dead beneath the blood and ashes. She’d even heard those who denied such stories, insisting that the laborers had simply been shipped to another land, or even enslaved in Somana.

Though Adria had heard the variations more than once, the story of the Red North Lights was so wrought with mystery and horror that, whether or not she believed such a tale, she believed the citadel she had called home nearly her entire life held many great secrets within its walls and beneath the ashes of its history.

Another mystery, another legend, another legion ghosts of Heiland.

The road wound up slowly, walled on the outfacing side to prevent a horse or cart plunging down the mountainside to crush a similar horse or cart below, and Adria’s legs soon wished she had brought the palfrey up the rest of the way.

The switchbacks ended at a large and similarly walled plateau at the base of the city. Half the height of a man, these low walls were rendered almost unnoticeable by the sheer face of the front walls of the city, standing forty or fifty feet tall. To the fortune of the merchants and visitors who stopped to rest before entering the gates, the walls blocked the sun for much of the day in the seasons they were needed most, though they served less against wind, rain, or snow.

Between the stony ground and too-often biting winds, tenting was useless here. There were a number of wooden shelters for respite, but Adria was certain a charge accompanied these in the typically poor weather. More stalls and hawkers sold warm bread and meat, mulled wine and honeyed beer. Others changed money for the tolls.

The barbican itself was starkly formidable. It stood a massive five full levels, with three portcullises, four sets of oak doors, and enough murder holes and arrow loops before and within to have busied a single stone carver for life. The only spots of color were her father’s flags and banner, perched atop and sprouting out from the barbican, their black and violet rife with wind.

These markings still evoked an unsettling in Adria, and her blood coursed a little faster to see so many of the emblems of Idonea.

I shall have to relearn not to flinch upon seeing it, I suppose, Adria sighed, smiling a little. S
he closed her eyes and focused a moment,
though even Aesidhe training could not completely slow the pace of her heart or quell the dizzying energy strengthening her limbs. So she found a place to rest herself upon the flagstones, even allowing the chill to brace her will and help her recollect her thoughts.

The sergeant took me at my word, without question,
Adria thought.
Is security so lax, or do they simply believe a young woman to be little threat? Perhaps Sisters
are
being recalled, or perhaps the way was paved for me… but by whom? And how?

And then she thought of the oddities of the past week —
and has it been only one week? —
the flashes of gray-clad figures at the corners of her vision, the sense of being watched, and even the white wolf who led her to the Marbury family…

Adria would be very difficult to follow without gaining her notice — of this she was certain. No Knight of Darkfire could manage it, unless their training now included rather more innovation than learning the Aeman letters.

Nevertheless, she suspected now that her father, no... more correctly, Matron Taber... knew she was coming.

It is her seal, not Father’s,
which allows my entrance.
Adria thought.
It is fitting I claimed Sisterhood.

Even more,
the manner of both the Sergeant and the Knight before him convinced her of this. They had not seemed to know her true identity, she was certain, but they didn’t seemed to be expecting someone like her.

She might have suspected Preinon of preparing her way somehow, perhaps even Tabashi. But none could have reached Windberth more swiftly than she had traveled, not even Mateko. There was no accounting for the Moresidhe Tabashi, Adria had learned. He had certainly known her path before she chosen it once or twice.

What coin could he have gained from this, perhaps with Taber?
Adria mused.

Hafgrim could also have revealed her oath, either to their father or Taber.
But for what purpose?

Adria could not immediately think of a reason for this either, and could not even be sure that Hafgrim would truly expect her to keep, or would even remember, the promise she had made as only a child.

Three years passed, and he would be a man now,
Adria thought.
Or at least what passes for one where Aeman law and expectations are generally concerned.

In the end, though disconcerting, perhaps this might prove better. She was expected, and her path had been cleared, at least this far. Whether this was fortune or ill-, she would have to wait and see.

Custom actually dictated a confrontation with the Matriarch. It was a long-standing Aeman tradition for visiting or returning royalty or high nobility to meet at once with the chancellor of an estate. Taber had been appointed, or had appointed herself, to this position some years before, and this was unlikely to have changed. All such ceremonies and ministrations of state had been absorbed by the Sisterhood.

Such tradition seemed a bizarre formality given the situation, but Adria was eager to take some measure of the Matriarch herself and perhaps to delay meeting both her father and her brother. Taber had always remained at a distance, and Adria had no reason to expect her manner to have changed dramatically, at least outwardly.

But Hafgrim will have changed
…
must
have changed. And Father? We were close once, despite
…
despite the manner of my exile, despite what I have done… despite what secret histories he held I have since learned beyond the walls of home.

Adria’s body tensed with the anxiety of anticipation.
And now, if he is as the rumors say
…

This is not the way to calm my blood.
Adria opened her eyes, rose, and dusted herself off. With measured breaths and steps, she unwrapped the wax seal of the Matriarch, holding it up like a talisman, and passed between the guards, beneath the iron teeth of the portcullises, and through the half-open doorways of her father’s great citadel city, where the first twelve years of her memory still dwelt.