Mask of Swords (18 page)

“No,” said Adalar. He handed the cup back to her. “Forgive me for this. There is…much on my mind, and sometimes it wanders.”

“You sound like my husband,” said Helen.

“I hope that is complimentary.”

She smiled. “It is. The Jutai…their homes are gone, too. The Malrags destroyed them all and wiped out most of their people. They can never go back, and their old homeland is gone forever.” She shrugged. “They can only go forward and make a new home for themselves.” 

“Yes,” said Adalar. “Yes, that makes a great deal of sense. Thank you.”

“I am pleased to serve, my lord knight,” said Helen. “Though if you wish to buy something on your way out…”

Adalar laughed and bought a dagger of Jutai make, its wide steel blade adorned with an intricate design of swirling knots. Helen expected him to haggle, but he paid her price without argument. 

He set off for his camp outside the wall. Tomorrow, he decided, he would bid his farewells to Mazael and set off for Knightcastle and Castle Dominus once more. If Wesson wanted to stay, well and good, but Adalar would depart after finishing his task.

There was nothing for him here but ashes and the dead.

###

Sigaldra opened the door to her bedroom and looked inside. 

“Sister?” she said. “Are you awake?”

“I am,” said Liane. She was sitting in bed, eating a bowl of Ulfarna’s vile-smelling soup. Sigaldra couldn’t stand the stuff, but Liane loved it, and always ate it after one of her episodes. “I knew you were coming.”

“A vision showed you, is that it?” said Sigaldra, closing the door behind her.

“Yes,” said Liane. “Or I heard you coming up the stairs. You stomp when you walk, sister.”

“I stomp?” said Sigaldra. “If I do, it is because I have work to do and places to go. Or should I glide like these weakling western noblewomen?” She inched forward, ostentatiously rolling her hips, and Liane let out a giggle that turned into a snort. 

“Stop that,” said Liane. “I shall spill soup and stain your blankets.” She tilted her head to the side. “You are in a good humor.”

“Why should I not be?” said Sigaldra.

“You never are.”

“Lord Mazael will side with us against Earnachar and his pet sorceresses,” said Sigaldra. She felt her right hand curl into a fist. “I hope I can see his ugly face when the hrould questions him.”

“I hope there is no fighting,” said Liane. “There has been too much fighting already.” She shivered. “It isn’t Earnachar that is the enemy, sister.” 

“He damned well is our enemy,” said Sigaldra. “He would have killed us all if Ragnachar had let him, and since we’ve come to the Grim Marches he has harassed us and threatened to steal our lands. I don’t hope to see Earnachar humbled. I hope he fights Mazael. I hope we kill him, and that I get to spit upon his ugly corpse.”

“Would that bring you joy?” said Liane.

“Yes,” said Sigaldra. “Or close enough to it that it does not matter.” She shrugged. “I know it makes you uneasy. But I will do whatever necessary to make sure the Jutai people survive. Whatever I must. Joy is for you, sister. Joy is for those who come after me. For myself…I want only the survival of our people.” 

“I understand,” said Liane. “I am sorry this burden fell to you.” 

“It is what it is,” said Sigaldra. “I am Jutai and the holdmistress of our people. I will do what I must.”

For some reason Liane’s words annoyed her. She wanted Earnachar dead, wanted him dead as badly as she had ever wanted anything. Why should Liane judge her for that? 

“I know,” said Liane. “Thank you. For everything. I would not be here if not for you. The Jutai people would not have survived.”

“Those of us who are left,” said Sigaldra. 

“But Earnachar isn’t the real enemy,” said Liane. “It is the Prophetess. I’ve seen her in my visions, Sigaldra. Even when I sleep, I see her in my dreams. She is at the center of the web…”

“Web?” said Sigaldra, chilled as she remembered Mazael’s talk of soliphages and spiders. “Why would you say web?” 

Liane shrugged. “It is what I see in my dreams. She stands at the center of a web, and the threads reach everyone. In her left hand she holds a knife made of blood, and in her right an egg made of green glass. A man wearing a mask of swords stands at her right side. She is full of dark magic and malice, and if her egg hatches it will devour the world.”

“What does that mean?” said Sigaldra. 

“I do not know,” said Liane. She sighed and pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead. “I wish…I wish I knew. I wish the visions were more useful, or that I could control them.”

“We might be able to help with that,” said Sigaldra. “Mazael’s wife, Lady Romaria.”

“The huntress,” whispered Liane. “The lady of the wolves. She has the soul of the Elderborn.”

“She does?” said Sigaldra, a bit surprised. It made sense. There was something uncanny about Romaria Greenshield Cravenlock, something that matched the Elderborn tribes that Sigaldra had seen during the Runedead War. And what other woman would a man like Mazael Cravenlock take to wife? There was something about him, something that commanded attention and loyalty. His steel-colored eyes had struck her like physical blows. Sigaldra did not think of herself as the sort of woman to have her head turned by charismatic men, but Mazael had something more elemental than charisma. If he had invited her to his tent, she was surprised to realize that she likely would have gone with him. 

Just as well that he had behaved with perfect propriety toward her. Romaria was not the sort of woman Sigaldra wanted to cross. 

“You’re turning red,” said Liane, blinking.

“I most certainly am not,” said Sigaldra, pushing aside the inappropriate thoughts. “But Mazael told me that Lady Romaria has the Sight. Or a form of it, at least. She can speak with you. Perhaps she can help you to control your visions.” 

“That would be welcome,” said Liane with a sigh. “It is…vexing. At least something useful sometimes comes of it, though.” She blinked. “You should go to the chapel now.”

“Why?” said Sigaldra.

Liane’s voice grew faint, her eyes distant. She was having another vision. “There is a knight made of rust, and you need to talk to him.”

“Are we in danger?” said Sigaldra. “Is he a foe?”

“Only to himself,” said Liane. “You have to talk to the rusted knight. I don’t know why. I…can’t see why. You must.” She sighed and slumped against the pillows again, her eyes growing heavy, and soon fell asleep.

Sigaldra stared at her for a while.

“That was helpful,” she muttered. 

She pulled up the blanket to cover Liane and left the bedroom, descending back to the great hall. The hall was deserted – Mazael and the other lords had returned to their men, and would return later to dine under her roof. The banners and trophies hung undisturbed from the wall. 

Sigaldra crossed the hall and opened the doors to the chapel. 

The chapel was a small domed room, perhaps thirty feet across. Images of the three Amathavian gods marked the wall, and a stone rail encircled the wall itself. When they had first settled here, some of the Jutai had wanted to paint over the images of the Amathavian gods, but Sigaldra had refused. She did not know if the Amathavian gods were real or myth, but there was no reason to offend them. 

Upon the stone rail sat urns, hundreds and hundreds of urns. Some were made of baked clay, others of stone, some of bronze or verdigris-encrusted brass. The Tervingi buried their dead in mounds, or at least they had until the Great Rising, and Sigaldra neither knew nor cared what the Tervingi did now. The Jutai had always burned their dead and scattered their ashes, save for one pinch that went into the family’s ancestral urn. The urns upon the stone rail held hundreds and hundreds of generations of Jutai ashes. 

This room, this old chapel, was the heart of the Jutai nation. Sigaldra felt the gaze of her ancestors upon her. 

Or, at least, she imagined that she did.  

The Jutai had always believed that the spirits of their ancestors guided them. After the last few years, Sigaldra was no longer so sure. What would happen to the ancestral spirits if every last Jutai perished? Would the ancestors cease to exist?

Maybe they had never existed at all, had been nothing more than the fantasies of the Jutai loresingers. 

She looked at her family’s urn. It was large and wrought from stone, its sides carved with stylized knots. That urn held the ashes of her mother and her father and her brothers, all of them killed by the Malrags. Someday, Sigaldra’s own ashes would lie within that urn. Assuming any of her family still lived to place those ashes into the urn. Perhaps Liane’s children would inter her ashes, given how unlikely it was that Sigaldra would wed.

A shiver of anger went through her.

“Damn you,” she whispered. “Why did you all leave me? I shouldn’t have been holdmistress. This burden shouldn’t have been mine.”

Neither the ancestors nor the gods answered.

Sigaldra shivered some more and closed her eyes until the anger cooled a bit. 

She could not blame the ancestors or the gods. The Malrags had done this to the Jutai, and then Ragnachar had been there to pick the carcass. Sigaldra would save what was left of her people, no matter what she had to do. If she had to kill every last damned Tervingi with her own hands, she would do it gladly…

A hinge creaked. 

There was a trapdoor behind the low altar, leading to the crypt beneath the chapel. Sigaldra had left the crypt undisturbed. Any corpses below would have been raised as runedead and then destroyed, and those that were left could sleep in peace. Now the trapdoor was opening.

Visions of runedead flashed through her head, and she yanked the short sword from her belt and leveled it at the trapdoor as it swung open.

She found herself looking into the face of a young man with brown eyes and close-cropped brown hair, a lantern in his left hand. He wore chain mail beneath a green surcoat adorned with a stylized heart, and the hilt of a heavy greatsword rose over his shoulder.

For a moment they stared at each other. 

“Greetings,” said the knight. “Please don’t stab me.” 

Sigaldra let out a long breath, the sword motionless in her hands. “You startled me.” She felt foolish. “It was just…when the crypt door opened, it made me think of the runedead.” 

The knight did not laugh. “I understand.” A tightness came around his eyes that made him look older. “I lived through the Great Rising, too.” 

“What the devil are you doing in the crypt?” said Sigaldra. “Are you robbing it?” She glared at the young knight. “Or are you here to defile the ashes of my ancestors?”

“Of course not,” said the knight. “I had business here, and now it is finished. Assuming you do not stab me in the next minute or so, I will walk out the door, leave Greatheart Keep, and never return.”

“Wait,” said Sigaldra. “I know you. You’re Lord Adalar, the one who was with Lord Mazael at the gate.” She had met him once or twice before the great battle at the Northwater, but every lord, knight, and headman in the Grim Marches had been gathered there, and he had been one face among thousands. “That’s why you are here, isn’t it?”

“Isn’t what?” said Adalar.

“To expel the Jutai,” said Sigaldra, “and to reclaim your father’s lands.” 

“For the gods’ sake,” said Adalar. “I don’t want Greatheart Keep. I didn’t want to come back to Greatheart Keep, not after what the runedead did to it. I only came back to bring my father’s ashes to the crypt. Now that it is done, I am going to leave. Unless you decide to kill me first.” 

“Very well,” said Sigaldra, lowering the sword. Adalar set his lantern on the stone floor, hauled himself up with a grunt, and closed the trapdoor behind him. “Why?”

Adalar straightened up, picking up his lantern. “Why what?”

“Why sneak into the chapel like a thief in the night?” said Sigaldra, her suspicion returning. “I thought there would be a ceremony, your Amathavian priests reciting prayers as the ashes were stored in the crypt. The lords and knights of the Grim Marches like their ceremonies. Instead you have slipped the ashes into the crypt like a messenger leaving bad news for his lord.”

“My father is dead,” said Adalar. “He wished for his remains to be interred in the crypt, and I have done so, but he is dead. The ceremonies mean nothing to him. The gods might hear the prayer, but what will they do? His already dead, his fate decided.” He shook his head. “Just as we all one day shall be dead, too.”

He turned to go.

“Why don’t you want Greatheart Keep?” said Sigaldra.

He glanced back. “Does it matter? I’m not going to challenge your claim, and if I can work my will I shall never return to the Grim Marches.”   

“I don’t believe you,” said Sigaldra.

Adalar frowned. “Why not? Is my given word not good enough for you?” 

“It is not,” said Sigaldra. “This was your father’s land. Why should you not wish to claim it? Perhaps you are simply lying to gain my trust, making it easier to claim Greatheart Keep later.”

“You are certainly mistrustful,” said Adalar. 

“Is there any good reason I should not be?” said Sigaldra.

“Lord Mazael gave Greatheart Keep to the Jutai,” said Adalar. She expected him to grow angry, but he only seemed…tired, perhaps? He reminded her of some of the older Jutai thains and bondsmen. “He is the liege lord of the Grim Marches, and he has given you Greatheart Keep as a fief. That is that.”

“Lord Mazael has never gone back on his word to me,” said Sigaldra, “but what of the other lords? Some of them counseled Lord Richard to wipe out the Tervingi after the battle of Stone Tower, and they would have killed the Jutai with them. Or Earnachar son of Balnachar. Do you think Lord Mazael’s commands mean anything to him? If he had the power, he would kill the Jutai and claim our land. Perhaps the Prophetess and her goddess offered him the power to do just that.” She pointed at Adalar with her left hand, the sword dangling from her right. “So how I do know you are not lying to me? How do I know you will not betray your word and return to reclaim your home from us?”

Sigaldra knew she ought to have moderated her words, but she was too angry to care. Adalar’s presumption annoyed her, and more importantly, alarmed her. She was the holdmistress of Greatheart Keep, and he had entered the keep and the chapel without her permission. More, if he thought he had the right to enter the chapel without her permission, then perhaps he thought he would have the right to reclaim Greatheart Keep whenever he wished.