Within the Hollow Crown (4 page)

“But he translated them into Galbosian, and we both know how difficult a language it is.”

“It’s a difficult language to speak,” Jareld said, navigating the second floor landing. “It uses fourteen vowels and consonants that can only be heard by dogs. But it’s easy to write. It has thirty-one characters; it conjugates verbs the same way as Cirilian. The most complicated rule in Galbosian text is with the tildes, but it turns out Formal Galbosian doesn’t use tildes except in the first word of a sentence.”

Jareld felt his point was well made, but found himself following Gallar across the landing on the third floor and even onto the next flight of stairs.

“Tommy
Brimmerfell was a certain kind of Historian, and I gave him a Field Test that seemed appropriate to him. To you, I’m giving one I find appropriate to you.”

“You’re asking me to track down the most sought-after artifact in the history of the Kingdom of Rone. The same one that has caused the untimely demise of dozens of treasure hunters. Are you sure you’re not overshooting a little?”

Jareld would have said more, but he was running out of breath when he and Gallar started up the fifth flight.

“Jareld,” Gallar said, stopping mercifully in the middle of the staircase, “I’ve always been impressed with you. I’ve always expected great things from you. I think the challenge here will be to rise up to your worth.”

“Why would I search for a sword that I couldn’t use?”

Despite Jareld’s many protestations, there he was, navigating his way through a cave full of plain old mud. Thor was up ahead, holding one of their few torches up to the wall. The torches had been provided by King Vincent, current King of Rone, when they had visited Anuen. There, they had double-checked Jareld’s findings with the original documents, then found the last piece of the puzzle: The final entry in the ship’s journal.

The ship that carried King James II and his League of the Owl across the sea to the Caves of Drentar had a regular log kept by one of the Knights. The journal ended with their arrival at the coast of the Caves, because you generally don’t take a ship’s journal off the ship; that would ruin the point. All of the entries started with the date and the ship’s coordinates. Sir Dorn did not maintain the journal on his return, so the last entry is just the coordinates of the shore of Drentar. Except that isn’t the last entry, really. Several pages later, there is an entry that contains only the date and the coordinates. Previous scholars reasoned that Sir Dorn had decided one day, on his return journey, to keep up the journal, and then later decided against it.

But when Jareld actually looked at the coordinates, they were vastly different from any of the previous coordinates. Again, this fact had been easily overlooked before: It seemed that Dorn was just incorrect, or that he had taken a different route back home.

But when Jareld calculated the coordinates, sure enough, they ended up in the middle of land. And that land was Arwall, Dorn’s old stomping ground.

“I found something,” Thor called back. Jareld sloshed his way further into the cave to see what Thor was looking at. It was an inscription on the wall. It was meticulously carved, so that it didn’t just look like chicken scratch. Sir Dorn had also taken the time to sign his name in full, with his title: Sir Richard Dorn, League of the Owl. Jareld took out a bit of parchment and a quill.

“Oh,” Thor said, “As long as you have that out, you should probably copy down the inscription.”

Jareld glared at Thor. Thor looked back in a way that would have made most people think he was engaging in a staring contest, but Jareld knew that was just his face. He found his
inkbottle and started copying down the inscription.

Chapter
4: Things To Talk About When Dining With The Count

Because Vye had returned very late from her brush with political disaster, she did not have an audience with the Count until the following morning. She arrived in the dining hall to see Landos already seated and waiting for the rest of the breakfast company.

“Good morning,” Vye said.

“My Lady,” Landos responded. Vye took her customary seat across from Landos, the two seats flanking the end of the table, where Michael sat.

“So,” Vye said, reaching for a loaf of bread, “Have you had a chance to speak with the Count about Harold?”

“Not yet,” Landos said. “I suspect it will make for good breakfast conversation. And you should know better than to eat before the Count has arrived.”

“The servants should know better than to put food in front of me in the morning,” Vye answered, tearing off an end of the loaf. “And the Count can go fuck himself.”

“I’d be happy to,” said Count Michael Deliem, entering the room, “If you could just draw me a diagram of how it could be accomplished.”

Landos and Vye bit their lips as Michael made his way to the head of the table. Behind him, Gabriel, the Marshal, took a seat further down the table. If the breakfast table had been more crowded, this would have been necessary. Now, it was just Gabriel showing his general disdain for social interaction.

“Good morning, Your Grace,” Lady Vye said.

“Good morning, My Lady,” Michael responded. “Welcome back to civilization. Or some form of it anyway.”

Michael sat, and the others followed suit. Michael had just turned twenty-eight, and had become Count when his father died four years earlier. He wore a trimmed beard, dark-brown, and had green eyes, which his tailor used as inspiration for the design of his formal robe; the family crest of a Stag against a striped green and white silk backing.

Gabriel was a much older man. He was primarily in charge of the castle and it’s guards. He trained them. In fact, he was Vye’s first sword instructor, before she left the Kingdom and trained with Tallatos. For as long as she had known him, he had looked sixty, with shoulder-length gray hair and a raspy voice. But Vye knew that even now, if you wanted a good sparring partner, he was your best option.

“So,” Michael said as his bowl was filled with soup by a servant, “What happened?”

“A close call is what happened,” Landos said. “Another close call.”

“Is it an interesting story?” Michael asked.

“It’s a familiar one,” Landos said. “Lord Rutherford went to visit Lord Endior sometime last week, presumably to discuss a new trade route.”

“I thought you left an explicit order for him not to go on any more spontaneous diplomatic missions,” Vye said between spoonfuls of soup.

“I did,” Michael said. “In fact, I think I left two identical orders.”

“He’s going to keep getting us into trouble, Michael,” Gabriel said. He was the only one comfortable enough with the Count to call him by his first name. “He’s not going to listen until the worst happens.”

“So,” Landos said, “When there, he happens to run into Marisa Endior…”

“Big coincidence,” Vye said.

“And he tries to woo her…”

“Again,” Vye commented while grabbing an apple.

“...And when things don’t go according to his plans, he grabs Lady Endior and drags her back to his Manor.”

“I don’t like where this is going,” Michael said.

“Halfway home, Rutherford has to take a piss, so he dismounts, and Marisa turns the horse around and returns home. Her father declares Lord Rutherford a menace…”

“He is a menace,” Vye said.

“And the rest you know,” Landos said, finally grabbing a bite of food.

“This is not the last time he will get you into trouble,” Gabriel said.

“His trouble comes too often for my taste,” Landos said.

“Can’t you lock him up for being an idiot?” Vye asked.

“The Barons would eat me alive if I try to remove his title,” Michael pointed out.

“We have a naval outpost on the Island of Delinampora,” Landos said. “It could use a new Admiral.”

“I can’t afford to lose the trade routes from Delinampora,” Michael said, “Which is the most likely outcome of putting Rutherford in charge of the naval base there.”

“Just let me spend an hour in a room with him,” Vye said. “I think I know how to put an end to his untamed nature.”

“I think you may be onto something, Lady Vye,” the Count said. Landos looked sideways at Michael. As High Lieutenant, he was essentially the executive officer of the entire County. If Michael
were to lose his mind, it would be up to Landos to fix it.

“Your Grace,” Landos said, “I don’t know how diplomatic it would be to let Lady Vye remove Rutherford’s balls.”

“Never mind that,” Michael said, “But I’ve been inspired. I think I have a way to put a stop to our troublesome little baron.”

Chapter
5: The Demographically Challenged

Four people ascended, like moonlit shadows, to the summit of Lunapera Mountain, the Crest of the Moon. The peak was a lonely gray island of stone amidst the pine green sea of the forest. On the sheer cliffside, at a particular outcropping, you could look up and feel as though you were communing alone with the Moon himself. You could sell tickets to this view.

The
Lunapera is not within the borders of the Kingdom of Rone, nor would the four people ascending it consider themselves citizens of
that Kingdom
.
They were Turin. Naturalists from the Towers of Seneca had long ago declared that they were not technically a different race of people, not in the same way that a horse is a different race from a chicken. They just had a different language. And different customs. And different skin. But the thing that stuck out in everyone’s mind is that they were different.

Ask
any citizen of Rone, and they’ll tell you that the Turin are primitive barbarians. Ask a Turin, and you’ll hear about the conquering, destructive Rone. The truth lies somewhere in the
middle
.
See, the Turin were here first. They used to wander freely throughout the continent. The Rone are, by comparison, the newcomers.

So, how is it that these Ronish upstarts control more than three fourths of the continent now? Well, it basically comes down to stone walls. The Turin have a more communal, tribal way of life. They like to share. It takes a village to raise a child, and all that. The Rone like to draw maps. And declare certain plots of land as belonging to certain citizens. Specifically, certain noble citizens.

First children inherit the stone walls of the father. But there are always those pesky second and third and fourth children. And there was all this land on the continent without stone walls. At first, the Rone and the Turin found ways to barter and sell land between them. But some of the nobles decided that the land was theirs, and didn’t think these simple people were worth the silver. They lived in little idyllic villages, with no stone walls around them. Savages. How dare they?

And that was the beginning of the Undeclared War. The Lords of the southerners marched in with superior numbers, superior weapons and armor, and an unearned sense of superiority. Most of the history books fail to mention the rape and murder that the more “civilized” Rone participated in. But they felt that burning villages to the ground was an acceptable way of making sure your third son had a plot of land of his own.

But, hey, let’s be fair. The Turin weren’t saints either. They figured that the way to stop the northern advance was to reduce the number of nobles. Simple math, it seemed. So, they put a bounty on noble sons and pregnant noblewomen. There, the Turin said, dusting their hands off, that ought to make those nobles stop bothering us for a while.

Alas
, the Turin never understood how the nobility worked amongst the southerners. See, the Turin understood vengeance, but they didn’t understand noble vengeance. They expected that, at worst, the husband of the dead, pregnant noblewoman or child would come looking for them. As it turned out, these nobles could summon vast numbers
to their banners
.

So the Turin were relegated to the heavily wooded, much colder northern lands. And despite the occasional raid on the Rone farms, an uneasy peace has stood for the last few centuries. But that was about to change.

Which brings us back to these four people who were climbing, incrementally, to the precipice of the Lunapera. They were an elite unit of soldiers called the Turin-Sen, which loosely translates to, “Best of the Turin.” They didn’t give themselves this name. But they earned it. You don’t believe me? Pick a fight with one of them. I dare you.

There is one other way in which the Turin and the Rone differ: The Turin know magic. And we’re not talking about
pulling bunnies out of hats
.
This is primal shit. Storms of lightning. Crumbling mountains. Elemental. Vicious. It’s not easy to learn. And it’s even harder to control. But these four soldiers, the Turin-Sen, were the ones who could do it. They were the elite warriors of the sword and the spell. The most dangerous operatives in the continent.

Their chief instructor in these matters was a man named Argos. Argos had no official rank or title in the Turin Government or Military. It hardly mattered. The Regent, the highest political office, did not inspire fear or unquestioning loyalty like Argos. Add to that his physical and magical prowess, and there was nothing left to argue. Argos was a rank unto himself.

When the four Turin-Sen reached the summit, Argos stood silhouetted against the crescent moon, his silver-white hair blowing in the mountain breeze.

“Welcome, my Turin-Sen, my children of the Mountains,” Argos said, his usual greeting. His baritone voice resonated across the cliff face like a cello bowing through an adagio. Even the Moon was jealous of Argos’ ability to enthrall.

“Were that I could spend the rest of time with you, teaching you all that I know. But time has finally run out, and we must put aside instruction in favor of fealty.

“The Regent has informed me that the armies are ready, and the supply chains prepared, and the battle plans laid out. The war is about to begin. And to that end, we must serve our country, and be examples for our fellow countrymen.”

“What part shall we play in the coming conflict?” asked Halmir, the youngest member of the Turin-Sen.

“You will be my instruments of victory, of course,” Argos replied. “But the details will come later. For our last lesson, we are going to talk about shadows...”