The Eighth Warden Bk. 03 Ch. 01-02

Corec stared down at the sword for a moment, trying to decide what to do. He needed a new blade before he left the city. He'd visited three smiths since returning, but none of them were familiar with how to craft a greatsword. The weapon was typically used for war rather than for personal protection, but with the High Guard's forested, mountainous terrain, they preferred small, mobile units armed with staff-spears and crossbows. According to Sarette, they also trained with smaller swords, shields, and pikes in case they ever needed to fight in tight formation, but they didn't use greatswords.

The weapon smiths did most of their business directly with the High Guard, or with the mining and ranching communities the stormborn had established throughout the Storm Heights. There were few threats within Snow Crown itself, so most citizens didn't carry arms. The smiths did sell arming swords and other weapons to caravan guards and travelers, but there wasn't a market for greatswords in the city.

"Perhaps I should take it with me," Corec said. "I can find out if the other wardens know anything about it."

"You know of other wardens?" the woman asked, an excited look on her face. "Who are they? Where do they live? I've heard of Leonis, of course, since records were kept of his visit, but that was a long time ago. He must be dead by now. I wasn't aware that there even were any others until you showed up."

When the Nadza and the other historians had interviewed Corec, back before he and his friends had left to find the ruins, it had become clear that the stormborn's stories about wardens didn't mention the long lifespan Yelena had described. He hadn't brought it up, not sure whether he believed it himself.

He said, "The only one I know is the woman I mentioned the first time we spoke—the one who told me about being a warden—but she said there were others."

Nadza frowned. "You still won't tell me who she is?"

"It's not my secret to tell. When I see her next, I'll give her your name and tell her your people know about wardens, but I can't promise she'll contact you. I also know a woman who carries an enchanted blade like this one. I'll talk to her too, and send you whatever I learn."

"In that case, I'll pass your request along. I can't authorize it myself, but the Head Magister sits on the Council of Elders. She can decide whether to loan you the sword on a long-term basis. For now, just please take it away so we can have our workroom back."

Corec nodded, and wrapped the blade in his cloak before leaving. He'd need to get a new scabbard made; the old one had worked temporarily, but it wasn't a good fit. Perhaps he could find a leatherworker's shop on the way back to the inn. No—on second thought, it would be better to return to the inn and take the measurements himself. The leatherworker wouldn't be able to touch the sword any more than anyone else could.

#

"You're certain it said Tir Navis?" Magister Borya asked.

"I don't see what else it could have been," Ellerie replied. "The letters looked different than I'm used to, but they were still readable."

"I wrote them out exactly as I saw them," Bobo added, pulling a folded sheet of paper from his satchel and handing it over.

"Incredible," Borya said, reading the page and then standing up to pace around his office at the rear of the Archives room in the museum. "Yes, we've learned that the people who lived in South Valley must have spoken a variant of what other scholars have identified as the people's language. If it truly is Tir Navis, that makes sense. It was one of the first colonies to be settled; it could also have been one of the first to be abandoned, while the language continued to change."

"You've found other writings?" Ellerie asked.

"A few, a few. Sadly, no books would have survived for long under such conditions. But this...you say it was from a sign in an armory?"

"An armory is one option," Bobo said. "Or it could have been a museum, like you have here. It's the same room where we found the weapons."

"Ahh, yes, Nadza showed those to me. What a find!" Borya read the page again. "Regent Milos. I haven't heard that name before, but that's not a surprise. We have very few stories from the people who came before—nothing other than fables with no real truth attached to them."

"I translated it as King Milos," Bobo said.

Borya chewed on his lip as he thought. "That would depend on whether you ascribe to Dimartes's theory that each of the Tirs represented a separate nation, or Evgeni's work linking them as fiefdoms under a common emperor."

Bobo opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Ellerie cleared her throat.

"I don't think we're going to solve that question today," she said. If she didn't stop them, the two men would talk for hours. She'd been feeling more generous toward Bobo ever since he'd discovered the route to Tir Yadar, but her patience would only last for so long.

"Oh, of course," the magister said. "I can't wait to see this armory for myself once the weather improves. Will you be joining us?"

Ellerie shook her head. "No, we're leaving soon. But you should know, there's more than just the armory. We found miles of tunnels. Living quarters, channels for water—Sarette called them aqueducts— and other rooms we didn't have a chance to explore. We had to leave sooner than we'd planned, but I mapped out what I could." She nodded to Bobo, and he gave Borya another stack of papers.

"Miles?" the magister asked, thumbing through the maps. "And living quarters? We thought the undercity was only used for the aqueducts and maintenance tunnels. We've discovered seven different entrances so far, and none of them led to anything but cave-ins. We've never risked clearing out the rock because we thought it might collapse the buildings above." He set the papers down on his desk with a wide smile. "With this much to explore, I may have to spend all summer in the valley. My students will be quite annoyed to be dragged into the wilderness for so long."

"I hope what we found is helpful." Ellerie hesitated, not sure whether to leave or to ask the question that had been in her thoughts for weeks now. Finally, she spoke. "Magister Borya, are the stormborn the Ancients? The people who came before?"

Bobo winced.

"Why would you think that?" Borya asked.

"You follow many of the same customs, your language is descended from theirs, your military is modeled after theirs. Some of your own scholars believe your people came from Tir Navis originally, before going north to Snow Crown. The Ancients must have gone somewhere. Why not here?"

Borya was silent for a moment, staring at her. "Who were the people who came before?" he asked ponderously, as if lecturing his students. "Were they humans? Elves? Some other race lost to time? Or were they a common ancestor of us all? Your own people, with their long lives, should remember better than any of us. What do they say?"

"Our records don't go back that far," Ellerie said. "We have nothing from before the founding of Terrillia, neither written nor oral."

"Then your historians suffer the same curse of time that we must all deal with—we simply don't know. There are few records from the time before. We know the names of a few of the Tirs and a few of the people, some details about daily life, and that's it. As to your question...no. We call them the people who came before because they came before us. There are too many odnovremennyy...how do I say this in trade tongue? Happening at the same time. Contemporaneous—that's it. There are too many contemporaneous records from the time when Borrisur created the first stormborn and led them to Snow Crown. For that not to be the truth, our people would have had to have perpetrated a great hoax on their own descendants. No. We are not the people who came before. I'm certain of that."

#

After they'd left the Archives, Bobo sighed. "Why did you do that?" he asked. "Arguing against religious dogma rarely goes well. We'll be lucky if he ever talks to us again."

"I had to ask," Ellerie said. "There were too many pieces fitting together. Do you really think one of the gods just created people out of storms? They must have come from somewhere."

"We'll probably never know. What does Boktar say about the origins of the stoneborn?"

"He doesn't care to speculate."

###

Chapter 2

Katrin hummed to herself, then played the same tune on her harp before marking it down on the sheet of paper before her. While she hummed the next few notes, Shavala came into the room and greeted her.

"Back to trying to write a song?" the elven woman asked.

"Now that my fingers aren't constantly frozen, I figured I should. I just can't think of the lyrics. I've finally got two decent melodies, but they're not good enough to stand by themselves. I need to put words to them, and I just can't come up with any."

"What sort of songs?"

"One sounds almost heroic, the other is sort of sad. I tried to write something about Fergus for the sad one, but what can I say? He died when a tree branch hit his head after the snow beasts broke our spear trap. I can't put that in a song. He deserves better."

Shavala bit her lower lip as she thought. "Why not write about his life rather than his death?"

Katrin considered that. The leader of the Jol's Brook refugees had been a decent person and a hard worker, a man who was just trying to get by in a situation that kept growing steadily worse. He wasn't some great hero out of legend, but then, he didn't have to be. He was what the refugees had needed at the time. Maybe she could work with that somehow—a requiem rather than a lament. He deserved to be memorialized. She just hoped he wouldn't mind if she was the person to do it.

"I'll try that," she said. "What have you been up to?"

"I went to see the horses."

"How are they doing?"

"Socks and Dot want to leave. They're tired of being in the same place for so long. The others are happy enough—they've got plenty to eat, the stable is warmer than outdoors, and the stable boys are exercising them every day."

Katrin nodded. "I wonder if Sarette has a horse."

"Are you thinking of giving her Duchess?"

"That's why we brought her—in case we needed another," Katrin said. Duchess had been her own mount for the ride from Circle Bay to Tyrsall. They'd sold the other extra animals from that trip, but Katrin had kept her as a spare, though she herself usually rode Flower, the mule Corec had bought for her the day after they'd met. "Though I suppose, even if Sarette's already got a horse, Nedley still needs one."

"Either way, I'm sure Duchess will be happy. She's been feeling left out."

Katrin laughed. "I thought you could talk to animals but they couldn't talk back to you?"

"You can learn a lot from their body language. Horses are very expressive if you know what to look for." Shavala glanced out the window to check the position of the sun. "Isn't it time for you to go downstairs?"

"I don't know if it's worth the bother. Yesterday, I only made six coppers for the whole afternoon."

"You get a free room, too," Shavala pointed out.

"I suppose, but it's still not much." Despite her words, Katrin gathered up her harp and her flute.

There weren't many inns in Snow Crown, and they were mostly frequented by outside visitors and traders rather than locals. The stormborn themselves rarely left the mountains, so they seldom had need for temporary accommodations. This particular inn was small, and Katrin and her friends took up half the rooms. While the music had attracted others to come inside, business had been slow.

"Maybe if you ask him again, he'll let you play in the evenings," Shavala said.

The innkeeper did good business at night, mostly among Snow Crown's tiny community of foreigners, but he didn't allow music after the sun went down. He made more money selling food than ale, so he focused on moving patrons in and out rather than having them linger around for hours.

The city had plenty of taverns that allowed minstrels to play, but the customers were almost all stormborn. Katrin had visited two different places, but with the looks of surprise she'd received from everyone in the room, she hadn't felt comfortable asking for work. The stormborn preferred their music to be in their own language, which she didn't speak, and she'd only learned a few of their songs so far.

"No, it's not worth it," she said. "We'll be gone in a day or two, and I'll do better once we get back to Tyrsall. I don't know about the trip to Cordaea though. Maybe I should stay in Tyrsall while everyone else goes."

"What? Why wouldn't you come with us?"

"I won't be able to work there at all. Bobo says they don't even speak trade tongue; it'll be like here but worse."

"The others won't care about that," Shavala said. "We'll just pay for our rooms the normal way."

Katrin sighed. "I just feel so useless compared to everyone else. What am I contributing?" It was the first time she'd spoken out about the concerns that had been building up in her mind over the past few months.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not like you or the others. You've got your bow and your magic, Treya can punch a man hard enough to knock him out, Ellerie casts spells. And now there's Sarette—Corec and Boktar already trust her to fight alongside them. What do I do? I'm no help in a fight."

"You've helped before. You stopped two of the snow beasts."

"I sang to them and made them fall asleep. It's not the same thing. You hit them with lightning."

Shavala stared into the distance. "I wish I hadn't. It's good that we can defend ourselves, but being able to kill someone... It shouldn't have been necessary. Why do you feel like this now? When you killed that man in Circle Bay, you were sad for days."

"I don't know. Seeing Sarette jump into the fight like that... She's the sort of person Corec should be recruiting, not me. He cast the binding spell for her on purpose, but for me, it was an accident."

"It was an accident for the rest of us too, but he still spends most of his time with you."

"That's different," Katrin said, allowing herself to smile. "I'm not worried about my relationship with him; I just feel like I'm not contributing enough. If I stay in Tyrsall while you're gone, I could support myself, plus make enough money to get us started in Four Roads or wherever we end up."

Shavala frowned. "We could be away for half a year, maybe more. You can't stay by yourself for that long."

Katrin hadn't considered how long the trip would take. Circle Bay might be better than Tyrsall if she didn't want to be alone, but she wasn't ready to see her brother and uncle again yet. "Well, maybe I'll go, but I wish I could do more to help. My singing didn't work on the red-eyes."

"The red-eyes shouldn't be a problem now that Treya knows how to deal with them."

"See? That's what I'm talking about. She can do things I never knew were possible. You all can, except for me. All I can do is sing."

"Do you remember what Yelena said about wardens and their bondmates? One person's strength compensates for another's weakness."

"But I don't have a strength."

Shavala shrugged. "Sometimes you sing to get us free rooms, sometimes you make snow beasts fall asleep, sometimes you cook or gather firewood. Not everything has to be about magic or killing."

#

The royal guards bowed as Rusol approached. He ignored them, passing through the archway that led to the palace's inner quarters, followed by Yassi, Kolvi, and Samir. Kolvi peeled away wordlessly when they passed the corridor leading to her apartment, and soon they reached another pair of guards outside the royal family's quarters.

Rusol paused there and looked back at Samir. "It'll likely be weeks before we hear anything, but I'd appreciate it if you remained in Telfort while we wait."

"Yes, Your Highness," his old friend said with a bow. He usually remembered to follow protocol when others were watching.

"Have a pleasant evening, Yassi," Rusol said to Samir's sister, while giving her a look of warning. She'd been acting stranger than usual on their trip to Northtower. If she wasn't careful, Samir might grow suspicious.

She stared at him expressionlessly with those dark eyes of hers until he passed through the double doors to his family's private domain.

His manservant was there waiting for him. "Your Highness," the man said with a bow. "Welcome back. Would you like me to have the cooks make up a meal for you? Or perhaps you'd prefer a bath? Fresh clothing?"

"Draw a bath for me, but first, I'd like to see my father. Where is he?"

"His study, Your Highness."

"I'll go speak with him now. Start that bath, and see to it that someone is supervising the servants unloading our things from the carriage."

"Yes, Your Highness."

The man left the room, and Rusol proceeded to his father's study, surprised to find his mother Sharra—his father's concubine—there as well.

"Mother, Father, I've returned from Fort Northtower."

"So I can see," King Marten said. "What did you find out? Is Leonis dead? Is he the one that killed Rikard?"

Rusol sprawled on one of the chairs facing his father's desk. "I doubt he was directly involved, but he may have known about it. He's more dangerous than I thought, though. He claims to be Torwin Larse."

Marten leaned forward in his chair. "Torwin Larse? Which one? Our family hasn't used that name in over two hundred years."

"Torwin the First."

Sharra drew in a sharp breath.

Marten barked a laugh. "What sort of game is he playing?"

"He seems to believe it himself."

"A madman, then?"

"Yes, but not necessarily about this. There's something you should know—in the dream where I learned about wardens, some of the visions suggested they could live for a long time."

"Sixteen hundred years long?" his father said doubtfully.

"I don't know, but would it be that crazy? Grandmother told me that some demonborn lines have a long lifespan."

"Not hers, unfortunately. I wouldn't mind some motherly wisdom right about now. Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"Because everything about the dream seemed so ludicrous, and Rikard didn't believe me about any of it to begin with. Later, after he... I just never brought it up again."

"Your brother should have believed you," Sharra said, frowning. "It wasn't fair how he treated you."

"That's in the past now," Marten told her firmly. He turned back to Rusol. "You think Leonis is telling the truth?"

"I wouldn't say that; I just don't think we can discount the possibility."

"But you still think he's a madman?"

"He believes there's a ritual that will give Pallisur control over all the sources of magic, not just divine."

"I don't understand," Marten said.

"Think about what it would mean if wizards could only cast spells if they'd received a blessing from Pallisur, like a priest."

"There'd be fewer wizards," Sharra put in.

Rusol nodded. He'd had plenty of time to think about the ramifications during the journey back to Telfort.

"It sounds like nonsense," Marten said, "but even if it were true, it would only strengthen Larso. We don't depend on magic. Matagor and Terevas do."

"That depends on who Pallisur chooses to receive those blessings," Rusol said. "It would make the Church stronger, at our expense."

"A good point," Marten replied with a scowl. "I don't have enough control over the Church yet as it is. Cardinal Aldrich might not be able to overcome the conditioning I've placed on him, but he's still clamoring to bring more of the blessed priests back to the city, if for no other reason than to have more healers here. But if I allow too many, they may realize what I've done to the unblessed priests."