The Eighth Warden Bk. 04 Ch. 05-06

"Are you going to keep it?"

"It might come in handy if we run into any more big groups of mercenaries, but I wonder if Hildra knows of a way to end a weapon bond. If she does, we can sell this and I'll just buy a warhammer or a bill."

"If she knows how to end the bond, are you going to do it with the sword too, so you can send it back to Snow Crown?" Sarette asked.

Corec blinked. "Uhh, I hadn't thought about that."

She laughed. "It's all right," she said. "I won't tell the elders if you decide to keep it."

"I've gotten used to the sword. I was hoping to give the elders one of the enchanted staff-spears in exchange."

"Not mine," Sarette said quickly.

"Yours?"

It was her turn to look embarrassed. "The one I've been using. I like it more than the other one. If there's enough left of my share after we put aside the money to hire guardsmen, I was hoping to use the rest to purchase it."

Corec nodded. "All right. We'll give Snow Crown the other one, then. It should be worth more to them than a sword they can't touch."

There was a startled gasp behind them, and then Ariadne's voice. "Thrymmatizo!" she exclaimed. They turned to find her staring at the glowing maul, an almost frightened expression on her face. "Where did you find that?" she demanded in the Western language.

"Do you mean the hammer?" he asked. "It was in the palace. There was a large suite in the northwest section with a warded door. I was able to open it, like the other doors we told you about."

Ariadne shook her head. "Palace? What palace? You mean Fortress Central? The king's chambers?"

Corec realized how it would sound to her, and tried to choose his words more carefully. "Yes, we thought they might be the royal quarters. I'm sorry--I thought you knew we'd been there."

Still staring at the hammer, Ariadne said, "It's King Argyros's war maul. In this language, you would call it Shatter. Why didn't he take it with him when he fled the city? How can you hold it? I thought no one but Argyros could carry it. It was a gift from his consort Gaiana on the day of their wedding."

"It's a bonded weapon. It bonds to one bearer for as long as..." Corec hesitated, then pressed ahead. "For as long as they're alive. After that, it can bond someone else. I was the first person to touch it, so I guess that was enough."

Ariadne drew her lips together in a thin line and took one slow, unsteady breath, then another. "It's been too long--he had to be dead by now," she said, a slight quiver in her voice, as if she was trying to convince herself. "But why leave Shatter behind?"

"I don't know, but we found some other things with it."

"Show me!"

Sarette had been glancing back and forth between the two of them as they spoke, trying to follow the conversation, but she didn't speak much Western.

"She recognized the maul," Corec said to her in trade tongue. "I'll tell you about it later. Could you go let Ellerie know what's going on? I think we need to be more upfront with Ariadne about what we've been doing--I keep forgetting that she can't listen in on our conversations. Maybe she'll know more about the things we've found."

"I'll tell Ellerie," Sarette said, and headed back to the circle of tents.

Corec set the maul down, then turned back to Ariadne, who was waiting impatiently. "I think the rest is in this wagon too," he said. He managed to find the bundle he was looking for without having to climb up to look. The longswords were still wrapped together in a single blanket. He laid it on the ground and unrolled it, exposing the contents.

Ariadne's eyes widened. She lifted the bejeweled sword reverently, still in its silver scabbard. "Thriamvos. Triumph. The sword of the royal family."

"We found it with the maul in a small chamber with a warded door. It seemed like some sort of vault."

She laid Triumph back down and picked up the other blade by its hilt. "This was with it, too?"

"Yes."

"It must be the king's own sword, then," she said, gazing at the plain weapon.

"You should keep those," Corec said. "Both of them." Marco wouldn't be happy--the ornate longsword was likely worth as much as an enchanted weapon--but it seemed like the right thing to do.

"I can't," Ariadne said, quickly setting it down by the other. "They belong to King Argyros. Belonged to King Argyros."

"You can hold onto them for your people." Corec privately doubted the Chosar were still around, but it was the only hope Ariadne still held onto. And maybe they really were the seaborn after all.

She stared out at the horizon, not speaking. Finally, she sighed and said, "That would be acceptable."

"There was a suit of armor with them, made from the same stuff as the hammer. I'm not sure what sort of metal it is."

"It doesn't have a name. The story goes that Gaiana was experimenting with something she found, but she only ever made the two pieces. She forged the war maul for their wedding, and then she made the armor later, after the war began. If any demons tried to touch the king, the armor burned them."

"I think it burns anyone. It burned me until I put my gauntlets on to pick it up."

She shrugged. "Perhaps. I was still in training, so I never saw him in battle." She was silent for a moment, and tears gathered in her eyes.

"I'm sorry," Corec said. "We should have told you about this before now. We weren't trying to hide things from you."

"No, don't you see?" she said. "Even if King Argyros fled Tir Yadar, he would have needed his weapons and armor. If they were left behind, that means he was already dead before the city was abandoned. And Prince Lydos along with him."

###

Chapter Six

Ariadne thumbed through the two spell books. "You found these in the same chamber as the king's weapons?" she asked the elf.

"Yes," Ellerie said, "but Bobo and I were too busy exploring the city to finish translating them. Do you recognize them?"

Ariadne raised an eyebrow. "Why would I? They're just spell books."

"One is labeled. Bobo translated it as Fundamental Materials. Does that sound familiar? It's not like any spell book I've seen before."

"The label is handwritten," Ariadne said, skimming through that book more carefully. "It's just there so the owner can identify it separately from her other spell books. I'm sure she has a lot of them." She grimaced. "Had a lot of them."

"She?"

"If you found them in the king's chambers, these must belong to Gaiana, his consort. Argyros isn't a wizard. These look like formulae for shaping materials. Stone-shaping, metal-shaping." She flipped to the end of the book. "And the spells to create and shape them."

"You can read the wizard language?"

"I am a wizard."

Ellerie glanced at Ariadne's metal armor but didn't comment.

"Can you tell me more about it?" the elven woman asked instead. "I'd already figured out that the book explains how to create some of the metals your people used, but I'm having trouble understanding even the parts we've already translated."

"I'm not a shaper."

"Anything you know would be helpful."

Ariadne shrugged. "Shaping is used to construct materials that can't be created through normal means. For shaped stone, you start with the stone that's already there, and then add other components based on what type of stone it is. You'd have to read through the book for details. You use one spell to turn all the components into a liquid and mix them together, and then another spell to create the shape you want and return it to solid form. The inner city is mostly built of shaped stone. The builders added enchantments to ensure the structures could never collapse or crumble, but shaped stone holds up well on its own." Which left more questions. How had the shaped stone in Fortress West melted? How had the entire eastern section of the city collapsed?

"What about metals?" Ellerie asked.

"There are a lot of shaped metals, but most are rare and just used for specific purposes. This book only includes a few of the more common ones."

"The first one is like the armor you're wearing now, right?" Ellerie asked, indicating the cuirass Ariadne had borrowed.

Ariadne had to stop for a moment and think about how to translate the name. The necklace didn't provide a direct translation, so she had to split up the component words and translate them separately, then recombine them.

"Yes, silversteel," she said. "It's used for armor or jewelry, or sometimes expensive dinnerware."

"It's steel?"

"I've never studied shaping. I don't know if it's truly steel or if that's just what it's called."

"What about the others?"

Ariadne sighed and glanced down at the book again. "The next... I'm not sure what to call it. Fortisteel, perhaps? There isn't a precise translation in this language. It's used for weapon blades and certain tools."

"Like the weapons we found in the armory?" Ellerie asked.

"Yes." Ariadne flipped through the pages until she reached the next formula. "This last one is mirrorsteel. It's expensive to create, and hardly ever used outside the Mage Knights, or certain war mages who can benefit from its properties. It's similar to silversteel, but can be easily infused with temporary enchantments. It also dampens spells cast against the bearer."

"That's what your own armor is made from?"

"Yes."

"Is that why you can cast spells while wearing it?"

"No." Ariadne didn't elaborate.

The silence stretched uncomfortably long, and then Ellerie said, "I'm sorry about our last conversation. I really do want to help you, but I also want to learn as much as I can about the Chosar and Tir Yadar. I think we can help each other."

Ariadne hesitated, then nodded. "We'll see."

"There's a warden in Aencyr by the name of Hildra. She claims to be over two thousand years old, and she's heard of the Chosar before. Corec has spoken to her, and says she didn't seem to know much about them, but if we tell her what you know, she might have some ideas we haven't thought of yet."

Another of these false wardens. Or, perhaps, she should simply think of them as new wardens. Ariadne had seen the six blue sigils along Corec's arms a few times when he'd been sparring shirtless, and three of them matched the sigils she'd seen on Leena, Shavala, and the redheaded human--Katrin. Ariadne wasn't sure who the other sigils belonged to, though she suspected Ellerie was one of them. It seemed a strange ruse to keep up if Corec wasn't actually a warden. And if he was, then perhaps this Hildra was as well.

She nodded again. "We'll see," she repeated.

"There's something else I wanted to talk to you about," Ellerie said, looking uncomfortable. "We're granting you two shares from the expedition's profits."

"I don't want your charity," Ariadne said, scowling at the other woman.

"It's not charity. As the last liv--... as the last resident of Tir Yadar, you're entitled to a portion of what we found. It comes out to a bit over ten percent. It should be enough to help you do... whatever it is that you want to do. You're going to need money and resources if you want to find out what happened to your people."

"I suppose," Ariadne admitted.

"And your shares are separate from the Mage Knights' equipment and the king's swords," Ellerie continued. "We figure those things belong to you and your people, and we don't have any claim on them. The same with the necklace and the bracelet."

Ariadne scowled. "I didn't take the damned bracelet."

"Then why didn't you say so before?"

"Because what I do or don't do is not your concern!"

Ellerie took a moment to visibly calm herself before responding. "Perhaps that's true, but if you didn't take it, then it actually was stolen, and we don't know who by. It would have been helpful to know before now."

"You're all thieves. What's the difference?"

"We don't know if it's dangerous! Do you know what it does?"

"I'd never heard of it until you mentioned it. If it came from the Enchantment Repository, I'm hardly the best person to ask. It's just luck that I recognized the Necklace of Tongues--I've spent enough time in the Fortress complex to have seen someone wearing it before."

"Would you recognize anything else from the Enchantment Repository?"

"No," Ariadne said. Then she shrugged. "Maybe from stories."

"Would you be willing to look at the other items?"

"To what end? To aid in your looting?"

Ellerie looked down, a disappointed expression on her face. "Never mind," she said.

Ariadne wanted to shout at her, to argue with her about what the group had done to Tir Yadar, but she couldn't muster the energy. She was tired of being angry all the time. Besides, after thousands of years, even by Chosar law it wouldn't be considered looting. Worldly goods were of no use to the dead.

"I'll consider it," she said.

#

Tears blurred Yassi's vision. Jasper was dead? That sweet old man?

And it was all her fault. She was the one who'd found him for Rusol. She was the one who'd sealed his fate when he could instead have continued to live his old life in Westport. First Samir and now Jasper. How many more deaths would she be responsible for? She'd found Rodulf too. Would he be the next to die?

"Are you paying attention?" Rusol snapped.

"How did it happen?" she asked.

"How did what happen?"

"How did he die?"

"You're still going on about Jasper? I'm trying to talk to you about something important!"

"Rus, please!"

Rusol growled, then relented. "He wasn't ready for a battle, even with the new spell books. It's unfortunate, and I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do about it now. I need you to find me some real wizards--ones who actually know how to fight. Stop looking in Larso. We're only finding the dregs here. Look in Matagor instead."

Just like that he'd already forgotten Jasper. He thought nothing of the old man's death, just as he thought nothing of the compulsion spell he'd laid upon Yassi's mind, or the orders he'd given her that had slowly stripped away more and more of who she was. She had to face the truth. To Rusol, other people only mattered to the extent he could get something from them. Sometimes he'd say something that let her believe there was more to him, some part of him that wanted to do the right thing, but in the end, it always came to nothing. He was friendlier to Kolvi and Magnus simply because of the power they brought him. He'd forced Yassi to marry him only because marriage gave him an air of respectability--or perhaps because he'd wanted a bedmate. There was nothing more to it, and there never would be.

"Yassi! Are you listening?"

"I'm listening," she answered in a dull tone, not meeting his gaze.

"Look for wizards or other mages we might be able to hire. In Matagor, they won't be hiding, so it should be easier than the ones you've found here. If we find more than we need, that's even better. I'll bond the best of the bunch, and turn the others into hunters."

He wanted her to find him more puppet slaves, and since he'd ordered it, she wouldn't have any choice in the matter.

"Why are we talking about this in front of him?" she asked, indicating the other man in the sunroom, who stood staring blankly at a wall.

"Do you remember Sir Barat, from our last visit to Northtower?" Rusol said. "It seems he's an elder witch, from one of the northern clans. He's not very strong yet, but I bonded him and Kolvi's going to work with him. I need you to find chambers for him near hers."

Yassi shivered at the dead expression on the young knight's face. "Why is he like that?"

"I don't think he's going to be happy about what I did, and I didn't want to deal with him on the trip back, so I left the other compulsion spells on him. Tonight, I'll sit down and come up with a list of commands to make sure he won't turn against me. Once that's done, I'll remove the other spells."

Yassi kept her face expressionless as she considered what Rusol had said. Despite the compulsion magic he'd woven into the modified warden bond, he was still concerned one of his bondmates could act out against him if he didn't give all the right commands. But how? Yassi was forced to obey anything he said, and he'd given her so many orders, she'd practically forgotten what it was like to make a decision for herself. Was it possible he'd missed something?

"I'll ask the housekeeper to find rooms for him," she said.

"Good. Get him settled, then watch over him for a while to make sure he understands what's going on. I'd better go talk to Father and tell him what happened in Northtower. I'll see you tonight for supper."

Rusol left, and Yassi went to find a maid to send a message to the housekeeper. By the time she returned to the sunroom, Queen Merice had arrived and was attempting to engage Barat in conversation.

"You're from Northtower, aren't you Sir Knight?" the queen was saying. "Do you know my son, Rikard? He's a knight at Fort Hightower, but he'll be king one day. He's Marten's son!" She had a bright smile on her face.

Merice's condition had worsened, and there were no longer any days where she remembered what had happened to Rikard. She'd descended into a permanent fantasy where her son was still alive, and Marten had given strict orders to everyone in the palace not to say anything to the contrary, not wanting to upset her.

"I don't know him," Barat said tonelessly.

But he certainly knew Rikard was dead, so Yassi spoke up quickly. "Your Majesty, is it time for your medicine?"

"I already had it, this morning!" the queen insisted. "I just woke up. I don't want to go to sleep again!"

Yassi hesitated. Sometimes she wasn't sure just how much the medicine was helping Merice as opposed to simply being used to keep her out of the way.

"Well, all right, but I need to show Sir Barat to his rooms. Will you wait here for me? I'll come back and we can have tea together."

"Of course," Merice said. "And then I'll braid your hair so you can look pretty for Rusol. He's such a sweet little boy. You must be so happy to have him back."

Yassi managed a fake smile and a nod, then excused herself.

As she and Barat walked down the corridor, she glanced at him and sighed. "Do you have any idea what's happened to you?" she asked.

"Magic," he said. "Hard to think."

"He'll change that soon. You'll be able to think again, but it won't make things any better."

#

"You turned them all?" Marten roared. "What kind of idiocy possessed you to do that?"

Rusol withered under his father's gaze. Marten had rarely been this angry with him. "I didn't have a choice. Too many people knew something had happened involving magic. There would have been questions."

"There's always a choice!"

"Don't yell at him!" Sharra, Rusol's mother, exclaimed. The concubine had followed the two into the king's study to hear the results of the trip.

"Do you have any idea what he's done?" Marten spat out.

"He did what you should have done a long time ago! He took control of the situation!"

"No! He's risked turning the entire Order of Pallisur against us, and with them, half the kingdom!"

"That's better than sitting back and manipulating puppet strings for decades, hoping someday you'll get what you want," Sharra said, ice in her voice. "The priests are your subjects, Marten, and it's about time they started acting like it. Take away the Church's right of doctrinal law. If anyone complains, behead them. The rest will fall into line if they don't want to be banished from the kingdom."

"That's not how it works! Right now, we're balanced on a knife's edge. The Church has been allowed too much political power over the centuries, and it takes time to undo that. If we move too fast, we'll start a civil war!"

"That's always your excuse, Marten, but I've read through Larso's code of civil law and the code of royal law. The king still retains absolute authority. Your great-grandfather used it to stop the Church from burning mages, but you never do anything with it!"