Threehill was, as Harkital said, a quaint fart of a town.
They passed fields of grain that took up hundreds of acres, then homesteads and gardens of unimpressive design. Off in the distance, there stood the belltower of the Temple of the Heart—not quite grand, not quite proud, stretching just above the eastern quarter of the approaching settlement. Harkital noted that most Biluranian towns were built around temples of that clumsy faith, “like piss pooling ‘round a giggling baby.”
Strange wooden signs rose on either side of the road as they approached, displaying an odd collection of carved symbols: a sheaf of wheat, a heavenly bowl, a pot of ink, a mouse, a teardrop within a circle, a blade within a square.
“What’s all this?” Ollis asked, pointing out the icons.
Harkital gave the smallest of sneers, as if tonguing something on his teeth. “Try not to speak unless spoken to, to start off. Keep questions to a minimum,” he said. Ollis nodded obediently. “You’ll figure it all out.”
Not long after, Ollis did indeed recall the symbols’ significance. They were the sigils of the highest Biluranian gods, of the Alegreon, placed by the priestesses of the Temple of the Heart to bless the town. The town had no wall or gate, so before Ollis could rattle all the deities off in his mind, he was passing homes, a smithy, shacks, sheds, and one or two stalls of goods—selling middling produce, bolts of simple fabric—near the town’s center, where the wattle and daub buildings were replaced with denser, taller structures of pale brick.
The people around seemed normal enough, for Biluranians. A butcher hauled a small pig carcass. Two young boys laughed as they carried a water pail, losing a splash here and there with their scampering, and were told off by a group of old men smoking on a stoop. A milkmaid gave the same butcher a wink as she sashayed toward the temple. A beggar, fast asleep and snoring loudly, sat back against the stone wall of a well. They were a little dirtier, more casual and gruff in their movements and huffs, but not that different from the average Waithen. Save for the hair, of course, of which the Biluranians sported plenty. Ollis realized he was staring at the smokers, and that they were staring back, cautious, guarded, uncertain.
He put his head down and walked on.
It was hard to remember, with his bald pate and his patterned cloak, that Ollis himself had been born not far from here, a Biluranian as much as any of them, by blood. That he might have called these ignorant people his neighbors.
In the river town of Folgrin, on the western bank of the Lenrung, which bordered the Kingdom of Biluran and the Waithen State to the northeast, Ollis had been born of a clerk’s daughter and an elfish merchant who was ‘just passing through,’ as his aunt had put it.
Had Ollis’s mother and her father, the clerk, stayed alive when he was young, perhaps they would have brought him to wave at the river ships that bore the banner of the rose, or to gawk at the armor-clad soldiers who sailed upriver to skirmish with the Senterlanders. Perhaps he would have felt like a citizen, then. Like a subject of the crown, even a child of Desmorah. He shuddered at the thought.
But the aunt and uncle who raised him near the forest behind Cooper’s Landing, just south of town, hadn’t been the kind to dress him in Biluranian red, white, and gold, or to weave roses into his belt on Queen Palwyn’s Day. They’d kept to themselves, and his aunt had told him what stories she liked, more often about gnomes, dragons, and Arentine swashbucklers than about Biluranian might and the sacking of southern tyrants.
And whatever Biluranian patriotism had remained in him had been cleansed, that day, when he’d drunk from the waters of the Bay. When he’d taken, of his own accord, the Waithen Rite. When he’d become a member of the Order, receiving the grace of his lord, Vindac, forever and ever, donning his blessings and putting aside childish notions of nation and crown, of fellowship with folk whose idea of religion amounted to weekly services, rather than a lifetime of solemn dedication.
Suddenly there was an odd, wheaty smell and the sound of creaking wheels. A soft-eyed farmer pulled up beside them, high up in a mule cart of fragrant grains.
“Lost your way home?” the farmer said with a Biluranian drawl. “Or are you here to join the rest of the baldies?” His vowels were so thick Ollis could hardly understand him at first; he realized with a strange shock that five years had passed since he’d left Folgrin.
“Little bit of both,” Harkital said, mimicking the man’s inflections. “The rest of the baldies, where might they be?”
“Bartow’s Inn, likely.” The farmer nodded toward one of the few buildings in town taller than thirty feet.
“My thanks,” Harkital said.
Ollis followed Harkital closely as they headed for the inn, glad to know he would soon be in the company of more Waithens. Of dignified folk, with sound theology, decorum, and respect for the magical arts.
The last time Harkital had seen Vorik, with his bankful of gold teeth, they’d both been plastered.
It had been far, far to the west, just outside of Summerdine, where the food had been kingly, and the whores had done much to raise his estimation of Biluranian hospitality, and a successful ‘negotiation’ with the local greenguardsmen had rendered the artifact of the day a non-issue. It had been some bone or tooth or something, with too many ties to the old times for the Archive’s comfort. Well ahead of schedule, they’d wound up with a budgetary surplus for their expedition and had blown it over two days on the best of Summerdine’s amenities. They’d gotten drunk, several times over, on the final night, as a storm battered the inn’s colored windowpanes and finest tracery.
They’d waxed poetic—or puerile, it was all a blur—about Waithen high-mindedness and the courts, and their bald, bald heads. They’d wrestled, sweating and cursing and bruising their biceps and shoulders. They’d laughed, guffawed, at the knowledge that they’d be home so soon, but for now, were still at Summerdine, where incense burned and art hung on the walls and some pillows were worth an Archivist’s salary.
That had been, what—four, six years ago?
But there the fellow was, tucked into a booth at the back of the inn’s first-floor tavern, as short and wizened as he’d ever looked, wearing the Waithen cloak, a hint of a yellow glow beneath his lips and a tankard, as ever, in his grasp.
“Hey, bastard,” Harkital grunted. The unsuspecting dwarf looked up and bulked, ready to fling fists at whoever chose that for a greeting. “It’s courtesy to save some room for guests,” Harkital added.
Vorik stifled a crooked smile. “Oh! And you call yourself a guest of mine?”
There was a moment of bright tension as the two comrades waited for the other to break, and Ollis awaited an explanation at Hark’s hip.
A lavish grin spread over Vorik’s face. “Come here, you dog.”
Laughing, Harkital embraced him, slapping the dwarf’s back as he might appraise a side of beef.
“Half a dozen expeditions together, and you wait this long to say hello?” Vorik asked.
“Not long enough, given your ugly mug.”
Ollis watched nervously, unsure whether to laugh along.
“Oh,” the dwarf waved at him, “tell your porter to shove off, we’ve palebrew to drink and artifacts to discuss.”
Harkital made an awkward grimace.
“What?”
“He’s tonsured.”
Vorik squinted for a moment, reconsidering the boy’s smooth head and cloak.
“Oi, he’s a Waithen?”
“Ollis Hilgerave.” The boy bowed. “At your service.”
“Since when did we let students join us abroad?” the dwarf bemoaned.
“Adresil, as a matter of fact,” Ollis added.
“Jorhan thought he was due for an early apprenticeship and sent him along with me.”
“Oh,” Vorik said, with a face that told him he had indeed heard about Harkital’s unsavory incident and understood that he was laboring to return to Jorhan’s good graces.
Jorhan had always kept a tight leash with his Exploratory assignees, but now, Harkital was practically grasped by the collar.
Kindly, the dwarf took that news no further. Vorik scrutinized the boy and said, out of the corner of his mouth, “You think he’s got the stomach for expeditionary work, eh, Hark?”
Hark chuckled, sidling into the booth. “He bested a Gorderak on the road here, if that tells you anything.”
“Ha! What’d you do, boy, set the thing ablaze? Blind and stake him? Oh, but you’re a student, aren’t you? At Yaelfand, where they like to watch the fights? Perhaps the old feint-and-full-hander, then?”
Vorik and Hark guffawed at the idea of meager Ollis pulling off such an athletic move, while the boy blushed and slumped into the booth.
An older woman with an eyepatch called out to them from the tavern’s bar. “Two more of the pale for you?”
Hark smiled dopily, having always found the Biluranians better at the prompt service of food and drink than his stuffy Waithen countrymen.
“Aye,” Vorik spoke for them.
“Or, erm—rootmead, if you have it?” Ollis chirped.
Vorik raised an eyebrow, undoubtedly about to poke fun at the boy for ordering what amounted to a children’s drink. Hark shook his head, gave him an old look that said, take it easy on him. Again, the dwarf obliged.
“So,” Harkital asked him, “the others hanging ‘round somewhere?”
“At the Temple,” Vorik answered, “inquiring with the priestess about the body, and where the stone got off to after they burnt it.”
“The body? So we do have a death, then?”
“Two, more like.”
“Two?” Ollis’s eyes widened. “Two dead?”
“Well, one of them for sure, though we couldn’t find most of the second, for confirmation’s sake.”
Hark ignored the feeling of Ollis practically quivering with fear beside him. “How’d that happen?”
The dwarf sighed, about to roll into a tale, but stopped himself as the drinks arrived. Harkital took a sip of the creamy looking brew—cool, refreshing, smooth yet bright—then a gulp to set his bones at ease after his nights on the road. He couldn’t help but notice the smell of the hot cup in Ollis’s hands, the rootmead reminding him of what it felt like to be young and anxious and uncertain.
When the hostess had walked off, Vorik finished his own beer, smacked his lips, and spoke in a storyteller’s low drone.
“A stone popped up in a brickmaker’s yard. Not the yard where he makes bricks, mind you, but the little field just behind his home.”
Harkital looked at Ollis curiously as the boy brought his mug to his mouth to hide an awkward grin. The young Adresil had been right about that.
“Now the rock looked completely ordinary,” Vorik continued, “no text or fashioning of any sort—at least from what I’ve heard, though I’d have to take a look myself to be sure. Average fellow around here wouldn’t know stonecraft from cowshit, you know. Anyhow, the brickmaker had this stone, and started going mental. Proceeded to bring the stone into town, ranting and raving about its ‘energy’ and ‘call’, clawing like a cat at anyone who questioned him. Folk said he seemed desperate, rabid. Before you fellows showed up, I chatted about the matter with that fellow right there.” Vorik pointed across the tavern to a young man unconscious in his seat, four empty drinks in front of him and one held in his hand. “Happens to be the poor brickmaker’s nephew. Says the last time he saw his uncle, the loon wouldn’t stop looking at some pan on the wall, and muttering gibberish.”
The drunk young man looked about Ollis’s age and height, with boyish features and closely cropped hair. His sorry state made Harkital a little sick to see, thinking of how easy it would be for his ward to have found the same fate, seeking respite from a harsh world in foamy stupors. Hark knew a little bit about that himself, and suddenly felt grateful that Ollis had opted for rootmead.
Vorik took a long drink from his mug, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.
“The brickmaker kept going like that for a few days, getting madder all the while, until things got out of hand. Bit of a scuffle in the street between him and a few townsfolk who’d had enough, and he fell hard on his neck, snapped it like a fresh carrot. A few folks we’ve talked to who were there that day felt bad about the whole affair. Others said good riddance.”
“But I guess that wasn’t all, eh?” Hark asked. The reasonings behind the Archive’s interests and retrievals were dubious, if not obscure. But they never sent out a party without some evidence of strong magical power, preferably of an unknown or ancient kind. “A madman with a pet rock and a spinal problem isn’t exactly archival material.”
“After the scuffle, folk brought the brickmaker’s body and the rock to the temple, hoping they’d bury him and sort out the rock. But something wasn’t right.” The dwarf eyed him and Ollis in turn, saying slowly, “Rigor mortis had set in. Only, the corpse was a bit stiffer than even the temple sexton was used to.”
Hark squinted.
“Its fingernails were turning to stone.”
“Figuratively, or…?”
“No.” The dwarf brought up his own thick-skinned hand, fingers splayed. “Rock, in his hands, where there used to be fingernails. And black stoney beads, where there used to be teeth.”
Hark felt Ollis shift in his seat.
“The priestesses blessed the body again, at the sexton’s request,” Vorik said. “Then, the sexton himself went quiet. No sight or sound of him for three days. When a priestess popped by his house again, he was nowhere to be found. All that was left of him was this.” He pulled from a fold in his woollen cloak what looked like a stone carving of excellent detail.
Harkital squirmed. “Is that an…ear?”
“What’s that on the edge?” Ollis asked warily.
“Flesh, I’m certain,” Vorik said. “Blood and skin. Never seen anything like it—it’s fixed to the mineral, fused with it, as it were. Don’t know of any rock that could stick like that to the meat.”
“Fused to it?” Harkital had to believe his eyes. “You’re not implying—the man’s ear turned to stone?”
“Then fell off. Meaning there’s a fellow somewhere around these parts with a rocky mug even uglier than yours.”
Harkital frowned, the rusted gears of his head turning, fighting against their alcoholic substrate to produce a thought he hated. Ollis looked as if he’d just realized it too. He didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to think it, but the boy had been right. Again. “No Gorderak after all.”
“No?” Vorik squinted at them.
Harkital’s throat felt suddenly dry, the beer’s buzz a little nauseating. “The creature we saw on the road here, two nights ago, by a willow.” He scratched the back of his neck. “The boy suggested it wasn’t a thrall, but a man. He might’ve been right.”
“You’re pulling my leg.”
“No,” Ollis said. “He was clothed, and his face crushed, all grey-looking and terrible.”
“Gorderaks have them greenish eyes, don’t they?” Vorik asked.
The green eyes. Harkital had forgotten all about that. Had just assumed…
“No, nothing of the sort,” Ollis said. “It was grey, and bloody. Rock and flesh.”
Vorik nodded at Ollis. “Sharp eye on this one, eh?”
Harkital said no more, not wanting, just yet, to confess that he had been wrong again, had perhaps put the boy in more danger than he’d thought, had missed an opportunity to prove himself still worthy of this expedition, to put recklessness behind him. He heard, again, the poor student’s screams, the drop in his gut at the knowledge of his own failure.
“If it was this sexton,” Harkital said quickly, drowning the memory, “he didn’t look much long for the land of the living. I doubt we’d find him again, much less get any information from him.”
“Not even—”
“No. The man was practically a walking corpse.”
Vorik eyed him. Hark eyed the dwarf back, unwilling to yield the truth that encountering that disfigured soul again, one he could have possibly saved had he been keener, more careful, would probably destroy him. A better version of Harkital, one Vorik was probably trying to tease out now, would hit the road now, hunt for the shambler, find him expelling his last gasps beneath that very willow tree.
But this Harkital would not.
“May he find comfort in Desmorah’s embrace.”
Harkital took a hefty gulp of palebrew, and the matter was dropped.
The Desmorahn temple felt neater and cleaner, with its concrete and masonry, than many Waithen chapels did with their joined wood. As comprehensively enchanted as they were, though, fair Cynthea needed no reminder that the Waithen holy places in Capplewait, Stormhand, and Waithen-on-High would outlive these frail cathedrals by millennia or more, their wooden spires stretching high, even as Biluran’s belltowers and clerestories crumbled. She eyed the statuary above the colonnade, listened as the priestess’s echoing footsteps turned a corner and faded out of earshot.
“Admar?” the Waithen asked softly, once they were alone in the austere sanctuary. “Do you remember which one’s which?” The stone gods in their many poses, with their sigils and symbols beneath them, eluded her.
“I never took you for the ignorant type, Cynth.”
“My Biluranian art history’s just gotten rusty, that’s all.”
The elf looked up, scanned the temple’s sculptures for a moment, then rattled the information off.
“Behind us is the Lower Porineon,” he said, though he’d not looked behind them, “celebrated saints, selected to align with this chapelry’s local flair. I never bothered to learn them all. To our right, members of the Higher Porineon and the Alegreon, identified by their symbols: a sheaf of wheat, a heavenly bowl, a pot of ink, a mouse, a teardrop within a circle, a blade within a square. And Desmorah at the sanctuary’s center.”
The highest goddess stood with one arm outstretched, welcoming the greater gods to one side. Her opposite arm wielded light. A spell. A weapon. “And there,” Admar’s voice lowered, “the Nentereon, approaching her from the other side.” The elf whispered it. “The bad gods.” They both looked up at the dark, misshapen figure approaching Desmorah’s violent power, soon to be stopped, maimed, smote by her holy hand. “Where the Devourer, bless his name, is given short shrift.”
“That’s an understatement,” Cynthea smirked, making light of the blasphemous depiction.
Admar watched the frozen figures in their stony procession, as if he could yet see them moving.
The elf always got like this in Biluran. Ever since she’d known him. Some Waithens could not handle the idea that their god, Vindac, was the villain in the Biluranian story. The prodigal brother, would-be killer, of Desmorah. But to Cynthea, that had always felt more like esoteric trivia than existential difference. Few Desmorahns held such a thing against them in these modern days, not after the wars of old, and as long as Admar didn’t get too sensitive about such things, their expeditions went seamlessly.
For the most part.
Cynhea furrowed her brow. “Wasn’t there another pantheon, though? The old ones? Kos and Hos and Mrae? Yrig, what was it called—”
“Hes. Not Hos. Of the Orandreon, represented by symbols and celestial bodies, often on a sanctuary’s ceiling. Rarely depicted corporeally.” Admar pointed up to bas-reliefs that hung directly above them. “Olc, Hes, Eon. Planet, Sun, and Moon. Then Kos, the dead all-father, signified by the space between them.” For the first time since they’d entered the foreign church, the elf smiled, his sharp features softening. “You really do need to brush up on your art history.”
“Right.” Cynthea turned to leave through the temple door, and he followed. “You never know when you’ll need to remember the difference between the god of merrymaking and that, that silly one—”
“Adventure.” Admar rolled his cobalt-colored eyes.
“Ascenria, though, is such a pretty name, isn’t it? Even if the deity is poorly conceived—”
A Biluranian priestess rounded a nearby corner, chin held high, having surely heard them. The Waithens bowed their bald heads apologetically, and the priestess carried on. It wasn’t until they opened the door to the bright, dry day of this heartland hamlet that Cynthea breathed a sigh of relief.
Admar reverted to his surly mode. “Such a pious look, coming from the likes of her.”
“Watch it. We’re here to help.”
“Are we? I must have missed the ‘help the Biluranians’ part of our expeditionary training.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Of course.”
They walked on, brushing off the townspeople’s curious looks at their gleaming scalps and heavy robes—Admar’s cloak loud with woven lines, Cynthea’s patterns more complex, but subtly colored—as they approached the main square, and at its head, the Magistrate’s Offices.
“Surely Vorik’s finished drinking by now,” the elf chided.
“Even so, I wish Hark were here already. I don’t wish to identify it without all of us together.”
“Agreed. His contributions will be invaluable.”
“Admar.”
It was obvious Hark would not be in the best position for this work, not after what had happened this past term, but if Admar couldn’t swallow his pride for an artifact, this was going to be a much longer excursion than it needed to be.
“Speak of the devils, there they are.” Admar looked ahead, where Hark and Vorik stood jabbering by the gallows in the town square. Both were rosy-cheeked, Hark bending his already slouched back as he often did when talking to his old friend. The elf squinted. “With an imp in tow?”
Cynthea looked again and noticed the third bald head. She’d nearly forgotten—at Jorhan’s request, Harkital had brought a guest.
When Harkital saw Cynthea and Admar approaching, he nodded up at the town’s foreboding scaffold, stretching high just beside them, its nooses hooked onto its posts. “Funny place for a meeting.”
“Droll. And who is this?” Admar looked down at the boy, and Cynthea noted the sharp ears shared by the two of them, the high jawbones, the bright, faceted eyes, the boy’s less prominent than Admar’s, yet unmistakable.
“A gift from Jorhan,” Harkital said. “My apprentice for this Exploratory Party.”
Admar bristled. “Apprenticeships are reserved for Adrei, if memory serves.”
“I am one, yes,” the boy stuttered.
“A little early, but mighty bright,” Harkital said, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“In fact,” Vorik chimed in, haughty with his gold grin, “he solved a mystery for us already. They ran into our missing sexton on the road here, one ear short.”
Cynthea’s eyes widened. “Did you, now?”
“We believe so,” Harkital said. “But, to put it plainly, I’m not sure we’ll see him again anytime soon.”
“I had hoped…” Cynthea thought for a moment. “But so be it.”
“Hoped for what?” Ollis asked.
She glanced at the others, knowing they would mock her for such earnestness later. “Well, I’d hoped we could find and cure him of whatever ailment he had.”
“Cynthea’s something of a saint, you know,” Admar gibed. “We love her for it, to be sure, though it puts the rest of us in a bad light. If she had her way, she’d probably be immortalized in the temple’s statuary, the lone Waithen in service of the heathens—”
“What’s gotten into you?”
Admar looked grave. “I merely note that looking for that sexton cost us a day already, when we knew he was lost, and here we are still talking about charity when we should be keeping our minds on the essential work.”
“As if our work isn’t in service of all people?” Cynthea wasn’t playing now. This wasn’t banter. She didn’t want to flaunt her authority, but if he continued his questioning—
“Our work is in service of the Archive, Cynth.” He looked anxious, almost wounded, “You, out of anyone, should know—”
She put a hand on her collar and pulled it down, exposing one breast.
In her periphery, she saw the young boy’s eyes widen, perhaps at her exposure, but more likely at the small, thick, grey metal ring piercing the pale skin beneath her collarbone, stuck through a thin band of taught flesh. Built into the ring, at the bottom of the circle, a portion of the metal loop had been replaced with glass. Within the glass was a bit of water, no more than a few small droplets stuck to the sides of the small glass tube, all of them gleaming starlike in the sun.
It was the stilor. The mark of the higher ranks. Of those who had proven their worth to the Order beyond all doubt. It was the mark of a Magis.
“And is it not the Archive’s, and our lord’s, perfect will that we are benevolent in our dominion?” she asked.
The elf bit his lip, wisely.
Cynthea let the collar go slack and turned to the others. Harkital and Vorik eyed her soberly, while the boy looked tigberry-red.
“Now, since we’re so concerned about wasting time, why don’t we see about this stone?”
That would shut him up for now. Such a brash display of hierarchy was effective whenever Admar was in one of his moods, a purebred elf for whom authority and rank were no laughing matter. For Harkital, it was usually a day on, or off, drink that set him straight. Vorik, for his part, needed time in nature, preferably somewhere he could fashion his little carvings, hacking at pure rock with an oltherite-edged blade as a child might whittle at a stick.
Ignoring the elf’s frustrated grimace, Cynthea pressed on, passing the scaffold to approach the stout building behind it, then knocked on the door. They’d waited several days before talking to the magistrate, hoping to gather their own information untainted by the whims and fears of local politics. But now, clearly, they were overdue for a proper introduction.
A greenguardsman soon appeared, looking tired in his hauberk and green and red surcoat. When he realized there were Waithens at his door, he stood straighter.
“May I help you?”
“May we speak with the magistrate?” Cynthea said.
“She’s in her office, unfortunately, but I can take a message.”
Cynthea felt the group behind her—Admar, in particular—bristle at the thought of further delays. At her side, her fingers contorted to the fourth supine position, and her mind recited Old Tongue syllables in a flash, words so simple and familiar they hardly needed remembering.
“We should speak with the magistrate now,” she said, a new edge to her tone. “Perhaps you could retrieve her?”
The guard swallowed, his mind failing to register the subtle shift in his inclinations. Perhaps Cynthea looked more attractive, more authoritative, or more in need of aid. “Come on in. I’ll fetch her.”
Inside, between the windows of the building’s main hall, hung a few banners, some showing the stripes and crest of Diwolerta, Threehill’s state, and others the ubiquitous red, white, and gold check and flourishes of the Biluranian flag. To the right was a broom closet that likely functioned as Threehill’s armory, and behind them, an unadorned table by an ash-filled hearth. A few moments later, a woman appeared from a back hall, broad-shouldered, strong-faced, eyes wise with years’ worth of weary service.
“Kurt seemed mighty keen on my making your acquaintance,” the magistrate said, eyeing them. “Do I even have to ask what this is about?”
“Likely not. I am Cynthea, and this is Harkital, Admar, Vorik, and Ollis, our ward.”
The magistrate folded her arms.
“We’d like to see what we can discern of the object, and bring it to our Archive for safekeeping.”
“Oh, indeed. You’d hate to see anyone get hurt now, wouldn’t you? Pure-blooded altruism is it?”
“Something like that,” Cynthea offered, sincerely.
“We didn’t ask for you. But here you are,” the magistrate said with a glare. “How’d you hear about this anyway?”
“Got around to us through word of the priestesses, actually,” Cynthea said, gesturing back in the direction of the temple. “One of them mentioned it to a Waithen who was passing through.”
“Figures,” the magistrate huffed. “They’re a rather useless lot, truth be told. And speaking of useless—why, exactly, are you here?”
“Because we monitor dangerous situations of a magical nature, traveling the continent to neutralize them and improve communities such as your own.” The rehearsed line was a half truth for the Waithen Order at large, but for Cynthea in particular, a heartfelt honesty. “You are certainly not the first—”
“There are wizards in Laitwelm, with services by the hour. Why don’t I just fetch some of them?”
“They’re of dubious skill, and predatory prices.”
“Nothing dubious or predatory about you then?”
“Magistrate, we want the stone—to take it off your hands, to ensure your safety.”
The magistrate glowered.
“Our interests are in keeping it, studying it, storing it away—”
“Like you stow away our children when your pilgrims come through? Promising them a better life in your little wonderland up north, shaving their heads, separating them from home and kin?” The woman glanced at Ollis. Cynthea looked at him too, watching him flush first with shame, then with something like defiance.
“We’re not evangelists, magistrate,” Cynthea continued before the boy could get a word in. “We believe all can benefit from the blessings of the Prophet, within and without the state, with or without tonsure, and even if we did pursue evangelical efforts, they certainly wouldn’t be focused on tearing children away from their families.”
“And what of the—”
“So I take it you’d rather keep the stone and see what happens?” Harkital interrupted, cutting the magistrate off with her countrymen’s twang and a cloying smile. “Cynthea, they’ve probably got their bearings. Magistrate, we’re more than happy to leave the stone in your dutiful care.” The woman cocked an eyebrow and Harkital went on. “But a word for the wise, eh? If the room or encasement you’ve put it in starts a-hummin’, have an enchanter perform a Rite of Purification all around. That way, if the stone destabilizes—you know, boom—most of the folk around here will have positive auras as Desmorah welcomes ‘em on. Oh!” he added, with a finger pointing up. “If you do find yourself in need of a Waithen, our chapel down in Laitwelm’s got an emissary. Fellow by the name of Winger. He’ll be happy to help, though he’s liable to shag his way through town, as he does. Not a formal thing, just a quirk of his. I’d prepare your women and goats for the event, once the time comes.” He ended with a sloppy bow and turned to depart, Vorik following suit.
The magistrate’s shoulders sagged with a great weight.
“Hold it.” She met each of their eyes with a belabored, unsteady look, then sighed. “Come with me.”
As she turned, Admar muttered in frustration, the most hateful of all Waithen-made slurs slipping from his lips with bitter breath. “Alis ini qyrdran…”
Cynthea nearly turned and laid into him, right then and there, but the magistrate either missed the words or knew not what they meant. Rather than jeopardize their progress, she tightened her jaw and carried on.
A dark hallway had been dug beneath the offices and reinforced with great hardwood beams. Ollis looked at the small windows built into the top of the right-hand wall, where the earth met daylight, casting wide rectangular light on the rough-hewn doors within. Each door was affixed with stout iron locks and hinges bolted into them, while another door, unique in size but with the same lock, sat at the hallway’s end.
“Any occupants in these here cells?” Vorik inquired.
“No. The magistrate before my predecessor was a paranoid twat. Thought every other man was an agent of Taslow Manor, sent here to break up or sabotage the Lenrung Farmers’ Union. Had the jail expanded to accommodate.”
“And the gallows?”
“Same man’s design.”
“If you lack his paranoia, why not tear them down? Bit of an unwelcoming visual, if you ask me,” Harkital said.
The magistrate pulled out a key ring and undid the lock on the door at the end of the hallway. “Even when vacant, I’ve found them to be an excellent deterrent,” she said with a smirk. “No trouble here, long as I’ve known it.” The smirk faded. “Until this stone popped up…and you came to town.”
With a heinous creak of the iron hinges, the door swung open. Inside was a dark room of shelving, crates, and miscellanea. At the center of it all, however, was a stool. Upon the stool was a stone, grey, jagged-edged, no bigger than a large potato. The weak light of the hall’s upper windows hardly illuminated the room and the object within, but Ollis thought he could make out a bit of the stone’s light grey surface, its pockmarked material. As he looked upon the object, his ears began to itch with a fury.
Cynthea stepped forward, sliding past the magistrate and into the room. “You’ve had no trouble touching it?”
“No, I’ve been alright,” the magistrate said. “I wrapped it in a bit of cheesecloth when they brought it to me. Brought it down here and haven’t touched it since. No issue. Nothing like what those two fellows had.”
“You were wise to put it on a stool, magistrate,” Cynthea said as she scanned the room’s spare contents.
The woman grunted. “Call me Elva.”
“Elva,” Cynthea corrected herself. “I’d hate to see what the stone might do when exposed to the wrong metal, or even some of the alcohol you have here.”
“What it might do? Do you not know?”
Admar replied, a quiet strain behind each word. “Of course we have guesses, magistrate. But until we can examine the specimen properly, we can offer no guarantees regarding safe procedure.”
Magistrate Elva eyed him. “And what of all that talk of ‘encasements humming’ and ‘Rites of Purification’?”
“Oh all that’s true, miss,” Harkital said. “No matter what you’re dealin’ with, you ought to start your prayers when things start humming. Rarely a good sign.” He pursed his lips. “While we’re on it, everything I said about Winger was also true. Leave him in Laitwelm.”
Vorik made a sound between a cough and a chuckle.
The magistrate looked back to the stone with concern, then glowered at the Waithens. “So what happens now? I leave you here to do Makinereth’s bidding? Or whoever it is you lot worship—”
“Vindac,” Ollis said. The word came to him unexpectedly, a declaration, a conviction. First, she’d said the Waithens had stolen him away. Now she associated them another, lesser god? “Makinereth is of no concern to us. To conflate him with The Deliverer of Worlds is disrespectful, at best, and at worst, it is—”
“What the boy means to say is,” Harkital interjected harshly, “we don’t worship the god of unholy knowledge. That’s all.”
“Like Vindac’s much better, then?” Magistrate Elva said.
Ollis’s eyes widened, his veins surging with the same righteous vitriol he’d seen in Admar’s eyes, the same zealous instinct to put this heathen in her place. He took a breath, prepared to speak the truth—
“Yeah, sure,” Harkital said, as if she’d done no more than inquire about the weather. “But we’re not here to discuss theology.” The burning indignation in Ollis sputtered—what was Harkital saying? Would he really let such blasphemy go unaddressed?
He looked to Cynthea, ready for her, the Magis and surely most faithful of them all, to say something. But she seemed oblivious to the whole exchange. Still pondering the stone, she had one hand hovering tenderly above its surface, as if feeling steam above boiling water. And then, on top of the itching that had plagued his ears since he came into the room, Ollis felt something else—a pleasant warmth. Cynthea was casting something.
Silently, invisibly, she was examining the stone, divining from it. And with such control, such subtly, such mastery over her form, she had done so without drawing the attention of him or anyone else here. A Magis indeed.
Cynthea looked up at Harkital, her eyes unfocused and weary, weighty with some knowledge Ollis could not define. After nodding over at him, Harkital spoke on her behalf.
“Magistrate, we’ll need to transport it to a separate location nearby and examine it there. We can’t safely bring it to the Archives before we know what it is, and our magical procedures are a bit too complicated to conduct here. My ward and I just came into town, and we’re planning on staying with the rest of our friends at their lodging—”
“Bartow’s Inn,” Vorik offered.
“—at Bartow’s Inn. We’ll bring the stone, and you can come check on our progress there.”
“Bartow’s?” The magistrate crossed her arms, her brows scrunching with worry. “But what if it booms there, like you said? No, no I don’t want more blood on my—”
Without warning, Cynthea took the stone in her hands and closed her eyes. Vorik gasped a little as she did, and Ollis’s ears began to itch with a fervor, as if gnawed by invisible gnats. Everyone in the little storage room waited, expecting her to scream, or combust, or worse.
Cynthea’s facial features slowly softened, mouth frowning at the sorrowful weight of the thing in her hand, as if the stone held some horrific portent. But her body did not change. Her ears, nails, and teeth did not solidify. She did not die.
After a long moment, Cynthea spoke with a great, terrifying stillness.
“You’re right, Elva,” she said, fixing her stern gaze on the magistrate. “From what I can discern, the stone is safe for now, or perhaps in low doses. But we have seen what happens when that is not the case.”
The magistrate brought a hand up to massage her temple. “An alchemist used to have a shack southwest of here, with a garden. A tight fit for you lot, but well outside of town.” She sighed. “You could study the stone there.”
“That would be much appreciated,” Cynthea said, dropping the stone into a fold of her robe.
“And…I can perhaps offer food, of course, but…is there…further payment required?” Elva looked to the group with genuine confusion.
“Oh, no, no,” Harkital said. “No payment at all.”
“…So you do this for fun?”
“Not exactly,” Vorik said.
“Altruism,” Cynthea said.
“Or, rather, an act of faith,” Admar said, his voice the only one that, to Ollis, seemed to ring true.
The alchemist’s shack was small. Behind it, the forest rose, dense, dark old growth that reminded Ollis of his aunt’s fairytales. Between the shack and the forest, lining a wide plot of wilding grass, a low stone wall reeked of ancient days.
To the side of the shack, a large fenced-in garden shook with the overgrown stalks and leaves of many herbs, fruits, flowers and roots, none of which Ollis could identify. Weeds grew with reckless abandon, some of them curling and twining, others leafy, purple-flecked, and many-layered. In small islands among the seething shoots, the fruited, large-flowered plants didn’t look like they were in their prime. Some grew small and lopsided, others bore strange warts and discolorations, perhaps disease, and even the grass had an odd, iridescent film that covered its glossy green.
As Ollis and the other Waithens approached, he could practically see the old alchemist tending the garden, sitting in their chair, turning to watch the forest rise up behind them like some ancient, unstoppable wave—
“Where did this alchemist get to, again?” Vorik asked.
“Elva said she died three years back. Or disappeared, maybe,” Cynthea answered.
“Said she was old and ugly as sin, too,” Harkital added.
“I consider myself smaller in stature than most,” Vorik said, observing the structure’s haggard wood and crooked angles with his yellow grin, “and even I am not sure I’ll fit in that there hut. Certainly not with all of you bastards.”
“Let’s see the rooms, at least.” Harkital looked at Ollis. “I wager anything will be an upgrade for the young ward and myself.”
Cynthea ran her hand along two hardwood planks that made up the wall by the door, eventually pulling a small key from an unseen cavity. With it, she opened an iron lock, and the door opened, unleashing, to the surprise of all, a scent worse than death.
Foul rot, many-layered and punishing, soaked the air with moisture and the tang of saccharine decay. It was the scent of lumpy alchemical byproducts mixed into one’s porridge, of excrement-infused street muck and cooking greens combined, of bloated cadavers filled with flowers, all of it left to fester for years on end, to pressurize and seep and finally emerge one warm afternoon as four priest-mages dumbly opened the front door without a second thought.
Admar gagged. Harkital plugged his nose. Vorik, somehow, laughed, or at least tried to, between his own fits of coughing and wretching. Ollis instinctively brought his hand up to his nose and gestured with a stuttered version of his standard incantation: “pis-tengderis oln-fuh”, he managed. He envisioned clean linens, his nose soon filled by their fresh scent—but that was not enough. Plenty of the shack’s hellish odor still crept in, only slightly masked now, like a bed sheet thrown atop the Capplewait arena’s midden. Still powerful was the scent of fermented herbs and spiced meat sheening blue in the country heat, the likes of which he’d never smelled before.
Cynthea’s voice cut through the sound of the muffled gagging and Vorik’s stunted laughter. “Ollis has the right idea.” With a flick of her own hand, mirroring the gesture Ollis had just used, she cast her fingers toward her nose and then out, making a large, sweeping gesture toward the house, the air around her rippling with magical distortion. Suddenly, the odor disappeared, snuffed by the scent of pine, riverstones, and the quiet, salty sigh of the sea. “Better?” Cynthea asked.
Vorik was nearly doubled over with laughter by then. “Oh, I wish I’d the nostrils to smell it in full, that they hadn’t been cauterized years ago in that Ginrun blast. What I got was bad enough, but what you got must be something indeed!” he hollered.
Admar swayed, close to vomiting. “You’d think the magistrate was trying to kill us.”
“At least I feel well awake,” Harkital said.
“Come along then,” Cynthea said to the crew, undaunted, “let’s have a look.”
The inside of the shack was dark, the wood of its walls black with years of mucky char from unvented alchemical steam. Then there was the equipment: rampant piles of tools coated the floor in unnavigable islands and peninsulas, in stacks and layers that nearly obscured every table, chair, or cupboard. There were all manner of flasks, mortars, pestles, diluters, calisters, stands, troughs, calumners, droppers, lenses, wicks, bidifers, caulkers—for the most part, Ollis had seen copies of these instruments last term in Alchemical Studies and Intermediate Permutations. Only these versions were caked with crud, filled with sludge, frothing with perennial bubbles of a sickening leathery appearance.
Ollis smelled a bit of the shack’s original flavor as he approached a central table covered completely with such things—he shuddered to think of facing the scent here without the aid of Cynthea’s illusion.
“Well, there’s the…kitchen,” Harkital said, looking at a corner overgrown with wooden bowls and crates. “And a second doorway there on the side, it seems.”
Cynthea poked her head through that door. “Indeed, living quarters. Though there’s hardly enough space for two. We’ll clear it off and, Admar, you and I may—”
“Oh no,” the elf said, “try as you might, Cynthea, that spell is hardly enough for my senses. I’ll not be staying in this hovel.”
“Then you’ll not be seeing the stone,” Cynthea retorted. “It stays with me, and though it’s far from ideal, these are the quarters available.”
“Curious as I am about this thing, I’ll not be staying in this shithole a moment longer,” Admar said matter-of-factly. “I’m sure you’ll find your way around the stone, Cynthea,” he added with a small, patronizing bow of his head.
“You’re staying here with me.”
“I’ll be staying at Bartow’s, I’m afraid.”
“Not with how you’ve been talking about the people in town. Biluranian or not, folk are prepared to fight when you go around using unsavory words that won’t do much to aid our cause.”
Qyrdran. Ollis knew that was what she meant. That word meaning ‘slanderer’, which Admar had muttered at the magistrate’s offices. A surly or careless Waithen might use it to insult those who blasphemed against Vindac, or who were simply foreign in their manners and beliefs. But if an Ademagis—those just above Cynthea in rank—used the word, it was more than an insult. It was a declaration. One that bore grave, even deadly consequences.
“You’ll stay here,” Cynthea resolved, adding with a dominating look: that is an order.
Admar said nothing in reply.
“You two,” she turned to Harkital and Vorik, “can stay here or go back to Bartow’s. It’s cluttered enough as it is, but we’ll find space for you, if you prefer.”
“Bartow’s it is, ma’am.” Harkital gave a mock soldier’s salute. He then turned to Vorik to snicker boyishly about drinking through the night, while Cynthea shook her head and tucked into the next room over.
Ollis watched Harkital and Vorik from afar, remembering his own companions at Yaelfand. Sure, he had friends, but none close enough to risk his life for in far away places. None with such shared histories. Now that he was an apprentice, and all of them still stuck in class, it would likely be that way for a long, long time.
He lifted a glass device from the mucky rubble, one that seemed to connect two beakers by way of convoluted tubing and a fan. When he spun the fan on its crusty pivot, it let out a quiet squeal.
“A habride condenser,” a silky voice informed him. Admar stood at his shoulder. “Used for distillation of grey and habitual ethers.”
Examining the tubular contraption again, Ollis marked its many openings, its unusual shape, the fineness of the surface beneath the dusty film. “It’s almost beautiful. I imagine the glassblower who makes these can charge a fair price. Tubes within tubes, and this fine bend here…”
“You’d be right.” Admar smirked. “I take it Harkital wasn’t interested in talking alchemy on the road over?”
“No.” Ollis’s cheeks flushed a little, hesitant to speak ill of the Idris, but grateful beyond measure that someone seemed to understand. “He, well, he didn’t want to talk much with me at all.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” Admar nodded soberly, then looked out of a murky window set in the wall before them.
They could hear Harkital and Vorik, already outside, taking the path back to town, laughing and goading each other on as they walked, inevitably, to the inn and its barrels of fine Diwolertan palebrew. Cynthea had exited the shack as well. Through the glass, Admar and Ollis watched her wave the others off, before heading toward the forest behind the shack, hiking up her cloak to progress through thick grasses. Ollis and Admar’s own reflections were ghostly, fractured on the uneven, soiled pane, sharing their high cheekbones, sharp ears, and vibrant eyes.
“But we Waithens must speak with one another. Must work together, you know,” Admar leaned closer. “Must be strong, intentional, in the defense and following of our faith. Ours is a difficult path, and I’m sure Harkital made it no easier by spurning conversation.”
“Nor by letting her blaspheme,” Ollis said, his grip tightening involuntarily on the device in his hand. Admar raised a brow. “The magistrate, I mean. When she said we worshipped Makinereth, and conflated Vindac with him, none of the others said anything. I couldn’t bear it.”
“Hold onto that,” Admar said. “To that feeling. To justice, piety, truth. With every year in the Order, I find those qualities rarer than I’d hoped.”
The sun was dipping below the forest’s peaks now, rosy light coming in softly, filtered by the window. Cynthea kneeled in the grass ahead, between the wood and the shack’s rear, then clasped her hands behind her neck, bowing in prayer.
“But if we can maintain those virtues,” the elf went on, “they will keep us together when our pride fails us. Cynthea and I have our grievances. To follow her for so long and watch as she ascends to Magis while I stutter before the courts…” Admar’s voice trailed delicately. “Well, you can imagine some strain. But there is no doubt in my mind that she loves our lord. Sometimes, misguidedly, but with a fullness of heart. And with the blessing of the Order.” He looked wistful, the sun’s dirt-speckled glow casting strange shapes on his face. “So, I follow her still. And hold on to my virtues.”
Admar’s understanding was so relieving, it was almost painful. To speak of justice so purely, and of following the Order’s command even when it seemed so hard—this was everything Ollis had felt over these last days. Shaking his head, Ollis took in a deep breath and went on, releasing pounds of frustration with each word.
“All I wanted on the road was to talk about the artifact, to prepare myself. It was like he wouldn’t even hear me. It was like—”
“You were asking about the artifact?” Admar’s tone suddenly shifted.
Looking up, Ollis found terrible sternness in his eyes. “I, yes, but only to prepare, to understand what I was walking into.”
Cobalt pupils pierced him, weighted by the pale brow and narrowed lids. “You do not ask about artifacts, Ollis.”
The boy shook his head. “I didn’t, I’m sorry. Jorhan didn’t mention that—”
“He should not have to.” The elf turned back to look out the window, voice unyielding as ever, all its charity lost. “A full Adresil would have taken Introductions to Antiquity.”
Now Ollis felt ashamed, unsuitable. Admar offered nothing more, looking quietly out at Cynthea kneeling in the grass.
“And what…what would I have learned?” Ollis croaked.
“That you aren’t to know what artifacts are, or where they come from. Not truly. Only how to neutralize and retrieve them.” Admar sighed. “More often than not, one’s work as an Archivist is retrieving and handling things they do not understand. One knows as much as they must to retrieve it, and that alone.”
The sky slowly dimmed. Cynthea continued to pray in the distance, and the sun continued to set behind the wall of trees beyond.
“On my first day in Introductions to Antiquity, our Idris told us a story. The story of Teris Rittenhour, which I should not tell you.” Admar turned, looking Ollis in the eye. “But it seems you have received the Order’s blessing. And I’ve seen firsthand that you’ve got your wits about you.” Ollis’s shoulders finally relaxed. Admar leaned down a little and whispered, as though to a fellow conspirator, “But you must promise to act surprised when you finally hear the story in class. And not to let it get to your head.”
Ollis nodded, and the two turned to look out the window again.
“Rittenhour,” Admar said softly, “had just passed his Higher Examinations. He was the most beloved student Yaelfand had ever seen. Wise beyond his years, he was—still is—the youngest Waithen to receive the rank of Teris in history. With such promise, he was asked immediately after his promotion to organize and lead an Exploratory Party. That decision is now thought to be one of the great blemishes of the Order.”
Ollis set the habride condenser down and listened.
“Rittenhour was tasked with visiting a settlement far to the south, at the foothills of Trestan’s Range, to claim an artifact and return it to the Archive. Merely by virtue of his exceptional youth, faith, and excellent standing with the college faculty, it was even proposed he be given the rank of Magis, were the mission successful. He knew this.
“The story follows that, eager to prove himself, he gathered three other Teri, two of whom were very experienced, highly respected Idri at the college, to join him. They journeyed many weeks to their destination. And what they found shocked them. An entire village of southern folk had died, gruesomely, from a disease of some sort. Hundreds of bodies littered the streets, the taverns, their beds, pooled in vomit, feces, and blood. The whole town reeked of death, and no level of olfactory thaumaturgy would have saved them then.
“They traced the source of the disease to a strange rag of ancient quality. Even though it was entirely against the Waithen Code, Rittenhour, in his youth, proposed destroying the thing then and there—blasphemy against the Archive, as even you should know—and rumor has it that one of the Idri actually considered the prospect. Cooler heads prevailed, thank Vindac, and Rittenhour and his party collected the rag and began the long road to Estaith.
“On the way, the party members began to succumb to the disease themselves. They spent their evenings learning some of the rag’s properties, but could discover nothing useful, no cure, no origin. The disease spread. Soon all of them were suffering, their stomachs ill, their faces bleeding, their skin drying out insufferably. Turning into paper.
“Weeks passed on the road north. Two died, before Rittenhour and the last Idris finally arrived at the doors to the Archive itself. The remaining teacher, young though he was, was frail and dying. Rittenhour was as well, but he seemed to have longer to go. They turned over the rag to the Archivists, communicating everything they had learned about its properties thus far. Their mission was completed. The artifact had been retrieved.
“But Rittenhour was unmollified. He despaired over the death of his fellow Waithens, over his failure to save the town. Over unsatisfied altruism. So, in this delirious state, he asked the Archivists a series of questions.”
In the filtered reflection of the warped pane, Admar’s blue eyes left Cynthea and found Ollis’s image upon the glass.
“‘Did they know what the rag was?’ Rittenhour asked. ‘Yes,’ they answered. ‘Had the Archive known all along?’ he asked. ‘Indeed,’ they answered. ‘Could they tell him what the rag was now?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ they answered, ‘but on one condition.’”
Admar looked back out the window.
“Some think Rittenhour wanted to know these secrets so he could save himself and the surviving Idris, whose skin had practically turned to parchment by then. But I think he wanted to know so he could keep his pride. So he could feel like he hadn’t failed in the face of his first task. There are many theories.
“The Archivists informed Rittenhour of what would happen if they told him these secrets. They reminded him of the Archival Code, of the tenet of Absolute Secrecy. He considered this and requested, again, their answer.
“They told him the origin of the rag, which is now known as the Rittenstole. The next day, he used the information he had learned to successfully cure the dying Idris, and to cure himself. Of course he told no one else of the rag’s true origins. He was not that impetuous. He had one more night of peace and good health. The following morning, he journeyed with two Northwatchmen from Estaith to Vindac’s Grace, saying nothing all the way. Upon arrival at Vindac’s Grace, he was greeted by an Ademagis, who declared Qyrdran upon him and guided him, with the Northwatchmen, to the Bridge of Echoes, where Rittenhour would fulfill his end of the bargain.”
At this last phrase, a shiver crept up Ollis’s back.
“And there, he was observed by all the city, who wondered at him, for how bright a star he once was in the Order, and how he had now come to this, his final hour, a slanderer. He walked to the end of the bridge, and from its dizzying height, he fell into the holy waters of the Bay.”
Something twisted in Ollis’s stomach, a heat pulsed at his temples.
“Rumor has it that a few Idri, including Jorhan—who, despite the severity of his affliction when they arrived at Estaith, did survive the event, thanks to Rittenhour and his ‘sacrifice’—still refer to that heathen from their hovels using the honorary title of Magis, in recognition of his successful recovery of the artifact and completion of his first mission. But that, of course, can’t be true. Such a thing would be blasphemy of the highest order.”
In the darkening distance, Ollis could see only the faintest outline of Cynthea, on her knees, her hands yet clasped behind her neck as she prayed before the forest. His mind whirred with the memory of Jorhan, from so many days ago, setting him on this journey. He had been there? Jorhan had seen this tale firsthand? Did he, could he, refer to a blasphemer with praise? Such a thing was impossible, surely.
“How well do you know the Waithen Code, Ollis?”
Ollis did not reply, though he knew it well.
“Knowledge is the great gift of life,” Admar quoted. “Like all great gifts, it is to be well-kept with the tender care of our hearts. With the endless power of our fires. With the quiet fury of our prayers. Well-kept,” he appended, “without question.”
One thought on “Malodorous Charms — Echoes & Orisons Part Two”