We snuck out of the Crown and Clasp and into Anteianum. Hester reminded us that we were not sneaking and should in no way look or act like we were sneaking, but that felt like what we were doing.
It was a cold spring night in the mountain lands of Anteianum, and suddenly I realized I had been taking the warmth and bustle of the Crown and Clasp for granted. The black tunic I was wearing was insufficient for the weather and I found myself wishing I had my nice, long, wooly gown. Well, wishing I had it on. I had it, but it was tucked in a roll under my left arm, heavy and damp with other people’s blood1. I almost considered putting it on given how empty the streets were and how dark it was, but I thought better of it. Beside my companions, Hester the fearless and Gena the unflappable, it felt stupid to run a risk like that because of a little cold nipping at my ankles.
At any rate, it was a short walk to the king’s castle, which loomed up over the city from the top of the ridge. A little less than a league separated it from the college, that ground split between the forested slopes below the college and the urban jumble of plaster and terracotta that climbed the hill to the castle.
The castle itself was a work of art. tremendous stone walls crowned the ridge, topped with ornate crenelations and carved angelic sentinels. Then, rising from amidst the walls, the palace itself clawed toward the heavens, an edifice of marble arches and columns that would shine like a snowcap on a clear alpine day. Tonight, the mingling white and grey was an eerie presence, ghostly yet solid, set against the stars.
The portcullis was down, and a crest-helmed sentry peered down at us from atop the gate, flanked by the angelic statues.
“Evening,” she said.
“Good evening,” Hester replied. “I am Sir Hester I, Heir to the House Eastmost, here to ask a favor of His Grace.”
It was dark and her face was shaded, but the sentry’s helm and crest gave a perceptible tilt of interest. “Your companions, then?”
“Right. Horwendell of Ilianath, apprentice to Magister Montigo of Ilianath. Sister Gena, Apostle of the Third Degree.”
The sentry paused for a beat. “A moment.” Then she disappeared from the battlement.
“Smoothly done,” I said to Hester. “As if you’ve known us for years.”
“I never told you what degree I’ve attained,” Gena said.
“I asked someone at the sump posey. Know people both how they know themselves and how others know them, mother says.”
“And titles matter quite a bit in your world,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you say we’d be asking for Lorea?” Gena asked.
“Yes, but… you’ll see,” Hester said.
We heard the sentry’s voice calling on the other end, which apparently spurred someone in the gatehouse to begin raising the portcullis. She reappeared at the battlement.
“Come through. Venali down there will take you inside.”
A tidy young man in a similar red-crested helm and a well-cared-for lorica greeted us under the gate and led us within. We navigated a wide and dark courtyard for some minutes before we began passing between titanic marble columns and into a reception hall.
Anteianum has been, of course, the cultural heart of the Ivian League for well over two centuries, and its palatial style has been exported as the architectural signature of righteous power all over the League. But standing in its storied castle now, I saw it with different eyes. All those little fortresses and mansions, examples of so-called “classical architecture,” now seemed less like “textbook examples of core-periphery cultural dynamics” and more like pale imitations.
The reception hall was massive, wider than a city street and several times longer than that, and its canted ceiling was lofted to dizzying heights by tremendous, fluted marble columns. Their upper reaches were draped with red velvet, which at the ends of the hall hung all the way down to kiss the shine-polished floor. The hall was occupied now by a few dozen benches and tables, lined up like pews stretching down either side of the crimson red carpet. All were empty. A few spaced-out lanterns provided a dim, warm light for the gigantic (and somewhat chilly) space.
By the time I was done gawking, we were about a third of the way into the hall, and I looked down and was stunned to see the King of Anteianum standing before us. He was an old man with a leathery, worn complexion, bright eyes, and a great deal of snow-white hair. One wiry mass cascaded down the back of his neck to his shoulder blades, and another flowed from his chin halfway down his chest. He wore a doublet, cloak, and riding pants, and a sword, even at this time of night. I had never seen the man before, but the crown of Anteianum—an iron circlet festooned with a laurel of emeralds—was unmistakable.
Venali held his body rigid in salute. I wondered anxiously if it was customary to kneel before a foreign king. I’d never met one before!
But before I could think to do something awkward and possibly embarrassing, King Nico of Anteianum said something in Yaria to Venali. Venali chirped a reply, and Nico nodded. “Welcome, friends,” he said, with a thick nomad’s accent and a smile.
Hester had, I swear to the gods, a shit eating grin on his face. He dipped a quick bow and said something in Yaria. Nico nodded and laughed, and then he strode past us toward the courtyard.
“This way, friends,” Venali said, motioning down the hall to the right, somewhere past the right flank of columns. We went.
Gena seemed to be of a mind to remain silent, so I burst forth with the obvious. “I had no idea.”
“What?” Hester said, enjoying this.
“The King of Anteianum is a Yariagar2?”
“No, he’s Anteainic. He’s the king, isn’t he?”
“But he speaks Yaria, not Late Ivian. Or much better than he speaks Late Ivian, anyway.”
“Sure.”
“Could you explain that to me?” I said, exasperated. I’m sure I heard Venali chuckle.
“Well, you see…” Hester began mischievously, before he heard Gena groan in annoyance. “Fine, fine,” he said. “King Nico was Lotreas IX’s second born. He was a hostage sent to live with the Windvalley Riders at a very early age. A few of the Riders’ sons every generation, in turn, are raised here. I’m told this is terms of their alliance, which was forged a long way back in a very hard time. Anyhow, Nico’s older brother, Lotreas X, inherited the throne, but he took ill and died childless not long thereafter. Nico was summoned back to Anteianum.”
“The Windvalley Riders…”
“A band of the Yariagar who winter near here. They are steadfast friends of this kingdom, of course. But many also travel out east during the summer season. I count some hunting partners among them.”
“Why didn’t I know this about Nico?” I asked the cavernous room, but mostly myself.
Hester answered nonetheless. “Why should you?”
I thought about that. “I suppose there’s little reason to go shouting it out on the streets. It seems like you lordly types know about it by having personally met with him.”
“Gone on a hunt with the man. Great company, even if you don’t speak the same language. And I don’t have to tell you he’s an excellent horseman.”
“And I’m only privy to correspondence, and he has all sorts of courtiers to take dictations and translate his meaning. As a fellow who receives edicts and missives secondhand, I’d never know him from a scholar trained on Ivian literature.”
“Right.”
“Did you know, Gena?”
“No, but I try not to gawk and gossip about my hosts in their homes.” She was giving Hester and I a sly side-eye.
Venali laughed at that. “We get it a lot,” he said. “And Nico knows how people see him. If he didn’t he wouldn’t have done so well for himself and for us.”
“Well, someone needs to teach these two some manners,” Gena replied. “Anyhow, I suppose I now know why you said we’re asking the princess for her hospitality.”
“I suppose you do,” Hester said. “I like Nico well enough, but she’s easier to hold a conversation with.”
“But you know Yaria,” I pointed out. “So… I suppose you’ve chosen to speak with Lorea instead of Nico for our benefit, then?”
“Aye. And who says I need to be taught manners?”
Gena rolled her eyes.
By then we had passed into a side hall, a smaller and less reverberating affair lined with portraiture and darkened windows. The ceiling bore a mural—depicting what, I don’t remember—in warm reds and yellows. Venali opened a door for us and bowed to Hester as we entered.
The room was small, but in the most palatial way. By the standards of any normal room—any room I could hope to call my own in the future, anyway—it was quite large. But within a palace, it seemed positively intimate. It was a sitting room, complete with elaborately upholstered chairs, lush carpeting, and velvety curtains. The windows faced west, peering just over the castle wall to see the sleepy city below with its scattered lit windows and thinning plumes of smoke.
Upon a chair, at a tea table, sat the young woman I presumed to be Nico’s daughter. Her blonde hair fell in gorgeous curls and her hands were folded neatly over her crossed legs. The silhouette of her hair and straight, lean body were much like her father’s, but she had a soft, refined look about her, which I thought a contrast. Nico was a nomad who wore the mantle of royalty. He wore it well, he wore it with practice, but he wore royalty. His daughter seemed to be royalty, in the very way she sat, clothed in a pearl-white dress with a mantle and a jeweled hem, watching and waiting to receive our plea.
Hester bowed, and some motion of his hands or shoulders or something must have indicated to me that it was time to do the same, because I remember doing so. We stood and waited while the young woman briefly looked each of us in the eyes. Hester wasn’t speaking, so I supposed we would be waiting on her.
“Please, have a seat,” she said, finally. “It has been some time, heir to the House Eastmost. I trust you and yours continue to meet the trials of rule in a march province with aplomb.”
“Of course,” Hester replied as we chose seats around the table, leaving the two directly on either side of the princess empty. Venali remained at ease at the door. “It is a difficult duty, to be sure. Military affairs… they are a great and sobering duty, and we must rise honorably to the occasion so that others need not. And we do.”
“Good.”
“And your own? The High Throne has ever been the rock of the faith, a model for a realm well ruled. A high standard in justice is no easier to maintain than the standards that flutter above a battlefield.”
“Of course. We are ever up to the challenge.”
“That is well.”
There was a silence.
A tiny bubble of panic rose in my throat. Was I expected to speak? Gena’s perceptive stare was hardening—if I had to guess, she was worrying about the same thing.
The princess broke the silence with a giggle.
“It’s good to see you Hester.”
“And you, Lorea.”
Gena was holding her head in her hands, trying not to be noticed. I, taking a different tack, sighed in shameless, audible relief. “Must you always do this?” I asked.
“Well…” began Hester.
“Of course! There are appearances to keep up, you know.” Lorea said.
“She’s right,” Hester said. “The forms are… a lot. But…”
“They are important,” Lorea continued. “We cannot afford to fail to observe them when it is critical. Too much is at stake.”
“So we keep in practice, even with each other.”
“But you are among friends here,” Lorea declared. “Hester vouches for you, and I have never known him to be wrong.”
“Truly?” Gena asked. “I have a hard time imagining that.”
Lorea laughed. “I should clarify. You are a scholar, no? His study habits have always left something to be desired. But he is an excellent judge of character.”
“You learn many things about men and women on the battlefield,” Hester said, applying a Hesterly cast to the compliment.
“He tells me that. I have little choice but to believe him. Anteianum is blessed with affairs of state such that my education involves far less mortal danger.”
“But your fair share of training, nonetheless. She’s a fine rider and fencer, have no doubt,” Hester explained.
“I’ll accept the compliment and leave it at that. Now… Sister Gena, a good apostle of the Lightbringer. It’s always a pleasure to host one of yours.”
Gena nodded stiffly.
“No, I mean that,” Lorea pressed. “The kingdom owes almost everything to the Lightbringer, and most of what it doesn’t owe to her it owes to the tireless faith and works of her apostles. Won’t you tell me of your work?”
She had Gena smiling a sly smile at that. “Well said… and practiced, I suppose.”
“It is one of the forms. But didn’t I say that we practice them because they’re important? They’re never more important than when they are true.”
After a few fits and starts, Lorea was able to extract the tale from Gena. Where I would have expected feigned interest, Lorea had a graceful humility about her limited knowledge of the scholarly life, and that was enough to charm Gena into speaking a bit more about her studies, about her difficult but fulfilling career as a generalist. When my turn came, I thought to protect my conversation partners from the worst wizardly excesses (which is to say, extended digressions into the details of astronomy, meteorology, or geology), but somehow I ended up describing a night of stargazing with Magister Montigo, cosmic details and all. Lorea apologized that their court wizard, Magister Cornelia, was traveling3 and was unable to revel in the tale with me, but I didn’t feel as though I was left wanting by the present company.
Soon, though, it was time for our mission.
“… which is how I spent an evening oiling my riding leathers myself. Messy business; can’t say I care for it,” Lorea was saying. “And… say, Howe, I’ve been meaning to say. You could’ve asked to hang that cloak rather than tote it around. Venali could call for the help.”
The four of us fell silent.
“I, uh. Wouldn’t,” I stammered.
Hester shook his head. “Lorea, we have some explaining to do.”
She looked between us, concerned. “Is something wrong?”
Gena began by explaining Theodric’s theft of the Doctrina Tempestas, Hester detailed the encounter in the Crown and Clasp (which was the proximate reason I was wearing a borrowed tunic instead of my cherished student’s robe), and with a nod from the two of them, I explained the stakes.
Lorea’s prim and practiced brow furrowed. “The Great Works are available to the public. Why not simply view them?”
“Two reasons I can see,” I began. “First is that the thief—or perhaps thief-patron, however you want to think of them—may not be welcome in the college. Or the very realm, for that matter. Sneaking in with a disguise isn’t out of the question, I suppose, but there are complications with that depending on the circumstances. The second reason is what I think is more important. One cannot simply borrow or view a spellbook and know its power. Even arcane secrets and spells that could be mastered by an apprentice or journeyman wizard cause the mind to fairly overflow with their sheer breadth and depth of meaning. It can take months of study with a particular arcane thesis to reliably bear its burden wholly in one’s mind, and even then constant refreshers are necessary.”
This is the first I had explained this to Hester and Gena, too, and they were deep in thought. Gena tested her understanding first. “So it’s one thing to admire a Great Work’s grandeur or to glean some specific insight from its pages,” she said. “But to understand the true power described it would require possibly years of exclusive study. You need to have it.”
“Right.”
“And not a copy?”
“Copies are unreliable,” I said. “Star charts and diagrams and calligraphy are subtle but critically important, and a single transcription mistake could foil years of effort. If you want to learn something, you learn it from the original source. The one that’s proven it works.”
“But it’s some comfort that this evil wizard may need years of study before their theft is truly complete,” Lorea said.
“Yes, but…” I mused. “Well, they’re not necessarily evil, right? Thieving, yes, but we don’t know…” I read the room and thought better of it. “Well, evil is a fair guess,” I hastily concluded.
“And we don’t have years, I’m afraid,” Gena said. “Our departure from the college was not graceful, and the… armed agents at the college’s disposal would be just so pleased to arrest us while the trail grows cold.”
“Why not let them, then?” Lorea asked. “The truth shall speak for you if they have questions, and if the college has such agents, shouldn’t they proceed with the recovery of the relic?”
“I have been given this quest by the Lightbringer herself,” Hester said.
Gena and I waited a beat before elaborating. “A vision, he said,” I offered. “I believe him, as outlandish as it sounds,” Gena added. “And besides… I’ve never known the soldiers of the college to travel to distant locales. And if I have doubts that the college will prevail, my duty to the Lightbringer calls to me, does it not?”
Lorea’s eyes flashed with some sort of insight—what, I couldn’t tell. “Strange circumstances indeed. You have all had a difficult day, and it was rude of me to have detained you here for small talk.”
“Proper and entertaining conversation,” Hester corrected with a smile. “It was genuinely a pleasure, Your Highness.”
“Ever the bold one, disagreeing with your hostess,” she riposted.
“Allow me to agree then,” I said, “with, uh, both of you. Proper and entertaining, and time for bed, if it still… pleases you to… grant that.” I thought my manners were reasonably well-improvised given my lack of practice.
Lorea nodded to Venali, who opened the door to lean out and call to someone.
“Have the servants care for your cloak, Howe,” Lorea said. “Best tell them you helped deliver an infant, I suppose.”
“R-right.”
“Rest well, friends. We shall break bread in the morning and speak more. I look forward to it.”
I didn’t bother to ask for the time before the servants left me alone to my guest room (another room that was larger and more richly appointed than any place I hoped to call home). The only thing I did ask for was a pen and a small sheaf of parchment, paper, or vellum, whichever might be conveniently provided.
Pen and paper in hand, I sat down at the desk and began transcribing notes from memory.
Regrettably, not for the last time. ↩
In the Seven Kingdoms of the Ivian League, we have a bit of a habit of thinking of the nomads of the veld as a single group of people, distinct from us settled folk. But really, they are many: united by a pastoral lifestyle on the wild plains but no less diverse in culture and spirit than the many peoples of our many kingdoms. One result of this is that, centuries ago, “we” had a name for “them” (vagum, literally “vagrants”) but “they” had none for “themselves,” as they hadn’t needed a sense of “themselves.” Eventually they caught on to this, and as a matter of convenience they rallied around the moniker “Yariagar,” that is to say, those who speak the language, Yaria. Vagum is considered somewhat rude now that we have a better option. ↩
Apparently, aboard a Cinisian long-distance trader, bound for the empire of the northern continent, to learn from the famed dragon-officers in that land. ↩