ELLIA:
Yes, Cyric had told me that I wasn’t allowed to leave for days, but if he thought one of his useless soldiers was going to be able to stop me once he was off training, he was fooling himself. When the servant came with my breakfast, I asked if there was a guard outside to make sure Cyric hadn’t been bluffing. Sadly the servant confirmed it, but this didn’t deter my mission.
After eating and dressing, I peeked outside the door. I furrowed when rather than one, there were two soldiers. And it looked like one was higher ranking. He faced my direction, speaking with the other, who was a woman. I huffed dejectedly; so long as it was a woman guarding me I wasn’t going to kill her, and I certainly wouldn’t be able to slip by on my charms.
But the second soldier stopped amidst his easy laughing, seeming to notice me, his eyes flicking up to me. He had pale blue eyes, very Shaundakulian, and why not, because it was Slark, and Slark had always looked very Shaundakulian.
He patted his hand once against the woman’s shoulder then walked past her. “Princess Ellia,” he said in greeting. He bowed low, flourishing his arm as was only done in Shaundakul, and even then to only the ladies of noble standing. “I come on behalf of your master. Will you allow me inside?” He smirked a little. “Or were you on your way out?”
I felt a little annoyance and having been stopped and now patronized, but my natural temperance at the sight of one of my people won me out and I went back inside without argument, allowing him to follow.
He looked around once he’d closed the door, making no attempt to hide his admiration. “I’ve never been inside the Lieutenant’s room.”
“I can’t say that surprises me.” He looked at me and I narrowed. “What are you doing working for Cyric, Slark? If I’m not mistaken, not a year ago, you would have died first.”
He started laughing as he crossed his arms. “You haven’t changed, Princess Ellia.”
“You don’t know a thing about me. I kept my distance from you in Uldin Keep, and I’ll continue to do so here. I can see you’ve abandoned you’re heritage like so many others.”
“I do what I must,” he replied. “But I have no reservations about serving Dracla. If I hadn’t been so blinded by Shaundakulian ways, I should have been glad to follow him long ago. He’s the best of us.” Slark smiled, then he dipped his head toward me. “Then again, you did always know that, didn’t you, Princess Ellia?”
“I know that if you have nothing of use to say, you may just as well leave. In fact, I command it.”
“Settle down, Princess Ellia,” he chuckled. “I’ve only come to tell you I’m available should you need to call for me. Before he left, the Lieutenant said that I should keep an eye on you. I didn’t want you to think you were now without a protector—even if you’re not meant to leave this room.”
“Left?” I repeated, not registering any of the words he’d spoken after this one. “Cyric left?”
Slark smiled to a laugh.
I glared him down.
“He didn’t tell you? Well I won’t be one to chastise him for his methods. They certainly work well enough.”
“Stop talking in riddles. Where did Cyric go?”
“Don’t work yourself up, Princess Ellia. He’ll be back within the week.”
“I didn’t ask when he’d be back,” I snapped, though I felt a wave of… not relief, something even stronger. “I asked where he went. To Karatel?”
Slark shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“You don’t know? Isn’t he in charge of the soldiers?”
“He’s left that to one of his sergeants, but he hasn’t told anyone where he’s gone. There are rumors… whatever it is, it’s important, and almost certainly an errand for Lox.”
“Commander Lox?” I didn’t know why I repeated it—as if I didn’t know who he’d meant. I supposed Slark was simply being so freely informative that I hoped to prompt him to go on. To my surprise, it worked.
“Oh, our Lieutenant is known for nothing if not his errands for Lox. I assume you’ve been here long enough to have heard the most infamous?”
I felt great hesitation, scanning my eyes over Slark, running through what he might mean, trying to think even of something to prod him on to speaking more.
Slark suddenly smiled. “I can see the Lieutenant has meant to hide many things from you. You should be pleased, Princess. This must mean he cares what you would think of him.”
“What could he have done that I would mind?” I asked, ignoring the knotting in my stomach. Somehow I couldn’t help feeling the only one besides Malatos Lox that better guessed my natural inclination towards Cyric was this late and rather flutterish Shaundakulian lord.
Slark held my gaze, his light eyes devious. Then he took another glance around the room and nodded to me. “Tell the guard to call for me should you need anything. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll come to take you for a walk. Even a captive can’t be expected to entertain herself in such a small place. At least not while her champion is away.”
I opened my mouth to argue. He put a finger to my lips, his expression retaining its full assurance. “Don’t worry, Princess Ellia. I don’t intend to tell a soul.” As he turned back to the door, he inexplicably laughed. This, and his behavior as a whole, shocked me so that I couldn’t even bring myself to form a rebuttal. It was the strangest thing I could imagine. The Slark I’d known (granted I hadn’t known him well) but the Slark I’d known had been a bully, very often starting fights, just as often disregarding the laws. I supposed it was possible that in the lawlessness of Akadia he had flourished, and I supposed there was still the aspect of hazard about him. He closed the door so lightly behind him that it cracked back open. I went to shut it, my heart pounding furiously in my chest. As I did I saw Slark lingering beside the still present female guard. To my surprise it wasn’t seconds and then he kissed her. She responded with at least equal enthusiasm. I thought them both so absorbed that I might slip by them unnoticed. But having heard all that I had, I felt a much stronger urge to go inside or rather a lack of any urge to go anywhere. I shut the door tight.
CYRIC:
At least Tosch was excited.
We’d left at dawn and where the trip would normally have taken a full day, he’d done it in half the time. Sunny desert turned to forest then the trees thickened to an abnormal width and the air grew icy. Even though it was well into fall, colors didn’t turn in Shaundakul because the trees were evergreens. I found myself slowing Tosch’s pace more and more the closer we got; it didn’t stop the towering Keep from emerging just when it was meant to, at the base of the mountain, climbing up, higher and higher, with its many towers behind a low cloud.
I expected stench, but the only smell was that of frost and snow, which no doubt already touched the top of the keep. I hoped this meant Lox had done a better clean-up than the goblins after they’d left. Since the forest was clear I assumed it must be so.
With the open gates of Uldin Keep before me, I swung down from Tosch, frozen earth and pine needles cracking beneath my boots. Tosch’s every breath let out a gust of fog.
“Inside or out?” I asked him. “You can rest in the throne-room for all I care.”
Tosch clopped his heels, neighed, then took some testing steps forward. If he hadn’t I wasn’t sure how long it would have taken me to actually enter. Crunching earth turned to echoing stone. A flock of birds flew out as we entered the first hall. After their departure, it was quiet, and dark, like a tomb.
“See? Even you couldn’t like it, Tosch.” And he made it a point to try and like everything low on evil attributes. He ignored my words and trotted ahead, right up to the large furnace of the entry hall. The wooden chairs that had once surrounded it lay broken and rotted on the floor. I remembered sitting in them either before or after going out for a patrol. The bliss of warming the ice out of your fingers and toes, or the dread of the cold to come. Cold. Always cold. What sort of people choose to settle in such a place?
I used flint to light a fallen torch. Knowing what Tosch was after, I piled some chair parts in the fire-place, then lit them. It crackled into rolling flames. “If it calls a bunch of carnivores, it’ll be your problem to take care of them,” I jibed.
I hoped this might dissuade him into walking further inside with me—for at least as long as he could fit—but instead he walked to the hearth, bent one knee into the stone, then rolled over onto his side.
I tossed my free hand. “You just smashed all our food.”
He rolled his lips. I gave him an expression of exaggerated disgust, which, again, had much more to do with the fact that he was abandoning me than his careless treatment of our supplies. I felt a spark of warmth against my chest and wondered if it had come from the fire, but when it didn’t go away I looked down and saw Ellia’s stone. With one hand holding my torch, I reached the other down to touch it. It was warm, warmer than the fire I’d built Tosch or the flame of the torch—a different sort altogether. I brought it close to my mouth and breathed into it. It flared with color and light. I was sure than that it was responding to the location. All the more reassurance that this place would have the answers I needed.
I readjusted my grip on the torch, let the stone fall, and walked into the Keep.
The first level of Uldin Keep belonged to commoners. Like one of the streets of Akadia, it was long and thin, with what had once been stalls and shops on either side. Narrower stone halls resembling alleys led to the homes of stone on the other sides. The ceiling was so tall in these largest ways that it may just as well have been a sky, albeit a black one. Once huge tapestries had hung across them, now it was only darkness that I couldn’t see the end of. The sound of flaps and squeaking told me bats now infested it. Uldin Keep had no windows on these levels. With my torch-light being quickly absorbed by the surrounding darkness, I had to rely on my memory to guide me where I needed to go. This wasn’t a pleasant experience. My time in Shaundakul could have easily been divided into three parts: my years on these streets, when I’d been passed from one home to the next, usually relations of my late mother, all of whom resented me, not only for being the son of the man who’d ruined her life, but the cause of her death as well. My second part would have been much higher up, where the scholars took in orphans and raised them until they were old enough to make their own way. Shaundakul wasn’t the sort of country to let any of its people go without help; I’d been just one of the many rescued. The third and longest part of my life had begun the day the palace had been open for a celebration. There I had seen Savras, and Ellia. The King had spoken to me personally, not even citing my name as others always did. And though I’d never lived in that section of Uldin Keep, it was where my heart and aim had remained until the day the entire place had been destroyed.
For the purposes of my trip today, I was headed for the granted temple, just one room off the astrologer’s tower and close to the palace. Unfortunately this meant the ascension of stairs. Innumerable stairs. Unlike Akadia, Uldin Keep held no lifts, nothing inventive, only silver stone, and echoes, and darkness.
I passed outside a handful of times, always it was colder and the wind was fiercer. Finally I saw the domed top of the astrologer’s tower; not far from it was a thinner tower made of silver blocks, tall but impossibly simple to climb. It had been my first experience with scaling a wall.
I didn’t mean to, but I recalled an especially cold winter’s night—what I thought at the time was the worst day of my life, and maybe it was. In the cover of darkness, I’d scaled that tower for the first time, kicked through the tapestry that blocked its window and dropped inside. Disoriented and frozen I wasn’t able to get my bearings before I was pounced upon by a small figure wielding a knife and wearing layers of silk. She shouted some threat about how skilled she was, moved her blade close to my neck, and relented only when I started coughing.
“Cyric?”
My coughing turned to shaking. It was too dark to see, but she pressed her warm hand to my face. “You’re half frozen. What have you done to yourself?” She rolled off of me immediately and made for the door.
“No, don’t,” I said.
“I have to get a healer.”
“I don’t need a healer.”
“You could be sick.”
“I’m fine.” I got to my feet. I could see her now, from the light of a fireplace on one side of her room. Her face was pale and anxious. “See?” I spread my hands, forcing myself not to shake.
She narrowed uncertainly. “What are you doing here? Everyone’s been looking for you.”
I doubted this. I made a face that said so, then began to make my way towards the fire.
“Well, two of the scholars were,” she conceded. “And I was.”
This sounded more accurate. Nobody cared what I did, not today. Ellia ran behind me to pin the tapestry back over the window, then bring me a cup of something warm.
“Don’t fuss,” I said.
She knelt beside me where I sat at the edge of the fireplace.
“I just need to stay for a few hours,” I explained. Anything else I thought to add sounded stupid.
She nodded quickly, brows low. “Whatever you want. Just don’t climb back down outside. And tell me where you went. Please.”
I waved her off. I stared at the fire a long time. But then: I’d stared off at things for most the day, and that wasn’t why I had come here, was it? I didn’t know why I’d come here.
“I went where they buried him,” I decided to tell her. “I followed them after the execution, and then I watched them put him in the ground, and then I just sat there.”
“All day,” she said. “And in the snow?”
I met her eyes. They were much too large for her face. The scholars said this meant she would be beautiful when she grew older; I thought they were probably the reason she saw so much better than I did, so I sometimes envied them. They grew glossy, then she started to cry.
I didn’t understand. It wasn’t her father that had died after all, and I hadn’t shed a tear all day. Perhaps this was why I’d come. Something about this made me forget everything else.
The next day I was thrashed for waking up in the princess’s quarters, but it never once kept me from going back.
I dropped my hand to the castle wall, feeling suddenly too cold, and too small, the wind rushing violently through me. I forced my gaze to the astrologer’s tower and took the necessary steps until I was inside. I hadn’t even noticed my torch had blown out. I had to re-light it and then I walked through a circular maze of walls, with spiraling alcoves above that opened to a domed ceiling. The viewing instruments, and silver ornaments, and hanging chimes that had once decorated it were all gone, but the painted stars and constellations covered every surface.
I ran my torch past them as I walked. I saw familiar patterns, but saved my real inspection until I had entered the main chamber of the granted temple. It was small, square, all walls and ceilings speckled with constellations of silvery white. If I had better sight, I could put the torch out and see them. They were meant to glow in the darkness.
I locked the torch into a holder at the front of the chamber then pulled the star-charts from my pocket. These were the ones that Lox had sent far away for, but hadn’t ever opened due to the war. There were three of them. Each depicting a constellation of stars, each I’d outlined to show the central form they represented. One a dragon, one a tiger, one a tortoise. The dragon constellation I had already found at the very center of the back wall. I compared the wall to paper, then set it down on the ground in front of it. Now I could follow the map laid underneath the constellations; a thin outline, in a darker silver. It portrayed the lands and oceans of all the kingdoms, like a regular map, only utterly unconventional in its shape. I found the high mountain that ran behind Shaundakul easily enough, just beside the dragon. But I had trouble following the map to the kingdom I thought the next animal would match with. Instead I tried a different tactic. The back wall of the chamber faced east and that was also the direction belonging to the dragon in the myths. Each of the creatures had their own. I took my torch and went to the center of the north wall. Sure enough I found the tortoise, exactly the same as the constellation on my paper. Beneath it was a mountain range I recognized as Genbu, some distance northwest of Akadia. The people that lived there weren’t known to have a granted animal, but they wouldn’t be the first to hide them, and that would explain why I’d never heard of a granted animal resembling a giant tortoise.
I left the paper and went to the west wall. It was just above the door; a tiger. I recognized the outline of the Byako swamplands immediately. This, at least, I had guessed. They lived just southeast of Selket and depending on the location of the fourth animal, they would be the easiest to reach.
I went to the south wall with barely restrained anticipation. The last animal was meant to represent fire, that much I knew, and when I saw the constellation of a bird at the wall’s center, that’s what it looked like: fire. A bird of flames. I had no doubt what it was, even before I saw the outline of Echren beneath it. These granted birds were well-known but seldom seen, residing on the northeastern side of the Ghaundian Crag.
I stepped back from the wall to the center of the chamber. I looked over each direction, naming its creature.
Azure Dragon, Shaundakul.
Black Tortoise, Genbu.
White Tiger, Byako.
Vermillion Bird, Echren.
The four mythical constellation animals. Otherwise known as—or at least alleged to be—the four oldest granted animals. And much more importantly, the most powerful.