Chapter Thirteen

 

 

Telm watched Laeder, for the third time, visit the archivist. The records keeper had been around for longer than Telm could recall. Had he been there when she first arrived at court, or had he come later?

Due to the conversation between herself and Jer shortly before he left, she had begun watching Laeder. Being a bedfellow of Jer, the scribe would do as he was asked.

She waited for Laeder to leave, then walked into the archives as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Looking over the greeting room, the smallest room of the archives, Telm finally settled on the archivist himself. He had given up his name when he agreed to take the position. Without recalling the name, Telm found it difficult to place the man.

“Laeder was just here,” she said to the archivist. “What did he want?”

“Jer opened the archives to Laeder,” the archivist said in that tone, the one that meant he wasn’t interested in sharing.

“Yes, but what was Leader looking for?” Telm asked.

“He has been looking at maps of palace lands now, and what they once were,” the archivist said, motioning to the table before him. “He is trying to find roads Av might take in spring, he says, to look for Lady Aren.”

On the newer map, still older than Telm, but new enough to show the south separated, there was an inkblot on the upper left corner. Some careless fool had damaged a palace map. She tapped by the blot gently.

“Aren will not accept this,” she said, “She will want a full survey done, especially of this area, which has been covered.”

“And I will tell her why I damaged the map,” the archivist said with a groan, standing to retrieve the map from Telm. “Then why we will not be going there.”

“There?” Telm asked.

“There,” the archivist responded.

Cold washed over Telm. Was the archivist still aware? He was more than old enough, but the man had to keep a great deal of information inside that head of his. Things became jumbled and lost. That was why the archives still remained on paper, as well as inside his head.

“And what is there?” Telm asked, needing to know if he knew. “That it would be erased from the map?”

The archivist frowned at her. “Surely you are old enough to recall. You look younger than you are, but I remember you as a young woman when I came to the palace.”

Telm finally placed the man’s arrival. After the incident, not before. After a queen was erased from the records and the archivist released to prevent him from passing on the information to another. That had been a disturbing time for everyone involved, yet so little information was given to those not involved.

She wondered how much the archivist knew. He wasn’t supposed to know anything, never to be taught that information. If he knew what happened, he knew how, and if he told a young queen, she might figure out how to repeat the magic that had been used.

Who could Telm go to about her suspicions? The steward? The man was learning, but dark matters long before he was born were beyond his skill.

There was only her. Only the archivist. No one else of the old staff remained. The older lords were considered doddering fools, their minds were beginning to fade away.

“As you might recall, not everyone was told everything,” Telm responded. “If Aren is headed northwest and your ink is in the northwest, you could very well be covering where she is headed. There are few of us left from that time, archivist.”

“The archivist before me was put to the sword for telling her how,” was the growled response. “I will not put my life on the line, so soon to having my apprentice trained, simply to feed your morbid curiosity. Why don’t you go ask the throne what happened?”

Which was not the truth of the matter, though it was likely the tale the new archivist was told to prevent him from doing just that.

“The way I was told, the throne had nothing to do with it,” Telm said.

“Way I was told, the throne is a better archivist than I am, only its memory hasn’t got holes in it like cheese,” the archivist said.

“It can speak, somewhat,” Telm said. “Though not about anything specific. Certainly not with the clarity you are capable of, only really warnings.”

“Mirmae knew,” the archivist said. The man was silent, watching Telm stiffen. “She came to me asking questions, said the throne told her all about what happened.”

“What did you tell her?” Telm asked.

“I gave her the information I had pieced together up until that point. She referred me to several scholars who might have been able to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. She wanted to know how and why this happened, to prevent it from ever happening again.”

“Did you figure out the how?” Telm asked.

“Yes,” the archivist said.

The man had to die. He had to be erased before his mind slid and he told someone the wrong thing. No knowledge of what happened could be passed on.

“Did you tell Mirmae?” Telm asked.

She had to know. Did the woman she dared call friend know, and not tell her? Even if the name had been erased from the archives, Mirmae should have come to see her.

“Of course, she did not understand the instructions,” the archivist said. “I did, though. I told her as much, I also told her that if someone were to ask, I would give them the wrong instructions. What they would do, then, would be to do what was done, only onto themselves. Three have been removed in such a manner, those who intended to consume the palace for petty argument.”

Missing queens. Telm was certain that if she sat down and made a list of the missing queens, she would be able to pinpoint who had wanted to destroy the palace and whose disappearance was a bit more mysterious than others.

“I thought it was your duty to pass on information,” Telm said.

“Yes, and no. It is my duty to maintain a working knowledge of all the history I can keep inside my head or on scrolls, vellum, and paper. Odds and ends, really,” the archivist said, pausing to cough. “But at the same time, I must not be a blind book when I give over the information that I have. Not just anyone who has access to my services can have access to anything in the archives.”

“And Mirmae approved of your possibly killing ranks?” Telm asked.

“She was the one who suggested the spell actually kill them, rather than make a light show,” the archivist said. “For anyone laying that spell is not doing so to aid themselves. If they are trying to undo what was done, writing the spell will not help. The one who did it, she hadn’t needed the spell. It was only afterwards that we wrote it out, a way to explain what she had done and how to do it once more. In order to prevent it from happening again. In order that, should one with magic see what she had done and do it themselves, we would know it was not her.”

“She’s dead,” Telm said.

“She did what the unranked are said to do: she walks amongst the dead, is what the stories say. The queen’s not dead, Telm. Mirmae knew that as well.”

“Did she tell you where to find this woman?” Telm asked. “For the sake of the land, we should have eyes on her.”

“Queens want to watch her for signs of rebellion. Warriors want to swoop in and save her. Trainers want to know about the man who betrayed her and healers just want to know why, in their feeling of the land, there is an inkblot in the northwest. Commoners want to know in order to be snide, to punish the ranks. The poor woman simply wants to be left alone.”

“You’ve spoken with her?” Telm asked.

“Mirmae did,” the archivist said. “She wanted me to note, if I were to have this conversation with another person, that she considered doing the one responsible a mercy. Yet she did not specify if it was the queen, or the warrior, she would be doing a mercy.”

“He’s dead,” Telm said sternly. “He died a long time ago.”

“Spoken like a queen who has suffered the pain of a warrior’s betrayal.” The archivist almost chuckled, but caught himself. “If he were dead, the spell would no longer be in our world, it would be tugged to the realm of the spirits, along with him.”

“No, he’s dead,” Telm insisted.

“Unless you pulled his heart out with your own hand,” the archivist started, then stopped, staring up at Telm. “Are you aware of what this spell does?”

“How did the story go?” Telm asked herself, looking up as if trying to recall. “It saps the magic of the one who laid it in order to further the curse.”

The archivist opened his mouth, then closed it. He blinked clouded eyes at Telm, considering.

“Spoken like a queen who has unleashed a rage,” the archivist said quietly. “Strange, none of my records ever mention one by the name of Telm falling into the queen’s rage.”

“I am wrong?” Telm asked.

“Absolutely, when a queen falls into a rage she tends to weave a spell, not of her own doing, not of her will.” The archivist paused to think. “When Aren’s father sat her down with Ervam, Av, and Jer, to explain to her that the arranged mating would happen, she became angry and the table top bubbled before her. If you were to ask her how to do that, do you know what she would say?”

“I don’t know,” Telm said.

“Exactly what she did say. Then she babbled something about magic and needing something else to absorb the magic because if it came back into her, that is what it would do to her flesh. An angry queen pours magic outward and instinct crafts it into a spell. If the queen brings the magic back, the spell latches and then unleashes onto her. You could no more control what your magic did during the rage than…” the archivist paused in thought, “than a man could help deliver a baby. He knows the basics, he knows how it’s supposed to work, but then he’s there trying to help and he forgets how to breathe and suddenly he’s passed out on the floor and simply in the way.”

“I see your point,” Telm said, shifting her weight. “What does this spell do, then?”

“Do you have several hours for me to explain it to you?” the archivist asked. “I won’t tell you how, only what the spell does.”

Telm looked around for a chair. She found one in the corner, stacked high with historical requests that had been denied. Shifting the papers to the side, she carried the chair back to the archivist and set it down.

“Tell me what the spell actually does,” Telm said.