Scholars and Other Undesirables

  Chapter 10

  They reached the great mountain late in the morning. The hills leveled off into a plateau at the base of the mountain. It was flat and barren, save for a few piles of stones weathering in the wind. “Who would fight over this?” Jain asked as she looked around. The ground was rocky and the wind cold. No crops would grow here and the land was too barren for livestock to graze.

  “It used to be fertile,” Joff replied. “The people who lived here had a town. They built out of timber from the lowlands and stones from the mountains.” He pointed to a heap of stones near the center of the plateau. “That didn’t get here naturally.”

  “Is it that temple you talked about?” Eduard asked.

  “Could be. Let’s go have a look.”

  The rubble was made up of stones too square to have occurred naturally and the pile took up enough space to accommodate a fair sized village. Joff took out the journal and opened it while Airk sat on a stone and put a hand on his wounded shoulder. Jain uncorked a water skin for him. Eduard paced about and pointedly did not look over Joff’s shoulder.

  “This isn’t the temple,” Joff eventually said. “The book says the temple was made of timbers decorated in gold. This must have been a castle or something.”

  Eduard looked up at the heap of stones. Some walls remained intact but he didn’t see anything anyone could live in. “Do you think there’s anything valuable here?”

  Joff shook his head. “Goblins know the value of gold as well as anyone else. I’m sure this place has been picked clean.” He looked at the ruins. “Besides, I don’t think I want to go picking around in that.”

  “What happened to the people?” Jain asked as she squinted into the wind. “Where’s the village?”

  “No one knows exactly,” Joff replied. “The goblins came down from the mountains after the battle. So maybe they destroyed the town. Or maybe the goblins came because the town was destroyed and the Genasians were pushing into the mountains. No one really knows.”

  “That’s fascinating,” Eduard said. “Where are we going now?”

  Joff looked over a few pages of the book. “Well . . .”

  “What?” Joff, Airk, and Jain all said together.

  “The journal says that Adara followed the sun. It also said that she went to a temple. The temple was east of the castle.”

  “So the sun set in the east back then?” Airk asked.

  “Not that I’m aware,” Joff replied. “Which means that either whoever wrote the journal had no sense of direction or something is wrong. I might have mistranslated or it could be a . . .”

  “Can you find the temple?” Eduard asked.

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “Then we’ll go there and see what we can figure out,” Eduard said.

  The temple sat a few miles east of the fallen castle. The gold decorations had long since been stripped away but the timbers themselves remained. The climate was too cold, dry, and windy to promote rot and the timbers themselves were too sturdy to blow down in the wind.

  “What now?” Eduard asked.

  Joff looked up. The sun was on its usual path from east to west. Following it would most certainly take them back the way they had come. “Maybe there’s some clue inside.”

  A rusted metal plaque was nailed to the top of the entryway. It was written in the language still common to The Holdings, though in a more archaic script. It said, “As With Day, So With Man.” Joff read it to the others. None of them knew what it was supposed to mean. The entrance of the temple led into a large sanctuary. The floor was paved in octagonal stones, now littered with bones and stained brown with long dried blood. A few broken weapons lay amid the debris. Planks that had once supported a roof now warped downward, the weight of ages slowly bending them to the floor. Old ropes hung from many of the planks and some of the ropes had bones tangled up in them.

  “So part of the battle happened here,” Eduard reasoned.

  “No,” Joff said. He squatted and picked up a thigh bone that had once belonged to a human, or something like a human. It had teeth marks in it. “This was more recent. I would say within the last ten years.” He tossed the bone aside and noticed a broken bowl on the floor. The outside of the bowl had been light brown. The inside was crusted with green. “This was a goblin camp. They thought they could hold this place.” Joff picked up the chewed bone again. The teeth marks were square, not pointed as they would have been from goblin teeth, which were ground to points. “They were killed by Rephaim.”

  Jain, Airk, and Eduard all drew their swords as they remembered when the Rephaim had attacked the village. Joff smiled. “It happened at least five years ago. My guess is that the Rephaim have moved on.” The others relaxed and sheathed their swords.

  “So do you see anything helpful?” Eduard asked.

  “Not yet,” Joff replied. He walked toward the front of the sanctuary. The timbers of the wall had been cut so that they made a flat surface there. Pockmarks in the wall indicated places where some kind of decorations, metal, stone, or some other material, had once adorned the wall. Though the decorations were gone the discolorations they left made it possible to get some idea of what they had been. Some figures shaped like mountains and buildings made up the bottom of the motif. A series of circles went across the top of the frame. “I have no idea what this is,” Joff said. “Any guesses?”

  The other three approached and looked at the picture. “It looks like the path of the sun,” Jain said. “Going over the landscape.”

  Joff nodded. “That’s a start. It orients south to north, not east to west.”

  “Does any of this help us?” Eduard asked.

  “Well,” Joff said. “If Adara followed the path of this sun then that would mean she went north, not east.”

  “Did she?” Eduard asked, his tone impatient.

  Joff was already flipping through the journal. The entry read that, “Adara followed the sun, into the long night, into darkness she went for good and all to leave us to wallow in misery without her glory.” Joff read the passage, or his best translation of it, out loud to the others. When he had finished he said, “Does that sound like anything useful?”

  “What’s north of here?” Airk asked.

  “Nothing to speak of,” Joff replied.

  “Let’s go and have a look in the morning,” Eduard said.

  They spent the rest of the day exploring the ruins. Doorways led off from the sanctuary on either side of the wood panel. The one on the right led into a long hallway. Doorways led off at regular intervals into cells. The cells, Joff explained, had probably been the residence of the augurs who had once worked at the temple, their guests, and anyone else who had come to stay. The cells would have held little more than a palette and writing desk when they were in use. Now that had all rotted away or been taken.

  The end of the hall opened into a set of chambers that had served as kitchen and laundry . Joff could indentify them all by the relics they found, an ancient cutting board in one room, a bit of ancient lye that had eaten through its tub in another. None of it was valuable or useful.

  The other door off the sanctuary led into another hallway. This hallway had cells, but they were smaller and Joff could not immediately divine their purpose. There were also bits of tiled roof that remained intact. “The builders really wanted to keep all this dry,” Joff observed.

  “Lot of good it did them,” Eduard replied.

  “Might have,” Joff replied. “The temple was in use for about three hundred years.”

  They reached the end of the hallway. In the room ahead books lay heaped on the floor. Joff rushed in and knelt by a pile of rotting literature. There were books, scrolls, and random parchments. Once it had all been stacked on shelves, but the shelves had rotted or bent and broken under the strain. The roof here was almost complete.

  “This is worth a bloody fortune,” Joff said. He sifted throug
h the pile. “’Meditations on the Sun God.’ I’ve read about this book.”

  His companions looked at each other in confusion. “You read a book about another book?” Airk asked.

  “This is a classic,” Joff explained. “Other books reference it. There were copies at the sun temples.”

  “Those were all destroyed,” Eduard said.

  “Yes,” Joff said, a little desperately. “And their libraries were lost. So this is important. The Academy would pay a fortune for this.” He rummaged through the pile, shook his head, and moved on to another pile. He unrolled a scroll and gasped. “This is Rettop’s ‘Incantations for the Favors of Lesser Spirits.’” He began to rummage again.

  Eduard put his hand on Joff’s shoulder. When Joff did not respond, Eduard grabbed him and forcefully turned him so that their eyes met. “Joff, listen. We will come back for the books, and scrolls, and whatever else is worth having. Grandmother will be thrilled. But we’re here for the Sword of Adara. I’m sure there’s more in that tomb, too. Can you imagine what the Adarans will pay for her body? But we’re here for the sword. Nothing less, nothing more. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Joff said. “Please let go of me.”

  Eduard let him go. “Is there anything here that we can use?” Eduard asked.

  Joff looked around. “Maybe. I’ll have to go through the books. There might be some maps or something like that.”

  “Right,” Eduard said. “Keep working. I’m going to go and see if they left us any middens.”

  “There’ll be a side door off the kitchen,” Joff said without looking up. “The outhouse probably rotted away a long time ago, but if it’s still around then that’s where it’ll be.”

  “Thanks,” Eduard said. “While you’re working, separate out the valuables. It’ll save us some time when we come back.” Joff waved without looking up. Eduard paused. “Grandmother did well with you. There are a lot of the wrong sort in this business. There are muscle men with no brains. There are clever men with no loyalty. You’re different. You could have knifed us all to death that first night. Don’t deny it. You could have told me this was all trash and come back on your own for the loot.”

  Joff looked up. “What do you want me to say?”

  Eduard smiled and walked out. Jain and Airk looked at each other, then at Joff. But Joff was already back at work, sorting the trash from the treasure and looking for a map, a scroll, a guide, anything that would help them find their way in the desolate countryside. “I’m sure there’s something useful the two of you could be doing,” Joff said without looking up. “Somewhere else.”

  Joff’s search yielded an ancient map of the area and a few old books about Harkness, the city that had once occupied the space between the castle and the ruins. Jain and Airk had built a bonfire in the ruined sanctuary and it was by the light of that fire that Joff went over his findings.

  “The cemetery was there,” he said as he pointed to a spot on the map, which they had unrolled on the floor. “The journal mentioned that Adara passed it on her way here. We walked right by it, so we must be on the right track..”

  “I didn’t see anything,” Airk said.

  “They used wooden markers,” Joff explained. “They would have rotted by now, or got used for firewood. The city was built with the four most important structures oriented on the four directions. That way if it was attacked . . .”

  “Are you going somewhere with this?” Eduard interrupted.

  “Right,” Joff said. “The castle is to the west, this temple is east. South is where the guild hall was; all the merchants and craftsmen worked out of it. North is where the town council building was. I haven’t had time to really read the books I found, but they’re in our language and it all seems straightforward.”

  “So you think Adara went to the town council to die,” Jain said. “That sounds weird.”

  “I don’t understand either,” Joff admitted. “But it’s the only thing that makes sense. She came here, then she followed the sun and went into darkness. If she followed the sun on that panel then she would have gone to the town council.”

  “Was there anything else important here?” Airk asked. “Like a laird’s house or something?”

  “The great families were all either merchants or in the town council or both,” Joff replied. “Their houses would have been by those places.”

  “Right, then,” Eduard said. “Let’s get some rest. Tomorrow we’ll find the town council.”

  Before they left in the morning Joff went out the kitchen doorway to see if the outhouses were still there. They were not. He turned and pissed on the wall, figuring that the gods would not even notice this indignity when the temple had already suffered so many. While he was relieving himself he looked around and noticed a protrusion, like someone might build for a doorway, on the wall outside of where the library would be. But the wall there had been smooth. Maybe the library had once had a doorway of its own, one that had been closed up. Joff could easily imagine augurs sneaking outside to study in the open air rather than in the little cells off the hall by the library. Eduard called from inside the temple and Joff finished his business and went inside.

  They backtracked to where Joff reckoned the crossroads would be. Now that they knew that there had been a town they were able to pick out little details that they had missed. The foundation of a building was visible in the dirt here, a depression in the earth too closely resembled the shape of a house there. And not all of the stones jutting up from the landscape were actually stone. There were pieces of bone, wood, metal, and bits of broken pottery. When they looked, they saw the signs of the old city everywhere. But none of it really meant anything. Goblins had roamed the area for centuries, would be among the ruins now if there was anything left to take. It was a miracle that they had not used the temple library for kindling.

  At length they reached a stone building. The roof was gone but the walls remained standing. The doors and windows had long since disappeared but the holes in the walls remained, as if they expected new doors and windows to arrive just any time now. The building sprawled over an area the size of a small farm. It had never been more than one story high, which perhaps explained why it had not collapsed, the weight of more ambitious architecture having not pressed down on the supporting structures like they would have with the castle.

  The grand entrance led into an auditorium full of collapsing wooden benches. The benches all faced an elevated stage where, no doubt, council members had once given stirring speeches about the fate of Harkness. With the roof was gone the acoustics were ruined. A few birds took off from the rafters as the company entered, their loud calls of protest echoing off the marble floor.

  “This’ll go faster if we split up,” Airk said.

  “No,” Eduard replied firmly. “We don’t know what else might be here.”

  They found the offices of the councilors. Some of the paperwork of running a city remained. Joff walked through office after office. He found payroll records, tax records, treaties, and declarations, along with a lot of paperwork too mouldered to read. He was ready to tell Eduard they should go back to the temple, or investigate the guild house, when he picked up a piece of parchment with the words “General Evacuation Order” hastily scrawled across the top. Below was sloppily written and badly spelled order for Harkness to be emptied in light of the threat posed by the convergence of two armies.

  “They knew that the battle was coming and they did not want to be caught in the middle,” Joff explained to the others. “They ordered everyone to leave the city, taking only what they could carry. They feared what Adara or the augurs would do when they took the city.”

  “But they weren’t Adarans,” Jain said. “The augurs would have had no reason to pillage this city.”

  “You’ve seen what augurs do,” Joff snapped. “They sacrifice people to make wheat grow better. If there was a whole a
rmy of them coming my way I’d run, too.”

  “So what happened?” Eduard asked.

  “This means that after the battle Adara and whatever followers she still had would have marched into an empty city. She probably came here looking for help for her wounds.”

  “So much for her healing powers,” Airk said.

  “The journal said she expended her powers in the battle,” Joff replied.

  “What happened to the people of Harkness?” Jain asked. “There must have been hundreds, maybe thousands of people living here. Why didn’t they come back?”

  Joff thought about it. “Well,” he finally said. “Adara’s army came out of the mountains and so did the goblins and they arrived at about the same time. There’s a good chance that the goblins were fleeing ahead of the Adarans. The people of Harkness fled into a countryside crawling with goblins.”

  “That’s horrible,” Jain said.

  “It’s history,” Eduard replied. “And it doesn’t help us. Where is the damned tomb?”

  “It has to be close to the city and probably in it,” Joff said. “If Adara came here wounded, looking for help then it stands to reason that this is where she died.”

  “So where do we look?” Eduard asked. “Our food is starting to run out and it’s just a matter of time before the goblins or the Rephaim notice that we’re here or the Adarans send their own group.”

  “It could be here,” Joff replied. “We’ll finish looking around this building. The next place is the guild hall. That might be a better place to look than here since it’s where she would have expected to find an apothecary to heal her.”

  They continued the search and eventually found a cellar. The stairs or ladder or whatever had collapsed. The only way in was to jump down six feet. The only way out was to either pull oneself up or be pulled by someone above. It was obvious to Joff that he had to go down alone and be pulled up by the others. He was sure it was so obvious that no one could deny it.

  “Absolutely not,” Eduard replied when Joff explained. “If you get hurt we won’t be able to get you back up. Even if you don’t get hurt, Airk’s arm is still injured, so I’d have to pull you back up myself. I’ll go down and see if there’s anything of interest.”

  “You won’t know what to look for,” Joff replied. “Even if there’s a sign that says ‘Adara’s Tomb’ you wouldn’t be able to read it. It has to be me that goes.”

  Eduard gritted his teeth. “Fine. Jain, you go first. Airk and I will stay up here.” He pointed at Joff. “The instant you see trouble, you get back up here.”

  Jain took a lantern from her pack and left the rest on the floor. She put a hand on the hilt of her sword and leapt down into the pit, to land on her feet with her knees perfectly bent. Joff followed, and fell hard on his backside. Jain helped him back to his feet. Joff lit the lantern. They stood in an arched hallway made of stone. At both ends the hall opened into larger chambers. Jain told Airk and Eduard about it and Eduard reluctantly consented to let them explore the chambers.

  The first chamber contained bits of broken glass and pottery as well as the ruins of some old shelves. Joff reasoned that it had been used to store wine and food and that the goblins or whoever had long since emptied it. Stacks and stacks of scrolls, ledgers, and loose papers filled the other chamber. Joff knelt and began to sort through them.

  “You never answered Eduard,” Jain said. “You could have killed us all at any time, but you let us bully you. Why would you allow that?”

  Joff paused in his work. “If I had killed you, I would have made an enemy of Coursa. I would have been dead inside of a week.”

  “You could have killed Coursa,” Jain persisted.

  “Hah!” Joff said. “The Holdings are littered with the unmarked graves of people who thought they could kill Coursa. It would have been simpler to turn the sword on myself.”

  Jain shook her head. She walked around where Joff knelt among the papers to stand in front of him. “You went into that goblin camp. You couldn’t have known that we’d get free in time. You are strange. But you’re no coward.”

  Joff tossed aside the papers he had been looking at, a record of payment for some work a mason had done on the town hall. “It was Coursa.” He sighed. “It was always Coursa.” He slowly rose to his feet. “Look at me. What am I? I can’t do anything for more than five minutes without collapsing into a gasping, sweating heap.”

  “What’s that go to do with Coursa?”

  Joff ran his hands through his hair. “What is Coursa? She’s elderly, she’s alone. She should be feeble and afraid. She should shiver every time something . . .”

  “What are you getting at?” Jain asked.

  “She’s been a bit of a hero of mine since I learned of her.” He smiled and chuckled. “I didn’t think she was real. Most people don’t. When you showed up I . . .” Joff shook his head. The lantern light cast weird shadows that distorted his features, but it looked to Jain like he was going to cry. “And then I met her. I had pictured a shriveled hag. Coursa is anything but.”

  “You fell in love with her,” Jain said. “She’s old enough to be your grandmother, but you fell in love with her.”

  Joff grinned at that. “She doesn’t seem to mind terribly.”

  Jain nearly dropped the lantern. “Have you no shame?”

  “By the gods, no,” Joff replied jovially, the banter having apparently improved his mood. A moment later he turned serious. “Most men look for pedigree in a wife, or good housekeeping skills, or the ability to bear strong children. My interests are not so provincial.”

  “Not so what?”

  “Not so simple, not so basic. I want a wife I can have a conversation with, make plans with.”

  “You need a wife as smart as you,” Jain said. “A partner.”

  Joff nodded.

  “Joff, what if it’s an act? What if she’s just playing at it?”

  “Then she’s very convincing,” Joff replied, but his heart wasn’t in the joke. “It had occurred to me that she might be less than serious in her interest. I am a cripple and she has any number of healthier men at her disposal. If that is the case then I will take my pay and go in peace.” He smiled, and it was the saddest thing Jain had ever seen. “Her regard for me has been for my talent, not for money. That is more than one such as myself could normally hope for.”

  Jain put her hand to her mouth. It was too much. It was too sad. Joff was a good man, afflicted through no fault of his own and denied any hope of a normal life. Any love, even false love, meant so much to him that he would risk his life in a forsaken wilderness.

  “Oh, come on,” Joff said gently. “You’re healthy and you’ve got a nice fellow. Don’t weep for the elderly and the crippled.” He smiled brightly. “We can manage better than you think.”

  “Have you found anything?” Eduard called.

  “Just a room full of old records,” Joff called back. “Nothing relevant to our cause.”

  “I’m surprised you’re not explaining them then,” Eduard called back, laughter in his voice. “Come on. Let’s push on.”

  The town council building yielded nothing else of interest so the company set out for the guild house. The building was stone supported with sturdy, vaulted arches. It had once had fine carvings worked into the stone but those had been worn down by wind and time.

  The building was divided into showrooms in the front and storerooms in the back and offices above. The showrooms were completely empty, as were the storerooms. The offices had also been picked clean. Airk found a cellar. The stone steps remained intact, so they were all able to go down to search the rooms. The first room they entered was empty and they were about to leave when Eduard told them to wait.

  “Something has disturbed the dust. Recently. Draw swords.

  They drew their weapons. The lantern light revealed boot prints in the dust leading away from the room.
They followed these to the most distant room. Something moved in the shadows.

  “Show yourself,” Eduard shouted.

  “Please,” a man whimpered. He fell to his knees in front of them. His white tunic was filthy but the Adaran wheel was just visible on the front.

  “A shepherd?” Eduard said. “What’s a shepherd doing here?”

  “Same thing we are,” Joff said as he sheathed his sword. “Where’s the rest of your group, shepherd? Where’s your camp?”

  The shepherd shook his head and wept.

  “Lovely,” Airk said. “What do we do with him?”

  “We need to talk to him,” Joff answered. “He’s Adaran. He might know something about the tomb.”

  “Right,” Eduard said. He sheathed his sword. “Let’s get him up and out of this pit. Maybe he’ll have something to say after a crust of bread.”

  They led the shepherd out of the cellar and into one of the showrooms. The room had large windows that might have once held wooden shutters that opened to light the displays. Whatever had been in the windows was now gone but the windows still provided light while the walls gave some protection from the wind.

  “I know him,” Jain said when they got the shepherd into the better lit room. “He’s the shepherd we nicked the book off of.”

  Airk and Eduard both looked at the shepherd. “So he is,” Eduard said. “You’re not looking so well, shepherd. What happened to you?”

  The shepherd stared at Eduard as if he could not understand the question. “Let him have a mouthful and something to drink,” Jain said.

  Airk pulled a bread roll and a water skin from his pack. The shepherd took them eagerly. He downed the roll so fast that Eduard and the others were surprised he did not choke. The contents of the water skin also disappeared with remarkable speed.

  “Easy!” Airk protested. “There’s no streams close.”

  “Right,” Eduard said. “What happened to you?”

  The shepherd made some strange noises in his throat and stuttered.

  “Where are you from?” Eduard asked.

  “Sorena,” the shepherd finally replied.

  “You don’t talk like a Sorenian,” Joff said. “Do I detect a Perimain accent?”

  “I set out from Sorena,” the shepherd clarified. “I’m from the Church of Adara, which is in Perimain. I read the book you stole before you took it.”

  “You swore you didn’t know what it was!” Jain said indignantly.

  Eduard raised his hand. “That doesn’t matter. You read the book, shepherd, so you knew where to look for the tomb of Adara.”

  The shepherd nodded. “I set out with five knights and three crossbowmen. We thought that with nine of us we would be strong enough to scare bandits but not attract attention. We stayed to the mountains, away from The Holdings.”

  “Where are the others?” Eduard asked.

  The shepherd shut his eyes tight and sobbed. “Dead. They came in the night. I had heard stories of them, of how they fought on with mortal wounds, but I never believed it.”

  “You ran,” Eduard said. “And the men with you were slaughtered.”

  The shepherd nodded as he continued to weep. “Adara forgive me.”

  “Why did you come here?” Eduard asked. “Why not just go home?”

  “I was closer to here than Sorena,” the shepherd explained. “I thought if I could find the tomb them I might be saved by some miracle.”

  “How long have you been here?” Joff asked.

  “Days,” the shepherd replied through his tears. “I don’t know how many. I went to the temple, but the carnage there terrified me and I knew that Adara was buried west of it anyway. I could not find the tomb. It’s not here.”

  “Wonderful,” Airk said.

  “How do we know he’s not lying?” Jain asked.

  “Because if he was, he’d have the sword or whatever artifact he came for,” Joff said. “He crawled into that hole because he had nowhere left to go. It’s all been in vain.”

  Eduard shook his head. “It’s not so bad. We have those writings you found in the temple and we still have the journal. Better, we have information about where the tomb isn’t, and that’s probably worth something to someone.” He looked out the window at the fading light. “We’ll camp in here tonight. Tomorrow we can go home. Shepherd, we’ll leave you at the frontier. I’m sorry for your troubles.”

  That night Airk took the first watch. He usually avoided looking in the direction of the campfire when he was on watch duty. The light made it harder for his eyes to adjust to the surrounding darkness. Tonight, though, he found his gaze drawn the shepherd. The ragged man muttered to himself incessantly, babbling in his Perimain accent that made him hard to understand at the best of times. The others looked up from where they lay to stare disapprovingly at the babbling shepherd, occasionally going as far as to send a harsh, “Sh!” in his direction. Eventually the shepherd quieted and they all fell asleep.

  Airk watched the sleeping shepherd for a while. It was never a good bet to trust an Adaran, the augurs always said. Better to avoid them, or kill them if you had to. But for some reason Eduard insisted on treating this one like a lost friend. Airk shook his head. He set another log on the fire, now burning in the center of the stone floor, and walked to the window. The moon and stars were out, illuminating a lot of nothing. Airk missed his farm, missed the certainty of a life lived according to crop schedules. He would go back to it soon, he promised himself. The rewards waiting at the end of this journey would make him a yeoman again, maybe even a freeholder, a man who owned his own land and was beholden to no laird, not even for taxes.

  The shepherd’s eyes opened. He saw Airk staring out the window, his back turned to the camp. He also saw Eduard, fast asleep with his weapons on the blanket next to him. The shepherd turned so that he had both of his hands under him and crept on all fours to where Eduard lay. The dagger hilt shone in the firelight and the shepherd reached for it. Eduard lay on the sword belt that held the dagger, so the shepherd had to use his free hand to keep the belt in place while he drew the dagger. It had a long, slender blade. The weapon was better suited to assassination and lock picking than to parrying sword blow. The shepherd did not need to block any swords. He took a backhand grip on the dagger, raised it high above his head, hesitated, and then drove it down as hard as he could. The slender blade found the space between the ribs and slid into its victim’s heart with ease.

  Eduard woke with a start as the shepherd collapsed next to him. “What the . . .?”

  “What happened?” Airk asked as he ran back to the fire.

  “He took my dagger,” Eduard said. “He killed himself.”

  Joff and Jain were both up now and they both came to where the shepherd lay. Joff ripped the tunic open around the dagger. “It’s in his heart. There’s nothing we can do.”

  “Why?” Eduard asked. “We were going to take you home.”

  “I left my men,” the shepherd rasped. “I lost the secrets of Adara to pagans. I failed . . .” He gurgled and lay still.

  Eduard, Jain, Airk, and Joff sat or stood around, staring quietly. Jain put her head against Airk’s shoulder and he wrapped her in a tight hug. Joff and Eduard both looked at them wistfully. Eduard wished that it was him comforting Jain while Joff wished that Coursa was there.

  “What was his name?” Joff eventually asked.

  None of them knew it.

  “I suppose we should bury him,” Jain said.

  “Adarans don’t bury their dead,” Joff replied. “They burn them.”

  “We can’t make much of a pyre,” Airk said. “Not unless we want to drag him all the way back into the hills.”

  Jain shook her head. “It doesn’t seem right, burning a body. They’re supposed to go into the earth to sleep, like the sun at the end of the day.”

  Eduard looked around at the showroom. “I suppose this place wi
ll do for a tomb.”

  “What did you say?” Joff asked.

  “Well, it’s not ideal,” Eduard began.

  “Not you,” Joff interrupted. “Jain, what did you say?”

  “Just that dead people are supposed to be buried.” She looked around as if she expected to be in trouble.

  “You said they should go into the ground like the sun at the end of the day,” Joff said. “’As With Day, So With Man.’ Adara didn’t follow the sun away from the temple, she was buried there.”

  “You said there was cemetery nearby,” Eduard said. “Do you think she’s there?”

  Joff shook his head. “I don’t think so. Adara was important. Important people get tombs. The church didn’t start cremating people until a century after she died. Harkness was a decent sized town. They had a cemetery set aside for common folk. They must have had a place where all the tombs were.”

  Eduard rubbed his eyes. “Joff, we’ve been wandering around here for two days and we haven’t found any tombs.”

  Joff remembered the doorway at the back of the temple, the one he had thought once went into the library. “Yes,” he said slowly. “We did. I just didn’t recognize it. It’s back at the temple.”

  Eduard sighed. “We’ll go back to the temple in the morning. In the afternoon, we start the trip home. I’m tired of following riddles.”

  They found the doorway Joff had spoken of the next morning. The arch had been sealed up with mismatched stones. The wind had worn away most of the mortar between the stones and now little more than inertia held them in place. Eduard pulled the larger stones out with both hands while Airk used his good hand to take the smaller ones. When the last stone was moved they looked at a stone stairway that descended into darkness.

  “This looks . . .” Jain began, searching for the right word.

  “Ominous,” Joff said helpfully. “This is where the tombs are. Adara’s followers must have sealed it after they interred her.”

  “Why would they do that?” Airk asked.

  Joff’s face twisted in thought. He started to take off his pack.

  “Never mind it,” Eduard said irritably. “It was bricked up. Now it’s not.”

  “Isn’t this necromancy?” Jain asked.

  “No,” Eduard replied in a tone like knives dragging on stone. “Necromancy is when you have unholy magical contact. We’re just stealing from them. That’s called grave robbing.”

  “Much more noble vocation,” Joff said reassuringly.

  They lit Jain’s lantern and walked down the steps. A tunnel wound away from the steps. There were shelves carved into the walls on which skeletons lay with whatever effects those who survived them had seen fit to leave. As the company walked they found that for every four of these there was an archway leading into a large chamber. The first of these belonged to a heap of bones laid out on a stone table. He wore rings on the fingers of both hands and a sword had been reverently placed on his chest. Joff waved Jain closer with the light so that he could read the inscription at the base of the table. “Cosmus, King of Harkness, Husband to . . .”

  “Not Adara,” Eduard said.

  “Right,” Joff said.

  They followed the catacombs for some distance. Joff did not turn into any of the other side chambers until they reached a place where there were no more people on shelves. He entered the next large chamber and found that it belonged to, “King Armand, beloved but gone too quickly.” The next chamber belonged to another king. Harkness had gone through kings at a faster rate than the builders expected and nobles not quickly enough.

  After a few more false starts they entered a tomb and found the words, “Adara, Empress of All Men,” engraved at the base of a table. A smallish skeleton lay on the table with a sheathed sword placed reverently on her chest. There we other objects about the chamber: cups and a plate, a moldering book, and other odds and ends.

  “This is it,” Joff said. “The Great Heretic, and her sword.”

  “Among other things,” Airk observed.

  “We’re here for the sword,” Eduard reminded. He looked at Joff. “You should draw it. It’ll make the trip home easier.”

  “He could take a watch shift,” Jain muttered. Airk chortled. Eduard looked at both of them disapprovingly.

  Joff grabbed the scabbard with his left hand and lifted the sword. It was almost as light as the blade he carried. He put his right hand on the hilt. The pommel dug into his flesh. The handle was too short for him. Of course it was. It was made for a woman born in another time. The image of Coursa, beautiful, aging Coursa, filled his mind.

  “Thank you, but no. If the sword is magic then we must know how to control it before we try to use it.”

  The others looked at him quizzically.

  Joff handed the sword to Eduard, who took it and held it as if it was a poisonous snake. “It could do anything,” Joff explained. “It could make me younger, it could heal Airk’s arm and have no power left for me. It could do literally anything. I won’t try to use it until I’ve researched it.”

  Eduard gave Joff a knowing look. “Your diligence is wise, master scribe. We’ll bring it home and study it. Now let’s go. This place is creepy.”

  Joff bundled up the journal and the sword while the others replaced the stones blocking the entrance to the tomb. They had no mortar but they managed to wedge the stones together into a reasonably solid barrier. They all stood there for a few minutes after the work was finished. The discovery of the lost tomb and its legendary artifact warranted more acclaim than they would get, especially out here in the wilderness. But they knew, and that was enough for the moment.