“Quite so.”
Oblivious now to everything but the task at hand, Seregil tugged absently at a strand of hair.
“Let’s see. The writing is Asuit Old Style and it’s written in that language, which originated with the hill people north of Plenimar. From that we can infer that our author was either from that region or a scholar of languages.”
“As you are, dear boy. I assume you can read it?”
“Hmm—yes. Looks like the ravings of a mad prophet. Very poetic, though. ‘Watch with me, beloved, as demons strip the fruit from the vine.’ Then something about horses—and ‘The golden flame is married with darkness. The Beautiful One steps forth to caress the bones of the house …’ No, that’s not right. It’s ‘the bones of the world.’ ”
Moving to the table, he pulled a lamp closer. “Yes. I thought it was just a few errors with the accent marks, but it isn’t. There’s a cipher here.”
Nysander passed him a wax writing tablet and a stylus. “Care to try it?”
Scanning back through the document, Seregil found sixteen words with misplaced accents. Listing only the wrongly accented letters, he came up with twenty-nine.
Frowning, he tapped the stylus against his chin, “This is a bitch of a thing.”
“More difficult than you know,” said Nysander. “It took my master Arkoniel and myself over a year to discover the key. Mind you, we were working on other things at the time.”
Seregil tossed aside the stylus with a groan. “You mean to tell me you’ve broken this already?”
“Oh, yes. That is not the task, you see. But I knew that you would prefer to work with the original and draw your own conclusions.”
“So how does it work?”
Joining him at the table, Nysander turned the wax tablet over and began to write rapidly. “To begin with, the accented letters come out to nonsense, a fact it took a discouragingly long time to discover. The key is a combination of syllabification and case. As you know, Old Asuit is an inflected language with five cases. However, only three—the nominative, dative, and genitive—are used for the cipher. For instance, look at the words making up the phrase ‘of the world.’ ”
Seregil nodded thoughtfully, muttering to himself, “Yes, it was that misplaced accent that threw me. It should be over the second vowel of the last syllable, not the first.”
“Correct. As ‘world’ is in the genitive case and the misplaced accent appears in the antepenultimate syllable, you use the last letter of that word. If it occurs in the same case but on the second, or penultimate, syllable, then you use the first.”
Seregil looked up and grinned. “I didn’t know you were such an accomplished grammarian.”
Nysander allowed himself a pleased wink. “One learns a thing or two over the centuries. It is truly an exquisite system, and one fairly secure from inadvertent detection. In the nominative case, an erroneous accent over the antepenult indicates that you take the last letter of the word immediately following the one wrongly accented, and so forth. In the dative case only the accents over the penult have any significance. The upshot of it all is that you come out with just fifteen letters. Properly arranged—keep your eyes on the writing now—properly arranged they spell out ‘argucth chthon hrig.’ ”
“Sounds like you’re getting ready to spit—” Seregil began, but the words died in his throat as the writing on the page swirled into motion. After a few seconds it disappeared entirely, leaving in its place a circular design resembling an eight-pointed star that covered most of the page.
“A magical palimpsest!” he gasped.
“Precisely. But look more closely.”
Tilting the vellum closer to the lamp, Seregil let out a low whistle; the entire design was made up of the finest calligraphic writing. “Our mad prophet must have written this with a hummingbird’s quill.”
“Can you read it?”
“I don’t know. It’s so cramped. The script is Konic, used by the court scribes in the time of the early Hierophants, but the language is different, as if the writer wanted to approximate the sounds of one language with the alphabet of another. Yes, that’s exactly what he was doing, the clever old bastard. So, attacking it phonetically—”
Muttering under his breath, Seregil slowly worked his way through the tangled writing. Half an hour later he looked up with a triumphant grin. “Pure Dravnian! Nysander, it’s got to be Dravnian.”
“Dravnian?”
“The Dravnians are a tribal people scattered through the glacial valleys of the Ashek Range, north of Aurënen. I haven’t been up there since I was a boy, but I’ve studied the language. Great ones for sagas and legends, those Dravnians. They have no writing themselves, but this captures the sound of it. This fellow was certainly a student of obscure tongues. Once you untangle all this mess, it’s just the same few words written over and over again to form the design. Written in blood, too, by the way and probably his own if he was loony enough to create something like this.”
“Perhaps,” Nysander broke in. “But can you make out what it says?”
Seregil glanced up at him, then let out a crow of triumph. “Ah ha! So that’s what this is all about. You can’t read it!”
Nysander affected a pained look. “I would remind you of the oaths you have given—”
Seregil held up a hand, grinning smugly. “I know, I know. But after all your restrictions and secrecy, I think I’ve earned the right to gloat a little. All it says is, ‘Stone within ice within stone within ice. Horns of crystal beneath horns of stone.’ Or vice versa. There’s no way of telling which is meant to be the first line. Why he would go to such extremes to hide anything as obscure as this is beyond me, though.”
“Not at all, not at all!” Nysander clapped Seregil on the shoulder, then began pacing excitedly. “The palimpsest begins in Asuit Old Style, an archaic language of Plenimar, which predates the Hierophantic settlements. The seemingly meaningless hidden phrase ‘argucth chthon hrig’ operates as the key word to the hidden writing. This, in turn, is composed in the alphabet of the Hierophantic court, based at that period on the island of Kouros, yet in the language of an obscure tribe of the southern mountains across the Osiat Sea near Aurënen. I had reason to suspect as much but you, dear boy, have provided the final clues. What an amazing document!”
Seregil, meanwhile, had been doing some further pondering of his own. “The Dravnian tribes keep to the highest valleys of the Ashek Range, building their villages along the edges of the ice fields. ‘Stone within ice within stone within ice.’ And the horns of stone part reminds me of a story the mountain traders used to tell, something about a place up there where demons dance across the snow to drink the blood of the living. It was called the Horned Valley.”
Nysander halted in front of Seregil, grinning broadly. “You have a mind like a magpie’s nest, dear boy! I never know what odd bit of treasure will tumble from it next.”
“If the Horned Valley really exists, then all this”—Seregil tapped the stained vellum—“it’s not just some convoluted riddle. It’s a map.”
“And perhaps not the only one,” said Nysander. “According to recent intelligence from Plenimar, several expeditionary forces have been dispatched west toward the Strait of Bal. We could not imagine what they were up to, but the Ashek peninsula lies in that direction.”
“At this time of year?” Seregil shook his head. Crossing the Bal meant making for the southern rim of the Osiat Sea, a place of dangerous shoals and forbidding coastlines in the best of weather. In the winter it would be worse than treacherous. “So whatever this ‘stone within ice’ thing is, the Plenimarans want it pretty badly. And I take it you don’t mean for them to get it?”
“I hope that you will assist me in forestalling that event.”
“Well, it would certainly help to know what I’m looking for. If it wouldn’t mean revealing too many sacred mysteries, that is.”
“It is rumored to be a crown or circlet of some sort,” Nysander told him. “M
ore importantly, it possesses powers similar to those of the coin, which you have already experienced.”
Seregil grimaced at the memory. “Then I’ll be certain not to wear it this time. But if your information is correct, haven’t the Plenimarans stolen a march on us?”
“Perhaps not. The fact that they sent several expeditions suggests that they do not know the object’s precise location. We, on the other hand, may have just determined that. And I am able to transport you there in a much swifter fashion.”
Seregil blanched. “Oh, no! You can’t—A translocation from here to the Asheks? Nysander, I’ll be puking for hours.”
“I am sorry, but this matter is too important to chance anything else. Which brings us to the matter of Alec. Will he be difficult about being left behind?”
Seregil raked a hand through his hair. “I’ll manage something. When do I leave?”
“By midday if you can manage it.”
“I think so. What will I need, besides the obvious?”
“How would you fancy playing an Aurënfaie wizard?”
Seregil gave him a wry look. “Sounds fun, so long as we aren’t relying on my magical abilities.”
“Oh my, no,” Nysander said with a laugh. “I shall provide you with items necessary to give credence to the role, and those for the task itself.” He paused and clasped the younger man by the shoulders. “I knew you would not fail me, Seregil.”
Seregil raised an eyebrow wryly at the wizard. “Bet now you’re glad you didn’t kill me, eh? What’s the hour?”
“Nearly sunup, I should think. Regrettably, I must send you back the same way you came.”
“Twice in one night? Just be sure you drop me handy to a basin!”
2
AT THE COCKEREL
Alec woke to the sound of sleet lashing across the roof. Ruetha had burrowed under the covers sometime in the night. He stroked the thick white ruff under her chin and the cat broke into a loud purr.
“What are you doing here?” he asked sleepily.
Sitting up, he saw Seregil’s battered old pack sitting ready outside the bedroom door. Seregil’s sword belt was draped over it, the newly mended quillon shining in the milky morning light.
Alec eyed the tidy pile with rising suspicion; Seregil had obviously been up for some time, making preparations for a journey. And he hadn’t bothered to wake him.
“Seregil?” Poking his head around his friend’s door, Alec found the normally cluttered little room utterly impassable.
“Morning!” Seregil called cheerily from somewhere beyond an overturned chest.
“What’s going on? Have you been up all night?”
“Not all night.” Seregil waded free of the mess with an armload of heavy sheepskin clothing and dumped it by the pack. “I found this,” he said, handing Alec a dusty sack containing half a dozen complex locks. Some were still attached to splintered fragments of wood.
“Thought you might like to have a go at these, since you’ve mastered most of the others on the workbench. Be careful, though. Some of them bite.”
Alec set the bag aside without comment and leaned against the door frame. Seregil was dressed for traveling and still hadn’t told him to start packing.
“What’s going on?” he asked, watching as Seregil wrestled a pair of long snowshoes out of a wardrobe. “Where are you going to find snow in this weather?”
“Give me a minute, will you?” said Seregil, checking the rawhide webbing. “I’ve got a few more things to find, then I’ll explain what I can.”
Alec let out a sigh and went to the window over the workbench. The panes rattled as a fresh gust of wind buffeted the inn. Outside he could see Thryis’ son Diomis hurrying across the back court. Curtains of icy rain rippled past, obscuring all but the closest buildings. Behind him, he could hear Seregil still rummaging about.
Fighting down his rising impatience, he pulled on a pair of breeches and set about lighting the fire. The coals had died in the night. He heaped tinder and kindling on the ashes and shook out a firechip from the jar by the hearth. Flames leapt up and he stared into them, trying to marshal his racing thoughts.
“You know, from the back your head looks like a disheveled hedgehog,” Seregil remarked, emerging at last. Ruffling Alec’s ragged hair, he dropped into his favorite chair by the fire.
Alec was not amused. “You’re going off alone, aren’t you?”
“Just for a few days.”
There was a guardedness in Seregil’s tone that Alec didn’t like. “On a job, you mean?”
“I can’t say, actually.”
Alec studied his friend’s face. On closer inspection, he noticed that Seregil looked rather pale. “Is this because of last night? You said—”
“No, of course not. This is something I can’t speak of to anyone.”
“Why not?” the boy demanded, stubborn curiosity mingling with disappointment.
Seregil spread his hands apologetically. “It’s nothing to do with you, believe me. And don’t bother pressing.”
“This is something for Nysander, isn’t it?”
Seregil regarded him impassively. “I need your word you won’t track me when I go.”
Alec considered further objections, then nodded glumly. “When will you be back?”
“In a few days, I hope. You’ll have to do that papers job for Baron Orante, and anything else coming in that looks like a one-man job. There’s Mourning Night to think about, too, if I’m not back in time.”
“Not back in time?” Alec sputtered. “That’s only a week away, and you’re holding a party at Wheel Street that night!”
“We are holding a party,” Seregil corrected. “Don’t worry. Runcer sees to all the arrangements, and Micum and his family will be here by then, too. You’ll just have to play host. Remember Lady Kylith, the woman you danced with our first night there?”
“We’re sitting with her at the Mourning Night ceremony.”
“Right. She’ll see to your etiquette.”
“People are bound to ask about you, though.”
“As far as anyone knows, Lord Seregil is still away recovering from the shock of his arrest. Tell anyone who asks that I was delayed. Cheer up, Alec. Chances are I’ll be back in plenty of time.”
“This secret job of yours—is it dangerous?”
Seregil shrugged. “What do we do that isn’t? The truth is, I won’t know much myself until I’m in the middle of it.”
“When are you leaving?”
“As soon as I’ve had something to eat. Get dressed now and we’ll have our breakfast downstairs.”
Alec smelled freshly baked bread as they crossed the lading room to the kitchen.
The breakfast uproar was over. A scullery boy was scrubbing down the scarred worktables while Cilla bathed Luthas in a pan. Old Thryis sat peeling turnips by the hearth, a shawl draped over her shoulders against the damp.
“Well, there you are at last,” the old woman greeted them, though she seldom saw Seregil before noon. “There’s tea on the hob and new current buns under that cloth there. Cilla made them fresh this morning.”
“And how’s this lad today?” Seregil smiled, holding a forefinger out to the baby. Luthas immediately grabbed it and pulled it into his mouth.
“Oh, he’s feisty,” replied Cilla, looking rather dark under the eyes. “He’s got a tooth coming and it wakes us all night.”
Alec shook his head. One minute Seregil was speaking of mysterious journeys, the next here he was playing uncle to the baby like he hadn’t a care in the world.
Not that his affection for Luthas wasn’t genuine. He’d told Alec how Cilla had offered him the honor of fathering her child when she’d made up her mind to avoid conscription. Seregil had politely declined. While his interest in women seemed marginal at best, Alec suspected the real reason for Seregil’s reticence was that it would have cost him his friendship with her grandmother. Thryis had been a sergeant in the Queen’s Archers in her youth and despaired t
hat neither her son nor granddaughter had followed a military career before settling down. Cilla had never revealed who the child’s father was, but the man must have been dark. She was fair, while her son’s eyes and hair were as brown as a mink’s.
Going to the hearth, Alec leaned down next to Thryis and reached for the teapot warming by the fire.
“You’re looking down in the mouth today,” Thryis observed shrewdly. “Going off without you, is he?”
“He told you?”
The old woman gave a derisive snort. “He didn’t have to,” she scoffed, deftly quartering a turnip and pitching it into a kettle beside her. “There he is in his old rambling boots, chipper as a sparrow. And you here with the long face and still in your shirtsleeves? Don’t take no wizard to figure that one.”
Alec shrugged. Thryis had run the Cockerel since Seregil secretly bought it twenty years before. She—together with her family and Rhiri, the mute ostler—was among the select few who knew anything of Seregil’s double life.
“Now, don’t go fretting yourself over it,” she whispered. “Master Seregil thinks the world of you, and no mistake. There’s none he speaks so well of ’cept Micum Cavish, and those two have been friends for years and years. Besides, it’ll give you and me a chance to talk shooting again, eh? There’s still a trick or two I haven’t shared and that fine black bow of yours shouldn’t be gathering dust.”
“I guess not.” Alec gave her a quick peck on the cheek and went to sit across from Seregil at the breakfast table.
Studying his friend’s face as Seregil joked with Cilla over breakfast, Alec felt certain he saw small lines of tension around his eyes. Whatever this secret job was, there was more to it than he was letting on.
There was no use asking further about it, though. Upstairs in their room again, Seregil finished with his scant collection of gear and clapped a battered hat on his head.