The elderly chamberlain nodded and turned to leave.
“Wait,” Anborn instructed. “Summon the captain of the guard for me, and have him send the message. You take Gwydion and Melisande and leave immediately with the civilians for Bethany. I will send part of the force to clear the local villages as well. But get the children out of here.”
“I am not a child, and I am going nowhere,” declared Gwydion Navarne. “I am duke of this province, thank you, and will stay here with you to defend it.”
The look on the General’s face was an odd mix of fury at being defied and affectionate admiration.
“You’re not duke yet, lad,” he said sternly, though his eyes twinkled in the deep lines of his face. “My nephew, your guardian, is still regent of your lands, as well as both of our sovereign. It was he who told me to defend the Alliance in his absence, so your authority is null. Your responsibility — your duty — is to your sister; now take her and get out of here.”
“But—”
“Do not argue with me, cur!” the General roared. “Take your sister, and go with Owen to Bethany, or I’ll set fire to you myself!”
Silence fell heavily over the Great Hall. Then, after shaking off his shock, the young duke-to-be nodded distantly and put his hand out to his sister.
“Come, Melly,” he said.
Anborn gently separated the sobbing girl from his shoulder, patting her back encouragingly. Gwydion Navarne stepped forward and put his arm around her, leading her from their late father’s keep without so much as a backward glance.
ABBAT MYTHLINIS, THE BASILICA OF WATER, NORTH OF AVONDERRE
The seneschal stood between the gusts of sea wind in the shadow of the great stone edifice at the shoreline of the sea, watching as darkness crept in from the horizon. He felt the warmth of the lanterns on the rectory and other buildings behind him come to light, the people inside them doubtless eager to combat the windy dusk that loomed at the edge of the sea, gray beneath low-hanging clouds heavy with rain to come.
The dark beauty of the coming storm hovering over the architectural marvel before him gave him pause, silencing the demon that had been cackling in glee at the destruction they had left in their wake.
The temple reached up out of the darkness of the crashing wind and surf, its oddly angled spire pointing away from the fallowing sea. The base of the mammoth structure was built from enormous blocks of quarried stone, gleaming gray and black in the light of the setting sun, irregular and purposefully shaped, mortared together around tall beams of ancient wood. Carefully tended walkways, formed by great slabs of polished rock embedded in the sand, led up to the front doors, which were fashioned from planks of varying lengths.
The entire cathedral had been designed to resemble the wreck of a ship, jutting from the craggy rocks and sand of the beach at an ominous angle. The immense entrance doors, with a jagged notched pattern at the top, appeared to depict a vast hole torn in what would have been the keel. The crazily angled spire was the representation of a mast.
The colossal ship had been rendered accurately, down to the last nautical apparatus. The moorings and riggings, detailed in exquisitely carved marble, were a half-dozen times their normal size.
The seneschal whistled in admiration, wondering what had inspired such a strange and magnificent undertaking.
Farther offshore behind the main section of the basilica was another part of the cathedral, an annex connected to the main building by a plank walkway. It was evident to the seneschal that the annex and the walkway were only visible at low tide, as now, submerging into the sea when the current flooded back in. This additional part of the temple evoked the wreckage of the stern. A gigantic anchor, lying aslant on the sandbar between the two buildings, served as its threshold.
The seneschal shuddered involuntarily. With Faron out on the sea in a ship, he did not enjoy viewing the celebration of a major traumatic shipwreck, if that’s what this building was constructed to represent.
Despite the care that had been taken by whatever architect designed it to elicit the feeling of an off-balance wreck unevenly resting on the sand, it was obvious that the enormous edifice was sound and solidly built. It stood, undisturbed, amid the churning waves of the raging sea, giving no quarter, no inch to the sand.
The seneschal turned to the quartet of soldiers on horseback behind him, awaiting his orders.
“Search the rectory and the other buildings,” he said, his eyes darting around at the lights flickering off the rolling waves. “Perhaps they are giving her shelter. Then, if you don’t find her, burn the priests alive. There are bound to be more of them than you, so when you are ready to go in, let me know, and I will assist you.”
The soldiers nodded and set about preparing for their maneuver.
The seneschal opened the great doors of the basilica and looked inside.
His eyes took in the cavernous basilica, its ceiling towering above him, the distant walls arching up to meet it. Great fractured timbers of myriad lengths and breadths were set within the dark stone. It looked a little like the fragmented skeleton of a giant beast, lying on its back, its spine the long aisle that led up forward, ancient ribs reaching brokenly, helplessly upward into the darkness above.
Round windows in the design of portholes were set high in the walls, undoubtedly affording the temple light by day. A single line of translucent glass blocks of great heft and thickness had been inlaid in the walls not far up from the floor. The churning sea was diffusely visible through them, bathing the interior of the basilica in a greenish glow.
The seneschal shuddered again. He was now outside of one of his elements, away from the wind, inside the holy place of an opposing and stronger element, water.
Besides, the ground beneath his feet was stinging him through his boots, hissing with smoke.
Blessed ground.
The demon within him screamed in anger and pain.
F’dor could not broach blessed ground.
“Rhapsody?” he called, his voice echoing in the cavernous cathedral. To his ears it sounded harsh, like the voice of the demon in his head. He winced; in the never-ending struggle for dominance in their shared body, it appeared that at the moment, the F’dor had the upper hand. He swallowed hard.
With a great swing of annoyance, he slammed the cathedral doors shut.
He strode across the walkway and down to the water’s edge, wading into the low sea. He made his way to the sandbar on which the temple annex stood, the great rusting anchor on its doorstep, and put a foot onto the sandbar.
No smoke rose from his boot.
The annex, unlike the basilica itself, was not blessed ground.
Cautiously he stepped the rest of the way onto the sandbar and stepped inside the open doorway. He turned around and looked at the back door of the cathedral.
Two copper doors, blue-green with salt spray, inscribed with runes, bore raised reliefs of swords which had been wrought into the metal, one pointing up, the other down. Scrolled designs ran down the blades, similar to ocean waves, and the points were flared in a similar pattern.
In the background of the relief was a coat of arms, an engraving of a winged lion.
The seneschal caught his breath, then laughed harshly.
It was the family crest of his most hated enemy in the old land, MacQuieth Monodiere Nagall.
Inside the annex’s archway was a simple, hollow chamber open to the ravages of the sea and the air. When the tide returned, much of the annex would submerge again.
Unlike the temple, which was an edifice built to look like a ship, the annex was a piece of a real one, wedged upright, bow skyward and aslant, in the sand. Whatever ship had been broken apart and now formed the annex had been a sizable one, judging by its wreckage, which appeared to be the better part of the stern and midship. Its deck had been stripped away, leaving nothing but the hull, which now formed the walls of the annex. It was evident that the ship had been built of something other than ordinary timber, something that h
ad not decayed or corroded with time.
Also wedged into the sand in the center of the annex was a block of solid obsidian, gleaming smooth beneath the pools of water that danced across it with each gust of the wind. Two brace restraints of metal were embedded in the stone, their clasps open and empty. There was not a trace of rust on either one.
The surface of the stone had at one time been inscribed with deep runes that had been worn away over time by the insistent hand of the ocean. Now it was smooth, with only a bleached shadow marring the obsidian where the inscription once had been.
Attached to the front of the stone was a plaque, with raised runes similar to the ones they had seen in the copper doors. Like the braces on its horizontal surface, the marker was unaffected by the scouring waves.
The seneschal crouched down and examined the plaque. Its inscription was in an old language, one he barely remembered, and contained a good many characters he could not make out. But the largest of the words caught his eye immediately. A smile began at the corners of his mouth as he read the word once, then again, then a third time, after which he threw back his head and laughed uncontrollably.
MacQuieth, it said.
The horrific sound of the laughter blended with the scream of the sea wind, the harsh cry of the gulls. The seneschal could barely contain his mirth, but more so, another emotion.
Relief.
MacQuieth had been his bane in the old world, the one man whom he knew, deep in his heart, that he feared.
There was something freeing about staring down at his hated enemy’s tombstone, something so vindicating that he could not help but give in to his basest instinct.
Quickly he unlaced his trousers and urinated on the stone, still laughing aloud.
“I have lived long enough to actually see it, your grave,” he said as he put himself back together. “Please accept my humble gift of holy water to bless it; I hope you can feel it as your bones rot in the sand beneath it. But most likely you are nothing but sand yourself by now anyway.”
He glanced quickly around the annex again and, seeing nothing, went back across the sandbar and waded to the shoreline again, where his soldiers were waiting. He drew Tysterisk, the handle coming forth glowing with excitement, the blade intermittently visible on the gusts of wind.
“Aim your fiery arrows for the cracks between the tiles of the roofs,” he instructed the soldiers. “All you need is a spark to catch. I will take over from there.”
The men nodded. A volley of arrows and bolts shot forth from bows, traditional and cross, raining like hail on the rooftops of rectory and the other outbuildings.
The seneschal raised the sword hilt above his head, where the wind danced around it in visible swirls.
The tiny sparks on the roofs roared to life.
The seneschal swept the sword through the air again. Once more, the sparks burst open, igniting the rest of the stone buildings into orange-red stone boxes of fire hot enough to melt the walls.
As the screaming rose in chorus, the seneschal and his men started up the beach, north, looking for more places that Rhapsody could be hiding.
It had almost become an excuse for the burning, instead of the other way around.
41
GLASS WORKSHOP, THE CAULDRON, YLORC
“How does the melt look, Shaene?”
The journeyman ceramicist peered in through the window of the enormous kiln.
“Red hot,” he said smugly.
The sealed master did not smile. “Dull, or bright?”
Shaene looked in through the window again, then shrugged. “Hard to say, Theophila. Fairly bright, I suppose.”
The woman pushed him impatiently out of the way and looked in herself. She exhaled in annoyance.
“One might think you would recognize dull, Shaene,” she said. “Sandy, increase the heat. I need it to glow like blood spurting from a pumping heart.”
“Lady!” Shaene groaned in pretend shock. “What a gruesome reference! And I can’t say as it’s a color I’ve ever had the opportunity to have seen. Honestly.”
Omet cranked the damper of the furnace open a little wider, allowing for more direct contact with the natural flamewell, averting his eyes, saying nothing. He had no doubt that the woman knew exactly the color of which she spoke.
The test frits had been fired, all save the last, the purple, and now lay on their racks, cooling, awaiting the comparison to the old plates. Omet went about his work, the dizzy sensation of fear that had been clutching his viscera mounting.
He knew that the colors were true by eye; whatever else she was, Esten was a skilled glass artisan, ceramicist, and tile artist. It was rumored her Yarimese father, who had traveled with the Panjeri in his youth, had taught her the nomadic glassworkers’ secrets from childhood, before she killed him for the family’s money to start off on her own. By the time she had become mistress of the Raven’s Guild she had gained entry into the best schools and guild workbenches in the world, and she had made a life’s work of it, employing the tile foundry as a creative outlet as well as an effective cover for the less savory workings of her business.
His hands trembled slightly as he turned the racks of the cooling frits. If the colors were true, whatever rune was inscribed in the test plates would be visible. Omet had no idea what information that might reveal, but its mere presence would signal that the color formulas were correct. Once that was achieved, Esten was poised to fire the enormous rolls that would be cut into sheets of glass to be embedded in the tower’s ceiling.
And what that would lead to, he had no idea.
Though the Firbolg king had said little about the purpose of the project, Omet had had enough exposure to the original plans to know that the tower was more than a mere work of art. The stained glass was the final piece that would make it into an instrumentality of some sort, some kind of funnel of power that must be very great for Achmed to be so insistent on it. Omet had no use for magic, especially when he didn’t know what it would bring about, but that had mattered little while the king was in the mountain. Whatever ends Achmed was building his Lightcatcher for, Omet trusted they were not threatening to him.
Now, with the king gone, and a vengeful killer in control, that was no longer the case.
Black eyes were suddenly staring directly into his.
Omet jumped.
The eyes focused even more intently on him.
“Where did you learn to turn racks like that, Sandy?”
Omet struggled to keep from shaking visibly.
“Shaene,” he said simply. It was a lie, but safer than revealing that his technique had come from endless instruction by her own journeymen when he was indentured to her in the foundry of Yarim.
Esten watched him complete the rotation, then nodded, satisfied; she touched the rack and, determining it to be cool, took the red frit out and returned to the worktable.
“It’s true to my eye. Let’s have a look, then, and see if the test plate agrees.”
She held the ancient plate of glass up to the light of the open ceiling above, then carefully slid the newly cooled frit in front of it. She waited for the clouds overhead to pass, then eyed it, the other artisans hovering behind her.
Delight broke over her face as a beam of sun shone into the tower, glowing through the double layer of red glass.
“I see it,” she said quietly. “But I can’t make out what it says. Can any of you? Come here and look while I hold it.”
Rhur and Shaene each looked over her shoulder at the pieces she was holding aloft, then shook their heads. “Don’t even recognize the symbols,” Shaene said, returning to his work. “Those aren’t any letters I’ve ever seen. Looks like scratchings or numbers of some sort. Sorry, Theophila.”
“Come here, Sandy,” Esten said, her eyes still on the test glass. “Do you recognize this writing?”
Omet set his tools down and came over quickly, not wishing to draw her notice further by dawdling. He peered over her shoulder as well, inhaling an
d holding it so as not to breathe on her.
In the translucency of the glowing red glass he could make out some old symbols in a language he could not read, but had in fact seen many times on the original documents. Until the Bolg king had gone to Yarim, no one had any idea what the symbols meant. Rhapsody had translated them, had scratched their meanings onto the diagrams next to the places the runes appeared.
This one was merely the symbol for red.
He shook his head, then walked quickly back to his workbench where the Bolg apprentices and journeymen where preparing the colorants to be added to the ash and sand in the huge vats near the furnaces.
Esten continued to stare at the symbols for a moment longer, then shrugged. She took each of the remaining test plates and held them up to the colored frits, seeing symbols in all but the last.
“Oh well. No time to be lost worrying about it. All right, Rhur, tell the furnace minders to set up the large sheets of frit in each of the colors except violet; we haven’t got the formula right on that one yet. We’ll get the fritting started on the other six. Once they’re fired, grind them down and get them ready for the melt.”
“Grind them down?” Shaene asked incredulously. “You going to add something to the mix, lady, and remelt them? An enamel?”
Esten’s eyes glinted sharply. “Yes, just a protective glaze, so that when they’re annealed they will be stronger. I had it sent from Yarim — it’s in those green barrels. No one is to touch them save for me. The glaze is expensive. Now, set about it. I want to have the ceiling installed before the king returns.”
Omet smoothed the surface of the wooden board on which the panes were to be cut, dusting it lightly with chalk. When the board was as white as his hands now were, he took the can of water and sprinkled it, then rubbed it down vigorously to make the surface reflective and easy to see.