“Have yuh ev’r seen th’like of sich a gath’ring?” said Bell, looking extremely impressed at the company around him.
“Very impressive,” said James.
“Demned near heroic, is what it is. Sutcliff is legen’dry fer it, y’know.”
“Is it?”
“It is indeed,” said Kreel, taking an interest in their conversation, seated several people away. “Sutcliff is renowned for its proud history of Heroes, and likewise its population of creatures of myth and magic.”
“Why is that, do you think?” Thomas spoke up. “I mean, what’s the big attraction of Sutcliff?”
“Well, now, I could explain it to you,” Kreel began.
“And ordinarily he would,” said Sabrina. She had been seated at the far end of the table, as far away from everyone else as possible, and that seemed as much her choice as anything else. It was the first time that she had spoken the entire evening. Thomas had never seen someone who seemed quite so determined to be disassociated from their father . . . unless, of course, he counted himself.
“However,” Kreel continued as if Sabrina had not spoken, “we have one of the premier scholars in such matters present at our table. Dean Carter, would you care to enlighten the young fellows?”
“Well,” said Carter, leaning forward and steepling his fingers, “I should emphasize that we are discussing legend rather than fact. I dislike the notion of elevating a fable to the status of absolute truth. Oftentimes, you’ll find that myths are created in order to explain that which cannot be explained by rational means. The fact of the matter is that Sutcliff remains a location replete with beings that are considered, in many other parts of Albion, to be extinct, if they ever lived at all. It could be any number of factors: environmental, availability of prey, population, climate changes. Many more that I could not even begin to guess.”
Sabrina made a loud snoring sound at her end of the table.
“Sabrina!” For the first time, Kreel did not sound amused at his daughter’s deliberately provocative behavior. She retreated into herself and said nothing.
Carter, surprisingly, chuckled. “Do not reprove your daughter, my laird. My students would likely agree that I tend to perambulate around a subject before getting to the heart of the matter. Very well, then: The explanation that is rooted in legend has its basis in the tales of the Heroes Three.”
Thomas perked up considerably at this. “Heroes Three? You mean the Triumvirate?”
“I,” said Shaw, “have heard of a group called the Trinity. Is that they?”
“All one and the same. Different appellations for the same three,” said Carter, warming to his topic. “Presuming they actually existed, their true names have been lost to antiquity. Supposedly they came together, the three of them, for each of them represented the absolute spire of learning for their respective disciplines. Individually they were formidable; as a team, they were absolutely invincible.
“The first was the Hero of Skill. Anything that came into his hand could be used as a weapon with unerring accuracy. Knives, spears. If he used a sword, he did not hack or slash, but instead always attacked with a thrust that inevitably found a vital organ. Some claimed that firearms were initially invented specifically for his use, for with a pistol or rifle, he was a marksman of exceptional mastery.”
There had been other conversations going on up and down the lengthy table, but all of them had ceased. Instead, all eyes and ears were upon Carter. He was all too aware of it and clearly enjoying the attention.
“The second was the Hero of Strength. He was a premier swordsman, and unlike his more precise comrade of Skill, the Hero of Strength was like unto a berserker with a sword in his hand. It was said that the Hero of Strength was a massive bear of a man, as wide as a tree trunk and easily as durable. He wielded a sword that was said to be so heavy that none but he could lift it. And when he did . . . when he went into battle . . . nothing could withstand him. He could hack his way through an army of menaces, and all would fall before him.
“The third was perhaps the most formidable of all: the Hero of Will. He needed no weapon save his own mind and inner energies. He could conjure up lightning strikes, blasts of power that could annihilate enemies from a distance. None could withstand him.
“And when the three of them came together, there was nothing beyond their abilities, no quest that they could not fulfill, no goal they could not accomplish.”
“Save one.” It was Molly Newsome who had spoken, and when she continued, it was with an understandable air of melancholy. “Death. They could not stave off death. Immortality is one goal that eludes us all.”
There was a moment of silence, for everyone at the table knew precisely why she had spoken thus. The shade of her late husband was obviously still hovering near her thoughts even though it had been several years since his disastrous fate. If there were any in the room who were uncharitable enough to think that perhaps the Lady Newsome had somehow sought to arrange her husband’s demise and make it look like an accident, they would have dismissed the notion the moment they saw the haunted sadness in her eyes.
“Not to be insensitive,” Dean Carter said gently, apparently aware of the pain that Newsome was feeling and the reason behind it, “but actually—according to legend—that is precisely what they did.”
The Lady Newsome had seemed in danger of drifting into her own recollections, but this snapped her back to reality. “They defied death? Truly?”
“In a manner of speaking.” He leaned his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers. “According to the legends, death came to the Heroes Three through most pernicious means: a curse called down upon them through terrible magics. Had the Heroes been in their prime, they might yet have thwarted it. But their years were advanced, and their powers somewhat diminished. They fought back and fought back, but the curse was a truly irresistible force, and it drove the Heroes back and back, down and down, into a secret place deep beneath the earth. And there did the curse finally strike them down.”
“But not before they were able to accomplish their final masterstroke!” Thomas jumped in, and then immediately looked abashed when all eyes turned to him. “I’m . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“No, that’s quite all right,” said Carter. “I’m merely a teacher; let us hear from one who is obviously a student of such things. Complete the tale, young sir.”
“Uhm . . . well . . . according to what I’ve read,” Thomas said, clearing his throat, “the Hero of Will joined the powers of the Heroes of Strength and Skill and, in one final burst of his magical prowess, imbued three power talismans with the essences of the Triumvirate. A pistol, a sword, and a gauntlet, for the Heroes of Skill, Strength, and Will respectively. Icons that, if worthy successors were to put them on, would make them—for a time, at least—Heroes on par with the originals.”
“Very good,” said Carter. “You read of them in your books, back in your home to the far west?”
“Oh yes.”
“That shows how far the tales have spread, then.”
“I read that they died peacefully, but I far prefer this version,” said James.
“But,” Thomas said eagerly, anxious to have holes in the stories filled in, “nothing that I’ve read details whatever happened to the icons.”
“The icons remained where they were, with the bodies of the Heroes who had crafted them. Unfortunately, they were in the hands of the enemies who had brought the curse down upon them,” Carter said immediately, as if he had been waiting for the question. “Posing an eternal threat to their enemies should anyone worthy manage to get their hands on them.”
“Then why didn’t the enemy destroy the icons and so remove the threat?” said Shaw. “Doesn’t make much sense to me.”
Carter turned to Shaw with a raised eyebrow. “You doubt me, my laird?”
“You? No. The story? Well, that is another matter.”
“Laird Shaw is something of a skeptic,” Kreel said indulgen
tly. “He wishes to see things for himself before accepting their veracity. It is his nature to question.”
“Understandable,” said Carter. “Questioning is good; it is the only way to get at answers. According to the story, the power of the Hero of Will was able to keep their enemies at bay even after his passing; such was the force of his will. The enemies could not approach the icons, or come within range of the remains of the Heroes. They had to content themselves with guarding the entrance in eternal vigilance so that none would be able to get to them.”
“And where exactly is this last resting place?” said Thomas, trying to keep the eagerness from his voice and only partly succeeding.
“Ah, there I cannot help you, young sir. There is purportedly one tome, called the Omnicron, that contains that information—that and much more ancient arcana—but I have never seen a copy of it. Fitting that a book about legends is nigh unto legendary itself.”
“Fitting and convenient,” said the ever-doubting Shaw.
This caused a ripple of laughter up and down the table, and Kreel said cheerfully, “Well, on the morrow, Laird Shaw’s doubts about the reality of such mythic beasts as the balverines—the doubt that drove him to join us on this expedition—will be more than satisfied. Thank you, my good dean, for giving us some compelling background on the legends of Heroes.”
“More than background, my laird,” Carter reminded him. “Remember, it was an endeavor to explain why our land remains a source of such mythic power. The point was that wherever the Heroes are, their remains—and their puissance—are somewhere in Sutcliff or its vicinity. And that puissance draws mythic and legendary beings to this area, as honey draws bees ...”
“Or flame draws moths?” suggested Thomas.
“That may well be the better analogy,” said Carter. “It is a weakness of such creatures that they are perversely drawn to that which can destroy them.”
After the impromptu lesson about things legendary, the conversation broke back down into smaller groups. Thomas could not help but notice, however, that Sabrina continued to keep to herself. Except every so often he saw that she was stealing glances his way, and he wondered what—if anything—he should make of that. Ultimately, he decided that it was best to make nothing of it at all, for the young woman was clearly nothing but trouble.
Later, after dinner, the guests milled around, chatting with each other. Thomas saw that the Lady Newsome did not seem to be particularly interested in talking with anyone except Laird Shaw, who in turn was clearly finding the lady utterly engaging. Thomas wondered where that was going, if anywhere at all. From what he’d understood, her husband had passed quite some time ago, more than a respectable amount of time for her to contemplate other dalliances. And the way that Shaw was looking at her, like a hungry animal . . . well, if it wasn’t lost to the casual examination of Thomas from a distance, then surely the lady was quite aware of it.
“Well, whatever,” Thomas muttered with a shrug. “It is certainly none of my affair.”
Dean Carter, being of humbler origin than his fellow travelers, seemed quite engrossed in chatting with the servants, particularly the one called Bell. It made sense that someone who was scholarly would be interested in speaking at length with the lower class from foreign lands. He would probably consider it a learning experience. Then Thomas reminded himself that he was from the lower class. Certainly his family—meaning his father and he—passed for wealthy back in Bowerstone, but most certainly not among this company. Mentally projecting it, he imagined that they could fit a dozen of his own house into this mansion.
Suddenly feeling a sense of disconnect from both his company and surroundings—and seeing that James was cheerfully occupied being on the periphery of the dean’s discussion with Bell—Thomas wandered away from the gathering hall and strolled through the mansion, taking in the ornate sights. He wondered if living there every day of one’s life caused a person to take for granted all of the splendor around: the artwork, the sculptures, the grand design of the place. Did it all become mundane thanks to constant exposure?
Maybe he could ask Sabrina about it.
That was a notion that he promptly dismissed from his mind, remembering that the one person in the entirety of the place that he needed to steer clear of was the young woman who had come close to getting both James and him killed.
Although . . . did he not bear some responsibility for that? If he had done as James had bidden, the girl would have posed no threat to their well-being at all. She would have been punished for her crime, forced to bear responsibility for her actions, and that would have been that. Thomas was really the one who had gotten them into their entanglement.
He ceased his musings about Sabrina, deciding that that way lay only madness. Instead, he focused on the new artistic marvel that was laid out before him.
He had entered a room that he could only think of as the mural room. That was because the entire room consisted of nothing but one vast mural: an incredibly accurate portrait of the very mansion in which they were. He wasn’t quite certain that he understood the point of it. To his mind, aside from portraits, paintings should be of things that were far away or outside of the experience of the viewer. What sense was there in crafting a rendering of something that people could see for themselves by the simple expedient of stepping out the front door, walking five hundred paces, and turning around?
He supposed that the art was in the scope of the work, and in that regard he had to admit that it was stunningly impressive. The rendering was massive, taking up in their entirety three walls of the room. The attention to detail was meticulous: Every stone, right down to its individual shape, was represented in the mural. Some of them were irregularly shaped, and Thomas suspected that if he were somehow able to step outside and view the mural at the same time, that if he did a one-to-one comparison, the irregularities would match up. So that meant that some artist had either had a memory that bordered on the supernatural, or else that he had sat outside and first done a thorough portrait of the house that he could then transport into the mural room and proceed with his work there. The more Thomas thought about it, the more abashed he was that he had initially been dismissive of the work. One had to respect the dedication to the endeavor, if nothing else.
What was even more intriguing was that the proud spires that jutted from three points in the mansion had been done in bas-relief. Rather than being painted onto the wall, as was the case with the rest of the house, they were constructed from some other material—possibly the same stuff from which the actual spires had been made—and were affixed against the wall in exact proportion to the rest of the mural. It added a sort of three-dimensional effect to the entire thing.
“Why?”
Thomas jumped slightly, for the voice that had spoken had been unexpected and thoroughly startled him. He turned and saw Sabrina standing there, her arms folded, that same defiant tilt to her chin that she always seemed to have. “Wh-why what?” he managed to stammer out.
“Why did you interfere? When they were going to cut off my hand. You didn’t need to, you know,” she added. “I could have handled it myself.”
“Considering you were about two seconds from having your hand lopped off, you certainly fooled me in that regard,” he said tartly. “You know my reasons: I said at the time. I thought it an act of barbarism that no one deserved, much less a young woman.”
“So that was it,” she said smugly. “That I’m a young woman. Had I been a young man, I’d’ve been on my own.”
“I didn’t say that at all.”
“You didn’t have to. I know your type all too well. The would-be Hero, jumping in to aid the damsel who he thinks needs his protection.”
He ignored the sarcasm. “And is aspiring to be a Hero such a terrible thing?”
“It’s way out-of-date, even in this country. You heard it yourself: Heroes live on in legend only.”
“If that’s how you feel, then what’s the point of talking to me?”
/> She stared at him then, and her eyes seemed to devour him.
And then, completely out of the blue, she took his face in her hands and kissed him. It was hungry and filled with need, and at first he was startled, but then he almost melted into it.
He had kissed girls before, certainly. Flirtations, come-hither moments that ultimately went nowhere, or eager courtings from girls who he knew considered him good husband material and wished to make their interest known, almost as a matter of wise commerce.
This was not that.
There was no restraint anywhere in Sabrina. One moment she had been standing there, and the next she was kissing him with a consuming passion as hot as any flame. She thrust her tongue into his mouth, which startled him since no girl had ever done that before.
Then she withdrew, and it left Thomas staggering, as if a passing storm had just come in, pounding the area with its full and unbridled fury, then moved on just as quickly. He stared at her, uncomprehending.
And she said in a tone that sounded more accusatory than loving or flattering, “It was a stupid thing to do, but it was also brave and rather sweet. Despite appearances, and the way I am . . . that wasn’t lost on me. And I am ...” She hesitated, and then concluded, “... thanking you for it. That was me, thanking you.”
She turned away then but before she could take another step, he said, “Why?”
“I told you.”
“No, I mean . . . not the kiss. Not that . . . I’m not left wondering about the way in which you thanked me. I mean . . . why did you disguise yourself? Engage in being a petty thief? You obviously had no need of whatever paltry sums you could have snatched in the marketplace. It just . . . it makes no sense to me why you would take such a terrible risk.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense to you,” she said airily, “it only has to make sense to me.”
“That’s true, but it’d be nice if you could at least make an attempt to explain it to me.”
“Does it truly matter?”
“Yeah. It does.”
She continued to regard him as if she were dissecting him. Finally, she said, “I doubt you’d understand.”