There was an exasperated growl as The Swordsman sat on the edge of Erebus’ bed, having just placed the insensate Holly in the infirmary’s only other permanent bed. It was a simply equipped station, about three hundred years behind modern magical healthcare; it tended to take a long time for new discoveries to make it this deep into paladin territory, let alone into the cold, dark heart of the Forest Von Mori within it. A forest one lich had foolishly remarked as being ‘a minor challenge for the journeyman magician’ within Von Mori’s hearing, only to go missing a week later. The case had never been definitively resolved.
“You didn’t half pick your times badly,” The Swordsman told the unconscious form, reflexively checking the necromancer’s pulse and breathing. “At the risk of being inconsiderate, couldn’t you have waited two weeks to shake the foundations of society as we know it?”
“Hardly his fault,” stated a voice from within the confines of Erebus’ backpack.
The man looked at the bag appraisingly, a raised eyebrow sending an apparent tremor through the tattoos on his forehead. “You would be Ente; the ghost?”
“I see you took the time to interrogate the child,” the ghost snapped coldly. “Well at least you’re still the same; a coward through and through.”
The Swordsman paused for a moment, pursing his lips in annoyance. “I don’t believe we’ve ever had the pleasure of being introduced,” he said flatly, though he couldn’t quite eliminate the growling undertones in the sentence.
“I’m Ente the Illuminator,” the ghost declared. “And we have met.”
With some effort, the immortal cast his mind back through the centuries, eventually narrowing the possibilities down to one. “You were the elf,” he began slowly, as if waiting for confirmation, though none proved forthcoming before he ploughed onwards, “the one that insisted on sleeping outside so you could see the stars.”
“I didn’t expect you to remember,” the ghost confessed.
“I remember a lot of things. I even remember what you said when I asked you why.”
The ghost was annoyed; it was hard to loathe and despise someone who was being friendly. “I said because theirs is an eternal beauty. And you told me I was wrong.” As he relived the memory Ente managed to reclaim some of his bitterness towards the immortal.
“Sorry but it’s the truth. Stars die, galaxies burn, and life shall end, the cold hand of entropy will take everything and everyone given time, not out of malice, hatred or scorn but merely because that is the nature of the universe. We are but a brief flicker of a guttering candle, a moment of light in the darkness and all we can hope is to shine as brightly as possible in the time we have. All things end, live long enough and you’ll see that,” The Swordsman said with utter solemnity, his expression grave.
“That could prove problematic,” Ente growled, and though The Swordsman could not see the glare being directed at him, he could certainly feel it.
“Only if you continue to be excessively literal,” the man told him before his words took a turn to the chilly. “Now I believe you were going to tell me under what definition I am a coward.”
“You could have stopped the fighting. One word and there would have been no wars.”
“Yes. I could have intervened, sworn death and destruction on all who fought, and then what would you have had me do? Kill the Paladin Council of War? Destroy every lich that declared its defiance?” he asked wearily. “Diplomacy at swordpoint isn’t diplomacy. People will rebel as soon as the threat is no longer present. The hardest lesson I’ve had to learn is that you have to let people, as a group, solve their own problems or they repeat them time and again.”
“And all the people who died in the meantime?” the ghost demanded angrily.
“Would have died anyway. Death is the only inevitability, it’s what you do before it that matters, present company excepted. You can’t force peace and freedom on people, they have to have chosen it for themselves, made a choice to unite and rise against their oppressors. When people have bled and died for peace; then they will have an understanding of its worth.”
The ghost went silent, deep in thought. The Swordsman didn’t interrupt, instead seeing to his patients as best he could, cleaning out Erebus’ wounds with a flannel soaked in a mixture of iodine and alcohol, the substance provoking a pained hiss even in unconsciousness. Then he turned his attention to the dryad, only to turn away when his medical repertoire fell short of the task before it.
“But you could do it. You could force a peace,” the ghost stated stubbornly.
“There is a peace now. And not because one despot says so, but because it’s what people wanted. You have to have patience, when the majority have had enough of something you’ll be surprised how fast it ends.”
“That’s heartless,” Ente retorted, “to let people suffer when you could change it.
The Swordsman had finally had enough. “Are you really that dense? All that would happen is they’d unite against me, then as soon as I’m out of the picture they’d return to fighting the same stupid war they’d been fighting before I turned up. You cannot force people to change, persuade perhaps but never force. To quote the young necromancer here, ‘Anyone hoping to lead the revolution is clearly on the wrong side.”
“But-”
The Swordsman slammed the door as he left.
As all this had been happening, Alec had found, with little difficulty, the library, its sheer scale making it obvious as it towered above all but a few buildings and then been promptly overwhelmed by it.
In his whole life he’d only ever seen eleven books, three of them philosophical discourses and a manual on the differential hardening of iron; the latter had been a gift from the old monk to the village’s blacksmith, though the former had been a gift to the whole village.
There had been other books from the old man, a small book of hymns and poetry — which from the state of the spine and the ease with which the words rolled from the monk’s lips Alec had always privately suspected had been his own copy — written in a delicate flowing script bordering on the calligraphic. This had been accompanied by a surprisingly matter-of-fact history of the Paladin Order; most of the spoken history was rather self-praising with heavy use of words such as noble and glorious. Alec had actually asked the monk once why there was such a disparity between the two histories.
The old man had looked up at him with benign amusement and said without trace of irony, “Because stories that simply tell people what happened are nowhere near as interesting as ones where great heroes triumph against foul creatures and cruel villains. True isn’t necessarily interesting.”
Of course, now he was beginning to doubt elements of even the matter of fact paladin version of history.
The other two volumes the monk had donated could only be described as odd. One had been a two thousand page manual on how to fold paper into the shapes of animals, whilst the remaining volume had been about a magical creature that looked like a humanoid fox known as a kitsune, rarely found outside of the eastern continent of Belsinan, many thousands of miles from Contenmere. The creatures were apparently masters of trickery and illusion who delighted in one-upmanship upon the other races, sometimes fatally so.
Of the three books not provided by the benevolent sage, two had been simple and outdated by several decades, farmers’ almanacs, but the final tome had been a marvel. A crumbling dictionary, inks fading in places and some pages missing entirely, a lack of paper, papyrus or vellum in the village had prevented the attempts of repair upon it, but nonetheless, it had been an invaluable tool for both Adis and the monk which had led to unusual levels of literacy amongst the people of the village.
Thus the library was a small Renaissance in itself to young Alec, his eyes wide with glorious wonder at the seemingly endless array of shelves, each shelf nearing three metres in height and a third that in width, every single one filled with compendiums, tomes and volumes, some barely thicker than a child’s smallest finger whilst the largest almost required two men to carry.
Unbeknownst to Alec, the Seruatis library was amongst the largest available to man, rivalled only by the Citadel’s collection, some of the magical institutions, two private collections and most of the elven libraries — by simple virtue of being older.
To the people of Seruatis there was a certain level of ambivalence to the library. Though from a rational perspective, it was inevitable; it was a tool, a useful tool but a tool nonetheless. The mystique of boundless knowledge loses its appeal to most people when they live with it every single day of their lives.
To Alec, there was no such apathy or complacence. To him, the library was beauty itself and yet posed a great question; where to start?
“Can I help?” enquired the sharp voice of the librarian from beside him, the woman moving soundlessly on the auburn carpet, her choice of garb an overcoat topped with a large hood.
The teen turned quickly, startled, and stopped still as a statue as he beheld his first gorgon; unlike the majority of people to find themselves doing so, Alec actually would have the opportunity to do so more than once. This was not due to any special quality bestowed upon him, nor the incredible foresight and protection provided by Erebus, but great caution on the part of the gorgon in question.
“Why are you wearing a mask?” Alec addressed the obvious question, ignorance of the most innocent kind allowing him to address boldly a topic that the more well informed would treat with utmost delicacy if they dared broach it at all.
The gorgon smiled behind the eyeless iron mask, finding the forthright approach rather refreshing. “It’s so I don’t accidentally hurt people.”
Most people would have been tempted to ask why, Alec, channelling Erebusesque perception, did not, opting for the more useful “How?”, picking up on the subtle tones of remorse in the gorgon’s voice.
“You’ve never heard of a gorgon have you?” the gorgon stated, a whole conversation taking place in the subtext.
“No,” Alec professed, looking down, embarrassed at his own ignorance.
Another smirk from the woman, unseen by the world in general from behind the iron facsimile of her own visage. “We’re a rather tragic species I’m afraid, evolution’s little joke, or the victims of a mad goddess if you believe the legends,” she declared in a tone that clearly showed that such beliefs were purest poppycock in her opinion. Despite the self-pitying nature of the words, there was nothing but confidence and surety of self in her stance.
“Why tragic? I mean how can being a gorgon be so bad?”
“Anyone who looks directly upon my face turns into stone,” she said morosely, not excessively enthusiastic in her ability to turn a flesh and blood being into a marmoreal statue.
The teenager looked conflicted for a moment, now aware that he had, metaphorically, been tap-dancing on a minefield in terms of the delicacy of the subject matter. To his credit, he did not once seem afraid of her, perhaps believing in the natural altruism of all people, though having met Lutan, this was unlikely. Thus an observer would simply conclude that he had a sufficiently deft mind to realise the mask was a deliberate attempt to shield the likes of him from harm, at great personal expense, and at a speed faster than his instincts of self-preservation. All this resolved into a single sentence, apologetic to the point of confession, “Sorry if I was insensitive.”
There was a hissed bark of laughter from the gorgon. “Don’t apologise for something you couldn’t have known.”
“Um…” Alec began hesitantly, treading with far greater care now, “How do you know where you’re going with that mask on?”
“Years of practise and I’ve got an exceptional sense of hearing, so I don’t bump into anyone.”
“Oh. Do you miss being able to see?”
“I can still see, I just can’t remove the mask while the library has people in it. Late at night, I like to read some of the more fragile texts and copy them out so age doesn’t cause a permanent end to them.”
“You work here?” the boy asked, intrigued about the library’s day-to-day runnings.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Live here in fact. I’ve a room on the top floor. Now, what can I do for you?” the masked gorgon rephrased her initial question.
“Well, there’s just so many books…” Alec began, only to be met by the harsh, sibilant chuckle from earlier.
“That you can’t fathom where to begin,” she finished for him, the sheer rapidity of the intervention indicating the frequency of the problem. “Well considering your apparent interest in my people… I can recommend some of the more accurate and impartial texts on gorgons, as well as a number on cockatrice and the exceedingly rare catoblepas.” The librarian began to walk away with surprising speed, clearly not bluffing on her awareness of her surroundings, and upon reaching the shelves, began to pluck books from them seemingly at random.
“What’s a catoblepas?” her young companion asked, whilst attempting, without success, minimal or otherwise, to sneak a glance at the titles.
In response she handed him a book, rather helpfully named Catoblepas. It was a surprisingly slim volume, soon accompanied, without prompting or enquiry, by a rather larger one about cockatrice. Then, after a considerable walk down the aisles to a section marked with a reasonably obtrusive gilded G. That the librarian knew this spoke volumes on her memory, though not as much as on her ability to unerringly remove the correct tome on the first attempt.
On the subject of gorgons, five volumes were plucked out in quick succession before just as quickly being offloaded into Alec’s arms.
“Find yourself a desk and get reading,” the gorgon ordered, preparing to disappear back into whatever shadowy recesses librarians inhabit when people aren’t being either louder than a whisper, seeking advice or wishing to take a book out of the library. “Come find me when you’ve finished them all.”
And with that parting instruction, she vanished amongst the aisles, leaving Alec in a pile of books large enough to obscure most of his vision and utterly lost amongst the shelves, though, by the time tested technique of wandering until finding one’s goal, he did eventually find a desk and so settled down to read.
Back in the infirmary, The Swordsman was watching the unconscious Saiko with an expression that was part respect for a fellow master of their craft, part amusement, a slight dab of surprise and the merest hint of awe.
Piled up in the chair beside him was Saiko’s personal armoury, the collection worryingly large and the source of the man’s amusement, which while on the machinations of his patient’s mind was not at his expense.
Despite an excessive number of centuries to his names, The Swordsman had never met anyone quite so well-armed.
He’d tried to be as unintrusive as possible in the circumstances, a matter only assisted by the four layers of clothing — technically, at least two could be counted as armour — each with their own caveat of violent intent. Despite the indignity of being stripped of weapons and clothing, though once it proved harmless, the latter had been reapplied, it was merely something that had to be done. Allowing a man with a violent potential greater than some assassins he’d known, to walk around armed would be foolish to the extreme.
First, he’d removed the swords, two slim arming swords strapped across Saiko’s back, then the falchion’s empty scabbard, idly noting the length of garrotte wire threaded into the belt it was attached to as well as resolving to pick the sword back up as soon as he had a moment’s peace; he had a hunch about that sword.
Then there had been the cloak, weighted in just the right places to make it throwable as an impromptu net or surprise flail.
The cloak had actually been a pleasant surprise. The many-hued dark grey cloth — no one who actually understood stealth would use black — spoke of both a certain fastidiousness to detail and a cunning originality, a rare combination in The Swordsman’s experience. It also helped that the weave of cloth in question had been known to, if not stop arrows, then certainly slow them significantly, presumably reducing anything short of the chainmail punching bodkin, or a crossbow quarrel, to a manageable trifle for the armour two layers further in. Of course, with the advent of the needle bodkin, even plate steel was no longer entirely safe. However, the traditional broadhead arrow was still the archer’s favourite, for, despite its parlous lack of armour penetration, it still had the pertinent perquisite of inflicting wounds that were significantly more likely to prove fatal.
The first layer of death, and prevention thereof, removed had revealed two bandoleers of throwing knives, overlapping across Saiko’s chest; he hadn’t even needed to remove them to know each would be balanced to perfection. Two knives in each bandoleer had proven worth a closer inspection, one — from the distinctive black tarnishing — was a silver alloy or at least silver-coated yet, by some miracle of the smith’s art, actually managed to keep an edge. A werewolf killer’s weapon.
It had not been quite as easy to identify the knife’s nature as he was used to; the steel blades had all the gleam of granite on a dark night. The weapons of a true assassin rather than someone who merely wished to look the part. An affectation of machismo that proved all too common and oft all too fatal for the braggart involved.
The other knife of note was made of wood, presumably because the throwing stake had proven a complete failure when subjected to such peevish and petty concepts as aerodynamics, and so vampire hunters, wise enough to realise that what you wanted most of all when dealing with something strong enough to pull off your limbs was distance and thus had, unless of exceptional aim, been forced to make do with wooden-headed arrows and quarrels, as well as throwing knives that would go thwack! rather than clang! if they missed.
The robes the bandoleers were fastened around belayed the stealthy themes indicated thus far. The fabric was dyed — well likely dyed — the familiar reddish-brown of dried blood, presumably to conceal stains of such a nature. It was a lighter fabric than the cloak, perhaps a particularly dense wool or similar. Whatever it was it proved to have a worrying selection of objects, from a set of lockpicks to smoke bombs to actual bombs to a pair of stilettos sown into the lining with painstaking care. Each joined the growing pile alongside the robe itself, revealing the armour it was intended to hide.
The Swordsman’s opinion of the man rose slightly further again as yet another facet of subterfuge was revealed; the thick cloak and wool robe hiding the armour quite masterfully, such that the first a prospective killer might know of it would be when their blade was turned aside, likely bringing them within reach of Saiko’s own exceptional sword-arm and whatever weapon currently attached to the end of it. Lies within lies within clothing… he couldn’t help but wonder how such a man had come to be in the service of Lutan.
The armour was quite interesting and, if his deductions were correct, of his patient’s own design. A series of interlocking titanium plates suspended and woven into a spider silk mesh.
The existence of spider silk mesh was a subject of much contention among soldiers, mages and scholars alike.
For a considerable amount of time magicians had been aware that spider silk was, ounce for ounce, significantly stronger than the finest steel. So when asked, as a sign of increasing paladin/magician cooperation, to find a way to cheaply improve the quality of basic armour — which from a paladin point of view was anything not containing nullstone — one particularly ingenious specimen had suggested they try to mass-produce the stuff.
They had first tried doing it safely by using magic to modify goats in such a way as to produce it in their milk, but when the volume had proved insufficient, corners had been cut. Another team working on the project had simply made the spiders grow to excessive size, finally settling on an arachnid whose average dimensions and mass was somewhere between a rhinoceros and a small elephant.
Predictably it had collapsed under its own weight and suffocated. Alas, the team had proven to possess a dangerous combination of determination and poor foresight. So with predictable foolhardiness, instead of abandoning the venture as a doomed experiment, they began again, using magic where biology rebelled.
Miraculously this approach not only worked but proved to have its own failsafe as the spells supporting the arachnids, both figuratively and literally — had to be renewed every three days. Despite some accidents, though rarely fatal as antivenom was usually on hand, the yield of spider silk was quite high, and after the use of said silk to create some very thick protective gloves, so was the yield of venom.
There is an old expression ‘from the ridiculous to the sublime’ used as an attempt to convey that the sheer level of unthinking, brazenly stupid decision making is not describable by mortal man, rendering the observer into a state of near awe at the failure to foresee the consequences.
In this case, with demand increasing exponentially, one biomancer, a Professor Munsento, decided to remove the failsafe by making the arachnids intrinsically magical and thus sustaining the spells themselves. The one trace of intelligence in this decision was that he didn’t release the genetically modified creature into the ecosystem on the basis that a good lawyer could deal with any problems this might cause…
Naturally, the spiders escaped and, without the failsafe, prospered, another ever-present danger in a world already full of them. By now, the arach had infested forest, jungle, desert and plain, with only the frozen south and tundra of the north being spared. And there were rumours that Munsento had survived, desperately devoting his life to fixing his mistakes; one particularly prolific rumour said that he’d travelled the world in search of natural predators of web-building spiders and enlarged them similarly, though the rumour was typically dismissed on the basis that no one could be that stupid.
Fast forward three hundred years and the project, consequences aside, had been highly successful in its initial aims and thus increasing amounts of armour were, instead of leather and iron, made of spider silk, light as a feather and harder than steel and thus in the case of Saiko’s armour raised mild questions as to why he’d even bothered with titanium plates. In fact, to a suspicious kind of mind, one might speculate that the underside of such plates might have protective runes carved into them whilst carefully concealing the presence of such from his magic-hating employer.
The Swordsman elected not to check on the basis that it would be like smashing a fine statue to examine the stone’s composition.
Another thing revealed by the removal of the bloody robe were the knives, one strapped parallel to the bottom of each leg and forearm. The latter of which had proved decisive in its nullification of the late Sir Bareth the previous day.
The fourth layer contained no armour at all, a mere silk body sleeve with some runes of cooling sewn into the fabric. The Swordsman could sympathise, without a light soft layer beneath it, such armour could chafe awfully and that many layers would be unpleasantly warm in the heart of winter let alone on the cusp as they were now.
After a cursory patdown to ensure that no weapons were left that were larger than a fingernail, The Swordsman left it at that, at least allowing the man his modesty, before he sat down in his chair to muse quietly on the sheer number of weapons. Each one purposeful and logically placed and yet on consideration with all the other weapons; excessive.
He’d have to think about this, but something told him that the potential before him was worth nurturing. Saiko was an exceptional fighter, for an amateur.
*
As he carefully retraced his steps, Lutan could not help but smile, almost whistling as he walked, nearly half a decade of careful, meticulous planning finally at fruition. There were loose ends to tie up and lies to tell, but for now, he just basked in the glow of success. It had taken nearly half his life, but the traitor Erebus was dead at long last. It was joyous to finally be able to take the first step towards letting go of his hate.
He’d imagined killing the necromancer a thousand thousand times, watching the life drain from that cold, heartless gaze.
There was a slight crunch as the heavily armoured paladin proved too great a weight for one dryad’s skull, her body several yards away, Lutan walked on unperturbed; it merely served the foolish creatures right for interfering with his holy mission.
They’d hidden that from him. The very reason the Paladin Order had been founded. But he’d found it; when the betrayal grew too much to bear, he’d thrown himself into his training, and, recognising another who saw necromancers for the spawn of darkness they truly were, the Keepers of the Divine had accepted him into their ranks.
Even they had betrayed him in the end; when he’d suggested they step out of the shadows, they’d died like traitors too… pleading. A small part of him felt disgust at that; Erebus would never have begged for his life.
It would take him five days to escape the forest, including a day for him to tend to his wounds. It didn’t matter; he had food and water enough for the journey, more than enough if he scavenged off the corpses of his erstwhile servants, and, providing he followed the carnage, not a dryad alive to try and stop him.
He’d have to organise a party of lumberjacks when he got home, a lesson to dryadkind on what happened when you crossed the Paladin Order. Without Von Mori, any defence would be hopelessly haphazard.
Of course, explaining what he’d done to Von Mori would be difficult, but already an excuse was forming, one that would be more palatable to the council than ‘She got in my way.’
Lutan smiled darkly. Von Mori had been a thorn in the side of the Paladin Order for time immemorial, resisting all attempts to colonise within her borders; this wasn’t strictly true, but to Lutan, it was true enough, and without the forest dryad’s meddling, things would be changing shortly. The council might be hard to convince, but the paladin knew several business interests who would be extremely grateful.
Ahead of him a dryad waited, visibly trembling in fear as she stood amongst the corpses of her neighbours.
The Lord Protector was not a fool; no matter how distorted his worldview, stupidity was not an accolade that could be fairly lain at his feet.
Despite disagreements, in later years, he’d had a good teacher in the deductive process. Thus rather than casually beheading the creature as he walked past, he stopped, curious what message the forest considered important enough to sacrifice another dryad.
“Speak creature,” Lutan commanded, causing the dryad to jump, raw terror plain in her hazel eyes, her gaze remaining fixated upon the sword at his hip.
“L-L-Lady Yew s-sends a message,” the tree spirit stammered, “the-the necromancer still lives.”
Lutan froze in midstep before drawing his sword upon the wretched creature, the poor girl falling over in her desperate haste to get away, scrabbling backwards in the blood-soaked dirt. She stopped as the tip of Lutan’s broadsword came to rest casually beneath her chin, the dryad wincing where the nullstone alloy left burns from the contact with the bark hued flesh. “Now, let’s have a little detail, shall we?”
“I-I don’t know,” she almost begged, “Lady Yew saw. That’s all I know, I swear.”
Lutan believed her, and so he slowly removed the sword from beneath her chin.
The dryad seemed to collapse with relief, and then Lutan’s sword took her head off.
Dispassionately Lutan watched the light fade from her hazel eyes before wiping the blade clean on the corpse’s clothes and resheathing it. It hadn’t been anything personal; she’d merely ceased to be useful.
For scant seconds he considered storming or sneaking into Circulus Seruatis on his own to finish what he’d started. But a moment of thought was all he needed to rule out that idea; there were too many variables, too many unknown quantities and worst of all, too many unpleasant known quantities. After all, to put things in perspective, a plan years in the making, where nearly everything had been accounted for, had all but failed in the face of a few unknown details. A plan which had accounted for the village, for Erebus, for The Swordsman, even for Von Mori herself — ironically, what had seemed the most dangerous part was the only one piece of the plan to go off without a hitch.
And there was always the, rather likely, chance that this ‘Lady Yew’ was lying.
Having made up his mind, Lutan continued his route back to what he considered civilisation.
He would rest, rearm, and then, and only then, he would return.