A sound drew Cyrus slowly out of deep sleep. It was a distant, mildly irritating multitude of individual clinks and clangs that blended into a homogeneous pad of high-pitched jingling and thumping. The sound was punctuated at irregular intervals by distant shouts, sometimes one at a time, sometimes in groups. As he emerged foggily from sleep, he focused on the sound for a few minutes, feeling disoriented and surreal. Where was he? Why was he lying with his head against the flank of a strange horse? Was this his apartment at Triad?
As memory and context began to shuffle wearily back to their desks and Cyrus put together the pieces of yesterday’s events, the sound came into sharper focus as well. He turned and found Bear sleeping soundly next to him.
“Wake up!” he hissed sharply, shaking her. She did not respond. “Wake up!” he said again, more loudly. Her eyelids fluttered open, and then she sat straight up, instantly alert.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“People are fighting nearby. Many people.”
They both listened for a few more moments. There was a louder, deeper boom from somewhere nearby.
“That’s an impact from a trebuchet,” remarked Cyrus. “Someone’s flinging rocks at someone else. And whoever the parties are to this dispute—it means we need to get out of here, right now.”
He staggered to his feet, dragging Gmork up by one leg and shaking him vigorously. The goblin—who had been dozing lightly—howled in protest and tried to gnaw on Cyrus’s hand, but couldn’t bend far enough upward.
“We’re leaving!” Cyrus whispered urgently to his assistant. “Go fill a bag with horse food so you don’t go hunger-mad when we leave this place!” He dropped Gmork, who instantly scuttled off in the direction of the feed bins.
“Where do you plan to go?” asked Bear, as they hurriedly gathered up their meager possessions. “I’m not pulling you back up over the pass.”
“We’re going to Weisseberg,” Cyrus replied confidently. “You said before you knew where it was. Take me there.”
“I’m not pulling you to Weisseberg, either,” she added with a touch of acid. “It’s twenty miles to the northwest, halfway up a mountain. How do you plan to get there? I promise you won’t be able to walk it, and if there’s a pitched battle happening outside, horses and sleighs to hire will be scarce. And that’s assuming we can even make it out of Enderly.”
There was another huge crash, and the ground shook beneath their feet.
“Those are the kinds of details, woman, that I will address in the least reasonable manner, at the last possible moment.”
“Do you practice those lines ahead of time?” she muttered, stuffing the last sleeping roll into the small sack.
“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. “It’s what I do instead of functional human relationships. Now follow me.”
He stumped out of the inn’s stable, trailing Bear and Gmork. Outside, the cramped, snow-choked lane was devoid of people. The small, narrow houses were shut tight. The light was dim; it was still perhaps an hour before dawn. But the sounds of battle grew louder, and they plainly came from the east—the direction of the river.
As they looked down the lane, a bright ball of light arced over their heads from the east, disappearing below the line of rooftops to the south. There was a flickering yellow-orange glow from that direction already. The sound of the impact was muted, compared with the loud, booming crashes they’d heard earlier.
“Flaming pitch,” remarked Cyrus sardonically. “Delightful. Enderly is still a barony, isn’t it? Does it have a castle?”
Bear nodded. “Sir Richard has been away for two years, but his wife and sons still live there. I think the Republican Guard took it over, though, when Enderly declared for the National Assembly. All the soldiers at the castle wear red cloaks now.”
“Then that’s where… whoever it is… will be flinging rocks and burning pitch,” concluded Cyrus. “Let’s not go there. We want to make for the north anyway.”
He slogged through the streets, laboriously floundering through the deep snow with his bad leg. Bear and Gmork soon pushed ahead, breaking some semblance of a path in front of him. Cyrus’s mind raced—despite his confident assurance to Bear earlier, he had no clue how they would get out of Enderly, much less how they would travel twenty miles into the Haalstern Mountains. He worked out a vague notion of hiring a draft horse from one of the outlying farms.
It was not long before they were confronted with more than just the sounds of war. Crossing one of the larger streets, they saw in the dim light groups of armed men fighting desperately farther up the street. Their uniforms and livery were difficult to make out, but at least one side appeared to be dressed mainly in white. Hearing harsh, angry cries and urgent commands from the melee, he realized that some of the combatants were not speaking Uellish.
“Svegnians,” confirmed Bear tersely.
Cyrus cursed. “Perfect—we’ve planted ourselves in the middle of an invasion. That explains why those Guard officers were in such a hurry to reach Swallow Hall. They must have seen the Svegnians massing their forces across the river.”
Crossing the street, he stumbled in a particularly dense pack of snow and fell forward. Bear caught him before he tumbled, and laboriously stood him upright again. He nodded mutely in thanks.
Their next encounter was much closer. Turning a corner to keep moving toward the north, Cyrus found himself face to face with a small squad—six soldiers, dressed all in white and moving on skis. They wore dull iron helms and cuirasses, and each man bore a spear, dagger, and crossbow. They carried heavy packs, loaded with equipment for winter mobility. The soldiers saw Cyrus at the same time, and—observing his sword and breastplate—instantly readied their spears.
Cyrus had plenty of practice thinking quickly on his foot, and he had a respectable grasp of modern Svegnian—acquired, it must be said, more from reading than speech.
“Take me to your leader!” he commanded in their tongue, using his most confident tone and standing erect.
One man—probably the commander, by the decorations on his hat—paused a moment, squinted at Cyrus’s clothes, and then turned to his comrades.
“Kill him,” the officer said. “We have no time for this.” Two of the soldiers started forward, spears raised.
This is it, thought Cyrus. This is how I die. What an embarrassment. He fumbled for his sword hilt under his thick cloak.
Dead end.
“Handle alpha apple sandwich!” came a clear voice from next to him, speaking Svegnian with a native’s delivery. Cyrus looked to his right in astonishment. The voice was Bear’s voice.
The soldiers halted, looking at the woman in surprise as well.
“Ignorant orange,” she explained firmly, still in Svegnian. “Cold obelisk.”
“Addled,” replied the squad’s leader. Then he silently skied past the three of them, watching Bear respectfully. The other five men followed him.
Cyrus stared at Bear. She stared back.
“Do you want me to call them back?” she asked eventually.
He considered that. “No. But—”
“Would you rather I was helping the Republican Guard?”
“Not that either. But—”
“Shut up and listen, Professor. We don’t have time for a debate about this.” She began tramping forward into the snow again, as the sounds of fighting grew louder to the east. “My parents were Svegnian. Dad was in the army; some kind of high-ranking officer. He never told me how high up. During one of the purges, he took my mother and fled. They settled in the littlest village they could find here in Uelland and stayed out of view. Mom and Dad spoke mostly Svegnian at home when I was growing up, but they made me learn Uellish without an accent. So—yes. I speak their language.”
“You don’t just speak their language,” Cyrus observed, struggling forward in the snow behind her. “You just told six professional soldiers to leave us alone, and off they went. The Svegnian army is many bad things, but on the whole they’re neither stupid nor cowardly.”
She shrugged. “Dad taught me some of their military code speech. He reckoned that living so close to the Tharma, one day they’d come over the river in force and I might need to talk my way out of trouble. I told that sergeant I was an intelligence officer, and to piss off.”
He shook his head in amazement.
“Do you have any other mysterious secrets you’d like to reveal?” he asked. “Just to save time later.”
She plowed forward silently through the snow.
“Would you help them?” he asked after a minute. “If you could, I mean. You’re Svegnian. Are you on their side?”
She stopped and turned.
“You told me you grew up in Uellodon,” she said quietly. “If King Leeland told you to kill Queen Anne, would you?”
He shook his head.
“Same answer, then,” she replied, turning back into the darkness. “You choose who you love.”
✽✽✽
As the sky grew lighter and they made their way slowly toward the northern outskirts of Enderly, the bloodletting spread. The bodies of red-cloaked Guardsmen and white-clad Svegnians, dead and dying, appeared with depressing regularity, forcing Cyrus, Bear, and Gmork to make long detours to avoid active fighting. Always they found their way back to the north, navigating by the increasingly strong light from over the river to the east.
At the outskirts of Enderly, as the small townhouses gave way to open fields and barns, they finally encountered a pitched battle directly in their path. Perhaps a hundred red-clad soldiers were gathered in a tight knot on a low rise, hemmed in by a much larger group of white-clad invaders. The Svegnians had taken up positions in a broad arc, and were simply standing back and shooting their crossbows at the ill-armed and immobile Guardsmen. The Guard, unable to charge through the snow into close combat or to flee effectively, were cowering behind a makeshift wall of snow, ice, and abandoned sleighs. Most of the horses from the sleigh teams lay on the ground, riddled with bolts; those that still lived were kicking and thrashing in blind panic. The Guardsmen desperately waved spears and sticks with bits of white cloth attached to them, but the stream of crossbow bolts continued remorselessly. Though Cyrus had no love for King Leeland’s new army, he felt sickened at the slaughter.
“There,” whispered Bear, crouched down next to him in the snow. “Just off to the left. There’s a sleigh team still alive.”
Cyrus looked where she was pointing. One team—a pair of shaggy draft horses and a large cargo sleigh—had drawn off farther than the others, and both horses were standing nervously in the snow, flicking their tales and twisting their necks to watch the violence over their shoulders. The horses appeared unharmed.
“Looks like a convoy,” said Cyrus in a whisper. “They tried to get out to the north by sleigh, but the Svegnians cut them off. This may not be the last possible moment for us to find transportation, but you’ve still done a terrific job coming up with the least reasonable manner. Do you think we can slip around this war crime to reach the sleigh team?”
“How much do weigh?” she replied, incongruously.
“About thirteen stone,” he answered. “Sixteen with clothing and gear. Why?”
A stray crossbow bolt grazed the top of Cyrus’s hat, punctuating their desperation.
“Get on my back,” instructed Bear.
Well, thought Cyrus. This fits my idiom perfectly.
He unbelted his broadsword and handed it to Gmork, then passed off his pack as well. After a moment’s thought, he took off his wide-brimmed, floppy hat and settled it on top of Gmork’s hood for safekeeping. And then Bear picked him up and slung him across her back in the way of a shepherd carrying a sheep—his head dangling over one shoulder, and his rear dangling over the other. She took one careful step forward through the snow—then another, and another.
Bear kept as far away from the doomed Guardsmen as she could, but to reach the sleigh they had to cross an open space in full view of the Svegnians. Inverted as Cyrus was, he had a perfect view of the white-clad invaders.
“They’ve seen us,” he reported calmly.
Steps through the snow.
“They’re pointing,” he updated her.
More steps.
“I think they’re having a conversation about us,” he said. “Definitely an exchange of firmly held views. They seem most excited. I don’t suppose you know their signal flag codes as well, Miss Bear?”
She ignored him, and continued stepping slowly toward the sleigh.
“Yes—yes, we have their attention. I can see one or two aiming at us. And now—” He grunted as her shoulder dug into his abdomen.
“Now they’re shooting at us.”
Crossbow bolts began to find their way toward Cyrus’s upturned rear end. Behind him, carrying his pack and sword, Gmork smiled encouragingly and waved. Cyrus’s hat was slipping down over the goblin’s eyes.
“Are we there yet?” Cyrus asked.
“No,” answered Bear.
She continued pushing through the deep snow, one step at a time, placing her feet carefully.
“When I get back to Triad,” he remarked, “I am going to write a paper about this—OW!”
He felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his right buttock.
Gmork chimed in helpfully: “They got you right in the—”
“SHUT UP!” bellowed Cyrus, still with enough presence of mind to switch to the goblin tongue. Gmork looked hurt, but fell silent.
“Better your ass than mine,” muttered Bear. “I need mine for walking.”
Cyrus gritted his teeth in agony as she soldiered on.
“They’re not shooting at us anymore,” he managed. “Looks like something else has caught their attention.”
After what seemed an eternity, Bear heaved him off her shoulders and into the rearmost bench of the sleigh. Gmork hopped into the middle bench, slinging the pack and sword in with him. Ahead, he heard Bear clucking to the horses, and the sleigh soon began to move forward, away and at an angle from the battlefield. Cyrus very carefully adjusted his body so that he could peer out the rear of the vehicle without putting any pressure on his injured buttocks.
His eyes widened in amazement.
Something was hacking its way through the massed Svegnian soldiers, coming from the direction of the town. It was several somethings; perhaps twenty. They were shaped like men, with two arms, two legs, and one head. But each was ten to twelve feet tall, and clad entirely in gleaming steel plate armor, complete with a fearsome helm. They hewed about them with colossal steel swords, each requiring two hands even for those fearsome warriors. The white-clad human soldiers leaped out of their way, abandoning their formations and any semblance of discipline to scramble out of the path of the advancing behemoths. But the creatures seemed unconcerned with killing humans—rather, once they had passed through the Svegnian ranks, they simply continued on to the north, jogging through the snow as though it were a grassy field in summer.
Their path took them close to where the sleigh was gathering speed toward the road to the north, and in a short time they passed very close behind, heading north and west. Cyrus could see that, although the armor completely covered their bodies, it appeared to be padded with furs and wool at the joints; he reckoned it was insulated on the inside. The giant humanoids ran with large, heavy packs as well, each carrying as much as could be laid on an ox.
As they passed behind and began to recede, he saw, to his even greater surprise, that three of the armored giants bore humans on their backs. Two were about the right size for adults, and the third was a toddler of perhaps two years. The humans were bundled in heavy clothes against the cold, and did not struggle—either they were unconscious, or were willing passengers.
He turned to Gmork. Bear was looking forward at the road ahead, and had missed the passage of the enormous warriors. But Gmork had seen them. His face bore an expression of absolute, sharp, and immediate terror.
✽✽✽
They drove for many hours along the broad, snow-clad trade road leading north from Enderly. Cyrus lay lengthwise across the rear bench of the sleigh, trying to focus his mind on enduring the agony in his buttock. He was too distracted to ruminate on the thing he had seen on the battlefield; indeed, he was too distracted for most rational thought.
Eventually, Bear stopped the sleigh at the side of the track on a rocky slope, dotted above and below with a scattering of evergreens. She listened carefully for several minutes. Apparently satisfied that no danger was near, she turned her attention to Cyrus’s wound.
“Bite this,” she said, handing him a strip of leather. He did; and then she yanked out the bolt. He chomped on the leather and moaned in agony as she removed his trousers, dumped something on the wound that stung, and then bound it up tightly.
“Lucky for you the Svegnians are still too cheap to mass-produce barbed bolt heads,” she remarked, holding a bloody length of metal in front of his face. “The head and shaft are smooth. If they’d used any kind of decent head, I’d have had to open you up to get it out.”
“You should have been a physician,” he replied, gritting his teeth against the pain. “Your bedside manner is even worse than your skill in anesthetics. Didn’t anyone ever teach you to put the alcohol on the wound before you operate?”
She shrugged. “They did, but the flask is small. I wanted to save it for after.” She showed him a small, leather pouch.
He blinked and looked up at her. “Where did you get a flask of…” he sniffed the pouch. “Is that… whiskey?”
She smiled. “It is indeed. Our luck has turned for a bit—the Guardsmen loaded this sleigh with a store of supplies before they made a run for it. I get the impression they didn’t think they’d be back to Enderly any time soon. I found the flask tucked into one of their sacks.”
He lifted the flask to his lips, thought for a moment, and then lowered it and plugged the stopper back into the pouch. He shivered, and looked around at the gray, rugged landscape of the low hills. A few fat snowflakes drifted down lazily out of the leaden sky.
“Let’s get on to Weisseberg,” he said, levering himself gingerly into a partially upright position on the bench. “After all this, there had better be a giant clue waiting for me at the gate with a bottle of wine and a hot bath.”
✽✽✽
Though the snow became thicker and the visibility decreased, Bear drove the sleigh confidently along the broad trade road. The miles passed in silence, as Cyrus sat at a canted angle in the back of the sleigh and looked gloomily out at the frozen Tharma to the east. His initial burst of intuitive confidence on the roof of Redbun Hall had vanished, leaving him tired, frustrated, and certain that he was chasing phantoms in the snow. He wanted to admit defeat, go home, and take out his frustrations on first-year term papers. Rolly would rest no more or less easily if his murderer was flushed out, and there was no reason Queen Anne’s problems had to be Cyrus Stoat’s problems. He could tell Bear to take the sleigh on to Growlgub, spend a week recuperating, and then make his way back to Green Bridge in time for the beginning of the spring term.
He took a deep breath of the frigid mountain air and let it out. Well. He’d come this far. He might as well see Weisseberg.
They stopped at a tiny spring to rest and feed the horses, then pressed on as the snow came down more and more thickly. Sometime in the afternoon—the precise time was impossible to know in the gray light—Bear turned the sleigh onto a barely visible side track that disappeared into a thick forest of dark fir trees at the base of a huge, craggy cut in the mountains.
“We’re going up there?” he asked incredulously. “Is that actually a road?”
She looked over her shoulder and nodded. “It’s narrow, but when I last came this way it was still open.”
“How long ago was that?” he queried.
“I was sixteen years old,” she supplied, not quite answering the question.
“Aren’t you worried that trees or rocks might have fallen in the road?”
She shrugged. “You’re the one who wanted to go to Weisseberg in December, Professor. If we can’t cut through, the next move will be your choice. I’m not taking you back to Enderly, but I could drive you on to Growlgub, or we can cross the Tharma into Svegnia if you prefer.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The dark line of trees drew closer.
“What were you doing out here at sixteen?” he asked.
She smiled, turning her head slightly. “Dad thought I needed experience surviving in the wilderness. Weisseberg is a ruin, so it fits the bill. We hiked there every summer starting when I was five years old. When I was ten, he left me alone for three days, and it turned into a week when I was fifteen.”
“Your father is a remarkable man,” replied Cyrus admiringly. “Mine thought I needed finishing school and a career in law.”
“Was,” said Bear, turning her head forward again so he couldn’t see her face. “He died three years ago. Some ailment of the stomach that the physicians couldn’t treat.”
They passed under the dark eaves of the evergreen forest. Cyrus was reminded uncomfortably of the Black Boughs, far to the west, and a close-fought battle with White Knights beneath their dark branches.
The road ran deeper and deeper into the forest, and began to angle up sharply. However, to Cyrus’s surprise, they found that it was clear of fallen wood and other obstructions. Indeed, the overhanging branches had been cut back to a tolerable height, and there were obvious saw and shear marks left behind. Neither of them needed to say it, but Cyrus did anyway.
“Someone’s been keeping the road clear.”
Bear frowned. “I guarded a caravan that travelled the trade road last summer. I didn’t have a chance to come into the forest, but from the road I saw no sign of anyone keeping up the path. If the castle has been reoccupied, then I think it’s happened recently.”
Cyrus grunted. “Rolly is supposed to have had friends there. In theory, they have some papers that could, maybe, shed light on his murder—but I fully expect to be confronted with nothing but vague nonsense and mysticism.”
“He must have been a good friend, for you to come all the way out here,” remarked Bear.
Cyrus stared out at the dark forest around him, thinking.
“He was a brother, of a sort,” he said finally. “There were times I hated him, but he and I were alike, and I think we valued the same things, in the end. And that makes it all the harder to believe he’d get mixed up in religion.”
Bear looked at him in apparent surprise.
“Religion? You mean the Ecclesia?”
He shook his head. “No. The new one—the Advocates of Ash. I don’t know for sure, but I’ve run into one of them twice now, and both times he’s claimed Rolly among their number. It doesn’t make any sense to me; Rolly was smart, tough-minded, skeptical, and brilliant in his discipline. People like that don’t go latching on to superstition and mysticism, because they don’t need to. Religion is for people want to absolve themselves of responsibility for their own failure and misery. It’s an easy source of meaning for those who won’t create their own. That wasn’t Rolly.”
“Hang on—I think I’ve heard that before.” She narrowed her eyes at him.
He grinned sheepishly. “I was paraphrasing Horace II’s speech on the steps of the Basilica of Naridium before he burned it. I told you the story on the second day out of Green Bridge.”
“Wasn’t he a mass murderer of priests?”
Cyrus nodded. “He was. It’s one of the enduring ethical puzzles of northern history—is it just to commit horrific acts of violence, if doing so leads to a good outcome? The Neighbor Kingdoms knew nearly seven centuries of freedom from religion, until King Reginald let the new Ecclesia start to trickle back in—and even now, they wield only a shadow of their former influence. In those centuries without priests, we made advances in knowledge, reason, science, wealth, and culture that surpass the Holy Empire by generations. Can you imagine if we’d been shackled to the Ecclesia all that time? We’d still be burning mad old crones as witches and hanging astronomers as heretics. Women would still be evil by nature, and slavery would still be the unquestioned law of the land. A thousand acts of harmless, consensual pleasure would get you sentenced to corporal punishment here on earth and to eternal damnation in the hereafter. But yes—in order to stamp out all that nonsense, Horace II executed nearly a thousand priests, and drove many thousands more into exile. If you can sort out the moral economy of that legacy, you’re a smarter woman than I. I’m just trying to make a living in the world as it is now.”
Bear said nothing more. They drove on through the dark wood, creeping closer to Weisseberg.
✽✽✽
The narrow track emerged onto a high crest above the evergreen forest and wound its way deeper into the mountains. The snow continued to fall, though it did not develop into the blizzard that had threatened earlier. The team of draft horses trotted stoically ahead of them, making swift work of the snow at their ankles. It seemed that, whatever force had kept the path open through the forest, it also had cleared the worst of the snow drifts from this high passage.
The afternoon wore on, and the gray light began to fade.
“Are we near shelter?” asked Cyrus, shifting uncomfortably to keep weight off his wound. “We might survive another night in the open, but I doubt these horses will thank us for making them sleep under the stars.”
“Very near,” answered Bear tersely. She nodded her head up to a high ridge to the west. “And I think we are expected,” she added. He followed her gaze, and saw a tiny light, glimmering and flickering high up on the ridge.
“Signal fire,” she observed.
“Or a ghost,” added Cyrus. “You said the locals think it’s haunted.”
She snorted. “They do. But we’re not locals, are we Professor? I’ve spent weeks at a time in the ruin of Weisseberg. If there were ghosts, they were extremely discrete.”
The path continued to climb, though it ducked below the crest of the ridge. Soon it rounded a curve at the base of a tall, steep cliff, and a narrow valley opened before them. The valley, far below, was a mass of dark green forest surrounded by towering rock walls; but perched halfway up the western slope, clinging to what looked like a narrow ledge, was a structure.
It was built of stone, and it was large. An outer wall of perhaps fifty feet rose out of the steep mountainside below, sheltering an inner keep with a single squat central tower. Four smaller, dilapidated towers studded the outer wall, and a long, arched bridge of stone spanned the deep, open space between where they now stood on the eastern wall of the valley and the gatehouse on the west.
In the fading dusk, a light could be seen in the keep’s central tower.
Bear reined in the horses and lit oil lanterns on the front corners of the sleigh. “We’ll need to walk them from here,” she stated. “The bridge is too narrow for a team. Gmork and I will go first, and lead one horse each. One of them alone can pull the sleigh this little distance.”
Cyrus slid out of the sleigh bench delicately, nearly tumbling over as his stiff, injured muscles hit the ground. He winced in pain, but settled his hat on his head and took a few limping steps forward along the path.
“Get back in the sleigh, Professor,” said Bear gently. “Let us pull you. Whatever is waiting for you in Weisseberg, come to it with dignity.” He gratefully returned to his seat in the rear of the sleigh.
Bear approached from the side. “Before we cross, there’s something I want you to know,” she said. There was tension in her voice, and her brow was furrowed. She reached beneath her heavy coat and tunic, and brought out something on a thin cord. It was a small pendant, which she laid it on top of her coat.
It was a circle set in the center of crossed bars.
“You asked me if there were other secrets I wanted to reveal. I don’t want this to be a surprise to you later.”
He stared at her, and at the pendant.
“Thank you,” was all he could manage.
They crossed the narrow bridge slowly. A low, well-crafted stone rail ran along each side of the span, but Cyrus nonetheless looked out and down with some trepidation. A strong gust of wind, and he would be flying into the deep valley below like a leaf—but without a leaf’s low ratio of mass to surface area.
“Who built this place?” asked Cyrus as Bear and Gmork walked ahead, leading the horses. “I’ve never read of its history.”
“I haven’t heard either,” replied Bear over her shoulder. “The interior was a ruin when I was there, and I wouldn’t know where to begin looking for evidence. Maybe the people who live there now can tell you.”
“Are they friends of yours?”
“I think so,” she replied hesitantly. “We’ll find out soon.”
They came at last before the gatehouse. It loomed over them, weathered and severe. Cyrus was reminded unpleasantly of one of his old professors at the Academy. There was a thick door of oak, newly joined and painted by the look of it. The snow had been cleared away from the stone in front of the door.
“This is new,” confirmed Bear. “There were no doors when I was last here.”
“Give it a knock,” he instructed. But before Bear could start forward, the door swung outward all on its own. Cyrus could see torchlight coming from the space behind the door as it swung out. And then he saw that there was a person standing in the doorway. The night obscured his face, but by the torchlight from behind they could see that he was somewhat taller than Cyrus and had a bald head with a fringe of hair. He wore long robes, and his frame appeared broad. Behind him were perhaps a dozen men and women, dressed in a variety of simple but warm clothing. The people behind the man in the doorway carried torches.
The man took a torch from one of his compatriots and stepped forward. Cyrus saw his face, and recognized it.
“Welcome to Weisseberg, Professor Stoat, Miss Borson, and Gmork,” said the man. “I am Gregory.”
“You are Grygory the Traitor,” accused Cyrus flatly.
“Yes,” replied Grygory. “I am the Traitor. But it’s ‘Gregory’ now. Please, come in out of the snow.”
✽✽✽
Gregory led them to the small central courtyard in front of the keep, where two men helped Cyrus out of the sleigh and set him in a padded chair. Torches and lamps were lit all around the perimeter of the courtyard, and the stone was swept clean of snow. Though the gray walls were weathered and ancient, there were a number of newly constructed buildings inside. Scores of men and women were within the walls; some moved about purposefully on tasks, while others stood and watched the newcomers. Cyrus was shocked to see the short, squat-headed figures of goblins among them as well, moving and working in concert with their human compatriots.
The two men carried Cyrus’s chair into the main keep, where he was placed before a hot fire burning in a stone fireplace in a small side chamber. The room was sparsely furnished, but clean and free of debris. There was a wooden tub of steaming water, and a bottle of wine.
Gregory and Bear disappeared to some other place in the building, but Gmork insisted on staying to wait on his master. He and the two human attendants carefully helped Cyrus out of his wet, filthy clothing and lowered him into the tub. They bathed him, then helped him out again and dressed the wound in his buttock. He was given new clothes and a fur coat against the cold. Once he was seated in the padded chair again, Gmork helpfully poured Cyrus a glass of the wine—a very acceptable Black Rose, though a bit sweet—and then helped himself to the rest of the bottle.
“Is this real?” he asked Gmork.
“Why wouldn’t it be real?” inquired his assistant. “I’m not asleep, so it can’t be a dream.”
“What if I’m asleep, and you’re my dream?” returned Cyrus.
“That’s crazy talk,” scoffed Gmork. “I’m real, so I can’t be your dream!”
“How do you both know you’re real?” asked another voice softly from behind them—also speaking the goblin tongue. Cyrus and Gmork both turned; it was Gregory.
“This whole affair is so outrageous, I’m simply giving up on how absurd it is that you speak the goblin-tongue,” remarked Cyrus. “I’ve travelled across the Kingdom of Uelland looking for a man-leaf of magic words in the hopes it will tell me why my friend got the stick-stick, and here is the Traitor of the North, welcoming me with a bath and a glass of booze, and now he greets me in the goblin-tongue. Perfectly natural. I suppose you have a unicorn waiting to fly us all back to Green Bridge.”
(The word that goblins use for unicorn can, in principle, be rendered somewhat more precisely in the Uellish speech. However, out of consideration for the tender sensibilities of the reader, we have exchanged a certain measure of precision for a much larger portion of civility.)
“I do not have a unicorn,” replied Gregory with a twinkle in his eye.
Cyrus switched to Uellish.
“Did you kill Rolland Gorp?”
“I did not,” answered Gregory solemnly.
“Do you know who did?”
The priest shook his head.
“Do you have Rolly’s notes on his research with Professor Pie?”
“I do,” confirmed Gregory.
Cyrus sat back in the chair. At last! There appeared the smallest chip in the wall of futility that ran through the road of his life.
“Will you give them to me?”
“Maybe.”
Cyrus scowled. The wall had gotten higher again.
“Let us have dinner first, Professor,” said Gregory quietly. “This conversation will taste better after meat and wine.” He nodded at one of the attendants at the door.
“How is your injury?” he asked solicitously, as a small table was set for three.
“I’ve just been shot in the bottom,” explained Cyrus. “If I end this trip with a prosthetic buttock, then I will personally retake Enderly from the White Emperor and murder every Svegnian soldier within it until I find the jackass that put a bolt in me—and then return the favor.”
“Ah,” said Gregory with an understanding nod. “About as well as we could hope, then.”
Supper was a simple stew of young goat, potatoes, carrots, and onions, served with a bit of brown bread and butter. But to Cyrus, who had eaten virtually nothing since he left Roosterfoot but near-frozen salted pork jerky, it tasted like a wedding banquet. He tucked away two bowls of the stew and a half a loaf of bread, feeling like a starved goblin. Gmork, who was on hand for comparison, nodded and smiled approvingly at his master’s appetite. Little was said until dinner was cleared away, and Gregory poured a glass of wine for each of his guests.
“It is a rare ill that cannot be made better with a bit of buttered bread and rich stew,” remarked their host. “Even a broken heart will yield for a time to good food and drink, I’ve heard.”
Cyrus thought about that, sipping at the wine from a simple clay mug. He thought of Veridia, and wondered if she was thinking of him. Panic welled up in his chest; he raised the mug to his lips again, but then set it down. Gregory looked at him shrewdly.
“Does it?” he asked.
“You’ve been misinformed,” replied Cyrus shortly. “But then, priests of the Ecclesia wouldn’t know about broken hearts from their own experience, would they? Your only love is God the Father.”
The broad cleric sighed softly and rubbed at his short, brown beard. “I’m afraid a priest can have his heart broken as well, Professor,” he said after a short pause. “God can be just as fickle as a woman, if you let Him. It broke my heart to confront the reality that I had loved and trusted a thing that existed only in my own frail desire for it to be real.”
The two men eyed each other silently across the remains of their supper.
“Then you’ve had an awakening?” said Cyrus. “I’m afraid it doesn’t change the reality that you are a traitor to Uelland. You aided an invading enemy, and then escaped justice after you were captured in Hog Hurst. As a priest, you may once have had a moral justification that some people would recognize, though certainly I would not. But now you have nothing.”
Gregory looked steadily at Cyrus. “You are correct, Professor, that I have awakened to a new reality. You are also correct that I aided an enemy—without justice, and against my own countrymen. For this I am sorry and ashamed, and will one day make restitution, as best I can. And finally, you are correct that this makes me a traitor, by any legal definition—though it is also true that Bishop Wildrick has inflated my reputation to distract Queen Anne from his own dealings with the White Knights. But I’m afraid you are mistaken on one point.”
“What point is that?” asked Cyrus.
“I have gained everything,” he answered softly.
“Ash,” declared Cyrus. “You Advocates love to talk about Ash, but so far I’ve heard no coherent doctrine or theological principle. Theology is the difference between a gaggle of self-deluded mystics and a well-organized gaggle of self-deluded mystics. You’d better get to work on some letters to your distant congregations, Traitor.”
Gregory smiled. “I have no desire to imitate the forms of the Ecclesia’s scripture,” he answered. “Principles we have, and comradeship, and love. But writings will be needed too, in time. It was to begin those writings that I withdrew here—and to build a community that will continue them after me.”
“I look forward to reading the Sixth Testament, when it hits the printing presses of Green Bridge,” replied Cyrus. “In the meantime, I have some questions about Rolland Gorp, and I really must have those notes. He wanted me to have them, I’m told.”
“What are your questions?” asked Gregory.
“Was Rolly an Advocate of Ash?”
Gregory sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. “After a fashion,” he answered finally. “He shared our principles and our love for Her. He did not give himself to our ministry, but chose instead to do other tasks that were necessary.”
“Other tasks?” demanded Cyrus. “What were they, and why were they necessary?”
“I believe you already know of his tasks,” replied the priest. “It was his work with Professor Pie that occupied Mr. Gorp’s faith.”
Cyrus leaned forward. “But that mathematics was some obscure research into formulas given to them by Snugg!” he exclaimed. “Are you telling me you view a trading company’s profit and loss sheets as a source of divine truth? That’s absurd, even measured by the extremely low standards of your competition in the Ecclesia.”
“Rolly’s work had nothing to do with Snugg’s account books,” answered Gregory quietly. “It had everything to do with Ash, and her adversary.”
“Is Pie one of yours? Or—was he?”
Gregory nodded. “He was. I do not know where Professor Pie is now, so I don’t know if the past or present tense is appropriate.”
Cyrus thought carefully. Gregory might be a cultist, but he had a sharp mind.
“Do you know why Rolly was killed?”
“I suspect,” answered the churchman carefully. “I do not know. The Advocates are new to the world, Professor, but already we have adversaries. The Ecclesia is one, and they are certainly capable of murder. But we have other opponents. Our own principles have an inverse, and the inverse has an embodiment. It, like our own Ash, attracts followers who do its work.”
“What is this adversary?” asked Cyrus.
Gregory smiled. “You should know, Professor—you have already written about it.” He reached into his robe and withdrew a small, printed book. Cyrus saw, with surprise, that it was his own published translation of the Balthan transcriptions. Gregory flipped to a page near the back and read.
> …The priests took him into the temple at the center of the ruins, among the great making-places of the old ones. And they showed him the metal god, who would give him wisdom. When he came back from the temple, it was that he had been wealthier than any other man, and it was that he had known the secrets of the making from the old ones. But he was mad, and talked to people who no one else could see and walked through the farm fields and mud as if they were great roads.
“That’s nonsense,” Cyrus stated flatly. “It was nonsense when some ignorant peasant made it up, nonsense when Balthan first wrote it down, and nonsense when I translated it into Uellish.”
Gregory shook his head. “It only appears to be nonsense because it has been projected from oral into written thought, left to age for a millennium, and then translated—as well as could be hoped, Professor—from Old Brassen into modern Uellish. But it reflects an event that was objectively real for the oral storyteller, and is no less real for having been forced through two incompatible modes of thought before reaching your ears.”
Cyrus scoffed. “That passage describes outright magic, Gregory. A man visits a metal god, who changes reality for him alone while leaving him half-anchored in some other reality that everyone else perceives. It’s an allegory for greed and madness, not a description of actual events. Only a religious maniac would interpret it as actual history.”
“You only believe what you see,” said Gregory with a smile. “There’s a story in the Second Testament in which one of the prophet’s followers demands proof of a miracle of which others have told him. The prophet remonstrates the doubting man, saying: ‘You believe because you have seen; but blessed are they who have not seen, yet still believe.’” It’s a point about faith, of course. But this is where we part ways with the Ecclesia, Professor. Those who hear a story that makes no sense, but believe it because they want it to be true, are not blessed; they are foolish, and dangerous to themselves and others. In truth, the blessed are those who refuse to believe anything until their senses and their reason prove to them that it must be real.”
“Yet you would have me believe a thousand-year-old ghost story?” demanded Cyrus, incredulously.
“Not at the moment. You asked me if I suspected who killed Mr. Gorp, and I tell you that I think it was the tools of the Metal God—for reasons that, right now, would be incomprehensible to you. But I am prepared to give you one thing you asked for—and another that you have not asked for, but which will be food for your own perception and reason. Perhaps it will lead to comprehension.”
He stood up then and went to the door. Cyrus could hear low voices speaking, and then Gregory returned.
“One of my friends is bringing Mr. Gorp’s notes,” said Gregory. “While we wait—how is your wound now? Did my friends dress it well?”
Cyrus grimaced. “It feels like a Snorl is chewing on my rear end,” he answered ruefully.
“I’m so sorry. I’m afraid we have few natural analgesics. The mountains here contain none of the right herbs for that application.”
Cyrus tried a question that had been bothering him. “Bear. Or Brea. She’s an Advocate. Did you tell her to bring me here?”
Gregory shook his head. “I did not, but one of my friends did.” The door to their small chamber opened again, and a man came in carrying a stack of papers bound neatly with string. He wore a black doublet, and had shoulder-length brown hair and a neatly trimmed brown beard.
“I believe you have met my colleague, Victor Hogman, before,” continued Gregory.
“You again!” exclaimed Cyrus. “Are you following me around the Kingdom of Uelland?”
Mr. Hogman smiled. “I could ask the same of you, Professor Stoat. Indeed, it’s you who followed me here. After our encounter in Bramble Square, I left the city that very night to travel to Weisseberg and report to Gregory. I arrived two days ago. But I did ask Miss Borson to join your caravan and see to it you reached us safely—so perhaps the spirit of your accusation is correct. She was with us in Bramble Square that night as well, and knew Weisseberg from her childhood.”
Cyrus frowned. “‘Hogman.’ I’ve heard that name before. Albert Hogman was the chief Selectman in Hog Hurst.”
“My father,” confirmed Victor Hogman, with a pained look.
“Please excuse us, Victor?” asked Gregory. Hogman nodded politely and withdrew. Cyrus stared at the neat stack of papers in front of him; the top one, visible, had rows and columns of letters written on it. Indecipherable, of course—unless one had the cipher and the key.
“You may keep them, Professor, on one condition.”
“What’s that?” asked Cyrus suspiciously. “I’m not converting to your religion.”
Gregory smiled gently. “Nothing so futile as that. A coerced conversion is not a conversion. A man must choose his principles freely, right or wrong. I want you to take me to Green Bridge and deliver me to the authorities of justice.”
Cyrus stared at him, waiting for the punchline—but it did not come.
“Why?” he asked finally. “They’re going to try you, convict you, and then execute you in the most uncomfortable manner you can possibly imagine. Why would you walk into that?”
“Because it is right that I should be punished,” he answered. “Men and women in Hog Hurst died because of the help I gave to the White Knights. Victor was nearly one of them. But my punishment must be in Green Bridge, and it must be by the law of Queen Anne. A mob in some village along the way won’t do. You must promise to take me safely to Green Bridge as your prisoner.”
Cyrus shook his head. “You’re mad. You claim to have principles, but what you’re proposing is suicide. A man who loves life does not walk to his death.”
Gregory rose and pushed back his chair. Cyrus tried to stand up, but fell back heavily in his own chair as his right thigh refused to cooperate. Gregory circled around the table and helped him to his feet; Cyrus had to lean on him heavily.
“I told you also that I would give you something you did not ask for,” said his host. He looked directly into Cyrus’s eyes. “You are wounded. May I treat your wound?”
Cyrus blinked. “Your followers have already bound it and applied poultices. With any luck it won’t become infected, and I’ll be able to walk after a week or two. Well,” he added ruefully, giving the wooden leg a shake, “‘walk’ in a liberal sense of the word.”
He stopped talking and looked back at Gregory. The man was still standing close by.
“May I treat your wound?” he repeated.
Cyrus didn’t quite know what to say. “Yes, I suppose you may,” he answered eventually.
Gregory nodded gravely. “Please, be seated,” he said, laying the palm of his right hand gently on Cyrus’s forehead.
Cyrus was suddenly dizzy. He gasped, and his vision flickered. Darkness crept in around the edges of his sight, and the world started to change—as though he’d inhaled far too much Juju-jug smoke for one sitting, and reality had grown uncertain and fluid. He sat down heavily in the chair, not feeling any pain from the impact on the wound.
His eyes widened. He was not seeing a fat, deluded priest standing over him. He saw something else. She was bright, and she shone, and her hair was golden, and her face was beautiful beyond any words that he could summon forth, and her wings were made of fire. Her hand was still on his forehead, and he wanted it never to leave. A small, cunningly-crafted panel flipped open on her forearm, and there emerged from it a long injection needle, its barrel filled with some glowing, sparkling, golden liquid. Behind her, the world shifted, and he saw the branching web of choices, outcomes, and possibilities, all overlaid on top of each other. For a moment he saw his whole universe, and all the other ones as well.
Then he closed his eyes.
✽✽✽
He opened his eyes, and it was just Gregory. The priest had withdrawn his hand, and stood back several feet from where Cyrus sat. Gmork was standing nearby, his head level with Cyrus, wearing expression of concern and surprise.
Cyrus shook his head, trying to remember what he had seen. But it was gone, like a dream forgotten too soon. He looked around, then up at Gregory.
“I’m afraid I sat down and fell asleep for a moment,” he apologized. “The journey made me weary. But I feel fine now. You said you wanted to treat my wound? I hope that’s not a euphemism for something else.”
Gregory gave a small smile.
“Stand up, Professor,” he said.
Cyrus stood up.
“You must be tired,” continued Gregory. “There’s a man waiting in the hall who will take you to a bed where you may rest.”
Cyrus turned, still feeling a faint wash of un-reality. Knowing he was injured, he walked carefully to the door, placing one foot in front of the other. Left foot, right foot. Left foot, right foot.
“Don’t need anything else from you tonight, Gmork,” he said over his shoulder. “Stay out of trouble, or these people will serve you for breakfast.”
“Uh… boss…” said his assistant.
“Good night, Gmork,” replied Cyrus firmly. He reached the door, and went through, still walking carefully.
The man was waiting in the hall outside. He was tall and muscular, and dressed in a simple black robe. He had long black hair and his face was brutally handsome, but it was marred by a patchwork of scars. Cyrus thought he looked strikingly familiar, but put it down to his present fugue-like state.
“This way, Professor,” said the man politely in a deep baritone with a strange accent. He walked briskly down the hall, and Cyrus followed after him. They went up a flight of stairs to the second floor of the keep, and the man opened a door for him.
“We’ve made up your bed, Professor,” he announced, gesturing into a small bedroom lit with a single oil lamp. A wooden frame with a mattress and heavy blankets was its only furniture, but a small rug with a pair of soft slippers sat at its side. Cyrus’s pack had been placed carefully at the foot.
“Thank you, sir,” replied Cyrus. “May I know your name?”
The man smiled slightly. “Here I am called Brutus,” he answered.
“I trust I’ll see you at breakfast, Brutus.”
Brutus kept smiling. “Of course, Professor,” he said. And then he closed the door and Cyrus was left alone.
He walked over to the bed and sat down. He felt more tired than he’d ever felt in his life. He slipped out of the fur coat, hung it on the door, and put his feet into the slippers.
Then he looked down at the slippers. There were two feet in them.
He stood up again. Very carefully, he bent over, running his hands down his thighs, calves, and ankles. He touched his toes. Then he straightened up. He felt his right buttock; there was no pain. He removed his pants, and turned around to look at the flesh. There was no mark of injury. His flesh was whole. His leg proceeded down from his buttock, through a thigh, a knee, a calf, a shin, an ankle, and a foot, to the ground, just as it always had done—until that morning he’d awoken and found it wasn’t there anymore.
Cyrus concluded that he had finally gone irretrievably mad, and lay down to sleep it off.
✽✽✽
“I’ll take you to Green Bridge,” he said to Gregory at breakfast. Bear and Gmork sat nearby, watching him carefully.
“Thank you,” said Gregory.
“What did you do to me?” Cyrus asked. He didn’t feel he could inject any more detail into the question. There was no way to put words to what had happened.
“I treated your wound,” answered Gregory.
“You got carried away and put the whole leg back.”
Gregory shrugged slightly. “It’s all part of the idiom.”
They ate their porridge. Brutus took the bowls away, and Victor Hogman returned with milk and brown bread.
“What are you going to do in Green Bridge?” asked Cyrus.
“I am going to die,” answered Gregory.