The way out of Safirbai led out onto a cliff edge overlooking the Lionspine Mountains, except that Josh hadn’t been able to admire the view because when they came out it was dark. Northcrag’s men had built a massive scaffolding for hauling packages and supplies up the cliff, which the huldra were planning to tear it down, and leave a hoist and a pulley in place. This would be the only access to the northern exit, assuming they allowed any visitors at all in future.
The last Northcrag outpost consisted of a house and a stable at the bottom of the scaffold. They hadn't expected the huldra to come swarming down the cliff, and the Northcrag guards surrendered immediately.
The stable held two horses and a cart. Josh had expected himself and the two women to take the cart and continue onto Dendral, but this plan was delayed when it turned out that no-one knew how to harness the horses to it, including the huldra, who had retreated to the cavern on the cliff top the moment the sun rose above the horizon, and refused to venture outside in daylight. Josh could understand that. Almost all of them had been born in the village in the Undercaverns, and lived their whole lives underground, which made the surface world a terrifying place for them.
The grooms who normally worked in the stable had been escorted into Safirbai, to prevent them sending word of the takeover to Northcrag, and to give the huldra time to set up their own defences, at which point the huldra had declared they would be released. The huldra reluctantly agreed to let go of one stable boy early, on the understanding that he would remain with the party until Dendral, and not be given any chance to pass a message on to Northcrag.
Meanwhile, Lady Paleyne and Lady Alianne rifled through the possessions of the servants—also being held in Safirbai—looking for clothes they could wear to make them look less like noblewomen.
“We can’t openly ride on a busy road for half a day and then right into the capital so that every court toady can report on our movements to the very faction we hope to avoid,” Lady Paleyne explained. “Lady Alianne must be well guarded until the ceremony can take place, because they will be doing everything in their power to prevent it.”
According to her, Josh already looked like a peasant, and therefore didn't need a disguise, so all he had to do was supervise the hitching of the horses to the wagon, and make sure the stable boy didn’t run away.
The stable boy was ten, and his name was Lalf. Far from being scared of his circumstances, he scornfully rejected Josh’s offers of assistance, and appeared to be under the impression that his release had promoted him to a full groom. His small head was swelled with importance, and since he genuinely appeared to know what he was doing, Josh just hung around and practiced his staff work some more.
The staff’s magic was very clever. Once it had finished going over forms and stances, it started projecting images of opponents that only Josh could see, and even clacked and jolted in his hands whenever he connected with the illusions.
Josh had had one brief interview with Jofer, the father of Anatis and the maker of the staff. Jofur had turned the staff over in his hands, his face remote and sorrowful as Katofen relayed the life and eventual fate of his son. Once again Josh had offered the staff, but Jofer had shaken his head.
“I have no need nor want of this,” he had said. He spoke English with the same archaic inflection that the villagers of Haven had used. “I made it for love of my son, and my heart be full of joy that he held my love for him every day of his life. It hath served its purpose. Now it must go to another warrior, one who will walk a path of honour.” His eyes had found Josh’s, calm and serious and utterly compelling. “I entrust you with the staff of my son. Swear that you will protect the weak, seek the rights the wronged, and offer mercy where it is due.”
He wants me to be a hero, Josh had thought.
“I swear,” he had said. Because that’s what he wanted, too.
And the next time someone like Lady Paleyne tried to manipulate him into a morally wrong choice for the sake of political expediency he would have this vow, and the staff, to remind him of it.
When Lady Paleyne and Lady Alianne appeared Josh almost didn’t recognise them. They wore coarse woollen dresses and white bonnets, and he thought that Lady Paleyne had subtly altered their features with her illusion magic. They didn’t look like noble ladies, at any rate.
Perhaps this was why there ensued a brief argument between Lalf and Lady Paleyne over who would take the reigns of the cart, from which the latter emerged victorious. And then they were on the road to Dendral.
Josh spent his time going over everything the Queen had told him about Anthony Harrison, the supposed First Hero that no-one else had ever mentioned. He tried asking Lady Alianne and Lady Paleyne, and even Lalf, about him, but they all stared in puzzlement.
According to the Queen, Anthony Harrison had first appeared at the court of Celespire fifty years ago, and she steadfastly maintained he was the first of the heroes to arrive. Did she know where he had come from? Another land she had said. How did he get here? It never came up. How did she meet him? She had gone to court with several of her people to petition Queen Halina for aid in re-taking the Azure Cathedral. Anthony Harrison was the only one who had listened to the plight of the huldra, and he had eventually secured her an audience with Queen Halina. Reading between the lines, it sounded like there had been some flirtation between Harrison and the huldra Queen.
Had Harrison entered the Cathedral with the Seven Heroes? No, she said. It hadn’t just been the other Seven Heroes—he had arranged for a large force to sweep through the Cathedral to clear it of the infestation of crystal constructs. There had been soldiers and porters and cooks, and an entire camp full of support staff. Harrison had stayed in the camp, and managed the campaign from there. The Queen sounded approving of this, as if he had been the general of a real army, whereby endangering himself on the frontline would have been beneath his dignity.
Had he been at the Ceremony where Northcrag had betrayed the huldra? No, but he had been on another mission by then, and prior to the Ceremony had written to her with his congratulations, and promised to visit her once she was properly invested as the Queen of the Huldra.
What did she think had happened to him?
The Queen supposed, sadly, that he had been killed, for he would never have left her imprisoned by Northcrag for so long.
All of which gave Josh a lot of food for thought. There would still be people alive who remembered Celespire from those times, even if they would be seventy or older now. Some of them would be in Dendral. Would the Seven Heroes be there?
Come to think of it, everyone talked about their heroic deeds of the past, but what were the Heroes doing now that they were presumably old and retired? He asked his companions.
Lady Paleyne wasn’t speaking to him unless absolutely necessary, and Lady Alianne was abstracted with her own thoughts, so it was left to Lalf to give Josh the run down. He seemed as fascinated by the Seven Heroes as Josh himself. Partway through the conversation Josh caught Lady Paleyne and Lady Alianne exchanging glances and rolling their eyes, as if an obsession with the Heroes was one of those male things that women found inexplicable.
This was genuine research, not some kind of hero fixation, which Josh totally didn’t have.
Sir Owain was now the head of the Order of the Unyielding who, according to Lalf, were glorious knights dedicated to fighting the scourge. Josh remembered Sir Owain as the one who had purportedly had too much influence over King Rupern, leading a noblewoman to attempt to assassinate him. Josh had heard of the Unyielding too—they were the organisation Rob the Hedge Knight had told him to avoid at all costs.
Lafl moved onto Lady Selene, the only surviving mage, who he claimed had turned into moonlight. Or something. Josh was briefly confused by this description, until Lady Alianne, who had been distracted from her own thoughts by Lalf’s increasingly confusing explanations, lost patience.
“She is the founder of the Shining Light of the Moon, you ignorant child!" she exclaimed. "Just as Sir Owain is the founder of the Unyielding." To Josh, she explained, "The Shining Light is an all-female sect in the Dascene Mountains.”
So, Lady Selene got religion and retreated from everyday life, Josh thought.
Sir Wayland, heartbroken after Gwynifer’s death, had gone to live with the dwarves. Lord Shadow’s whereabouts were a mystery, but he was rumoured to materialise unexpectedly every so often and strike at enemies of the realm, before vanishing into the darkness for which he was named.
He sounded like another idiot roleplaying an assassin to Josh.
“What about Sir Doug?” Josh asked. The moth haunt had referred to him as merry soul with a giant heart.
Lalf had no information on him, and shrugged his thin shoulders.
It sounded like the only Hero still living in Dendral would be Sir Owain, and Josh had no desire whatsoever to seek him out. Still, he was sure there would be someone he could ask questions of.
Dendral was nestled at the base of the Lionspine Mountains, by a confluence of three rivers. South of the city the river meandered across a plateau of arable farmland, eventually arriving at the lake by Brackstone, before turning west and filtering into the eastern swamps by the sea.
They were approaching the city from the northeast, which Lady Paleyne said she hoped would make them less likely to be detected, and it had the added benefit of allowing them to see the whole city laid out in the valley below them. Like Brackstone, it was situated by a lake, but sprawled out in a semi-circle around the shore. Slender bridges spanned the three rivers feeding the lake, and from this height Josh could see the concentric circles created by the remnants of old city walls, which the city had spilled over and outgrown. It glimmered with summer heat haze, and lured Josh onwards with the promise of soft mattresses, cotton sheets, and as much food as he could eat.
“We will go straight to Sir Ernil,” Lady Paleyne declared, as the cart made it slow, jolting way down the pass. The road was wide, and well-maintained, but it was full of slow-moving traffic, and Josh had been deputised to hang onto the brake lever in case they needed to stop in a hurry.
He had been surprised that carts had brakes, but apparently they didn’t stop moving just because the horse did. Lalf, who had child’s unwavering conviction of the proper order of things, obviously felt he should have been deputised to this role, and watched Josh with stern distrust to make sure he did it right.
“Who is Sir Ernil?” Josh asked.
“He is the Duchess of Kaldermere’s agent in Dendral. It is his influence which has secured a…” Lady Paleyne hesitated and glanced around to make sure no-one else on the road was in earshot, “…you-know-what for my lady.”
Josh had no wish to be dragged into more intrigue. He was planning to abandon the women and the cart as soon as he could, and find an inn for the night that would be entirely free of manipulative and self-entitled noblewomen.
He had previously dismissed the huldra as lacking in material wealth, but while taking over the city they had discovered and plundered a chest full of a full month’s pay for the entire Northcrag garrison. They had offered Josh a small purse filled with silver coins, and even a couple of gold ones. It was enough to keep him solvent for at least six months, he judged.
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He had no need of Lady Paleyne or her patronage, but decided he wouldn't announce that until after they had arrived at the city.
“We will stay anonymously with Sir Ernil, my lady,” Lady Paleyne told Lady Alianne. “I hope that Bethca has been able to stay sequestered in Brackstone, and has been able to maintain the pretence of your illness all this time. We will arrange for a company of knights to escort her to Dendral, disguised as you. They will be primed and ready to expect interference, but in the meantime you will be able to complete your preparations for the transfer ceremony here in secret.”
“But what about Father Lomer?” Lady Alianne protested. “He is supposed to instruct me.”
Father Lomer, Josh recalled, was the self-important priest who had been travelling with Lady Alianne when he had encountered them at the inn in High Howe.
“Another priest must be found, my lady,” Lady Paleyne said briskly. “Those of the Church who are sympathetic with our goals are thin on the ground, but I am confident there must be at least one in Dendral who can be bought.”
“Bribe a priest?” Lady Alianne exclaimed, scandalised. “I would not want such a creature anywhere near me! I want Father Lomer!”
Lady Paleyne supressed a grimace.
“Of course, my lady. My sincere apologies. Perhaps Sir Ernil will have a suggestion as to how that might be accomplished.”
The Church of the Common Covenant was another organisation Josh was supposed to avoid, but along the road today he had noticed their churches and shrines were everywhere, replacing those of the Paragon, which had been more common in the south.
Once inside the city, Josh asked his companions the sort of unobtrusive questions any first-time visitor might have, which gave him some idea of the general layout, and areas to avoid. He decided to leave the cart once they got closer to the city centre, which would put him near an area where a lot of craftworkers and tradesmen lived, people who would be inclined less towards crime and more towards frugality, which ideally would mean plenty of cheap, clean accommodation.
Preferably without bed bugs.
All that went straight out of Josh’s head when he suddenly smelled pizza.
He sat bolt upright and turned his head this way and that, searching for the source of the scent. There! A woman with a food cart on the side of the road doing things with flatbreads and cheese.
“I need to check something,” he said, and leaped out of the cart.
Closer to, he saw that the woman wasn’t exactly making pizza. It was a flatbread, soft and slightly puffy, just like a perfect pizza base should be, with a tomato sauce and melted cheese topping, but to serve it she rolled it up into a tube and handed it to him.
Josh bit down, not caring that the hot tomato sauce burned the roof of his mouth. He moaned. It was delicious. The woman smiled to see him enjoying her wares, but then her eyes slide past him, and her smile morphed into a smirk.
Josh turned around to see Lalf peering curiously at the pizza stand, and behind him was Lady Paleyne, who had her arms crossed and an incredulous expression on her face.
Clearly not a woman who understood the importance of pizza.
“Would you like one too?” Josh asked Lalf, who nodded with the wide hopeless eyes of an underfed orphan.
Josh knew perfectly well that he was neither—on the journey Lalf had revealed the existence of seven siblings and a mam and dad somewhere back in the Lionspine Mountains, and he had eaten his way through six slices of bread and cheese on the journey down. Still, Josh could sympathise with a fellow pizza enthusiast, so he bought a second one for Lalf.
“Is this really the time to be stuffing your face?” Lady Paleyne demanded.
Josh stopped midchew, and swallowed hastily.
“Er … yes?”
There was always time for pizza. It was a meal that could be eaten any time of the day or night, hot or cold. It was also his first pizza in a month, and Lady Paleyne wanted to ruin it by having an argument. He might as well get it over and done with once and for all.
“After this, I’m going to find an inn,” he said.
“Oh, are you now?”
Josh brushed past her and went back to the cart. He pulled out all his things, swinging the pack onto his shoulder and the bow over the other shoulder, all the while juggling the pizza roll from hand to hand, which was now leaking oil and tomato sauce. Maybe while the citizens of Dendral were inventing pizza they should have invented cardboard takeaway boxes at the same time.
Lady Paleyne went to say something, then noticed Lalf crowding next to her skirts, with a string of melted cheese dripping from his pizza roll.
She exclaimed in annoyance, and stepped to the side.
Lady Alianne had been left holding the reigns, and when she turned around and realised Josh had unloaded his things, she exclaimed, “Pally, he can’t leave! What if he tells everyone I’m here?”
“I’m not planning to tell anyone anything,” Josh said firmly. “I have no interest in your conspiracies. I only got dragged into this because of the library thing, and the rest of it has got nothing to do with me whatsoever.”
“Pally, stop him!” Lady Alianne cried.
Lady Paleyne could prevent him leaving if she used her trick to render people unconscious. Josh eyed her warily, and she met his gaze with a faint, calculating smile, as if she knew what he was thinking, but then she shook her head.
“My lady, if you would be guided by me, we should let him go. He has as much to lose as we do by revealing the events of the past few days.”
Her eye fell on the staff, and Josh took her meaning. He carried several powerful magical items, and if the officials and nobles here were anything like the sergeant at the border post, he might find them confiscated, or even stolen. On top of that, Lady Paleyne knew he had magic.
Anyone could cast small spells from spell scrolls, but while in the huldra village, Lady Paleyne had informed him that the Hide spell he used was not some minor cantrip, as he had first thought. It required enough magical force that only someone with the true potential to become a mage would be capable of casting it. And Rob the Hedge Knight had told him that anyone discovered to have that sort of potential would immediately be press-ganged into working for the nobility, something else Josh wanted to avoid.
“Very well then,” Lady Alianne said. She nodded regally at Josh. “You may go. And say nothing of my business, or else it will go ill for you!”
Josh immediately had the overwhelming urge to stand up on the cart and shout out to everyone that here was Lady Alianne, coming to get her Philosopher’s Stone, but he restrained himself.
Once the cart was out of sight, he finished his pizza roll in peace, and then bought another for good measure.
Where had the idea for pizza come from? It was a twentieth century invention and everything here, like most fantasy settings, was a blend of medieval and Renaissance culture. Had the locals invented pizza separately?
The Heroes could have introduced the idea. Even if they hadn’t, the rest of the outlanders would have. Maybe it had been re-invented at Celespire and then the idea got carried north with the Celespiran refugees.
What other Earth things had been introduced to Six Spires?
Josh, you colossal idiot, he thought. Guns! Where were the guns?
Varian and Frenxy had had American accents, which suggested at least a proportion of the outlanders were from North America. And out of a thousand people, there was bound to be at least one American who knew enough about how guns worked to reproduce them in Six Spires. They’d had twenty years to do so.
So why were there no guns? Or was it a secret technology that only outlanders had access to? Maybe that was another reason a few hundred scourge could hold Celespire against the armies of King Rupern.
Come to think of it, they ought to at least to have cannons, but Josh hadn’t seen any cannon emplacements at Brackstone.
Another mystery to investigate when he had the time.
For the rest of today, though, he planned to have a rest, and the next few days would be devoted to researching his spells, improving his feather-making abilities, and finding ways to combine them that would give him more combat utility.
The inn he found was comfortable, served good food, and was bed-bug free. He made a note to tour local inns and discreetly discover if they would be interested in pest control services, the only difficulty being that he could currently only do one bed at a time, otherwise he was in danger of magically exhausting himself.
Over the next week, he kept himself busy.
He found a lodging house to stay in. He checked on the book moths, then wrote out several copies of his Babel the Pig story, and used them to coax the moths into a demi-john that was more than twice the size of the bottle. At some point the swarm would get too big to carry around, so he would need to decide what to do with it sooner or later, but he put that off for another day.
He made more tiny spell books for his own personal use, and ensured that he always had multiple copies of his spells secreted about his clothing, along with a paper utility set, rather like a Swiss army knife, with a Stone spell to harden it at need.
He bought sacks stuffed with feathers from the market, and practiced crafting items with them—necklaces, headdresses, belts, plumes for hats, and even a waistcoat covered in hundreds of tiny feathers so that it resembled iridescent chainmail. If he could make feathers turn hard, using the Stone spell or something similar, he would be able to make himself feather armour.
He managed to sell some of his creations, particularly the feathers, which had been enchanted to glow. He told the market vendors it was merely a cantrip, not something he could cast innately, and hoped that would be enough to disguise him as someone who was magically inclined.
He gained a whole level of unapplied experience from all the crafting he was doing, and the achievements it gave, which brought him to a projected level of 14. He would continue to stay under level 10 for now, though, apply the experience when he was ready.
He experimented with the five druid spells, finally learning how to change some of the parameters, so that he could enlarge or reduce the area of effect of the Heat spell, and make it more or less intense. Once he was able to do that with Heat, he was able to apply that to Chi Siphon and Alarm. He learned how to make all the spells last for shorter or longer time periods, although casting an Alarm that would stay up for a full night left him utterly drained.
He resolved to cast it on a nightly basis to increase his Chi.
The Stone spell was one that resisted modification the most, but he did manage to get it to work on objects that were connected to each other, instead of just the same object, which meant he could potentially use it on a suit of armour made from feathers. When he tested it on his feather waistcoat, he found that, like the Alarm spell, it exhausted him enough that he wouldn’t be able to cast anything else for an hour, by which point the Stone effect would have run out. But when it was on, the feathers overlapped and acted like scales, and served to resist the point of his knife when he stabbed with full force, even if they didn’t stop it completely.
He thought it had required extra energy was because he was enchanting multiple items connected together, not one single item, so he resolved to experiment more with the spell in order to make it more efficient in terms of Chi.
He experimented a little with the Water spell, and worked out that it condensed water out of the air, rather than creating it. It might have some utility in a desert if he was desperate for water, or in reducing the humidity of a room, but otherwise he couldn’t see a combat use for it. It took several minutes for the water to form, which meant he couldn’t just instantly cast it underfoot to make people slip, and he would risk making his own footing treacherous at the same time.
Eventually he realised how to modify it so he could use it to pull the moisture out of wood, which would make it easier to build a campfire in damp conditions. His experiences in the druid woodland had proved just how useful that would be, and Water cost less to cast than a Heat spell that would do the same thing.
He practiced daily with the staff and although he was still a novice, at least he now had some idea of how to defend himself against basic attacks. He attended the mandatory weapons training for locals and practiced his archery.
He worked hard at fitting in, listening to the word choice and accents of the locals, and mimicking it as closely as he could. The lower someone’s social class was, and the more countrified they were, the more likely they were to use older forms of English, like the Havenites, but city folk prided themselves on what they felt was a more modern way of speaking, and Josh did his best to imitate them.
He watched the actions of nobles from afar—the way they bowed to each other, the gestures they used when they spoke, so that he could imitate them as well, if he had to, but he stayed well back from anyone with fancy clothing. He didn’t want to get outed as a mage.
All this kept him very busy.
He had several vivid nightmares of falling from the bridge, or of watching Zogan fall from the bridge, and a few involving the Anatis’s parents demanding he give back the staff, but these felt like the normal kind of coping nightmares, and they gradually faded as the week went on.
Josh wouldn’t have called himself happy, exactly, because the worry of what was happening on Earth, and how his parents and Ben would be feeling, was always niggling away at the back of his mind, a permanent ache he couldn’t ease.
But there were parts of his days that he enjoyed. He was getting better at everything he set his hand to, whether it was curling and glueing feathers into artistic patterns, or putting an arrow into a bullseye, or casting stronger versions of his five druid spells. He was getting regular doses of experience, achievements and attribute points, and much as he tried not to let it affect him, it was satisfying in a way that only progression in a game could be. He was also fitter and stronger than he had ever been in his life, even when he’d been at school and playing lots of football.
The only downside was that he was lonely. There was no-one who knew him, or any of the things he’d been through, or with whom he had a common heritage. He had found a decent boarding house and exchanged daily conversations with the woman who ran it, and the other lodgers, and he was fitting in as best he could, but it wasn’t the same.
He asked for directions to Sir Ernil’s house to check up on Lalf, and make sure he was being treated well. Josh was strongly of the opinion that Lalf ought to be in school, but child labour was a thing here, and it wasn’t as if Josh could overset an entire social order simply to suit his own cultural beliefs. As far as he could see, Lalf was relishing his new employment, so he quietly retreated.
He wrote a letter to the Abbot of High Howe Priory with such news as could be safely committed to paper, and enclosed one for Goodwife Benton, asking the Abbot to pass it on if he knew of anyone travelling south who might go near Haven. He would have written one to Katofen too, if he’d had any way of getting it delivered, but he’d not heard anyone on the street talking about the revolution that had taken place in the Azure Cathedral, or any mention of the huldra at all.
At the end of the week, once he’d finished his preparations, Josh was ready to start investigating the Dreamer.