When Death’s baleful hand,
Lies heavy on heart and soul,
Summon all of thy strength,
And dream the dream of life.
—Abbess Halimer, Cautions & Aphorisms
The light of the day was fading through shades of rose and grey as Corlek Ondene made his way up Baraskel Hill by way of the old Treemonk’s path. The fresh smell of new leaves and burgeoning flowers hung in the cool air, and early blossom lay in small drifts against low bushes or scattered across the simple wooden benches that he passed every twenty paces. This was a place of communion and devotion, yet as Corlek walked through the scented stillness his thoughts kept straying to the letter which he carried in one of his robes inner pockets. A four-year old letter, which had reached him three years ago as he lay shivering with fever in an ocean-lashed tower out on the westernmost edge of the Stormbreaker Isles.
In the letter his elder brother, Rhanye, had written of their father’s tragic death in a boating accident at the mouth of Sejeend’s harbour. After that had come a short account of how the Emperor’s ministers then found a way to rescind the family’s right to their manor and estate (which was later bestowed on an un-named court favourite). However, the Emperor insisted that his mother and brother be allowed to reside in the old summer house and receive an adequate annual stipend ‘as a measure of the crown’s unfailing generosity…’
Corlek smiled bleakly as he trudged on, easily able to imagine Rhanye speaking those words with unrestrained sarcasm. The letter went on to reassure Corlek that despite their reduced circumstances all was well, and ended with the words — ‘In the six long years since your unjust exile, not a week has passed without our giving prayers and offerings at the Earthmother shrine in Drum Park. You are always in our thoughts, brother. May the Light be with you…’
Through his robe he patted the shape of the letter, its every word graven into his memory by the hundred or more times he had read it these last three years. During the latter days of his mercenary wanderings every sentence had become a small treasure, a fragment of the life he had abandoned a decade ago. Yet nowhere in the letter had Rhanye mentioned the reason for Corlek’s mad flight from Sejeend and the lands of the Empire because, Corlek knew, his mother would have read it before its despatch.
It would have been improper to mention that a young knight newly raised up to the Iron Guard, the Imperial bodyguard, had dishonoured the Emperor’s own daughter, would it not, mother? he thought. Especially when that young knight was and is your own son…
It was getting dark beneath the trees that sheltered the path but there was light up ahead. Moments later the ground levelled out as Corlek emerged at the cleared, open crest of the hill, a flat, grassy area softly lit by a pair of glass-chaliced oil lamps on ornate stands. Dominating the clearing was a fountain shrine dedicated to the spirit of the divine Emperor Tauric I, the liberator of Sejeend who gave his life in the final struggle to vanquish the Lord of Twilight. Standing over a shell-like bowl was a pale marble statue of the boy-emperor, hands holding aloft a banner while his feet bore down on the back of a five-headed, reptilian beast from whose fanged jaws water poured. But there was a finger-length crack in the fountain’s bowl, an old one by the long stripe of green mould on the underside and the channel worn into the ground by the leaking water. In the lamplight, the rivulet looked almost black as it trickled away down the other, steeper side of Baraskel Hill, beside the curving rack of worn, wooden steps.
Corlek stood by the fountain, one hand trailing in the cold water, listening to breezes sigh through the trees and inhaling the sweet fragrances they brought. But his mind was full of memories of Lyndil, the Emperor’s daughter whose beauty and grace had stolen his heart and his mind and shackled all his senses. The Emperor’s fury on discovering their dalliance had been such that Corlek was advised by one of his father’s friends to flee the capital or face charges of treason followed by a certain death.
But now Magramon was dead, and his body was interred in the royal vaults on the Isle of Remembrance. Looking southwards across the outer estates of the city, he could make out the lanterns of the burial grove by Drum Park. It was a man-made hill amid the city, but was called the Isle of Remembrance by the Earthmother priestesses nevertheless. With night now encroaching, a carpet of lights was beginning to spread through the streets and districts as porch lamps and street cressets were lit. Suddenly he laughed, full of the belief that he was on the verge of new beginnings, new hope and a new life. All that remained was to seek out his mother and brother and see what might be salvaged from the old.
He followed the wooden stairs downward, alongside the leaking water which veered away near the foot, disappearing into a bushy copse. With the hill behind him, Corlek hurried along a log-surfaced road with small, hedge-bordered fields to either side as he headed towards a slow-winding river called the Deinlok. Beyond it lay the northern districts of Sejeend and the former estate of the Ondene family. As he neared the substantial bridge that crossed it at this point, he had to pause as a caravan of ten or more horse-drawn wagons coming from the north rumbled across it. He guessed that they must be carrying the first harvest from the rich fields of eastern Khatris. The impact of horses’ hooves and iron-rimmed wheels passing over heavy planking combined to create a mighty din and as the last rolled onto the bridge Corlek tugged the wide brim of his hat a little lower, shouldered his travelling sack and followed close behind. Half way across, he passed a night-torch man hauling a little cart from which a lamp swung and a folded ladder jutted. Gruff nods were exchanged as the man stopped by an empty iron bracket and went about his business. At this ordinary sight Corlek felt a sense of certainty that he was back where he belonged.
“Back to civilisation,” he whispered to himself as he reached the other bank of the Deinlok.
Rather than follow the wagons uphill into the northern urbs, he ducked right along a grassy riverside track. In darkness he hurried, led by childhood memories which told him that before long he would come to a great, tilted kingsgold tree in whose bark he and Rhanye had carved their initials far back in their youth. At a bend in the river he paused to light a small, shuttered lamp then looked about him — sure enough, there in the undergrowth was a leaning tree. The initials were still there, if a little higher.
Hanging the lamp at his waist, he tugged on his gauntlets and began tearing away a screen of dogthorn and winding grass, searching for the flat stones and split logs they had laid down over the boggy ground which blocked the way to the eastern boundary of the Ondene estate. Bushes and saplings had taken root but the stones were still there, providing a path for him to follow. But when he emerged a little while later from the trees, muddy and scratched, he was confronted by a tall, heavy pallisade rather than the flowering fences which had once served as an enclosure for the servants’ huts. Following it round to the right, he saw where it joined the old west wall which was a combination wood, turf and slate — eleven paces along from there he crouched down behind a clump of bushes and found his secret entrance, a small section of the wooden surface which fell inwards after several moments of determined pushing. As he crawled into the short, root-fringed tunnel on hands and knees, he laughed quietly as he imagined the surprise on his mother and brother’s faces when they opened the door to him.
The lamplight showed the square wooden framework of the hatch that opened on the slanted earthwork beyond the wall. It took a while to push it open against all the grass rootless which had woven together down the years but once they began tearing apart at one corner he was soon through. He then turned round and went back to put the log section back in place before backing out and fitting the grass-covered one into its square hole.
Lights were burning in some of the servant cottages and he could hear voices talking as he crept northwards to the old coppice beyond which the summerhouse lay. Skirting the trees he used the bushy undergrowth for cover yet when he pushed his way out of the foliage on the other side he thought for a moment that he had lost his way. Instead of a two-storey house with a small greenhouse, where was only dark, empty ground leading to a slight rise to the bush-bordered gardens stretching away to the lamplit walls and bright windows of the high manor. But he knew that from the balcony over the manor’s main entrance you could look straight down at the seated arbour at the rear of the summerhouse so this was were it had to be….
A ghastly fear rose up in him and heedless of any observer he opened the shutters of his lamp and stumbled across the bare, hard ground, searching….
“Stand where you are, ser! — and put out your light…” came a man’s voice from the dark behind him.
He whirled on the spot, one hand reaching for his sword….then he froze when he saw the spear waiting poised about two feet away, aimed at his throat.
“The lamp,” growled the spearman. “Put it out.”
As he did as he was told, he saw that the other man carried a hooded lamp on a chain about his chest. Faint glimmers highlighted the spear’s wooden shaft and the dark iron of its tapering point.
“Who are you?” the man said. “Why are you trespassing?”
But Corlek was full of panicky foreboding.
“Ser,” he said. “I beg you, please tell me what happened to the summerhouse….it used to stand on this very spot…”
“How….” the man began, then set his spear aside as he raised up his lamp to shine in Corlek’s face. There was a gasp.
“Master Corlek!”
The man turned the lamp towards himself and Corlek immediately recognised him as Rugal, the Ondene’s stablemaster. But his ten-year old memories were confounded by what he saw — once a tall, vigorous man, Rugal was now gaunt and stooped, black hair gone grey and long while his eyes looked watery and full of pain and fear.
“Rugal — what happened?”
The older man suddenly gave him a grim, piercing stare.
“Can’t you smell it, young master?” he said. “Breathe in deep.”
Almost against his will he did so and found that he could smell something, a faint charred odour, like old ashes…
“The summerhouse….burned down?…”
“Caught fire like a book in a furnace,” Rugal said. “When the alarm was raised, I rushed through the coppice with everyone else, thinking to help your brother and the Lady Ondene but the flames….they were everywhere, great sheet of them roaring up the outside of every wall…”
“No, by the Void, no,” Corlek groaned.
Rugal turned and wandered off a few steps, as if seeing and reliving it all again.
“My clothes were smoking the heat was so terrible — it drove us back. There was no water nearby, except for the well up behind the great house.” A few steps and he was back at Corlek’s side. “But there was nobody coming running from it to help. No, they were all out on their balcony, watching.”
Corlek felt hollow and bereft, his legs trembling and weak. “Was anything recovered… anything…”
“Nothing left but burned ashes and cracked stones,” Rugal said in a hoarse voice, leaning on his spear. “Them up at the house wouldn’t have a memorial stone on the grounds, and they offered nothing towards the cost of one. But I was having none of that…” He suddenly began walking towards the coppice. “Come this way, young master. You’ll be wanting to see it.”
Stunned by the terrible news, Corlek stumbled after him in the darkness, following the gleams of his hooded lamp through the night and back into the dense foliage of the coppice. Rugal led him into its heart where the oldest trees grew, safe from cutting, and behind a screen of vines and dog-ivy he opened the lamp’s shutter a good way and held it higher for Corlek to see.
In some past year lightning had struck one of the elder trees, leaving it a stump from which smaller limbs had sprouted. The trunk itself had later been shaped by a wood carver, whittled into a finely detailed sculpture of leaves and berries and entwining vines, in the midst of which were the faces of Corlek’s mother and brother, eyes closed but smiling as if in peace. Below their images three small, tiered shelves had been carved into the wood, each one bearing a number of thimble-sized votive candles. Rainwater had gathered in each one’s tiny flame-melted cavity.
As he reached out to touch the beautifully rendered faces, the tears came at last, silently in the silence.
No family, no bodies, no bones, and no graves, he thought emptily. No home, no hope…
“Nothing left but my name,” he murmured.
“And your honour, young master,” said Rugal. “And the skill of your hand and the sharpness of your eye. And the path that the Earthmother is making for you.”
Corlek felt a hot tear trickle down his cheek.
“You’re still a believer, then, Rugal.”
“That I am, master Corlek. In the liturgy of the Mother it says ‘Great sorrow is preparation for great joy’, and I believe that is true.”
“I envy you,” he said, then paused as a faint pattering and the quivering of leaves announced a passing shower. Taking off his hat he raised his face to the cold raindrops for a moment or two before letting Rugal lead him out of the coppice. The old servant closed his lamp’s aperture down to a gleam, just enough to show the way back to the secret exit in the palisade earthwork. When Corlek realised where they were going, a certain realisation roused him from grief.
“You knew,” he said. “You knew about our hidden door.”
Rugal chuckled in the darkness. “Of course, and it was me who planted those bushes on either side of the wall. Thought an escape hole might come in handy…”
Nearing the wall they both fell silent and moved in a stealthy crouch. At the concealed hatch Rugal knelt to tug it loose he whispered to Corlek an address and a name.
“They are old friends of my family,” he said. “Tell them you were sent by Father Wolf, young master, and they will keep you safe and fed for a time. Then we’ll find somewhere safe outside Sejeend for you to go, though when Ilgarion is crowned peace will become a rare commodity and nowhere will be safe.”
“What do you mean?” Corlek said.
“You may not have heard but in the last week those fanatical Carver-worshipping Mogaun routed Mantinor’s largest army. And what with that Carver prophet uniting the Jefren templarchies…”
Corlek shook his head, having only heard vague rumours about the threat which Carver worship-dominated Anghatan posed to Eastern Honjir, which had been an Imperial protectorate for nearly fifty years. But he had found that difficult to take seriously since the Nagira mountains lay between the two countries.
Next to him, the grassy hatch came away in Rugal’s hands and Corlek crouched down to crawl through, pausing to look back at the old servant.
“Thank you, Rugal — thank you for kindness and for the shrine. It was….more than fitting….”
“I would have done more, had it been possible, master Corlek. Now, I wish you good health and a long life, both of which you are more likely to find someplace other than in this city. That is my advice, which I am sure you’ll not be taking.”
Corlek gave a bleak smile, then said: “Perhaps I will, Rugal, but for the moment tell me the name of the people who own the estate now, the people who watched my mother and brother burn.”
Rugal hesitated and Corlek waited. Then the old man leaned in close.
“They are the dor-Galyn, a powerful family and close favourites of Crown Prince Ilgarion. Their eldest son was recently sent up to the Iron Guard as a captain.” He place the grass plug side down by the gap in the earthwork. “Have a care, young master. May the Light reveal your path.”
As Corlek moved into the dimness he heard the hatch thud into place, plunging him into utter darkness. A moment later he pushed open the log section on the other side, crawled out and wiped his muddy hands on his equally muddy robe, then replaced the log door. Leaning against the wall he stared into blackness for long moments, then sighed and pushed through the bushy undergrowth, westward away from the estate. Nearby was a road that led into the commercial district of Sejeend’s north bank. He thought of the address and name Rugal had entrusted him with….then lingered on that other name.
Dor-Galyn, he thought. I need to know more about them…