Bear Knight, page 11
“A secret I’ve tried to show you, my friend.” Shan cocks his head and offers me a look of pity. “That I am not from this land.”
The door slams closed behind me. Shan is gone. Darkness has me.
I am lost.
19
CONNOR
KELEDEV
SKY HARBOR
Lee said the late slack tide would come during the first watch of evening, four ticks after they’d received the mystery woman’s message. They spent the time getting settled in the house the Assembly had arranged for them.
Settled.
Connor disliked the word. He’d never intended to spend more than a few ticks in Sky Harbor. With the provisions in the house—cured ham in the cupboard, linens for bath and bed stacked in his wardrobes—the Prime Council seemed intent on keeping him and Lee for a month.
Clothes hung in the wardrobe as well. Connor felt the sleeve of a yellow silk tunic, then frowned and drew out a shirt of blue-dyed wool instead. He laid it out on the bed with a set of leather trousers before taking his turn at the bath. When they’d arrived, Lee had walked straight to the hearth to claim the first pail of hot water. Connor doubted he would have prevailed had he tried to intervene.
When the two passed each other in the passage outside their rooms, Connor saw Lee had chosen silk. The smoother fabric suited him, but he found the color scheme bracing. “Stripes?”
“Lines,” Lee said, “on the uniform of my former life. It seems our hosts remembered. Two vertical lines on the upper portion, one blue and one amber, on a crimson field to represent the two texts of the Sacred Scrolls.” He waved his hand over the lower half, a dizzying blend of silver, green, brown, and every other color Connor might think of. “The waving horizontal lines of the lower half represent the thousands of other texts the scribes have preserved.”
“You thought this was the perfect mode of dress for this evening’s encounter?”
“Of course.” Lee looked Connor over with a frown, blinking because he had not yet donned his spectacles after his bath. “This is a secret meeting, Connor. At least one of us should blend in.”
By the time the two began their walk to the harbor, the sun had sunk behind a southward branch of the White Ridge Mountains. The lamplighters moved through the lower city, dotting the roads and houses with lights. Looking east, Connor saw matching lights in the sky. They looked smaller than the lamp flames, yet he knew from what Lee had told him about the airships that they were much larger—an ever-present danger to the passengers. “What do they hope to see at night?” he asked, still gazing upward.
“They hope to see nothing. Zel says they pray through every tick and watch that they’ll see nothing at all.”
A good answer.
The failing daylight did not dim the traffic on the high roads where they walked. But fewer wagons and horses passed beneath them. Connor tapped Lee’s arm and pointed at a stairway leading down. “We should walk the gravel below. There’s more room.”
“We cannot. To walk there without packs or horses is an impropriety. The locals have a word for it, a sort of insult. Lewaker, meaning low walker—one who walks the low road unburdened. It also means one who carries an imaginary burden.”
Lewaker. Connor narrowed his eyes. “The Assembly guard used that term with me earlier.”
“Yes he did. And I said nothing about it. If I’d let your delicate sensibilities become offended, you’d have only prolonged the argument.”
“Delicate what? That’s absurd. I never—”
Lee raised an eyebrow.
Connor frowned. “Yes. I see what you did there. Well done. Two points for the fisher-scribe. But what did the guard mean by such an insult?”
“To many in Sky Harbor, all lightraiders are lewakers. They believe the Order shows a lack of faith in the Rescuer’s ability to save those whom he desires to save by trying to do the work for him. I’d guess such folk also accuse the stormwatchers of lacking faith in the protection of his barriers.”
A similar thought about the stormwatchers’ faith had crossed Connor’s mind earlier, and he did not want to be on the side of those who scorned the Order. He slowed. “The two are not the same.”
“Perhaps not.” Lee sharply tilted his head, signaling him to keep up. “Or perhaps it’s a question worth pondering.”
A long walk still awaited them once they’d descended into the harbor plaza. According to Lee, the high roads that formed a semicircle around the Second Hall were built at the exact distance necessary to keep their shadows from ever darkening the high stained glass windows beneath its dome. Those windows glowed with light from inside, bringing life to scenes from the Rescuer’s time on Dastan and others from the early days of creation.
“Are they in there?” Connor asked. “The councilors, I mean.”
“Not all at this hour, but a dozen or more at least. Always talking. Ever debating. The Assembly never sleeps.”
Connor made for the main steps of the Second Hall, but Lee steered him toward a smaller door in the low outer circle of the building. “The Archive has its own entrance from the plaza. Besides, the guard who insulted you earlier won’t be in there. His shift ended hours ago.”
“I never said I was eager to confront that guard.”
“You didn’t have to.”
They passed through an outer door into a small chamber where another door waited. Lee held a finger to his lips. The second door opened upon a scriptorium. Scribes wearing the same colorful tunics as Lee sat on high stools at rows of canted desks, scratching away on parchments with feather quills. Inkwells hung from posts spaced evenly among the rows.
Connor watched a worker climb down from her stool and walk twenty paces to recharge her pen. “Is this some kind of discipline or sacrifice,” he whispered, “to make the scribes slog all that way for ink?”
Lee did not answer until they’d entered a small antechamber, where other scribes chatted and flexed their fingers. “That is often suggested. Yes. Especially by new recruits. But there is a practical purpose. The long walk allows the ink to settle on the quill so that the lines of script are perfect. No splatters or spills.”
Connor imagined his friend, day in and day out for four years, marching back and forth from desk to inkwell, slowly losing his sight to preserve the knowledge of the Keledan. “I have known you more than a year, fought with you and fought beside you, yet now I see you anew.”
They passed through two more scriptoria before coming to a narrow staircase leading down. There, the yellow-orange of lanterns gave way to white luminescence tinted with purple. This came from pale plants growing in water-filled sconces.
“Sea candles,” Connor said.
Lee flicked one of the sconces, causing a quiet ring. The plant inside glowed brighter. “From the Gulf of Stars, near my birthplace in Lin Kelan. Stewards charge them with saltwater each afternoon.”
Not long after, one wall of the staircase ended, and the two emerged into a vast open sea cavern. Waves tipped with foam lapped at a black shore beneath story after story of carved shelves, nooks, alcoves, and passages, all filled with scrolls and texts. Lee lifted a water-lantern and set off along an upper walkway. “Welcome to the Archive of the Scribes.”
Connor spent the next half tick worrying over Lee, who went from nook to nook, checking the chiseled symbols below each shelf, never once checking how close his heels came to the edges of the open walkways. This process led them to the lowest level and down a short passage away from the lapping waves to a steel door and a seated woman wearing an Assembly-crimson tunic and cloak.
A flush of anxiety twisted Connor’s chest. The scene looked familiar. Another metal door, shut and guarded. Had the Prime Council lured them all the way down here only to be turned away? Was this more repayment for the Order refusing to send Kara?
The guard rose from her stool, looking as stern as the one who’d called Connor a lewaker.
Lee caught the hood of Connor’s cloak and pulled him back before he could speak, then nodded to the guard. “He’s with me.”
She made no reply, but opened the door and motioned for them both to carry on.
“Told you,” Lee whispered, once they were inside. “One of us needed to blend in.”
The chamber proved another natural cave, a chaos of turns and branches. Lee found the archival address from the mystery woman’s note chiseled into a rock shelf in a deep alcove near the center of the maze.
The shelf was empty.
The scribe held the light up to his face. “I don’t understand.”
Before the soft echo of his words faded, Connor felt a presence enter the alcove behind them. Slowly he turned, and saw three men. One stood taller than the others, dressed in a councilor’s robes—like Stradok, but far more imposing. A thin smile spread across his gaunt face, and he shook his head. “You truly are a disappointment.”
20
Connor held up his hands. “If you’re the one who sent the note, then we came at your invitation. We want no trouble.”
“Too bad,” the tall man said. “Because trouble has come for you. Trouble has come for us all.” He strode past his two friends, right up to Connor, glaring down at him. “Move. You’re in my way.”
It took Lee’s hand to move his friend aside. “Connor, this is the apothecarist I was telling you about. This is Councilor Boreas, Zel’s father, the founder of the Airguard.”
The assemblyman seemed little interested in introductions. Once the two cadets were out of his way, he reached back into the empty shelf. Connor heard stone sliding against stone, and a beat later, Boreas pulled a leatherbound codex into the light.
Lee held the sea candle lantern closer, illuminating the silver script embossed upon the cover. “You hid it behind a secret panel?”
“The Prime Council hid this codex. Not me. Its contents were once an obsession for their body”—Boreas lifted an eye toward Connor—“and for the lightraiders, at a great and terrible cost. That is why I’d hoped to have this conversation with someone without such familial ties to the Order and its leadership.”
Lee caught Connor’s eye. “Look at the shield on the cover—emblazoned with a hollow tree, fruit laden branches spreading almost to the edges, tangled roots extending down. Our symbol.”
The title above the tree was written in the Elder Tongue. Connor didn’t recognize all the words, but he sounded it out. “Sofar ke’Samanis.”
“Literally the Book of the Heaven Ore,” Boreas said. “But we translate it as the Celestium Codex.” He spoke as if the revelation should spark some memory in the cadets.
It didn’t. At least, not for Connor. “Celestium?”
“The fact that you do not know is a credit to your father and the Order’s guardians, all of whom were commanded never to speak of it. I was given the same command. But Keledev is threatened. Now is the time for secrets to find the light, and this secret is the key to destroying all dragon-kind before they can invade our land.”
“The miners of Huckleheim found celestium first.” Boreas had led the group to the center of the passage complex, where they charged more sea candle lanterns from pitchers of salt water and gathered around an oak table. The codex lay at its center, open to pages filled with sketches of weaponry.
“Celestium was a gift from the Rescuer, encased in his impossible peaks. The miners say Kerias Baldomar discovered it. They say the Helper led him to a spring where he thought he saw the sparkle of shairosite.”
“Banishing powder,” Connor said. “The substance we used to close the dragon portal.”
“The same. But Kerias was wrong. When the miners dug into the slope above the spring, they found veins of an unknown black ore, speckled with shimmering constellations like a night sky. The Baldomars are known for their smithing, in part because their ancestor shared a forge with the Rescuer. Kerias formed a new steel alloy from this ore and fashioned a fine sword for the head of the Order, Talin the First. I’m sure you are familiar with his life’s tale.”
Lee raised a finger. “Talin the First. The lightraider who was taken up. When a firedrake ambushed his party, Talin rushed ahead to defend them. The dragon’s flames split around him, leaving him unburnt, and he ran the creature through. Both vanished in a great white flash. But I don’t remember anything about a special sword.”
Boreas let out a huff. “The sword is the reason he vanished, Cadet. And it’s also what split the dragon’s fire. Like shairosite, celestium exists on the border between the realms of flesh and spirit. A weapon fashioned from its ore can utterly destroy a dragon.”
“Dragons can’t be killed,” Connor said. “Not entirely. We can vanquish their bodies, but their spirits flee to Ras Pyras. And from there, the Great Red Dragon pushes them into the next egg fitting their kind.”
“Do you really think the High One so feeble?” Boreas turned back a few pages in the codex and showed them a drawing of a lifeless dragon with a celestium dagger lodged in its neck. Beside it, a creature resembling a twisted Lisropha warrior hung in the air, shattering like glass. “He gave us a tool to end the dragon’s cycle of regeneration into corrupted bodies. He gave us the means to finish this war.”
“So what happened?” Lee asked.
“We squandered the ore. Every last ounce.” Boreas turned to a chart of the Celestial Peaks marked with pickaxe symbols, some black and some red. “These are shafts where the miners searched for celestium. Those colored red proved fruitful. See how few there are? Once the Order and the Assembly understood the power of the Rescuer’s gift, the smiths fashioned every bit the miners found into weapons.” He returned to the sketches of weaponry, then flipped through page after page of the same. “Spears, swords, daggers, arrowheads. They amassed enough to the lightraider armory. And over the decades, the Order made good use of them. They sent a hundred or more dragons to the eternal abyss.”
Lee lifted his eyes from the book and raised a lens. “But the hordes of the Great Red Dragon number in the thousands.”
“Exactly.” Boreas paced away from the table. “Your Order spent the weapons as if there would always be more celestium.”
“But there wasn’t,” Connor said.
“No. The mines ran dry.” Boreas turned past the sketches of weaponry to another chart of the peaks. This time, there were far more black pickaxe symbols but no new red ones. “The Assembly has always governed the mining of the Peaks with care. It doesn’t serve to dig too many holes into a barrier the Rescuer raised to defend us. But when the celestium mines ran dry, they suspended all restrictions. They set Huckleheim loose and brought tragedy down upon their heads.”
Huckleheim. Tragedy. When Connor first crossed the bridge at Mer Nimbar, staring down into the mists of the empty chasm, his tehpa had told him how the lake was emptied.
It was not our Blacksmith who drained the lake, boy. That achievement belongs to the miners of Huckleheim.
“The miners dug too close to Mer Nimbar.” Connor looked from Boreas to Lee and back. “Their digging breached the lake wall beneath the waters and ruined the city.”
“And destroyed several mining families.” Boreas sat heavily on a reading stool near one of the water lanterns. “Whole lines were ended when the mine flooded. Half the Baldomars were wiped out. And your friend Dagram Kaivos will never know the cousins he might have had. All because our people spent the celestium without plan or thought and could not come to grips with that failure.”
Connor had heard more secrets than he’d expected when he and Lee came looking for the mystery woman. Too many secrets. How much of this did Dag know? He remembered the way the miner had lowered his gaze after Tehpa’s revelation at Mer Nimbar—the way he’d ridden off into the fog. Dag might not know everything, but he knew parts of the story for sure. And he hadn’t shared any of it with the rest of them.
And then there was Tehpa. And Master Jairun. And the other guardians. With dark creatures entering the land and a dragon opening a portal, wasn’t the tale of such weaponry an important story to tell?
Perhaps not. Not anymore.
Connor closed the codex and brought it to Boreas. “If the celestium weapons are gone—if the gift is already squandered—why bother sharing this with us now?”
“Ah. Now we see an inkling of that supposed lightraider intelligence. The celestium isn’t all gone. Once they saw their error, your Order held one weapon back, a dagger called Lef Amunrel.”
“Amunrel,” Lee said. “The leopard constellation. He who walks the night with confidence in his Maker.”
Boreas nodded. “The Faith Walker. That constellation appears in the stars of the celestium blade. However, some in the Order called it the Red Dagger because of the ruby enamel in the hilt and the red starlot in the pommel.”
Connor was unimpressed by the assemblyman’s answer. “What good will one dagger do against the dragon horde?”
“A good question. But before we come to that part, you’ll need to find the weapon. The Order lost Lef Amunrel years ago.”
“Lost it? How?”
“On their last mission into Tanelethar. It was your grandfather’s mission, and the one upon which the lightraiders pinned all our hopes. Faelin’s party failed, routed and destroyed, all but him sent onward to Elamhavar.” Boreas shrugged. “That is the real reason he never came home.”
21
Connor could not hide his simmering anger. Who was this blood-robed assemblyman, playing at intrigues deep in the safety of the Liberated Land, to speak so unkindly of Faelin Enarian, who slayed the dragon and closed the portal? “What do you know of my patehpa’s mission?”
A hollowness bored through Connor’s gut the moment he gave voice to the question. Perhaps the councilor knew plenty—much more than him. Connor’s argument with Faelin in the dragon’s stronghold filled his thoughts. In that moment he’d learned Tehpa knew Faelin still lived.
