Friar Momeht crossed the threshold of his monastery and felt the instant rush of comfort in the familiar. His arms felt heavy and he’d developed a limp that accosted him halfway back from Greytusk Castle.
He thought of the hulking stonework Goliath perched among the hills behind him, thought of the wretched King leering out one of the parapet windows at the village below made up of a collection of stone buildings and sod huts. Did he not see that the prize for his silly competition could go to many other things? The friar slipped into his small chamber and sat down at a wooden table marred and chipped from many hands before his that rested on it. Idly his thumb picked at a groove in the wood as he listened to the sounds of the night seep in through his window.
The village had been filling with outsiders attracted by the promise of the King’s wealth. Caulderwilde was the closest thing to a city as some of these outsiders would get. Momeht knew they would wither in Tryonas or Galt, those hulking collections of steamwork and commerce that comes with a swelling population and the prosperity to support them. Momeht chastised himself for the bitterness he felt but there had been a void growing in his heart long before tonight’s musings. He felt the chill air from the next room brush across his face as the door to his anteroom crept open.
A young man stood framed in the doorway. His eyes were bright and he was smiling until he took in the friar’s fatigue and revelation blotted the hope from his eyes.
“You’ve returned from Greytusk?” the man asked
“I have.” the Friar answered
“You spoke with the King.”
“As promised. He did not see fit to cancel the tournament based on the rabble of some villagers.” Moment’s eyes fell to the lad’s right arm, he couldn't bring himself to repeat the King’s label of enfeebled. He knew from experience how much that would enrage the man whose right arm ended scarred and gnarled where most of his forearm should have been.
The man’s face fell and he resigned to sit at the only free chair at the friar’s table. His eyes roamed around the sparse shelves filled with the ivory likenesses of Old Gods. His sigh was the only sound between the two of them. When he spoke his voice reflected the defeated resignation.
“Then Bronwyn is our only hope.”
“The Old Gods see fit to test her Everitt, I’ve tried to stay the King’s hand but human interference has no place in this dominion, I'm afraid.”
Everitt’s left hand clenched on the table and the colour rose from his neck to his face.
“This shouldn’t be made to stay on her shoulders.”
“Your sister is an able marksman.” Momeht soothed.
“MY SISTER SHOULDN’T NEED TO BE.” The bellow was filled with a frustrated agony that ripped through the Friar's heart. Everitt wore that same disgusted look on his face as he gazed at his right arm that he’d worn in his teens. He trembled at the unspoken thoughts coursing through his head, and the Friar knew it. He tried his best to recite the words of Moryor, the Old God of benevolence.
“You will do all you can for her, you always have. When she’s needed a patient hand and a sharp eye it’s been you to lead her. No one else.”
“She’s practiced, but not well. She’s, we’ve both been occupied since...Since-”
“I know.” the Friar gazed out the window at the implication. Both Everitt and his sister Bronwyn had been distracted since Bishop went missing. Neither one of them letting the fear in their heart transmutate into confirmation of death.
Friar Momeht stood. “Go to her Everitt. Tell your sister what’s happened. Your practice begins in the courtyard tomorrow. The tournament is four days from now, that’s enough time.”
“I haven’t seen her.” Everitt admitted. “She’s roving the city looking for anything on Bishop.”
“When she returns to Ironcraft hearth then. Go eat something boy, get your strength.” The Friar let genuine comfort radiate from him for the love he felt for his adoptive son. “We are given no more than we can bear, remember that son.” For a moment the Friar thought Everitt would protest but he just took the words in and excused himself. Vaguely nodding before seeing himself out.
When Everitt left, Momeht surveyed the ivory gods looking down on him, thought of those same sombre features peering down on the King. Rygeer would not stay his hand with this asinine tournament, and the aging friar was forbidden to interfere. His breath joined the chill night air in the form of a tired sigh and he rose wearily, weighed down by the burden he felt looming over his family. The Ironcrafts were strong, true to their name, but they were disorganised, look at the way the youngest had sluffed off into the darkness of night to pursue that damnable book. Moment’s rage mirrored that of Everitt’s. He felt responsible for young Bishop’s lust for knowledge and pursuit of the relic. He walked to the old wooden shelf and took it in his hands as if to topple it over, shattering the ivory likenesses. But instead he only moved the shelf, sliding it to the side to expose the stone wall behind it. With practiced efficiency Friar Momeht pressed a keystone and rotated it counterclockwise. Ancient gears moved within the stonework and the wall slid aside on unseen tracks. The friar took the candelabra from the table and entered the secret chamber.
When he reached the bottom of the stone stairs beyond he placed the candelabra on an altar worn smooth with time. Arranged in the shadows beyond the light were figures similar to the carvings on his shelf above. Surrounding him were hand carved tributes to the New Gods. Religious deities that he should have rejected, and ones that would have him dishonourably expelled from his monastery if they were ever found in his possession.
“If adhering to the Old teachings get me nowhere.” Moment mused. “Then perhaps it’s the New Gods I should turn to.” Momeht extinguished the light from his candles and sat amongst the limestone and quarts carvings, quieting his mind through controlled breathing. After an unknown amount of time in the darkness, an idea began to shine from him like a beacon.
King Rygeer was indeed peering at the small village below as Friar Momeht had mused, but not from his walled in throne room. He took in lungfuls of the night air from the vantage of one of the castle walls. He looked down at Caulderwilde, the village that had been his family's charge for generations. He ran a hand through his white beard and began tugging at a corner. From where he stood the village looked as it always did, an amber jewel nestled among the foothills of the Greytusk Mountain range. Rygeer saw the stone monastery in tiny scale at this height but no less troubling. Did the Friar speak the truth? Were his subjects questioning the payout from his tournament, would it be better to bring the Friar into the fold? To reveal the true intent of such a beguiling prize?
“You’ll make a bald patch that way.” Her voice called from behind him. Rygeer looked down at his occupied right hand and threw it to his side with a tisk of exacerbation. “Ah. the spider’s descended from her web. Am I to assume you have anything of value, or is it you too that wishes to cast doubt on my tournament.”
From a doorway behind him a hooded figure strode into the moonlight, her cloak a patch of starless black against the rest of the night.
“You ask as if you don’t know my answer already.” Her voice was still like velvet after all these years. Rygeer had fallen in love with it when they were placed in the Castle, but that was long ago. She sidled next to him, an act that would have been welcome by any other king, but Rygeer’s love for his queen was all but extinguished by his preoccupation with fortification and her preoccupation with her network of assassins. She had transformed from lover to reluctant council, but even that had waned. She continued to undermine him with her own agenda time and again.
“You think Wormwood doesn’t see through this?” she asked. “The man has the book of knowledge, you don’t think somewhere in its pages he can find the runes for sight seeking?”
“The book has many uses, I’m sure. But in his heart Jasper Fern is a King’s guard, a man driven by conquest. What better conquest than a King’s prize, what better motive than spite?”
“A subject well known to my King.”
“You jab in a night already plagued with fatigue Murna. You tempt the guillotine if you continue.”
Beside him Queen Murna actually laughed. A rueful and bitter sound that echoed into the courtyard below.
“My King” she smiled in the night “You would have a knife thrown into you before you could signal your best guardsman.”
Rygeer fell silent, playing as if bested. Better she thought him a witless fool, it would keep him beneath her suspicions. His wife spoke as if he wasn’t aware of the cloaked assassin bathed in the castle’s shadows watching their exchange. She was naive if she thought he suspected her of coming out here alone.
Her tone remained cold but she seemed to sheath her barbs, finally speaking word to her presence here.
“your captain of the guard knows his task I take it.”
“He does.” Rygeer’s breath came out in a cloud of exasperation, he felt the ache of the day pinch between his shoulder blades.
“And he’s prepared to torture for the information, if necessary.”
“If necessary.”
“I would hope, dear King, that Tyson Mak has the stomach for it. I would hate for sentimentality to embrace his heart during such a trial.”
“Your doubt has no ground Murna, Whatever humanity was left in Fern surely has been wrung from his body when he delved into the book. He will take the bait, and we will take him captive. If not during the tournament then during the hunt. You will leave this to my guardsmen, mind my words now. This started from the Kings Guard and a guardsman will end it. I will justify this no more.” Rygeer left then for fear that he would lose his temper and reveal too much of himself.
Queen Murna was left to muse over the king’s words as he walked off in a whirl of furs. Seconds after she heard the wooden door she’d entered from slam shut a living shadow seemed to materialize beside her. A figure clothed in black with no discernible features save for a pair of eyes peering out from the figure's face covering. The queen did not break her attention from Caulderwilde below. “The King thinks this a matter for his guard. I don’t trust the fumbling iron hand to work that is as delicate as this. I want that book found and the wizard interned. I want eyes inside this tournament.” Murna didn't wait to hear confirmation, even if she did her assassin couldn't give it. She found mutes kept secrets far better than those who spoke. Whether they were naturally afflicted or muted by their own devoted hand, the queen knew her secrets were always kept.
From the wall the Queen made her way through the series of tunnels and passageways used only by her and her guild of assassins. They were a labyrinth of stonework and earthen tunnels. Some lead deep into the mountains beyond the castle only to a dead end, leaving would-be infiltrators to rot under the mass of a New God. Murna scoffed in the torchlight as she made her way through her webwork. She had no use for the deity squabbles she heard erupting throughout the lands. Old Gods and New were, in her mind, just another form of control. And any good assassin knew the best way to control was through manipulating the odds, which was what she was on her way to do.
Continued in the next Second Saturday Story.
