Chronicles of the Last Days Chapter 11

Chapter 10

A

t the end of the Tribunal, Thorat accompanied Parnet back to his quarters. Dismissed for the night, he staggered toward the barracks, too exhausted to celebrate the fact that Darna had become the next thing to a prince. It was strange to think that his scrappling friend was a ruler of a province as well as being a priestess. He shook his head at the thought. She still seemed like a scrappling to him. Perhaps he should ask Parnet to let him go to attend her in Tiadun, but he wasn’t sure if he really wanted to be Darna’s man-at-arms.

The hour was late, so the courtyard was quiet, but a few straggling revelers and messengers drifted past – the palace was never entirely asleep. He was almost to the door of the barracks when a cloaked figure accosted him. He had his hand on the hilt of his sword before he recognized her.

“Myril? Why are you still here?”

Myril looked over her shoulder and spoke in a low voice. “I have a duty to my guild. I came back to speak to you. Some of these Cereans are trying to take the secrets hidden in our histories. We need to hide them.”

“I can’t help,” Thorat said. “I’m here attending the governor. I have no time, and besides –”

“You know of a place that they can’t find. Even I can’t find it. Would you take some scrolls there? They include some histories that might interest the others there.”

The Defenders’ hall was indeed secret, but they’d never hidden anything but themselves and their shrine there. It didn’t seem like the sort or thing that the Enatel would agree to. Still, keeping the dragons’ secrets was half the work of defending them. “I’ll ask,” he said. “She might agree.”

Another person was coming toward them.

“Let me know,” Myril said, “or talk to the Chief Chronicler if you see him first. He’s the one who asked me to help. I have to go to the temple now with the news.” She scurried away. Myril and Iola were no longer lovers, but he still envied the ease with which Myril could go to see Iola in the temple.

A few days later, he was able to return to the training hall. Half of the bandits had disappeared after the tribunal, but the others were lingering around temples and street-corner shrines in between training sessions, making sure that no one was trying to steal anything from the altars there. Tiagasa had sent guards down to Ara’s Landing, so that place was safe, but elsewhere, the priestesses were mostly left to fend for themselves. Raina looked grim when she talked about it.

“Most of them are safe enough,” she said, “but they’re all afraid.”

“Those men had better all go back to their own lands after Midsummer,” Sovara added.

“Why wouldn’t they?” Thorat said, realizing how stupid the question was as soon as the words were spoken. “Never mind,” he said. The world was out of order.

“Your Grace?” he said. “I have a request to ask of you. It’s –” He hesitated.

“Out with it,” Raina prompted.

He’d meant to ask Sovara alone, but if she agreed, then all of them would know, and if she didn’t, then it wouldn’t matter. “It’s a request from Myril, from her guild. The Cereans are trying to take their scrolls and folios. I don’t know what they think they’ll discover there, but Myril says that they have the dragons’ secrets in them. She wants us to hide them here.”

“Here in the hall?” Sovara said. “Have you told her where it is?”

“No, she only knows that we have some hidden place,” Thorat said.

“It’s foolish to keep secrets in a form that can be picked up and carried away,” Sovara said. “I don’t like it. Why don’t they just destroy them?”

Thorat tried to imagine Myril destroying an old text. He shook his head.

“They wouldn’t do that,” Raina said, saving him from answering. “There’s a lot of knowledge in those texts, and people are forgetful. Besides, sometimes students don’t learn all their lessons.”

Sovara nodded to that but still didn’t look convinced. “I still say it’s better to lose them to fire than to the dragons’ enemies.” She frowned and looked out in the general direction of the guild halls. “Does this Chronicler know that we exist?” she asked.

Thorat shook his head. “I’m not sure, but he probably knows that we

did

exist. I don’t think Myril would have asked me if it weren’t important.”

#

Thorat saw the Chief Chronicler the very next day. That afternoon, he was standing to one side in Parnet’s chamber, the image of a silent, forgettable guardsman. Girizit said something to Parnet in Cerean, and Parnet nodded.

“You two,” the governor said, pointing at Thorat and another guard. “Go down to the Chroniclers’ guild and bring back another box of their scrolls for our friend here.”

Thorat bowed and went out. His fellow guardsman was a thickset country man, new to the city, with a pockmarked nose. He grumbled about being made to march through the streets in the hot sun so near midday, but Thorat was glad to be out from under Parnet’s glare and cheerfully ignored his fellow guardsman.

At the guildhall, they were shown in with reluctant courtesy. The Chronicler was not pleased to see them.

“Box of scrolls for His Excellency,” the pock-nosed guardsman barked.

The Chronicler sat down behind his table and made himself comfortable before answering. “You may go outside to wait. I will have them delivered in my own time.”

“He wants ’em now.” Thorat’s fellow guardsman rested his hand on the hilt of his sword and nodded meaningfully. Thorat kept his expression blank.

“You will wait outside.”

“That’s not our orders,” the guardsman said.

“Begging your pardon, Lord Chronicler, but His Excellency has expressed some urgency,” Thorat said.

The Chronicler squinted at him.

“I can make it worth your while,” Thorat said.

“What are you saying that for? That’s not in our orders.”

“I just want to hurry things along,” Thorat said.

“Well, I’m sticking to orders.”

“Wait outside the hall. I will have a box for you to carry to ‘His Excellency’ in short order. I’ll even send for tea for you if you clear out of here,” the Chronicler said.

“I prefer ale, myself,” Thorat’s fellow guardsman said.

“Come on,” Thorat urged, practically dragging the man away. He led the way back out to the guild hall’s steps, where they settled down on a shady bench. After a little while, an apprentice scribe came out to say that their tea was ready if one of them would fetch it.

“Fetching our own tea!” the other guardsman said, huffing as if that wasn’t just what he did every morning in the barracks.

“I’ll get it,” Thorat said. The apprentice led him in, but Thorat walked behind him and, at the turning of a corner, slipped off back to the Chief Chronicler’s study, his absence unnoticed for a moment.

“Lord Chronicler,” he said.

The Chronicler looked up, startled.

“Myril tells me that you have a need,” he said quietly. “Her Grace says that she will meet with you.”

“Her Grace?” the Chronicler looked puzzled, then a smile spread across his face, wrinkling the corners of his eyes. “I thought that it would be a ‘His Grace.’ Very well, then. You’d best go get your tea now.”

Thorat turned to see the distraught apprentice coming up behind him.

“You were to follow me!” the apprentice said.

“And you should be more careful with our visitors from the palace,” the Chronicler told the apprentice. “Go now. I’ll see you later.” He said it as if he were speaking to the young apprentice, but Thorat felt that he’d meant the words for both of them.

Thorat got the tea, and it wasn’t long after when two apprentice chroniclers emerged with a box and dropped it onto the bench between the guardsmen. Thorat and his fellow guard took the box by its handles and walked back up to the palace, leaving their unfinished cups of tea behind.

“Don’t know what he wants with these old things. If it was me, I’d go to the goldsmiths or the bead makers more.”

Thorat grunted noncommittally. The other man finally took the hint and dropped the conversation.

The midday gongs were sounding by the time they returned to the palace, and the governor was still conferring with Girizit. Thorat wished he’d been able to send a message to Sovara. Maybe he would be able to find Eppie on her way to or from delivering some message to Darna in her princely apartment.

“What’s this we have here, the same again?” Girizit said.

The box had been lifted up onto the conference table and opened while Thorat was woolgathering.

“You did ask for scrolls,” Parnet said, looking down into the box and shaking his head. “Those are scrolls.”

“But look,” Girizit said, rapidly unfurling one of the ones on top. “This is just another copy of those children’s stories, a copy book.”

Parnet gestured helplessly at his guards. “You can hardly ask these men to tell the difference,” he said. He himself wouldn’t know the difference either. Besides, no one had asked them to inspect the scrolls.

Girizit plucked the texts out of the box one by one, tossing most of them aside and tucking a select few into his own satchel. He signaled for his page to take the satchel away.

“I don’t even know that the Chroniclers’ guild has what you’re seeking,” Parnet said.

“Then go into the temples for it,” Girizit said. “Or shall I ask your lady wife where those secrets are hid.”

“I will speak with the Chronicler again,” Parnet said. “I will be more explicit this time.”

“Do that,” Girizit said. “We will see you tomorrow.”

“Rest assured, I will wait on your honorable presence.”

“And I on yours, Your Excellency,” Girizit said. He then performed an obeisance of such groveling complexity that Parnet seemed to forget the sneering tone of Girizit’s orders.

#

Thorat spotted Eppie on his way to a late midday meal at the kitchen and she promised to carry word to Sovara. She returned late in the afternoon to say that he should go to the training hall as soon as he could get away that night. It was still well before midnight when the evening’s council concluded, but he didn’t dare stop in the barracks to give notice that he was going out. He walked straight out of the gate and down to the Defenders’ hall in his guardsman’s livery.

At the top of the outside stair into the training hall, he stopped short. Garren was there, lying on a mat and looking up at the sky.

“Still in that guardsman’s rig?” he said. “I don’t know how you stand it up there at the palace.”

“What are you doing out here?” Thorat asked. It was unusual to see Garren lounging anywhere, and he was usually at the hall only for training sessions and vigils. It was late in the night.

“Looking at the stars. No trace of the dragons tonight, though I don’t doubt they’re coming. The sailors say that the tides have changed again.” Garren sat up. “I must be off on my errand, now that you’re here. I’ll see you at Ink Pounders.”

“Ink Pounders?” The tavern was not a place Thorat had expected to go that night. He regretted not changing out of his livery.

Garren got to his feet. “That’s what she said. You’re going to walk there with her if she decides to go. I’m off to fetch the guildmaster.” Garren bounded away before Thorat could ask him anymore. He took one look at the peaceful, starry sky then went inside.

The hall was quiet, with a few sleeping forms snoring softly along the wall. A clink of metal on metal sounded from inside Sovara’s curtained nook.

“Your Grace?” Thorat ventured.

“Don’t call me that,” Sovara said.

Thorat looked in. The Enatel worked by the light of a single bright lamp, squinting over a pile of small metal pieces, mostly copper and silver. She had a copper pin clenched between her teeth. She set her small hammer down and removed the pin to glare at Thorat, but then she beckoned for him to come in.

It was a small room, with only the stool and workbench and a raised pallet for sleeping. The lamp dimmed as Sovara turned away from her workbench, as if the flame were sentient.

“I don’t know about all of this,” Sovara said. “I wouldn’t want the Chronicler to go writing anything down about us to send the governor hunting us down again. I don’t know that we can help with these histories. They’re no use to us. We have our teachings handed down from one to another.”

“But then the Cereans will get the texts and whatever’s in them. The Cerean king’s emissary seems to think the scrolls will teach them to use the dragons’ magic.”

“If the knowledge of how to use the dragons’ stones could be had so easily, they’d have had it long ago,” Sovara said. “Any knowledge worth having can’t be had from reading scrolls.”

“They seem to think it can,” Thorat said.

“Did you learn to wield a sword by reading scrolls? Does a priestess learn to channel the dragons’ power by hearing stories? No, it’s practice. They don’t have the first idea of what to do, and they never will.”

She picked up her hammer and began tapping again. The lamp brightened in response. The piece she was working on looked like a broad pin for a sash, big enough to offer some protection from an errant dagger to the heart. A moment later, she sighed and pushed her work aside.

“I sent word that I’d talk to him, though,” she said. “We’d better be going.”

#

The Ink Pounders tavern lay on the upper banks of the East Canal, about midway between the sword hall and the Chroniclers’ guildhall.

“Are you sure this is the right place to meet?” Thorat asked Sovara. The taproom was crowded with men and women from the guilds, merchants from the harbor front, and even more from beyond the city walls. There were provincial tradesmen and foreign sailors, who used to be unwelcome in the guilds’ favorite watering spots. The din was deafening.

Sovara ignored Thorat’s question and wove across the room, meandering like any other white-haired old lady, looking frail among the mostly young drunkards. Thorat wondered whether or not she’d really recovered from her illness the year before. Was her strength an illusion, or was this frailty the camouflage?

The barmaid hurried over to them, looking apologetic.

“Ma’am,” she began.

“The attic room, please,” Sovara said. She opened her hand and showed the barmaid a token that glimmered briefly before it disappeared into Sovara’s pocket. As far as Thorat knew, Ink Pounders had no private rooms.

The barmaid looked carefully at Sovara, then shrugged. “I don’t know you, but you have the token, so I suppose,” she said. “Go on in.”

“The Chief Chronicler will be coming to meet us, along with another guardsman,” Sovara said. “Show them upstairs as well.”

“As you wish, ma’am. Will you be wanting food and drink?”

Sovara shook her head, but Thorat said, “Please do,” and the barmaid called a young kitchen helper over. She whispered instructions to the boy, then hurried back out to the taproom. Sovara made her way across the kitchen as if she knew the place well, going into the small pantry beside the hearth. On its bare back wall, she found a latch and pushed. Half of the wall swung aside, revealing a narrow stair up to a low-ceilinged attic full of barrels and sacks of grain. The young kitchen servant followed, carrying a lamp.At the far end of the attic, he opened a door and went in before them. He lit half a dozen lamps, which brightened a room hung with tapestries woven with ancient and erotic scenes. It was the kind of thing found in a priestess’s chamber or in the bedrooms of the palace. The floor was laid with furs around a low table of polished bronze.

Thorat let out a whistle as the serving boy left. “I never knew this was here.”

“Of course you didn’t; there’s been no need for you to know,” Sovara said. “The noise from below covers most conversation, so the guildmasters like to use it sometimes.”

Thorat sat back on the cushions and let his eyelids close. The thick floor muffled the sound of conversation from below so well that he couldn’t even make out snatches. The soft roar had almost lulled him to sleep by the time the young servant returned with ale and a pot of even-better-than-usual stew, plus a basket of bread that smelled good enough to have come from Ara’s Landing itself. Sovara took a piece of the bread and sniffed it. She shook her head.

“They’re selling the bread. That doesn’t bode well.”

“Who are, the priestesses?” Thorat asked. “I thought this was just very good bread, not temple bread itself.”

There was a clatter on the stair. A moment later, Garren opened the door to let in the sleepy-eyed Chief Chronicler.

“My Lady Enatel?” the Chronicler said. “Or should I say, Your Grace?”

“I dislike titles, Lord Chronicler. Let’s sit.”

Sovara did not reach for the ale, but Thorat poured for the rest of them. The Chronicler pushed it away. “Have them send water,” he said. “But is this temple bread?”

“It seems so,” Sovara said. “Either the dragons’ ladies are selling it or the scrapplings are.”

The Chronicler turned it over in his hand. “Curious. It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed this bread.”

Garren inspected his piece closely. “It has the mark of the temple on it. I don’t know what price it fetches down by the harbor, but I’d imagine that a half-moon’s worth would be enough to buy a scrappling passage to Calandria or Ganat.”

The Chronicler nodded soberly. “I can’t blame people for fleeing the rising water, but still, I hate to see them go. The city feels emptier every day, despite Midsummer coming.”

“Not empty enough, with all these foreigners,” Sovara said.

The Chronicler tipped his head. “There is that, as well. Have we met, Lady Enatel? I think that I’ve seen you at the palace from time to time.”

“I haven’t been there for many years,” Sovara said. “But yes, we met before that. You’re as old as I am. Sometimes, ten years passes like a season.”

“So it does, though not this season. It’s worn me more than most, and I’m not the only one.” He leaned back and pulled on his beard, looking at Sovara. “I was surprised to learn that your order still exists.”

“We have kept ourselves to ourselves,” Sovara said. “I’d like to keep it that way, but with the waters rising everything seems to be in flux. I’ll hear what you have to say. Why should we hide your scrolls, from the governor?”

“Mostly to keep them from the foreigners,” the Chronicler said with a shrug. “They would use our secrets against the dragons you swear to protect. Also, we kept the histories of Enat’s followers before your order was publicly dissolved. You might like to know what’s in them.”

“I would,” Sovara admitted. “There are gaps in our knowledge, but still, I doubt that the Cereans could make any use of these scrolls, not without direct training and experience of the dragons.”

“That’s not a chance I’m willing to take, even if they are all dragon-blind,” the Chronicler said.

“They’re not,” Thorat said. “There was one Cerean at Tiada’s gate who saw her, who walked right in. Many of the Ganateans in Slaradun saw Salara at the end, too. I don’t think many of them survived.”

“Some did,” the Chronicler said. He looked at Thorat with renewed interest. “You were in both places?”

“I was.”

“I’d like to know what you saw there.”

Sovara raised a hand to cut him off. “Not tonight.”

“Very well,” the Chronicler said. “Do you have news of the palace, then, guardsman of our governor?”

“I overhear some,” Thorat said. “After we brought your scrolls to Parnet, Girizit looked through them and was angry not to find what we was looking for. Parnet said that you might not have what he wants, that it might be in the temples. Girizit said he would ask Tiagasa where they were hidden.”

“I hear that Tiagasa has already gone to the Aralel, looking for them. I would much rather that they not be found.”

Sovara was leaning on the table and resting her chin on her fingertips. They all turned to look at her.

“I still doubt that any worthwhile magic can be unlocked merely by reciting some words in a text,” she said.

“A reasonable doubt,” the Chronicler said, “but did you know that some of the old texts also include physical instructions, even for fighting techniques?”

“I didn’t know that, but could most men could learn fighting techniques from marks on parchment?”

Garren nodded at that, and Thorat might have agreed too, but the Chronicler’s grave expression gave him pause.

“It only needs one man who can learn from the parchment to teach the rest,” the Chronicler said. “The priestesses do it. I see no reason why a foreigner might not be able to learn, if he were intelligent and receptive to the power of the land. They overcome their terror of the dragons enough to raid the gates. I used to wonder why it took them so long for them to find those gates, but I can see now that your order must have done something to keep them away.”

“There were bandits who played a part too,” Sovara said. “There haven’t been enough in our sword hall to hold them all back for many years now. When I was an apprentice, we had twice a dozen members of the order, enough that one of us could keep watch on each dragon’s gate, every year, while half of us stayed in Anamat to train with the Enatel. Now we are fewer, many fewer, and we have only one apprentice. She’s likely to be our last.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Some guilds have given up even looking for apprentices. Some of our journeymen are starting to leave for worlds beyond the dragons’ shores. Does your spoken lore have anything to say about these rising waters?” the Chronicler asked Sovara.

She shook her head. “I don’t like it, though. Our shrine and the taproom here haven’t flooded yet, but the waters are pushing in on them since Slaradun fell.”

“I see,” the Chronicler said. “Then let me tell you about one old prophecy. A priestess some three hundred years ago dreamed that Slaradun would fall into the sea. Then she saw all of the dragons rise, leaving nothing but open sea where the land had been.”

“How?” Thorat asked.

“No one knows. It’s only a prophecy, but I share it to say that this favor I ask of you is only for one season at most. Some of our guild members are searching for some safe place to go, away from the rising waters and the Cereans, and away from Theranis. The king of Cerea has offered our governor and some princes gold and a position of power in his court; the alleged rebellion of this Duke of the Southern Reaches is very conveniently timed for him. There are already Theranians in the Cerean court who can interpret these texts.”

“And what about Ganat?” Thorat said. “The men who raided Slaradun were from Ganat, not Cerea.”

“They’ve been slower to come to our shores than the Cereans, but the two nations are similar, from what I’ve learned of them.”

“So, you think that we, with our knowledge of dragons and the art of defending them, are also suitable to defend these texts until we are all drowned?” Sovara said.

“You are so secretive that I, standing watch over the histories of our land, did not even know that you existed,” the Chronicler said. “I’m still not entirely convinced that you’re really who you say you are, but if anyone can keep these secrets, you’re better suited to it than the priestesses are, especially with Tiagasa circling their treasuries.”

“That much, I can agree with,” Sovara said.

“You may not think much of the priestesses, but they have considerable power, even wisdom. The foreigners want their power, as well as their bodies, and it’s only a matter of time before they raid our guildhall for the texts they’re looking for. They may even come during the waning year.”

Sovara nodded grimly. “They would do something like that.” She pushed away from the table. “All right, we’ll keep any texts that concern our order, and a few more besides, but you will be limited to what Garren here can carry in a satchel every day.”

“I’ve seen you, too,” the Chronicler said to Garren.

“I keep a sweet shop in the West Gate market.”

The Chronicler smiled. “Then I will send my apprentices there for bread in the coming days. They will bring the packages. I thank you all. Just think of the threat to the dragons if the foreigners try to chain them.”

“The foreigners would be destroyed, but of course, the dragons can be wounded, too. If they couldn’t, there would be no need for us,” Sovara said. “I must also think of my students and successors, if any of them survive, and how to keep our order alive a little longer.”

The Chronicler smiled. “In that, you are just like the Aralel.”

“Don’t remind me of it.”

They all rose from the table then, and Thorat gulped down the last of his ale. The Chronicler settled the bill with the serving boy, then went out alone, through the back way. Sovara slipped out after him, shaking off Thorat and Garren’s offers of help.

Thorat felt thirsty for another ale, so he made his way to a small, unoccupied table in the corner by the hearth of the taproom below. Another patron was sidling up by the time he reached it – one of Thorat’s old fellow pickpockets, Pannen, who’d become a captain of the city watch.

“Is that you?” Pannen said. “I’ve hardly seen you for years.” He thumped Thorat on the back. “Wearing the governor’s colors now? That’s too bad. We could use you in the city watch.”

“Is that so?” Thorat was just as glad he’d never joined the watch. He still thought of them as the enemy, an old prejudice left over from his season as a scrappling.

The barmaid arrived and they raised their cups to each other.

“It’s nice to be back in my old quarter again,” Pannen said. He’d become watch chief for the city’s southeast quarter, the area around the harbor temple. “I thought I knew all its tricks when I was young, but things are different now. You’d hardly believe the trouble we’ve been having down by Fishermen’s Wharf.”

“Oh? I always thought that was a peaceful enough place.”

“It was, before this season. Now the cursed Cereans and the Enomaeans are trying to drive the fishermen off. They want more places on the wharves, and I say this is for the fishermen, that’s why it’s called Fishermen’s Wharf, but they just carry on as if they can’t understand a thing, and half the time they can’t.” He paused for a drink. “And then there’s the priestesses. We could probably work something out with the Enomaeans, they’re reasonable enough, but the priestesses won’t have it, say they need that way clear for Midsummer Eve, which is days away still. I’m counting every quarter-day until I can get a full night’s rest again. Any way you look at it, they’re all making trouble, and the traders have hired away half the decent swordsmen in the city, with the governor taking the rest, not that I wouldn’t do the same if I were him, but we’re shorthanded.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Thorat said. “I would help, but the governor has me in his clutches.”

“I can’t take you, then. It would be like old times, having you in the gang,” Pannen said with a faraway smile. “And then I’ll be away. If not now, then after Midwinter.”

“Will you? Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” Pannen said. “Maybe to Cerea first.”

“Looking for Nira?”

Pannen nodded. “If she’s still alive, I’ll find her. I never should have let her go.” With that, he downed the rest of his ale, and they bid each other farewell.

#