Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (41 page)

“I would like to see the place a bit. From the couple
times you sneaked me in when we were younger, it seemed nearly as nice as the
palace,” Iridan replied. “Not today, though. I think everyone should get some
time to get used to me being Warlock Rashan’s son, not the least of them being
me. I woke up this morning as Iridan Korian. I think I shall try falling asleep
as him tonight as well.

“By the by, you could use a good night’s rest
yourself. I know you have had as interesting a day as have I, but you look the
worse for it,” Iridan said in that bluntly insulting manner that only close
friends are wont to get away with on a regular basis.

“I slept poorly last night. I had a particularly vivid
nightmare, and it has gnawed at me all day, despite the numerous distractions
that you might think would take my mind off it entirely,” Brannis confided.
There was no one else around now, and he felt confident that Iridan knew him
well enough not to read too much into it.

“Must have been quite the nightmare. Were you falling
perhaps, or trapped by some monster or another? I have never found the end of
one of those falling ones; I think the mind does not quite know what the end is
supposed to feel like, so you just wake up,” Iridan said.

“No, I always see the same place in my dreams, the
same people. I am always the same person in my dreams, not Brannis the knight,
but some lowly scribe. Last night, I was accosted by city guards after they
caught me doing magic, which I think was illegal, possibly. Anyway, I got
caught and knocked out. I do not know what happened from then on,” Brannis
said. He was not sure Iridan would understand, but at least he felt he could
unburden himself somewhat in Iridan’s presence.

“Oh, Brannis. It still pains you even though the
Academy was winters ago? You get to play at magic in your dreams and get
persecuted for it? That is just awful. Quite a clear recollection of it as
well. It must have made quite the impression on you.”

Iridan sounded empathetic, but Brannis knew he could
not understand the frustration that those winters of failure and ultimately
ridicule had caused him. Still, as thoughtful as Iridan’s kind words were, they
missed the mark.

“Well, yes, but that is not the half of it. I remember
it all, the whole thing, morning to night, and I do every night. I did not use
to remember my dreams much at all, but I think possibly because they bored me
so. Things have been going better of late in the dream world, what with
learning a little magic and meeting this girl—”

“Aha,” Iridan interrupted him. “This whole dream thing
is about the parts of your life you would like to change. You are still pining
for Juliana, too, I would wager. You claimed you were past that, but you still
carry on hoping because technically no one called off your betrothal. It was
just a given that once you left the Academy that it was over. How many lasses
have you bedded to convince yourself you did not still want her? You are a
general now—”

“Grand marshal,” Brannis corrected him quietly, barely
slowing Iridan’s narrative momentum.

“Err, yes, a grand marshal now, and have the support
of the new high sorcerer. Surely you could just, uh, follow through? How could
she refuse you?” Iridan asked.

Brannis could not help but admire how his friend was
trying to help him out, ill-conceived though the attempt might have been.

“It is not so much that; I just worry what has
happened in my dream. I do not want to lose everything I have there,” Brannis
said.

“Brannis, it is just a dream. Dreams are all in your
head. If you lose what you have there, maybe you can take my advice and seek it
while you are awake.” Iridan smiled mischievously. “Is she pretty?”

Brannis frowned in reply. “Do you have an appointment
with a tailor you ought to be seeing to this afternoon?” Brannis said,
diverting the conversation because Iridan was just having fun with him now.

“See you tomorrow, Brannis.” Iridan turned and waved
as he departed. “And get some real sleep tonight. The Empire will need you,
after all.”

*
* * * * * * *

Brannis attended the officers’ summons to the palace
that night. Rashan held audience in the throne room but stood beside the empty
throne the whole time. All officers stationed in Kadris were in attendance,
since the order had left off mention of what ranks were considered “senior”
enough to attend. Rashan made no comment on the size of the crowd.

Brannis kept himself distracted by the audience, as he
had heard the details of the conspiracy already, and knew more of the travels
from Kelvie already than Rashan revealed to the rest of the officers. He could
not stop his worries about Kyrus and his fate, now that he had time enough to
let them run wild.

He was half-listening to Rashan and was aware enough
of the crowd’s reaction to realize that the warlock was an inspiring speaker.
It dawned on Brannis that
these
were Rashan’s people, much more so than
the flabby old sorcerers that sat in ornate chairs in a tower and spent their
days debating and delegating. These were men who would bear arms into battle
and emerge bloody and victorious, or at least might have in their younger days,
in some cases.

The warlock appealed to their sense of imperial pride
and talked of the glories of the Empire that were dying in the fields like
overripe vegetables. He actually compared them to those vegetables: soft,
worthless, and rotting inside. He offered them a new path back to what the
Empire used to be, when he was last its warlock.

The rousing speech noticeably lifted the morale of
those present, though obviously some remained unconvinced. The one phrase that
stood out to Brannis as an omen of the Empire’s future was thus: “I will
reunite the Empire through diplomacy, and I am a diplomat of fire and steel.”
There was actually a book in the library at the School of Arms entitled
The
Diplomacy of Fire and Steel
, which had been written after Rashan’s apparent
death, describing his use of diplomacy and deception in the cause of war.

It was said that the emperor wielded the army in his
left hand and the Circle in his right, the two tools by which he controlled the
Empire. Brannis wondered if he was about to become the blood-stained left hand
of the regent.

Sir Hurald did not seek Warlock Rashan’s permission to
challenge Brannis to a duel that night. Brannis did not expect to sleep the
better for it.

Chapter 21 - On My Own Behalf

What happened?
Kyrus wondered in a daze.

He had a headache that only a man bound for the
chopping block would envy. He was lying down on some hard surface that felt
like wood. Opening his eyes to try to get his bearings, the light sent shooting
pains through his head, and he closed them again quickly.

There was some sort of commotion that sounded like it
was in the next room, but he could not tell with any certainty. There were
raised and angry voices, but too many of them, and the overall effect was too
loud; it was making his headache worse.

His whole side hurt from whatever wooden surface he
was lying on. He felt as if he must have been insensible for a long time, for
his muscles had grown stiff due to lack of movement. He stretched out a bit and
heard a clanking of chains; his ankles were shackled together.

What he had first dismissed as a bad case of dry mouth
was actually some sort of gag. He reached up to pull it loose but found his
wrists shackled together as well, and bound to a chain around his waist.

Oh, this definitely is not a good sign.

Opening his eyes just a slit, Kyrus managed to survey
his surroundings. He was, unsurprisingly given the shackles, in a cell. Kyrus
had never been to Scar Harbor’s jail—a failing of his cultural upbringing no
doubt—but was clever enough to puzzle out that it was his present location. He
was surrounded on three sides and above by stone bricks, with a wall of bars
completing the room. The floor was dirt covered, but Kyrus suspected that it,
too, was stone or bedrock not far down. He was lying on a wooden cot, with the
only other furnishing in the room being a chamber pot. With a supreme effort,
Kyrus rolled enough that he could look at the wall he was lying nearest, and
saw that there was a small, wide, barred window above him near the ceiling of
the cell. The window allowed in fresh air, a little—unwelcome at the
moment—light, and the noises from the street that he had been hearing.

Kyrus knew only one, modestly effective, cure for
headaches. He relaxed as best he could and drew in a bit of aether. The cool
rush cleared his head a bit. It did not eliminate the pain, but it helped
markedly in clearing the foggy haze that the pain left in his head. He was able
to sit up without the world spinning and decided that it was worth an attempt
to do so.

Though he had drawn in little aether, after a few
moments he became irritatingly aware of the fact that he was holding it. As it
began to burn, and it occurred to Kyrus that he had not the ability to cast any
spells, bound up as he was. He looked about for a likely place to dump the
excess discretely and found that they had left him no water. He was almost glad
he had not yet used the chamber pot, sparing himself that unsavory odor, should
he have boiled it off. He decided on the bars of the cell door as his likeliest
option and diverted the aether there. He saw no visible effect from it, but
knew that the bars would be, at the least, rather uncomfortably warm to the
touch.

*
* * * * * * *

The bars of the cell had surely cooled by the time the
bailiffs arrived to drag Kyrus from his cell. They were two stocky men, cut
from the “just obeying orders” cloth. Both were dressed in official uniforms of
a drab brown with minimal adornment, and carrying clubs slung from their belts.
One carried a ring of keys and unlocked the cell door. The grating
metal-on-metal sound of the key in the rusted lock pierced Kyrus’s
still-sensitive ears and drove tiny daggers of pain into his brain.

The door opened with the creak one might expect of an
un-oiled iron cage, and the bailiffs strode in. Without so much as a word, they
hoisted Kyrus up under each arm and carried him bodily from the cell, shackled
feet dragging along. Kyrus could not have kept up with their pace had he wanted
to, hobbled as he was, and doubted he would much care for where they were
taking him. They carried him down the row of cells beneath the jailhouse, and
to the stairs heading up.

Well, at least this bodes well for seeing the light of
day again
, Kyrus mused darkly.

He had worried that he might be taken somewhere worse,
and usually that sort of thing would suggest down rather than up, if the
storybooks he had read were any indication. As they took the stairs, Kyrus
contorted to dodge his head below one of the low rafters, causing his headache
to renew its efforts. His feet bumped along at each step as they hung limply;
Kyrus was too tired to make the effort to pull them up or back and out of the
way.

When they reached the top, they made their way past a
short row of waiting constables, who fell in beside them as they proceeded. The
jail was cleaner and more orderly up on the ground floor, with desks and
storage rooms and hallways connected by barred doors. Kyrus tried to make a map
of it in his head, in case he were to attempt some sort of daring escape. To date,
his most daring endeavor had been courting Abbiley, so he expected that there
might be a bit of a learning curve in regards to jailbreaks. Still, what other
options was he going to have?

Well, I can always try denying everything. Only a few
officers of the constabulary saw anything, and it was late at night. They could
have been overwrought and misinterpreted what they saw. Or maybe I can insist I
was practicing parlor tricks, and it was all an act. Surely not enough people
in Acardia are superstitious enough to believe in magic. Certainly not a
magistrate.

Kyrus had managed to make himself feel rather better
about his prospects by the time they got him to the door. He would make his
appeal to the magistrate—which is where he supposed they were bringing him—and
convince everyone that the whole notion of magic was preposterous. Acardia was
a rational, enlightened kingdom: too sensible to be overcome by fears of
witchcraft.

Of course, once Kyrus passed clear of the door, the
crowd, which had gone relatively quiet in the hours of waiting to see the
“witch,” was re-energized. Thoughts of appealing to the better nature of a
learned man of law and justice were quickly replaced with a sudden fear that he
was going to be burned at the stake!

“Begone, fiend!”

“We do not want your kind!”

“Get rid of him!”

“Hang him!”

“Leave us alone, witch!”

“Burn the witch!”

The latter was shouted more than once and was
eventually taken up by the mob at large as a chant. Kyrus suspected that he was
being carried because any sane man would have likely tried to bolt if he was
walking on his own. The two bailiffs carried him to a waiting wagon and hefted
him into it, then climbed in with him. The constables kept the crowd back and
away from the horses as the wagon drover got them moving. Kyrus tried to slouch
down below the level of the sides of the wagon to get out of sight of the
crowd, but one of the bailiffs grabbed him and hauled him back up.

“Aww, no hidin’, Mister Witch,” the bailiff told him
in his gutter accent. He seemed the sort who chose a life of thuggery in the
service of law as a career option favorable to a life of thuggery outside
it—and only because the pay was steady. “They wants to see ya, so they gets to
see ya.”

Kyrus hung his head and tried to block out the jeers
and calls for his immolation, but there was only so little room inside one’s
own head in which to hide, and Kyrus was beset on all sides. The ride to the
courthouse was a short one, as it was located convenient to the jail, but it
seemed an eternity to Kyrus, whose confidence in the rationality of Acardians
was severely shaken. He could not understand how the citizens could be
convinced so quickly when he had only been arrested hours earlier, and no
charges had yet been lodged against him officially.

*
* * * * * * *

Across town, at a certain shop whose sign bore no
picture, another crowd had gathered. This one was less angry and more curious,
but still very excited. Constables had formed a loose ring around it and were
keeping folks back from it. Inside, some of the more senior members of the
sheriff’s staff were rummaging through papers and books, gathering evidence.
They had already found Kyrus’s notes, both those written in plain language and
those that were written in an indecipherable and otherworldly script.

The crowd was uninterested in the investigation of the
shop. They had all gathered to catch a glimpse of the otherworldly light that
shone out the door that had been left ajar. A light that had no visible origin,
yet just kept glowing …

*
* * * * * * *

“Expert Kyrus Hinterdale, how do you answer these
charges?” Lord Kenrick Lionsvaen asked.

Kyrus had formally been charged with the practice of
witchcraft and attacking officers of the peace. Two men with crossbows aimed at
his back stood just behind him as he sat in the dock, where he had just
finished listening to the preliminaries of the case presented against him. He
had been given to understand that if they heard anything that sounded like it
might be magical in nature, he would be shot, but at least they had removed the
gag from his mouth.

“I have done nothing wrong, Your Lordship,” was all
Kyrus could manage.

He was terrified and disoriented. The shouting of the
crowd had done little good for his still-aching head, and he had never had much
interest in court cases, so he was unfamiliar with how things were to be
handled.

“Sheriff Marsemal, please present the evidence,” the
judge intoned.

The judge was an elderly man with a regal bearing. He
wore the traditional black robes of a jurist, which hung loosely off his gaunt
frame, and skull cap to match. His wrinkled face was pale and ashen as someone
who had worked a lifetime indoors. His hooked nose supported a pair of
gold-rimmed spectacles that caught the light strangely and obscured his eyes,
making it seem as if he was not seeing what took place around him and giving
him a detached air.

“Your Lordship.” The sheriff of Scar Harbor bowed
slightly to the magistrate as he arose. “I have five men who were witnesses to
the sights in Mr. Hinterdale’s shop last evening, three of whom can attest to
having seen actual witchcraft performed in front of their very eyes; seen it,
heard it, and had detritus from about the shop flung at them by means of it.

“Also, Your Lordship, we have the accused’s own notes,
describing the methods and means of his dark art, written plainly in Acardian.
We also have a number of pages containing notes in an unknown language. I took
the liberty of awakening the esteemed Professor Wittingham of the university’s
department of language and foreign studies, who could not so much as identify
the characters or symbols being used.

“If these were not enough, Your Lordship, there is
still, as of the last of my hearing, a light of inexplicable and unknowable
origin shining from within the main work area of Mr. Hinterdale’s shop.

“Your Lordship, I am not a superstitious man, and a
week ago, I would have thought it impossible. Today I stand before you and ask
how this can be anything else but witchcraft,” the sheriff concluded.

Kyrus could not help but be impressed at the man’s
oratory ability, despite his predicament. Sheriff Marsemal could have been a
thespian, or perhaps a city councilor, but instead stayed on year after year as
the sheriff in Scar Harbor. Kyrus wondered if he kept the job because he had
grown to like having everyone hang on his words as he made such speeches in
court.

“Again, Expert Hinterdale, I would ask you to respond
to this evidence,” Lord Lionsvaen instructed Kyrus.

Kyrus’s mouth was dry, but somehow managed to get even
drier. “I … hurt no one,” he croaked. He cleared his throat, fearing that the
nervous crossbowmen would fire quarrels into his back, but needing to make a
case for himself. “It is all harmless. Parlor tricks and such. This is all
being taken much too far.”

There was a general murmuring of dozens of
conversations that began in the gallery at the first hearing of Kyrus’s
defense. Many who had never met him just heard this “witch” speak for the first
time, and he was hardly a threatening specimen. Kyrus had barely been aware of
the spectators within the courtroom until they started making noise. After the
crowd outside and their calls for his gruesome demise, the relatively civil
citizens in attendance had barely registered themselves in his
consciousness—his consciousness being somewhat tenuous at the moment itself; he
was feeling faint.

“Quiet now!” Lord Lionsvaen shouted, and the audience
composed themselves once more. “Mr. Hinterdale,” he continued in a more
professional tone, “you admit to these acts?”

“Yes, but—”

“And I have seen for myself, as Sheriff Marsemal took
me by your shop this morning, that there is indeed an unhallowed sort of light
that comes from nothingness.”

“Well, you see—”

“Stop interrupting me, child, or it shall go badly for
you,” Lord Lionsvaen said. “And the lawmen you assaulted are rather upstanding
and honest men, whose accounts I believe in spite of the fantastical nature of
its description.”

“Your Lordship, I think that this is an instance where
we might justifiably request an exemption from the prohibition on executions,”
Sheriff Marsemal said.