Scriber (33 page)

They converged on me from both sides, but the one in front of me leapt first, claws outstretched. Ten yards away, Bryndine put her whole body into a mighty swing of her sword, though she appeared to be striking at nothing. A flash of grey in the air, a glint of metal, and the leaping snowcat jerked sideways, crashing to the ground with six feet of steel buried in its ribs. I stared for a moment, unable to make sense of what I had just seen.

“Get down, Scriber!” Bryndine shouted as she surged forward through the snow.

Startled into motion, I threw myself flat against the ground, barely ducking beneath the last snowcat as it pounced. Sharp claws raked at my back, tearing my greatcoat and the clothing beneath, but finding no purchase in my flesh. The beast passed overhead, failing to disembowel me by a margin no thicker than my underclothes.

It landed behind me and to my left, the momentum of its jump carrying it a short distance away. When I looked back, it was already skidding to a halt in the snow, reversing direction. My feet slipped on the packed snow beneath me as I tried to stand, and I fell on my stomach, forcing the breath from my lungs. The cat would be on me in an instant, I knew. I did not want to die with my back turned. I rolled over just in time to see the sleek white animal descending. It was so close that I could smell the rotting meat on its breath. Sharp claws raked the air inches from my face.

They never reached me.

Bryndine slammed into the snowcat in midair, holding her shield before her like a battering ram. The force of the blow carried the beast to the side, its claws missing me by inches. Bryndine fell heavily on her hands and knees beside me; the cat landed on its feet, close enough to take my head off with one swipe.

The cat slashed at my throat, quick as instinct. Bryndine was quicker. Still kneeling, she swept her left arm across her body in a backhanded arc, driving the edge of her shield into the snowcat’s head. The metal disk sheared through flesh and scraped bone, but drew no blood. Somehow, the cat kept its feet, clawed at me again, and then Bryndine’s shield punched through its skull with a dull crunch. It slumped to the ground and moved no more.

Bryndine pushed herself to her feet. Her sword still jutted from the side of one of the beasts’ corpses a few feet away, and she strode over and drew the blade free. A dark trickle of blood finally flowed from the wound it left, and she wiped her blade clean in the snow before sheathing it. I had been confused before, but now I understood that she must have
thrown
the sword—a sword that I could barely lift with two hands—hard enough and accurately enough to kill the cat from ten yards away. I stared at her for a moment with my mouth agape, trying to imagine the kind of strength and control that would have taken.

“Are you injured, Scriber?” Bryndine reached down to help me up.

I took her hand and stood, still trying to understand what had happened. “I’m… fine,” I said. It was not entirely true—I had no wounds, but the moment of unexplained clarity I had experienced during the fight worried at my thoughts.
What is happening to me?

“Dragon-damned cats came out of nowhere,” Orya said as she and Sylla drew near. “What got them so angry?” She was limping, I noticed, and one of the cats had left four deep parallel gouges in her cheek that would almost certainly scar.

“It was the Burnt.” I ran my eyes over my companions as I spoke, searching for signs of serious injury. Sylla clutched at her side where one of the beasts had parted her armor and underpadding to reach the flesh beneath; Bryndine had escaped the worst of it, though her right arm was wounded and bleeding.

Bryndine nodded, apparently unsurprised. “I thought as much. They bled too little, and snowcats do not hunt in packs as a rule.” She looked at me for a moment in silent appraisal, then said, “It was fortunate for us that the snow stopped when it did. You hear the… the sorcery at times, Scriber. Was that…” She let the words hang without finishing her thought, but it was clear that she suspected my involvement in ending the snowfall.

I shook my head sharply, unwilling to confess until I knew exactly what I had done. “I don’t know what happened. I… I’ll understand more when I read those books. We need to find the cave.”

“No we don’t,” said Sylla.

I swivelled to face her, ready to defend the need to keep searching despite the snowcat attack. After whatever it was that I had just experienced, I needed answers more than ever. But Sylla’s face showed none of the defiance I was expecting.

She pointed back the way she had come, and I saw it. Half-buried in the high snowdrifts piled against the valley’s east slope, no more than twenty yards from where we stood, was the mouth of a cave. Fyrril’s cave.

“We don’t need to look for it,” Sylla said again. “It’s right there.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

If not for the bravery of Prince Fyrril and the men who followed him, the entire history of the Kingsland would have been lost with the Forgetting. Much of that history survives today only because of Fyrril’s rebellion, and because of the songs of a minstrel who was fiercely loyal to his Prince. Fyrril died to give some measure of hope to the Kingslanders who, nearly five centuries after his death, would face the same threat he had; he died without knowing if his sacrifice would ever be remembered. That it was not for so long is one of the greatest tragedies of the Forgetting.

— From Dennon Lark’s
The Forgetting Remembered

Beyond the mouth of the cavern, the passage turned sharply to the left and sloped uphill. The change in direction prevented the snow from travelling very far past the entrance, and the cold of the mountains kept the air crisp and dry. I could almost believe that the last tomes of the Archives might have survived there for nearly five centuries.

Bryndine and Sylla walked with me, Sylla moving gingerly due to the wound in her side. I had bound the women’s injuries as best I could before doing anything else, and none of them had been terribly serious. The gouge in Orya’s thigh could have severed any number of arteries, but had missed them all; despite the limp it gave her, she had insisted that she hardly felt the pain and volunteered to stand watch outside while we explored the cave.

The light grew dim as we went further in, but we had come prepared. Bryndine detached a handheld oil lantern from her pack and used it to light the way. It was not long before that light revealed something that nearly made me scream with rage.

At the end of the passage, our way was blocked.

An enormous stone prevented further progress, completely obstructing our path. Peeking through the slivers of space around it, I could see that the passage opened into a larger cavern just beyond, but the light of the lantern did not penetrate far enough to see what lay within.

My shoulders slumped. After coming all this way, it would be a cruel joke for our search to end here, but I did not see how we could get by. There were too few of us to move such a large boulder. Fyrril must have had it put in place to keep animals and the like from entering and damaging the books, but he would have had men with him to help. We did not have time to go back for the others and return before the winter began in earnest.

“Well,” I said, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice, “I suppose this is as far as we go.”

Bryndine regarded the boulder as though assessing an opponent. “I think not,” she said, setting her lantern on the ground. “We will try to move it.”

She was a big woman, and strong, but I was certain that she was overestimating her abilities. She had to be. The boulder must have weighed thousands of pounds—it nearly filled the passage, more than eight feet in height and six across. But there was an undeniable command in Bryndine’s voice, and when she set her shoulder against the rock, Sylla and I moved to join her without hesitation.

I had seen Bryndine Errynson do amazing things. I had seen her swing her blade hard enough to cleave a man in two, seen her take blows that would have knocked me off my feet. Outside the cave, I had seen her kill a snowcat by throwing a sword that should have been impossible to throw as far and as well as she had. I had seen her fight—and win—while outnumbered ten to one.

This was the most incredible thing I had ever seen her do.

Though Sylla and I pushed beside her, we were less than useless; to say we helped at all would diminish what Bryndine did then. She heaved against the giant rock, the muscles in her arms and neck bulging and cording with the strain. And the rock moved.

At first I thought I had imagined the motion, but then I felt it again. The slightest movement, no more than an inch, but this time I heard the sound as the boulder scraped the stone floor of the cave. I was barely pushing, my feet scrabbling against the ground, unable to find leverage. Yet the heavy stone continued to inch forward.

Sweat beaded on Bryndine’s brow despite the cold; her face was flushed and red, her square jaw clenched. She braced her foot solidly against the floor and put all of her weight, all of her preposterous strength, into another surge of effort. The boulder slid forward another half-foot, then a whole foot. Sylla and I fell back, unable to keep any kind of useful pressure on the stone.

Bryndine gave a final, titanic shove, and the boulder flew forward, rasping loudly along the rock wall. Then, slowly and ponderously, the giant stone toppled, falling into the cavern that lay beyond.

The crash of falling stone echoed painfully in my ears, and in the back of my head there was a vague concern that the rock might have damaged the books when it fell, but at that moment, I could do nothing but stare in awe at Bryndine.
The blood of barbarian heroes and Elovian kings
. I had never believed in the old saying about the Errynsons, but it occurred to me then that where Bryndine was concerned, it might have been more than just legend and gossip. I thought that Sylla might mock me for staring so openly, but when I looked at her, she was watching Bryndine, and her eyes held nothing but pure admiration.

Bryndine swayed on her feet, leaning against the side of the passage to steady herself, and Sylla immediately leapt to her side.

“Are you all right, Bryn?” she asked, her brow furrowed with worry.

Bryndine waved away the concern, though she was panting for breath and looked ready to collapse. “I will be fine in a moment. Scriber Dennon, take the lantern. Find the books.”

Nodding, I took the handheld lantern and started into the cavern, clambering over the rock that had barred our way. I could already see a glimmer of metal by the lantern’s light, and I hurried towards it. What I found took my breath away.

The cave went back some twenty feet, and against the far wall sat ten chests like the ones we had found in Three Rivers, all sealed and seemingly intact despite the long years they had waited there. Ten chests—twice as many as our last find, and if Fyrril was to be believed, full of the most important books the Archives had contained. Atop one of the center chests sat a flat rectangular box crafted of silver, with a burning tree embossed into its surface.

“They’re here,” I said, my voice breaking. “The Archives are here.” There was something damp on my face, and I realized I was crying. This was everything I had worked for my entire life, and despite many, many bumps along the way, I had arrived at last. Those who had died had not died for nothing. The lost history of the Kingsland waited in those chests.

With something approaching religious reverence, I opened the silver box. A leather-bound journal lay within—Fyrril’s journal, the source of the pages we had found in our search. A small piece of parchment lay on top of the journal, scrawled with a message in a hand I now knew well.

Whoever has discovered this place, I hope that it is not too late for you to make use of these books. This journal holds my story, all I have done and learned. In the chest beneath are all of the books I found relevant to my research. The others contain the most important works I could save from the Archives.

My men and I will do all we can to preserve the Kingsland, though it will almost certainly end in torture and execution. I have done little right, I fear, and the kingdom suffers for my failures. But perhaps if this information is used well, our deaths will have been worth something.

The despair in the short note was heart-breaking. Fyrril had given everything to defy his father and preserve these works through the Forgetting. He had deserved better than a rebel’s death.

Bryndine laid a hand on my shoulder, startling me; she and Sylla had approached from behind as I read the note. Embarrassed, I hastily wiped the moisture from my cheeks.

“We cannot afford to stay long, Scriber Dennon,” Bryndine said. “It will be hard enough getting back with the snow as deep as it is already. We must try to outpace the next blizzard. Most of these books will have to remain here until the Scribers can return.”

“I know.” I tapped the lid of the chest in front of me. “We need to bring as many books as we can carry from this chest.”

“We will take all we can. You can read them on the road.”

Though I wanted to read everything in the cave immediately and a hundred times over, I shook my head. “Better that I read them somewhere safe, sheltered. They are old, and I don’t want to risk damaging them.” This was another thing driven into me at the Academy until it was instinct—a book was a precious thing, not to be read on horseback or around a campfire, not to be exposed to the wind and rain and grime of the outdoors. And these books were more precious than any I had ever handled.

Bryndine raised an eyebrow. “There may be vital information in Fyrril’s journal. It is a long journey back to Three Rivers, if you mean to wait.”

I smiled, thinking of my conversation with Deanyn a few nights before. “Actually, I know a closer place.”

* * *

We arrived in Waymark a little over a week later.

Slogging through deep snow, our packs laden with heavy tomes, it had taken us four days to return to camp. After that it was a safe and uneventful journey south out of the mountains, despite a few light snows before we descended into the foothills. Tenille’s injuries did not slow us a great deal—with her limbs splinted and her ribs wrapped, she had insisted that she could ride, ignoring my objections. To her credit, she kept pace with the rest of the group and gave no complaint, though every bump must have been excruciating for her.