The Swordmage Trilogy: Volume 02 - The Darkest Hour (2 page)

             
Faxon gestured absently to a buried object in front of his desk that might have been a chair. Tiadaria lifted stacks of paper and looked for someplace to put them. She was completely at a loss. There was literally nowhere in the cramped room for her to put the pile down in any meaningful way.

             
“Faxon?”

             
“Hmmm?”

             
“Where should I put these?”

             
The quintessentialist finally looked up from the papers and seemed to really see Tiadaria for the first time. He looked from the chair to her hands and back again.

             
“Oh, right,” he pointed to the gently smoldering hearth in the corner of the room. “You can put them there. Yes, that will do fine.”

             
“Really?” Tiadaria looked from the papers to the fireplace, uncertain.

             
“Yes, yes.” He waved his hand, lost again in the paper spread out on his desk.

             
Tiadaria went to the hearth and shifted the papers into the crook of one arm. She prodded the glowing coals to life and then tossed the entire sheaf into the fireplace. It took a moment, but the edges of the paper began to blacken. Before long, orange tongues of flame licked up around the edges and the fire started burning in earnest.

             
“What are you doing?” Faxon cried, leaping to his feet, toppling his chair backwards. He rushed to the hearth, his face contorted into a mask of alarm.

             
“What you told me to do!” Tiadaria shouted, dropping to one knee. She was about to reach into the flames when she heard Faxon’s rumble of laughter.

             
“Relax, Tiadaria,” he said, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “I was just teasing you.”

             
She brandished the poker at him, backing him against the wall. “You gremlin-eared, goblin-toed, stinking, filthy ice pig!”

             
Faxon threw his hands up in surrender, still laughing so hard that tears were streaming down his cheeks.

             
“Alright! Alright,” he said, getting himself under control. “Oh, but if you could have seen the look on your face.”

             
Tiadaria shook the poker at him again, and then dropped it into the rack by the hearth. “Not funny, Faxon.”

             
“On that, young Tiadaria, we will have to agree to disagree. However, scarring you for life wasn’t my intent in calling you here. I trust that Cabot filled you in on what we know?”

             
“What he knew of it. It seems to me that we don’t know as much as we need to.”

             
The quint nodded, leaning against the edge of his desk. “From what Cabot tells me, there are a number of Xarundi packs harrying the settlements around the Warrens, the few of them there are. It seems like they’ve recovered from the thrashing we gave them at Dragonfell and now they’re looking to expand as far and as fast as their furry little feet can carry them.”

             
“That’s not funny either, Faxon.”

             
“No,” he said, sobering abruptly. “It’s not. It is, however, the way things are. Add to that the rumor that they’re looking for something, but we don’t know what. I’ve been going over every record we have in the library and there are vague mentions of ancient Xarundi seeking out an object of great power in the icy wastes of the Frozen Frontier, but no concrete statement of what it is, or where it might be.”

             
“Surely the records here can’t be all we have to go on,” Tiadaria said uncertainly. “If there isn’t any information here, maybe there is in Dragonfell. I can go to the capital and—“

             
“No need,” Faxon interrupted. “King Greymalkin had all the documents pertaining to magical history, theory, and such moved to here from Dragonfell. He felt that they were…safer…in the hands of those who were trained in the arts and sciences.”

             
Tiadaria wrinkled her nose. “In other words, he was afraid that a rogue mage would get hold of something nasty and do something horrid.”

             
“Something like that,” Faxon agreed. “Regardless, all the documents that refer to any magical relics are either here in Blackbeach or in Ethergate.”

             
“Ethergate?”

             
“Blackbeach isn’t the only quintessentialist city. It just happens to be the largest one in the Imperium. Ethergate is farther north, outside the Imperium’s borders. Here in Blackbeach, we deal with education and research. Ethergate deals more with practical application.”

             
Tiadaria ran her finger along the thin gray witchmetal collar around her neck. It was a habit she had developed as a former slave under the Captain’s care. Now it was a source of comfort when she was nervous or agitated. It helped temper the unknown with the familiar.

             
“So,” she finally said. “Ethergate is where you test the things that you don’t want the King to know about, or that you want to be able to disavow.”

             
The papers in the hearth had died back down to embers. Faxon took the poker and prodded them experimentally, watching them crumble to ash before he replied.

             
“Not officially,” he said at length. “But there are those quintessentialists who…shall we say bend the rules from time to time.”

             
Tiadaria laughed. “I’m surprised you don’t spend more of your time in Ethergate.”

             
“I used to, in my youth. Now my talents are better put to use here, shaping impressionable young minds. Like yours.”

             
Tia snorted. “Ha!”

             
There was a knock at the doorway and they turned to see a girl no older than eight or nine standing in the doorway. Her miniature robes swirled around her ankles. The girl’s long black hair was pulled back in a ponytail and framed a delicate face so pale and flawless that it reminded Tiadaria of smooth porcelain.

             
“Yes, Tionne?” Faxon’s voice was gentler than it had been just a moment before.

             
“Head Master Maera wishes to see you, Master Indra.” Tionne’s wide round eyes, like little pools of emerald fire, glittered in the dim light. Tiadaria found the effect unsettling.

             
“Thank you, Tionne,” Faxon said with a wave. “Please tell her that I’ll be along momentarily.”

             
Tionne nodded and padded off down the hall, her slippers making only the slightest whisper on the smooth obsidian floor.

             
“Tionne,” Tiadaria said thoughtfully, then shot Faxon a startled glance. “Not the girl from Doshmill?”

             
Faxon nodded gravely. “The same. She showed an affinity for the arts, so Torus brought her here after the attack. She’s a quick study. She’ll outmatch even me one day.”

             
“That’s hard?” Tiadaria quipped.

             
“Quiet you,” Faxon snapped. He was gathering stacks of paper and piling them on top of each other. He hefted the entire pile and gave her a measured look. “I need to meet with the Head Master. If you want to make yourself useful, you can start going through the library again to see if I missed anything. Once I’m done with Maera, we’ll have dinner and tomorrow maybe we’ll see about heading to Ethergate. I have an apprentice there who can probably help us dig up some details.”

             
He squeezed past her and stopped in the hallway, turning to face her. “Stay put until I get back, Tiadaria. This is no time to be flaunting your independence.”

             
“Have I ever?” She asked sweetly.

             
“Oh, only at every turn.” He gave her a piercing look. “I mean it, Tia. This could get ugly. I’ll be back.”

             
With that, he disappeared from the doorway, leaving her alone in the office.

* * *

              The library in Blackbeach was a large rectangular building that filled the better part of the entire northwest corner of the city. It was bounded on the north by the city walls, the east by the great eastern ocean, and the west by the Great Tower itself. Four stories were crammed floor to ceiling with books and scrolls, diagrams and paintings, from all over Solendrea. One of Tiadaria’s favorite things about the library was the way it smelled. The subtle combination of old paper, ink, and lamp oil was soothing no matter how frayed her nerves were when she arrived.

             
She slipped through the arched doorway and passed the prune-faced quintessentialist at the reference desk. Tiadaria had long ago learned not to let the disapproving glances at her collar bother her. There were many, both here and in Dragonfell, who didn’t approve of her unorthodox jewelry. However, since she was vouched for by not only her reputation, but also one of the most powerful quintessentialists in the realm, and the One True King himself, there weren’t many who would openly show her any blatant disrespect. No matter how they thought of her in private.

             
Tiadaria climbed the spiral staircase to the third floor and let herself into the map room. Large wide cabinets dominated the perimeter walls, while a series of tables were pushed together in the center of the room forming one large table that allowed even the largest maps to be spread out in all their glory. Small moveable steps were scattered around the table, allowing those viewing the maps to climb up and gain the proper perspective on the larger specimens.

             
Jotun, a quint so old that Tia suspected he had been present at the founding of the Imperium sat in one corner of the room. His head was pillowed on his arm and his snores were the only sound in the otherwise still and empty room. She let the old man sleep. Circling the map table, she read the neatly printed letters on each cabinet. Though she had come to the Imperium with a very basic understanding of written language, Faxon had drilled her time and again on both fundamentals and advanced concepts of language and record-keeping.

             
He expected her to be able to match the fastidious Captain’s records and notes, a task that Tiadaria loathed almost as much as research. Still, the records she kept for Faxon helped to document the tasks she performed in service to the quints and the realm as a whole, and so earned her a stipend from the king’s treasury for her service. That part, she had to admit, was rather nice and could be easily adapted to.

             
Finally she found the cabinet with the map she sought. It was painted on thin muslin but was so large that it was still rather heavy and bulky for her to move on her own. However, even if she woke Jotun from his nap, he wouldn’t be much help. The elderly mage was much more adept at reading maps and remembering forgotten details than he was at anything as pedestrian as physical labor. With some effort she got the map to the viewing tables and began to spread it out.

             
When fully unfurled, the map took up nearly the entire viewing table. It was easily twenty feet wide and three-quarters of that high. Tiadaria had to climb to the top of one of the step-stools to get the proper vantage point from which to gather her bearings. Dragonfell was easiest to locate, as the inset detail of the cavern palace and the large alabaster stonework was unmistakable. From there, it was a relatively simple matter to trace the trade road south, past Wheatborne and eventually to Blackbeach.

             
Tiadaria gnawed thoughtfully at her lower lip. Faxon had said that Ethergate was outside the Imperium’s border, so she followed the trade route north from Blackbeach, across the Dragonback Mountains through which she passed so often and out past King’s Reach. There was a large city far to the northwest of King’s Reach. It was unlabeled on the map, but marked with the hand-eye-and-triangle symbol that was the common mark of the quintessentialists. Certainly that had to be Ethergate.

             
“Have you found what you seek, young lady?” Jotun’s gravelly voice startled her so badly that Tiadaria jumped and had to clutch the handrail on the steps lest she fall down. He had gotten silently to his feet and shuffled around to where she stood on the stool, two heads higher than he.

             
“Is that Ethergate?” she asked, pointing at the dot on the map. Jotun nodded, scratching his stubbly white whiskers and looking at her thoughtfully.

             
“Aye, young lady, it is.”

             
“How long would you say it would take to travel there on horseback?”

             
Jotun shook his head. “The trade road ends outside the Imperium, Lady Tiadaria. That slows things up something awful. Once you get onto the lesser used roads in the outlands, it’s slow going indeed.”