The Great Pandemonium: Nobilitas Obligat

Part VIII. Nighttyr (cont.)

Part VIII. Nighttyr (cont.)

Sacha had not been exaggerating about the trip taking three weeks, and the further into the Hereveil they rode the worse the weather became. During the day it was either misting or outright pouring rain, and the rain only ceased for a few hours every night, barely long enough for them to get enough dry wood together to start a fire worth cooking over.

At the end of the first week Drystan had given up trying to dry himself out at night and instead hoped he would not get some sort of horrible foot rot that would lead to his legs being amputated. At the middle of the second week he remembered that he was an Inferi now, and that unless that foot rot was of Pandemonium magic, the only thing that was really going to happen would be the fact he would be gracing Sacha's presence with the worst-smelling feet on Eral.

At the end of the third week the nasty weather finally broke up and he caught sight of Frostheld. It was not what he would consider a castle, but moreso a large walled-in area containing homes, markets, forges, and a pair of temples which he knew would be dedicated both to the sky and earth spirit that the horse lords worshiped. The Éadoren did everything in pairs, from bearing children to buying horses to building their permanent settlements. Having an odd number of anything was a sign of a cosmic imbalance which preceded either great prosperity or terrible misfortune. As such there was a low, mostly ceremonial wall that split the area within the castle walls neatly in two; he suspected that if he asked the Éadoren that lived there they would say one side was "Frost" and the other side was "Held."

They rode in without much in the way of inspection from the locals. From the looks he could see Sacha receiving they all knew who she was, or at least who she was affiliated with. No one offered to sell them anything as they rode through the market, but neither were they treated coldly. It was a bit odd how no one treated their arrival with any more ceremony than a normal pair of road-weary travelers; he had thought there would be a bit more reverence involved, but as Coord had said, no one truly knew what they had done. A few of the younger children stared at her in awe, then grinned and shouted out something in the language of the steppes before running off into the shadows of an overhang or an alley.

"What are they yelling at you for?" asked Drystan finally as they neared the center of the city.

She glanced with disinterest over her shoulder. "They're daring us to chase them. They do it with everyone from Antenox-here, it's something of a legend where they say we take the 'odd' children into our service and make them whole. The ones that shout at you will be the only child of their mother, or the third, or fifth, and so on."

"Are there a lot of Éadoren in Antenox?"

"A few, but none are Inferi. Though they don't think of the City the way the church does they still believe it's forbidden ground, the site of a war between three god-factions that destroyed a world. It's part of the reason for their obsession with even numbers, we think."

The stone-walled keep-like building marked by the two-headed wolf hanging over its oaken doors sat rather appropriately on the line straddling the divided grounds of the settlement. At the south side were the stables where Sacha lead him and they left their horses in the hands of a few young men who had looked rather bored until they rode up. They entered the keep through what he guessed was the back door and made their way through the oddly quiet halls until they arrived in a library-like room lined floor to ceiling two stories high with stone shelves.

"Ah my mistress, irony! He's a blond too!"

Drystan jumped at hearing the voice and turned to find a thin bespectacled man hanging from a rung ladder against the wall by one hand and one foot. He had just withdrawn a book bound in blue leather from the shelf and had it tucked neatly beneath his free arm. Branded on the left side of his face just below his dark brown eye was the broken circle mark of apostasy, seared into the flesh of those who had once been title-bearing members of the Church of Junan but had been convicted of violating canon law and excommunicated. Drystan had to wonder what the wide-eyed cheery-looking man could have done to warrant such a harsh punishment-or what title someone as young-looking as he could have held within the clergy where virtually none under the age of thirty were permitted to be anything save priests or census-takers.

Waving at them both with his foot the man placed the book he had been holding back upon its shelf and hopped the six or so feet back to the floor. Pushing his glasses up so that they became slightly lost in his mop of curly black hair he came to stand before Drystan and offered his hand. "I am Caspar. Welcome to Frostheld."

Shaking the man's hand he glanced around the room a second time, then asked, "Are you the only one here?"

"Today I was," replied Caspar with a shrug. He did not seem overly concerned with being the only person in such a large domicile. "You and Farseeth are here now. A dozen others should be by within the week to stop over for the wake on their way into the Empire." His voice became slightly mournful as he continued. "Taskmaster Coord's decision was really quite a shock to us all. Did you know she and Samalyn were the oldest Inferi in the order? Over a hundred and thirty years they'd been sussing out people like that damn fool..."

Drystan blinked in surprise. "If she was that old, why was she out in the field? Why wasn't she the leader of the order?"

Upon hearing his perfectly innocent question Caspar barely managed to contain his laughter. "Grandmaster Erminhild Coord? Saints, no! She pissed off virtually every personage of authority she ever met! We'd be at war with ten different city-states and a duchy if she were in charge. Besides, she always likened sitting at a desk to having her legs cut off. Had some pretty creative ways of describing it, too." The man shifted uncomfortably on his feet. "Ways that would make one never wish to sit down in a chair again, truth be told."

The librarian rolled his sleeves back down to his wrists and motioned for him to follow. He turned around to see if Sacha was coming along and found that she had, rather unsurprisingly, vanished after dropping him off with Caspar. He followed the man to a door in the northern wall of the library that lead into what looked like a bank vault, though none of the strongboxes had anything even resembling locks on them. They were all roughly four feet by two by two and each one was made out of the same odd glossy black wood. In fact the whole room, despite that it was housed within a stone fort, smelled like the forests around Whiteshire after a light rain.

"I ordered one of these made for you but I doubt word's yet reached the South Dominion. Things are rather precarious at the Wall these days. I do hope my hawk wasn't eaten by something nasty." Caspar began shuffling the identical crates from side to side until he reached the one at the bottom of the stack, then drug it across the floor to Drystan's feet. "Taskmaster Coord left that for you. It's the balance of her ledger."

"Why would she leave me her things?" he asked the man, kneeling down to look at the strongbox. "She barely knew me."

"She barely knew anyone aside from Farseeth and Taskmaster Galerius up north," replied Caspar with a shrug. "But when Farseeth sent the notification I disbursed those things she had requested to them. What remains are yours by her personal request."

The request puzzled him somewhat. "Her things should really go to her family. Is there any way to find them?"

"Drystan, she outlived even her grandchildren. Her family were the Inferi she was in charge of as Taskmaster." He sighed quietly and raked his fingers through his hair. "Truth be told I think that's why she went herself-she and Samalyn knew what would happen would be bad, and they both knew their time was almost up. They probably thought it was better that they were the ones, rather than someone younger like Farseeth and Erathi, or even yourself and the revenant with you. The two of them were practical to a fault, really."

The librarian paused, then peered down at him tentatively. "Might I ask, what is your revenant's name? I'll be writing you in to our records later."

"Arathron. Arathron Leilen-maor."

Caspar sputtered in surprise at the name. "A ward of the well?"

Drystan glanced up at the man and let Arathron speak his own question. "Why, precisely, is that so surprising, archivist?"

The librarian held his hands up in surrender and moved to return to his books. "I'll see if I can't find that book on the founding of Antenox for you. You'll see after you read it."

Groaning Drystan felt around the edges of the strongbox for the latch to open it. "I thought I was done with the entire reading thing now that I quit the Inquisition."