The Illuminatrix
Barbara Leibhardt Wester
Quid Pro Books
New Orleans, Louisiana
Copyright © 2011 Barbara Leibhardt Wester.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means without the prior written consent of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in critical reviews or articles.
ISBN 1610271165 (ePub)
EAN 9781610271165 (ePub)
EAN 9781466486737 (pbk)
Published by QP Fiction, an imprint of Quid Pro Books, at Smashwords.
QUID PRO, LLC
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This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to any persons living or deceased is coincidental.
More information about The Illuminatrix, Deneresh, and the author may be found at www.barbarawester.com.
DEDICATION
To the ones I love
CONTENTS
Chapter 1: The King’s Word is the Truth
Chapter 3: The Stonemason’s Apprentice
Chapter 4: Friends and Enemies
Chapter 8: Personal and Political
Chapter 10: Special Assignment
Chapter 12: At the Golden Lamb
Chapter 26: The Kiss and the Thief
Chapter 29: An Island in the North Sea
Chapter 34: Raylen Meets Us All in the End
Chapter 37: Kenhelm and Eleanour
Map of Deneresh
The Creed of Deneresh
We believe in one United Kingdom of Deneresh, the chosen kingdom of the gods. We, the descendants of the Sarph and Magdalen peoples, began life as warring, brutish tribes. The gods on their mountain, seeing the centuries of war, grew displeased. They held a council at Mount Zell, and chose Deneresh, son of Zacob, to bring peace to the people.
Each of Zacob’s Clan gave gifts to Deneresh. Zacob, mighty father of the gods, God of War and Peace, God of Truth and Justice, gave the gift of peacemaking. Karphor, God of Nature, gave the gift of harmony. Junan, Goddess of Laws and Wisdom, gave the gift of authority. Ophalt, Goddess of Life, gave the gift of strength. Namian, God of Harvest, gave the gifts of grain and plenty. Raylen, god of death and the underworld, gave the last gift, the gift of mortality.
Deneresh freely accepted these gifts. He sacrificed his immortality for us when he took human form and descended into the wars of men. He made peace between the warring tribes and founded in their place our great kingdom.
Truth from light, authority from divinity, peace from war, justice from injustice, one people from two, civilization from barbarism; one nation under all of the gods. Out of the battlefields grew fields of grain; out of warriors grew farmers; out of chaos grew civilization.
So began the productivity and prosperity that have blessed our kingdom. Praise to Deneresh, the Clan of Gods, and their chosen kingdom.
Deneren Year of the Gods 10.
Prologue
A visitor to the Kingdom of Deneresh would know, or soon be told, that this country had not become this country through any ordinary culmination of the political wranglings of long-moldering kings and the wins and losses of long-dead armies. No, Deneresh’s glories were no accident. They were, rather, the divinely ordained will of the gods who had brought order out of chaos and blessed this land and its people with a thousand years of relative peace and unrivaled prosperity.
If some suffered or did not prosper as much as others, this too could be attributed to the gods, who, after all, hardly treated one another as equals even if they all lived together on the mythical slopes of Mount Zell, where all good Denerens could eventually expect to dwell after they left the living behind.
The evidence of this divine foundation was there for anyone to see, be it in the wide open fields of waving grain that carved an unbroken, rustling current across the arc of Hellia and Peri, the southern and eastern-most provinces; or in the deep, teeming fisheries off the coast of Kep, the westernmost province; or in the boundless fir forests of the Nord Woad that covered half of Illia, the northern province.
But nowhere was the divine past more manifest than in the great clock of Eastgate Cathedral in the kingdom’s capitol of Samhare. It was the largest clock in the largest church in the largest city in all of Deneresh, and, indeed, the largest, oldest clock in the known world. Its mechanisms were hand-shaped of brass and steel, and it had never missed a second, or a minute, or an hour as it had counted out all those seconds, minutes, and hours that had come and gone (with the minor subtraction of such time as might be necessary to clean and service the clock each year at the spring solstice), since King Deneresh the First had founded the kingdom a millennium ago. As the enormous bells rang out their cadence, each hour brought forth a new tableau as the great doors at the top of the clock tower opened while a man-sized screw below turned a series of discs that allowed a parade of life-sized figures slowly to revolve high above the heads of enraptured visitors and such residents of the city who wished to be reassured of their civic heritage.
The earliest morning hours were illustrated by the principal gods and goddesses of Deneresh, their features ethereal and refined, and their sculpted clothing sheathed in real gold and silver foil that gleamed as brightly now as it had under the skilled fingers of King Deneresh the First’s craftsmen. These were followed by two discs upon which crouched, in considerably less clothing and no splendor at all, the knife- and bow- wielding men and women of the savage Sarph and Magdalen tribes, the eternally warring descendants of an errant god’s experiment in forming human playthings. By dawn, just as had occurred on that fateful day in Deneren history, a disc went round upon which Deneresh the First, firstborn son of the great God Zacob, was shown kneeling before the council of gods, as he accepted his heroic charge to bring peace and prosperity to the warring tribes-people at the terrible price of his descent to earth and the sacrifice of his own immortality.
By the end of the morning’s daily bustle of wagons and carriages on the streets beneath the curve of the Cathedral’s walls, the clock’s hours had revealed new scenes, which showed the man-god Deneresh descending from Mount Zell, his travels through the chaotic tribal battlefields, his momentary loss of faith in the success of his project, and his rapturous vision of his coronation as King of the United Kingdom of Deneresh, so that by the time the noon bells rang out, the clock produced the most resplendent disc of all, the one which captured the very moment Deneresh, clad in shining robes of white gold, stood before the subdued armies of barbarians and announced his founding of the Kingdom of Deneresh and the beginning of his reign as King Deneresh the First.
Thereafter, the hours spanning the sparse early afternoon traffic and then the return of wagons and carriages in the crush of the daily evening commute were respectively accompanied by scenes showing the progressive civilization of the savage tribes into modern Denerens as they enjoyed the fruits of peace (consisting mostly of figures engaged in farming, mining, exploration and trade), so that by the time the clock struck the midnight hour, one had viewed the entire history of Deneresh complete. The circle of these scenes had continued with little interruption for a thousand years; a testament to the excellence of Deneresh the First’s instructions to his newly civilized clock makers, and an enduring sign of the gods’ unambiguous preference of this kingdom and its aims over any other.
Anne Quinn, aged sixteen, and an apprentice in residence for seven days at the royal palace in Samhare, had passed beneath the clock a minimum of once a week since toddlerhood and could be said to have paid as much attention to this clock as most Samharians, which is to say that she counted on it to mark the passing hours of the day, but accepted all its intricately fitted mechanisms and stoic and dignified figures in their immutable pageant of history as one accepts that the sun will rise and set in its daily course and that those who arrive earliest at the market will get the best selection. That is to say, she had never given the clock and the story it told any thought at all.
If Anne had known that within a year of her arrival at the palace she would be responsible for stopping this clock and its endless reel of history, she would never have believed it. In fact, had she had known that she would help send those long-serving clock figures to a museum for their eternal rest, she might not have come to the palace at all.
But she didn’t know. Perhaps because of this, she did something that neither she nor anyone else could ever have imagined.
She did something which forever changed both her life and the history of the Kingdom of Deneresh, and this is how it happened.
Deneren Year of the Gods 999
Chapter 1:
The King’s Word is the Truth
I hereby set my hand to this Charter on this 10th year of my reign:
I appoint Thea of Ufford as my Illuminatrix, who will provide translations and illustrations for the historical record and the official use of the King and Kingdom, free from any oversight or control by any of the guilds of scribes.
The Illuminatrix, or Illuminator if the position be held by a man, shall have the duty to appoint, with the advice and consent of the King, an apprentice for training.
The apprentice will succeed to the position of Illuminatrix or Illuminator should it become vacant through retirement, incapacity, or death.
–Royal Charter of the Illuminatrix, Deneren Year of the Gods 10
I had always believed that I would die by drowning so I never considered that I might be hanged instead. As I didn’t swim and didn’t live anywhere near the sea, I’d never dwelled much on my potential end. In any case, drowning wouldn’t be such a bad death. Once you gave up the struggle to hold your breath and let the cold dark water fill your nose and lungs, it was all over. In the work of mere minutes you moved on to the place of the gods – or not – but your earthly struggles were over.
Hanging was different. Everyone had seen, or, if not actually seen, heard stories from someone who’d witnessed, the ends of those poor convicted wretches who were strung up on scaffolds like so many sheep carcasses in a butcher’s window. A lot could go wrong in a hanging, from the inexperience (or mistake or sadism) of the hangman who’d failed to correctly assess your height and weight; to the scaffold collapsing because of poor carpentry and leaving the whole ordeal to be carried out again; or the simple variation in people’s constitutions that led one neck to snap instantly while another merely stretched so that you slowly strangled to death for an hour or more until your swollen tongue hung from your open mouth in your blackened, lifeless face. Of course, there was always the hope that some compassionate spectator would rush forward to jerk your legs with sufficient strength to break your neck and end your torture, but no one would likely step away from the crowd to put a traitor out of his (or in my case, her) misery any sooner.
No, drowning seemed infinitely more manageable. All you had to do was will yourself to breathe in.
“Anne, are you listening to me?” Mistress Luken Arondale’s voice snapped me back to the present. “To disagree with the King’s word is treason and neither you nor I can afford an appearance of argument about our assignments lest we be seen as traitors. Is that clear?”
But it wasn’t clear to me at all why we could not at least check facts. Accuracy, after all, is the hallmark of an illuminatrix, which is what Luken was and what I, as her apprentice, was on the way to becoming. An illuminatrix is a scribe, a linguist, and an artist, all rolled into one. A royal illuminatrix (or illuminator) is something more than even this. She (or he) is the King’s recorder of official texts and the one responsible for creating the lavishly illuminated documents in which these texts are memorialized for future generations. To be an illuminatrix, to be trusted to write what is true, my grandmother Miranda often said (countless times since I’d been promised into this apprenticeship to the King of Deneresh at the age of 9, some 7 years ago), is an important gift to be used for the good of all. But it had taken only a week on the job to realize something Miranda had never mentioned, namely, that accurately recording truths is different from accurately recording what an official said is the truth.
“Lord Charles was very specific about what the recruitment posters should say. He wrote down the words directly from the King’s lips. He could not have made any mistakes. Just look at how neatly he’s written everything out for us in his own hand.”
Something Miranda once had said about Luken flashed through my mind, “she has fine hands and an artist’s skill, but lacks discernment.” And the way Miranda had spoken made me think it had not been for lack of trying on Miranda’s part. I looked down at the parchment Luken had thrust into my hands before our argument had begun:
King Claude Needs You For the New Millennium Now!
Deneresh has been the guardian of free trade in the West for the past one thousand years. Now the Great Protectorate of Omara threatens to capture our amalacite mines, reclaim the colonies, and cross the Nord Sea to their ultimate prize: The conquest of Deneresh!
Since the reign of King Deneresh the 13th, the colonies have been the barrier protecting Deneresh from the evils beyond our borders. Our amalacite mines lie in the shadow of Omara’s grip. If the colonies fall, so will Deneresh!
Deneresh needs miners and soldiers now, in this, our Millennial Year. King Claude needs your bravery and loyalty! Join the fight to keep the colonies and Deneresh free!
The message continued with details of where volunteers were to report and how much pay they could expect for their tours of duty; or if they were killed, how much their families would get as death benefits. This poster, though more inflammatory than others I’d seen pasted on walls and buildings around the city, was really no different. No facts, just vague threats loosely woven together to present someone’s political vision.
Because even after a week I knew better than to challenge royal policies, I hadn’t argued against Lord Bodkin’s message: Everyone knew the King and Council were moving closer to war against Omara, though most people hoped that it might still be avoided. In fact, Prince Aiden, the King’s son, was going to Omara next week for peace negotiations, though palace gossip didn’t put the odds in his favor. War was brewing and Deneresh needed to prepare. This newest poster was just part of a mounting campaign. But amidst all the official propaganda, Lord Bodkin’s text contained one fact, and I was sure that this one lone bit of historical truth was wrong.
“Why do you question which King established the colonies? Lord Charles Bodkin, who has been the Minister of Security since before you were born, wrote right here that King Deneresh the Thirteenth founded the colonies. If he says that’s correct, then that’s good enough for me.” Luken pushed a lank strand of greying brown hair back into an untidy bun at the nape of her neck, heedless of several pins that fell to the floor during the process. One foot in a drab shoe tapped irritably under her skirts, making her look like she was vibrating.
“It would take just a few minutes to look this up in a history scroll. Then we would know if it was King Deneresh the 13th or if it really was Deneresh the 15th,” I said, casting about Luken’s cluttered study as if, amidst the jumble, a history scroll might miraculously appear.
“There is no need for checking the King’s word against some old scroll in the library. It’s not up to us to second guess the judgment of our superiors. Our role is to make our King’s words known to his people, is that clear?”
“What if it’s just a simple mistake?”
“The King doesn’t make mistakes. I’ve served him for more than sixteen years, twenty counting my apprenticeship to your grandmother, and I can fairly say that I know him very well; far better than you, who are, after all my apprentice, and just arrived, at that! Isfor would never have questioned an assignment. You must defer to my superior judgment.”
I had already heard all about Isfor Penney, Luken’s apprentice of the past decade who had resigned abruptly six months ago because he’d fallen in love with a visiting diplomat’s scribe and had departed the kingdom with the official’s entourage. “But this isn’t a matter of judgment; it’s a matter of simple fact.”
“On the contrary, you are questioning my judgment in relying on Lord Bodkin’s notes, and therefore you are questioning his judgment and that of the King.” Angry patches of red and white stood out on her narrow white forehead and nose, and she really was now vibrating with rage. “It isn’t your place or mine to question, especially where the kingdom’s safety is concerned. If you can’t follow instructions that I, or royal officials, dictate, then this is a grave defect indeed. How can you be trusted with the projects for the Millennium and Jubilee celebrations? How can you be trusted to transcribe treaties or directives on security? You’ll not be going to New Palace - or anywhere else out of my sight - until you learn to follow instructions perfectly. Do I make myself clear?” Her pale eyes pinned me as she waited for my answer.
In that instant, the whole weight of the past nine years of Miranda’s training – honesty, integrity, accuracy, and service to my people – balanced right there against Miranda’s parting words to me to stay on Luken’s good side and not jeopardize my new position.
After all, most young women did not have jobs that paid any kind of income, nor the freedoms, luxuries, and status that went with living in the royal palace (even as a lowly apprentice). “Don’t risk her anger and do your very best on each assignment.” I doubted Miranda thought I’d ever have to choose.
Did I care enough about this argument to lose my position?
I had the skills to be an Illuminatrix. Miranda had more than seen to that. But I wanted to write my own future; not just follow the one that had been relentlessly trained into me and which left me walking straight as a scribe’s straightedge into my retirement on the well-trodden path marked out by Luken, and Miranda before that, and unseen others before them. There weren’t a lot of options for women, but I could still dream of another life, one in which I would escape beyond Samhare to explore the waiting world beyond, much as my adventuring great uncle had done so many decades ago.
The first place I’d go was north to the province of Illia, where Miranda had found me as an orphan, in a little village called Thism-Upon-Arne. Long before that, Miranda’s guardian, the great explorer, my great uncle, Runolph Alden Quinn, had died while trying to traverse a nearby mountain pass. Even though I’d never returned to Illia since Miranda had adopted me, I was sure that I would find the keys to my past if I ever did get back.
If I wanted to get to Thism-Upon-Arne, even if it took years to save the denners or for Luken to trust me enough to leave her oversight, working for her was my best hope. Thism-Upon-Arne happened to be the site of the King’s newest palace, called New Palace (“N.P.” to insiders) and as an apprentice to Mistress Luken, it was very likely that I’d eventually be sent there to work on all the projects needed to finish the interiors.
Of course, aside from my dreams, there was the practical reality that if I got fired from my apprenticeship (or worse, accused of treason for calling Lord Bodkin or the King a liar, in which case I’d probably end up dead (per hanging, as previously described)), what other job could I get? I had no other useful skills. I would have to pack my trunks and go back home in shame. No, I had to stay. I had to concede. A coward’s path, perhaps, but I was a week-old apprentice, and there it was.
“I didn’t mean to question the King’s word, Mistress Luken. I will write up the posters as Lord Bodkin directed.”
“The King’s word is the truth, Anne Quinn, remember that.”
“Yes Mistress.” I felt a little sick.
“The King and his Council must respond to Omara’s threats and we have an important role to play in helping them. We serve the King, Anne, and thereby serve Deneresh. Always remember that. The King is the embodiment of the kingdom. What serves the interests of one serves the interests of the other. It has always been so.” Her voice had softened a bit as she lapsed into platitudes. “I’ve always admired Lord Charles’s ability to turn a phrase: ‘Guardian of free trade,’ and ‘the shadow of Omara’s grip,’ sound so vital,” she said using both hands to hold her wire-rimmed spectacles closer as she read out the text I was still holding.
“Have there been new aggressions?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound like I was arguing.
“Tensions are escalating,” she said vaguely, taking off her glasses and polishing them on a rumpled handkerchief. “The Council has been on the alert since the raids on the Kep fishing grounds last summer. Also, there have been more attacks on the colonial mining camps. Prince Aiden will be up at Blackfort next week for one last attempt to talk with the Omaran delegation. No one thinks much will come of it, though.”
Deneresh’s uneasy relationship with Omara had been a vague and distant danger at the periphery of daily life as long as anyone could remember. I’d grown up hearing Miranda’s bitter criticism of the lives and denners that were bleeding from Deneresh’s borders to sustain the colonial amalacite mines. The simple fact was that the ore was our chief energy source and the domestic supplies had long been exhausted. From our house on Water Street, Miranda and I had occasionally seen the parades of men leaving for work in the colonial mining camps, or for service at Blackfort, one of several military outposts protecting the colonial borders.
Yet nothing Luken had described seemed different from the skirmishes that had always gone on between Omara and Deneresh, with none of it ever adding up to a real war.
“The peace treaty has been in place for centuries. Surely the Prince will reach an agreement, as agreements have been reached before,” I said, wondering privately that if we were going to regularly falsify facts to fuel the King’s war plans, then maybe I wasn’t cut out to do this job, even if a few moments ago it had seemed the best way to get to Illia.
Without her glasses, Luken’s eyes looked small and slightly unfocused, not quite brown and not quite grey. “Lord Bodkin and the King think war is inevitable. Of course this is not widely known, but as you’ll see, our jobs make us privy to the most confidential deliberations. Lord Bodkin told me, confidentially,” she said, lowering her voice a notch, “that he believes Omara is plotting to take back the colonies, take control over sea trade routes, and finally break the peace treaty. In fact, some on the Council think there may be Omarans right here in Deneresh who might stir up trouble. Lord Bodkin said Deneresh might have to strike first; before Omara has the chance to be the aggressor. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Council cancels the Prince’s trip altogether. Lord Bodkin says the time for talk may be over.”
“Surely it would be better to try to avoid war.” Despite her words, it seemed incredible that either Deneresh or Omara would abandon a treaty that had served the interests of both partners and secured the peace for so many for so long.
“If Deneresh can run its exports across the caravan route through Ephranon, then the sea route that Omara has regulated all these centuries won’t be needed and the peace treaty will be more or less irrelevant. Lord Bodkin says we will be at war with Omara within another year.” She shivered, somewhat luxuriously, pulling her garish orange wrap tighter around her shoulders. “Omara frightens me. It should frighten all of us. But the King speaks so eloquently on the subject of defending us from Omara’s threats, that I think we must be safe in the end.”
“Let us hope there is no war,” I said, careful to keep my voice neutral. While the thought of war was appalling, Luken’s personal fears didn’t make sense. It wasn’t like Omaran raiders were going to kidnap her out of her comfortable palace bed. Far from it. Any threat, if it was real at all, was across the sea in the colonies, leagues away from here.
“War or no war, it’s very important to finish N.P. as soon as can be. While it may be the King’s wedding gift for Princess Arabeth and her Ephranese prince, Thism-Upon-Arne, I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, would be the quickest point of departure for any fleet leaving for the colonies. And if there is a war there will be work for us both here and at N.P., what with making posters, announcements, and transcribing Council proceedings.” She looked as if she enjoyed the prospect, though I wasn’t sure if that was because she liked the idea of a war or just because it meant job security for us.
“Won’t the regular scribes be able to help with some of those things?”
“They can’t produce texts in multiple languages as we can, so I imagine that we will very busy indeed. I wouldn’t be surprised if they bring on another apprentice to help me. Now where are the rest of my notes on those posters?”
She put on her glasses again and began sorting through the chaos of her desk, pushing aside parchments, haphazardly rolled scrolls, pens, quills, and assorted ink pots.
I didn’t know what Luken’s chances were of getting another apprentice, and I didn’t know what it would do to my chances of getting to N.P., but she was right about how quickly we would be overwhelmed with work if war came. Regular scribes were licensed to write in only one language and Deneresh’s strict guild system rigorously enforced the divisions among them based on the different dialects in which they specialized. Take the four provincial dialects, plus High Deneren, and add half a dozen languages needed for all the immigrants and foreign nationals living within Deneresh for trade and work, and that made at least a dozen guilds of scribes. But by royal charter, a royal illuminatrix isn’t bound by the restrictions of the guilds. We serve the King directly and we can write in any language. Still, Luken was probably right about needing help if our current workload increased much more.
“Here it is,” she said, producing a ragged palimpsest, a parchment that had been used previously and then been washed, scraped, and dried for reuse. She consulted this, and waited for me to get out parchment and load a pen with ink, before dictating the details of the posters: Their dimensions, letterforms, size of the nib, ink colors, and so forth.
“Lord Bodkin wants a dozen of these. You’ll be making ten and I’ll take the others. The provincial lords will receive three each, one to post at their respective palaces and the other two to be taken round by the public criers and read in the villages.” She paused to see if I was paying attention. “I’ll need you to have these finished within the next two weeks, which you should be well able to do, given your current assignments.”
“Yes, Mistress Luken.”
“And please don’t forget my wine party tomorrow,” she added abruptly as I put the parchment and pen back into my linen bag. “I’ve invited all the apprentices and artisans who aren’t working at N.P. It will be an excellent opportunity for me to introduce you to everyone; an honor which is, of course, due to you as my apprentice.”
I told her I would be there, and with a fractional nod she dismissed me. I knew her well enough already to know that although she hadn’t made another reference to our dispute, she would not easily forget it or forgive me. Even if I’d backed down in the end, she would remember that I’d questioned her authority.
As her door closed behind me and I walked slowly down the hall to my room, located at the opposite end of the artisans’ wing where the corridor ended in one of the castle’s old, squat, northwesterly towers, I felt that everything was all wrong: The way she’d unequally divided the work (not the first time), her irrational fear of Omara, and, especially my giving in to her insistence not to check facts. Surely, despite her dramatic resort to threatening treason, I might have done a better job standing up for myself, even if I was a new apprentice.
I’d seen the library on the tour I’d been given on my first day. Maybe it was too late to make my point with Luken, but I could at least settle the facts for myself by checking the history scrolls that must be kept there.
Chapter 2:
The Rat Catcher
Behold! I have set before you a feast of knowledge. It is the wisdom of the ages.
–Inscription from the Temple of Junan, Deneren Goddess of Justice and Wisdom, at the City of Turnhill, Province of Peri , Deneren Year of the Gods 145
The library was two floors below the artisan’s wing, and I made my way down to it with a good deal of back tracking through a maze of dim and smoky corridors. A week had still not given me any grasp of the layout of the rooms and passages. The library was at the end of a dark side passage, removed by several twists from the larger, more heavily trafficked main corridor that ran between the throne room and council chambers. Judging by the unlit candle sconces on either side of the double wooden doors, no one used this place much. I pushed one of the doors open and stepped inside.
High windows framed with faded velvet drapes cast shafts of cool, pale, dust-flecked light over ranks of shelves stretching from floor to ceiling, crammed with scores of scrolls and a scattering of leather bound books. In deep alcoves between the shelves hung numerous large and discolored tapestries depicting fantastical animals, hunting tableaus, and scenes from tales of the Deneren gods. The room smelled strongly of leather, mold, and, above all, dust.
A faint shuffling, moving toward me from somewhere behind the tall shelves, was accompanied by a low, mumbling voice, “. . . get you my pretty, yes, I will at that, if not now, then you know I’ll have my way with you yet. You’ve eluded me for the last time, just –.” The words broke off as the source of this litany rounded the corner of the foremost bank of shelves and stopped, blinking before me, as if unused to being in the presence of another person, or if unused to having his egress blocked, or, probably both.
He was dressed in patched, grey woolen robes which looked rather like the fabric that had gone into the mending had exceeded whatever yardage had been given over to their original construction. His hair was long and white and silver earrings gleamed at his ears under a pilled woolen hat that was pulled down so low that it covered his eyebrows. Under this, the eyes peering out of his finely webbed face were strangely olive-colored. He might have been anywhere between 50 and 80 years old, though on closer view he might have been Miranda’s age, perhaps 60. At his waist dangled at least a dozen dead rats, hanging by their tails, while in one hand he held another struggling victim by the scruff of the neck, to which he paid no heed. “You’re dressed too elaborately to be a serving girl, even on her first day, and you haven’t enough finery to be a lady, so you must be an apprentice of some sort, yes?”
I nodded, trying to keep my eyes off the gently swinging rats at his belt, only to find myself staring at the struggling rat in his hand. It was a large one, with sleek black fur and pink ears, and it fixed me with shining black eyes which bulged for just a moment before the man’s other hand expertly snapped its neck.
He laughed abruptly, “Thursday’s are cleanup day; a sad comment on the current state of our historical heritage.” He paused to carefully join the rat to the others he’d already killed. “Can I help you? I doubt you’ve come here to help me.”
“I’m looking for a history of Deneresh,” I said as he made no further move to speak nor to identify himself. “I’ll not disturb you, I’ll just take a look through the shelves,” I added hurriedly, not wishing to prolong our conversation – and my view of the rats.
“You’re Anne Quinn,” he said as if I hadn’t spoken. “You don’t look a bit like Miranda. I’ve not seen her since Year of the Gods 984.”
“You know Miranda?” I asked, not sure if I’d just been insulted, nor how to reconcile this disheveled man with Miranda’s crisp elegance.
“I’m Paul Bresson, royal historian. At least that was my title the last I heard, which admittedly was some time ago. Has she never mentioned me?”
“I’m sorry, she hasn’t.” Miranda had mentioned few people at the palace aside from Luken, yet I belatedly realized many who were still here would have overlapped with her tenure, even if it had ended 16 years ago.
“Miranda always had a gift for ignoring what she couldn’t control. I’m not surprised she hasn’t changed.” He didn’t elaborate on whether by this he meant to refer to himself, or their relationship, or perhaps the circumstances of her retirement. “What does she do with herself these days?”
“All sorts of things,” I said.
“Still scribbling for her neighbors and writing up grazing rights and rental contracts?”
“Sometimes she still helps Luken.”
“I’ll bet Luken doesn’t like getting help too often. She can’t afford to have anyone wonder if she ever quite had the skills for the job.”
“Grandmother says that she prefers to use her skills where they are needed most.”
“Where she thinks they’re needed most, more like. Where no one is liable to challenge her,” he grunted. “Now what are you looking for in here?”
“A history of the colonies, please.”
“They have a long history.”
“I want to check when the colonies were established. You see, someone told me–,” I hesitated and began again. “I was certain they’d been founded under Deneresh the Fifteenth. I want to check if that’s right.”
“Quite right,” he said with the first glimmer of interest. “You’ve learned your history well. We can find a text confirming what you say. Follow me, Anne Quinn.”
“But I want a text that confirms the truth,” I said to his retreating back as I trailed behind him up one dusky, narrow aisle and down another. I didn’t know anything about Paul Bresson, but somehow it seemed very important, perhaps now that I wasn’t being chastised by Luken (and I wasn’t even sure he could even hear me), to assert myself.
“The truth?” He gave a short laugh. “There’s something hardly anyone speaks of nowadays, but that’s neither here nor there. The colonies were founded under the Treaty of Soledad in Deneren Year of the Gods 546. King Deneresh the 15th signed the treaty. Few seem to know about these old documents anymore, much less value what we could learn from them,” he added as he stopped in front of a column of cubes whose yellowed contents were furred with dust. He searched for a few moments, muttering to himself: “The Origins of History, Poetry, Vineyards, Beer, Dancing and Beekeeping, no, that won’t do. . . .A Description of Agriculture in His Majesty’s Dominions with Notes on Cidermaking . . . no, not that either. Here we are, that one there,” he said pointing to a tightly rolled parchment near the bottom. “I’ll not touch it. I don’t want to risk contaminating it with my ratty hands. Of course you would need to read Old Deneren to make sense of it. Do you read that language?”
“Yes.”
“Miranda saw to that, I suppose. If you need to take the scroll with you, to show someone–? No, well, then I’ll let you get on with your reading and I’ll get back to the rats. If you should need to borrow the scroll, have the courtesy to leave a note on the desk by the door.”
I murmured my thanks and he just inclined his head slightly before disappearing back through the shelves. I would have to ask Miranda about him the next time I saw her. Somehow I doubted he was as half-witted as he’d first appeared, or perhaps wished to appear.
I took the scroll, The Essentials of Deneren History and Politics, Deneren Year of the Gods 829, over to one of the windows and unrolled the springing parchment bit by bit, scanning through the text until I found what I’d been searching for.
The colonies of New Deneresh, Cammelia, and New Faenland, all of which lie along the coast of the Great Omaran Protectorate, were established by King Deneresh the Fifteenth in an effort both to secure a reliable source of amalacite and to establish a sea-based trade route from Deneresh to the Eastern Kingdoms. Deneren explorers had identified large amalacite deposits along the southern coast of Omara, stretching north to the Bitter Mountains as early as Year of the Gods 492, and by Year of the Gods 535, Deneren miners had established permanent settlements to exploit these deposits and to regularly ship ore to Deneresh.
The settlements were established in a relatively unpopulated area of Omara, which historically had been inhabited by a dozen or more uncivilized peoples known as “the Hill Tribes.” These Hill Tribes were indigenous residents of Omara who had long refused to join the Omaran provinces that had confederated, many centuries prior to Deneren Year of the Gods 1, to form The Great Protectorate. As Deneren mining camps extended their reach into the Bitter Mountains, the Hill Tribes declared war in Year of the Gods 540. The Omaran High Council at first refused to intercede, having little interest in defending these outlying Tribes who had long refused to pledge their loyalty to the Omar (and having ample supplies of amalacite elsewhere, including in the Amar Mountains). However, in the interest of stabilizing coastal trade with Deneresh and the Eastern Kingdoms, in Year of the Gods 545, Omara relocated the Hill Tribes into a communal reservation whose southern border became the Bitter Mountains. In exchange for the loss of their coastal fishing grounds, the Hill Tribes received the promise of yearly payments from Omara and the right to limited coastal access at fixed points.
King Deneresh the 15th and Jared the 23d Omar signed a peace treaty on the Island of Soledad in the Year of the Gods 546. Under this agreement Deneresh makes annual payments to Omara for the right to occupy the three colonies now known as New Deneresh, Cammelia, and Faenland. Deneresh makes additional payments to Omara for use of the ocean trade route through the Strait of Maythen. The colonies have continued to engender periodic border clashes between Deneren colonists and Omara. The colonies have been an important bulwark to Deneren trade because of their strategic position at the mouth of the Strait of Maythen. . . .
This was certainly proof enough. But what could I do with it? Did it matter to anyone whether it was King Deneresh the Thirteenth or the Fifteenth or the Fifty-fifth? Even if King Claude, Lord Bodkin, and Luken all were wrong, was their error really harmful? Reluctantly, I shelved the scroll, feeling that Luken had been too rigid in her interpretation of the King’s instructions. Why not correct what was wrong? Somehow I felt the facts would matter to Paul Bresson.
Just as I was reshelving the scroll, the word “adventure” on the leading edge of a scroll shelved above the history cubicles caught my eye. Upon closer inspection, I saw that I was also in the travel and folklore section. Miranda’s guardian, my Great Uncle Rune, had, I knew written journals of his travels, which Miranda had occasionally referenced over the years, although I’d never seen them, if they still existed. But had he ever written anything more widely read?
I searched fruitlessly for a few moments, defining the boundaries of the section, and then began lifting one dusty, curled scroll after another, finding A Discourse on the Nature of Ephranese Boat People and their Floating Gardens and Cities, Dated this Year of the Gods 575, and A Lady’s Culinary Journey to Dunealfin and All that She Saw and Ate There, Our Year of the Gods 878, and so on, until I found beneath all these and more, a trio of scrolls tied together with a faded brown ribbon, marked with a tattered tag: The Journals of Runolph Alden Quinn.
Clutching them, I retreated to one of the secluded armchairs in a windowed alcove. Upon unrolling them carefully, one by one, so as not to break the brittle parchment, I saw they were accounts of Spring Travels, Summer Travels, and Autumn Travels, all dated the Year of the Gods 953, the year at whose end Rune had so tragically died in the Brenneth Mountains.
The first column of the ‘Spring’ scroll began with the words, “Transcribed by Miranda Quinn according to the direction of Runolph Alden Quinn’s last will and testament.” Miranda had never mentioned these writings or her role in making them pubic. The scrolls were not long, but closely written through and liberally illustrated with drawings, explained by Miranda’s notes, to have been copied faithfully from Runolph’s own notebooks. Where were the originals?
I lost all track of time as I read the scrolls, hearing Uncle Rune’s voice and views of the world in his writings. He’d traveled widely through northern Illia in the last year of his life. He’d been by this time, he noted, in his 62d year, commenting, “I’m getting too old to tolerate sleeping on the ground in inclement weather.” In that last year he’d been especially interested in exploring coastal villages along the North Sea, but then, after a stay of some weeks in Thism-Upon-Arne, he’d decided to turn inland to the Brenneth Mountains during an unusually mild early winter.
A postscript, added by Miranda, noted that it was believed that Runolph and his local guide had gone into the mountains in order to locate an alternative land route through Ephranon. Based upon reports of locals, the pair had entered the mountains shortly before a heavy blizzard had struck. It was widely believed that that the two men had frozen to death. Their bodies were never found.
Hearing Uncle Rune’s own words made me appreciate even more the acute loss Miranda must have felt at the death of her wry, witty guardian and companion. And while Miranda had talked of her travels with Rune, she’d never mentioned how intent he’d been on collecting folklore.
Fully the last half of each scroll was comprised of an anthropological catalogue of these stories, ranging from variations on the quarrels, loves, and adventures of the gods and goddesses of Mount Zell, to a group of stories that appeared in all three scrolls that described the “Lost Children of Deneresh.”
The Lost Children belonged to the earliest Denerens, known as the Sarph and Magdalen tribes, which the Creed described as “warring and brutish.” But instead of being civilized like modern Denerens, these Lost Children had remained barbarians and now were said to roam around Illia and other remote locations spooking and even terrorizing locals.
As ever I could remember, Miranda had dismissed any folk tales, and especially the lurid ones about the Lost Children, as utter nonsense. The fact that Runolph had actively collected and thought to preserve these stories showed he felt otherwise.
As I sat holding the scroll and thinking of Runolph’s descriptions, a vague memory stirred from some unvisited corner of my past: A scrap, literally a parchment scrap, that had been stuffed into one of Miranda’s travel journals and which we’d come across while she and I were looking through her notes on the Illian dialect. It was a rough sketch, done in pen and black ink, showing a tall, exotic looking man dressed in flowing, embroidered robes. Under the sketch, written in a hand I didn’t recognize was a question: “What if the Sarphs and Magdalens are not us?” I’d been eight or nine at the time, amused more than curious about the strange looking figure.
“One of Runolph’s bad jokes,” Miranda had said snatching the parchment out of my hands and folding it so quickly that the brittle skin splintered the drawing apart. Afterward I hadn’t been sure I’d really seen it at all.
But Rune’s journals seemed to provide the context that Miranda had never shared. It was clear from just these few writings that Rune didn’t think the Lost Children were a joke. In the last journal entry of his Autumn Travels, Rune had written:
These so-called “Lost Children of Deneresh” are a genre of folk tale I have found throughout Illia. What is the origin of this story? Does it arise from a factual event? I have insufficient evidence to draw any conclusions, but hope future study will lead to an answer.
Unfortunately, it looked like he’d never had the chance to find out. But just maybe it was another reason for me to get to Illia.
I slowly made my way out of the now darkening library. I didn’t see Paul, but I couldn’t help feeling as if someone was watching as I pushed open the massive creaking door to the dank hall beyond. I shivered.
Whoever thought living in the palace meant living in luxury had a lot to learn. In contrast to Grandmother Miranda’s pristine and sunny cottage in the city’s Southquarter, I’d found the labyrinth of mostly windowless stone corridors and dark scales of stairs – and the rats, of course – to be more than a little creepy.
“Why, Miss Anne! What are you doing here? You should be at dinner.”
It was John Goode, head of the palace household and the King’s Keeper of Keys, who, I’d already learned, had a habit of silently gliding the hallways all the better to startle the unwary servants under his command. The last thing I wanted to get into with Master John was the dispute I’d had with Luken; the gods knew she would probably waste no time telling him herself. But I couldn’t pass him without a direct confrontation, as he was standing in the junction of the passageways, his massive girth blocking my way into the main hall.
“I was just looking up something in the library.” I stopped as I got within arm’s length of him, but he remained where he was, studying me with unsettling, mismatched eyes, one brown, one blue, that made me wonder irrationally if there were two sets of emotions; two personalities brooding behind them.
“I can’t imagine Mistress Luken sending you down here. I don’t think she’s ever visited the library in the whole course of the time she’s been with us.” He laughed as he said this. In fact, John Goode, who, with his gold earrings and bulging stomach looked like a jolly pirate in his palace uniform, laughed a great deal but was not necessarily good humored. Even in the short time I’d been here, I’d observed that wherever he walked he would frequently pull one or other scared looking maid or page aside to scold them or remind them of some neglected duty. Among the artisans he was known as the Proctor of Protocol, a subject about which he was an unrivaled expert, having written an entire scroll about it, A Very Short Scroll of Useful Knowledge, Protocol and Behavior for Palace Artisans and Apprentices, which easily weighed a half stone. He’d dumped this monolith into my arms within minutes of my arrival, confiding that an expanded version was in progress.
“I had this drawn up a few years ago. It should answer any of your questions as to proper conduct between servants and royal folk. Please read the chapter on royal audiences before I introduce you to the King and Queen at 3 bells.”
I hadn’t made it through even the first portion of the chapter he’d marked before he’d returned to take me to the throne room that afternoon. Master John was the consummate professional, however. With a hand to my elbow, he’d firmly guided me through that first audience without incident and then reminded me afterward, with a laugh, to please be prepared next time.
“No, nothing for Luken,” I said quickly, as the library door swung open and Paul, holding another half-dozen dead rats by the tails, stepped out.
“Gathering a little history, Master Historian?” John laughed as Paul stopped beside us.
“Just the Thursday cleaning,” he said with a bland smile, using the back of his free hand to adjust his cap a bit higher on his brow.
“Not assisting Mistress Anne here with her research? I still haven’t found what was so fascinating that she had to come all the way down here to find out.”
Admit the real reason or deflect John’s attention from my dispute with Luken? I didn’t know if I could trust Paul, but given the way the two men were warily eyeing one another it was clear that there was no love lost between them.
“I was wondering about the history of the palace and thought I’d see if I could find some scrolls about it,” I said boldly, hoping that Paul would not reveal my lie. The history of the building was, I knew, one of Master John’s pet subjects and hopefully it would divert him from further questioning me.
It worked. If Paul was surprised, he didn’t show it, for which I was more grateful than he would ever know.
“I didn’t notice her in the library.”
John ignored Paul, saying, “My dear girl, there’s no need to dig through the rubbish down here. Nobody’s used the library in ages and I’d be happy to see the space given over for the King to house more of his collections of curiosities and such.”
“Yes, but you haven’t quite gotten Claude to agree to that, have you?” Paul said, obviously touching a raw nerve.
“Aren’t there any rats awaiting your expertise?”
“I’m only catching the four-legged variety today, and a very successful day it was too,” Paul said brandishing his prizes and smiling somewhat cruelly as John couldn’t quite stop from flinching.
“Get on with your work, then, man.”
Paul bowed, this time flourishing his fistful of dead rats in mock salute, then turned and strode rapidly down the hall.
“The less you have to do with him, my dear, the better,” John said as he watched Paul’s departure. “He came when Claude was young and Claude can’t or won’t get rid of him, though the gods only know why he keeps him on. But no matter. I can lend you a scroll or two about the palace to begin your studies. Let’s go to my office now and I’ll show you.”
Gripping my elbow, just as he’d done at that first royal audience, John guided me down the halls, leaving me no choice but to go along.
“I’ve been working on my own history of the buildings and grounds for some time and I’ve built several models showing how the various additions to the palace came about. This place has a logic all its own and what do you expect, I always say, when you have a palace built by almost four dozen kings and not a real engineer among them? You can tell a lot about the workings of the royal mind if you make a study of the way each of them manipulated spaces. . . . I addressed all this in my first scroll. In my second, I looked at the innovations made by each architect. When you see the models you’ll be able to visualize everything as you read about it. By the way, have you noticed these designs that look like figure eights at the tops of the arches we’ve been walking under just now?” he asked, abruptly stopping to point out a double loop of carved stone.
“These provide additional support for the vaults in this older wing as a kind of shoring up.” He tugged down his uniform jacket, which had ridden up over his ample stomach as he’d pointed out the various features of the arch and then went on with his narrative.
For someone who professed such a love of the past, he certainly had an aversion for the place that must house most of it, not to mention for the King’s official who’d been entrusted to keep it. I felt uneasy and lost all track of his monologue of dead architects, their masters, and accomplishments as I followed his bobbing, gleaming bald head.
Maybe I’d been vindicated by the history scroll in the library, and maybe Paul had for now kept my secret, but what good would it do in the end? I couldn’t tell anyone nor would it change what I’d committed to do.
What if next time Luken asked me to copy out an error that was not so harmless? Did I want to get to Illia and N.P. so badly that I would agree to write a bigger lie to do it? I hoped I wouldn’t have to face that test.
Chapter 3:
The Stonemason’s Apprentice
Zacob’s grace illuminates us all, though some gleam more brightly in his light.
–The Small Scroll of Truths, Observations and Miscellaneous Advice for Daily Life, vol. III, Deneren Year of the Gods 378.
Friday afternoon, the day after my argument with Luken, and I was on my way to her wine party. I hadn’t come up with any satisfactory solutions to my dilemma from yesterday and had spent the better part of the day marking the large parchments for Lord Bodkin’s posters so I could begin lettering. As predicted, Master John had laden me with a half-dozen architectural history scrolls, three of which he’d authored. I’d paid a heavy price for distracting him from my visit to the library. I didn’t have the time or interest to read the scrolls, but Master John was sure to ask me to report. Somehow I didn’t think Paul Bresson would be impressed by John’s scholarship. One thing I’d learned without doing any reading was that working in the palace was as much about politics as it was about doing my job.
Although I could have just walked down the hall to Luken’s rooms, half a bell before the party I headed out by way of the Queen’s lavender garden for a few minutes of fresh air. The garden was rather hidden and private, situated as it was behind the large kitchen gardens, in a curve of the wall just below my room, which is how I’d found it. Already, I’d gotten into the habit of stopping here whenever I could to enjoy the sharp, clean fragrance of the blooming plants which reminded me of Miranda’s cottage garden.
This garden belonged to the Queen, but as far as I could tell she never came here; preferring instead the far fancier gardens elsewhere in the palace complex. The only occupants of this place seemed to be an old gardener and a handful of undergardeners who cultivated and harvested the plants so they could be turned into special lotions and preparations on the Queen’s orders.