The Red Wolf conspiracy- chapter one

Chapter One
Tarboy
1 Vaqrin (first day of summer) 941
Midnight

    .....It began, as every disaster in his life began, with a calm. The harbour and the village slept. The wind that had roared all night lay quelled by the headland; the bosun grew too sleepy to shout. But forty feet up the ratlines, Pazel Pathkendle had never been more awake.
    .....He was freezing, to start with – a rogue wave had struck the bow at dusk, soaking eight boys and washing the ship’s dog into the hold, where it still yipped for rescue – but it wasn’t the cold that worried him. It was the storm cloud. It had leaped the coastal ridge in one bound, on high winds he couldn’t feel. The ship had no reason to fear it, but Pazel did. People were trying to kill him, and the only thing stopping them was the moon, that blessed bonfire moon, etching his shadow like a coal drawing on the deck of the Eniel.
    .....One more mile, he thought. Then it can pour for all I care.
    .....While the calm held the Eniel ran quiet as a dream: her captain hated needless bellowing, calling it the poor pilot’s surrogate for leadership, and merely gestured to the afterguard when the time came to tack for shore. Glancing up at the mainsails, his eyes fell on Pazel, and for a moment they regarded one another in silence: an old man stiff and wrinkled as a cypress; a boy in tattered shirt and breeches, nut-brown hair in his eyes, clinging barefoot to the tarred and salt-stiffened ropes. A boy suddenly aware that he had no permission to climb aloft.
    .....Pazel made a show of checking the yardarm bolts, and the knots on the closest stays. The captain watched his antics, unmoved. Then, almost invisibly, he shook his head.
    .....Pazel slid to the deck in an instant, furious with himself. You clod, Pathkendle! Lose Nestef’s love and there’s no hope for you!
    .....Captain Nestef was the kindest of the five mariners he had served: the only one who never beat or starved him, or forced him, a boy of fifteen, to drink the black nightmare liquor grebel for the amusement of the crew. If Nestef had ordered him to dive into the sea, Pazel would have obeyed at once. He was a bonded servant and could be traded like a slave.
    .....On the deck, the other servant boys – tarboys, they were called, for the pitch that stained their hands and feet – turned him looks of contempt. They were older and larger, with noses proudly disfigured from brawls of honour in distant ports. The eldest, Jervik, sported a hole in his right ear large enough to pass a finger through. Rumour held that a violent captain had caught him stealing a pudding, and had pinched the ear with tongs heated cherry-red in the galley stove.
    .....The other rumour attached to Jervik was that he had stabbed a boy in the neck after losing at darts. Pazel didn’t know if believed the tale. But he knew that a gleam came to Jervik’s eyes at the first sign of another’s weakness, and he knew the boy carried a knife.
    .....One of Jervik’s hangers-on gestured at Pazel with his chin. ‘Thinks his place is on the maintop, this one,’ he said, grinning. ‘Bet you can tell him diff’rint, eh, Jervik?’
    .....‘Shut up, Nat, you ain’t clever,’ said Jervik, his eyes locked on Pazel.
    .....‘What ho, Pazel Pathkendle, he’s defendin’ you,’ laughed another. ‘Ain’t you goin’ to thank him? You better thank him!’ Jervik turned the speaker a cold look. The laughter ceased. ‘I han’t defended no one,’ said the larger boy.
    .....‘’Course you didn’t, Jervik, I just—’
    .....‘Somebody worries my mates, I defend them. Defend my good name, too. But there’s no defence for a wee squealin’ Ormali.’
    .....The laughter was general, now: Jervik had given permission.
    .....Then Pazel said, ‘Your mates and your good name. How about your honour, Jervik, and your word?’
    .....‘Them too,’ snapped Jervik.
    .....‘And wet fire?’
    .....‘Eh?’
    .....‘Diving roosters? Four-legged ducks?’
    .....Jervik stared at Pazel for a moment. Then he glided over and hit him squarely on the cheek.
    .....‘Brilliant reply, Jervik,’ said Pazel, standing his ground despite the fire along one side of his face.
    .....Jervik raised a corner of his shirt. Tucked into his breeches was a skipper’s knife with a fine, well-worn leather grip.
    .....‘Want another sort of reply, do you?’
    .....His face was inches from Pazel’s own. His lips were stained red by low-grade sapwort; his eyes had a yellow tinge.
    .....‘I want my knife back,’ said Pazel.
    .....‘Liar!’ spat Jervik. ‘The knife’s mine!’
    .....‘That knife was my father’s. You’re a thief, and you don’t dare use it.’
    .....Jervik hit him again, harder. ‘Put up your fists, Muketch,’ he said.
    .....Pazel did not raise his fists. Snickering, Jervik and the others went about their duties, leaving Pazel blinking with pain and rage.
    .....By the Sailing Code that governed all ships, Captain Nestef would have no choice but to dismiss a tarboy caught fighting. Jervik could risk it: he was a citizen of Arqual, this great empire sprawling over a third of the known world, and could always sign with another ship. More to the point, he wore a brass ring engraved with his Citizenship Number as recorded in the Imperial Boys’ Registry. Such rings cost a month’s wages, but they were worth it. Without the ring, any boy caught wandering in a seaside town could be taken for a bond-breaker or a foreigner. Few tarboys could afford the brass ring; most carried paper certificates, and these were easily lost or stolen. Pazel, however, was a bonded servant and a foreigner – even worse, a member of a conquered race. If his papers read ‘Dismissed for Fighting’, no other ship would have him. He would be cut adrift, waiting to be snatched up like a coin from the street, claimed as the finder’s property for the rest of his days.
    .....Jervik knew this well, and seemed determined to goad Pazel into a fight. He called the younger boy Muketch after the mud crabs of Ormael, the home Pazel had not seen in five years. Ormael was once a great fortress-city, built on high cliffs over a blue and perfect harbour. A place of music and balconies and the smell of ripened plums, whose name meant ‘Womb of Morning’ – but that city no longer existed. And it seemed to Pazel that nearly everyone would have preferred him to vanish along with it. His very presence on an Arquali ship was a slight disgrace, like a soup stain on the captain’s dress coat. After Jervik’s burst of inspiration, the other boys and even some of the sailors called him Muketch. But the word also conveyed a sort of wary respect: sailors thought a charm lay on those green crabs that swarmed in the Ormael marshes, and took pains not to step on them lest bad luck follow.
    .....Superstition had not stopped Jervik and his gang from striking or tripping Pazel behind the captain’s back, however. And in the last week it had grown worse: they came at him in twos and threes, in lightless corners belowdecks, and with a viciousness he had never faced before. They may really kill me (how could you think that and keep working, eating, breathing?). They may try tonight. Jervik may drive them to it.
    .....Pazel had won the last round: Jervik was indeed afraid to stab him in front of witnesses. But in the dark it was another matter: in the dark things were done in a frenzy, and later explained away.
    .....Fortunately, Jervik was a fool. He had a nasty sort of cunning, but his delight in abusing others made him careless. It was surely just a matter of time before Nestef dismissed him. Until then the trick was to avoid getting cornered. That was one reason Pazel had risked climbing aloft. The other was to see the Chathrand.
    .....For tonight he would finally see her – the Chathrand, mightiest ship in all the world, with a mainmast so huge that three sailors could scarce link arms around it, and stern lamps tall as men, and squaresails larger than the Queen’s Park at Etherhorde. She was being made ready for the open sea, some great trading voyage beyond the reach of Empire. Perhaps she would sail to Noonfirth, where men were black; or the Outer Isles that faced the Ruling Sea; or the Crownless Lands, wounded by war. Strangely, no one could tell him. But she was almost ready.
    .....Pazel knew, for he had helped in his small way to ready her. Twice in as many nights they had sailed up to Chathrand’s flank, here in the dark bay of Sorrophran. Both had been cloudy, moonless nights, and Pazel in any case had been kept busy in the hold until the moment of arrival. Emerging at last, he had seen only a black, bowed wall, furred with algae and snails and clams like snapped blades, and smelling of pitch and heartwood and the deep sea. Men’s voices floated down from above, and following them, a great boom lowered a platform to the Eniel’s deck. Onto this lift went sacks of rice and barley and hard winter wheat. Then boards, followed by crates of mandarins, barberries, figs, salt cod, salt venison, cokewood, coal; and finally bundled cabbages, potatoes, yams, coils of garlic, wheels of rock-hard cheese. Food in breathtaking quantities: food for six months without landfall. Wherever the Great Ship was bound, she clearly had no wish to depend on local hospitality.
    .....When nothing more could be stacked, the lift would rise as if by magic. Some of the older boys grabbed at the ropes, laughing as they were whisked straight up, fifty feet, sixty, and swung over the distant rail. Returning on the emptied lift, they held bright pennies and sweetmeats, gifts from the unseen crew. Pazel cared nothing for these, but he was mad to see the deck of the Chathrand.
    .....His life was ships, now: in the five years since Arqual swallowed his country, Pazel had spent less than two weeks ashore. The previous night, when the lift rose for the last time, caution had deserted him: he had seized a corner rope. Jervik had pried his fingers loose, sending him crashing back to the deck of the Eniel.
    .....But tonight the little ship bore no cargo, just passengers: three quiet figures in seafarers’ cloaks, on this passage of a single night from Besq to Sorrophran. They kept apart from the crew, and even one another. Now, as the blue gaslights of the Sorrophran Shipworks came into view, these three pressed forward, seemingly as eager as Pazel himself for a glimpse of the legendary ship.
    .....One of the three, to Pazel’s great excitement, was Dr Ignus Chadfallow. He was a slender man with worried eyes and large, educated hands. An Imperial surgeon and scholar of note, Chadfallow had once saved the Emperor and his Horse Guard from the deadly talking fever by placing men and horses alike on a sixweek diet of millet and prunes. He had also, single-handedly, saved Pazel from slavery.
    .....The three passengers had boarded at sunset. Pazel and the other tarboys had shoved and shouldered one another at the rail, competing for the chance to lug footlockers aboard for a penny or two. Spotting Chadfallow, Pazel had leaped, waving, and nearly shouted, ‘Ignus!’ But Chadfallow shot him a dark look, and the greeting died in his throat.
    .....As Nestef welcomed his passengers, Pazel tried in vain to catch the doctor’s eye. When the cook shouted, ‘Tarry!’ he sprang down the ladderway ahead of the other boys, for it was Nestef’s habit to greet new passengers with a mug of blistering spiced tea. But tonight there was more to the offerings: the cook loaded the tea-tray with muskberry biscuits, red ginger candies and lukka seeds to be chewed for warmth. Balancing these delicacies with great care, Pazel returned to the topdeck and walked straight to Chadfallow, his heart thumping in his chest.
    .....‘If you please, sir,’ he said.
    .....Chadfallow, his eyes on the moonwashed rocks and islets, seemed not to hear. Pazel spoke again, louder, and this time the doctor turned with a start. Pazel smiled uncertainly at his old benefactor. But Chadfallow’s voice was sharp.
    .....‘Where’s your breeding? You’ll serve the duchess first. Go on!’
     .....Cheeks burning, Pazel turned away. The doctor’s coldness hurt him more than any blow from Jervik could. Not that it was altogether a surprise: Chadfallow often appeared frightened of being seen with Pazel, and never spoke to him at length. But he was the closest thing to family Pazel had left in the world, and he had not laid eyes on him for two years.
    .....Two years! His hands, blast them, were trembling. He had to swallow hard before he spoke to the duchess. At least, he hoped she was the duchess, a bent and ancient woman three inches shorter than Pazel himself, who stood by the foremast mumbling and worrying the gold rings on her fingers. When Pazel spoke she raised her head and fixed him with her gaze. Her eyes were large and milky-blue, and as she stared at him her dry lips twisted into a smile.
    .....‘Ehiji!’
    .....Her crooked hand shot out; a nail scraped his cheek. He had shed tears. The crone put her moistened finger to her lips and grinned all the wider. Then she fell upon the tea service. First she popped the three largest ginger candies into her mouth, and slid a fourth into her pocket. Next she produced an old, scorched pipe from the folds of her cloak. As Pazel watched, aghast, she tapped the halfburned plug of tobacco into the bowl of lukka seeds, stirred with a thumb and then crushed the whole mixture back into her pipe, whispering and squeaking to herself all the while. Her eyes found Pazel’s again.
    .....‘Got a flint?’
    .....‘No, ma’am,’ said Pazel.
    .....‘That’s Lady Oggosk to you! Fetch a lamp, then.’
    .....It was difficult to fetch anything while holding the tea-tray. Pazel thought his arms would break, hoisting a brass deck lamp heavy with walrus oil as Lady Oggosk struggled with her pipe. Wafts of burning walrus, tobacco and lukka seeds flooded his nostrils, and the Lady’s breath as she puffed and hiccupped was like a draught from a ginger-scented tomb. At last the pipe lit, and she cackled.
    .....‘Don’t cry, my little monkey. He hasn’t forgotten you – oh, not for an instant, no!’
    .....Pazel gaped at her. She could only mean Chadfallow, but what did she know of their connection? Before he could find a way to ask, she turned from him, still chuckling to herself.
    .....The third passenger was a merchant, well groomed and well fed. At first glance, Pazel thought him ill: he had a white scarf wrapped tight about his neck, and one hand rested there as if nursing a sore spot. He cleared his throat with a painful noise – CHHRCK! – nearly making Pazel spill the tea. The man had an appetite, too: four biscuits vanished into his mouth, followed by the next largest ginger candy.
    .....‘You’re not very clean,’ he said suddenly, looking Pazel up and down. ‘Whose soap do you use?’
    .....‘Whose soap, sir?’
    .....‘Is that a difficult question? Who makes the soap you scrub your face with?’
    .....‘We’re given potash, sir.’
    .....‘You’re a servant.’
    .....‘Not for much longer, sir,’ said Pazel. ‘Captain Nestef has extended me his hand of friendship, for which I bless him thrice over. He says I have genuine prospects, with my flair for languages, and—’
    .....‘My own prospects are excellent, of course,’ the man informed him. ‘My name is Ket – a name worth remembering, worth jotting down. I am about to make transactions valued at sixty thousand gold cockles. And that is just one trading voyage.’
    .....‘How grand for you, sir. I say, sir! Would you be sailing on the Chathrand?’
    .....‘You will not see sixty thousand in your lifetime – nor even six. Go now.’
      .....He placed something on the tea-tray and waved Pazel off. Pazel bowed and withdrew, then looked at the object. It was a pale-green disc, stamped with the words ‘KET SOAP’.
    .....One of those sixty thousand coins would have suited him better, but he hid the soap in his pocket nonetheless. Then he looked at the tray and his heart sank. He had nothing left for Chadfallow but a small rind of ginger and a broken biscuit.
    .....The doctor ignored these, but pointed at the tea flask. Carefully, Pazel filled a mug. The doctor wrapped his long fingers around it, raised it to his lips and inhaled the steam, as he had told Pazel one should in cold weather, to ‘vivify the nosthrils.’ He did not look at the boy, and Pazel did not know whether to stay or leave. At last, very softly, the doctor spoke.
    .....‘You’re not ill?’
    .....‘No,’ said Pazel.
    .....‘Your mind-fits?’
    .....‘They’re cured,’ said Pazel quickly, very glad they were alone. No one on the Eniel knew about his mind-fits.
    .....‘Cured?’ said the doctor. ‘How did you manage that?’
    .....Pazel shrugged. ‘I bought some medicine in Sorhn. Everyone goes to Sorhn for that kind of thing.’
    .....‘Everyone does not live under the influence of magic spells,’ said Chadfallow. ‘And how much did they charge you for this . . . medicine?’
    .....‘They took . . . what I had,’ admitted Pazel, frowning. ‘But it was worth every penny. I’d do it again tomorrow.’
    .....Chadfallow sighed. ‘I dare say you would. Now what about your teeth?’
    .....Pazel looked up, startled by the quick change of focus: his mindfits were the doctor’s favourite subject. ‘My teeth are just fine,’ he said carefully.
    .....‘That’s good. But this tea is not. Taste it.’
    .....Chadfallow passed him the cup, and watched as he drank.
    .....Pazel grimaced. ‘It’s bitter,’ he said.
    .....‘More bitter for you than me. Or so you may well imagine.’
    .....‘What do you mean by that?’ Pazel’s voice rose in confusion. ‘Why are you all so odd?’
    .....But like the duchess and the soap man, Chadfallow merely turned to face the sea. And all through that night’s crossing he showed no more interest in Pazel than in the common sailors who bustled around him.
    .....Now, six hours later, battered and soaking and chilled to the bone, Pazel watched the Shipworks loom nearer. They were minutes from port, and still the moonlight held.
    .....Pazel knew he’d been a fool to hope for better treatment from Chadfallow. The doctor was a changed man since the invasion of Ormael, which as the Emperor’s Special Envoy he had witnessed firsthand. The violence had left him morose, and whatever spring of warmth he used to draw upon appeared to have dried up. At their last meeting, two years ago, he had pretended not to know Pazel at all.
    .....But why was he here, on the eve of the Chathrand’s launch? For the doctor never appeared but when some great change was about to explode into Pazel’s life. Tonight would be no different, he thought, and so he lingered by the foremast to see what Chadfallow would do.
    .....A voice ashore hailed them: ‘Bring to, Eniel! Bring to, there! Crowded port!’
    .....Captain Nestef bellowed, ‘Aye, Sorrophran!’ and tugged hard at the wheel. The bosun shouted, men leaped for ropes, the white sails of the Eniel furled. Coasting, she passed the Sorrophran dry docks, the long files of warships with their armoured bows and gunwales bristling with spikes, the shrimping fleet, the porcelain-domed Nunekkam houseboats. Then a sigh of wonder passed over the deck, breathed by officer and sailor and tarboy alike. The Chathrand had swung into view.
    .....No wonder the port was full! Chathrand alone nearly filled it. Now that Pazel saw her plainly by moonlight, the ship seemed a thing not of men but of giants. The tip of the Eniel’s mainmast scarcely reached her quarterdeck, and a sailor high in her crosstrees looked no bigger than a gull. Her own masts made Pazel think of the towers of the Noonfirth Kings, soaring over the black cliffs at Pól. Beside her even the Emperor’s warships seemed like toys.
    .....‘She is the last of her kind,’ said a voice behind him. ‘Do not turn around, Pazel.’
    .....Pazel froze, one hand on the mast. The voice was Chadfallow’s.
    .....‘A living relic,’ the doctor continued. ‘A five-masted Segral Wind-Palace, the largest ship ever built since the days of the Amber Kings before the Worldstorm. Even the trees of which she is made are passed into legend: m’xingu for keel, tritne pine for mast and yard, rock maple for deck and wales. Mages as well as shipwrights played their part in her creation, or so the old tales claim. Such arts are lost to us now – along with so much else.’
    .....‘Is it true, she crossed the Ruling Sea?’
    .....‘The Segrals braved those waters, yes: that is why they were built, in fact. But Chathrand is six hundred years old, boy. Her youth is a mystery. Only the elders of her Trading Family have seen the logs of her earliest journeys.’
    .....‘Captain Nestef says it makes no sense to outfit Chathrand here, when Etherhorde is just six days away,’ said Pazel. ‘He says there are shipwrights in Etherhorde who train for years just to work on her.’
    .....‘They have been brought here from the capital.’
    .....‘But why? Captain Nestef says Etherhorde will be her first stop anyway.’
    .....‘Your curiosity is in perfect health,’ said Chadfallow drily.
    .....‘Thank you!’ said Pazel. ‘And after Etherhorde? Where will they send her next?’
    .....The doctor hesitated. ‘Pazel,’ he said at last, ‘how much do you remember of our lessons, back in Ormael?’
    .....‘Everything. I can name all the bones in the body, and the six kinds of bile, and the eleven organs, and the tubes in your gut—’
    .....‘Not anatomy,’ said Chadfallow. ‘Think back to what I told you of politics. You know about the Mzithrin, our great enemies in the west.’
    .....‘Your enemies,’ Pazel couldn’t resist saying.
    .....The doctor’s voice grew stern. ‘You may not be a citizen of Arqual yet, but your fortune rests in our hands. And Mzithrini tribes raided Ormael for centuries before we arrived.’
    .....‘Right,’ said Pazel. ‘They tried to kill us for hundreds of years, and couldn’t. You managed it in two days.’
    .....‘Don’t speak in ignorance, boy! If the Mzithrin had wanted to take your little country, they could have done so faster than we did. Instead they chose to bleed her quietly and deny it to the world. Now prove that you paid attention to my teaching. What is the Mzithrin?’
    .....‘An empire of madmen,’ said Pazel. ‘Honestly, that’s how you made them sound. Crazy about sorcery and devils and ancient rites, and worshipping the pieces of a Black Casket. Dangerous, too, with their singing arrows, and dragon’s-egg shot, and that guild of holy pirates, what’s the word?’
    .....‘Sfvantskor,’ said Chadfallow. ‘But that is not the point. The Mzithrin is a pentarchy: a land ruled by five kings. During the last war, four of those kings condemned Arqual as evil, the abode of heretics, servants of the Pits. But the fifth said no such thing. And he drowned at sea.’
    .....A horn rang out across the bay. ‘We’re nearly there,’ said Pazel.
    .....‘Are you listening?’ said Chadfallow. ‘The fifth king drowned because Arquali guns sank his ship. He never condemned us – yet him alone we killed. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’
    .....‘No,’ said Pazel. ‘You kill who you like.’
    .....‘And you insist on obstinate knavery when in fact you are moderately wise.’
    .....Pazel shot an angry glance over his shoulder. He could tolerate most any insult except to his intelligence: sometimes it felt like the one thing he had left to be proud of.
    .....‘I ask where the Chathrand is going,’ he said, ‘and you talk about the Mzithrin. Were you listening to me?’ He was getting sarcastic, but he didn’t care. ‘Or maybe that’s your answer. The ship’s paying a visit to your “great enemies”, the Mzithrin Kings.’
    .....‘Why not?’ said Chadfallow.
    .....‘Because that’s impossible,’ Pazel declared.
    .....‘Is it?’ The doctor had to be teasing him. Arqual and the Mzithrin had battled for centuries, and the last war had been the bloodiest of all. It had ended forty years ago, but Arqualis still loathed and feared Mzithrinis. Some ended their morning prayers by turning west to spit.
    .....‘“Impossible”,’ mused Chadfallow, shaking his head. ‘There’s a word we must try to forget.’
    .....At that moment the bosun’s voice rang out: ‘Port stations!’
    .....Chatter ceased; men and boys scrambled to their tasks. Pazel made to go as well – orders were orders – but Chadfallow caught him tightly by the arm.
    .....‘Your sister lives,’ he said.
    .....‘My sister!’ cried Pazel. ‘You’ve seen Neda? Where is she? Is she safe?’
    .....‘Quietly! No, I have not seen her, but I plan to. And Suthinia as well.’
    .....It was all Pazel could do not to shout again. Suthinia was his mother. He had feared both were dead in the invasion of Ormael.
    .....How long have you known they were alive?
    .....‘You must ask no more questions. For the moment they are safe – if anyone is, and that is no certainty. If you would help them, listen well. Do not go to your station. Do not, under any circumstances, go belowdecks on the Eniel tonight.’
    .....‘But I’m to work the pumps!’
    .....‘You will not.’
    .....‘But, Ignus— Ah!’
    .....Chadfallow’s hand had tightened convulsively on Pazel’s arm. ‘Never use my name, tarboy!’ he hissed, still not looking at Pazel but unmistakably furious. ‘Have I been a fool, then? For half a decade, a fool? Don’t answer that! Just tell me: have you been ashore in Sorrophran?’
    .....‘Y-yes.’
    .....‘Then you know that if you set foot outside the port district you’re fair game for the Flikkermen, who get three gold for every boy or girl they send to the Forgotten Colonies, twenty days’ march across the steppe?’
    .....‘I know about the Flikkers, and that terrible place! But it’s nothing to do with me! They’re keeping me aboard tonight, and we sail at sunrise!’
    .....Chadfallow shook his head. ‘Just remember, the Flikkers cannot touch you in the port. Keep away from me now, Pazel Pathkendle, and above all stay on deck! We will not speak again.’
    .....The doctor wrapped himself in his sea-cloak and headed aft. Pazel could sense his doom already. The first rule of survival as a tarboy is ‘Be quick!’ – and Chadfallow was forcing him to break it. Captain Nestef hadn’t noticed yet, but the common sailors, rushing about on tasks of their own, stared at him as if he were mad. What was the boy thinking? He didn’t look sick, he hadn’t fallen from the yardarms, he was just standing there.
    .....Pazel knew what would happen next, and it did. The first mate, inspecting his topdeck men, reached Pazel and fixed him with a scandalized look.
    .....‘Muketch!’ he bellowed. ‘Are ye afflicted? Get below or I’ll skin yer Ormali hide!’
    .....‘Oppo, sir!’
    .....Pazel sprinted for the main hatch, but at the top of the ladder, he stopped. He had never disobeyed Chadfallow. He looked around for another tarboy – perhaps he could trade tasks? – but they were all belowdecks, where he ought to be. Soon they would miss him, send someone looking, and he would be severely punished for breaking orders. How could he explain? He didn’t understand himself.
    .....Desperate for cover, Pazel spotted a neatly coiled hawser by the portside rail. Furtively he pushed the thick rope over, then began meticulously winding it anew. Now he would look busy at least. His mind reeled with Chadfallow’s news. His mother and sister, alive! But where could they be? Hiding in ruined Ormael? Sold as slaves? Or had they made for the Crownless Lands, slipping free of the Empire altogether?
    .....Then, very suddenly, Pazel felt ill. His head spun and his vision blurred. The taste of the bad tea rose in his throat. He stumbled and knocked the hawser over again.
    .....Ignus, what did you do to me?
    .....The next instant the feeling vanished. He was fine – but someone was snickering behind him. Pazel turned to see Jervik pointing at him triumphantly.
    .....‘I found him, sir! Skipped his station! And he’s knocked over that coil on purpose, to stretch his holiday! Make him do it, Mr Nicklen, sir!’
    .....The bosun, Nicklen, slouched up behind Jervik, scowling. He was a heavy, red-faced man with eyes receded into soft pouches, like fingermarks in dough. Usually he treated Pazel well enough, taking his cue from Nestef – but the rope sprawled in an accusing heap, and when Nicklen asked if Jervik spoke the truth, Pazel clenched his teeth and nodded. Behind the officer, Jervik made a face like a grinning frog.
    .....‘Right,’ said the bosun. ‘Be off, Jervik. As for you, Mr Pathkendle, you’re in luck. You should be whipped for cutting chores. Instead all you have to do is come with me.’
    .....Forty minutes later Pazel did not feel very lucky. The rain had begun, and he stood in a half-flooded Sorrophran street with no hat (it lay in his box on the Eniel), listening to dim sounds of fiddle and accordion, and roars of laughter, through the stone wall of the tavern beside him. This was Nicklen’s pointless punishment: to stand him here like a disgraced schoolboy while the bosun drank off his wages.
    .....Not for the first time, Pazel cursed Jervik. He was still in the port district, and so safe from marauding Flikkermen. But if Pazel knew the older tarboy, he’d tell the first mate about the scene on deck and Pazel would still get a lashing.
    .....Pazel had mentioned this suspicion to Nicklen as they marched through town. The bosun’s reply was strange: he told Pazel to forget he’d ever known a fool named Jervik.
    .....‘Mr Nicklen,’ Pazel had continued (the bosun was tolerating his chatter tonight), ‘is the Chathrand fast?’
    .....‘Fast!’ he said. ‘She blary well screams along on high winds! Trouble is finding that much. Small ships can do more with a light breeze, don’t ye know? That’s why His Supremacy loves his wee gunboats. Loves his big ones too, mind. And middle-sized. As for Chathrand, she dreams of a wind that would sink yer average boat. I dare say the Nelu Peren keeps her wings clipped.’
    .....The Nelu Peren, or Quiet Sea, was the only ocean Pazel had ever sailed. It was far from quiet at times, but it was much tamer than the Nelu Rekere (or Narrow Sea) that enclosed it. Furthest of all, beyond the archipelagos of the south, lay the Nelluroq, or Ruling Sea.
    .....Legends told of great islands, perhaps whole continents, hidden in its vastness, full of strange animals, and people who had once traded and parleyed with the north. But centuries had passed, and the big ships had sunk one by one, leaving only Chathrand, and whatever lands there were had likewise drowned in seas of forgetting.
    .....‘Anyhow,’ said Nicklen, ‘these days she don’t need to fly like a murth on the wing. She’s no warship any more.’
    .....At the mention of war, Pazel’s thoughts had taken another leap.
.....‘Were you in the last war, Mr Nicklen?’ he asked. ‘The big one, I mean?’
.....‘The Second Maritime? Aye, but just as a powder-pup. I was younger than you when it ended.’
.....‘Did we really kill one of the Mzithrin Kings?’
.....‘Aye! The Shaggat! The Shaggat Ness, and his bastard sons, and his sorcerer, too. A famous night battle, that was. Their ship went down with all hands, not far from Ormael, as you must know. But not a trace of that ship was ever found. Shaggat, lad – that means God- King to them mongrels.’
.....‘But was he . . . a friend, to Arqual?’
.....At that Nicklen had turned to look at Pazel with amazement. ‘Is that a funny, Mr Pathkendle?’
.....‘No, sir!’ said Pazel. ‘I just thought . . . I mean, I was told—’
.....‘The Shaggat Ness was a monster,’ Nicklen interrupted. ‘A vicious, kill-crazy fiend. He weren’t friend to no man alive in this world.’
.....Pazel had never heard the bosun speak more firmly. The effort seemed to drain him: he smiled awkwardly, patted Pazel’s shoulder, and when they reached the bar he bought the tarboy a leek fritter and a mug of pumpkin ale – two Sorrophran delicacies. But he wagged a finger before going in to his revels.
.....‘Skip this station and I’ll drown you off Hansprit,’ he said. ‘Keep your eyes peeled, eh? The captain don’t approve of carousing.’
.....Pazel nodded, but he knew the bosun was hiding something. Tarboys rarely tasted pumpkin ale. What was Nicklen up to? Not mutiny, or dealing in deathsmoke: he was too old and slow for such crimes. Nor did the customers, joking about ‘the little sentry’ and tussling his wet hair in an annoying way, seem much like criminals.
.....An hour later the bosun appeared with a second fritter and an old sheepskin to keep off the rain. He was bleary-eyed and frowning; his very clothes stank of ale. ‘Still awake!’ he said. ‘You’re a good lad, Pathkendle. Who says Ormalis can’t be trusted?’
.....‘Not me, sir,’ mumbled Pazel, hiding the fritter away for breakfast.
.....‘I never did hate ’em,’ said Nicklen, with a look of distress. ‘I wouldn’t be party to such a thing – hope you know, if it were my choice—’
.....His eyes rolled, and he lurched back into the bar. Pazel sat down on the steps, bewildered. Nicklen couldn’t honestly be worried about the captain. Nestef disliked carousing, true enough. But he had better uses for his time than chasing his old bosun about in the rain.
.....Hours passed, drunks came and went. Pazel was half-dozing under the sheepskin when he felt something warm and velvety touch his bare foot. Instantly awake, he found himself looking into the eyes of the largest cat he had ever seen: a sleek red creature, its yellow eyes gazing directly into his own. One paw lay on Pazel’s toe, as if the animal were tapping him to learn if he were alive.
.....‘Hello, sir,’ said Pazel.
.....The animal growled. ‘Oh, ma’am, is it? Get along with you, whatever you are.’ He shrugged off the sheepskin – and the cat pounced. Not on him, but on his second fritter. Before Pazel could do more than swear, the animal had it out of his hand and was bounding for the alley. Pazel rose and gave chase (he was hungry again and quite wanted that fritter) but the lamps were dark now, and the cat vanished from sight.
.....You fleabit thief!’
.....Even as he yelled, the sickness came rushing back. It was worse than before: he stumbled against a rubbish bin, which fell with a crash. The bitter flavour again coated his tongue, and when a voice launched insults from a window above him the words seemed pure nonsense. Then, just as suddenly, the sickness vanished and the words rang clear:
.....‘. . . out of my trash bin! Blary urchins, always up with the birds.’
.....Fuming, Pazel walked back to the tavern. But there he stopped. It was true: the birds were in fact starting to sing. Dawn had arrived.
.....He pushed open the tavern door. The barman sprawled just beyond the threshold, looking rather drowned.
.....‘Uch! Get on, beggar-brat! The party’s damn well done.’
.....‘I’m not begging,’ said Pazel. ‘Mr Nicklen’s here, sir, and I’d better wake him up.’
.....‘Are ye deaf? We drank the house dry! Nobody’s here.’
.....‘Mr Nicklen is.’
.....‘Nicklen? That putty-mug lout from the Eniel?’
.....‘Eh . . . right you are, sir, that’s him.’
.....‘Gone hours ago.’
.....‘What?’
.....‘And a good riddance, too. Moaning all night. “The doctor! The doctor paid me for a wicked deed!” Nobody could make him hush.’
.....‘What doctor? Chadfallow? What was he talking about? Where’d he run off to?’
.....‘Softly!’ groaned the barman. ‘How should I know what doctor? But Etherhorde, that’s where! Said they were sailin’ before dawn. Didn’t pay for his last drink, either, the tramp – slipped out the back door. Uch!’
.....Pazel leaped past him. The place was utterly empty. Fooled, fooled by Nicklen! And what had the barman overheard? Sailing before dawn?
.....He rushed back to the street. The rain still pelted Sorrophran, but in the east the black sky was changing to grey. Pazel flew back the way he and Nicklen had come, turned the corner, pounded down a flight of broken steps, passed the red cat devouring his fritter, knocked against more rubbish bins, turned another corner and sprinted for the wharf as if his life depended on it.
.....The fishermen were back from their night at sea. They whistled and laughed: ‘Seen a ghost, tarry?’ He dashed through their barrels and gutting-troughs and heaped-up nets. The great hulk of the Chathrand loomed straight ahead, men crawling about her in the greyness like ants upon a log. But in the corner of the wharf beyond her there was no ship named Eniel to receive him.
.....He raced to the end of the fishermen’s pier. He spotted her in the harbour, sails filling, picking up speed. He tore off his shirt and waved it and bellowed the captain’s name. But the breeze was offshore, and the rain muffled his voice. The Eniel did not hear him, or did not care to. Pazel was homeless.

J.R.R. Tolkien; a biography

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, as he was christened, was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa in 1892. His early and barely memorable years were spent divided between the city and a country farm. His father, an English banker, was making efforts to establish a branch in that country. Many of Tolkien's early memories of South Africa, including an incident when he was bitten by a tarantula while visiting a rural district, are reported to have influenced his later works.
He left South Africa to return to England with his mother and his brother, Hilary. His father, Arthur, was supposed also to return to England within the next few months. However, Arthur Tolkien died of rheumatic fever while still in South Africa. This left the grieving family in relatively dire straights and on a very limited income.
They soon moved to Birmingham, England, so that young Tolkien could attend King Edward VI school. His mother, Mabel, converted to Catholicism and the religion would have a long lasting effect on young Tolkien. The family was befriended by the Parish Priest, Father Francis Morgan, who would see the Tolkiens through some troubled times.
An avid reader, Tolkien was influenced by some of the great writers of his day including G.K. Chesterton and H.G. Wells. It was during this period of financial hardship, but intellectual stimulation that Tolkien suffered the loss of his devoted mother. She succumbed to diabetes in 1904 when Tolkien was only 12 years of age.
Father Morgan took over as his guardian, placing him first with an aunt and then at a boarding house for orphans. It was at this boarding house, at the age of 16 that he would meet and fall in love with Edith Bratt. Naturally, their relationship was frowned upon. Tolkien and Edith were caught in affectionate circumstances - they bicycled together out to the countryside surrounding the city and had a picnic.
Edith became somewhat of an obsession for Tolkien, and his guardian, Father Morgan, determined to separate the young couple. For, it seemed that their relationship was interfering with Tolkien's studies and leaving him ill-prepared to take exams to enter college. This was driven home to him when he failed to enter the college on his first try. Tolkien temporarily swore off the love of his life an knuckled down to the work at hand. On his second try he succeeded in obtaining a scholarship to Oxford.
Throughout his life, Tolkien had cultivated a love of language, especially ancient languages {This is one of the reasons I reckon adds real spin to his novels}. At Oxford he would major in philology, which is the study of words and language. He would be much influenced by Icelandic, Norse and Gothic mythology. Even some of the characters and place names he would later develop would be drawn from the names from ancient sagas. The forest of Mirkwood, which played a prominent roll in both "The Hobbit" and in "The Lord of the Rings" was borrowed from Icelandic mythology. The names of many of the dwarves in "The Hobbit" were actual placenames in the myths.
Having reached the age of maturity in 1914, while still attending college, he looked up his lost love, Edith Bratt, and proposed marriage. She had accepted a proposal from another quarter, but in the end was persuaded to return to Tolkien. They would marry in 1916.
World war I, the "war to end all wars", came in 1914. It would forever mark the end of many of the Empires of Europe and would unleash death across the European Continent. Tolkien lost many of his friends in the war, and he himself would serve as an officer on the front lines at the Battle of the Somme. He caught trench fever in 1917 and was sent back to England to recuperate. He would not see front line service again.
Throughout his schooldays he had been a determined poet and scholar. His interest in language was such that he had even developed his own languages based loosely on Finnish and Welsh. It was while recuperating in Birmingham, with his wife at his side, that he began to create a mythology behind his languages. This work would one day result in his famous books.
It was about this time that Tolkien was blessed with the first of his four children. After the war he was offered a professorship at the University of Leeds. Besides lecturing, he continued work on his mythology. He felt that he, in a sense, was creating England's mythology.
In 1925 Tolkien with a colleague published a translation and analysis of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." It was a turning point in his career. It brought him notice at Oxford where he was offered the professorship of Anglo-Saxon.
"The Hobbit", the work that would make him famous, came out in 1936. He began it one evening while grading exam papers. Seated at his desk, he opened up an exam booklet to find the first page blank. He was surprised and pleased that the student had somehow entirely skipped the page. It seemed an invitation to write, and in that space he began his work on "The Hobbit".
The finished manuscript of "The Hobbit" fell into the hands of George Allen and Unwin, both publishers. Unwin paid his ten year old son a shilling to read the story and report on its publishability. The young man lavished praise on the book, and Unwin decided to take a risk on it.
"The Hobbit" soon became a best seller and made Professor Tolkien famous. He was already well-known as a scholar for his work in Philology, and he was also part of a group of friends who called themselves the Inklings. The center of this group was C.S. Lewis who would long be one of Tolkien's best friends and admirers {C.S. Lewis also wrote the Narnia chronicles}.
In the late 1930's Tolkien began writing the "Lord of the Rings". Work on the story would go on for ten and a half years. He gave first chance at publication to Allen & Unwin, the publishers of "The Hobbit". But it was rejected by a staff editor when Unwin was away on business in France. The younger "Unwin" was now in the family publishing business. He found out about the rejected manuscript, wrote to his father in France, requesting permission to take on the project. Recalling the success of "The Hobbit", but skeptical about a "hobbit book", he acquiesced to his son's request reluctantly.
"The Lord of the Rings" was published in three parts and would become a huge publishing success.
Fame and fortune were both a blessing and a bane for Tolkien. He enjoyed the popularity of his work. Yet, he was burdened with work responding to his adoring public. After his retirement at Oxford, he and his wife Edith moved to Bournemouth in 1966. Edith died in 1971. The loss of his life's companion did not sit well with Tolkien; yet he struggled on for some two years till his death of Pneumonia on 2 September 1973.

Avempartha

coming soon

The Wise Man's fear preview

“Where are we going, anyway?” I asked Wilem as he led us through the dark shelves of the Archives.
“He's down in the lower levels,” Wilem said as he turned to descend a long flight of stone steps. Countless years of shuffling feet had slowly eroded the grey stone of the steps until they were noticably worn at the middle, making them look bowed like heavy-laden shelves. As we started down, the shadows from our hand lamps made the steps look smooth and dark and edgeless, like an abandoned riverbed worn from the rock.
I recognised an open doorway that led away from the main stairwell, and I tugged on Wilem's sleeve. “Detour,” I whispered.
Wilem hesitated, then shrugged, knowing what I meant without asking. Simmon must have guessed too, as he made no move to question why we were stepping off the stairs at this particular place.
We were well underground now, about thirty feet beneath the Archives at my best guess. The stone hallway looked just the same as any other piece of the Archives: high ceilings and smooth, grey stone walls. If a person got turned around, he might even forget that he was underground, as lack of windows meant nothing in the windowless building.
As we approached we saw a pair of Scrivs slipping away, the light from their brighter, whiter sympathy lamps disappearing quickly around some bend of passage hidden in the shelving. I didn’t doubt that they were here for the same reason we were.
The three of us finally came to a stretch of wall that stood strangely empty. Shelves crowded every available piece of space above or below ground in the library, setting this place apart from all others in the building.
Here was the four-plate door. This is what we had come to see.
It was made of a great square piece of grey stone. It wasn't that large, everything said, perhaps seven feet on a side, but it gave an impression of vast solidity and weight. Its frame was a single seamless piece of stone that snugged so closely to the door that a sheet of fine paper could almost be slid through the crack between them. Almost.
It had no hinges. No handle. No window or sliding panel. Its only features were four bright copper plates set flush with the face of the door, which was flush with the frame, which was flush with the wall surrounding it. You could run your hand from one side of the door to the next and barely feel it.
In spite of these notable lacks, the stone was undoubtedly a door. It simply was. It felt like a door. Each of the copper plates had a hole in its center. Though they were not shaped in the conventional way, they were undoubtedly keyholes. It sat still as a mountain, quiet and indifferent as the sea on a windless day. This was not a door for opening. It was a door for staying closed.
In the center of the door, between the hard copper plates, a word was carved into the stone: Valaritas.
I set my fingertips against the middle of the door, running them across the word I didn’t understand. A word I hadn't been able to find in any grammar or dictum in the Archives.
As I've already told you, I discovered the door on my first trip into the Archives. Later, when I had asked Simmon and Wilem what was behind it, they had laughed. Actually, Simmon had laughed. Wil simply gave a smile that was nearly a laugh and asked me the same question in return, offering to give me a full gold mark if I could show him the answer.
I soon found out that most students would give more than that. I knew I would. Everyone had a guess as to what was behind the door, and there were at least a hundred stories about it. It was generally agreed that the masters could open the door. Some believed that those who became full arcanists were taken inside after they had earned their gilthe. Perhaps as a reward, perhaps as a final rite of initiation. Only one thing was certain, none of the students knew what lay behind it, and all of them wanted to.
Of all the University’s secrets, I suspect this one was wondered over most. But while most students' interest in the four-plate door faded in light of the thousand more accessible secrets the University provided, I never tired of it. When I finally managed to sneak into the Archives, this was the first place that I had come.
And every time afterward. No matter how hurried or tired or busy or busy I was, I was drawn back to the door again and again. Each time some part of me was sure that this would be the time I might find the door ajar. Or with a key still left in one of its locks. Or perhaps the great piece of grey stone would simply swing open to the pressure of my hand.
It is fair to say that I have a gentle madness where secrets are concerned. If something is kept from me, I cannot help but pursue and uncover it. But this particular secret drew at me more than any other. The University is the heart of all civilization. The Archives is the heart of the University. What then, lay here, in the heart of the Archives? What was Valaritas?
Setting my palm against the deep grooves of the letters, I gave a hesitant push. I had forgotten that Simmon and Wilem were behind me. My only thought was that this was it. This would be the time it opened. It would.
It didn’t. I rapidly remembered myself and dropped my hand to my side. Either my friends hadn't noticed, or they were too polite to mention it.
We had discussed the frequently over the last several months, grousing about the unfairness of it all. Sometimes we would take our best guesses about what was behind it, about who had access, about the reasons the Masters kept so hush about it.
“Maybe Valaritas is the name of a place,” Simmon said softly.
We nodded, guesses were never questioned or ridiculed. Later, perhaps, they might be discussed. But not now, not here. It would be like laughing in a church.
"Come on," Simmon said at last. "If you're going to meet Puppet we should go now. He was fine when I stopped down before, but you know how quick that can change."
"Actually, I don't know," I said.
"I do," Wilem said. "We should go."
We faded back from the door, heading back to the stairwell, our red lamps throwing long shadows into the dark.
* * *
“The most important thing is to be polite,” Simmon said in a hushed tone as we made our way through the tall shelves of the Archives. Our sympathy lamps shot bands of light through the shelves and made the shadows dance nervously. “Unfailingly polite, but don’t patronize him. He's a bit—odd, but he’s not an idiot. Just treat him like you would treat anyone else.”
“Except polite,” I said sarcastically, tiring of this litany of advice.
“Exactly,” Simmon said seriously.
“Are you sure he’s going to be there?” I asked, mostly to stop Simmon’s henpecking.
“He’s always there. I don’t think he leaves his chambers very much.”
“He lives here?"
Neither of them said anything, merely watched their feet as their shoes scuffed one step after another. That seemed to be answer enough.
Wilem led the way down a short flight of stairs, then through a long stretch of shelf-lined hallway. Finally we came to an unremarkable door tucked in a corner behind a set of shelving. If I hadn’t known better I would have thought that it was nothing more than one of the countless reading holes scattered throughout the stacks.
“Just don’t do anything to upset him,” Simmon said nervously.
I assumed my best martyred expression as Wilem knocked on the door. The handle began to turn somewhere between the second and third knock. It was opened a crack, then thrown wide. Puppet was framed in the doorway, taller than any of us. The sleeves of his black robe billowed strikingly in the breeze the opening door made.
He stared at us haughtily for a moment, then looked puzzled and brought a hand to touch the side of his head. “Wait, I’ve forgotten my hood,” he said, and kicked the door closed.
Odd as his brief appearance had been, I’d noticed something more disturbing. “Great Tehlu,” I hissed to Simmon. “He’s got candles in there. Does Lorren know?”
Simmon opened his mouth to answer when the door was thrown open again. Puppet filled the doorway, his dark robe striking against the warm candlelight behind him. He was hooded now, with his arms upraised. The long sleeves of his robes caught the inrush of air and billowed impressively. The same rush of air caught his hood and blew it partway off his head.
“Damn.” He said in a distracted voice. Sliding backward, the hood settled half on, half off his head, partially covering one eye. He kicked the door shut again.
Wilem and Simmon remained straight-faced. I assumed the same expression and refrained from any comment.
There was a long moment where all was quiet. Finally a voice came from the other side of the door. “Would you mind knocking again? It doesn’t seem quite right otherwise.”
Obediently, Wilem stepped back up to the door and knocked. Once, twice, then the door swung open and we were confronted with a looming figure in a dark robe. His cowled hood shadowed his face, and the long sleeves of his robe stirred in the wind.
“Who calls on Taborlin the Great?” Puppet intoned, his voice resonant, but muffled from the deep hood. “You! Simmon!” There was a pause, and his voice lost its dramatic resonance. “I’ve seen you already today, haven’t I?”
Simmon nodded. In spite of his calm demeanor, I could sense the laughter tumbling around in him, trying to find a way out.
“How long ago?”
“About an hour.”
“Hmmm.” The hood nodded. “Was I better this time?” He reached up to push the hood back and I noticed that the robe was too big for him, the sleeves hanging down to nearly his fingertips. When his face was out from the shadow of the hood I saw that he was grinning like a child playing dress-up in his parent’s clothes.
“You weren’t doing Taborlin before.” Simmon admitted.
“Oh.” Puppet seemed a little put out. “How was I this time? The last time, I mean. Was it a good Taborlin?”
“Pretty good,” Simmon said.
Puppet looked at Wilem.
“I liked the robe,” Wilem said. “But I always imagined Taborlin with a gentle voice.”
“Oh.” He finally looked at me. “Hello.”
“Hello,” I said in my politest tone.
“I don’t know you.” A pause. “Who are you?”
“I am Kvothe.”
“You seem so certain of it,” he said, looking at me intently. Another pause. “They call me Puppet.”
“Who is ‘they?’”
“Who are they?” He corrected, raising a finger.
I smiled. “Who are they then?”
“Who were they then?”
“Who are they now?” I clarified, my smile growing wider.
He mirrored my smile in a distracted way and made a vague gesture with one hand. “You know, them. People.” He continued to look at me in the same way I might examine an interesting stone, or a type of leaf I’d never seen before.
Another pause as he continued to methodically look me over. “What do you call yourself?” I asked to fill the silence.
He seemed a little surprised, and his eyes focused back onto me in a more ordinary way. “That would be telling, I suspect,” he said with a touch of reproach. He glanced at the silent Wilem and Simmon. “You should come in now.” He turned and walked inside.
The room wasn’t particularly large. But it did seem out of place, nestled deep in the heart of the Archives. There was a deep padded chair, a large wooden table, and a pair of doorways leading into other rooms. There were books, of course, stacked on shelves and bookcases. A pair of drawn curtains against one wall surprised me. My mind fought off the impression that there was a window behind them. The room was lit with candles, long tapers and thick dripping pillars of wax. Each of them filled me with a vague dread at the thought of open flame in a building filled with thousands and thousands of precious books.
And there were puppets. They hung from shelves and pegs on walls. They lay crumpled in corners and under chairs, some were in the process of being built or repaired, scattered among tools across the tabletop. One wall was covered in shelving that was full of what seemed to be small puppets at first, but soon revealed themselves to be figurines, each cleverly carved and painted in the shape of a person.
On his way to his table, Puppet shrugged out of the black robe and let it fall carelessly to the floor. He was dressed plainly underneath, wrinkled white shirt, wrinkled dark pants, and stocking feet. Without the robe or hood I realized he was older than I'd thought. His face was smooth and unlined, but his hair was white and thin on top.
He cleared a chair for me by carefully removing a small string puppet from the seat and finding it a place on a nearby shelf. He then took a seat at the table, leaving Wilem and Simmon standing behind him. To their credit, they didn’t seem terribly disconcerted.
Digging a little in the clutter on the table he brought out an irregularly shaped piece of wood and a small knife. He took another long, searching look at my face, and began to methodically carve curls of wood onto the tabletop.
Oddly enough, I had no desire to ask anyone what exactly was going on. When you ask as many questions as I do, you get a feeling for when they are appropriate and when they are not.
Besides, I knew what the answers would be. He was one of the talented, not-quite-sane people that had found a niche for themselves at the University. The University had more than its fair share of eccentric characters. Not because it attracted them, but because it made them.
Let me explain. The rigors of Arcanum training tend to do unnatural things to student’s minds. The most notable of these unnatural things is desirable: the ability to do what most people call magic and we call sympathy, sygaldry, alchemy and the like. Believing that wax dolls are real people and playing ‘seek the stone’ are not normal things for a mind to do.
Some minds, such as mine, take to it easily. Other minds have more difficulty, and when those are pushed too hard, or in the wrong ways, they break. I was all too aware of the fact that a mile north of the University there was a place called Haven. A pretty name, for an asylum. It was full of those who pushed themselves too hard in their studies and broke under the strain.
Students rarely spoke of Haven. When they did, it was with a nervous bravado. They referred to it as the Rookery, or the Crockery. It was place for broken pots that could not take the heat of the flame.
But between these two extremes lay a great many students. Most minds don’t break when put under the Arcanum’s stresses, they simply crack a little. Sometimes these cracks show themselves in small ways: facial ticks, stuttering. Some students became forgetful, others remembered things that hadn’t happened at all. Some students heard voices, others grew sensitive to light.
I guessed Puppet was a student who had cracked years and years ago. Not enough to send him to the Crockery, but enough that couldn't function anywhere else.
“Does he always look like this?” Puppet asked Wilem and Simmon. A small drift of pale wood shavings had gathered around his hands.
“Mostly,” Wilem said. “Like what?” Simmon asked.
“Like he’s just thought through his next three moves in a game of tirani and figured out how he’s going to beat you.” Puppet took another long look at my face and shaved another thin strip of wood away from the block. “It’s rather irritating, really.”
They both craned to get a better look at me. Wilem barked a laugh. “That’s his thinking face, Puppet. He wears it a lot, but not all the time.”
“What’s tirani?” Simmon asked.
“A thinker,” Puppet mused. “What are you thinking now?”
“I’m thinking that you must be a very careful watcher of people, Puppet,” I said politely.
Puppet snorted without looking up. “What use is care in watching? What good is watching for that matter? People are forever watching things, carefully looking around. To no use. They should be seeing. I see things that I look at. I am a see-er.”
He looked at the piece of wood in his hand, then to my face. Apparently satisfied, he folded his hands over the top of his carving, but not before I glimpsed my own profile, cunningly wrought in wood. “Do you know what you are, what you are not, and what you will be?” He asked matter-of-factly.
It sounded like a riddle. I thought about it briefly before giving up. “No.”
“A see-er,” he said with certainty. “You are a see-er because that is what E’lir means. But you are not really a see-er, not yet. Now you are a look-er. I guess you will be a true E’lir at some point. If you learn to relax.” He held out the carved wooden face. “What do you see here?”
It was no longer an irregular piece of wood. Now the gnarled piece of birch held the angles of my face. My features, locked in serious contemplation, stared out of the wood grain. I leaned forward to get a closer look. “Well...”
Puppet laughed and threw up his hands. “Too late!” he exclaimed, looking childlike for a moment. “You looked too hard and didn’t see enough. Too much looking can get in the way of seeing, you see?” Puppet set the carved face on the tabletop so that it seemed to be staring at one of the recumbent puppets. “See little wooden Kvothe? See him looking? He is so intent. So dedicated. He’ll look for a hundred years, but will he ever see what is in front of him?” Puppet settled back in his seat, and looked around in a contented way.
“E’lir means see-er?” Simmon asked. “Do the other titles mean things too?”
“Since you are a student, with full access to the Archives and all its varied secrets, I imagine that you can find that out for yourself,” Puppet said. His attention focused on a string-puppet on the table in front of him. He lifted it off the table and lowered it carefully to the floor so as not to tangle its strings. It was a perfect miniature of a Tehlin priest.
“Would you have any advice as to where we could start looking for that?” I asked, playing a hunch.
“Renfalque’s Dictum.” Under Puppet’s direction, the Tehlin-puppet raised himself from the floor and moved each of his limbs, almost as if he were stretching them after a long sleep.
“Renfalque? I’m not familiar with that one.”
Puppet responded in a distracted voice. “It’s on the second floor in the southeast corner. Second row, second rack, third shelf, right hand side, red leather binding.” The miniature Tehlin priest walked slowly about the floor around Puppet’s feet. Clutched tightly in one hand was a tiny replica of the Book of Path, perfectly fashioned, right down to the tiny spoked wheel painted on its cover. The three of us watched Puppet pull the strings of the little priest, making it walk back and forth before finally coming to sit on one of Puppet’s stocking-clad feet.
After a minute or two of this, Wilem cleared his throat respectfully. “Puppet?”
“Yes?” Puppet replied without looking up from the Tehlin at his feet. “You have a question. Or rather, Kvothe has a question and you’re thinking of asking it for him. He is sitting slightly forward in his seat. There is a slight furrow between his brows, and a pursing of the lips that gives it away. Let him ask me, it might do him good.”
I froze in place, catching myself doing each of the things he had mentioned. I sat stiffly for a while, trying to remember how exactly to sit naturally in a chair. Puppet continued to work the strings of his little Tehlin. It made a careful, fearful search of the area around his feet, brandishing the book in front of him before he peered around table legs and into Puppet’s abandoned shoes. Its movements were uncanny, and it distracted me to the point where I forgot I was uncomfortable, and felt myself relax.
“I was wondering about the Amyr, actually.” My eyes remained on the scene unfolding at Puppet’s feet. Another marionette had joined the show, a young girl in a peasant dress. She approached the Tehlin and held out a hand as if trying to give him something. No, she was asking him a question. The Tehlin turned his back on her. She laid a timid hand on his arm. He took a haughty step away. “I was wondering who disbanded them. Emperor Nalto or the church.”
“Still looking for something,” he admonished me, but more gently then before. “You need to go chase the wind for a while, you are too serious. It will lead you into trouble.” The Tehlin suddenly turned on the girl. Trembling with rage it menaced her with the book. She took a startled step backward and stumbled to her knees. “The church disbanded them of course. Only an edict from the Pontifex in Atur had the ability to affect them.” The Tehlin struck the girl with the book. Once, twice, driving her to the ground, where she lay terribly still. “Nalto couldn’t have told them to cross to the other side of the street, let alone disband.”
Some slight motion drew Puppet’s eye. “Oh dear me,” he said, cocking his head toward Wilem. “See what I see. The head bows slightly. The jaw clenches in irritation, but the eyes aren’t fixed on anything, aiming the irritation inward. If I were the sort of person who judged, I’d guess that Wilem had just lost a bet. Don’t you know that Tehlu and church both frown on gambling?” At Puppet’s feet, the priest brandished the book upward at Wilem.
The Tehlin then brought its hands together and turned away from the crumpled woman. It took a stately step or two away and bowed its head to pray.
I managed to pull my attention away from the tableau and look up at our host, “Puppet?” I asked, “You spend a lot of time in the Archives, don’t you?”
I saw Simmon give Wilem an anxious look. But Puppet didn’t seem to find anything odd about the question. The Tehlin at his feet stood and started to dance and caper about. “Yes.”
“Do you think it odd that there is so little information about the Amyr in the stacks?”
“Oh certainly,” he said without looking up from the marionette at his feet. “There should be scads of books, barrows full.”
“About how many?” I asked on impulse, leaning slightly forward in my chair.
“There should be....” he closed his eyes briefly, then opened them. “Roughly six hundred twenty volumes devoted to their explication.”
“How many are there?”
“Fifty or so that give them a mention, but books where they are the main subject of discourse?” He closed his eyes again. At his feet, the Tehlin lost its animation for a moment. “Eight.”
I was quiet for a moment while I wondered what strange calculus had gone on behind his closed eyes to give him such specific numbers that he mentioned with such nonchalant belief. Somehow, I found myself trusting his estimates.
I was struck by a sudden idea. “Puppet,” I asked, “Do you know what is behind the locked door on the floor above this one? The large stone door?”
The Tehlin stopped dancing and Puppet looked up. He gave me a long, stern look. His eyes were serious and absolutely, perfectly sane. “I don’t think the four plate door should be of any concern to a student of your standing. Do you?”
I felt myself flush. “No sir.” I looked away from his eyes.
The tension of the moment was broken by the muted sound of the belling tower striking the hour. Simmon cursed softly, “I’m late. I’m sorry Puppet, I’ve got to go.”
“Don’t worry yourself over hasty good-byes.” Puppet told him as he stood and went to hang the Tehlin on the wall. “It’s time I got back to my reading, regardless.” He moved to the padded chair, sat, and opened a book. “Bring this one back some time,” he gestured in my direction without looking up from his book. “I have some more work to do on him.”
Wilem, Simmon, and I filed out the door, murmuring our good-byes. Puppet was already reading and did not make any response. Wilem closed the door, separating the three of us from the cozy candlelit quiet of Puppet’s rooms. Wordlessly we moved down the hall a ways from the door before we spoke.
“So that’s Puppet,” I said blandly. “Interesting fellow. Bit of a character.”
“You could say that,” Wilem said dryly.
“I’ve got to go,” Simmon said anxiously. “I’m already late for observation. We're still on for...” He looked around nervously. "... for tonight?" I nodded and he hurried off in the quick walk that was the closest thing to running that was allowed in the Archives.
Meanwhile, Wilem dug an iron drab from his purse. He held it out to me, his expression vaguely sour.
“Giving up so easy?” I teased, vaguely surprised. “You don’t have anything for proof but that guy’s word, and unless you hadn’t noticed, he’s one short step away from a long stay in the Crockery.” We reached the stairwell and started to climb.
Wilem’s frown deepened. “I know some people who would say the same thing about you,” he said with more than a hint of reproach. “Puppet’s word is good enough for me.”
Slightly embarrassed, I took the coin. “I’m still curious. I’m going to look a little more into the Amyr. If I find out he was wrong I’ll own up to it.”
Wilem shook his head. “Puppet isn’t wrong about the Archives. I’d bet a silver talent against your drab that what you find backs him up.”
“Oh.” I pocketed the coin. “I don’t think I’ll take that bet.”
He flashed a brief, white grin at me. “Too bad.”

The Black Prism preview, chapters 1-3

CHAPTER 1
Kip crawled toward the battlefield in the darkness, the mist pressing down, blotting out sound, scattering starlight. Though the adults shunned it, he’d played on the open field a hundred times—during the day. Tonight, his purpose was grimmer.
Reaching the top of the hill, Kip stood and hiked up his pants. The river behind him was muttering obscenities, or maybe that was the warriors beneath its surface, dead these sixteen years. Kip squared his shoulders, ignoring his imagination. The mists made it seem he was suspended, outside of time. But even if there was no evidence of it, the sun was coming. By the time it did, he had to get to the far side of the battlefield. Farther than he’d ever gone searching.
Even Ramir, wouldn’t come out here at night. Everyone knew Sundered Rock was haunted. But Ram didn’t have to feed his family; his mother didn’t smoke her wages.
Gripping his little belt knife tightly, Kip started walking. It wasn’t just the unquiet dead that might pull him down to the evernight. A pack of giant javelinas had been seen roaming the night, tusks cruel, hooves sharp. They were good eating if you had a matchlock, iron nerves, and good aim, but since the Prisms’ War had wiped out all the town’s men, there weren’t many people who braved death for a little bacon. Rekton was already a shell of what it had once been. The alcaldesa wasn’t eager for any of her townspeople to throw their lives away. Besides, Kip didn’t have a matchlock.
Nor were javelinas the only creatures that roamed the night. A mountain lion or a golden bear would also probably enjoy a well-marbled Kip.
A low howl cut the mist and the darkness hundreds of paces deeper into the battlefield. Kip froze. Oh, there were wolves too. How’d he forget wolves?
Another wolf answered, farther out. A haunting sound, the very voice of the wilderness. You couldn’t help but freeze when you heard it. It was the kind of beauty that made you shit your pants.
Wetting his lips, Kip got moving. He had the distinct sensation of being followed. Stalked. He looked behind himself. There was nothing there. Of course. His mother always said he had too much imagination. Just walk Kip. Places to be. Animals are more scared of you and all that. Besides, that was one of the tricks about a howl, it always sounded much closer than it really was. Those wolves were probably leagues away.
Before the Prisms’ War, this had been excellent farmland. Right next to the Umber River, suitable for figs, grapes, pears, dewberries, asparagus—everything grew here. And it had been sixteen years since the final battle—a year before Kip was even born. But the plain was still torn and scarred. A few burnt timbers of old homes and barns poked out of the dirt. Deep furrows and craters remained from cannon shells. Filled now with swirling mist, those craters looked like lakes, tunnels, traps. Bottomless. Unfathomable.
Most of the magic used in the battle had dissolved sooner or later in the years of sun exposure, but here and there broken green luxin spears still glittered. Shards of solid yellow underfoot would cut through the toughest shoe leather.
Scavengers had long since taken all the valuable arms, mail, and luxin from the battlefield, but as the seasons passed and rains fell, more mysteries surfaced each year. That was what Kip was hoping for—and what he was seeking was most visible in the first rays of dawn.
The wolves stopped howling. Nothing was worse than hearing that chilling sound, but at least with the sound, he knew where they were. Now… Kip swallowed on the hard knot in his throat.
As he walked in the valley of the shadow of two great unnatural hills—the remnant of two of the great funeral pyres where tens of thousands had burned—Kip saw something in the mist. His heart leapt into his throat. The curve of a mail cowl. A glint of eyes searching the darkness.
Then it was swallowed up in the roiling mists.
A ghost. Dear Orholam. Some spirit keeping watch at its grave.
Look on the bright side. Maybe wolves are scared of ghosts.
Kip realized he’d stopped walking, peering into the darkness. Move, fat head.
He moved, keeping low. He might be big, but he prided himself on being light on his feet. He tore his eyes away from the hill—still no sign of the ghost or man or whatever it was. He had that feeling again that he was being stalked. He looked back. Nothing.
A quick click, like someone dropping a small stone. And something at the corner of his eye. Kip shot a look up the hill. A click, a spark, the striking of flint against steel.
Illuminated for that briefest moment, Kip saw few details. Not a ghost, a soldier striking a flint, trying to light a slow-match. The slow-match caught fire, casting a red glow on the soldier’s face, making his eyes seem to glow. He affixed the slow-match to the match-holder of his matchlock, and spun, looking for targets in the darkness.
His night vision must have been ruined by staring at the brief flame on his match, now a smoldering red ember, because his eyes passed right over Kip.
The soldier turned again, sharply, paranoid. “The hell am I supposed to see out here, anyway? Swivin’ wolves.”
Very, very carefully, Kip started walking away. He had to get deeper into the mist and darkness before the soldier’s night vision recovered, but if he made noise, the man might fire blindly.
Kip walked on the balls of his feet, his back itching, sure that a lead ball was going to tear through him at any moment.
But he made it. A hundred paces, more, and no one yelled. No shot cracked the night. Farther. Two hundred paces more, and he saw light off to his left, a campfire. It had burned so low it was barely more than coals now. Kip tried not to look directly at it to save his vision. There was no tent, no bedrolls nearby, just the fire.
Kip tried Master Danavis’s trick for seeing in darkness. He let his focus relax and tried to view things from the periphery of his vision. Nothing but an irregularity, perhaps. He moved closer.
Two men lay on the cold ground. One was a soldier. Kip had seen his mother unconscious plenty of times; he knew instantly this man wasn’t passed out. He was sprawled unnaturally, there were no blankets, and his mouth hung open, slack-jawed, eyes staring unblinking at the night. Next to the soldier lay another man, bound in chains but alive. He lay on his side, hands manacled behind his back, a black bag over his head and cinched tight around his neck.
The prisoner was alive, trembling. No, weeping. Kip looked around, there was no one else in sight.
“Why don’t you just finish it, damn you?” the prisoner said.
Kip froze. He thought he’d approached silently.
“Coward,” the prisoner said. “Just following your orders, I suppose? Orholam will smite you for what you’re about to do to that little town.”
Kip had no idea what the man was talking about.
Apparently his silence spoke for him.
“You’re not one of them.” For the first time, a note of hope entered the prisoner’s voice. “Please, help me!”
Kip stepped forward to help. The man was suffering. Then he stopped. Looked at the dead soldier. The front of the soldier’s shirt was soaked with blood. Had this prisoner killed him? How?
“Please, you can leave me chained if you must. Please, I don’t want to die in darkness.”
Kip stayed back, though it felt cruel. “You killed him?”
“I’m supposed to be executed at first light. I got away. He chased me down. He got the bag over my head before he died, though. If dawn’s close, his replacement is going to come take his watch any time now. ”
Kip still wasn’t putting it together. No one in Rekton trusted the soldiers who came through, and the alcaldesa had told the town’s young people to give any soldiers a wide berth for a while—apparently, the new satrap Garadul had declared himself free of the Chromeria’s control. Now he was King Garadul, he said, but he wanted the usual levies from the town’s young people. The alcaldesa had told his representative that if he wasn’t the satrap anymore that he didn’t have the right to raise levies. King or satrap, Garadul couldn’t be happy with that, but Rekton was too small to bother with. Still, it would be wise to avoid his soldiers until this all blew over.
On the other hand, just because Rekton wasn’t getting along with the satrap right now didn’t make this man Kip’s friend.
“So you are a criminal?” Kip asked.
“Of six shades to Sun Day,” the man said. The hope leaked out of his voice. “Look, boy—you are a child, aren’t you? You sound like one. I’m going to die today. I can’t get away. Truth to tell, I don’t want to. I’ve run enough. This time, I fight.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. Take off my hood.”
Though some vague doubt nagged Kip, he untied the half-knot around the man’s neck and pulled off the hood.
At first, Kip had no idea what the prisoner was talking about. The man sat up, arms still bound behind his back. He was perhaps thirty years old, Tyrean like Kip but with a lighter-complexion, his hair wavy rather than kinky, his limbs thin and muscular. Then Kip saw his eyes.
Men and women who could harness light and make luxin—drafters—always had unusual eyes. A little residue of whatever color they drafted ended up in their eyes. Over the course their life, it would stain the entire iris red, or blue, or whatever their color was. The prisoner was a green drafter—or had been. Instead of the green being bound in a halo within the iris, it was shattered like crockery smashed to the floor. Little green fragments glowed even in the whites of his eyes. Kip gasped and shrank back.
“Please!” the man said. “Please, the madness isn’t on me. I won’t hurt you.”
“You’re a color wight.”
“And now you know why I ran away from the Chromeria,” the man said.
Because the Chromeria put down color wights like a farmer put down a beloved rabid dog.
Kip was on the verge of bolting, but the man wasn’t making any threatening moves. And besides, it was still dark. Even color wights needed light to draft. The mist did seem lighter, though, gray beginning to touch horizon. It was crazy to talk to a madman, but maybe it wasn’t too crazy. At least until dawn.
The color wight was looking at Kip oddly. “Blue eyes.” He laughed.
Kip scowled. He hated his blue eyes. It was one thing when a foreigner like Master Danavis had blue eyes. They looked fine on him. Kip looked freakish.
“What’s your name?” the color wight asked.
Kip swallowed, thinking he should probably run away.
“Oh, for Orholam’s sake, you think I’m going to hex you with your name? How ignorant is this backwater? That isn’t how magic—”
“Kip.”
The color wight grinned. “Kip. Well, Kip, have you ever wondered you were stuck in such a small life? Have you ever gotten the feeling, Kip, that you’re special?”
Kip said nothing. Yes, and yes.
“Do you know why you feel destined for something greater?”
“Why?” Kip asked, quiet, hopeful.
“Because you’re an arrogant little shit.” The color wight laughed.
Kip shouldn’t have been taken off guard. His mother had said worse a hundred times. Still, it took him a moment. A small failure. “Burn in hell, coward,” Kip said. “You’re not even good at running away. Caught by ironfoot soldiers.”
The color wight laughed louder. “Oh, they didn’t catch me. They recruited me.”
Who would recruit madmen to join them? “They didn’t know you were a—”
“Oh, they knew.”
Dread like a weight dropped into Kip’s stomach. “You said something about my town. Before. What are they planning to do?”
“You know, Orholam’s got a sense of humor. Never realized that ’til now. Orphan, aren’t you?”
“No. I’ve got a mother,” Kip said. He instantly regretted giving the color wight even that much.
“Would you believe me if I told you there’s a prophecy about you?”
“It wasn’t funny the first time,” Kip said. “What’s going to happen to my town?” Dawn was coming, and Kip wasn’t going to stick around. Not only would the guard’s replacement come then, but Kip had no idea what the wight would do once he had light.
“You know,” the wight said, “you’re the reason I’m here. Not here, here. Not like ‘Why do I exist?’ Not in Tyrea. In chains, I mean.”
“What?” Kip asked.
“There’s power in madness, Kip. Of course…” he trailed off, laughed at private thought. Recovered. “Look, that soldier has a key in his breast pocket. I fiddled for an hour, but couldn’t get it out, not with—” He shook his hands, bound and manacled behind his back.
“And I would help you why?” Kip asked.
“For a few straight answers before dawn.”
Crazy, and cunning. Perfect. “Give me one first,” Kip said.
“Shoot.”
“What’s the plan for my village?”
“Fire.”
“What?” Kip asked.
“Sorry, you said one answer.”
“That was no answer!”
“They’re going to wipe out your village. Make an example so no one else defies King Garadul. Other villages defied the king, too, of course. His rebellion against the Chromeria isn’t popular everywhere. For every town burning to take vengeance on the Prism, there’s another that wants nothing to do with war. Your village was chosen specially. Anyway, I had a little spasm of conscience and objected. Words were exchanged. I punched my superior. Not totally my fault. They know us greens don’t do rules and hierarchy. Especially not once we’ve broken the halo.” The color wight shrugged. “There, straight. I think that deserves the key, don’t you?”
It was too much information to soak up at once—broken the halo?—but it was a straight answer. Kip walked over to the dead man. His skin was pallid in the rising light. Pull it together, Kip. Ask whatever you need to ask.
Kip’s eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness now, and he could tell that dawn was coming. Eerie shapes were emerging from the night. The great, twin looming masses of Sundered Rock itself were visible mostly as a place where stars were blotted out of the sky.
What do I need to ask?
He was hesitating, not wanting to touch the dead man. He knelt. “Why my town?” He poked through the dead man’s pocket, careful not to touch skin. It was there, two keys.
“They think you have something that belongs to the king. I don’t know what. I only picked up that much by eavesdropping.”
“What would Rekton have that the king wants?” Kip asked.
“Not Rekton you. You you.”
It took Kip a second. He touched his own chest. “Me? Me personally? I don’t even own anything!”
The color wight gave a crazy grin, but Kip thought it was a pretense.”Tragic mistake then. Their mistake, your tragedy.”
“What, you think I’m lying?!” Kip asked. “You think I’d be out here scavenging luxin if I had any other choice?”
“I don’t really care one way or the other. You going to bring that key over here, or do I need ask real nice?”
It was a mistake to bring the keys over. Kip knew it. The color wight wasn’t stable. He was dangerous. He’d admitted as much. But he had kept his word to Kip.
Kip walked over and unlocked the man’s manacles, and then the padlock on the chains. He backed away carefully, as one would from a wild animal. The color wight pretended not to notice, simply rubbing his arms and stretching back and forth. He walked over to the guard and poked through his pockets again. His hand emerged with a pair of green spectacles with one cracked lens.
“You could come with me,” Kip said. “If you what you said is true—”
“How close do you think I’d get to your town before someone came running with a musket? Besides, once the sun comes up… I’m ready for it to be done.” The color wight took a deep breath, staring at the horizon. “Tell me, Kip, if you’ve done bad things for your whole life, but you die doing something good, do you think that makes up for all the bad?”
“No,” Kip said, honestly, before he could stop himself.
“Me neither.”
“But it’s better than nothing. Orholam’s merciful.”
“Wonder if you’ll say that after they’re done with your village.”
There were other questions Kip wanted to ask, but everything had happened in such a rush that he couldn’t put things together.
In the rising light Kip saw what had been hidden in the fog and the darkness. Hundreds of tents were laid out in military precision. Soldiers. Lots of soldiers. And even as Kip stood, not two hundred paces from the nearest tent, the plain began winking. Glimmers sparkled on the ground, as broken luxin gleamed, like stars scattered on the ground, answering their brethren in the sky.
It was what Kip had come for. Usually when a drafter released luxin, it simply dissolved, no matter color it was. But in battle, there had so much chaos, so many drafters, some sealed magic had been buried and protected from the sunlight that would break it down. The recent rain had uncovered more.
But Kip’s eyes were pulled from the winking luxin by four soldiers and a man with a stark red cloak and red spectacles walking toward them from the camp.
“My name is Gaspar, by the by. Gaspar Elos.” The color wight didn’t look at Kip.
“What?”
“I’m not just some drafter. My father loved me. I had plans. A girl. A life.”
“I don’t—”
“You will.” The color wight put the green spectacles on; they fit perfectly, tight to his face, lenses sweeping to either side so wherever he looked, he would be looking through a green filter. “Now get out of here.”
As the sun touched the horizon, Gaspar sighed. It was as if Kip had ceased to exist. It was like watching his mother take that first deep breath of haze. Between the sparkling spars of green, the whites of Gaspar’s eyes swirled like droplets of green blood hitting water, first dispersing, then staining the whole. The emerald green of luxin ballooned through his eyes, thickened until it was solid, and then spread. Through his cheeks, up to his hairline, then down his neck, standing out starkly when it finally filled his lighter fingernails as if they’d been painted in radiant jade.
Gaspar started laughing. It was a low, unreasoning cackle, unrelenting. Mad. Not a pretense this time.
Kip ran.
He reached the funerary hill where the sentry had been, taking care to stay on the far side from the army. He had to get to Master Danavis. Master Danavis always knew what to do.
There was no sentry on the hill now. Kip turned around in time to see Gaspar change, transform. Green luxin spilled out of his hands onto his body, covering every part of him like a shell, like an enormous suit of armor. Kip couldn’t see the soldiers or the red drafter approaching Gaspar, but he did see a fireball the size of his head streak toward the color wight, hit his chest and burst apart, throwing flames everywhere.
Gaspar rammed through it, flaming red luxin sticking to his green armor. He was magnificent, terrible, powerful. He ran toward the soldiers, screaming defiance, and disappeared from Kip’s view.
Kip fled, the vermillion sun setting fire to the mists.
Chapter Two
Gavin Guile sleepily eyed the papers that slid under his door and wondered what Karris was punishing him for this time. His rooms occupied half of the top floor of the Chromeria, but the panoramic windows were blackened so that if he slept at all, he could sleep in. The seal on the letter pulsed so gently Gavin couldn’t tell what color had been drafted into it. He propped himself up in bed so he could get a better look and dilated his pupils to gather as much light as possible.
Superviolet. Oh, sonuva—
On every side, the floor-to-ceiling blackened windows dropped into the floor, bathing the room in full-spectrum light as the morning sun was revealed, climbing the horizon over the dual islands. With his eyes dilated so far, magic flooded Gavin. It was too much to hold.
Light exploded from him in every direction, passing through him in successive waves from superviolet down. The sub-red was last, rushing through his skin like a wave of flame. Gavin jumped out of bed, sweating instantly. But with all the windows open, cold summer morning winds blasted through his chambers, chilling him. He yelped, hopping back into the bed.
His yelp must have been loud enough for Karris to hear it and know that her rude awakening had been successful, because he heard her unmistakable laugh. She wasn’t a superviolet, so she must have had a friend help her with her little prank. A quick shot of superviolet luxin at the room’s controls threw the windows closed and set the filters to half. Gavin extended a hand to blast his door open, then stopped. He wasn’t going to give Karris the satisfaction. Karris’s assignment to be the White’s fetch-and-carry girl had ostensibly been intended to teach her humility and gravitas. So far that much had been a spectacular failure, though the White always played a deeper game. Still, Gavin couldn’t help grinning as he rose and swept the folded papers Karris had tucked under the door to his hand.
He walked to his door. On a small service table just outside, he found his breakfast on a platter. It was the same every morning: two squat bricks of bread and a wedge of cheese. The bread was made of wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt, unleavened. A man could live on that bread. In fact, a man was living on that bread. Just not Gavin. Indeed, the sight of it made Gavin’s stomach turn. He could order a different breakfast, of course, but he never did.
He brought it inside, setting the papers on the table next to the bread. One was odd, a plain note didn’t look like the White’s personal stationery, nor any official hard white stationery the Chromeria used. He turned it over. The Chromeria’s message office had marked as being received from “ST, Rekton”: Satrapy of Tyrea, town of Rekton. It sounded familiar, maybe one of those towns near Sundered Rock? But then, there had once been so many towns there. Probably someone begging an audience, though those were supposed to be screened out and dealt with separately.
Still, first things first. He tore open each loaf, checking that nothing had been concealed inside it, and broke open each wedge of cheese. Satisfied, he turned toward the morning sun. A pale, granite blue swirled in his eyes like smoke, passing from Gavin’s multicolored irises to the whites, and then disappearing deeper into his body. Wisps of that pale blue brushed the skin around his temples, then in his neck, before coming to rest in his right hand. Gavin drafted only enough magic to fill the fingers of his right hand. He held his hand up against the pale, granite blue sky of a painting he kept on the wall as his reference. Then he turned his hand over. There wasn’t much pigment in the backs of his tan fingers, but there was almost none in the front, and it was vital to get this exactly right, to adjust even for the reds that shone through his skin from his capillaries.
He did it perfectly, of course. He’d been doing this for five thousand mornings now. Almost sixteen years. A long time for a man only thirty-three years old. He drafted the blue into the bread, dyeing it the same color, same intensity, same saturation throughout. Then the cheese.
Gavin picked up the note.
“I’m dying, Gavin. It’s time you meet your son Kip. -Lina”
Son? I don’t have a—
Suddenly his throat clamped down, and his chest felt like his heart was seizing up, no matter that the chirugeons said. Just relax, they said. Young and strong as a warhorse, they said. They didn’t say grow a pair. You’ve got lots of friends, your enemies fear you, and you have no rivals. You’re the Prism. What are you afraid of? No one had talked to him that way in years. Sometimes he wished they would.
Orholam, the note hadn’t even been sealed.
Gavin walked out onto his glass balcony, subconsciously checking his drafting as he did every morning. He stared at his hand, splitting sunlight into its component colors as only he could do, filling each finger in turn with a color, from below the visible spectrum to above it: sub-red, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, superviolet. Had he felt a hitch there when he drafted blue? He double-checked it, glancing briefly toward the sun.
No, it was still easy to split light, still flawless. He released the luxin, each color sliding out and dissipating like smoke from beneath his fingernails, releasing the familiar bouquet of resinous scents.
He turned his face to the sun, its warmth like a mother’s caress. Gavin opened his eyes and sucked in a warm, soothing red. In and out, in time with his labored breaths, willing them to slow. Then he let the red go, and took in a deep icy blue. It felt like it was freezing his eyes. As ever, the blue brought clarity, peace, order. But not a plan, not with so little information. He let go of the colors. He was still fine. He still had at least five years left. Plenty of time. Five years, five great purposes.
Well, maybe not five great purposes.
Still, of his predecessors in the last four hundred years, aside from those who’d been assassinated or died of other causes, the rest had served for seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years after becoming Prism. Gavin had made it past fourteen. So, plenty of time. No reason to think he’d be the exception. Not many reasons, anyway.
He was still holding the White’s note. Cracking her white seal—the old crone sealed everything, though she shared the other half of this floor and Karris hand-delivered her messages. But everything had to be in its proper place, properly done. There was no mistaking that she’d risen from Blue.
The White’s note read: “Unless you would prefer to greet the students arriving late this morning, my dear Lord Prism, please attend me on the roof.”
Looking beyond the Chromeria’s buildings and the city, Gavin studied the merchant ships in the bay cupped in the lee of Big Jasper Island. A ragged-looking Atashian sloop small enough that it was maneuvering in to dock directly at a pier.
Greeting new students. Unbelievable. It wasn’t that he was too good to greet new students—well, actually, it was that. He, the White, and the Spectrum were supposed to balance each other. But though the Spectrum feared him the most, the reality was that the crone got her way more often than Gavin and the seven Colors combined. This morning, she had to be wanting to experiment on him again, and if he wanted to avoid something more onerous like teaching he’d better get to the top of the tower.
Gavin drafted his red hair into a tight ponytail, and dressed in the clothes his room slave had laid out for him: an ivory shirt and an well-cut pair of black wool pants with an oversize gem-studded belt, boots with silverwork and a black cloak with harsh old Ilytian runic designs embroidered in silver thread. The Prism belonged to all the satrapies, so Gavin did his best to honor the traditions of every land—even one that was mainly pirates and heretics.
He hesitated a moment, then pulled open a drawer and drew out his brace of Ilytian pistols. They were, typically for Ilytian work, the most advanced design Gavin had ever seen. The firing mechanism was far more reliable than a wheellock—they were calling it a flintlock. Each pistol had a long blade beneath the barrel, and even a belt-flange so that when he tucked them into his belt behind his back, they were held securely and at an angle so he didn’t skewer himself when he sat. The Ilytians thought of everything.
And, of course, the pistols made the White’s Blackguards nervous. Gavin grinned.
When he turned for the door and saw the painting again, his grin dropped.
Gavin walked back to the table with the blue bread and blue cheese. Grabbing one use-smoothened edge of the painting, he pulled. It swung open silently, revealing a narrow chute.
Nothing menacing about the chute. Too small for a man to climb up, even if he overcame everything else. It might have been a laundry chute. Yet to Gavin, it looked like the mouth of hell, the evernight itself opening wide for him. He tossed one of the bricks of bread and the cheese into it, then waited. There was a thunk as the bread hit the first lock, a small hiss as it opened, then closed, then a smaller thunk as it hit the next lock, and a few moments later, one last thunk. Each of the locks was still working. Everything was normal. Safe. There had been mistakes over the years, but no one had to die this time. No need for paranoia. He nearly snarled as he slammed the painting closed.
Chapter Three
Three thunks. Three hisses. Three gates between him and freedom. The chute spat a torn brick of bread at the prisoner’s face. He caught it, and the cheese that followed. He knew they were blue, the still blue of a deep lake in early morning, when night still hoards the sky and the air dares not caress the water’s skin. Unadulterated by any other color, drafting that blue was difficult. Worse, drafting it made the prisoner feel bored, passionless, at peace, in harmony with even this place. And he needed the fire of hatred today. Today, he would escape.
After all his years here, sometimes he couldn’t even see the color, like he had awoken to a world painted in grays. The first year had been the worst. His eyes, so accustomed to nuance, so adept at parsing every spectrum of light, had begun deceiving him. He’d hallucinated colors. He tried to draft those colors into the tools to break this prison. But imagination wasn’t enough to make magic, one needed light. Real light. He’d been the Prism, so almost any color would do, from those above violet to the ones below red. He’d gathered the very heat from his own body, soaked his eyes in those sub-reds and flung that against the tedious blue walls.
Of course, the walls were hardened against such pathetic amounts of heat. He’d drafted a blue dagger and sawn at his wrist. Where the blood dripped onto the stone floor, it was immediately leached of color. The next time, he’d held his own blood in his hands to try to draft red but he couldn’t get enough color given that the only light in the cell was blue. Of course. His jailer had thought of everything. But then, he always had.
The prisoner sat next to the drain and began eating. The dungeon was shaped like a flattened ball: the walls and ceiling a perfect sphere, the floor less steep but still sloping toward the middle. The walls were lit from within, every surface emitting the same color light. The only shadow in the dungeon was the prisoner himself. There were only two holes: the chute above, which released his food and one steady rivulet of water that he had to lick for his moisture, and the drain below for his waste.
He had no utensils, no tools except his hands and his will, always his will. With his will, he could draft anything from the blue that he wanted, though it would dissolve as soon as his will released it, leaving only dust and a faint mineral-and-resin odor.
But today was going to be the day his vengeance began, his first day of freedom. This attempt wouldn’t fail—he refused to even think of it as an “attempt”—and there was work to be done. Things had to be done in order. He couldn’t remember now if he had always been this way or if he’d soaked in blue for so long that the color had changed him fundamentally.
He knelt next to the only feature of the cell that his brother hadn’t created. A single, shallow depression in the floor, a bowl. First he rubbed the bowl with his bare hands, grinding the corrosive oils from his fingertips into the stone for as long as he dared. Scar tissue didn’t produce oil, so he had to stop before he rubbed his fingers raw. He scraped two fingernails along the crease between his nose and face, two others between his ears and head, gathering more oil. Anywhere he could collect oils from his body, he did, and rubbed it into the bowl. Not that there was any discernible change, but over the years, his bowl had become deep enough to cover his finger to the second joint. His jailer had bound the color-leaching hellstones into the floor in lines. Whatever spread far enough to cross one of those lines lost all color almost instantly. But hellstone was terribly expensive. How deep did they go?
If it only extended a few inches into the stone, his raw fingers might reach beyond it any day. Freedom wouldn’t be far behind. But if his jailer had used enough hellstone that the crosshatching lines ran a foot deep, then he’d been rubbing his fingers raw for five thousand days for nothing. He’d die here. Someday, his jailer would come down, see the little bowl—his only mark on the world—and laugh. With that laughter echoing in his ears, he felt a small spark of anger in his breast. He blew on that spark, basked in its warmth. It was fire enough to help him move, enough to counter the soothing, debilitating blue down here.
Finished, he urinated into the bowl. And watched.
For a moment, filtered through the yellow of his urine, the cursed blue light was sliced with green. His breath caught. Time stretched as the green stayed green… stayed green. By Orholam, he’d done it. He’d gone deep enough. He’d broken through the hellstone!
And then the green disappeared. In exactly the same two seconds it took every day. He screamed in frustration, but even his frustration was weak, his scream more to assure himself he could still hear than real fury.
The next part still drove him crazy. He knelt by the depression. His brother had turned him into an animal. A dog, playing with his own feces. But that emotion was too old, mined too many times to give him any real warmth. Five thousand days on, he was too debased to resent his debasement. Putting both hands into his urine, he scrubbed it around the bowl as he had scrubbed his oils. Even leached of all color, urine was still urine. It should still be acidic. It should corrode the hellstone faster than the skin oils alone would.
Or the urine might neutralize the oils from his hands. He might be pushing the day of his escape further and further away. He had no idea. That was what made him crazy, not immersing his fingers in his own warm urine. Not anymore.
He scooped the urine out of the bowl and dried it with a wad of blue rags: his clothes, his pillow, now stinking of urine. Stinking of urine for so long that the stench of urine didn’t offend him anymore. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that the bowl had to be dry by tomorrow so he could try again.
Another day, another failure. Tomorrow, he would try sub-red again. It had been a while. He’d recovered enough from his last attempt. He should be strong enough for it. If nothing else, his jailer had taught him how strong he really was. And maybe that was what made him hate Gavin more than anything. But it was a hatred as cold as his cell.