The Monster War: A Tale of the Kings' Blades Read online

  “Now sign it. May he borrow your quill, Lester? Add ‘companion’ after your name. Congratulations, Sir Stalwart!”

  Master of Archives was making spluttering sounds like an annoyed goose. “That is absolutely outrageous!”

  “We live in strange times.” Bandit took the pen to write “Witnessed Bandit, Commander,” under Stalwart’s admittedly shaky signature, then handed it to Master of Archives. “Now you, Lester. File it somewhere very secure, and enter Sir Stalwart’s name in the rolls.”

  “B-b-but…”

  “The records must be correct, because there will be false stories spread.” Bandit turned to regard Stalwart, compressing his long eyebrow in a frown. “Your sword’s ready, of course, but you can’t have it today. We’ll try to get it to you. What’s her name to be?”

  Things were happening too fast. “Sleight, sir.” Stalwart had said it before he realized that—if all this was for real, and if he didn’t come out of it alive—the sword Sleight might be hung in the sky of swords before he had ever seen her or laid hands on her. “Not ‘slight.’ ‘Sleight,’ like sleight of hand.”

  The Commander chuckled. “Good one! I’ll have Master Armorer inscribe it. Write that in your book also, Lester. Well, that’s all, Sir Stalwart! Welcome to the Royal Guard.” He offered a handshake.

  “Th-thank you, er, Leader.” Stalwart was miserably aware that his own palm was sweaty. He dearly wanted to ask why he wasn’t being bound, but he feared he would not like the answer.

  “Glad to have you. Here are your first orders. Go straight to your quarters. Gather up what-ever you own, including that lute of yours, and then go.”

  “Go, sir?”

  “Out. What was it Grand Master said—kick up dust? Must have been catchy talk fifty years ago. Walk out the gate. Take the Lomouth road and keep going. Someone’ll be waiting for you at Broom Tarn.”

  The Commander’s steady stare was a challenge to steady the new recruit’s fluttering insides. Not just butterflies in the stomach—he had bats in the belly. A Blade could not refuse an order, but it was very obvious that he might have fallen into some sort of elaborate trap. Suppose there wasn’t someone waiting for him on the road? Where would he go, what could he do?

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bandit smiled to acknowledge what those two little words had cost. “I’ll be at the gate to see you get past the Blades there.”

  “Thank you, sir!” He was to be given no breakfast?

  “But if anyone asks you where you’re going, you will not answer.”

  “Sir?”

  The Commander shrugged. “Has to be, Stalwart. Despite what Grand Master said, I won’t ask you to lie to your friends. I hope you can’t, because it’s not an ability to be proud of. And you mustn’t tell the truth. If there truly are spies back at court, they’ll assume you got puked because you’re a lousy fencer. People here in Iron-hall will know better than that, but they’ll assume the old man lost his temper with you. Or you annoyed the King, or something.”

  No, they would assume he’d lost his nerve and run away. He was going to be branded a coward.

  Bandit did not say that, though. “Believe me, this is very important! We can’t protect you where you’re going, you see. If one careless word lets the enemy suspect that you matter, then you’re as good as dead. So today you refuse to talk. Understand?”

  “I’ll obey orders, sir,” Stalwart said hoarsely.

  “Good man!” The Commander forestalled his questions with a head shake. “Don’t ask. The man at Broom Tarn will explain. I don’t dare tell you more now. Officially you’ve been expelled.”

  “Yes, Leader.” Stalwart turned and went.

  The instant the door closed behind him, Master of Archives said, “Well you can dare tell me! What is all this nonsense? What’s going on?”

  Bandit had his eyes closed. He let out a long, long breath, as if he’d been holding it for a week. “No, I can’t tell you.”

  “I don’t like this!”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Spirits, Leader, that boy’s only a…a…a child! Did you see how his chin trembled?”

  The Commander opened his eyes and scowled. “Yes, I did. Did you see how he obeyed orders in spite of it?”

  “You’re sending a child into mortal danger!” Master of Archives yelled. “You’re bound. You’ve forgotten what fear is like. I tell you, the week after I was dubbed knight and unbound I got into a fight and suddenly my hand was shaking so—”

  The Commander’s fist flashed out and grabbed the older man’s jerkin. His eyes blazed. “Don’t push too far, Lester! I’ve told you I don’t like it. And you will not breathe one word of this to anyone, you hear? Nobody! Give me your oath on it.”

  “I swear, Leader.”

  “I’ll hold you to it.” Bandit released him.

  Sir Lester restored his dignity by straightening his jerkin, like a chicken rearranging its feathers. “Is this Snake’s doing? Is that who’s he going to meet—Snake?”

  “Snake or one of his men.”

  “You really think that…that boy…is going to do any good?”

  The Commander turned and picked his way across the littered floor. “I can’t tell you. I don’t know what’s going on either. Snake and the King dreamed it up. Maybe Durendal was in on it—I don’t know. I do know that we’ve lost far too many men and Ambrose’s luck can’t last for-ever.” With his hand on the latch he looked back. “I’m desperate, Lester. I’ll try anything.”

  “Because all you’re risking is one boy with no father to complain and no mother to mourn!”

  “That’s all,” Bandit said harshly. “One starry-eyed boy. Lots more where he came from.”

  5

  A Fateful Scream

  TWO DAYS LATER, A STAGECOACH CAME RUMbling through Tyton, a town in eastern Chivial. It stopped at the Gatehouse, the entry to Oakendown, headquarters of the Companionship of the White Sisters, who were commonly known as sniffers, because they were trained to detect magic.

  If the Monster War had put the King’s Blades into a state of simmering alert, it had brought the Sisters to a wild boil. In normal times about twenty-five of them lived at court, assisting the Royal Guard in its duties. Another two hundred or so worked for nobles or rich merchants, and the rest were mostly teachers at Oakendown. Now the Blades were demanding the services of every Sister they could get. So were the nobles and merchants. Hundreds more people who had never given a thought to the dangers of evil magic had been alarmed by the Night of Dogs and were howling for Sisters to protect them. Probably few of them realized that a Sister could do no more than detect the presence of magic. Even other sorcerers could rarely defend against it.

  At the best of times there were never enough Sisters. Only girls who were naturally sensitive and compassionate were accepted. They were taught courtly manners and given an excellent education—which was unusual in Chivial, where very few women knew even the rudiments of reading. Suitors pursued the Sisters like bees after blossoms. More than half of them were married within two years of taking their oaths. In the Monster War emergency, Mother Superior had appealed to all former Sisters to return to service. Many had done so, but there were still not nearly enough to satisfy the demand. Every prioress in the country was hunting for suitable recruits.

  The stagecoach had brought six. They were met at the gatehouse by a young woman in the sparkling white robes and tall conical hat of a White Sister. She told them her name was Emerald and she would be their guide in their first few months at Oakendown. She did not mention that she had been a mere deaconess until the previous day. As she had not been due to take her vows for another three months and had been given only an hour’s notice of her promotion, she had not yet quite adjusted to her new status. She was also still convinced that the hennin was about to fall off her head at any moment, but she didn’t mention that either.

  “Your names I do not want to know,” she added, and smiled at their surprise. “Later I’ll exp
lain why. Meanwhile, I am sure you are tired and probably hungry. Which need do you want to satisfy first?” The vote was unanimous. She led them to the refectory to eat.

  In the great hall under the high rafters, they gazed around with wide eyes while stuffing themselves with roast venison and rich fruit pudding. Especially they stared at passing Sisters.

  “When do we get to wear the funny hats?” asked one, braver than the rest.

  “When you finish your training. In about four years.” It might be nearer three, Emerald suspected, if the present demand continued. She pointed out postulants like themselves, also novices, and deaconesses. “This is where we touch the world,” she said. “On that side lies Tyton, and through this door, across the bridge, is the real Oakendown. We come to the gatehouse to eat sometimes, but not always. It is a busy place, as you can see. Merchants come here to sell things to us. Persons who wish to contract for our services come here. If members of your family come to visit you, then you will meet them here. Outsiders are not allowed to cross the stream. See those people with hair on their faces? They are called ‘men’!” The girls all laughed, of course. “Take a good look, because you won’t see any of those on the other side of Oakenburn.” The reasons for that involved one of the virtual elements and a lecture she would save for another day.

  Meanwhile, her young charges seemed to be accepting her. Half a dozen scared, excited twelve-or thirteen-year-olds were quite a handful for someone only four years older, but she was an earth person and well able to cope. By the time the six were so full that they could not stuff in one more mouthful between them, she had won their trust. She took them to Wardrobe and saw them outfitted in postulants’ brown robes. She explained that their own clothes would be given away to the poor.

  “Suppose we want to go home?” wailed one of the air children.

  “You can always go home, and we shall give you clothes to wear. Do you think we would put you in the coach naked?”

  They laughed nervously. She had them classified now—one earth, one water, one fire, and three air. Every person’s disposition contained all four of the manifest elements, of course, but one of the four was always dominant. Similarly, one of the four virtual elements would prevail: time, chance, love, or death. Those were a little harder to distinguish. Being an earth-time person, Emerald was solid, methodical, and patient. She was also heavy boned, destined for plumpness within very few years, and her broad features would never inspire poets to sonnets. “Comely” would be the most charitable epithet ever applied to them. Oakendown had taught her to accept what the spirits had brought her and not to fret. Her six nestlings were seeing her as trustworthy and motherly, which was undoubtedly why she had been assigned as a guide.

  The sun was close to setting when she led her charges through the gate and over the footbridge that spanned the Oakenburn. She was always happy to leave the world’s unfamiliar turmoil and return to the peace of the forest. Some Sisters remained in Oakendown all their lives, and she might turn out to be one of them if she did a good job guiding these six. It would not be so terrible a fate.

  “Oakendown is very big, and I will need several days to show you all of it.”

  “Why do you live in trees?” squeaked one of the air types.

  “Do we get to live up there?” another cried excitedly.

  “Do we have to?” moaned the earth child.

  They all peered up at the cabins nestling in the branches, the long bridges slung from tree to tree.

  “Shush!” Emerald said gently. “You must never shout in Oakendown!” Time enough tomorrow to explain that postulants should rarely speak at all. “Yes, tonight you will sleep up in a tree. It is a very cozy, pleasant cabin, I promise you, and it doesn’t sway at all. Later you will live in other places. There are lakes with many little islands and houseboats. There are caves—”

  “Caves?” wailed the three air and one fire. The earth and water children smiled excitedly.

  “Yes, caves. You have to learn to recognize the flow of the spirits. All your lives you have been in contact with earth elementals. Up in a tree, you are removed from them. In a cave, you are away from air—as far as you can be without suffocating. And also from fire, although we don’t make you freeze to death. Gradually you come to sense the presence or absence of the various spirits. It isn’t as difficult as it sounds.”

  It was a slow process, though, and not with-out hardship. Spending days underground was taxing for an air person; only a fire child could enjoy standing for hours under a blazing sun.

  As they walked deeper into the forest, she mentioned that oaks were the only trees that extended their limbs horizontally. She pointed out how cunningly the aerial platforms were braced on those great boughs. When they reached their home tree she showed them the inconspicuous number written on the first riser of the wooden stair twining upward around the great trunk. This was Tree 65 of First Grove. Then she told them to go and explore. The three air girls went racing up ahead.

  The earth child stuck close to Emerald. Bounty might be a good name for her. Her dominant virtual was almost certainly love, and with that combination her destiny was to marry young and produce children by the dozen.

  Sixty-five was a juvenile tree by Oakendown standards. Its boughs held only a dormitory for the postulants, a private room higher up for their guide, a few meditation nests in the upper branches, and the necessary toilet facilities. No bridges connected it to other trees.

  “Postulants are not allowed candles in the tree houses,” Emerald explained, “so you get ready for bed now and then we’ll talk.” She watched to see how they settled the distribution of the pallets—who argued, who acquiesced.

  Fire spirits had faded with the day, but the night was hot. She opened all the dormitory windows, sensing the air elementals rustling the leaves of the forest canopy. Then she gathered her little brood together in the deepening gloom as if she were going to tell them all a bedtime story, which in a sense she was. With all seven of them sitting cross-legged in a circle, she bade them hold hands, remembering her own first night in Oakendown and Sister Cloud doing this.

  “Now you are among friends, in a very safe place. You can sleep soundly. Do not chatter in bed, because that is unkind to others. Dawn comes soon and the birds will rouse you, but I promised to answer any—”

  Two of the air children tried to speak and the fire child drowned them out. “Why wouldn’t you let us tell you our names?”

  It was the question she had expected to come first. “Because in a day or two we are going to choose new names for each of you. I want you to try and forget your old names. I address each of you as ‘Postulant,’ and I want you to speak to one another that way, too. We won’t force you to accept a name you don’t like. When I came here I was given the name of Emerald and I soon realized that it was a much better name for me than the one my mother gave me. How could she know when I was born what sort of person I would turn out to be? No, Postulant, I will not tell you what it was, and you should not interrupt when I am speaking.”

  It had been Lucy Pillow, and she was still trying to forget it.

  “If you later decide that the name we have chosen for you is wrong, then you may ask to change it. Names are words and words have power. It is with words that sorcerers bind the elementals, and some people are bound by their own names. We must find you names that express your true natures so they do not restrict you, that is all. What else?”

  “What does magic smell like?” That query came from the little air child Emerald was already thinking of as Wren, although of course the Mistress of Postulants would have to approve her choices. The water child would probably be something like Snowflake. Water people were diverse and notoriously changeable, but this one already had an astonishing beauty, bright and cold. If her dominant virtual was death, as Emerald suspected, then she was going to shatter men’s hearts like icicles. No matter how well-meaning death people might be, they were destructive to others and often to themselves as well. />
  She laughed. “I can’t tell you. You have to experience it, and every Sister seems to experience it differently. It isn’t really a smell. Often it’s more a sound or a feeling.” But it could be a smell, especially when air elementals were much involved. She sniffed…

  Oh, nonsense! Just talking about it was making her imagine…There were places in Oakendown where sorceries were performed, of course. Once the novices had learned to recognize the natural flow of the spirits, they had to be taught the distorted forms produced by magic. But never in the groves.

  And yet she could almost swear…

  “Tell us about the Monster War.”

  Emerald wanted to say that she knew no more than they did, but perhaps they really did not know much. Wharshire was a long way from the center. News might be badly distorted by the time it arrived there.

  “Do you all know what an elementary is?”

  “A place for healing!”

  “It can be. The place where sorcerers invoke the spirits is properly called an octogram, the eight-pointed star marked on the ground, but people do use the word ‘elementary’ to mean the building containing it. It can also mean the group or organization that owns the building, the conjuring order. They perform healings, yes, but they may do other things as well. Lately many conjuring orders have grown very rich, buying up land. They’ve begun putting on airs, too—the House of This and the Priory of That…. Last winter, the King decided the elementaries ought to pay taxes like other people do. Some wicked sorcerers banded together and tried to kill the King. They sent monsters—”

  “Dogs big as horses—”

  “Packs of them eating people in the palace—”

  “Shush, shush!” Just when she had been getting them calmed down! “I’m sure the stories were exaggerated. Anyway, His Majesty set up a Court of Conjury, which is investigating all the conjuring orders and elementaries. Some of them do good, but many have turned out to be very wicked. They sell curses and bewitch people into giving them money. It’s created a lot of worry about evil sorcery and that’s why everyone suddenly wants a White Sister around. You will learn how to play your part. Now are you ready for bed, because…”