Martin Hengst - The Darkest Hour

Cabot seemed to shrug off his melancholy.

“Anyway, it was nice to meet you, My Lady. I’ll see myself out.”

Tiadaria stared after him long after he had slipped out through the exquisite door. She went to the window and watched him take the path away from the cottage with long strides, his farmer affectation a memory.

Cabot’s innocent remark had stung her in a tender place. How long, she wondered, would old ghosts continue to haunt her?

* * *

“Cabot found you then, I presume?” Faxon spoke to her without raising his eyes from the paper laid out in front of him. His chambers in the Great Tower were crammed, floor to ceiling, with books, sheaves of parchment, and all manner of contraption, both magical and mundane. Tiadaria had never been particularly claustrophobic, but walking into this man-made cave gave her vivid visions of the entire mass crashing down on them at any moment. She was already fairly disagreeable after a week on the road and his nonchalance wasn’t helping her disposition in the slightest.

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

“Faxon?”

“Hmmm?”

“Where should I put these?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s not funny either, Faxon.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Ethergate?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tia snorted. “Ha!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s hard?” Tiadaria quipped.

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