L. Modesitt - Imager’s Battalion

Quaeryt smiled. “Good. See what you can do. I suggest you practice where it’s not obvious.” With that, he turned and started back to the River Inn.

Behind him, he caught a few words.

“… told you…”

As he walked back toward the inn, he began to think about what he could do to improve his own skills.

When he reached the River Inn, looking for Skarpa, he discovered that the commander was meeting with the officers of Third Regiment in the public room of the inn. So he waited half a glass and then slipped into the public room as the officers were leaving.

Skarpa caught sight of Quaeryt and motioned to him.

“Did you find any supplies at the High Holder’s place?”

“No, sir. Everything was locked and shuttered, and there were no recent tracks or signs of anyone being there recently. The imagers undid the locks on the storerooms and all the buildings. They were empty. Just like his warehouses here in town. We replaced the locks and left the grounds and buildings untouched.”

Skarpa nodded. “No sense in ransacking if there’s nothing we need.”

“I thought I’d take some men to the next nearest High Holder tomorrow … if you didn’t have any reason I shouldn’t. His place is something like ten or twelve milles west.”

“How much of the battalion do you plan on taking?” asked Skarpa.

“I’d thought one of the Khellan companies would be sufficient.”

“Take two. The scouts haven’t seen signs of more Bovarians, but I’d feel better if you took two. And tell the officers the dispatch riders on Jeudi will also carry personal missives-for the usual considerations.” Skarpa smiled. “I imagine you might be using their services.”

“I just might,” Quaeryt agreed.

Skarpa nodded, effectively a dismissal, and Quaeryt left to check with Zhelan and the company commanders before the evening meal.

That night, after eating and handling other duties, Quaeryt settled into his chamber in the River Inn and wrote down his recollections of the high holdings and holders he had visited since he had left Ferravyl, while he could still remember details. Then he wrote a few more lines on his growing letter to Vaelora. Finally, he opened Rholan and the Nameless and began to page through it, trying to see if the unknown author had ever commented on death and the ceremonies surrounding it. He was about to turn past a chapter that seemed to deal with justice and mercy when a phrase caught his eye, and he went back and read through it once more.

Rholan spoke often of justice and mercy. While he deserves credit for addressing them both and for expounding the distinctions between them, he was even more astute in recognizing the fundamental difference between justice and law, perhaps because he had suffered from that difference as the bastard son of a High Holder. Rholan was far more competent than his younger half brother, who in fact inherited the lands of Niasaen upon the death of their father and who squandered it all before his early death in a drunken stupor in his hunting lodge, leaving his young widow no choice but to marry the second son of their father’s greatest rival …

It could not but have galled Rholan to be the one Thierysa requested to return Nial’s body to the hold house, for he had pled suit to her, and despite her affection for him, she rejected his suit in order to save her own family’s fortune … and in the end, she had to marry another she did not love to save herself.

It may well be that Rholan’s later views on funeral ceremonies took root after the death of his half brother, because in accepting the charge by his brother’s widow, he had to deal with a corpse that had putrefied greatly in the summer heat and doubtless sit through a lengthy memorial before Nial was quickly placed in the elaborate stone mausoleum that still dominates Niasaen Hold. All of that celebration of a younger half brother who was a wastrel likely had great impact, because Rholan held forth on more than one occasion upon the vanity of glorifying the body both in life and in death, and of the total emptiness of the gesture of elaborate tombs, claiming that a man’s worth lay in his deeds, not in the exaltation of his name after his death … and that the body might well be burned for all the good the cost of such funeral arrangements did a man, his family, or his reputation.

Quaeryt nodded slowly. What the writer had put down made sense, but it also raised another mystery, again. Who was the writer, that he knew so much about Rholan, and why had he chosen to remain nameless?

Quaeryt and third and fourth company left Caernyn promptly at seventh glass on Meredi morning, heading westward toward Fauxyn’s holding under a sky filled with puffy white clouds. From what he and the scouts could tell, almost no one had used the road as far as Haeryn’s gates since he and fourth company had ridden back the afternoon before-just one rider and a single cart pulled by an ox. That didn’t count any scouts, either Bovarian or Telaryn, of course, because they likely would have ridden on the harder parts of the road or on the shoulder to minimize their tracks.

Some three milles beyond Haeryn’s gates, the road dipped down into another marsh, the western end of the lake that had swamps at both ends. Quaeryt caught sight of one swamp lizard, more than three yards long, before it slipped under the murky water. The levee-like road across the swamp was more than half a mille long before it again rose onto the higher ground bordering the River Aluse. While it widened once above the marsh, the roadbed was more rutted and not all that well traveled.

Both Major Zhael and Major Arion rode near the front, one with Quaeryt and the other with Captain Wharyn, Zhael’s second in command, alternating occasionally. All six imager subcaptains rode behind Wharyn.

The first thing that Quaeryt noticed as they neared where Fauxyn’s holding was supposed to be was the high and thick hedgerow along the river side of the road, and the fact that the road ran along the south side of what appeared to be a long ridge whose crest had been flattened years, if not decades, before. There were no breaks in the hedgerow, and the top ranged from three to five yards above the shoulder of the road.

When they reached the holding entrance, Quaeryt blotted his damp forehead. He was mildly surprised at the plain gray stone and the dull iron gates and the fact that there were no tracks or wheel ruts from the gate onto the river road. He was less surprised at the chains and double locks.

At Quaeryt’s command, Shaelyt removed the locks, and two troopers swung open the gates to reveal a stone-paved lane that led directly to the rear of a two-story structure situated on a low rise less than half a mille from the gates. The lane bore no tracks at all, as if it had been swept recently. As Quaeryt, led by the scouts and followed by the two companies, neared the hold house, he could see that it was far more than a hold house, with wide covered porches, a walled garden off the rear verandah, and a small garden off each wing of the small palace, not to mention a pair of hedge mazes flanking the side gardens.

A thin wisp of smoke rose from a chimney, possibly the one serving the kitchen. That, and the fact that none of the windows were shuttered, suggested the hold had not been locked and abandoned … and that it was occupied with the holder either absent or most confident.

“They do not expect us?” murmured Zhael in Bovarian, from where he rode beside Quaeryt. “How could they not know?”

“Perhaps no one told them,” replied Quaeryt. “Did you see any other access to the grounds? I didn’t.”

“There must be another entrance.”

Quaeryt nodded, but he was convinced that they had not passed anything that would have afforded access to the grounds. Part of that mystery was resolved when they followed the lane up the rise and to a point where the ground leveled out just east of the holding buildings. From there, Quaeryt looked down a long gradual slope to the river, where an elaborate dock, with an elegant boathouse, jutted out into the water. From the foot of the pier a wide lane wound up the slope through elaborate gardens in sweeping turns, ending at a paved circle under a roofed portico supported by fluted stone columns. A row of statues, sea-sprites, crowned the low wall between the columns on the river end of the portico. The leaded glass windows overlooking the river were wide and tall.