Michael Stackpole: Of Limited Loyalty

Then again, he is always guarded.

He had to be. Prince John had never been suited to the throne, and had willingly entered a monastery in his youth. When it became apparent that King Richard was unable to father children, John was recalled from the monastery, married to a Princess of Strana, and sent to Mystria to act as Governor-General. Vlad suspected this was less to teach his father to govern than it was to keep him free of court intrigues. When Richard died in 1740 while campaigning in Tharyngia, Margaret-the youngest of the three siblings-assumed the throne and sent for John. He returned to Norisle, abdicated in her favor, and again entered the monastery.

And Vlad, at the age of twenty-four, was made Governor-General in his place.

These letters, as with many others, amounted to sermons on the virtue of service to the Crown. While suspicious men might think John wrote them to disguise a loathing for the woman who usurped his rightful place, Vlad was convinced of their sincerity. His father would have ruled had he been forced to, but he truly welcomed a chance to return to the monastery where he could resume his theological studies. Moreover, the fact that the Queen had produced five children, all of whom had lived to adulthood, meant that Vlad would be saved the burden of ruling. That fact made Prince John-whom many referred to as Saint John-very happy.

The third letter contained a hidden message, so he refigured the keys and began to coax information out of the note. He picked out the words involved in the code, then broke them down, letter by letter, replacing them with the numbers from the key. Each word produced a three-number combination which corresponded to the page, paragraph, and word in a particular book. His father’s choices were limited, and after a couple of test runs, Vlad realized that A Treatise on Magick was the volume his father had chosen. The resulting note, while not wholly grammatical, managed to convey its intent.

“Sun, no word of dead walking. Proof required. Ranged magick whispers. Church rules black art. Eye shall learn more as directed. Instructions required.”

Vlad’s flesh puckered as he read. The message confirmed two things, and neither of them brought him joy. The first was that the code he shared with his father was compromised and that this third letter, though written in his father’s hand, had been composed and dictated by others. While the covering message matched his father for style, the coded message did not. His father was a passive being. He would have urged caution. Use of the word required wouldn’t occur to his father, neither would making a strong declaration as he did with Eye shall learn more. The request for direction was a clear solicitation of treason. The warning about the Church’s opinion about ranged magick would have been couched in terms of his beseeching Vlad to return to the ways of the Church.

The warning confirmed hunches Vlad had harbored of a conspiracy so monumental that it forced him to see the world in an entirely new but hardly flattering light. His researches, including the study of the du Malphias papers, confirmed what he’d have dismissed as insanity had another tried to convince him of its veracity.

Until the advent of brimstone and guns, magick had been severely limited and of little power. Because magick could only work by touch, and because iron and steel completely deadened magick, a man armed with a sword could easily kill a witch, warlock, or sorcerer no matter how powerful. Magick would have been rooted out of the Auropean population entirely down through the years, save that most who revealed talent-oddly enough referred to as “the curse”-exiled themselves to the fringes of society and did their best to appease those inclined to dislike them. The Church, while condemning the sin, bestowed charity upon the sinners and invited back into their ranks those who promised to refrain from using magick.

Once brimstone had made magick useful in the theatre of war, the Church reinterpreted certain teachings, and then condoned the use of magick. Most people who could use it were not terribly powerful, and magick use had its price. The Prince’s indulging himself in lighting the lamp through a spell would raise a little blood beneath his thumbnail. When he’d fought at Anvil Lake, he’d been black and blue to the elbows because of his efforts.

But then, he was of royal blood. It seemed to him rather curious that within a generation of the Church sanctioning the use of magick, all the royal houses of Auropa revealed strains of strong magick use among their scions. Soldiers were ranked by how many shots they could get off before exhausting their magickal ability. Most were twos or threes, yet the majority of nobles ranked five and above.

Marry all that to the fact that the miracles performed by saints in service to the Church could be duplicated by spells, and add in the fact that the Church often accepted into its ranks the lesser sons and daughters of nobility, and it suggested that the Church had, down through the centuries, secretly enshrined magick and preserved it. A case could be made for their having used it to influence world events.

While a prisoner of Guy du Malphias, Owen Strake had witnessed the Tharyngian Laureate using magick in a manner that did not require direct contact. The Shedashee Mystrian natives likewise did things with magick that appeared to circumvent the need for direct touch. Du Malphias had told Owen that when the Tharyngian Revolution overthrew the King and destroyed the Church’s power in Tharyngia, they uncovered evidence of the Church’s conspiracy.

Vlad might have considered that all fanciful save for a few chance comments his Norillian magick tutors had made. He’d begun instruction at the age of eight and progressed quickly. He’d been a keen learner and having inherited his father’s studiousness helped him greatly. His tutors had praised him lavishly for his abilities and hinted at his being able to work great magicks. And then, when he turned ten, those tutors departed for Norisle, and the others sent out were neither so enthusiastic nor intelligent. Vlad already knew more than they did, so they remained for a year, declared him hopeless, and left Mystria.

Vlad had always consigned his memories of the first tutors to fantasy. Even when he noted that their recall coincided with the birth of his cousin, Edward, he’d not suspected anything sinister in it. But with evidence that greater magicks existed and the knowledge that the Church and Crown both had a vested interest in keeping them secret, he began to wonder. He began to question his father about things, gently, and the directness of the replies had kindled one other memory.

It had been back when Vlad was twenty-three and just returned from what the family referred to as his pirate adventure. He’d awakened one evening and found his father pacing in the library of their home in Fairlee. John would walk, then try to write something, get up to walk again, then sit to write. Vlad watched him, then just took up his father’s place at the desk and told him to dictate.

The resulting message, though lacking in specifics, was his father at his most direct. The letter was to his brother, King Richard. John urged him to abandon his foolish quest. He predicted dire consequences for them all if Richard persisted. He begged his brother to reconsider and refused to tell Vlad what it was all about. “For your own good, Vlad, you should forget this evening.”

And so I would have if they had not chosen to use you against me, Father. To engage Vlad through his father, someone hoped to trap him into revealing a plot against either the Church or the Crown-perhaps both. His inquiries, however, had not involved politics and certainly were within the bounds of normal curiosity. To someone who had something to hide, however, even the most innocent question invited suspicion, and his father might be an unwitting dupe in the entire plot.