Michael Stackpole - Of Limited Loyalty

Owen looked at him. “Like the heat from an infection?”

Surprise lifted the Altashee’s brows for a second. “A bit more than that, but yes.”

Nathaniel nodded once, strongly. “Good. I reckon you’ll want to be making notes, Captain. Let’s start in. Once we learn something gots some heft to it, we can figger if this is more important than Postsylvania and plan accordingly.”

Their survey produced a great deal of information that led to speculation, the contemplation of which introduced a tremor into Owen’s handwriting. The statue, when excavated, showed a man crouched beneath the figure, wearing the tentacled monstrosity as a mask. Lettering ran all the way around the statue’s square base. No one had seen anything like it and none of them could decipher it. The serpentine lettering seemed to shift when he stared at it, frustrating any attempt to make an accurate record of the words. At least, it did before Owen had Hodge cover the writing up, then only reveal a handful of letters at a time.

And while he was writing, Owen checked often to see if the infectious heat was coming up from his facsimile, but it was not.

The intact tower provided a second set of revelations that set everyone on edge. A stairway spiraled up inside the walls all the way to the flat roof. The stairway had two sets of risers, with the smaller running right up the middle and adding two steps to the other set. The taller stairs rose eighteen inches between courses, while the smaller only six. Owen could take the larger steps, but not conveniently. Missing floor beams and planking hinted at tall ceilings and suggested that whatever used them stood ten or twelve feet tall. The lower steps suggested creatures smaller than men, but how much smaller he had no way to gauge.

More importantly, while the windows in the tower’s lower reaches amounted to little more than slits, up top they broadened and had a wide sill at the bottom. While that sill would provide cover against shots from below, the window width made no sense unless man-sized creatures were meant to move in and out. Owen ran his hand over the sill’s smooth, cold stone and could detect no scratches or other clues as to its purpose.

The need to accommodate giants became evident elsewhere, as did provisions made for smaller creatures. Large doorways opened into houses with no inner partitions or decorations. For all intents and purposes, they were warehouses into which creatures were marched and stored. The lake’s water had long since washed away any murals or other paintings. Though he looked closely, he couldn’t even find signs of where someone had scratched marks corresponding to days on the walls, or carved his name for posterity.

Count von Metternin found that odd. “I once heard that even in the Tombs of Kings in far Aegeptos, grave robbers scrawled their names. Men wished to be remembered.”

Owen sighed. “I don’t think these were men. I’m not even sure they had names.”

“Their names are here.” Kamiskwa ran a hand over the smooth stone. In its wake, letters glowed violet for a handful of heartbeats. Rendered in the same lettering as on the statue’s base, but more crudely so, they overlapped in some places, and in others had extra letters squeezed into place to correct an error. “But these are names that should be forgotten.”

Owen raised his hand to the wall and concentrated. He didn’t feel anything at first, then, in his fingertips, he caught the same tug as a nettle might cause when brushing the flesh. Nothing glowed as his hand passed over it. He pulled in all fingers but one and began tracing invisible letters.

Kamiskwa’s hand closed on his wrist with an iron grip. “Owen, stop.”

Owen blinked his eyes. He stood a dozen feet from where he had begun and could not remember taking a single step. “I don’t understand.”

“The winding path, you remember.”

He nodded. “I do remember the winding path. That’s what’s odd. I don’t remember what I just did here.”

The Altashee shook his head. “This magick is that much stronger precisely so you cannot remember.”

Count von Metternin’s eyes narrowed. “You will forgive my impudence, Prince Kamiskwa, but your knowledge of magick could be taken as a knowledge of this place and the people who were once here.”

Kamiskwa released Owen’s hand. “I wish I knew more magick and less of what these people were. To know less would be difficult, for what I know is echoes of whispers of stories half-heard in days long dead. None of it is good. Until I saw this place, I had no reason to believe any of the stories.”

“What do you know?”

The Altashee opened his arms. “There are creatures that come in the night to steal children and to crush and kill. Sometimes they are giants. Sometimes they are smaller fiends.”

Von Metternin smiled. “Not so unlike the trolls and goblins of my nation’s folklore.”

Owen frowned. “But I don’t remember you saying anything of lost cities like this in Kesse.”

“True, Owen, but then we have not drained our deep lakes. There are glaciers which could bury a thousand of these settlements and we would never know.” He narrowed his eyes. “These creatures appear to be very reliant on magick, and this may, too, be a part of why we have no ruins for them.

“In the Good Book we have the flood, which God used to wash away evil from His creation. What if this is a place that survived the flood? We could be standing in the last outpost of an Antediluvian civilization. I believe the Good Book even mentions giants on the earth. Mr. Bone would know. Perhaps we can consult him and…”

A gunshot rang through the ruins. The three of them sprinted from the giant house, and a second gunshot turned them west toward the edifice they had taken to calling the Temple. They ran toward where Hodge and Nathaniel knelt on one knee on a patch of dried mud.

There was no mistaking the clear moccasin print, now days old, in the middle of it.

Nathaniel glanced toward the Temple. “’Pears we weren’t the first to find this place, and those what was here before us, they weren’t of a mind to be scientific about their exploring.”

1 May 1767 Prince Haven Temperance Bay, Mystria

Prince Vlad sat back, removed his glasses, and scrubbed hands over his face. How can my eyes burn when my blood is running cold?

Documents and books lay strewn over his desk as if it were debris washed down the Benjamin River after the earthquake. The damage in Temperance Bay and Bounty was not severe, though requests for supplies had been sent down river and goods started back up in the hands of the militia. Prince Vlad had given Caleb Frost the responsibility for organizing a company of men to make the trip. Caleb, he trusted, would make sure the supplies reached those who needed them and would resist the temptation of profiteering along the way.

Princess Gisella and Owen’s wife had spearheaded relief efforts in Temperance Bay. They solicited donations, sorted them, and arranged for them to be shipped south to Kingstown. Though Catherine Strake hated being in Mystria, she did enjoy exercising unfettered power. This made her very useful in dealing with the current crisis.

Their efforts bought Prince Vlad time to work on two projects. One was Mugwump’s flight training. The Prince was proud of his effort; the dragon was flying short distances without tiring quickly and appearing to gain strength and confidence each day. He, as yet, did not have the agility to pluck a bird out of the air, but he enjoyed flying enough to chase after wood doves. Vlad had cousins who were devoted to the art of falconry, and the Prince entertained fantasies of bringing Mugwump to one of their hunting jaunts.