Jeff Crook - The Rose and the Skull

"You don't realize the precariousness of your position," Tohr said.

"My position has always been precarious," Valian said.

"You fancy yourself a hero, going to save the Knighthood from itself, like Sturm Brightblade?" Tohr barked mockingly. His voice grew sinister as his features drew into a snarl. "Dead men make poor heroes."

Reacting suddenly and swiftly, Valian drew his sword before Tohr could call for help. He leveled it at his master's heart, ready to strike the death blow.

Tohr froze. Trevalyn stood at his side, trembling either with fear or anger. Tohr tried to calm himself to speak, but it did little good. When he spoke, his voice quavered with fear. "You'd not kill an unarmed man?" he asked.

"Where is your sword?" Valian growled through clenched teeth.

"I don't need a sword," Tohr answered. "I have a Thorn!"

With that, he seized Trevalyn by the sleeve and flung him at the dark elf. The gray-robed Knight shrieked in surprise as Valian's sword slid between his ribs.

"It is bad luck… to kill… a mage," Trevalyn gasped as he clung to the sword. Blood flecked his lips and poured from his breast, staining his gray robes to black.

Valian, momentarily thrown, yanked free his sword. Trevalyn fell at his feet. "You have no more magic," he said to the corpse, "and I never liked you anyway."

He turned to pursue Tohr but found the Knight of Skulls already outside the door, shouting for his guard. With a snarl of rage, Valian slashed aside the curtain and burst out the window, escaping to the battlement just as three Knights erupted into the room, swords drawn.

Liam's candle had burned down to a stub no bigger than his big toe. Gunthar's papers lay before him on the desk, and still he had not begun. Despite the Knighthood's pressing need for some kind of direction and order, he couldn't bring himself to begin the task. Was it fear of failure, his own failure, or was it fear of having to announce that Gunthar's Revised Measure was a failure? Could he bring himself to admit that possibility before everyone?

There were so many other things to consider right now. There was his failure at the vote of succession, and the news brought by Valian Escu of the draconian stronghold. During his interview later that evening with Jessica Vestianstone, she'd confirmed everything Valian said, even adding to what he'd been told. She'd expanded on the part of the tale concerning the priest, Nalvarre Ringbow. She told Liam of Nalvarre's encounter in the forest with a creature able to take the form of anyone it killed and of the attack on his house while he was away. She described the injuries to the hound Millisant. When she mentioned it, he seemed to remember some talk among the grooms that one of the hounds had not returned from the hunt, but at the time he'd paid it no mind. Jessica had broken down in tears when describing the destruction of Isherwood. She'd wept for it as though mourning the passing of an old and very dear friend.

Liam sympathized, though it was not in his nature to show sympathy. All the old ways and old places were passing away, without anything to take their place: the gods, the Knighthood, even magic. As much as he distrusted magic, Liam was forced to admit the world was a better place with it than without. There were no true heroes in the new age, and those left over from the last age were proving to be straw, powerless scarecrows of their former selves, gully dwarves living off the leavings of a glorious world destined never to return.

Liam took a deep breath and steeled himself. He lit a new candle from the old one and set it on the desk, then reached for the top sheet of the stack of manuscripts closest to him.

He went page by page, marking out with his pen the passages irrelevant to the whole of the work. Outside his room, darkwatch came and went, and his pen continued to scratch. Sometimes he laughed at what he read, sometimes he shook his head with sorrow, but on into the night he worked, forgetting his supper, forgetting sleep, forgetting everything but the work before him. Rising late, the new white moon shone through his window. He stopped briefly to open a new bottle of ink.

Liam reached for the next page and spread it on the desk, his pen poised above it, when a scrap of paper fluttered from the top of the stack and landed upside down before him. He flipped it over and read,

Abandon this foolish notion and leave this land, or you and all your Knights will suffer the consequences.

Liam sat back in his chair and read it again. He held the paper up to the candlelight and saw that it appeared torn from a book. The watermark was of Betterman's, a bindery in Kalaman.

Before he had a chance to ponder the note, there came a reluctant knock at his door. Still holding the note, he cautiously approached the door, listening for sounds. When he heard none, he asked through the door "What do you want?"

"Milord, forgive me, but there is a man here who demands to see you," answered the captain of the guard from the hall outside.

"At this hour?" Liam asked. His instincts were aroused since hearing the priest's tale of dopplegangers or sivak draconians murdering people and taking their shape. "Who is he?"

"He is the priest who arrived with Lady Jessica this afternoon," the captain said. "I told him you were very busy, but he insisted."

"Tell him I'll see him in the morning," Liam said.

Another voice answered, shouting, "I must see Sir Liam!"

"Sir Liam will see you in the morning. Now you must go!" the captain warned.

"I have news of Gunthar's death. I have been to the crypt!" the man said. Sounds of a struggle began.

Liam gasped and jumped to the door, angrily snatching it open. "Bring him here," he hissed. "And be quiet about it. You'll wake the entire castle."

The captain, a tall powerfully built Ergothian, dragged Nalvarre Ringbow into the room and unceremoniously dumped him on the floor. "You can go," Liam said, waving the warrior to the door. "Tell no one," he added.

With a baffled expression, the captain of the guard closed the door behind him. Nalvarre rose to his feet, brushed back his hair and turned to face Sir Liam.

"What is this about visiting the crypt?" Liam asked as he moved behind the heavy oaken desk, placing it between the wild man and himself. At the same time, he used the desk to conceal the dagger in his hand. "That is a holy place forbidden to all but the initiated."

Nalvarre cleared his throat. "You have been told that I spent some time with a gully dwarf named Uhoh Ragnap, and that he claimed to be present at the time of Gunthar's death," Nalvarre said.

Liam nodded impatiently.

Nalvarre continued, "Uhoh did a remarkable job of imitating the manner in which Lord Gunthar died. And he mentioned several other things, about the dog Garr for instance, that made me suspicious as to the cause of Lord Gunthar's death."

"The cause of Lord Gunthar's has already been determined by Trevalyn Kesper. He said that…" Liam's voice trailed off as he raised an eyebrow.

"Ah, now you begin to see why I was in the crypt," Nalvarre said. He stepped forward and reached into his pocket.

Reacting swiftly, Liam stepped back, his dagger poised to strike. Nalvarre halted, his hand half out of his pocket.

"I have no weapon," he said. "Look." He inched the scrap of paper between his fingers out enough for Liam to see. "It's only a bit of paper."

Liam lowered his weapon.

Nalvarre breathed a sigh of relief and carefully unfolded the paper. "I took these from the wound on Gunthar's thigh," he explained as he laid the paper on the desk.

"You did not desecrate the body!" Liam said in alarm.

"No, of course not,'" Nalvarre laughed nervously. "I found them right on the surface of the wound."

Cautiously, Liam leaned forward to look. Several tiny amber beads lay in a crease of the otherwise blank scrap of paper.