She was silent for a long while as I finished stitching her wound and tied off the thread. I opened my mouth to fill the silence, but just then something snapped her out of her reverie.
“But you have nothing to worry about, Scriber,” she said. “We found no sign of these so-called ‘Burners’. Sylla and I are rejoining the rest of my company in Barleyfield to return to Three Rivers.”
Relieved, I began to wrap her arm with cotton bandage. “You’ll want to replace the bandage quite often,” I said. “And clean the wound when you do, to make sure it doesn’t fester.”
“I have a Scriber in my company. I will have her see to it when we regroup.”
“Fine. Just be sure to rest the arm until the swelling goes down and the wound heals.”
Bryndine shook her head. “Just bind it tightly, Scriber. If I should need my shield arm, I will tolerate some pain.”
“And risk injuring it further? Don’t be foolish, Lady Bryndine.”
“I will try to follow your advice, Scriber, but if the need arises, my duty takes precedence. Please, bind it tightly; it will be fine.”
“I’m sure you know best, m’Lady,” I muttered, wrapping the bandage as tightly as I could.
Sky and Earth, she thinks I’m a complete fool
. She had no intention of following my advice, I was sure; she had formed an opinion of me after my hasty words at the inn, and couldn’t be bothered to listen to me now. Why should she? She was Bryndine Errynson, daughter to Elarryd Errynson, who was King Syrid’s brother and Lord Chancellor of the realm. Royal blood ran in her veins.
Why should she listen to me? I’m only a trained, educated Scriber.
“You likely won’t find any need to use the arm anyway,” I said as I tied off the bandage and stood up from the table. “Not on tame patrols like this one. It is very kind of the King to make sure his niece is kept safe.”
She stared at me silently for a moment, and I thought for certain that I had gotten to her, but she only stood and took a silver coin from her purse, dropping it on the table.
“Goodbye, Scriber Dennon,” was all she said as she strode swiftly to the door; she left without waiting for a reply. I had never managed to make her so much as blink, and it rankled me. She left as assured of her superiority as when she came.
It was late by then, but before I retired for the night I made an entry of the day’s events in my journal. A Scriber’s habit, that; deeply ingrained in me by Master Illias over eight years at the Academy. My record of the meeting with Bryndine was not kind to her, but it was unlikely that anyone would ever read it—I simply needed a way to release my frustration. In truth, I expected that I would never see Bryndine Errynson again.
Chapter Three
Sometimes I need to remind myself that a Scriber swears his oath to the people of the Kingsland, not to the King. We swear to pursue the advancement of all knowledge and the rediscovery of all that which has been lost, and to serve the people in whatever way is needed—anything from teaching children to providing medical treatment. I swore that oath, and I truly believe in it.
But by the Father above and the Mother below, I
loathe
serving the people.
— From the personal journals of Dennon Lark
It did not take long to put Bryndine out of my mind the next morning—I had little peace from the moment I woke until I retired that night. Before I had even made it to the Prince’s Rest for breakfast I had to see to Darlia Ginnis’ little boy, crying over a scraped knee that made me wonder if he had been playing in a bed of nails.
At breakfast, Josia harangued me into writing a letter to her husband Hareld, two days late returning from Barleyfield. The messenger who had delivered Illias’ letter late the previous day had stayed the night and would be heading back that way shortly.
No doubt Hareld had lost track of time while enjoying the company of a cheap prostitute or gambling away their savings. Only Josia believed him when he said the monthly trips were to “check in with friends in the business”. For all that her constant chatter bothered me, she was still a decent woman, and she deserved better than her ass of a husband. But there wasn’t a suspicious bone in Josia Kellen’s body, and I did not want to get involved, so I kept my mouth shut.
When I was done with Josia, Penni Harynson showed up at my door for her weekly lesson. She ostensibly wanted to learn her letters, but never absorbed a thing; the girl was an idiot. She only came because at seventeen, she was of an age to be married, and she had decided the local Scriber would make a better husband than Logan Underbridge’s fat son Jason. Compared to that pimple-faced adolescent I was positively dashing, I suppose, despite being almost thirteen years Penni’s senior.
I have never been an overly handsome man, but Penni chose to focus her flattery on my black hair and apparently “soulful” green eyes, ignoring my scrawny frame, narrow face, and over-long nose. After a fruitless hour trying to get her to write even one word correctly, I threw her out until she was ready to stop acting like a lovesick child. She left petulantly, telling me not to expect her back the next week.
On the way to the Rest for lunch, I was accosted by Ashton Norgand. His wife Carine was heavy with child and ready to give birth any day, and they called for me every time she so much as felt a chill. This time she was certain the baby was coming because she had a headache; it was not, of course, and I was forced to spend an hour pretending to examine her in order to convince her of that. I preferred that to actually having to deliver a babe, though—I can’t abide the mess, or all of the shrieking that tends to come with childbirth.
After lunch came the worst part of my day: teaching the local children. I have no fondness for children, nor they for me, and every lesson went much the same. I would try to teach them of King Erryn and the Burning; they would demand stories about the tree spirits called the Wyddin, the jealous first children of the Mother and Father who sought vengeance on mankind for stealing away their parents. I would explain that the Wyddin were only legends, religious allegories; they would ask who it was, then, that Erryn fought with a sword of fire to conquer the Kingsland. I would move on to the Forgetting and King Ullyd; they would scream and rub snot in each other’s hair.
Getting the children to remember anything I taught them was an impossible battle—yet if I asked any one of them about Waymark’s history, they would offer up a wholly false story about the Lost Prince without hesitation. The hours I spent teaching them were never less than excruciating, and it was no different that day.
I ate a late dinner at the Prince’s Rest, as always. Logan Underbridge and several other men chose that evening to stop by for drinks, and I was forced to listen to them gossip about the other villagers and give superstitious explanations for the sickly crops and poor harvests of the last year. Given the size of the Rest, I could not avoid being pulled into the conversation, though I tried to stay silent. Night had long since fallen by the time I extracted myself. It was then, on my way home, that I noticed something extremely curious.
The fireleaf tree in the village square was shedding leaves.
This would not have seemed such a momentous thing to most, but a Scriber knows things most do not. And one of those things is that a fireleaf—unique among all trees—
never
sheds its foliage, not throughout the autumn and winter months, not in the most violent of winds. Those flame-red leaves leave their branches only when they are torn off by human hands. Most of those leaves would have grown there for hundreds of years; some of them might even have budded nearly a thousand years ago, when the first trees began to grow back after the Burning. And yet, a thin circle of a dozen or so now littered the ground in the middle of Waymark.
I wondered when they had begun to fall. I had not noticed it before that moment, but I might easily have missed one or two, hidden behind the thick trunk of the massive tree—it was unlikely that they had all fallen while I was eating dinner. I picked a leaf from the ground and peered at it closely. Bright crimson at the center faded to a lighter orange-red around the edges; a wide base narrowed into a sharp, slightly curled point at the top. It truly looked like a lick of flame sitting in the palm of my hand, which of course was where the name came from. In the First Forest south of Timberhold the fireleafs budded green, but throughout the rest of the realm they grew red, and it was tradition among the Plains barbarians who had founded the Kingsland to name a thing by its most familiar traits.
Were the leaves falling all over the Kingsland, or just in Waymark? Was it natural, or the result of some sickness or infestation? The questions flitted through my head, but I had no answers. This was a matter for the School of Sciences, and my primary discipline was History. I didn’t have the expertise to pursue the matter.
I thought I heard a voice then, a faint whisper floating past my ears. There was something terribly sad in the sound, though I could not make out the words. When I looked around for the speaker, no one was there. But I could not shed the sense of unease that had taken hold of me, and I hurried towards the safety of my home.
It was a long while before I fell asleep.
* * *
The dream began as it always did, every night for the last five years.
The only light was dim and flickering, thrown by two handheld lanterns near the east wall where the men were working. The air was thick with the dust of centuries of neglect, and the sounds of digging echoed off the walls—the sharp ring of tools against rock, the rough scrape of stone on stone. I surveyed the chamber with growing dread. Long ago the sight had given me great satisfaction, even joy, but here in the dream, I knew what was coming. I shouted for the men to stop, but they didn’t listen, couldn’t hear me over the sounds of their work. And then there was another sound, a deep groaning, a terrible rumble and crack, and the roof was falling.
The screams of the workers assaulted my ears as debris crashed down from above, crushing the men as they tried to escape. A torrent of brightly colored glass rained down upon me, shards of blue and green and yellow and orange slicing into my flesh, tracing deep red lines where they cut. But no rocks fell where I stood—I could only watch while the others died.
And when the noise stopped, and the dust cleared, the worst part began.
The dead men began to claw themselves out from beneath the stone, bleeding and broken, staring at me with accusation in their milky eyes, and they began to chant.
“
In books of power, writ in blood…
” I covered my ears and screamed, trying to drown out the words, but snippets drifted through, scraps of old rhymes, of ancient songs. The men lurched closer and closer, circling me as they continued their terrible litany. “
The doom of Old Elov
—”
But abruptly the chanting stopped. The men were still there, still staring at me with condemnation in their eyes, but something was different—this was no longer the dream I knew.
Moonlit night surrounded me in place of lamp-lit darkness, and there was grass under my feet rather than stone. There was something against my back, and when I looked I saw that it was a mighty, ancient fireleaf, its rustling leaves as bright as fire even in the darkness. But no, they were not leaves; the tree was truly aflame, casting red light across the faces of the men surrounding me. And I no longer knew those men.
They were naked, all of them, and there were women among them now. All bore terrible wounds, but not like the men that had come before. These were the wounds of battle, the deep cuts of swords and axes, yet none of them bled. Their mouths were not moving, but there was a low whisper in my ears—their voices, I realized. Dozens, no, hundreds of voices, all whispering at once. And growing louder.
I could make out perhaps one word in a hundred, but all of them were terrible. “
Death
,” I heard, and “
Pain
,” and “
Vengeance,
” and over and over, “
We are the Burnt
.” But the worst was not the words themselves, it was the torment and the rage behind them. I could feel their anger as if it was my own.
I clapped my hands over my ears, but it did no good. The voices grew louder and louder, rising to a screaming fervor. Then, when I thought I could take no more, they united as one terrible voice, speaking a single undeniable command:
“
BURN,
” the voice demanded. And I did.
The flames of the burning fireleaf licked downwards, engulfing my body in a torrent of fire. I shrieked in agony as my skin melted and bubbled and sloughed from my bones; I felt my eyeballs burst and drip from their sockets. I was half mad with pain, screaming for mercy, begging the Mother and the Father and even the Dragon for respite from this torture.
And then, inexplicably, I heard a loud rapping noise: knuckles on wood. A pause, and then again, louder, and a shout.
“Scriber Dennon!”
I woke with a start to the sound of knocking at my door and Sylla’s voice shouting my name.
Chapter Four
Erryn’s Promise is the ideal the Kingsland was founded upon. The exact events that led to it are lost, but an idea of the true story can be found in the legends that survive to this day.
Erryn’s tribe offered protection to Princess Aliana and the survivors of Elovia after the cataclysm drove them from their home. The other tribes demanded blood, for Elovia had warred with the barbarians for centuries. But Erryn wanted peace, and sought to find it beyond the Wasted Plains.
He made a pledge to his tribe, to Aliana’s people, and to all those who would follow him: he would forge a new kingdom, founded on the simple tenet that he and all Kings after him would not demand service, but give it. If a King failed to provide protection, freedom, and equality to his people, he was no King at all; he would lose his right to the crown.