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i_read_whatSo this is a bit later than intended. I blame the holiday. Turkeys and tryptophan will do it every time.
It's funny, for all that it seems like a high number of chapters, we're only a little more than half way through this book. It's not a huge book, but the chapters are pretty short so they add up.
So we rejoin Alec as he is just north of Watermead. He's spotted a column of cavalry. He asks what's going on: apparently, to misquote Futurama, war were declared. Oh dear. There was an ambush in the hill country, and they're off to rejoin the Queen's Horse Guard. They'd taken the brunt of it. Uh oh, hope Beka's okay!
Alec clearly is thinking the same thing because he asks if they could take a message for him. The rider is polite about it, but says no - no time. They ride off.
At Watermead, Alec is greeted warmly by the servants again. He warns them not to have Ranil send anyone else by that short cut and updates them on the news. He advises them to tell Micum, and let him break the news to Kari. He also reassures them (and himself) that Beka is a good soldier and has had the best training possible. They pack him some food for his ride as he heads back on Patch.
Happily the trip to Rhiminee is uneventful. He makes it back to the Cockerel, where the lanterns have gone out. He thinks that Thryis will be mad at Rhiri for that. He unsaddles his horse, leaving her with a rug on her back, and water and food. He hurries up, hoping that the commotion will cause Seregil to overlook that technically he disobeyed instructions by coming back instead of spending the night at Watermead.
He heads upstairs, absently keying the glyphs. And we get an ominous note: In his eagerness to find Seregil, he failed to notice that the warding symbols did not make their usual brief appearance as he passed.
The scene shifts after another ominous line ("No final dream or vision prepares him.")
Now we're with Nysander, who was dozing over some wizardy shit, when the alarms go off. Oreska is being invaded!
Invaders in the atrium! Golaria’s voice rang out in a red flash. A dying cry from Ermintal’s young apprentice stabbed at Nysander’s mind like a shard of glass, and then that of Ermintal himself— The vaults!—cut short by another burst of blackness. Through the onslaught of voices Nysander called out to Thero. There was no response.
That's probably a bad sign.
Nysander goes to the vault. He sees "what was left" of Ermintal and his apprentice - recognizable because of their robes. Eek. He's greeted by the voice from his vision.
Not Tikarie Megraesh, but a woman, Nysander thought as he took a step toward her. She was a tiny, wizened husk of a creature, blackened with years, desiccated by the evil that animated her. This was the ultimate achievement of the necromancer—the embodiment of life in death wearing the sumptuous robes of a queen.
Raising gnarled hands, she held up two human hearts and squeezed them until blood oozed out in long clots, spattering to the floor around her feet.
Mardus is there too, speaking with the voice of the Eater of Death. Other robed figures come into view, Nysander "could smell the stench of necromancy" and Ylinestra's special perfume. Eeek, again. He readies to fight and the chapter ends.
--
The next chapter starts us with Seregil. His investigations have come up dry. Most of his contacts have fled or gone to ground in the wake of the Beggar's Law. He reaches the inn, noticing the lanterns. He sees the the inn door is slightly ajar.
Seregil's more observant than Alec was. He sees a lot of ominous signs:
An unlucky odor filled his nostrils as he entered the kitchen; the stale, flat smells of a cold hearth and lamps left to gutter out on their own. Taking out a lightstone, he saw nothing out of place, except for Rhiri’s pallet, which was missing from its place near the hearth.
On the second floor the signs were more ominous.
Thryis and her family were not in their rooms and only Cilia’s bed appeared to have been slept in; the linens were thrown hastily back, and the coverlet hung awry over the side. Next to the bed, an overturned chair lay in the shattered remains of a washbasin.
A grim heaviness settled in the pit of Seregil’s stomach as he moved on to the guest rooms at the front of the inn. Only one had been occupied. The unlucky carter and his son lay dead in their beds, smothered with the bolsters.
THAT'S BAD.
He heads up. The panel to his rooms doesn't look tampered with, but he notices the glyphs had been trips. There's blood spots on the steps. I'm sure everything is fine!
The doors at the top of the stairs stood open, showing darkness beyond. If there was anyone lurking in the disused storage room, it was best to find out now while there was still a chance of easy retreat. Fishing a lightstone from a pouch at his belt, he tossed it into the room. The stone skittered noisily across the floor, illuminating the few crates and boxes scattered there. No one jumped out to attack, but the floor told a tale it didn’t take Micum Cavish to read; people had been in and out of his rooms, quite a number of them. Some had been dragged and some had been bleeding.
...just fine. Alec's going to be inside sleeping!
Several lamps had been left burning, and pale, unnatural flames danced on the empty hearth.
Someone had turned the couch to face the door, and on it four headless bodies sat as if waiting for him to return.
He knew who they were even before he looked past them to the heads lined up on the cluttered mantelpiece.
The strange light cast their features into tortured relief: Thryis, Diomis, Cilia, and Rhiri seemed to look with dull incomprehension toward their own corpses, which some monstrous wit had arranged in attitudes of repose. Diomis leaned against his mother, one arm draped over her bloody shoulders.
Okay, maybe not fine! Egads.
There was blood everywhere. It hung in congealed ribbons from the mantelpiece and pooled on the hearthstones below. It had dried in scabrous crusts on the pitiful bodies. There were great sticky smears and handprints on walls.
There had been a struggle. The dining table had been knocked sideways, spilling a sheaf of parchment onto an already blood-soaked carpet. The writing desk was overturned in a litter of quills and parchment, and the shelves to the left of it had been pulled down. As he stooped to inspect the mess more closely, something in the shadows beneath the workbench caught his eye, stopping his breath in his throat.
Alec’s sword.
Definitely not fine!
Seregil has a moment of irrational anger, he'd told Alec to stay at Watermead. I'm sure Alec feels that way too.
Bloody footprints lead into the bedroom. There's a cat scare here. You know, when there's a scary yowl that turns out to be a frightened cat. Seregil's cat is okay, if freaked out.
The bed curtains are shut.
Seregil’s breath sounded loud in his ears as he forced himself across the room, knowing already whose body he’d find when he pulled the hanging aside.
“No,” he said hoarsely, unaware that he was speaking aloud. “No no no please no—” Gritting his teeth, he flung the curtain aside.
There was nothing on the bed but a dagger-a dagger with a hank of long yellow hair knotted around the hilt.
On the plus side, Alec's probably not dead?
On the minus side, if he came in to see this shit, he's probably pretty traumatized!
“Where is he?” Seregil hissed. Grabbing up his sword, he rushed out into the sitting room again. “You bastards! What have you done with him?”
An evil chuckle erupted beside him and Seregil froze, scanning the room. The laugh came again, lifting the hair in the back of his neck. He knew that voice.
It was the voice of the apparition that had dogged him through the Mycenian countryside; the one he’d fought through a fever dream the night Alec had torn the wooden disk from his neck.
But this time there was no black, misshapen specter. The voice issued from the writhing lips of Cilia’s severed head.
Eww. So the voice taunts him through the severed heads of his friends. They accuse him of desecrating the sanctuary of Seriamaius and defiling his relics. They shout accusations of him being a defiler and thief. Seregil's sturdier than he acts sometimes, and he's more outraged and revulsed than freaked out. He also wants to know where Alec is. The heads just laugh.
“Forgive me, all of you.” Feeling as if he were trapped in the worst of nightmares, Seregil raised his sword and hacked at the heads until only a scattered mass of hair and brains remained. In the midst of it he found four small charms, charred human finger bones wrapped with nightshade vine.
So yeah, things have kind of ramped up in the horror department at this point, and it's going to stay this way for a while. You're warned!
Seregil wraps the dagger in a large scarf, then gets Alec's bow and quiver down. He tries not to wonder if they'll ever be used again. He grabs his box of loose jewels and upends it in his pack. Lots fall out and he just leaves them where they fall. (Alec had sorted the box recently as part of a gem appraisal lesson. Aw.)
Poor Seregil's going through some emotions here:
He’d been happy here, perhaps happier than anywhere else in his life. Now all of it-the books, weapons, tapestries and statues, the shelves of accumulated relics and curiosities-all of it was nothing more than stage dressing for the mocking tableau centered around the mutilated corpses gathered at his hearth.
Taking a large lamp from the table, Seregil whispered a quick prayer and emptied the oil over the bodies.
So yeah, he basically sets the inn on fire. As he's heading downstairs, he hears a cry in Cilia's room.
It's the baby! Cilia had heard the attackers downstairs and hid him. The baby must have been asleep when he'd looked before. Thank goodness he wasn't now! He leaves, only to meet Nysander's servant Wethis.
Wethis of course has more bad news: the Oreska was attacked. Nysander was found in the lowest vault. Wethis doesn't know if he's dead. Seregil gives the baby and his shit to the kid to take to Oreska, and then gets his horse. He notices that Patch is fine and taken care of. He rides bareback to Oreska.
So Nysander's alive, but comatose. Valerius is there, taking care of him. Hwerlu, the centaur, is playing a song of healing. Other drysians are chanting.
The invasion happened through the front gate and the sewers. Seregil is aghast, he'd thoguht the sewers had been dealt with. But apparently the authorities only concentrated on the routes to the Palace. That's stupid, in retrospect, but seems realistic for bureaucracy.
Nysander wakes up a little. He whispers that it's Mardus, and a dyrmagos, and asks after Alec. He babbles about a temple in Plenimar, but passes out again before saying anything useful. I'd make a snide comment, but dude's having a rough day.
Seregil is kind of freaking out. Valerius kicks him out of the room, on account of freaking out not being helpful to the half dead patient. The chapter ends with a bitter Seregil holding the dagger with the lock of Alec's hair asking rhetorically if Nysander's magic can protect Alec now.
So yeah. Things are getting a bit more exciting! And traumatic! Should be fun!
It's funny, for all that it seems like a high number of chapters, we're only a little more than half way through this book. It's not a huge book, but the chapters are pretty short so they add up.
So we rejoin Alec as he is just north of Watermead. He's spotted a column of cavalry. He asks what's going on: apparently, to misquote Futurama, war were declared. Oh dear. There was an ambush in the hill country, and they're off to rejoin the Queen's Horse Guard. They'd taken the brunt of it. Uh oh, hope Beka's okay!
Alec clearly is thinking the same thing because he asks if they could take a message for him. The rider is polite about it, but says no - no time. They ride off.
At Watermead, Alec is greeted warmly by the servants again. He warns them not to have Ranil send anyone else by that short cut and updates them on the news. He advises them to tell Micum, and let him break the news to Kari. He also reassures them (and himself) that Beka is a good soldier and has had the best training possible. They pack him some food for his ride as he heads back on Patch.
Happily the trip to Rhiminee is uneventful. He makes it back to the Cockerel, where the lanterns have gone out. He thinks that Thryis will be mad at Rhiri for that. He unsaddles his horse, leaving her with a rug on her back, and water and food. He hurries up, hoping that the commotion will cause Seregil to overlook that technically he disobeyed instructions by coming back instead of spending the night at Watermead.
He heads upstairs, absently keying the glyphs. And we get an ominous note: In his eagerness to find Seregil, he failed to notice that the warding symbols did not make their usual brief appearance as he passed.
The scene shifts after another ominous line ("No final dream or vision prepares him.")
Now we're with Nysander, who was dozing over some wizardy shit, when the alarms go off. Oreska is being invaded!
Invaders in the atrium! Golaria’s voice rang out in a red flash. A dying cry from Ermintal’s young apprentice stabbed at Nysander’s mind like a shard of glass, and then that of Ermintal himself— The vaults!—cut short by another burst of blackness. Through the onslaught of voices Nysander called out to Thero. There was no response.
That's probably a bad sign.
Nysander goes to the vault. He sees "what was left" of Ermintal and his apprentice - recognizable because of their robes. Eek. He's greeted by the voice from his vision.
Not Tikarie Megraesh, but a woman, Nysander thought as he took a step toward her. She was a tiny, wizened husk of a creature, blackened with years, desiccated by the evil that animated her. This was the ultimate achievement of the necromancer—the embodiment of life in death wearing the sumptuous robes of a queen.
Raising gnarled hands, she held up two human hearts and squeezed them until blood oozed out in long clots, spattering to the floor around her feet.
Mardus is there too, speaking with the voice of the Eater of Death. Other robed figures come into view, Nysander "could smell the stench of necromancy" and Ylinestra's special perfume. Eeek, again. He readies to fight and the chapter ends.
--
The next chapter starts us with Seregil. His investigations have come up dry. Most of his contacts have fled or gone to ground in the wake of the Beggar's Law. He reaches the inn, noticing the lanterns. He sees the the inn door is slightly ajar.
Seregil's more observant than Alec was. He sees a lot of ominous signs:
An unlucky odor filled his nostrils as he entered the kitchen; the stale, flat smells of a cold hearth and lamps left to gutter out on their own. Taking out a lightstone, he saw nothing out of place, except for Rhiri’s pallet, which was missing from its place near the hearth.
On the second floor the signs were more ominous.
Thryis and her family were not in their rooms and only Cilia’s bed appeared to have been slept in; the linens were thrown hastily back, and the coverlet hung awry over the side. Next to the bed, an overturned chair lay in the shattered remains of a washbasin.
A grim heaviness settled in the pit of Seregil’s stomach as he moved on to the guest rooms at the front of the inn. Only one had been occupied. The unlucky carter and his son lay dead in their beds, smothered with the bolsters.
THAT'S BAD.
He heads up. The panel to his rooms doesn't look tampered with, but he notices the glyphs had been trips. There's blood spots on the steps. I'm sure everything is fine!
The doors at the top of the stairs stood open, showing darkness beyond. If there was anyone lurking in the disused storage room, it was best to find out now while there was still a chance of easy retreat. Fishing a lightstone from a pouch at his belt, he tossed it into the room. The stone skittered noisily across the floor, illuminating the few crates and boxes scattered there. No one jumped out to attack, but the floor told a tale it didn’t take Micum Cavish to read; people had been in and out of his rooms, quite a number of them. Some had been dragged and some had been bleeding.
...just fine. Alec's going to be inside sleeping!
Several lamps had been left burning, and pale, unnatural flames danced on the empty hearth.
Someone had turned the couch to face the door, and on it four headless bodies sat as if waiting for him to return.
He knew who they were even before he looked past them to the heads lined up on the cluttered mantelpiece.
The strange light cast their features into tortured relief: Thryis, Diomis, Cilia, and Rhiri seemed to look with dull incomprehension toward their own corpses, which some monstrous wit had arranged in attitudes of repose. Diomis leaned against his mother, one arm draped over her bloody shoulders.
Okay, maybe not fine! Egads.
There was blood everywhere. It hung in congealed ribbons from the mantelpiece and pooled on the hearthstones below. It had dried in scabrous crusts on the pitiful bodies. There were great sticky smears and handprints on walls.
There had been a struggle. The dining table had been knocked sideways, spilling a sheaf of parchment onto an already blood-soaked carpet. The writing desk was overturned in a litter of quills and parchment, and the shelves to the left of it had been pulled down. As he stooped to inspect the mess more closely, something in the shadows beneath the workbench caught his eye, stopping his breath in his throat.
Alec’s sword.
Definitely not fine!
Seregil has a moment of irrational anger, he'd told Alec to stay at Watermead. I'm sure Alec feels that way too.
Bloody footprints lead into the bedroom. There's a cat scare here. You know, when there's a scary yowl that turns out to be a frightened cat. Seregil's cat is okay, if freaked out.
The bed curtains are shut.
Seregil’s breath sounded loud in his ears as he forced himself across the room, knowing already whose body he’d find when he pulled the hanging aside.
“No,” he said hoarsely, unaware that he was speaking aloud. “No no no please no—” Gritting his teeth, he flung the curtain aside.
There was nothing on the bed but a dagger-a dagger with a hank of long yellow hair knotted around the hilt.
On the plus side, Alec's probably not dead?
On the minus side, if he came in to see this shit, he's probably pretty traumatized!
“Where is he?” Seregil hissed. Grabbing up his sword, he rushed out into the sitting room again. “You bastards! What have you done with him?”
An evil chuckle erupted beside him and Seregil froze, scanning the room. The laugh came again, lifting the hair in the back of his neck. He knew that voice.
It was the voice of the apparition that had dogged him through the Mycenian countryside; the one he’d fought through a fever dream the night Alec had torn the wooden disk from his neck.
But this time there was no black, misshapen specter. The voice issued from the writhing lips of Cilia’s severed head.
Eww. So the voice taunts him through the severed heads of his friends. They accuse him of desecrating the sanctuary of Seriamaius and defiling his relics. They shout accusations of him being a defiler and thief. Seregil's sturdier than he acts sometimes, and he's more outraged and revulsed than freaked out. He also wants to know where Alec is. The heads just laugh.
“Forgive me, all of you.” Feeling as if he were trapped in the worst of nightmares, Seregil raised his sword and hacked at the heads until only a scattered mass of hair and brains remained. In the midst of it he found four small charms, charred human finger bones wrapped with nightshade vine.
So yeah, things have kind of ramped up in the horror department at this point, and it's going to stay this way for a while. You're warned!
Seregil wraps the dagger in a large scarf, then gets Alec's bow and quiver down. He tries not to wonder if they'll ever be used again. He grabs his box of loose jewels and upends it in his pack. Lots fall out and he just leaves them where they fall. (Alec had sorted the box recently as part of a gem appraisal lesson. Aw.)
Poor Seregil's going through some emotions here:
He’d been happy here, perhaps happier than anywhere else in his life. Now all of it-the books, weapons, tapestries and statues, the shelves of accumulated relics and curiosities-all of it was nothing more than stage dressing for the mocking tableau centered around the mutilated corpses gathered at his hearth.
Taking a large lamp from the table, Seregil whispered a quick prayer and emptied the oil over the bodies.
So yeah, he basically sets the inn on fire. As he's heading downstairs, he hears a cry in Cilia's room.
It's the baby! Cilia had heard the attackers downstairs and hid him. The baby must have been asleep when he'd looked before. Thank goodness he wasn't now! He leaves, only to meet Nysander's servant Wethis.
Wethis of course has more bad news: the Oreska was attacked. Nysander was found in the lowest vault. Wethis doesn't know if he's dead. Seregil gives the baby and his shit to the kid to take to Oreska, and then gets his horse. He notices that Patch is fine and taken care of. He rides bareback to Oreska.
So Nysander's alive, but comatose. Valerius is there, taking care of him. Hwerlu, the centaur, is playing a song of healing. Other drysians are chanting.
The invasion happened through the front gate and the sewers. Seregil is aghast, he'd thoguht the sewers had been dealt with. But apparently the authorities only concentrated on the routes to the Palace. That's stupid, in retrospect, but seems realistic for bureaucracy.
Nysander wakes up a little. He whispers that it's Mardus, and a dyrmagos, and asks after Alec. He babbles about a temple in Plenimar, but passes out again before saying anything useful. I'd make a snide comment, but dude's having a rough day.
Seregil is kind of freaking out. Valerius kicks him out of the room, on account of freaking out not being helpful to the half dead patient. The chapter ends with a bitter Seregil holding the dagger with the lock of Alec's hair asking rhetorically if Nysander's magic can protect Alec now.
So yeah. Things are getting a bit more exciting! And traumatic! Should be fun!