[djo]

Vanheim turn 42

In which Vethru's tomb-robbing is spoiled by bad news, and Pherios feels the rope.


Vethru

As far as I can tell, the library in Trisia is over nine thousand years old. Not quite as old as me, but still. There's not a chip missing from any of its stonework. There's something preserving it, and that's why I'm here.

It's always the little things that trip you up. I didn't bother conquering Trisia until recently, because there didn't seem to be any civilization here to conquer. Just barbarians. You'd think that as old as I was, I would remember that civilizations rise and fall over the timespans I'm looking at. Oh, well. All's well that ends well.

I'm standing in front of a magnificent stone sarcophagus. It's the final resting place of the wanderer that passed through Imictan many years ago. I now know that his name was Amuttet Furcaisol. He knew a fragment of the code I seek. Elements of it are inscribed throughout the library. It's clear his piece deals with solidity and density. The angel that knew him, or learned from him, turned itself into an animate stone guardian and watched over its code fragment in Birman Highs. Then I came along and removed the "animate" part. When Furcaisol visited Imictan, he changed old Graknor from a shadow of emptiness into solid existential sludge. Here, in Trisia, he preserved his library against time.

And I'm one step closer to his secrets.

"Be extremely careful with the positioning of the wedges," I say. "You'll never chip this stone. Find the seams. That's the only way we'll get the cover off."

They work at it halfheartedly. I ask them what's wrong.

"Lord, what if there's a curse?"

I can't imagine what is in their culture to make them worry about a nine thousand year-old curse instead of the immediate threat that I'll cause them to shrivel into tiny people-raisins. But I'm too excited to slaughter them. Besides, I don't want to lift the cover by myself.

I'm trying to reassure them when Hallixene rushes in. I left him in Vanheim, and he looks like he spent the night on a horse. Not good.

"My lord, terrible news!" he pants. "Marignon has invaded! Imictan has fallen!"

Crap. Well, on one hand, I didn't expect the treaty to last this long. On the other, why the heck aren't they busy conquering Ermor?

"A company of knights," says Hallixene. "They were supported by crossbows and pikemen. The Archbishop of Wic was there! And the Green Knight!"

Double crap. They're serious.

"Belletennares is maneuvering the army. He would not wait for your orders. Also, sire, I have a message." He hands it over.

At least Belletennares was home. Vanheim's forces are almost as mobile as hovertanks, and Belletennares knows how to use them. The roads were probably clogged with units criss-crossing the realm by now. There's something to be said for competent underlings.

The message comes from my secret police. It can't be good news. I look at my sarcophagus and wonder why the message couldn't have come an hour later. Would it hurt to put off reading it until I open the coffin? The workers are looking around nervously. They all heard Hallixene; most of them are probably thinking we're going to rush home without bothering opening the thing.

It started out as such a good day, too. I break the seal and read: "Pherios captured. Told family he escaped. Worry he actually will. Orders?"

It's good advice to treat every problem as an opportunity, but sometimes your opportunities are also big problems.

Well, it could be worse. I was looking for him. Keeping his family off my back is going to be a big problem, but a least he's under control now.

And then "cogito" met "ergo" wandering through my brain, and together they made "sum".

Just before I left for Trisia, I talked to my lizard seer Akkulu one last time. He was going through an obsessive-compulsive phase. All his bones were neatly lined up on the table, arranged carefully by size and shape.

"Hey, boss," asked Ji. "Are you sure the locks work? 'Cuz he's got more bones here than yesterday."

Ji didn't notice that I wasn't limping anymore. I'd finally replaced the foot that was damaged in my fight with Graknor. I found a good use for the old one. As anyone who does magic with body parts knows, if you want the best soup, you've got to get the vegetables out of your own garden.

"What do you see, Akkulu? Will I find what I'm looking for?"

He's not a model of clarity in the best of circumstances, but usually I can understand something. I thought I did.

"Rising sun," he said, after rearranging his bones into a different pattern. "Coming soon!"

Marignon, right? Not exactly. He didn't mean who, or when, but where. From the east. Not the north.

The rest, at the time, I didn't understand.

"Oopsie! Tide's coming in! No time!"

"Something's going to go wrong?" I said. "I won't find it?"

"Just pluck it," he said. "It's on the tree. Be there when you need it. Like the other one."

It made no sense then, but now I see it.

Well. The easy part is done. Endgame is starting. Time to promote a pawn.

I look back at the sarcophagus. One morning, that's all I wanted. One morning to pop open the grave and plunder the body. Was that so much to ask? Apparently so. I sigh.

"Get that back to Vanheim," I tell the workers. "If it doesn't arrive three days after I do, I'm going to feed you to the trolls." Tolls won't eat humans--some kind of religious prohibition--and by next month, they might have a contract somewhere else anyway, but the workers jump to their pulleys and ropes and levers with a will.

I head back home. Time to get my hands dirty.


Pherios

So close. I almost made it.

After talking with my parents, I made my way into the castle without being seen. First I went up to my old turret, thinking I would recover my old notes, but when I opened the door, I found there was nothing there I wanted. That part of my life was over; I would never return to it. I left without even disturbing the dust.

I eluded the guards near Vethru's office. I broke the lock and went in. Before lighting a candle, I checked the sightlines from the windows. "Damn it," I swore aloud, almost setting fire to the papers I examined. No one heard. The dispatches showed increasing concern about Marignon's army in the north. Once Ermor was conquered, they were expected to turn south. Interesting, but not what I came for.

Deep in Vethru's desk, I found it. Files full of papers I couldn't read. An engraved wooden rod. A few cryptic books. I grabbed them all and immediately left. Better not to make a longer search and risk capture.

And I would have escaped had I not chosen a route past the Valkyries' practice yard. An out-of-place spot of white caught my eye as I passed. I walked over to a statue that was apparently being used as a practice target. It hadn't been there when I left. It was a stone angel with a sword, chipped and pitted by the impact of thousands of spears and javelins.

At its base was the body of a large, white bird. I knelt. It was a snowy egret. Her body was cold. She'd been impaled, possibly by a sword. Then I heard the sound of clawing and pecking at stone, and I knew.

"You killed her," I said, standing. "You killed my Galameteia, and you're still in there." I didn't know how, or why, but I knew something was alive and aware in the statue. It quivered as I backed away from it. Good. When I was about thirty feet away, I called down the lightning.

I don't know what I wanted or expected to happen. I never thought this day would come. As I watched the statue crumble, bolt by bolt, I imagined that I could absorb the knowledge of what happened to Galameteia. That I could see how it killed her. That I could somehow make up for her death and everything done to her afterward. The bolts struck, one after the other, the thunder sounded, and I thought, as I pictured her fighting it, that I heard her call my name as she died.

I didn't notice the soldiers. They captured me as I stared at the rubble, and they brought me to this windowless cell. My jailers weren't Vans or huskarls, or even einhere. The were skinshifters, loyal only to Vethru. They didn't speak to me. They left me in the dark.

I sat in darkness for what seemed like a long time, but was probably only two or three days. I thought that at any moment, the door would burst open, and my father, or Belletennares, or Petema would save me. I trusted that my family would come for me.

They didn't arrive in time.

When my cell door opened, it was the skinshifters. They bound my hands behind my back and dragged me up the stairs, out into the courtyard of the ancient, crumbling keep they called home. It was night, but the half moon seemed bright to me, accustomed as I was to total darkness. I struggled to focus my eyes after not using them for days.

I saw a wooden stage. No, it was taller than me, too tall for a stage. A high platform, with a framework on it. Its moon-cast shadow fell before me. There were two upright beams, and an unfinished crosspiece--a thick tree branch, ovate leaves still clinging to one end. What was that hanging from it?

I blinked, and it all became clear.

A rope.

Oh, no.