Chapter 7 - The Council.
The heavy iron door groaned on its hinges as the Queen crossed the threshold of the cell, while two Green Order knights stopped short in the doorway, gripping the hafts of their halberds.
The light of an oil lamp pulled the figure of Magister Kyle out of the darkness, seated on a narrow wooden bench, his back against the cold wall of white stone. His dark robes were stained with dried blood, his fingers still trembling faintly in the aftermath of the overload from the magic he had spent so recently.
The Queen stopped two paces from him, her hands folded behind her back.
Shadows from the lamp fell in hard bands across her brows, drawn together above the bridge of her nose, and her lips, pressed into a firm line.
Edith's gaze never once wavered as she looked down at the prisoner, lingering on his trembling fingers before rising back to his face.
Edith tilted her head slightly, light glinting across her hair, arranged into its heavy crown of braids.
"Your assistant, Aris... for all the strength you poured into her, she still hasn't come around."
She held a short pause, and when no reaction came from the Magister, she walked over to the small window with its steel bars and turned her gaze out through it.
"The Archiater said it was only her will to live and the strength of her Pandorum that let her survive at all, reaching the southern gates with wounds like that. And though you managed to repair the critical damage to her body... she'll still need more than one week to recover enough," Edith said, looking out the window, where a clear moonlit sky lit the whole city.
"I have only a couple of questions, and one of them is this. What in hell were your people doing on sacred, and moreover forbidden, ground in my kingdom?"
The Magister sighed, closing his eyes and tipping his head slightly, weighing his answer.
"A week ago I sent a team of three researchers to the borders of the Great Forest to study the state of the Unified Field in that area. They were to return before the Hallowed Hunt began, to deliver the findings of their small expedition," Kyle answered, looking straight ahead, studying the brickwork pattern of the walls.
"You chose to break our laws for the sake of some expedition, sacrificing your own people for the sake of some data on the Unified Field?" the Queen said, indignant.
The Magister lifted his clouded gaze from the wall, his pupils slowly focusing on the Queen's silhouette.
"You call it law, while I call it blindness. We are watching the Unified Field lose its stability, turning into an unpredictable force under the pressure of reckless action by the greatest powers."
Kyle's voice came out hoarse, breaking on every third word, but it never faltered mid-sentence, going on to lay out the facts at a measured pace.
He slowly straightened his back, forcing himself through the physical weakness.
"Aisengard, Valkar, Hardun, the Trade League, and even Aeris-Lund... they draw energy out of space in volumes humanity has not yet learned to comprehend, which leads to the degradation of the world's energy field."
The Magister looked her directly in the eyes, not blinking, not glancing away, while the tremor in his fingers stilled for a moment.
"You want to know why my people were in the Great Forest?... Our instruments recorded an anomalous rise in energy concentration, drawing toward Waldruhm as though toward a vortex. We could not ignore that fact, because it was here, on your lands, that we expected to find the region where the density of that energy likely reaches its peak."
Kyle drew a short breath, and a pained smile surfaced on his pale face.
Queen Edith didn't stir, still watching the night city, the moonlight tracing the sharp lines of her profile. Behind her back she clenched her fists until the knuckles went white.
"I sent those people not for glory or forbidden riches, but in search of an answer to how we stop the inevitable ruin. We see flora and fauna across all of Prime beginning to change, spawning deformed mutations and aggressive forms of life. Chimeras created in the laboratories of certain states are slipping out of control, spreading like a contagion through forests and plains. If we don't understand the nature of this surge in Waldruhm, there's every risk your 'sacred forest' will soon become a cradle for creatures against which your knights' steel will prove useless. And on this subject, I think you understand better than I do what I mean... don't you?... A veteran of the battle at the Cursed Forest... the great warrior and goddess of lightning, and now a queen — Edith Valdrich," the Magister said, his voice cracking on the last word, the trembling hand on his knee closing into a fist for an instant.
Edith turned to him slowly, her eyes flashing with a cold fire in the half-dark of the cell.
She took a step forward, closing the distance to the prisoner, until the shadow of her figure covered him completely.
"Twenty-three people, not counting your two, likely torn apart in the forest by an unknown predator that YOU likely disturbed. It may be that in our lands people are used to giving their lives with honor in battle or on a hunt... but outsiders meddling here, and my people dead because of it, during a sacred festival... that is another matter entirely," the Queen replied.
"And so, one way or another, a trial awaits you, as soon as my people learn the truth," Edith added, heading for the cell door.
"You already know, don't you?" Kyle said after the departing Queen, who stopped dead in the doorway.
"You know, or at the very least you suspect, what could have attacked them..." Kyle went on.
Edith looked back at him slowly over her shoulder.
Kyle chuckled quietly and leaned his back against the cold stone wall, turning his gaze to the window.
"Better that way, in truth... because if the threat is known, it will be easier to deal with than something you have never faced before..." Kyle finished, and the Queen left the cell without a word, the door slamming shut behind her with a dull thud.
Edith held her back perfectly straight, every step across the corridor's stone flags staying measured, never breaking tempo by a fraction of a second.
She hadn't gone ten paces from the door before one of the guards came hurrying up to her.
"My Queen," the man said in his armor, with a short bow.
"Sir Aurey has returned with news and awaits you together with the rest of the council."
Edith let out a breath, held a short pause, then nodded without a word and set off for the council.
The council chamber was built from the same white stone as most of the Upper Castle, but over years of service the walls had darkened with soot from the torches that lit the long oak table in the middle of the room.
At the far end stood a man of middle age, his short but well-kept brown hair and beard shot through with emerging gray.
Ulrich Thorne, whose emerald aristocrat's uniform sat in harmony with the silver stag on his right pauldron, the mark of the Hand, glinting dully in the gloom.
To his right stood Alistair Sterling, whose polished steel plate, worked with fine patterns on the gorget and pauldrons, threw back the flame of the lamps, a dark green cloak hanging down his back.
His russet beard was combed, and the scar on his left cheek showed white against his tanned face, while his two-handed sword stood beside his chair, propped against the wall.
The Intendant of Intelligence had settled a little apart from the main line of the table, a stack of rolled papers lying untouched in front of her.
The rest of the officials occupied the sides of the table.
The Intendant of Trade sat upright, tapping a finger on the tabletop to a rhythm known only to himself, while the Intendant of the Economy squinted with fatigue, fresh ink stains darkening her wrist.
The Intendant of Resources didn't move at all, his face frozen, staring into the space in front of him, while across the table the acting Intendant of Public Works spoke quietly with the Intendant of Provisions, discussing something of their own.
And finally, his back to the room, stood the Queen's bodyguard and sword, Sir Aurey Dane, his gaze turned to the night city through the western window. He was the youngest man on the council, with sharp features and smooth, fair skin, but with a cold, calculating look in his eyes.
The matte black plates of his armor reflected the light faintly, a heavy black cloak fell from his right shoulder, and waves of blue-black hair brushed his pauldrons.
The chamber door opened, and everyone present turned at once.
Edith entered, walking at an even pace, while all the Intendants rose from their seats and bowed before her.
Her gaze swept the table once as she stopped at its far edge, then turned to Aurey.
"Aurey."
He lifted his head and looked at Edith with grey-blue eyes in which nothing flickered.
"My Queen."
"Were you able to learn anything?"
Aurey pressed his lips together slightly and, after a short pause, nodded, then came over to the table.
"By the time I reached the Forest Watch tower, Sir Bram was already waiting for me. As it turned out, he had personally inspected the boundaries of the Forest and the western grove. And where the two meet, he found the site of a brutal slaughter."
Thorne leaned forward a little. Sterling didn't move.
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Aurey took a leather satchel from his belt and laid two objects on the table, a rolled sheet with a wax seal and a compass in a brass case, a monogram on the lid, the metal covered in brown stains of dried blood.
"It was found eighty paces from the main site. There were also tracks from one of the horses there, leading off along the western grove and disappearing at the river. One of the hunters likely managed to escape on horseback, which one of the tower's watchmen then confirmed."
He unrolled the paper, where several rough diagrams in ink marked the positions of the bodies.
"Seventeen bodies found across an area some five hundred paces wide. Five are missing — no bodies, no equipment."
The Intendant of Trade's finger stopped on the tabletop.
"The type of injuries?"
"Torn open. Massive trauma to the chest from a powerful blow. Several fighters' bodies were ripped apart, by brute force from all appearances, others crushed to pulp. Most had their blades drawn, many snapped in half. Two warriors' swords had shattered to pieces."
"They all had ordinary blades, then?" Alistair asked, surprised.
"For better or worse, every blade carried runic engraving," Aurey answered.
The Intendant of the Economy laid both palms on the table, while the Intendant of Intelligence went on looking at her folded hands.
"Tracks?" the Hand asked, drawing his fingers slowly down his beard.
"That's where it gets most interesting." Aurey pointed to one of the diagrams.
"A wide stride. Six pressure points in a single cycle of movement, arranged in pairs. And the size... roughly four paces long, and almost two paces wide." He held a short pause, while most of those seated at the table straightened and exchanged glances.
"The tracks lead back into the depths of the forest, past the inner boundary."
Silence settled over the chamber, arising less from the absence of words than from the shared thought no one wanted to say out loud.
"Did Sir Bram say anything?" Alistair asked, his eyes on the table.
"He did," Aurey answered, raising his gaze to the head of the Order.
"He'd seen these tracks before, back when he was still a young assistant to the last commander of the Watch. By his account, whatever left these tracks has never before left the inner boundaries of the Great Forest."
Aurey's and Alistair's eyes met, and the latter's jaw tightened slightly.
Thorne studied the diagram with its six-point tracks, then shifted his gaze to Edith, who stood straight, holding the compass in her fingers and looking at the monogram, then lifted her chin a fraction.
"There should be two more in the forest."
"Wait... what do you me—" Aurey began, turning to Edith with his brows drawn together.
"The Trade League," Edith answered at once, setting the compass down on the table.
"Magister Kyle said he sent three of his people into the forest. Not one of them returned by the deadline."
Aurey went still, looking at the Queen, then shifting his gaze to the compass.
"We detained the Magister for violating the kingdom's laws and placed him under guard, immediately after one of his people arrived in Ockhaven on the horse of one of our warriors," Alistair added.
"So... the one who fled on horseback was her... and of the missing: six of ours and two from the Trade League..." Aurey said thoughtfully, straightening up and crossing his arms in front of him.
The Intendant of Trade traded a quick glance with the Intendant of the Economy, while the chamber sank into a thoughtful silence for several moments.
"So this compass..." the Intendant of the Economy began.
"Belongs to the survivor," the Intendant of Trade finished.
"Who can't speak yet. She was picked up at the gates a hair's breadth from death, but the Magister managed to save her with his restorative magic. Right now she's unconscious and under the Archiater's care," Edith added, putting the compass back into the satchel and holding it out to Aurey.
The chamber lapsed into another brief silence, broken when the Intendant of Trade spoke up.
"My Queen... The guests are still in the city. Merchants, the hunters' families, the delegation. By morning rumors will fill the streets faster than we can explain anything. People know not everyone came back. And they'll be waiting for something. If there's nothing for them to wait for, they'll start inventing it themselves."
"By morning they're already inventing," said the Intendant of Resources.
"Which is exactly why the city has to be given something in place of emptiness. The Tournament. The knights take the arena, the Order honors tradition, the people see order and strength instead of closed gates and silence," the Intendant of Trade went on.
"Use the arena as cover?..." Sterling began, his gaze snapping up.
"He may be right," the Intendant of Public Works put in.
"The Tournament is part of the festival. No one has canceled the festival."
"Twenty-three people did not come back from the forest," Alistair answered, his eyes fixed on the Intendant of Public Works.
"Which is exactly why the ones who remain need something to look at," the Intendant answered, meeting Alistair's eyes in return.
The head of the Order's jaw tightened, while the Intendants of Public Works and Trade sat motionless and the rest of those present kept their silence.
Edith looked at the table in front of her, where the compass had lain a second ago, then raised her head.
"I agree with this idea. The Tournament buys us time. Thorne — the announcement tomorrow morning, in my name."
"As you command, My Queen," the Hand answered with a short nod.
"Have Wellard expect my arrival by tomorrow morning," Edith added, heading for the door.
"Yes, My Queen," Thorne answered.
The door closed with a dull click as the Queen left the council chamber, and not one of those remaining moved from their place, turning the details of the incident over in their minds.
The Intendant of Trade shifted his gaze from the diagram to the Intendant of Public Works, while the Intendant of Resources went on staring at nothing, his expression unchanged.
The heavy, thick silence held for another minute, until the Intendant of Intelligence brought herself to break it.
"She made that decision too quickly."
Alistair raised his eyes to her but said nothing.
"I'm not saying it's the wrong one," she stressed.
"I'm saying we need to understand what we're dealing with before we announce a tournament as though nothing has happened. Twenty-three people. Twenty-three. And not one explanation we could give their families."
"There is an explanation," said the Intendant of Trade.
"The Hallowed Hunt is dangerous. Everyone who goes into it knows that."
"The Hunt's danger is a boar's tusk or a Cortex's claw," the Intendant of Provisions answered.
"Not whatever breaks runic steel."
"Then this time the danger turned out to be a different one," answered the Intendant of Public Works.
"And still we don't know what actually happened. All we know is the consequence," the Intendant of the Economy put in carefully.
"We know the tracks," said the Intendant of Trade.
"The tracks of an unknown creature out of the depths of the forest?"
Voices began overlapping one another, while one of the knights along the wall shifted his weight slightly.
Ulrich Thorne stayed silent, standing at his end of the table and listening, until at some point he raised a hand in a calm motion that made the voices around the table settle on their own.
"The Queen was not in a hurry. She made a decision that holds the city in balance while the investigation continues. The Tournament only buys time to answer it properly, rather than in haste. That is the difference between governing and reacting," Thorne said, letting his gaze travel over every member of the council.
"Now for a different conversation." He held a short pause.
"About whose tracks Sir Bram found."
The Intendant of Trade closed his mouth, the Intendant of the Economy looked away, and the Intendant of Resources changed his posture slightly for the first time all evening.
Ulrich turned to Aurey, who stood at the western window, his back to the room once more, looking out over the sleeping city.
"Aurey, you heard Sir Bram. You've seen the diagrams. What do you think?"
Aurey didn't turn right away, gazing out the window for several more seconds, where Ockhaven lay under the moon at night, calm and unaware of what was happening in this chamber.
He turned slowly and ran his eyes over the faces at the table.
"It's precisely because he knows the answer that he said what he said. Not outright," Aurey said, settling his gaze on the Hand.
"What are you talking about?" the Intendant of Trade asked.
Instead of answering, Alistair lifted his eyes from the tabletop and fixed him with a hard look.
"Ursus," the head of the Green Order answered.
The Intendant of Trade raised his eyebrows and glanced around the room with a smirk, expecting someone to share his skepticism, and got nothing but silence.
"Are we truly going to talk about ancient myths?" He spread his hands, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair.
"A giant six-legged guardian bear that no one has ever seen alive? Those are tales for children and for hunters around a fire, so no one goes wandering into the forest without cause."
"Precisely," said Sterling.
"No one wandered in. It worked."
The Intendant of Trade opened his mouth, then immediately shut it again.
"Six points in the track," said the Intendant of the Economy.
"Coincidence. An anomaly. An unknown species no one has encountered before," the Intendant of Trade answered with a shrug.
"That explanation is no worse than the one you're proposing."
"And no better," the Intendant of Intelligence objected, without shifting where she sat.
"And the tracks lead past the inner boundary. To where, by any explanation, something lives that wants no neighbors."
The Intendant of Trade looked at the Intendant of Intelligence, then at the Hand, then at Sterling and back at the Hand, searching for an ally or at least a neutral arbiter, but Ulrich met him with silence.
"Fine." The Intendant of Trade leaned back a little.
"Suppose... suppose it is him. What does that change? He went back past the inner boundary. That's where the tracks end, Aurey said so himself. So the threat is contained."
"The threat is contained," Sterling repeated with a smirk.
"Right up until someone disturbs again what shouldn't be disturbed. As has already happened."
"The League's people..." the Intendant of Trade said after a short silence.
"The League's people," Sterling confirmed.
A heavy silence hung in the chamber, through which the Intendant of Trade kept his eyes on the table, the smirk gone from his face now.
"The question at present isn't whether we believe in Ursus or not." The Hand looked around those assembled.
"The question is that there are tracks, there are bodies, and something that crossed the inner boundary for the first time in no one knows how many years has gone back. Gone back for now."
Aurey still stood at the window, listening to all of this, not turning, looking down at the city, and then spoke, addressing no one in particular.
"Wellard said one more thing."
Everyone looked at him, and Aurey turned back to the council.
"He said that in all his years of service he doesn't recall a single instance of Ursus crossing the inner boundary. Not one documented track, not one tall tale from the older watchmen."
Aurey fell silent, and this time no one at the table hurried to break it.
The Intendant of Trade slowly rubbed his face with his palm, while Sterling watched Aurey.
"Then we'll have the answer to the first question when the survivor comes around," Thorne answered, folding his hands on the table.
"Until that moment — no theories beyond this chamber. No hints, no rumors. The council has heard me."
Meanwhile, Queen Edith was making her way to her chambers through a narrow corridor where torches burned every ten paces.
The two guards at the tall doors of dark oak straightened as soon as Edith appeared at the end of the gallery, lowering their halberds in a bow of greeting at the same moment.
The antechamber of her rooms was quiet and warm, threaded through with the smell of dried herbs the maids hung in the corners every week.
A servant stood by a small table near the window, a young woman with her hair neatly pinned up and her hands folded in front of her.
"My Queen. Your bath is ready," the servant said, dipping into a quick bow.
"Thank you," Edith answered, stopping in the middle of the room.
"Tell the others they're free for the evening. I'll take the bath myself."
The servant's eyes and eyebrows lifted quickly, her surprised expression holding for a moment before she lowered her gaze again.
"As you command, My Queen."
She bowed and went out, closing the door behind her.
For several seconds Edith stood in the silence, listening to the footsteps fade down the corridor, then headed for the bath.
The stone bath was wide, set into the floor and filled to the brim, steam rising in slow columns and settling on the ceiling in fine droplets.
One of the maids had managed to add lavender oil to the water, which spread a thick, faintly sharp scent through the whole room, overpowering the smell of stone and wax, while several candles burned on a shelf by the wall.
Edith unfastened her dress without hurry, the fabric slipping neatly down along her wide, bared hips, in a motion so habitual that her hands worked separately from her head.
She removed her jewelry and freed her hair from its pins, the heavy strands falling to her shoulders, and then lowered herself into the water.
For the first few seconds she sat motionless, feeling the warmth press down through her shoulders and lower back, softening what the past hours had turned to stone. Then she took a coarse linen mitt, wet it, and began scrubbing slowly at her forearms, washing away an invisible exhaustion that was always felt physically, though it left no mark.
The conversation in the cell wouldn't let her go, because she understood that Kyle might be telling the truth, and that was the most unpleasant part of it. A man who had broken her laws might turn out to be right in his fears, which didn't stop the law from being law, or his people from being dead. Twenty-three people, six of whom had still not been found, two more from the League missing to who knew where, and Aris, who knew everything but was silent for now against her own will.
Edith scrubbed the skin of her wrists in circles, looking at the water.
Ursus.
She knew him less well than any child raised in Waldruhm knows him, having heard of him only through the stories of her late husband, King Edmund Born, who had fallen in love with a wandering warrior during the great battle at the Cursed Forest and then taken her as his wife, giving her a queen's station she had never much wanted.
King Edmund believed the legend of the Great Ursus, the fabled guardian of the Forest, keeper of the Great Tree.
She lowered the mitt into the water and tipped her head back against the stone rim of the bath, looking up at the ceiling, where the candles behind her threw ragged shadows.
What an unpleasantly familiar feeling... as though I've gone back thirteen years... the same sensation, a different forest... she thought.
Steam settled on her face in a warm dampness, and the heat of the water pulled her downward, toward weight and stillness, so that Edith slowly closed her eyes, while beyond the closed doors, beyond the walls of the royal castle, in Ockhaven at night, Aren was having a nightmare.