The Fifth Vertex (The Sigilord Chronicles) (3 page)

"So that's it? Our family can make things glow?" Urus signed, disappointed. When he thought of magical powers, making shapes light up in stone wasn't the first thing that came to mind. No, he wanted fireballs and wingless flight and to be able to conjure whole turkeys with an incantation, like the wizards from his favorite stories. Magic could make him powerful, powerful enough to defeat any of the graduates—maybe even any warrior in Kest.
 

The prospect practically made him salivate, especially the part about summoning turkeys. He leaned forward on the bench, the pain and emotions stuffed down beneath the excitement of a new puzzle to work out.

"Up until tonight, for as far back as we can trace the history of the radixes—that's what the journals call people like us—that's all we've been able to do," Aegaz signed, pausing to rap the side of the kettle again. "When you jumped off the roof tonight, you…landed…in a pool of that same light. It even splashed, like water.
 
I can't remember reading about anything like that in any of the family journals, but I don't read ancient Kestian as well as you."

"So our family's magic saved me from the fall?"

"I think so. There is a room below the dungeons, on the other side of the cistern, a room with a stone slab in the middle with ancient writing on it. It has journals written by my father, his father before him, and so on through the history of Kest itself. I will go there tomorrow and see if I can find any mention of the sort of thing that saved you."

"Let me go with you; I want to see the journals!" Urus pleaded, grabbing his uncle. This was definitely going to be worse than the gas lamps. No way in Hol's realm would he be able to sleep tonight, not with a mystery like this in his head.

"Tomorrow is the graduation ceremony."

"You mean the culling," Urus signed, his mood souring.

"Now look, Urus, there is more to life than being a warrior. Master Villus from the trade guild told me they could use a good translator, and you know more dialects of tradesign than anyone in Kest."

"I want to be a warrior!" Urus shouted loud enough so he was keenly aware of the strain and vibration in his throat. He jumped to his feet, knocking the bench over. "I'm not going to be some stupid translator!"

His uncle frowned. "This is an important duty, not a stupid one. You'll see. I will be there for the culling; then afterwards I will go with you to see Master Villus. We'll do it together."

Aegaz got up and walked around the table, reaching for Urus. But before he could hug him, his head snapped toward the door. Hugs weren't something that came naturally to his uncle. Urus knew exactly what that head turn meant.

"Don't answer it," Urus begged. He didn't want to be alone.

Aegaz glanced sadly from the door to Urus and back.

"I have to answer it; it might be important," he signed and dashed to the door.

I'm important too
, Urus thought, but said nothing, watching his uncle again ready to drop everything to take care of the city and everyone else in it; everyone except Urus.

Aegaz answered the door to a member of the First Fist in full battle gear, his black and red tabard pinned to his body with two swords strapped to his back and two short swords sheathed at his waist.

The soldier crossed his arms over his chest and saluted, then delivered his message. Whatever it was, Urus couldn't read it on the man's lips and Aegaz certainly didn't like it.

His uncle grabbed his sword belt from the peg near the door, strapped it on, then looked up at Urus, eyes bloodshot and moist with tears.

"I have to go. You know I wouldn't go if it wasn't important," he signed.

"I know."
 

"We will talk more about this tomorrow," Aegaz signed, and then he was gone through the door, his lieutenant in tow.

Urus poked at the kettle of stew, taking a whiff of its aroma. The now-empty room held little evidence that his uncle had ever been there.

Urus was alone again.

3

Cailix urged her wheelbarrow forward, plowing a narrow trench through the fresh powder of the early morning summer flurry. The snow had nearly covered her load of lava rocks in the time it had taken to get from the quarry back to the monastery.

She banged the head of the wheelbarrow against the thick wooden doors twice, then waited for one of the monks to admit her, shivering under her heavy wool coat.

The door opened, and as she rolled her burden into the warmth of the monastery's antechamber, the monks disappeared without a word back into the sanctum's quiet depths. Shedding layers, she peeled off the wool overcoat, then tossed her cloak aside and shook her hair free. Tresses the color of red wine hung to her waist, cinched in even bunches starting at the nape of her neck.

She wheeled the rocks from the antechamber into a vast, domed room ringed with recessed fireplaces that warmed the desks in the center of the room piled impossibly high with books and scrolls.

This was the great room where the monks spent most days and nights, transcribing and worshipping the written word almost as fervently as their pantheon of deities. Iron vents covered holes in the gray stone floor, crisscrossing below the grid of desks and tables, a faint orange glow blooming up through the slats.

The heat of the volcano was all that kept the city of Naredis and everyone within from freezing solid. The room, like most of Naredis, had the scent of a noxious cocktail of burned wood and rotten eggs.

Cailix was glad it was summer; otherwise she would have needed a heated wagon to do her chores. The natives always said the only difference between winter and summer in Naredis was how long it took to freeze to death.

"The floor is no place for your cloak, child," remarked one of the monks without looking up from his work. She was sure these monks had supernatural sight—they always knew where she was and what she was doing.

"Sorry, Brother James," she said in her sweetest, most apologetic voice. A few days after they had taken her in from the orphanage, she'd learned that the monks loved the sweet and meek tone, so she practiced it often. If the monks were happy, that meant she stayed warm and well fed and out of the orphanage.

After hanging up her cloak, she started her rounds, tossing a few of the lava rocks into each of the fireplaces to keep them warm without choking the monks on wood smoke. In the winter, the monks sealed this room off because it was too difficult to heat, everyone huddling instead into a smaller chamber three stories below, closer to the heat of Mount Kebel's core.

As the wood ash and sulfur smell filled her nose, the memory of the adventure of getting to the quarry and back vanished and she settled back into the humdrum routine of keeping the monks warm, their tea brewed, and their meat pies hot. She had just finished tossing the last rock into the last fireplace, her mind already filled with places she wanted to explore later that day, when the chamber door burst open, the sound of dense wood banging against stone reverberating off the ceiling.

Cailix's ears rang.

Standing in the open doorway in white robes were three tall, slender men with short cropped hair, their fair skin bronzed by the warmth of some faraway climate. The only color Naredis turned people's skin was blue.

"We have come to speak with Brother Toyce," said the middle of the three strangers, stepping forward. None of them bothered to close the door, which infuriated Cailix. If they left it open much longer, the monks would get cold and she would have to stoke all the fires. The whole place would fill up with smoke and her day would be ruined.

"I am Brother Toyce," said one of the monks, rising from behind a pile of books, his head barely reaching above the top of the stack.

Finally, the two men at the door slammed it shut.
 

"At long last," said the leader, snaking his way through the stacks toward the monk, his bright white robe flowing over the dark stone floor like some ghostly train dragged behind an apparition. "You would not believe how long we have been looking for you."

Cailix blinked as she saw the man's bare, sandaled feet.
 

Sandals, on the top of Mount Kebel!
The very idea was ridiculous. Even at the peak of a midsummer's day, bare skin could freeze outside in a matter of minutes.

"I am honored that you have sought my counsel, stranger. What may I call you?" said Brother Toyce, bowing slightly, his face flushed. Cailix couldn't tell whether it was from the cold or from taking the man's words as a compliment.

"Anderis will suffice." The man's face wrinkled as he smiled, baring the most perfect set of teeth Cailix had ever seen. "And then you can fetch what I have come for."

Books and tables obscured her view, so Cailix inched her way toward the middle of the great room, ignoring the whispered pleas of the other monks to stay back.

"We have many fine books here, works of fiction, historical archives, trade routes, maps—"
 

Anderis raised his hand to cut the monk short. "I seek a map, but not just any map. I seek
the
map," he said, beaming, as though the monk should somehow know which map he meant.

Toyce's face remained calm. "You will have to be more specific, my Lord Anderis. We have an entire floor below this one dedicated to maps of the world."

"I am no Lord, monk," Anderis snapped, as his friends at the door stifled their laughter.
 

Cailix didn't get the joke.

"I seek the oldest map you have. In ages past it was called the Woan Map. Before that it was called the Map of Doors. Before that it was called Hulgoth's Pyramid, before that the Sigilpost Guide, and before that—"

"Ruorc's Earthly Vertices," Toyce added, a wide grin on his face. "We have all heard this fairy tale before. One would be more likely to find a grand wizard riding a golden dragon out of this fireplace than the Woan Map."

Anderis's smile vanished.

"You can drop the act, Brother Toyce. We know this map is real. We know who gave it to you and we know you have it here. Brother Todwynn sent his regards only moments before his death."

The color drained from Brother Toyce's face, his eyes wide, mouth slack-jawed. Cailix's eyes widened as well. Toyce was the head of the monastic order and could issue orders and scold disobedient children like no other. She had never seen him put off guard by anything or anyone, not even Naredis's Regent.

"Give me the map, Brother Toyce, and my friends and I will be on our way."

"Never," Toyce snapped, brow now furrowed, jaw and fists clenching.
This
was the Toyce Cailix knew, and it looked as if he was going to give this stranger a good tongue-lashing.

"If you know what this map truly is, then you know what I am capable of doing to obtain it," Anderis said, towering over the short monk.

"I know this map, and now I know what you are," replied Toyce. "We have all taken an oath to protect the location of that map with our lives, as did our fathers and their fathers before them. We will tell you nothing."

Cailix drew in a wary breath. She wasn't particularly fond of the monks, but they did take her in when the orphanage discarded her and they were her only source of food and shelter. Something bad was about to happen to that, and she didn't know how to stop it.

Anderis smiled. "Oh, you'll tell me everything; you have no choice in the matter. You do, however, get to choose the degree of pain involved in the process."

He reached into his robe and drew a knife from a sheath on his hip.

"Decide now, monk. Are you going to talk or will your blood?"

Cailix decided that she wasn't going to stand around and let these men bully the monks. Maybe if the brothers saw her defiance, they would quit being so monkish and fight back.

"No!" she shouted.

She hurled herself at Anderis shoulder-first, slamming into his chest. Despite the man's height, he went down pretty easily. The sounds of bone cracking when he hit the floor startled her. If he had broken anything, the man in white didn't let it show.

"Insolent girl!" he hissed, grabbing her and rolling over so he knelt straddling her chest, his knife poised at her throat.

"Leave her alone!" called Brother James, several of the other monks echoing his plea.

Her plan might actually be working, she thought. The monks sounded defiant, and they easily outnumbered the strangers. All they had to do was throw a few chairs or some of their giant manuscripts or start stabbing people with quills and it would all be over.

"If any of you move from where you stand I will feed this child's blood to the volcano, understood?" Anderis said, his icy gaze fixed on Cailix's face. His chest heaved as though he had just run a race, veins bulging from the surface of his neck, sweat beading on his arms. Cailix couldn't remember the last time she had seen anyone sweat in Naredis.

The man in white looked older and more frail than when the trio first arrived. If it weren't for the knife at her throat, she figured she might actually be able to overpower him.

"Give me the Woan Map now. Then I let the girl go," Anderis snarled, no longer bothering with his calm facade.