The Huntsman's Amulet (6 page)

With no reason for further delay, he shook Captain Joris’s hand and made his way down the rickety boarding ladder and into the boat. It pitched unexpectedly as he set foot in it. He caught his breath, balanced and sat down carefully. Eventually it steadied and he was ready to go. As he pushed off he saw the crew lined up at the bulwark watching him. They all shared the same expression: that of watching a man going to his certain death.

Chapter 6

The Shrouded Isles

A
s Soren pulled on
the oars, he was reminded of a day when he and Alessandra had rowed to a small island not far from the shore in Ostenheim bay for a picnic. How different the world had seemed then; so full of hope and opportunity. Now all of his dreams had been cast to the wind.

The day grew ever duller as he went, as his small clinker built rowboat passed fully beneath the blanket of cloud that sat unnaturally still over the Isles. When he grew closer to the shore, the small breaking waves drove him in with no further effort needed from him, other than to keep the boat pointing in the right direction.

There was a scraping sensation as the bottom of the boat came into contact with the sandy bottom, before finally it ground to a halt. He hopped out, hoping to make it to land completely dry, but one of his boots let in a flood of cold water. He cursed quietly as he dragged the boat completely clear of the water and pulled it up the beach until it was above the high tide line.

He sat down on the sand for a few moments to catch his breath. It was grey, unlike the light golden grains found in Ostia or Auracia. He took a handful of the damp sand and let it crumble from his palm as he tried to decide what his next step would be. He was still far from the straits and had a long walk ahead of him. It was late in the day, so he decided it would be best to make camp there for the night and set off in search of Vellin-Ilora the following morning.

He unpacked the boat and made a quick mental inventory. There was plenty to get him by which he was thankful for, as a cursory glance around suggested foraging would not just be poor, it would be non-existent. Rather than lush forest or grasslands beyond the beach, there seemed to be little more than sparse scrubland; small, stunted vegetation clinging on to life. He had survived a long time without food on a previous occasion, but had no desire to repeat the experience.

He tipped the boat on its side and propped it up with an oar to provide some shelter before heading up the beach to gather firewood. He knew lighting a fire there was probably not the best of ideas, but he was simply too damp and cold to care. Wild animals were more likely to be frightened off by it, and he was happy to take his chances against any people it might draw. As for anything else, he would just have to take what might come.

He slept fitfully and woke early. The chill in the air had penetrated all the way to his bones, and he had a headache that was strong enough to be an irritation. He ate a little and packed food and water to last him for three or four days before burying the rest beneath the boat in an oilskin — hopefully deep enough to protect it from anything that might be alive and hungry. He set off in search of the capital of the Old Empire.

The
Honest Christophe
had dropped him on the eastern shore of the southern island, as close to the straits as Joris was willing to go. The city of Vellin-Ilora sat on both sides of the strait, but the Emperor’s palace was said to have been in the part of the city on the southern isle, Vellin. Soren thought the mages would most likely have built their college there.

He walked all day, and by the end he had sore feet but no indication that he was getting closer to what had once been the greatest city in the world. There was something about the island that was unsettling, but for most of the day he could not put his finger on it. It was only when he stopped for the night and lit a fire that he realised there was an absence of sound. Other than the breeze, the gentle lapping of waves against the beach and the crackle of his fire, there was no noise. No animals, no birds, no insects; none of the sounds that he’d expect anywhere else. It was strange, and incredibly unsettling.

He spent the night on the edge of the beach, huddled next to a small, smoky fire in a vain effort to keep out the damp and cold. Perhaps this was an adventure that would have been better left to the height of the summer, although with all the cloud above he wondered if the Isles were ever warm and dry.

The discomfort of sleeping in the open on a desolate beach resulted in another poor night’s rest. He gave up as soon as the first hint of dawn appeared on the horizon. Once again he began his walk, hoping that it would not be much farther.

His hopes were realised in the late afternoon — or what he thought was late afternoon; without the sun to give some indication it was difficult to tell. As he made his way around the base of a rocky bluff, Vellin-Ilora came into view.

Soren had expected to find ruins, with perhaps a few of the better constructed buildings extant enough to protect what was contained within. What he saw far exceeded his expectations. Laid out in front of him was what looked like a completely intact city. Vellin-Ilora, and the hinterland of the Isles had been abandoned during the Mage Wars, hundreds of years earlier. Although he could not see any movement from that distance, the city looked pristine; as though it was still being maintained.

High walls surrounded Vellin-Ilora, interspersed with square, octagonal or round towers, obscuring most of what was on the other side. Here and there, tall, slender towers reached up from behind the walls, breaking the skyline. The wall extended out into the sea on the right, presumably creating a harbour on the other side. Toward the seaward end of the wall, two of the large towers were closer together than the others. They looked like a gate to Soren, so he headed in their direction

As Soren got closer to the walls, his initial impression of them proved correct. The crenellations were crisply outlined against the sky. It felt surreal being so close to such an ancient city, the place where so much of the world as he knew it had originated. It was even stranger to find it in such good condition. The picture he had of it in his mind was not of an intact city. Piles of rubble and some occasionally intact walls, but little more. Certainly not this.

His main thought as he approached the walls was that a city in such good condition could not be uninhabited. Everything he had read over the years relating to the city said that it had been abandoned because it was cursed. Could things have changed since then?

It had become noticeably darker in the time it took him to reach the walls. Night was not far away, and Soren had no desire to take his first steps in a city that was quite possibly inhabited with gods only knew what, in darkness. He would camp beneath the wall and enter the city in daylight the following morning. He was incredibly tired and the headache that had nagged him since arriving on the island refused to go away, so he was glad of the break. Next to the wall, he was sheltered from the breeze, but this was a hollow benefit, as so close to the city, there was no way Soren was willing to risk lighting a fire.

Sheltered from the wind, away from the water, and without the comforting crackle of a fire, the island was completely silent. Soren huddled against the wall and did his best to sleep.

Chapter 7

A Dead City

S
oren woke the next
morning, stiff and sore. His headache had eased, but it was still there. After stretching his stiff limbs, he made his way along the base of the wall to the gate he’d spotted the previous day. The stonework was intact, not looking at all as though it had stood there for over a millennium. The wooden gate had not fared quite so well; the thick planks had faded, dried and splintered over the years and in places Soren could see daylight between them. There was a smaller wicket door set into one of them, which Soren pushed. It was stiff and the hinges squealed, but it opened with a little effort, giving him his first glimpse of the capital of a long-dead empire.

He had seen a dead city once before, but it had been reduced to little more than gravel. That city, Rurip, had been rumoured to be haunted. Stories were told that no man who entered the city would return alive, much like the tales about the Shrouded Isles. Soren had encountered the ghosts of Rurip and they had turned out to be nothing more than bandits and looters, hoping to find something of value among the ruins. The stories of that city had proved to be just that, and he saw no reason for those of Vellin-Ilora to be any different.

Like the walls, the buildings of Vellin-Ilora looked to be perfectly preserved. They were cream and ivory in colour, with faded brown tiled roofs. The buildings were tall, and bore all the hallmarks of years of use, but also years of maintenance. There was nothing about them to indicate they had been abandoned centuries ago.

There was something chilling about looking down a city street in daylight to see it completely deserted. The absence of people was so unnatural that it put Soren on edge. He refused to give any credence to the stories, he had already rationalised them in his head, but it was difficult to completely dismiss the fears that they caused. He could not help but feel a degree of reluctance and trepidation as he stood on the threshold of the city. He had taken his sword and dagger from his pack and strapped them around his waist before setting out that morning, and as he stepped through the wicket gate he realised that his hands had found their way to the hilts without him thinking about it.

He looked around, constantly expecting to see movement. He felt as though there were people there in hiding, watching him, and it sent a tingle down his back. He could see nothing but empty buildings and deserted streets, though.

Soren had not been able to make any worthwhile plans before getting to the city. There was not enough solid information available; so much from when the city was still alive had been destroyed. The earliest books that he found had been written decades after the wars ended and the city was abandoned. These were based on second and third hand tales. Even to an uninformed reader it was clear that they were mixed with so much hyperbole that it was difficult to know what was useful and what was mere fancy.

Soren knew that the bannerets of old had been closely tied to the mages and had been created for the purpose of being their bodyguards. It stood to reason that they would have shared a headquarters, or at least be based close to one another. If he were to find anything useful, it would be there. He was certain the mages’ headquarters would stand out, but in such a large city that didn’t mean it would be any easier to find.

Finding the mages’ headquarters was only a small part of his task; once discovered, his true search would begin. There was no way of knowing how long that would take. Suddenly, coming all this way seemed very foolish. He was there though, and standing still staring at empty buildings would not achieve anything.

He started off along the street with the sea to his right and the city ascending a hill to his left. As he walked, he tried to reason out a method for his search. If they had been one of the most powerful institutions in the Empire, the mages would have based their headquarters near to the administrative centre of the city, amongst the other buildings of power and influence. To Soren, that meant size and height. In Ostenheim, the castle and the palace both sat near the top of the hill overlooking the city. The homes of the wealthy spread out from their walls. He saw no reason for it to be any different here; the air was clear higher up and the views were better.

He couldn’t see much of the city inland from where he was, as it was uphill and blocked out by the buildings that lined the road. He decided to make his way to the highest part of the city and look for a cluster of tall buildings. If luck favoured him, they would be on this side of the straits.

The road he was on led north in the direction of the straits, roughly following the line of the eastern shore. He stopped to take a look around when it reached a wide quayside.

Large iron rings sat where they had been left, the traces of where ropes had worn against them still visible. They looked as though they could still perform their original task if put to it, and showed only minor patches of rust. The water lapped against the large cut stones of the quayside and Soren wondered how long it had been since a ship had last berthed there. By appearances, it looked as though it might have only been the day before, but he knew that it had been far, far longer. It was all so eerie.

The city wall stretched out into the water and curved around like a protective arm, creating a large harbour. There was another wall extending out from farther along the shore, which stopped short of meeting its counterpart, leaving an opening large enough for a behemoth oceanman to pass through. Stone piers reached out into the water in various places, which once must have been busy with crews and harbour workers. It was strange to see them deserted; unsettling.

He looked directly inland. With the open space around the quayside he could see farther than previously. The southern part of the city, Vellin, was built on the slope of a hill that rose away from the water. The part on the far side of the strait to the north, Ilora, was still obscured by buildings.

He started off toward a street that seemed to lead uphill. The buildings that lined the street varied between plain and ornate and started to reach higher than three stories with greater frequency. The stone window frames were often carved with ridges and curves that made them pleasing to the eye, and they all seemed to still have their glass intact.

The cobbles of the street had been worn smooth by the passage of thousands of feet, but the years in which they had lain unused had not marred their surface with weeds or moss. Now that Soren thought of it, there was no vegetation growing anywhere in the city that he could see. He walked on, curious as to what might be found in each of the buildings he passed, but aware of the limitation on his time. At some point he would need to go back to his original campsite to get more food, so he forced himself to ignore the distractions all around.

As he walked up the hill, the buildings took on a less residential look and it seemed that the ground floors had been home to businesses. There was much about the city that reminded him of Ostenheim; the tight, winding streets, the tall buildings looming above. In Ostenheim the buildings were usually made of brick, but there were a number of more important ones that had been built with cut stones. Most notable among them was the Academy, and it had been built out of the same cream coloured stone as Vellin-Ilora, in a style similar to the buildings now before him. It gave the strangeness of the city an odd familiarity.

He reached a cross-section with a larger road, but continued with the street he was on as it was still taking him in the direction he wanted to go. He wondered what the city must have been like filled with thousands of people. Noise, colour and movement, rather than silence, pale cream stone and stillness; a living place rather than a petrified monument to a forgotten way of life. Had things been any different for them than they were for people living now? It was easy to forget that magic had been practised legally and extensively then. What difference must it have made to their lives?

As he walked, something caught his attention; something familiar. He was flabbergasted when he gave it a proper look. The building was not huge, nor did it display the trappings of power, wealth and sophistication he would have expected. In neatly chiselled lettering over the doorway, set in a carved cornice that jutted out from the building’s face were the words ‘Austorga’s Banking House’.

He looked more closely at the inscription, but the word ‘Austorga’s’ was definitely in the singular. The bank he knew was run by the Austorga dynasty, a close-knit family that kept the management of the organisation within its confines. This must have been where they started, a not particularly remarkable building on a not particularly remarkable street. It was a far cry from the palatial banking house that they had in Ostenheim, where the name above was simply ‘Austorgas’’. Everyone knew what business was conducted there, so there was no need to advertise it any further.

Despite his earlier decision not to go into any of the buildings to explore, this was too great a temptation. He had never been wealthy; destitute in his youth, and entirely reliant on the beneficence of his sponsor at the Academy when his fortunes did change. Could there be any money left inside? There was only one way to find out.

He pushed on the door and it groaned gently under the pressure. It was gloomy inside. He stepped through a small foyer and into a larger room. As soon as he walked in, the previously dark room illuminated. The sudden change gave Soren a start and he found himself in a low crouch with his sword and dagger out in front of him scanning for an attacker.

The light came from several mage lamps suspended from the ceiling. He took a deep breath to calm himself and stood straight; they had been activated when he walked in. Mage lamps were common in Ostenheim, but those that responded to the presence of a person were rare and enormously expensive. He thought about pulling them from the ceiling and stashing them in his pack, but they were too bulky, nor were they what he had come in for.

There was a counter by the wall opposite, and a layer of fine dust that covered everything. As he moved about, his boots kicked up little swirls that revealed the polished floorboards hidden beneath. He felt a pang of guilt at his intentions, but surely abandoning property for several centuries would extinguish any other claims of ownership.

He went behind the counter. It looked as though that side had once housed a number of drawers, but they had all been removed and the same layer of dust that covered every other flat surface had also found its way into the drawer frames. He checked each one, blowing a cloud of dust into the air in the hope of revealing even a single coin, but it was not to be. Despite the disappointment, he was enjoying the experience of not knowing what he might find.

A door behind the counter led into another room. Soren opened that and peered in. It was dark, but once again a number of lights went on as soon as he stepped across the threshold of the door. A few paces back from the door, there was a steel cage that lined the rest of the room, the entrance to which was open. The cage contained a number of extremely sturdy and heavy looking safes, all open, all empty. The drawers that had been pulled from the counter in the other room were there too, carelessly piled in a heap and also empty. Soren shrugged. Nothing ventured nothing gained, he thought, but he would not become rich that day.