The Sword Of Erren-dar (Book 2) (34 page)

 Finally, Eimer, out of breath from ascending a steep spiral
staircase that led to one of the crenellated stone towers, raised a protest.

 “This place is immense,” he puffed. “We’ve been up towers
and along corridors until I’m perfectly dizzy and we still haven’t seen the
half of it. We’ve found no evidence of recent occupation and I for one, find
all these empty halls are giving me a fit of the dismals.”

 He was standing on the top step of the stairs but Vesarion
had emerged onto the summit of the tower into the howling wind. It tore at his
cloak, nearly extinguishing his torch. A riot of flapping and raucous cawing
broke out, as the roosting crows took flight, alarmed by his presence. Crossing
to the battlements, he faced into the wind, trying to pierce the encompassing
night before he suddenly recollected himself and handed his torch to Eimer.

 “What am I thinking? I shouldn’t be standing up here
holding a torch,” he chided himself. “It could be seen for miles. Keep both torches
out of sight in the stairwell, Eimer. You’re probably right. There is nothing
to be found here. We should return to the great hall – that is, if we can remember
the way.”

 As he spoke, the fleeing clouds tore apart, allowing a long
absent moon to peep through. The snow had stopped falling and the view from the
tower was magnificent. The mountains were bathed in the bright light, the
snowfields radiating with cold brilliance. Every stone in the castle’s wall
could be seen with crystal clarity, but drained of any of the colour that would
have brought life to it. It seemed to Vesarion that the moonlight lent a touch
of unreality to the scene before him, like a frozen painting rather than a
living thing. Once again, he found his eyes drawn upwards to the rearing peaks,
searching for the passage they must take the following day, and once again, he
found nothing.

 When they returned to the great hall, they discovered that
Iska had kept her word. Broken furniture was now heaped up in the magnificent,
arching fireplace and was burning merrily, giving out enough light and heat to banish
the shadows and make the place, if not welcoming, at least a little less
dreary.

 Sareth was sitting wrapped in a blanket with her back
against one of the pillars. Catching her eye, he crossed to her and sat down
beside her.

 “Find anything?” she asked.

 “No – thankfully.” Gently he placed his hand on her
forehead. “The fever has not broken yet. Your forehead is still hot, but dry.
You should have something to eat.”

 She smiled tiredly. “I thought one should starve a fever.”

 “You’ve had nothing since morning. I’ll see what Iska has
produced.”

 “Actually, it’s Bethro who’s doing the cooking. He thinks
Iska’s portions are too small.”

 Eimer came up to them, carrying one of the many mouldy old
books in his hand. Its once beautiful leather cover was bloated with damp, the
tooled design spotted with green mould.

 “I’ve been looking through some of these books to see if I
could find any clue as to who might once have lived here – and why they
abandoned it, but the pages are so damaged by damp that the ink has run. The
few pages that I can turn just fall to pieces in my hand and the rest are stuck
together in a congealed lump.”

 Sareth, her eyes bright with fever, said jauntily: “Why
Eimer, it’s so nice to see you with a book in your hand. Bethro will be feeling
under threat as our resident intellectual.”

 Vesarion gave a choke of laughter, but Eimer pretended to
be offended.

 “I’ll make allowances for you because you’re sick,” he
offered generously. “In the meantime, I’ll see if our Resident Intellectual can
make anything of this. I would dearly love to know why this castle is here.”

 But Bethro had very little more success. He was able to
make out that the books were written in the Old Language, suggesting antiquity,
but could distinguish only a few words here and there and only one
semi-complete sentence.

 “I see the word ‘trandor’ which means defence – what one
would expect in relation to a castle and ‘celed’ meaning revenge. Beside
defence there are two words that might mean ‘the path’ or ‘the way’.” He read
them aloud for the benefit of his audience: “ ‘Trandor an ferith’.”

 Vesarion, who had been looking over his shoulder, made a
suggestion. “Perhaps you should translate it as ‘guard’ rather than ‘defence’
then it would read ‘guard the path’.”

 Eimer sat up excitedly: “It must mean that the castle guards
the path over the mountains to Adamant.”

 But Bethro, miffed at having his translation challenged, said
dampeningly: “We do not even  know if the book is describing the castle. For
all we know, it is merely recounting some old legend.”

 The Prince’s face fell. “I suppose you’re right. If these
books cannot be read, then they may as well keep us warm by being thrown on the
fire.”

 The librarian was aghast. “Prince Eimer,” he began, in his
best schoolmasterish tone, “you do not burn a book – not ever!”

 Vesarion took the first watch that night, pacing restlessly
around the hall to try to keep himself awake. The fire burning in the great
fireplace was a little dwarfed by its surroundings but still managed to send cheerful
flickers of red and gold over the sleeping forms and up the pillars towards the
rather beautiful carved ceiling. But it was too weak to penetrate the dark
shadows at the periphery of the hall and remained an intrusion struggling
against the sense of overwhelming emptiness. One of his circuits of the hall
took him close to the great doors and acting on impulse, he lifted a stout
piece of wood and thrust it through the heavy ringed handles. It would not
resist a serious assault but at least it would prevent the door from being
opened stealthily.

 Unfortunately, Bethro, taking full advantage of sleeping on
his back, was beginning to snore. The echoes took up the irritating noise,
bouncing it off the bare walls until the whole hall seemed to be reverberating
with dozens of noisy sleepers.

 Swiftly, Vesarion crossed from the door to put paid to it,
but he was too late. Sareth had already awoken from an uneasy doze and had
given him a none-too-gentle nudge with the toe of her boot.

 Quite used to such treatment by now, he rolled over without
even awakening, and quietude, broken only by the pleasant crackle of the fire,
was restored.

 Seeing that she was not going back to sleep, Vesarion crossed
to her.

 “I could kill Bethro sometimes,” he said with soft
vehemence. “Some uninterrupted sleep would do you good.”

 She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I would have awoken
anyway because I’m so cold.” As she said the words, she was wracked by a fit of
shivering.

 Sitting down against the pillar, Vesarion wordlessly held
open his fur-lined cloak. Responding willingly to the inviting gesture, she
found herself beside him, enveloped within the warm folds.

“This will help keep those shivers at bay,” he murmured kindly.
“I wish that this fever would break. If Gorm is right, it should burn itself
out soon.”

He felt her begin to shake again and tightened his arms
around her.

 “I w-wonder what’s been h-happening at home?” she
stammered.

 “I’ve been wondering that myself,” he responded a little
grimly.

 “I mean, they won’t know where we’ve gone. Even if Ferron
and the guards made it safely back to Sorne, they were not privy to our plans.
It grieves me to think that father and grandmother might be worrying.”

 “I note that you did not say that Enrick might be worrying,”
he observed with a soft chuckle.

Sareth made a noise of disgust. “Enrick will be delighted to
get the three most annoying people in the Kingdom out of his way. In fact, the
only blot on the landscape, as far as he is concerned, is that it’s only
temporary.”

 “I wonder what Seldro found when he returned to Addania?”

 “You think Enrick has designs on the Ravenshold Brigands?”

 “Without a doubt. To command such an elite cavalry division
is to be in possession of a certain power – or,  in my case, a certain
immunity.”

 “Father will stop him,” Sareth said, after a moment’s
consideration. “I know he largely lets Enrick get his own way, but he wouldn’t
allow him to do anything to harm you. I sometimes think that you are more of a
son to him than his own son.”

 Vesarion thought that over for a moment before saying
reflectively: “A while ago, Iska was asking me about my own father, and do you
know something, Sareth? I could hardly remember him. The images in my mind, once
so clear, have become faded and misty. Instead, I remember your father giving
me the silver box or taking me hunting. I know there were long periods when his
duties as king took him away from all of us, but he was always kind to me and
for that I hold him in great affection.”

 “I know that he is not a ruler of the quality of King
Andarion, but he deserved better than the son he got,” she said, a little wistfully.

 He tilted his head to look down at her, nestling against
his shoulder. “He has a younger son and a daughter to be proud of.”

 She looked up at him, suddenly touched by the sincerity in
his tone.

 “You’ve never said that before. If I recall rightly, when
we were younger, you referred to me as an annoying little brat and Eimer as an
irresponsible menace.”

 He chuckled in recollection. “Ah, but that was under
provocation. That was the day that you two stole Terebar.”

 “Terebar was the worse-tempered horse you have ever owned.
He was, quite frankly, a devil.”

 “Which, of course, was exactly why you took him. Mind you,”
he added reflectively, “he did have his good side, for he threw you both into
the moat. I can’t say that duckweed exactly suited you.”

 Sareth, too, was laughing by this stage. “Eimer and I were
a terrible pair, weren’t we? Always getting into trouble.”

 “Yes, and always getting
me
into trouble, too. If
you recall, Enrick went and told tales to your father about how you two had
stolen the horse, so I had to go along and tell him I had given you permission
to take it. I still remember the thundering scold he gave me about my
foolishness in lending two youngsters such a dangerous animal.”

 “Poor Vesarion. At least at Ravenshold there is no one to
plague you so much.”

 Suddenly his amusement faded and he was silent for a
moment. Then almost as if the words were being forced out of him, he said:
“Ravenshold can sometimes be a very lonely place.”

 Sareth, who despite her fever, was revelling in the joy of
being close to him, for the first time heard something in his tone that opened
a tiny chink of hope in the black despair in her heart. He fell silent after
that and they sat together companionably, watching the hypnotic play of
firelight on the bare wall, until Sareth’s shivering ceased and she drifted off
to sleep. A short while later, Vesarion, touching her forehead, found that it
was damp.

 “The fever has broken,” he breathed gratefully.

 Without waking her, he carefully lowered her onto her side
and making a pillow out of a folded blanket, tucked it under her head. Gently,
he smoothed her hair back from her forehead, unaware that it was a gesture of
the greatest tenderness.

 Then, overcome by tiredness, he nudged Bethro awake to take
his place on guard and lay down to sleep the sleep of exhaustion.

 Bethro disliked being on guard. He disliked the sense of responsibility.
He disliked the rather lonely feeling of being the only one awake, but at the
root of it all, lay the feeling that if something dangerous, or even unexpected
happened, he would have absolutely no idea what to do about it.

 He reviewed the previous occasions when he had faced danger
and was forced to admit, much to the detriment of his alter ego, Bethro the
Hero, that he had not come out of it well. When chased by the Turog, he had
panicked so much that he had dragged Vesarion over the cliff. Instead of
striding to the rescue at the Lonely Lake, all he had done was to bawl like an
idiot for help, and worst of all, when the Red Turog had jumped on him, his
sole response had been to faint.  All-in-all, Bethro the Hero was becoming an
ever more remote daydream - and more than anything, Bethro was intrinsically a
dreamer. His favourite occupation – except for eating -  was to spend a quiet
hour reinventing in his imagination all the old legends and devising a role for
himself in which he was neither over-weight, nor a fussy librarian, but was an
armour-clad paladin, putting all the nation’s enemies to flight.

 Bethro the Hero being absent that night, the librarian
prowled timidly around the edges of the firelight, cravenly avoiding the darker
corners of the hall, listening to the immense silence which seemed to possess
the fortress like an invisible occupant. It was a living thing, that silence,
that pressed in upon him from all sides in a dark embrace. He looked around him
fearfully, wondering if there was movement in the shadowy corners. Finally convincing
himself it was just caused by the flickering light of the fire, combined with
his ever-active imagination, he turned his attention to the mighty fireplace
and realised that the shades were drawing in because he had neglected to put
wood on the fire. He began rifling amongst the scattered heaps of debris,
trotting back and forth with promising bits of wood, carefully stoking the blaze.
Finally, in his search, his hand fell upon something that was not quite as
broken and decayed as everything else. It was a wooden box, deeply carved with
a sinuous device on its lid. Its polished surface was now dingy and scratched
with age but it was otherwise intact. When he lifted it between his hands and
tried to open the lid, he suffered a check, for he found that it wouldn’t
budge. He struggled with it for some moments before he came to the conclusion
that it was locked. His curiosity piqued, he poked around in the debris,
looking for a key but found nothing. The box was not particularly heavy, so
getting a good grip on it, he shook it vigorously. There was no rattle from
within and no sense of contents shifting and Bethro decided that, locked or
not, the box was empty. Losing interest in it, he placed it on top of the blaze
and sat down for a few moments to enjoy the heat.