Soldier Song (The Teralin Sword Book 6) Page 21
But other places might be even better. He could imagine those records in Vasha, or perhaps even in Thealon. They would not be in any danger then.
And then there were the records that he knew existed within the Conclave. He had only visited once, but within the library, Endric suspected that there were dozens upon dozens of journals that documented many historical events that were unknowable otherwise.
“Come on, Benran, and you will continue your testing.”
Endric looked up as they approached the fortress. There was something quite imposing about it. It was enormous, with moss growing along stone that crumbled in places, and he wondered how old the fortress was. It had to be centuries old, and if it were, why had it been created here in the first place? And who had built a fortress like this?
They were questions that came to him, but he didn’t want to ask them, not wanting to engage Poaln in those sorts of questions. That wasn’t his purpose in coming here. His purpose was in trying to understand more about what Novan wanted from him.
They reached an enormous door made of oiled wood, and Poaln grasped the handle, slamming against the door three times in quick succession before pausing, and then he slammed it again three more times.
“You don’t have a key?” Endric asked.
Poaln turned to Endric. “Only those inside are allowed access.”
Endric frowned. That didn’t make any sense. “They keep it locked?”
“As I have said, the records within are incredibly valuable. Novan would understand and feel the same way.”
Eventually, the door opened, and a lean face looked out, glancing from Endric to Poaln. The man was gaunt, and his eyes were hollowed, with age spots along his cheeks. He had thinning hair that he slicked back, and his fingers were crooked and wrinkled.
“Poaln. You have returned with someone for testing?”
“Master Hames. I have returned. I found this apprentice within the city.”
“You found him?” Hames said.
Poaln smiled and looked over at Endric. “His name is Benran, and he is apprenticed to Novan.”
Master Hames stood with his hand on the door, staring at Poaln for a long moment before turning his attention to Endric. “Is that correct? Novan has not sent an apprentice to the guildhall for testing before.”
“That was my reaction, as well,” Poaln said.
Endric stood quietly, waiting for whatever it was that they would ask of him. If it was only the testing, he thought that he could continue with it, especially after what he had experienced with Poaln. It had been a test of his observational ability, and that made sense considering he was expected to know how to observe and how to make appropriate documentation of what he observed.
“Novan wanted me to come to Coamdon,” Endric said.
He wanted to look back at the harbor, wishing that Novan were here, but it was too late for that. He was already along this path, and he needed to continue. If he didn’t, what would happen? There would be no way to present another apprentice on behalf of Novan.
They would not find out why the guild had gone silent, and they would lose out on learning why that line of information failed. It was important, at least according to Senda, and that meant it needed to be important to him.
Endric waited for Master Hames. The door slowly came open, and the old man motioned for them to enter.
Endric followed Poaln in, moving carefully. The air was musty on the other side of the door, and he couldn’t shake the sense that there was a certain dampness within it. Considering what was housed here, the dampness seemed strange. Wouldn’t it be damaging to the works of the historians?
When the door closed behind him, Endric stared at it for a long moment, thinking that perhaps he was making a mistake. He couldn’t shake the fact that he didn’t know whether he should be here.
“Come with me,” Master Hames said, guiding them down the hall.
Endric followed. The building was entirely made of stone, and every so often, doors interrupted the hallway, but they were infrequent. Lanterns were set every dozen feet, and his boots thudded along the stone. He imagined they were heading deeper into the mountain, into a space that was dug out of the stone. It reminded him of the Magi palace, though that seemed to be carved out of the stone whereas this seemed to be dug into the mountain itself.
Did that mean that he would encounter teralin?
He didn’t detect anything, certainly not any teralin that would tell him that it was within the mountain. He was attuned enough to it that he thought he should pick up on it, but there was none.
Then not teralin.
It would be unusual to find that here, anyway. Teralin was considered rare, certainly rare enough that it shouldn’t be within every mountain, though it was spread throughout much of the north. There was the collection of teralin beneath Thealon. And the mountain within Salvat was all of teralin. Maybe it was much more widespread than he had once believed.
Either way, the metal was powerful, and it granted abilities, which made it dangerous, especially in a place like this, so close to the Deshmahne, men who would use teralin for dark purposes.
He tried to push those thoughts away, focusing on why he was here and what he would learn while here. There was no one else in the hallway, and he wondered how Master Hames had even known they were coming.
“Are there others within the guildhall?” Endric asked.
Master Hames turned back to look at him. His eyes were dark pools of shadow, and he seemed incredibly frail, almost as if he would fall apart as he looked at Endric. “There are others within the guildhall, but they remain in their work.”
“What’s the next step in the testing?” Endric asked.
“There is nothing that you can know,” he said.
He didn’t like the sound of that. The Denraen part of him didn’t like surprises, though Endric had never been much of a fan of them regardless. “How will I know when the testing continues?”
“What makes you think the testing has ever ended?”
Endric frowned as he looked around. Was all of this part of it? It was difficult to know, mainly as he hadn’t known that Poaln was testing him to begin with, and if it was all part of some test, he needed to try to figure out what they intended for him. He could come up with nothing. Maybe that was part of the test. Maybe this was designed to challenge him in a way that the others did not.
What did he know about the historians?
Everything that he knew came from Novan, and he wasn’t necessarily the best example of a historian. Then again, that wasn’t true, either. Endric knew more about the historians than just what he had learned from Novan. He had spent considerable time around Urik, and Urik was more of a traditional historian than Novan, and there was quite a bit that he could have learned from him.
If nothing else, Endric knew that Urik had valued his time within the guild. From what Endric knew of Urik, he had regretted the fact that he had needed to betray them. He had felt an attachment to it, and that attachment had been enough for him to want to continue to serve the guild, even after he had left.
What would Urik have been able to share with him?
Endric couldn’t come up with anything. As he continued to follow Master Hames through the hallway, he looked around, thinking that there had to be something here, some mystery that he was missing, but he didn’t know what it was. Whatever it was meant that he could pass the next step in his testing and could continue on, and once he passed the testing, then what?
Endric didn’t need—or want—to be accepted within the guild. All he needed was to understand what had changed, and when he did, then he could leave and return to Vasha to… Do what?
The only thing in Vasha was to challenge his father, and when he returned, that was the expectation. For now, it might be best that he was here. Better that than forced to challenge his father, to push him out of his role.
They reached the end of the hallway and Master Hames guided them through a staircase a
nd upward. At the top of the stairs, Poaln nodded to Endric. “This is where I leave you.”
“Why here?”
“My role is done,” Poaln said.
Endric hesitated. “Why did you test me? I know that you saw the ring, so I’m assuming you realized that I was an apprentice.” He thought back to what he could remember of Poaln sitting in the tavern. He hadn’t been alone, had he? There was someone else with him, someone dressed in a dark jacket and pants, and they had their back to him. Endric couldn’t make out who that other person had been, but they were the reason Poaln had been in the tavern.
Was his desire to test Endric all part of a distraction?
He had to be careful not to read too much into it, but Poaln’s reaction had been strange. He had poisoned Endric as a way of attempting to test him, and Endric didn’t know if he would have survived had he not thrown up.
If that were the case, then why had Poaln brought him here?
This was the guildhall, wasn’t it?
Unless it wasn’t.
There was the strange dampness in the air, and Endric had to believe that didn’t quite fit with what he knew about the guild. Why would they keep their records in a place like this?
He took a step back, glancing from Poaln to Master Hames.
“What is this?” he asked.
“I’m afraid that I don’t understand,” Poaln said.
“Who were you meeting with?”
Poaln frowned. “Who was I meeting with? Benran, I’m afraid that you are conflating the testing. I was in the tavern alone.”
Endric closed his eyes, thinking about what he’d seen. It was difficult to reach back and pull those memories to the forefront of his mind, but he knew that he was right. Now that he was able to remember that he had seen Poaln, it was easier to recognize that there had been someone else with him.
“You weren’t alone,” Endric said.
Poaln sniffed. “Wasn’t I? And what do you think I was doing there?”
Endric tried to remember, but he had barely glanced in Poaln’s direction in the first place, and certainly hadn’t spent enough time staring at him to know what he might have been doing there.
Maybe there was nothing.
Had Endric looked in that direction again?
When he had taken a seat at the table, he had scanned the tavern once more. When he did, he had seen Poaln then, too. It was then that he had a clearer vision of who Poaln had met with, and he remembered the dark hair and the narrow brow. There seemed to be more that he should remember, but it didn’t come to him.
His gaze turned away, but before it had, he had seen a flash of paper.
That was why Poaln was there. He was trading for something.
Had he poisoned Endric because he was concerned about the possibility that he had observed it?
“Who was the man you were meeting with?”
Poaln smiled broadly. “You get ahead of yourself.”
Master Hames watched Endric, frowning. “What is it that you observed, Benran?”
Endric shook his head. “I’m not entirely clear what I observed, but the man he was meeting with passed paper over to him.” Endric thought about what he had seen, and he pointed to Poaln’s left pocket. “He put in there.”
Master Hames held his hand out. “Let us see it.”
“Master Hames, this is incredibly irregular,” he said.
“Perhaps, but you are the one who brought him here and not his master, so one must assume that you were a part and privy to the testing. If he is correct, then he will have fully passed the first stage.”
Endric blinked. Was this nothing more than further testing? He hadn’t thought so, and thought that his recognizing that there was something more that Poaln had done in the tavern was hard, but not that it was part of his testing.
Poaln reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. He handed it over to Master Hames with a flourish. “As you will see, I have a blank slip of paper, nothing more.”
Master Hames glanced at the paper before handing it back. “Was he correct?”
Poaln flicked his gaze over to Endric. “He was.”
“And you agree that he should move on?”
“I will leave that to the masters.”
“If the masters concur, you would have no objection?”
Poaln shook his head. “Why would I object?” he asked, looking over at Endric.
He tapped his staff on the ground, and while there was no flash of teralin, the gesture still reminded him of Novan. He nodded to Endric and then started back down the stairs, leaving Endric with Master Hames.
“What was that about?” Endric asked.
“There are layers to the testing,” Master Hames said.
“And I just passed one?”
“You have passed three layers,” he said.
“I don’t understand.”
“The first layer is recognizing that a historian is present. The second layer is another test, one chosen by the historian, and then the third layer is what you have just seen.”
“Why is that the third layer?”
“That’s the third layer because it is,” he said.
Endric chuckled. “That’s quite vague.”
“We are historians of the guild. Of course, it will be vague. Now, I would have you come with me.”
Endric followed Master Hames down the hallway until they stopped at a room. Master Hames pushed the door open and waited for Endric to go in. “This will be your quarters while you are here. This will be where you stay until the testing is complete.”
Endric glanced into the room. There was a bed and a basin of water. There was nothing else. He stared longingly at the bed, wanting nothing more than to sink into it, but he felt a certain hesitancy. While he wanted to sink into the bed, he didn’t know whether it was safe to do so.
He decided to take the opportunity and went into the room and waited for Master Hames to leave. When he was gone, Endric turned to the bed and settled onto it. He sat there for a moment before getting up and jamming his sword in front of the door, positioning it so that no one could break in. Teralin was a relatively hard metal, and it would be difficult for them to break in without him noticing.
He sank into the bed, resting.
Endric lay back, and sleep claimed him quickly.
16
Strange dreams plagued Endric during his sleep, and he jerked awake, barely able to remember where he was. It took a moment to remember that he had been brought to the historian guildhall, and even once he did realize that, he took a while to come to terms with what that meant. Why was he here? What was he going to find?
Answers. That was the reason that he had come, but what kind of answers would he come up with here?
He rolled over and looked at the door. The sword was still jammed in front of it, and it didn’t seem to have been moved, which made him more relaxed. At least he didn’t have to worry that someone had tried to force their way in, but even if they had, he liked to think that he would have reacted in time. His Denraen training should have given him enough reflexive speed to get up, and he thought that he should be able to, were there the need.
Endric pulled the sword out and opened the door, looking down the hallway. There was no one there, and he wondered how many people were even within this building. If this was the guildhall—and Endric wasn’t completely convinced that it was—then there should be others here.
And if this was all part of some testing, then he would expect that those who intended to test him would be here as well.
None of it made sense.
He was thankful for the rest and glad that he was able to have those moments to catch up on sleep, but he still didn’t know what exactly he was here to do. Poaln had brought him and then left him. That much he knew. He also knew that he had somehow passed whatever testing that Poaln intended for him, but more than that, he felt as if he were still confused.
Was this what Novan had intended him to do?
Endric looked around, but there still was nothing to see. He glanced back into the room, debating whether he should stay there before deciding to make his way down the hallway. At the end of the hallway, he reached the stairs that he had been guided up by Master Hames. There was another level above him, but he remembered that there was more of a level below.
That was where he would go.
He started down the stairs and paused at the bottom, listening for sounds of others. He didn’t hear anything that revealed the presence of anyone else, but there were plenty of doors lining the hallway, and behind those doors, he thought that he would be able to find other historians. Maybe that was how he was going to discover what Novan wanted him to know.
Should he go knocking on each of the doors? That would only draw the wrong kind of attention. What if he went the other way?
He headed away from the stairs, making his way down the hallway, and as he went, the air started to change, becoming warmer and drier, and by the time he was at the end of the hallway, he felt that it was incredibly dry. It didn’t make sense. Then again, he had felt something similar to this before. The mountain beneath Vasha was warm and dry, but that came from teralin.
Endric didn’t think there was teralin here, but maybe he only couldn’t detect it.
The hallway ended in a massive arched doorway.
A double door blocked the entrance, but Endric tested the handle, half expecting that it would be locked and surprised to find that it was open. He pushed it open. The other side of the room was nothing like he expected.
An enormous hearth filled one end of the room, and it glowed with crackling flames. Heat pushed out from that hearth, filling the room. Rows of shelves lined the walls, and stuffed into each of the shelves were books, some of the shelves overflowing. There were chairs situated in the middle of the room, too. They were plush, and they were angled toward a low, heavily lacquered table set between the chairs.