There were still more rooms to discover in these apartments I saw, as Abioye opened one of the three doors in the main reception room to reveal another room, this time lined with books. “Come, it’s a bit more… secluded in here,” he said, casting a wary eye at the main doors. “I have my chambers there, and a small servant chamber besides”—he indicated to the other two doors behind us—“which either of you are welcome to use.”
“Uh, I don’t think so,” I said under my breath. The very word ‘servant’ irked me far more than ‘slave’ did. They both meant the same thing in Inyene’s household, right? At least ‘slave’ was the more honest.
“But there’s two more rooms beside mine,” Abioye said quickly at my distaste. “I think this whole wing must have once been for courtiers or royal relatives, once. Inyene has pretty much given this floor to me alone, saying that we needed to keep an air of dignity about us D’Lias.” He shook his head, moving into the study room.
Once again, I shifted the heavy metal box with Montfre and shared a slightly comical look with the young mage. Abioye doubtless still had a lot to learn about how to make friends.
But whatever. There would be enough time to tell him that he shouldn’t treat other people like glorified manservants if he wanted to have any sort of friendship with them.
But Abioye was at least trying, that I could see, as he had pulled out three chairs around another one of those ridiculously small tables and set down a carafe of pale pink wine and three long-stemmed glasses.
“Please, sit,” he said encouragingly, pouring me some of the wine, and then Montfre, before going back and topping up his own glass so that it almost brimmed.
“My plan.” He cleared his throat, taking out the map and setting it on the table, folded. “As soon as I saw this map, and started to read the Lady Artifex’s journal and saw what it meant, and how important it was going to be to Inyene.”
And just what is this master plan of yours? I thought.
“This journal is written in Old Torvish, and luckily, as my sister was adamant that we were the rightful heirs of the Three Kingdoms, she had me learn it. It appears to be an account of a lengthy expedition by the Lady Artifex.” Abioye reached to draw out the journal next, carefully flipping through the pages. “I believe that the Lady and her dragon were actually on a very different sort of mission,” he said.
Abioye flipped open the map, to point towards the various small dragon-tail insignia, as he outlined his argument.
“One: The First Realm of Torvald, under High Queen Delia, had already mapped out quite a large part of this area, as it seems that as soon as the high queen found the power of dragons, then she sent them off to explore and expand her empire.”
“So why send out another expedition at all?” Montfre said pointedly.
“Precisely.” Abioye nodded. “And two: The Lady Artifex doesn’t seem to follow any sort of pattern in her journeys. She’s not following a river to its source, or skirting a line of mountains to their end, or heading in one straight direction as far as she can go.” His finger dotted here and there around the Empty Plains. “Which is what I would expect to see of an exploration mission. No, instead, it is almost like the Lady Artifex was just taking what currents interested her.” Once again, his finger moved back and forth.
“Although I am probably wrong on the details of her journey,” he admitted. “There are many places and details in the journal that I couldn’t find on the map at all.”
I thought about that erratic sort of journey, and it made me think of the only two explanations for why a Daza would perform strange here-and-there travels.
“If it was the Souda doing that,” I said. “We would either be visiting people and places that we already knew and had a reason to go to,” I said, “Or…”
I looked up at each of the young men beside me in turn. “Or we would be attempting to throw off a predator from our trail.”
“Then why make a map at all?” Abioye frowned, looking at the parchment. “If the Lady Artifex was trying to conceal her movements.”
“Well.” Montfre cleared his throat. “There’s nothing here that suggests a straight-line destination. Maybe the Lady Artifex was clever enough to know that this information shouldn’t be lost forever, and that there might come a day when, in the right hands – the Stone Crown could be useful.”
“Hsss…” I felt a hiss of annoyance from Ymmen in my mind, but before I could reach out to him Abioye had continued talking.
“When Queen Delia died, she left the midmost lands in turmoil – three lands given to each of her three sons, and then devolving into the Land of the Three Kingdoms, as it was for almost a thousand years,” Abioye said seriously. “But she did leave behind the Dragon Monastery.”
“There’s something I don’t understand, however,” Montfre piped up. “It is well-known that during Queen Delia’s time, they used dragons, but no one rode them. It was only when the first king of the Middle Kingdom learned to ride one that the Dragon Monastery turned into the Dragon Academy.” He pursed his lips. “But you say that this Lady Artifex was a Dragon Rider under Queen Delia?”
Abioye nodded, moving to the front of the journal and opening it once again, to clear his throat and read out the dedication just as I had heard Tamin doing.
“This being the journal of Lady Artifex, detailing my attempts to chart and plot the confines of the World, under the rule of High Queen Delia the First, with my faithful companion Maliax,” he read.
“Impossible.” Montfre shook his head. “I was at the Dragon Academy remember – admittedly, only for a couple of years, but they made a BIG deal of history up there. It was the first king of the Middle Kingdom that rode dragons. No one before him.”
I squinted at the map, with all of its intricate glyphs and squiggles. “And these places are Dragon Rider outposts,” I said. “So… either the map is much newer, or the journal is, or—”
“Or someone is lying.” Abioye frowned at the title page of the journal before a slow smile spread across his face. “Of course. This whole box is a puzzle, don’t you see? Lady Artifex, if she rode a dragon, had to have been alive fifty years or more after the High Queen Delia’s death. Which would make perfect sense if she had been sent to the ends of the world to get rid of the Stone Crown!”
“Why would that make any sense?” I asked out loud, totally confused by the looks of victory between Abioye and Montfre. “Didn’t this new Torvald King want it? What was wrong with it – too ugly?”
Or too many bad memories? I wondered, remembering what Tamin had told me – that there were some very bad rumors attached to the first ruler of the Midmost Lands.
“It’s why my sister is so fascinated by the Stone Crown,” Abioye said quickly, as Montfre nodded. “The old legends go, that although it was the High Queen Delia’s sheer strength of character that made the dragons respect her – she made for herself a magical crown that would forever call the dragons to her aid when she needed them.”
Well, that certainly sounded like something that Inyene would want, I thought. She had imprisoned entire villages in order to create her own army of mechanical dragons – why not go for the one object that would mean she could summon the rest, as well?