Her cynical eye was quick to separate ceremony from anything that might have a real effect, and the cup was what stood out. It was possible the Imperial mages had the power to materially improve the initiates—they had been capable of feats that gave Solène a headache just to think about. However, the one thing she had quickly come to understand was that Imperial mages viewed magic as a science. That had put them at odds with the lands the Empire had expanded into, where it was viewed as a mystical concept, the interaction of the gods with the physical world. Nothing about what they had done, or the methods the Order was trying to adopt from them, wasted time on ritual when it came to the actual use of magic. Everything was considered, measured, and recorded. The cup had to have some significance or power of its own.
Her first instinct was to seek out information on this cup, but she was exhausted from the effort of deciphering the text. Every morning at the Priory was an early one, and she needed to keep her mind rested and sharp if she didn’t want to end up injuring herself. It would have to wait until tomorrow.
CHAPTER 34
Guillot woke the morning after Leverre’s departure and glanced out the window, wondering how long he had slept. It looked close to noon, but after the past couple of days, he reckoned he could be forgiven for sleeping late. Although his body still hurt in more places than he could count, he felt moderately refreshed.
He turned his mind to how he would spend the next few days until help arrived. Dal Sason wasn’t going anywhere and Gill had no desire to sit at his bedside and make small talk when the man wasn’t sleeping. He got up and dressed, then stopped in the doorway of his room. The sweet scent of wine and ale carried up on the warm air from the taproom. How long could he stay there without giving in to temptation? A few days. Possibly a week. Perhaps more? He had already cracked, albeit briefly, and today he felt a little more balanced than he had at that moment.
Dal Sason wasn’t in any danger from his injuries. All he needed was rest until the Order’s healers got there, and Gill couldn’t do much to contribute to that. He drummed his fingers against his thigh for a moment, then headed for the stable yard. He needed something to keep him out of the taproom.
“Saddle my horse!”
After taking a few minutes to gather what he needed for the trip, Guillot was clattering out of the town gates on his horse, on his way back to Villerauvais, or what was left of it. The village had been preying on his mind ever since they had discovered it burned to ashes. Part of him couldn’t believe that was true, insisting that it was some horrible dream so vivid that it had remained with him when he woke. He needed to look through the remains—make sure that whatever he could find got a proper burial.
He had gone several miles before realising he hadn’t told dal Sason he was leaving for a few days, and considered turning back. That would likely mean him remaining in Trelain overnight, and then who knew what would happen?
He had gone several more miles before he remembered the last time he had felt so strong a compulsion to return to Villerauvais, to return home. It was just after his judicial duel, when he had been handed his banner—the small, embroidered flag every banneret received on graduation and could fly as a mark of honour—in shreds, the greatest dishonour a swordsman could receive. Worse than everything else. Almost everything else. All he had worked for had been falling apart around him, like a great, beautiful house of cards collapsing in chaos, but he still had somewhere to run to. Now there was nothing. Nothing but a black smudge on the ground.
He wondered what the dragon was doing at that moment, how many villages it would destroy and how many people it would kill before they were ready to try to slay it once again. It occurred to him that he might cross its path on his trip back to Villerauvais, and the thought sent a shiver down his spine. Despite everything that had happened, despite the rut he had allowed himself to slide into, he wasn’t ready to die. Killing the dragon was more important, however. If that meant dying, he had to make peace with that.
Gill arrived not long after nightfall. Were it not for the fact that he knew the area so well, he might have completely missed it—there were no features to tell a traveller by night that a village had once stood there. Whether it was the fear of ghosts, or respect for the dead, he stopped some distance from the ruins to make his camp for the night. Despite himself, he slept soundly. There was, it seemed, something to be said for complete exhaustion.
When Gill crawled out from his blankets the next morning and surveyed the place that had once been his home, he was dismayed. It was hard to believe that only days before, people had made their homes there. He circled the village, staying well clear of what would have been the town’s boundary. How long would it be, he wondered, before grass and weeds reclaimed the ground? The task of digging through the ash to find bones would take days, or even weeks. He was no priest, so any words he said before putting them in the ground would have been hollow. It occurred to him that a far better tribute was to complete the task he had set himself. Kill the beast. Avenge his people.
He urged his horse in the direction of the manor house and spurred it to a slow trot. He could tell even from a distance that it had suffered the same fate as the town, but there were items in the house that were important to his family—jewellery, heirlooms, and such—and curiosity dictated that he at least check to see if any had survived.
With so many memories of the place—a building that had stood for centuries before he was born and which, he had thought, would stand for centuries to come—it was discomfiting to not see it there. It had been a stone structure, so he’d expected more of it to remain standing. With all the timber support—once concealed under carpets and behind plastered walls—burned away, it seemed to have simply fallen apart, the great chunks of cut limestone lying haphazardly around what had been gardens when his mother lived.
He tried to picture where everything had been, the study, the lounge, the kitchen—that was easy, as its great stone fireplace stood a lonely vigil in the centre of the ruin. The rest had nothing to mark its presence but Guillot’s memory. He stepped over fallen stones into what had been the hall, his boots crunching on the cinders beneath his feet. He felt the numb anguish that often preceded tears, but none came. He had not lived in the house since he was a child, nor had he even visited it with any regularity, but he could not have predicted the effect its destruction had on him. So long as it had remained, there had been hope that one day he would come out of the shadows and properly take on the mantle of Seigneur of Villerauvais. Now that would never happen.
What could he do? Make another futile attempt against the dragon to prove he wasn’t a coward? Would a heroic death redeem his destroyed reputation? Gill wandered through the remains, kicking at the ash and bits of debris, occasionally seeing something vaguely recognisable and trying to remember the last time he’d seen it intact. He had not gone far before he found himself staring down a flight of stone steps leading into darkness below.
At first Guillot thought he had reached the kitchen, beneath which there was a small wine cellar and ice store, but a quick glance at the lonely fireplace told him he was about where his father’s study had been. He frowned and stared down the dark stairway, rummaging through the clutter of his memory for any old cellar he might have forgotten about. He had spent a lot of time in his father’s study as a boy, playing with tin soldiers on the rug while his father worked at his desk. He couldn’t remember any door other than the one that led in and out of the room, nor could he remember any flight of stairs leading to a second cellar. If he’d known it was there, he would have explored it—he had been a very curious child.