He went down several steps, his right hand instinctively resting on the handle of his sword, then stopped, realising that whatever was down there would be hidden by the darkness. He skipped back up the steps, thinking that having Leverre around would have been useful at that moment. A few minutes of kicking around in the ash turned up some fragments of wood. A few moments hunched over the pile with his tinder box got a fire going, and soon enough his makeshift torch was bright enough to be of use.
Shielding the flame with his hand, Guillot descended the stairs. His first obstacle was a heavy oak door reinforced with riveted iron bands. It was badly scorched, but had otherwise survived the dragon’s wrath intact. What had not survived the passage of time was a handle of any sort. Where Guillot would have expected to find one, there was only a small, round hole in the wood. It invited him to stick a finger through, and considering that he was in the perceived safety of what was once his family home, he was tempted to do exactly that. The voice of caution screamed in his ear, however; as a boy, he had heard too many tales of children putting their hands where they didn’t belong, and being trapped by evil spirits, sorcerers, monsters, or whatever the story’s villain happened to be.
He took his dagger from its sheath and carefully probed the hole. Quite why anyone would want to booby-trap a cellar door was the question, and after several moments, he was confident nothing waited on the other side to take off his finger. He knelt by the hole and peered in, trying to cast as much of the torch’s light in as he could. He could see the void in the centre of the door where the old locking mechanism had been sandwiched, but it too was gone, with what looked like a wedge of wood in its place. He poked at it with his dagger for a moment, but it was hammered in tight, and time had sealed it to the surrounding wood.
He stood, and with impulsive abandon, put his boot to the door. The dry oak gave with a loud crack and the door creaked open. He took a deep breath and waved his torch into the open doorway.
CHAPTER 35
Solène regretted not having sought more mentions of the cup before she left the archive the previous evening—she had tossed and turned all night thinking about it, and had barely a thought for anything else all morning, much to Maestro Foulques’s displeasure. Even dal Drezony had grown impatient with her, and sent her off for an early lunch when it was obvious her mind was irretrievably elsewhere.
She reached for the Fount as soon as she got to the archive, and in actively looking for it, realised how weak it was down there. Remembering dal Drezony explaining that underground, surrounded by rock, the Fount would be dulled, she felt a sense of satisfaction that she could now sense this for herself. Weak though it might be, there was plenty of magical energy available for what Solène wanted to do. She focussed on her desire for information on an old, magical cup, imagining it contained in a folio of papers, then in a scroll, and finally in a book. Though she held each thought for several moments, there was no result.
Adding thoughts of the Chevaliers to the mix, she tried again. The clump of leather-bound paper hitting the floor brought a smile to Solène’s face as she walked toward the sound. What awaited her looked like a ledger. A neat, clerical hand had inscribed a list of names—none of which she recognised—with dates beside them. These too looked unfamiliar, leading her to assume that this was how they had recorded dates during Imperial times. She flipped several pages and discovered that she held bound correspondence; the ledger at the beginning was a record of sender, recipient, and the date of sending. She noticed two vacant spots on the shelf. One from this book; the other, she assumed, something the Prince Bishop had taken to study.
Back at her desk, she dived straight in. The letters discussed the possession of an ancient artefact that had been in the safekeeping of the Imperial College of Mages since the first days of the Empire. The writers were considering moving it to Mirabensis—Mirabaya as it had been known back then. It took a moment for the pieces to come together in her mind—if it had been used to initiate the Chevaliers, it must have ended up in Mirabaya. She decided to follow the thread carefully, to learn all she could.
There was a subtext to the letters, which in the earlier part of the tome at least seemed to be between only two correspondents, one at the Imperial capital, Vellin-Ilora, and the other, quite possibly in the chamber where she now sat. It felt voyeuristic to think she might be on the very spot where some of the letters were written, to be peering into someone’s private thoughts and concerns, albeit from one and a half millennia away.
The Mirabayan writer appealed to his superior in Vellin-Ilora for assistance in a crisis, the specifics of which were not detailed. Solène presumed this was because the circumstances were well known to both of them, though each mention irritated her as they offered only hints. According to this man, the situation was so dire, it called for the use of the Amatus Cup. Solène was familiar with the name Amatus. He was the first mage, the man who began the science of magic.
The correspondent in Vellin-Ilora was reluctant to resort to the Cup. It seemed even at that point, there was some doubt as to whether it actually did anything, or if it were simply an object that had assumed importance from its association with a hero of the past. Either way, they did not want it leaving Vellin-Ilora unless absolutely necessary.
Solène let out a sigh of satisfaction as she turned a page and finally saw mention of the cause of the great crisis. At that moment she felt a great affinity with the man who might have written the letter not far from where she now sat, for their problem was the same. Dragons.
The letters continued, with the Mirabayan correspondent pointing out that he was sending copies to the emperor himself. He said the Cup was never used, and was no longer needed by the College of Mages. He went on to detail how it could benefit the men being sent to deal with the crisis, how it could be used to grant them the additional abilities they needed.
So that was it—the answer she was looking for. The Cup could give a man or woman additional powers and skills. If they were going to all those lengths to find a weapon to defeat the dragons, it meant the weapons they already had weren’t up to the job. They had to create a new type of banneret because neither the old ones, nor the most powerful mages, were able to defeat the beasts.
That presented a problem, though. How was she supposed to defeat a dragon if the powerful mages of old couldn’t manage it?
She skipped through the remaining letters, pausing only to read one signed by the emperor. It stated that the Cup would be transported to Mirabensis for use by a new organisation of bannerets dedicated to the fight against dragons and under the full supervision of the College of Mages—the Chevaliers of the Silver Circle. That explained the presence of mages at the initiation ceremony. It also confirmed the Cup was sent to Mirabay.
The correspondence ended with a letter outlining the delivery process—shipment from Vellin-Ilora to the Port of Mirabensis, then transport up the River Vosges to Mirabay. When Solène closed the book, some questions had been answered, but an equal number of new ones had arisen. If the Cup had reached Mirabay, where was it now? If they found it, how would they use it?
Finding the Cup, if it still existed, seemed to be the next course for her research, if she hoped to bring the Prince Bishop information he could use. Once they had the Cup, then they could worry about figuring out what to do with it.