Gill supposed it could be a belek. They rarely came as far down from the mountains as Villerauvais, and never at this time of year, but he supposed they could inflict wounds such as those on the carcasses. Might a rogue one be stalking the demesne? It seemed unlikely, but more plausible than the alternatives he was coming up with. A belek didn’t explain the scorch marks, though. The fireball, he reckoned, could be put down to bad wine and an over-active imagination. Guillot had seen equally strange things while drunk, only to discover the next morning that they had occurred nowhere but in his head.
“What did it look like?” Guillot said. “The shadow?”
Philipe blushed. “Don’t rightly know, my Lord.” Another nudge from his wife. “Feels foolish saying it out loud,” Philipe said, “but it reminded me of how dragons are described in the old stories.”
“Dragons?” Guillot said, doing his best not to laugh.
Philipe shrugged.
“Dragons,” Guillot repeated, looking back at the charred bones, wondering if perhaps the time had come for him to have all the seigneury’s vines pulled up and replaced with something that could not be fermented.
No banneret in the king’s service could be expected to give up easily, all the more so when the Prince Bishop was involved in handing out the instructions. Dal Sason was inspecting fruit at a market stall when Guillot walked back into the village. The visitor greeted Guillot with a nod and a warm smile, which Guillot made no effort to return. He still felt sick and now had the added worry that either his demesne was under attack by dragons or his vassals were going mad. Perhaps he had imagined the whole thing? His mother had always said if something seems too good to be true, it probably is, and the thought of insanity being the explanation did indeed seem too good to be true at that moment.
He couldn’t forget the old stories of the Chevaliers of the Silver Circle, that gilded fraternity of decadent wastrels. He’d thought the older Chevaliers were simply trying to frighten him with the hocus-pocus of their midnight initiation ceremony at a strange, ancient carved stone in the crypts beneath the old citadel in Mirabay. He had thought them nothing more than an idle ceremonial bodyguard to the king, a place where a safe career could be made while he settled down and started a family. The Chevaliers had seemed like the perfect solution for a country nobleman of modest means and his beautiful young wife in a big, expensive city. The fame he had won with his victory in the Competition had opened the path to advancement and he had seized it with both hands.
Guillot was drawn to the Chevaliers. As a boy, he had loved the old tales of their deeds, of dragon-slaying and derring-do—stories of Andalon, Ixten, and Valdamar, the most famous of the dragon-slaying Chevaliers. As a man, he had never been under any illusion as to what their modern brethren represented. He even questioned how much of the old stories was true. After all, he’d never seen any dragon remains. Even after so long a time, with so many said to have been slain, surely some trophies would remain? So far as he knew, none did.
While stories of the Chevaliers had filled his head with too much nonsense to completely discount Philipe’s tale, he could not quite believe it. As he watched dal Sason squeeze and smell fruit and vegetables, he wondered how much more the man knew than he was letting on. Questions would have to wait, however. He felt terrible and knew that only sleep would ease his suffering. Dal Sason and the mystery in the fields would keep until morning.
CHAPTER 5
Amaury dal Richeau, the Prince Bishop of Mirabay and the Unified Church, First Minister of Mirabaya, blinked the sweat from his eyes and launched into a fast combination of cuts and thrusts, driving the salon master back down the fencing gallery.
“Excellent, my Lord, excellent,” the fencing master said as he retreated.
Amaury smiled at the praise. The salon master—an Ostian by the name of Dandolo—was regarded as the best private trainer in Mirabay. He was always frugal with his compliments, irrespective of his trainee—professional duellist or nobleman—so to get it was worth one of Amaury’s as-rare smiles.
Out of the corner of his eye, the Prince Bishop could see one of his assistants appear at the gallery’s doorway. The momentary distraction allowed Dandolo the opportunity to riposte and score a hit, and the Prince Bishop stretched another smile and nodded to acknowledge the blow.
“I think that will be enough for today, Maestro,” Amaury said, raising his rapier in salute. He waited until Dandolo had returned the gesture before turning to his assistant.
In his clerical robes, the assistant looked out of place in a fencing salon, but at least he had the presence of mind to offer Amaury a towel and a glass of water. He took both, then wiped the sweat from his brow and took a drink before speaking.
“What is it?”
“The king wishes to see you, your Grace.”
“Of course he does. Did he say why?”
His assistant remained silent.
“Ah,” Amaury said. “Silence can often say far more than you might think. There’s a lesson in that. Tell him that I’ll attend him directly.”
With a nod, his assistant left. Amaury placed his training sword in its leather sheath and went to the changing room. As he peeled off his sweaty fencing clothes, he could not help but glance at the place on his hip where he had carried a wicked scar for the greater part of his adult life. The memory of it, and of the resultant ruination of his career, would be forever with him, even if the physical damage was all but gone. A less powerful man might have had to explain the disappearance of a severe limp, of a lingering injury that had ended any hope of a career as a swordsman or soldier, but not he.
No one had so much as raised an eyebrow when he started walking normally again. The leg was far from perfect, merely healed to the limit of the healer’s magical ability, but with a little luck, his plans would come to fruition. Then he could personally finish what the Order’s healers had started. He wondered why people had been content to live without magic for so many centuries. Indeed, they positively hated it. If only they knew the benefits it could bring, he felt certain their opinion would change. A few repaired joints, a few cured children, and they would welcome magic back with open arms. He needed to be careful picking the time, but it was growing near.
He would not be able to keep his order of mage-warriors secret forever. The old king had known of them, as did the new one. No secret known by three men was much of a secret, even if one was dead. The young monarch’s scrutiny of his recently inherited kingdom had been inconvenient for Amaury, but thankfully King Boudain the Tenth had seen the sense in his project. He’d set it in motion soon after discovering a treasure trove of ancient and forbidden knowledge in a great vault beneath Mirabay’s cathedral. The archive had re-opened the way to the practise of magic, something that had been outlawed for centuries, since the bannerets of old had overthrown the mages who had, in their turn, usurped the empire. The opportunity had been too tempting to pass up, so he had, in secret, established the Order of the Golden Spur. The Spurriers. He had known it would be a long-term project, one that would take decades to bring fully to fruition.
Training new mages properly was a lengthy task. Work had to start when the candidates were children, and they would be of little use until they were grown. Some progress could be made with adults, but the later one came to magic, the less power one would ever be able to wield. That was Amaury’s own curse. Parlour tricks were the most potent magics he could create, and he knew he was too old to ever get any better.