Chapter 1 - finale

Within the great guard house, Leni and Amos were shown to a chamber where they were met by a middle-aged man wearing a decorated uniform. His face was decorated as well: one of his eyes was black, and the bruising all round it was ugly and blue. He looked them over and sniffed.

“I am Colm,”he confided. “I am Chief Commander of the High Guard. You will speak to me now about what happened in the Terrizi Square.”

Leni responded respectfully. “I saw a man approach my betrothed with the intent to end her life; so I saw fit to end his instead.”

“Yes,” Colm said, sucking on something in his mouth, like a piece of hard candy. He moved it about within mouth, and they heard it clicking against his teeth. “So you have come to the point that perplexes me: how did you see? You were seated so far away from the missus, who was standing nowhere near you. And yet you had the time not only to see the blade and the assassin's intent to use it; but you also had the time to load a crossbow which you held concealed until the final moment. That does not strike me as the actions of a man is who is reacting spontaneously, but of a man who is acting premeditatedly.”

“Precisely,” Leni agreed.

The Chief Commander lost his rhythm at this turn, and said, “Pardon?”

“Accepted,” Leni said with a curt nod. He looked at Amos and gave her a little wink, which made her blush. She averted her eyes and looked at the floor of the richly appointed office.

Colm saw all of this. “Is this a game to you, sirrah?” he asked in a completely different tone.

“Not at all,” Leni replied. “I play for stakes much higher than these.”

Colm sniffed. The candy in his mouth cracked and crunched loudly in his teeth. “Would you please,” he said then, his tone altered yet once more, “kindly explain yourselves to me. If you do not, I feel compelled to remind you, that you might find yourselves in rather quite a bit of trouble.”

“We escaped being victims of murder,” Amos said with a quiet fury that burned like a little flame being fanned. “Compared to that, there is no trouble we need to worry about.”

“Nevertheless,” Leni said, cutting off the Commander's reply, “I will tell you what you ask; but first I must ask you a question – and your reply will determine how we proceed.”

Colm sniffed. “I'm listening,” he said dourly.

Leni leaned forward and flashed a smile. “Tell me, Chief Red-Coat – do you believe in magic?”

Colm let out a snort. He regretted it as soon as it came out, for he saw Leni did not react well to that. He withdrew, and the smile vanished. The Commander made a gesture as if to apologize, then decided to actually say it: “Forgive me, sirrah. I am a practical man. I investigate crimes; I worry over details. Magic has no place in my life.”

“Well, perhaps you could find the time to fit in a little today,” Leni said as if reprimanding an errant child.

Colm put his hands out, inviting Leni to proceed. “Go ahead,” he said with a grand display of sarcasm. “Enchant me with your tale.”

“It is quite a simple trick,” Leni said. “I was able to predict the assassin's attempt because I can see into the future.”

“With cards? Bones?”

“Sometimes; rarely.”

“Tea leaves?”

“I don't drink tea. It stains my teeth.”

“You simply...see?”

“Look out your high windows here, Commander,” Leni gestured to the bay of windows overlooking all of Caza. “Do not you see further and better because you have an unmatched vantage point up here? It is same principle, except that I have not climbed a rock bluff, but the hidden slopes of the spirit.”

“So you knew the man would be there?” The Chief Commander passed a hand over his face. “Why didn't you contact the red-coats? We could have intercepted-”

“Judging by your current incredulity, I imagine if I had tried to enlist your aid before the act had taken place it would have proved impossible to convince you of my need. So I protected by beautiful bride on my own - as any proper man would do.”

Colm looked down at some papers on his desk. Things were piling up, and nothing made him more uncomfortable than falling behind in his work. And now this! He looked at Leni and felt out of his depth. The way the magician was staring him down was unnerving. He wished to finish with this matter quickly – but how to proceed?

Without looking up, he asked, “Do you know the slain hand, or the one who wished to perpetrate this crime by hiring him?”

“No,” Leni said derisively. “I tend not to associate myself with cut-throats and thieves.”

“Of course,” Colm said, now speaking more or less automatically, going through the motions. “But perhaps you can imagine why such types as these would want to kill your lovely bride?”

“That is easy,” Leni said, taking Amos' wrist in his hand so that, by lifting her arm she revealed a mark on the underside of her forearm: a series of lines, black and gold.

Colm knew what those lines meant. He looked at the girl, this waif who couldn't be more than twenty, all skinny elbows and knobby knees. This wasn't going to be a case that he could dismiss easily. In fact, he knew now that the rest of his day was shot.

“So you're a survivor of the Harzia,” he said.

He opened a drawer in his desk and removed a tin in which a few hard candies were heard rattling. He removed the top and popped one into his mouth, returning the tin to the drawer without offering any to the mysterious, astounding pair sitting before him. “All right,” he said around the candy. “I suppose we had better begin this tale from the very start. Why don't you two tell me how you met.”

Colm expected Leni to begin holding forth, but it was the waif-like Amos who spoke up:

“When I was six years old,” she said, “I was taken to the Solemn Cape to be raised by my aunt and uncle, for my parents had both been killed by our enemies.”

So she started out on the long and twisted tale of her family history, leading up to the eventful day when she met the illustrious Wizard of Lazu:

It was a sultry night near the Salt Gate when the alarms started blaring. Fires had been lit. The spies were infiltrating the Auspices, letting loose the phastrio birds that flew about the high rafters in the dark, squawking and cawing.

The Archers came marching out of Red Scarp, down the eastern collar into Espa, down through Olka, and into the smouldering streets of the Lathe. Families were already in the streets, crying out for one another, crying for their burning homes, crying at the red-coats.

Little Amos, in her night-gown and slippers, ran along the lower vestiges of Hike Wall, up toward the stairs that would lead them to safety. She went hand-in-hand with her older brother, Veon, who was pulling her on. She ran as if running in a dream. The stars were burning brightly overhead, the night was deep; her parents were dead, and she had now to flee. A certain magic holds sway over people after midnight, and it was with it working upon her that Amos was able to accept all of this, was able to run and to keep running, seemingly without falling short of breath. There was no fear, only a need to escape the hunters, the Harzia intruders that had penetrated the walls of Caza in order to kill her and everyone else in the city that bore the name Eskepsiol.

Veon was twelve years old, twice her age, and was the last of three boys, the only other beside Amos to survive the attack. Their family yesterday had been seven strong; now it was down to two, young and weak, escaping into the wild highlands.

Hike Wall is the shortest of all the eleven city walls, but it is the longest to walk; this is simply because of the ascent. From its lowest foundation, to the uppermost, there is a difference of two long leagues, which is twice the length of the wall. Most of it had been constructed not as a flat rampart, but a steep, rising stair. At its apex, it connects with the outlying stretch of the Espia Palisades – a line of towering cliffs running from the Prow for miles back toward the massive peaks of the Olsom Range standing imperious and mist-enshrouded in the mountainous south.

Anyone reaching the end of Hike Wall found a path leading to the top of the escarpment, after which a crossroads would take them either down toward Red Scarp, or up and out: a narrowing track wound upward into high, deep furrows of the desolate Uplands.

That high, lonely way was the one Veon had chosen for them. He had gone the summer before, with a team of boys and their camp-master, as far as Silent Hall. There, along with two dozen scouts, he'd lain down, after hearing their older guides tell tales, in awe of the long, winding road of history, and the heroes of the past that had fought and bled under the same rafters where now they meant to sleep.

It seemed the perfect refuge for them now – he and his orphaned sister; and their only solace. Three days it would take to reach the great pillared hall where massive timbers upheld a great roof of bronze, wood, and silver.

No one lived there, not anymore. It was a relic, and the chances of meeting anyone in the Uplands, or even along the trail that led there, were slim to nil. Veon was a sharp lad, and it was his wiles that had saved him and his little sister from the awful fate that had just befallen the rest of their family. He was now thinking clearly, with absolute lucidity, and could see several steps ahead of those who were so ruthlessly hunting them.

Fleeing upon the ramparts, with Veon leading her on beneath the fiery stare of those rampant stars, became the defining moment for the rest of their entire relationship. Amos the innocent took up permanent residence under her elder brother's wing – or at least it was so in Veon's mind. He went on guard that night, and never came off the habit of mistrust and overbearing protectiveness.

In the morning, overlooking the long Slake Wall stretching out beneath them across the glebes and glades of Aberguest Valley, their pace slackened.

“Here,” Veon said, pulling Amos off the path into a deep crevice where a shadowed hollow presented itself to him. They could rest here; and they could sleep, if only for a few hours. Anyone following them along the path would never spot them; they were safe. “Come on, Amos,” her brother urged.

Her brawny yet brainy brother held her, and she seemed to understand in a purely animal way that now her task was to sleep, to recuperate, to [harness] the energy that she would need when the next leg of their journey began – upon their short awakening.

At noon, after three hours in the dark hollow, they emerged to make more distance. Veon did his best to listen to the birds, to mark their movements and flight in order to determine the enemy's movements. What he learned, if anything, led him to believe that there was no present threat. They proceeded up the path, scrambling into the Uplands with no provisions and no hope of finding providence.

Before too long, Amos began to flag, falling asleep on her feet; at this time, not wanting to stop, Veon took her on his back and kept creeping along the hard, uneven path that was marked out along the escarpment.

“I'll let you down here,” he told his slumbering sister as he let her down that evening. She was snoring before she hit the ground. Veon stretched and then ventured from their hiding spot under drooping boughs of evergreens where Amos lay upon a bed of dried needles.

“We'll need some eggs,” he said to himself, muttering this under his breath. “And water.”

The evening passed with light showers, then night wore on. Veon returned before the moon rose with some water, but he knew he would have to leave the search for eggs until the morning.

That night, both orphans were visited by dark dreams of huge, brute beasts moving in a swift herd; huffing and hoofing in their ingrained impulse to undertake their mighty migration, these snorting behemoths thundered by as both Amos and Veon watched them pass by, fearing all the while to be crushed, but knowing somehow that they would be spared such a fate.

Amos awoke to find her brother cooking eggs on a heated stone which he had withdrawn from his little campfire. She came over rubbing her eyes and Veon couldn't help but laugh at her, for she looked so comical.

“You look exactly as if you had just risen from your feather bed in our dear house and were looking for the tea and toast!”

Amos didn't smile at his joke, and stood considering how to react. She had not wept yet, was still in a state of shock, and Veon recognized that fact, as well as the reality that he himself was in his own kind of shock. Wordlessly, Amos came over and ate the eggs that Amos gave her to eat off a leaf. He was proud of himself for being able to feed his little sister in the wild; and she was proud of him, too.

They marched all day long, stopping only once during the afternoon to scrounge for fallen nuts in a patch of tall selspia trees, and thereafter rest their legs. Veon recognized certain landmarks and knew that, if they pushed on, they could come to Silent Hall sometime shortly after nightfall. This they did, and Veon let them into the long, lonely hall by a side door, where he knew the key was hidden.

They crawled onto a hard bed under musty furs. Amos fell asleep instantly, utterly exhausted; but Veon, with his little sister in his arms, was as wakeful as that first night he had slept in this hall haunted by history.

“Only now,” he said to himself, “I have become part of that long story that is history. Just like Gale and Hara, who were betrayed in Banasbuul by conniving spies.”

Those heroes had faced their foes over a thousand years ago, but the classic tale could be shown to bear direct links between the houses of prominent figures in those days, and houses of high repute in Caza today. In the case of Hara, there were bloodlines connecting her with Veon and Amos, distant and diluted over time though they be.

Veon's last thoughts before sleep stole over him were of the courage those two must have needed to scrounge for when they faced moments most dire.

“They made it home,” the boy told himself in the silent, deep dark before dawn. “They made it back to Caza, in spite of all the opponents that Oxco dispatched to find them; and so will we.”

Then, like the moon diving into a pool of dark clouds, Veon dipped out of his thoughts and into visions of danger and glory.