Welcome back, Constant Readers, to Silvanus and Empire! I am your most humble servant @beowulfoflegend, sometimes better known as professionally under-employed fiction author David M. DeMar. I write, you read; you keep my ego fed and I'll keep up my end of the bargain. Sound good?
When last we visited Annex, Caddoc had returned, shocking Oren into telling him the truth about the history of the town. Now it's time for a few more shocks as the conversation continues...
“I knew it. I bloody well knew it!” Caddoc bared his teeth. “There’s no way that bloodthirsty woman could have ever birthed Lyrinn.” Caddoc began to recount what he had seen and experienced under the tender care of the Silvani, beginning with the heated arguments he had heard between Spirit and Hammerfist and ending with the brutal murder of the Bloodhair chieftain at her own hand.
“She’s not human,” Caddoc said with a shiver. “And she has some sort of fell power at her command. I watched her freeze Han-Go-Simkiara in her tracks with a wave of her hand- ” He paused at Oren’s unspoken question. His brows furrowed. “Wait, sorry. The Mouse That Walks. No… Mouse-step. Best translation.” Caddoc shook his head. “That concoction gave me the ability to speak and understand it, but the names in that language are so blasted odd. All metaphors and complex concepts.”
Oren nodded. “I was very glad when Lyrinn’s father told me to just call him ‘Owl,’ and not his full name. ‘Wisdom-of-the-Owl’ is a mouthful in Imperial – he tried teaching me the Silvani equivalent and I nearly dislocated my jaw.” He smiled at the memory – a genuine grin, something Caddoc had never seen on the older man’s face before today. It faded slowly. “Spirit was nothing like that She was kind and gentle, with none of Owl’s mischief – or fiery temper. Lyrinn gets that from his father.” Oren shook his head. “And she certainly didn’t have any sorcerous abilities. The Silvani mystical tradition allows select bloodlines to bend the flora and fauna to their will. In some rare instances, the most powerful could change the weather, Owl told me – and it was exhausting. It was all he could do to coast some light rain during a drought. He was never able to influence another person directly.”
Caddoc eyed Oren for a moment. “You knew them very well, didn’t you?” he said quietly.
Oren nodded. “They were my closest friends. We had much in common – coping with a completely different way of life amongst strangers. It was only natural. I helped them learn the intricacies of Imperial language and custom, and they helped Annex and the farms nearby by making their crops grow better, keeping vermin away, and things of that nature. It was a slow process, but the three of us were beginning to change things. On top of that, with Traherne always stopping by-”
Caddoc’s mouth grew dry. “Traherne?” It couldn’t be… could it?
Oren nodded. “A caravan guard. He would spend months every season escorting the harvest down to the west. Farmers would load up their wagons and take them down to the old guardhouse by the falls, and a contingent of guards from the capital would take it the rest of the way. Traherne would travel back and forth from the falls to Annex and back – and even beyond – for months at a time.” Oren smiled again. “Poor man was terrified of horses. He refused to ride… would walk everywhere. We used to joke that he cost the Emperor a fortune in new boots.” He shook his head. “Even the Silvani noticed. They even had their own nickname for him—”
“Longwalker.” Oren blinked at Caddoc. The younger scribe nodded. “They still speak of him. They think he was behind Owl and Spirit’s betrayal.” He paused, looking up at the hayloft. “They also think he was my father.” Caddoc leveled his gaze at Oren. “They’re probably right.”
Oren’s mouth gaped. For once, he found it impossible to speak. Finally, he found his voice. “How can that be? But you were raised by the Scribes, we only take in orphans.”
“I wasn’t born an orphan, Oren.” Caddoc ran a hand through his matted hair. A small shower of dirt rained down. “My father’s name was Traherne. And he was an Imperial Guard. He died in the line of duty around twenty winters past, when I was barely a newborn. My mother… she didn’t last long without him. After that, I was taken in by the Scribners.” His voice was weary and ragged.
“Caddoc, my boy, the name’s a common one. And there are many Imperial Guards who die in the line of duty-”
“There’s more.” He took a half-burned piece of kindling from the makeshift hearth he had cobbled together just a few days earlier and began to trace a design on the hard-packed dirt floor of the barn with the burned end: a snake, circumscribed in a ring. Its jaws were spread wide as it prepared to swallow its own tail.
Oren’s brows furrowed. “The Mark of Silvanus? What does that have to do with anything?” He hastily brushed his foot over the sketch, smudging it beyond recognition.
“Did Traherne ever receive a gift from Owl and Spirit? Something to show him as a friend of the Silvani?”
The older scribe shook his head. “No, I don’t – wait.” He leaned back in his chair, stroking his hairless chin. “There was something. He never showed it to me. Some piece of jewelry that he said he could use to provide a measure of safety for himself with the Bloodhair if he ever needed it. A mark of trust.”
“It was a silver medallion.” Caddoc held his hand up, his thumb and forefinger apart. “About this big. It had the Mark of Silvanus on it as well, it’s why Lyrinn used to stare at me whenever I was wearing it. The only thing that was sent back with his belongings when he died. The Silvani took it from me when they found it on me, and they wanted to question me about it. They said it was the one they had given to Longwalker. I can’t believe that you didn’t notice it!”
Oren scratched the side of his nose. “Caddoc, I’m an old man. My eyes are ruined from three-and-twenty winters of poring over these documents under candlelight. I knew you had what looked like a coin hanging around your neck, but I never thought much of it.” He shook his head. “You must be Traherne’s son, then. I can’t believe it… what are the chances that you would be sent to the very same place where your own father lost his life a generation ago?”
“Somehow I don’t think it’s chance. Not with Spirit-of-Vengeance pulling strings behind the scenes. Or whoever she is.”
A hasty knock on the door interrupted them both. “Scribe Oren!” a panicked voice cried out. The banging continued. “Scribe Oren, are y’awake?”
Oren clambered to his feet, joints creaking. He coughed, clearing his throat, and waved Caddoc behind a wooden shelf holding stacks of decade-old tax records. “Coming, coming! By the Emperor, what sort of terror is happening now!?”
With a look over his shoulder to see if Caddoc had hidden himself, Oren unbarred the barn door and threw it open. A bedraggled Bryn was standing there, shivering in the false dawn. “Master Farmer? What’s going on? Where’s Dafydd?”
Bryn stumbled into the meager candlelight of the repository. “Scribe Oren, we’ve got a problem,” he said. “Giant storm… the Cliffway…” he shuddered violently as Oren guided him down into the chair.
“Slow down, Master Farmer. The storm woke me a few hours ago. What happened, why aren’t you halfway to Imperial City by now?”
Bryn pulled the woolen cap off his head. His thinning hair was matted down to his scalp. The farmer worked the cap in his hands, wringing them of excess water as he did so. “We had just got to th’Lemon Squeeze when we stopped for th’night,” he said. His voice was distant. “We turned in early because one of Dafydd’s boys followed us were stopped for the night.”
“What? That journey is no place for a child!”
“That’s what I said, Scribe Oren, but we reckoned it was too important to waste time a-turnin’ around and comin’ back the way we came. We had already lost half a day from leaving so late, an’ we didn’t wanna come back to our homes in flames or worse.” The farmer sniffled and sneezed. “You wouldn’t happen t’have a spare blanket, would you, sir?”
Oren grumbled, looking around the barn for a moment. In the end he just slipped his own blanket off his bony shoulders and handed it to Bryn. “Here. Now what’s this about the Cliffway? What happened during the storm, Master Farmer?”
“It was…” he shook his head, wrapping himself with the blanket. He hugged himself tight. “The storm was hittin’ us something fierce. We were holed up in the Lemon Squeeze, but the lightning was so close that we were afraid th’roof of the tunnel would come down over our heads. Dafydd and Einion made a break for it down to th’valley west of th’Falls. We got separated when the storm washed the path between us away.”
“Washed away?” Oren looked behind him. Caddoc was peeking out from behind the shelf. Oren waved the younger scribe back into hiding. “It rained that hard?”
Bryn shook his head. “Not just the rain. The wind, and the lightning… it struck the path. Over and over. Blasted holes right in the cliff. Scribe Oren, there’s no way out of the valley. The path is gone. We’re trapped!”