Broken Rule | Chapters 24 & 25
This post is chapters twenty-four and twenty-five of my not-previously-published epic fantasy novel Broken Rule, which I'm serializing here on Steemit.
The story so far:
Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Chapter 24
Riding down a road surrounded on all sides by apple trees heavy with fruit, Duke Benedek caught first sight of his ancestral home, Applewood Manse. “We're almost there, Joszua. It will be good to have a rest.” He edged his horse closer to the side of the road and plucked an apple from a tree as he passed. He bit into it. “Perhaps a few more days to ripen, but it's damned good to taste them again.”
As they approached the house a boy ran from the stables to take their horses. “Welcome home, Your Grace, it sure has been a long time.”
“It has indeed,” said the duke, stepping down from the saddle and handing over his reins. The house was just as he remembered it, but between the entry stairs where there had once been a series of small shrubs there now stood a life-sized marble statue. Benedek looked closer and saw that it was a perfect match for his young wife, Suzana. The statue showed her wearing a light summer dress with shoulders bared. Under one arm she carried a basket of fruit and in her other hand she held up a single apple, as if offering it to Benedek. She had just the hint of a warm and welcoming smile on her lips and in her eyes. The workmanship on the statue was breathtaking, and Benedek was reminded just how young and beautiful his new wife truly was.
“The duchess hired a sculptor, Your Grace,” the stable boy informed him. “There's plenty more like this in the gardens in the back.”
Before the duke could formulate a response, the front door of the manor house flew open, and he saw the woman in the flesh. She cradled their newborn son in her arms and ran down the steps to Benedek. “Oh, you've come home!” she called.
He let her come to him and pulled her close with one arm so they could both look down at his son. Benedek had loved all of his daughters dearly, but with a son of his own he could finally be sure that his line would carry on. He had done his duty to the kingdom as Lord Marshal, and now he had done his duty to his family by siring an heir. Duty had been the cornerstone of his life, and now he had fulfilled them all. So many of the burdens that had been on his shoulders for so long seemed to be disappearing, and in their place he had a beautiful wife and a beautiful son. After a long life that had its fair share of pain, he wasn't prepared for how quickly the joy would wash over him. He began to weep.
“I named him Lukas, after your father. A good strong name for my good strong boy,” she said. She passed the baby over to Benedek.
The duke was nervous to hold him at first, as if he might drop him, but then pulled him tight. A son. A boy to raise on his own, someone he could teach how to be a good knight, a good man. “Lukas, dear sweet Lukas. I hope I can be half the father to you that your namesake was to me.”
“It's so good to have you home, Benedek. You know we hear nothing here, for months at a time, and then when we do hear things they turn out to be the most dreadful gossip.”
“You won't have to worry about that any more. I am home now and I shan't need to leave again.”
“Oh! But that's wonderful!”
Benedek handed his son back to Suzana, and they started up the stairs into the house. “Yes it is wonderful, but it has been a long journey, and these old bones are tired. I hope that someone will be able to find one of Elzbieta's pies in the kitchen.”
“Oh, I'm sure they will. And you can meet Master Tymon the sculptor. Did you see the statue? Isn't it wonderful?”
“Yes, I saw, it was beautiful. But what ever possessed you to hire a sculptor?”
As they walked down the hall toward Benedek's private study, she explained, “I hadn't intended to hire him. But one day he showed up at our door with his apprentice boy, and he said that he had been told that I was the greatest beauty in all of Tarkannan, and that it would be a sin against the Most Holy to sculpt anyone but me. Naturally I dismissed him as a flatterer, thinking that he could pray on my vanity as if I was one of those songbirds in Kubara. He begged me to stand for one sculpture, and I agreed. But when he was done it was so beautiful I couldn't turn him away. All he asks is room and board for him and his apprentice, and the stone to work his craft. He is gentle and polite, not at all like the stories I've heard of artists. Oh Benedek, perhaps I am as vain as those ladies at court, but please don't be angry with me.”
“I shall have to meet the man myself to pass judgment,” Benedek declared. He had no desire for his wife to be turned into a frivolous butterfly, but there was also no denying that the man had exceptional skill. Besides, the woman consented to have Benedek as a husband when she could have easily had a much younger man. She must be given some allowance to compensate for that.
Benedek pulled off his riding gloves and settled himself into a high backed chair. One of the servant boys who had been surreptitiously following them went over to help the duke pull off his boots. Elzbieta herself appeared with a slice of pie, but she brought a cup of her vile medicinal tea as well. “Welcome home, Your Grace. We're all so happy to have you back.”
“It's good to be back, Elzbieta.”
Chapter 25
Now that he was actually in the Wolf's Teeth, Marek found waiting difficult. He could see that his company of engineers was working hard, but he could do nothing but wait. He had been born in a rural village but had left for the monastery before anyone had ever expected him to do any difficult physical work, so he had no sense of how hard it was on the body, or how long it took to accomplish. But he did know that it felt like an eternity waiting for his engineers to shift the dirt and rocks at the site. Surely there was a way they could work faster.
He had used his maps to get as close to the ruins of Loden as he could, but there were limits to the accuracy he could achieve with only ancient drawings and the second-hand recollections of spirits to work with. Day after day, week after week, the engineers sunk pits into the earth. They set up wooden scaffolds over the pits, and men were constantly hoisting buckets of dirt and debris away, with more men at the bottom digging deeper and deeper into the earth, filling those buckets. Most of the pits were quickly abandoned, finding nothing but dirt and rocks no matter how deeply they dug. Some found worked stone, debris from the buildings that had been destroyed in the cataclysm that buried Loden. These pits gave Marek hope that he was in the right place, but each one filled him with despair when they had to give up on the shaft after failing to find the library. On the edge of one pit they discovered the corner of a wall and had to scramble to reposition the scaffolds so they could expand the pit. Marek waited with almost breathless exhilaration, but as they cleared the dirt away it proved to be only the remains of someone's home. They abandoned that pit, sinking a new one, the same as they had the day before, and found nothing in that one. Marek silently cursed the men for moving so slowly, for not delivering his prize immediately. But he also blessed them, for working so diligently, for digging for such elusive treasure with nary a complaint.
The engineers had all served with Benedek's expedition and had been reluctant to return to the mountains at first. However, they hadn't seen or heard a single goblin on this new mission for Marek, and most now believed that they were under the direct protection of the Most Holy. Marek made an effort to be seen by the men in his priestly vestments as often as possible. It certainly seemed to be good for morale. For their morale, at least. Marek was nearing exhaustion. To be so near to his goal but to be unable to achieve it was almost unendurable stress. To have his hopes raised and then dashed so often had taken a toll on him. His sleep was always fitful, and he frequently woke in the night long before dawn, unable to return to sleep. He lay quietly and waited. Waited for another day. Another day for more hope, and more disappointment.
“Learned, wake up. They think they may have found it,” said Petro. Marek pulled himself to a sitting position on his bedroll and rubbed his eyes. He pulled on his boots and slipped into his vestments.
“Should I prepare to celebrate or prepare for more disappointment, Brother Petro?”
“They say they've found doors, Learned.”
“Well, that sounds promising.”
When Marek got to the pit, he saw what had gotten his men so excited. They had hit a large, intact building with their initial excavation and extended their pit into a trench that followed the wall of the structure. Marek wondered how long he had been asleep. He didn't recall any of this from the previous day. At the end of the trench Marek could see two huge, iron-bound doors. Of course, if the doors had held up to the dirt and rock that had been pressing on them for hundreds of years, they didn't seem likely to give in to the attentions of men quickly. More waiting to endure?
Reuben Trumbull, master carpenter and one of the most experienced siege engineers in the crew, had taken charge. Marek shimmied down the ladder into the trench. “Brother Reuben, do you think we'll be able to get inside?”
“Oh, naturally, naturally. I didn't want to start until you were here, eh? These doors are just doors, see, not like on a castle or a fortress. They're good for keeping out the elements and the like, but we'll be through quick enough.” The carpenter had hammered several wedges into the crack between the doors, spreading it fractionally wider. Wide enough to slip a saw-blade through. “There's probably a thick bar on the door, but we'll be through it soon enough. This would never work if somebody inside was trying to stop us, but there's advantages to breaking down doors that have been buried for a thousand years, eh?” Reuben traded off turns with the other engineers, and even Petro tried his hand with the saw. Eventually they broke through. With no one supporting the far end of the saw, it fell when it bit through the final inches of the bar holding the doors closed.
“I guess there's nothing else but this.” Reuben put his shoulder to the left door and shoved. The wedges that he had put between the doors fell as the left door opened an inch. “Well, you never know if you get lucky unless you try.” He put his shoulder to the door and heaved it open another inch. Rubbing the sweat from his brow, he assessed the men assembled nearby. “Hey, big man, you look like the expert on this part, have at it.”
Petro took it as a challenge, and gave a long sustained push. When the door was open a foot, something seemed to rush out from inside. Petro was knocked flat on his back, and something brushed by Marek. He had seen nothing, and could think of no explanation save some freakish gust of wind, but there was a nagging certainty in his mind that it wasn't some trick of the air. He pushed those thoughts aside. There were more important things to attend to.
With the door open as wide as it was, Marek squeezed himself through, and held up a lit torch to see what was inside. His heart quickened and for a moment he forgot to breathe. This was it. The ground must have shaken when it was buried, because shelves were toppled and books were strewn everywhere. But this was it. This was what the Most Holy wanted him to find. These were the words he needed, hidden away for centuries, waiting for this moment, waiting for him.
Marek shook himself, remembering that there were still men outside who must be wondering what he found. Men who had worked hard on the excavation. “Good job, brothers, we've found the library.” He looked at the torch blazing in his hand. “Let's fetch some oil lamps so we don't risk burning down our prize.”