Once more a serpentine shiver slid down her back as he described a ritual of violent death and unnatural resurrection in which those whom the Kai named Wraith Kings became as strange and grotesque in their new incarnation as the creatures they battled.
It seemed disrespectful somehow, almost blasphemous, to keep writing while Serovek spoke. She wanted to lay down her quill, fold her hands in her lap and listen, both enraptured and horrified as he recounted the struggle against and final defeat of the galla. But she kept writing until her aching hand went numb. When he paused, she scribbled a little more, then stopped to shake out the cramps in her fingers.
Reliving the horror of that conflict had altered Serovek’s face. He was pale and pinched around the mouth, his eyes hard as the obsidian the trade caravans sometimes brought over the mountains from the far southern kingdoms.
“I’m so sorry,” Jahna said. “We can stop there if you wish.”
The margrave shook himself as if to slough off something foul. “No, this is why I agreed to our meeting, so even generations beyond us will remember what happened and hopefully learn the lessons we didn’t regarding the dangers of Elder magic.”
“And heroes should be remembered and celebrated,” she added.
A wry look flickered over his still pale features for a moment. “We aren’t heroes. We did what we did to survive and suffered a defeat with the loss of one of our own. Megiddo paid the ultimate price for our triumph.”
A terrible despair painted his words. Jahna chose not to write those down. There were some things meant to be remembered with ink and parchment while others were best served with fading in memory just so one might heal.
While five men rode out to battle the galla, only four returned home. The heretic Nazim monk, Megiddo Cermac, did not, and Jahna shied away from dwelling on the suffering his soul must be enduring trapped in the malevolent realm of the galla.
She struggled for some words of sympathy to offer Lord Pangion over the loss of his comrade-in-arms. “Maybe since the galla never touched his body, there’s still a chance he can be saved? Didn’t you say as long as your bodies were protected from the galla, you couldn’t die?”
“There are the dead, and then there are those who are worse than dead.”
It might have been the dancing light of the hearth’s fire or even the tilt of Serovek’s profile as his gaze shifted from her to the inner horizon of a distant memory, but Jahna swore, in that moment, thin lines of spectral blue fire etched the whites of his eyes, and his face no longer looked quite human.
She was half out of her chair when, with a single blink, the margrave of High Salure was once more just a handsome man wearing a faint smile and sitting in a chair far too small for his big frame. His eyes were still the deep-water blue she found so arresting, but only the irises. The otherworldly cerulean spiderweb that fractured his sclera was gone.
He didn’t seem to notice when she eased back into her seat, gripping her quill like a dagger. “Ask your next question,” he said.
She kept him another half hour, until her hand threatened to seize entirely and her ink ran dry. When they finished, Serovek helped her pack up her supplies, offered more tea which she refused, and escorted her to the door.
They stood together at the threshold for a moment. He bent a little so he wouldn’t hit his head on the lintel. “Should you ever find yourself in the hinterlands, Lady Uhlfrida, come to High Salure. We’ll make you welcome, and if the weather is fine and we’re still at peace with the Kai, I’ll take you to the new Kai capital at Saggara. You can meet the man who wielded the wraith spell and led us into battle.” His eyes narrowed with a wry humor. “The Khaskem isn’t quite as impressive as his wife or his his second-in-command, but I think you’d like him.”
Jahna swallowed a squeal of delight, certain that such a demonstration would make the margrave rescind his offer. “You’re most generous, Lord Pangion,” she said, thankful she sounded so calm, as if war heroes offered to introduce her to Elder rulers every day. “I hope to take you up on that offer one day.”
He bid her goodbye and disappeared back into his chamber. Jahna raced down the hall, eager to return to the Archives and conscript a pair of amanuenses to help transcribe her extensive notes into a neat composition for Dame Stalt to read and review.
As with every year prior to this one, the bailey was a surge of humanity packed in a space too small to fit it comfortably. Thanks to Rodan’s new decree that the various hawkers and vendors were to set up their stalls outside the walls instead of in the bailey itself, there were areas within where one didn’t have to squeeze past bodies and livestock to reach their destination.
Hunger pangs made Jahna’s stomach rumble. She hadn’t eaten all day, and the wine she drank while speaking with the margrave sat in her belly on a sour note. The smells of roasting meat and nuts toasted over fires rose above the stench of unwashed bodies to tease her nose. She had time to make a quick detour outside the fortified walls to purchase something before returning to the Archives.
Without the confinement of the palace’s fortified curtain walls, the impromptu market that sprang up during Delyalda sprawled in every direction on the land King Rodan had designated. The snow-covered ground had been churned into a slurry by the tread of carts, people, horses and oxen. Straw had been laid down to help with footing, but its effectiveness didn’t last long. Jahna was glad she wore her sturdiest boots with the tightest laces, or the mud would have sucked them right off her feet as she trudged toward a stall where a vendor turned skewers on a grate resting across a fire pit dug in the ground.
She passed other booths selling Delyalda charms, gloves and wraps, jewelry and pottery. More offered services such as hair-braiding, fortune-telling and even hip baths for the truly brave willing to stand naked in the frigid air for a good scrubbing.
Jahna purchased a skewer stacked with pieces of roasted goose and stood on the periphery of the thoroughfare to eat and observe the endless procession of humanity. Across the main avenue, a group of barbers had set up their reclining chairs to shave the men who wanted their beards clipped or shorn. Jahna grinned at the notion it looked a bit like a sheep-shearing competition, with the barbers’ knives flashing in the sun as they soaped, scraped, wiped and pushed their customers out of their chairs before gesturing for the next man in line to take a seat.
She forgot her food and demanding stomach when, through the gaps in the milling throng, she spotted a man roll nimbly out of the barber’s chair and hand payment to the barber. His back was to her, and he’d been too quick out of the chair for her to catch a glimpse of his face, but the sight of broad shoulders and vivid ginger hair made her breath hitch to a stop.