The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 18: The Doyenne's Counsel, Part 1

 They had marched along that ancient road for nearly three hours before Ammas called the first stop. By the side of the road was a crumbled shelter, a former shrine to one of the Ninefold Faiths (Barthim insisted it was the Graces; Vos thought Simori the Traveler was more likely) that still provided some protection against the weather despite its decay. 

For the last half hour a driving rain had drenched them all, the sky turning the color of iron, the wind an icy knife in their faces and against their hands. Casimir huddled against Ammas, but the boy was shivering from crown to toe. Barthim and Denisius went about building a fire, and no amount of protesting would sway Ammas from ordering his apprentice to stay at its side wrapped in a blanket. Casimir had not protested much. 

Carala stayed by his side as Barthim put on some tea to brew, as well as some hardened squares of pocket soup. "Drink it all up, Cass. It will not do to be catching the ague when we are almost there."

Ammas was scowling as he poured rainwater from the crown of his hat to gurgle along the road's debris-choked gutter. Denisius watched him uneasily. "This isn't a natural storm, is it?" he asked. It had escaped no one's notice that the weather had turned almost the moment they passed the barricade back at the crossroads.

"Othma knows we're coming," Ammas said shortly. "Hold this." He passed Denisius his hat and strode from the shrine to the center of the road, where he fell to his knees, drawing his dagger and holding it before him in both hands. Muttered words whispered from his lips, but the wind tore them away before they ever reached Denisius's ears, if they had been audible at all. 

Not for the first time Denisius thought Ammas looked mad: kneeling in the road and muttering to the sky, the curls of his hair tightened and darkened with the pouring rain, his robes and cloak completely soaked. Water dripped off the bluish gleam of his skymetal dagger and his face was unusually pale. Denisius remembered how Ammas had collapsed when they'd broken through the tomb door, and wondered silently about the cursewright's health.

After perhaps five minutes of this a jagged stroke of lightning lit up the sky, for a second's time banishing the unearthly shade that had stolen across the bluffs. Thunder crashed deafeningly, making even Barthim jolt upward in surprise. At once the rain ceased, like a candle being snuffed. Ammas sheathed his dagger and made his way to the shelter, arranging both his cloak and himself as close to the fire as possible. 

"I've told her I'm here," he muttered as he retrieved his hat from Denisius. "I don't think she's pleased with my company, but at least she's not going to be throwing a storm at us any more."

"You -- told her?" Carala asked wonderingly.

"Othma is an astrologer. She speaks on the wind, and so close to her home it's easy for her. It's not something I'm very skilled at myself, which is probably how she knew it was me."

"What did she say to you?" Denisius asked.

"Nothing. But she called off the winds and rain, which is encouraging. Don't expect things to get much brighter." Ammas shivered and drew even closer to the flames, steam rising from his shoulders. "All of you mind your tongues when you meet her. Especially you, your highness. If she thinks you're ordering me to do something against my will, things will not go well for either of us."

"She would not wish to rescue you?" Carala could not restrain the amusement in her voice.

"She'd kill me for showing weakness to the House of Deyn," Ammas said flatly, which doused whatever humor Carala saw in the situation.

When Ammas's robes had dried a little, and once they'd all taken in a little warming tea and broth, they set off up the road once more. Rainwater chuckled down the long-abandoned gutters on either side of them, a peculiarly cheerful sound to accompany the ruins that began to loom among the hills flanking the road. Ammas told them these had once been villages; that before the dissolution there had been a whole chain of small settlements between Autumnsgrove and Vilais. 

"At its height the academy was home to over a thousand students, along with any number of visiting scholars and dignitaries seeking counsel or assistance on arcane matters. Tourists flocked to it, for it was far more beautiful than it is today."

"Beautiful in what way?" Personally Denisius couldn't see much that was beautiful about the place so far, unless one found beauty in abandoned hovels and decrepit barns and windmills.

"You'll see," Ammas replied with a strange smile, and would say no more.

As Ammas had predicted the sky remained ominously dark, occasionally illuminated by flashes of lightning, though the following rumbles of thunder were distant and faint. When the forks of lightning arced across the sky, Carala and Denisius both noticed that small objects seem to glitter in the tall grass that grew wild through the ruins. Further along the road a very odd structure began to rise above the grasses and overgrown hedges on their right: a series of curving pieces of wood, weathered and splintered, looking for all the world like a vast arrangement of rib bones. 

"What is that?" Carala asked as they approached these strange things. The closer they came to them the larger they proved to be, towering over a nearby windmill that had been at least five stories tall itself before it had begun to collapse. From the wooden ribs hung ragged strips of fabric, flapping in the wind.

Ammas squeezed Casimir's shoulder. "Do you know what that is, lad?"

Casimir studied the object. "Is it the Blackspur?"

Ammas nodded, clapping his apprentice on the back. "It is indeed the Blackspur. Why don't you tell our companions about it?"

"I'm not sure I know everything about it."

"No one does. Do your best."

Casimir took a deep breath. He was a little nervous to be put on the spot this way, but he knew Ammas well enough by now to expect the occasional surprise lesson. "The Blackspur was a flying ship, something the forgewrights were building in secret before the Emperor dissolved the academies. They had meant it to be something he could use against the Sultan, something that would work against his cannon, but they ended up using it against the Emperor himself when he attacked Autumnsgrove. Nearly all the other Academies had fallen, but because of Autumnsgrove was so powerful, it had held out for months. But they were running out of food. The forgewrights launched the Blackspur against Doyenne Sulivar's wishes. It wasn't ready for battle. The lightning strokes and the flame-cannons exploded, and the ship crashed down on the hills."

"Gods above," Denisius muttered, trying to imagine those weathered wooden ribs somehow borne aloft in the air by forgewright magic.

"The people of Vilais thought so," Ammas said drily. "Casimir has given a fine overview, but there are some things not recorded in his studies. The Blackspur's appearance on the battlefield was nothing short of spectacular, and it terrified the Imperial army. Before its weapons failed, it killed hundreds of them, including wiping out their cavalry and half their siege engines. These were men of the First, Sixth, and Tenth Southern Cohorts."

Vos nodded knowingly. "The Anointed Realms were vulnerable to invasion from Q'Sivaris for years afterward. I was in Marhollow by then, and even we were nearly called south to shore up the defenses. Did you see the battle, Ammas? I've always been curious about it."

Ammas shook his head. "I had fled by then. I was well on my way to the Scorched Desert and trying to book passage to Summervale." A frown creased his features as he studied the doomed ship's wreckage. "The forgewrights were desperate. The whole brotherhood had a reputation for being a little mad, and they did themselves no favors when they launched that ship. The citizens of Vilais feared it would crash into their city and lay waste to it, and it nearly did. Only the Doyenne's mastery of the winds kept the destruction contained to these hills. But the forgewrights were almost entirely destroyed. Most of them had been on board the Blackspur, and there were no survivors of the crash. Autumnsgrove fell less than a week later, the holdouts surrendering out of fear of starvation. The besieging army was not inclined to be merciful. Your brother Ursus was in command by then, Carala, despite his youth -- General Haddow was killed in the crash; it came down right on top of him." Ammas spat on the ground, though for a wonder Carala didn't sense his anger was directed at her family. "They were fools. Any sense among the common people that the fellowships suffered an injustice burned along with that ship. Tell the people of Vilais who remember the day the Blackspur crashed that your father was justified in purging the academies, and you won't hear much argument."