Fantasy serial. Godfrey meets King Lara of Passon.
Godfrey Digbett III, to his anxiety and chagrin, is drafted into a crew of adventurers delving into an ancient elvish catacomb, which is not so silent, nor so dead, as it appears from the outside. Cleric to the minor god Halloran, he stands most of all for servants and their service, and must be a good servant himself to the Oghmian religious order that employs him.
In studying the music of the tunnels, he is forced to reckon with the things that he lacks, and the things that he aches for – and the things the god he is pledged to might give him or deny him.
It was rather like a city of tents ahead of them as their carts came to a stop on the road, and before stepping out from the caravan and after Bearchán and Buran, he stood on the top step and gripped loosely at one of the handles, looking out over it.
He had seen a good many archaeological sites over the past few years, but never had he seen one like this. Over the span of what must have been perhaps a square mile or more were a huge array of tents, and not just barracks-style tents in rows to host sleeping staff or the slightly larger canvas spreads that they made to shield uncovered artefacts or excavation plots: the tents were in various colours and shapes, and several of them had banners in different elven tongues declaring them property of or under the purview of various Passon Royal University departments, and several more had the royal crest.
Dozens of people bustled back and forth – in and out of a long tent with a high ceiling, made of dark yellow canvas, various people were walking to eat at the canteen tables; he could see various mages in different uniforms and sets of robes, archaeologists, historians, linguists, geologists, astronomers; he could see royal staff, clerks and officious people, perhaps bursars, tax officers…
Siofra Dhuibhne’s was a rather well-funded party of adventurers, and they had their own part of this little settlement to themselves – in Erstwhere, Dhuibhne had lingered with Bearchán White, Alfa, and Maven Ramses. White was a trained warrior and a decent poet, and the other three were mages and academics; outside of the meeting with Mother Effily, Godfrey had met Edward Flowers, a superlatively large and handsome warrior in chain mail, and talked more with Scott Locke Harrow, a slimmer chap with a set of fighting sticks.
Flowers actually did have a degree in history, although his breadth of knowledge was largely focused on Gonthor and the middle stages of the Bright Kingdoms and their development; Harrow was no academic at all, although he read voraciously, and he had put a great many years into studying traps and poisons. Eddie had seen no need to be part of the meeting with Mother Effily, but he and Harrow had led the coaches to Passon – Harrow was a passionate horseman, apparently, and he could confidently lead his team even on very narrow mountain roads without so much as making the caravan tilt or wobble on its wheels.
Waiting for them at the encampment were the remainder of Dhuibhne’s unit: Jock – John Trapper – who was another fighter and also their quartermaster and goods dealer; Eleanor Nielsen, a pretty little mage in dark robes who was frankly quite frightening, and scarcely looked up from her notes as they entered the large tent that served as base; Missy Kane, who was a master warder as well as their camp cook; and Sam Leeke, a slim and pretty half-elf who seemed to serve as general dog’s body.
Buran and Godfrey had been allotted their own tent beside Missy and Eleanor’s, and it was surprisingly warm and comfortable, given that soon enough they were going to be spending days if not weeks at a time beneath the surface of the earth and within the caverns – they had raised camp beds that had been neatly packed with additional pillows and blankets, more luxury than they would enjoy sleeping on stone floors in the coming weeks, and a few bookshelves of relevant texts had been curated by Missy, who was a sort of librarian for the party, and she’d also pinned up a map of the area on the broadest tent wall.
He’d shared sleeping quarters with Buran before, and he was not an unpleasant sleeping partner in Godfrey’s mind – he was very neat and quiet, and he played the viol, and sometimes he and Godfrey played music together. He was an extremely adept musician, technically – he was a stiff performer, not particularly expressive, and improvisation was anathema to him, but he took conduction masterfully so long as it was appropriately specific. He snored, but it was very soft and quiet, and he was as still whilst sleeping as he was when awake.
As Godfrey set aside his pack at the foot of the bed and hung up his travelling cloak, Buran removed his boots and cloak, as well as his jacket, and turned the magic lantern over his head up a little higher, opening his book in his lap and continuing to read in silence.
“I’m just going to have a little mosey about,” Godfrey told him – Buran said nothing, and acknowledged him only with a quiet hum. Shifting on his feet, Godfrey looked over at him, and said, “You don’t, ah… You don’t mind being here, do you, Buran?”
“Mind?” Buran repeated blandly, glancing up at him – his expression showed no recognition whatsoever, only polite frustration at being interrupted from his work.
“You didn’t volunteer, you said, that’s all,” Godfrey said haltingly, his hands awkwardly shifting in front of his belly, one hand gripping loosely at the other, and he gently squeezed his own fingers. “I… I don’t know if there’s something you’d rather be doing, is all, and I know personal protection work isn’t exactly your bread and butter.”
“I don’t like butter,” Buran replied. Godfrey stared at him, but before he could gently point out that it was just a metaphor, Buran went on, “I am a sworn brother of Lord Oghma, Godfrey. The duties I perform in his service are decided by my superiors, and I go where I’m bid.”
“Still,” Godfrey said. “I feel badly, that you’re stuck with me.”
Buran looked at him with mild interest, and then tilted his head half an inch to the side, and asked, “Why?”
Godrey exhaled, and the feeling of mild and aching guilt that was tugging at the base of his belly faded somewhat, and he felt his lips pull up and into a smile as he looked across the tent at the other man. Over the groundsheet, they’d laid out a rug – the camp was on a plateau halfway down the cleft of the valley, and Eddie had said that it was very cold and foggy in the mornings – and it was a dark brown colour, the same colour as Buran’s robes.
“I don’t know, really,” Godfrey said softly. “Never mind about it.”
“Alright,” said Buran, and looked back to his book, and that was that – things were just that simple, Godfrey supposed, when you were Brother Buran Highfield. He rather envied the simplicity of purpose.
He could be a terribly irritable little man, at times, but it was ordinarily only when he felt that people weren’t doing as they ought, when people did things like leave library books out of order or made a mess of things – he often expressed exactly this sort of distaste at Godfrey’s own workspace, which was often chaotic and somewhat disordered, but he at least kept it in a tight and constrained orbit, and made sure to tidy up after himself once he was done.
He ate what he was given, largely – he found most meat and dairy products distasteful, but would eat them if no other fare was made available to him; he did not drink alcohol or smoke any sort of leaf or recreational product; he liked music, but didn’t like parties or taverns or other occasions where music might be played; he didn’t have any friends, and to Godfrey’s awareness, he had never had sex or engaged in physical intimacy with anybody.
Not that Godfrey was judgemental about that, given his own… situation.
“Thank you, Buran,” he said, surprised by how much he genuinely meant it, how much warmth he heard in his own voice even as it tumbled out of his mouth – as ever, Buran nodded vaguely in his direction, and Godfrey smiled to himself as he slung his lute over his shoulder and stepped out of the tent.
Most of Siofra’s party were two to a tent, although that seemed to be down to personal preference more than out of a lack of resources. Siofra, Bearchán, and Eddie had their own tents; Harrow and Jock shared together, Maven and Alfa, Missy and Eleanor. Sam didn’t seem to have a particular home, from what Godfrey had understood from Eddie’s tour, he avoided going to bed until he absolutely had to give in and put himself to sleep, and was a chronic insomniac.
“Hullo, Mr Digbett,” said Jock as he approached the fire in the midst of their little part of camp. He had a lovely set-up, a nice roast pig on a spit going as well as the campfire, with a griddle over it, and an open set of tables over an open tent nearby; in the central tent, which was also where Siofra slept, were the bulk of the party’s shared bookshelves and a set of planning boards and an operations table were set up.
Godfrey was rather impressed, in honesty, by the organisation of their many resources – most adventurers and mercenary groups were far less put-together and somewhat more hectic in their approach to their jobs, particularly given the necessarily nomadic nature of their work, but this group evidently put a lot of thought into their movements, didn’t just run about with their swords forward in hopes of being awarded money or accolades for their troubles.
“Oh, please, my name is Godfrey,” he said. “No need for sirs and misters with me, Jock.”
Jock grinned at him. He was an older man, red-faced and jovial in his appearance, studded with gold here and there, with big meaty hands and a thick greying beard, the top of his head as bald as a polished rune stone. “Anything to eat, lad? We’ll sit down in another two hours or so, but you were in that cart a while, I can give you something to tide you over.”
“No, I’ll wait, I just thought I’d have a walk around. Most of the work I do is with little teams here and there. This place is like its very own town – and no one’s even gotten inside yet?”
“They’ve gotten into the tunnels,” Jock said. He was a Kithman like Bearchán, judging by his accent, but probably an islander by how thick his brogue was in comparison. He had a friendly manner about him, open and warm, and as he talked he tended his fires and his roasting meats, seasoned the vegetables on the griddle. “Just not very deep – and it’s more than a little spooky, or so I’ve heard. I wouldn’t fucking know, I’m generally out of the sword and shield game, I tend to stay put and mind camp with Missy while the troupe go here and there and everywhere. They’ve managed to find some plaques and things, although nothing with text – just different faces and depictions, carvings here and there, that’s all. The Royal University here in Passon has a music department, I do know, but they’ve not much by way of historical structure. I was surprised you were a human, what with all you’ve written about ancient elves.”
Godfrey smiled, glancing down at the floor – it wasn’t the first time someone had thought he would be an elf, based off his writings, although Godfrey wasn’t a usual elvish name, and most elves didn’t have seconds or thirds or the rest, tended to stay away from naming children after their forebears.
“Many elves today are… not superstitious, perhaps, that’s rather charged language, but they’re often cautious of engaging with old elvish burial grounds, ancient ghosts. Because of how important music was to the ancient elves, there’s sometimes something of an uncertainty about studying music in depth at all, in pursuing philosophy or theory related to music, and as for ancient music, the stigma is…” Godfrey exhaled, laughing quietly, and loosely rubbed his hands together, then looked around the camp. “King Lara putting so much support behind the excavation of an ancient elvish burial ground is… unusual, to say the least.”
“His people love him,” Jock said. He sounded approving, and surprised, too, like it was unusual that a people should like their king so well. “You’ll find that, walking around the camp proper – from the university, from his palace, just from the broader kingdom. Apparently he’s very pretty, too – so Bearchán says.”
“Oh,” Godfrey said.
He didn’t know much about King Lara, really – Godfrey and his family were from Seville, a good way south from Erst, let alone Passon, and there was little love held for King Raúl in most people he met. His family were far from staunch monarchists, but then, most necromancers tended to have a somewhat unusual take on the line of succession – with that said, Raúl was not a popular chap.
He had been, during the orcish wars, which was nothing to call them, in Godfrey’s mind – sending his army forward and eliminating the independent orcish tribes still present in Seville, that hadn’t yet been slaughtered or driven out, even though they’d retired to the mountain plateaus, been pushed back to the smaller and smaller swathes of land. Raúl had performed the same vile work his father had, to a greater degree, did his best to complete the genocides that had begun before his rule.
And so yes, for a while, he was very popular indeed: he’d driven out the savage threat, given stolen land over to new owners that might work it for profit, employed soldiers and kept his armies occupied.
Until there were no more orcs left to murder, and no more land to conquer; his army had shrunk down and down, with little to occupy them and put them to work. Raúl had never been a particular academic, had no passion for music or literature or magic or art or architecture, no especial economic or administrative skills. Certainly, he would never put time into archaeological pursuits like Lara was now.
What was a conqueror left with, with no peoples left to crush under his heel? He could hardly invade his neighbours, whether human or elf. He was too much of a coward for that.
He realised he hadn’t said anything, and so he said, “King Raúl isn’t pretty. I’m no judge, but he’s a rather square and stony fellow. Prettiness is hardly the least of his concerns, though – he has greater flaws than that.”
“You’re Sevillian,” Jock said. “Is that why you’re so inclined to orcish causes?”
“I have a conscience,” Godfrey replied evenly, “and a beating heart. I expect that’s the reason why.”
This wasn’t the answer Jock had expected – somewhat cowed, he leaned back on his heels, and his jovial expression softened slightly before he bowed his head and returned to his work.
When he was a boy – before Halloran had chained him and drew him up from the miserable ground he slithered on and into the light – perhaps Godfrey would have been called to apologise for having said such a thing, for having made the conversation stunted or awkward with his earnestness and his incisive care. He was no boy any longer, and he lacked the anxiety or nervousness he used to about his moral causes.
He knew he was correct – if others were uncomfortable, it was because they could not cope with the weakness in their hearts or were perhaps troubled by some rightful guilt or other. Regardless of the reason, Godfrey knew it wasn’t of his making.
“I’m just going to go for a wander,” Godfrey said pleasantly, smiling to himself as he walked into the rows of other tents. He hardly thought of himself as having an especially strong backbone, did naturally consider himself something of a coward, but whilst his dedication to Halloran had hardly rewritten all of his personal qualities, hadn’t entirely divested him of his social awkwardness, he was more resolute than he had been, once.
He used to struggle to say no to anything, to anybody. Most all of his opinions, his thoughts, he used to keep rather tight to the vest, if he dared to admit to himself that he had them.
Most real settlements had a population of orcs – they would be labouring in the forestry camps or the mines at the outskirts of town, or they’ would be members of mercenary or fighting contingents, serving as hired muscle here and there. There was little heavy lifting to be done here, and with so many mages present there were no latrines dug, nor water-carrying needed: a well had been trenched with magic, and there were tents with magical chamber pots in each section.
There were one or two orcish members of the university contingents, although he didn’t see any of them in Passon robes. There was a smaller tent next to the academics, dark purple canvas decorated with grey crescents and stars: four or five mages were sitting just outside, and one of them was an orc. They were from the Dusk University, Godfrey thought, from the Hourglass Continent – the orc chap, two elves, a human, and a minotaur woman.
Many of the Passon people, elves and humans alike, kept glancing nervously their way, glancing as nervously at the orc as they do the minotaur. He was less used to it than she was, which is what marked him so clearly as a foreigner. Godfrey’s heart rather panged for the poor fellow.
He looked up from his work as Godfrey is looking their way, and Godfrey smiled at him – he smiled back, after a moment’s pause, although Godfrey didn’t stop to chat with them, kept on walking. They didn’t look as though they had time for music.
“Ah, Mr Digbett, you’ve saved me a journey in your contingent’s direction,” said a plump elf, approaching him as he walked by the big kitchen tent, and Godfrey glanced his way. “I am Master Faisal Collett. If you’ll follow me.”
Godfrey trailed amiably after the fat little elf, and to his surprise was led into a sumptuous tent in the middle of the royal section: seated at a desk, a flurry of attendants and assistants moving about him like bees about a hive, was a very handsome elf wearing a golden diadem about his brow, dressed in white and gold.
“Your majesty,” said Godfrey, surprised, and King Lara of Passon looked up from his seat, his quill pen pausing for a moment on the page he was signing before he passed it off to the waiting secretary beside him.
“Ah, Mr Digbett, yes? A moment, please.”
This was directed to his team of assistants, who immediately stepped obediently back from him and neatly filed out of the tent, leaving Godfrey and Lara alone together but for Master Collett, who took a pot and poured each of them a glass of tea, gesturing for Godfrey to take a seat across from the king’s desk.
“I had no idea you would be here yourself, your majesty,” Godfrey said, taking the cup from Master Collett with a quiet word of thanks. “People have been saying how seriously you’ve been taking these excavations, but there aren’t many monarchs who would take their place in the midst of a dig.”
“We are not on our hands and knees in the earth, Mr Digbett, nor burrowing into the stone with drill and trowel,” said Lara mildly, although he seemed amused as he took a sip from his own tea. His desk was very neatly organised, but it had numerous stacks of papers, scrolls, little orbs, rune plates, and various other messages and appliances; around the room were runed mirrors, shelves of scrolls and papers, and other desks at the edges of the tent, likely for his assistants and for Collett, although Collett now disappeared behind a wooden screen and into the part of the tent that was presumably dedicated to Lara’s toilette and sleep. “There is as much comfort appropriate to a monarch in this tent as in our palace halls.”
“Almost,” Godfrey said, and Lara softly laughed.
“We are hitherto acquainted with Mistress Dhuibhne and certain of her band – most notably Mr White, who is… bold, for his position, but we are informed this is a cultural norm for the peoples of Kith and its islands.”
“They can be plain-speaking,” Godfrey said. “It’s built into their language, the bluntness – in most other south-western languages as well. Beletian dialects of the main elvish tongues are quite different to the ones spoken here in Dumas or Karnet.”
“And Beletia?” Lara asked.
If you looked on some maps, the areas of the continent that had once held the now-three Dimmed Kingdoms – Beletia, to their south-west, Kariana to their far north, and Gros on the north-western corner – were literally writ in darker, dimmer ink than the Bright Kingdoms, so drenched in magic as they were that you couldn’t even see the moons or stars from beneath the aurorae that spanned their skies.
Beletia was the worst of them – Gros had been quite a small territory, insulated by the heavy forestry that surrounded it, and Kariana had heavy stone cliffs that redirected some of the explosive impact. Beletia was a broad plain, a savanna with scattered settlements and pockets of woodland in between its wide spans of grass and sand.
When the great wards surrounding the palace had collapsed, there’d been nothing to impede the magical burst that had ensued. Even today, once you crossed what was left of Beletia’s borders, the magic was so thick and pungent on the air it could infect your skin or hair, begin to transform or change your organs, let alone your clothes or equipment.
There were very few concentrated settlements – people did live in the Dimmed Kingdoms, but rarely did they do so in particularly large groups. The more of you there were, the more things that could go wrong, the worse the effects would be.
“Beletian linguistic quirks are somewhat more difficult to study than most,” Godfrey said, and Lara did not smile, but looked at him with interest, seeming to study him.
He was very pretty, Jock was right about that – brown-skinned and dark-eyed with glossy black hair, and very lovely, defined lips. He had fine hands, pretty ones, and although his white sleeves were perfectly clean, his fingers were stained with ink and calloused from holding his pen.
“You are a citizen of Seville – how came you to Erst?”
“I do a lot of work with the Oghmians,” Godfrey said. “I’ve been travelling a lot, the past two years or so, to different ancient elvish sites – we were in the Kann valley, there was a temple and collapsed town there, that was myself and a chap called Orco, a Tacitan from Tigris; I was in a few old elvish settlements in Aria, and then… Well, I was in Beletia, actually. The ancient elvish rune library a few miles outside of Rhyl, in the caverns there. Much of what I’d been doing in Erst was collating my notes and then providing musical recordings of or live demonstrations of what my research had turned up. Not every academic is musically trained, and even if they know how to play an instrument or two, they’re not necessarily up on musical theory or historical chord notation, let alone in the old elvish styles. Until very recently, your majesty, my work was of rather fringe concern.”
“And that was how you liked it,” Lara remarked dryly, and Godfrey laughed, rubbing the back of his neck and pressing his knees together. The seat he was wearing was made for the proportions of a modern elf – his knees were a little too high in front of him, and knocking awkwardly together.
“The money is nice,” Godfrey said softly. “I perform all the work I do in the service of my lord Halloran, your majesty – the work I do produces vital funds for our order, minor as it is. I am Lord Halloran’s only cleric, and it’s really very nice, for his name to be recognised, spread, through any measure. But his domain is that of servants and quiet aid, subtle ministrations, vital and silent tasks – work performed behind closed doors and shades, in side-corridors and cellars.” Godfrey nodded behind King Lara, and added, “Behind vanity screens.”
“Would you call for the end of kings, Godfrey Digbett?” Lara asked, tone surprisingly pleasant.
“I call for nothing, your majesty,” said Godfrey diplomatically.
“When your god laid his hands upon you and chained your wrists, our cousin, Lucilla, was in attendance – she heard your many speeches. You decried the many guests about you, your relatives, your king, and revealed so many secrets, let them pour from your mouth as water from a fountain spout. You revealed affairs, announced an illicit pregnancy, called for an end to certain abuses, and so much more – declared you would never marry, for you were your Lord Halloran’s in name and soul and body. And said, we are informed…” He opened a journal and turned to a particular page, then went on, “In all those alive flows the same blood and magic: man or elf or orc or dryad. Is it a crown that makes a king, a circlet a queen? Is it dirt or filth or rags that makes a peasant, or the toil they are pledged to?”
Lara looked keenly into Godfrey’s eyes – he was quite an intimidating gentleman, apart from being pretty, but Godfrey looked back at him nonetheless.
“Strange, is it not,” the elf remarked, “that a god of servants should call for the end of those servants’ employers.”
“Lord Halloran is a god of servants, because he is a god of service,” Godfrey replied. “It is a privilege to serve others, your majesty – a privilege many nobles are robbed of, distracted as they are by lesser concerns, you know. Parties and bloodlines and heirlooms and succession and all that.”
Lara hummed.
“We,” he said pointedly, “are privileged indeed to serve our people, as their king. Our life is service – we have been discussing with our royal priests the addition of an altar to Halloran in our palace’s divine halls.”
“Oh,” said Godfrey, and Lara set his cup down.
“We shall discuss this further, perhaps, upon completion of your expedition into the Silent Caverns.”
“Yes, your majesty,” Godfrey said.
“Assuming, of course, your survival,” Lara said, and Godfrey blinked, but before he could say anything else, he had snapped his fingers, and there was a flurry of servants all around them again, returning Lara to his constant flow of administrative duties.
It was Collett who said, “You are dismissed, Mr Digbett,” and nudged him on his way.
In something of a daze, he wandered back to his and Buran’s tent, and dropped headfirst onto his bed, shoving his face into the pillow: it was into this pillow that he mumbingly offered his prayers, for all the good they’d do him.
He imagined it would be rather valuable for Halloran’s name, if he was killed by a ruling monarch – he hoped his lordship didn’t see it that way.
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