Broadswords - 18. The Symbol

Broadswords

Chapter Eighteen
The Symbol

Feeling nostalgic, Harmon decided to do something he hadn't done since Elsior had been exiled. He was going to visit Elsior's old room. He knew it would be occupied by some other member of the castle staff, but he felt like it was something he needed to do. Especially knowing that Daegon and Birten had undoubtedly encountered him by now, while he hadn't seen him in years. He felt a smidgen of jealousy.

As he made his way down the corridors, he wondered how time had changed his former lover. He tried visualizing what he might look like now. Would he still be slim and pale, with that same unkempt hair? How would his demeanor have differed from when they were younger? Would he still be laid back and aloof? He had gathered as much as he could from the letters, but there was only so much that could be absorbed from written word.

He slipped down the maze of hallways toward the staff quarters as smoothly as he had always done. He felt a sense of exhilaration, sneaking around as he used to do, and a touch of accomplishment in reaching Elsior's old room without being noticed. Though he was now 25 years old, he still had it.

Thankfully, the door was ajar. He listened for a few moments to make sure that he didn't hear anyone inside. Once he was satisfied it was silent, he stepped softly into the room in case it was occupied by someone sleeping or involved in a similarly quiet activity. Once he made it all the way inside, he was pleased to find it empty.

Not much had changed. It was still as barren as it had been when Elsior had occupied it. Whoever lived there now seemed to have as few material possessions as Elsior, considering there were only a handful of trinkets in the room.

He stood in the center and closed his eyes. He tried to bring forth the memories the two of them had shared in this very room when they were boys. Indeed, he could almost smell the muskiness that had often clung to Elsior's skin, could almost hear his candid laughter.

Before he could get lost in his remembrances, he heard footsteps approaching. While he could make any number of excuses for why he was there, he didn't feel like the information making its way back to his father. The last thing he needed was for the king to be informed that he was caught in the old bedroom of the boy that had been exiled years ago.

Though it was small and wouldn't do much in the means of disguising him, the only thing he could think to do was squeeze under the cot. If someone did come into the room, they would spot him straightaway. But he didn't have much other choice. He pressed himself firmly against the floor and slid under the bed. He knew his clothes had become immediately dirty on impact, and that would be something else he'd have to make up a lie for if someone noticed.

The footsteps continued past the door, and he realized that whomever they belonged to was not coming into the room. He breathed a sigh of relief, and decided that he'd be smart to get back to his own quarters. He was being foolish, and he could have easily been spotted.

As he slid himself back out from under the wooden frame, he noticed a carving in the leg of the bed. It was one simple word, a name, flanked on either side by an unusual symbol.

ƾ Elsior ƾ

He stopped where he was, face down on the floor, and stared at it. Somehow seeing it there, written in front of him, made his emotions swell. He hadn't seen the name written down in a long, long time. Considering Elsior had signed his letters with a drawing of a potato, he hadn't really had the opportunity to see it actually spelled out.

Reaching out to the carving, he ran his thumb across the grooves. The symbol was what really caught his eye. He had never seen it before. It could have just been a random doodle, or an accidental character etched by Elsior. But since it was there twice, carefully constructed, he knew that there must be a deeper meaning to it. Yet Elsior had never mentioned anything about it before.

Knowing he had to get out of the servant's quarters, he pushed himself back to his feet. He glanced back at the wooden post where the signature was, but he couldn't see it from a standing position. Curiosity was getting the best of him, and he had to know what it meant.

He brushed the dirt from the front of his tunic and pants to the best of his ability. It wasn't as noticeable on the dyed parts, but it stood out on the areas of white. He'd have to switch into clean clothes the moment he made it back to his room.

After he'd bathed and changed into a fresh set of clothes, Harmon sat at his desk and rifled through all of the letters he'd received from Elsior over the past year. He was curious if the symbol had ever appeared in any of his writings. He still had no clue what it was, of course, but maybe Elsior had hinted at it in something he'd said that would give him an idea.

The first few letters were brief, and included the potato. The longer the letters got, the more the potato started to phase out and there was no signature at all. By that point, there was no need to explain who was writing him. There was a random doodle or drawing here and there, generally associated with a wry joke he had made. Most of the time, though, the letters were serious, and there was no added flair.

There was one point where he thought he'd found something, but it turned out just to be a bit of spilled ink. Out of all the letters, there was no reference to the symbol whatsoever. He hadn't really expected to find anything, but it didn't mean he wasn't disappointed.

It could be anything. A symbol Elsior had chosen to represent his name. Something that was part of his genealogy. Hell, it could just be something he liked to draw. There was absolutely the chance that he was making something out of nothing. Still, he rarely had much to do with his time and something like this was at least something to do. The dragonslayers, the knights, the squires, the travelers; they all had journeys to go on and tales to tell. Even something as small as a mysterious symbol was as much of an adventure as he could hope for.

Then it hit him. The castle library! While he wasn't much of a reader and rarely spent any time in that room, he knew that the royal library was one of the vastest on the continent. There were certainly more books in the city library, but the books held within the castle were rarer. There were old tomes passed down from generation to generation, books gifted to the royal family from far-off visitors, and others retrieved from knights after pillaging enemy army camps after a victory. There were fiction novels from every storyteller imaginable, resource indexes about almost any trade or skill one could think of, and biographies of some of the biggest names there had ever been.

And so he made his way to the library, which was one of the bigger rooms in the castle. When he arrived, he found it occupied by his youngest sister, Lessa. She was sprawled out on the floor in a mess of pillows with a large book spread open in front of her. A half dozen others lay scattered about on the rug. As the door opened, she looked up and made eye contact with Harmon. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

"I've got some research to do," he said simply. She was quite astute for a 14-year-old, and he didn't want to give her any ammunition that she didn't need. He wouldn't be surprised if she would haul off and tell their father, so the less she knew, the better. "Now scram."

She clambered to her feet with the book in tow, and kicked one of the pillows at him as she walked out of the room, sticking out her tongue. Sometimes being an older sibling in a royal lineage had its perks, as she had to obey an order such as the one he had just issued. As soon as the door was firmly closed, he looked around the room. It was overwhelming, the amount of books that were housed there. The shelves went up high enough to require ladders, and they lined every wall of the room.

He knew the books were categorized by subject, but he wasn't sure where to begin. He supposed language would be the smartest choice. He browsed through a few selections dedicated to runic languages, but had no luck there. Considering some of the older Cascadian languages were heavy on unusual symbols, he tried books on any he could remember from his schooling. Nothing. He flipped through pages on everything from Archaicka, a long-since forgotten nomadic tongue, to Yarba, a still-untranslated scripture of the ancient tribes of the Tetrad Desert. He was getting nowhere closer to finding an answer, but he was getting a number of papercuts.

Perhaps he was barking up the wrong tree. Maybe the symbol wasn't like a letter in an alphabet. Maybe it was indicative of something else besides a structured language. He perused literature documenting the history of the flags of each kingdom, but that didn't prove fruitful. He tried records on creatures that had left unusual markings in fields, towns, or mountainsides – that, too, was a dead end. He even went so far as to reference some cookbooks; after all, Elsior had always desired to become a chef. Maybe it was some obscure cooking symbol. But, of course, that too led him nowhere.

After deciding that it was time to call it a night, he glanced at the large floor clock that took up the wallspace opposite the door. He was shocked to see the time. He'd spent more time in the library in that one sitting than he probably had spent there any other time, combined. It was well past midnight. While he didn't have an exhausting day ahead of him, he knew he should get to bed soon so he could wake up at a decent hour. He needed to keep up appearances, after all.

Just as he was about to make for the door, he realized that the books Lessa had left on the floor were still there. He tossed the pillows onto the nearest seating area, and gathered the books. He wasn't going to take the time to put them all in their correct places, but he could at least pick them up off the floor.

As he carried them over to the large desk in the middle of the room, he rifled through them. The Mermaids of Emory Island. Dressmaking: A Fine Art. Gems and Jewels Across Centralis. He had to admit, the girl had varied tastes. Mysteries of the Amellian Ridge. Silvercrest Butterflies and Other Dangerous Insects. She really didn't have one specific type of book she liked to read.

However, it was the final book that really caught his eye. It was titled Ancient Magic and Those Who Use It. Setting the other books down on the desk, he fanned through it. There were no sketches or images in the book, but he scanned the pages once more to be sure he hadn't missed anything. It didn't seem like this one would help him, but it did give him a nudge in the right direction. Magic. Why he hadn't considered magic before, he didn't know. Perhaps it was because there were few citizens in Jhirdyr that had the ability to perform it. Elsior certainly never had made any indication that magical blood ran through his veins. Then again, it didn't mean he didn't have a curiosity for it, as clearly Lessa did despite her lack of magical abilities.

He stepped over to the section of the library dedicated to magic, which was quite sizable. He glanced back at the clock, knowing that he wouldn't be making it to bed anytime soon after all. Curiosity was getting the best of him, and he felt like he was finally on the right track.

Light had begun creeping through the stained glass in the windows that lined the highest reaches of the ceiling, and Harmon couldn't believe he had spent the entire night in the library. And a large chunk of the previous day, too.

He had gone through countless books within the magic section, though nothing had yet to stand out to him. His fingers were beginning to hurt from flipping through so many dusty pages that he was certain he would never want to open another book as long as he lived.

At last, his fingers fell upon a book with The Dark Collective: An Abridged History of the Assemblages Dedicated to the Black Arts emblazoned across the spine. While the thickness of it indicated that it was indeed condensed, the title was a bit of a mouthful. He pulled it down from the shelf and cracked it open to the middle.

There on the page before him was a symbol. It wasn't the symbol he had seen carved into the bedpost, but it was similar. It resembled an O with an arrow through it. Beneath read: Necromancy. He flipped the page. Another odd symbol, this one like a triangle with horns. The caption underneath: Haematomancy. Page after page of the same: a symbol he didn't recognize, a word he didn't know, and a brief description.

Finally, he found it. A page illustrated with the same symbol carved into Elsior's old bed. Just like the one he'd seen before, this one looked like an upside down question mark with a T-like cross though it. The word underneath it was Terramancy.

With frantic eyes, he read the remainder of the page.

Like most mancies, Terramancy originated as a form of divination. The earliest Terramancers used minerals within the dirt and soil to make predictions, obtain answers, and fulfill ritualistic practices. As was true of other types of mancers, once the Terramancers began mastering their art, they too began to channel their powers beyond prophetic abilities.

Powers of the Terramancers evolved to include the ability to manipulate the earth, the ability to create small land masses, and for those powerful enough, the ability to shift the tides. As their manipulation powers progressed and Terramancers became something beyond diviners, Terramancy was provided its own symbol as its acceptance into the Dark Collective.

Harmon felt his hands shaking as he closed the cover of the book. He didn't know why the symbol of a black art was etched around his former lover's name, and he certainly didn't know what the Dark Collective was. But one thing he did know was that Elsior had a secret of which Harmon had never been made aware.