Many Words

Anja and Hans trailed Mikel by a step or two as the mage led the way higher up the tower. They spoke quietly, though Anja thought Mikel’s apparent deafness a little suspicious.

“Is it going well?” she said.

“I think we turned it around.”

“How much did you tell them?”

“No more than they needed to know, milady,” said Hans. He glanced furtively from side to side and asked, “Do you have it?”

Anja watched Mikel for some sign of surprise, but he remained as studiously unhearing as he’d been before. “Hans,” she said at length, “I’m not going to lose it.”

“Never hurts being careful,” he retorted. “Did you sleep well?”

“How could I but, after the last few days? Did you? Have you eaten?”

“I’ve been arranging things with the Guild since we got here,” Hans admitted. “There’ll be time for me once we’ve settled you in.”

“You’ve already done more than enough,” she said, expecting Hans’ blush. He made no reply, and she had nothing else to say, so they continued the walk in silence.

Anja was beginning to realize just how much the spiraling hallway inflated distances. The trip seemed to take an inordinate amount of time, and Anja thought it was probably best that she and Hans had stopped talking. She would concede that Mikel Skräskyddsling had proven to be an ally, and apparently one with discretion as well, but she did not trust him quite so far as to reveal much more than the fact that there was more to reveal.

She also noticed that some of the mages—the more experienced ones, if age was any indication—were aware of her presence and something of the reason for it. Most of those they passed stole glances; some openly stared.

Finally they came to a door, which Mikel held for Anja. He stopped Hans with a hand to the chest, saying, “Alone.”

The door swung shut behind Anja, and she looked at each of the Septumvirate in turn as she took a few confident steps to the center of the room. “Masters,” she ventured.

“Anja Grevdarsdottir,” said the speaker. “We must confess that your arrival here was a surprise. Even so, we are glad your journey was safe.”

Anja was surprised, and realized she looked it too. “Well, thank you,” she covered, thinking that Hans had certainly been truthful when he said he’d told them only what he had to. If there was one thing Anja could claim to know, it was that a safe arrival did not necessarily mean a safe journey.

“You are a guest,” the speaker said, evidently guessing wrong at the cause of Anja’s surprise, “and we are bound to concern ourselves with your well-being, regardless of whether or not we were prepared to receive you.” Anja smiled uncertainly. “However, we do have our own interests to look after. To that end we have a few questions for you. First: you have obviously manifested some talent with magic—” there was a snort from one of the seven, and Anja also thought it was a bit of an understatement “—and such manifestations are rarely isolated events. Can you—”

“Stop wasting our time,” another of the Septumvirate interjected. The hoods they wore concealed their faces, but to Anja’s ear the voice sounded old—it had a quality of crackling paper to it, but nevertheless retained a steely edge. “Tell us, girl, what you did to the draug.”

With a theatrical flourish, Anja withdrew her hand from her pocket. She opened it palm-up, revealing a small, smooth stone, and spoke with a voice which carried authority well beyond her years: “Show yourself.”

“I haven’t seen you here before. Who are you?”

Anja followed the pointed finger up the arm to the face of the speaker, seeing a girl about her own age. There was a great deal of contrast between them: Anja was short and slightly built, with the wavy dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin common to humans of southern stock. The girl accosting her was, on the other hand, Anja’s idea of the quintessential Northerner—blond hair, blue eyes, pale skin, and a height well above average which was nonetheless accompanied by a full frame.

Anja had no idea how to respond, and her nonplussed expression seemed to disarm the other girl.

“Elisa!” said a boy’s voice, and the other girl looked away. Anja followed her gaze and saw a boy of roughly the same age, midway between the two girls in appearance in nearly every way. The word ‘nondescript’ floated to the surface of Anja’s mind. “There you—who’s this?”

“That’s what I was trying to find out,” said Elisa, and Anja thought she heard a note of suspicion in her voice.

“I’m Liam,” the boy said, “and this is Elisa. She’s actually friendly, even if you don’t always see it right off. What’s your name?”

“Anja,” said Anja, stopping abruptly as she realized that the other two hadn’t given patronyms.

Liam pulled out a chair for himself. “Are you new here?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Anja replied, vaguely surprised at her frankness. She was well aware that the last few months had made her rather more taciturn than she’d been before, and sharing much at all about her situation was something she had become unused to doing. Even while thinking this, she added, “A friend of mine is talking with the Septumvirate for me.”

Elisa had taken a seat, too, and seemed to be thawing a bit. She and Liam exchanged glances, and the latter asked, “What did you do?”

“Excuse me?” said Anja indignantly.

“To be offered a place here,” Elisa clarified.

“It’s not everyone who has to go before the Septumvirate when they get here,” Liam added. “It must have been something big.”

Anja smiled nervously, and thought for a moment before answering as diplomatically as she could. “It’s… it’s a long story, and I’m not even sure I’ll be able to stay.”

Liam raised his eyebrows but didn’t push the issue, and Anja silently thanked him for it. “Well, we both hope it works out for you.” At that, Elisa’s head whirled around toward Liam. For a moment they stared at each other, and then Liam turned to face Anja again with a smile. “There’s nobody else near our age—it’s all little kids and adults now.” Again, Liam and Elisa shared a look, and Anja was beginning to think that it was more than just nerves that gave her the feeling that they were managing to talk behind her back right in front of her.

She cleared her throat. “How did you come to be here?” she asked.

Liam grinned. “Once you’re here to stay, we’ll trade stories,” he offered. His gaze shifted past Anja, and he scrambled to his feet, adding, “Master.”

Anja turned in her chair and saw Mikel Skräskyddsling and Hans approaching from the stairway. She rose.

“Anja Grevdarsdottir, the Septumvirate would like to meet you,” Mikel said, waving a hand to acknowledge Liam and Elisa at the same time.

Anja smiled uncertainly at Hans, and he nodded. She said, “Then I guess I would like to meet them too.”

The speaker for the Septumvirate was, momentarily, speechless. One of his colleagues tapped him on the shoulder, and the Septumvirate conversed in quiet, rapid-fire Elvish.

Hans glanced at Mikel and whispered out of the corner of his mouth. “Is it going well?”

“Better, now,” Mikel judged. Further comment was precluded by the return of the Septumvirate to their places.

The speaker addressed Hans. “Hans Georgsson. You can provide is with an account of the circumstances surrounding one Anja Grevdarsdottir’s alleged confrontation with and victory over a draug?” The mage sitting next to him whispered something, and the speaker corrected himself, “A firsthand account?” At Hans’ nod, the speaker raised his eyebrows at Mikel. “You might have told us.”

“There was hardly time,” said Mikel, a trace of smugness evident in his voice.

The speaker’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, and he returned his attention to Hans. “Please, tell us your story.” The Septumvirate looked a little less hostile than before, and Hans began to tell his story. At first he spoke slowly and haltingly, but he gained momentum as he went on.

“Well, masters, it began eight months ago, or about that. Not more than a tenday away, at least.” He gathered himself and pressed on. “A draug came to Jötunberg, and before we had any idea it had taken more than a hundred of us. It got worse fast, and by the time the tenday was out I wondered if the town would survive.

“I tend the gardens at Anja’s father’s estate, and I’d gotten stuck there when the draug arrived. I was half out of my mind with worry about my family, and I made a fuss about it. Anja caught wind of it, and she told the guards they’d show me home if she had to go along with me. They didn’t believe her ’til we’d walked out the gate. We weren’t a dozen yards away, and with the guards running after us, when out of the dark there was a sound, or something. I don’t know—”

“If I may,” one of the Septumvirate said, and as he closed his eyes a sensation filled the room that chilled the blood, leaving an uncomfortable silence where a howl or a scream ought to have gone.

Hans, face turned ashen, nodded. “Like that.” He took a deep breath before he was able to say more. “I don’t remember too much of what happened next. We went off into the wilderness, very fast, it felt like, and the next I knew we were up in the mountains. I saw Anja and the draug—they were standing, facing each other. With my own eyes I watched the draug vanish into thin air, and after it did Anja fell. She seemed alright when I ran over to help, and we went back down toward the village.”

The Septumvirate were, to a man, leaning forward over the table and listening with rapt attention. As Hans’ brief narrative came to an end, the speaker said, “Remarkable. You are prepared to swear that things occurred exactly as you describe?”

“Masters, if it weren’t for Anja I’d not be here today to tell you about it. I’ll swear by whatever you want.”

“How did you come to correspond with Mikel Skräskyddsling?”

“It was Anja’s idea that we get her to the city and trained. She still doesn’t know exactly what she did, or how she did it, and as I understand it she’s not exactly comfortable that way. I chose a few of the Guilds that she wouldn’t mind, and the only letter I got back was his.”

“I expect we’ll have more to ask on that topic in time. Meanwhile, the Septumvirate would very much like to meet this Anja Grevdarsdottir. Bring her before us.”

Anja awoke with a start, a roll of thunder seeming to her to fade from her ears. She took a deep breath, and a moment later she saw the sunlight streaming in through the window.

She sat up, inspecting the room she found herself in. It was long and narrow. The bed in which she sat was pushed up against one of the long walls, and would not have fit the other way. Across from the bed there was a wardrobe, writing desk, and chair, with barely enough space between them and the bed to walk past. On the short wall at the head of the bed was the window, and opposite that the door.

Anja got out of bed and opened the wardrobe. Finding it empty, she glanced down with mild distaste at her traveling clothes, dirty from a long journey with too few stops, sighed a sigh of resignation, and regained some of her good humor. With the aid of a mirror on the wardrobe’s door she did what little she could to make herself look a little bit more presentable and left the room.

She stood in the doorway, the singular corridor outside inspiring greater recollection than the nondescript room had. She remembered spiraling upward along the circular, gently-sloped hallway she saw before her and collapsing, exhausted, in the bed. She spent a moment trying to remember what she’d seen on the way up. She found that she could remember standing in the rain with Hans and being conducted through the gates, and she could remember waking up moments ago. The time in between was more than a little foggy.

An older man who was wearing what Anja recognized as mages’ robes passed, and she fell in behind him. They descended, the hallway curving away to the right in front of them, until they came to a stairway. The sounds of conversation and the smells of food wafted up from below.

Anja followed the mage down the stairs and into one of the largest rooms she had ever seen. It was circular, and the walls were the right distance apart to be the outer walls of the tower. The windows spaced evenly along them suggested that guess was right. A railing ahead, punctured by two great curving stairways, suggested that Anja stood upon a balcony, and as she approached the railing she found she was right.

The room was furnished in a way that reminded her of her father’s great hall: tables and chairs surrounded by more comfortable seating, shelves upon shelves of books, and a handful of tafl boards. She guessed there were about a hundred and fifty people between the balcony and the lower level, rather more than half in mages’ robes, and another ten or twenty servants.

She went down the nearer stairway, finding it somewhat unusual that by and large the other people in the room didn’t spare her a second glance. She shrugged the feeling off, realizing just how hungry she was—by her reckoning it had been a little more than two and a half days since her last real meal. She seated herself at a table occupied by a large quantity of food and two mages making quite a dent in it. The mages looked up when she sat down. One offered a curt greeting, and beyond that they ignored her. She made a polite reply anyway, glanced sidelong at the other tables to see if there were any obvious rules about the food, and after a moment or two decided that, under the circumstances, she didn’t care. She poured herself a cup of tea, tore off a piece of bread, skewered a few links of sausage…

She lost track of the time, but some of it passed, and eventually she found her plate rather less full and herself more so. She was sitting back, sipping contentedly at her tea, when she felt someone walk up to her. She turned, and was surprised to find a pointed finger a few inches from her nose.