Hall of Adulation

Chapter 8 : Hall of Adulation

Outside the glass were canopied streets entwined and streaking murders of white corvids. Inside sat a dull chamber, lit scarcely by candle. Cold stone floors crawled below a modest ceiling, uncustomarily devoid of its grand arches. Sitting by the window—which dominated all of the western wall—was a crumpled sack of sagged flesh in a chair with wheels. His skin was loose and veined richly. His left hand twitched, his gray old eyes batted, but he was otherwise still. Like some blighted trophy, Jo’er Ovalin loomed crestfallen in the bleak edge of his hall, his stare sent tilted through the glass, where streets bustled and winds blew and life was lived in grandeur and distress all the same. A great scowl took his face in sight of the winding streets of Galehaven. Looking up, which seemed to him a great effort, he beheld the Ashomdus Wrack: a wide-armed monument of waved stone standing spine-like to one of the city’s many rugged mounds. Jo’er gazed, trying to piece together some reason behind the eternal vigilance of its stone eyes, some justification for such longing servitude, such sake for a duty without yearning its boon, but he found only the shadow of its brow. Impossibly, his scowl sunk lower, then the door came ajar.

In stride came Veidt, with a loose coat of black silk and gray trousers so plain they seemed unbefitting of his station, and even that of a steward stations lower. His dark hair was done into a tail as it often was, and on his face beamed a certain splendour of soul. Behind him stomped a hulking ingot of strength, coated crimson, with a hangman’s helm and a stature so immense he had to crouch, place a fist over the entrance’s head, and wedge himself sideways into the chamber. Osi Dragul closed the door gently after his entry, though the power behind even a lone finger sealed it unevenly, forced a sound with the semblance of a slam. Annoyed, lingering near embarrassment, Veidt shot him a probing glance, and Osi slowed, then straightened, indignant. He turned to sift his hard gaze through the chamber’s decor, but in that it was limited, and quickly he came bored.

Jo’er did not greet his son nor shift to spot his guard, yet he knew full well who had entered his hall. The eyes of the Ashomdus Wrack held him forward. Seldom did the old cripple receive visitors, and rarer still did he receive those who denied him the courtesy of a knock before entering his chamber.

“Father,” said Veidt. “I’ve good news.”

“Do you?” asked Jo’er in a frail croak, seconds from decay, it seemed. “What goodness has the High Ovalin found today?”

Veidt stepped close behind his father. “Not found. I daresay forged, for indeed this was a troubled pursuit. Yet I think it will prove more than worthy.” He raised a hand, tempted to brace it upon the chair of Jo’er, but the shadow from his slumped back made the leather’s touch an imposing thing, so his hand fell to his side, and his words resumed with an impersonal force. “As we speak, a team of mine charts into the underearth. I believe, dear father, in some odd days—”

“Dear father, the High Ovalin says,” groaned Jo’er, miserably forthright. “And when, Veidt, have I ever been a dear thing to you? You and your raiders, pretending at nobility. Saying ‘dears’ and ‘sirs’ like it means something to you.” He scoffed, and in woe shook his head.

“Would you at least know the object of your scorn,” Veidt asked, his enthusiasm since staled, “before naming it wrong?”

“Oh, I know it. I know it everyday, when I see fires spark up low in the byways. When I smell smoke draft in from the West, I know it.” Jo’er turned to Veidt, and shared a hardship with the blue sting of his eyes. “Your deeds are not some hidden thing as you deign them to be, much to the ache of the house Ovalin.”

Jo’er returned to the window and Veidt fell compelled to gaze against it too. What scroll of squalor painted beyond the glass—in such muddy dyes of brown and gray—could earn the care of his father more than his father’s son? What, in all that filth and cold brick, was better than him? Veidt flickered with a certain fury, but suffered it silently, then spoke again with calm, a reluctance that could not overshadow his spite.

“And does its venerable head know some horrid truth Galehaven does not?” He paced aside, dejected. “Suppose you’d rather I leave our gates unmanned, so that you can roll to your window and see a quiet sky.”

“I’ve heard tell, boy,” Jo’er persisted, his chair creaking under his dreary slump. “I’ve heard it said all that red metal you prance about in wasn’t forged… and where else does red come from, eh? Surely I’ve taught you that, if anything…”

“You taught the distinction between want and necessity, father. Mere wager and true conviction. I had thought you’d at least know it yourself,” said Veidt with a forward reel, before attempting to slow himself. “It is that same necessity that brings me before you now, to share our victory you are so desperate to—”

“Necessity, says the good lord, bathed in harlot salts, with the very sigil of wanton strength to shadow his every step, from alley to bar back to alley again.” Jo’er spat against his own floors and that splat of ailed discontent struck his son’s eye like venom in his neck, sporting a sickened vein in its sight, and indeed his throat did choke when it sought speech in wake of that shame. “Drop your deceit at a weaker door,” Jo’er commanded, firm despite all his frailty.

Sunken, Veidt reclined. With one step back he made himself tall, as if to distract from the briny wane of his pride. He fought to swallow, and when he at last gulped down that caustic nerve, his gaze filled the cracks of the floor, for in truth if they aimed high, they would break the old man’s decrepit little heart.

“And where might I find a door weaker than your own?” asked Veidt, a grudge loading in his jaw. “No guards to shield you, no stewards to tend to your many needs… You speak so highly of nobility, father, while clearly it has forgotten you.”

Now Jo’er laughed, cruelly, with a pain of tongue that peppered each gasp. “Is that what you deem noble, dear boy? Whores to pamper you? Better men to man the door?” Again, his head shook, guilty of his role in raising the lord, blind to any silk accessories of his soul. “What son have I, who sees merit in the sum of his spoils…?”

“And yet,” Veidt began, with contempt now quivering in his stare that brought the room to a rattle, “there was a time without whores to clean me and blades to keep me whole.” Now, he stepped near, brazen and appetent in an ignoble secrecy, looming upon a dear, sour truth soon to break and amuse by its clatterings. “Do you remember Njall, father? Do you remember the horror in your old eyes when you saw what rode home, crumpled over that wagon?”

Jo’er rocked in discomfort and, sensing his vulnerability, Veidt propped a heavy hand over his father’s shoulder, then leaned low. He felt bones jitter under his fingers and so his fist tightened.

“So quick you are to shun my providence.” Like a bite his tone hardened; drew fast. “But without it you were fearful, poor, crawling from bed to porch to pray your son home.”

His father shook loose of his grip, contaminated by it, though it strained him and made him wince. “Aye, ‘cause then there was a son worth praying for!” he rejected, snubbing the sight of his boy for the window once more. “Now there’s only another beast in the world.” For a moment, his voice wavered and the words came forlorn, clasped by an evil memory still shallow in its grave. “I’ve seen enough beasts,” Jo’er lamented, his harsh upset retired.

Veidt’s stare thawed. He recalled his father’s torment, his maiming at the hands of an Arakvinin horror that left him crippled, and there was renewed some benign rapport.

“If I was then the man I am now,” he began, honest and of great regret that shuddered his words, weakened all prior warning. “That monster would never have touched you. Not with one hair on its hand, it would not.”

Jo’er shook his head, like some teacher whose words a student could not grasp. At last worn down and feeling of his age, he succumbed to a hunch and blinked wet eyes at the glass. “You would’ve slaughtered it, Veidt. As you’ve slaughtered so many others,” said Jo’er. “And as it slaughtered me.” He sighed, deeply. “Do you not see it, boy? You’re little different from the horror that set me in this chair. Save that it came from below, and you were born of a woman I loved.” He keeled forward, whimpered, effete. “I thank the All-Father she can’t see you now…”

Starstruck—by that tone that swore it served neutral truth, by his own father’s unanswering antipathy—Veidt at once shrunk; away from his anger, from his sorrow and all his cautious thoughts. As those croaked slurs trickled down his ear, the room expanded before him, the shadows snagged, and the chair’s idol twisted until seated in it was a stranger. The mere thought of his mother concussed him, splintering his credence. Its rifts were belief, and they grew and darkened, and in their depths fell sin and need and all the burden of neither with shame playing their shepherd. Njall flashed red in his eyes, its carnage trickling close in behind like light chasing a falling sun. From that burning wound, he heard the whispers of those he dragged dead to their graves, the starved, hounding wails of those that slew them; all shames set aflame behind his bewitched eye. The shades of Scourgers drowned him in fur, fury and terrible, terrible anguish, as each of their gruesome deeds sang to him again. Again, were the mountains real and the snows deep, the skies loud and the cries deafening. Beasts in cave and burrow, eyes perverted upon men. Again, that dread loom and the hush of the fallen. But, in a lapse of breath, Veidt found an air of clemency, impossibly, and the might of those monsters narrowed his eyes in hate. Their unwavering will to feed, to persist flogged his thoughts—their invincibility to the war cries that condemned them and their focus that prevailed beyond even an arrow’s pain—until their taint twisted his lips into toothed delight. No different, he thought, and suddenly a fiery truth took him that wedged wrath out from his lungs and set his heart pumping after it.

“No. ‘Cause she’s dead,” said Veidt, a stone, unfeeling grind in his throat. “She died carrying you about like some sickly babe. Tending to the chores and the labours you proved too feeble to answer.” He stepped in front of Jo’er and his wheeled chair, though with his back to his father’s nettled, embarrassed scowl, and like a performer at his stage stanced centerfold before the glass. “But I am here and ever I shall remain, until age takes you. For unlike her, I need nothing of you.” Over his shoulder he threw peril. “I, despite your beliefs, father, bear the strength to stand alone.” Veidt came close, then crouched to level his gaze with Jo’er’s. “And you are wrong again, for that beast that left you broken was nothing like me.” His eyes crawled over the crippled man as if they sought to peel at his skin and, when they raised, a grin—brimmed with diffident merry—perched below them. “Indeed, it was a far better thing than us both,” he told, sincerity pulsing his loom, until it drew far beyond that little chair.

With his son out of sight, where there was once relief Jo’er now trembled with worry. He had seen that same gaze just then that returned fractured from Njall so many ages ago. It was wrong and his role in its birth made his skin pale.

“Come then, Veidt,” said Jo’er, cautiously, quietly, with an uncertain hurt. “Tell of this victory we’ve staked our hearts for.” There was a command, but to Jo’er, the compromise of allowance was surrender in the strictest sense.

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At last unopposed, Veidt leaned back and savoured a silence. Then he smiled, breathed conquest while his mind settled, and returned adjusted once more.

“The monarch of the underearth,” he said, proud. “The great Brintcrag, who existed only in whisper and myth before, has been found. Rumors rise from the depths of its grandeur. The digs yield sight of its tracks; wide and guttural, mightier than the earth that sports them. Now, it is hunted, near the bellies of Harlm. All of its power—to subvert, to dominate—will be brought before us soon. Even now, my bladesmen bleed for it: the Call.” His head soared with wonder. “Imagine, after so long, after so much searching, the will over the monstrous will be owned by man.”

Jo’er stayed silent. But his shiver showed the truth of his fear.

“Arakvan’s arsenal…” Veidt said in a daze. “My own. With nothing more than a horn hewed off its owner, and a bag to carry it home.”

“Such dreams,” groaned his father. “‘A monarch to monsters’… Do you trust these fables beyond reason, Veidt? Does the escape from your humanity inspire you so, that truth is forgot?”

“Truth be damned,” he scorned. “The Call is a means to an end. For all things, all ailments of our beast-riddled age. For all war, misery, famine—for all time. Whether its blast bends them servient or scares them off in droves, the Call is victory.” Now he did look to the window, where morning peeked its blazing head, and unperturbed he gazed long, wishing he was there under the earth with his killers to cull the great prize. “Arakvan is owed to its horrors, and by my will we may claim the means to master them all: a perfect power, at nature’s bloody summit.”

Jo’er shook his head, defiant still. “You’ve found only an old beast’s bones, Veidt. The underearth is quick and cruel. It will cave before your intrusion until every bladesmen you can buy is swallowed into darkness, and the debt is repaid. If it makes a sound or tears the damned world apart, all you’ve done is unearth another weapon.”

Veidt turned to face him, frank. “And how else, then, are wars won?”

“There is no war, Veidt. There hasn’t been for years.”

The door came open with a romp and a swing, and into the hall a guard stepped calling. Before his words could be heard, Osi rose against him, and with a fist clamped across the man’s neck he bashed the intruder into the wall, and by his throat lifted him until he gagged.

Veidt called him off wearily, so the trespasser fell to his knees, panting, with the great shade of Osi hanging over him. The guard was sent by Sunt, and shared in haste that the High Conrord awaited his lordly peer in the Hall of Adulation, with dire news. Reluctant but relieved to leave his father for a thing other than scorn, Veidt stalked down the corridor and up a flight of narrow stairs, until the floor before him was high but dark, without glass to show it sky. He passed a long blue carpet with gold edges, its risk of wear allayed by a dozen guards.

Striding to its other end, the High Ovalin gazed up at the great door of iron and gold, where corvids laced around metal bands. Osi pushed the doors askew, then, with a wave from his master, sealed them behind Veidt, and placed himself in the way of the entrance; a barrier against any intrusion. The guards there bore certain curiosities, but none persisted past the gaze of Osi Dragul.

The chamber within—long and wide—was high-ceilinged, but made a narrow passage through the sheer volume of carved exploits walling its sides. Like some causeway of rite, robed, hooded, and faceless men of sandstone twirled and capsized along the chamber’s either length, infatuated in worship and so crazed to their devotion there seemed an aura of animation behind their eyeless frenzy. They were without direction, and yet all aimed forward, to the monument at the hall’s very end: a great gazing orb, etched into the wall. It was called Father’s Watch, and the mist of its pupil that was layered with a dozen lashes sought to encapsulate the cold, vibrant eye of the All-Father himself. Casting a light against the massive orb were lanterns, hanging high from ceiling chains. They fed its roll an underlining shadow that fagged the power of its gawk, and in doing irked that intense alert of the Hall of Adulation.

With his brown scowl upon it and his stance adding to its shade, Sunt admired its every chip. His robes—blue with gold streaks—were malformed, fitted as if they aimed to accommodate a third arm or a doubled hip. While they laid over him lax and cloak-like, his heart and gut were unsheathed of them, alongside an adjacent shoulder, his right leg, and most of his waist, with none of its silk reaching so far as his knees. Under was a light steel of red and black, darkened under the loft of his robes and strong to the eye that did indeed envelop him in full. From his hip hung a conductor’s stick of white marble with a battered edge, though far more akin to a baton.

Hearing the door slide shut, High Conrord spoke with stealth, leisure, and a snakish mime that cut his words low. “Morning, Veidt. I must be candid, you were not expected to arrive so unguarded.” He turned to set his watch upon the High Ovalin, squeezing him in the tight slit of his stare. “Though I suppose when one guard is Osi, one is many.”

“What?” asked Veidt. “Did you hear his stomps?”

“Felt them,” he corrected, half serious. “Though I prefer a tool more slight.”

“Yes, yes,” said Veidt in a slow approach down the hall. “You and your rats.”

“We’ve all rodents in our employ, Veidt. Some just happen to be armoured.”

Veidt closed the gap. He wrapped his hands behind his back and shared a stare against the stone eye, unimpressed. “Why am I here, Sunt? We usually save this lovely banter of ours for night, at least, when there’s ale to actually make it pleasant.”

“Ah, you do have affairs to attend to, I suppose,” he muttered. “Such as the revolt in Ochros, which I hear is gaining. Or, is it the fell town of Banor this morning?” Sunt shrugged. “The good Father was particularly intent on keeping that one above ground, if I’m not mistaken.”

“He’s as ‘good’ as the pork that fills him,” groaned Veidt, “but if it’s hell for Banor’s pigs, the Pale Gut will find new meats to burden with his ‘intent’. In the midstwhile, yours should stay firm upon your own affairs. It’s easy to confuse your station, Sunt, but not so easy to take it back, once the wrong eyes glance twice at your deeds. Does our good Father know the limbs we’re paid to send your purity north? Has he heard how desperate pleas for ferrovine grow anywhere higher than Helmdor’s Spite?”

“He’ll care about that when there’s something real to care for,” Sunt dismissed, before twisting with a sly aggress. “Oh, but my apologies… I’ve forgotten how charitable you’ve grown in the time between your hangings. Surely, the hardships of the commonfolk are of much greater worth to you than things as mere as gold and silver.” The brown of his stare narrowed upon Veidt, and in them resided a dark force. “Perhaps Arrenfaeld left you changed, Veidt. I just wonder if you discovered this knack for good will before or after you set it aflame.”

Veidt turned on him then, a bitter forsaking in his squint. “Careful, now. Such a grave allegation to be made so early. It would be a shame to sully noon with its dismiss.”

“As I said,” said Sunt, on the verge of a grin. “I prefer a tool more slight.”

“I do not,” Veidt revoked.

“Clearly,” said Sunt, reeling off diffusively. “Boasting of your vengeance to our Vithicar just as your position was softened under his words… It was great luck that those bandits, who proved apt enough to massacre a hamlet, were found and dispatched of so swiftly.” He shook his head. “Truly, a worthy feat of the Crimson Clad. A shame, though, that they linger still amidst the high swards when they could instead return to reap their rewards.” Impish, he held Veidt in his sights. “Or perhaps their rewards are with them now.”

“Believe it or not, Sunt, they remain where there are those to protect. As is their duty, no matter how many times you and Lydae fantasize of my villainy.” He found the Father’s Watch again, then lost himself to its thousand etches while his mind roamed the faraway winds. “You may be quick to turn your back to anyone with empty pockets, but there are some who fight for reasons greater than stacking coin. There are those who suffer the winds, beyond our haven, for the sake only of those without.”

“I’m glad,” Sunt quipped with a keen smile. “I do hope those garrisoned at Searaith prove as enduring in their suffering. Especially with such a fierce wind towards them, and so many folk without a haven to protect.”

Veidt turned, crossed his arms and leaned against the adoring horde of stone to better face Sunt and all the mystery of his words. Sandstone fingers crept over his shoulders like a derelict embrace to their screaming conformity. “Speak clearly, Sunt,” he demanded. “I am not one to fall enthralled at these trite subtleties you pride yourself on. We are far from the beggars of the Nydessius. You can dare to be cruel, here.”

“A swarm of raiders comes in from Meddlelfore,” said Sunt. “Some hundred strong, I’ve heard, with their sights set south upon Searaith. They seek to plunder the Gold Etch, presumably. Perhaps for ransom. Perhaps pleasure, but regardless they’ve made the Whilderwheats their hunting ground, and their appetite only grows.”

“A lie,” Veidt denied. “For you would divulge nothing that does not ail me.”

“You mistake me, Veidt. From their dispatch we both gain,” Sunt reasoned, trailing towards the shallow depths of the hall with his hand tracing along their devoted masses. “If Searaith falls, as does our stock of ferrovine, and my powers in the wake of that loss become as finite as yours in failure to protect it.”

“Yes, so you say,” Veidt wondered, unsure and impatient. “I will offer this threat to Searaith's northern garrison, and we will see through their blood what your words are worth.”

“Searaith?” asked Sunt, curious if not challenging. “Not Eritle?”

Now Veidt paused a moment, seeing Sunt anew and hearing his story over in his head. He considered if perhaps the band was far larger than told, or perhaps far smaller, or perhaps the threat was the question itself; purposed only to extract some obscure fact from him. The uncertainty darkened Veidt, as already did the morning prove all too trying.

“Eritle’s garrison stays with Eritle,” he said firmly. “My centenars will concur.”

“You’d sooner risk Searaith than lonely old Eritle?” Sunt pressed. “What value is there in that, aside from a cleaner conscience and more cabalder to fog the world?”

“If you spoke honestly, Sunt, then the northern garrison will prove more than worthy,” he blurted with a haste. “With such a passion to learn Arrenfaeld’s fate, I am surprised how soon you’d leave Eritle to the fires.”

“Do not underestimate this threat, Veidt,” said a stern Sunt. “We have our battles, but if Searaith is threatened as is our state. As is the Clergy. As is the very memory of Datharl, the First. There is more at stake than our prides.” He produced a stack of papers wrapped by twine and held it to Veidt, who received it in all hesitance. “Accounts from the guards at Nelkard, backed by commonfolk reports. They were seen last alow the Haddlebush, due south.”

“And so they were,” said Veidt, flipping through the edges of the sealed stack. “Then let them die, for both our sakes.”

Veidt turned to leave, though halfway down the hall Sunt stopped him.

“And the sake of the realm, of course.”

The High Ovalin laughed, then carried on. “Of course,” he said, leaving the chamber as Osi absorbed the sight of him under his giant stature.

The doors shut, and the echo of their close boomed through the hall; riding up each stone curve to shout tenfold at the Father’s Watch. Sunt savoured the quiet that followed, humoured by some discrete thing, then with an acrid eye rivaled the monument’s ogle. Its thousand etches filled his glare, and Sunt felt relief, for in that moment he beheld the wounds of God. How could the All-Father, he thought, if so hurt and aged, ever assail him for his sins?

Sunt bounded down the hall, left the bleak chamber, and took to his own, high in the keep’s towers. From there, his hand worked, and a letter was forged. Veidt was undelicate, and revealed whatever he sought to the northeast amidst his digs had already demanded the bulk of Eritle’s garrison, meaning it was a precious thing to him indeed, and something he could never be allowed to receive. So with haste did Sunt write, and soon, by his sway, an outfit rode ardent to the Bridgebarge of Theragus, where they would thus remain, until blood came at last. Then was a second letter composed, crafted slower and with eyes ever to his back and whoever might gaze over it, and when done it flew west, on and on towards a camp, clustered along some shallow gully just low of Searaith’s first mile. There, eager minds awaited it, and blades were sharpened till it came.

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