To Osmont and Back

[Toffee 2843]

 

 

They stayed at an inn overnight. A Petran inn. Petran… Petran… d’Arkent has its roots in Petran culture, her cousin Caliope had said, much to everyone’s confusion. The Duchy of Sunholdt resided in the province of the Lower Petra in the Holy Orenian Empire, but Erika wouldn’t describe them as Petran, especially considering the connotations with the extant realm of the Petra. She said as much to Caliope at her own nameday, but as soon as she returned to New Valdev from Balian, she had gone straight to the royal archives.

 

The archives were, unsurprisingly, frustratingly light on Imperial history, but Erika had many tomes and scrolls borrowed from the library in Chambery from when she conducted her research on Princess Charlotte and Lady Moliana. She found a passage that said the Petrine culture was that of the ruling class of the Empire, named for Emperor Peter III. High nobility the House d’Arkent might have been, but they could not safely be described as having Petrine roots. She had been right to correct Caliope.

 

Dmitry was constantly trying to find a flaw in her, but in this arena, he would find none. Only perfect, sparkling clarity. He was outside to the inn just now, tending to the horses. Brooding and sullen as usual, with a bone to pick with anyone who had lived a soft and sheltered life (like Erika), but she had begun to see his sly humour peeking out from behind the snark. And he was good with horses. They seemed to like him. You can tell a lot about a man by the way he treats his livestock, her father would always say.

 

The group of them were headed for Osmont, Prince Sigmar’s new holdings, granted to him by King Therin of the Petra for some heroic deed or another he had done at the tender age of fifteen. Five of them in all; Sigmar, Dmitry, Sosina, Nóruiel, and Erika. A rather odd group, but the journey from Haense had been pleasant, even if she couldn’t keep up with Sosina and Sigmar when they raced each other across the hills, Sosina’s hair streaming behind her in a fiery banner.

 

“What are you thinking about?” Nóruiel joined her at the window, facing out onto the city square. It had been more lively at sunset, but now all the vendors had closed their stalls and the encroaching night was still and quiet.

 

“Nothing.” Everything. Erika never could seem to shut her mind off, even when she was just about to fall asleep.

 

Nóruiel shrugged. Those silvery irises of hers caught the dying light, glinting like the flash of fish scales in a river before it flitted away. Such fascinating eyes, this princess of the Númenedain had. She seemed fascinating as well, even if Erika had only met Nóruiel and not the girl Nori who Sigmar spoke so fondly of. “Sosina and I are readying for bed. Sigmar wants to ride out at first light.”

 

Sure enough, watery morning light had no sooner trickled through the flimsy curtains that there came a pounding on Erika’s door. “Hurry up and get dressed. The horses are already bridled.”

 

Dmitry. Impatient and blunt and very discourteous. Didn’t he know she usually had Primrose to help her dress in the mornings and comb out her hair? 

 

Erika came downstairs to find the others already mounted, Sigmar holding Kostana’s reins in one hand. Erika had named her for the sign of the Wind, and Kostana would have run as quick and fierce as a mountain zephyr if only Erika were bold enough to let her run free. But she was afraid of falling, so she kept Kostana to a sedate canter at the back of the group.

 

They rode for half the morning. Up ahead, the others spoke and laughed, but their voices were snatched away by the wind before Erika could be privy to them. She didn’t mind. The landscape was so different compared to Haense; it occupied her wholly trying to commit the flora to memory so she could sketch them later, and compare them with her books on botany. Fields of bright wildflowers, orchards with so many different kinds of fruit hanging heavy from the branches. Nothing like the mean, bent apple trees dotting the Karoswald.

 

The sun hung bright and golden far ahead by the time they reached the keep. Sigmar slipped in first to raise the portcullis for the rest of them. A few thin trees rose from the courtyard, providing little shade, and around them the stone loomed mossy and windswept. A little worse for wear, this Osmont, the towers scratching the sky in crooked fingers, the stable stalls leaning together like drunkards, but it was Sigmar’s very own.

 

“A tour,” Sigmar announced, leading them from the dirt courtyard into a low-ceilinged kitchen. Yesterday’s hunt hung from a meat hook in the corner, crusted with salt to dry it. A hog. He would be better served brushing the meat with powdered cryptus shrooms, but the group moved quickly to the outer walkways, so Erika held her tongue.

 

This keep was a winding trail of stone and wooden paths, some under shelter, cutting through barrel towers, and others clinging to the edges of parapets, so narrow Erika had to wonder if they had taken a wrong turn and were simply walking along the walls. They passed a mess of straw and raven cages, most standing open and empty, but one with a lone, scrawny bird pecking at the wooden bars. Up a rattling pulley lift to a draughty tower, where Sosina and Nóruiel disappeared up a ladder. Dmitry had wandered off somewhere when they mounted a spiral stairwell. That left Erika and Sigmar, though when Sigmar crossed a narrow gable to the tower on the other side, Erika stopped short, clinging to the stone.

 

“Don’t be afraid.” Sigmar moved nimbly across the roof, surefooted and utterly devoid of fear. He held out a hand, guiding Erika across the rickety wooden ridge. She squeezed her eyes shut and let him lead her, blindly. The wind tore at her skirts and at one point she teetered, her heart rising in her throat, but Sigmar led her safely to the other side.

 

Different… Sigmar came back different. More irreverent than before, like life and death were little more than children’s games, and he knew the secret to rise above it all. Perhaps he did. Who knew what he had seen beyond the veil, before that holy flame pulled him back? He never spoke of it, only made flippant japes about his own demise.

 

“A place for alchemy.” Sigmar released her hand and Erika’s eyes slowly fluttered open. “You seem the sort.”

 

The wind was quieter here. Though it whistled and moaned between the towers, the drip-drip-dripping of alchemical equipment nearly drowned it out. Glass vats, winding tubes, potted herbs, chopping boards, measuring instruments, cabinets filled with dark bottles and ceramic pots. Small and cramped and dark, with only a small slatted window and a tallow candle to see by—nothing like her mother’s laboratory in Jerovitz—but it was quaint and private and hers, if she wanted it.

 

“Take a tower, if you like. This tower, another tower, it makes no matter to me. This is a place for all my friends.”

 

They visited the library next, on a level below in a squat building attached to the main keep.

 

“You really should get some drapes to hang over these shutters.” Erika trailed her fingertips across the dusty shelves. A few books here, but a scant collection, connected by stringy cobwebs. “The mildew and rot will get to them, not to mention the sunlight.”

 

Already, she pictured the shelves restored, filled with her collection of precious books. Well over a hundred, she had told Nóruiel. Most were in Castle Emsgrad in the depths of storage, a small chest of her most favoured tomes resting in piles around the office of the Deputy Palatine. An office she did not yet fill, but the Lady Palatine let her have use of, for some peace and quiet while she conducted her research.

 

It didn’t take long to finish the rest of the tour. Osmont was not a very large keep, but it had character, and interesting nooks and crannies Erika would have delighted in exploring with her siblings when she was a girl. She was still half a girl—perhaps one day she would come back here and discover the rest of Osmont’s secrets. She and Sigmar travelled down a narrow stairway that opened up into the courtyard, and the group became whole again. 

 

“Where to, now?”

 

The museum in Chambery had maps; huge maps stretching floor to ceiling, the details of the terrain and towns painted in exquisite, tiny details with a brush scarcely wider than a single hair. Erika had seen a tree to the east of the Petran capital, a tree with boughs so wide as to dwarf even the city of Vallagne. She told Sigmar as much, and before long the five of them were mounted again, galloping up a shallow ridge towards that great tree. Its shadow reached them long before they reached the lake at its base, the canopy muffling most sound, even though it stretched so high above their heads. A tree of perpetual autumn, leaves of russet, brown, red and gold fanning out, grander than any basilica.

 

“What is it called?” Erika slid from Kostana’s saddle, letting her roam free and tug at the tufts of grass and dandelions after testing them with a snuffle of her velvety-soft nose.

 

Dmitry and Sosina had already raced off, running across a huge root forming a bridge between the lake shore and the trunk of the tree. Fifty men could have stood around it holding hands. No, a hundred.

 

“I thought you would be the one to know.” Sigmar wandered between a set of standing stones arranged in a loose ring, coming to stop at the base of a statue of Saint Julia of Paradisus. She was carved of basalt, except for a goblet held in her outstretched hand; that seemed to be of solid gold inset with rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, but was more than likely pewter with a thin gold veneer, with garnets and blue and green beryl. Lesser stones, though just as pretty in the right light.

 

“The druids have a name for it that I can’t pronounce, something in their ancient tongue. It is of great significance to them, my books say.” Erika would have asked Nóruiel what she thought the tree was called, but she had wandered off around the edge of the lake, peering into the waters. When the sunlight hit it just so, it reflected back the exact same colour as Nóruiel’s eyes. “I will call it the Tree of Womanly Saints.”

 

“An apt name.” For it was not only Saint Julia represented here, but Saint Emma of Woldzmir, standing in the inverse. Woldzmir, Woldzmir… It all came back to Woldzmir in the end, didn’t it?

 

Of course, once Erika returned to Haense, she dove headfirst into her research and discovered that the Petrans called it the Aldtree, but to her it would always be the Tree of Womanly Saints. The shadow of the Palatine’s Tower stretched a long, dark finger over the Zodiakal board in the gathering dusk upon her return, blackening the game pieces. Yellow for Erika, red for Andrei, white for Dima. Conversations in this garden always felt like a game, a careful consideration of words to avoid any strategic blunders. Osmont loomed large in her memory, small and twisted and leaning, but more a keep than a chessboard.

 

Only Godan knew of her fate, but whatever happened, wherever she ended up, there would always be that small, dim library beneath the alchemy laboratory, hugged by the summer wind.

[carebear 1291]

Nóruiel rode with those Haenseti, finding quiet peace in the friendships she had forged among them. Sigmar, Erika, Sosina, Dmitry; such unlikely friends to have found for that Númenedain Princess. The small moments with Erika in their inn room, Sigmar's firm hand spurring on the horse, laughing with Sosina while they raced towards the keep; all was beautiful to her. She thought herself lucky, to have found such friends in this life.

She raced the ladder up to the top of the tower with Sosina, laughs and giggles echoing off the stone walls. Looking out over the view over the Petran countryside, one could forget anything. The brisk summer wind whipped her hair around, watching Erika traverse the roof below. In this moment, it was easy to forget all of their status. A Prince of Haense, the Duke of Vidaus, the daughter of the Lady-Emissar, the daughter of the Viscountess of Zvezlund. Today, they were simply her friends. Perhaps such was foolish. Her family often warned of involving one in the affairs of foreign nations. Though in this moment, she could not care.

 

"Nori, Sosina!" Sigmar called from the lab in the tower below. "Race you both down!" Nóruiel startled, having lost herself in her thoughts. She smiled, then began to clamber down, not about to back down from such a challenge. Her boots hit the dirt in the courtyard, a few moments shy of Sigmar. It mattered not to her, though. She glanced towards the tower as the others made preparations to leave.

 

The Princess prayed that one day, she might have a chance to read in Erika's library.