Nobility Chapter 25

Daniel passed the medallion back to Lord Aidan. “I’m afraid I couldn’t say what to make of it, my lord,” he admitted. He hoped the inscription was, itself, somehow inscrutable, mysterious enough that his confusion would not be immediately identified as illiteracy. He didn’t know why the idea shamed him so: less than half the folk of his village could read, and even Lord Hector did so only poorly, it was said. Daniel’s father could sign his name, but that was all. His mother knew her letters, as long as the script wasn’t too fancy, and occasionally sounded out words at need, but that need was infrequent. Daniel had never bothered to learn. Some were surprised by this, those who knew his tendency to daydream, but the only books in his village were a few copies of the Bible, and since he had no plans to join he clergy, he supposed everything he needed to know of those would be told to him by the priest. Despite Daniel’s condition being reasonable, even expected, he found himself mortified at the thought that Lord Aidan, who had thought him so worthy of respect and even consideration, would recognize this deficiency.

The miller’s son read faces better than letters, though, and he caught the knowing look pass behind Aidan’s eyes as he took back the amulet. The noble said nothing, but Daniel’s heart sank, and his stare dropped to the crumbs left on the board that sat on the table before him. His eyes flicked up again, though, when Lord Aidan began to read, the unfamiliar words coming in a cadence that couldn’t be mistaken.

“When bloody revels the weapon, the darkness shall arise, inviting the servants of hellfire, to come reclaim their prize.”

Daniel’s throat tightened, horror catching the breath in his chest. His mind swam. The pattern of the rhyme matched Roland’s, and the small man had admitted he and his brothers still withheld parts of it. What did the verse mean about the servants of hellfire reclaiming their prize? It said the “weapon” would revel in blood, and Daniel’s skin crawled at the memory of how the sword sang in triumph or crooned in satisfaction whenever it took a taste. As if all this wasn’t enough, Captain Jacob’s reports of treachery had described men in black robes, just like the one Roland wore. The boy turned suddenly toward the monk while scrabbling at his sword belt as the blade suddenly took on a terrible weight, as though it would drag him through the floor, through the very earth, down into the depths of perdition.

The monk, for his part, gasped and crossed himself, begging Lord Aidan to read no more.

“There is no more,” Aidan replied, turning the medallion to inspect both sides, and even the wide, flat edge. “What do you know of this?”

Daniel felt both eager and terrified to hear Roland’s reply, some part of him preparing to disbelieve the monk’s words, no matter what they were. Whatever his own desires, he could hear nothing of the conversation as the sword’s song swelled in his mind, a layered, discordant flurry of strings and brass that seemed to express panic, sorrow, and misery all at once, calling to mind the wide-eyed, creased-browed image of a hound being beaten without any understanding of what it had done wrong.

“Hold, there, Daniel,” Captain Geoffrey ordered, silencing Roland’s stammering reply. “I suffer you to keep arms in my lord’s presence by his order, but I will be forced to act if you don’t calm yourself.”

As desperate as Daniel had been to rid himself of the sword only a moment ago, and not for the first time, the threat of having it forcibly taken sparked a hot defiance in his gut, and that reaction only troubled him more. He forced his hands to relax and placed them in plain view on the table, his ring belt now half uncinched and the sword still hanging loosely at his side. His heart hammered at his ribs, the sword’s song now completely silent, leaving a hole in his mind where it used to be.

Aidan’s gaze moved from Roland to Geoffrey to Daniel and back again. Unspeakable tension filled the room. As if satisfied Daniel wasn’t immediately unwell, he addressed Roland once again, though anyone following his eyes couldn’t help notice he kept the boy in the corner of his focus. “You may answer now, Roland.”

“The prophecy came to my fore-brothers a century ago, more or less,” he explained, composing himself.

“What prophecy is this?” Lord Aidan asked, interrupting.

“It may be that with so many strange words and deeds multiplying throughout your most verdant of lands, Lord Aidan,” Sir Reuben piped up, “a full elucidation of that matter is needful of more time than we dare lavish upon it just now. Suffice to say it most confidently foretold the appearance of wondrous blade that yesterday morn chose Page Daniel, that same which seems now to trouble him so.”

“Very well,” Aidan relented with a sigh. “Go on, Roland.”

The monk nodded. “The rhyme my order recites was written many years ago by one of our number who was a steward in the house of Sir Reuben’s father. He did it to codify and pass down our many elucidations; the original signs were far more abstruse…and open to interpretation. A schism erupted between my fore-brothers, those who believed the sword was a force for good, and others who thought it foreboded ill. In time the factions even fell to bloodshed within the monastery itself, but in the end the others were forced out. Occasionally we clash with them in our secret work, usually indirectly. This cabal has fallen into the hands of leaders who now seek to capture the weapon for their own ends. Their lust for power has corrupted them, and they have warped even their old interpretation of the prophecy to suit.” Roland reached under his tunic to produce a medallion not unlike that in Aidan’s hand, save that the monk’s bore the symbol of two, crossed croziers, while the lord’s showed flaming brands. “In all things there is symmetry. Even our prophetic verses, betrayed to the enemy by treachery, have become a pattern for their own, as though the two sides spin about the same center, like opposite spokes on a wheel.”

Daniel could see Lord Aidan listening with care to the monk’s words, but when he’d finished speaking Aidan looked, instead, to Daniel, noting his skeptical expression. The boy tried to read the noble’s face in turn, studying the man. Literate or not, he considered, a miller’s son could be wise if he followed the right example, and of all the strange and lofty character’s he’d so recently met, Lord Aidan, and the men with whom he surrounded himself, showed more wisdom than either the knight or the monk. Considering his new acquaintances, though, he couldn’t help but steal a glance to Rebekah, and he saw she looked at him as well, her face full not of calculation, as the lord’s, but only of concern for him. The anxiety in her pretty eyes somehow warmed him, so he forced his thoughts back to the meeting before they could distract him. Returning his gaze to Lord Aidan, he observed the fair-haired noble’s dispassionate expression. He stared at Daniel for an extra heartbeat as if urging him to watch with care before turning back to Roland and saying, “Tell me more.”