Spawn of Seron - Part 3
‘Explain to me why we’re going there one more time, will you?’ asked Tulley. ‘Do you think lord Dorraine has left some magic behind? He’d been mad for years you know.’
‘I don’t expect anything from the old man, but you can’t forget who he had been before the Fall,’ said Valens, nodding. ‘Seron favored the Dorraine family greatly, probably more than any other nobles, so there is a good chance there will be something enchanted by his own hand. Such a thing is likely to be too well hidden for us to find.
‘Don’t sulk though, there is something I can claim no matter what - the mansion itself, one of the oldest buildings in Salderra. Before channelers started being employed for this, Seron had been the only one able to shape the desert. Half the mansions around here are his work, and he reinforced the foundation many times over the centuries. I bet it contains as much of his blood as the Palace of the Unforgiven. The only difference is that if I try to drain the Palace, I should be prepared to fight an army of people in red..’
‘..while lord Dorraine has lost his soldiers years ago,’ Tulley finished for him. ‘I see. Now that he is dead the mansion should be deserted and you can take your time. Can we look around inside before you raze it to the ground, though?’
‘Provided we can get in.’
Simply called the Laurels, the street seated a number of houses set apart from the rest of the city. These houses stood out among the rest in the sheer size of them and the materials used in their construction. Ask anyone who had never visited Salderra before now and he would still tell you - this is where the people of considerable wealth and status spent their idle lives. While the palace at the heart of the city was grand, it was fairly utilitarian in design, on the other hand the mansions in the Laurels looked like pieces of art, each trying to outdo the next one with the intricacies of facade carvings or flower arrangements.
A formidable number of armed home guards stood watch behind each of the picturesque fences. Judging by their expressions and sluggishness of movement, they didn’t seem to fare better against the burning sun than their underpaid counterparts in the city. Valens and Tulley stopped in front of the only gate that was conspicuously unattended.
The Dorraine family mansion was as imposing as the first time Valens had seen it. He studied the two-storey building, the place he longed for when he was small and the place he hated when he realized how unfair the world really was. It was built from the same sandstone as the rest of the city but somehow more condensed and solid, shaped by magic into walls balconies and pillars. No seams or intersection could be seen, either smoothed out by the time or non-existent in the first place. Some of the bends and arcs shouldn’t have been possible, which made the mansion look twisted and unstable. Seron did not concern himself with the rules of architecture when founding the city. Why would he? His blood made anything freeze in place in any conceivable angle.
Along the big balcony in the front, above the main entrance, Valens saw faces indented into the wall. Life-sized busts of the generations of Dorraine family members, bastards excluded of course, sculpted in stone and covered with precious metals. Lords and ladies, his grandparents and great-grandparents stared down at him with discontent expressions. It must have cost a fortune to sculpt the depiction of the whole family tree for everyone to see. No one had ever accused the Dorraines of modesty, had they? On the other hand it looked like sharp noses and lank dark hair pursued male offsprings of the family since ancient times.
Valens approached the tall fence and frantically looked around for a way in. Unlike the house it wasn’t ancient, made of plain sand brick matching every other modern structure in the city. It had no gaps or tranches, the inhabitants clearly didn’t want anyone to peer inside the yard.
When a highborn family had been executed in the past there was looting. Valens remembered vividly what greed made people do, and it wouldn’t be any different now.
‘We need to hurry,’ said Valens. ‘The Dorraine’s haven’t left the premises for many years, even still there are bound to be others who recognized them at the hallows. The news of their death will be out when the dismissed mansion staff starts talking. We have to get in first and get out before anyone is the wiser.’
‘Don’t worry, Val,’ said Tulley at his back. ‘Father Warren says I am quicker and quieter than a rattlesnake when I need to be.’
‘A good comparison. Gods know, you rattle way too much,’ added Valens, then he put his fists together and intertwined the fingers, inviting Tulley to put his foot through then step on his shoulders and get over the fence. A well rehearsed motion.
Mother died when Valens was six years old and yet his naiveté hadn’t left him just then, he had wandered for days without food, looking for this place. The Dorraine’s mansion, the last place where he knew his mother had worked. He knocked on the door with his little fist and asked the guard to call his dad.
‘Go away kid,’ the man said, ‘Lord Dorraine ordered me to beat the lunacy outta you, but I don’t need no child blood on my hands. Be gone.’
Valens cried and begged. When he got weary he spread on the cobblestones in front of the grand gate. Hours passed before the passage finally opened and a tall dark haired man stepped out. Two mean hounds trotting after him. That’s when Valens understood, really understood how unwelcome illegitimate children are. So he ran. And he kept running all his life.
Now, ten years later there were no more dogs, no more lord of the house, no more guards. And the fence was no longer tall enough to stop him.
The boys flew over the stone wall in an instant, landed quietly, like a pair of experienced larcenists. Life on the streets hadn’t taught much, but what it did, it did very well. The yard wasn’t well tended to - the shrubbery and grass had grown way out of proportion and the wind was playing with leaves and wilted flowers. Evidently the Dorraines have been indisposed by the Inquisitors for quite a while. No matter how unkept, this amount of plants was impressive to someone who lived on the streets, so for a second they just stood there staring, taking in the smell and color of life around them.
Wordless, they snuck up to the front doorway, frozen faces of Valens’s relatives glaring at them, incredulous at their arrogance. Valens touched the warm wooden door. It felt as smooth and pleasant to the touch as he’d always imagined. He slid the key into the hole and tried to turn. The lock clicked, but didn’t budge. Valens sighed.
‘The key doesn’t fit. It likely isn’t even the key to the front door. I will drain the power from the blood in the foundation and we will leave right after. You can try to look around the garden for anything valuable.’
‘Hold on,’ protested Tulley. ‘How about you go poking around and leave the lock to me,’ He fished for something in his pocket for a second and then produced a number of small metal instruments.
Valens frowned. ‘Lockpicks? Since when are you a burglar?’
‘Dunno, probably since I was like five or six..’
‘Okay, stupid question. What I meant is, since when do you know how to pick locks?’
‘Since you became a channeler and I realized that no matter how well I can pick pockets I will not be able to catch up to you,’ murmured Tulley, prodding the keyhole with two instruments, a pick and a tension wrench. ‘So I figured, it is time to learn to pick other things. I’m still learning, and truthfully there weren’t many books about locksmithing and none about lock breaking in our temple, so don’t get your hopes up.’
Valens’s palms covered with sweat as he watched his friend work, there was no stopping the young scoundrel now. The god they both chose to follow was Larrion, or Larrion chose them if you believe what Father Warren preached. In a city ruled by Seron’s Divine Inquisition it was not a very popular option, it often earned you a scornful gaze or a beating if you were especially unfavored by Larrion that day. He was a fickle god after all, one day he sent you fortune, the other demise, without any decipherable rhyme or reason. This night he decided to send both in equal measure.
‘Ha!’ yelled Tulley. ‘This wasn’t so special after all, just another set of pins on top of the usual ones. These locks might look fancy, but no thief was ever supposed to get this far anyway, so on the inside they are quite ordinary. I could crack five of those with my hands tied behind my..’
An ear-piercing screech erupted from thin air, it came seemingly from every direction, filling the empty space of a quiet evening in the Laurels. There was no light, no enchantments flared on the grand doorway, but Valens felt the magic anyway. And saw Tulley fly through the air as if launched by a trebuchet. The boy did a half turn and landed in the thick greenery, only his soles visible sticking through the bushes.
It took Valens a moment to snap out of the stupor, his senses still confused he closed the distance separating him and Tulley in one hurried stride. ‘Tull? Talk to me.’
‘My fingers feel like I just tried to give sun a handshake,’ complained Tulley, thankfully alive. ‘You know, I expected you to have the channeling part covered,
‘I’m sorry, there aren’t any books on disarming enchantments in our temple either,’ said Valens, relieved. ‘Let me see. Anything else hurts? This enchantment was old and exhausted, I have a feeling we would both be dead if we tried this just a few years back.’ A quick glance confirmed Tulley’s words - his fingertips were red and tender, as if he held them in boiling water for a while, but otherwise he was unharmed.
‘We need to get you looked at,’ said Valens, helping his friend back up on his feet. ‘You never can’t be careful enough where magic is concerned.’
‘Um.. Val, that will have to wait,’ said Tulley, his eyes fixed on the doorway that just sent him flying. ‘I did it.’
The entrance to the Dorraine family mansion stood open. The darkness beneath looked menacing and inviting at the same time. Valens knew the right decision was to cut their losses and leave but there was one trait that him and Tulley shared - their curiosity always outweighed their fear.