The Ghost's Legacy (eBook)

CHAPTER TWO

Dhrumvelt Abbey

Glint from the earliest hints of dawn shone through the balcony door as Freyja noticed her guest. The girl slept snoring quietly on the chaise in Freyja’s apartment, snuggled in a large blanket carefully purloined from the foot of Freyja’s bed. Freyja silently slid out of bed and crept toward the chaise. The occupant looked to be around twelve or thirteen years old with brown skin, almond-shaped eyes, and brown outrageously uncontrollable curly hair, her cheeks ornamented with a semi-circle of light freckles. As Freyja studied her, the dark eyes opened.

“So, you’re up,” The girl observed in an almost accusatory tone.

Freyja stammered for a moment.

The girl looked out the window and swore. She leaped from the blanket and moved toward the corner at the foot of the chaise. “Sorry,” she called backward, “I should have been back in the dungeons before now. I hope they haven’t checked on me yet.” She stopped in the corner of the room, squinted her eyes, and reached to a crevice in the rock. With her touch, a large rock popped loose, revealing a small door next to the floor, camouflaged to look like a stone in the wall. “I never sleep in the dungeon when the moon’s full.” The girl dropped to her knees before turning back to look at Freyja as she stared after her.

“I’ll come back later if he hasn’t killed you yet,” then she was gone, leaving Freyja sitting speechless in the room behind her.

BjornsGaard City

Nik Tau stood outside a ring of constables with several other onlookers in the swirling blue and red glare from the constabulary signal lanterns as the early morning bustle of the city continued about them. Nik stared at the lifeless form of his friend lying in the street as members of the constabulary rerouted horse-drawn omnibuses around the scene. Ignorant of the scene, the city’s steam-powered gondola lifts continued to rattle by overhead hanging from their cables as they transported people to work, and the steam stacks from the neighborhood boilers continued to spew vapors into the sky, warming businesses and homes alike.

Nik’s tall, lanky frame stood rigid, snowflakes catching in his thick brown hair. Out of respect, the constabulary had covered the body but its massive length along with its location, on Nils walk home, left no doubt regarding its identity. Nik reached up and rubbed his aching head. After the Prime Ministers’ party, he’d completed his assigned shift: guard duty on the city wall, and hadn’t slept. His eyes were heavy, and his head ached from fatigue.

He heard the clop of approaching hooves and looked left to see Derek’s massive form approaching on the back of a large hairy stallion, his battle axe hanging from his back. The constables saluted and moved the crowd aside, allowing allow Derek through. He swung down from his mount, crouched next to the body, and pulled back the sheet to look at his face. He knelt in silence for a moment, then stood. Motioning to Nik, he announced loudly, “Let the Tau knight through.” The guards allowed Nik passage, and the friends shook hands. “Did you want to see him?” Derek asked the other quietly.

Nik shook his head, “Does Gren know?”

Derek nodded, “I spoke to her.” His face hardened, “I left constables posted at the house, and her mother arrived as I left.”

Nik glanced at the body, “What happened?”

Derek motioned down the street, his mouth slightly open and his tongue covering his lower lip as he pondered for a moment before speaking, “At least three men with crossbows . . . skilled shots . . . waited for him there.” He pointed to a staircase leading to one of the many multi-storied stone houses on either side of the street. “The street lights had been turned off . . . I’m not sure how they managed that . . . Access to the controls is locked down, and there’s no sign of anyone forcing the lock.” Derek scowled, his eyes narrowing before he continued, “He turned up the street, and they fired from the darkness.” Derek glanced back at a group of waiting constables with a meaningful gaze and nodded. The group started moving the body respectfully into a waiting wagon. “They most likely would have collected the body if one of my men hadn’t seen it happen and sounded the alarm.”

Nik leaned close, his dark brown eyes flashing dangerously, but his tone calm. “Derek, why did you leave our friend’s body lying in the street all morning.”

Derek bit his lower lip guiltily, “I’ve had men walking back and forth on this street for hours, measuring things, looking at the body pretending to study the street,” he whispered. “I want these assassins to think that we’re calm and that we’re smart . . . I want them worried. There’s no way they’ve left the city yet.”

“What do you know for all that?” Nik asked.

Derek shook his head, “Absolutely nothing . . . frankly we’re not calm and . . . and we’re not smart . . . We’re panicking and dumb, but I don’t want to showcase it.”

Nik nodded sanguinely.

“Nothing like this has happened in BjornsGaard City before . . . Not in recent history.”

“Have you spoken to Hjalmar yet?”

Derek shook his head and rubbed his pale brown face nervously.

“We’d better get that over with.”

Derek looked down at his friend, “Nik, you’ve been up all night. Go home. You don’t need any of Hjalmar’s conspiracy theories clouding your already drowsy mind.”

Nik shook his head, “No . . . I’m alright . . . Let’s go talk to Hjalmar.”

Derek nodded and motioned for his men to take charge of his horse and respectfully move the body to the Hospitalar compound before Nik, and he turned south and moved away from the scene.

The two tall men walked together across the metropolis, the morning crowds parting for the pair. The only municipality of its kind in MidGaard, BjornsGaard City was built inside the crater of an extinct volcano on an inner island of the BjornsGaard Commonwealth. The volcano’s thousand-foot high crater walls surrounding it on three sides in a horseshoe shape, and the fourth side, blown out during the last eruption, was left open to the ocean, creating a deep natural harbor where ships docked and unloaded. Scholars taught that sometime after the Day of Cataclysm as the New Dark Age fell, the original citizens of BjornsGaard, a small but sturdy group of engineers, scientists, and craftsmen, had sailed into the dead volcano and landed on the extinct floor of this crater. Inside the ancient caldera, they built the power factory that still electrified BjornsGaard’s houses, streets, and public transportation. Boring deep into the Earth, they harnessed the old volcanoes remaining heat, pulled it up, combined it with water, and made artificial power. The factories two massive steam chimney’s sprouted up from the center of the city, billowing steam day and night as a reminder of the founder’s work. As time passed, later generations carved ramparts onto the top of the crater walls for protection, bore tunnels through the sides of the volcanic bowl connecting the city to the rest of the island for commerce, and built a massive planned town out of the mountain’s remaining rock. Nearly a thousand years had passed – but the lights still burned, and the city still stood.

Hjalmar answered the door and let them enter before they had the chance to knock. Wearing monastic-style robes, the minister greeted them both and led them into his library, where a fire had already been lit.

“Let me guess,” he immediately turned on Derik, without even a greeting, his edgy voice already agitated. “Your Chief Constable is blaming street violence ?. . . Some old grudge against Nils? . . . Random robbery? What’s his excuse for three crossbowmen killing the head of Hospitalar intelligence on the street.”

Derek sighed, “You already know, eh.”

Hjalmar flashed a sad smile, “I have my sources.”

The massive constable leaned his axe against the wall next to the fireplace and collapsed into an armchair nearby. Nik remained standing, concerned that he’d fall asleep if he sat. He removed his sword belt as well as the bow and quiver from his back, laying them on a bench near the door. Derek glanced at Hjalmar, slightly annoyed, “The Chief has asked me not to rule out any possibility and to treat the investigation as if it were any other citizen.”

“Really,” the lean man stood in the center of the room, staring incredulously at Derek. Derek merely stared into the fire, “Nils was an Al-Tig Senator . . . He was the head of intelligence for the entire Hospitalar Order. He’s assassinated in the middle of the street, and yet the Chief Constable wants this treated like any other street crime.”

Derek nodded. “I can’t let my friendship with him taint the investigation . . .”

“Your friendship is one thing! His position and this crime is another!”

Derek sat in silence for a moment, “I have my orders.”

Hjalmar leaned toward him and lowered his voice, “Oh, I bet you do.”

Nik interrupted, “Hjalmar, Derek will do everything he . . .”

“Oh, I have no doubt. But he won’t be able to do what needs to be done . . . I guaranty it.

The trio sat in a pregnant silence before the Hospitalar spoke abruptly, “The Chief’s been regularly meeting with a member of Church...