Christopher Rowley - Bazil 01 - Bazil Broketail.pdf - Christopher Rowley - margozap

Bazil Broketail by

Christopher Rowley

…

CHAPTER ONE

High and clear the clarions sounded the silvery cry of Fundament Day

from the Tower of Guard of the city of Marneri. The old year was ended,

winter was begun, soon there would be flakes of snow upon the air.

Already there was a chill in the wind at night that sent children indoors

early, while mothers put more logs on the fires; but for now it was time for

the greatest festival of the year. The harvest was in, the sun still held

warmth; it was a day to mark the passing of the old and the beginning of

the new.

Throughout the Empire of the Rose, from the Isles of Cunfshon to the

western marches of Kenor, the people were as one on Fundament Day.

In the city of Marneri, sited at the head of the Long Sound, there was

an additional significance to Fundament Day. The Greatspells were

renewed, in solemn majesty, replenishing the strength of the city walls for

another year. Drums and the sharp reports of firecrackers urged the folk

out of their houses and through the massive North Gate to the Green Field

beyond the city walls.

Today! sang the horns, today is the day of the Greatspell and every able

witch must come. To make the walls stand tall, the height of fifteen men,

with the power to resist all known assaults. To make the turrets firm and

adamant! To give the gate spirits, Osver, Yepero, Afo and Ilim, their

strength to resist the magic of the enemy.

From the corner towers floated the brightly colored banners of the high

families of the Guard. Small balloons flew, carousels twirled upon the

green. Folk in colorful silks danced the ancient steps of the Fundament

dances.

The crowds were filled with people wearing blue and red Marneri caps.

The men wore white wool shirts called “copa,” and thick winter leggings of

black and brown. Most of the women wore traditional cream-colored linen

dresses, with the red sash of the Sisterhood.

By the tenth hour of the day the city was almost empty. The sound of

the distant fireworks and horns and drums became muffled echoes around

the stone-flagged courtyards behind the mighty Tower of Guard.

In the Stables of the Guard, where sixty horses made quiet chuffing

sounds, the echoes of the distant fun made young Lagdalen of the Tarcho’s

heart feel hard and heavy in her chest. Sometimes it was awful to be

well-born, a member of a High House, with all the privileges of that

station and all the responsibilities.

The drums and fifes died down, and it grew quiet once more except for

the sounds of contented horses. Lagdalen bent to her task again, mucking

out the stables.

No matter how she looked at it, it still seemed enormously unfair. As if

all the world were arrayed against her, from the Lady Flavia and the

officers of the Novitiate to her own family. She was simply a young girl

who had fallen in love, and as a result here she was muckraking on

Fundament Day. While all the city was dancing on the green, she would be

laboring for hours on this punishment detail which would take all day.

And by the time it was done, and the feasting had begun, Lagdalen would

be too exhausted to do more than bathe and go to sleep on her cot in the

Novitiate.

Fundament was ruined, and all because of a mad infatuation with a

boy, a silly boy, a boy she still ached for. A boy with the tiny green,

triangular freckles on his skin that marked a bastard of the tree, an

elfchild.

A boy named Werri, a boy from the “Elvish” race, who grew from trees

in the sacred glades and loaned their skills to the aid of the people of

Marneri and all the Empire of the Rose. A boy who worked in the foundry,

forging steel by day, and who stayed in the elf quarter by night, caught up

in their mysterious world of ritual and trance. A boy she had seen only a

handful of times, a boy that she barely knew in fact; although this

realization was new to her, and she had only come to it in the last few

days.

The news of her downfall had brought no response from Werri. No

romantic invitation to leave her life in the Tower of Guard and join him as

an elf-wife in the quarter with its funny, narrow streets and crowded

tenements.

Werri had behaved just as her father had predicted.

“You’ll see,” he’d said with the contemptuous foreknowledge of an

adult. “He’s only interested in wenching with normal folk. To him you’re

no more real than a phantom.”

She burned with embarrassment now, for she knew in her heart that

her father had been right. Even after the love she’d imagined between

them when she’d gone to him, he’d barely acknowledged her, barely taken

the time to say goodbye, before slouching off with his friends clothed in elf

green to the quarter and the ale house.

In tears of bitter humiliation she’d gone back to the Novitiate with her

romantic dreams shattered. Werri didn’t want her in the quarter. Now

that he’d had his way with her, he didn’t even want to know her.

Grimly the Lady Flavia had prescribed the punishment: long and hard

labor on Fundament Day.

Of course, Werri was a handsome young devil, in the way that elvish

folk often were, with a long lean jaw, slender straight nose, and

green-brown eyes that danced when he spoke. And long, green-blond hair

that hung down to his shoulders and which he shook back from his eyes or

tied back with a silver elf-band.

But those triangular flecks on his skin were the mark of the wild elf glen

and of entry into the world through the womb of a tree. No woman could

give birth to such as Werri, for the only product of such liaisons was the

engenderment of imps, debased and evil.

And thus to be caught abed with such a one as Werri was a serious

matter for a young witch in the Novitiate.

And for Lagdalen of the Tarcho they had high hopes; the Lady Flavia

had said as much in prescribing the punishment.

“Normally for this sort of thing, I’d take the cane to your backside and

set you a full Declension of the Dekademon, plus a month of service in the

Temple to show you just how silly it is for a witch in the Novitiate to be

infatuated with an elfboy, and to remind you of your place within our

mission. But you are not just any novice, Lagdalen. Of you we have hopes

of much achievement in this world. You are to go to Cunfshon, to the

teachers there. If you continue your growth you will go on to a great career

in either the Temple or the Administrative Service.”

Flavia had frowned most thoughtfully then, while gazing into a white

paper file upon her desk.

“So instead you will clean the Stables of the Guard on Fundament Day,

and produce a full Declension of the Dekademon by the end of the week.

Am I understood?”

Lagdalen’s heart had grown heavy at the thought, for she loved

Fundament Day beyond all other festivals and would willingly have

endured the cane, though Flavia’s was a notoriously heavy hand with it,

instead of spending that day working in the stables.

Flavia had then said, “You must understand this, Lagdalen. The

passions of the body are sent to torment us and to turn us aside from our

historic mission. We must eschew all thoughts of love and family during

these learning years. And, of course, it goes without saying that we must

not have congress with the elvish. From such unions can come only imps

and disaster. The elvish cannot understand the distress they cause in this

behavior; we are playthings to them in this. But for a witch it is a deadly

crime, a slip into abomination.”

And thus had Fundament Day been ruined, although she had learned

with considerable relief, at the medical examination which followed her

interview with Flavia, that no imp had been quickened in her womb.

She had wept many, bitter tears since then. And rerun through her

mind again and again the awful humiliation of that moment when Helena

of Roth, Lagdalen’s most bitter enemy, had pulled open the door and

shown the proctors what was going on in the little laundry room at the

back of the dormitory.

Helena was a senior novice, and she took particular pleasure in

disciplining the “little Tarcho brat.” Lagdalen recalled, with a

spine-chilling thrill of horror, the vindictive laughter with which Helena

had greeted Lagdalen’s arrest and removal to Flavia’s office.

And now she drudged, mucking out the stalls of sixty horses. Of course

the stable boys who normally did this work, but were excused on

Fundament Day, had left all the dirt and straw down from the previous

two days. They knew that on Fundament Day there was normally some

poor wretch enjoined to work there all day for punishment.

She lifted another shovelful of manure and cast it into the barrow; the

job ahead of her was mountainous. It would take her all day to rake it and

shift it.

Wearily she filled the barrow, lifted it, and trundled it off to the

composter heap. This was set in a covered pit just inside the Old Gate,

under the looming walls of the tower. To reach it she had to leave the

stables and negotiate the smoothly polished cobblestones of the Tower

Yard, where the barracks troops performed their drill. This was the

dangerous part of the passage, for not a drop of the contents of her barrow

could be left on the cobbles for fear of old Sappino the Yardkeeper, whose

obsession was the polish on his cobbles. Loud would be his complaints if

she made a mess. Long would she kneel polishing the stones if Sappino

complained to Headmistress Flavia.

Outside the stables, which were protected by a spell, the fat flies of

summer still buzzed vigorously in the sunlight, and they soon discovered

her cargo.

Lagdalen hated flies, and she quickly tried to cast her own fly spell. But

it took two full declensions and a paragraph from the Birrak, and she

made a mistake in the declensions. The flies continued to buzz, oblivious

to the botched spell.

With a curse of woe, flies settling on her face, in her hair, around her

Christopher Rowley - Bazil 01 - Bazil Broketail.pdf

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