The Disturbance

Chapter 14 — The Disturbance

The message from Tavalon should not have existed.

That was the first thing the servant understood.

He read it again anyway.

The strip of hide was narrow enough to fit across his palm. Three lines had been cut into it with a sharpened point, the marks darkened afterward so they could be read in the weak blue light.

The buried place has been entered.

Five strangers survived. Silver marks on the left arm.

The crystal is exposed.

Nothing about the words changed the second time.

The servant lowered the message.

Across the chamber, blue light pulsed behind a curtain of iron bars.

Once.

Then again.

Slow.

Steady.

Alive.

He hated that word.

He had heard others use it for the crystals, usually men new enough to the work that wonder had not yet been beaten out of them. The crystals were alive, they whispered. They breathed. They dreamed.

Fools.

The servant had tended this chamber long enough to know better.

Living things could be understood.

They hungered. They slept. They weakened. They died.

The crystals did none of those things.

They simply waited.

The chamber had been carved deep into stone long before he had been brought there. He did not know who had made it. He had learned quickly not to ask.

Six crystal formations rose from the floor beyond the bars, though only three currently held light. The others were dark shapes in the cavern, almost invisible except when the active crystals brightened enough to catch their edges.

A low hum filled the room.

The servant had stopped hearing it years ago.

Tonight he heard every vibration.

Tavalon.

He looked down at the message again.

That place was supposed to be dead.

Not empty.

Dead.

There was a difference.

Empty places invited curiosity. Travelers entered them. Thieves searched them. Scholars scratched notes into books and convinced themselves ruins existed for their benefit.

Dead places were forgotten.

Tavalon had been buried beneath a mountain for centuries. Even those who knew the old name rarely knew where to look.

The crystal there had remained hidden.

That had been the point.

The servant folded the strip once.

Then twice.

His hands were trembling.

He clenched them until they stopped.

A scrape sounded behind him.

He turned.

The gnoll waiting near the chamber entrance lowered its head.

The creature was larger than a man and broad through the shoulders, its fur clotted with old dirt and darker stains. A crude leather harness crossed its chest. One ear had been torn nearly in half.

It had been standing there since delivering the message.

Waiting.

The servant disliked being watched by gnolls.

He disliked almost everything about them.

Their smell.

The way they laughed when no one had spoken.

The way their eyes remained fixed on him whenever he entered one of the transfer chambers.

Most of all, he disliked knowing that whatever authority he held over them had never belonged to him.

He had merely been permitted to borrow it.

“Five?” the servant asked.

The gnoll stared.

The servant held up one hand, spreading his fingers.

“Five strangers.”

The gnoll’s lips pulled back.

For an instant the servant thought the creature was going to laugh.

Instead it nodded.

“All lived?”

Another nod.

The servant felt his stomach tighten.

The people who had instructed him would care about that.

He did not know why.

That frightened him more than if he had.

“And the marks?”

The gnoll scratched at its own left forearm with one claw.

Silver Crown.

The servant looked away.

The Order was not supposed to be at Tavalon.

No one was supposed to be at Tavalon.

“How did they find it?”

The gnoll gave no answer.

“Did they follow the packs?”

Nothing.

The servant took a step toward it.

“Did they follow the packs?”

The gnoll’s head tilted.

Then the creature laughed.

The sound rolled through the stone chamber, high and broken and completely without humor.

The servant stopped.

He had learned enough of their speech to issue simple commands. Move. Wait. Kill. Return.

Not enough for this.

That was probably deliberate.

There were many things he had been taught only enough to use.

The crystals.

The gnolls.

The routes.

Even the messages.

Knowledge had been divided carefully.

No servant was given too much.

No servant could betray what he did not know.

At first he had thought that clever.

Now he understood what it meant.

He was disposable.

The blue light behind the bars brightened.

The gnoll turned toward it immediately.

So did the servant.

One of the three active crystals had changed.

Not the largest.

The narrow one at the far end.

A tremor of pale light passed through its interior, beginning somewhere below the floor and climbing toward its jagged crown.

The servant crossed the chamber.

He stopped before the bars.

The crystal pulsed again.

“That is not yours,” he whispered.

The gnoll moved closer behind him.

The servant resisted the urge to step away.

Every crystal had its purpose.

He did not know the destinations. He did not know why some were used frequently and others only under specific orders. He knew the combinations he had been shown. He knew which packs were sent when the blue light took on certain patterns.

He knew never to touch the crystal directly.

He knew what happened to people who did.

That was enough.

It had always been enough.

Until Tavalon.

The narrow crystal flickered once more.

The servant stared.

He had seen that pattern before.

Years ago.

Only once.

He remembered the man who had been standing beside him at the time.

He remembered the man asking what it meant.

He remembered that the man had been gone the following morning.

The servant had never asked where.

The crystal dimmed.

Behind him, the gnoll growled softly.

“I know.”

The creature growled again.

The servant turned.

“I said I know.”

Its eyes remained on the crystal.

It was afraid.

That realization unsettled him.

Gnolls understood hunger. Rage. Submission. They understood pain well enough to fear whoever could inflict more of it.

But this was different.

The creature was not looking toward the chamber entrance.

It was not afraid of him.

It was afraid of what the light meant.

The servant looked again at the folded message in his hand.

Five strangers.

Silver marks.

All survived.

There had been instructions concerning the Order.

He searched his memory carefully.

Do not provoke them without purpose.

Do not allow the routes to become visible.

Remove witnesses when possible.

Nothing about five.

Nothing about Tavalon.

Nothing about what to do if the old site was uncovered.

His orders did not cover this.

Which meant he had to report it.

The servant closed his eyes.

For several heartbeats, he considered not doing so.

It was a stupid thought.

He knew that.

But imagining silence was almost comforting.

He could destroy the message.

He could order the gnoll back through the chamber.

He could tell himself the strangers would leave the ruins and never understand what they had found.

A buried crystal meant nothing to people who did not know how to use it.

Perhaps the Order would seal the site.

Perhaps Tavalon would become dead again.

Perhaps no one above him ever needed to know.

The servant opened his eyes.

The gnoll was staring at him now.

He wondered whether it had understood any of his hesitation.

Probably not.

That did not make him feel better.

He crossed to the far side of the room.

A narrow passage led away from the crystal chamber and into a smaller room cut directly from the rock. There was no furniture except a heavy table and a lamp that gave off more smoke than light.

A wooden box rested against the wall.

The servant unlocked it.

Inside lay several sheets of prepared parchment, a stick of black sealing wax and a small metal stamp.

He avoided looking directly at the design carved into the stamp.

He had done that since the first day it had been given to him.

Another foolish habit.

As though refusing to study a symbol could protect him from the people who used it.

He set the Tavalon message on the table and pulled a fresh sheet toward him.

For a moment, his hand hovered over the page.

What did one write when admitting failure that was not one's own?

He began.

The dormant site at Tavalon has been disturbed.

He stopped.

Disturbed sounded too small.

Breached sounded like blame.

He chose accuracy.

The dormant site at Tavalon has been entered by five unknown members of the Silver Crown.

He paused again.

Unknown.

That was true.

But perhaps not enough.

He added:

All five survived contact with the forces present at the site.

The words looked worse once written.

He continued.

The concealed crystal has been exposed but remains intact and active.

That part mattered.

He knew it mattered.

A destroyed crystal meant one kind of failure.

An exposed one meant another.

He was not sure which was worse.

The servant considered adding that the strangers had used something else within the ruins.

The first report had been confused on that point.

A platform.

Ancient markings.

The sudden disappearance of the intruders, followed later by their return.

No one at the site had understood it.

The servant certainly did not.

He wrote one more line.

Additional ancient mechanisms may also have been activated.

He read the report from beginning to end.

Still his hand did not move toward the wax.

He knew what would happen after the message left him.

Someone else would read it.

Someone who knew more.

That person might pass it farther.

Or might come here.

The servant's mouth went dry.

He had met his immediate superior four times.

Four times had been more than enough.

The first meeting had been almost disappointing. The figure who entered the chamber had looked ordinary at a distance.

No horns.

No wings.

No crown of fire.

Nothing from the old stories.

Then the servant had looked into their eyes and understood that all the frightening stories he had heard as a child had suffered from one great weakness.

They had tried to make monsters interesting.

Real monsters did not need spectacle.

They only needed certainty.

The servant had been given instructions.

He had obeyed ever since.

He reached for the wax.

Behind him, from the crystal chamber, came another pulse.

This one stronger.

Blue light spilled down the passage and stretched his shadow across the table.

The servant froze.

The light faded.

Then returned.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

He knew that signal.

Movement requested.

Not from him.

From elsewhere.

The servant stood so quickly the chair struck the wall.

The gnoll in the outer chamber began laughing.

“No.”

The servant hurried into the passage.

“No, no, no.”

By the time he reached the bars, the central crystal was burning bright enough to hurt his eyes.

The gnoll had backed away.

That alone told him how wrong things had become.

Usually the creatures crowded forward when the light rose. They knew what it meant.

A path.

A hunt.

Blood waiting somewhere else.

Now the gnoll stood near the door, its ears flattened.

The servant stared at the crystal.

Shapes moved inside the light.

Not bodies.

Not yet.

Shadows.

A pack waiting on the other side.

He had not called them.

No order had come through him.

Someone else was using the network.

The servant stepped backward.

A terrible thought took shape.

Perhaps the disturbance at Tavalon had already been noticed.

Perhaps his report was late.

The blue light collapsed inward.

The shapes disappeared.

Nothing arrived.

The chamber went dark except for the two remaining crystals.

The servant realized he had stopped breathing.

He released it slowly.

The gnoll watched him.

Neither of them moved.

At last the servant returned to the small room.

He sat.

His unfinished report waited where he had left it.

The final line now seemed absurd.

Additional ancient mechanisms may also have been activated.

As though he were informing anyone.

As though those above him had not known before he did.

He melted the black wax.

Pressed it to the folded parchment.

Then hesitated with the stamp above it.

The symbol faced downward.

He could not see it.

That helped.

He pressed.

When he lifted the stamp, the impression remained in the cooling wax.

The servant stared at it despite himself.

Then he looked away.

The sealed report would travel before dawn.

He would send another pack to observe the approaches to Tavalon, but not to enter the ruins unless ordered. He would increase the watch around the active routes. He would prepare the chamber for whatever instructions came back.

All ordinary tasks.

That was what he told himself.

Outside, the gnoll began laughing again.

The servant gathered the report.

He no longer believed the sound was directed at him.

He carried the message toward the waiting courier passage and tried not to imagine how many hands it would pass through before reaching the person who actually mattered.

Tavalon had been hidden for centuries.

Five members of the Silver Crown had walked into it.

They had found the crystal.

They had survived.

And somewhere beyond the chamber, beyond the routes he tended and the orders he understood, someone had already reached for the network.

The servant sent the report onward.

Then he returned to the blue-lit room and waited for new orders.