Fountains, Burglary, and a Sacred Chalice

One of the Myths of Ixonia

View of a House and its Estate in Belsize, Middlesex by Jan Siberechts

'Alright, that's definitely the place,' Frey whispered to herself. She pulled her hood over her eyes, aware the glare from the torches would give her away in an instant. The château stood alone within acres of fields and woodland, the Estagar family seat.

Jaspar bounced on his eight-legs, clicked his mandibles, and sniffed her hand.

'Calm down,' she petted the sirog behind one ear. 'We're here for one thing and one thing only. No thieving any trinkets or valuables. We only want the chalice.'

Jaspar nuzzled her hand, his teeth catching on her gloves.

'Oh alright,' Frey reached into a pocket on her trousers and pulled out a dead mouse. She held the rigid furball up. 'Sit.'

Jaspar sat.

'Good boy,' she dropped the mouse.

The sirog caught the fur between his mandibles, bones crunched and fur burst from between his teeth. He opened his maw of teeth and panted, his red eyes staring doe-eyed at her.

'Yeah, yeah. After we find the chalice, alright.'

Jaspar nuzzled and licked her hand. Frey watched the château. A mammoth building with forty windows on the front facade, not including the double height front doors. Oil lamps burned either side of the doors and security guards patrolled with lanterns on the end of poles. Orange light bled from half the windows. 'The whole place is lit up. Damn surface-dwellers love light too much.'

Frey watched for as long as it took one guard to lazily patrol from one end of the building to the other. The guard paused half-way, swapped words with the man headed the opposite way, then continued on, his lantern swinging at the end of the pole.

'This is ridiculous. Come on, Jaspar, we're going round the back.' Frey scurried behind the low wall and wrought iron fence, darting between hedgerows and brickwork like a squirrel. Jaspar clung to her shadow, glaucous fur hiding him in the midnight dark.

The pair reached a rear gate leading into a walled garden. No lanterns burned and a moment of focussed hearing revealed nothing but the trickle of fountains. Frey slipped her picks into the lock and in a few clicks the gate squeaked open. 'Jaspar, scout out any guards.'

The sirog's crimson eyes lit up and he scrambled into the garden of roses, hydrangeas, and primroses. Within a heartbeat he had vanished, his eight-legs carrying him as light as the air. Frey closed the gate behind her. 'Alright. Find a cellar door, open window, ladder to the roof, then figure out the rest inside.' Frey nodded to herself and slunk across the gravel path, keeping a hand on her long knife to keep the scabbard from touching the ground.

Frey couched behind the lichen covered stonework of a fountain. Three mermaids danced and spat water in long, noisy arcs, making the moon shimmer through the water. Jaspar appeared like a shadow from her right, eyes wide and tongue lolling. 'What did you find?'

Jaspar lifted three of his legs off the ground.

'Three guards. Where?'

Jaspar faced north, then east.

Frey reached into the pocket on her thigh and pulled another dead mouse for the sirog. 'Good boy.' The mouse spun tail over snout and landed with a crunch in Jaspar's maw. She headed west, parallel with the gable end of the château, dashing under an arched passage of pear trees and wisteria. Drooping purple flowers grazed her head, 'How do the ladies of the house walk this path?' Jaspar lopped behind her. The path wound through the garden linking one water fountain to another. Three benches faced a gallant man striding some felled demon. Whoever it was had done the deed nude and held the demon's horn in one hand while his arming sword slit the beasts neck. Frey scanned his moss covered chiselled frame and understand why the benches where here and not with the mermaids. Water cascaded the air from beneath the demon's prone form, twisting a swinging golden hue in a spectacle of light. 'Guard,' Frey hissed and darted behind the water feature. Jaspar cowered at her knee.

Gravel crunched in slow even steps punctuating by out of tune whistling. The sounds grew and grew until they stopped on the other side of the gallant statue. The guard huffed and a moment later a new trickle of water echoed. Frey gagged as the wafting scent of pungent piss made it her way. The guard sighed with relief, whistled a dud note, and spun on his heel. His footsteps crunching away.

Frey waited until she couldn't hear him at all and then continued on, hurrying by a patch of well pruned rose bushes and out of the walled garden by an open gate. The manor lawn yawned before her, a blanket of darkness that seemed to stretch on forever. The rear of the house was dark, save for a single ground floor window glowing with candlelight. In ten steps she was beneath it, the crunch of gravel looming yet again. 'The guards from the front,' she hissed.

'Huh?' the guard's footsteps quickened.

Frey bit her lip to stop the next sentence from leaving her lips but she couldn't just think it. She groaned, stood, and found the window was ajar. She grabbed the bottom sash and flung it upwards and clambered through the muslin curtain. Landing in a heap on the rug she expected a sword at her neck but none came. Jaspar landed on top of her, eight legs slamming down on her stomach and bosom. Winded, she sat against the wall her head hitting the windowsill. There was no-one in the room.

A candle burned on a desk facing the wall, a pen stood upright in an inkwell. On the other side of the cramped room were book cases and little drawers filled with letters and paperwork. An armchair sat in the corner, a book split open over the arm.

'Must have been the wind,' the guard said. His footsteps carrying him along the back of the manor house.

Frey shuttered the window back to where it had been and approached the four panel door thick with dark varnish. Beyond was silent and the brass doorknob turned with a creak. Jaspar slunk out ahead of her. 'Jaspar!' Frey followed, closing the door behind her. The sirog darted down the hallway and hid beneath a table at the end, his red eyes watching. Frey crouched beside him. The hallway was clear. 'Okay. If I were an ancient sacred chalice found deep beneath the earth where would I be?' Her voice drifted down the hallway as a sigh of wind. 'Pride of place. Landings, cabinets, mantelpieces. Over doors. Let's go Jaspar.' Frey hurried down the hallway in a crouch, her footsteps padding against the plush runner in the centre.

She turned an angled corner and rushed past closed doors on her left side, light glowed ahead from a turn to the right. She slunk against the wall, her head brushed the dado rail, and peeked round. Ahead was the entrance hall, replete with portraits of the lord and lady's ancestors, tapestries of the surrounding lands, and cabinets filled with curiosities. Pale light flickered from wall lamps, a weak resistance to the night. 'See anything?'

Jaspar leapt into the middle of the hall, landing silently, and watched. His dark fur absorbed the light glancing him until he was as shadow. He skittered behind Frey, tongue lolling from the maws of teeth.

'Alright,' Frey ducked round the wall and half-ran into the entrance hall. A grand staircase rose to her right through the centre of the château. Moonlight fell in lazy beams from roof windows, illuminating the curved bannisters and brass runner grips. She swiftly ducked behind a column and scanned the nearest curios. Rusting bronze swords. Jewelled knives. Gold and silver goblets. A bronze mirror with a naked woman for a handle. Thread bare dresses and fine hats, but no chalice. Rumours varied on the intricacies but all agreed the chalice was white with a black stem, likely carved of stone. 'What's important to me is not necessarily important to him,' Frey shifted round the column and froze. A figure stood over her, looming gaze piercing her. She reached for her knife but as she blinked she sighed with relief. It was a full size painting of a man, probably a lord, in plate armour, his brow furrowed. This painting was meant as a threat to someone or a demonstration of strength. Frey sheathed her knife.

Staccato footsteps echoed from a hallway on the other side of the entrance hall. Frey dashed out towards the stairs, unable to speak or think, and hurried up the opulent maroon and navy chequered carpet two steps at a time. Jaspar sped past her and cowered in a dark corner on the first landing. The stairs turned at a right-angle a third of the way up, Frey crouched behind a post with a decorative pot on top, long trailing leaves grazed her head.

A figure crossed the entrance hall, tall, thin, male, in finery and smoking a pipe.

'Lord Estagar,' Frey hissed as he vanished into the hallway she'd come from. She continued to climb until she reached the first floor landing. 'Would I keep a sacred Alokathian chalice in my bedroom? Probably not.'

'Flynn!' Lord Estagar bellowed. The house shuddered as dozens of people suddenly surged into action. Doors opened and closed, keys rattled in locks, servants and family bickered down far off corridors.

Frey panicked, 'Nononononono, I left something out of place. Nononono.' She ran, Jaspar on her heels, towards the nearest door. She pressed her ear to the keyhole. Silent. She fumbled her picks and unlocked the door as another opened less than ten feet from her. Frey dove inside and kicked the door closed. A crumb of mud smudged across the glossy paint. On her back she saw the ceiling overhead, a lone cone of light flickered to one side. Frey sat up to see a woman in her nightgown as pale as snow sitting at a desk. 'Don't move. Don't speak,' Frey found her feet. 'Jaspar.'

The sirog leapt up at the woman who gasped and almost fell out of her chair as the eight-legged beast jumped up to lick her face.

'Jaspar. Scare,' Frey said.

The tongue vanished to be replaced by a growl and show of teeth.

The woman whimpered.

'No sound,' Frey pressed the cold blade of her knife to the woman's neck. Her face was oval with a thin nose and grey eyes. Human. 'Who are you?'

'Celine, Lord Estagar's niece. Visiting for the season,' the words tumbled out from thin lips between her well fed cheeks.

Estagar shouted for someone named Flynn again while other voices gabbled on the landing outside.

'Shh. I'm looking for a chalice. White and black. Sacred to the Alokath. Lord Estagar has had it awhile, from his adventuring days if you can believe that,' Frey spoke in hushed tones, sharp and threatening.

Celine nodded and her skin grazed Frey's blade.

'Good. Where is it?'

'On the landing.'

Frey sighed. 'Where on the landing?' her voice lost all its edge.

'You can't miss it. On a shelf at head height as you're coming up. Pride of place, has been for years. Uncle says it catches the light just right. That...'

'Shh. Jaspar, door.'

Celine pursed her lips, eyes white with terror. Jaspar dropped to the floor and padded to the door. He crouched and barred his teeth at the brass handle.

'How did I miss it. How did I miss it?'

'You're... you're an Alokath aren't you? From the Everdark? Why are you here?'

'What gave it away? The blue-grey skin or asking for what belongs to my people? Yes, I'm Alokath. I'm here for that relic. What I want you to do is go out there and get the chalice. Come back in here and I will leave and no one has to get hurt.'

Celine's chin quivered. 'But... but... what if someone stops me?'

'Just do it,' Frey grabbed the woman's arm and shoved her towards the door. Jaspar slinked to the side.

Celine approached the door, her nightgown damp, and opened the door. She slipped outside, not once looking back, and closed the door behind her.

'She's going to rat me out,' Frey hissed. Her long knife was in her right hand, the wicked curve of the blade ready to slit the throat of whoever came in. Her other hand hovered over a throwing dart in her belt. Seconds stretched to minutes and all she could here was the muttering confusion of servants on the landing. Flynn had been found but it wasn't clear who he was.

The door opened and Celine stepped in, hands empty. Lord Estagar barrelled past her, rapier in one hand, chalice in the other, and parried Frey's reactive strike. The Alokath leapt backwards as three guards followed Estagar into the room to surround her. She kept her back to a window and whistled for Jaspar to follow. The sirog lopped across the room to her side.

'I don't know who you are or why you're here but your life is forfeit,' Lord Estagar advanced. The crown of his head sported a quiff of thick chestnut hair while the sides had greyed with age. Scars clustered on one of his cheeks and the callouses on his knuckles spoke of a well practised duelling hand.

'I'll leave once you give me that chalice,' Frey said. The Lord held the sacred cup, carved from a single large white gemstone with a stem and base of obsidian. Three rubies were set on the base. An Alokath hadn't set eyes on it in centuries and it had been sitting on a shelf for the last thirty.

'Why? I found it in a ruin deep in the Everdark. Your people didn't care for it, I do.'

'We do care for it. The horrors there are what prevented our retrieving it.'

'Horrors? Rubble and giant slugs! I thought Alokath were braver than that.' The guards chuckled.

'That means... Give me the chalice and no-one has to die,' Frey brought her knife up and slipped a dart between her fingers.

Estagar laughed, 'We've got you four-to-one.' As he said it the man beside him gargled and fell to the floor, a dart in his neck.

'The chalice!'

'Flynn, get her.'

The guard on his right advanced, arming sword held high.

'You're the one who pissed in the fountain,' Frey said.

Flynn halted, confused. 'Huh?'

'You pissed in the fountain, about an hour ago. I heard you. Saw you.'

'What's she talking about, Flynn?' Estagar said.

'Jaspar, get it,' Frey whispered.

'I don't know, m'lord. I've never, would never, relieve myself in the walled garden.'

'Most certainly not! Such behaviour would result in a flogging and a sacking.'

Jaspar threw himself at the Lord, all eight legs slamming into his torso. The sirog landed with the chalice in his mouth and bolted for Frey.

'Get it! Get her!' Lord Estagar was sprawled on his backside.

Frey turned and dove through the window. Glass shattered around her and she landed with a roll in the gravel, Jaspar beside her. Flynn stuck his head out of the window but second guessed himself and disappeared inside. Lord Estagar yelled for the guards to catch Frey. She took the chalice from Jaspar's mouth, 'Was that sacrilegious? It was necessary, can't have been if it's necessary.' She sprinted for the walled garden. Minutes later they burst through the outer gate. Frey smiled with relief as she sprinted for a patch of woodland and vanished into the dead of night.

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