The Return of Fitzroy Angursell Read online

  The Return of Fitzroy Angursell

  The Return of Fitzroy Angursell

  Victoria Goddard

  Underhill Books

  Copyright © 2020 by Victoria Goddard

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  I. A Catalogue of Crimes

  1. In Which I Raid a Tomb

  2. In Which I Am Called Upon to Assist an Arsonist in his Craft

  3. In Which I Am Tempted To Lie

  4. In Which I Make a Grand Exit

  5. In which I am Aided and Abetted

  6. In Which I Fail to Fly

  7. In Which I Answer Prayers

  8. In Which I Impersonate Another of my Ancestors

  9. In Which I Startle a Smith

  II. The Last Free City of Zunidh

  10. In Which I Try to Clarify this Matter of Impersonation

  11. In Which There Are Not Enough Strawberries

  12. In Which We Overshoot Our Destination

  13. In Which We Commit Trespass

  14. In Which We Learn of a Curse

  15. In Which There Are an Ample Sufficiency of Cushions

  16. In Which I Find the Second Mirror

  17. In Which We Consider Maps

  18. In Which We Throw Caution to the Winds

  III. An Eventful Midsummer Day

  19. In Which There is A Chance Encounter

  20. In Which I Advise on a Divorce

  21. In Which There Are Far Too Many Emotions

  22. In Which We Take Refuge

  23. In Which I Lose My Temper

  24. In Which I Receive Some Advice

  25. In Which I Remove Another Curse

  26. In Which There is A Crow

  Author’s Note

  I

  A Catalogue of Crimes

  1

  In Which I Raid a Tomb

  I prefer not to lie.

  No, really—I do. Not for any strong moral compunctions, it must be said: I am, at heart, a poet. It is precisely that vocation that makes it so difficult. In life as in poetry, I much prefer the misleading wink, the sly sideways truth, the straight face smirking suggestively at a precisely chosen moment.

  As a young man, I was given to great flights of hypotheticals, dizzying exaltations of absurdities, extravagant arrays of subjunctives.

  When asked who I was, I used to tell people I could be the Prince of the White Forest, come to judge the righteousness and hospitality of those I encountered. (And indeed, I still maintain, I could.)

  I acknowledged the inevitable comparisons of my physiognomy to the ninety-nine Emperors of Astandalas before my time, and never negated—how could I, in any good faith?—the family resemblance.

  I conscientiously denied that I was a trickster god.

  I never claimed other than that I was a poet, a wild mage, an anarchist, a revolutionary, and almost certainly a fool.

  I discovered early, and subsequent experience has not disproven this, that the greatest truths, most plainly spoken, are the least likely to be believed. Few indeed are those who have told any truths more brazenly than I, or to greater applause for the depths of my cunning duplicities.

  You may imagine, then, I hope, how disappointed I am in myself, how embarrassed—I, whom popular imagination believes incapable of either emotion!—when not two hours after setting off on my first real quest in thirty-odd years I was caught breaking into the tomb of one of my most esteemed ancestors and found myself unable to respond to the sarcastic guard with anything but the most stuttering, stammering, inadequate, obvious lie in the book.

  To the flippant question I should have responded with an even more flippant truth. The guard would never have believed me had I answered “Yes”; he should certainly have found it inconceivable had I replied, “Hardly, as I was once an Emperor of Astandalas!”

  I could have told him half a dozen incredible truths, but instead, when he peered in through the entrance tunnel, saw me there in amongst the grave goods, and asked, “Who do you think you are, Fitzroy Angursell?” I was so surprised to be immediately recognized that I replied with a barefaced lie, and denied it utterly.

  We stared at each other, he and I, both, I reckon, somewhat startled.

  On second glance the man was probably not actually a guard, but rather some form of custodian for the necropolis. He was a weedy, wiry, middle-aged sort of man, mid-brown of skin and curly of hair, dressed in a dirty cotton tunic and ragged rusty-red trews. He was peering rather apprehensively at me from the entrance tunnel.

  I was standing in the central chamber of the tomb of Yr the Conqueror, first Emperor of Astandalas. It was a massive construction, all enormous blocks of rusty-black basalt, simple, heavy, and deeply impressive. On the outside it formed the shape of a grassy cone; the inside, which I was fairly certain I was the only person to have seen since it was closed, contained a short, narrow passage leading to a large single chamber.

  This chamber was a hollow cube perhaps twenty feet in every direction, the basalt forming walls, floor, ceiling. I had lit a couple of mage-lights to illuminate the space, and had only just begun investigating it when I was interrupted.

  The air was cold, noticeably so after the equatorial afternoon heat outside, and tasted both stale and electric, like the air before a lightning strike. Ancient magic had stirred at my entrance, but I technically had the right to enter, even if I’d never had any occasion to do so before. What the magic did if fully awoken was unclear, but judging by the eerie lack of dust inside the chamber it remained operative despite the four thousand or so years since Yr’s death.

  In the centre of the space was a basalt plinth on which rested a pure white alabaster sarcophagus. The lid was carved with a life-size relief of a man. He wore a knee-length kilt with a belt clearly intended to be seen as set with heavy jewels. His muscles were well-defined, his shoulders broad, his torso layered with heavy necklaces. His hands were folded on his stomach, clasping three items: the hilt of a sword whose blade ran down between his legs, a circular object I presumed represented the legendary Sun Disc, and a small mirror.

  I contemplated the carving. My initial survey of the chamber had made it clear that the grave goods were primarily carved bronze, gold, and stone items representing the entire retinue an ancient emperor might want for the afterlife: horses, soldiers, servants, handmaidens, elephants, horses, dogs, falcons, horses, and thousands of items of more prosaic household use.

  There was gold and jewelry and real weaponry a-plenty, but nothing quite identical to the three objects on the sarcophagus lid. If they were here, as legend claimed, then they had been sealed inside the sarcophagus with the earthly remains of the emperor.

  I regarded the carved face thoughtfully. Even paying generous heed to the substantial developments in the sculptural arts over the millennia, not to mention the likelihood of flattery in the depiction here, it was remarkable how the family nose had, in fact, persisted.

  “There’s a curse, you know,” the custodian said.

  I had quite forgotten about him, and turned to see that he had edged a few steps further from the entrance. He was half-turned, obviously worried about the door closing, and leading with the unusual implement he held in his right hand. This was a handled rectangular blade with a gruesome-looking spike halfway down one side.

  I have always been excessively curious, and for half my life have been prevented from asking questions for fear of the answers
people might give. Delighting in the ability to do so, I nodded in the direction of his hand. “What sort of tool is that?”

  He blinked and stopped his unsteady progress. “What?”

  “The object in your hand. What is it?”

  He lifted it, as if surprised he was holding something. “This? It’s a zax, like. You use it working with slates. I was fixing the roof on Eritanyr’s tomb yonder.” He jerked his head in vague indication.

  The Emperor Eritanyr, my unlamented uncle, had had built for himself a miniature temple, complete with silver-blue slates imported from far western Voonra, each individually dipped in gold. My ancestors had wealth; more occasionally, taste.

  I nodded in appreciation of the zax. “It is certainly fearsome.”

  The custodian sniggered, shuffling his feet so he could lean up against the side of the tunnel mouth. “What are you holding?” His voice shifted to what I presumed was an attempt at my accent. “The object in your hand. What is it?”

  I looked down at the item in question, a six-inch rod made of cunningly carved gold set with opaque black and white diamonds in concentric bands. It was gaudy, extravagant, visibly of the same aesthetic as the majority of objects inside this tomb, and quite likely the reason the colours of the Empire of Astandalas were black, white, and gold. The magic in it sparkled against my fingers.

  “This,” I said, tilting my hand so he could see it, “is called the Linchpin of the Empire. It was created by Harbut Zalarin.”

  The custodian pursed his lips. “Who was he, then?”

  “The greatest wizard of pre-Astandalan Zunidh and the father of Yr the Conqueror.” I waved the linchpin in the direction of the stone sarcophagus behind me.

  “It’s a magic wand, then?”

  “You could say that. It was supposed to be the very core of the enchantments holding the Empire together.”

  A linchpin is the rod through the centre of a wheel that holds the axle in place. Harbut Zalarin was popularly supposed to have invented the wheel, though I personally believed his name was simply attached to it, as happens more often than you might think.

  The custodian snorted. “Funny thing to hide away in your tomb, then.”

  I tucked it away into a pocket of my shoulder bag. “I brought it in with me; that’s how I opened the door.”

  “And how did you come by it?”

  “I was given it,” I said blandly, omitting that this had been in the course of the ceremony that made me hundredth and last Emperor of Astandalas.

  “You didn’t steal it?” he said, a note of urgency coming into his voice, and he stepped towards me, zax uplifted warningly.

  I didn’t need to be fairly certain that he would win in any contest of physical strength, nor I in any of magic, to shake my head in denial. I did cast one final glance at the sarcophagus lid, but there is a difference—a fine one, perhaps, but clear—between robbing a tomb and desecrating a coffin.

  And if I needed the mirror in the end, as I might or might not, I knew exactly where to find it.

  “Look here,” the custodian said, moving towards me, “I don’t know what your plan is, but—”

  But he had taken a step past the tunnel mouth, and despite his work on the surface the custodian had no right to be inside the chamber proper, and the magic retaliated instantly.

  I moved a little less instantly, as a sudden wind shrieked past me and the figurines representing Yr the Conqueror’s armies came alive and started to grow to fill the space. As an elephant stumbled over my feet I caught my breath and was able to gather my magic and composure together.

  “Run, you fool!” I cried, and shoved the custodian with magic. It wasn’t my full strength, but enough to propel him up the sloping tunnel and out the door into the bright sunlight.

  He tumbled over. The zax embedded itself in the grass, and I half-tripped over its handle before catching myself on the stone I’d rolled away from the entrance. I whirled around, magic rousing, the linchpin leaping back into my hand from my bag as I channelled the ancient powers back into their accustomed roles.

  The shrieking wind spiralled around us, pushing the custodian back to the ground, causing my garments to whip wildly around my legs, and finally picking up the boulder and slamming it into place with a definite thump.

  The grass on the mound rippled and then went utterly flat as a shadow passed over the necropolis. I readied myself but, I confess, was glad I didn’t have to do anything further. The shadow touched me, accepted my instinctive recognition of the custodian as under my protection, and returned to the tomb.

  I took several deep breaths, recovering my composure, and turned to regard the custodian with a severe frown. That was the most physical excitement I’d experienced in decades.

  The custodian ignored my frown and instead grinned crookedly at me from where he was still sprawled on his back. “Are you going to write a song about this?”

  I was not even three hours away from the Imperial Apartments in the Palace of Stars. My efforts at disguise had not extended much beyond changing my clothing to something pertaining less to the iconography of emperors and more to that of folk heroes.

  This consisted of a knee-length cotton tunic in sky-blue and white stripes, which was accompanied by a matching hat that more or less hid the fact that my head, as per ancient tradition, was shaven bald. The hat kept flopping over one ear and irritating me, but I felt obliged to keep it on while I was still so close to what amounted to home. It had, unsurprisingly, fallen off in my helter-skelter exit from the tomb. With great dignity I picked it up and put it back on.

  I was also wearing a scarlet silk mantle, which I adjusted with even more dignity.

  Black-skinned and bald-headed screamed, at the very least, a serious imposter of the high nobility, even if not necessarily Last Emperor of Astandalas.

  The custodian did not have any particular reason to expect Artorin Damara or any other former Emperor of Astandalas to be standing there sans entourage and guards and ceremony, and did not imagine he had found him.

  He had no reason to expect Fitzroy Angursell, either, but thirty years of myth-mongering after a spectacularly bizarre disappearance had apparently done much of my work for me. Not to mention that I was dressed very closely as described in several songs; sky-blue was my colour, and the scarlet silk mantle was nearly as famous as my Bag of Unusual Capacity.

  “What makes you think I would?” I temporized.

  “It’s an adventure, like,” he explained, getting up and experimentally tugging his zax, which was deeply embedded in the ground. “And that’s what you write songs about, no?”

  His tone suggested he did not really believe I was the returned Fitzroy Angursell, but that he was a canny man and was determined to cover all possibilities. And if the opportunity came to be put in a song by Fitzroy Angursell—well! He’d be a fool not to take it.

  I nodded, not quite regally. “It’s been known to happen.”

  “I’m Gus,” he said, abandoning the zax in favour of impressing on me his role in the affair. “I tend the tombs, like, and it was very brave of me, don’t you think, coming in to see who was inside the tomb, when everyone knows there are curses, like.”

  I regarded the very definitely closed stone of the tomb of Yr the Conqueror, and nodded absently.

  “‘Course,” Gus went on, “I’m from here, you know, like the first emperor himself. Related, most like, from way back when.”

  This was unlikely. Even in those very early days—perhaps especially in those very early days—my ancestors did not tend to distribute their seed outside the marriage-bed: it is a dangerous thing to have children of the line outside of direct control.

  As indeed they found with me. Not that I ever told anyone that truth.

  “No doubt I am, too,” I replied, smirking.

  Ninety-three or possibly ninety-seven generations back, depending on how one counted the little-publicized instances of intergenerational incest in my family tree. There are, alas, reaso
ns for why the features have bred as true as they have. Though I can say that there are other unexpected cousins than me in the history books.

  The custodian appeared to find this hilarious, but eventually he recalled himself to his duties. “Are you planning on breaking into any more tombs?”

  I looked at the Imperial Necropolis, where ninety-nine emperors and numerous members of their (and thus my) extended families and courts had tombs. (Not all of them were actually entombed here, of course; at least one, Aurelius Magnus, had disappeared into legend without leaving a corpse behind.)

  “No,” I said, recalling that here I was not Artorin Damara, and thus it behoved me to answer questions and attempt a certain normal courtesy. “Just that one, thank you.”

  That didn’t sound quite correct. Oh well. I am much better at recognizing the nuances of other people’s behaviour. We stood there for a moment, he toeing the ground absently, I holding my bag under my arm. I was, it was becoming increasingly clear, out of practice with this sort of thing, and wasn’t quite prepared to say good-bye and walk off, especially as I wasn’t entirely sure of my direction.

  My plans on setting forth had focused on reaching the necropolis and retrieving the mirror. With that plan currently forestalled, my next task was to leave the world behind in furtherance of the three components of my quest, but there are no useful passages across the Borders anywhere near the capital.

  “Have you been in there long?” the custodian asked at length. At my puzzled glance he clarified, “Since you disappeared, maybe. Everyone always wanted to know what happened.”