Ch 4: The Manor

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• Victor Morrow’s Journal

Solomon blinked his eyes, stepping backward, and saw the shadowy shape disappear from the window. He looked at it for a few more moments. There was only a bit of light left in the day, and the rain made things even darker. Had he just been seeing things? Or was there someone there? A squatter perhaps?

He steeled himself and began walking back down the hall. He decided not to call for help. The only ones that could assist him were women, a one-handed man, a few boys barely starting manhood, and an old man. Besides, they were his responsibility.

He kept walking down the hall, but stopped. There seemed to be something off with the wall between the windows. He took the lighter from his coat and lit it to take a closer look. It was a scorchmark. A blackened circle on the wall. He looked around it and saw that a few feet further there was a rend in the ground, two or three inches deep into the wood floor, revealing stone beneath. Further than that was a strange scorchmark that looked almost like a tree’s roots on a nearby wall, and past that were more rents, and even a few large dark brown stains. He wasn’t sure, but he believed they must’ve been blood.

He reached the door to the tower. It was a double door with one of the doors having been blown completely off its hinges, and the other seemingly sliced perfectly in half. He walked inside to see that the tower was a library. There were at least three levels of it, with bookshelves all wrapping completely around each level. In the center of the bottom floor, was a bare desk, or at least the remnants of a desk, as half of it seemed to have been carved away in a perfect crescent and was missing. The library in general was in ruins, with destroyed books littering all three floors, broken shelves, and the ceiling looking to have been damaged by smoke.

Solomon felt a tinge of sadness. So much knowledge was destroyed, not to mention the hard work some scribe had done to bind those pages, many of which appeared to have been hand written based on the scraps of paper that had seemed to survive in places.

He heard a creak and quickly turned toward the sound, remembering why he’d chosen to search the tower to begin with. Against the far wall he saw an empty suit of armor. He approached it carefully, stepping over what piles of books and paper he could and resigning himself to stepping on what he couldn’t. He eventually reached the suit of armor and, hesitating for just a moment, he knocked on it two times. The sound rang out as hollow.

He let out a breath, and carefully lifted up the visor on the armor’s helmet, seeing nothing but darkness inside. He shook his head and turned his attention back to the rest of the library. He climbed up the stairs to check each floor and found nothing but destroyed books, accidentally pushing some down to the bottom floor as he walked through them. When he was satisfied he made his way back down.

No longer concerned that there may be someone in the tower, his mind turned to the state of it, and the hallway that led to it, as he walked back down to the bottom floor. What in the hells had happened? It looked like an explosion of knives and fire had torn their way through everything. He realized that he’d never questioned how his great uncle had died. He’d assumed it had been due to his advanced age, but had it actually been violent? If it had he couldn’t imagine his father not taking issue with it, or the rest of the nobility for that matter. If even the most minor of nobles was killed the ranks were closed and the perpetrator killed. Unless of course, it was part of the grand game they all played against one another, but as far as he knew Victor had never been a part of that. He’d have to investigate.

This narrative has been purloined without the author’s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

As to how the damage had been made, the only answer he could think of was… magic. That didn’t make sense though. The Union was in control of every mage in Drakthiss. They had no motive to attack his Uncle, and doing so would be a dangerous thing to do considering the delicate balance between the Union and the nobility. Especially with the new rail project the Union had been working with the King and Parliament on around the time Victor had died. That very rail project had played a big role in his desires for the estate and surrounding territory, so the dates and sessions around it were thoroughly entombed within Solomon’s mind.

He reached the bottom floor, taking one more glance around at everything. He’d have to dig through everything, perhaps himself. If there was some evidence of what had happened mixed among all of the books and paper it could be dangerous for the servants to find it.

He walked back out into the hall, running into Melissa who startled a bit when she saw him.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.