Hugh Mazarin

Overview

This document was prepared at the request of Breannain of Bronwen's Rest, as the Dredgemaster of Feverwater during the Summer Solstice 380YE. The text was compiled by the scholar Leoric of Tabulous, a verbose civil servant who would summer in Tabulous. Sadly, Leoric passed away shortly after the Winter Solstice 386YE and some of these notes were uncovered among his effects. Communication with Eleri Bronwen's Rest, the former Dredgemaster who received the historical research, gave the civil service enough information to publish the report shortly before the Spring Equinox 387YE.

On Hugh Mazarin

For Breannain of Bronwen's Rest, the Dredgemaster of the Feverwater
My good Dredgemaster,

You ask concerning a young Dawnishman named Hugh, associated with a House Mazare or similar, expected to be noted in the 320s YE. Now, of course, you understand that Wisdom will tell you to look twice at anything that seems to tell you exactly what you want to hear. But in a case such as this, given that half an hour in the library of the Castle of Thorns turned up a 326 monograph by one Hugh Mazarin, upon the subject of a sacred trust given to House Mazarin of Ferrond, I felt that such caution was perhaps unwarranted.

Curiosity bids me ask, Dredgemaster - did you believe this man to have had some connection with Therunin, with the Feverwater, with the Terun of Tharunind or with the Gwerin Morfa? If so, I am afraid to say that our records do not provide us with anything to go on in this regard, and we do not even have Nicovar to blame. While the man was indeed a sometime explorer, having been set a Test of Ardour that saw him journey far to the east beyond the reach of any trod, there is no record of him having visited the shores of the Feverwater. Nevertheless, there is no other Dawnish house with a name that fits, and no other individual named Hugh associated with them in the early third century: I therefore continue as if this is your man, Dredgemaster. Also attached please find a copy of a letter from a servant of House Mazarin to the then-Mistress of Troubadours, concerning Hugh, which had been mis-filed in a recent reorganisation alongside documents concerning the dredging of the Feverwater, associated as it is (apparently) with objects in lakes: the clerk concerned maintains that this serendipity can only be the action of the Wanderer, however one should note the tendency of my countryfolk to see the Star of the Throne in the smallest of shadows at the slightest of provocations.

The bald facts of the life of Hugh Mazarin are distressingly obfuscated, as one would expect for any Dawnish noble worth their salt; nevertheless I shall relate them before going on to more fanciful elements.

Hugh Mazarin was born Hugh Fletcher in the winter of the tenth year of the reign of Empress Deanne the Fair. Of his parents, little is known; the first attestation we have of him is of his attendance at Anvil in 320YE, where he was enrolled as a guest student with Canterspire Academy by one Earl Guillaumette Mazarin, and known to be associated with the epithet 'Little'. His attendance was spotty, citing straitened means - there is a note in Canterspire's records that he is to be permitted the loan of a weapon for practice, for he pleaded that Loyalty forbade that he ask his Earl's seneschal to buy him one - but he is recorded among the graduating class of 324 nonetheless, where he is commended for his exceptional commitment to physical fitness.

I am unsure as to why the Wisdom Assembly were raising a judgement of rewarding, but my learned colleagues suggest that it could well have been a judgement raised in their own assembly to support one raised in the general.

Notes of Jenny Fletcher

For details of his Test of Mettle, I refer you to the enclosed morass of fiction. Clearly, he requested a test from Lady Mazarin: clearly, he passed it, for there is no attestation of a hero known as Hugh Fletcher after 324 and no attestation of a hero known as Hugh Mazarin before 326.

In 326 Hugh Mazarin is mentioned in dispatches as part of a spearhead assisting the Eastern Sky against the Druj at Dawnguard; I include the excerpt. Reading between the lines, it is almost certain that Hugh and a number of other young firebrands took the opportunity of a battle in the Barrens to engage in an attempt to liberate slaves taken in the Druj invasion of Montane; as for his motivations for that action, Dredgemaster, your guess is better than mine.

The next believable appearance of the man's name (again I must refer you to the attached) is in Autumn 328YE. His name is listed as one of twenty-two Dawnish nobles missing in action after a bloodsoaked foray through the Sentinel Gate against Druj on the shores of the Semmerlak. Judgement 12 of the Synod, Autumn 328YE, reads as follows: "The Wisdom Assembly commends the generals of Dawn for their prudent decision to withdraw from the field during the recent Imperial victory at Semmerholm, and rewards 8T 1cr 13r from the Virtue Fund to the Cardinal of Wisdom for disbursal as compensation to the Houses denied glory thereby."

I would be remiss in my duties, however, were I to condense the story of this young man's life and death to a half dozen facts and a monograph as if he were a countryman of mine. For Lord Hugh Mazarin was Dawnish: in fact, I might venture to say based upon the stories that he was distinctly too Dawnish for his own good. I therefore commend you to the attached analyses and fiction.

Leoric of Tabulous, the Castle of Thorns, as the first rains of autumn fall, the hundred seventy first year since Nicovar.

Letter of Praise

Dispatch, Eastern Sky, Barrens, Summer 326YE
...I must also commend to you, milady, the actions of the elite House troops you have recommended to our side: without their glorious example, the season would have been grim work indeed. Particular mention should be made of the initiative of Amoret Novarion and 'Little' Hugh Mazarin. These two young heroes laid aside the conservative orders of their field commander to spearhead a daring advance that punched a hole straight through the disordered Druj line. They then spent a productive few days wreaking havoc among the barbarian supply lines before breaking back through to Dawnguard, inflicting great damage and confusion to the enemy siege train in the course of the action. Allow the record to show that they actually returned with more swordarms than they set out with, having effected the rescue of half a hundred prisoners along the way!

Tests of Hugh Mazarin

Amanda Scriber, Assistant to the Mistress of Archives, Castle of Thorns

'Little' Hugh - a childhood nickname that he made his own to spite those who gave it him, for by all accounts the fellow was as broad as an ox - has more than one tale about him, and they are all true, in the fashion of lessons to be learned rather than dreary facts to be collected like pressed flowers. There certainly was a real man at the centre of these tales - possibly more than one - but to focus on the minutiae of how and when and what is to miss the point.

The Tale of Little Hugh and the Sacred Trust is an old one, oft repeated to an inexperienced Earl who has lost one too many knights-errant, or who looks in danger of the same. A young fellow, the Earl's son, comes to her aged seventeen and asks with respect for a Test of Mettle. In her love for her son, she says of course, for she has been keeping for him a Test that should be easily fulfilled and yet preserve the Pride of all concerned. She takes him to the catacombs of the House and shows him a mighty blade that has been the sacred trust of the house since time immemorial. And with heavy hints she charges him to rediscover the sacred trust of the blade, or to reforge that trust anew, and discover who is worthy to bear it.

Of course, she believes she knows full well that the blade's purpose is lost to history, and that the young man will take the hint and wield that sword by his mother's side in glory. But the young man is more Virtuous than his mother. He nods seriously, swears a mighty oath that he shall discover the history of the family he is to join or wear the golden sun until his dying day, and heads off to do his homework. And three years of quiet frustration later he returns to his mother weeping. He has discovered the sacred trust, he says: the blade is to remain in this crypt against the day that the Glory of Dawn shall fail: and this is not that day. And he tears his hair and weeps, but he cleaves to his oath: and a knight-errant he remains until his dying day. And the moral of the story is that you should never assume, for somewhere someone is binding their heart's Ambition to your incautious words.

The Tale of Little Hugh and the Ends of the Earth is likewise told to Earls who would set incautious Tests: this time, the test is a Test of Ardour.

Little Hugh had met a lady named Amoret: he had fought beside her in glory at Dawnguard, fallen in love with her, and she with him. But her Earl disapproved of the match: to him, Hugh's house was as Prosperous as the cur that whines for scraps in the gutter, and his young ward could do a dozen times better. And when Hugh came before her Earl to request a Test of Ardour, the Earl nodded minutely: go east, he said, to the end of the world. And find there Prosperity, and bring it back as an ornament for your bride.

And Lady Amoret in her fury turned pale as the moon, and would have challenged her Earl to lighten the Test then and there, for this man was her heart's true love - but Little Hugh laid a gentle hand over hers on the hilt of her sword, and softly said that if this was the Glory that those of her House required to wed, then he was all the more Proud to be asked for it, and Courage demanded nothing but success. And he swore to travel east to the end of the world, and to recover there Prosperity, and to return it as an ornament to his love, or forever to be alone.

And a year and a day after Hugh had left for the East, a year and a day that Amoret had won glory after glory not in the name of her House but in the name of Little Hugh whose favour she bore, a year and a day she'd wept and cursed the stiff neck of her Earl and her ill fate to meet a man so Courageous - Hugh returned. And the Earl asked him where he'd been, that he was back so soon: and he said with a smile the end of the world, and would the Earl call him a liar? And the Earl asked him what Prosperity he'd brought, as an ornament to his bride: and, ah, 'Little' Hugh whispered in the lady's ear and her eyes became wide, and she said it was acceptable. And the Earl demanded to know what had been said: and Amoret said with a smile that it was acceptable, and would the Earl call her a liar?

And between the sharp brightness in the eyes of Hugh and the cold fire in the eyes of Amoret, and the well-used blade that each wore at their hip, the Earl had naught he could do but hold the Test to be passed, and give his blessing to their union. And the moral of the story is that if you mean to make a Test impossible, then do not merely make it very hard: for Love and Glory and Virtue are the greatest forces in this world.

The Trust of Mazarin

Spring, 326YE

It is against my better judgement I write this: but my Earl insists, and a poor lord I'd make if I tarnished an oath of loyalty still new and bright. For Vigilance's sake this testament is incomplete: like as not, you'd only notice what's missing if you knew that answer yourself.

My House is older than the Empire. The colours of Mazarin flew alongside those who stood up to ask an upstart from Casinea why she was worthy of the love of our King. They went proudly by the side of that King as Glory and Virtue made our Empire one. They must, I'm sure, have flown at the first Summit at Anvil.

For House Mazarin is entrusted with a blade, and a trust to go with it. The blade itself is very old - how old exactly I know not. But the weavers tell me that it was not made in Dawn. The sacred trust - it is older than the Sun Queen for certain, and Giovanni the Peacemaker would not have come to Dawn for this - from these two pieces of evidence, I conclude it to be exactly as old as the Empire, and that can have only one source.

My assumption here is that this puts its creation as squarely in the Foundation; the roughly fifty year period before the reign of Empress Richilde.

Notes of Jenny Fletcher

And the words of the trust were lost - except that nothing is impossible. It cost the house a whole year's income, but we found a coven of seers from the mountains of the south who were prepared to travel to Ferrond, and in the tower they set up their lightstones and their lenses and they listened to a kaleidoscope of tales, three centuries of earls telling their knights successive versions of an ancient story that grew and wandered in the telling. And they spoke their best understanding of that truth to me and to my Earl, upon their word as seers, and as they'd agreed when their work was done they drew upon a costly veil of Night and forgot our secrets.

The fullness of the tale I shall bear on, to tell to my own knights in that tower one day. But the essence of it is this. One day, the purpose of the Empire shall falter. One day, the path of the Way shall be lost. One day, the people shall forget their destiny. And on that day, at the darkest hour of Virtue, we shall take up that blade and set the Empire free.

I did not know it when I saw it, but I believe I have faced my own trial when I saw off the call of self-serving hypocrisy: I did not go to Montane, and I was asked so to do. I believe that the day that we are called on shall not come in my lifetime.

Prophecies are a strange thing, but after careful discussion with my colleagues, I am going to refrain from adding more notes to this section.

Notes of Jenny Fletcher

Reader, know this. The trust of Mazarin must be borne only by the pure of heart and the strong of Virtue. I do not exaggerate when I say that this blade in the wrong hands could wound our Empire deeply: that I am familiar with the heroes of the Empire and cannot think of a one who I would trust to bear it.

It is my earnest intention that before my Earl and I find the end of the path of Glory, we shall find a soul to carry this trust on to future generations.

Because the oldest of the stories was told as I tell it here. Not as a warning or a morality tale, but as a prophecy. And upon that day we shall be needed.

Hugh Mazarin

The Death of Hugh

To the Mistress of Troubadours,
of the Castle of Thorns, Jewel of Astolat, Ornament of Dawn.

My lady,

I write these words on the understanding that they shall be kept in the Castle of Thorns against the day when a Knight Good and True will be drawn by Destiny to the Trust of House Mazarin. They are not for the common eye. They are not for crying in the street or singing in the taverns. I write against the direct orders of my dear lady the late Earl Mazarin - I write in Loyalty nonetheless, for mayhap it shall be she for whom I write.

I write of the final words of he who was my life, my heart, my one true and unattainable love, the Lord Hugh Mazarin, who lived and fought and passed into the Labyrinth as a Dawnish should, though cruelly robbed by Gralm and Ull and Glory of the illustrious career that surely could have revealed him as none other than the Exemplar of Courage that all those who met him would know him to be - or were Glory a Virtue, were Love, surely this man would be already a Paragon twice over (though never, I knew, had held mine own visage a place in his great Heart).

I write of the final task that he gave me - a task that rent my very heart and soul near quite in Twain, and yet for Love I endured and for Love I succeeded. And I write of the last day of Lord Hugh, for I was there. I was there when he fell. I was there when he stood, and I was there when he told me to run and not look back, and I was the last of Humanity to see good Lord Hugh in life: may his Passage be Swift, may the Virtues guide his Soul once more to the heady boughs of sweet Ferrond.

It was autumn, of the year before the Abdication. That autumn had been a bitter one in Ferrond, on the lands of House Mazarin: while our harvests were good enough, our Lances were not bound to the cause of the Eastern Sky, for the Sky were in Resupply in Weirwater, and thus our Warriors had made their keep guarding caravans from Karov on the long trod south to Cargo. The Lord Hugh, who'd at first accompanied the Sky to see to their well-being, returned mid-way through the season to our tower in Ferrond: and as he did so the Weather turned, and disdaining rain-cloak he stood bare-headed upon the balcony of our tower and he stared not East towards the tantalising promise of Dawnguard but North, towards Weirwater - and the Labyrinth alone knew of what he brooded, though my Lord's usual sunny countenance had been darkened and his manner withdrawn since his return from the East and the affair with that Novarion woman, and were I a betting man I would not have lost money on these things being fruit of the same tree.

But nevertheless to Anvil we went, as we had every year since his Test of Mettle: I'd the honour of bearing my lord's shield and armour, and doing for him as did the Seneschal for the House proper. Grim he was that first evening of the Autumn Summit, as hardly ever had he been before; he kept much to the company of the Novarion woman, and drank that evening with her and their Weirwater friends, and it was perhaps as if those of us who'd known him as a Yeoman knew him no more: yet were I a betting man I would not have lost money that it was his troubles with which and for whose benefit he was drinking.

And the Sun rose upon that morn and I'd the honour of my lord's Girding, and nothing did I speak of the fresh favour that he bore, for the Novarion woman went not to war that day and she'd given him a sign of the red-gold phoenix that he'd pinned to his Mazarin blue. And I armoured myself as always I did, and took up the herbs I bore for him, and my spear, and through the Gate to Semmerholm we went in the column of the Knight of Roses.

The Battle joined near immediately, and as always my Lord was at the heart of the Fray. I never knew the plan of the Field-Marshal: as the Lines were drawn, we heard the chanting of the Druj - and certain Taunts and Phrases that they used that were anathema to the Dawnish Blood - and so it was that we set to. Little enough there was for a Physick to do on the Charge, but clear it was that we were cutting a bloody Swathe through the Barbarian Scum: an hundred yards and more we fought, and then my Lord Hugh was first to raise the Cry - the General, he cried, the General of the Orcs, I see her! - and off we went, and soon it was that I found myself shoulder to shoulder with the Flower of the Knighthood of Dawn.

And he met her, the General, and long they fought, and many a mighty blow they traded: and I watched his back, and many a cunning assassin met my own spearpoint - and at last it was that he ran her through, but his face was pale, and his lips were pale, and from the joint of his right arm I saw the telltale drip of blood, for she'd fetched him a poisonous barb to pay for her life - and such Scathe could I do little for upon the field of Battle.

And I cried to him and to our Fellows, that we should return through the Gate to Anvil: and yet it was clear within a moment or two that between us and the rest of Dawn was a sea of orc-flesh. And I heard the horn-call go up, and I heard the drums of the Leaguish, and I knew it for the order it was, to fall back to the Gate: and we could not, and we could not, and we could not, for between us and the Gate there must have been half a thousand.

So it fell to Hugh to lead, as he'd led us thereto: and with my bandages still on him he stood and raised his voice, that we should fall back toward the Semmerlak, to draw the Druj away from the Imperial retreat and preserve Imperial lives thereby. And this we did, and as we fell back so they bled us, and rather than meet our blades they tried from a distance to Feather us, and they sent their Skirmishers after us, and in the Trees our parties became separated one from another, and emerging into one Clearing I found that my Lord and I were of all the force of Dawn quite alone.

I am increasingly of the view that some yeofolk think that making things proper nouns makes them more glorious.

Notes of Jenny Fletcher

And my Lord cried out, then, and swooned, for the Poison in his Wound pained him full sore - and I knew, though said it not in words, that should I not be able to find him Medicines and Tools such as I had at Anvil then he'd be for the Labyrinth. And I bore him from that place then, casting aside my spear, and in my arms I bore him away till we found a way-shrine there in the woods, and I could bear his weight no longer and there I laid him and gave him what aid I could, yet knowing it was not enough.

And fluttered his eyes open then, and in pain he struggled and sat, and I will never forget what it was that he did next.

Upon his belt, under a cover of black cloth, he bore a blade with which he had not fought. The sheath full of leather, and the hilt, bearing the strange symbol of broken chains: I recognised it at once, as the Trust of Mazarin. And his face was pale and his lips were tight, and he took it from his belt and he regarded it for a long moment, and he spoke to me.

Carry this, he said, but I charge you upon your life and by any Love you have for me and any Loyalty you have for our House, I charge you not to take it up. Carry this blade sheathed and upon your life do not draw the steel, he said, for you alone of all of the Empire I can trust to wreak for me this final service. Take this blade and listen not to its siren song. And run. And he pointed ahead, north and east, towards the Semmerlak whose shores were a scant half-mile yonder. And throw it, he said, cast it into the Semmerlak. Cast it into the waters, for the blade is a danger to your yeoman hand: Gralm and Ull must I trust to bear it, for Loyalty behoves that I leave you not with a burden that should surely slay you. Cast it into the Semmerlak, and then run you west, and there find the Trods and refuge.

And as he spoke that last word, winged an Arrow past the two of us and stuck into the wood of the Shrine: we were found. And wordless I received the burden and wordless I ran, as he surged to his feet with a mighty roar and cried to the barbarian cowards to face his blade that had reft their General of her life. And as I ran I felt the siren song of the blade, but for Love and for Loyalty I hardened my heart, and onward I ran until I found myself ankle deep in the sweet waters of the Semmerlak: and overarm I threw the thing with all the strength my body had left.

And I did as I was bid, and west I fled, and to the Trods, and along the Trods to Lacre and safety, and thence to Ferrond.

And thus passed from the hand of humanity the sacred Trust of Mazarin: and now it is in the hands of naught but Gralm and Ull and this letter.

I am old, now, and the strength of my youth is spent. The House of Mazarin is half a dozen old yeofolk and a wastrel unfit to lick clean the boots of the Earl she talked into a Test on her deathbed. May Vigilance hide these words from her. May Glory take her far away from the sacred trust laid upon us of old.

I commend this testimony into your hands against the day that Virtue is returned to our fair nation.

Rodric Barber
written in the twelfth year of the reign of Hugh the Pillock