To Target the Heart

by Aldrea Alien

  Gordon hastily shook his head, his flushed face having nothing to do with the mild heat of the pond.

  “And I trust we shall be camping somewhere nearby after our visit?” He spied several places with room enough for a tent. Their camp might be a little more spaced out than usual, but it was doable.

  “We’ll nae need to do that,” Sean said. “They’ve beds to spare.”

  Bless. Actual beds with mattresses and pillows. He would even settle for something as lumpy as the back-aching bed he had left behind in the castle’s guest quarters. Anything to stall another night sleeping on the unforgiving ground.

  “Single beds,” Zurron added. “One per room, typically. You’ll nae be able to sleep coiled up to your walking heat source.” The man waggled his brows suggestively. It was no secret that Darshan shared a tent with his lover, but the others clearly thought more was happening within than mundane slumber.

  Gordon splashed the elf. “Dinnae you start again. Shut your gob and get out.” Taking his own advice, the man hauled himself out of the pond and started drying off.

  One by one, the rest abandoned the warm water and hastened to their separate piles of clothing. Darshan lazily followed suit, turning his power to forming a barrier just around his body and heating the air within. It was an old trick that enabled him to dry off far quicker whilst also keeping the cool wind at bay.

  He abandoned the Tirglasian-made attire in favour of his original garb, with the exception of the thicker undershirt. His sherwani was wrinkled from a week folded within the depths of his pack, but nothing a little moist heat couldn’t fix.

  His gaze returned to the cloister as he did up the last few buttons. The priests must’ve had ways of keeping their charges within the walls. Hopefully, it would be made clear that he wasn’t to be a new addition to the spellster ranks.

  Once clothed, the rest of the group returned to their mounts with a wordless syncing that spoke of a great many travels together. They’d done similar actions along the way.

  Darshan strolled along behind them, his thoughts mostly elsewhere as he checked Warrior’s straps and tightened the pony’s girth. “I must admit,” he said, trying to maintain a light edge to the words. Not an easy task when the Tirglasian language already sounded quite harsh on his tongue. “I am surprised that all of you are quite laid back about me and…” He glanced his lover’s way, trying to gauge the man’s feelings on the matter of speaking openly when it came to who he desired.

  Hamish showed none of the usual signs. No wincing, however minute. Not even the slight shifting of his gaze to suggest Darshan remained silent. Hamish merely went about his usual task of checking his horse’s straps before mounting, as casual as if Darshan had remarked on the cloudy nature of the sky.

  “That is to say, the current sleeping arrangements,” Darshan continued. Although they hadn’t spent many nights sleeping in tents, he still felt the warmest snuggled against his lover. Not that they’d done more than slumber—no different to the rest of the group—but he supposed cruder minds would wander below the belt far more often. “I would have thought that such things were rare and—”

  “Frowned upon?” Gordon finished. “Aye, and I wouldnae blame you for thinking it the truth after those bloody guards attacked you. Or what with how me Mum’s treated you. She’s certainly nae trying to be open-minded there.”

  “Gor picked us because we’re nae likely to judge,” Zurron said, clambering aboard his horse.

  “Your head’s full of tar if you think that’s the only reason,” Gordon snapped back at the guard.

  “Aye,” Sean said. “We ken there are others, but it was a factor, you must admit that.”

  Gordon shook his head. “The point these two lugs are trying to make is that they’ve personal experience with those who prefer the same gender. Zurron’s brother is a bit like you and ‘Mish.”

  “A bit?” Darshan echoed.

  “He’s married to a nice human lass from up in the northern farms now,” Zurron added. “But he’s always been just as fond of chasing men.”

  Gordon bridged the gap between mounts to nudge his brother. “Didnae we try to have the pair of you step out for a bit?”

  Hamish sneered whilst picking at his teeth with a fingernail. “Dinnae talk to me about him,” he grumped. “Nae offence, Zur, but your brother’s a prick.”

  The elf laughed, rocking back in the saddle. “You cannae offend me there, I’ve called him far worse.”

  “And Quinn’s brother was exactly like you two,” Gordon continued.

  “Was?” Darshan echoed, his stomach twisting with the all-too-familiar queasiness of dread. He never liked that word. There’d been far too many instances of its use with his half-sisters. Had the man been a victim of that now-illegal practice innocently referred to as a hunt?

  “He hung himself just last autumn.” There was just a little bit too much of a flippant edge to Gordon’s voice, an echo of the crown prince’s mother. “And Sean here.” He jerked his chin at the brown-haired man, who’d become solemn at the mention of their comrade’s brethren. “His sister has a wife and they’re expecting their first in…” Gordon frowned. “Is it two months now? I’ve lost track.”

  Sean nodded. The hint of a prideful smile tweaked the corner of his mouth. “About that, aye. They’re hoping for a good strong lass.”

  Darshan frowned. “She has a wife?” After learning they had hunted men for what had been seen as a corrupting act only half a century ago, the notion of those same people being allowed something as official as marriage was a surprising one. “Same gender couples can marry?”

  Again, the guard bobbed his head in affirmation. “Nae many choose to and most priests dinnae like the idea, but coin generally changes their tune.”

  “Dinnae let the priests hear you saying that,” Zurron quipped. “They’ll see you strung up for slander.”

  Darshan held his tongue as the pair continued to squabble good-naturedly amongst themselves. He had preferred not thinking about how much of a hold the priests had on people’s way of life here. Not as badly as the kingdom of Obuzan, where the people lived in fear of their priesthood.

  “Sean?” Darshan interjected during a lull in their chatter. “Did I mishear or was there a mention of an impending pregnancy?” Even before the rumours of a new child-making method whisked out of the Empire of Niholia, there were women in Udynea who bore children without seeking a man’s aid. However, he was uncertain if that was what either of the men meant.

  “Dinnae ask me how,” the man insisted, waving his arm. “I’ve enough brains to nae enquire how a woman got in the family way, especially when that woman’s me sister.”

  “Fair enough.” He could rule out the Niholian method, which required magical healing knowledge on a level that boggled him, and he didn’t think Tirglasians as a people would be the kind to impregnate without sex, but it was possible. Without those, that left Sean’s sister as being also willing to sleep with a man or the woman’s wife had done the deed herself. He couldn’t see any of those options being open to any sort of dialogue. “I could not see myself asking the same of my sisters.” Perhaps a few of the younger ones, but that would’ve been a completely different conversation given that the youngest was ten.

  “You’ve sisters?” Gordon interjected, arching a brow at Hamish who just smiled and shrugged; the man had been there during the hunt for a special trinket to gift Anjali, after all. Gordon slapped his knee before Darshan could respond. “That’s right. You said some are still unmarried. Are they all younger than you?”

  Darshan inclined his head. “Although, in the case of my twin, just barely.” Two hours. That was all it had taken for their mother to turn from having a healthy birth to dying in distress.

  “How many?”

  “Several more than I would like,” he muttered, garnering a laugh from the group. In truth, he had lost count of them. If they had all survived, then the total would be a great deal more than the current dozen. At leas
t, he hoped it was still that. Onella had made quite the contribution towards thinning the royal line, not that anyone could actually pin anything on her. Assassination studies had been the one place she had rather shone in the execution thereof.

  Darshan glanced up at the cloister. The closer they got to the cliff, the more that building loomed over them and he found ignoring the cloister’s presence wasn’t a simple task. “I wonder if you could indulge me in a question?” he asked of Hamish. “Why are all your spellsters cloistered?”

  “Did you nae learn that when you were taught the language?”

  “Well, yes but I—” He grinned sheepishly. “I rather drifted off.” Only his elderly nanny, Daama, could make the learning of history engaging enough to absorb, but he wouldn’t have dreamt of asking her to come along. “There was a war? Or am I confusing your history with that of the Demarn Kingdom?”

  Hamish shrugged and turned to his brother.

  “I cannae say much about Demarn’s history,” Gordon confessed. “But aye, there was a war. Spellsters like yourself had full reign of the land.”

  Sounds familiar. It seemed to be a common theme in most of the lands where spellsters were either imprisoned or outright slain on sight. “I suppose they enslaved people, too?”

  Gordon’s expression soured, but he shook his head. “There wasnae a need. The entire kingdom was under their thumb, each clan blindly following their chief. They were considered blessed by the Goddess and untouchable. Right up until the first king of the people challenged his chief in battle and won.”

  “Against magic?” Could there really be a Nulled One that far back in the royal line? “I take it he is your ancestor?”

  “We’re nae direct descendants. Our line comes from a civil war five hundred years back.”

  After his tutelage, Darshan had been left with the impression that Tirglasian rule had been stable for far longer. His own bloodline’s influence rather fluctuated, holding power on and off over the past thousand years, with his great-grandfather being the one to wrest the crown back from a usurper not even a century ago. “I cannot imagine the spellsters of that time were pleased with the idea of whiling their lives away in cloisters.”

  “They were prisons first,” Hamish mumbled.

  “Like the Demarn tower?” Reports of what transpired behind those thick walls were few. Rumours ran rampant about the place, with Udynean parents using the horrid imagery of the tower complex to frighten young children into line. To spend one’s whole life from birth to death in one tower. The imperial palace was bad enough at times and he had the choice to leave its walls should he desire.

  “I dinnae ken about their tower, but the stories mention a lot of death. On both sides.”

  Darshan could imagine that. A single, moderately-powerful, spellster was capable of wiping out a small village if riled. One against an army would fight with every scrap of power if they knew only imprisonment or death were their options.

  “Those who submitted were said to be… bound?” Hamish glanced at Gordon as if seeking confirmation from his brother, relief relaxing his shoulders as the man nodded. “I dinnae ken how, though.”

  “Nae one does,” Gordon added.

  Darshan already had a suspicion there. Infitialis. The rare purple metal that had a reputation for exploding at the slightest miscalculation during its processing and also nullifying a spellster’s abilities, providing that person was encircled by it—a collar being the most foolproof method. He could think of nothing else capable of binding a spellster.

  That spoke of Domian influence.

  If the ancient, and now very much eradicated, empire had reached as far as Tirglas, then how much had it influenced the land? How he wished he knew the answer there, for it would certainly explain the lack of trust in spellsters. Not that the actions of his ancestors within Udynea would’ve soothed any minds.

  His gaze slid back to the cloister. Perhaps the answers he sought lay within.

  The road led up the foot of the cliff. Buildings sprawled around the base; stables, storerooms and what appeared to be a few huts sitting on the edge of the undergrowth. Darshan hadn’t expected to find much out here beyond the cloister, perhaps a few buildings to serve as a resting point for those bringing wares, but this almost amounted to a small hamlet.

  Much of the cleared space was taken by carts and cargo. Whilst most of the men and women bustled around the carts, loading barrels and sacks, others stacked more of the same onto a wooden pallet sitting innocently enough on the ground.

  Gordon jerked a chin at the workers. “They’ll nae doubt send up a missive with the cargo, letting the priest ken we’re coming.

  A few of the men were lashing the barrels and sacks to the pallet, which seemed to be attached to a crossbeam via heavy ropes. Darshan followed the ropes up to where an even thicker one led straight up the cliff. A wooden structure jutted out from the edge like a laughing fisher bird over the southern end of the twin lakes. He almost expected it to swoop down after them. Any second now.

  Behind him, Zurron grumbled. “That pulley system gives me the willies every time I see it.” Darshan caught the man visibly shudder. The elf shot a disapproving glance up at the structure, a worried frown creasing his forehead.

  “Do you see something wrong?” Darshan asked. Perhaps there was a fault in the mechanism that superior elven vision could spot. “Dangerous, perhaps?”

  “Nae more so than usual.” The man shrugged. “But what do I ken about how they work? Me dad just spends his days designing the sodding things.”

  Darshan drew his pony in until he rode beside the elf. “You have expressed concern to them before?”

  “Aye,” Zurron muttered. “Every time we come here, they’re overloading it. You can have all the muscle you like at the other end, but if the pulley’s nae built to take the strain, she’ll give. I can only pray that she doesnae take someone with her when it happens.”

  They turned onto a narrow road winding up the mountainside. The necessity of keeping to a single file stalled all but the most important of conversations, lending Darshan’s mind far too much time to consider the unimpeded drop should his pony stumble. Not what he wished to think about—even if he’d little fear of heights—but once his thoughts latched onto the notion, it was somewhat reluctant to consider anything else. He could certainly see the merit behind why those in the buildings below preferred the pulley for carting their goods.

  Their journey upward seemed to travel at a snail’s pace, but the path they trekked wasn’t eternal and the cloister entrance loomed over them in due time. The archway seemed to be made half from hewn blocks and half carved directly out of the cliff. Each man-made slab was pitted by the centuries of rain, the edges no longer sharply defined, if they ever had been.

  His gaze slid to the building itself. It was like no cloister he had ever seen before. Seemingly a repurposed fortress, much of the structure was embedded in the mountain. And it carried on higher up than he’d imagined, too. The front had been carved splendidly, but all the effort seemed to halt several levels up and what he’d first thought to be cracks in the mountainside were actually windows.

  An elderly man garbed in a simple willow-wood brown robe of the Tirglasian priesthood trotted over as they filed through the gate. “Your highnesses.” He bowed low to Gordon and Hamish in turn, seemingly flustered. “We were nae expecting your presence.”

  Darshan couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow there. Such a thing was unheard of when he or his sisters travelled. Every man and his dog seemed to know precisely where the Mhanek’s children were at any given time, even throughout Darshan’s moments of spontaneity. But then, he supposed that getting word to this remote section of mountainside would be difficult without the magical technology the Udynean government had access to.

  “We’re here to see our sister,” Gordon said, dismounting. A woman scurried up to take hold of the man’s reins and led the horse into what appeared to be a stable hewn into the bottom level of the
cloister.

  The rest of their group dismounted, Darshan following suit. He stood next to Warrior, patting the pony’s neck and attempting to decipher his next move. Both the princes had been relieved of their mounts, whereas the two guards were leading theirs into the stable.

  Someone must’ve decided he was of some importance as a man scampered to his side with a cascade of apologies and relinquished the pony from his charge.

  Darshan took the opportunity to stroll to Hamish’s side, casting an eye across the courtyard.

  A massive wheel took up one side and the nearby wall had been demolished, letting thick wooden beams jut out into the abyss. Hanging off them was a rope as thick as his thigh. The business end of the pulley system, no doubt.

  “This is his highness, Darshan vris Mhanek,” Gordon said by way of introduction to the man. “He’s a spellster from Udynea and has expressed interest in the inner workings of our cloisters.” Gordon’s expression grew dark for a heartbeat. “He will be returning with us.”

  The old man’s face scrunched as if he had bitten a lemon. “It isnae our policy to let those with magic just wander out our gates.”

  “It would be prudent for you to make an exception here,” Darshan said before either prince could reply. “If only for the good of your kingdom. My father would be rather vexed if he was forced into a war to recover me.”

  The old man peered at him. Then the reality of the situation seemed to seep into his mind as his ruddy face slowly drained of colour. His dark eyes darted to Gordon, finding only confirmation. “As always, your highnesses are welcome to come and go as you please. Will you be staying long?” There was a hopeful note in the man’s voice of the answer being in his favour.

  “A day or two,” Gordon replied. He made his way up the stairs leading inside, tailed closely by the old man. “We should make our sister aware of our arrival. Where will we find her?”

  The man’s bony shoulders bobbed. “The study hall, where else?”

  “Still? I would’ve thought she’d have learnt all she could by now.”