Immediately, Kheled knew he’d miscalculated. The last time he’d fought someone drawing energy from Daevetch, his opponent had been an experienced swordsman who knew how to pace himself both in physical energy expenditure and magic usage. Raimie had yet to learn this vital lesson.
He hammered away at Kheled’s defenses with abandon, holding nothing in reserve, and while normally the healer might be able to easily withstand such an onslaught for the minute or two it would take his opponent to exhaust himself, he struggled to dodge and slap away each of Raimie’s attacks. The boy’s fists, when they glancingly connected, felt as if they had the power of a sledgehammer behind them. Speed was a wonderful asset, but it wouldn’t do Kheled much good when a single, direct punch might knock him out.
A small audience gathered on the sidelines, and for once, Kheled was glad for the poorly lit dusk. The descending night masked the dark streaks flickering up and down Raimie’s arms, shoulders, and hands. Knowledge of his student’s primeancy must absolutely be kept from the mob.
While Kheled may have vehemently opposed the Zrelnach’s attempt on Raimie’s life as a solution, Dath had been correct about the inevitable effect of a human thaumaturge. A single example of humanity’s ability to produce magic was enough to tip the race’s general prejudice and hatred of the Esela into mass hysteria and a push for extermination.
And while that unfortunate outcome was almost always guaranteed, Kheled also knew the unavoidable fate of a discovered primeancer. Once his power was revealed, his lifetime shortened extensively.
Unfortunately, that warning in the back of his mind and the gathering darkness made Kheled more and more reluctant to draw from Ele. Raimie might have a small chance of surviving discovery, protected as he was as the rightful claimant to the throne of Auden, but a simple Eselan, no matter how spectacular his healing skills, had no chance in hell. Weary as he was of the cycle and the life forced upon him, Kheled didn’t want to die.
Soon, true night fell over the army, and he reluctantly released his hold on Ele’s energy. He lasted about half a minute without magically enhanced speed, a testament to his years of experience, before Raimie’s fist connected with his jaw followed instantaneously by a foot in his stomach.
He went flying, tumbling end over end deeper into camp, and landed beside a fire, cloak fringe so close to the flames as to start singeing before he could think to move it. He groaned into the dirt, assessing the damage and applying illusions as needed.
Someone pounded to a stop beside him, cursing quietly, and collapsed.
“Gods, Khel! Are you hurt? What did I do?” Raimie whispered fiercely.
Kheled sat up, wincing at the appropriate times. He carefully massaged his jaw, opening and closing his mouth widely, as if checking for breaks or unhinging. Next, he lifted his tunic and sucked in his breath at the mottled bruise already beginning to form across his stomach.
“Shit,” Raimie quietly muttered.
Something off to the side drew his attention.
“Some warning might have been nice, you asshole,” he vehemently hissed.
Kheled lowered his tunic and released the illusion, thinking quickly.
“Is that Chaos?” he tiredly asked and then clarified at Raimie’s confused expression. “You call it Dim.”
“Yeah. He’s been egging me on, insisting I bring you down a peg.”
“You’ve figured out how to hide your splinters from all primeancers but you. Congratulations,” Kheled grimaced when he tried to stand. “I’m guessing it failed to inform you that pulling from Daevetch might affect your emotions?”
“Stop trying to distract me!” Raimie heatedly exclaimed. “Are you hurt?”
“Other than a bad bruise, I think I’m all right,” Kheled reluctantly admitted, “which is extremely lucky considering how far I tumbled.”
“I can’t believe I-”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s a risk we take when sparring. I fully expected you to deck me at some point, but I didn’t think it would be this soon. You’re learning quickly.”
Raimie ducked his head and blushed, and Kheled idly wondered if the kid knew how often he let his discomfort present itself to the world that way.
“Thank you,” he mumbled.
The whispers of the crowd subtly watching them drew Raimie’s head up for a split second before it ducked even further into his chest. Kheled chuckled as he dove in to rescue his student from his own personal torment.
“How would you like to play a prank on those vultures?” he asked.
Raimie’s eyes darted to the crowd and then to him.
“Vultures?” he asked cautiously.
“Sure. Rumor mongers, gossip whores, vultures. Want to play with their emotions like they are with yours?”
Raimie stared at him, his eyes squinted and his brow furrowed.
“How?”
“Well, perhaps you’ve noticed how busy I’ve been lately?”
Raimie’s head inclined the barest fraction of an inch.
“Let’s just say that I’ve been working on something important, but I’ve hit a wall. If I want to get past the impediment, I need to make it look like we’re not quite as friendly as we appear. I need to get in a fight with you.”
“But why would we fight?” Raimie asked anxiously. “Have I offended you somehow?”
The distress on his face wrenched Kheled’s insides a little.
“No! If anything, you’ve done the opposite,” he assured his friend. “I need to look like I’m fighting with you. Get it?”
“I think so…”
“I guess what I’m asking is this. Raimie, will you do me the favor of engaging in an enormous argument in front of all of these witnesses for me?” Kheled asked solemnly. “It’d only be for a few days after which we can publicly make up and pretend it never happened. I’d be in your debt.”
“If it’ll help you…”
“Wonderful!” Kheled quietly exclaimed. “Now, remember, we’re faking. I don’t mean anything that I’m about to say. You get up first and offer me your help.”
Raimie uncertainly climbed to his feet and extended a hand to Kheled. The healer knocked it away, struggling to stand on his own.
“How dare you hit your teacher!” he shouted, doing his best not to laugh at the comically over dramatized voice. “Don’t you know that the face is off limits when sparring? Your ignorance disgusts me! I don’t know why I ever took you as a student!”
He spit at Raimie’s feet, ensuring the young man saw him wink before doing so, and pushed through the eagerly watching throng, angrily throwing elbows this way and that for good measure.
He allowed himself one self-satisfied smirk once he’d left the crowd behind. Raimie may be quickly learning what he had to offer when it came to combat and might have the potential to be a much more powerful primeancer, but Kheled was still leaps and bounds above the young man when it came to manipulation. Over the course of a single evening, he’d made some headway in breaking past Raimie’s new defenses and subsequently appeared to cause a rift between them.
Hopefully, he could use that to make further inroads with those conspiring against his friend. He only hoped Raimie completely understood that they weren’t actually fighting. Kheled was sure the young man could resist the temptation to believe the lie for the few days in between them making up.
Unfortunately, that resolution would be a lot longer coming than Kheled believed.
* * *
When he’d concocted this shaky plan to make a break in his investigation, Kheled hadn’t taken into account how close the small band of men and women was to their destination. Two days after he and Raimie ‘fought’, they came into sight of Sev’s walls.
Those tall stone barriers with crenellations and armaments aplenty must have seemed impressive to those who’d never visited the city-state, but Kheled knew better. Within those imposing defenses lay a decaying city, its back broken by nearly three centuries of constant pirate attacks and a stream
of Audish refugees. Half the city was abandoned, previous residents moving on to more prosperous towns, and the other half, destitute with no option but to stay.
The only reason Sev limped along as it did was that it was the safest port of call for traders from the southern kingdoms. Sev’s close location to the Accession Tear and its perch on the relatively calm and sheltered waters of Blackwell Bay made it a prime spot for merchants to hastily unload their goods and restock or layover before making the treacherous trip home or continuing on their journey.
Still, the poverty beyond those walls would make even the most hardened men cringe. As a relatively independent city-state, Sev only had its own citizens to rely on as a source of income. Any attempt to raise the currently insignificant tariff on imports and exports risked such a backlash that the city might lose the one aspect keeping it afloat, and so, Sev’s population paid the price instead. Someone had to fund defenses against the pirates after all.
Even with taxes, everyone knew the city-state was running out of money. There were rumors floating throughout Adair that Queen Kaedesa was in the process of annexing Sev, supplementing the city-state’s diminishing money supply and defenses with her own in return for its fealty to her.
Kheled remembered well his first months on this continent’s shores. The starvation, abuse, and desperation were stark memories he’d hoped to escape. The sight of the city gate he’d limped through upon hearing of an Eselan haven made them all come crashing back.
It was a distraction he didn’t need at the moment. He’d finally convinced a cell of conspirators that he truly did want to see Eledis stopped and the time he’d spent tutoring Raimie really had made him hate the human boy. The standing order for potential recruits was to bring them to the ringleader for assessment. Thereafter, they’d receive assignments from someone lower down in the scheme.
Kheled followed the Zrelnach squad leader who’d first offered a meeting to him. Her cropped, blonde hair tinged with green was distinctive enough that he could keep only one eye on her while he took note of his surroundings with the other.
While not the norm, a few solitary tents scattered around the campfires and wagons, their canvas dominating the immediate skyline. In the distance, Sev’s walls overshadowed all.
The small army had camped well away from the city-state, wishing to raise no alarm with her defenders. They didn’t want to incite an attack, after all.
Kheled had pushed hard for this meeting once it had been offered to him. Their arrival at this last stop before boarding a boat bound for Auden meant the conspirators would have limited time to bring their plan to fruition. Whatever they’d prepared with the Queen would have to begin soon.
He’d spent the previous evening within sight of Raimie, ensuring that his friend was safe, but earlier this morning, Eledis and Raimie had entered Sev with a small escort, leaving him in camp to worry.
The two would be safe within the independent city-state. Kheled found it hard to believe that Queen Kaedesa would ruin any potential negotiations by killing or illegally capturing two of her own citizens within Sev’s walls.
Worry about his friend would have to come later. They were approaching a tent raised a short distance away from the outskirts of camp. As they came closer, his escort stopped and gestured to an empty box several feet from the tent’s entrance.
“You’ll have to disarm if you wish to meet our leader,” she instructed gruffly.
Kheled raised an eyebrow. Asking an Eselan to disarm outside of Allanovian’s walls was tantamount to requesting disrobing. In a land of heavy prejudice, carrying a weapon could be the only thing that kept you from a beating or worse, a lynching.
“Come on, Healer,” his escort rolled her eyes. “Every one of us knows how good you are with those blades. It’s why our leader’s so interested, but it’s also why she insisted you’re unarmed when you meet.”
So, the conspirators’ leader was female. Interesting.
Shrugging, Kheled proceeded to pull his saber and long dagger from their sheaths on his hips, unwrap his bandoliers of throwing knives from around his chest and thigh, and retrieve a few more daggers from various hiding spots. He dropped each blade into the box as he unlimbered it from his body. Lastly, he removed his long cloak with its pockets full of healing instruments and potentially poisonous concoctions and draped it over the weapons.
He held his arms to the side and slowly turned in a circle.
“Happy?” he asked calmly, slapping his hands back to his thighs.
Satisfied, she proceeded to bring him inside the tent. A small contingent of fully armed Zrelnach waited within, a number of which Kheled hadn’t confirmed as complicit in the plot.
A spike of worry that he’d underestimated this conspiracy’s size stabbed through him. He pushed it down with a reminder that he hadn’t had nearly enough time to identify every one of the participants.
“Well? Which of you am I making my appeal to?” he asked congenially.
“She’ll be along momentarily.”
He was content to wait as long as necessary. Spend enough time stalling your life in anticipation of another’s arrival, and you gain an insanely high tolerance for boredom.
Even still, he was grateful that it was only a few minutes before a slight, hooded and cloaked figure entered the tent, followed by a small guard unit. Kheled faced her upon her arrival, a pleasantly neutral smile on his face. He hungrily anticipated the chance to attempt to mislead such a prominent person.
The figure lowered her hood, and the world froze in place.
“Hey, Khel,” her familiar voice said, a matching, sad smile on her own face.
“Ferin?” Kheled asked. “What are you doing here? If you’re here to deal with the treachery within your ranks, then you’re early. If you’d given me a few more minutes, I’d be meeting…”
The pieces fell into place. The fierce loyalty of the conspirators, their legitimacy with the Queen, the forest of swords pointed at his throat and heart. All of these led to one conclusion.
“You’re their leader,” he flatly stated.
“You got me,” Ferin replied, one corner of her grin rising higher. “Clumsy investigation, by the by. I saw you coming a mile away.”
“But you encouraged the Zrelnach to join with Eledis. You’re tutoring Raimie in tactics for Alouin’s sake!”
“Yes, I did and am, and a part of me hopes that the kid somehow makes it through this. I like him well enough.”
“Then why would you sabotage him? Why would you send someone to kill him?” Kheled asked, outrage creeping into his voice. “Aren’t both actions in defiance of your precious Council’s mandate?”
“Allanovian’s Council gave me full authority to destroy this fool’s quest in whatever way I saw fit,” Ferin laughed at Kheled’s stunned expression. “What, you thought that because the Council publicly endorsed Eledis’ plan that we actually intended to go through with it? Don’t be silly. We’d never commit Allanovian to an unnecessary war.
“We were content to allow Eledis to gather allies when he first approached us because we knew that when the old man failed to produce the prophesied child, the mercenaries and hangers-on would trickle away back home. Then you escaped, ruining my credibility with the council by the way, and returned with Raimie. Our course was set in stone.
“We couldn’t break past agreements, not with so many bloodthirsty enemies outside our walls, and so, we decided to leave that troublesome family’s demise to someone with more authority, namely the Queen. Kaedesa was kind enough to send troops to Sev in order to incarcerate those she believes to be traitors. Eledis and Raimie will be executed as such in the capital, and all of Allanovian’s problems will be solved.”
“And Aramar?” Kheled asked quietly.
“I’ve sent someone to deal with the invalid,” Ferin waved a hand dismissively. “I doubt he’ll prove as much trouble as the magic user.”
She smirked at the unhappy look on Kheled’s face.
; “Yes, I know Raimie is a thaumaturge of some kind, no thanks to you. Dath had to tell me, poor boy. He agonized for days before informing me out of some misguided sense of loyalty to you. Alouin knows why with the way you’ve treated him.
“He’s been sent home, in case you were curious. It seemed a just reward for all of his service considering that his usefulness here was spent.”
The woman finally shut up, and she attempted to judge Kheled’s expression.
“Do you understand, Khel?” she asked after a moment. “Everything I’ve done has been for Allanovian and the Esela race.”
“My name is Kheled,” the healer calmly told her. “Only my friends may call me Khel.”
Ferin’s face fell, but he wasn’t quite finished.
“I understand your motivation. Truly, I do. An entire continent’s worth of people will continue to suffer and die because a group of four insecure leaders was too afraid to tell an old human there were no soldiers to spare.”
He sadly shook his head.
“It’s disappointing really. I expected better of someone normally so brave.”
Ferin released her held breath in a great rush and laughed.
“I see what you’re doing, you know,” she said. “Make me angry and hope that the extreme emotion causes me to make a mistake, right?”
“Can you blame me for trying?”
“It won’t work, Healer,” Ferin told him firmly. “Raimie’s fate is sealed. I’ll ensure that you survive the changing of the guard for whatever we might once have had but don’t expect my help in the future.”
She turned her attention to her subordinates.
“Keep an eye on him,” she instructed. “If he attempts to escape, do whatever you must to contain him, up to and including ending his life.”
She held Kheled’s gaze with a half-smile.
The Undying Champions (The Eternal War Book 1) Page 35