The Flames of Deception - A Horizon of Storms: Book 1

by AJ Martin

  Suddenly she sat up in the bath with a sharp intake of breath. Water droplets fell from her hair. She threw her head down. The water lay still and perfectly clear, save for the distilling murkiness of the soap mixing in the water. She had fallen asleep. It was only a nightmare! Her heart still pounded in her chest, her breathing short and quick. Both relief and terror gripped her and she took a moment to gather her senses before she scrambled out the bath. She wanted to be out of that room as quickly as she could- she almost forgot that she needed to dress first. Fast as she could, she dried herself off with a linen cloth hanging by her side on a wooden prop and threw on her clothes before she dashed out and down the stairs and into the common room. Her face was a picture of terror.

  “Princess, what’s happened?” Thadius started, rising.

  “We have to go,” she said. “We must leave now!” Her breath still caught in her throat, and she had to swallow to keep from gasping.

  “Why? What’s happened?” Matthias asked.

  “I… that is…” Josephine began, but stopped. “I had a bad dream.”

  Matthias looked at her askance. “A dream?”

  “I take it that it wasn’t a good one?” Luccius asked.

  “It was not,” Josephine replied. “There was blood. Lots of it and it was my own.”

  “Oh.” Matthias raised his eyebrows. “Luccius can you get the Princess a glass of spring wine? It will steady her nerves.”

  “My nerves will be steady-” she snapped, before leaning forward and lowering her voice to a whisper again. “I will be fine once we leave here!” she finished.

  “Well you don’t have too long to wait now. We should be leaving for the boat in a half-hour,” Matthias said. He indicated to the spare chair. “Sit down and gather yourself.” She nodded and plonked herself down in the chair. “I’m sorry about our argument,” he said to her. “You are right. Apologising is becoming a bit of a habit for me. It is one I am not accustomed to.”

  Josephine shook her head. “Apology accepted,” she said, still slightly breathless. Luccius returned and gave her the wine and she took it gratefully and sipped at the sweet drink. “I think all our nerves are a little frayed. You must understand that I am not accustomed to being ordered about either by anyone other than my father.”

  Matthias nodded. “I’ll try to be a little more patient. I’m just worried, given how little time we seem to have, that you won’t be ready when we arrive at Crystal Ember.”

  The princess nodded. “Very well then, I will practice more on the boat. I suppose it will be a good opportunity to learn further.”

  “The captain agreed to take us as far as the river flows until it runs through the mountains at Gormal. There the way is too narrow to safely pass through. There is a small village, though the captain says we are probably best not staying there too long. It’s not known for welcoming outsiders apparently. I had to agree to pay him an extra mark to get him to travel that far upriver.”

  “Some of the villages that way are suffering from crop shortages,” Thadius advised. “The people aren’t happy about it.”

  “We’ll have to tread carefully then,” Matthias acknowledged.

  “Oh!” Josephine exclaimed suddenly, and looked down at her feet. “Thadius, would you be so kind as to go and retrieve my shoes from beside the bath?”

  The longboat Providence lived up to its name for being a long boat. It spanned half the village harbour and its lengthy carriage suggested that in a previous life it had been a cargo barge. But where once its bowels had housed goods there were now quarters for people’s passage. It was a lavishly decorated vessel; its underside painted a deep green, and the rest of its bulk a deep red. Josephine inspected the bizarre boat as they approached.

  “It looks a little... cramped,” she said, her nose wrinkled in distaste.

  “You’d rather ride by horse?” Matthias retorted.

  “No!” Thadius quickly interjected. “Please, Gods no, my behind can’t take anymore saddle sores.”

  Matthias grinned. “I’ve reserved three of the uppermost compartments. Space enough for all of us. ”

  “I suppose a boat is a boat,” she sighed. “And I have not had the pleasure of trying this new contraption before.”

  “A few years ago these boats had to be towed by rope on either side of the river by horse,” Thadius informed them. “It wasn’t a very fast way of travelling.”

  “How does it work now then?” the princess asked Thadius.

  “It is quite clever, Your Highness. The steam is made by burning logs and materials, and it drives some kind of mechanism that moves the thing.”

  “How clever,” she said. “Moves it how?”

  “Now that I don’t know,” Thadius said.

  “You would have thought they could have made it a little bigger,” the princess remarked.

  Matthias shook his head. “If they made it much bigger it wouldn’t fit in the river.”

  Taico Grimm watched the group board the Providence from the depths of his alleyway hidey-hole. So, they were travelling by boat, were they? He had been stalking them a good few miles, but in his weakened state he hadn’t dared to make any move against them. He waited until they had all stepped below deck and then deftly hot-footed his way on to the ship, ready to dart behind the nearest cargo barrel should they come out again. When he reached Gormal, and received his orders, then maybe he could finish this once and for all and find the peace that had eluded him so long. The storm would be breaking soon.

  A Dark Sect Meets

  127th Day of the Cycle, 495 N.E. (New Era)

  Four men sat opposite each other at even intervals around a large, round oak table in the centre of the dank, poorly lit, cramped room of the unremarkable townhouse. The walls were bumpy and uneven; their plaster yellow and musty from the smoke of years of pipes being puffed in the unventilated house. A half - melted candle sat in the centre of the thick table - top, its shape heavily disfigured by the pulsing flame. Beads of wax spilled out over the brass housing and onto the wood. The light it gave the room was minimal, but accompanied by several wall - mounted candles stuck unevenly into candelabras behind the men, it provided enough light for their meeting.

  The eerie shadows of the four men danced about the room. They could not have been more different in appearance from each other. The first was in his middling years, his coarse, auburn hair pulled back tight and fastened with a silky black ribbon. A pony - tail spilled out over his back. In the right light he could even have been classed as handsome, but in the spectral, flickering candlelight his beauty was distorted and disfigured and a scar that ran along his cheek signalled that he was anything but tame. He wore a high collared coat of navy blue and gold, with delicate lace that spilled out from a white shirt underneath. He clasped his hands together and scrutinised the others through his deep, grey eyes.

  The second man opposite was old and bony. Glazed, inset blue eyes weighed his counterparts through their misty, milky film. His thin beard and wispy grey hair gave him an eccentric appearance, but the look on his face was more murderous than mad. Around his neck he wore a thick gold chain and a chunky pendant in the shape of a raven hung from its length, its wings stretched out in flight. Two emeralds for eyes caught the candlelight and winked menacingly. He clutched at a thick black fur cloak around him, buttoned at the neck with a thick, gaudy brooch of a gothic design.

  The third man, to the right of the second, was young in comparison, but still older than the first. Thin, greased moustaches hung down from his upper lip and dangled freely below his chin, from which a small, trimmed beard spiked outwards. His clothes were markedly different to the others. He wore bright colours: a deep blue robe tied a yellow sash that cut across his skinny midriff. His straight, slicked back hair, greying at his temples, was tucked behind his ears, and he raised a thin, plucked eyebrow at the others as they argued with each other. He was slim, with long fingers and a tall neck, and he sat regally in his rickety chair, observing the sh
ow in front of him.

  Across from him sat the final man: a tall figure, towering above even the third, who himself was decidedly tall even sitting down. What marked the fourth man apart were his eyes. They were brown - red and his irises were thin slits, shaped like those of a snake. He too had a pony - tail like the first, though shorter and more stylized than that of the other man. The clothes he wore were like those of a western merchant: a brown and green waistcoat worn atop a plain cotton shirt, criss-crossed with a lace tie at its top. His face was jagged as if he had been clumsily carved from a piece of coarse stone and like the other, he wore scars across his face: one along his cheek, another across his nose, stretching up to his brow. It was he who hammered his huge fists against the table, ceasing the argument that was continuing on between them.

  “Enough!” he demanded in a deep, booming voice. “We are achieving nothing sitting here arguing again!”

  “Perhaps you should have issued such an ultimatum earlier,” the first, and youngest contested dryly. “It would have saved us much of the evening. I could be sitting back in a comfy chair, drinking brandy in the company of good women right now, if you made these two shut up sooner!” He examined his fingernails as he slumped in the chair, a thick- soled boot resting on the edge of the table as he pushed himself backward so the chair pivoted on two legs. “I had two young beauties waiting for me tonight: a young livery maid with slender, tanned calves, brilliant bosom, a loose tongue and even looser morals and a prostitute with the dirtiest laugh you've ever heard. Instead, here I am sitting here listening to the same old bickering! Hundreds of bloody years of bloody bickering!”

  The red - eyed man pushed back his own chair and stood, leaning forward across the table. His overbearing posture brought a disgruntled look from the oldest man and an uncomfortable shifting of position from the one with the long moustaches.

  “I don’t care what evening entertainment you had planned for yourself Kala. Sometimes I think you forget exactly what it is you are still doing here! You’ve grown too comfortable in your hedonistic lifestyle.”

  “I had to fill the years doing something Rajinal,” the man named Kala scoffed. “Unlike you I chose to enjoy my isolation from society.”

  “Well now is the time to remember that your duty is to our master, not some whore who wishes to bleed you dry of every penny you have left in your possession! As for you two,” he began, staring at the others angrily. “The matter of sovereignty over the lands of Triska isn’t something we will have any decision on. We have become side - tracked by your selfish greed at a crucial point. We need to rethink our immediate plans in the light of this new turn of events.”

  “Our plans?” The oldest sneered, his voice crackling. “As I recall these plans are not ours to claim. We could never be so visionary as to imagine such possibilities! Not even in our youth did we even comprehend such an idea!”

  “Oh let him be old man,” the youngest directed. “It was a term of phrase. A slip of the tongue. Besides, when have you ever been so humble? Rotten old fig,” he whispered, and then smiled at the withered man, who clicked his tongue at him.

  “A ‘slip of the tongue’-” the old man accentuated, “-could mean the difference between victory and defeat! That is the delicacy of the events we have now set in motion. We are on a precipice! So long we have laid low and waited and now, at the eleventh hour the gods seek to take back control of this game!"

  “Could we please get back to the point,” the third grumbled. “I am sick of metaphors and endless prattle from this one! I managed to slip away this evening, my first opportunity for over a week. Yet here we are wasting it with petty banter. I was only voicing my concerns about what happens after we succeed."

  "If we succeed," the oldest grumbled again.

  "Maevik, one more word like that from you and I will rip out that voice box from your brittle old throat and feed it back to you!" the burly man barked. The old man fell silent, his mouth twisted in distaste. "Now, are we all ready to get on?" The rest muttered agreement. He folded his thick, hairy arms and shifted restlessly on his chair, tapping his big, booted foot on the floor. He was a giant of a man.

  “Where had we gotten to?” the youngest asked. The fourth took the floor again.

  “We were discussing Taico Grimm. You were telling us of his progress, Maevik? Or rather his lack of it. You had just informed us that his assassination attempt on the princess had failed.”

  “Yes. The wizard has reached her. Just as it was foreseen, I hasten to add. He overpowered Grimm, despite the power I had imbued in him. In the struggle that ensued, Grimm got his head cut off.”

  Kala scoffed. “Our investment in him is truly paying off! What a waste of time that was. We should have let him rot.”

  “Grimm may still prove useful,” the burly man retorted, holding up a hand. “Please Maevik, continue.”

  “The other two men depicted by him are also with the princess.”

  “The knight from Rina and the ansuwan?” Kala asked. Maevik nodded.

  “Of all the possibilities Grimm described, they were always amongst the four who overcame our plans. Their presence is a result of the gods’ interference and a threat to us,” Maevik said.

  “This is bad news,” the third said. “I feel it in my bones.”

  “Nonsense Silar. Everything is still going to plan!” said Rajinal. “They haven’t achieved anything yet.”

  “I don’t recall any of these recent events in any of our planning!” Silar spat. “A single seeing stone has sent our plans spiralling out of control! Now the girl is on her way to Crystal Ember to stop the dragon from being released. A girl who should not even be possible!”

  “Her presence is why we still need Grimm,” Maevik advised. “His knowledge is still useful to us while she is alive.”

  “But Grimm’s very presence has altered those events he has foreseen. How can we be sure of anything?” Silar asked.

  “We can’t,” said the burly man named Rajinal. “But he knows her. And his presence here may be the one thing the gods didn’t predict. We’ve taken their tool and moulded him into our own.”

  “Perhaps. But Grimm is not as important as the dragon. The return hinges on Sikaris being released. If there is no distraction, no threat to draw the eyes of Triska-”

  “The dragon will be freed!” Maevik snapped. “I have sent more spawn after the girl.”

  “I feel so much better,” Kala mocked. “The Helspawn and Grimm you sent to take care of it before have worked so well so far! Bravo!” He clapped his hands slowly, derisively.

  “As I recall,” Maevik growled, his half dead eyes regarding the younger man icily, “Using Taico Grimm was your idea in the first place?”

  “We all agreed we needed him!” Kala muttered back at him.

  The room grew darker suddenly as the candle in front of them snuffed out. Rajinal rose and picked up the holder from a pool of spilt wax, speaking to the others as he went to change the candle.

  “Is there any indication that the full extent of our plans have been uncovered by anyone else?” he asked.

  “No,” Maevik growled. “There are no signs of any other movement towards the south. It seems the seeing stone have not compromised our efforts completely. Fortunately Mahalia is not astute enough to have drawn the right conclusions from the premonitions they intercepted.”

  “They have been astute enough to make an attempt on my life!” Kala exclaimed. “Two weeks ago one of their kind found me, amongst all the people in all the places in Triska! You underestimate them too much Maevik. They known about us, at least, which is only one step away from their learning the full truth. Their net is closing in on us.”

  “Wizards are tricky creatures. We all know how much they’ve scuppered more than one of our plans to bring dysfunction to Triska over the last few centuries,” Rajinal added. “But we have always remained one step ahead of them.”

  “We must remain in hiding as much as we can until the time is right,�
� Maevik advised. “We can use Taico Grimm to scupper their plans. Remember that Grimm is not just useful to us for his foresight. We need a vessel for the return. We have sought after one for so long, and none has been as ripe a candidate as him.”

  “He is practically an empty shell,” Rajinal nodded. “One we have been able to have considerable influence over.”

  “You’re welcome,” Silar said, steepling his fingers.

  Maevik turned to Kala. “Grimm is going to come to you. I thought it best as my ability to provide more borrowed power is clearly not enough. I suggest you make his abilities more permanent. Give him enough firepower to stop the wizard and kill the princess. That will tip the scales in our favour. Then we can deal with Mahalia separately. As long as we remain hidden they cannot stop us.”

  “Are you sure giving Grimm permanent abilities is a good idea? Especially those that Kala can provide?” Silar asked.

  Maevik sighed. “You doubt him too much Silar! Grimm is a loyal subject now. He will obey all of our orders to the death.”

  “Again,” Kala chuckled.

  “Exactly,” Maevik snorted. “Or do you doubt your own abilities?”

  Silar sighed. “Such ‘convincing’ is unpredictable, especially with a man in his condition. He is insane. He was insane before we even laid our hands on him, let alone now we have taken the last shreds of his decaying mind and bent them to our will!”

  “It will hold,” Maevik said. “We have only months now until the time comes.”

  “I could do a much better job of stopping them myself,” Kala retorted. “I doubt the girl has attained the ability yet to do anything of any real damage. I could kill the wizard and this guard, isolate the girl... hmm, yes, that pretty little thing, I’d like to have her all alone. I am sure I could teach her a trick or two. She isn’t married yet, is she?” He looked to the others, who watched him impassively. “No, she’s not. Then she’s not been properly broken in.” A sickening smile broadened his face.