Kings or Pawns (Steps of Power 1)

by Sherwood, J. J.

  But if the human miners were about, then so too were their prostitutes.

  He frowned slightly, feeling an unusual lack of thrill at the thought. His mind whisked him north before he realized it, out across the frozen tundra and through the icy walls of Kaivervale…

  “General Jikun Taemrin, your captain is not allowed in the city at this time,” a guard shouted as they drew near to the city’s golden gates.

  Jikun’s mind retreated to the warm summer air about him and his pace only grew more determined, the fresh day bolstering his focus. He gestured to Navon to follow him.

  “General Jikun Taemrin!” the soldier’s voice rose all the more urgently. “We have orders to shoot anyone who attempts to enter the city who is still considered to be in need of quarantine!” He raised his spear slightly, but the male knew it was the threat along the wall and not the spear itself that caused Jikun’s pace to slow.

  “Navon has already passed the inspections by the temple’s healers,” Jikun began curtly. “If you do not consider me to be an honorable male, then fetch the priests and we shall wait.”

  The soldiers exchanged looks—elven tradition no doubt caused them conflict. The council had appointed Jikun as general and, of course, as the “council is honorable,” then so too was the male they had appointed. They could not think to challenge his word—or rather, that of the council.

  The soldier’s spear lowered. “Proceed.”

  Jikun’s pace returned to its natural course and his eyes fell away from the wall to the city’s opened gates. Yet as he and Navon neared the egress, Jikun noted the guards leaned slightly away from them.

  It was difficult to blame them—he had seen what the plague had wrought firsthand. Nevertheless, he was indignant toward their disgust while at the same time sickened with their unwavering trust.

  ‘You are in a foul mood today,’ he acknowledged to himself. There was nothing the guards at the gate could do to appease him either way. Whether it was scores of white tents or marble walls, he knew his frustrations were far beyond the scenery.

  The council is honorable. Jikun scoffed as he stepped through the gates of the city and onto the cobbled street. The buildings towered up above him, and the flowers that had adorned the balconies in the early spring were long gone and replaced by simple vines. It seemed almost surreal, standing once more in the midst of crisp and unmarred civilization.

  “What is it?” Navon asked, regarding Jikun curiously.

  Jikun rebuked himself for his outward show and attempted to respond in an indifferent, thoughtful tone, “I was just thinking about the council again. What I wouldn’t give to put them all to the sword.” Well, that had lasted a grand total of eight words.

  Navon’s eyes grew wide as an owl’s, his lips parting to a little ‘o’ of shock. He glanced quickly behind him to survey the reactions of the guards, but they had created enough distance that Jikun’s words were lost in the tumult of the city’s streets. “Jikun, every word that comes out of your mouth grows more blasphemous by the day!”

  Jikun rolled his eyes, grip subconsciously tightening on the book of necromancy tucked beneath his arm. How could Navon even think of rebuking him when he himself had nearly died to the council’s corrupt and foolish southern war?—and the male himself had been audaciously dabbling in blasphemy mere minutes before?

  Somehow, for all he had seen, Navon remained sickeningly loyal to them. ‘The loyalty of a conditioned soldier…’ And yet Navon was not originally from the elven continent.

  He opened his mouth, desiring to question from where his comrade’s unquestioning loyalty had arisen, but the chill beneath his arm drew him to a halt. It would have something to do with necromancy. He knew it before he asked.

  “While we are here, I need to make a personal stop,” Navon continued, his tone still revealing his ruffled feathers.

  By personal stop Jikun could only assume he meant the temple of Sel’ari. “As you wish,” he replied with a slight shrug. What did he expect? The culture south of Darival was embedded with blind loyalty. The ice and Lithrian people of the north had long since lost that fault. Life was harsher there. Real. Whereas in Elvorium…

  He watched a group of children scurry across the road, kicking a ball down an alley across the street, shouting and laughing as they vanished after it. The image of the young girl in Kaivervale returned to him, seated with her little friends behind the frozen waterfall in the Turmazel Mountains. Seated before the great, yellow eye.

  Yes, Darival was far harsher.

  He saw Navon give a faint smile as his eyes followed the children into the darkness.

  “Do you want one?”

  Navon laughed outright, shaking his head. “Gods, Jikun. I have enough children to take care of right now.”

  Jikun smiled, feeling exceedingly alike on the matter. He watched an older elf rebuke the children for their ruckus as they reemerged with ball in hand. Then they tore off down the street, laughing in defiance as they went.

  It was the same rhythm of everyday life here. Nothing seemed to change. Thirty thousand sick soldiers were dying outside their walls, but life across the bridge was as blissfully ignorant as ever. He did not expect them to drag their feet and weep, but what had a single, free-willed elf, not under direction from the council, done for his troops since their return?

  The answer was nothing.

  The council was not the only thing corrupted.

  And if war was not enough to shake their complacency, then what was?

  Navon drew to a stop beside a pastry stand along a marbled wall, flicking a fattened fly off his hand as he reached for a flaky bun. “These are excellent,” he spoke excitedly, the dullness in his eyes abating slightly. He picked up a second, dropping the coin onto the wood of the stall, and handed one to Jikun. “Here. Have you had one of these?”

  Jikun regarded him absentmindedly for a moment. How could this light and wild spirit tamper with necromancy? One moment he was looking at the familiar face of his comrade and the next, there was something else shifting darkly beneath his azure gaze. Curiosity was the god’s curse on the elves… And Navon had acquired far more than was healthy.

  He bit into the flaky bread and wiped a finger across the corner of his mouth where the salty cream seeped past the edge—no doubt it was something from the western seaboard. He raised his eyebrows and nodded heavily. “Gods that is good. I can almost forget about how much I hate these people with food made this well.”

  Navon chuckled at Jikun’s jest. “If the next sentence out of your mouth even resembles negativity, so help me I shall wring the rest of it from you with whatever strength I may have left.”

  Jikun found his smile broadening as the lines on Navon’s face ebbed away. “The city of Elvorium possesses only the facade of peace—it lasts only so long as those in power have what they want.”

  Navon punched his shoulder firmly, causing Jikun to fumble the bread. Jikun threw the remnants at Navon and the male tried haphazardly to smack them away midair. “Knock it off. Act like a general,” Navon taunted.

  Jikun smirked at their little game and stepped after Navon as he left the side of the booth. But inside his mind was churning as he watched the elves go on with their lives, as seemingly carefree as Jikun had briefly allowed himself to be with his captain. Maybe… that guise of peace was necessary. Outside, the real world was grim: a great weight to bear with little reward in sight. He had made his choice to live it.

  But he had also chosen to protect these people from it.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  There was a resounding knock on the door to Jikun’s room, unfamiliar in its severity and rhythm. He awoke with a start, his icy eyes staring up at the ceiling as his heart lay below, pounding from the rush of adrenaline in his chest. He sat up abruptly, the grogginess of the elven wine gone. Beside him, the woman he had bedded was staring in clear panic, holding the covers to her bare breasts in a state of frozen fear.

  “Sh, get under the bed!”
Jikun hissed. He hastened from the sheets, kicking her clothes under the bed and yanking the covers from her hand. “Get!”

  The woman scrambled to obey, quickly vanishing as the general turned toward the door.

  “Who is it?” he demanded, quickly pulling on his pants. He snatched his wine-soaked shirt from the nightstand and hurried toward the door.

  “A message,” the unfamiliar voice responded vaguely.

  Jikun’s movement slowed, his face reflexively knitting in concern. “A message?” He glanced once toward the bed. Good, there was no sign of the woman. He rested a hand on the handle of the door, inhaled sharply, and swung it wide. “Why not give it to my messenger?” he demanded curtly, collecting himself under a general’s command.

  His eyes fell to the elf before him. The male was of the City Guard, donned in clean plate-mail embellished with his arbitrary position. He was armed with a long sword, but Jikun noted that it remained resting in its sheath.

  The soldier glanced once into the room, but his eyes seemed disinterested and refocused on the general in an almost apologetic gaze. “It’s about your captain, General Taemrin.”

  *

  The Temple of Sel’ari was flocked by a crowd of curious elves. Through the throng of civilians, Jikun could hardly see the speckle of soldiers dotted in their wake. His eyes ran up the steps to the two heavily armed soldiers poised rigidly before the temple’s doors. Questions rang out through the air; whispers flitted by as the general passed. Yet the males at the doors remained stoic and still. Jikun drew his horse up beside them, dismounting swiftly and dropping the reins carelessly to the side.

  These were not the usual doors, Jikun quickly noted. As unfamiliar as he was with the goddess’ temple, these plain wooden doors were clearly temporary and hardly ornate enough to don the entrance to the capital’s goddess.

  “General,” one of the guards acknowledged as the frantic tap of Jikun’s boots drew to a stop beside him. He pushed open the door just wide enough to let Jikun through and the crowd leapt forward in a surge of curiosity.

  For once, Jikun did not hesitate to enter. As the door closed behind him and the voices of the throng died down, a white-robed male turned toward him from the center of the vast and empty room, catching his attention before his eyes had even swept the unfamiliar interior. The male’s hands were clasped together at his abdomen, his thin, weathered face drawn. The gold inlay at his sleeves and hem was the first sign to Jikun that he was not a priest of Sel’ari, but rather a mage of the capital—and a rather high ranking one at that. The intricate detail wove rank amongst its threads and Jikun swiftly deduced he was on the of the capital’s leading Seers.

  His stomach dropped.

  “What happened?” Jikun demanded as his hurried footsteps echoed across the marble tiles. He scanned the carefully composed face of the mage, detecting through his calm guise the tumultuous information rolling about within.

  The seer raised a slender hand, gesturing toward the back wall and the interior of the temple around him, sweeping a deliberate arc to rest before Jikun’s torso, as though directing his eyes in the exact trail they should follow.

  Jikun’s eyes snapped away and swept the room, noting for the first time, away from his focus on the elf, the dismal condition of the temple about them. A large, humanoid-sized hole had been smashed through at the back wall and the candles along it were scattered about, unlit heaps of half-burned and stark-white wax. Twisted metal lay in pieces around the hall and a stone hand reached out desperately from a mound of shattered rock, as though grasping desperately for help to regain its once unmarried entirety.

  “What happened?” This time Jikun’s words were softer, hesitant even. His eyes fell to a splatter of blood on his left and his stomach twisted beneath his rigid frame. Why had a seer summoned him to the temple…?

  He was not long to receive his answer.

  “Captain Navon was attacked in this temple earlier this morning—before the dawn—by Saebellus’ beast. Clearly, Saebellus’ creature had orders to dispose of your captain specifically. I can only imagine why.” His tone through the last sentence was tinted with the faintest traces of stoic sarcasm. The seer raised his other hand at equal height with the first. “I can show you what happened, as I retrieved the events from his mind. The projection will be from his eyes, but it will show you what you want—or rather need—to know.” His hands lowered as one. “It is not a pleasant experience.”

  Jikun had never endured the transfer of events from a seer, nor did he possess extensive knowledge of the method, but he nodded, drawing himself up to demonstrate his solidarity. “Show me,” he commanded stiffly.

  The world around them changed instantaneously and Jikun found himself kneeling before a seven-foot statue of Sel’ari, the scene projected into Jikun’s memory as though he was the Helven himself. He felt a strange sensation through his body as his senses adjusted to unify with the illusion—senses torn between the realities of both vision and world.

  Slowly, with growing speed, the reality of the vision solidified about him.

  Navon lowered his head once before the statue, in a slight bow of reverence, before he raised his eyes attentively to her face. He studied its calm beauty for a moment, inhaling deeply the perfumed scent of the halls around him: the subtle fragrance the priests had sprinkled above the temple to ease the wandering mind.

  His eyes shifted fondly down her arm to her hand, outreached to rest upon the head of the statue of an elven child. And it was with the same fond reverence that the child looked up into the goddess’ face and smiled. Jikun felt a sense of peace settle over the captain and Navon leaned forward, reaching a hand out to rest on her foot. Through all of Navon’s necromantic tendencies, Jikun had not been able to refrain from doubting his comrade’s sincerity to his faith. But here, unwatched and unplanned, the religious fervor he sensed was uncomfortably real.

  Navon lowered his head once more and kissed the cool stone. Despite his resistance, Jikun found himself pulled further into the reality of the vision.

  There was a sudden thud from his right and Navon raised his head sharply, brow knitting in a mixture of confusion and concern. His hand fell slowly from the stone and he pushed off his knees. “What…?” he trailed off, intrigued.

  There was another deep thud and he watched several white-robed priests hurry toward the back wall of the temple, whispering quietly to one another in a blur of rapid theories.

  “What is it?” Navon called out, his voice echoing across the high-vaulted ceiling, rising above the whispers with undaunted force. Jikun could feel the concern emanating through Navon’s memory, causing his body to tense. And yet, even then there still was rising a level of imprudent curiosity.

  Several dozen other worshipers, who were scattered across the temple, had paused in their prayers, raising their heads to follow Navon’s inquisitive gaze.

  “We don’t know, Captain,” one of the robed priests replied, stopping before the countless rows of candles lining the wall. He leaned his head forward above the flickering flames, his ear moving toward the wall to determine the source of the noise.

  There was a suddenly explosion of stone from before the males, smashing into the skull of the nearest priest to crush it inward in a definitive crack. Shouts of terror erupted from around the room and the sound of feet scattered desperately for the temple’s doors.

  Navon tensed, and with a soldier’s training, pushed his fear aside even as he felt the floor beneath him tremble. He glanced down once to see several small stones bounce past his feet, as though even they were desperate to flee from what now lay before them.

  His head snapped up. The unwounded priests had scattered, fleeing into the throng of terrified worshipers screaming, “Sel’ari, save us!” And it was then that Navon stepped back, his eyes locking onto the hole in widening realization.

  A shadow loomed before them in the dust. A taloned hand reached out and gripped the stone wall as a body pulled itself through the jagged o
pening.

  “Gods save us!” a nearby female screeched in horror.

  Navon twisted about swiftly, the instinct to command seizing him even above his own instinct to flee and survive. He gestured sharply to the people behind him, bellowing above the pounding in his ears, “RUN!!!”

  The female behind turned with most of the others, laboring under the weight of her unborn child, stumbling and screaming for the door in a pounding and scurrying of desperate and frantic feet. Yet, several priests stepped forward, inspired by Navon’s stance.

  There was a low growl behind the Helven and a powerful odor of blood and sewage filled the room. A candle skidded across the floor past his feet, leaving a little trail of smoke in its wake.

  Navon turned, his eyes growing wide as his breath caught in the deepest channel of his throat.

  With a shudder of bloodlust, the beast shook its great, tattered wings and snorted in the smoke, yellow eyes burning as it scanned the vast room before it; it was seeking its prey. As its eyes landed upon Navon, there was a brief flicker of recognition and hatred, a rising fury of past wounds and vicious encounters. Then its powerful jaws snapped open and it emitted a thunderous roar, reaching down and grabbing the bent candleholder beside it. With a single flick of its powerful arm, the candleholder whipped through the air toward the Helven like a twisted, jagged heap of melded swords.

  Navon stumbled back as it sped toward him, diving beside the stone statue at his left. He threw his arms up to desperately cover his head, his shield of flesh and bone rising just as the metal collided with the statue. Rock shattered about him in a crack like thunder, dashing shards across his body.

  But Navon did not wait for the dust to settle. He scrambled across the floor away from the wreckage, glancing up in time to see the beast step forward casually, snatching up the injured body of a priest as it went. The male screamed in terror, struggling violently against the iron grasp; then the beast reached over with its free hand and gave the head a swift and final twist. There was a sickening crack and the flailing body went still.