by Andrew Linke
The king raised his left hand and looked down at his council. “What else would you have me do? You saw the marks on him with your own eyes.”
The royal financial advisor, who was indeed the same man who Rajin had so intimidated, stared down the others, who returned to their seats muttering. He leaned forward, his palms resting on the tabletop as he said, “Your majesty, I must speak to the wisdom of your actions. Yes, the heretic is dangerous and yes, I and my companions did react poorly to his threats just a few moments ago, but he is a danger that we must risk. As we all know, he has been free to rome the world and insinuate himself into the graces of other nations for nearly a decade. He is our best hope for securing safe passage for the expedition across the lands of the wild east.”
“But justice has not been served!” cried Partho ZyBrin, the council’s legal scholar.
“You know better than anyone that ‘justice’ is a malleable term, Di-Partho,” Gatha said.
“But to make him the lynchpin of such an important expedition!”
“Did any of you even look at him?” King Berech cried. “Did you not see the marks of an elfkin upon his skin? They still held strong, throughout his interrogation. They are real, or as real as any man or dwarf can ascertain. I trust you know what those sigils mean.”
As one, the advisors bowed their heads in mute acknowledgement, for they had all seen the subtle, shifting patterns of green and blue writhing beneath the skin of Rajin’s side.
“We are decided then. The expedition shall go forward within a fortnight, with the heretic as its guide,” the king said, rising and lifting his sword from the arm of the throne. He latched the scabbard to his belt, turned away from the council table, and strode from the room without another word.
⫛
The edges of the balance gate swirled with white mist, cut through with a continually shifting rainbow of colors thrown by countless branches of ever-forking lighting, as if the rim of the gateway were formed from a living ring of shattered crystal. Within the ring of the balance gate, one could see the wavering image of a different place, as through looking through a rippling sheet of poorly crafted glass.
The gateway crackled, filling the air with a scent like burning metal, then the image shivered and Neasa stepped through.
She shivered, more from surprise than cold, and glanced about her. It was disconcerting to stand in the stronghold of Greenwatch Tower one moment and then, with nothing more than a single step, to find oneself in the capital, surrounded by the shimmering, crackling maws of more than a dozen balance gateways. Here, Neasa knew, was the beating heart of the Commonwealth military. From this room messages, supplies, and troops could be shifted between the farthest reaches of the Commonwealth, wherever gateways had been erected by rune mages. That was the theory, at least.
“Welcome to Tal Albahi, soldier,” said the elderly clerk who sat at a desk in the center of the large, round room. He stood and waved towards a scale that rested beside his desk and was large enough to hold a handcart. “Stand on the scale. We need to get the measure of you.”
Neasa said nothing, but strode over to the scale and dropped her bag to the stone floor beside it.
“No. Everything you carried must be weighed with you. I don’t expect that a soldier would understand the dynamics of balance gate travel, even if you’re important enough to merit an individual trip through the portal. The transfer papers indicate that you will not be returning through the gateway in the foreseeable future, so I need to get an exact measure of how much weight you carried through so we can correct the imbalance.”
Neasa shrugged, feigning indifference, shouldered her bag, and stepped onto the scale. It was of a variety that she had never before seen, with long strings of runes glowing up the length of a pole sunk into the floor beside the platform and no sign of balance weights, springs, or levers. As she stood at the center of the iron platform, the runes on the pole shifted and she recognized several of them as listing a number.
“Thank you, soldier. Now you can step over here and I’ll give you your transfer orders,” the clerk chirped as he scratched an entry into one of the many ledgers that lay upon his desk.
“How will you be balancing the gateway?” Neasa asked. She pointed at the scale. “I have read of runic scales, but never seen one myself. It seems like a lot of effort just to balance the gates.”
The clerk’s eyes widened in surprise. It was uncommon enough for individuals to be authorized for a one-way journey through the balance gates. For one to make such a journey and have even a rudimentary understanding of the powers at play, well, that was a true wonder to the old man. “Generally speaking you would be correct, but we are not speaking of a single balance gate being used for an emergency retreat. Look around you, soldier. We have over a dozen fully open balance gates in this chamber, and many more that are currently holding in their reduced state because we do not anticipate any need for them today. If the anima imbalance in all of these gates were to grow too strong, the results might be catastrophic.”
Neasa nodded and glanced around at the ring of crackling gateways, each a window into a distant corner of the Commonwealth. She had once dreamed of traveling to all those places, perhaps at the side of her half brother as his personal guard, but fate had written for her a more obscure role, and a narrower path to walk.
The clerk held up a sheet of flimsy paper and waved it at Neasa, catching her attention again. “Your orders. Do you know your way through the castle?”
Neasa took the paper and peered at the instructions written on it. Below the neatly curved lines of instructions, a single familiar rune glowed with a faint purple light. “Yes. I can find my way.”
⫛
King Berech lounged on a purple velvet divan set below a wide window in his private chambers, perusing a hand-illustrated copy of T’Almark’s Theory of Fighting Forms, when his handmaid called to him from the door. “You have a visitor, your majesty. She is carrying one of your friendship runes and bears the marks of safe binding, but she is not familiar to me.”
Berech closed the book and laid it on a marble end table beside the divan. He smiled and rested his hands behind his head as he said, “You sound concerned, Xi-Cuer. Is that jealousy I hear in your voice?”
“Forgive me, master, but it is my duty to see that you are kept safe and well. I would not dare to judge my king if he told me to expect a private caller.”
Berech laughed and raised one hand to wave Cuer away. “Go let her in, then give us some privacy.”
Cuer bowed and returned to the doors of the king’s private chambers, where Neasa waited. Neasa had combed her hair and dressed in her formal black leader jerkin and a pair of loose brown leggings held up by a tooled leather belt. Cuer escorted Neasa to the king, bowed to both of them in turn, then slipped into an antechamber and pulled the door shut, bowing as she did.
King Berech raised both of his arms in an expansive greeting and called out, “Welcome, Neasa Veatro. I trust your journey was short and not too uncomfortable.”
“I have never traveled by balance gate before. That clerk you keep down in the basement could do with seeing daylight more frequently, if you ask my opinion.”
“Ah, but nobody asked your opinion, Neasa, and yet you volunteer it. Is it any wonder that you found yourself exiled to a distant outpost?”
Neasa shrugged her shoulders, glanced around the chamber, then strode towards the nearest chair. She settled down into it and said, “That probably has more to do with my king’s willful efforts to forget that I even exist.”
“I am hurt, Neasa.”
“Not really.” She raised her fingers to the band of runes tattooed around her neck and said, “You know better than anyone that I cannot harm you. Tell me, Berech, do you have all of your whores restrained or only those who might challenge you for the throne?”
“A good joke.”
“An honest question.”
Berech sighed and sat upright, facing Neasa with his hands drap
ed across his knees. “I only told Cuer what she wanted to hear. If I told her that my bastard sister was coming for a visit, rumor of it would be all over the castle within an hour. Let her think that another whore is coming to entertain the single most desirable bachelor in all of the commonwealth and it’s nothing new.”
“And is she restrained as well?”
“Of course.”
Neasa shook her head and looked away from Berech to take in the opulence of his private chambers. Silk curtains were pulled back from the windows, allowing the morning light to fill the room and wash across the rich decorations in purple and white. Wherever the rough stones of the castle wall showed between the frames of paintings and gold-embroidered edges of tapestries they had been whitewashed. The difference between her rude quarters at Greenwatch Keep and these chambers were as stark as those between herself and her half brother.
“What do you want with me?”
Berech stood and nodded towards a window in the eastern wall. Neasa heaved a sigh, rose, and followed him to the window.
“What do you see out there, Neasa?”
Beyond the wide, completely clear panes of glass Neasa could see the towers and walls of the castle below, resplendent with whitewashed stone and waving banners, perched atop the heights of Albahi. Beyond and below, the shimmering waters of Brackwater Bay were teeming with cargo vessels of the shipping guild and warships of the commonwealth fleet, their masts arrayed with billowing white sails and brightly colored pennants declaring the lords and guild contracts of each vessel.
“I know what you’re looking at, Neasa. Look up. Look beyond.”
Neasa raised her eyes and gazed across the bay to the far horizon, where she could just see the hazy canopy of the wild elven forests. Here, far from the wide mouth of the river Trau, a journey by boat of one, perhaps two days would bring the traveler to the opposite shore. Those lands had stood untamed, and for the most part unexplored, for much of the history of the Commonwealth.
“The elven lands?” Neasa asked, her eyebrows rising in surprise. “Please do not tell me that you intend to place a settlement on the far shore of the bay, Berech. You may be a royal fool, but I know that you had even better tutors than I did. Surely you know the history of our dealings with the eastern elves.”
“Better than you, sister. I have been studying our treaties with the peoples of that vast wild in detail these last two months, ensuring that the mission I have for you does not give them cause for war. To the best of my interpretation, and that of my legal and foreign relations advisors, there is nothing to stop you.”
“What do you want from me, Berech?”
“I want you to be my eyes, my ears, and my sword on an important mission.”
“Your sword?”
“Yes. You were always a talented swordsman. If you are willing, I want you to join an expedition that will travel through the elven wilds all the way eastward to the dragon kingdoms.”
Neasa turned from the window and gawked at Berech. An expedition to the dragon kingdoms? Trade with the draconic lands had been cut off for nearly a century. The overland routes had been dangerous even before the Dreaming had fallen upon the world and the lengthy water paths had fallen prey to drakes, pirates, and monstrous water beasts born of the nightmares of sailors.
“You appear to be as surprised as I expected,” Berech said. He turned away from the window and, striding back towards the divan, lifted a crystal decanter from the end table and poured a golden liquid into two blown glass goblets. As he poured, he said, “That is nearly the same reaction that the guilds had when I proposed the expedition to them. Trust me, sister, this is a grand opportunity.”
Neasa furrowed her brow and tried to decide how to react to her half-brother’s offer. She accepted the goblet and raised it to her nose to sniff the sharp, sweet scent of the mead. She took a sip and let the cloying liquid dance over her tongue for a moment before swallowing it. She raised the glass to the window and studied the play of sunbeams through the golden liquid, trying to make sense of the the king asking her to join this expedition when he possessed the unbreakable power to order her to go.
“Is something wrong with the mead? I swear, if the servants have held over a decanter from yesterday I will…”
“Why do you not order me, Berech?”
The king paused, then saluted Neasa with his goblet. “You noticed.”
“I can’t help but notice,” she spat. She reached up with her free hand and unbuttoned the collar of her jerkin, revealing the band of runes tattooed around her neck. “You know what father did to me. What is done to all slaves.”
“You are not a slave.”
“Then break the sigils. Release me from my contract and let me return to the academy.
“I will not. You knew what you were signing up for when you joined the Commonwealth Army, even if you thought you would only be assigned to guard the New Tower. It is not my fault that you had to be reassigned.”
“Then bring me back to guard the New Tower. Or assign me to the academy.”
“You know I can’t do that. We have a command structure for a reason.”
“You are the king, Berech. You can do practically anything, except maybe disband the guilds.”
“Don’t even joke about that.”
“So you still refuse to release me?”
“You still have three years on your contract and I will not see that violated. Just because you feel misused by your commanding officers…”
“They lied. You were there, Berech, when that murderous bitch Ida Saltach unleashed a dream beast upon the tower. Good soldiers died bringing that monster down. You know as well as I that…”
“Enough,” Berech said. He held up one hand and shook his head as he said, “You are a good swordsman, Neasa, and you are possibly the best wakener that I have ever met, but you are a lousy soldier.”
“Then why are you sending me on this expedition, if I cannot be trusted? And why won’t you order me to go? You know that I cannot refuse a direct order any more than I could kill you right now.” Even as she said it, Neasa knew that she was pushing the edges of her bond. A heat began to tingle at her neck as the runes prepared to draw tight and restrain her, should she make any move to act upon her treasonous words.
Berech saw the faint glow beneath the collar of Neasa’s jerkin as the runes reacted to her words. He shook his head and stepped forward to lay a hand on her shoulder. “You are my sister, Neasa, no matter that your mother was never acknowledged by King Tybald. I do care for you, but I will not violate a century of tradition because you are bad at following orders.”
“Then order me to go on your cursed expedition and see it done with.”
“I cannot. The expedition will take a year, perhaps more, and journey into lands that have not been seen by any Commonwealth citizen for nearly a century. You will certainly encounter situations that are beyond anything for which we can prepare. My runic scholars advise me that any direct orders given to one traveling so far might result in unexpected bindings. Therefore, I offer you a choice: You may volunteer to go on this mission, sworn only to uphold your vows as a soldier in the Commonwealth army, or you may choose to return to your post at Greenwatch Keep and serve out the remainder of your contract there. If you return from your expedition before your contract has expired, I will arrange for you to serve out the remainder of your contract in a command position here at the castle.”
Neasa tipped the goblet and drank down the remaining mead in several deep swallows, then pulled away from Berech and stepped back to stand in front of the window. The elven wilds stretched out in the distance across the bay and beyond, in the hazy distance, Neasa saw a rocky promontory rising up above the thick tangle of the jungle canopy. She knew that the distant rock faces could not be even the foothills of the dragon peaks, which lay over a thousand miles distant, but the sight of the them looming up above the unexplored jungles, shrouded in mist and only faintly visible, was emblematic to her of the length of
the journey ahead.
She draws slow breath, then nodded and said, “Put it in writing, tattoo it on me alongside my army contract, and I will go.”
⫛
The noonday sun hammered down upon Tal Albahi, sending many of the merchants and servants who thronged the capital’s busy streets scurrying into the cooler shade of their stone dwellings. That day, the first truly hot day of the spring season, the only true crowd that was in evidence on the streets snaked along the main streets and alleyways of the southern quarter, outside the shops of those rune smiths who sold inexpensively scribed cooling runes on paper that would surely yellow and wither within a few weeks.
In the castle, the heavy stones from which the fortress had been constructed still held the cool of the night, rendering the contrivances of runic cooling unnecessary. Here, high above the rest of the city, the tall windows were thrown open to allow a pleasantly warm breeze to flow through the council chamber, carrying with it a pleasant salty scent that whet the appetite and reminded all within of the sea that had been so important to the founding of the Commonwealth. Seated at the head of the council table, King Berech drew deep, satisfied breaths of that air as he savored the delicate flavors of his herb encrusted salmon and considered the crowd of representatives gathered for a midday meal.
At that moment, the implacable Oppen Ralva was sedately explaining the intricacies of preparing a letter of introduction for the expedition in, it seemed, more languages than ought to exist. Across the table from Berech, seated directly to the king’s left, Biho Erdenech was openly glaring at the representative from the Translators Guild. Berech would have suspected the proud guild master of coveting Oppen’s position as the leader of the expedition, were it not for the man’s widely known distain for foreign cultures. To Biho’s left sat Jarom DyZhokar, the broad chested, and even larger bellied, dwarf who represented the Precious Commodities Guild, nibbling on a hard goat cheese imported from the rocky shores at the southern reaches of the Commonwealth. His wide, fleshy dwarf face was furrowed in concentration as he listened to the Zlata Comac, the cultural ambassador and the only member of the official delegation who was not representing any particular guild, speculate on the position of paid companions within the culture of the Dragon Kingdoms. Unsurprisingly, this conversation had drawn the attention of Havil A’Mar. The Victuals Guild representative put forth the face of a noble abstainer who pedaled his exotic spices, foods, and alcohols while consuming only enough to assure potential customers that his wares were not poisonous, but Berech privately suspected that the man’s abstemious front concealed some deep-seated perversion. Between Havil and Zlata sat Tracha Runson, an independent artificer who was legendary throughout the guilds for both his skill with runes and mechanical devices, and his refusal to join any of the guilds. That obstinacy had long poisoned Tracha’s career, until Berech’s royal father had spotted the man’s talent and raised him to the position of court artificer, effectively placing him above the guilds.