“That is why it is an evil land,” Queen Arlene had said.
Rafen hadn’t fully understood this.
Between the East and West were many other lands: Vladmiēr, Hara, and Renegald, to name a few. Meanwhile, the sun ‘orbited’ the world, moving in a descending arc over the top face in the day and passing over the lower watery face at night. The revolutions of the three moons determined the ‘seasons’, a word Rafen had never heard. This shocked Queen Arlene.
“There are three seasons, Rafen,” she said. “First summer, then a long winter, and then spring. Some in this world claim there are six seasons, but they are fools.”
Rafen had only heard of winter, never summer or spring.
In the afternoons, Rafen spent his time on the deck. Often he watched the sea with Etana, who would tell him how ‘kesmalic’ everything was. Rafen now understood kesmal was a supernatural force, which some had within them and others did not. Sacredness surrounded the topic.
Etana once asked him about a man called Curtis whom she had met in Tarhia. Rafen had never heard of him. Her face had fallen.
King Robert didn’t speak to Rafen much over the next few days because he and Admiral Alexander were now obsessed with a speck on the horizon. They kept looking at it through some sort of extendable metal tube with glass stuck in both ends.
“If we make Fritz’s Current first,” Alexander kept saying.
When Etana told Rafen over a meal that the speck was a Tarhian ship, he had frozen in horror with a bit of gravy soaked bread halfway to his mouth.
“It’s all right,” Etana said. “You do panic so. The Tarhian ship is not very fast, Father says, and we are sure to reach Fritz’s Current first. When we reach that, the Phoenix Wing and the Sianian Crest will be carried along so quickly by the sea that we shall soon lose them. Besides, we have many, many philosophers on board the ship besides Arez who protect it with a great deal of kesmal.”
“What is Fritz’s Current?” Rafen asked, thinking of his dream about the phoenix feathers.
Etana sighed, stirring the soup in her bowl. She pointed a finger at her spoon and tried to lift it with kesmal. The spoon hovered a tiny way above the soup before flopping back into the liquid, exhausted by its unnatural efforts. Etana sniffed in disgust.
“You ask too many questions,” she said. “Fritz’s Current is a big trough in the sea where all the water flows very fast. It’s huge, and it runs all the way to Renegald. We shall find our way out of it sometime after we have passed Hara, and then we angle ourselves south and head for Siana.”
The day came when Rafen felt the ship move perceptibly faster. Little by little, the speck on the horizon fell behind. Talmon’s last attempt to catch them had failed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The
Lashki’s Plan
Chewing cherries behind his large crude table in the hall near the guard’s rows, Talmon felt the room turn cold, colder than normal. Something smelled like mold… or a corpse. Spitting a cherry pip on the table, Talmon scrambled up from his chair and glanced around the hall. He remembered with regret that he had ordered the guards at both sets of double doors to leave him. He couldn’t stand their fidgeting, and his wonderful dogs, now whining at the locked door on the right wall, always barked when they were around.
“Master?” he said in a high voice. He wished the men he had dispatched would hurry up and bring that sickly old man who had helped Etana. He was going to make an example of him, kill him the way he should have killed Rafen.
“You seem nervous today, Talmon.” The Lashki stepped out from the shadows in the left corner behind the table. He held the copper rod.
Talmon stumbled away from the table, choking on cherry skin.
“I received the message you sent through Asiel,” the Lashki said. “Robert must have had a good weather to come so soon. I hope you made him very comfortable.”
He spoke softly, a ghastly smile on his face.
“Twenty-four years,” he said, “but Nazt kept me a week longer – it called for the Fourth Runi and I feel I am somehow missing things. It told me Robert must wait. I saw many things, Talmon, and I followed vision after vision until I was sure that Richard was in Tarhia at this moment, in your own mines and defying you!”
He laughed.
“So I returned. Nazt knows many things, Talmon, and all is possible. Has the Sartian prince been here? Once he is dead, the entire world will fall to us.”
Talmon shook his head slowly. He didn’t understand what his Master was talking about.
The Lashki gritted his teeth. “You lie. But I can wait no longer. I have come for Robert.”
“Master,” Talmon said, trembling.
The Lashki moved around the table toward him, still smiling that horrible rotten-toothed smile, his black eyes fixed on Talmon.
“Master,” Talmon started again, his mouth dry.
“Well, Talmon?” The Lashki directed his copper rod at Talmon’s head like he was about to practice killing Robert. The rod jerked impatiently in his hand, its blazing blue tip swelling. Talmon let out a howl, turned, and ran toward the double doors. He grabbed one of the handles and pulled before remembering he had locked them. The Lashki laughed behind him. Talmon glanced over his shoulder, desperately swilling his fingers around in deep pockets, searching for keys.
“Where is Robert?” the Lashki asked.
Talmon gazed back in despair. His keys glistened on the cold tabletop.
“Master.” He raised his eyes to the Lashki’s. “Please, Master. It was not my fault.”
“Not your fault?” The Lashki twitched.
“Etana escaped,” Talmon blurted out.
The Lashki froze, staring at Talmon. “What?”
“One of my slaves showed her the way out,” Talmon said hurriedly. “There was a door the guards smuggled their weed through – Roger did not tell me of it. I had her pursued, Master, they pursued her, but she did kesmal after all, and her father picked her up.”
Talmon meant to offer a thousand other excuses, of how he tried to kill Robert, but that fool Sirius who he had once made a pact with betrayed him because Talmon had attacked Sirius’ men earlier in the year. When Talmon had only one ship left to pursue Robert with, that cursed king had reached Fritz’s Current first—
The Lashki gave a strangled yell of rage and surged forward on slimy feet. Talmon screamed and shook the door handle helplessly. The Lashki grabbed his lapels and whirled him around to face him. His copper rod was thrust against Talmon’s diaphragm, and Talmon couldn’t breathe for fear of skewering himself. His thin, moist nose pressed against Talmon’s, the Lashki hissed foul, steaming breath in his face.
“Who was it, who did it? Tell me who showed her the way!”
“It was Rafen!” Talmon screamed.
The Lashki hurled Talmon to the stone floor, where the king landed on his side, pain shuddering through him. Standing over Talmon, the Lashki whipped his copper rod through the air up the length of Talmon’s body, sending invisible waves of kesmal vibrating through him, rattling his bones, and driving his breath from him. He finished at Talmon’s head, holding the rod poised above him, exactly between his eyes. The vibrating escalated to a thundering, shattering roar within his skull. Talmon couldn’t see. A ball of unbearable sound swelled within his head, and he thought it would explode. Moments before Talmon blacked out completely, the copper rod must have been raised, for he came to himself. He now lay on his back on the stone floor, his sight so blurred he could scarcely make out his Master above him. He panted, his face dripping sweat.
“M-m-ma-ma-masta.” His tongue flapped uselessly. Rolling over, he vomited on the floor.
“You fool,” his Master said above him, his voice flat, resigned in the haze that was reality. “You have ruined everything. I will kill the boy. Where is the boy, Talmon?”
His chest heaving, Talmon struggled to sit up. His trembling arms forced him to slump back on the floor. “I-I-I ca-can’t.” He could b
arely form words. “G-g-gone.”
“Gone?” The word hovered in the air like a bird of prey. “Oh, I see, Talmon. You really have ruined everything. Did Robert rescue him, or did he do it by himself?”
“B-b-b—”
“Both,” the Lashki said. “Rafen ran, and Robert was there, perhaps even in the harbor, to pick him up. Is that how it happened, Talmon? No, don’t try to tell me. You haven’t bothered informing your men yet that Tarhia and Siana are now enemies, that there will be no more Sianian ships in the harbor. So Robert sat there undisturbed, did he? You idiot. I do not understand how there could be a door in your palace you failed to guard. I suppose it was not locked either. Twenty-four years… and Rafen frees Etana. Did he escape at that time too? Or did you recapture him and wait before you executed him? I would have killed him immediately. It would have been the most savage, deserved death. But you went too far in your desire for revenge. You wanted him to hurt. So Rafen, the supposed Fledgling, goes to the Sianians. I knew the child was dangerous. You have already given them a victory… unless we finish him.”
Talmon shivered on the floor, eyes hooded. A knock resounded on the double doors behind the Lashki.
“The old man, Your Grace,” a guard called.
The Lashki raised his dripping head. Above Talmon, the tip of the copper rod glowed blue, and the smile reappeared on the Lashki’s face.
“Come in,” he said loudly. With a flick of the rod, the lock in the double doors clicked.
The doors creaked open. Talmon heard the guard yelp, his frightened footsteps echoing as he fled down the corridor leading to Talmon’s hall. Someone had been left behind. Their quick breathing could be heard clearly in the absolute silence. A cracked cry as the Lashki pulled them in. The doors thudded closed.
“Who is this?” the Lashki asked, reappearing in Talmon’s vision. He held a tall, skinny old man in the air by the neck with one slimy gray hand. The old man writhed, his legs swinging uselessly.
“H-helped,” Talmon croaked, “Et-t-tana.”
The Lashki’s eyes darkened. The skinny man twisted his head desperately, but the Lashki’s gray hand was inexorably squeezing. The old man’s mouth worked frantically, soundlessly, the whites of his eyes twinkling in the blue light of the copper rod. Unexpectedly, the mouth jammed, half open. A sobbing wheeze came from the throat; the head froze. With a mirthless laugh, the Lashki twisted the old man around in the air twice, his mouth agape and his eyes bulging in a grotesque parody of the victim. Releasing the man’s neck, he dropped him in the putrid puddle beside Talmon.
“This is justice, Talmon,” the Lashki said. “Nazt has been defied, and now there is punishment. Justice lies beside you, Talmon.”
Talmon tried to maneuver himself away from the old man, who smelled like a latrine bucket.
“There is only one thing to do,” the Lashki said quietly. “Robert will have his ship well protected with kesmal. He always travels with fifty philosophers. It will take too long to break the protection; it is best to catch him unawares. Robert will doubtless keep Rafen in the same palace as himself, because of his name. Next he will report his daughter’s capture to King Albert of Sarient. King Albert will go to Siana to hear the evidence and will, as usual, bring his son Richard, Fourth Runi and joint heir to the Sianian throne. Then my servant Annette, along with my other loyal ones in Siana, will undermine the kesmalic protection Robert puts around his palace.”
He paused as if he had seen a vision.
“Nazt always speaks the truth. The Fourth Runi is within my grasp, and so too is Robert, his daughter, and the Fledgling he now has. When Richard, Robert, Etana, and Rafen are all in the same palace, then…”
The Lashki’s eyes moved magnetically to the corpse next to Talmon. One of the dogs by the right wall moaned.
Lying there, Talmon breathed shallowly, head aching. He had remembered something: directly after Rafen’s escape, Talmon had thrust a pistol to Roger’s head and had seen in Roger’s eyes that he hadn’t helped Rafen at all. He had remembered what he should never have forgotten about Roger: the man was a hopeless coward. Even so, he had never fully believed his previous general guilty. The man had left an important door unguarded, so something had had to be done. And someone had to be blamed for Rafen’s uncanny knowledge of the palace and the Tongue. To earn Talmon’s trust again, Roger had pleaded with his king to let him go to Siana and kill Rafen. Without thinking clearly, Talmon had allowed Roger to go on a merchant ship, even though the worm likely wouldn’t come anywhere near Rafen. Now, he thought while he trembled on the stone floor next to the dead man, he could only hope Roger and his cursed ineptness didn’t somehow get in the way of his Master’s plan.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Letter
to King Albert
“No, no.” Alexander adjusted Rafen’s grip on the over-long sword. “Are you sure you are left-handed? Very well, then. Very interesting. Now: guarde.”
Rafen slipped into the position, which felt oddly familiar, not because he had done it in the past but because he remembered doing it in the future. At age eighteen, he would arrange himself into ‘guarde’ on the rolling back of a dragon and kill Talmon and avenge Torius.
Rafen didn’t quite know how he’d gotten into this. He’d been watching Alexander force King Robert to practice his fencing skills, which were poor. Then Alexander had suggested perhaps King Robert would like to practice against someone more his equal. At that point, he had noticed Rafen on deck. Before Rafen had known it, he’d been holding a sword, despite his protests.
“Believe me,” Alexander said, “no one is going to get hurt.” Then in a lower voice, with a meaningful smile, “His majesty won’t get anywhere near you.”
He pushed a cork onto the end of Rafen’s sword. King Robert was fiddling with the cork on the end of his.
“Are we ready now?” he asked wearily. “Alexander, really, I don’t think this is necessary. When would I possibly have to defend myself?”
Rafen stared at the king in disbelief. He’d always thought kings were constantly armed and ready to fight at the slightest notice. Talmon carried a pistol, a dagger in a black sheath, a whip, and a long rapier everywhere. King Robert carried nothing except an oddly shaped scepter with which he did what he called ‘a little kesmal’.
“You never know what may happen, Your Majesty,” Alexander replied. “I think Sianian kings have taken their own safety too much for granted. His Majesty Fritz, scarcely armed when his attacker came upon him—”
Fritz? Rafen gripped his sword a little tighter. He kept hearing that name.
“—then His Majesty Joseph, wandering off into the mountains assuming no harm would come to him. That’s not to mention your own brother, who refused to keep learning ‘kesmalic warfare’, as he called it.”
King Robert sighed. “I’m sure you’re right as usual, Alexander.”
“Are you ready, Rafen?” Alexander asked.
Rafen wasn’t sure he was. Alexander nodded quickly at King Robert, who lunged forward, his broadsword pointed at Rafen. Rafen recoiled.
“Parry, parry, Rafen!” Alexander ordered. “Parry!”
Parry? Rafen blocked King Robert’s sword, twisted his own to free the blade, and made a lunge. King Robert sprang forward to thrust and missed. Rafen’s sword sailed beneath King Robert’s, and the little cork prodded the sagging belly.
“There,” Alexander said, “there, now you see. Well fenced, Rafen. And Your Majesty, a mere boy can beat you. Do you understand the importance of learning self-defense? Anyone might run you through!”
“Well, yes,” King Robert conceded, gently pushing Rafen’s cork away from his stomach, “but Alexander, no one wants to run me through. Besides, I can do kesmal.”
“And little enough of that,” Alexander said. “I understand that you’re a diplomat and scholar by nature, Sire, but self-defense is essential for a monarch.”
King Robert shrugged. He gave Rafen one of his broad smiles. “
The boy is unusually talented,” he remarked.
Alexander inclined his head slightly. “Perhaps so. You must take him to see Jacob when he is in Siana.”
“That I will,” King Robert said.
Rafen lowered his sword to the deck. He never liked to hear Siana mentioned. He had no idea what he was going to do once he got there. He had no money, no trade, no home, no parents. Still, there was no use fretting. He would make a life for himself. Talmon wasn’t going to win this Game.
“Rafen,” Alexander said, “I called your name twice. You must have been leagues away. How about trying again? This time I will teach you a routine.”
Rafen nodded slowly and repositioned himself. Still deep in his own thoughts, he was barely aware of Alexander and King Robert admiring his perfect posture.
*
“The First Years, approximately three thousand years,” Queen Arlene dictated, and Rafen struggled to write down what she said with his shaky, unpracticed hand. Though his reading and writing were improving, they were far from perfect. Yet Rafen took delight in reading. He read whole books now: thin ones, admittedly, with many words he didn’t understand. Still, they were books just the same.
Queen Arlene sat at her desk across from him. They were in her wide cabin with the huge paneled windows that looked out to sea. She was making him write down a list of the ages of the Mio Pilamùr and the Secrai for each age.
Rafen at last understood why Etana was so important. Queen Arlene had explained to him that a Secra was a female bequeathed with unusual powers who appeared at the beginning of an era. A Secra was symbolic of great change, and every time one appeared, a new age was recorded in the history books. There were said to be seven, of which Etana was the sixth. They still awaited a seventh. Secrai became great things: philosophers, queens, healers, and helpmeets of the Runi, who were great kings themselves.
Rafen (The Fledgling Account Book 1) Page 13