by Greg Curtis
“Now send to your Sandara worshipping ruler this. The accusations are baseless. Lord Iros of Drake is a man of spotless honour. He will release my envoy immediately and unharmed. He will restore my mission. And if he does not do so, I will have him fed to the rats.” Herodan looked up at the king, horrified by what he was hearing. Fed to the rats? That was more than simply a terrible way to kill someone. It was an outrage. It was ample reason for blood feuds to be born. And it was something that had never happened to a ruler. Not in thousands of years of recorded history. Not even during the age of kings when wars had been fought ceaselessly.
“Highness -.” He looked up into the king’s eyes hoping to see some sign of jest, but there was none.
“You heard me. Now go!” The audience was over. Herodan knew that immediately the guards grabbed him by the arms and started dragging him from the room. It was almost becoming the normal way their audiences ended.
“And make sure you give that fetid little toad my words exactly.”
Chapter Twenty Three.
It was peaceful in the Grove, but in her heart Mya knew that the peace was a lie. Honeysuckle Grove was always a garden of peace, but the city beside it, was a house of anger and fear. She might only be a lowly servant, but she had eyes to see it with. The tall trees of the Grove merely hid the darkness from her sight.
And yet it was beautiful. The tall trees surrounding them, the endless flower gardens with their bright colours and sweet scents, all added to the impression of the Grove as a giant garden. Fire crested lovebirds nested in the trees, filling them with colour and song, while ducks and blue tufted geese swam in the slow moving river. Silver willows lined the banks of the river, their long tendrils of green and silver leaves, hanging down almost to the water, providing a little shelter for the leap rabbits as they nibbled on whatever grasses they could find. Truly the grove was a garden of great beauty as she’d imagined it would be.
There were few structures in it, and what there were could never be called houses. At best they were shelters. But the elders had houses in the city if they needed them, and when they chose to stay in the grove as they often did, they slept under the stars. They said it was soothing to the soul, and maybe they were right. She would have preferred a roof though. The blankets of woven reed they had been given were water tight, but there was still something comforting about a solid roof over one’s head. Not to mention walls to shield them from the sight of visitors.
Still as Nanara said, those who pleaded should not complain. And she was safe in Honeysuckle Grove, and nowhere else. They all were, and the grove was filled with refugees. Some of them were of her people, some of them were of the other peoples, and surprisingly many of them were elves. As Finell’s soldiers became more and more fanatical in their hunt for enemies, the people of Leafshade were taking refuge in the only place that they knew they would be safe.
Many of them had tales every bit as sorrowful as hers. Many, especially those of mixed blood, had dead relatives, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, all killed by the watch. Many more had their loved ones locked away in that dark mountain of crumbled stone that Finell called a prison. Most of them though called it what it was, a dungeon. A dark place where terrible things were done to innocent victims. And a place where torturers ruled.
It seemed that the high lord was engaged in a never ending hunt for traitors, and that anyone with even a trace of outsider blood was being found guilty without charges needing to be laid. Anyone who spoke against him was also convicted. And all the rest were under suspicion.
Though the grove was large, extending surely a league across, and she hadn’t made a count, she would have guessed that at least a thousand people were now calling it home. Mya wondered how many more were soon going to do the same.
Not far from her Elder Yossirion was sitting on a fallen log, head slumped forwards into his arms, staring into the gently flowing waters of the river. But she would have guessed he saw nothing of them. His thoughts were far away. His brow was furrowed with worry. It often was. Even Saris understood his pain as she kept him company. She of course, had her own worries, about her missing master, and so the two of them, the elder and the pining jackal hound, made an oddly apt pair.
The elder probably didn’t want to be disturbed, but this was the first Mya had seen of him all day, and for once he was actually by himself instead of deep in conversation with the other elders. If she was going to get a chance to speak with him, this would have to be it.
Mya approached Elder Yossirion cautiously. Though he seemed like a good man, and he was always polite when he visited the mission, he was an elder and she just a maid. A human maid at that. But then the grove was filled with refugees from the high lord’s unending wrath, people the elders had taken in, and many of the others had human blood in them, so maybe that didn’t matter so much any more. What mattered was surviving.
She had only been in Leafshade for three years, and she’d been warned before she’d come that life among the elves would be hard for a human. But in the two and a bit years since Finell had come to power, even she knew that the city had changed, and not for the better. At first it had been small things. Open rudeness from the high born instead of looks of disdain. Restrictions on where she could go and who she could talk to. More recently though it had become far worse again, with watchmen on every corner, outsiders being beaten and even killed in the streets, and the people living in terror.
It was madness. Though she hadn’t heard the elders and priests say as much openly, she was sure that they must know the same. The high lord was mad. Driven to insanity by the demons of grief and anger. Held there by the demon of wrath. And blinded by the moon maiden’s mist. But knowing that couldn’t help. Nothing would help until the war was finally ended. That could be months or even years. And there was one who if he still lived, was in even worse danger than them. Lord Iros.
He was such a good man, a leader, and a friend. He had always stood by them. He had always helped them when they needed it, and when trouble had hit, he had been there for them. The thought of him being locked away in that foul prison was pure darkness to the soul.
“Elder Yossirion?” Mya approached him as respectfully as she knew how, expecting him to be gruff with her. He was gruff with everyone. “Is there word of Lord Iros?”
He looked up at her, surprised by the interruption. But he wasn’t gruff with her, he was gentle, and that maybe scared her more than anything else.
“No. I’m sorry child.” He even smiled at her like a grandfather at his granddaughter. “None of our priests can even go near the prison, and none can enter the Royal Chamber.”
“I see.” But she didn’t want to and that surely showed.
“He is strong. The Mother moves through him and will keep him as best she can.” The elder tried to comfort her, but there was no comfort any more.
“Some of the others, they have said dark things of the prison.” More than dark. They had spoken of the screams of those inside as terrible things were done to them. They had spoken of the smell of death surrounding it. And they had spoken of so many entering, and none leaving. The elder had surely heard the same.
“I know child. It is a darkness upon the land. A blight upon our fair city. But if any can survive it, it is Iros. You must keep hope.” He patted her gently on the hand. He was forever doing that as if she was a small child.
“Besides, Saris still lives.” He scratched the hound’s head. “She still eats. And she still waits. If he was dead I think she would know. And I fear she would die too. Of a broken heart.” As reasoning went it didn’t seem that convincing to Mya, and yet some part of her thought he might be right. The jackal hound was more than loyal. The bond between her and her master was closer than any she had ever known. So maybe that was enough of a reason to keep hoping. It was all she had.
“Thank you elder.”
Mya left him with a respectful nod, knowing that there was nothing more to be said. The time for words had e
nded. They could provide little comfort any longer. And she was certain that the elder knew the same as he turned back to the river and his thoughts of gloom.
Now it seemed that the only thing left to be done was to light a candle and offer a prayer to Silene.
Chapter Twenty Four.
“High Lord!” Y’aris rushed in to the high lord’s private chambers in a fluster, calling for him urgently. Of course he wasn’t actually in a fluster. It was all perfectly rehearsed. An act. But the boy was too stupid to realise. And in sooth too much enamoured of his creature comforts to care.
His quarters, really his old family home where he and his sister had lived until recently, was far too well appointed in Y’aris’ view. Too large too, especially for one man. It had been too large even when the family had been complete. But then it had to hold a small army of servants. Some of them just to clean and polish the beautiful wooden walls, and of course the gallery of paintings adorning them.
They were portraits for the most part. The artists’ likenesses of his family extending back for centuries. And they were everywhere. Surely it couldn’t be easy to eat your breakfast with a century of disapproving ancestors looking down on you. Or relax in the endless soft furnishings while hundreds of members of House Vora from the past watched your every move. Y’aris didn’t like even entering the house because of them. Somehow he kept imagining that those long dead faces saw all his designs. That they knew what he’d done to House Vora. And what he was going to do.
When he was king, Y’aris would burn those portraits. And he would take the house too. After all it would be empty. There would be no House Vora remaining by the time he was through with them. But he would fill it with his own family. A bevy of fine elven maidens to become his wives. It was time that that ancient custom was returned, and the king had his proper count of wives to raise his heirs. It was time that Elaris had a king.
Y’aris had been forced to deny himself a wife thus far. He could not risk his secrets becoming known. And besides, until he had finally been appointed as high commander, his status had been such that he could not have been considered as a worthy suitor for a maiden of one of the great houses. But times were changing quickly and soon it would not be him that had to prove his worthiness for a spouse. They would have to fall before him. In their droves.
The modesty of just one wife in a high lord appalled him. Even the title of high lord appalled him. A king should be a king. He should be proud of it. And his people should be proud of him too. They should know that he was above them in all ways. That he was more than just a man.
But those were dreams, and for the moment he had to deal with the more practical problems in making them real.
“What is it Y’aris?” Finell was sitting down to his dinner, a platter of fresh salmon on rice expertly prepared by his chef, and he didn’t seem pleased to see him. But that was fine. The more he was displeased he was the easier it would be for Y’aris to make him believe his sorry tale of utra treachery.
“Terrible news High Lord. Terrible news.” Y’aris glanced at him and then at the maid holding a jug of wine, waiting to refill his goblet, and let a smatter of doubt cross his face, as if wondering if she should be there. It was enough of a hint, and Finell waved her away with an annoyed flick of his fingers. He liked his wine Y’aris suspected. Perhaps a little more than was proper. And he liked being served too.
The maid curtsied to Finell and then quickly left the room, shutting the door behind her. She was well enough trained to know not to listen. But then she was low born, not of mixed blood. Not suitable for a wife perhaps, but still suitable to serve. Once she was gone it was time for Y’aris to tell his sorry tale, and he launched in to it with well practiced urgency.
“The humans, they have crossed into Elaris. A huge army with hundreds upon hundreds of cannon, and ten thousand cavalry at least. They crossed during the night, seeking to catch the people of Whitefern unready.”
They hadn’t of course, not yet. The utra’s dragoons were busy sweeping east and west across the southern lands, seeking out his smaller forces and crushing them one by one. Throwing his plans of conquest into disarray. He hated them for that. But still it was only a matter of time before they invaded Elaris and Whitefern would be their likely first conquest. So he wasn’t really lying for once, just speaking a little ahead of the facts.
“My watchmen, they had a training camp just north of Whitefern, three thousand strong. But most of them were not yet trained and they were heavily outnumbered. The utra fell upon them, slaughtered them like animals. Those accursed cannon shredded them in their hundreds and thousands, and then they butchered the injured. The survivors number only fifty.”
“Three thousand dead?” Finell stared at him in horror, as if he’d said three million. As if the utra armies were already at Leafshade’s gates. No doubt after the pigeon he’d received that morning from King Herrick advising him of his soon to be death at the hands of the rats, he was feeling a little at risk.
Of course it wasn’t actually the message Herrick had ordered be sent by their mission. The high lord had no idea that since Y’aris’ men had taken over the city’s roosts, he made sure to receive all messages for him first, and then decided what he wanted Finell to read. He was getting quite good at forging Herodan’s cursive, and long ago had had a second seal made up for the Tendarin Mission. And though it was probably wrong, some days Y’aris wrote completely fake messages just for the pleasure of watching Finell’s face wrinkle up in anger as he was insulted by the king.
But it was also useful as well as enjoyable, and that very morning as Finell had read the lengthy pile of slurs of his name, and of course the obligatory threats, he’d also learned that the humans could wheel their cannon and bring them with their armies. That useful little scrap of information he had planted would prove to be useful in Y’aris’ plans, as it gave him a scapegoat to explain their early defeat. A scapegoat that would once more damage House Vora and distance the high lord from his own family. Even in defeat he could win. All he had to do until then was keep feeding Finell more tall tales about how the watchmen were being cut down by the terrible utra cannon, and watch him squirm.
“Whitefern? They are moving on Whitefern?”
“It seems so High Lord. King Herrick has taken the news of his envoy’s arrest personally, and has used it as an excuse to start his war. I have sent many brave watchmen to worry them and slow their progress, but they are no match for so many soldiers and their accursed cannon. I fear thousands more will die carrying out this heroic duty.” Thousands more deaths he didn’t have to explain as daily the death toll mounted, even if it was all in his head. In ten days every watchman who had died on the march to West Hold would become a hero who had fallen defending Whitefern. The high lord had no idea, and no more did the people of Leafshade who got the news from him. And of course the more that died the more he could recruit, as the high lord grew ever more desperate. Soon there would be a conscription and his losses would be as nothing.
“Then send more!” Finell suddenly screeched at him, his voice filled with panic, and Y’aris tried not to smile. Obviously the high lord could feel those vermin nibbling at his soft skin already. When he’d read what Herrick had said he’d kept that threat. If nothing else it kept the high lord in a state of perpetual anxiety. He was easier to control that way.
“Yes High Lord. I will do so at once.”
Y’aris bowed low and quickly backed out of the chamber, realising that Finell had just handed him a new opportunity. Another chance to explain the terrible losses experienced by his army even more quickly. Within ten days all thirty five thousand dead would be heroes, defending Whitefern from an unprovoked attack, all at the behest of a panicking High Lord. And soon after he would have his conscription for the same reason.
Whether they won or lost, he would be the hero and Finell the incompetent who had given the foolish commands. The Heartwood Throne was almost within his grasp.
As he ran
from the high lord’s quarters, supposedly to carry out his bidding in the face of a terrible crisis, Y’aris couldn’t help but smile.
Chapter Twenty Five.
The whip cracked a few more times and each time it found its mark in Iros’ flesh. Be it his chest, his back, his buttocks or his legs, the inquisitor never missed. It was a skill he and his peers had obviously practiced over the years. Years when their services should not have been needed. Years when people such as him should not have even existed. Torture was a violation of the ancient codes.
But despite the inquisitor’s skill, the sting was less than that of a bee. And it faded fast.