The Severed Realm

by Michael G. Manning

  Chapter 10

  I didn’t return home after leaving Rose’s apartments. Instead, I left the palace and began walking toward my old house in the city. Since Tyrion had claimed it as his own, it was no longer technically mine, which still irked me somewhat—but my factorage was located across the street from it, and I had some business to conduct there.

  As I stepped into the street outside the palace, I immediately noticed something odd. My magesight has an extremely long range compared to most wizards. From what I had learned from Moira Centyr, most wizards could detect things with their magesight at a distance of a mile or less. I, on the other hand, had a range that was effective out to around two miles, and most of my children were similar in that regard.

  There were other differences, of course. Years ago, Walter Prathion had shown me that despite his shorter range, he was far superior when it came to things like detecting shiggreth, and over the past year I had found out that my son could see things with his gift that I could not—dimensional disturbances, for example, although our experiment near Lancaster had cast some confusion over that issue.

  In any case, my exceptional range was picking up a large number of powerful aythar sources within the city. At least fifteen or twenty were strong enough to make me think they were other wizards. There was an even greater number that were far weaker, a number too great for me to easily count, and they were moving.

  Wary, I quickened my step and reinforced my shield. It can’t be other mages. There aren’t that many in all of Lothion. The direction of my walk was taking me closer to one of the weaker sources, and just before I reached the corner, a small creature flew around it and buzzed past me. It stopped a few feet away and hovered, apparently interested in me.

  I returned its examination and realized it was a small insect-like creature, similar to a dragonfly. Then I remembered what Rose had told me the day before about Tyrion’s plan. “This must be one of his ANSIS-detecting krytek,” I muttered. A few seconds later it lost interest and resumed flying down the street.

  My curiosity aroused, I altered my route to take me close to one of the stronger sources of aythar, even though it was several streets out of my way. I might as well take the opportunity to see the other part of his plan. I was rewarded ten minutes later when a guard patrol came in sight.

  It consisted of two men wearing the royal guard uniform, but one of them was a man only in appearance. His aythar and the spellwoven weapon he carried at his side convinced me he must be another of Tyrion’s krytek posing as a guard.

  The two of them stopped when they saw me approaching, and it was then that I spotted the most obvious difference between them. While the real guardsman fidgeted and fussed with his collar, the krytek remained perfectly still, like a statue. Its eyes followed me closely as I passed.

  I touched my brow in greeting, though I wore no hat, and wished them good day.

  The guardsman gave a short bow. “Milord,” he said, but the krytek said nothing. I could feel their eyes on my back the rest of the way down the street. That wasn’t awkward at all, I thought to myself.

  Still, though it felt weird to be scrutinized, I wouldn’t complain if Tyrion’s plan kept the city safe from ANSIS. I continued walking, and fifteen minutes later I had reached the factorage. The door was unlocked, since it was still within business hours, so I let myself in without knocking.

  David Summerfield looked up from his desk. “Lord Cameron!”

  The office was well decorated with fresh flowers, so I assumed he was still in the good graces of the flower girl down the street. “Relax, David, I’m here on business.”

  My factor offered me his chair and moved to take the one designated for visitors, but I waved him away. “It’s your desk, David. Sit behind it.” I took the visitor’s chair and made myself comfortable.

  “What brings you here today, milord?” said David. “I didn’t expect you for at least another month.”

  “I need money,” I said flatly. “A lot of it.”

  “The repairs?” he asked, guessing my reason. “I didn’t think you’d need more so soon.”

  “I’ve accelerated the construction,” I told him. “The main structure is already in place, but it will take a lot of masons, carpenters, and other workmen to turn it into a place where people can live and work.”

  “The main structure?” said David. “What do you mean? It takes years to build a fortress of that size.”

  “I grew a new one. But that’s beside the point. I’m planning to shift the metals market again, so I thought I’d warn you in advance.”

  “Which metals?”

  “Gold, silver, and a lot of iron,” I stated. “It might be best to invest our free capital in other commodities, such as wheat and wool.”

  He nodded. “The prices will rise considerably if you dilute the value of gold again.”

  “I’ll try to be more moderate,” I explained. “I’m not out to bankrupt anyone this time. I don’t want to cause too much chaos, but I won’t mind if we take a small profit.”

  “A small profit?” he chuckled. “You could be the richest man in Lothion if you let me move aggressively.”

  “I only want to restore Castle Cameron and maintain a healthy balance sheet,” I told him. “I don’t need any more enemies.” We spent the next hour hashing out our plans for the next month before we moved on to more casual talk.

  “Before I leave, do you know where Prince Leomund’s hunting lodge is?”

  David seemed surprised at the question. “It’s in the royal hunting preserve, a couple of hours to the west of the city. Why do you ask?”

  I smiled enigmatically. “Just curious. Do you have more specific directions?”

  As it turned out, his files included land surveys that happened to include the area, so he found them and showed me on a map. I didn’t bother writing anything down; my memory was pretty handy for situations like this one.

  “While you’re here,” said David before I could leave, “do you know anything about the recent patrols?”

  “The city watch?”

  He shook his head. “No, since the attack the Royal Guard have taken to the streets. There are patrols everywhere. It has most of the citizens alarmed.”

  “Are you alarmed?” I asked.

  “Anything that’s bad for business worries me,” responded David. “People have been disappearing. They say the guardsmen are arresting people at random.”

  Despite the attack, ANSIS was not common knowledge in Lothion. If the citizenry knew that anyone could be harboring a metal parasite that controlled them, well, there would be chaos and possibly even riots. For that reason, Ariadne had chosen not to divulge the truth, but by the same token, it meant that the people had no idea why the Guard was arresting people.

  Honestly, I wasn’t sure how much I should tell my factor. “The enemy behind the recent attack is thought to have a number of agents and spies in the city. The Guard is probably rounding them up.”

  “Two days ago, they took Sarah’s father,” said David. “I’m quite sure he wasn’t involved in anything like that. He’s a florist!”

  “We can’t be sure…”

  “I knew the man!” said David, raising his voice. “None of the people that have been taken have been seen again. There have been no trials. Families haven’t been allowed to visit them. As far as anyone knows, they might as well have been executed and buried.”

  The ramifications of Tyrion’s plan hadn’t really struck home with me until then, and I wondered if Ariadne realized how much damage his secret campaign to eliminate ANSIS could do to her reputation. If this continued, there might be a panic. “I’ll see what I can find out,” I hedged.

  “Please do,” said David firmly. “And before you go, is the man in your house across the street really your ancestor?”

  I grimaced. “Well, technically, now
that he’s returned, it isn’t my house anymore, and yes, he is.”

  “Rumor has it that he founded Albamarl over two thousand years ago,” said David, “but that couldn’t possibly be true, could it?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” I answered. “And I wish he weren’t my ancestor. Is there a point to this?”

  David rubbed his chin. “Well, if he founded the city, doesn’t that mean he was the first King of Lothion?”

  Well, in Tyrion’s time there hadn’t been a human government of any sort, and it had been his son who had actually laid out the first streets for Albamarl, but that wouldn’t make much difference to this argument. “That’s dangerous talk, David,” I said in a low voice.

  He held up his hands. “I’m just repeating what I’ve been hearing from people in the streets.”

  “I don’t think my ancestor has any interest in making a claim to the throne, and I wouldn’t repeat any of that. You could be arrested for treason if the wrong person heard that,” I warned him.

  “Do you think that’s why the Guard has been making people disappear?” asked David, his brows shooting up.

  “Absolutely not,” I declared. “You have my word on that.”

  “Then you do know something,” said my factor, a conspiratorial grin sneaking across his features.

  I fought the urge to cover my face with my hands. If such rumors really were travelling the streets, it couldn’t possibly be good for Ariadne. Lothion’s monarchy had traditionally been male. My cousin was the first queen regnant in the nation’s history. Consequently, there had long been a rather vocal segment of the population that had been against her rule. Her choice of Leomund for marriage had been based largely on the fact that he was a foreigner, making it unlikely he would gain the support of the nobility and threaten her reign.

  But Tyrion was an entirely different story. Could he have planned this? I wondered. It seemed far too subtle. Is that why his krytek are disguised as Royal Guards, to help foment a revolt?

  I was starting to get a headache just thinking about it. This wasn’t something I could deal with alone. I needed to talk to Rose. But first I’ll see if I can gather a little information on another front for her first, I told myself.

  ***

  I was standing in plain sight at the edge of the forest some thirty yards from Leomund’s hunting lodge. Though I wasn’t hidden, I didn’t worry about being seen. “Because I’m doing my best Tyrion impression,” I mumbled, smirking to myself. I had covered myself in the illusion of a modestly sized elm to match the trees nearest to me.

  It had taken me less than fifteen minutes to reach the area by flying, though I had spent just as much time choosing the perfect observation spot. I was off to one side of the front, so that if any new visitors arrived I could observe them with both my eyes and my magesight.

  The lodge itself gave the impression of being a country estate house more than it did a place for hunters to gather, for there was very little about its appearance that could be described as rustic. It was constructed from dressed stone and ornamented with columns at the front entrance, a relatively new fashion that told me the building had probably been built within the last decade if not more recently.

  The grounds closest to the house were well tended with a series of delicately sculptured bushes surrounding the ground floor and partially obscuring the windows. In fact, there was a man outside now clipping away at one of them.

  Within the building, I had already detected seven servants, four men and three women. One of the women and two of the men were in the kitchen, preparing the evening meal, while the other men were handling other mundane tasks. The second woman was standing in a bedroom on the second floor.

  She occupied most of my attention, primarily because her behavior was so strange. At first, I thought she was there to clean the room, but her actions didn’t reflect that. She stood at one end of the room without moving, as though she was imitating a statue. I might have thought she was one of the She’Har but for the fact that she did fidget now and then.

  Twenty minutes after beginning my observations, Leomund went up to the second floor and entered the bedroom she was in. The woman bowed as he entered, and I began to get a bad feeling.

  Leomund didn’t disappoint. He said something and then crossed the room before circling her like a predator that could smell blood. The woman remained utterly still the entire time, without even daring to turn her head and look at him.

  Then he lifted her skirts and ran his hand up the inside of her leg. She jerked slightly when his hand reached the high point between her legs, but otherwise she didn’t fight him. Leomund kept his hand there for a while, until eventually the woman twisted slightly, as though she might try to pull away.

  His reaction was instant. Pulling his hand away, he struck her soundly across the cheek, sending her reeling. The woman bumped into the bed frame and fell sideways to land hard on the floor.

  At that point, I was probably the angriest elm tree that had ever existed, and I struggled to remain calm. I had known that some lords abused their power by taking liberties with their female servants. I knew it first hand, in fact: my wife, Penny, had once nearly been raped by a visiting nobleman named Devon Tremont, back in the days when she had been a castle maid, and I was just the local blacksmith’s son.

  But I hadn’t expected something like this from Leomund. The man was obnoxious, certainly, but it had never entered my mind that he might be a monster of this unsavory variety. I wanted nothing more than to enter the lodge and do something drastic and permanent to Leomund’s manhood, and I might have if he hadn’t stopped at that point.

  The woman had regained her feet and seemed to be apologizing, but Leomund merely laughed and stalked from the room. She resumed her stoic pose beside the bed, and he went off to occupy himself in what appeared to be a study of some sort.

  My chest was heaving in reaction to the adrenaline that had flooded my system, and it took me several minutes to regain my full composure. Why did he stop? I wondered. He had saved himself from an unfortunate and painful experience at my hands, but he hadn’t known I was here. Was tormenting the maid simply a minor amusement for him?

  Pondering these questions, I waited and watched, until another hour had passed. I was considering leaving, but it was then that I detected a carriage approaching along the small lane that led to the hunting lodge.

  This was exactly the sort of thing I was here to learn, so I waited. The carriage was drawn by four horses and had a driver and footman, along with a single occupant. By the time it had reached the house, I had identified the man inside from his aythar alone. It was David Airedale.

  The Count exited his carriage, and his servants drove it back behind the house to take care of the horses and park it in a small carriage house. Meanwhile Count Airedale was greeted by his host, Leomund, and ushered inside.

  Leomund seemed glad to see him, and the two engaged in what appeared to be a lively conversation for a few minutes before settling into the front room for a glass of wine. They remained together there for another quarter of an hour before the Prince motioned for him to follow and led him up to the second floor.

  A sick feeling passed over me as they approached the bedroom where the woman still remained, waiting in her statue-like pose. They couldn’t possibly… I thought.

  Airedale seemed surprised when he was shown the woman within, which raised my opinion of him slightly. It went up even more when he shook his head no as the woman began to remove her clothing. The Count almost bolted from the room, while Leomund laughed at his discomfort.

  The Prince followed him back downstairs, and I almost relaxed when the count went back to his chair and drink, but Leomund wasn’t finished. He was yelling, and after a minute or so, the rest of the servants came to his call. Then they marched, single file, up the stairs. Entering the bedroom where the woman was, they lined up on one side of the
room.

  “What in the hell are they doing?” I muttered, confused.

  Leomund joined them a minute later, while Airedale remained downstairs, looking uncomfortable. The Prince appeared to lecture his servants for several minutes, occasionally pointing at the woman standing by the bed, then he turned and barked an order at her.

  She began removing her dress again while the prince rummaged in a chest in one corner of the room. I found myself frozen, unable to comprehend what my magesight was showing me. Why would he make her strip in front of the other servants?

  I was sick with anger, wavering on the verge of doing something stupid. What does he have in his hand? At this range I couldn’t be entirely certain—it might have been a short rope, but I didn’t think he needed to tie her up. Thus far, his poor maid had been completely submissive.

  Then a chill ran down my spine as he uncoiled it in a snake-like motion. It was an item I was intimately familiar with, from my own experience at the whipping post in Albamarl. Leomund brought his arm up and across, and the woman’s back arched in pain.

  I had no memory of moving, but I dropped my illusion and flew across the intervening space between me and the front door so quickly that I heard her scream at almost the same time I entered the house. The door itself was no more. It existed now as a rain of splinters and fragments that were falling all around me.

  Count Airedale stared at me as though I had sprouted horns. “What are you doing here?” he exclaimed, but I had no time to entertain questions. I went to the stairs and flew up them, my feet inches above the steps.

  Inside the room, Leomund and his staff were already reacting to the explosive sound of my entrance. One of them opened the door to the bedroom to look out just as I came into view at the end of the hall.

  Making a conscious effort, I put my feet back on the ground and marched toward the bedroom. “Get out,” I warned the man looking at me. He stumbled into the hall barely in time to avoid me as I stomped in.