The Innkeeper's Son

by Jeremy Brooks

  They’ll take the gem.

  With the last ounce of strength and resolve he could muster, Sim removed the necklace and stuffed it into his boot. He tried to twist his head to check on Quinn and Farrus, but could only make out their still forms lying beneath large bits of rock and debris. What had happened, he wondered?

  Through bleary eyes, he saw two black cloaked forms, shrouded by the dust and smoke, approaching him from the blown out wall. A hand reached down and touched his neck. He had a strong impulse to fight, but knew he was too weak. His only recourse now was to accept capture and live to find another means of escape.

  “They all live,” a female voice announced.

  “Pack them up. The Governor wants them alive,” he could hear Davold command.

  “There are only supposed to be two of them. What about the third?” she asked.

  “Bring him. We’ll let the Governor decide his fate.” There was a pause. “Did you do that to his face?” Davold asked, aghast.

  Sim felt himself slipping away. The light in the room began to fade. His vision tunneled. Lost to the helplessness of his unconscious state, Sim slipped away into a world of dreams.

  Chapter Twenty: Convergence

  Baneur Deuseau appeared in the middle of a field just outside the outer limits of Carleton. The afternoon sun, hung high in the clear sky, making the air hot and nearly intolerable. Nal’Dahara had been cool and temperate, so Baneur was dressed in sturdy wool pants and a black cloak. He cursed his master’s impatience. If he’d had time, Baneur would have dressed accordingly, but when King Desirmor issued a command, you obeyed. Dissention was punished severely.

  Feeling perspiration quickly taking affect, Baneur removed his cloak, as well as the wool vest underneath. He had been in Carleton only two other times and neither instance had agreed with him. How did people live in such unbearable heat year round? It wasn’t natural.

  His home in the Turkan Hills had warm summers, but you only had to endure the uncomfortable humidity for three months out of the year. The tropics weren’t meant for men of his kind. Turks didn’t like to sweat.

  He set out for the city lying at the bottom of a low sloping hill. Traveling was a marvelous gift, but it had drawbacks. Baneur’s ability was limited to area’s he had been to or had seen at other times. It had been more limiting when he was younger and the only place he had ever been was his homeland. Now that he was older and had been around the world many times, the scope of his ability gave him access to nearly every corner of the globe.

  He approached the city unsure of where to search out his quarry. Desirmor, as was his way, had given him vague directives. He hadn’t said where in Carleton to find Navan Prianhe. The high monomach could be anywhere. Baneur wasn’t even certain if Prianhe knew that he was coming. All Baneur knew for certain, was that Desirmor had contacted him using the stones. That meant that the task was urgent and failure would be met with harsh punishment.

  He entered the city and began to search for a guard station or an infantry outpost. It was his best chance of quickly finding Prianhe. The man was perhaps the most fearsome person in the world not named Desirmor. If he was in the city, everyone would likely know about it.

  Baneur hated Navan Prianhe. Actually, Baneur hated everyone, but Prianhe was certainly the most loathsome individual he had ever met. The man had a very high opinion of himself. He was Desirmor’s most trusted servant, a friend really, and he took every opportunity he could find to remind people of his importance to the King. Years earlier they had worked together on an assignment, and Baneur had been pushed to his threshold by the man. Words had been exchanged. Prianhe’s skill with a sword was the source of legend, but Baneur had not been scared. His own ability with the trivarial power would have made it a short fight, and putting the filthy Reikkan in his place would have been satisfying. The man was descended from dogs. Baneur would have made him lick his boots and beg for table scraps. Unfortunately when word of their disagreement reached King Desirmor, Baneur had been soundly punished for insubordination. Worse yet, Prianhe had been allowed to watch the punishment. His left hand still twitched as a result of the beating he had taken, and the sting of shame was a wound that Baneur Deuseau would never lose. The very thought twisted his stomach into bitter, choleric knots.

  On the advice of two pedestrians he had passed, Baneur found the base of the local infantry in the center of the city. He entered the building, with his temper on edge. Being a Turk was difficult. Because of his diminutive size, humans had a penchant for making jokes at his expense. Sometimes they could be downright cruel. In many situations, Baneur had killed men for comments, but in this setting he would probably have to endure a few tasteless jokes.

  A young man in a crisp infantry uniform and a forehead beading with sweat, looked up when he entered. Apparently the man wasn’t accustomed to seeing Turks, because his eyes were practically popping out of his head.

  Baneur eyed him irritably. “I’m looking for Navan Prianhe.”

  The soldier continued to gawk with a slack-jawed stupidity that made Baneur’s temper flare. He was about to walk up and slap the foolish creton across the face when an older man came walking in from the staircase to the left of the desk.

  “Did you say Navan Prianhe?” he asked.

  Like the young man, he was dressed in a smartly pressed Imperial infantry uniform, only a gold tassel adorned his left shoulder, marking him as an officer low in rank, but still with a modicum of authority.

  “That’s right. Have you seen him?” Baneur asked.

  “What’s a Turk doing in Carleton, looking for a man like that?” the officer asked. A condescending smirk struck the corner of his mouth. The younger officer noticed the slightly mocking tone and joined in.

  “Is that what he is?” he said with a laugh. The slack-jawed stupidity was quickly replaced by a devious sneer. “I’ve never seen a Turk before. I thought he was just an ugly child.”

  The officer laughed out loud. Each man eyed Baneur like lions toying with prey. Baneur began to consider the consequences he might face if he were to kill them. The soldier may earn him a reprimand, but the officer could lead to a stiffer penalty. However, King Desirmor had sent him on this urgent task, so his action might be taken lightly in lieu of a fast completion.

  “I’ve been sent to find Navan Prianhe. It would be in your best interest to point me in his direction quickly.” Baneur was only going to give them one chance.

  The two men looked at each other as though Baneur had told them some great joke. They seemed to take his command as an invitation to have some more fun.

  “Where did you steal that voice little boy?” the officer chided. “Did your daddy let you borrow it?”

  “Sounds like a bear dressed up as a kid,” the young soldier added, slapping his knee. “An ugly bald kid.”

  “What’s with your hand? Are we making you nervous?”

  “Don’t worry little boy, we won’t step on you. Horse turds are small too, but I still manage to avoid them.”

  They were laughing uproariously. Tears formed at the corners of each man’s eyes.

  With a stream of solidified air, Baneur lifted the young soldier out of his chair and pinned him to the wall at his back. The officer looked around in shock, then realizing that Baneur was the source, reached for his sword. Baneur used a flow of air to pull the sword free and levitate it, point up, at the man’s throat. Still too brainless to understand the danger of his present situation, the officer tried futilely to grab the blade and gain control of the weapon, but it didn’t budge. Baneur edged the tip closer to his throat, until drops of blood spilled out from a fresh wound caused by the pressure of the blade.

  “What do you want?” the officer cried out, still desperately holding the blade in a useless attempt to pull it away from his throat.

  “Do I have your attention now?” Baneur asked with satisfaction. The terror in the officer’s eyes was all the confirmation he needed.

  Perhaps it was because of
his lack of height that Baneur enjoyed making larger men cry and grovel so much. Since leaving his home in the Turkan Hills and making his life within the world of men, Baneur had suffered every possible insult imaginable. Sometimes he had earned revenge, other times he had been forced to endure the slights.

  “I’ll ask you one more time. Just once more. If you don’t answer my question, I’ll kill you and find someone else to tell me. I am here on direct orders from King Desirmor to find Navan Prianhe. Where is he?” Baneur practically snarled every syllable at the loathsome man.

  “He’s staying at the Charmont. It’s near the docks,” the man sputtered. “He’s scheduled to leave for Perth by Trevloc tomorrow morning.”

  “That wasn’t so hard was it,” Baneur smiled. He looked at the young soldier, still pressed to the wall. “So I’m an ugly bald kid. That’s what you said, right?”

  The soldier shook his head and moaned. Barely untellable cries for mercy and forgiveness dribbled like saliva over his lips. Baneur breathed it in. Every luxurious nugget of fear. Each inscrutable plea.

  Finally satisfied that the young man had suffered enough, Baneur adjusted the flow of air, taking hold of his throat, and began to choke the life from his body. The officer watched in speechless horror as the young man’s face slowly turned blue. It only took moments before his body went limp, and Baneur released him, allowing the corpse to slide down the wall like sap sliding down a maple tree.

  “You're an officer,” Baneur told his wide-eyed captive, “so you will live. But before I release you, I need you to know that my acts today are within my rights. Since you are an officer you must know what ‘Phaol tu sharre’ means?”

  The officer swallowed audibly at the phrase. It was old tongue for ‘men of shadows‘, a name now given to Desirmor’s elite unit of spies. Every officer in the Imperial army was schooled in lists of codes and symbols that various groups used as a means of identification. The officer knew now that there was nothing he could do. Baneur didn’t need a reason to kill someone that wasn’t nobility or an officer in the army. He may eventually be questioned about the death, but he wouldn’t be punished unless Desirmor deemed it so.

  “Next time you meet a Turk, I suggest you act more cordially.”

  Baneur released the man and left the building. He felt pleased that he’d been able to torture and kill a human, even if he did have to let the officer live.

  He moved through the city, asking the occasional passerby for directions. People stared at him when he passed, like he was some kind of deformed cripple. It made him sick.

  Soon enough he came to the end of a street that opened out on one side to the ocean. A cool breeze blew inland, giving him a tenuous reprieve from the sweltering heat. If it wasn’t likely to draw even more attention than his genealogy, Baneur might have stripped down and continued his search in the buff.

  The docks were down the street to his left, so he started that way, checking each building he passed for a sign indicating the Charmont. He had walked perhaps three blocks when he spotted the inn. It was plain and white like nearly all of the buildings in the ocean side of the city. Only a sign out front, hanging above the front door, told him he had found the place.

  The common room was empty, when he entered. Baneur went to the bar and stood there waiting for a servant to come along. He didn’t have to wait long. A fat man, with a clean apron, emerged from the kitchen with a bored look on his chubby face. He leaned against the bar causally, unaware that he wasn’t alone, and picked his nose as if there were a treasure buried deep within his nostril. Suddenly he noticed Baneur standing there staring at him, and immediately snapped up straight, mildly embarrassed, but mainly surprised to be looking at a Turk.

  “I’m looking for Navan Prianhe. I’m told he’s staying here.”

  The fat innkeeper shook his head. “He’s staying here, but I haven’t seen him all day.”

  “Did he pay for another night?” Baneur asked, barely masking his impatience.

  “He didn’t pay for last night. I’m too afraid to ask him for money,” the innkeeper chortled nervously.

  “He’ll be back,” Baneur said. The officer had told him that he was due to take a trevloc the next morning. One thing Baneur knew about Prianhe was that he liked to sleep. He would come back eventually. Staying put in a spot he knew Prianhe would come to was better than walking all over the city without any idea where to look.

  He took a seat at a table in the corner facing the door. “Bring me some food,” he told the innkeeper. Now he just had to wait.

  ******************************************************************

  “Why are you doing this?” screamed the terrified woman. The corpse of her teenage daughter lay slaughtered and ripped apart only a few feet away. Her husband, tears streaking his fat freckled face, fought the binds that held his hands.

  He would die quickly. Navan Prianhe would let the man watch his family perish, then run him through with a sword. He wouldn’t eat the man’s heart because he could smell the sickness in him. Eating his heart might pass the illness along. Prianhe was unwilling to chance getting sick. The mother and daughter however were subject to a more gruesome end.

  “What did we do? Please. Please tell me why?” she cried. Her sobs echoed in the small room.

  “There is no why. You were chosen because your pathetic son caught my eye. I killed Miles this afternoon, but because of his sickness, I was unable to succor my appetite for flesh. You and your daughter will suffice to appease me.”

  Prianhe sat on the other side of the room, still catching his breath after dining on the young girl's heart. She had been just the right age. There was something about a pubescent heart that was rivaled in indulgence only by the heart of a trival. Now an adolescent trival’s heart…that was the glorious golden peak of his fetish.

  For a short time he sat, leaning casually against the wall, watching Miles’ mother whine and beg for her life. It only re-enforced his disgust of humans. They always died like cowards, pleading for mercy, as though they deserved to live.

  When he had seen enough, he calmly walked over to her and used his dagger to cut a hole in her chest. Then he ripped out her still beating heart and devoured it as quickly as he could. The fresher it was, the stronger the euphoria.

  Some time later he emerged from the tiny house on the outskirts of Carleton, leaving behind a gruesome scene. His desires for heartflesh had been fulfilled, but he was not satisfied. There had been no trevlocs ready to make a flight to Perth until the morning. Farrushaw and the trival could be anywhere by now. At first light he would finally have a trevloc to bring him to Nal’Dahara. Then he would hunt. The anticipation was crippling.

  He stalked down the quiet street, feeling his anger seethe and boil. Miles family had been poor, so all of the houses and buildings in this section of town were small, broken, and decrepit.

  It was evening now, with the sun just about to fall behind the western corner of the island. Shadows marked the alleys and corners. Prianhe watched them with hopeful anticipation. In a rundown section of town like this, there were certain to be thieves and cut purses. He hoped, desperately, that someone would try to rob him. The two hearts he had eaten had been satisfying, but to smooth out his flaring temper, he needed to spill some blood.

  Just for the purpose of bait, Prianhe let his coin purse dangle loosely on his hip. The coins jingled in rhythm to his measured footsteps. In an alley ahead, three men stood around having a quiet conversation. Their eyes followed Prianhe as he passed. A block later, he could hear the footsteps of two men carefully tracking behind. A wide smile broke across his angular mouth. There would be more blood before the day was done.

  They followed him down a cross street that Prianhe chose because it was more shaded and thin than the main road he’d been walking along. His goal was to encourage them to act.

  From an alley in front of him, a man suddenly stepped out, blocking his path down the road. He looked weak, malnourished, and he carri
ed the scent of the disturbing sickness that Prianhe was noticing everywhere he went in the city. A crude dagger in his right hand, glinted with the last remaining vestiges of the day's sunlight.

  “I’ll have that purse,” he said dangerously, waving the dagger for emphasis.

  “Come and take it,” Prianhe toyed with him.

  The footsteps of the other two men who had followed him, abruptly stopped a short distance behind. He turned and looked them over. Like the man who had stepped from the alley, they looked weak and desperate. Neither had the sickness, but both man reeked of stale booze.

  “You don’t have to die tonight,” the first man said victoriously. “Just throw the purse over here, and be on your way.”

  “You can have my purse,” Prianhe said, removing the pouch and dropping it on the ground at his feet. “Just come and claim it.”

  The man licked his lips and eyed the purse unsurely. He wanted the money, but his own middling common sense told him there was a chance that despite the odds, he was the one that was overmatched. Eventually, Prianhe knew his greed and desperation would win out.

  All three men advanced at the same time. Prianhe let them come close enough that they might feel empowered before he freed his sword and unleashed his pent up frustration. A simple impaling wasn’t enough infliction, so he took his time severing limbs, a leg first so they couldn’t run, then a hand, or an arm. Their cries cut the silence of the twilight, riding the perpetual ocean breeze inland.

  When he finished, Prianhe bent down and picked up his coin purse stained by the blood that pooled thickly in the street. He had to kick a severed arm out of his way before continuing on toward the inn. It rankled him the entire walk back that even after brutally killing those three men, his anger over Farrushaw and the trival was as pitched as ever. He wanted a good night’s rest, but wasn’t certain he would find sleep with so much pent-up frustration.