She blushed. Endergot was the only human that could reprimand her effectively. Even though she was forty years his senior, she felt his wisdom in every statement. She thought through the question for several minutes while staring at the dancing fire sprites that were now jumping from the mostly consumed logs to the new log and back again. Finally she answered, “Both.”
Her mentor nodded, “Indeed.” He coughed a few times and wiped his mouth with the handkerchief he always carried. Marisha’ilea noticed blood on the white cloth, but said nothing. His condition was worsening, no matter what the Daughters of Shaleesa, the Mother, had tried. They had finally given up, saying that they couldn’t heal old age. Watching the sprites lazily, Endergot finally continued, “What else did you notice today?”
Marisha’ilea thought carefully for a moment before she responded, “There were three that stayed out of the conversation completely; Dar’ell, Brynden and Norella. Doratellan seems to dislike Brilon significantly, even though he appears indifferent to his place on the Council, but weighs all his words carefully. Other than that, I noticed nothing else beyond ordinary.”
Endergot was silent for a minute. “Thank you my dear. If you could leave me to get some rest, I would welcome it. Please let Henkelan know he can attend me in the morning, I will see myself to bed.” He coughed again into his handkerchief. She nodded briefly as she stood and walked to the door. She paused before opening it, looking back at the wise man that ruled the Dar'Shilaar as he sat quietly in his chair watching the fire sprites throw balls of fire back and forth at each other, like children playing in the snow. She wondered how long it would be before they would need a new leader.
---o---
Marisha’ilea returned to her room several floors below her mentor’s and found Zazaril waiting in her sitting room. Apparently Mishka had been through, as there was a fire burning in the fireplace, the normal kind, not fire sprites, and her visitor had a cup of tea steaming beside her. As she entered, Zazaril rose and inclined her head in greeting. At the same time Mishka stepped in from the bedroom.
“Bed’s turned down for the night, and your nightgown is laid out Marisha'ilea Shilaar. A small snack is on the side table. Is there anything else you need?” the servant questioned.
“Thank you. That will be all Mishka. See yourself to bed.” She directed.
“Very well, mistress.” She curtsied and left the room quietly, closing the door softly behind her.
Marisha’ilea stood watching Zazaril, saying nothing. Zazaril met her gaze for a long moment until she raised one eyebrow in question.
“I had hoped you would speak to Endergot on my behalf,” Zazaril stated.
“Why?”
“To remove my direct involvement in the investigation, of course,” Zazaril turned and walked to the window and looked out into the orange sunset. Her back was as straight as a rod.
“Again, why?” She watched as Zazaril continued to stare out her window, across the undulating forest canopy of green, fading to black as the sun dropped behind the Barrier Mountains to the west.
Finally, Zazaril’s shoulders slumped slightly as she turned to face her. She watched as her visitor’s amber eyes attempted to pull any piece of information from her expression as possible. When the attempt failed, the ambassador obviously straightened. “Forget I even asked,” she said as she moved to the door and opened it. Pausing at the threshold, she added quietly, “You will be a good addition to the Council... when the time comes.” With that, she closed the door behind her.
Marisha’ilea stared at the door for a while after the other Dar'Shilaar left, puzzling out her last statement and the brief conversation that led up to it. She filed it away in the “things to sort out later” part of her mind, and went and got ready for bed.
Hicks
Reegan Hicks was worried. Something must have gone wrong. She had not seen Hoyle around the Red Rooster Inn since that night, and it had been over a week. Rumors abounded of a City Guard raid on the same guild that the trio left to investigate on the same night. Had he been captured or killed? If so, by whom? Did the Empire have him? If not, what kind of merchants' guild was running out of Goralon?
She checked in with the proprietor, a portly man name Edvard, with a red beard and hair, most likely from the Isle of Saretha. He had not seen Hoyle either, but since he paid by the month, his room was secured for at least another few days.
She had tried tracking down Salrissa the last few days, but she was as elusive as Hoyle. Had she been captured as well? No, apparently she had not been captured, as Hicks saw her last night as she strode through the common room of the Red Rooster heading for the stairs. By the time she had fought her way through the common room, climbed the stairs and reached the door to the room Salrissa shared with Hoyle, the door was locked. There was no answer to her knock, though she could hear noise inside. She pleaded with Salrissa to let her in, to tell her what was going on.
“Go away.” was the terse reply from within the room. After a few more moments of banging on the door, which drew a few people from their rooms, as well as a few curious stares from the common room below, she thought of an idea.
She returned with Edvard and the room key, but once the door was open, there was no one to be found. Everything seemed to be in order, nothing obviously out of place.
“There’s no one here, thus I must ask you to leave.” Edvard insisted as he gestured her out of the room, relocking the door.
She was at a loss of what to do next, and worried for her friend. Two days ago rumors began to spread that the Kingdom of Goralon had suspended trading with the Empire. There was no indication as to why, but all her merchant peers began speculating on which wares were going to be in short supply in the near future. Goralon mainly supplied heating coal, brass, and iron, as well as animal furs trapped by the barbarians to their north. Some foodstuffs difficult to grow in the Empire’s warmer climate were on the list, string beans, peas, cabbage, turnips and some weird fruit that came in stalks, called gorbat.
As Hicks represented a consortium of blacksmiths, her partners' biggest concerns would be the iron and coal, but she had other prospects that may pan out in the future, rendering the Empire’s slight dependency on Goralon, to some regard anyway, obsolete.
An idea came to her, so after settling her business the next morning, she set out for the Dar'Shilaar Embassy. After an hour of navigating the busy spring streets, side stepping oxen led wagons, the odd noble’s coach and various people and horses, she arrived at the embassy. She was directed inside by one of the guards.
Stepping inside the tower, she saw a large number of people who appeared to be waiting in line. There were poles on ropes that guided the line to snake back and forth from a stone balustrade at the front, separating the public half of the room from the other. Behind the balustrade there looked to be two Shilaar seated at a table each, with quills, ink and parchment within reach. Several clerks stood behind them, and others moved about, some leaving the room through a back door. It was ordered chaos! thought Hicks. Trust Shilaar to bring order to chaos.
One of the clerks was working along the line with a pitcher of water and a few wooden cups. When he finally reached her, she asked to see Celia.
“I’m sorry, but you must wait in line for your petition to be heard,” was the reply. Hicks was pretty sure that was the standard answer to any standing in line. He hadn’t even looked her in the eye when responding. So she waited, and waited, and waited.
Finally, shortly after the lunch bell, when the Shilaar at the front had been replaced by a different pair, she finally reached them. She stood before a small mousy, brown-haired sorceress in a faded lavender dress with an odd hat on her head that seemed to be made entirely of feathers. It had also been dyed lavender to match her dress.
“What can we do for you today deary?” the woman asked without really looking up.
“I would like to see Celia, if I may?” Hicks requested.
The woman started writing her re
quest down on a piece of parchment before the words registered and she paused and looked up. “Celia?” She seemed confused.
“Yes. I’m an acquaintance of hers. It’s about some business we talked about a while back.” Hicks ventured.
The small sorceress frowned. “We don’t generally have petitioners ask for specific personnel by name. You said your name was?”
“I hadn’t, but it is Hicks. Obviously you’re very busy, could you please have someone fetch her for me? I assure you, it’s quite important,” she gestured at the long line of people behind her.
“Hicks? That would be your family name I assume... I used to know a Hicks once, a Fernazad Hicks out near Fallow Hollow. What a silly name. Fallow Hollow, not Farnazad –” the mousy wizard began ready to start into a long diatribe.
“Please ma’am, I need to speak with her.” She interrupted.
“Oh yes, right. What was your first name, deary? For the record of course...” The woman crossed off her original words on the parchment and wrote another sentence.
Hicks supplied it, assuring the woman that Celia would not know her by that name, insisting that they use just Hicks on the note that was to be used to inform her that she had a visitor. The Dar'Shilaar then handed the note to one of the clerks who left the hall. A clerk directed her to a stone bench under a window to the side of the room to wait. They offered her water again, which she gladly took. She leaned back against the wall and settled in to wait, again.
She watched the people in line, some obviously desperate, some despondent, some clutching hats to their chests, others trying to pretend not to be nervous. The afternoon moved on, and the line dwindled, but Celia did not show up. She checked with several of the clerks over the course of the afternoon, but none had any more information to give her.
It was finally time for the embassy to close, and she had not seen Celia yet. Either she was too busy, didn’t care, or had forgotten who Hicks was. She wasn’t sure if she was more angry or scared. Either way, she was certainly not happy.
Ravan
Ravan moved along the corridor as quickly as he dared. As a stable boy in the Imperial Army, he had managed to earn his much coveted position of assistant head groom at a fairly young age. It was not all rainbows and candypops for sure, as it was hard work, but he now got to live in the sky citadel. Three months ago, they had moved him and the head groom to the sky citadel from Parr’ador. At the time, there were no horses on the citadel, and the new position was a mystery to him and to the head groom. He was now in charge of all the horses of the newly developing Sky Cavalry.
Very few knew of the Sky Cavalry, they had been practicing only in the early morning and at dusk, and had been kept below the Citadel walls, to be out of view of the city folk. The Dar'Shilaar had delivered the harnesses just over two months ago; one hundred for horses, one hundred for their riders, and an unknown number of magestones, but at least twenty – he was required to keep count. The harnesses for the horses were designed to fit under the horse’s armor, made of thin straps of leather sewn with metal thread that held a small magestone at the center of the horse’s chest. The harnesses for the men, also with thin strips of leather, were meant to be worn over armor and hold a magestone over the chest piece of the armor. The harnesses for the men were more meant to prevent falling deaths than allow men to fly. They had been tested, and allowed men to float slowly to the ground when they fell off the horses. Ravan imagined they may even allow men to float upwards as well, but certainly not fly as easily as a bird.
In the last two months they had been able to train only twenty of the most stalwart warhorses of the army. They had been brought from Parr’ador in secret, and they had worked day in and day out to remove the skittishness from the horses as they learned to fly. Ravan shook his head. He didn’t think it was in their nature, but some of the horses took to the additional freedom. Would wonders never cease? First the mirrors, then the gates, then the skyships, and now this. He shook his head again. The things he had seen up close since earning his position were awe-inspiring.
However, tonight he could sense something wrong. The horses were upset at something; he could hear their nervous whinnies from below through the gaps between the boards in the wooden floors. His room was one of several in the top floor of the stone stables at one edge of the sky citadel; the floor below housed the storage rooms and hay loft; and the main floor below that the stables themselves. He had thought he had heard quiet voices from the floor below just a few minutes ago.
He had climbed from his bed, and dressed quietly in the breeches and shirt of his uniform – it was still cold out at night – before proceeding along the hall to the winding stairs down. Now he was edging towards the storage room at the far end of the hallway, from where he could now hear quiet voices. He stopped by the edge of the door, and listened as quietly as possible.
“Where are they?” demanded a harsh voice in a whisper.
“They are locked away here in this locker,” spoke a voice Ravan recognized as the head groom, Vargas. He could hear a key scrape in a metal lock. “The harnesses are here, but the head Dar'Shilaar himself removes the stones at the end of each training session.”
“Very practical, but it is of no concern. The harnesses will be adequate for my needs,” was the quiet answer. Ravan felt a shiver run up his spine; the words made him feel as if a snake was winding its way up his shirt.
“Here are the six you requested, Mi’lord.” Ravan had never heard Vargas defer to anyone like he was doing to this man. “They will be missed in the morning, so if I could get my payment now, it would be mighty kind of ya.”
“Certainly.”
Ravan heard more quiet words that didn’t make any sense, then Vargas cry out, a cry that ended abruptly, then a large thump. Ravan peeked around the corner into the room and gasped audibly. A tall, thin man in dark robes was standing over Vargas’ still body, the six flight harnesses sized to fit a man slung over one arm. The tall man looked up from Vargas at Ravan’s gasp, and met Ravan’s eyes. Ravan could see some sort of metal band holding a magestone to the man’s forehead. There appeared to be blood painted on the man’s face also.
“Vortu!” the man spat at Ravan, pointing fingers at him. The magestone on the man’s forehead flared brightly and many dark, shadowy spikes drove Ravan into the wall across the hallway. His muscles all locked up briefly, and then went limp, as his vision began to fade to black. “One more task before I go,” he heard the man whisper to himself before Ravan slid into oblivion.
PART II
There are many experiences in life that we get to choose how they affect us; they can best be forgotten, they can break us, or they can forge us into something stronger.
Again I mention Choice. The days in the dungeons of the Imperial Sky Citadel, being tortured daily, were among the worst in my life. I felt anger; rage even, that those acts could be perpetrated upon my body and mind. I felt despair that I would never escape, or would die there as so many before me. So many emotions wound through me during that week that I thought my mind would break. Of all the emotions that were presented by my desperate mind, the one I Chose to cling to was the one most elusive: steely resolve.
My Choice was to come out stronger, should I survive, a blade honed by the fires that did not consume it. An unfeeling weapon with only one use – vengeance. That being said, sometimes other people’s Choices can override even our best intentions...
Journal of Hoyle Dardanel
The 27th of Jarn,
In the year 89 IR (Imperial Rule)
Chapter 11
Hoyle awoke to darkness. And pain. All his muscles ached and many new scars crossed his body. His clothes now were in blood-crusted tatters. But he was alive. The only new development was that they had decided that after the last indeterminate number of days, that there was no point in chaining him to the floor. In fact, he had full run of the entire cell; one span by one span by one span high. Actually the cell was two or three handspans short in e
ach direction. He was only able to lay flat on the cold stone floor if he went corner to corner, and found that if he turned the wrong way, the bolt linking his former chains to the floor would dig into his lower back.
They still left Brows chained though. Although he had stopped growling several days ago, Hoyle guessed that Brows was as tired and sore as he felt. That is, when they brought light to collect whomever they were going to question again. Hoyle had tried making friends with the small veklian who came to feed them about twice a day, but the only thing he had gotten from the creature was his name – Sathran. So every time since that day, he had greeted the creature by name and thanked him for his meal, as disgusting as it usually was.
Today seemed different though, for some reason he had an uneasy feeling. He had heard noises from the guardroom at the end of the hallway, loud shouting that went on for a little while, and then nothing for some time. One of the other prisoners had screamed out a while back, but was cut off abruptly. That prisoner's constant moaning had never resumed.
He heard the door open at the end of the hallway, and quiet, shuffling footsteps come down the hallway. A small glow preceded the small veklian, a small stone he carried cast minimal light, but enough for the reptile-like creature to apparently see. Sathran stopped across the hallway, opened the cell holding Brows, and gathered up and dumped his chamber pot into the bucket he carried. As always, Brows lunged for the veklian, even if it was a half-hearted effort at this point, his chains bringing him up short. For the most part Sathran ignored the larger man, which enraged him even more. Sathran closed and locked his cell, and turned to gather Hoyle’s pot.
“Good morning Sathran!” he said with as much cheerfulness as he could muster, not expecting a reply. The creature looked at him briefly as he unlocked his cell door. Hoyle handed him the chamber pot carefully, and then sat back against the wall.
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