Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles)

by Robert Brady

  “Why do you think?” Lupus asked. Not good.

  “Well, she sang that song in English—but Angron speaks English, so they know what it says,” she began.

  “Dat song was in Andaran,” Shela said.

  “I heard it in English,” Lupus said. “But I happen to know that they heard it in Uman-Chi, and the Uman and the Men among the Wolf Soldiers didn’t hear it at all.”

  “No?” Bill asked.

  Lupus shook his head.

  “So…magic?”

  “Yep,” Lupus said. He just watched them now, his blue eyes hopping from one to the other, waiting to see what they said.

  “Well,” Melissa said. “The prophecy calls together six heroes and a champion to fight this ‘One’. It sounds like they came too late.”

  “Okay,” Lupus said. “And what does that tell you?”

  “Well,” she continued, “both of us are from outside.”

  “You dey one from outside,” Shela said. “He dey guardian—he can’t be dey one.”

  She didn’t mention the champion was also a ‘She.’

  “Something will bring them together,” Lupus said. “Do you have any feeling as to where they are?”

  Melissa looked at Bill, who looked at her, then at Lupus. She shook her head.

  “Maybe if I saw a map?” she said.

  “So, Glynn doesn’t spark anything in you?” Lupus said.

  Melissa thought for a moment. “No, not at all.”

  Lupus turned to Shela, who looked at him.

  “Well, they seem to think she’s the noble, young and old,” Lupus said.

  She shrugged. It didn’t make her feel anything. She thought about Glynn—she was Glynn, nothing more.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  Shela said something to him in another language, he responded in it, then turned back to them.

  “I am going to be honest with you,” he said, “although I think you are smart people and you know what is going on already.

  “It is pretty clear that I am the ‘One who is of War,’ and that the prophecy is a warning against me.”

  He regarded them both, leaned forward again, and took a sip of his brandy, then said, “The Uman-Chi have been called upon by the goddess Eveave to stop me, however, Eveave warns that they are already too late.”

  “Das tricky, doh,” Shela said. “Eveave dey Taker and dey Giver. Eveave gwon give you tom’ting, she gwon take tom’ting. So, she tell you what gwon happen, she gwon take back you advantage.”

  “But not necessarily leave you behind,” Lupus said. “I think we are, right now, neck-and-neck with the forces that will oppose us, when we move on the Fovean nations. And I think, as well, the Uman-Chi believe they can’t win by opposing me, so they are picking our side.”

  “And you are taking us to make sure those forces don’t oppose you?” Bill asked him.

  Somehow, Melissa didn’t think that would do it.

  * * *

  Shela watched them all, following the conversation in the difficult ang-lesh, which her Yonega Waya had taught her over the last few years.

  She could see how he enjoyed them, speaking in their language, sharing perspective that only people of the same tribe felt.

  The Yonega Waya, her White Wolf, came from a vast tribe. Now she knew he didn’t come from the north, or even from this planet. Now she knew how he understood things differently.

  He hadn’t even confided this to her. That hurt, but she understood, too. Men had their secrets, just as women had theirs. It was part of the way of things.

  This new comer had her more concerned. Yonega Waya never wanted more than one wife, but this girl could be her sister. She had a young, strong body, not changed by childbirth. If any had a chance to be a concubine, it would be her.

  When Shela felt sure this girl had no power to detect the other members of the prophecy, she offered to bring them out to the stables and do away with them. Lupus had forbidden her. They had agreed that any threat to him must be extinguished, but he felt certain, as well, that they needed more time to know what that threat may be.

  She couldn’t help but believe he simply felt lonely for them. He shouldn’t be. He had a new life now. Anyone would be fulfilled by it. He had three strong children. It should be enough for him.

  She should be enough for him.

  Shela had indulged these feelings before. In leaving her life as his slave girl and becoming his Empress, she’d forced him to push the way people thought here, not just in one country but in three. Rather than let him take a wife and she herself become a concubine, she’d almost touched off a war that would have shaken Fovea.

  She doubted her own jealousy. She knew what she was capable of to protect and to keep her man. What she hadn’t expected is what she’d turn that man into to please her.

  Yonega Waya had killed thousands for her. He’d risked everything he’d accomplished, he’d even jeopardized their children, born and unborn, to please her.

  “You are wondering if we are your enemies,” Bill said. The question roused Shela from her musings and she considered him.

  He was old, Shela thought. He should be a gaffer with grandchildren at his feet, learning from him. Avek had told them he’d seen fifty summers—and yet he moved easily and had all of his teeth. This spoke well for Yonega Waya, much older than she. She felt reassured she would enjoy him for a long time.

  “Frankly, it appears you are, no matter what I wonder,” White Wolf said. “I don’t hold it against you; I know what it is to be wrapped up in a god’s plans.”

  “You do?” Bill asked him.

  “Somewhat,” Yonega Waya said, waving off the question. “It doesn’t make you a bad person, and it doesn’t mean I necessarily have to fear you. Do you know why they bring in people from another world, yet?”

  “No,” Bill said.

  “Think about it,” Yonega Waya said, cryptically. “But, if you stay close and stay good, and help me, we can defeat this thing. It doesn’t say you will actually beat me, you know. It says you will find people who will be weapons. I would like to find a way to keep you, like the Uman-Chi, on my side. The longer you are here, the more advantages you will see that we have over these people.”

  The two of them nodded. What choice did they have?

  As she had done repeatedly throughout the evening, she released her energy into the air around her, and sensed the presences of the Uman-Chi wizards. They occupied the rooms below her, outside in the courtyard, and surrounding their King, of course. Glynn’s special presence could be felt in the next suite of rooms. That one she could touch without thinking.

  She raised her head, and her man immediately became attentive to her. His hand went from her hair to her shoulder; she gripped his shin and focused. Shela knew of many who criticized her husband for the way he treated her but his arms held her all night long, and she knew the rhythm of his heartbeat better than she knew her own name.

  The second she alerted, he knew it, his connection to her working faster than words or thoughts. His scar wrinkled on his beautiful face, his blue eyes told her that he would do anything to protect her. She knew there were soul mates, and she’d found hers.

  Now someone watched them—someone close. She only had to think of it, and he knew.

  * * *

  Xinto of the Woods had a reputation for a lot of things, not all of them nice. This included acting as an ambassador between rival nations. He had a skill for ending wars and finding common ground. Since the Daff Kanaar had become a presence in Fovea, he’d found this a very lucrative trade to be in.

  He also acted as a spy, for sale to the highest bidder. That bid right now came from Conflu.

  Conflu had an emperor, just like Eldador. Trenbon had summoned one emperor to see something it had found. The other emperor wanted to know what—especially considering what usually went on between two emperors.

  He had listened to Glynn Escaroth’s song, nonsense as it might seem. Now, from a chink in the stone wall w
ithin the palace of Outpost IX, crouched in one of the many air ducts that ran through the building, Xinto listened to the blatherings of Men in a language he didn’t know, which seemed strange because he understood them all.

  He had understood clearly when Shela had offered to kill them both, but that had been spoken in Andaran, and either these other two Men didn’t understand that, or they had nerves of steel.

  When the conversation suddenly stopped and Xinto felt a tingle in his gray beard, he knew the Empress had figured out that he watched her, and the time had come to go.

  He had enough to report. He started to scoot backwards through the air duct, to a linen closet where a different passage would take him to the exterior wall.

  Or would have, had not Karel of Stone stood in that closet waiting for him, with a self-satisfied grin on his face.

  Xinto was a Scitai—Scitai are the smallest of the races, few being over three feet tall. Scitai were born in two places. Most came from Trenbon or, more specifically, the Silent Isle.

  Xinto didn’t hail from that part like Karel of Stone.

  “My lord ambassador,” Karel said, his sword in his hand and the silver hook symbol prominent on his bearskin outer-garment.

  Xinto had a dagger out in a second. The flat of Karel’s sword smacked the heel of Xinto’s hand and disarmed him, leaving his right arm numb from the elbow to the fingertips.

  “Do that again and I will take that hand,” Karel warned him. “I don’t feel any allegiance to you.”

  Where Xinto’s features looked swarthy, with a gray beard and brown hair, a cloak full of pockets and a cap with a rakish orange feather always on his head, Karel appeared as the opposite. Dressed in bear skins, impossible blue eyes much like the Emperor’s, brown hair and clean-shaven with milky skin.

  “Cut off my hand,” Xinto said. “Compared to what the Bitch of Eldador will do to me, it would be a blessing.”

  Karel grinned a wicked grin. The Bounty Hunter’s Guild had labeled Shela Mordetur as ‘the Bitch of Eldador’ when she had killed one of theirs in the Eldadorian court in defense of her mate.

  Xinto had given them the reason to want him dead, and he felt quite sure the Emperor knew it.

  “You’re an ambassador,” Karel said, indicating the door. “Talk your way out of it.”

  He sighed and opened the door. He could reach the knob—not always true in this world of giants. In a fair fight, he didn’t think he could defeat Karel of Stone, who made his living by his sword, so he resolved not to fight fair.

  “Don’t think that I won’t,” he said, as the door swung open.

  And there he stood, tall as a mountain, angry as a storm, in his bare feet and leggings, as blond and stupid as when Xinto had met him on the streets of Outpost IX.

  “Xinto of the Woods,” he growled in Scitai.

  “Your Imperial Majesty,” Xinto said, shocked. Had Shela turned the whole house out?

  The fist felt like an anvil as it took him in the side of his head.

  * * *

  They were comical little men, Melissa thought.

  One had that upside-down question mark symbol on his chest, in silver. He called himself ‘Karel.’ He took her hand and kissed it, and told her in Uman she was a pretty picture to see.

  They called the other Xinto. He looked smaller than Karel, and wore a lumpy gray cloak that they took from him. They tied him to a chair with some twine Karel had.

  For her benefit, they spoke Uman. She interpreted for Bill as best she could. It seemed to her that Xinto had betrayed Lupus somehow. Now Shela had caught him spying on them.

  Lupus seemed upset about it, but Shela acted just spitting mad. Lupus, to Melissa’s surprise, turned Shela around and gave her bottom a good, hard smack when she kept going near the bound and unconscious Xinto. That actually quieted her down, and she sat on the corner of the coffee table and glared at the little man.

  Bill just watched everything. She saw him mouthing words, so he must be trying to pick up the language.

  Melissa sat down next to Shela and put a hand on her thigh.

  “Does he hit you often?” she asked Shela in English.

  “He hit one time,” Shela said. “He haf strong hand.”

  “No,” Melissa said. “Does he usually hit you?”

  Shela gave her a funny look, then she seemed to get it.

  “He hit me when a wife need to be hit,” she said.

  Melissa bristled. “You allow this?”

  She shrugged. “I his woman,” she said. “He tell me no talk, I talk, he hit. Is what a good husband do.”

  Yikes! Melissa took a sip of brandy just to quiet herself.

  Oh, God—they hit their wives?

  It dawned on her—she’d found herself in a feudal society. Women had been voting in America for less than 100 years.

  Who did you call to report the Emperor, especially when you didn’t have phones?

  “He not hit you?”

  That roused her. “Bill?” she asked. “Bill not hit me, no.”

  She nodded. “He old,” she said.

  “No,” Melissa was almost offended by it. “He’s not old, he loves me.” She felt glad she had learned the word.

  “What he do when you bad wife?” Shela asked, and seemed to be uniquely interested in the answer.

  Melissa shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said, “but not hit. Yell, talk, not hit.”

  Shela shook her head. “He learn,” she said. “Young wife, lot of trouble. Need to know who husband is.”

  So she believed a wife needed to be hit, Melissa thought. On the other side of the room, Xinto seemed to be returning to consciousness. Shela stood, and waited. Finally Lupus turned to her and beckoned. She went right to his side, her hand on the small of his back.

  He hit her, and she loved him for it, Melissa thought. What made it worse, he hit her in front of other people, and she expected it.

  Where the hell did she find herself?

  Chapter Ten:

  A Key to a Kingdom

  Xinto woke up to pain in his wrists, his head, his ankles, his arms and his back.

  And his neck—oooh, his neck! This didn’t seem fair—he didn’t even know where he had woken up!

  Yes, he did—he’d been in the royal palace of Outpost IX, spying on Rancor Mordetur, and he’d been caught.

  He raised his head, and there he stood—the Conqueror himself.

  He didn’t look happy, but Shela looked uniquely angry, sitting on the corner of a caw-fee table with a girl who could be her twin.

  Lupus stood in front of him with his arms crossed over his chest. Next to him stood that old giant the Uman-Chi had pulled out of oblivion, the thief Karel of Stone, and an Uman-Chi he had met in court named Glynn Escaroth.

  “My lady,” he said to Shela directly.

  “Speak to my husband, you scum,” she hissed at him. He hadn’t seen hatred like that in his life before, and he had seen a lot. “If he lets me, I will dip you in honey and bury you in an ant hill. I will use my power to keep you alive until the youngest Uman-Chi are old.”

  Xinto raised an eyebrow and looked to the Conqueror. “I think it best I speak to you, your Imperial Majesty.”

  “I think it best you take this a lot more seriously than you are,” Lupus said. He spoke in Uman, probably so these newcomers could understand him. That struck him odd, seeing as they were Men. However, when he had spoken to Xinto before, it had been in Trenboni Scitai.

  “You have a blood debt to this one, Yonega Waya,” Shela said in Uman, mixing in the Andaran for ‘White Wolf.’ “He confessed you to the Bounty Hunters. It took years before they gave up on trying to kill us. They even attempted to kill Lee.”

  “No attempt was ever made on the Princess,” Xinto argued. Out of the blue, the Emperor backhanded him.

  He tasted the salt taste of blood in his mouth. “Liar,” Lupus hissed. “I bought you dinners, Xinto. I called you friend.”

  “You invoked the Guild,” Xinto d
emanded, angry despite himself, his lip already swelling.

  “I didn’t know any better,” he said. “I’d only just come here.”

  “And if we had done nothing?” Xinto asked. “Would you have kept doing it? Would you have continued to call yourself ‘Bounty Hunter?’”

  “I did continue to call myself ‘Bounty Hunter,’” Lupus said, and smacked him again.

  There he told the truth, sadly enough, and the Bounty Hunter’s Guild that killed kings and nobles and powerful merchants, peasants and holy men, had failed uncounted times to pay him back for it. In his home, in the Eldadorian throne room, in other cities, at his inauguration, on the sea, through his food—nothing worked. He detected poisons, killed assassins, turned out operatives and tortured them. Finally, the Emperor had sent a message:

  “Come up with a solution you can live with, or I’ll come up with one that kills all of you.”

  A threat like that would normally have been laughed off by the Guild, but this came from the Man who’d sacked Outpost IX. They reached a compromise. Lupus could be admitted to the Guild and his crimes would be made moot. You can call yourself a member if you are one.

  “As a fellow member of my Guild, then,” Xinto said, blood flowing in a trickle from his lip to his beard, “I call on Guild Sanctuary.”

  “The Guild does not spy on the Guild,” Lupus said, surprising him. He hadn’t thought the Emperor would bother to read the Guild Charter.

  He should have known better.

  “Then I call for a trial of three Masters,” Xinto demanded. He had this right. They would kill him for spying on a member of the Guild, but more mercifully than Shela would have done, if allowed.

  “I will turn you over to the local authority instead,” Lupus said, grinning fiercely. “I am sure Angron will be impressed with having you.”

  The Uman-Chi would never invoke the wrath of the Guild from the precarious spot they currently found themselves in. Lupus would know that—he bluffed to see if Xinto had any fear of them.

  He would turn the tables and see how much the Emperor trusted these new allies.

  “What makes you think he doesn’t know I’m here?”

  Lupus turned on Glynn with an unpleasant expression. The Emperor acted as a force of nature—get him going in the right direction and he leveled everything in his way.