It wasn’t until they had finally passed through the Spine that any respite from the hellish journey was to be found at all. The other end of the pass had once been sealed off by a great stone wall with gates and a portcullis. The wall still existed, but the gates were gone to allow free passage. Immediately upon passing through, they were met by the Loszian he’d seen in Byrverus on many occasions, the one with the odd gait, as if he had to swing one of his legs out awkwardly in front of the other. As he approached, he glanced up in disgust at the afternoon sun.
“Lord Dahken Cor,” Menak said with a slight bow of his head as Cor dropped down from his horse, “it is agreeable to see you again. Am I to assume all is well?”
“Well enough,” Cor replied as he stepped forward to take Menak’s arm, a greeting with which the Loszian had never felt at ease. “It’s been some time since I’ve travelled. I think that both my Dahken and I are looking forward to a good night’s rest.”
“No question. I’ve never understood the desire to travel in such a way, so slow and filthy,” Menak said with a wrinkle of his nose. “However, you are here. I have several sets of quarters set aside for your people. You and Lady Thyss are welcome to my personal bed, should you so desire the comfort.”
Cor’El perked up a bit at this, knowing how much Loszians value their comfort, but his hopes were dashed when his father answered, “No need, thank you. What news do you have?”
“I think, Lord Dahken Cor, the troubles of Aquis are not going to be solved in the next few minutes. Perhaps you would rather let your family and your Dahken rest and relax a bit? Perhaps bathe? And we can talk about it over supper?”
Cor’El watched his father look back at the Loszian, and for a moment he feared that Cor would ignore the offered hospitality, would jump straight into the business of why they were there. Instead, a very slight smile broke out upon on Cor’s face.
“Do we smell that bad, Menak?”
“Well, I was not going to say it quite that way.”
* * *
Cor’El still didn’t see the point in the whole affair, but Menak’s holdfast, or whatever it was called since it was really no longer a holdfast, brought back some feeling of comfort. The small quarters he afforded them felt reasonably well appointed, clean with plush mattresses and soft linens. There were few soldiers here anymore, at least far fewer than Cor had ever described in his stories, and Cor’El wondered if all of them enjoyed such amenities. Or had Menak set up some nicer accommodations for his honored guests?
It was the work of three or four hours for the group to find their quarters, remove armor, nap or otherwise settle in. A bathhouse was made available, and only to them, so they could wash away the stench and grime of the summer road, so as not to offend Menak’s senses. This was a luxury that Cor’El took great joy in, lingering in the water long after it had cooled and then using his own power to warm it back up to almost boiling, to a temperature well beyond what would burn most normal people. It was only after a long hard look from his mother, followed by a shout several minutes later that he finally pulled himself from the bath.
No doubt aware of the hardships endured during normal travel, the Loszian had been sure to set a fine table as well, with far more roasted meat than a dozen people could eat – plenty of venison and mutton, as well as over a dozen birds of various sizes. Several steaming platters of marinated vegetables and loaves of buttered bread accompanied the main courses. There was a noticeable lack of pork from the table, and Cor’El couldn’t help but wonder if Menak had known what they would have been surviving on for most of the last two weeks. They ate supper on beautifully crafted stoneware with utensils made of silver and gold, no doubt in Menak’s possession from the labors of slaves in bygone years. Of course, Cor’El thought little of this, nor did he care much if at all.
Cor’El endeavored to keep himself interested in the food, as the dinner conversation was almost as boring as the journey.
“So, I waited until now,” Cor said. “Shall we talk?”
“I could not convince you to wait until morning, Lord Dahken Cor?”
“No. In the morning we have to use your little bowl trick to contact King Rederick,” Cor answered.
Menak’s eyes narrowed for just a moment, his face adopting a dangerous look which Cor’El had seen now and again on Loszian faces. It was gone as fast as it came, and Menak said, “It is no trick, but sorcery.
“As you will, it is absolutely true that Than’Tok has declared himself a ‘Master’. Two other lords whose lands border his have done the same, and I estimate that almost ten thousand Westerners and a number of… mixed breeds have submitted to their will.”
“You’re saying these three Loszians have enslaved ten thousand people?” Cor asked.
“No, not at all. Ten thousand people have chosen to live as slaves.”
Cor’El’s father sat quietly for a moment, taking in the confirmation of what they had already heard. It was Keth who broke the silence, “We knew this. The question is what do we do about it?”
Cor interrupted, “Why?”
“Why what?” Menak asked.
“Why would ten thousand people choose bondage over freedom?” Cor elaborated. “The Loszian Empire visited thousands of years of degradation and evil upon Westerners. Why go back?”
Menak seemed to chaff a bit at Cor’s words, but why exactly Cor’El wasn’t sure. The Loszian replied, “It seems to be a complex answer.”
“Enlighten me,” Cor demanded.
Cor’El grew bored as the Loszian seemingly spent hours talking about the recovery of what used to be Losz, the vast populations that had been destroyed, the disorder. He spoke of starving masses, with no understanding how to live as their masters had always told them where to go and what to do. He spoke of money and taxes and wages and all sorts of other things that interested Cor’El in no way, shape or form. After what felt like hours, but was probably only a few minutes, he excused himself to go walk in the evening sunlight back to the rooms he shared with his parents.
As he closed Menak’s door behind him, a filthy dog ran up to him and began sniffing his leg, no doubt having caught the aroma of food on the air before the door closed. As he smelled Cor’El, the dog’s tail swung hard from left to right and back so fast as to be a constant blur. The animal smelled as bad as the horses, maybe worse, its fur matted down terribly by things Cor’El had no desire to contemplate.
“Go away,” Cor’El commanded, and he turned to walk away. The dog only stood in place and stared for a few seconds after his newfound friend before deciding to follow. He caught up to Cor’El quickly, the Dahken having only walked about ten feet and was content to walk beside the boy. Cor’El looked down, annoyed, and stopped walking; the dog also stopped and merely stared back at him with its wagging tail.
“I said go away.”
The dog answered by dropping his front half down to the ground, rear end up in the air with a crazy look in its eyes. Cor’El ignored him and began to walk again, his destination only twenty feet or so away. The dog jumped after him and ran directly across Cor’El’s path, so close as to trip the Dahken boy, causing him to fall down to the ground, small clouds of dust erupting into the dry summer air.
“Gods damn you! I said go away!” he shouted at the dog, who only turned its head from side to side in confusion. Cor’El glared back at the mongrel.
He climbed to his feet, but the dust had already worked its way into his lungs. Cor’El suffered terribly, trying to keep the coughing from turning into a full fit. He walked to the door leading to his rooms, but stopped short of entering, contemplating the mutt that continued to follow despite his curse. He looked surreptitiously about and saw that no one, no soldier, Westerner, Loszian or anyone paid him any mind whatsoever.
Instead of entering, be began to walk across the front of the barracks building that had been converted into his group’s quarters until he could turn a corner that took him into a narrow alley less than four feet wide. Most of
Menak’s holdfast had no grass or foliage of any kind except crops in the distance, but in the tight places between buildings, yellow and green crab grass and other weeds grew mostly unchecked reaching up to Cor’El’s knees. He turned and beheld the dog that he knew would be there, staring back at him with the idiotic look of a brainless beast.
The dog suddenly found it could not open his mouth again to pant, nor could he wag his tail as he had been doing for the last several minutes. The most natural of instincts took hold, but he could not turn to run away from this person with whom he only wanted to play. The animal whined once, but then found he could not inhale any more breath to replace that which it spent in the action. It was only a matter of seconds before the dog’s eyes rolled up into his head, unconscious from lack of air, but his body, held in suspense, did not fall to the ground. Cor’El held the air around the dog in place for about a minute, until he was absolutely sure the animal was dead, and then he returned to his room, leaving the body lost in the weeds.
Dahk
The God of Blood waited quietly, patiently in his Vault, a small pool of blood in a cramped room with depths of darkness that went on forever. He raised a mental eyebrow at the irony of his calm; the more time that passed, the closer he was to finally being released from his prison. Zheng would return and would reward him for finally succeeding, for finally providing the thing the admiral had wanted for so long – a way to retake his homeland, China and the Earth, without nuking everything in sight and making the world uninhabitable as what had once almost happened. Every second that passed was a second closer to his goal, which should make Dahk more anxious, yet it seemed to have the opposite effect.
Dahk looked out across half of the world to a very specific place just on the eastern edge of the World’s Spine, asleep under a waning half-moon. He sought a boy, all of ten years old with gray skin, golden hair and power without measure, and he found Cor’El asleep, as expected. Dahk touched the boy’s mind, as he had done so many times, taking hold of it and bringing it in a suddenly awake state back to the darkened vault.
Cor’El stood only a few feet away from Dahk’s puddle, a truly proud mixture of his parents. He had the well-defined jawline and strong chin of the Westerner, combined with the golden hair and almond shaped silver eyes of the High Dulkurians, both sets of features nearly overwhelmed by the gray of his skin. The boy had grown fast; he was right near five feet tall, but as he stood naked in front of Dahk, Cor’El’s body had not yet begun to show the muscles of manhood.
“Good evening, Cor’El,” Dahk bubbled.
The boy looked around in the darkness impassively, completely nonplussed at the lack of light combined with the ability to see himself as well as the puddle of talking blood. For that matter, he seemed entirely unsurprised at the entire affair, as if he had virtually expected it at any time in his life. He started momentarily at his nudity, but made no move to conceal it, clearly unconcerned.
“You are Dahk,” he replied in a most matter of fact, neutral tone.
“I am.”
“And this is your Vault.”
“It is. Do you have any idea why I brought you here?”
“No,” Cor’El replied, “but it must be important. I know you people can’t do things like this often.”
“What do you mean, ‘you people’?”
“You gods, but you’re not, are you? My father says you are only men locked away for centuries.”
“So,” Dahk sighed, “your father has told you of us.”
“He’s told me you aren’t gods.”
Dahk shrugged, at least he did so in his mind’s eye. “I guess it depends on your definition. From the standpoint of knowing everything that happens on or around Rumedia, we most certainly are. If you define being a god as having ultimate power, omnipotence, then perhaps we are not. If having the power of creation makes one a god, then you should look no further.”
“What do you want?” Cor’El asked.
“Only to see you live up to your potential. Do you know just what you can do? How powerful you truly are?”
“Well…” Cor’El drew the world out, as if searching for the answer.
“Oh, come now. Of course you do. You knew when you were but a baby, saving your mother’s life with Garod’s healing power. With so much power that none of Garod’s priests even wield. Maybe it was pure instinct, but you knew.”
“Maybe I do,” Cor’El answered quietly.
“Of course you do,” Dahk repeated. “How old were you when you offered to make that boy simply go away? To save him pain?”
“Young. I was little. I’ve grown up since then.”
“Grown up? Don’t be ridiculous. You’re all of ten summers? You’re far from grown up, but you have grown and will continue to grow. What concerns me is your willingness to let those you should rule tell you how to live.”
“I don’t understand.”
Dahk sighed, “Okay, Cor’El, can we end the bullshit?”
The Dahken wrinkled his forehead for just a moment, confused at either the colloquialism or the sudden shift in the conversation – maybe both, but he nodded his assent. The darkness all around was suddenly replaced by bright white light that touched every corner of a mostly white room. They stood in the middle of Doc’s twenty first century lab, and the boy turned in circles looking in apparent fascination and wonder.
“Not gods, huh?” Doctor Harold Brown asked. “I make this pop up out of nowhere, and I’m not a god…”
“Pop up?”
“It’s an expression. Don’t worry about it. I know you get it, but you’re acting like you don’t. Just as I helped make your father, I helped make you, but do you know the difference between the two of you?”
“No?”
“Here, have a seat.” Doc kicked a short rolling lab stool toward the Dahken, and watched with a smile as he sat upon it somewhat uncomfortably. The idea of a chair with no back and wheels that could swivel in any direction had yet to occur to anyone in Rumedia, and Cor’El seemed to struggle with it for a moment before stabilizing himself.
Doc leaned back against one of the counters and explained, “You’re better than he is. You have all the same power he does, plus more. You know you’re stronger than he is, just as he’s stronger than the Westerners. Have you not thought that he should be King of Aquis, not Rederick?” Taking Cor’El silence as assent, Doc continued, “As powerful as your father is compared to the king, you are the same to your father. You have the right to rule. Everything.”
“No, my father says we shouldn’t, that we should protect. We have a responsibility to the world,” Cor’El said, but it sounded like a schoolboy repeating a rote fact that he really didn’t understand.
“Responsibility? What responsibility? Your father has hid himself away for almost ten years. Even he struggles with the knowledge that he should rule Aquis, if not all Rumedia, because he’s stronger than any of the others. Do you have responsibility? Yes, you do. You have a responsibility to rule it all, a responsibility your father has shirked. Look at all the thousands of people that have died fighting both with and against your father. If he’d just taken what should’ve been his, think of all the lives that would’ve been saved.” Cor’El starts to nod ever so slightly, and Doc pushes his advantage. “Are you brave enough to do what needs to be done? There are people who’ll try to stop you, but you can’t let them. You can rule all of Rumedia; you must rule to save them from each other. Protect the world? Is that what the dog was about?”
Cor’El started, surprised at the mention of the dog he’d just killed. For a brief moment, guilt flooded him, but it was no different than any other wave in the sea. As quickly as it had come, it had gone, and it left Cor’El wondering why he should even care about the dog. “What does the dog matter?” he asked.
“It doesn’t. I don’t care about it, and neither should you. Look, do you know why I am here? Who sent me?” Doc asked.
“The… ad-mir-al?” Cor’El half asked, half stated h
altingly.
“That’s right. Vice Admiral Zheng Huojin is a powerful and amazing man. What you may know of him makes him out to be an evil man, but you have to understand the truth about him.
“He’s from a world called Earth and an ancient land known as China. You see, the people of Earth were divided into more nations than you would believe, over a hundred with almost eight billion people, that’s eight thousand million people, and not all of them agreed with Admiral Zheng’s views of the world. His world was overrun and nearly destroyed by some very bad people, and he had to retreat into the stars with millions of his people.
“He wants his home back. Wouldn’t you?” Doc asked.
“Yes, but what use am I? If he is so powerful, why does he need me?”
“The Admiral has weapons that can destroy entire cities, turn whole countries into glass. He doesn’t want that. He wants to remove the enemies of good and order while leaving his world intact. What good is having your home if it is completely destroyed?”
“I still don’t know why,” Cor’El answered.
“Because with your help, he can take his home back, bring peace to all of the different peoples of Earth. You can make that happen.”
“Why should I?”
“Because it is your right, your responsibility – to use your power to rule the weak, to control those who would destroy everything by fighting amongst themselves. Like I said, some will try to stop you, but you absolutely cannot allow them. They have no right to stand up to you. You may as well be a god, and they aren’t even men. They’re worms, ants. Crush them if you must, because they’re nothing. Even your father… You will one day rule not only Rumedia but the stars as well, and you shall live forever.”
Cor’El took a deep breath, inflating and then deflating like a balloon while sitting upon his stool. Doc knew it was a lot for a ten year old boy to take in, but this boy was born with more knowledge and understanding than any thousand Westerners, not to mention certain psychological issues that would be of major concern to others…
Blood Betrayal Page 6