Blood Betrayal

by Martin V Parece

  Marya turned back to Cor’El and found the golden haired Dahken boy quietly regarding her.

  “So, what do you want?” he asked somewhat petulantly.

  “What makes you think I want something?”

  “You followed me all the way here.”

  “Yes,” Marya said.

  “Then you came in here. No one comes in here.”

  “You said I could,” she reminded him.

  “No, I just didn’t stop you.”

  Marya half shrugged half nodded in response.

  Then Cor’El said, “I could have, you know.”

  “Could have what? Stopped me?” she asked.

  “Yes. I can do almost anything.”

  “Can you?” Marya asked, and her heart began to thud again. It felt suddenly warm in Cor’El’s rooms, though the stone construction of the Crescent combined with the lack of direct sunlight generally kept it rather cool. If her Dahken gray skin would’ve allowed it, she thought she may have appeared flushed. She suddenly found herself standing next to his chair with a bare hand on the back of his neck. “Can you really?”

  “You saw what I did down there, to those Dahken my father loves so much,” he said looking up at her, and Marya couldn’t put her finger on the emotion she saw in his eyes. “I tore them apart like they were nothing. I did not even have to do that. I could have just turned them all to blood or even water or air or light. I could just make them go away.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Marya asked as she kneeled down beside him. She knew she should be appalled at his words, but they seemed to have the opposite effect. She began to feel a wetness the likes of which she’d felt before for Cor, Parol and Keth from time to time.

  Cor’El pulled his silver eyes from the gaze they shared with hers and looked ahead for a moment in consideration of the question. Then he answered, “I do not know. I did ask to fight them. It seems unfair to end them when they obliged me.”

  “Yes, but I don’t think that’s the right answer,” Marya urged.

  Cor’El thought about it, and after a moment, it seemed an idea struck him. He said, “I suppose because they do not matter.”

  “They don’t, not to you,” she agreed, “but that shouldn’t stop you. Because they do not matter is why you should not care whether or not you end them.”

  Cor’El turned his face back to hers and searched her face for a moment as he considered her words. Just as he seemed to accept them, Marya pressed her lips against his, kissing him fiercely. She forced her tongue into his mouth and began to search his body with her hands.

  He pulled away from her kiss for a moment and said in an almost concerned tone, “Keth will be here with my father soon.”

  “Your father is at the docks buying something for your mother, and Keth has no idea where to look. We have plenty of time,” she replied, admitting to herself the lie she had told Keth as she again placed her mouth on his.

  Dahken Keth

  Finding his Lord Dahken at first seemed to be the easiest of tasks, something that should have taken Keth mere minutes. Keth started toward the palace, long and purposeful strides taking him quickly to his destination. The sun continued to warm the city, and the wide, gorgeous plaza between Garod’s temple and Byrverus’ palace reflected the light and heat substantially. After Sovereign Nadav wrought his horrific destruction on the city, it was important to the people of Byrverus that the palace and temple complexes be repaired as quickly as possible, if not absolutely first. Keth thought it was, in their minds, the symbol of Western strength, the foundation of their beliefs. At the least, it represented normalcy.

  He found the main hall, and the throne, empty except for a few armored guards who stood absolutely still in their watch, and the occasional priest or bureaucrat as they scurried about their business. Upon seeing this, Keth continued on to the king’s Council Room without breaking step. A guard opened the right side of the huge, oak double door to allow him entrance, but it appeared that vacancy was all he would find. Keth sighed softly.

  “Whom do you seek, sir?” asked the guard who still stood next to the ajar door. Keth couldn’t see his face, but somehow thought the man looked no different from most Westerners. He certainly looked no different from the other palace guards, with a set of full plate armor, including helm, polished to the highest shine one would find anywhere.

  “Lord Dahken Cor. I was told he came to the palace this morning.”

  “I have not seen the Lord Dahken,” the guard replied unhelpfully.

  “I hoped to find him with King Rederick.”

  “Sir, I believe the king has gone riding.”

  “Very well,” Keth replied. He thanked the guard.

  As was necessary to service an army and garrison, stables to serve the king were placed throughout the city, but it certainly seemed logical that if King Rederick had decided to go for a ride, he would have most likely gone to the closest of these, less than a thousand feet away just behind the palace. Keth found that his stride had somehow lengthened, and his feet moved even faster, almost of their own volition. He somehow resisted the urge to break into a run.

  The stable was little different from any other he had been to in his years; Keth supposed no one hired an architect or the greatest engineers to design a building that quite literally was full of horseshit. As close as it was to the palace, and therefore the most likely to be used for royal business, the stablemaster kept it as clean as it could be, but as he entered, Keth still wrinkled his nose at the smell of the animals within. He didn’t mind riding a horse, or even the smell of a horse while upon it, but when one horse turned into horses in a cramped area, the odor seemed somewhat overpowering to him.

  “Yes, lord. His Majesty rode out a short time ago. Off to the countryside, I believe he said,” said the stablemaster. He was a plain man, short and wide, stocky but not round, with receding black hair that had started to turn stone gray.

  “Did Lord Dahken Cor go with him?”

  “No, lord,” answered the stablemaster with a slight shake of his head. “He went only with the queen and their daughter.”

  “King Rederick allowed Queen Mora to ride?” Keth asked. “It doesn’t seem safe as far along as she is.”

  “No, lord, of course not. I keep the plushest of carriages around just for such an occurrence.”

  Frustration mounted in Keth’s bearing as he began heading back the way he had come. He cursed himself a fool that he hadn’t made absolutely sure that Cor wasn’t haunting the Crescent somewhere while he had been searching in the wrong places. He could no longer keep himself to a walk, breaking into a quick jog as he passed back through the palace, its plaza and made his way to the Crescent.

  He slowed himself to his walking pace, a speed that most people would find hard to match without simply running, once he pushed his way through a door, but he nearly ran up the first set of stairs he came to, taking them two or three at a time. Keth stormed through the halls to Cor’s private office and just barely stopped to knock rather impatiently before just charging into the room. After no more than a few seconds without an answer, he tried to enter but found the door locked.

  “For the gods’ sakes,” Keth called to the ceiling.

  It took him mere minutes to climb up steps to the next level and make his way to Cor’s suite, but again, a locked door foiled him. Thoroughly aware that he could not search the entire city without an inkling of where to look, Keth decided to simply lean against the wall outside of Cor’s rooms to wait.

  It must have been at least an hour, maybe two, before he heard the groans and grunting of labor coming from the hallway that led to the stairs, because the shadows cast through the Crescent’s windows by the sun were at their shortest, as if the sun were directly overhead. Cor appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed in a black tunic, trousers and soft boots, having walked backwards up them while talking to someone further down.

  “You’re almost there. Please be careful around this turn,” he said, but to whom
Keth couldn’t tell.

  “Lord Dahken!” Keth called, and he quickly crossed the fifty or so feet to the steps.

  Cor glanced over his shoulder and held up one hand for calm, “Hold on, Keth.”

  Reaching the top of the stairs to stand beside Cor, Keth saw three rather burly Westerners in the white tunics and brown pants common to dock workers laboring mightily to bring a divan up the steps. It looked quite large, easily eight or nine feet long and four wide, made of an apparently extraordinarily solid and heavy wood. Reliefs of pyramids and jungles, mountains and rivers were carved into the wood frame. A fourth man followed behind as he struggled with two giant cushions that seemed to be made of a shimmering black silk, reminding Keth of Thyss’ preferred clothing choice even after all of these years.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Cor breathed. “I can’t tell you how much it cost me. Made by a master craftsman in her homeland.”

  “Lord Dahken, I must speak with you,” Keth urged, and his tone must have brought Cor to attention. “It is about your son.”

  “What?” Cor asked, and he turned away, Thyss’ new and very expensive divan completely forgotten. “What about my son?”

  * * *

  In the silence of Cor’s suite, Keth related the events of earlier with unerring detail, repeating every word that was spoken and the speed and efficiency in which Cor’El began to dismember the Dahken only to heal them again. Keth told his story, and flashes of different emotions and thoughts flashed across his Lord Dahken’s face. It started with surprise, then shifted momentarily to pride of what his son was capable, but that disappeared quickly into concern. As Keth finished explaining what had happened in the plaza below, Cor’s eyes narrowed, and his very presence exuded something that felt akin to anger. At no point did he question Keth’s veracity or say anything at all. There was a long silence as Cor seemed to sort through the story, the only sound the wind that blew from one room to the next through the open windows.

  Keth broke the silence first, “Lord Dahken, I am sorry to bring this to you, but you needed to know. I would never create such a story, not after Geoff.”

  “I know,” replied Cor, quietly. “I’ve never doubted you. You’re a good Dahken, and a better friend. Let’s go speak to my son.”

  “I sent Marya to stay with him; I imagine we will find him -”

  “In his rooms,” Cor completed the sentence.

  The Lord Dahken shot to his door and exited into the hallway with a speed borne of immense purpose, and Keth nearly had to run to catch up to him, following only a step or so behind. They traversed nearly thirty feet of hallway before Keth could hardly blink, and took the left turn that led to the hall with Cor’El’s door.

  The two Dahken came to a sudden stop, Keth almost running his Lord over, when Cor’El’s door opened and Marya emerged, shutting it behind her. She wore her armor, but carried her sword belt in one hand, her signature shortsword and dagger dangling from where it was buckled to the heavy leather. She took one glance their way, her eyes meeting Keth’s for a long moment before she turned and sauntered away. She nearly swayed as she went, a haughty and satisfied gait that Keth had seen her use many times before. She reached the end of the corridor and turned to leave them standing and staring.

  Cor turned to Keth, and the younger man had no doubt that hurt and confusion showed plainly upon his face.

  “Go,” Cor said to him, placing a hand on his shoulder, “I’ll deal with my son.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You’re still here?” Cor asked solemnly.

  Keth nodded and left his Lord Dahken behind as he strode down the hallway after his lover, and as he turned the corner, he heard the hinges of Cor’El’s door whine slightly as the door opened. He saw Marya just as she started down a set of stairs that would eventually lead her to the Dahken barracks and her own quarters. Keth picked up his pace into a jog, reaching the top of the steps in mere moments to find Marya had turned to face him only four or five steps down.

  “What?” she asked, and her demanding, short tone indicated that she really didn’t give a damn what he had to say.

  “What? You dare ask me?” Keth almost shouted at her, his usual impassive calm breaking for perhaps the first time he could remember. She turned and began to step her way back down the steps.

  “Don’t turn away from me,” Keth actually shouted, but neither the volume nor the change in his usual grammar caught her attention. He reached out and caught her by the shoulder, and Marya turned back to him with anger flashing in her eyes.

  She slapped his hand away from her, saying, “Don’t you touch me again. I’ve found a man with real power, now, and the will to use it.”

  “A man?!” Keth screamed. “He’s half your fucking age! Did you really do that?! You fucked him, didn’t you?!”

  “I did,” she replied with a vicious smile, “and it was glorious. Even now, I can still feel his strength inside me. Cor’El will rule all of Rumedia, and I’ll be by his side.”

  Keth had no idea why he did what he did next, neither could he even see nor understand his actions, but he lurched forward to take Marya by the shoulders to push her up against the stone wall of the stairwell. Somehow, she anticipated his move and sidestepped quickly, throwing out a leg. His momentum carried him into the leg, and Keth fell forward to tumble down eight or nine steps to land bruised on the landing at which the stairs turned back to continue downwards. When his eyes cleared, Marya lorded over him with a foot on his chest and her shortsword’s point mere inches from his throat.

  “Shall I just end you right now?” she carelessly asked.

  “Do, and neither Lord Dahken Cor nor King Rederick will rest until they have hunted you to your death.”

  Marya laughed heartily, a sound that Keth until just now had always found one of the most beautiful things in the world. She sneered, “Let them try. Cor’El will be Lord Dahken, King of Aquis, Emperor of the All the World, and he knows he deserves it.”

  “No one deserves such a thing,” Keth replied softly.

  “He does,” Marya disagreed, and she removed her foot and sheathed her sword. “So did Cor, but Cor’s a fool. He thinks power is meant to serve. It’s meant to rule.” She turned from him to continue her path down the steps.

  Keth pushed himself up to his elbows and called after her, “I love you. Come back from this.”

  She replied without turning, and her words seemed to echo up to him eerily, “Love is transient. Power is immortal.”

  Lord Dahken Cor

  The hinges to Cor’El’s door squealed slightly as Cor passed through it into Cor’El’s small suite. At first glance, he did not see his son, but the soft snoring to his right led Cor’s eyes to the boy’s bedroom. They narrowed as they took in the scene. Cor’El naked on his mattress, snoring softly on his stomach with a down filled pillow balled up under his head. His cotton tunic and trousers seemed to have been flung in different directions across the room.

  Anger boiled instantly up from Cor’s gut, and he slammed the door behind him as hard as he could manage. He heard the sound boom its way through the Crescent’s closed in hallways. His son flipped and shot upright almost instantly into a sitting position, the sudden interruption of his afternoon nap causing him crazed deep breaths in and out.

  “By Dahk!” he breathed, “What?”

  Cor ignored the oath, as much because it had no real meaning as he was too angry about the most recent development and too concerned about what happened down in the plaza. “Excuse me?” he asked with a furrowed brow and one side of his top lip raised slightly.

  “What do you want?” his son elaborated.

  “To talk to you, but you will drop that tone.”

  “You sound angry. Why do you not come back when you have had some time to think,” Cor’El replied, and though the words were those of a reasonable request, the challenge would have been missed by no listener.

  “Who do you think you are, to speak to me that way?” Cor asked rh
etorically, and his voice had risen in volume, though not quite to a thunderous height. Yet.

  The old buzzing returned, the wings of a bee or large fly in his left ear droning annoyingly, the sound telling him that Soulmourn and Ebonwing longed to taste blood. They had not yet begun to sing to him, as they always did when battle imminent, but something else felt hidden in the sound that they had never before tried to impart to him. He couldn’t help but feel a hint of danger, the suggestion of caution.

  Father and son locked eyes with each other in an unspoken contest of wills. Cor’El’s jaw hardened and the corners of his mouth turned down ever so slightly. Though the boy’s eyes retained the silver they’d had since birth, Cor swore he could almost see a light within them extinguish, and they grew harder than any he had ever seen before, almost lifeless. It felt like staring into the dead, black eyes of the sharks he’d seen hauled up onto docks back in his days sailing the Narrow Sea. He locked himself into a wide stance at the foot of Cor’El’s bed, as authoritatively as he could manage, and his hands balled into fists unconsciously.

  “Should I tell you about the things Marya just taught me?” Cor’El shot at him, and Cor knew the question was meant only to push his rage further. “It was the most anyone has taught me in years.”

  “Dahken Marya. You will call her that only. She has earned that title, something you have not, and you shall show her respect,” Cor replied, using every ounce of willpower he had to ignore the comment itself.

  “Respect? Respect was shown here, proper respect of my power.”

  “That’s what I’m here to discuss,” Cor said, seeing the opportunity to change the subject to the real matter at hand. He hated what Marya did and how it would hurt Keth, especially considering she did it with his son, but his anger over that would merely push this conversation the wrong direction. “You cannot do what you’ve done today.”