“I don’t—” I began.
“Chiha Baraji…”
Akaterru be damned, but he meant it when he said he knew everything. I tried to act as if hearing the woman’s name wasn’t going to send me into a fit of ungodly rage. “What about that bitch? She’s yesterday’s news. Yet unmarried, quite possibly fawning over another woman’s husband...” Too late. I sucked in a breath of air to calm myself. “If Rayyel wanted her, why didn’t he consult with the priests to absolve our marriage and take her? He’d already thrown away everything, so it can’t be that he’s holding on to this marriage for the crown.” I rubbed my forehead. “And anyway, what does this all have to do with Thanh?”
“The land is not stable enough for this dream of yours,” Dai replied. “It is an admirable thought, but one that has no place in a land as divided as ours. You need to secure a marriage alliance for your son, and you need to do it in a way that will keep the warlords from tearing you apart the moment you announce it.”
I laughed. “All right, Master Dai,” I said. “Let’s pretend I can entertain this notion of yours. I waltz back to court and announce that Prince Thanh will be marrying an alon gar when he comes of age…”
He chuckled. “It will require a bit more finesse than that, obviously.”
“Obviously,” I snorted. “What do you have to gain from all of this?”
“With this sort of marriage announcement, you would be abolishing the rigid rules that separate royals from commoners,” Dai said.
“Let’s pretend I can do that. What then?”
“Such an announcement will give me the power I need to drive the Anyus off the land.”
I almost slammed my fists on the table, but I didn’t—it would have been too insulting, and I was still a guest in his household. I curled my fingers over my knees and gave him a dog’s smile. “This was what you wanted the whole time,” I said, keeping my voice low. “I have to admit I am disappointed, Master Kaggawa. After all your daughter’s talk about the common man…” From the corner of my eyes, I saw Lahei flinch.
“I’m not sure I follow, Queen Talyien.”
I shook my head. “You’d dangle your daughter as bait to get me to overthrow centuries’ worth of tradition just so you could seize power in this region. What’s next? Warlord Dai aren dar Kaggawa? Dragonlord Dai?”
He started laughing.
The smile on my face grew cold, but I kept it there until he stopped for breath. “Don’t tell me I’m not too far from the truth,” I said.
“Very far,” he replied. “Though I can’t say I blame you for making that leap of logic. It is, after all, the very foundation on which you royals have built your legacies.”
“I’ll cram your words back into your mouth, Kaggawa. I’m not sure you’re clear about what this sounds like at all. This will cause war. Is overthrowing the Anyus and seizing power for your little corner of the map reason enough to risk it? We have barely recovered from the last one—you’ll do that to our people again? Are you really that shortsighted?”
“It isn’t shortsightedness, Beloved Queen,” Dai said. “I would risk it all simply because our lives at our stake. All our lives.”
Chapter Five
The Hidden Aberration
“What are you saying, Kaggawa?” I asked.
Dai pressed his hands along the side of his desk as he stared at me in silence, chewing on the corner of his lips. I took a moment to consider how different he was acting now than when I had first met him out on the streets. Out there, he had been more sombre, stiff; here, he seemed more pensive, expressive. “I think I will let you sit on my words first,” he said with a grimace. “You’ll have plenty enough time to think them through during our trip to the Sougen.”
“I am not going to the Sougen,” I hissed. “This little side-journey just to see you has already cost me too much time. Our lives are at stake here.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“The events in the Zarojo Empire…” I started.
He leaned back. “You made enemies out there, didn’t you?”
“You could say that.”
“You made enemies, and suddenly your people refuse to help you,” Dai said with a heavy sigh. “I’ve been wondering why the Oren-yaro never went after you. It’s worse than I feared.”
“Da—” Lahei began. I glanced at her in confusion. Da, not Father? Da was a Kag affectation.
“My son’s life is at stake here. I will not allow Thanh to be feasted on by vultures,” I murmured. “You need him alive too, don’t you?”
“Tell me what’s happening. You’re going to have to trust me, Queen Talyien.”
“My son is in danger. That’s all you need to know.”
His nostrils flared. After a moment of silence, he inclined his head to the side. “She sounds sincere enough. Frightened, even. Not what I expected from her at all. What do you think?”
“The queen, indeed, had her fair share of troubles in the empire,” Lahei agreed. “I suspected there was more to it than she let on.”
“And Faorra can’t very well marry a dead boy, can she?”
“No, Da.”
Dai pressed his hands on his desk. “A proposition, Beloved Queen. Consider it a token of goodwill so that you can begin to trust us.”
“I’m listening,” I bristled.
“I have men,” Dai continued. “Something which we’re both aware you’re short of. I’ll take care of extracting your son from Oka Shto and his Ikessar guardians, away from this danger you claim he’s in. In exchange…”
“I go with you to the Sougen,” I finished for him. “You bastard.”
He smiled. “If you remain this compliant, then we don’t have to be hostile at all, do we? Our daughter did tell you we are your servants, did she not?”
“Servants who blackmail their queen,” I grunted.
“Your distrust is understandable,” Dai said. “Hopefully, you’ll soon see the necessity of all of this.” He gestured to Lahei. “Send Torre to Oren-yaro.”
She nodded, stepping out of the room.
I didn’t know if it was relief or dread now running through me. “If you manage to get Thanh away without getting killed—”
“My men know what they’re doing.”
“And then what? We become your hostages. You’ll want me to announce Thanh’s betrothal to your daughter right after, I’m sure. Between the warlords and the Zarojo army…”
His eyes brightened. “A Zarojo army?”
“I am not in the mood to play games, Kaggawa. This is more serious than you realize. Do you have enough sellswords to stop the nation from burning?”
He laughed. “Sellswords! And where did you hear that from?”
I smirked. “I have my ways.”
“Worries for the future,” Dai said, growing serious. “The warlords will not attack us. This land’s concerns go beyond your royal squabbles. But come—we’ve talked enough. The day grows shorter, and we have a long road ahead.”
I followed him out of the building, where I saw my guards, Khine, and Cho on the street with Lahei. I wasn’t sure what she told them, but Nor gave me a look as I passed by. “Later,” I grumbled. “I’ll explain later.”
We continued down the street, which led to the outskirts of town. A low wooden fence surrounded one of the buildings. There were horses tied in a row along the street. Dai whistled and a young man ambled up to us, a straw hat set at an angle on his head. He was thin, more bone than flesh. “Your horses are ready, Master Dai,” he said, speaking in Kagtar, although he looked Jinsein from the distance. On close inspection, I could see a brown sheen to his hair. His eyes were quite light, too—almost yellow. I wasn’t surprised. Children of mixed lineage were common in that region.
Dai walked towards a large bay horse, the kind with a light feathering along its forelegs, and his face broke into a grin. He greeted the horse with the sort of fondness you reserved for a special friend before turning back to the stableh
and. “We’ve got company. I brought my daughter’s horse, but please find something for the rest of them. Put it on my tab.”
The young man glanced at me. “Everything outside is spoken for, but maybe something in the stables?” His face muscles twitched. He quickly slapped at it, as if it was an affliction he was used to.
“Perhaps the queen will want to pick her own horse. I’ve been told she’s fond of them.”
It took all my power not to gape at him now. The change of tone was clearer—it was the same voice from when he had met me down the road, one that made it easy to believe he was the sort of man who slew dragons on the side. I turned to see if anyone else had noticed, but Lahei had called on Agos and Nor to help her with the saddlebags, and Khine was too far away.
I forced my attention towards the stablehand, who was wringing his hands in front of us. I smiled politely, doubting the quality of horseflesh one would find from a commercial stable in a rundown town. But I followed the young man into the building. He indicated the available horses with haphazard flailing, and I went down to inspect them. I wasn’t looking for anything particularly special, but I wanted to keep an eye out for the sort of horse that might be able to outrun Dai’s mount if I needed it to. I caught a couple that looked like they had the legs for it, though they were flightier than I liked.
I heard the young man clear his throat. “Have you decided?”
“A moment,” I said. I patted the nose of an amiable dappled grey before moving on to the next stall. A shaft of sunlight from the window crossed my path. As I glanced away from it, I noticed the stablehand’s shadow on the ground. It looked like a forked tree branch, the edges hard and angled.
It gave me pause. I felt my skin crawl as I took a second look. The shadows where his fingers should’ve been ended in points, like claws. Higher up, his hair looked like it was standing on end, and the head was twisted, the silhouette of his mouth and nose upturned.
“Well?” he asked. His shadow opened its mouth. I saw fangs.
I looked up at him.
Maybe it was the expression on my face, or maybe because my hand had dropped to my sword, but his eyes grew bright. The thin line of his lips turned into a sinister smile.
Without another word, he changed.
~~~
I felt my hair prickling as it happened, the feel of the air before a lightning storm. His mouth split open, revealing the long, white fangs, just like in the silhouette. His body contorted, ripping through his clothes. His flesh darkened, and patches of hair appeared all over him, like a flea-bitten dog’s fur. His arms grew longer, lean muscles and veins popping through throbbing skin. There was a thick, oily sheen over him that smelled like rotting blood.
My observations ended there. He lunged for me.
There was very little room to flee between the stalls, especially between the panicked horses and thundering hooves. I dodged the first attack, watching in horror as the creature crashed into the gate. The wood exploded into several pieces. A frightened horse raced past us. I was almost expecting the creature to go after the hapless beast, but it only had eyes for me.
It reached out again with claws the length of my arm. I ducked a second time and managed to wrench my sword free. I struck its leg. It howled and smashed me with the other leg, and I quickly realized my mistake in engaging something strong enough to send me flying to the wall.
I hit a board, my left shoulder taking the brunt of the fall. My head spun. I tasted blood from a split lip and spat out straw. Before I could even think about getting up, I felt the creature on me, claws dancing over my skin. I gazed up to its slavering jaws and stabbed it in the roof the mouth with my sword.
It threw its head back with a roar. I pulled my sword back and struck it across the chest several times. Black blood dripped over me, but the creature refused to budge. The weight of it pressed on my chest seemed to squeeze the breath out of my lungs.
I heard someone call out. I recognized Khine’s voice and scrabbled to get out of the creature’s grasp. “Get out of here!” I managed to scream before the creature tossed me to the side like a rag doll.
I hit a bale of hay this time. I coughed as I drew myself up to my knees, and then found myself retching at the stench and feel of the creature’s blood. When I finally caught my breath, I reached for my sword. Slime coated the hilt. I wrapped my fingers around it as tight as I could and blindly rushed forward.
The creature had left me for Khine. He was keeping it at bay with a pitchfork. As I reached him, I saw the stable doors slide open and heard Dai’s thundering voice in the distance.
“Out here, you piece of shit!”
The creature hissed as sunlight struck it. Small pockets of burning flesh appeared on its skin. Unfazed by its injuries, it bounded through the door. I limped past Khine just in time to see Dai take it down with one clean, upward stroke.
The creature’s body shrank under the sunlight, cracking like a wilted flower as it slowly turned back into the stablehand—a stiff, grey, desiccated shadow of him.
I managed to swallow. “How inconvenient,” Dai said, striding up towards me. “I suspected he was one. Wasn’t sure, really.” He had regained the curt voice, the one I remembered him with. There was no ounce of surprise or regret on his expression.
“What the hell is happening here, Kaggawa?”
“Knowing your reputation, you would’ve fled from me the first chance you got. I had to show you what was wrong here. My apologies if I had to use you to bait him to reveal himself.”
I wiped my face. “Explain yourself.”
“This is an unstable region,” Dai said with a snarl. “Years before your father’s war, Rysaran’s mad dragon was destroyed in the mountains. The act ripped through the fabric, allowing vast amounts of agan through—an entire lake of it.”
“What does that have to do with that…thing?” I gestured at the corpse.
“Didn’t your tutors teach you anything?” Dai snapped. “Ah, they wouldn’t have. I forget how stuck up you royals get over these things. The agan…look…” He made a ball with his hands, oblivious of the blood that dripped down his arm—the creature’s, not his. “A fabric separates our reality from the other side, where agan comes from. Rysaran’s dragon created so much damage that it was threatening to swallow this entire region. Dageian mages came to stop it. They erected spells around the mountains near Cairntown to contain the spill.
“But mere spells couldn’t quite repair the fabric and restore it to the way it was. Their spells created a blockage, a dam. The stifled flow of the agan in that area became corrupted. Or it corrupted things. I don’t know much about it myself, but…we are all part agan. Do you know that?”
Khine cleared his throat. “I’ve been told it flows through every living thing.”
“When we die, our souls travel through the agan stream. And there are some who find themselves drawn to that torn fabric, to the corrupted lake in the mountains. And it changes them. It changes…” He stopped, his face tightening. “What do you mean I’m not explaining it properly?” he asked with an irritated expression. He wasn’t looking at me, or anyone.
“Father,” Lahei called out.
“It’s not a problem,” Dai replied. I wasn’t sure if he was replying to her or talking to himself again, but his voice had changed once more. He turned back to me. “She has to know. How long will we pretend this isn’t a problem threatening to consume us all?”
“What by all the gods are you both going on about?” I asked.
“Souls travel on the agan,” Lahei said softly. “The creature you have seen was a man who somehow attracted the soul of a corrupted thing. We’ve been trying to understand how it works, to predict what causes possession, but all these years, it seems to be completely random. A neighbour can be masquerading as normal for years and later be discovered eating babies and children in the night.”
“And this sort of thing only happens in these parts?” I asked.
Lahei nodded. “We bel
ieve it is because of the corrupted lake. The entire region of Kago is affected, as well as parts of the Sougen Province. It is also the same reason we are infested with the mad dragons. The agan attracted regular dragons to the area—they use it in order to breathe fire and allow themselves to grow big. But somehow, these creatures, these souls, came through and possessed them.”
I felt my fingers begin to shake, and carefully crossed my arms so it wouldn’t be so obvious. My eyes darted towards Dai. “I’ve heard of a land where this is common occurrence. Herey, to the far east of the Zarojo Empire. Is this the same thing?”
“Perhaps,” Dai said.
“Except they don’t have mad dragons. We do.”
His face broke into a smile. “You catch on fast. Perhaps we have hope after all.”
~~~
On the road, the Kaggawas gave me the sort of education on the agan that my tutors had denied me all these years.
They spoke of its abundance in another realm, the one the Zarojo called Sheyor’r, and the fabric that separated it from our world. In Sheyor’r, agan flows freely, and everything there is made of this substance, which has resulted in a world of agan attempting to mimic a solid form—the trees, the water, the ground, and even the people.
It was like hearing a story, a fairy tale. Amusing enough coming from someone like Agos’ mother on a cold winter’s night with cups of hot ginger tea in our hands. To listen to it out here, among grim faces, with the knowledge that what had attacked me in that stable could very well be among us…
It seemed that when we die, our souls would slip into a stream and make its way to the nearest hole in the fabric, where we would then make our way to an afterlife in Sheyor’r. Our souls were made of agan, too, the exact same substance, only different enough to retain a will of its own. Dai and Lahei’s arguments gave me a glimpse of how little people really knew of it and why there were different schools of thought and interpretations on the subject.
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