The Gardens of Almhain

by Laura Mallory

  Rodrigo Vasquez and his sons, Eduardo and Samuel, were still chuckling as a loud knocking began on the dining room door.

  In the months to come, as blood made rivers across the peninsula, Rodrigo would remember that final moment with his family. The long, expertly laid table, the sputtering wicks of thick white candles in its center. His wife’s aghast expression, betrayed by the silent twinkle of mirth in her dark eyes. His twin daughters, youthful and prim, innocents who dreamt at night of kind husbands and children of their own. The boys, laughter fading as they watched their father frown and push back his chair.

  And Maria, still smiling at the successful recital of a joke she could not understand.

  The pounding outside continued. Rodrigo strode purposefully to the door, ready to berate the fool who dared to interrupt their meal. The iron knob was smooth and cool in his fingers as he pulled the door open. It was one of his men, though for the life of him, Rodrigo couldn’t recall his name. He stood in the hallway, panting, eyes showing white around the edges. Beneath his left foot was a slowly widening pool of blood.

  Rodrigo felt a strange coolness radiate down through his body. “Great God, wha—” Something large and hard connected with his abdomen and the air rushed from his lungs. He staggered back into the dining room, moving blindly until his back connected with a wall.

  Plates and silverware crashed. One of his daughters screamed. Little Maria wailed and cried out for her mother. His wife, beautiful Inez, spoke his name softly.

  Rodrigo fumbled for the knife at his belt. His mind was in a haze, his lungs aching as he fought for a painless breath. Nausea came in a great wave and he gagged, doubling over. He felt Inez’s hands on his shoulders, face, and then she was gone.

  “No,” he gasped.

  Terror cleared his vision in time to register the tall stranger standing before him, a large mallet in his hand. His features were unremarkable, but the green sash he wore would be forever imprinted in Rodrigo’s mind. Then the mallet swung, and he fell.

  *

  What awakened him was an itch in his foot. Rodrigo opened his eyes slowly, then blinked because he could not see. For the briefest of moments he thought himself dead. Then pain blossomed in his head and abdomen. He gasped, and abruptly choked on thick, acrid smoke.

  The itch on his foot grew more insistent, and looking down he saw that his shoe was burning, licks of flame darting up his calf. With a wordless cry he tore his shirt from his body and smothered his foot, dampening the flames. With the cloth pressed tightly over his nose and mouth, he gained his feet, bracing himself against the wall until vertigo passed.

  Several feet away he saw the outline of the door, wreathed in fire. From the hallway came a deafening crash as the ceiling caved. A series of explosions rocked the ground, and he knew that his underground armory had been breached. He imagined the barrels of invaluable black powder, shipped to him over land and sea at incredible cost, rocketing upward through the ground, tearing through the tourmaline floor tiles and rare statues of his wife’s garden.

  The thought of Inez snapped his mind to attention. With his back flush to the wall, he took quick steps toward the distant window. The smoke pouring into the room from the hallway lessened until he was able to lower his shirt from his face and take several gulps of untainted air.

  From his position beside the window he quickly surveyed the room. The carpet beneath the dining table was smoking, would soon catch flame. To his immediate, heart-stopping relief, he saw no bodies on the floor.

  Aware of the likelihood that the exit was being watched, he took only a brief look through the window. It was full dark, but the sky was tinged a telling red. The enemy had left no corner of the estate untouched by the torch.

  The window shattered suddenly, glass shards flying inward and barely missing Rodrigo’s face. Gloved hands appeared on the sill, followed by a dark head. Rodrigo brought his fists together, lifting them over the unsuspecting neck.

  “Father?”

  “Eduardo,” he breathed, clutching his hands to his chest.

  The soot-darkened face angled toward him was barely recognizable as belonging to his youngest son. But the voice, which wavered on the cusp of manhood, was his. “Come on,” he said, and ducked out of sight.

  Rodrigo wrapped his shirt around his fist and punched away the remaining slivers of glass. He levered himself onto the window ledge, swung his legs about, and dropped to the ground.

  Eduardo stood some feet away, face expressionless, the flames reflecting in his vacant eyes.

  “They murdered them all,” he said. “Sliced their throats, one by one. Mother was last.”

  Rodrigo inhaled sharply through his nose, conscious of his lungs filling, heart beating, and blood circulating. There was a thick, painful pounding in his head, a dull ache in his stomach. He wondered how it could be that his soul was dead but his body still lived.

  “They said it was the vengeance of the God,” Eduardo continued, “that we were a house of sin.”

  “Stop, my son,” he croaked.

  “I begged them to kill me, but they wouldn’t. I was spared, they said, to show your allies that there is mercy to be had in surrender.” His gaze focused at last, coming to rest on Rodrigo’s face. “Will you kill them, father?”

  “Yes,” he said, unaware that tears were forging tracks through the soot on his face.

  Eduardo nodded, sighing. “Good.” He turned away, speaking over his shoulder, “There are other survivors. They wait for us beyond the wall.”

  The group of less than fifty men left the province of Vallejo that night. On horseback and by foot they traveled under the cover of darkness, north across low, rolling hills, at a pace mindful of those among them who were injured.

  As no one was willing to speak of it in length, Rodrigo spent the next week of travel piecing together the story of what had befallen them all. It was better to think in numbers and facts, to assess damage and plan for the times ahead. For in every moment of silence, every blink of his eyes, there was grief. A grief that threatened to undo him, but that he swore would guide his sword instead.

  The town at the base of the foothills had been hit first. The modest families who toiled day in and day out to cultivate the tough ground and live peaceful, quiet lives were burned alive as their homes were set on fire around them. Those first flames had been invisible to the sentries manning Rodrigo’s estate, and by the time the rising column of smoke had been seen, it was too late.

  Systematically and in silence, by sword, knife, and arrow, the small army of rebels had been eliminated. The survivors were a motley assortment of the stupid and lucky, from an old steward who’d fallen asleep drunk outside the wall to a stable lad who’d hidden beneath hay until he could make his escape.

  In all, Rodrigo had thirty-eight men of fighting age and strength.

  It would have to be enough.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As dawn rose over the capital city of Vianalon, it touched first upon the highest tower of the palace, from which the flag of the royal family had flown. In the place of House Caville’s bold crest, however, hung a wide strip of black cloth, and as the sun bled across it, bells of mourning began to ring.

  First from the palace steeples, then street by street to the edges of the city. The doleful call of the bells spread like the sunlight across the River Viana. From barges to fishing boats to shallow-bellied merchant ships, the news echoed north and south. By noon, word had traveled throughout the whole of Tanalon. By dawn the following day, emissaries had arrived, taxed greatly by the haste and distance of their travel, in each of the three neighboring kingdoms.

  In Argenta, his highness King Manuel di Lucía received word of Armando’s death whilst he bathed in the cold waters of a mountain spring. The courier, weak-kneed and near fainting from his flight across the Wasteland and through the treacherous mountain pass, refused to re
st or take sustenance upon arrival in the hunting camp. He would speak nothing of his message to Manuel’s men, only demanded repeatedly that he be presented to the king.

  Standing waist-high in the natural pool, frigid water dripping onto his shoulders and chest, Manual absorbed the message without expression. There was a tense moment of silence among the gathered men before their king uncoiled from his stillness, walking from the water in several great strides. He regarded them from his impressive height with a sweeping, scathing glance before, birthing bare and shivering with cold, he knelt on the hard ground.

  One by one, his men followed suit, falling to their knees and bowing their heads.

  “God keep the soul of Armando de la Caville, King of Tanalon,” Manuel said. His words were echoed fervently by those men around him.

  And then, in a move that, depending on the author, would be writ in history as either surpassing foolish, vain, or heroic, Manual looked up and said in a resoundingly clear voice, “God bless Serephina de la Caville, Queen of Tanalon.”

  The king’s eldest son, Victor, met his father’s steady gaze, saying nothing as the hunting party softly repeated their liege’s astounding invocation.

  *

  East across the mountainous region of Argenta, past the stretch of the Wasteland, through the northern territory of Tanalon with its rocky coastline and thickly forested terrain, there stretched another desert, a great sea of red dunes, rising and dipping like waves.

  Carnivorous birds flew soundlessly through a night sky whose stars shone clear and bright, each constellation a feast for the dark eyes of wise women. Long before the common people of Dunak heard of King Armando’s death, their women spoke of a great omen in the stars, one of endings and new beginnings.

  The seat of the Dukari royal family was a massive city of stone, built so many countless generations before that no one remembered the architects, whether they had been foreign or Dunak-bred. Within and about the city was an oasis, greatest and most abundant of those scattered across the forbidding desert. The thickness of its foliage and profusion of brimming springs spared its inhabitants the most vicious effects of the sun. Most of the city’s residents never traveled beyond its walls during their lifetimes, leaving such tests of fate to merchants and veiled-ones.

  Ezekiel ibn Dukari, eldest among the seven sons of the late king of Dunak, stood in a shadowed hall within the royal house, staring at the empty throne he hoped, one day soon, to occupy. In various locations throughout the room, unseen and unheard, stood three veiled-ones. Their faces were shrouded in the ageless custom of their tribe so that only their eyes, and the dark tattoos around them, were visible.

  It was a rare opportunity to glimpse the eyes of a veiled-one, and most often the sight came the instant before death. It was not a fact Ezekiel oft forgot.

  “If what you say is true,” he spoke into the heavy silence, “there will be war.”

  “Yes,” whispered a reedy voice.

  “What do your spies tell you, Master of Knives?”

  There was a whisper of sound like smoke across stone, and suddenly Ezekiel was standing face to face with the leader of the veiled-ones. His pulse hammered against the skin of his throat, which suddenly seemed much too fragile and exposed. He countered the impulse to flee with the knowledge that if he were wanted dead, it would already be done.

  Surpassingly serene, oddly pale eyes regarded Ezekiel from within a border of finely etched ritual tattoos. There was no telling how old the man was, for succession among the veiled-ones was not something known outside the tribe. From the smooth skin about his eyes, the thick, finely sculpted brows, and the straight, broad shoulders, he might have been of an age with Ezekiel, who had turned thirty-three six moons past.

  It did not matter to Ezekiel how old the Master of Knives was, only that he held the man’s allegiance and therefore that of his network of assassins and spies.

  “They say martial law has been enacted in Vianalon,” said the Master.

  “The High Cleric wasted no time, then,” Ezekiel replied.

  The slight crinkling of skin about the Master’s pale eyes was the only indication of his smile. “He does not state publicly his intention to seize the throne, but it is rumored that the princess has gone into hiding.”

  Ezekiel ran a hand through his hair, sighing; the absolute stillness of the Master only enhanced his restlessness. “What should I do?” he asked.

  The broad shoulders, encased in flowing black silk, shrugged minutely. “It is also rumored that King Manuel of Argenta will throw his support behind the princess.”

  Ezekiel grunted at the acknowledgment of his own suspicions. “He has a son of marriageable age, does he not?”

  The Master nodded. “Victor, age twenty-six.”

  “Of course,” he said, nodding. “Quell the ambitions of the High Cleric, marry his son to Armando’s daughter, and rule both Argenta and Tanalon. He will not stop there, with Borgetza’s plentiful shipping ports so near.”

  Another slight nod. “On the eve before Armando’s passing, the Borgetzan ambassador to Tanalon met a sudden and very strange death. Yesterday, I received word that our southern neighbors have been amassing troops on the plains west of Siezo. The public word is training exercises. The private word is somewhat other.”

  Ezekiel narrowed his gaze, quelling sudden resentment that his own agents in Borgetza had spoken nothing of this in their last communiqué. “What do you mean, strange death?”

  The slightest of frowns creased the skin between pale eyes. “I do not know.”

  It both relieved and unnerved Ezekiel to learn that the man resources, through broad, had its natural limits. “I’m sure the notoriously paranoid Terrin of Borgetza believed his man was assassinated. The question is, who does he blame, the Church or the princess?”

  His companion said nothing, then, “We expect more news come dawn.”

  They stood in the silence, one man breathing audibly, the other with no discernable movement or sound. At length, Ezekiel asked again, in a murmur, “What should I do?”

  There was no answer, and when he looked up, the veiled-ones were gone.

  *

  The Master of Knives sat alone in his chamber, one among thousands in the city that existed underground, far beneath the unaware citizens of Dunak’s capital. His people had lived in the darkness beneath the desert for longer than their oral histories could tell.

  It was his home, and he was loath to leave it.

  With slow, methodical movements, he unwound the veil from his head. For several moments he sat still, feeling the caress of cool, moist air on his face. Then, with a silent sigh, he stood to unwind the plaits of his braid, combing through the long, dark strands with his fingers as he walked from the room.

  In the assembly hall his people gathered, waiting for him. There was silence at his entrance, but with ears attuned to the expressions of soundlessness, he felt his people’s shock. From some of them also radiated disdain, and worse still, loathing.

  His face unveiled for the first time in more than fifteen years, hair unbound since it was long enough to braid, Devlin al’Ven walked to the front of the silent gathering and turned, spreading his arms wide.

  “Behold your brother,” he said, voice strong and reedy, riding the currents of air. His arms fell to his sides and he rolled his shoulders back. “Let there be one among you strong enough to take my place.”

  There was silence, and then a different sort of silence, one thick and supple with intention. A silence that told a story if one had the ears to listen.

  Devlin moved his head an inch, and a knife clattered against the wall behind his head. He waited, watching all and none, and the wait was not long.

  By dawn, seven men were dead, and Devlin stood in the same place he’d occupied for hours. He touched the scratch on his cheek; it was superficial, no longer bleeding. The man
who’d inflicted the wound was allowed to live, to take his place as Master of Knives.

  Devlin wept, though no tears stained his cheeks.

  Even the most perceptive of the veiled-ones failed to notice his departure from their city. Only later that evening, as they gathered again, was his absence noted.

  “He has gone, then, back to his people,” spoke an elder.

  An old woman, dark eyes glistening, nodded. “As we knew he would,” she murmured. “May Istar guide and protect him.”

  “Istar protect him,” the veiled-ones intoned.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The bells woke Arturo at dawn. He had slept little, passing most the night staring at the ceiling and waiting for the sound of the outer door. Several hours before the bells jarred him awake, he’d fallen into a restless sleep and dreamed of shadows and knives, and of blue eyes watching him.

  The first thick, tonal sound of the palace’s mourning call had not finished when Diego burst into his room. Through the deafening noise, he yelled, “Armando is dead! Church soldiers are filling the streets. We’ve got to get Isidora out of Vianalon.”

  For the first time since youth, shock slowed Arturo’s reflexes. With his body moving ahead of his mind, he jumped from the bed with a foot still trapped in blankets. He hit the floor with a grunt, knee slamming painfully on stone. Without comment, Diego hauled him to his feet and they ran from the room.

  Finnéces was standing in the sitting room near the window, looking down onto the city. He turned as the men entered, regarding them with wide, terrorized eyes. “I just saw a man bludgeoned to death,” he said, voice too high.

  “Where’s Edan?” Diego snapped.

  “Filling packs… for travel,” Finnéces stammered.

  “And Isidora?” Arturo demanded.

  The old man wrung his hands together. “I don’t know.”