by Colin Taber
“Really?” asked Felmaradis.
“That’s if the Church doesn’t try to claim it for itself.”
Angela seemed deflated by the news, but unsurprised. “King Giovanni is no fool, he’ll be ready for that – thus the proclamations.”
Anton nodded. “You’re right, of course. There may even be more than the one campaign to take Ossard in the coming seasons.”
Felmaradis shrugged. “And who knows what part my own people will play in all this, though I suspect it will not be a happy one.”
I asked, “Fel, where’s the prince you were with when we first met?”
“Prince Jusbudere is in Quor awaiting our orders, so I have come south in an effort to gain more news. Of course, I also had a promise to keep.”
Pedro asked, “Fel, does anything remain of the Flet homeland?”
Fel was quiet for a moment as he considered his words. “More remains than most would think, and my family has done much to protect and mend what we could when we took ownership.”
Sef enquired, “And you took the Praagerdam’s colours as your House’s own? It’s a wonder!”
“My father said it was about learning from mistakes.”
I offered, “He sounds like a wise man.”
“Yes he is, and one who’s made many think, even if he’s also roused our enemies. Still, he’s the brother of the High Queen and can call upon strong support. He knows his limits and works within them.”
Sef said, “We’ve spoken of many things, but in such an erratic way. Perhaps we should retell the tales of what has befallen each of us during our parts in the fall of Ossard.”
“A fair call,” answered Felmaradis.
Over a generous spread of the evening we sat and listened as each of us recounted our own part of the tale. There were stories of my rescue of my family and the rising again of Angela and Silva – though Felmaradis shifted in discomfort to hear such a thing. There was also the telling of Sef and Anton’s incarceration and their own escape.
We also spoke of the city’s fall from grace, something which may have started with slow moves, but which sped up to become not just unstoppable like the tide, but as fast as the winds of a winter gale. There were also moments when we spoke of our trek to the ruins and what we’d found there, of Grenda, Marco and the Prince, and also of the rosetree renewed.
Sef said, “So, now we wonder at where these five seeds should be planted and how best to protect such a thing. The rosetree was stolen away from the Northcountry a century ago, only to return unexpectedly, yet how does one look after such a rare gift?”
Fel shrugged. “It sounds like a question, though I’m no man of the green. It’d be better put to my father, for our House has prospered under him. He seems to know what to do with every opportunity.”
I asked, “And how’s that, is he a learned man?”
“He is a mage of the Cabal, but also studied many other things. He has always been particularly good at finding the talented about him and then putting them in positions to use their strengths.”
Sef reached across from behind Anton’s chair to tap me on the shoulder, while giving me an encouraging nod. I could only chuckle at his clumsy persistence, something which amused the rest of the table, but also left them feeling more than a little lost.
Fel said, “There’s a joke here, one that I’m not alone in sitting out of, but feel has something to do with me?”
Sef whispered, “By the gods, he’s quick!”
I spoke up, “Just before your ship arrived we were talking about the riddle of where to plant the seeds. It was suggested, on a whim, that one could go to the Praagerdam, for we feel that they should be scattered far and wide and not just across the Northcountry.”
“I can see the sense in that.”
Sef chipped in, “And then, having suggested it, your ship came into the sound bearing the colours of the Praagerdam.”
Now, Fel and the others got a sense of the coincidence at the heart of our joke. He asked, “Are you serious? You want to send one of your precious seeds far away to the core of the Fifth and Final Dominion?”
Put that way it did sound audacious. “It’s what we were thinking.”
Sef nodded. “Perhaps at the heart of your own family’s estate?”
Fel smiled. “I’d be honoured. I’ll see to it that it’s not only planted to grow, but to prosper and birth a whole woodland.”
To have found somewhere safe from our own travails made me feel satisfied. Besides, there’d still be four seeds for the Northcounty. “I’ll need to talk to Grenda and the Prince.”
Pedro shook his head, bemused. “That may not be the easiest of things. Wasn’t it Lae Velsanans who destroyed the Prince’s people; the Ogres of old. Who can say how he’ll react to such a request?”
Fel frowned.
Sef gave a sigh. “It’s Grenda who’ll resist, she hadn’t forgotten Anton. Likewise, she’ll not have forgotten the genocide, and to then propose sending one of the last seeds to the heart of Lae Wair-Rae might strike her as a little too ambitious.”
I said, “We’ll see. Leave it to me.”
There was agreement around the table.
“So,” I said, “let’s now speak of the future.”
Anton and Fel would have the most to say here. As glances were swapped about the table it was the latter who cleared his throat to speak, “We are on orders to watch and wait. I believe that High King Caemarou thinks that the Heletian attempt to take Ossard will fail. I think our own offensive, based on that failure, is already being planned.”
Anton asked, “How can he be so certain; what kind of counsel will he be taking and from whom?”
“There will be many sources, but the main are easy to name; his advisors, a knot of grovelling men who accompany him at court, but their opinions will be conservative and soft; Lae Corster, the head of the Wair-Rae Cabal who is renowned for his scrying; the council of Lae Bareth, which is made up of the heads of the Kinreda’s five faiths and not without their own powers of divination; and finally, the Chronicle Forwao, who is very well versed in the future.”
Sef asked, “You’re saying that the defeat has already been seen, if not by Lae Corster, than by the Chronicle or the Lae Bareth council?”
“Yes, I believe by all three.”
And a grim quiet settled around the table.
“I don’t know the details, and while I’ve not heard it said in plain language, we’re being directed to watch the attack and gather information for our own forces who will be coming later on.”
I shifted, suddenly aware of a couple of unpleasant truths, “So, anyone we meet coming from the Inquisition will most likely not live to see the end of their campaign. Therefore we need to watch how closely we involve ourselves with them lest it also doom us.”
Sef nodded, as he looked to Anton. “What a bleak thing.”
The former inquisitor said, “I’m not surprised to hear such talk. From what I’ve seen of their plans, I can see why they’ll not succeed.”
I asked, “Why?”
“Because they’re too stuck in their own ways and thinking.” He looked about the table. “They’ll come with Sankto Glavos and a smattering of knights from the nobility, all expecting to have a gentleman’s battle. The cultists will not play that game. Instead, they’ll use their single greatest advantage – magic – and strike hard and fast. The Inquisition will be defeated before they know it.”
Fel nodded. “I’ve not heard any details, but I’ve talked with Prince Jusbudere about what we could gather. It’s our feeling also that the Inquisition will be overwhelmed long before they have the chance to rally. For the cultists in Ossard this is not the main battle, it’s just a skirmish. They’ll be looking further ahead to when they can open their gate with ritual magic.”
I asked, “But how would a Lae Velsanan attack on the city differ? Would they not just overrun it with troops and knights as the Inquisition plans to do?”
Fel grimaced. “T
here’d be troops and officers, some on horseback, but there’d also be a great deal more magic at our disposal, too. The numbers we’d bring would also weigh in our favour, something that the Inquisition lacks.”
“How many?”
“I couldn’t say for certain, for we haven’t rallied yet.”
“A guess?”
“Perhaps as many as a hundred thousand.”
Gasps sounded from around the table.
Anton said, “By the time you were to launch an attack there’d barely be that many people left in the city!”
“That would be the thinking of our command.”
I asked, “And of magic; we can all guess you’d use more than a Heletian force, but how much and how effectively?”
“We’re well acquainted with magic, it’s not just something we’re familiar with and accept, but part of our very culture and lives. If we brought a force of one hundred thousand troops, there’d be around a thousand mages of the Cabal amongst them.”
Anton whispered in awe, “One thousand!”
Fel said, “My people have a deep affinity for those arts. It’s not just something we can use, but part of who we are.”
“I see,” I said, but was only just beginning to understand.
He stood and walked to the window that showed his grand ship moored and lit by lantern light against the dark. High on the masts the lights were a haunting blue, lower down they were of a more familiar yellow. “Look at the ship I’ve come in: See those lights?”
We nodded and answered that we could.
“You’ll recognise the lanterns, the low hanging ones, those that are within easy reach and used in a portable fashion with a soft golden glow because of their oiled flames.”
We agreed.
“But higher up, two on each main mast, and one on each of the lesser beams, are those blue lights with a silvery glow. See them?”
“Yes,” We answered.
“We use them as lamps, and perhaps also as an extravagant decoration, but they burn no flame nor oil. They are of a kind of magic that only Lae Velsanans can craft, and they are precious to us, yet we use them for light – but can also turn them into terrible weapons. Why, with just eight of them, manipulated by a competent cabalist, we could turn them into explosive weapons that could scorch this place so that nothing but its charred stones and ghosts would remain.”
Sef said, “That’s quite a claim.”
“And a true one. If the Dominion military is called upon to take Ossard, we will, and with the might we can unleash, we will not fail.”
Anton nodded at his words. “I know of the power your people have – and its source. Don’t take my words as an insult, but there are those who label your people as depraved.”
Felmaradis tensed, though none of the rest of us seemed to know what they were talking about, for we all exchanged confused looks.
He shook his head for a moment, glanced back at his ship, and then met Anton’s gaze. “Depraved is not a word I’d use, though I could see why some may think it. I come from a different people, with a different culture, and with different bodies which hold a treasure that is unique.”
Anton asked with a sympathetic voice, “Then it’s true?”
“Yes, if you’re speaking of Naskae; the pearls of soul-stuff that we mine at the time of our own kind’s deaths.”
I asked, “What are you talking about?”
Anton nodded to Fel, leaving him to speak, “I don’t know how to put it best, but let me try: Our bodies are tools of our souls in this world, and as a consequence, in people such as yourselves – non-Lae Velsanans – over the course of your lifetime, a measurable trace of your soul builds up in your body because of that link.”
“Escenco,” Anton offered, “that’s the term we use.”
Raw power...
“I thought that was just the stuff of ghost stories?” asked Pedro.
“No, it’s real, but the amounts gathered are so small that you’d need to harvest it by filtering the fluids from scores of bodies to get enough to be able to do anything with it.”
Angela’s face paled, as did Baruna’s, Kurt’s and Sef’s.
Fel went on, “Lae Velsanans are different: In our bodies it gathers in one place and in greater quantities. Some say that it’s because we are more attuned to magic, others because of our longer lives. Regardless, a Lae Velsanan has a soul-pearl buried deep in his abdomen, a small blue sphere about as wide as your thumb, and it’s literally made up of soul-stuff that glows with power.”
Horrified, I asked, “You take it from the bodies of your dead?”
“Not all of them. The family decides what to do on behalf of their own – and most are allowed to rest whole and in peace. Many worry that to remove the naskae is to deprive the soul of some of its own power when it’s reborn.”
“So where do they come from, the ones that you do mine?”
“Prisoners, the poor, debtors, orphans, families who feel that the relative now dead can tolerate the loss.”
I looked out the window at the moored ship, at the blue lights that glowed there – the remnants of the dead.
Anton asked, “And if one harvested naskae from a living person?”
“It cuts the link to the soul, it’s a fatal wound.”
I looked about the table, both amazed and appalled. “This is quite a revelation.”
“And one that explains why we Lae Velsanans will always triumph in war: We not only have a long and proud history of combat and skill, but we’ve this other advantage we can unleash to redress any unbalanced battles. You’d not believe some of the things I’ve seen, of the scorching of whole towns and vales with altered naskae in an effort to redress unfavourable battle momentum.”
“You’re saying that if the forces of Lae Wair-Rae came to take Ossard and were failing, that they’d torch as much of their opponents’ force and the city as need be until they achieved their aims?”
“Yes, even if it means destroying the city.”
Baruna shook her head in horror.
“I know it’s a grave thing, but our orders will be to defeat the cultist threat and destroy it. If they fight us in the city, then Ossard will be wasted.”
They talked on, speaking of the horrors to come.
Myself, I slipped into silence, a silence haunted by visions of a city scorched and fallen, and of streets choked with the dead. Some there had died in battle, many had been executed, while yet others had been taken by a sickness and now lay to rot. And about it all fires raged. Doom was coming.
Chapter 19
-
A Gauntlet Cast
-
While Felmaradis seemed friendly enough, much of his crew remained aloof. I could sense a bitterness held by some of them; not only did they wish to keep away from the Flets amongst us, but also the Heletians. Some of them just held no love for middlings.
Yet, for now, that wasn’t our greatest concern.
After a morning of grey skies and rain, that worry came delivered by our own people, those who’d taken to fishing the waters at the head of the sound. As their small convoy of boats returned with their catch, they reported that the black ships we’d previously seen moored out in The Wash seeking shelter from the Northern Sea, to the east of the isle of Bellini, had been joined by others. A flotilla had arrived from the south to see the Black Fleet reunited.
Now, gathered in strength, this would be the time that the Inquisition made demands. They’d think us impoverished and isolated, seeking refuge in a ruin, while they rallied heady with mustered power.
Such an image wasn’t something I agreed with, and to reinforce my feelings I only had to look to Felmaradis and his great ship. Even though he had only the one, it was a mighty vessel, more than twice as long as the Sidian – and a solid symbol of his people’s strength. Its mere presence suggested I was protected.
And at night it lay there lit by the souls of the dead!
For the Heletians, with their history of a slow b
ut steady rise – unlike the Flet background of catastrophe – the only thing to challenge their spreading influence was the rejuvenated Lae Velsanans building their Fifth and Final Dominion out of the ashes of their fallen Fourth.
The Fourth Dominion, Wair-Rae as they’d called it, had collapsed with the advent of Def Turtung or Lae Lunis Pors. The murder and ejection of the Flets had not just destroyed the Praagerdam, but the Dominion that had hosted it, by taking law and order, and a large part of Wair-Rae’s most important workforce with it.
In Old Wair-Rae, the Flets had handled the basest jobs and in particular the production of food. With that workforce cast out or laying about the streets, mines and fields, dead, Wair-Rae collapsed into disorder and famine. The crisis took decades to remedy.
After a time of consolidation, the newly rising Fifth Dominion – renamed Lae Wair-Rae – began grabbing more territory, at first by re-establishing old colonies, and then by founding some new.
Lae Wair-Rae, now with thirteen colonies, had lands that spread across two continents, one ocean and seven seas. The very idea of it was enough to make a Flet’s blood run cold. Yet, right now, as the Inquisition massed its forces, to have even one ship from such a power moored alongside us was more than I could’ve hoped for.
In truth, it was a blessing.
-
Around that time, about eighteen thousand souls counted on me, our original number much grown because of those who’d since joined us after being christened by the dust of the road. Marco’s Ruin was full with extended families sharing rooms, packing caves, and increasingly, peopling the smaller ruins that dotted the vale. There were also, no doubt, thousands of others aligned to me scattered across the Northcountry – and still some trapped back in the blighted city.
If my nights now came mostly free of my deep hunger’s cramps and fevers courtesy of the ill-defined aid of the Prince, they instead arrived full of worry. Now, when I finally gained the respite of sleep, I found my mind hosting nothing but visions of the world should I fail.