THE QUEST FOR NOBILITY
by
DEBRA L. MARTIN
DAVID W. SMALL
2010 Copyright © by Debra L Martin & David W Small
Cover Design © www.TERyvsions.com
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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Prologue – Otharia, 5th Century
With bloody sword in hand, Reaver looked over the scene of the massacre. It did not sit well with him, what he had done, but he was loyal to his commander. The orders had been simple: kill them all, and so he had done his best. Now, with most of the killing done, he had time to reflect.
May the gods have mercy on our souls.
***
The Telkur duty telekinetic looked up as the portal started to form. He checked the coordinates and was surprised to see that the portal was from the planet Earth. That expedition was not due to check in for another month.
“What the....”
Before he could finish his sentence two bloodied men staggered through.
“We’ve been attacked,” the first man said. “All is lost.”
More men and women stumbled through with varying degrees of battle wounds. The duty telekinetic was stunned momentarily. Earth was a primitive planet, but from all previous indications, its people were peaceful.
Snapping out of his shock, he opened a comm link to the Duke of Telkur directly.
“Sire, we have trouble at the portal station. Some of the expedition members are back and are badly wounded. Please come immediately and bring the healers.”
***
The gavel banged and the Master Clerk read the declaration.
“Let it be known that, from this day forward, off-world travel to the planet Earth is prohibited.”
Duke Rael Telkur sat unmoving in the Grand Council chamber room. The decree was final. There would be no more travel to Earth. Rael had lost a fortune financing the ill-fated expedition. It had required four 10K crystals to transport the hundred-plus explorers and their supplies. Normally, a 10K crystal would provide a duchy with more than three years of local planetary travel. But more importantly than the crystal expense, he had lost fifty loyal men and women to brutality. Only five of his expedition team had made it back to Otharia, but they all subsequently died of their wounds. The Vogdo team members had fared only slightly better; a mere ten of their men returned.
Rael glanced down the table to where his partner in this venture, Duke Jaks Vogdo, sat stone-faced. Jaks looked over at Rael and nodded. There was nothing more to be done.
You naive fool Rael. If you only knew the truth, Jaks thought.
The Vogdo Duchy was rich in crystal mines located within the Sharellian Mountains. Everyone believed the crystal veins were bottomless, and the Vogdo family thought the same until the veins started to dry up.
Fate and fortune had shone favorably upon Jaks Vogdo when mineral-rich Earth was discovered. Jaks eagerly agreed to form an alliance with the Duke of Telkur to explore this strange new world. They would share expenses for the exorbitant cost of off-world exploration and divide any potential riches evenly.
But, greed has a way of eliminating alliances. Blinded by unimaginable wealth, Jaks had no compunction about turning on his partner and ordering the massacre of the Telkur team members.
“The crystals must be shipped back here without a trace,” Jaks told his man on Earth. “I’ll open the portal from Earth directly into my mines and transfer the foreign crystals unseen. No one will ever know the truth.”
***
“I told you this would work,” Merlinius Telkur said.
His partner Vivienne shook her head at his boasting. They had been running for days from the Vogdo hunting party and she was at the end of her patience. Their traveling crystal was gone and they had no way to return to Otharia or even contact them. There were so few of the Telkur expedition that had escaped the attack, and now they were stuck on this primitive planet Earth.
“Save your breath, Merlinius,” Vivienne shot back. “Just concentrate on holding your shield until those bastards out there leave and we can get out of here.”
“I know that,” Merlinis replied, exasperated at Vivienne’s curt command. “You make sure your own shield holds. If they detect our life signs, this ruse will be for nothing and we’ll be on the run again.”
Vivienne sighed heavily. At the moment, she didn’t know which was worse: Merlinius’ bravado, or being stranded on a primitive planet with the Vogdo killers outside the cave.
Excerpt from the Chronicles of Otharia during the reign of the First Vacancy:
Division I – The Rule of Otharia
Subsection I – The Kingdom
The planet of Otharia has two major landmasses and multiple island chains. The larger of the two continents is referred to as the Kingdom of Otharia, though there hasn’t been a reigning king in over a thousand years. The kingdom is subdivided into a number of duchies, each ruled by a royal family and a seated duke. The duchies vary in size, but their wealth is dependant on the natural resources of the region and the ingenuity of the reigning duke. The smaller continent is ruled by multiple clans of gypsies, who broke from the Kingdom at the death of the last King.
Chapter 1 – Nils
The small head poked out from a tiny hole and sniffed the cool air. The alley was ripe with the stench of garbage and it lured the small creature forth like an elixir. Finding a piece of rancid meat, the mouse quickly began to drag it back to its lair. Unfortunately, the greedy little creature failed to notice a pair of gleaming eyes silently tracking its movement.
The alley it crept along was pitch black, cast in deep shadows from the continuous rows of the warehouses through which it passed. The twin moons had not yet risen and the denizens of the dark ruled the murky gloom. Tendrils of fog crept off the waterfront and cocooned the harbor district in a cold oily blanket, ensuring no warmth would be found on its streets tonight.
As the mouse neared its sanctuary, a dark shadow fell upon it. The predator struck with razor-sharp claws, piercing the rodent’s small neck and killing it instantly. The cat shook its prize to ensure it was dead and scanned the alley for any other predators lurking about.
A sudden loud crash reverberated through the long alleyway, startling the skulking creature.
The cat froze in fear, watching while the nearest warehouse wall bulged to near breaking. As the tumult continued, the cat dropped the mouse and streaked off into the darker regions of the alley, leaving its meal for the next hungry hunter to find.
Nils slammed into the wall as the gypsy brute backhanded him. The impact knocked the air out of him and he gasped with pain, feeling his ribs crack from the impact. His lightning-quick reflexes saved him from the next blow as he ducked under the big man’s fist. The fist barely missed his face and slammed a hole into the wall behind him. The gypsy pulled his hand free and staggered back, the effects of the drugged wine finally taking hold. Nils punched forward and caught the other man in the sternum, knocking the wind out of him.
“Murdering scarecrow,” the gypsy cursed through clenched teeth, staggering backwards.
Nils was tall and lean, but his years of training made his muscles rock hard and gave him strength that belied his rangy frame.
“Murder,” Nils said. “No, my dear Rafner, you have it all wrong. This is an execution in grand design.”
Nils laughed at his cleverness while Rafner gasped for breath.
Rafner was a big man, well over 300 pounds, with the raw power of a raging bull. The drug was taking longer than expected to overcome him, and Nils realized his error in judgment when the big man launched himself at him again. As much as he was enjoying this fight, Nils was running out of time. He slipped his stiletto from its sheath and moved to meet the big brute head on. Rafner wrapped Nils in a bone-crushing bear hug and proceeded to tighten his grip. Nils grunted from the pressure of the big man’s arms, but smiled through the pain.
Rafner sneered, squeezing Nils harder.
“Smile now, you cockroach, this will soon be over.”
“Yes, unfortunately for you, it will,” Nils said, feeling relief when the pressure on his chest began to ease.
Confusion spread across Rafner’s face. He felt a stabbing pain in his left side and let go of Nils. Looking down, he saw the knife sticking out from between his ribs.
“What?” Rafner asked through the haze that began to cloud his senses.
“I did so enjoy playing with you Rafner, but I’m afraid I have other tasks that I must attend to this evening.”
Nils pulled the knife out and the blood flowed freely.
Rafner tried to stem the flow of blood, but he was losing consciousness and his knees buckled. Nils grabbed the big man by his collar and lowered him to the floor. Kneeling beside him, he stared into the gypsy’s eyes, watching the light of life drain away, mesmerized until the final shudder of death.
With the bloody knife hanging loosely in his grip, Nils stood and surveyed the room. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he realized the pounding in his ears was the staccato beat of his own heart.
He breathed in the miasma of blood and gore that permeated the room, filling his nose with the sickeningly sweet stench of death. The ecstasy of the kill coursed through his veins, feeding and satisfying his perverse appetite for inflicting pain. He loved this work, relishing the prospect of close-quarter fighting and the inherent danger it held. He shivered as the intensity of the moment momentarily overwhelmed him.
“What a rush,” Nils crooned.
He returned his attention to the remaining unconscious gypsies, and began methodically dispatching the lot. He had been interrupted in his gruesome task when Rafner had roared to life and tried to kill him. That distraction had taken valuable time away from his assignment, time he would have to make up now.
He arranged the rest of the bodies in a variety of positions to make sure the scene looked like a fight to the death. He had much to accomplish in a short period of time. Everything must be perfect when the authorities discovered the grisly scene later tonight.
“There now, sit up like a good gypsy leader,” Nils pantomimed to one of the dead leaders while arranging his body. “No slouching on the job.”
The dead man’s head rolled forward and crashed onto the table.
“What? Can’t hold your liquor?”
Nils moved over to the next body.
The Constable should find this an easy case to solve; a gang of smugglers entwined in death with their local contacts, clearly a falling out amongst thieves. Violent, heartless men ruled this seedy part of the waterfront district and murder was a nightly occurrence.
As the saying goes, Nils thought, men who live by the knife, all too often die by it.
Nils was the chief security officer for Baron Avikar Kantos, and the Baron often called upon Nils’ special talents and unique skills to handle these kinds of sensitive matters. Tonight’s work had been quick and easy, not something that Nils usually favored. The drugged wine had made his victims lethargic and easy to dispatch, but he enjoyed the killings nonetheless. He had to admit he liked it better when his victims struggled and pleaded for their lives. It made the final stroke so much more gratifying. Rafner’s struggle made tonight’s work satisfyingly delicious, though Nils winced as he probed his damaged ribs.
Dispatching the last of the group, he briefly wondered what the aftermath of this night would bring.
I have a suspicion all of you will still be a problem, dead or not.
The smugglers were from the Isle of Gypsies, a nation of vagabonds outside the laws of mainland Otharia, and were extremely volatile in matters of honor and betrayal. These murders tonight would not be taken lightly by the gypsy brotherhood.
Nils finished staging the last of the bodies.
“Really, you brought this on yourselves,” he said, rebuking them.
The premise for meeting tonight was about increasing the illegal smuggling trade in the Telkur Duchy. These gypsies controlled the smuggling along the waterfront and were eager to gather and talk. It was ironic that Baron Avikar had ordered their murders; ironic indeed, because it was the Baron himself who had initially set up the smuggling ring so long ago. Avarice had brought the gypsies together tonight and the drugged wine had done the rest, with a little help from Nils.
Nils glanced around the room.
“If only you had not been so greedy, this would have never happened.”
With the staging finished, Nils looked down at his cloak and swore. “Damn sloppy brute, getting your blood on me.”
He had not expected to get Rafner’s blood splattered on his cloak, and he chastised himself for not removing it earlier. He had been fastidious when he began, ensuring the other victims’ blood did not splatter on him. Now he would have to change his cloak before the final events of the evening began. There must be no association between the Baron and the murdered gypsy smugglers, so he could ill afford to have anyone see him and his bloody cloak leave the warehouse. Nils ran his thumb along the edge of his razor-sharp blade, thinking about what would become of any unfortunate person he might meet tonight in the dark alleys of the waterfront.
If only all my duties were this enjoyable.
After inhaling one last whiff of death, Nils left the back room, walked down a short hall and entered the main storage area of the warehouse. He rechecked the incendiary charges he’d placed around the interior perimeter earlier, making sure they would burn as planned. The warehouse had to burn, but not completely. The authorities needed to identify the dead bodies along with evidence of smuggling. Everything had to be set perfectly for Baron Avikar’s scheme to work and perfection was Nils’ middle name.
He took a final look around the warehouse and thought through the plan again.
Baron Avikar would announce the discovery of a smuggling ring on the Telkur waterfront to Duke Levon. That would put the old fool in a state of apoplexy. Avikar would further inform the Duke that there was a smugglers’ meeting tonight. Duke Levon would inevitably come charging to the warehouse to investigate. The man was easy to read, a veritable open book. Then, of course, there would be the final betrayal.
Nils pictured the shock and indignation on Levon’s face and his maniacal humor got the best of him. He chuckled out loud at the picture
in his mind. The resulting scandal from this night would be devastating and that scandal was one that Nils and Avikar would profit from handsomely.
Yes, the Baron will be most pleased.
Excerpt from The Chronicles of Otharia during the reign of the First Vacancy:
Division I – The Rule of Otharia
Subsection II - The Grand Council
The position of the Grand Duke was created by the Grand Council to be a deciding vote in any stalemate or deadlock reached by the Council. Any duke may be nominated for the position, but must be approved by a unanimous vote. The Grand Duke holds the office for a period of 5 years after which time the Council votes to extend his reign or elect a new Grand Duke. The true power of the office is the Grand Duke’s right to veto any action voted on by the Grand Council. The only way a veto may be overturned is by a unanimous vote of the entire Council. The office of the Grand Duke is the most powerful position on Otharia and is coveted by many, but attained by few.
Chapter 2 – Grand Duke
Janus Vogdo was a revered elder statesman, a patron of the arts and a generous benefactor of education. His tall stature, angular features and regal bearing lent itself to that image perfectly. He was also the presiding Grand Duke of Otharia and considered the most powerful man in the kingdom. Royalty respected him and commoners were in awe of him, but beneath his cool veneer of benevolence beat the heart of a master puppeteer, an expert manipulator who would stop at nothing to achieve his ultimate goal. For years, Vogdo moved people strategically around his personal chessboard to create the perfect mechanism for his elaborate scheme for ultimate power, claiming the title of King of Otharia. There had not been a king crowned in many centuries and Vogdo was determined to be the next one no matter what the costs or whom he had to crush to achieve it.
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