by Joe Jackson
Kari kissed her mate and he kissed her in return, and when Kari looked at Grakin’s siblings, they were all smiling at the couple. Kari was surprised at Typhonix’ sudden change in demeanor, but she stayed guarded where he was concerned, as it had only been a day. Of all of her mate’s siblings, only Erik seemed to harbor even the slightest of unhappy feelings toward them, and she wondered if it was just jealousy, and whether it would pass. She had to work directly with him on Tsalbrin, so if he was covetous of his brother’s relationship, she imagined it could cause many problems.
Eryn eventually joined the rest of the group on the quarterdeck. She asked where the twins had disappeared to, and once informed that they were having breakfast with the captain, she muttered something about being left out. The group and even Jori-an got a chuckle out of the half-brys woman’s reaction, but once Eryn returned below decks, the men all followed after her. Grakin gave Kari a parting kiss before leaving her alone with Sonja.
Sonja sat down on the bench beside Kari and patted her leg. “This has been such a surprise,” she said simply.
“Not just for you,” Kari said. Just scant weeks before, she thought she’d missed the best opportunity of her new life when Kris Jir’tana had left.
“How did all of this happen?”
The demonhunter shrugged. “It’s hard to put into words,” she said. “It may sound weird, but Grakin...reminds me of Suler Tumureldi.”
Sonja beheld her curiously. “He reminds you of Suler...?”
Kari glanced at Jori-an before she continued, “That ‘mistress’ mentioned in the book you loaned me...that was me. I was Suler’s mistress for about nine months, before my training with him came to an end and I had to get back to my work.”
“You were mated to Suler Tumureldi?!” Sonja blurted.
“I was his mistress,” Kari corrected. “He couldn’t take me as his mate; that would’ve made me queen and the people wouldn’t allow that. Neither would I, for that matter.”
Her friend chuckled. “Gods, girl,” Sonja muttered. “I need to find a book about you. Mistress to King Suler Tumureldi...and you say Grakin reminds you of him?”
Kari nodded and met her friend’s eyes. “People think of Suler and they think of his fighting style and all the duels he won, but Suler was a gentle man. He looked at fighting as an art, not an act of violence, and he was a very good king to his people. Grakin is the same in many ways...he’s gentle, he puts others ahead of himself, and he loves me. And it only took me a couple of minutes to realize it when I looked in his eyes and spoke with him.”
Sonja smiled more broadly, the telltale traces of tears of joy in the corners of her eyes. “Is it still as magical?” she asked. It seemed Eryn’s bluntness may have rubbed off on her.
“I’m still glowing from the first time,” Kari said, rubbing her hands up her arms with a gentle sigh. “I don’t know what it is about him, but he’s perfect for me.”
“Are you two mated, then?” Sonja asked. If Kari and Grakin were ‘mated,’ it was the rir equivalent of human marriage. Being mated was closer to a common-law marriage, but among rir it was a very strong bond and rarely did two who became mates split up and go their separate ways. Occasionally rir married in the human tradition, but most felt the ceremony unnecessary.
Kari thought about it for a few moments, and though she shook her head, she said, “Yes. I can hardly believe I’m saying it; it still doesn’t seem real.”
Sonja hugged Kari, and the demonhunter returned the strength of the embrace in full. “I’m so happy for you two,” Sonja said. “Even Ty is already beginning to look at you like a sister. I think he’s still a little suspicious, but you’re his brother’s mate now, and that seems to be taking priority over whatever he feels. You’re family now.”
“Yea, I guess you finally have a sister,” Kari said, and the two women hugged again.
“Well it took my idiot brothers long enough for one of them to get it right,” Sonja huffed. “Shall we go get some breakfast, too?”
“You go ahead,” Kari said and motioned for Sonja to go. “I’ll be down in just a couple of minutes.” Sonja nodded and descended below decks, and Kari turned to meet the sapphire gaze of Jori-an up on the boatswain’s nest. Once Sonja was gone, a smile spread across the first mate’s face. “What are you thinking?” Kari asked. She was honestly curious how the entire thing looked to a total outsider.
“Many things,” Jori-an answered in her typical cryptic fashion, but after a moment she seemed to reconsider. She bobbed her head to one side for a moment. “I am foremost thinking that you are either very lucky or very foolish. I hope it is the former.”
“What makes you say that?” the demonhunter asked.
“I’ve sailed the oceans for many years,” Jori-an said, “and I adventured across the lands for many more before that, in my youth. I’ve seen people fall in love when they’re confined to a ship, out on the road, or else in a position where they spend a lot of time close to someone. A lot of times, once that confinement or journey ends, they suddenly find that their relationship was one of convenience and need, rather than love.”
Kari nodded. “If you knew me, you’d know I don’t fall in love easily,” she said. “It’s not a matter of convenience or need from my side; I meant everything I just said to Sonja. I’m pretty sure the same holds true for Grakin.”
The first mate bobbed her head again. “Yes, for you I can tell this is the case. Grakin is a little harder for me to read. I’ve spent little time in the company of serilian-rir – half-demons, if you prefer. I traveled with one when I was younger, but he was so much different than these Tesconis siblings, especially Grakin. Grakin certainly seems to be in love with you, but there is something about him that just seems…off. It is as though he is hiding something.”
“I know,” the demonhunter replied. “I know what he’s hiding, but it’s not something I can share, by his request.” Jori-an nodded. “It has nothing to do with his love for me, though.”
Jori-an gave a sincere smile, but only for a few moments. “Then you are lucky,” she said, the strength of her eye contact stating quite clearly that she believed what she had said. She bounded down from her platform suddenly and practically ran up the rigging to the crow’s nest, leaving Kari to marvel at the woman’s dexterity. Once again Kari wondered if the woman’s sudden need to visit the crow’s nest had more to do with avoiding showing any emotion, and Kari headed for the general mess to share breakfast with her friends.
The rest of the day passed quickly, which surprised Kari since she spent most of it looking forward to spending the evening alone with Grakin. She took her lessons from Aeligos and spent a little time sparring with both Erik and Typhonix. She found the blonde male’s style simple but brutal. The sheer power behind his massive, arcing swings was too much to take lightly or underestimate. Like when she watched him spar with Erik, Ty also used the butt of his axe haft to keep Kari at bay when she came in from odd angles. She was confident she could penetrate his defenses with ease and score a killing blow if she wished, but instead she took the time to acclimate herself to his fighting style and brush up on her two-weapon defense against a larger, crushing weapon. Her seemingly hesitant, tentative nature when fighting Typhonix also served to mask her true abilities from Erik.
Dinner was taken with Captain Galdur, and she passed the early evening playing cards with her friends. Eryn and Aeligos took no small amount of pleasure educating Sherman and Katarina in the ways of gambling, and cleaned the youngsters out easily. It was all in good fun, as they continued to play with the captain’s coins once it became obvious how overmatched everyone else was compared to Eryn and Aeligos. The coins were all returned to the captain after the game, and each player was given the same amount to start each night to keep the games friendly and fun.
Kari was getting better at masking her feelings as she became more familiar with both the game and her fellow players, and consequently she began to hold her own even against the more
skilled gamblers. She had always considered poker a liar’s game, but when she said so, Aeligos explained that it was a game of deception, which was not the same as lying. He illustrated by pointing out that in Kari’s profession, she worked hard to never show weakness to her enemies, while at the same time masking her strength to make it more effective. He explained that poker was very much the same, and even admitted that the majority of hands he won had little to do with his cards and more to do with everyone else’s behavior. The twins took Aeligos’ words in with great interest, and his lesson was punctuated by a sage nod from Eryn.
Kari spent the later evening sitting at the rear rail of the sterncastle, where she shared drinks with Eryn and Sonja and watched the moons come up over the horizon. Much to the delight of the three women, Katarina joined them on the second night. She was full of questions on nearly every subject regarding the outside world, and Kari, Sonja, and Eryn were glad to see that the young woman was not intimidated by their stature or reputations. They tried their best to make Katarina feel like she was one of the group – even Eryn, who normally seemed closed-mouthed around the twins. Not surprisingly, Kari found that even Katarina was curious about the demonhunter’s new relationship, and she shared as much as she was comfortable with.
As the night grew older, Kari retired to her cabin to find Grakin reclining on their bed, reading one of the books Sonja had loaned Kari. Kari undressed and joined him on the bed, and she gave him a quick kiss on the side of his snout. She looked over the page he was reading and could tell he had chosen The Ascension of Saint Bakhor. Apparently he hadn’t been reading very long, as he was only a couple of dozen pages into the volume, and Kari smiled when she recognized the point in her friend’s life that he was reading about.
“How do you like the book?” she asked when he paused and looked up at her.
“I have always been fascinated by her story,” Grakin said, “though details of her life have always been a little sketchy. It strikes most people as odd that she took up worship of the Beast, and that fact leads to a lot of speculation as to what race she was, since his followers tend to be shapeshifters and lycanthropes.”
“It was an unusual choice,” Kari agreed. A sylvan beast - sometimes called a sylvan demon - was a massive, minotaur-like variant of a serilian demon, but unlike their destructive cousins, they lived in and defended the woodlands wherever they were found. Their leader and deity – who had been a mortal named Carlos Bouron before being reincarnated as a sylvan beast – was most often simply called the Beast. Those who swore to his service were usually other sylvan beasts or shapeshifters who lived in the wilds, or even lycanthropes who had mastered their curse and come back to some semblance of sanity.
“You said you knew her,” Grakin said. “What race was she?”
“Shakna-rir,” Kari said. “And she took a fures-rir as a mate.”
The priest’s brows rose in surprise. The fures-rir were one of the least populous of the rir races, were nearly impervious to cold climates, and they made their homes in the frozen lands of the far north and south. The shakna-rir were desert dwellers with a dislike of cold climates, but they thrived in heat that was unbearable to most. For members of the two different races to mate was uncommon, to say the least. “And they had shakna-fury children?” he prompted, naming the hybrid of the two races.
“Just one,” Kari said. “A beautiful little girl with red hair like her mother, and the most solidly black eyes I have ever seen; even more so than mine or yours.”
“What was it like to travel with someone so famous?” he asked.
Kari shrugged. “She wasn’t really famous when we traveled together,” she said. “But she wasn’t anything like what you’d probably expect from a saint. She was cocky: she had the Beast’s favor and she wasn’t afraid to let people know it. She had this giant sledgehammer, and woe to anyone she actually swung it at.”
Grakin chuckled. “Yes, I have heard she had a bit of a fiery temper, but she would not have been sanctified if her dedication to the gods was not complete.”
“Dedication wasn’t even the word for it,” Kari said. “The group she traveled with always wanted to go dungeon delving, and I usually tagged along with them to get from one place to another because I always had some mission or other from Zalkar to take care of. Carly would always end up deciding to follow me, and would tell the rest of the group to go die in a lost tomb if that was the best they could think to do.”
“A little headstrong?”
“Why do you think we got along so well when I was younger?” Kari asked with a shrug. “She didn’t really take orders from anyone since the Beast doesn’t have established churches, but when she got a cause to follow there wasn’t a thing in the world that would stop her. Half the time I think she was more serious about my missions than I was, and with the kind of power she wielded, it made my life a lot easier. She just had a dedication that few ever realize: she knew what was right and just tried to do the best she could in every situation, regardless of the risk. She jumped into everything with near-reckless abandon and never looked back. I think the only regret that woman ever had was that she couldn’t cure my illness.”
Grakin nodded. “I can sense that Kaelariel feels the same way,” he said quietly. “It is no disease that is killing me, but a defect in the way I was made, and there is nothing he can do to fix it. I feel his sorrow when I touch his mind, but you…you remind me just how much I can do with the time I have. Thank you for that, Kari. Thank the gods for you.”
The two shared a kiss, and Kari fought off the urge to cry. “I’ll never leave you,” she said. “Just as Carly never left my side except when I pushed her away.”
“Do you suppose any of her descendants are still alive?” he asked, apparently trying to keep the conversation light.
“I know her daughter is,” Kari said, the dark feelings fleeing. “I heard her mentioned in the war camp when the Apocalypse was just starting. Karinda Bakhor: it’s the same name. They mentioned she was a war wizard or something like that. Carly named her somewhat after me. I’m pretty sure it’s the same girl.”
“It might be nice to meet her some time,” Grakin said. “Did you know her?”
Kari nodded. “Yeah. Carly’s mate, Hrothgar, died adventuring before my time came, and Carly settled down in the elven lands with her baby. Karinda was only a toddler when my own time came, but I remember her very clearly: such a beautiful girl. Maybe someday when I can take some personal time, we can go see her. If what I heard is true, she still lives in the elven lands of Laeranore, near where her mother’s home was.”
“I would be honored,” he said with a smile. “So what do you think this book will have to say about you?”
“Hard to say,” she said with a shrug. “Towards the end of my life, when I was traveling with Carly, I think I was a lot like what you see of me now. Maybe a little more impatient, since I felt the sands dwindling, but otherwise the same. Hmm, I wonder if it will mention Fireblade.”
“Fireblade?” the priest echoed as he reclined on his elbow and put his head in his palm.
“The red dragon,” she clarified. “Fireblade was her nickname among the people of Terrassia. We killed her mate and one of her children, and scattered the rest of her brood. We never got to plunder her hoard, but that was among the biggest accomplishments of my old life, even considering all the demon kills.”
“I can imagine,” he said, still shocked. “How did you manage to kill two dragons?”
“Well, having a priestess who wielded her god’s power certainly helped. A lot of people think when you fight a dragon, you just kind of surround and beat on it. That’s a great plan if you’re trying to get eaten. If you’re fighting them in the open, you’ve got to ground them, and then it’s a matter of confusion and trickery that gets the job done. They’re too well-armored for brute force to work.”
“Serenjols would love to hear about this,” Grakin said. “He spends a lot of time studying and researching creat
ures and how to kill them if they attack. Knowing how to survive or even defeat a dragon attack would probably be the bright spot of his year.”
“This is the killer strike,” she said, touching Grakin just above his groin. “If you can avoid getting kicked by their hind legs, get their attention focused on someone else, and groin them, they’ll bleed to death before you ever do any real damage to their armored fronts or flanks. Hamstringing them,” she added, running a finger across the back of his leg, “really hurts their ability to defend themselves too, but getting through the armor there can be tricky.”
“Where ever did you learn to fight dragons?” he asked, fascinated.
“Actually, from Suler Tumureldi,” she answered, which drew another wide-eyed stare from him, and Kari shrugged knowingly. “I knew a lot of people back then.”
“Did Tumureldi teach you his fighting style?” Grakin asked, surprising Kari but only for a moment, and she nodded with a barely-suppressed grin. “So you have been holding back when you spar with Erik?”
“A bit, yes,” she said. “Like I said before, our superiors want to know how good a leader he is, and if I embarrass him or make him doubt himself, he may just follow me and I won’t learn anything.”
“I understand,” he said, putting a finger before his snout. “I will say nothing.” He closed the book and put it on the floor, and then he looked Kari’s naked form up and down. “Would you like to make love?”
Kari smiled, leaned in with a kiss, and let that answer his question.
Chapter VII – Storm of Memories
The next two weeks for Kari passed lazily and predictably, following much the same schedule as the first couple of days out of Salkorum. Eryn and Aeligos started fighting less than a week after the ship left Salkorum, and it got to the point where Galdur and his officers had to step in to force the two to tone things down. They stopped sleeping together and could hardly stand to be in the same room. Eryn joined the group at the captain’s table for less and less time, barely taking her meal before leaving, and eventually stopped going altogether. Kari had no idea what started the entire mess, but she knew that with Eryn’s volatility and Aeligos’ habit of prodding her on moral issues, it had only been a matter of time.