“I hereby disband this Council, on grounds of treason,” the king said. He turned to the knights. “Take them all to the dungeon.”
A great clamoring filled the room, and streams of curses and dire threats sailed in every direction as the knights hauled the ten men away.
When Prichard Hennis was alone with the king and queen, he turned to them, bowed, and said, “I must speak with you concerning grave news that was brought to me by Primus Vayjun and the senior scout of the Outer Guard.”
The storm clouds never did bring rain to Storms Reach.
Winds howled, and cold early morning rain whipped the faces of Jerreb and his three companions as they rode hard toward High Road. The narrow road that led there was turning to mud in places and made the ride hard going, but the knights’ able coursers and Ghendris’s massive black dray, which rivaled the Prybbian destriers, were undeterred and moved at a goodly pace.
“Bloody rain won’t let up,” cried Ellerick, who brought up the rear on the smallest of the three coursers.
Sendin was just ahead of him, and the burly knight looked over his shoulder and gave Ellerick a fierce scowl. “There you go complaining again. Let it rest for a spell, boy. We can do with a break from your whining. I liked you more when there were six of us.”
“I liked me more when there were six of us, too,” Ellerick muttered, drawing a hearty laugh from Ghendris, who was riding just ahead of Sendin.
They rode another mile before coming to a fork in the road, where the left path became High Road and ended at Storms Reach, and the right path skirted Eastern Plain and continued to the provinces lorded by the vassors of East and South Court. Jerreb slowed his horse and signaled a stop. He looked in either direction and deliberated. Though the rain had washed away many of the tracks that had marked the split paths, he could see countless hoof prints in the dirt. The tracks not only indicated that a horde had marched north to High Court and Storms Reach but also confirmed that a smaller host, able to move at a faster pace than the first, was bound for lands that included his.
“By the looks of these tracks, I’d say our Dremsa plainsmen have broken into two groups,” said Jerreb, as he looked south. “I’m afraid Storms Reach will have to wait. I have to look in on my land.”
“Aye. The wife,” Sendin said.
Ghendris, who had been studying the tracks on the rightward path, looked up. “To the netherworld with Killik. I’ll ride with you to Rivencrest to see about your fair bride, king’s man. If you like.”
Jerreb turned his courser till he faced Ghendris. “I would like.”
“Then let’s ride,” said Sendin, turning to offer a glance at Ellerick. The youth was blinking wildly as he looked up at the clouds through the rain, his face a mask of drenched anguish. “You coming, or should we leave you here?”
Ellerick shook his soaking head like a dog just come out of a lake and spurred his courser toward the road that led south. He waited there till the others pushed off ahead of him, Jerreb in the lead, setting a course for Rivencrest.
Rivencrest lay in ruins. The land was named for its strategic location atop a lush hillcrest surrounded by twin rivers that fed the great Kilgud Lake, which sat half a mile to the south. The beauty of the region was such that it had attracted from various lands philosophers and poets and master potters, whose vases depicted images of the Ancients painted in relief, where subtle variations in polychrome coloring was coupled with delicate light and shade effects to showcase their brilliance. The women of Rivencrest were young and fair, many of them muses to the poets who sat at the river’s edge bleeding out the thoughts of their hearts on parchment.
As the four men walked their horses through the center of the village, they gazed at the destruction about them—nearly every dwelling razed to the ground, gardens trampled underfoot by an army of horses, smoke still billowing over distant fields that had been set aflame, and not long ago. The bodies of men were strewn everywhere—fathers, husbands, sons—many of their faces badly bludgeoned. Jerreb moved through the scene like a lost boy through a fog, his glazed eyes taking in the devastation.
“Not a woman or girl among the dead,” Ghendris said, breaking the pall of silence that had fallen over them as he searched the ground.
Jerreb dug his heels into the flanks of his mount and sped toward his home, the others galloping behind. Jerreb’s cottage, a two-story fieldstone and timber affair, had been destroyed. The thatch roof had been burned, and the front wall had collapsed, exposing the loft where his wife slept as well as the stone floor below it, where a brazier stood intact. His wife was nowhere to be seen.
“The women have been taken,” Ghendris said. “It’s the way of the plainsmen.”
Jerreb arched his head skyward as he let out a bloodcurdling scream that did little to quell his rage. The others looked on with grim expressions, waiting for their leader’s madness to subside. As Jerreb fell silent, they heard the sounds of a horse and wagon in the distance. The knights unsheathed their swords, and Ghendris reached for his mace. When they looked in the direction of the hoofbeats, they saw what looked to be a spice trader’s wagon drawn by two gray carthorses.
“Stand down, men, it’s a woman driving it,” Ellerick said.
When the horses drew up, a woman climbed down from the seat of the wagon and walked around to the back. The four men walked their horses to the rear of the wagon to see what she was about, and they marveled when they saw her strapping a young cripple to her torso. The whiteness of the boy’s eyes marked him as blind.
“What business do you have here, woman?” Jerreb asked.
“It’s not safe to be in these parts, mum,” Sendin added.
The woman looked up at the hard faces of the men that surrounded her. “My business here is to give you lot a message.”
That was unexpected, and the expressions on the four men’s faces betrayed their surprise.
Jerreb narrowed his eyes at the woman. “Who are you?”
“I be Seyalinn Grun, from Pembrick Hollow, near the heart of the Prybbian Realm.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “This here’s Quarvik. He’s mi lad. We’ve traveled many miles, pursued by a torrent of rain all the week to bring you your message.”
“The woman’s daft,” Ellerick whispered.
“Watch your tongue, Ellerick,” the woman said, and the young knight started so violently he nearly unhorsed himself. Then she spoke the names of the others in turn as her eyes moved from one face to the next.
“How do you know us, woman?” Jerreb asked. “What sorcery is this?”
“No sorcery, Sir Jerreb,” said Seyalinn, “But I’ll let mi lad do the talking from here on.”
Jerreb glanced at the boy hanging from the makeshift harness on Seyalinn’s back. “I’m listening, boy.”
“You’ll find he can’t talk with his mouth,” Seyalinn said. “He’s deaf and blind as well.”
Jerreb glared at her. “Stop speaking in riddles, woman. You just said the boy will do the talking.”
“He don’t talk like you an’ me. He has his own way.”
Jerreb forced himself to be calm. “We’re listening.”
Seyalinn gave a small sigh. “You’ll do well to close your eyes.”
“I’ll keep mine open,” Ellerick said.
Seyalinn shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
But in the next moment all four men felt their eyelids growing heavy, and soon the world around them was shut out. They heard a voice deep within the vast space of their minds, and visions began to play out in a panoramic vista across their mind’s eye. The voice spoke to them.
I am Quarvik. What you will see is what has been.
A swirling vision swam before them like gray fog parting. The fog dissolved, and they saw Dremsa plainsmen riding through the narrow, flowered paths of Rivencrest, watched them enter broad fields where farmers harvested the vegetables and fruits common to the region. They saw the riders trample and torch those fields, saw farmers fleeing and being cut down by
sword and spear. They saw torches fly up to thatched roofs to set them aflame and battering rams smash the walls of stone buildings. They witnessed other atrocities as well, children taken as thralls, their mothers treated worse than whores, victims of savage rapes amidst the burning and pillaging and kidnapping. They watched as brave men fell under battleaxes and war hammers as they tried to save their wives and children, even the best of them no match against the relentless marauders.
The vision faded, and the four men opened their eyes.
“What did you see?” Jerreb asked Sendin in a voice that he barely recognized as his own.
“Dremsa plainsmen,” Sendin replied, his own voice thick. “Massacre. Pillaging.”
“I saw the same,” Ghendris said.
“And you?” Jerreb said to Ellerick.
The young knight nodded once, too stricken to speak.
The four men looked around them and knew the vision was true. They were surrounded by its aftermath. Jerreb edged his horse closer to the woman called Seyalinn and removed Life Ender from its gilt-mounted leather scabbard. He poised the point of the sword an inch from Seyalinn’s lips. “How were we shown these things?” he asked. When she hesitated, he waved the point of the sword before her face. “Speak, woman, or I’ll have your tongue.”
“Quarvik,” Seyalinn said, her face gone as grim as theirs. “He possesses a rare gift, what the old taletellers call aka’tii. It be a sixth sense granted to souls unable to use all the other five. It allows mi son to communicate with others, mind to mind. This is why you were able to see his thoughts. That is, his dreams.”
“His dreams?” Jerreb asked, trying to make sense of her words.
“He dreams most of the day,” said Seyalinn. “Sleeps nineteen hours, only awake for five. But his dreams aren’t like the dreams of others. He only dreams what’s real—what has been, what is, and what will be.”
“So, what we were just shown was what really happened?” Jerreb asked, still not quite willing to believe in visions and magical dreams.
Seyalinn nodded. “Every bit of it. He dreamed it on the way, among other things. But that’s not what drew us here.”
Jerreb watched her for another moment and then gazed down at the ground. His eyes followed the countless hoof prints that spread out in every direction. The horde had divided and at that very moment might be raiding any or all of Rivencrest’s neighboring lands. His wife could be anywhere. Jerreb turned to his three companions. “I must find my wife.”
The boy’s words entered Jerreb’s mind. War is coming.
“Yes, and we initiated it,” said Jerreb.
His friends, who hadn’t heard Quarvik’s thoughts, looked at him curiously.
My dreams tell me you will find your wife. But first you must do something more important.
“You’ve dreamt that I will find her,” said Jerreb. “Where? Tell me now.”
They are moving toward Tooths Point, intent on freeing their comrades from the gaol towers.
“Then that is where I am headed,” said Jerreb, and he turned his courser to the road that led south.
His companions looked on helplessly, not knowing or understanding, but when Jerreb spurred his horse and sped away south, the other three immediately took off after him.
Seyalinn stood in the rain and watched the four men ride off. She was at a loss and knew not what to do next.
We must follow them, Quarvik thought.
Seyalinn sighed deeply and returned to the spice wagon.
The high vassor stood before the king and queen, who were seated on their thrones, high-backed works of stone with an array of foreign jewels in various colors and sizes embedded into the armrests. High-ranking lords, ladies, knights of the Inner Guard, and at least one vassor—on a visit from the lower provinces—were in attendance, having been summoned by the queen. The queen sat tall and regal in a flowing emerald gown of fine silk. The king looked frail and weak, his condition worsening by the hour, and Queen Klienne had to speak for him.
“What possessed you to send your entire legion to Aklon?” she asked Prichard Hennis, her expression rigid and cold.
“As I recounted last night, your grace, the sapient primus, Nerus Vayjun, filled me with the idea. I believe he had control over my mind, at least to a degree, but I know not how long it lasted. Choices I made during this time were not entirely of my own volition. The same can be said of the Council of Elders, if you will permit me to say so.”
The queen looked thoughtful. “I bore witness to the Council’s loss of its own wise judgment. Perhaps the primus stole yours as well, but that does not absolve you. You must still answer for the lives of nearly three thousand of our knights. We are vulnerable to attack, with barely five hundred knights of the Inner Guard to defend us, some of whom have taken leave, having received permission from the king.”
Prichard Hennis fell to one knee and bowed his head. “I humbly submit myself to any penalty you pronounce this day, your grace.”
The queen looked to her husband, but she knew from the vacant look in his eyes that his mind was far away. Twenty-five annos of marriage, twenty of them consumed with ruling one of the two great realms, had come to this. The queen focused her gaze on the high vassor once more, and her lips parted, but before she could utter a word, a war horn sounded in the distance.
Prichard Hennis raised his head, his eyes fixed firmly on the queen. “Thrice it blows, your grace. That could only mean—”
“An enemy at the gates,” she finished for him. “Why did our scouts not ride ahead and alert us? We keep no less than three along High Road at all times, do we not?”
“We do, your grace,” replied Prichard Hennis. “But with shadow crafts at work, they might have been taken unawares and killed.”
The queen’s face was flushed with discomfiture. “Lord Hennis, I … I must defer to you in this instance.”
The high vassor found his feet and turned to face the knights lined up on either wall behind him. “Knights of the Inner Guard, man the towers of the curtain wall. Summon your brethren and defend the castle. With your lives if you must. Your queen commands it.”
When Prichard turned to the queen again, she mouthed, “I thank you,” and clasped her hands in earnest.
“Your grace, you and the king must get to safety,” said Prichard. He gestured to one of the Inner Guards, who had made to leave for the wall. The knight stopped when he caught the high vassor’s gaze. “See to it,” Prichard commanded, and the knight nodded and bowed before ascending the steps that led to the thrones. The knight gathered the king in his arms, much like a child, and directed the queen toward a rear door to the left of the landing.
“My daughters,” said the queen as she stared down the steps at Prichard.
“I’ll see to them personally,” Prichard replied before turning to leave. As he made his way from the throne room, chamber pots and other items crashed to the floor of the hall as nervous servants ran to and fro. He realized that the first grasping fingers of panic were reaching into the castle and soon would have it in an iron grip. The courtyard, too, was a flurry of activity, with cooks and bakers and stable hands pitching in to aid the knights of the Inner Guard with defensive preparations. Others were dashing up steps to the battlements or climbing ladders inside the round towers that stood at the corners of the curtain wall and midway along each flank.
“Men of the plain,” one knight shouted from a high tower.
Another called out, “Defend the wall. Ready your arrows!”
The drawbridge had been raised during the night, and the castle was as fortified as ever it would be. But the moat that fronted the castle was nothing more than a frozen neck ditch now, deep and broad though it was. Its thirty-foot drop would not deter the relentless plainsmen, who were prepared to walk atop the corpses of their own if such a feat allowed entry into the castle. Prichard ran up a stone stairway along the wall and then climbed a ladder to the top of a tower that overlooked the moat near the center of the cas
tle, taking a position next to a knight. He could see the plainsmen emerging along High Road, heard their shouts as they approached. They were clad waist to ankle in animal skins, but their chests were bare, save for leather straps that carried sheath and sword—trophies from dead enemies. A few covered themselves with stolen furs, but clothes against the skin of the torso was not the custom among the plainsmen of Dremsa.
“Let fly!” shouted a knight commander, and a hundred arrows flew toward their marks. Sharp iron tips bit into the flesh of scores of attackers, whose blood stained the snow as they fell. Scores more warriors materialized over the hill beyond, like ants on the march, to replace those who had fallen. The living tossed the bodies of the dead into the moat as if they were sacks of grain.
As the knights fired a second and third wave of arrows, Prichard could see more plainsmen pushing wheeled siege weapons forward—two or three ballistas and several trebuchets.
The siege machines were set in place, and a plainsman loaded the sling of a trebuchet with a rock the size of a horg. As arrows continued to hiss toward them, the plainsmen launched the boulder toward a tower on the curtain wall. The rock smashed a dent in the stone directly below a knight, just as a second trebuchet’s throwing arm launched another rock. This time, an unfortunate knight, too slow to remove himself from danger, suffered a crushing blow to the head that sent him flying backward into the courtyard below.
Prichard moved to the rear of the tower and shouted orders to a group of men waiting below. “Send up a bow, and a full quiver!”
Queen Klienne followed the young knight through the underground passage to an iron-studded wooden door. He pushed it open and gestured for her to enter. She looked into the empty room and saw the king on the left side, seated on the floor, his back leaning against the cold stone wall. His eyes were closed, and his chin rested on his chest.
“You will be safe here, your grace,” the young knight said as they stepped inside. “For the time being.”
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