The Questing Game f-2

by James Galloway

  Keritanima nodded. "If the captain were to put on full sail, it would tear the masts out of the deck."

  "I guess the priests know where it's going, so it's safe for us to go on."

  She nodded again. "The magic of weather forecasting is pretty demanding for a priest, but it's gotten to be very accurate."

  "How long did it take your people to learn about sailing?"

  "We've always been sailors," she replied, looking down into the water. "Since the beginning of our history. I guess it's in our blood. We've arranged our entire society and our priest magic to center around sailing and trade."

  "Such single-mindedness isn't a good thing, Kerri."

  "Maybe not, but we do have craftsmen and workers, same as any other nation, Zak. Actually, we're a bit more advanced than the human kingdoms, but we don't trade or transport our technology off of Wikuna. Well, except for our pact to trade gunpowder to Shace in exchange for the sulphur they mine from their volcano. We have gunpowder and cannons, muskets and other things. you'll see them when we get to Wikuna. We just make our living off trade, and to trade, we have to be able to sail." She glanced at him. "But hey, maybe we'll branch out," she said with a toothy grin. "Maybe it's time for Wikuna to stop sitting on its high horse, and share with the rest of the world."

  "Wouldn't be a bad idea," the human agreed, looking at the land. "Pretty coastline. What's it like there?"

  "Hot," she replied. "The hurricane's wind has cooled things down, but it gets hot down here. The main staples of this region of Wikuna is rice, sugar cane, and they also have good ship-quality timber."

  "How big is Wikuna?"

  "Well, the island is more like a continent, Zak," she replied. "Wikuna is just about the size of western Sennadar. Everything below the Skydancer mountains, and from the coast to the Sandshield. Wikuna is just a bit larger than that."

  "Wow. A single kingdom owns as much land as the entire West."

  "Alot of it is uninhabited, though," she admitted. "Wilderness dominates the inner regions. We've populated all the coastlines and moved inland a good distance, we populated the Island of the Heart and the Sea of Crowns, but the heart of Wikuna is mostly unexplored."

  "Guess there are no seas there," he chuckled.

  "I think that may be part of it," she agreed with a grin.

  "It would be fun to explore it," he said dreamily. "To brave the unknown, to trek into dark lands and find out what's there."

  "Why Zak, you sound like you have the soul of an adventurer."

  "When I was a slave, I used to dream of running away, to some place they'd never find me," he said quietly, wanly. "Slavery is boring, Kerri. You spend your whole life in one place doing the same things over and over, and the entire world is denied to you. I guess a part of me will always look for someplace never disturbed by a man's boot. When I escaped from the arena, it made me flee west, and then it made me petition the Knights. They go all over the world, they get to see and do new and interesting things. Now that I'm free, I just want to go see what's behind the next hill."

  The Princess cozied up to the huge human, grabbing his massive arm in her delicate hands and leaning against it. "Someday, Zak. Maybe some day, you'll get that chance."

  "Maybe someday," he agreed. "But for right now, I'm content to stand with you."

  "I'm glad to have you. So is Miranda. She really likes you."

  "She's a bit wild, but I can deal with her."

  "Both of us are a bit wild," she winked. "She's just wild in different ways, that's all. I have a temper, but Miranda loves to play games with men. She's a born heartbreaker."

  "Don't you ever think of playing games with men?"

  "Maybe later," she smiled. "Right now, I have more important things on my mind."

  Though little was read into their conversation, the gist of it spread through the ship quickly. It wasn't often that the sailors heard the Princess speaking in such an informal and calm manner.

  The ten days in sight of land passed quickly, until the massive city of Wikuna appeared on the horizon. It was the oldest of all Wikuni cities, said to be the first city of their kind, full of old stone buildings of ancient appearance mingled in with newer architectural designs. The jewel of the city was the huge Royal Palace, built on top of a hill at the center of the city, allowing the golden dome of the main structure rise above all and amaze the spectator with its majestic might and power. The city was far to the north, and the steeply sloped roofs of the city's buildings demonstrated the need to have buildings capable of shunting off the weight of snow. The hightlight of the city was the huge, deep harbor, protected by three massive coastal fortresses and with a single large island right at the center of the outside edge, allowing the two channels into the harbor to be heavily defended. Those channels were narrow and restrictive, allowing no more than one ship at a time to pass through them because of the daunting stone walls built out from the central island to narrow the entrances. The city had no walls to protect it from a land attack, a fact that a visitor from Sennadar would certainly notice quickly. But what it lost with a wall, it gained in sheer size. The city was huge, was probably home to nearly a half million Wikuni, and it sprawled out from the harbor and the Palace like the gray blanket of a god, dominating the land in every direction from the Palace.

  The sailors assembled on deck when the ship docked at a private quay used only by the Royal Family. It stood at the end of a wide avenue that ran straight through the city, straight to the Palace itself. Fifty mounted Marines waited at the end of the quay with a large covered carriage. A footservant stood by the carriage, waiting for the High Princess to take her leave of the ship and return to her former life.

  There was little fanfare in it. The Princess and her four companions walked down the gangplank, across the quay, and entered the large carriage, a carriage brought with the Vendari in mind. And then it and its escort trotted away.

  The sailors had no idea what had just occurred. They had no inkling of the significance of the event when Keritanima's feet stepped back onto Wikuni soil. They went back to their duties, relieved beyond measure to have the volatile Princess off Sailor's Pride and out of their fur.

  They had no idea that her dainty feet setting foot on Wikuni soil would create shockwaves that would shake the world.

  It was all so strange, yet so familiar.

  Keritanima walked along extravagantly decorated hallways, wide and spacious, the hallways of the Royal Palace. She never dreamed that she'd be there again, to stand in the hallways where she used to play as a child, hallways that had lost their innocence when Sabakimara crusaded to drive Keritanima mad. Hallways that had heard many secrets, had seen many murders and assassinations. If only those walls could talk. She had never dreamed she would see those hallways again when she last looked upon them, even had convinced herself that her father wouldn't go through with it and bring her back when they were on the ship. But there she stood, staring up at a massive portrait of Thalos Eram, the first Eram king in the current Eram dynasty. Her grandfather, six times removed. Seven kings of the Eram house had sat upon the throne of Wikuna, the seven kings who had increased the stakes of politics in Wikuna by killing and blackmailing to hold the throne. Thalos Eram had been the first, the first to teach the house of Eram all about the advantages of murder in politics, the first of a long line of bloody monarchs who killed any who challenged their rule.

  Five hundred years. Five hundred long bloody years, five centuries that degenerated Wikuna from a monarchy to a totalitarian state. There was no longer a king in Wikuna, there was an overlord. Damon Eram was the master of this land, and he ruled it with an iron fist, with no regards to the people he destroyed or the lives he annihilated to maintain his crown, to increase his power, and to enhance the fortunes of both himself and the house of Eram.

  There was quite a bit of pain wrapped up in that simple portrait. And not all of it was just hers. The house of Eram was responsible for the slaughter of thousands, from nobles to workers to in
nocents, killed to further the aims of the house. That was quite a bit of blood to be responsible for. It was part of the reason she had run away from her home, from her first family. She had never told the others about the extent of the savagery of her house, of her family. She had been ashamed of them, of her past. It was a deeply personal pain, a pain not even Miranda could feel. To know that she was descended from murderers and cold-blooded monsters was a sobering epiphany. She herself had proven to be little better than them. She had been forced to play their games to survive, to fend off the attacks and plots of her three sisters. She had tried hard not to do any permanent harm to them. But then, after the Brat was born, Jenawalani managed to kill Sabakimara and put Keritanima at the head of the line. It was a brilliant move, she had to admit, to place the one daughter that looked insuitable to rule in the role of High Princess, to get the other noble houses to help kill her off to prevent an incompetent from taking the throne. But Jenawalani had underestimated her. So had all the others. She had played their games, played them and beaten them time and time again, beaten them while continuing to pose as a scatterbrained shill.

  But the games would stop. So would the killing. Keritanima had a plan to deal with that, and that plan coincided with her plan to destroy her father. She had five hundred years to answer for, and she was going to stand up and be responsible for that debt.

  The servants in the hallways greeted the Princess with a thin veneer of submissiveness. They all hated her, thought she was a brat, an image she had carefully cultivated in them. They had no reason to change that opinion, and in a way, it felt rather refreshing to be treated that way again. That conception would change over time, but at least it was the one thing that didn't seem tainted by her time away, and the knowledge that Wikuna now knew about her. The nobility, on the other hand, did nothing but stare at her with unmasked curiosity and questioning. They knew who she really was, but many of them wouldn't completely believe it until they spoke to her personally.

  The steward escorting them, along with ten Royal Guardsmen, Marines selected because of their outstanding service or their political affiliations, led them through the hallways of the palace in relative silence, aside from the occasional greeting, curtsy or bow from those they passed. They then reached Keritnaima's apartments, which were on the fifth floor of the Palace in the center of the eastern wall, giving the rooms abutting the outer wall a spectacular view of the harbor. The steward, the name of whom escaped her, had opened the door to her chambers, handed Binter the key, and then bowed and informed her that her father had restricted her to her room until such time that he called for her. It was no more than Keritanima expected. Damon Eram didn't want his dangerous daughter roaming the halls getting into mischief, and he also didn't want her to feel that she was so important that he would drop everything to deal with her. It was a game of hurry up and wait. The four monstrous big-cat Wikuni Marines posted outside her door were there to convince her to remain inside, and perhaps to prevent possible conspirators from gaining access to the Princess. Again, it was no more than what she expected. Given the circumstances, she would order the same things if their positions were reversed.

  Her old rooms were undisturbed. The crushed velvet theme of the room's lavish furnishings were just as she remembered them, with the mahogany wood panelling covering over stone walls and the rich feel of the Shen Lung carpets strewn across the cold floor. The main chamber of her apartments was dominated by a huge hearth, in which a fire had constantly burned when she occupied the chambers. Keritanima was fond of the fire, of its light and it warmth, and the fact that it allowed her to stand in silhouette against its light and make it hard for those spying on her to see what she was doing. Each room was furnished similarly, except for the room occupied by Binter and Sisska. Her personal bedroom was beyond their room, forcing any attacker to go through the Vendari to get to her. The heavy bars on the window of her room ensured that nobody could scale the precipitous walls of the Palace to reach her either. What they didn't know was that those bars could be easily removed from the inside, allowing the crafty Princess to climb down to the next lower window, which was at the end of a passageway, and sneak out of her rooms. She was quite adept at making the climb after so many years, and the cracks, footholds, and handholds of the rough stone wall were intimately imprinted into her memory. She could make that climb, up or down, blindfolded.

  The rooms were clean and neat, just as she left them. All her clothing and jewelry were also present in the room, and from the smell of things, none of her rooms in her apartments had been entered for a couple of days. She allowed no one to enter her bedroom other than the Vendari and Miranda. Not even the other servants of the Palace were permitted in her room, on pain of death. Miranda maintained the room, kept the room clean and changed the sheets on the bed.

  "Nice," Azakar said appreciatively, looking at her huge inner chamber. It was dominated by a four-poster bed with a feather mattress, with curtains to shade her from the light and large enough to hold four people. A little stool allowed her to climb up into it, since its rail came up to her chest. A pair of nightstands flanked the bed, and a large hope chest sat at its foot. She had a large, gilded desk on one wall, just over the window-which was what she used to climb up to it when she snuck out-and three clothes armoires lining the wall to the bed's left. The right side of the room was open and empty, except for a large, ornate hearth and mantle, complete with a wrought-iron fence and screen to keep the embers of the fire off the expensive carpets, and a door leading to a large closet. The room was decorated by several small sculptures standing on pedestals, elegant works of art depicting Wikuni, a couple of human busts, and a breathtaking sculpture of some sort of exotic female being. She had paintings on her walls, strange paintings consisting of large pictures of landscapes and Wikuni in relaxed surroundings, yet when one looked closely, those figures and objects were constructed of a myriad of tiny dots and smudges of paint of different colors. Up close, the paintings looked like spatters of paint, yet when one stepped back and regarded the work as a whole, the characters and settings were easily made out. Those portraits never failed to amaze and enthrall the Princess, who would sit and stare at them for hours on end to puzzle out the depth of the genius guiding the hand who had created them.

  "I never thought I'd see this place again," Keritanima remarked as she touched the Weave and wove together a hasty spell constructed entirely of Mind and Divine flows, sending the fingers of her spell out to search for sentient minds within the immediate area. She had no trouble locating six of them outside the room, yet so close they had to be just beyond her apartment's walls. The daily spies. Her bedroom was impenetrable by spies, for the rooms on both sides of it belonged to her private apartments. One was the large closet that held the majority of her clothing, and the other was a small privy and bathing chamber, complete with running water. Those two chambers isolated her room within the apartment from physical spying through the walls, leaving on those who could listen into the room either with magic or with certain auditory aides. The only true way to spy into the room was from above, and the room above hers was supposedly unused and kept locked. That didn't stop them from getting in there and making tiny holes in the ceiling with which to spy on her. Before she left, she used to keep her own agents in that room, deaf agents there to kill anyone who knew the secret way to get inside it.

  Without so much as batting an eye, she wove together another spell of Mind, Divine, and a touch of Air, a spell that attacked those minds with the power of an avalanche, overwhelming them one by one. A single instruction was implanted deep within them, an order that none of them could possibly hope to ignore, deny, or fail to carry out. One by one, those six Wikuni filed out of their hidden cubby holes, marched to the end of the passage, then threw themselves out the window.

  She had to establish her dominance immediately, and unfortunately, that required her to kill off anyone who dared to spy on her. It was part of the plan.

  Lula had taught h
er Wikuni pupil alot more than even the Council suspected. Mind weaves she created wouldn't work on humans, because she was not human, but there was nothing stopping them from working on other Wikuni. Lula had taught her those mind weaves, knowing that her bright student could make the alterations necessary to make them effective on her own kind.

  After doing that, she sent flows of Earth through her ceiling, using them to find the tiny peepholes made in the ceiling to spy on her. She wove together a spell of Water and Earth and released it into the ceiling, causing the stone to soften just enough for her magical nudging to seal those holes and cracks, then she dissipated the Weave and wove another consisting of flows of Earth, Divine energy, and Fire. That hardened the stone, made it as strong as steel, and making sure that any attempt to drill through it would be so noisy that it couldn't be missed.

  "It's safe to talk now," she announced calmly, sitting down on the chest. "Miranda, we have to start immediately. I won't be able to move around for a few days, so I want you to go into the city and contact Ulfan. I'm going to need him."

  "Already? Wouldn't it be better to wait?"

  "No. We're running on a schedule here, Miranda. Sisska, I want you to leave tomorrow. Are you ready for it?"

  "I will leave with the dawn, Highness," she said confidently. "In exactly three months from tomorrow, the Vendari will be here."

  "Good. I can't stress how much I'm counting on you, Sisska. You and the Vendari are the fulchrum of this plan. If you don't show up, the rest of us are going to be executed."

  "By my honor, we will be here," she said seriously.

  "Then I'm sure I'll see you again in three months," Keritanima smiled. "Azakar, do you think you're ready to take Sisska's place? Miranda can be a handful."

  Miranda gave Keritanima a dirty look. "I'm not half as much trouble as you," she accused.

  "I know," Keritanima winked to her.