by CS Sealey
ABOUT EQUILIBRIUM: EPISODE 4
A mage and newly-made queen is killed, devastating both sides of the war.
Unable to persuade her former companions to give up their quest to reclaim her allegiance, Angora has been forced to turn against them and fight for her freedom. However, the fight has proven to be a costly one and Angora has fallen to her death in a deep ravine.
In the wake of her demise, both empires are momentarily subdued, mourning the loss of a friend and queen.
However, driven by the belief that Angora may have survived, the Ronnesians launch an attack on the Ayon capital of Delseroy in an attempt to free her from the Ayons’ clutches. But their attack does not go according to plan, setting in motion a series of events that could spell their doom.
CONTENTS
ABOUT EQUILIBRIUM: EPISODE 4
MAPS
EPISODE FOUR: 368 Third Era
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
ABOUT EQUILIBRIUM: EPISODE 5
ABOUT CS SEALEY
COPYRIGHT
EPISODE FOUR
368 Third Era
CHAPTER 37
The king had kept to his rooms for two days, refusing to admit a soul, not even Varren himself, which concerned the sorcerer. Samian had eaten none of the food left outside his door, nor taken any water. He had not allowed the servants to attend him and his supply of wood for the fire had not been replenished. Recalling Samian’s distress upon returning from the islands four years ago, Varren felt more than a little uneasy. It had taken months for the king to recover from the sight of a scorched Teronia and the assumed death of his childhood love. This time, he had witnessed her death firsthand and had been powerless to prevent it.
Many times, Varren had considered breaking through the door to the royal suite but knew that the king would only throw him out. In any case, Varren had never been able to comfort anyone. A part of him understood the nature and power of Samian’s grief but the stronger side of him insisted that the king should stand above his emotions and act. Regardless of his loss, he had an empire to attend to and Varren’s authority was limited.
“Someone speak to him,” Varren prompted as the king’s servants and advisers sat down to supper that night, their master absent once more. “Tarvenna – ”
“I cared little for the girl,” the witch said, looking back at him with her large eyes. “I do not grieve for her.”
“But you’re a woman, aren’t you?” Varren asked, annoyed. “Comfort him!”
“Anything I would say to him would do little to console him. It would be insincere, and he’d know it.”
“Lhunannon?”
The old man shrugged. “I could try, but I think you would be the most successful in talking sense into him. The two of you are now more alike than, I think, you would care to admit.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your wife, my lord,” Lhunannon said quietly. “The two of you have both lost the woman you loved.”
Varren remained silent for the rest of the meal. Though he tried to find excuses, he had to admit that he did have the best relationship with the king. At least, the king held him in the highest regard and might even consider him a friend. So despite his nagging doubt, he finished his meal early and went to speak with Samian. The man’s door was locked but Varren knocked, giving the king the illusion of choice. There was a pause before Samian’s shaken voice on the other side of the door ordered him to leave him be.
Varren sighed in frustration and knocked again. “It is my duty, sire, to enquire after your health and wellbeing,” Varren reminded him. “You have had nothing to eat or drink for two days.”
“I wish to be alone.”
“May I remind you that doors pose no obstacle for me.”
“If you break your way in here, Archis, you would be offending your king.”
“Should any harm come to you, Your Majesty, the first name on the executioner’s list would be my own. If a court of law was to convene in the wake of your demise, do you suppose they would look favorably on the adviser who did not aid his master when he was ill? Or perhaps you no longer look upon the possible return of your brother, Prince Nildemar, with contempt?”
There was another pause and then the key turned in the lock and the door opened a sliver. “Damn you, Archis,” the king muttered. “Damn the lot of you.”
Samian moved away from the door and collapsed into a large chair in front of the empty grate with a groan. Varren noticed that he held a shawl in his hand, which he assumed belonged to Angora, and sighed as he closed the door after him.
“You can’t keep yourself locked away in here,” Varren said, attempting to keep his tone low and sympathetic. “The servants, not to mention your council, are worrying.”
“What do you care?” Samian spat, looking up at him with red eyes. “You never liked her! You’re only sorry you never had the chance to kill her yourself!”
Varren shook his head. His master’s words would have been true had he uttered them several weeks before, but not now. He had been developing respect for Angora after their confrontation and, though a darker side of him tried to insist that he was glad she had fallen to her death, the rest of him admitted that her presence would have been advantageous to the Ayon Empire. Varren had fantasized about the possibility of Angora actually fighting with them and, for one glorious moment on that dreadful day, she had done just that.
“My lord,” Varren said and approached his master, “that is untrue. She had a strong character and her devotion to you was unmistakable. Don’t insult me by supposing I don’t feel the loss of her presence.”
“But you hated her!”
“When she first arrived, very much so, but you told me that I would learn to see the advantages of having her here, and I did, just as you said.”
Samian appeared to want to argue but, instead, he covered his face with his hands and began to sob. Varren drew up a nearby chair. He glanced at the empty fireplace and flicked his wrist to produce a small fire in the grate.
“Sire?”
Samian shook his head and averted his gaze. He clutched Angora’s shawl tightly in one hand, the other gripped his hair. It was only then that Varren realized that the king was still wearing his wedding suit.
“What am I to do without her?” he cried. “I despaired for four years. Four years! I was doomed to dream of her and of the life we could have had, only to wake up and remember the truth! Then when I found her again and that dream was almost within my grasp, those bloody Ronnesians came and shattered everything I ever wanted, everything I yearned for! Oh, Angora…I should have done something to save you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”
“I will have Vrór search the canyons again tomorrow morning,” Varren said, “and thoroughly this time. I will accompany him. Galenros is still searching the sight but is finding it difficult. He says the future is clouded, but he will keep looking.”
“Why?” Samian asked quietly, his voice muffled through the shawl. “Why do the Spirits hide her from me? Why can’t I bury my dear wife?”
CHAPTER 38
Zoran Sable had already ordered half-a-dozen drinks when the stranger stumbled into him, muttering an apology as he moved to the bar. As a rule, the assassin did not converse with those he did not know unless it was on business, so he grunted in reply, not taking his eyes off his mug of ale. In most instances, that would have been the end of the matter. However, when Zoran finis
hed his ale and signaled to the barman for another, the stranger turned to look at him. Zoran ignored him for as long as he could, for people often stared at a man who covered his face, but the man’s gaze became irritating.
“What is it?” Zoran asked, fixing the man with an incensed glare.
The stranger was no different to the others in the tavern, swathed in dark clothes and with a shadow of untended stubble on his chin and top lip. His fingers and face were dirty, making Zoran assume that he had been on the road for a long while. But then Zoran realized that the man’s high brow and perfectly straight nose were familiar to him and there was a look in his eyes that told the assassin that the stranger knew him too. The man’s hair was several inches long and, though it was messy, he recognized the style it once had been.
“Mayor Challan,” he said, his brow creasing. “What brings you down this way and…so alone?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” the man said bitterly, clasping his own mug of ale. “The whole empire is talking of it.”
“Ah, but we’re not in the empire any more, are we?” Zoran said. “It took me a long while to hear about your actions regarding a certain general, but it’s hardly common knowledge yet. I’ve heard very little of the north since we last met. I hope you’re not here to renew your offer.”
Challan’s eye twitched involuntarily and his brows creased together. “Renew it? With what? I have no money!”
“But you’re the most powerful aristocrat in the Ronnesian Empire. You can’t have spent so much in so short a time.”
“Was, damn you. I was a powerful aristocrat! They exiled me!”
Zoran raised his eyebrows. Challan was the queen’s greatest supporter, besides perhaps Prince Korrosus, who was widely rumored to be courting her from a distance. “Tell me how this came about,” he said.
“So you can gloat in my misfortune?”
“I have no reason to gloat, for it was not my doing that brought you here.”
“Not your doing?” Challan exclaimed, his raised voice drawing several pairs of curious eyes about the tavern. “Damn you, you could’ve taken that job and none of this would’ve happened! It would never have been traced back to me!”
“Come,” Zoran said, heaving the man off his bar stool and onto his feet. “Barman, have two more ales and a firewater sent to the back room.” Zoran flicked a silver piece in his direction and the barman caught it nimbly, nodding at the order, glad for the continued business.
A little while later, when Challan was finishing his ale and looking expectantly at the second, Zoran asked him again to relate the circumstances that had brought about his exile. Reluctantly, after Zoran had pushed the second ale across the table, the former mayor spilled his tale. Though Challan had offered the contract to at least a dozen individuals, no assassin had been prepared to travel north to attempt to take the life of the king, for it was widely known that powers greater than any amount of human strength guarded him. And so he had aimed lower – at the Ayon general. Amid his cursing and rambling, the assassin understood that the foolhardy man had enlisted a second-rate cutthroat who had not even risked his own skin to carry out the deed. This Nomanis Tirk had hired or threatened – Challan was uncertain – a prostitute and she had done the work in his stead. “And how were you discovered?”
“Lord Varren,” Challan said, his voice shaking at the mentioning of the name. “He found out everything.”
“I have heard of this Lord Varren,” Zoran said vaguely, “though I’m not sure what the context was. Is he some kind of investigator or magistrate?”
“Lord, judge, general and chief adviser to King Samian, but more importantly, he is a magician and a very powerful one at that,” Challan said, finishing his second ale. “He and another man appeared in my house out of thin air and spirited me away to some island in the Kalladean.”
“Spirited you away?” Zoran asked, curious. “I have heard of such things. He transported you by magic, yes? What was it like?”
“Like every part of my body was twisting and changing, pulling itself apart, then being thrown back together.”
“Intriguing.”
“They locked me up in a cell for about a week, I think, and fed me little. Varren seldom visited me, but when he did, he tortured my mind without moving a single finger. I don’t remember telling him much but he seemed to know everything anyway, as though he could read my thoughts.”
“This Varren sounds a most curious man.”
“You wouldn’t say curious if you met him. He’s cruel, evil, malicious.”
“I gather he let you go.”
“Only after he obtained all the information he wanted. He escorted me to the castle and put a spell on himself that kept him hidden from sight and forced me to confess all I had done to the queen herself.”
“Ah,” Zoran said, smiling, “clever.”
“Clever?”
“He used the art of politics to separate you from the queen. Had she ignored your crime, he would have destroyed her, broken her people’s trust in her somehow. She had no choice but to have you exiled for assassinating General Carter, to make an example of you. After all, you have, though inadvertently, given the Ayons reason to go to war.”
“But without their general, they are crippled,” Challan said and sighed. “That was my intent, to leave them disorganized. He had been in the position for many long years and was reputed to be the best general they had ever had.”
“I have also heard that.” Zoran sipped at his firewater, then folded his arms and leaned back in his chair, looking thoughtfully at Challan. He had changed considerably since the last time the two had spoken. He no longer looked down on Zoran as someone of lower birth and consequence. Though it had only been a matter of weeks since his exile, his new situation had dawned on him quickly and he had been forced to embrace it. He was nothing but a commoner now, but with the memories of something grand that he had lost. “How did you end up down here in the south, then?”
Challan sighed and ran his hands through his disheveled hair. “I thought to go to Cithille and stay with a friend but I was chased from the city by the guards, who had heard of my exile. I am not permitted to set foot in the empire until the queen pardons me. Even then, my wealth and property will not be restored. I am penniless now, just as I was when I was born. My life has gone full circle – my father lost all our family’s wealth and, now, so have I.”
Zoran looked at him with a touch of pity. He had seen many great men fall from their pedestals in his time but none had fallen so far as Challan. Though many in the Ronnesian Empire would rejoice at what he had done, he had been far from rewarded.
“Here,” Zoran said, producing a couple gold pfenns from his pocket and tossing them onto the table top. “That should keep you alive until you can find the next rung of the social ladder.”
“What?” Challan exclaimed. “You expect me to take your money?”
Zoran shrugged. “I’ll have them back if you don’t want them.”
Challan glowered, quickly gathered up the coins and buried them deep in his pockets. Zoran chuckled and pushed his half-finished firewater across the table. Then he rose and pulled his hood over his head to cover the tousled mass of his dark hair.
“I can’t really wish you good luck, for you’ll need a miracle to recover everything you’ve lost,” he said as he moved to the door. “But ask for me when you want to start rebuilding your reputation. This city knows me well.”
“Damn you, Sable,” Challan said angrily. “I have no money, no place to stay and no contacts! Just leave me in peace.”
Zoran bowed mockingly low and grinned before wrenching open the door of the back room. “You still have one contact. I’ll be waiting, lord mayor.”
CHAPTER 39
Many miles to the north, Rasmus woke unexpectedly. He lay on his back, staring at the roof of the tent he shared with Cassios Avric. A slight wind rippled the canvas. He sighed and sat up, pushing the memory of his dream aside. Though i
t was still dark, he knew he would not be able to return to sleep.
A great many things had changed since Rasmus had last left the front line. Commander Tiron had welcomed him back warmly and had not even mentioned the loss of Rasmus’s fingers. After his injury, he had feared the worst, and though the men joked, occasionally calling him Captain Eight, Rasmus could not have been more confident in his position and was fast coming to terms with his missing fingers. He could still eat, clothe and bathe himself, as well as saddle his horse and ride just the same as before. Gripping mugs of ale with his left hand was the only thing that proved a challenge.
He rose, pulling on his boots and wrapping his cloak around him. He still had several hours of so-called leisure time until he was needed on duty, so he left the tent, seeking somewhere he could sit and think. The daily sightings of Ayons on the northern border were starting to unnerve him. Training had intensified since the movements were first noticed two weeks earlier and twice the number of scouting parties had been sent out to investigate what was going on. Every group returned with uncertain reports of enemy movement beyond Kilsney, but they were sure roughly one hundred men had set up camp in the town on the northern bank, a number insufficient to sail across in the boats at night to plague the Ronnesian sentries with skirmishes. The Ayons’ actions left the Ronnesians with a quandary – was this yet another diversion or was this a defensive tactic? Had the Ayons been dealt a greater blow during their failed invasion than the Ronnesians had first thought? Perhaps the men on the opposite bank were all that could be spared to defend the border at Kilsney.
Rasmus preferred straightforward battles determined by skill, the deployment of units and the structure of the army, not by ambush and deceit. The Ayons on the opposite shore had been making themselves known to the Ronnesians, brandishing their swords at them across the Divide, baiting them with obscene gestures and shouting taunts. The Ronnesians had retaliated, daring the Ayons to attack, but Commander Tiron and Prince Korrosus both refused to react to their goading.