War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy

by D. S. Halyard

  The whole thing could have just been one of the many myths that seemed to follow the man.

  And now someone had come to kill him.

  Idly, he wondered whom he had offended. That the men at the bar were there for him he knew without reflection. He had grown up in the wilderness north and west of Northcraven, a land of sudden death and hardship, a land where only animals and the savage Cthochi Auligs truly belonged. Just as an elk did not need to ask to know he was stalked by wolves, so with Tuchek. The looks on the men's faces, the hidden weapons; the pattern was familiar, and older than man's existence in this world.

  He frowned and put down the silver goblet. It was not his way to wait until the trap was set to spring it, and he would not wait now. He stood suddenly, wordlessly flipping a small silver coin onto the top of the bar. It bounced once before the innkeeper deftly made it disappear.

  He belted on his longsword, resting his hand with feigned casualness on the worn, braided hilt. He walked directly to the three men, knowing they did not expect it.

  They could not avoid meeting his gaze.

  "Who sent you?" His voice was a soft growl.

  One of the men stood forward, as the others edged back, reaching for their hidden weapons.

  "I dunno what you're talking about." The man's voice was oddly high-pitched, strained between a brown tombyard of broken and rotted teeth. His face was pitted from lancing old boils, and he spoke with a Flanesi accent. Tuchek knew that others waited outside of the tavern, and if he gave them time to gather together, getting out of here alive might be difficult, even for him. These three he decided he could manage. The way they bunched together told him all he needed to know about their fighting skill. "Nobody sent us."

  "You are lying to me." Tuchek replied simply, his voice sounding bored. "Who paid you for this mistake?"

  Ninecount, one of the three patrons in addition to the innkeeper who had no part in the affair, edged away from the four men, aching for the door. He knew trouble when he smelled it, and he knew enough about Tuchek to know that this was bad. A situation like this could get a man who wasn't careful killed, and the little man didn't want any part of it. Ninecount came by his name as a joke, for two of his fingers had been cut off for stealing, and he had no desire to shorten his name any further. Of the men in the tavern, perhaps only he and the innkeeper really saw what was coming. He was the first to see the four man-shapes through the frosty glass of the tavern's front door, and it was his sudden intake of breath that alerted the Aulig.

  The door burst inward and Tuchek's sword leaped into his hand in the same instant.

  A nobleman, a stranger to Tuchek, stood in the doorway. He was dressed finely, in a lace-shrouded blue satin blouse and a golden cloak. Three men stood behind him.

  "Take him alive, men, by order of the baron!" The nobleman shouted, his fine face contorted with anger. He would have been better served had he drawn his own weapon, instead of relying on his hirelings, three of whom were behind him. He would not live to repeat the error. They were a shade slow in reaching their hidden blades, and the Aulig wasted no time.

  The long sword whirled in Tuchek's hand like a demon's shadow dancing.

  Before the light from the tavern's single lamp was extinguished, Ninecount clearly saw two severed heads bounce off of the floor, one of them sliding to within inches of his three-fingered right hand as he scrambled beneath a table. Then the light went out and it was too dark to see.

  Blades clashed briefly in the darkness. A shriek of pain suddenly began and just as suddenly cut short.

  Ninecount heard more violent shuffling, then the sound of a horse's hooves beating a rapidly diminishing tattoo against the poorly mortared stone of the cobbled street.

  He counted his fingers, just to be sure, and said a thankful prayer.

  Ch 5: Interlude: The Tree of Rhan

  In Northcraven Harbor, within the hold of the ship called Kalgareth, Anrealla Bishota contemplated the dark and loathesome shape before her, careful not to set her feet into the water. She held a torch up and considered the tree that had made her fortune.

  She had found the tree by investigating a clue that was almost nothing, a footnote in an almost forgotten and nearly untranslatable scroll, detailing the death of Dula Vasta, some two thousand years earlier. The footnote was a single line, describing a race of cannibals, the Khigrisi, whose god was a living tree. The Khigrisi, the only white-skinned race known in that strange continent called the Wild Lands, were reputed to eat captives and traders, but Anrealla had been undismayed. Rejected as an enchanter, and by every other school of the Art in Stoor, she was prepared to burn the city down to gain the power to which her birth entitled her. Her parents had both been powerful workers of the Art, an Urigal and a White Witch, and had trained her from birth to work the Art.

  But when she reached puberty and no spark came, and she could not so much as light a candle, their shattered expectations and obvious disappointment embittered her and estranged them from her. Still, she did not give up. She found the only school willing to accept her, the unofficial and unsanctioned collection of hedge wizards, tea-readers and charlatans known as the dendromancers, or tree-wizards.

  She determined to make the dendromancers the most feared school in Hulmin.

  She studied every obscure passage about the god-tree that she could find, and learned many things. She learned that during the Age of Magic, when men first began to explore the potential of the wizardry inherent in the dreamwork world, a mighty wizard walked the remote jungle kingdoms of Rhan. In the stygian gloom of that land, he found many wondrous things, and explored and unearthed many new secrets for the first time in history. It was this wizard, whose name was to become a matter of dark legend, who first began to explore, examine and listen to the dreams of the god-tree.

  He found it among the Khigrisi, for they worshiped it, a black-barked tree, ancient even then, that fed upon human flesh. He learned that it had the power to enslave men, to force them to feed it and worship it. Wanting that power for himself, he caused the squat, dark tree to be unearthed, and he carried it to his hidden fortress to plumb the depths of its dark heart.

  He taught it first, for he found that he could teach it, to obey. He taught it with fire and with water. Over the course of centuries, even as his power grew and his holdings became a kingdom, and then an empire, he never forgot his tree.

  Every single day he fed it man-flesh, and every day it grew darker, hungrier, and viler. It possessed a host of dangerous powers, and he put them all to his own use. In its heart of black wood, it undoubtedly hated its master, but he did not care, so long as it served him.

  Even after the master fell in a far distant land and his empire faded to nothing, his Khigrisi slaves continued to worship the tree, and to serve its dark desires. The wickedness in its heart grew, and so did its greed, even as its leaves -no longer needed for sustenance- fell away and its blackened bark took on the putrid odor of decayed human flesh.

  All of these things and not a scintilla more Anrealla learned from studying bits and pieces of old lore and obscure writings. The other members of her adoptive school told her she was wasting her time, and that she should focus on reading leaves and blessing orchards, for that was how dendromancers earned their bread. She ignored them. She decided she needed to go to the Wild Lands, and see the tree for herself.

  Ch 6: Lanae, Misfortune in the East Forest

  Sentinel was hungry and Lanae was tired. She clung to the great eagle's harness and simply flew on, for Sentinel knew the way home and needed no direction. It was with relief that she saw the simple stone tower and the small clearing that marked the stopover where Jaren waited. She did not bother to examine the tower's crest, where a blue pennant was flying in the wind. The pennant should have been green, for that was the afternoon's safe signal, but in the dim light the two colors looked much the same and she wasn't really paying attention. She would bitterly regret this lapse.

  Sentinel slowed in the wind and
began to lower his tail for landing, and the difficult maneuver of landing took all of Lanae's attention. It was for this reason that she did not notice the odd absence of movement on the grounds of the clearing below her. Still, she could see the uniformed men approaching at her landing, same as they always did.

  She did note the absence of Jaren waving her down, and she wondered where he was.

  Finally, but much too late, she noticed something odd about one of the soldiers coming toward her. His hair was up under his iron cap, but a lock had escaped the confines and lay curled under his neck. The hair was much longer than that permitted soldiers of Mortentia, and silvery white in a slightly unnatural way.

  By the time she noticed the bloodstained hole in the man's tabard and the oddly glistening cat's eyes that regarded her coldly from his too-youthful face, she had dismounted, and he was holding a crossbow on her. A steel, crossletted quarrel pointed at her heart.

  Lanae had never before faced the prospect of dying, and for a moment felt only shock. Then, before the man -or creature- before her could utter a word, her training took over. The life of the eagle was more important than hers, her training told her. The eagle must never be taken, never be killed.

  Without thinking, she reacted. "Fly, Sentinel! Fly! Fly!" Her voice was shrill and panicked.

  Sentinel heard the command, recognized it, and recognized the danger to this girl, his rider. He was the greatest of all of the eagles, the smartest, the fastest, and the strongest. He screamed his fury at the unfamiliar man who was frightening his rider, even as he leaped forward, his proud beak as sharp as a spear's point.

  "Fly!" Lanae shrieked again, for she could see, like a shadowy thing, the great net descending. Sentinel hesitated, turning a keen, questioning eye her way, and the net settled over his great head.

  Taking an eagle, especially one as great as this one, would not be easy. Jahaksi, the leader of the strike team, had planned it as best he could, with a Brizaki's cold efficiency. The net was not large enough to encompass the entire body of the great bird, only the head. It was not meant to entirely bind the animal, only to hold it in place.

  A sorcerer could have seized the animal's mind easily, for it was a simple enough creature. Unfortunately, in this land dead of the Art, sorcery was not an option. The great bird jerked its head backward, but this only served to tighten the thick ropes around its neck and more securely bind it.

  The strength of the eagle was remarkable, Jahaksi noted, and if only men had manned the eight lines tied to the net, the beast would have quite easily hurled them into the brush. Jahaksi had planned for this, however, and secured each line to the base of a thick oak. Even now, his men pulled the lines tight, as those who had donned the soldiers' uniforms to fool the girl ran to get out of range of the mighty creature's beak.

  The girl was unimportant, but she had drawn a slim knife and was trying to cut one of the lines. The rope was thick, and she was having no success. Even so, he could not permit her interference.

  "Seize her!" He commanded. Tathaga, his man with the careless hair, turned about to grab the girl. Unfortunately for him, the lines to the eagle were not yet taut, and the beast had a small space in which it could still maneuver. The girl was within that space, and the bird knocked Tathaga from his feet, dislodging his helmet completely and sprawling him in the tall grass. Jahaksi admired its strength.

  With tears in her eyes, Lanae tried ineffectually to cut at one of the ropes binding the eagle. There was no sense to what she was doing, for they kept snatching the rope from her grasp as Sentinel struggled, but she could think to do nothing else. With dismay she saw that there were at least seven other lines on the eagle, and the men were rapidly drawing them tighter.

  Desperately, she turned to the man who had seemed to issue commands, although in no language she recognized. He was tall, thin in the waist and broad in the shoulders. Beneath a mottled cloak meant to conceal him in the forest he wore steel-colored banded armor and a helmet with two sharply upthrust horns jutting directly above his eerily catlike eyes. "Please!" She cried out. "You must let him go. He is the king's eagle! You don't know what you are doing!"

  The taut lines and the net now held the Sentinel’s head fast, even as he screeched in protest. Lanae could do nothing but beg for his freedom. The strange man seemed pleased with himself.

  "This one was to capture this bird." He told her, and his voice seemed strangely musical, although he spoke as if he was unfamiliar with Mortentian. She noticed that his eyes were the same catlike gold as the man who now lay on the ground, unconscious. When he removed his helmet, she saw that his hair was long and braided, shimmering black. He was strikingly handsome in an unearthly way. "This one has done so. You are wise to cease struggling." She recognized his accent as Tolrissan, although she suspected it was not his first language.

  "You don't know what you have done." She told him. "It is death for anyone other than the king's eyes to lay hands on his eagles. You will be flayed alive for this."

  "Not only will be Jahaksi, but so will you be." He replied candidly, with a knowing arch to his thin, womanish eyebrows. "I know of this. A rider who allow an eagle to be taken must be punish, yes?" For a foreigner, his knowledge of the customs of the king's eyes was disconcerting.

  She looked at him with an expression of naked despair. She saw the blue pennant flying from the top of the tower behind him, and she shook with inward loathing. She had failed, and now the greatest of the king's eagles had fallen into the hands of a foreign enemy. She turned and put her hands out to Sentinel, who was screaming in rage at the effrontery of his captors.

  A man came from out of the trees…

  No, it was not really a man, but another of the strange, cat-eyed followers of this Jahaksi. With one hand on his sword hilt, this man took her arm. He looked a question at his leader.

  -

  "Let her live, for now. Pack her with the beast." The command was in his own language, and the girl did not understand it. Jahaksi gave her a reassuring look, but she probably did not notice in her frightened state. That was understandable.

  "We were to kill all who knew of us." Da'all Khor reminded.

  "I command here. Do not question."

  "Of course, Lord Jahaksi." Da'all Khor nodded his head respectfully, the highest form of obeisance allowed a Brizaki soldier. Others came forward and lifted Tathaga from the ground.

  From the forest, the men brought forward the specially built wagon, with its inner cage of iron and outer covering of padded and cloth-draped wood. Two Brizaki handlers patiently soothed the panicked horses that drew the dully colored thing.

  Chapter 7: In an Alley of Alidis

  The seeker lay on the muddy ground of the alleyway, mindless of the splashing of water as it thrashed in its agony. Its once fine clothing was ruined and its cloak tattered by the throes of its failure. It had broken the wooden cup that it normally wore upon the stump of its right forearm in place of a hand.

  Its beautiful, glorious Mistress had been right to cut off its hands, it realized. Surely, as the Mistress had once explained, if it had hands it would have slain itself in frustration.

  Although it was blind, it had seen everything. It had felt the men die in the tavern, it had felt the others die in the street outside. Pieces of gold, meant to pay the men for the capture, lay scattered about its feet. It could always get more gold.

  Still, even the failure was not without its benefit. Seven men killed by one man! Who would have believed it? Surely the man the seeker sought was worthy of this mission, the only mission the seeker had ever known, the only reason for its existence.

  It had waited across the cobbled street from the tavern, impatient, sickly eager for the taking, the single touch, the end of its own existence.

  Now the hunt could continue, and for that, the seeker was grateful. Urgency filled its bones, sucked at its guts like the thing it had once known as lust, but so much stronger. Already the seeker was making new plans, thinking of the new men
it must acquire.

  Still, the Mistress would not be pleased. As far away as the Mistress was, the seeker could already feel the pain of Her displeasure. It shuddered at the thought of its punishment. It kneeled in the dirt, licked clean the stumps of its forgotten hands, and began to pray to long forgotten gods for the strength to continue its search.

  Endam Calia, warder and keeper of the peace in Alidis, walked by the man without really seeing him. Seven men had died suddenly in his town, and he had the duty to see them buried and conduct an inquiry. It did not really surprise him that Tuchek was involved. He had never trusted the Aulig brute, and saw no justification for the Baron's blanket trust in the man.

  Still, Baron Brego might be the high law in Pulflover, but this was a killing, and seven men at that. Tuchek would hang for it, and the Baron could hardly prevent that.

  Endam examined the bodies, and with the help of his men, removed them for burial. Members of the Order of the Spade would see to the actual digging of the graves, for only the outcast members of that brotherhood had that right, by church law. The coin in the dead men’s pockets would pay for the burial. Already two of them, in plain brown robes, had arrived with a small wagon.

  Belder, one of Endam’s warders saw them coming. "Looks like you'll need a bigger wagon." He grinned as he said this, and Endam shot him a frown. It was bad luck to speak to a gravedigger, especially one engaged in his occupation.

  "As Lio wills." The gravedigger replied. It was just about all you ever got out of one of them.

  Endam spoke to the innkeeper. "They come for him." The nervous man replied at his questioning. "No doubt they come for him, but he took out his sword and done for 'em all. You never seen the like."

  Although he listened closely, Endam did not need to hear the innkeeper's account to see what had happened. The positions of the bodies told him the story. Tuchek had slain the three at the bar almost instantly, before they'd even managed to get out their own inadequate weapons. The nobleman had gotten his long sword out, but not in time to deflect Tuchek's blade on its sure path to his heart. The Aulig had then burst through the door, pushing one man back onto the blades of two others. While they tried to sort themselves out, he took their heads. It had been quick, efficient and brutal, and Endam doubted they'd even got a blade on him.