The Winds of Strife (The War of the Veil Book 1)

by John Donlan

  “He should be here by now,” Lysena said suddenly. She turned to stare at the door and Jaran followed her gaze. “What is keeping him so long?”

  “He will be here, your majesty,” Jaran told her. “Kendrey is old, he cannot move very fast. I can go and find him, if you wish...”

  “No.” She waved her hand and sat back in her chair, chewing on her lip. “I only wish he had chosen to share what he knew on the journey back from the mountains. I have not slept since we returned to the city, wondering what dire knowledge he might be keeping back from me.”

  Kindrey had refused to explain any of what he seemed to know, and no amount of badgering from the queen or from Jaran had made him budge on that decision. He’d needed to be sure about what he suspected, he had said.

  “You could have given him a royal order, my queen,” Jaran said, smiling bitterly. “He would not have refused that.”

  “Bah! It would not have made a difference, and we both know it.” She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. Jaran could see it trembling, and her fingers were twitching nervously. “In truth, I did not order him to speak because I knew he was right to hold back. We do not need theories and rumours, we need facts. We need the truth, no matter how horrible and disturbing it might be!”

  Jaran frowned darkly. He hardly knew what the truth was any more, and lately, the facts seemed as fluid and changeable as water. “Well, it seems he is certain now. Or so he says.”

  “We shall see soon enough. Whatever he suspected, and perhaps now knows for sure, it scared him, and badly.”

  She fell silent as the handle of the room’s only door suddenly turned. The door opened and Kindrey Lolsk stepped inside, holding a large, leather bound book.

  Jaran sighed when he laid eyes on that hefty tome. More words, more ancient scribbles. He had never laid much stock in books before; he preferred what he could see and touch and understand. Books dealt in faith almost as much as religion. They required a man to believe without seeing for himself, to accept what was written as truth, even if there was nothing to verify the claims. Kindrey had full and unwavering faith in his books and in the archive. He never doubted any of it.

  “My queen.” The old man bobbed his head and then shuffled to one of the empty seats. “Please, forgive my silence of the past few days. I know the frustration and pain it must have caused. But it was necessary. What we learned up there in the mountains had ramifications that could threaten not just Arrenissia, but the entire world. I had to be sure!”

  “We know,” Jaran spoke through thin lips and grit teeth. “You told us this again and again in the mountains!”

  Lysena held up her hand, causing him to fall silent. He sighed and shook his head, but closed his mouth to stop himself from letting out any more of his anger. “Kindrey, please. We have waited long enough. If you know something of importance, then I need to know it, too. I need to understand, so I can decide what needs to be done.”

  Kindrey brushed his beard and laid the book he was carrying down on the top of the table. “I am not sure there is anything to be done, my queen,” he said. Jaran detected a hint of fear in the old man’s voice. He had first heard it after the horror in the mountains, but then it had been vague and hidden. Now it was as clear as day, and it scared him more than he liked to admit.

  “Tell us what you know,” Lysena said. “And then we can determine if there is any action that we can take.”

  Kindrey nodded. “It was the name,” he said. “The Endless Hunger. There are not many alive who would recognise that reference, my queen, and fewer still who would be able to understand the significance. It goes back a very long way. All the way back to the Candrille.”

  “The Candrille?” Jaran sat forward. The Candrille were the name given to the first people, the ancient, original inhabitants of the continent. They had built an empire that legend said covered the world. They had built great cities, learned the secrets of the universe, and mastered all magic, both good and evil. And then they had vanished. All of them, every man, woman and child. Their world had burned and fallen from memory. Ruins of their cities still remained, but they were empty, soulless shells, haunted by ghosts of the ancient past. Little of what they had accomplished remained intact now, and those who dared explore the crumbling remnants of their empire rarely returned; at least not with their sanity intact. Nobody knew why the Candrille had fallen, though loremasters and scholars from across the continent had strived to understand it.

  “Yes, the Candrille. You know their story, as we all do. They were masters of all, and yet, we understand so little about them. And there is one myth that very few people know. It concerns a being that they called the Endless Hunger, the Glutton, the Great Devourer. Names long lost to us now.”

  “I have never heard any of those names,” Lysena said, though from the expression on her face, Jaran was not entirely sure his queen was telling the truth.

  Kindrey nodded. “Indeed. They have faded from the world. But the Candrille knew the names. They feared the entity so much that they did not even dare record it in more than a few places. They believed that the names held power, and that to write them down or to speak them would be to invite destruction. That it would let the thing they feared cross the veil into our world.”

  “What was it?” Jaran asked. “Did they know?”

  “They believed she was a God,” Kindrey said simply. “One of the oldest of the Gods. A being more powerful and more deadly than any other. They believed she had been striving to enter the world since time began, driven by a hunger so powerful it was all consuming. What little I have discovered tells how they feared she would break through one day and devour all of humanity. They feared it so much, that they sought to find a way to kill her, once and for all.”

  “Kill a God?” Jaran laughed at that. The idea alone was ludicrous and utter madness. The Gods could not be killed; they were eternal, all powerful. Invincible.

  “Indeed. You may scoff, but the Candrille believed it could be done. They knew things we have not even dreamed of. And so they devised a ritual that would bring her into our world. Not fully, of course. If they had done that, we would likely not be here today to speak of it. They wanted to tear her spirit from the void and manifest it here, inside a shell of flesh. They created rituals and spells designed to keep her locked in a body they had chosen. Then they crafted a weapon that could kill her mortal vessel.”

  “Did they succeed?” Lysena was listening intently. Jaran could see that she believed every word of what she was hearing. He did not share her faith. To him, the story that Kindrey was spinning was just that; a tale, nonsense pulled from ancient legends. There were many such tales about the Candrille; stories about how they tamed ancient monsters and soared through the air on the backs of the mighty beasts; how they were able to harness primal energies and use them to fuel great and powerful machines; stories of how they sought to elevate themselves to Gods. Nobody put stock in such things. The Candrille had been men, like all who came after, nothing more. They had achieved great things, it was true, but they had done so through conquest, through intelligence, and through might of arms.

  “I do not know,” Kindrey admitted. “I have scoured what tomes I have, and even finding mention of the Endless Hunger was a difficult task. The story of what they wanted to accomplish was never set down by the Candrille themselves. It was told centuries later, by the inheritors of the empire, by those who came after. But I believe they attempted it, and I believe they at least partially succeeded. If they had not, the world would have ended long ago.”

  Lysena sat back, pondering what she had heard. Jaran looked between the loremaster and his queen for a moment and then threw up his hand in disgust. “This is your great fear, Kindrey? That some ancient and malevolent Goddess wants to return to the world and devour us whole? It is nonsense! Speculation and stories that would scare children and nothing more. Yes, we heard what the thing in the mountains said, but are we to believe the words of a being known for bringing
horror to the world? The Frendrith are supposed to be masters of manipulation.”

  Kindrey opened his mouth to protest, then snapped it shut again as he mulled over the possibilities. When he spoke at last, he chose his words deliberately. “It is true, the Frendrith cannot be trusted wholly. But in this… I am not sure. Think of what we witnessed. The creature expended every last ounce of energy to relay the message to us. It killed the men you sent, captain, so that it had the strength to pass on what it knew. You saw how it ended! It was destroyed. If it had wanted to do us harm, would it not have made sense to wait, to gain in strength?”

  “Perhaps it sensed why we were there,” Jaran suggested. “Perhaps it had come to realise that it could not stay here, that we would destroy it utterly, and it took the only chance it had to sow fear and doubt in our minds.”

  “To what end?” Lysena was looking at him with a troubled expression on her face. It pained Jaran to see his queen in such turmoil, worried about things that she should not be.

  “To bring chaos and terror to the world. Is that not what they do? Are they not harbingers of some great calamity? It wanted to distract us from the true threat, the threat of the Tho’reen and the Losarn. They are about to be at one another’s throats, and we will be trapped in the middle. If we ignore that real danger in favour of wild speculation, we risk bringing about the doom of the entire kingdom, my queen. Perhaps that was the true goal all along.”

  Kindrey was stroking his beard nervously. Jaran could tell that he had hit a nerve. It made sense; far more sense than this insanity about a demented goddess. And yet, he knew it was not the truth. He was latching on to what he knew, what he could do something about, so that he would not have to face the twisted nightmare of what they were all thinking.

  “What would you have us do, my queen?” Kindrey said at last, breaking the silence that had descended upon them all.

  Lysena was silent for a moment, debating the options available to her. At last she sighed heavily. “I do not know what to think. On one hand, what you say seems the most logical, Jaran. War is coming, and it is coming soon. We need to be prepared. But I will not neglect the possibility of something far more terrible hovering on the rim of our world. Therefore, I will entrust you two to find a way to combat both potential calamities. Kindrey, you will have all the resources at my disposal to discover the truth of what you suspect. We must be certain, wholly certain, and when we are, we must know how to fight it. Scour all of Arrenissia if you have to, but find it. Jaran, I want you to prepare our army for the conflict ahead. Send garrisons to the borders, where you think they will be needed. I want the passes watched night and day, and I want the all of the beacons manned. I do not want to be caught unprepared. We may be outmatched against either the kingdom or the empire, but I am not about to give in without fighting back.”

  Jaran smiled inwardly. This was the queen he had hoped to see all along. Decisive, prepared, ready to face all threats to her people. She reminded him now, more than ever, of her father, and he was more proud than he had ever been to serve her.

  “I will do as you bid, my queen.” He stood and bowed to her. “We will be ready to meet whatever comes our way, you can be sure of that.” He was already thinking of where their forces would do most good, how they might mount a defence in the event of an invasion. This was what he knew. This was what he was good at.

  Kindrey stood more slowly, but he, too, had a determined look on his face. “If there is a truth to be found, I will find it,” the old loremaster said solemnly. “Even if I have to go to the ends of the world.”

  Lysena smiled tiredly, as though amused by the idea of the ancient scholar attempting that particular feat. “Then I will trust you to your word, and hope for all our sakes that war is the only danger ahead of us.”

  Thirty-Two

  Gadmar had been called to the throne room. Though he already knew what awaited him there, he was still nervous. He had no idea how the other lords and dukes might respond to the king’s edict, especially the announcement of the intended wedding. Not well, was his guess. Still, they could do little but seethe over the prospect. At least initially. In time, Harrow and the rest of his allies might find a way to sow further dissent, but for now, their hands would be tied. The king had been clever with his decision. He would create a new bond with his closest ally, while at the same time, showing that he was still strong on justice for those who failed him.

  Stairn walked silently on his left. The captain knew what had happened with the king and he knew of the deal that had been struck. He had agreed that it was the best course for all involved, and had sworn his continued allegiance to the Southmarsh, and to Darius when he took up the mantle of Duke. Gadmar was relieved to know that Stairn’s loyalty would not waver when all was said and done.

  Luscard walked at his right. He had insisted he be there when judgement was passed. Gadmar had not told his son about the meeting he’d had with the king; in part it was because he feared his son’s reaction, but it was also because there had been little time. Luscard had been spending all his time alone, exploring the castle, lost in thought. Gadmar would have liked to have seen his son more, though. This was a rare opportunity for the two of them to spend time away from the Southmarsh and the affairs of ruling the duchy. But it had not happened, and soon they would be returning to their home in shame, to prepare for the wedding to come.

  “Whatever happens, Luscard, I want you to know something,” Gadmar said suddenly. “I want you to know that none of us had any choice. All of our fates were sealed the moment the Tho’reen were struck down in the swamp.”

  Luscard looked at him strangely for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t believe that,” he said. “There is always a choice.”

  Gadmar frowned. He had believed he was getting through to his son, making him understand the sacrifices that needed to be made for the good of the kingdom, but now, it seemed as though they were right back where they started, at odds with one another and of different minds. He sighed, tiredly, expecting fresh arguments later once they were away from the throne room.

  The guards standing at the door to the throne room were Corin Harrow’s men. Gadmar recognised them from the city gates and was surprised to see them there. It was the job of the royal knights to watch over the entrance to the throne room, not the city guard. Had there been an incident that had called the knights away? It would have had to have been something significant to warrant such a change in protocol. Perhaps the Tho’reen were finally aware of the slaughter in the marsh and had launched an attack? Gadmar didn’t believe that. There had not been time for the news to reach the empress yet, and even if it had, she could not have marshalled her forces so quickly. Was it something else then? Something even worse? He could think of nothing quite so bad as a looming war.

  The guards pushed open the door to admit Gadmar and Luscard. He stepped inside with his son at his side, and instantly felt all eyes in the room turning to watch him impassively. The room was more crowded than normal, every available inch of space crammed with lords and dukes and noble men along with their attendants. Most of them were eastern lords, allies of Harrow, likely here to see their version of justice carried out. Duke Harrow was there, too, of course, close to the throne, looking smug and self-satisfied, clearly believing that he was about to take another step closer to his eventual goal of attaining the throne. In a way, he was, since Gadmar was about to lose his title, but at the same time, the proposed wedding would mean that the Southmarsh would stay with his own family. He had planned to relinquish control to Darius eventually, and had even been preparing his son for the duchy; his punishment now would only serve to accelerate those plans.

  But Harrow would likely see it as an affront, and as the king playing favourites with the dukes. Gadmar was certain that Harrow had his sights set on the Southmarsh. It was a prosperous and important duchy in the kingdom, and it would elevate Harrow’s position even further, as well as boosting the man’s already considerable wealth.
>
  Gadmar strode forward without looking at any of the rival lords. He kept his gaze focused on the king, who was sitting on the throne and looking stern.

  As he arrived at the foot of the king’s dais, he sank to his knee and bowed his head. There was a brief muttering from the assembled lords, and then silence. When the king spoke, his voice echoed around the quiet chamber.

  “Arise, Gadmar of the Southmarsh, and face your punishment.”

  Gadmar did so. He squared his shoulders and placed his hands firmly behind his back.

  “Your mistake in the south has been considered and a verdict on your fate reached. Your actions have placed the safety and security of the kingdom in peril, and for that, there can be no reprieve. Therefore, it is my decision that you forfeit your right to the title of duke, now and forever. The lands of the Southmarsh will return to the crown, and all holdings will be relinquished.”

  Gadmar bowed his head. He had thought he would be prepared for this, that he would face it with resolve and determination, but on hearing the words spill from the mouth of his friend and king, he felt a tear creep down his cheek. He would be the first Crow in all of history to lose control of the Southmarsh. It would be a stain on his family name that would take a very long time to wipe clean. The lands had returned to the king, and despite the fact that it would only be for a brief, transitory moment, it still stung.