by Nat Russo
Only one tube remained intact.
“Did you do that?” Aelron asked.
Kaitlyn slumped to the floor.
“Kaitlyn!”
Aelron knelt at her side. She was breathing but unconscious.
He couldn’t leave her here. He scooped her up and placed her over his shoulder.
As he stood, he glanced out through the overlook to see what the Barathosians were doing.
They were gone. The entire fortification, along with the soldiers manning it, had vanished.
“Kagan!” Aelron called. “Something’s happened!”
Kagan stepped into view. His expression didn’t change when he saw Kaitlyn’s limp form draped over Aelron’s shoulder.
“Drop her,” Kagan said.
Aelron’s pulse quickened. “You’re more evil than Nicolas gives you credit for, if you’re suggesting I leave her here. I’d just as soon take my chances with—”
“Don’t be stupid, boy. I’m suggesting no such thing. Drop her. I’ll catch.”
Kagan extended his arms.
“Does death make you insane, or were you always delusional?”
“My physical abilities are greatly enhanced in this form. Now drop her!”
Aelron stepped down onto the ladder. He wasn’t about to trust Kaitlyn in the hands of the man who tried to kill Nicolas to protect his own power.
When Aelron reached the bottom of the tower, guards in the plaza were cheering.
“What did you do to her?” Toridyn yelled.
Aelron set Kaitlyn down. “She did it to herself. One moment she was standing at the overlook getting rid of the Barathosians. The next, she was on the floor. Now you know as much as I do.”
Kaitlyn groaned and turned her head toward Toridyn. When she opened her eyes, an expression of fear crossed her face.
“I can’t see!” Kaitlyn said. “What happened? I can’t see!”
Aelron stammered. “I don’t know.”
“Tor,” Kaitlyn said.
“I’m here,” Toridyn said, kneeling beside her. “Maybe I can fix this.”
Aelron was torn. He needed to get back to Morrigan at the safe house and tell her what he’d seen. But he couldn’t leave his Kaitlyn like this.
“Where’s Nicolas?” Aelron asked.
“He should return shortly,” Toridyn said. “He went to the Pinnacle in search of something that might end this battle.”
“She ended this battle. Efficiently, too.”
“I saw through his eyes,” Kaitlyn said.
“The cannon operator?”
Kaitlyn nodded, tears streaming down the side of her face.
“I watched it all,” she said. “But now I can’t see anything.”
Aelron couldn’t stay. Now that the battle was over, he needed to learn more about this Sodality Morrigan had inducted him into. The urge to head back to the safe house was as urgent as reaching for the coin had ever been.
Was that all he’d accomplished? Had he exchanged one obsession for another?
“Kaitlyn,” Aelron said, “Can I leave you with Toridyn for a while longer? There’s something I must do.”
“She’ll be fine with me,” Toridyn said.
“I won’t be long,” Aelron said. “I promise.”
Aelron ran back through the plaza, past the fountains and abandoned merchant tents, past the corpses of Caspardis soldiers, and retraced his steps to the hidden door Morrigan had led him to.
When he opened it, the stench from earlier had decreased somewhat.
Morrigan stood next to the door across the room. She noticed him, but looked back down at whatever she was doing at the table.
Aelron approached her.
“You need to stop throwing your daggers,” Morrigan said. “I could throw a rock with better efficiency, and rocks are easier to come by. That Barathosian would have killed you if not for misfiring his weapon.”
“I’m usually good about hitting them with the pointy end.”
“And then what? He would have turned and shot you. Your blades aren’t heavy enough to strike a killing blow like that.”
As Aelron approached the table, he took a closer look at what Morrigan was working on. There was a disturbing array of instruments—an assortment of bloody knives and tools, and a blacksmith’s glove.
“If you want to throw something,” Morrigan said, “I’ll train you with metal stars. You can coat them with fast-acting poisons and throw them by the dozen, if you wish. What I won’t do is watch you waste a fortune in master-crafted weaponry. Our resources are thin and our supply lines unpredictable.”
“I had a good view of what happened out there,” Aelron said. He told her the story of the clumsy crossbow, and how he’d decided to take a more active role in the battle. When he got to the part about the cannons and the Barathosian camp vanishing, Morrigan’s eyes widened.
A muffled groan came from the closed room, and Morrigan picked up a knife.
“You’re interrogating a Barathosian in there, aren’t you?” Aelron said.
Morrigan glanced at him, then stepped into the other room.
Gone was the partial corpse responsible for the fetid stench lingering in the air. A furnace—a stone enclosure Aelron hadn’t noticed previously—blazed with fire in the corner of the room. It narrowed at the top and vented through a chimney. A man, bound and gagged, sat in a chair next to the furnace. His hair was gray, matted down with blood, and a small section of his beard had been torn away. Burn marks traced a path up his arms and across his chest.
If Morrigan was responsible for this, she’d been brutal.
Before he’d met his brother, Aelron would have hardly noticed the man’s wounds, or the look of terror on his face. The broken nose and shattered eye orbit would have been of little interest to him. In fact, he’d have questioned none of it a few days ago. The man’s condition would have been nothing more than line items on an inventory. Random facts about the environment for Aelron to keep straight. Potential weaknesses to exploit. Necessary elements in his situational awareness.
But something stirred inside, and a solitary thought ran through his mind.
What would Nicolas think if he saw this?
Would Nicolas help Morrigan torture the man without mercy?
No. He’d help him up and offer to carry him on his shoulders if he couldn’t walk. Just like the refugee.
“This isn’t right,” Aelron said. “You can’t just beat him to death for information.”
The man moaned and nodded, clearly in full agreement with Aelron.
Aelron walked toward him. Was he going to set him free or not? Odd that he wasn’t sure, even while putting one foot in front of the other.
Stranger still was the lack of desire to flip a coin.
“This is his fault,” Morrigan said. “The entire invasion.”
“The invasion is hardly the fault of this poor bastard,” Aelron said.
“The archmage,” Morrigan said. “Him and his barrier. He caused this.”
“You’re talking about Kagan. He’s dead now, you know. There’s a new archmage.”
“And now the world has another Ardirian arse to kiss.”
“It’s not like that. The new archmage is a decent person—from what I’m told.”
Why did he want to hide his relationship with Nicolas? He didn’t need Morrigan’s approval.
Aelron wanted to tell her that Nicolas was a kind man, as different from Kagan as a person could get, but there was a fire in her eyes that burned too hot for reason. And her apparent dislike of all things Ardirian didn’t put him in a good position either.
“Are you going to help me get information, or not?” Morrigan asked.
“He’s not going to talk,” Aelron said.
“Of course he will.”
“If you were him, would you give us any answers?” Aelron asked. “I’ve known you less than three hours, yet I’m fairly certain a torturer would be wearing your skin as armor and hair as a wig before
you gave him so much as a name. And even then, it would be a fake one, wouldn’t it?”
Morrigan smirked.
“I find it hard to believe that torture is what this Sodality is all about,” Aelron said. “You’ve told me the Sodality is a sacred order. Is torture now within the purview of Religion?”
“Your question implies there was a time it wasn’t.” Morrigan looked away and took a step back. “What do you propose?”
“Do you still have the feather?”
“Of course.”
“Then we should—”
Bells tolled through the street outside the safe house. They were more numerous than before.
“Shealynd’s protuberant tits,” Morrigan said. “I thought you said the Barathosians were gone.”
“I saw them vanish with my own eyes.”
“The entire city is on alert now. Let’s go. There’s someone I need to warn before we leave the city.”
Morrigan ran for the door and Aelron followed her into the alley.
“Just use that speed trick of yours,” Aelron said. “I can catch up.”
“It doesn’t work that way. There’s a cost. And I may need it later.”
Halfway to the plaza, Morrigan turned left into a side street.
“There,” Morrigan said, pointing to a three-story sandstone building across the street.
The sign out front read The Boring Jester.
Aelron stopped behind her next to a corner building.
“We need to be fighting, not scouting,” Aelron said.
Morrigan’s expression grew serious. “A dear friend of mine is in danger. And not because of Barathosians.”
“I have friends in this too, remember? If you think I’m going to abandon them and hide in some ruined farmhouse with you, you need to think again.”
Shouts came from the cross street ahead.
Six Shandarian Rangers rode into view, spurring their bright-red adda-ki north at breakneck pace.
Aelron pressed his back flat against the corner building until the last of them rode out of sight.
Morrigan gave him a questioning look. “Afraid of rangers? Weren’t you one of them?”
It was clear she hadn’t seen how he’d arrived in Blackwood, prior to killing the magus. If he was going to be serious about the Sodality, maybe he should begin with a little trust.
“Forget about them,” Morrigan said. “Come.”
When Aelron caught up, Morrigan pushed one of the doors open and entered The Boring Jester.
“It’s important you let me do the talking,” Morrigan said.
Aelron nodded and they stepped inside.
The tavern’s common room was well lit from natural light pouring through expansive windows on two sides of the building. People huddled under the tables, and several gave a start when the next bell tolled. A portrait—depicting a court jester leaning against a wall and checking his fingernails—hung above a modest fireplace in the back of the room.
The matron, who was comforting one of her frightened customers, eyed Morrigan nervously.
“Something isn’t right here,” Morrigan said.
Aelron’s pulse quickened.
Four paces to the matron. A dozen people in the room. None visibly armed.
Morrigan strode over to the bar and knocked twice on the countertop. When the matron approached, Morrigan spoke. “I’ve stabled the adda, but it has a problem with one of its hooves.”
The matron’s eyes widened. “The farrier doesn’t live here anymore, miss.”
Morrigan looked away from the matron.
“I…I thought you knew,” the matron stammered.
Morrigan grabbed Aelron by the shoulder and nudged him toward the door.
“He finally did it,” Morrigan whispered. “The new Traveler finally did it.”
“The who did what?” Aelron asked as they stepped into the street.
“We have to leave Caspardis. Now!”
“Whoa! You haven’t told me what’s going on.”
Morrigan clenched her eyes shut for a moment, then opened them.
“Come.”
“Morrigan—”
“Let’s go!”
Morrigan started running toward the west gate and Aelron ran after her.
“What has you so shaken?” Aelron asked. “Who was that traveler you were talking about?”
“The Traveler,” Morrigan sad. “He’s…”
She stopped and faced Aelron as the next bell tolled.
“My handler…the farrier…is dead. Not just dead. Assassinated. By the Traveler—the head of the Sodality. If my handler was targeted, I’m next. And now that you are with me, you’re just as much a target as I am.”
It was too much for Aelron to process. A few hours ago he didn’t know the Sodality existed, and now he was a target by association.
“Why would the Sodality want you dead? You just recruited me into this festering organization!”
“Because I’m not one of them anymore!” She turned and started jogging toward the west gate, which came into view less than three hundred yards up the street.
Aelron followed, but he couldn’t help thinking about something she’d said earlier. She’d called him a kindred spirit, and now he understood why. It was more than the craft, or his training, or whatever innate ability she’d seen in him.
Like Aelron, she was on the outside of the group she’d most identified with for years. She’d lost her family, even if it wasn’t blood.
“Only a small group of people know the Traveler’s true identity,” Morrigan said. “We call them the Watchers.”
“They watch the Traveler?”
“They watch the sky. Not literally. Not anymore. I told you, the Sodality is ancient.”
Morrigan looked away for a moment.
“My handler uncovered a coup,” she said. “Since only the Watchers knew the Traveler’s identity, he went to his handler, knowing that handler would go to his, and so on, until eventually a Watcher would find out. But before he did, he showed me something. He showed me who was planning the coup. I know the identity of the new Traveler. Not by name, but I’d know him on sight. And that’s why he wants me dead.”
Another bell tolled, and a squad of Caspardis guards ran past.
Aelron picked up his pace toward the west gate, and Morrigan followed. When they entered the plaza with three fountains, Aelron stopped.
The large, circular merchant tent at the center of the plaza had been converted into a military command pavilion. But that wasn’t what stopped Aelron.
Looming over the west wall were six towers, each topped with two cannons and a squad of archers.
The wall was no longer defensible.
On the rightmost tower, four flags rested in stands along the rear, and a Barathosian soldier stood next to them. He retrieved a blue flag from its stand and waved it back and forth.
A series of loud booms reverberated through the plaza as the first volley of cannon rounds tore through the command tent and surrounding fountains.
Aelron leapt to the side as a piece of marble the size of a wagon wheel flew toward him. As he landed against a wall of a building, he caught a glimpse of Kaitlyn and Toridyn running from the city wall.
Toridyn must have fixed Kaitlyn’s sight.
Aelron glanced behind to check on Morrigan. She was leaning against the same building as he.
More cannon fire—dull, as if at a great distance—came from behind Aelron.
The city must be surrounded by these towers. We don’t stand a chance.
The flag bearer waved a red flag this time.
A second series of booms had Aelron and Morrigan covering their ears.
The west wall collapsed into a cloud of dust and debris.
“This is no good,” Morrigan said. “We need to retreat now.”
“I can’t.”
“If your friends were anywhere near this wall, they’re gone!”
“They’re not just my friends!”
> Aelron faced Morrigan. “There’s something you need to know about me. And you’re not going to like it. The new archmage is my brother. He and his betrothed are in that mess somewhere. And so is Kagan. He’s dead, but he’s in there. He’s my brother’s penitent.”
Morrigan’s face was expressionless, and she glanced over Aelron’s shoulder.
Aelron looked back toward the plaza to see what had caught her attention.
The dust was settling, and the field beyond the west gate was a sea of Barathosian soldiers.
Morrigan placed a hand on Aelron’s shoulder. “Let’s take care of your family. But if there’s any chance of getting them out of this alive, I need you to do everything I say. Without question.”
Aelron nodded as the first wave of soldiers entered the city.
The battle for Caspardis had begun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
In the year 1018 BCE, Sajid Mukhtaar stepped over the threshold, becoming Sajid Lord Mukhtaar. Lord Mukhtaar added twenty-five covens to Clan Mukhtaar, which is a considerable number given the conflict between Clan Mukhtaar and Clan Davith. When the star fell from the sky, it struck the very desert where Mukhtaar and Davith priests battled one another.
- Coteon of the Steppes, “The Mukhtaar Chronicles: Coteonic Commentaries” (circa 680 BCE)
It took several decades for me to decipher the meaning of that last sentence. I had an encounter in that very desert recently. I am now convinced it is speaking of the formation of the Oasis of Zarush, in the Religarian desert, on the road to Dar Rodon.
I don’t know how best to pass this knowledge on. Kagan is purging necromancy from the Three Kingdoms, and I have been banished. I am a pariah in my own land, hunted, as are all of my fellow priests.
What am I saying? Did I learn nothing from Father Dominic? There is hope. Shealynd’s prophecy will give me strength.
I shall begin by writing the story of my journey on the road to Dar Rodon. Perhaps future generations will glean something. I will include it as an appendix to the Mukhtaar Chronicles. I suspect it won’t be the last story to tell.