by Radu Aldea
“A sorceress,” Kara hissed. “They had a sorceress with them to keep them away from humans. And they stayed clear of the inhabited areas.”
“I see that sorceresses have something against you as well. Were they supposed to meet up with her again?”
“Yes, but that time has passed. By now they must suspect I am alive,” Kara answered Michael. He saw she was thinking intensely.
“We have to leave here immediately,” Michael told everyone.
“Let them return if they dare,” Kara spit the words.
“If Julia did this she might return to finish the job,” Cecilia mumbled.
“You don’t understand,” Michael spoke again. “Sorceresses are very reclusive and usually don’t leave that island of theirs. And they run away from senators as if they are demons from hell. In fact, the only sorceresses who don’t run from senators are those who are rumored to be immune to their powers.”
“It’s not a rumor. Some are immune. Those who are the emperor’s guards are, anyway.”
Michael saw that as Kara spoke the words understanding hit her. She came to the same conclusion as he did.
“But why?” This time Kara only addressed Michael.
“I don’t know! I was hoping you would. Anyway, it is possible that a senator captured some sorceresses. You could probably do that easily. They are not able to break a senator’s hold on them.”
“Yes, and if some senator got news about some sorceress alone in their region he might pursue her. And, unlike senators, sorceresses are not only born of other sorceresses.”
“Until you know more you should leave.”
“Yes, but there are more things I have to do. I just got an idea what to do with them,” Kara pointed to the men she captured. “Go to the cages and bring me some ravens.”
Cecilia and Amelia hurried to execute her order. Nobody asked why she needed the ravens. All of them seemed to understand she had a plan.
“I need to bury my father. I won’t just let him lie here. We use cremation so there shouldn’t be a problem. There is no need for a ceremony.”
“All right! We should take him to the courtyard. I don’t want to burn down the villa.”
Then Kara turned to the man she captured.
“You will write a message to this count in Essland and tell him that I died but you were attacked by sorceresses. You barely escaped with your life but your commander didn’t. You don’t have my body because I am at the bottom of the lake. You will go back to him as fast as you can and you will avoid all the populated areas. Cross the mountains and go through Cuttland. Before you do that, take my father’s body to the courtyard.”
The leader started writing the message while the other men carried the body.
“Come with me!” Kara said to Michael.
He followed her through the corridors and relished the moments they were alone. They entered a room that seemed to be used for storage. Kara pushed a stone and a lock was revealed. She took a key from around her neck. It fitted nicely. When she turned the key a hidden door opened. They entered and he saw they were in a library. There were maybe fifty volumes there, which wasn’t much. Michael was sure that the villa had a proper library with thousands of volumes. This was the room where they kept the rare and very valuable books. Kara started shoveling books in a bag.
“There are wizard books in here. I don’t know which are important but you should take a look. Those that are, we’ll take with us.”
It shouldn’t have been a surprise. The senators defeated the wizards in the war and took over their possessions, books included. It was astonishing they didn’t destroy them. Some must’ve done exactly that but Kara’s family decided to keep them.
“Have you read them?” Michael asked her.
“Yes, but as you can imagine I didn’t understand them completely. I assume it would be the same for you with our books.”
“I guess. These books were written so only the respective kind would understand them.”
Michael looked over the titles. There were about twenty books for wizards and only four or five of them were not rare. He put them in with the other books.
“So I guess we are leaving and you have a plan. Shouldn’t you write to your clients and tell them to gather your armies? Don’t you have some that you can trust?”
“I trust all of them, some more than others. I also trust Julia implicitly. I believe with every fiber of my being she didn’t do this. But you and the others do not think the same. My judgment could be clouded so until we know for sure it is better I stay dead.”
“I don’t know this girl, but you do, and if you say she didn’t do this I believe you.”
“I’ve known her all my life. She’s my age, so we grew up together, played together. Our families have the same convictions and an alliance. Other than Aleyna she is the best friend I have. A betrayal like this is inconceivable to me.”
She uncovered a hidden safe in the floor. There were thousands of gold coins in there, a large movable fortune. Michael didn’t think the senators were poor and this proved it.
“How much do you think we should take?”
“I guess it would depend on how long the trip would be.”
“Right! See that small chest there. Fill it with them. I have more gold!”
Somehow that didn’t surprise him. He suspected this was not the only residence Kara’s family had. There were probably many others. And the books she took with her were much more valuable than the gold he saw. He would’ve made copies and stashed them in different places. Kara most certainly did the same. She just didn’t want anyone else to get their hands on those books. Some of them looked more than three hundred years old, which meant they were invaluable.
They returned to the hall and found that Cecilia and Amelia had returned with the ravens. The man had finished writing the message.
“Write another message to the sorceresses in Veneguard. Tell them that I was dead and you barely escaped after you were attacked by them, which was an unwelcome surprise, since you had a sorceress with you. You didn’t manage to return in time to her so you are writing to them because you don’t know what else to do.”
“That’s a nice touch,” Michael told her. “They might have some code.”
“They certainly do, if they are involved, but he wouldn’t know it. Anyway, I want to scare them a little.”
“That would frighten them more than a little. I think the Conclave would be frightened to death. This is a very complicated game you are playing.”
It was. All the senators formed the Senatorial Order. All the sorceresses formed the Conclave. The Conclave was one of the powers of the empire, second only to the Order. The human counts and dukes were the third leg of this tripod, albeit the weakest one. Although, if he thought about it, the humans didn’t dread the Conclave that much. The almost unlimited numbers they could send against the sorceresses would be enough to drown them in blood. It was possible the humans could win that war. What they really feared were the senators and their mind control. The Order was not likely to give them any more power than they already had, which wasn’t much. It wasn’t likely to let them destroy the Conclave for any reason, either. They tolerated the sorceresses and the only laws they obeyed were their own. And those regulated the relations among senators, not between senators and humans. As far as the senatorial laws went the senators could do anything they dreamed of to a human. They were quick to let the humans know they were masters and squashed any thoughts of rebellion. The Order, after its victory over the wizards, was the true power of the land and would annihilate any other it considered a threat.
“It’s not that complicated. I just want to find out the truth,” Kara told Michael. Then she spoke to her servants. “Go get me my battle-armor, my father’s mask and some clothes for me and Michael. We need to pass for rich merchants.”
“Do you think anybody would think of us as merchants?”
Kara shrugged. She tied the two messages to the feet of two ravens and sent them
flying. They would reach Essland and Cuttland soon enough.
“Let’s go and cremate my father.”
In the courtyard, Kara’s father was placed on a stone table.
“Do you think you can cremate him, so that the ashes will be left? I want something of my father to remain.”
“I can! Are you sure you don’t want some kind of ceremony?”
“We are senators. We are born and raised to fight wars. If we died fulfilling our duty and without dishonoring our ancestors, it is the only ceremony we need. My father lived with honor.” Kara leaned in and kissed her father on the forehead. She whispered. “I’m sorry. It shouldn’t have ended like this. I will make you proud.”
Then she stepped back and gestured to Michael that he could cremate the body. The ball of fire he used was not as hot as the one he had used on those bodies near the lake, but it was just as quick. Michael had the feeling Kara didn’t want to prolong this any longer. Cecilia and Amelia had arrived before the cremation began and they both had tears in their eyes. They must’ve cared for Kara’s father as well. One was holding a large bowl and the other a mask. He knew what the mask was. It was a custom of the Suttland senators to wear battle-masks. They were not frightening by themselves, but the senators from this province fought enough battles with unrivaled ferocity and success so the battle-masks had gained a grim reputation and struck terror into the hearts of their opponents. When they put on their masks you knew they were preparing for war.
He was right that Kara was in a hurry. She didn’t wait for her father’s ashes to cool and gathered them in a bowl. Then she turned to the men she had captured.
“Help Cecilia and Amelia pack the horses. When you are finished with that take what you need for a long trip and leave for Essland. Do you understand?”
She didn’t wait to see if they understood. Michael was sure they did. He also noticed the use of senatorial power even though her orders were spoken, not only thought. When she had spoken to the girls her orders were not backed by senatorial power. The servants were doing what their mistress ordered them to do, just like they would with anyone else.
“You want to come with me?” Kara asked Michael.
He saw that Cecilia and Amelia were holding their breaths, which meant that the fact she invited him to come with her was significant. Perhaps it was a test.
“I will!”
“What I will show you now, few persons have ever seen,” she told him.
Michael followed her to the cellar of the villa. She had the bowl with her father’s ashes and his mask with her. Somewhere around there must’ve been a dungeon. Every senatorial residence had one. But the rooms below ground were usually used for storage. When they went down another level he suspected they were indeed heading to the dungeon and she was going to show him some prisoner they had there. Kara must’ve read his mind without using her powers because she spoke.
“We’re not going to the dungeon. We have no prisoners in there.”
Of course they were not going there. A dungeon was not something that few people had ever seen. It must’ve been something more important. He will just wait and see.
She led them to an empty room. It didn’t take her much effort to reveal another hidden lock in a wall. It was the same type as he had seen upstairs when they entered the hidden library. Now behind the door was a tunnel which directed them deeper underground. They only had the torches to light the way. The tunnel ended in a system of natural caves. They formed a labyrinth. If you didn’t know where you were going you could get lost in there. Kara finally stopped in the middle of a tunnel. She brought her torch to a niche in a wall. If you didn’t know it was there you would not find it. At first Michael thought the niche was just that, but Kara disappeared through it. Then he realized it was an entrance to another cave.
He went after her and came to a large cavern. At one point this had been a natural cave as well, but it was no longer just that. People had worked on it and sculptures cut directly in the stone of the cave adorned the room. Hundreds of niches all with urns in them, again cut directly in the stone of the cave, covered all the walls. Maybe half the niches had masks alongside the urns. Michael understood exactly what this was, Kara’s family crypt. Of all the things the senators kept secret, a family crypt was the most guarded secret they had. For her to reveal something like this to him would take a lot of trust.
She removed the lid from one of those urns and moved the ashes from the bowl into the urn. Then she put the lid back on and hanged the mask. Michael saw the name of Kara’s father inscribed on the urn. Above that niche was another urn with a mask. The name told him that was Kara’s mother. To the right was another urn inscribed with Kara’s name. No mask was put there. None of the urns to the right were inscribed. When the builders made this room, it was designed for generations and generations of senators.
“This is my family’s crypt, as you have guessed. This is my mother’s urn, but there are no ashes in it. There’s just the mask. We place the mask here when a senator dies.”
“You never found her body?”
“No, we haven’t!”
“What happened to her?”
“Sixteen years ago she left the villa with a hundred and fifty soldiers. She went to patrol the land, just in case one of the few wizards who were still alive came this way. By then the war was mostly over and wizard attacks were rare. Still, we had better security. It was like a spider web spread over miles of land. There was no possible way a wizard could come within ten miles of the villa without being spotted, or so we thought. We were really good at protecting ourselves and hunting wizards. We had years of experience. That day she did not return. We went looking for her and followed the tracks to a field. There they ended. There were no signs of a battle, just extensive burn marks, not unlike those you left near the lake.”
“A wizard killed her. I guess it was possible he got close enough.”
Kara laughed softly.
“You think so? I was careless; the years of peace had made me so. Back then, when my mother left the villa she always did so with more than a hundred soldiers. They were spread in three concentric circles, the largest one with a radius more than a mile long. Slipping through it to get close enough to kill my mother was not possible. She would’ve escaped before he could get to her and sounded the alarm. And even if a wizard could’ve gotten to her, some of her men would’ve escaped. None did. None were found. When my father discovered the field he sounded the alarm. In a very short time hundreds of senators raised a senatorial net. You know what that is and how well it worked. Yet we found nothing. Two more wizards were killed after this, but none in Suttland. My mother was one of the last senators killed in that war.”
“And after today you think it wasn’t a wizard that killed your mother, but sorceresses.”
Kara shrugged.
“Why would sorceresses attack a powerful senator? What could they have gained?”
“Nothing! Or that’s what I thought. We were already the most powerful senatorial family and that hasn’t changed. The sorceresses wouldn’t have dared angering the Order and they answered to the old emperor. And he didn’t have any reason to attack us.”
“So a wizard or more than one killed your mother. By then I am sure they were more interested in hiding than taking revenge, but you never know.”
“That was my reasoning until today when that man told me something while he had me tied up on the ground. That made me realize I ignored a pattern that had occurred sixteen years ago and an unfathomable reason.”
“What was it?”
“The last five killings of senators attributed to wizards were of young powerful female senators. And in every case all that remained were burn marks. No bodies were recovered. Why would a wizard take time to do that?”
Michael didn’t know. There was nothing he could say to make her feel better. He noticed she didn’t tell him what the reason was or what that man told her. It was easy enough to guess, although he thought she
knew much more than she let him suspect.
“So I guess you have a destination in mind?”
“I do. We will leave for the Serelian Mountains immediately. There I will be safe for the moment, I think, and I have to get things organized.”
“Will your clients stand by you?”
“Some will, I am sure.”
“We are on the brink of a new war, aren’t we?”
“Yes!”
Chapter six
Aleyna kept drifting from blank unconsciousness to ridiculous dreams and back. Sometimes those dreams became inescapable nightmares. She was cold and wet in most of them and in the worst she was drowning. The cold was bad enough, but it was the drowning that made her feel a terror that overcame her senses and paralyzed her. She wanted to scream and her lungs filled with water. No sounds came out; there was just the pain of trying to breathe under water. Somehow, Aleyna knew she was dying, drowning in a creek. Memories started to come back to her. The ridiculous part was the creek was not that deep and she could’ve crossed it easily. The water was waist high at its deepest. She would’ve laughed if it wasn’t so stupid. All she had to do was wake up and she couldn’t. It was luck that the water was not flowing very fast and there were no rapids or waterfalls. If she hit a big boulder or encountered a waterfall she would be really dead. Not that she was far from that now.
Aleyna felt something grabbed her. Suddenly she could breathe again or at least gasp for air. Her lungs still hurt and so did her shoulder blade. The first assessment that she had been lucky she didn’t hit any rocks seemed to be wrong. But she wasn’t drifting away anymore and that made the dreams better. There was no more suffocating and gasping for air. It felt as if a crucial moment had passed and her living gained the upper hand over her dying.
Time to wake up, sleeping beauty! The command was so powerful that she had no other choice but to obey it. Aleyna thought it must’ve been Kara giving her an order. The voice she had heard sounded so much like her friend. She chose to ignore the subtle differences. Nobody said that a mental command from a senator sounded exactly like a verbal command. She opened her eyes with difficulty, but she was finally awake.