by S E Meliers
‘You would like for me to kill this man?’ he stated. ‘Irrevocably.’
‘Is there any other way?’ she was baffled.
‘You would be surprised,’ he replied with a smile that was not pleasant.
‘I would like this man to cease to exist,’ she clarified as he seemed to need it. ‘I want him to be beyond any ability to threaten myself or my family. I want him to be silenced; unarmed; dead. Beyond the abilities of even such a skilled necromancer such as yourself, dead.’
Shade exchanged a glance with Song. ‘That is rather dead,’ he acknowledged. ‘Very well, I will see what I can do for you. Am I to know the name of the dead man?’
‘Gallant,’ she whispered. ‘His name is Gallant.’
Cinder
‘They think to sneak up on Amori,’ Cinder was amused. ‘It is a clever ploy. They have divided one army into three small ones, and have positioned them to make us think they intend to attack Truen. They may even throw one away by doing so. But the other two wings will swing by Truen straight to Amori.’
‘And there they will find you have prepared for them a few surprises,’ Ironwood was gleeful.
‘Yes,’ Cinder exchanged a grin with him. ‘Make sure that their positions are tracked and reported to Spider. We do not want the Lady Patience to run into trouble on her way to Truen.’
‘Yes, my Lord,’ Ironwood bowed. ‘It will be seen to. Regarding Lady Patience…?’
‘Yes,’ Cinder sat back and smiled. ‘I have heard the rumours. I have received no word, myself, but the Lady may wish to inform me in person. I will be very pleased if it is true.’
‘May it be so,’ Ironwood was fervent. ‘An heir would be a boon.’
‘Yes, and I will make it a legitimate heir, I have decided,’ Cinder gestured for a page to bring him wine. ‘A Rhyndelian wife will encourage our Rhyndelian conquests to accept a Shoethalian King.’
‘It will disappoint many Shoethalian hopefuls, however,’ Ironwood commented slyly.
Cinder laughed. ‘Maybe I will pass a law that any Shoethalian Lady in Rhyndelian land needs to be wed to a Rhyndelian Lord.’
‘Blending the bloodlines would be a clever move,’ Ironwood conceded. ‘Mayhap I will pick myself up a Rhyndelian wife in Guarn. They are said to be hardy sorts there.’
‘Hardy,’ Cinder snorted. ‘Bleak, dour, and surly are the terms I have most commonly heard used about the natives of Guarn.’
‘Hardy,’ Ironwood persisted. ‘Practical. Good and solid. The sort of women you leave at home and know everything will be managed and in control when you return. Not a flighty frippery like so many of the pretties about court who cannot even tie their own shoes. I want a woman, not an oil painting.’
‘Hmmm,’ Cinder agreed with the concept, but did not know if a Guarnite would be an appropriate source. The women that he had seen, dragged from working the fields in the immediate vicinity of his army, all looked the sort to slip a poison toadstool in the tea. ‘Well, regardless, they have left little force manning the fortifications at Guarn. We shall not make the same mistake as Lyendar. The King in the West shows no inclination to support this Rhyndelian army, but keep some scouts in the land between here and the next array of citadels. We shall hit Guarn hard and without warning. With no army coming from Garvia, and the existing army split into three between Truen and Amori, we should have time to get into Guarn and refortify before they can retaliate. How are our wizards?’
‘At last, they are travelling well,’ Ironwood acknowledged. ‘They are still conserving their energy, merely doing the odd bit of boosting for the scryers. Do you think to use them now?’
‘I do not want to exhaust them,’ Cinder was thoughtful, ‘as the Rhyndelian wizards are with the King in Garvia and will, no doubt, be marched out against us as soon as we take Guarn and demonstrate no intention to stay in the East. We will need our mages to combat theirs. But, perhaps small magics could be used without impacting the wizard’s abilities in the future?’
‘They can recover faster from a small expenditure of energy than a long, large expenditure that is true. I will speak to them about it. Have you any particular thing in mind?’ Ironwood asked.
‘I was hoping they could perhaps weaken the mortar at certain points of the wall, or use the water available from the swamps to undermine the walls, to improve the efficacy of our mangonels on the Guarnite’s defences,’ Cinder admitted.
Ironwood was intrigued. ‘I will speak to them.’
‘And the scryers? Do they foresee anything new?’
Ironwood shook his head. ‘They still see your success,’ he assured him. ‘But without detail as to how it will be obtained.’
‘How annoying,’ he grimaced.
‘They say that there are too many key elements indecisive for a distinct foreseeing,’ Ironwood shrugged. ‘Useless bit of magic, I say.’
‘I do not hold it in high regard myself, though the High Priests seem fond of it,’ Cinder shrugged. ‘As long as they continue to see my success, I do not care, though it would have been nice if they could have foretold that idiot Honesty’s dishonesty.’
Ironwood grinned. ‘Who knows, maybe they did? It is like they say, sometimes it is best to let it just happen as there’s an outcome that requires that event to occur.’
‘Makes me curious as to the outcome they seek,’ Cinder narrowed his eyes, before shaking the thought off. ‘Regardless, we can only focus on the events before us, and the current event is Guarn’s defences.’ His shoulder twinged as he unrolled a map onto his table, and he grimaced, favouring it as he placed weights to hold the parchment open. ‘The points I want to hit are there, there and there,’ he marked the spots with small stones, before straightening, absently rubbing his shoulder as he ruminated. ‘It would be good if we could find a way to enter the walls where the swamps lie and secrete a small force within Guarn without notice. An attack from within would be most unexpected, and their watch will be focussed on the walls unprotected by swamp.’
‘I will speak with the mages,’ Ironwood nodded thoughtfully. ‘It would be good, as you say.’ He regarded the Prince with concerned eyes. ‘That wound still bothers you, my Prince?’ he asked.
‘It heals slow,’ Cinder acknowledged. ‘The healer implies it to be my fault,’ he added with a grin. ‘An inability to stay still and prone like any decent patient would.’
Ironwood snorted. ‘Those healers – voracious in their appetites seek to keep men prone for more than one reason,’ he winked. ‘Perhaps you should obey, and see what comes of it?’
Cinder laughed. ‘I prefer to take, not be taken,’ he retorted.
‘You never know what you may be missing, some of those healers are mighty tasty,’ Ironwood leered.
Cinder threw the map at him. ‘Get out of here, you old lech, and win me a swamp mired fort.’
‘As you command,’ grinning, Ironwood retreated.
‘You should summon the healer, my Prince,’ Granite commented from his discrete station. ‘That shoulder is worrisome.’
‘Hmmm,’ Cinder frowned. ‘Sometimes I feel the cure is worse than the ailment,’ he admitted.
Granite’s brows drew together. ‘Earnest is a renowned healer.’
‘And she has served me well with past ills,’ Cinder assured his guard. ‘But this one seems beyond her talents. Felled by my own carelessness,’ he complained.
‘Or by the Lord Honesty’s plotting,’ Granite suggested. ‘We were lured into believing that position to be beyond arrow shot. The evidence of our eyes made that assumption for us. They shortened their aim to leave that impression.’
‘Cunning,’ Cinder acknowledged. ‘And in line with Honesty’s behaviour.’
‘To lure you within shot, my Prince,’ Granite ground out. ‘In the hopes of your death. But by luck and chance you stayed on the outer edge of their range. That shot was luck.’
‘And the wound minor,’ Cinder mused. ‘Perhaps spelled?’ he thought aloud.
‘My
Prince?’ Granite’s eyebrows shot up.
‘This wound will not heal clean, as such a minor wound should. They lured us to stand within their arrow range by leading us to believe it beyond their reach. I think that arrow was meant for me and bespelled to rot my flesh,’ Cinder growled. ‘Honesty was too smug,’ he spat angrily. ‘Why did I not see it before? He was too smug when he was brought before me. He knew that my death was coming slow, and that he had the ultimate revenge for the destruction of his holding and any punishment I meted out to him.’
‘I will send for a mage,’ Granite strode to the tent opening and yelled out.
‘It may be too late,’ Cinder murmured. ‘Let us hope that rumour holds true and the Lady carries my heir – I may not live to sire another.’
Praise
‘We prefer to be called Dveygar,’ the man said.
Eolwin, Praise reminded herself as she looked up at him. He certainly was not the short figure of the fire-side stories of her youth. He was not as large as an EAeryman, by any means, which may have been where the stories originated, but he was about the same height of an average Rhyndelian man. He was broad of shoulder and thick of arm and leg, and this width seemed at odds with his height. He wore his orange hair long and luxuriously groomed, and his wiry beard was full and beaded with gold. He wore leather, like an EAeryman, but it was studded with metal in geometric design. His breeches were of a coarse material, like none she had seen before, thick and sturdy, the colour of the earth, and buttoned at his calf where his highly polished boot rims met the material neatly so only a glimpse of titan leg hair could be seen as he walked.
‘Dveygar,’ she repeated. ‘You are certainly nothing like the stories,’ she commented.
He grinned, teeth large, even and white within that fiery beard. ‘Ah, you have barely met us,’ he said pushing open a heavy door for her. ‘Give us time.’
They walked through a chamber so vast that the edges were lost in shadow to her. Pillars supporting a roof of lofting arches with pointed peaks lined avenues within the capacious space. The stone floor was perfectly even and so highly polished that the soles of her shoes squeaked on its surface, but the pillars were pitted and scratched in texture though perfectly and regularly formed. The texture varied from round evenly spaced pitting to her head, to an odd scratching above, and was the same on each so she assumed it was done for aesthetics. It was certainly effective, if not what she’d consider beauty.
The chamber was not empty. Clusters of chairs, cushions, braziers of fire, screens of beautiful embroidery suspended on wooden frames, and tables were organised to a system she could not interpret within the eternal avenues of pillars. All these spaces were also occupied by Dveygar, all brassy headed and dressed in a variety of fashions. Their clothing tended to muted jewel tones, the cloth heavy, sleeves and skirts long. Studded leather was a feature, worn in hair, as belts, forming purses and clothing. Jewellery was also much in evidence; both women and men had fingers heavy with rings, thick silver bands at wrists and necks, and glitter at earlobes. She also saw many with glinting studs through lip, nose, or eyebrow: as if they had so much jewellery they had run out of conventional places to wear it and so had to make new holes to thread it through.
She felt very dull amongst this company, with only her simple gold rings in her ears and her opal torque at her throat, and in her dragon-rider clothing. The room was also quite cold, and she was glad of the heavy quilted jacket that Ember had insisted she buy for the journey – even with it on, she felt the hair on her arms stand on end though that could also be attributed to the many eyes that watched her pass with benign curiosity. Her hair however, which had always been her signature feature elsewhere, was quite unremarkable in this company. The EAeryman’s god could have his fill on red-headed virgins here she thought wryly.
‘This way,’ Eolwin’s guiding hand did not touch her, hovering just out of contact with her skin. He would like to touch, she thought smugly. She had not missed his admiring assessment. It was not often that a man looked at her that way and it made her feel sensuous and desirable despite her thickening middle.
Ember and his tangle had taken man form amongst the Dveygar, something that had astonished her as it was a closely guarded secret when amongst the men and women of Shoethal and Rhyndel. She wondered in the EAeryians knew that dragons could take man form, and rather thought not. But the Dveygar were different; they were dragon-allies, Ember had explained. The two peoples had been interlinked for longer than the oldest dragon-memory. To the Dveygar, the dragons were the emissaries of their Gods – of which they had five – made flesh in order to give the Dveygar constant reminders of the divine.
The dragons seemed to hold a homologous belief in their divinity and purpose to the Dveygar, as far as she could make out, though their concept of Gods were confusing to her.
In their man form, the dragons could enter the underground dwellings of the Dveygar, where they were treated like Kings who were returning home from successful campaigns abroad. Feasts were held in honour of their presence, important dignitaries were eager to present them with gifts, and there were meetings which the dragons attended where certain privileges and services were negotiated in quiet, respectful voices. They had been presented with lavish chambers in which to stay. Each chamber had its own bathing room, where the water was actually warm – brought from deep within the ground where everything was warmer than above.
At the moment, Ember and his kin were entrenched in one of the negotiations that she could never follow – partially because a great deal of the discussion was done in the Dveygar tongue which sounded close enough to her own that her head hurt because it thought she should be able to understand the words. Eolwin had been assigned as her guide when she had expressed an interest in not being present at any more of the meetings, and he had since shown her the considerable sights of their subterranean abode.
The chamber, by itself, was a sight to behold, but Eolwin’s goal was still to be obtained. They walked for what seemed to be an eternity of time for crossing a single chamber until they came to the back wall which had several doors of varying heights and grandness. The door he guided her to was narrow. He pushed it open and had to turn sideways to enter. Just inside the doorway was a trough that ran around the room. He touched a torch to the trough and it lit the viscous fluid within, burning brightly so the entire room glowed. Someone had made a mosaic over the naturally formed walls of the cave. The doorway was narrow in order not to disrupt the natural flow of the walls.
It was beautiful.
Due to the natural formation of the walls, the entire mosaic could not be seen at one time and she had to move about the room. The tiny shards of pottery that formed the mosaic were brightly coloured, some glazed and some raw. She marvelled at the time it would take to create this piece of artwork. The chamber was not large, but it was not small either, and the mosaic covered from the cave roof to the cave floor – both of which were uneven and as natural as the walls. ‘This is amazing,’ she said, gape-mouthed with awe.
‘It is no less amazing the hundredth time you see it then the first,’ he agreed, head tilted back so as to view the walls. ‘It is ancient. We discovered it when we made the chamber beyond. We cannot say if it was our ancestors who made it, or some people who were here before us. But, the workmanship is inspiring, and how they managed to reach so high is baffling. It would take lifetimes to complete just a section of this work. We think maybe magic was used in its construction.’
‘The dragons?’ she asked.
‘They say not,’ he lifted his shoulders in a baffled shrug. ‘The trough that goes around the entire room, following the natural shape of the walls, was here already. It is made of some type of pottery. We have been unable to determine the nature of the fluid that burns without smoke, but it does not need to be replenished no matter how long the fire is lit, or how often. We monitor the level in the trough and it does not decrease. It also cannot be removed. In any other vessel, it evaporates.’
She examined the trough closer, but it was just a series of overlapping ceramic tiles curved to cup the fluid that burnt so brightly. ‘What is the story of the mosaic?’ she asked, stepping back to see if she could spot a start to the pictures on the wall. They seemed to flow endlessly into one another.
‘We do not know,’ he shook his head. ‘There seem to be many stories. There is one main figure, wearing a crown, which appears in the central wall, there,’ he pointed to a figure made androgynous by tile, wearing a pale crown, ‘which we think is pivotal to the tales around it, but what role it holds we are not sure. A King? A Queen?’
‘There are dragons,’ she noted. There was also a white haired figure which reminded her of Calico, and her promise to get the statue for her.
‘There are also several red-haired figures,’ he grinned, pointing. ‘When I was a child, I used to pretend that one was me and that I was destined for great adventures.’
‘Ha,’ she shared his grin. ‘That one could be me, then, with the long red hair, and that one could be Ember – see the hair is more red and less orange than ours.’
‘True,’ he laughed with her.
They went around the walls, making up stories to go with the figures depicted. ‘Maybe this is the purpose of this,’ she said. ‘To entertain. The ancient version of a children’s story.’
‘Children’s stories usually have a moral – something for the children to learn, like the little boy who did not listen to his mother and ended up being dragged into the dark caves by the ogres,’ he commented absently as he examined a section of the mosaic.
She shuddered. ‘What a terrible tale,’ she said.
He looked at her with chagrin. ‘The mother saves him, in the end,’ he qualified. ‘I guess that story is just a Dveygar one.’
‘It is not one I know,’ she was trying to get a good look at the crown on the androgynous sovereign. ‘There are stones on that crown, big round ones.’