He worked for more than an hour, losing track of time as his mind held to the task before him, his concentration complete. This depth of focus explained why he did not hear the approaching footsteps until they were only paces from the tent. Thinking it to be Kellatra, he knew that blowing out the candle would look suspicious, so he hastily closed the cover of the book, hiding it and his supplies beneath a folded blanket at the back of the tent. He smiled as the tent flap opened, expecting to see his tired wife, seeking his arms to curl into for the rest of the night. Instead, the tip of a sword, a bone-white blade in moonlight, thrust into the tent, and the face of a man confronted him.
Rankarus instinctively raised his hands and suppressed the desire to call out an alarm. Not only might he end up with a blade through the chest, but it could lead to fighting that resulted in the children being harmed. He needed to rely on his wits, and his wife’s proclivities to escape this predicament.
The man gestured with a black uniformed arm for Rankarus to exit the tent. He complied with the order, keeping his hands held high as he stepped out into the moonlight once more. Six men stood around the tent, five with drawn swords. Academy guards. Rankarus recognized the uniforms. He also knew the sixth man, a blue cloak draped over his shoulders. The back of Rankarus’s throat began to burn as his stomach churned.
“Where is my daughter?” Kellatra’s father spoke quietly but firmly.
“The cabin.” Rankarus pointed to the house, trying to ignore the tip of the sword digging through his shirt and into his skin.
“The other tent?” Kellatra’s father asked.
“Our children and a servant.”
The seer pulled the flap of the tent back to inspect for himself. Rankarus craned his neck to look inside the tent. Luntadus and Lantili slept curled up beside Jadaloo’s slumbering form.
“If they wake, keep them quiet. If this one makes a noise, kill him.” Kellatra’s father spoke to one of the armed men, ignoring Rankarus. The seer turned and walked toward the cabin. He gestured toward two of the other guards, and they accompanied him up the dirt path. Rankarus followed them with his eyes, belatedly noticing that Abananthus no longer slept on the porch. Where had the man gotten off to? Hope and fear warred in Rankarus’s mind. Abananthus might present their best chance at escape, but a wrong move would get them all killed.
Rankarus glanced again at the children and Jadaloo sleeping in the tent. He wished he could think of something to do. He could not disarm the guards. If rumors were true, these Academy guards were as skilled with The Sight as with swords. He could call out to warn Kellatra, but the guards would likely kill him for it. And what then would happen to the children and Jadaloo? And what would Kellatra do? He remembered the councilmembers burning in her father’s study with a shudder. With her family threatened, she might set the entire mountain ablaze.
He watched as Kellatra’s father opened the door and entered the cabin with the two guards close behind him. He strained his ears to hear anything, any words, any commotion, any sign of what transpired inside those log-lined walls. He did not attempt to communicate with the guard holding him captive. The look on the man’s face suggested he’d happily kill Rankarus if provoked. He needed to stay alive to protect the children. He considered again the possibility of attacking the guards in hopes that Jadaloo and the children might escape, potentially with the help of Abananthus, wherever the man might be. He rejected it as too risky and likely to end with him dead and the children caught soon afterward.
He tried to casually watch the woods near the cabin, hoping to catch a glance of a shadow that might reveal Abananthus’s location. Maybe his friend could sneak the children out the back of their tent and into the woods.
A shadow by a tree seemed to move, and Rankarus breathed quickly as optimism welled in his mind. The two guards near the children’s tent grunted and fell to their knees. Rankarus watched them kneel as they raised their hands to the arrowheads bursting from their chests, blood dripping down their hands as they moaned and collapsed to the ground. The guard beside him turned to look around, a flash of reflected moonlight streaking across his throat. The guard dropped his sword, hands clutching to his neck, blood gushing over the leather of his gloves. Rankarus stumbled back as the guard fell to the ground. Another man now stood before him. One he knew.
“Good ta see ya again, Rankarus.”
Rankarus’s legs went weak, and he had to clench his lower muscles to keep the urge to release his bladder at bay. How could he be standing there with a dead guard’s blood on his dagger? Where had he come from? How had he followed them? He realized the answer to the last question as he watched yet another a man step from behind the wagon while two more approached from the woods.
“Wish I could agree, Kinorus.” Rankarus cursed his lack of foresight. Kinorus knew from Jantipur that he had returned to Juparti and the City of Leaves. He had likely heard about the deaths of the Academy Council members. It would have not taken long for his spies and informants throughout the city to mention the missing codex and even less time for him to realize the connection with Rankarus. From there, it would have been a matter of paying enough money to locate the surviving Academy Council member and follow him and his guards as they left the city. They should never have stayed so long at Tamateraa’s cabin. They should have consulted the old woman and set to running again. It was a mistake he blamed himself for as much as Kellatra. She had the excuse of being obsessed with the codex. He had no such defense for his foolishness.
“What’s in the tents?” Kinorus held the blade of his dagger to Rankarus’s throat.
“Nothing.” Rankarus found he had trouble speaking, his airway dry and constricted.
“Get the nothin’s out here.” Kinorus swept his free hand outward and the three other men began to search the tents. Finding the first one empty, they quickly pulled Jadaloo and the children from the second, hands covering their captives’ mouths.
“It’s all going to be fine,” Rankarus said to Luntadus and Lantili, their eyes wide with terror. He saw that Luntadus had wet himself in fright. The sight filled him with anger. He wanted to take the blade from Kinorus’s hand and drive it up into the man’s skull. He should have done so ten years past when he had the chance. He’d been a fool to think the criminal would forget the debt of a theft so great, even if he had been stealing what belonged him.
“It’ll all be fine for some, that’s fer certain.” Kinorus spun Rankarus around and held the blade to his throat before shouting at the cabin. “We gots the family. Yer men is dead. We wants the book.”
Rankarus held his breath, waiting to see how their lives would get worse, as they had every day since the fire at the inn and the arrival of that damnable book. A moment or two passed and Kellatra’s father stepped onto the porch. He said something too quiet to hear to the men inside, and a few moments later, the guards brought Kellatra and Tamateraa outside, blades at their throats. Rankarus realized that all he loved hovered at the edge of death, steel pressed to tender flesh, blood waiting to flow.
“We don’t wants no trouble,” Kinorus yelled beside Rankarus’s ear, shoving him slightly to emphasize his coming words. “We wants this one, and we wants the book.”
Rankarus’s heavy breath filled his ears in the silence that followed. Kellatra’s father stared at Kinorus, two strangers seeking the same thing, each willing to kill for it, Rankarus and his family caught between them.
“Who are you?” Kellatra’s father stepped forward to the edge of the porch.
“I’m the one tellin’ ya what’s what and what to do, and that’s all ya need ta know.” Kinorus’s breath smelled as rancid as his words as they passed from behind Rankarus’s ear.
“I do not have the book, so killing them will provide you no leverage.” Kellatra’s father’s voice rang with a barely controlled anger. “Proceed if you wish.”
“Don’t tuss with me, old man,” Kinorus shouted at Kellatra’s father, spittle spraying across Rankarus’s cheek.
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br /> “Do you know whom you address?” Kellatra’s father straightened his shoulders.
“The man what’s gonna gives me the book I wants, Councilman.” Rankarus heard the smile in Kinorus’s words. “Now give me the book or we’ll toss the house and take it.”
“It’s not in the house.” Kellatra stared at Rankarus as she spoke. He wondered if she suspected what he’d done. “We would give it to you if we had it.”
“It’s in the tent.” Rankarus licked his lips and swallowed. “I took it from the house. It’s in the tent.” He pointed to the tent he shared with Kellatra. “Just take it and go.”
“We’ll be takin’ more than just the book. You and me gots business to settle.” He turned to the man holding Luntadus. “Check it.”
The man passed Luntadus to his companion holding Lantili and grabbed the canvas of the tent, yanking to pull it from the ground. He kicked through the blankets and bedrolls, opening the leather packs and emptying them to the matted grass. Rankarus’s heart held motionless between beats. He did not see the book. Or his supplies. How could that be possible?
“Nothin’.” The man turned back to Kinorus.
“Ya said the book was in the tent.” Kinorus pressed the blade into Rankarus’s neck, blood dribbling down his chest. “Where is it?”
“I don’t know.” Rankarus noticed the panic in his own voice, but it sounded as though it came from another man a thousand paces away. Where could the book be?
“I told ya not to tuss with me.” Kinorus turned to the man holding the children. “Kill ’em both.”
“No!” Rankarus made to grab at the metal biting into his neck, hoping to reach the children before the man holding them used a similar blade to end their lives.
Kellatra cried out from the porch as Lantili screamed and Jadaloo fought with the man holding her.
Then light filled the night, blinding him with its sudden brilliance, the intense heat forcing his free hand to cover his eyes. The man who had held Lantili and Luntadus screamed and flailed, fire consuming every finger’s width of him, a ball of howling, bursting amber staggering back and rolling on the ground.
The confusion that followed advantaged those with swift minds.
“Kill ’em all,” Kinorus shouted as he made to drag the blade across Rankarus’s neck.
To continue reading the Seer story arena follow this link.
THE CARNIVAL
LEOTIN
FLAMES, NEAR and far, filled the blackness of night, the stationary flickering of campfires in the distance competing with the illuminating dance of fireflies near at hand. Leotin watched the luminous insects float away as he continued to count the campfires surrounding the castle in the fields below the wall. He stood in the shadows of the western tower. No need to attract an arrow. When he reached a hundred and saw still more to tally, he stopped, the endeavor becoming too unsettling. It had taken a day for the Tanshen army to arrive and make camp to initiate its siege. They would, no doubt, begin to build battering rams and stone casters to break down the stronghold walls come morning. He did not know how long the castle and its volatile concoction of newly merged inhabitants could hold against a dedicated siege. He suspected it numbered days, not weeks.
He turned from the fires of the fields and town to study those demarcating the four regions within the courtyard. He had taken Pi-Gento’s well-argued advice to allow the remnants of the militia into the castle. As Pi-Gento had pointed out, once under siege, they needed more men to mount the walls for defense. Without the militia to fight for them, they would be swiftly overwhelmed.
While Leotin agreed with this reasoning, he wanted to ensure it did not lead to a battle within the walls that would leave the one outside them superfluous. To that end, he ordered the militia to abandon their arms before being hoisted over the walls of the castle. Once inside, townspeople and carnival folk were dispatched via ropes over the walls to round up as many foodstuffs and supplies as possible from the town before the impending arrival of the Tanshen Army. The barricade of the castle gate had been too thorough to easily reverse, but the castle held enough pulleys and winches to make the task manageable, if somewhat time consuming. A few of the townspeople had run off, hoping to take their chances on the road before the army arrived. Leotin wished them luck, although they would not likely find it.
The castle courtyard now held four factions, each assigned its own corner, meeting only minimally for meals and defensive projects. So far, the carnival folk, especially Palla and the outlanders, had managed to keep the townspeople, the pilgrims, and the militia from more than baring teeth at one another. It helped that Leotin had Pi-Gento hide the wine and ale. It also helped to have the roagg and yutan patrolling the grounds between the four groups.
Leotin felt an odd sadness about the passing of the wyrin. He had not known Shifhuul well, and the creature’s surly disposition rankled many, but he recognized something in him. Something familiar. Regardless, he had balanced the other outlanders as a fighting unit, and his death reduced considerably Leotin’s leverage with the townspeople and the militia. It would require all his skill and showmanship to keep the castle from becoming a bloodbath. It could prove a wasted effort, as the army beyond the walls might cause that blood to flow nonetheless, but for now, an external threat helped create bonds that would otherwise be impossible.
“Do you think they’ll kill us?”
Leotin turned to find Donjeo standing nearby in the shadows, staring out over the wall at the army. He’d been thinking too deeply if the boy could approach him unawares. It would not do to die of a knife blade slipped between his ribs by one of those in the courtyard who might wish to see him replaced. There were certainly many such people in the castle.
“They may have to fight the militia for that honor.” Leotin joined Donjeo to look at the army once more.
“The militia didn’t have so many men.” Donjeo’s voice squeaked slightly. The boy had been transforming into a man the last few years, his limbs getting long and gangly, his voice deepening, only to break pitch when least expected.
“No matter how many enemies you face, they can only kill you once.” As he spoke the words, Leotin realized they did not hold the comfort he’d intended.
“I’d rather not face them at all.” Donjeo shivered as his eyes followed one of the fireflies.
“Neither would I.” Leotin sighed. When would he once again be allowed to be nothing more than a carnival barker? Not a spy for a distant master. Not the impromptu tahn of a castle under siege. Merely a man trying to entertain folk for a few coins. He did not think it would be soon. Realizing his statement did not strengthen the boy’s fortitude, he spoke again.
“I won’t let them kill you.”
“You have a plan?” Donjeo looked over to him, their eyes of a similar height.
When had the boy grown so tall?
“When have you known me to allow circumstances to dictate what happens in this carnival?” Leotin had, of course, allowed circumstances to do just that, which had directly led to their being trapped in a castle under siege. He kept the sentiment behind that thought from entering his voice. A showman did not reveal his true disposition.
“Never.” Donjeo’s smile bespoke unreasonable reassurance, but a glint in his eyes hinted at darker thoughts.
“Exactly.” Leotin noted the boy’s smile and the look in his eyes as he placed a hand on Donjeo’s shoulder, feeling a surge of emotion rise in his chest. The boy had become a son these last eight years. Raised by the carnival, true, but Leotin considered himself father to them all, and especially Donjeo. A boy needed to know someone in particular cared for him, not merely that a crowd held concern for his welfare. He did not know if he could keep the promise to protect Donjeo, but he would certainly sacrifice what might be necessary to do so.
“I forgot. Sorry.” Donjeo shook his head as though to clear the straw from it and opened his hand. A small wooden cylinder sat in his palm. “A night jay came.”
“Le
t me see.” Leotin took the message tube from the boy, pulling the small slip of paper free and translating the coded language. Only Donjeo knew of the night jays and the messages from the carnival’s secret benefactor.
When two cats hunt the pantry, the wise mouse flees while they fight.
The wise mouse would flee — if it hadn’t built its own trap.
“Shall I fetch you ink and paper?” Donjeo glanced back as though he might dash down the stairs of the wall.
“No.” Leotin looked out at the army beyond the castle crenellations. “I’ll stay here a while longer.”
Leotin decided to respond to the dispatch at a later date, after he knew what final situation he faced. While he normally would have written a reply immediately, he found he could not sufficiently fear his master’s wrath for a delayed response. His master held the threat of death over his head, but would have to wait behind an army, a fanatic militia, and an angry town. Oddly, although trapped inside the walls of a castle with thousands of armed men surrounding it, he suddenly felt more in control of his life and destiny than he had in years.
To continue reading the Carnival story arena follow this link.
THE PHILOSOPHER
SKETKEE
THIN SHADOWS flicked across the stone wall as the air twisted the candle flame, darkness overwhelming the pale yellow light. Sketkee walked cautiously down the stairs to the castle cellars. Rakthors did not have exceptionally good night vision. She would have preferred the greater illumination of a lantern, but feared its additional light might draw attention. As she stepped from stair to stair farther into the earth, a part of her mind slowly counted down from one thousand. When the count finished, Kadmallin would begin his portion of the plan elsewhere.
The Dragon Star (Realms of Shadow and Grace: Volume 1) Page 64