“I am Donaie Swarl, Chosen of the Forge of Wheklam and King in Lead. This is my fleet. Do you surrender your lands to me?”
“Will you show my people mercy if I surrender?”
“I will offer the same mercy I gave the Guntha if you do not.” Her hand gestured to the waters behind her, where the column of flame and ash and smoke continued to roar into the skies.
“Spare the people in my palace then, and I will surrender.”
“I do not negotiate.” Her swords barely seemed to move, but the points found themselves in either side of his neck just the same, and the movement cut through to bone with ease.
His death was fast, but Marsfel died just the same.
The cold was an old friend now. It wrapped itself around Andover Lashk and wove its spell through his skin and muscles alike. He did not shiver. Shivering took energy. Instead he walked, one foot forward and then the other.
The perpetual twilight was no better than it had been, but now the sky above was bloody and clearly showed the silhouettes of the great mountains he had heard so much about.
The Seven Forges were before him and Andover found the cold hardly mattered at all. His exhaustion was still there, but that too seemed a trifling thing in comparison. The mountains were enormous. So much larger than he’d have thought possible before.
Delil walked next to him and he saw her eyes looking at the vast black surface facing them. The only highlights he could see were the places where the reddish light from the clouds accented the more prominent edges of stone.
“You face Durhallem,” Drask spoke from directly behind him. When last he’d looked, the man had been almost a hundred feet to his left and now he was only a foot away. How a man that large could move so quickly, so quietly, still unsettled him.
“That is the mountain? Where is the tunnel you spoke of?” Andover looked but could see no sign of the gate he was supposed to pass through in order to enter the valley of the Taalor.
Drask chuckled. “We are not close enough for you to see it yet.”
He looked away from the mountain and stared hard at Drask. “We’re not?”
“Not nearly. We have two more days of traveling before we reach the passage.”
“Two more days?” He looked back at the mountain, which already consumed most of the horizon. “We’re still two days away?”
“Durhallem is a very large mountain, Andover Lashk. We have at least two more days of walking before we are there.”
Andover shook his head.
Bromt walked closer and without preamble he swung one massive fist at the side of Andover’s head. Andover worked on reflex alone and ducked under the blow, skittering back and staring hard at the man.
Drask spoke as if nothing had happened. “That is two more days to make sure you are ready for whatever you face in the Pass.”
Bromt came for him again, his eyes the only sign of his features in the darkness.
Look to any map of Fellein and at the very southern edge is the Corinta Ocean and on some of the more sophisticated and detailed maps there is an indication of the Brellar below that.
There were people who had come from Brellar and a few of them had made it as far as Roathes in their time, but most of them were stopped long before they planned on ending their journeys. Roathians were not known for their tolerance of anyone with knowledge of the seas.
Still, it happened. There were tales written of the Brellar, and a few of the older books at the Imperial Academy had illustrations of the Brellar and careful depictions of the scars they placed on the their bodies.
In total there were seventeen recorded situations, determined to be historically accurate, of the Brellar making it to Fellein and living to tell their tales.
So this time around Desh Krohan sent a representative to find them and talk to them first hand. Because she was particularly good at dealing with sensitive issues, he sent Tataya across the ocean. She went with his blessings, a rather large supply of gold and gems, and a ship full of men who knew how to behave themselves around sorcerers.
There are maps that are more detailed than those most commonly found. Most of them belonged to Desh Krohan. The man, who had paid several fortunes over the years to find and map the Seven Forges, was not new to the notion of learning all he could about the world around him.
Tataya and Captain Callan were standing together on the prow of his ship, a sleek, fast affair that bore no name, when the lookout called “Land ahead, Captain!”
Captain Callan was a lean man with wind-tanned skin and an abundance of freckles. His hair was a dark auburn and he sported a thick mustache and a grin that was always eager and just a little bit ravenous. Tataya liked him immediately. He claimed to have encountered the Brellar before, thought there was little to prove it. Still, as he was exactly the sort of man who tended to ignore the rules he did not agree with, she could easily believe that he might have had a run in or two in his time.
He managed to take his eyes off of her for a moment and looked to where the young man crawling along the top of the sails was pointing.
“Well now, looks like we might just be in luck this day, milady.” His voice was cheerful and his grin stayed in place.
“That would be a lovely thing, Captain.” Far to the north the ocean was a foul mess of ash and dead fish. Here the skies were calmer and the waters were a clear and lovely shade of blue. The air was pleasant and the wind whipped a few stray strands of her hair around. Most of her locks were bound with a leather tie, but some escaped, almost inevitably. The Captain kept staring at her hair as if it might be the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. At least he was good enough not to speak directly to her breasts, which was more than could be said for several of his crew.
“Do you want to set into a port, if there is one?”
“‘If there is one?’ I thought you said you’d met the Brellar before.”
His grin grew larger. “I have. Our ship met theirs. We waved and I managed to purchase a few trinkets and several crates of fruit from them.”
To be fair, that did actually qualify as an encounter. “And that is the only time you have run across them?”
“I have never had a reason to go this far south before, milady.”
“Why did you go now?”
Callan’s smile actually grew brighter. “A beautiful woman offered me a great deal of money.”
She allowed a small smile and a nod as acknowledgement of his words. “Perhaps we should see if there is a port where we can land.”
He called out to his first mate and they exchanged a quick flurry of words in the slang-heavy dialect employed by the Guntha, until that people had been slain. Likely he thought she had no knowledge of what he was saying, and she chose not to disillusion him of that belief.
“What can you tell me about the Brellar, Captain Callan?” Her voice was calm and the question was casual enough. She had asked him before and he had carefully avoided giving her answers that offered any details. That alone was reason enough for her to doubt his claims, but not enough to make her call off the expedition.
“They’re friendly enough, I suppose, if they’ve a mind to be. I’ve only met them the once and we exchanged trinkets and food. The captain of their ship spoke the common tongue,, but it wasn’t his first language. If he hadn’t, I’d have been hard pressed to deal with him properly.”
That was a lie and she knew it. He’d already displayed knowledge of several languages. He simply didn’t understand that she shared his knowledge. The Brellar might well speak the common tongue, and so much the better if they did, but the good captain was hardly without resource when it came to communication.
Still, it was a small enough lie.
“And if they have other notions?”
“The Brellar don’t have a home. What I hear was they had a place to call their own, once, but the good people of Fellein took it from them and cast them out. That’d be a few hundred years ago. No country, so they took to the water. Found new plac
es to call theirs.” His eyes looked into hers as he spoke. He made sure he was looking at her properly when he continued on. “You need to know they’re not supposed to like Fellein much.”
“What do they like then?”
“What they can take as theirs, mostly. They like easy prey and if they find a ship that isn’t properly defended, they’ve been known to take it and everything on it.”
“And the crews of those ships?”
“Some of them survive. Others float in the water till the sharks come along.”
“Do you suppose your ship is defended well enough?”
His smile flashed out brightly. “I bought fruit and trinkets. A wise man has a crew large enough to handle troubles.”
“Well, I wonder what they’ll think of my offer.”
“You brought an abundance of gold and a promise of more?” Callan’s smile was wider still and she half expected him to purr. “I expect they’ll meet you with open arms. But I do not expect you should trust whatever they agree to.”
“Are they liars?”
Callan shook his head. “No. They are opportunists.”
He would give nothing more on the subject and she knew it. “And what do you know of the Guntha?”
The Captain looked at Tataya and sighed. “That they are mostly dead now.”
“Mostly?” She looked back at him and raised one eyebrow in question.
“They are a seafaring race, milady. Not all of them were on their islands when the great fire took them.”
“What has happened to the rest of them?”
The Captain shrugged his shoulders and looked away. “I expect they’ll do what everyone does in such situations. They’ll survive as best they can and fade away.”
“And do you know others who have been in such situations, Captain Callan?” She found herself looking carefully at his face, wondering what he was thinking. There were ways to find out, of course, but none she chose to employ at the time.
Callan’s smile faltered. It did not completely fade, but it seemed to her that he held it in place by force of will.
Neither of them spoke of the rumors just starting when they left port. A few spoke of the black ships finally closing in on Roathes. If there were truth to the stories, it remained hidden from them.
Much like Desh Krohan, Tataya hated not knowing with a certainty what was occurring.
“Well now,” he said. “I’ve met a lot of people in my time, milady. Travelers always do.”
“I’ve been known to travel myself.” She looked away from him. Not because she was done studying his reactions, but because he wanted her to not look at him for the moment. There were few who could tell what a person wanted as well as she could. She had been trained to understand the finer aspects of desires.
Callan pointed to one of the crew with his chin. “Vondum tells me you’ve actually been to the Seven Forges. Is that true?”
It was Tataya’s turn to be cryptic. “I have been to the Blasted Lands.”
Callan was ready to ask another question when the youth climbing across the top of the sails called out again, “Ship coming, Captain! Ship coming fast!”
The Captain looked up and followed the lad’s pointing finger with his eyes. And there it was, a longship heading for them. The sails were clean and well tended. There was neither flag flying nor any colors to indicate alliances, but there were none on the ship she rode on, either. Flags tended to fly when there was a reason, and currently there were no countries fighting against each other that she knew of.
Callan squinted and looked closely at the approaching vessel. “This could well be the day I earn my money from you, milady. That would be a Brellar ship.”
“How can you tell?”
Callan smiled again. “Might not be Brellar running that ship, but it’s definitely built by them. You can tell by the metal along the sides.”
Looking closely at the approaching vessel she could see what he meant. There was a rail along the entire length of the ship, and it had the dull gleam of steel.
“Why do they have a rail?”
“They use it to tie lines to the ships they’re planning to board.”
“Why would they need that?”
“Most times the Brellar run across another ship, they either make a sale or two, or they take what they want in tithings.”
Tataya looked to the Captain and shook her head. “You couldn’t mention that before?”
Callan shrugged. “Hardly seems good business to have you too scared to go looking for them before you’ve paid me.” He smiled and waved an arm around to indicate his crew. “Besides which, we’re armed and you have money. One way or another, we’ll work these things out.”
There were many ways to work out the potential issues facing them, and not all of them involved spending the gold she’d set aside for negotiations.
“The money I brought with me is to deal with the Brellar in an official capacity.”
“Oh, to be sure, they’ll act very official when they get here.” Callan’s voice was as cheerful as ever. She found she liked it less under the current circumstances.
As she contemplated the best possible answer to his latest words, the ship ahead of them doubled and then tripled. Three ships. Three.
One quick look let her know that the Captain was no longer quite as confident as he had been moments before.
The skies were just as blue as they had been a moment before and yet the feel of the air was a bit chillier.
“Do the Brellar normally run in fleets, Captain Callan?”
“To my knowledge, which is limited, no, milady.”
Tataya nodded to herself and then looked on as the three ships came closer. “And what do we do about that situation?”
“I would expect we wait and see how they receive us.” Callan shrugged his shoulders. “There isn’t much else we can do, to be fair.”
Tataya nodded her head. There was a great deal more she could do, but she preferred to see how the situation progressed.
There was no love lost between Danieca Krous and her much younger cousin, Nachia. That was a fact that few people outside of the immediate family knew. Desh Krohan knew, of course, because he made it a point to know. Amazingly little got past him along those lines. The careful study of the Krous bloodline was an extremely important part of his duties as the Royal Advisor. Currently he was also the man in charge of the nation and deciding who would ascend to the throne. He had actually already made his decision, but that didn’t stop the majority of the Krous family from continuing to demand he change his mind.
Currently it was Laister Krous who wanted that change to happen the most. Laister felt he should be the Emperor. He’d felt exactly the same way when Pathra ascended to the throne and he would likely feel that way regarding who should rule the Empire for as long as he was alive and possibly into any number of afterlives as well.
To make his point clear, Laister had run to his second cousin, Danieca, who controlled a substantial fortune in her own right. Danieca was a large woman and, while few would have believed it, in her time she had been a true beauty. A life of excess had been unkind to her, but had not, unfortunately, calmed her attitudes in the very least.
Her voice was like the sound of a crying baby, shrill and impossible to ignore. Far worse was the fact that Desh could not make himself stop staring at the rash at her hairline. It was a fairly ugly rash, to be sure, but the angry red marks seemed to flare with every breath she took.
“I am hearing ugly rumors, about you and Nachia, Desh.” Her lips snapped shut for a moment and she glowered. “Ugly. Rumors.”
“The same sort of rumors once floated around regarding you as now float around regarding your cousin. Neither has any validity.” He forced himself to focus on her eyes. Hard to believe that she had ever been capable of seducing a man with the baleful things, but in her time she had managed repeatedly.
Danieca didn’t so much as blink. She sucked in a great breath and prepared to conti
nue the debate at a new volume.
Desh held up his index finger before her and made sure it got her attention before he spoke. “Think very carefully about what you’re about to say. The wrong words will go a great way toward determining your lifespan.”
She paled. “Are you threatening me?”
“Not at all.” His eyes remained locked on hers. “I’m reminding you who you speak to; no more, no less. I have about had it with your accusations regarding my relationship with Nachia, who will be the new Empress in a matter of hours.”
“I could protest this.”
“You already have. You’ve been protesting since Pathra was slaughtered.” She flinched at his words. “You and yours seem to have forgotten that part. He was murdered.”
“And his murderer remains unpunished!” Danieca slapped her meaty hand onto the table and leaned toward him. “Where is the assassin who killed our Emperor, Desh Krohan?”
“I’m still investigating that very question, Danieca.” He spoke softly, but his eyes kept their grip on her gaze, not letting her look away. “Very little else has been on my mind of late.”
The woman no longer looked comfortable with the current discussion and, if he had to guess, it was the tone of his voice that was responsible for the change in her demeanor. When the latest wave of demands had started he’d been as patient as he could, but his tolerance for screaming was wearing thin.
Desh Krohan rose from the seat where he’d been leaning a moment before and rose to his full height, looking down on the woman who had, as a young girl, done her very best to seduce him – sometimes he thought it was a game all of the women tried to play as surely as the males of the Krous family tried to bed the Sisters – and spoke softly. “This conversation is over now, Danieca. The decision is made. I have listened to the endless prattling of Laister and yourself, and even done my best to ignore the veiled accusations you’ve thrown my way, but this ends now.”
“I have merely done what I must to ensure the safety of the throne in these troubling times, wizard.” Danieca’s voice was harsh, but of a lower volume. She was not cowed, but it was just possible she was remembering whom she was talking to.
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