“Who tends the farms, Delil?” He couldn’t imagine a farmer among the Sa’ba Taalor.
“Mostly the children.”
He looked at her to see if she was having a jest at his expense, but the girl seemed completely sincere.
Andover stopped to look long and hard at the distant fields, and Delil stopped with him. “How?”
“How does anyone tend a farm, Andover? They plant the seeds, they grow the crops, and they cut them down and harvest them. It is different for each kingdom, of course, but Tusk’s people teach the children to farm so that they will always be prepared to grow whatever foods they need.”
“I have never seen a farm before.” The words were out before he knew what he was saying.
She looked at him for a moment and her eyes smiled behind the veil. “Then we shall have to take you to see one.”
By the time the sun was on its way down, they had stopped at a wall of buildings. That was the only way he could think of it.
According to the stories he heard, the people in the area had once lived in stone huts they built themselves, but after the Mound Crawler came, that great and terrible beast that Tusk had killed when he became king, Tusk ordered his people to change their ways and change they did. The people lived in the mountainside, in homes that they carved from the rock themselves, though it had taken years to accomplish the task.
Stairwells cut into the rock of the mountain itself led to openings at different heights, some of them only a few feet from the ground and others that required climbing nearly a hundred feet from the flat plateau where the odd town was settled.
There were rooms and they were solid, as they should have been, seeing as they were hacked from the side of the mountain. The work was not primitive, as he’d first imagined it might be. Instead the rooms were smooth walled and even floored and as squared and balanced as any he had ever been in. Some were simple in design and others far more complex. It seemed to depend entirely on who lived there and what they did to complete their dwellings.
He was given a room in the same structure as Drask and Delil and Bromt. None of them lived in the area and so all of them were hosted in places set aside for visitors. The rooms were comfortable and functional, with little or no decoration.
What little Andover carried was left in his room without fear of it being taken. The idea seemed insane for a moment. Back in Tyrne you kept your possessions close by and hid them away if you were going to leave them behind. Here the idea was as foreign as he was. The Sa’ba Taalor did not have much of a problem with theft, according to Drask. Thieves had to fight to keep what they might take, and especially where Durhallem ruled and mercy was not an option, it seemed one would only risk theft if one was willing to die for what was taken.
It was a very different place from what he was used to. Then again, he was a very different person. All he had to do was close his eyes and think back on the fights he had survived to know that.
After the sun had set, there was a feast before the wall of structures. A broad area had been cleared of all brush and artificially leveled. He could see the cut marks where stone had been meticulously chiseled away until the area was as flat as a well-planed board.
In that area, there were four deep pits and in each of those was a fire. They proved necessary as the sun set and the chill of the night came across the mountain. From their height the people could see the entrance to Durhallem’s Pass and also see into the valley far below. Andover saw rivers and lakes that he had spotted when the sun was still up. They were a different shade of black in the darkness of the valley and from time to time he could spot fires along the edges of the water.
Drask Silver Hand joined him in observing the valley, as more and more of the people from the area came down from their homes and started gathering around the four fire pits.
Drask gestured with his hand. “The valley is larger than it looks from here.”
“It does not look small. How many days would it take to travel the length?”
Drask assessed him for a moment, his eyes once again catching whatever light was around and reflecting back a silvery glow. The more he stared, the more he suspected the light was internal somehow.
“To walk the Taalor valley would take you at least two weeks from end to end.”
“Impossible.” The word was out before he could stop himself and he dreaded the man would take offense.
Drask’s eyes smiled behind his veil. “As I said, it is larger than it seems. There are seven vast mountains, Andover. They are not neatly lined up. They are staggered. You cannot see the other end of the valley from here.”
“Which mountain do you call home, Drask?”
Drask shrugged his shoulders, a gesture he had picked up from the soldiers he’d traveled with a while back. Very few of the Sa’ba Taalor ever seemed to shrug, now that he thought about it.
“I follow Ydramil and his King in Silver, Ganem. I have a home near the top of Ydramil, but I have not been there in over a year now. I have been busy.”
“A year?” Andover frowned at that. “Why so long?”
“Ydramil makes demands of his followers. We are told to study much of the world. I have been visiting each of the mountains, each of the kings and each of the gods.”
“Like I’m supposed to?”
“Just so.” Drask sighed, the thin veil fluttering with his breath.
“Why the veils, Drask? I have seen every one of you naked, but still you wear veils.”
“We do not question the Daxar Taalor. They have not yet said you are ready to see our faces and so we cover them.”
“What is so special about your faces?”
Drask chuckled. “What is so special about yours? To us, they are just faces. We are who we are.”
“Does your face look like mine?”
“No more than my skin looks like yours or my hand looks like yours.”
He held out his silver hand and placed it close to Andover’s right hand. Both were metal. Both moved through sorceries Andover did not even try to understand, but beyond that they looked like hands and had five fingers, there was little that they had in common.
“Your children do not wear veils?”
“The children have not yet met with gods.”
“Like I’m supposed to meet with them?” That thought was still too large to completely take in. It was easier to try to study the whole of the sky and count the stars than it was to comprehend meeting actual gods.
Drask looked away. “You ask many questions. I can only answer a few. You will meet the Daxar Taalor. They have reasons for wanting to meet you that they have not shared with me.” There was no anger in his comment, not even disappointment. Drask merely stated a fact. “I can tell you only this: no one stands before gods and remains unchanged by the encounter.”
They were silent for a while, lost in their own thoughts as the sounds of people gathering and preparing food came to them. At each of the fires, carcasses were spitted and set above the flames. There was a time when the notion of eating a Pra-Moresh would have been repellent, but having endured the Blasted Lands and eaten even stranger things – for strange things indeed lived in the wastelands – Andover found the idea had a certain appeal. His stomach rumbled agreement.
“I’ll be leaving after the feast.”
“Feast? Leaving?” Andover frowned at the other, larger man.
“Ydramil tells me I must go back into the Blasted Lands. He has plans for me and I will obey.”
Andover shook his head at the notion of speaking directly to a god. The notion refused to sit comfortably. “Where will you go?”
“The feast is in your honor. You should remember to thank Tusk properly.” Drask stood up, not answering the question. “Should we meet again, after you have spoken with the gods, you may ask me more questions. Until then, Andover Lashk, the Daxar Taalor watch over the both of us.”
The man who had taught him harsh lessons tapped him lightly on one shoulder and walked away, hi
s thick dark hair swaying with his steps.
Andover was uncertain how he felt about that. In part he felt he was losing a friend, though in truth Drask had done little that could be called a kindness.
Aside from teaching him not to die. That had been a very large kindness indeed.
Andover contemplated all that Bromt and Delil and Drask had done for him, even as he ran one hand gently along his bound ribs and felt the area where the pain still flashed if he pushed. The ribs were mending. They’d felt fine when he was fighting – too busy staying alive to care about the pain, and he’d been fueled by the thrill of combat – but now his side ached with a dull throb again.
He heard Bromt laughing and saw the man walking with a few other men of similar stature. They wore no armor at the present time, though all of them still sported weapons. He imagined this was as close to relaxed as they managed.
Delil talked with several others, men and women alike, and though Andover wanted to speak with her, he did not wish to interrupt her homecoming.
Tuskandru walked toward him. He was again taken by how large the King was, how striking a figure. One of the soldiers, who had traveled with the Sa’ba Taalor to Tyrne, a man named Wollis, had told Andover that Tusk cut a Pra-Moresh nearly in half with one swing of a sword. Despite having seen the monsters, having fought them, he did not have trouble believing the outrageous claim.
The King wore a tunic and leather breeches, the same as he had when Andover had first seen him. His necklace of teeth was wrapped twice around his thick neck, and his hair was pulled back into a heavy braid, wrapped with leather and decorated with a few small pieces of onyx. He did not carry any weapons. That fact alone was unsettling to Andover.
Tusk stopped before him and nodded. “Drask said you want to know what happened with your people.”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” His voice only cracked a little as he spoke.
“They came for us. One of them claimed that your Emperor is dead. He said that someone killed the Emperor and said we must go back and speak with your generals.”
Andover nodded his head. He’d been on the receiving end of demands from the City Guard and, in comparison to the soldiers, those men had almost no authority. Certainly not as much as generals in the Imperial Army.
“They did not ask. They tried to command me. I am a king. I do not answer to your Emperor or his generals. When they would not accept that, one of them drew his weapon. I killed him.”
Andover nodded again. He could think of nothing at all to say to that.
And so instead he asked, “Tega. She flew away?”
“She spoke with the voice of her master, the sorcerer. He asked that your soldiers not attack and they did not listen.”
“So is she safe?”
Tusk crossed his massive arms. “None of my people hurt Tega. She was under my protection and helped me speak with your soldiers.”
“Good. That’s good.”
“You wish to go home? To your people?”
Andover shook his head. “No. I made a promise to you and your gods, Tusk. I keep my promises.”
Tusk nodded his head. “This is good. In the morning, I will show you how to reach Durhallem.”
“You’ll show me?” His voice broke a second time. “Are you not coming with me?”
Tusks eyes looked at him hard, their light burning. “No one goes before Durhallem who does not walk alone. That is Durhallem’s demand.”
Tusk gave him an amiable thump on the arm. Andover managed to keep his balance, but it was a close call.
A moment later the King was moving away, heading for one of the fires and calling out cheerfully in his own language. Andover understood a few words of the greeting, but only enough to feel embarrassed that he had not yet learned more.
Of course he had been learning other things.
“Tusk!” He called out before he could let himself think too much.
The King turned to look at him. He did not walk back and it was clear that if Andover wished to speak discretely it would be he who did the walking.
Instead he called out, “Are our people at war?”
Tusk looked at him for several heartbeats and nodded. “We are at war. Fellein has attacked us. You will be asked to defend that attack before the kings of the Sa’ba Taalor.”
Oh yes. His heart hammered away in his chest and he nodded. “When?”
“First you meet the Gods of the Forges. Then you answer to their kings.” Tusk spread his arms wide in a gesture that almost looked like he wanted to embrace. Only the fact that he’d seen the gesture before let Andover know the move was the equivalent of a shrug. “You will be given the chance to prepare.”
“Can I speak to my people?”
“You have agreed to be here. Unless they send you a message, no.”
Andover nodded again and Tusk started walking. This time he didn’t try to get the King’s attention again.
Andover shook his head. He’d rather hoped to know the love of a woman before he died. That seemed less likely all the time.
Ten
The Krous family was powerful, to be modest. There was remarkably little that even the lowliest members of the family wanted for. Even the bastard children of Towdra Krous had more money than most could conceive of, and it is fair to say that Towdra cared little for any of his offspring, legitimate or otherwise.
Most of the family was quite content to stay where they were, fully aware that anything they desired was theirs so long as they behaved themselves.
There are always exceptions. Towdra himself was fine with the current situation. He and his great-niece got along well enough; though there were many members of the family who believed he felt otherwise, Nachia sitting on the throne suited his purposes.
Laister Krous was not as content. He believed that he was better suited for the throne, that his long years of making connections and preparing the way for his eventual accession should have paid off already. For him, Nachia was a nuisance and a problem. The only purpose the girl could have served in his eyes would have been as a good bartering tool to the appropriate parties. Want a country to behave? Offer them a fine looking woman to serve as obedient wife and mother of royal children and call it done. But Nachia on the throne was offensive to his sensibilities.
She was now on the throne and that was a problem, but not one that couldn’t be surmounted with the appropriate actions.
It was for that reason that the men were sitting together in a small tavern called the Adze and Axe just outside of Freeholdt. A night’s hard ride would have him back in Tyrne and no one the wiser and he had chosen his timing flawlessly. The sorcerer was gone on one of his very rare excursions from the castle. Nachia herself was too busy looking into the possibilities of war – or perhaps pleasuring herself with her new general, who could say? – to notice his absence. Brolley was, of all places, with Desh Krohan on his little search for answers to what had happened to the Roathians. The boy was hardly an issue in any event, especially after his public humiliation at the hands of the barbarians Pathra had invited to visit from the Blasted Lands. Since then, Brolley seldom let himself be seen in public. Most likely it was Nachia keeping him out of harm’s way. She was an overprotective sibling and Brolley needed all the protection he could find. Danieca was staying well away from everything ever since she’d tried confronting Desh Krohan. Whatever the man had said to her was enough to convince her to keep herself to herself for the present time, but Laister already knew where she stood on matters. She was with him.
The rest of the Krous family was a herd of simpletons as far as Laister was concerned. They would follow whoever was leading and for the moment that meant they obeyed the whims and desires of Nachia.
The men in the room with him were not as loyal or as easily swayed. They required hard coin for their devotion and a great deal of it. Laister himself was not at the table where the negotiations were taking place. He left the particulars to Losla Foster, his personal assistant. Losla was a quiet man
with a quiet way about him. Most everyone who met him forgot he was even there, which was exactly why he was so very successful in his endeavors. Losla sat in the shadows of the tavern’s western corner and spoke softly to men who were far easier to remember and much more likely to cut a throat. They were exactly as hungry for money as they appeared, and they looked to be starving for the stuff.
There were four of them, all from the east. It seemed all the best mercenaries came from the east, normally from Elda or even farther away. Laister did not listen to the negotiations. Instead he concentrated on his surroundings and seeing everyone in the room. There were the five men concentrating on their shadowy business. There was the fat sow of a tavern keeper’s wife, a woman who had long since moved from buxom to unpleasant, though at the right angles a ghost of her old beauty lingered. There was the tavern keeper himself who was even larger but had an infectious smile and a pleasant attitude. The two of them made sure customers were happy and otherwise stayed out of the way. There were three others in the place: two road-weary men who looked like they would be finishing their meals and then taking rooms upstairs, and a woman who might or might not have been an aging whore. She was attractive despite her peasant’s clothes and her common features, but old enough that Laister wouldn’t bother even if he were so inclined. Whatever the case, she paid him no attention and, aside from noting her presence, he returned the favor.
The biggest danger, in other words, was that Laister would grow bored enough to find the whore an interesting notion.
Losla saved him from that fate by nodding and rising from the table. The men with him did nothing to indicate that they much cared one way or the other and Losla left the tavern after gathering his cloak and saying a few words to the tavern keeper.
Laister would wait a few minutes before meeting him outside. He had no desire to be connected with anyone in the place. The inquisitors tended to investigate when dignitaries died and Laister had already endured enough polite questions regarding Pathra’s death. They were always polite when dealing with the Krouses. It was in the best interests of everyone to avoid offending the Imperial Family.
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