Preludes to War (Eve of Redemption Book 6)

by Joe Jackson

  Kari barely reached her target before she heard the sounds of blades slicing flesh and a panicked scream. It was cut off a moment later, and the demonhunter had no doubt one of their attackers was dead. The elestram before her balked when Kari bore down on him with her twin scimitars, and he dropped his bow to pull out a short blade. He glanced at his weapon, then at Kari, and turned to run. She hardly began to pick up her pace again before three streams of wispy gray smoke shot through the trees and sent the bowman sprawling, unmoving, into the undergrowth.

  A quick check revealed he was dead, his neck twisted at a horrid angle from his short flight and unprotected crash. Kari followed the wispy trails through the trees and could see Aedrien standing on the driver’s bench of the cart. They really are all arcanists, Kari thought, and she turned to get back to Seanada.

  The demonhunter paused in shock when she found the half-syrinthian. Seanada had an elestram in her lap, her fangs sunk into his neck. Her eyes were closed, but his were open and glassy, a look of elation on his face as though she was giving him a sensual massage instead of draining the life from him. Kari had never been bitten by a succubus or even a half-succubus, but looking at the elestram, she thought he looked to be enjoying it, as deadly as it was.

  After a minute, Seanada withdrew her bite and stabbed him through the top of his skull. “I cannot believe this. These were not even assassins, just common bandits that thought our wagon would be easy prey with only a single mallasti driver.”

  “How do you know?” Kari asked.

  Seanada used the dead elestram’s shirt to wipe the blood from her mouth. “I was reading his memories while I had him enthralled,” the assassin answered. She hefted up the body and gestured back toward the cart with her head. “I had to be certain there were not more of them waiting for us or already on their way to report us. The fools…what a waste.”

  “Where are you taking him?”

  “We should double back and dump these bodies across the border, so our crossing point and presence are not discovered,” Seanada said. “It will cost us some time, but if the bodies are found, it will give any border or realm patrols cause to charge us with a crime even if they have no other reason to question us.”

  They returned to the cart with the gathered bodies. Kari helped Seanada wrap them with linen to keep them from spoiling the back of the cart with blood, and then they were stacked behind some barrels and crates. It left Kari with little room to sit in the rear, but they would be gone soon enough.

  Kari nodded to Aedrien when he came around the back, and the mallasti male returned the gesture. He helped the demonhunter scramble up into the bed of the cart, and then he got back to the driver’s seat with Seanada. They turned the draft animals – the same kind that had pulled the coach to Mas’tolinor – and got the cart headed back to the border.

  The demonhunter looked over the barrels at the linen-wrapped bodies and sighed. It was the first real glimpse she’d had into Mehr’Durillia having many of the same issues as her own world. Simple banditry wouldn’t have really occurred to her here, not with how severely the kings punished the slightest transgression. It pointed to the instability the civil unrest caused, and Kari imagined it was just going to get worse.

  She wasn’t pleased with having to kill people, but the implications of this encounter did point to another minor success in her grand plan to sow unrest among the kings.

  *****

  Kari woke well before dawn the next day, the sun coming up a bit later this far west. Aedrien was asleep on the driver’s bench while Seanada perched delicately atop one of the metal loops that framed the wagon’s cover. Kari wasn’t sure whether the half-syrinthian had slept; she sometimes did when she lived with Kari, but not always. She was a bit like Kari’s half-guardian relatives, who could sometimes go days without sleeping if the situation demanded it.

  Watching over her brother while he slept certainly seemed to fit Seanada’s definition of the situation demanding it.

  “How far to the village?” Kari asked in hushed tones, trying not to disturb the mallasti.

  Seanada looked down at Kari. “We should reach it by midday. Dawn is still a couple of hours away, should you like to get some more sleep.”

  Kari waved off the suggestion. “I’d rather stay as close to my schedule back home as I can. Gods know the children won’t get up later to accommodate me.”

  Seanada laughed, the sound pleasant and wonderful for its rarity. “Your son still speaks a fair amount of beshathan from when the Wraith stayed among you.”

  Kari had completely forgotten about that. Little Gray did speak with the Wraith in the beshathan tongue, though at the time, Kari didn’t recognize the language. Looking back now, she recalled that they had done so, and it made more sense in context. Kari wondered how much her son could teach her about the language, and the irony of it made her smile.

  Seanada let Aedrien sleep a little longer before she hopped down and landed lightly as a cat on the driver’s bench. “Wake up, lazy. We should get underway.”

  The mallasti male got up and folded his blanket, then got dressed. Kari was surprised he had bothered to take off and fold his clothes to avoid them getting too wrinkled while he slept. It was a curiosity for the mallasti, who weren’t all that fond of wearing clothes to begin with. He got their animals fed and watered, and once they were ready, the cart got underway again. Kari returned to her hidden spot in the rear, while Seanada and Aedrien drove.

  Kari could hear the sounds and smell the scents of the village before they arrived. Based on the hub-bub – not as raucous as DarkWind’s streets, but considerable – she guessed it was quite a bit larger than Moskarre. It smelled like the mallasti people, but also like farmland. She caught the scent of livestock and the worked earth, the smell of growing things mixing with the sounds of insects and chatter in the lively air. At last her curiosity got the better of her, and she knelt on the edge behind the driver’s seat to get her first glimpse of the Te’Montasi home.

  “Welcome to the village of Gaeshokk,” Aedrien said.

  Village was definitely a misnomer; this was a town. While many of its homes and other structures were the teepees and huts that were the staple of the nomadic mallasti, there were more permanent buildings as well. At first glance, Kari suspected Gaeshokk was home to a few thousand, depending on how densely populated the homes were. The forest gave way on the west and south to more open land that was either grazing fields for livestock, or managed rows of crops. Above all, the place looked self-sufficient.

  As expected, the majority of those living here were mallasti. As Kari looked around, though, even majority failed to properly contextualize things: the populace was almost entirely mallasti. There was the occasional elestram or even cross-bred mallestrem, but no sign of any of the other races of Mehr’Durillia. Kari had expected there might be some syrinthians among the town, but as she thought about it, she figured it might be too hard to trust them in light of them possibly being spies.

  “So, these are all your family?” Kari asked in infernal to include Aedrien.

  “Clan,” the mallasti male corrected.

  Seanada nodded. “Extended family, technically. Aedrien’s family that took me in bear the surname Te’Montasi, which is the dominant and most populous surname among the clan. Many of these are distantly related by blood to Aedrien and his family, but not all. Some have only clan ties, which can be narrow or nonexistent when speaking of blood.”

  “Seanada is not my sister by blood, but she is my sister by adoption, and therefore a part of our clan, our extended family,” Aedrien explained. “She is just as much a member of the Te’Montasi clan as I am.” He brought the wagon to a halt and spoke quickly in beshathan to a couple of others who approached. When he turned back to Kari, he said, “We walk from here; the cart and the goods go with these fellows.”

  Kari gathered up her things and hopped down from the cart. She received a whole host more of those impassive stares than she had even in Rula
j. Seanada and Aedrien gestured for Kari to follow, either ignorant to the stares or simply unconcerned by them. Kari reached down under her breastplate, pulled forth the symbol of the Great Mother, and laid it out for all to see. Within moments, pulsing behind it in light blue, came the answering affirmation of Zalkar. The impassive stares quickly turned to incredulity, punctuated by rapid, excited chatter among the hyena-folk.

  When Kari began to follow Seanada and her brother home, she quickly built up a crowd in her wake. By the time they reached the cottage house that was Aedrien’s family’s abode, it appeared the entire village was gathered outside. Apparently, it seemed that way to the family as well, because a female mallasti opened the door, stepped onto the porch, and said what had to be, “What is all this?” in beshathan.

  “Seanada?” the woman asked before she received any sort of response.

  Seanada bowed respectfully to the mallasti female, then shared a short but warm hug. The assassin stepped back and gestured toward Kari. “Mother, this is Karian Vanador, the one the Wraith assigned me to protect,” she said in infernal. “She has come here to help deal a blow to King Sekassus if we can.”

  The mallasti woman asked Kari if she could speak beshathan, but the demonhunter shook her head in response. The woman then spat on the ground. “That is something we will need to rectify, as I hate speaking this infernal tongue,” she said. “For your sake, however, we will take things as we need to. Now, that being said, young lady, do you have a death wish to be walking around with that pendant out for all to see?”

  “I suppose I do,” Kari answered. “But I wear it to show your people that I am a friend.”

  “Not all of our people would return that sentiment, especially in light of you wearing an outlawed symbol. But I’m sure you don’t need me explaining all of this to you,” she said with a sigh. Something just short of a smile made its way to her hyena-like countenance, her tan fur speckled here and there with grey. It was so hard to know how old these people were from a glance, considering how much longer they lived than Kari’s people, but she got the impression that this woman had seen millennia. “I am Ilsara Te’Montasi, and I welcome you to my home, friend of Be’shatha.”

  Kari bowed again, waiting only for Aedrien to greet his mother with a hug before she followed the family inside. Ilsara shooed the crowd away playfully before she came in behind them and shut the door. The inside was cozy yet spacious, with an open floor plan. There was a cooking area, a dining area, and a depressed sitting area near wide windows. Only a door that led to what Kari suspected was a privy or bath chamber, and a staircase leading to an upper level were separate from the open arrangements.

  “You must be hungry after your travels. Go wash up and I will fix you something to sate those appetites,” Ilsara said, waving them toward that separate back room.

  Seanada and Aedrien entered together, so Kari followed. There was no indoor plumbing here, but there was a wash trough with a hand pump, which Aedrien quickly filled. They all washed their hands and faces, and Aedrien showed Kari a sliding panel that led to the privy. It was efficient, if not as fancy as her own home or the palaces of the kings.

  Ilsara fixed them some meat and potatoes, and Kari sat with the family. She waited for them to sing the blessing over dinner first, and then ate slowly. “So, you’ve come to help us rise up against the king?” Ilsara asked Kari squarely once the meal was underway.

  “To strike directly at Prince Amnastru if possible,” Kari confirmed, unsure if it might be foolish to do so. There was no reaction from either Seanada or Aedrien, so she suspected many of the villagers might know what was going on.

  “Is the Wraith coming?”

  “I expect we will see him this evening,” Seanada answered.

  “Perhaps our prayers are finally being answered,” Ilsara said. “Perhaps the Great Mother, even in her sleep, is not deaf to – or powerless to answer – our prayers.”

  “King Morduri is actually the one who asked that I come here and do what I can,” Kari said. “Though you’ll obviously want to keep that quiet. We don’t want him getting into any trouble with the Overking.”

  “No, we certainly don’t,” the mallasti matriarch said. “He is good to our people, and we owe him that favor in return, at least.”

  “Have your people here been attacked by Amnastru yet?” Kari asked.

  “No, but our sister villages to the north have seen people dragged from their homes and beaten, their domiciles set ablaze, or their possessions broken or confiscated. Amnastru has, thus far, been careful not to seriously injure or kill anyone, but the more he grinds our people, the more we rise up against him. Eventually, things are going to reach a breaking point, and he is going to have a riot on his hands. From there, the killings will likely begin. Whether things escalate or calm after that, I cannot say.”

  Kari jumped to her feet as a black mass seeped through the front door. It looked like the wraith she had engaged on Terrassia, the one that had killed a necromancer and nearly done the same to Aeligos. She drew her swords, but Seanada was on her feet only a moment later, and she put her hand to Kari’s elbow to stop her. The demonhunter regarded Seanada, but then turned back to stare down the black, roiling mass as it approached the table. It formed up into a humanoid shape, and glowing orange eyes appeared where its head should be.

  “Master,” Seanada said with a bow.

  “Silent Fang,” came the whispered voice from the shadowy mass. “Lady Vanador.”

  Kari stared at the thing. “So this is what you look like?”

  “I was not given the moniker The Wraith without cause,” he responded.

  Kari nodded and sat back down. “So, do you want to go over what you expect us to do?”

  “Not at this time. For now, I came only to tell you that I am here, and that the time to put our plan in motion is nearly upon us. Rest you well, for tomorrow, we begin the greatest feat the Ashen Fangs have ever attempted. Tomorrow, we strike directly at the heart of the Council by destroying the first of many progenies.”

  “Where is Amnastru now, my lord?” Seanada asked.

  “He is headed to Saovonn,” he answered, elaborating for Kari’s sake, “to the west of here. Our first test will be to draw him here, and attempt to strike out at him on the road between the two villages. We will speak more of this on the morrow.”

  “We’ll be ready,” Kari assured him, and with a hissing laugh of approval, the orange eyes disappeared and the black mass receded back out through the cracks around the door. Ilsara and Aedrien both looked mystified by what they’d just seen, but Seanada seemed confident. “At least, I hope we will.”

  Seanada regarded Kari and half-smiled. “We will. The Wraith is a great tactical mind; we will not be attempting this blindly or on a slim hope.”

  Kari nodded, and the conversation around the table returned to normal. Ilsara was a widow like Kari, and they shared their feelings and memories of their husbands, each finding a bit of comfort in a kindred spirit. Of her many children, only Aedrien and Seanada still lived with Ilsara, though many of them lived just next door or close by with their own families. Ilsara was apparently “middle-aged,” though for a mallasti, that was just over two thousand years. Kari could only imagine the things the woman had seen and experienced, good and bad. Whatever the case, she didn’t delve too deeply into her past, and Kari was happy to do the same in return.

  The exodus of many of her children left several empty rooms in the house, so Kari was afforded a bedroom of her own on the upper floor. It had a comfortable bed with quilted and fur blankets, and she sank into them and fell asleep easily. Ilsara’s mention of being a widow and the subsequent conversation brought Grakin to Kari’s dreams, and she remembered the feel of him holding her close as they slept.

  Chapter VII – Bait

  When Kari woke, the windows were still dark, and the house was silent. The fur blankets were exceptional insulation, and she stretched out under them, hesitant to leave their warm confines. T
he town outside was quiet in the pre-dawn gloom, and Kari slipped from her bed. She tiptoed through the upper floor and down the stairs toward the privy. She paused only to wave a silent and casual good morning to Seanada, who was reading by the fireplace.

  When Kari returned to the open area, there was a bowl of what looked like cereal mixed with nuts and sliced fruit waiting for her on the table. Seanada gave no indication that she had ever moved, but there was no one else awake, from the sound of things. Kari grabbed up her breakfast and went to sit by the fire. Once she took her seat, the half-syrinthian closed her book politely and set it on the end table beside her.

  “What’s that you’re reading?”

  “A book of old mallasti folklore,” the assassin answered. “There is one fable I always come back to whenever I find the time to return home. It tells the story of Aegonn Te’Vardris, a travelling merchant who had the odd distinction of being allowed to go from realm to realm as he pleased. No one seems quite sure if it is a parable, a legend, or a true account of events.”

  She took up the book again and lightly rubbed its cover with her thumb. “Because he was allowed such freedom, Aegonn was distrusted everywhere he went, despite the fact that he was an upstanding and honest merchant. He charged fair prices for his goods, offered reasonable recompense for the things he acquired, and made an annual trek to Anthraxis to pay his taxes to the Overking. But freedom in a land with few freedoms leads to jealousy, suspicion, and even outright hatred. People dealt with him because they needed his goods, but he was always looked upon as a spy, or at least as a harbinger of trouble.”

  “And you see a bit of yourself in this tale?” Kari guessed.

  Seanada managed a smile, which seemed to be coming more frequently around Kari. “To an extent, I suppose. You see, while Aegonn was not a spy, he did trade in information and rumor as much as in physical goods. Yet despite the fact that his information gathering was essential to the early days of the Ashen Fangs, the people knew him only as a loyalist to the Overking. He was a champion to the people, unbeknownst to the people – and without ever officially being a part of the Ashen Fangs or openly supporting our ideals.”