Intimations of Evil (Warriors of Vhast Book 1)

by Cary J Lenehan

~~~

  He had decided to take his own weapons. If he didn’t like the ones they offered him he would leave his behind. His were all of reasonable quality and he was used to their feel. He spent time saying goodbye to his brother and his sister-in-law, whom he lived with, and wrote a note to his parents to be sent to them in Southpoint. Like many part Kharl families, his was career military, in Basil’s case in both his Human and his Kichic-kharl lines.

  His brother still had the incisors of his ancestors. All that Basil displayed was a faintly reptilian and greenish-hued scaled skin on his chest and back and arms—that and his in-family name. To them he was Kutsulbalik—‘Holy Fish’—the name taken by his great grandfather when he was told that he had to become a Christian to marry his wife to be.

  Basil currently had no woman and no other ties. It had not been mentioned, but he supposed that also suited this particular mission. Taking his brother quietly aside, Basil told him that all of his other possessions and money could go to his nephews if he was not back, or no word came, within two years. He wrote out a note to this effect, in case of complications.

  ~~~

  That night they drank heavily and reminisced about their life growing up in the hot and steamy jungles at the southern edge of the Empire; where their family were posted when Basil was young. In the morning, in the deeper darkness that comes before dawn, after only a few hours sleep, he dressed. Basil went downstairs and said goodbye. Even the youngest were up to say goodbye. He picked up the saddlebags and headed off to the palace. Despite his nervousness about the mission, he was expected and ushered straight in to the Strategos’ office as soon as he appeared. Despite the early hour the office was already busy, but then it always was. As Basil well knew, some of its most important work was done at night.

  As the first glimmer of light appeared over the sea to the east, Strategos Panterius met Basil with a brusque, ‘Good, follow me’. It was obvious to Basil that that the Strategos had to be more used to late nights than to early mornings. After all, he wouldn’t be losing sleep over the mission, would he?

  He led Basil to a room in the stables. There was laid out a set of gear that a servant might have packed: a sheet of canvas, cooking gear, food supplies, two bags of bandages and salves, some healing berries, rope and so on. It was all good quality, but well used.

  “Is there anything that you need?” a supply sergeant asked anxiously.

  “More salt, pepper and seasonings. I do not know when I will get more. Is there anything my subject particularly likes in the way of food?” he asked the Strategos.

  “She has been eating Arabic food since her cousin left,” was the reply.

  “In that case I also want a steamer, pine nuts, asafoetida, mountain rice, currants, dates, date sugar and both rose and orange water. As well we want a small supply of ready-pulverised kaf, a goodly supply of kaf beans, a small mortar and pestle, and an ibrik to make it up in.” He ticked these off on his fingers as he spoke. This was the signal for frantic activity and a hand of waiting servants were sent running. It was gratifying, but worrying, that his word would send so many people springing into action. When all was as Basil wanted, the servants started to pack everything into two waiting horse packs while Basil was led away to another room to look at some weapons.

  Laid out on tables were a goodly selection: six short swords, three sets of throwing knives, eight daggers with different styles of hilt and blade and four long quiver-pouches for the belt, each with six heavy martobulli in them. Proudly presiding over them all was the mottled brown-green figure of a senior Alat-kharl sergeant; by the size of his arms and chest and the scars from burns on his hands a blacksmith as well as a soldier. At the end of the room was a target. For half an hour or more, Basil tested weapons for feel and balance under the approving gaze of the other sergeant. As he made his selections he laid them aside. It turned out that both of the shortswords and the belt dagger that he had chosen were a matched set. He strapped on the smooth oiled leather of their harness, smelling the oil before silently drawing the shortswords and going to guard and then replacing them. Yes, they felt good in his hands.

  “A good choice sir,” said the sergeant. “As you can see, the blades are pattern welded. They also have a minor charm to enhance their damage. Expensive for a servant perhaps, but your master may have been generous or, seeing that they are of an older pattern, they could have been an inheritance.”

  He left the throwing knives but chose a quiver of martobulli. The heavy throwing darts had sharp points, a nice balance and, if used at close range, were often more dangerous than a sword if the user knew how to throw them well.

  Basil strapped on his new weapons in place of the old. His own familiar weapons he laid aside regretfully, asking the Strategos to see that they were delivered to his nephews. Once he was equipped, Basil was led to the stables where three grooms each held a horse. Two were riding beasts, each with saddlebags, one hung with weapons as if it was waiting for its rider to come out from a bathhouse. The third was a sturdy looking chestnut pack animal and it wore the packs he had seen earlier.

  “The extra beast is that of your supposed dead master,” said the Strategos. “If you successfully meet up with Theodora then you are to leave him at the army post at Dochra with word for him to be returned to me. That will be a sufficient message. Theodora will probably head there. We know that she is disguised as Insackharl Kataphractoi. Are these horses suitable?”

  Basil looked over the two that he would have with him. He expected that any horse selected for this mission would be perfect, but went through the motions anyway. He could ride one at need, but he was not an expert on horses. Without taking them for a ride, he couldn’t tell. They looked fit and to have no blemishes.

  “They appear more than suitable,” he said.

  “Good. Now follow me.”

  Basil went to take the horses, but discovered that the grooms would not let go and that he was supposed to walk on after the Strategos. He quickly caught up and discovered that, rather than heading to a gate out of the palace, they were heading further inwards. At the rear of the stables they reached a large door that, when a groom opened it, led further inside and could be seen to slope up. How this would get him to Dochra and ahead of his subject, he was not sure, but trustingly he followed on.

  A corridor that was of a size meant for horses led inwards and then, moving outside, circled around the palace under the battlements. He had never seen this before or heard of it; or if he had, he had not realised what he was seeing. As they climbed he realised it was now after midday. The air lay heavy and hot around them—waiting for the sea breeze of the afternoon to lend its cooling balm to the city.

  Eventually they reached the palace roof and all became apparent. Laid out in front of them were a large and a small magical diagram. Someone was standing in the smaller one. The diagrams looked to be worked into the stone of the roof itself and appeared to be well used. This was obviously a source of part of the Empire’s reputation for always having agents on the spot when needed. They could be dispatched anywhere given a powerful enough mage.

  With a start Basil realised that the person in the small diagram was Hrothnog himself. The mage would certainly be powerful enough. Without a word the grooms delivered the horses to him and one pointed to the larger figure. He led the horses inside, trying to make sure that none crossed or broke a line. A groom hurriedly swept up some horse droppings.

  The pattern was easily large enough for several more beasts. Nervously he started wondering what was next when the grooms, clearly experienced in this, started running around, lighting incense and putting things on the diagrams. Objects of metal and wood were placed at key points. Hrothnog started saying a spell in a language that Basil didn’t know. His voice again resonated in its deep and awesome tone. It was not a short incantation and while it was being recited Basil realised that only a person of Hrothnog’s power could cast such a long and obviously powerful spell—a spell that would send so much weight
so far away safely.

  He hoped it was safely.

  The smell of the incense mingled with the salt smell of the sea as Basil held tightly to the horses. He must have blinked, because suddenly a view from a hill overlooking The Great Plain replaced the view to the east and over the sea. There was no sense of movement, but now the arid heat of the inland replaced the relative coolness of the coast. He had arrived in the middle of a cleared circle near the top of the hill, a place obviously prepared for such travel.

  The horses showed their uneasiness at their translation by whinnying and pulling suddenly at reins and leads. Basil settled them down and gazed down a road as it circled what must be Nu-I Lake with Dochra to the west of it. To the east was visible the dot of a solitary horseman. The dot was the only object moving on the road that was coming from the east and Basil realised that this could, should, be Theodora. He decided to move down the slope away from her and onto the road.

  He took some dried food from his bag and ate it. It would be a few hours before she arrived below him and it would not take him long to come down from the hill. Broken as the terrain was, there was a path to follow if he looked for it.

  ~~~

  Picking his way down and onto the road he went over the story that he had decided on. He decided to move slowly and allow her to almost catch him so that it would be apparent to Theodora that he was a new arrival as well. As he left the searing heat of the open road and entered the cool of the oasis around Dochra and its palm groves he was able to use the sudden transition from light to dark to look back unseen. His timing was perfect. Whoever the rider was rode only a few hundred paces behind.

  Chapter II

  Ever since her cousin, Miriam, had fled the confines of life in the Darkreach Court, Theodora had felt isolated from those around her. She was both lonely and bored. She blamed the granther and the other elders. Hrothnog’s descendants may live for a long time, a very long time, but they have few children and all of the others of her generation were male; caught up in military interests or cloistered away in dry and dusty research.

  Without Miriam beside her the games were less fun, the endless suitors who sought a night of pleasure or more were harder to avoid, and she had no one to talk to without being dragged into incessant and meaningless games of prestige and intrigue. She kept asking herself what the endless rounds of court politics mattered when the Granther had lived for well over twelve thousand years, which she knew of for certain, and showed no sign of ever relinquishing his role as a seemingly immortal God-King. There were even so many great aunts and uncles and other granthers and granmers that there were no interesting jobs left that she was allowed to do. The accident of her ancestry prevented her from doing anything outside a very narrow range of jobs, and most of those were already taken. All the others that were left were really boring.

  For the sake of appearances she was not even allowed, by the family, to learn or do anything that was considered ‘beneath her’, anything that may bring disrepute on the House. With her gifts she could do what she had and train as a mage, as a military officer or as an entertainer, but in the last she was a performer who could only amuse her own family. She had done all of those, but could see none of them leading anywhere for her. Theodora looked at some of her aunties and uncles and cousins. Some threw themselves into sex and other pleasures, some into hobbies like gardening. Most of them seemed to be happy.

  She had tried to follow them and had ended up bored and as boring as she thought them to be. Each pathway, even she realised, had ended with throwing an epic tantrum. She wasn’t proud of them, but she just felt so frustrated. Sometimes she thought the collective granthers who ran most of the house affairs were far too conservative. Baring accidents, at one hundred and twenty years of age, she had at least another five hundred years ahead of her, if not a thousand.

  Anytime she looked at those around her it was as if they were on the other side of a very thick pane of glass. She could see them and faintly hear them, but it was if she were cut off from them; isolated and stranded.

  She was the only one left alive in a vast mausoleum of golden-eyed golem.

  No, Miriam had made good her escape, arguing to the Granther that her marriage to the Caliph’s third son would both help heal a long-standing war as well as to introduce the bloodline of the Imperial House to the Caliphate. It didn’t hurt her that she was in love—even if it was to a short-timer and could not last. To top it off she had even managed to have a child by her husband already. That particular experience Theodora was not yet ready for, but the rest of her cousin’s life she envied.

  The final straw was a birthday party. Several of the family had a birthday every single day and most were ignored even by the person who had them, but Granmer Kale had reached the round sum of six hundred years, an auspicious age, and a hand of centuries. She was fit and healthy and didn’t look a day over thirty, but a party was the name for such a celebration.

  In Theodora’s opinion funerals were usually more fun. The scent of orange water may have filled the air instead of that of burning frankincense, but the party in the hall had the same food, near the same music, the same people and the same conversations as every other house gathering had had for the last hundred years. Nothing changed—ever.

  She was ready to scream after an hour of the event. Mercifully the speeches came early and she fled immediately afterwards toward the more secluded part of the palace, ignoring the servants as if they were one with the decorations. She swept through corridors filled with rich tapestries and artwork that she had seen a thousand times before, fingers unconsciously brushing against the smoothness of silk and the courser warmth of wool.

  The swish of silk as her blue under-dress and shorter gold over-dress rubbed against her legs was the loudest sound of life to be heard. Theodora paid no attention to where she was going except that it was away from the party.

  She eventually found herself in one of the quiet and secluded gardens hidden in the dips in the roof. She couldn’t see out but from where she sat she could watch as the water played and gurgled in a small fountain and smell the flowers as a breeze played through the diminutive courtyard gently stirring the plants. As she sat her body relaxed. The relief of being out of that room was amazing. Light played on the folds of the soft, golden silk of her over-robe that contrasted so well with her thick jet-black hair. As Theodora rested and allowed quiet signs of the world to wash over her, a thought struck her.

  If it were that much of a relief to be out of a room, what would it be like to be out of Ardlark, perhaps out of Darkreach itself?

  No longer would she be stifling within a box. She could have a chance to breathe, freely, and to finally be herself without asking permission of anyone. She began thinking about this idea, turning it over in her mind and then, perhaps even without a conscious decision, she began planning.

  ~~~

  It was quickly obvious that she could not get what she needed to take with her at the palace. There were far too many servants around and too many relations with too little to do except to be curious about anything odd or out of the usual. She didn’t own very much that would be useful in the wilds outside Darkreach, and she realised that she was not even sure what she would need or even how to buy it. That was what servants were for. She would have to just try things and see if they worked.

  At least she could be inconspicuous while she did it. Ever since Miriam had married the Muslim man, face veils had spread and become popular with the wealthy of all religions. Between wearing one of those and her spells of illusion, hiding and misdetection, it was possible that no one would notice what she was up to. That is unless Hrothnog himself suspected something, as her spells would not prevail against his. At least money was easy to get. She was sure that she had a lot in her room and, if it ran out, she could just go to the palace purser and ask for more and most likely no one would question her. With money she should be able to get the rest of what she needed.

  A mixed feeling of excit
ement and trepidation began to creep through her with the realisation that she was going to actually do something; something that her family would not approve of. Firstly she would need a base—a place where she could collect the things she needed and disappear to for short times so that people became used to her being absent. It couldn’t be in the palace, but it had to be somewhere that she could get access to easily. To actually escape would be marvellous.

  Even this planning is exhilarating, she thought as her heart began to race like a small child expecting gifts.

  ~~~

  Early the next day Theodora dressed in her plainest riding clothes; the sort of thing she would wear in the country when there were only close family about and no one to impress. She chose a green divided skirt in fine wool. She could feel her fine cotton chemise smooth against the skin and her light-green embroidered dark-green waistcoat held it tight to show her figure. She wore matching jewellery from her collection of magical rings and amulets and put on her veil.

  After checking outside her rooms and seeing no one was about she left. She hadn’t bothered checking a mirror, she would have seen through her own illusion. She knew if anyone saw her they would have noticed a beautiful girl wearing a veil, eyes the black colour of a part Kharl, her raven blue-black hair now a dull orange, moving towards the palace gate and out into the city through the main doors. But she had taken more precautions than a simple glamour of appearance and, as she moved through the palace, servant’s eyes seemed to avoid her. As she left the building itself, the keen-eyed guards didn’t notice her passage out of the wide public doorway. She had to duck away and hide a few times as she saw relations who were also mages, lest they sense her and grow curious, but otherwise she had moved quickly through the palace.

  Not being used to being outside on foot and alone, Theodora next had to work out where to go. Under her feet she could feel the unaccustomed smooth and uneven roundness of cobblestones, but they told her nothing. She had entered a world that was totally different to that which she was used to. Although the streets were still spotless, due to the sewers and the constant presence of street sweepers, they were also teeming with humanity, and with other races.