by Robert Brady
“We can cross to the north,” he said. “We can avoid their scouts, circle past them—”
“The one called Raven,” Defassi argued, “she said to the purple-haired witch that we’d go north.”
Jahunga closed his eyes and nodded. “You’re right,” he said. They’d wanted their enemies to think they were heading to Andurin. Not wise to go that way.
“South, then,” he said. “Just as good.”
“It’s not,” Defassi said. He pointed south and continued, “Their supply train runs south and they guard it.”
Jahunga shook his head.
He’d been wondering at their logic, at keeping with these people. They’d gone to Kor and that was pointless. They’d divided their forces for no reason, either, in his opinion. Their song told them to go to a sacred place and find the one who ‘fights as does the sun.’ It didn’t say they couldn’t all go, just that certain of them had to. It would have been wiser to stay together, but they hadn’t listened to Jahunga.
The Scitai, Xinto, and the Uman-Chi, Glynn, had appointed themselves as leader. Why not Jahunga? In Toor his council was among the wisest. Here, they thought of him as just another warrior with a spear.
It was hard not to be angry over this.
“There!” Defassi said, pointing past the army on the field.
Jahunga squinted, the setting sun behind him, and painted by the dusk light, four individuals, one of them a hulking giant, another an overlarge Man, and the third a slip of a figure in a dress. A fourth dressed in some sort of robe or cloak—it was impossible to tell more in the dying light.
Roaming at their feet, apparently something the size of a small lion; behind them three horses, one of them huge.
They could have picked up the animal, but there was no mistaking Zarshar or Little Storm. Magee, the Uman-Chi witch, had probably found them by the beacon Karl carried. Jahunga watched as they ducked back behind the hill they’d topped, to let themselves be seen.
They couldn’t let this army see them; neither could they let their allies miss them. No one of the race of Men would have marked them in the Salt Wood, hidden as they were, but Uman-Chi eyes worked strangely.
Or they might have been there for a long time, exposing themselves a few times a day. It didn’t matter—Jahunga needed to report this back to the mainstay of their group.
* * *
Dilvesh dined with the Duke Tartan Stowe, his wife Yeral and Nina of the Aschire at what passed for a dining room, in what passed for a palace, in the port city now called Lupor, the newest of the Eldadorian Empire.
It used to be known by another name. It used to be called ‘Outpost III’ when the Cheyak lived here, but that was more than 1,000 years ago. Dilvesh kept this secret to himself. The Daff Kanaar had once been a group focused on selling mercenary services to the rest of Fovea, in an effort eventually to eradicate the Fovean High Council and pave the way for Ancenon Aurelias to reunify the nations under his banner. That had quickly changed to the wolf’s head banner of Lupus the Conqueror, and that had changed again when that same Lupus had started to discover the lost Cheyak Outposts. Lupus knew of almost all of them now, and the Daff Kanaar were very focused on reclaiming and looting them.
Not for their gold, but for the knowledge still hidden within them. Lupus had an amazing and exceedingly fortunate fixation with history and the collection of knowledge, and that played right into Dilvesh’s hands.
As they dined on a mean fare of pork and old vegetables, the Druid called ‘the Green One’ collected more of that information now.
“In fact,” he answered Nina, who sawed on a piece of over-tough pork before her, “no one ever saw Genna fall, so of course we were never sure she’d died. I’d always had my doubts.”
The Duke and his wife kept their own council, just listening. Neither of them had ever met this lost member of the Daff Kanaar.
“She confessed to me she’d left to Conflu,” Nina said, “but not just to escape the Emperor.”
“And that’s what I find troubling,” Dilvesh said.
“The timing does not work,” Yeral added. She was a plain woman with a freckled face and over-large bosom. She tried to style her hair but it tended to fall back straight and dish-water blonde. She been paired to the Duke, but her family had once ruled Uman City, and her father had been deposed. She’d served as a lady in waiting for the Empress and elevated from common to baroness without lands, with only that to legitimize her marriage to the son of the former King.
Lupus might seem to sit secure on his throne, but he’d clearly still felt the need to neutralize the old Stowe line.
All eyes turned to her. This woman had, in the last ten years, all but created the infamous Angadorian breed of horses, the most coveted by Angadorian Knights and Theran Lancers. Her worth was in her mind—she’d made her husband a wealthy man and, ultimately, a Duke with her ingenuity.
“Assuming no dalliance with her during his relationship with the Empress, then his slave,” she said, “she’d have birthed a child before the Battle of Tamaran Glen.”
“There was a period when Genna rarely saw the rest of the Free Legion, before she set up the meeting between Lupus and my father,” Tartan Stowe said, holding a pile of withered vegetables on the end of his knife, before him. “She may have birthed it then.”
“Or she may be lying,” Dilvesh said. “Genna has done worse to slight Black Lupus.”
Nina shook her head. “I looked into her eyes,” she said. “I heard her words. I also saw her body—let there be no question, Genna birthed a child, and she believes in her heart the father of that child is Rancor Mordetur, Emperor of Eldador. She also believes this is his eldest child, so she must have birthed it during that time when she was away from the rest.”
“Or lied,” Yeral reasserted.
“Regardless,” Dilvesh said, “we must contact the Emperor with this and let him know he has Genna’s machinations to consider.”
“This couldn’t come at a worse time,” Nina complained, putting her ragged piece of pork in her mouth.
“I don’t see why,” Tartan said, his brown eyes shifting between the persons at the table. “Lupus could have a thousand sons and all of them could be older than Lee and Vulpe, and it wouldn’t matter. The Eldadorian law is not that the leader’s eldest son succeeds him.”
“Or else you would sit the throne,” Yeral added.
She exchanged a glance with her husband. Nina regarded both of them and returned her attention to her meal.
Dilvesh thought these feelings were of more concern to the Emperor. There had been a time when nobles in the Eldadorian nation might have considered changing their laws and putting Tartan on the throne. That had been a time when Black Lupus, then just become Emperor, had nearly provoked every nation in Fovea to attack him. Many of the Dukes had shown concern that the new ruler took on too much, assumed too much, and they’d all pay for it with their lives and the lives of their people.
Then Black Lupus had won a decisive naval engagement with the Uman-Chi called The Battle of the Deceptions. After that, Eldador could boast decisive sea power in addition to the most feared land troops on the planet.
No one wanted to alienate Eldador. Now Black Lupus was starting that whole process again. It might be a good time for an ambitious Tartan Stowe to seek his future, if he wanted more than he already had.
“And so,” Dilvesh said. Nina opened her mouth but Dilvesh interrupted her.
“However I know Clear Genna,” he said. “And it doesn’t matter to her what the law is, what the rules are or what protocol might dictate, not when it comes to Black Lupus. What will matter is that she has some imagined slight, she has some imagined cure for it, and she will focus a great deal of effort to secure that cure, especially if she believes she’s entitled to it, which I’m sure she does.”
“Making this something the Emperor needs to know,” Nina said. “Do you have access to Central Communications from here?”
Dilvesh sho
ok his head. “Central Communications is set up between specially tuned rooms between the key cities in the Empire,” he said. “It lets Wizards communicate by sight and sound between the cities, but I can’t just invoke it from here. It will be months before I can choose a room and tune it to Central Communications.”
“Then I need to go to—” Nina said, but Dilvesh was shaking his head.
“No,” he said. “You have an immediate mission, and you need to complete that.”
Nina lowered her eyes. Yeral straightened.
“Messengers to Uman City should suffice,” she said. “We can send a full Century if need be.”
“I think that would be excessive,” Tartan countered.
Dilvesh considered.
“You claim this group you’re following split up, and now they’ll try to get back together in Andurin,” he said.
Nina nodded.
“And they have a beacon, made by the Uman-Chi, to allow her to find them again.”
“Yes,” Nina said, her eyes on him now.
Dilvesh smiled. “I don’t suppose you can use that same beacon to find them?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know how it’s tuned,” she said.
A Wizard would create a beacon to emit a call into the infinite aether, the stuff of the universe which contained all things and nothing. The Wizard would then look into the aether for that specific call. Because the aether is infinite and the things that resonate into it many, one looks like the next and someone who didn’t know what he or she was looking for could find another Wizard, an enchanted weapon or a duck that swallowed the ingredients to a complicated spell.
This bellied methods more simple.
“I don’t suppose the Salt Wood is overrun with magical beacons, created by Uman-Chi,” he said. “I would think the beacon would have to be very powerful, and relatively near to us.”
Nina frowned and looked into her plate. She closed her eyes, hummed for a moment, and then opened them, a smile on her face.
“I believe the Duke and his Lady could now be of great assistance to you,” Dilvesh said.
“So they’re out there waiting for us on the other side of an army,” Karl said, repeating what Jahunga had told him.
Typical of the race of Men, Xinto couldn’t help thinking.
“To the south their supply train stretches back to either Vrek or Angador,” Jahunga said. “Perhaps both. They expect us to go to the north.”
Xinto nodded. Karl with him.
“To the north, then,” the Volkhydran said, looking to Xinto for approval.
The Scitai nodded.
“But that might put us—” Raven protested.
“That will put us right where they expected us to be,” Xinto said, cutting her off. “And then they will think we are doing just what they expected us to do, and they will move past us and cut us off.”
“Because with that many warriors, it’s easier to ambush us than to chase us,” Jahunga said.
“They’ll spread out to our north, while we double back in a day and come right back here,” Karl said. By the time they realize we’re not coming, we’ll be gone to the west or the south.”
Xinto nodded.
Clearly his intelligence was rubbing off on them.
Chapter Three
One Man’s Sacrifice
For a day and a half, their little group of Volkhydrans, Toorians and whatever someone decided someday to call the rest of them travelled north toward the city of Andurin in the Salt Wood. For a day and a half they travelled back.
The Angadorian army shadowed them the whole way.
“They know we’re here,” Karl informed the rest of them, as if he needed to.
“Their scouts are poor,” Jahunga informed them, “or we would be among them now, in chains. It will not be long, though, before they simply enter the woods and drive us to the ocean.”
“I don’t know why they haven’t done so already,” Xinto said. They were sitting in one of the many little glens that formed throughout the Salt Wood. The trees were mostly fir and pine, twisted by the wind that constantly swept in from the Sea. They tended to look more like tall creatures reaching for them, especially at night, and even more so in their current situation.
At least, that’s what Raven thought.
“Okay,” she said, “if they know we’re here, and they aren’t coming to get us, then it’s because someone’s telling them not to.”
“Or no one has told them to yet,” Xinto added. “They could be under command just to keep us here until the Emperor arrives.”
“I don’t think Rancor Mordetur handles things like this himself,” Karl said. “He already sent Nina—she’s the one who knows we’re in the Wood now. If they’re waiting for anyone, they’re waiting for her.”
“I’ve never seen or heard of Nina of the Aschire commanding troops,” Karl said.
“But Tartan Stowe does,” Jahunga countered. “I saw him myself. If they’re waiting for anyone, they’re waiting for their Duke.”
“They’re waiting for both, then,” Xinto concluded. “And if they aren’t with their troops already, they soon will be. Then they’ll come find us.”
“But how?” Raven pressed them. This was frustrating. “And why hasn’t Glynn come found us? She’s some kind of wizard, why doesn’t she just pull us out of here?”
“I don’t think her beacon allows Magee to do that,” Jahunga said. “When our own shamans use a beacon, it’s to find those who might be lost—oh!”
All eyes turned to Jahunga. His shoulder slumped and he shook his head.
“What?” Xinto and Karl demanded together.
“The beacon,” Jahunga said. He turned his face to Raven. “Where is it now?” he asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not supposed to touch it.”
“Try and find it,” he said to her. “Think about it, not for what it is, but think about the magic of it; look for something magical that doesn’t belong.”
Raven searched Jahunga’s face, then shrugged. Nina hadn’t taught her how to do anything like this. She knew a little of the nature of magical things, but not…
When she’d learned to manipulate the flame on the candle, she’d first watched Nina do it, and it was like she could imagine her finger touching the flame as Nina manipulated it. She did that now—she imagined her arm reaching out through all of them, the fingers of this imaginary hand touching them, touching their things, feeling their possessions.
Clothes, weapons, all of that just felt dead and plain. Their minds, their thoughts—she couldn’t read them but she could tell they were there, little tingles of activity. She looked for more of that—but more powerful, more focused, more regular. A beacon would pulse, she decided. It would say, “I am here,” so Glynn could find it.
She smiled. “In Karl’s pack,” she said. “Wrapped in a blanket.”
“War’s beard,” Karl swore.
Xinto shook his head.
“So we’re letting them know where we are, and Glynn probably already knows this and that’s why she’s staying away,” he said.
“Or she is doing something to keep them from pursuing us,” Jahunga said.
“Regardless,” Karl said, “we need to send that beacon back to Glynn, and she needs to destroy it.”
“Give it to Raven and let her destroy it right now,” Jahunga said.
“And leave Glynn to believe we’ve been captured?” Xinto asked. “She’ll be away from here as fast as her horse can carry her.”
Raven shook her head. “Get it,” she said to Karl.
He turned to her, then to Xinto. The Scitai shrugged.
Karl went to the pack on his horse.
“Slurn!” Raven hissed.
In a wink, the saurian melted out of the shrubbery. He stood up next to Raven and hissed at her.
“Do you know where Glynn and Jack are?” she asked him.
He hissed. Xinto translated, “He does, or he can find them
.”
Karl returned with the beacon—a simple steel rod. He handed it to Raven.
She stepped back from it and pointed to Slurn.
“Give it to him,” she said.
Karl held out the rod. Slurn took it in his webbed claw, then transferred it to his teeth.
Without another word he was gone.
Raven called after him, “Be careful!”
Karl snorted. “We didn’t even tell him what to do,” he said.
* * *
Slurn slithered through the tall grass to the north of the Angadorian army. He held a steel rod in his jaws, one he’d seen many times before—a beacon for the Uman-Chi enchantress.
He had no magic among his people. They didn’t cast spells, they didn’t have shamans. Water, their goddess, gave her people nothing other than the promise of her return.
As the sun rose, the army rumbled awake. Pots and pans clattered, horses neighed, Men and Uman grumbled their good mornings. In his home, his mates would be packing their unhatched eggs with fresh mud, or teaching the newborn how to strain for minnows and frogs.
The plains grass whipped his scales and left him feeling dry. He’d become stiff for lack of water, and testy. He didn’t look forward to a meeting with the bullying Swamp Devil as he crawled up the ridge where he’d seen them last.
They’d had the sense to get out of the light, anyway. He found them on the dark side of a hill, Glynn, Jack, a woman of the race of Men, Zarshar, three horses and a dog.
He’d eaten dog before. He liked the taste. The thing growled at him as if in recognition of his fate as a meal.
“Slurn?” Glynn stepped away from her own mount. She was thinner than when he’d last seen her, and she’d been a waif then.
He hissed his greeting. She spoke the language of Water and Earth, his own.
“We sensed you on the other side of this army, then moving toward us,” she said. “We’d hoped to attract you all. We fear our enemy has found us out.”
He handed her the beacon, and informed her that their group also believed Nina of the Aschire knew of this thing, and had likely parked this army here to capture them. He informed her of Nina’s capture, and of her educating Raven in the beginnings of her spell casting.
