Dark Spirits

by R. J. Price

  “Oh, this?” Laeder asked, handing over the reports. “Jer asked me to review them, learn about the finances of the palace.”

  “Did he really?” Telm asked.

  After a long moment, Laeder decided to go with the truth, “No. He wanted to know how much your income was. Aren wishes to increase it by some percentage when she returns.”

  “I see,” Telm said.

  “Perhaps my math is rusty, but ten percent of nothing… That equals nothing, doesn’t it?” Laeder asked as Telm stood.

  The woman sank back into the seat ever so slowly.

  “What do you mean?” Telm asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Getting the words out would have been easier if Telm had shouted, raised her voice. Something besides giving up.

  “The house is always under budget. You were promoted to head of house upon the death of the previous head because, as house master, the house was always on or under budget. Under only so much as you are allotted in income,” Laeder said.

  “I am very good with numbers,” Telm said.

  “As am I,” Laeder said. “Removing your income from the equation, if I assume you pocketed it, I don’t know how. By burying it in the yard? The coin master has no account or records for you. But if I remove your income and look at expenditures versus budget, there are often times where you were over budget. Thus. Where did the surplus come from, if not your own income? And how did you convince the coin master that you were taking your allotted income without him being in on the whole thing?”

  Telm remained silent as Laeder waited for an answer to his question. She offered nothing but a blank stare.

  “When you became head of house you were put in charge of the balancing of the entire palace. That’s actually the job of the coin master, if I’m not mistaken?” Laeder paused, but the blank look did not change. “He said to me that he didn’t lodge a complaint because you found a way to balance the books and he went over them very carefully to make certain you were not syphoning funds.”

  Still nothing. Laeder was worried, though not for his own safety. He was worried about Telm’s stability. Worried about the possibility that he had just broken the head of house. The woman who Aren took to above most others. If Ervam and Jer didn’t tear a strip off Laeder, Aren surely would when she returned to the palace. Whether by the order of Jer or not, the one who sat the throne wouldn’t care.

  “Since taking over the budget, the palace has seen balance and small surpluses that were immediately given over to the coin master to ensure that the debt the palace owes to local lords has begun to be paid back.” Laeder sighed and set his hands in his lap. “Lady Telm, there is no way, in this economy, that the palace could balance a budget, even if the spirits have blessed you with an understanding of numbers. Yet still, no less than four times in the past decade the surplus has equalled two hundred less than your income.”

  “What is your point, Lord Laeder?” Telm asked.

  “I’m not a lord,” Laeder said gently. “Only a scribe given a duty. It is my regret to inform you that Aren will not accept you working for free. She may even insist that you be paid in full for your years of service.”

  “That is a ridiculous notion,” Telm responded. “The throne would be bankrupt.”

  “I have to report this to Jer. He will, in turn, report it to Aren. Unless…” Laeder hesitated, reaching for the missive sent from Av, to Telm. His hand paused on the missive when he saw the flair of emotion finally.

  Hatred. Telm thought Laeder was about to blackmail her. Very carefully, Laeder picked up the missive and held it out to Telm, who snatched it from him. Emotion was good, but not that sort of hatred. This was the sort of hatred a man could not return from.

  “Unless Aren does not return,” Laeder added, trying not to sound as fearful as he felt. “If your missive says what I think it does, it is the same as mine. An inquiry as to whether or not you told Aren in no uncertain terms that she is infected, and what it means to be infected.”

  He entwined his fingers and set his hands on the desk as he waited for Telm to read the missive. The woman’s hatred dissipated slowly. A frown creased her brow.

  “In the throne room, I mentioned the change of Aren’s strength and Av said it was because of queen’s stone,” Telm said. “Of course she knows.”

  “She knows that when infected, the throne calls more strongly to her?” Laeder asked. “That the house cleaning, as many queens call it, is stronger and wider spread? That if she bonds truly with the stone, there’s a possibility that she will never need a healer? Of the madness that some claim come over those who are infected? How the world will simply… change... around her? You know for a fact that Aren knows all that?”

  Telm hesitated, then said, “You’re the one who told Ervam about the infection, didn’t you also tell Aren?”

  “No. I didn’t tell him about it, I simply shared with him a piece of history. Ervam already knew about the infection, he knew that it can create ones who speak in riddles and alter the house cleaning, but he didn’t understand the extent until I showed him the journal I brought with me,” Laeder said.

  “Why are they asking now? It does us no good, with her across the land to who-knows-where.”

  “Jer’s missive to me was a little more detailed and said that the throne seemed to say that we are all stupid and deserve what is coming our way, because we neglected to inform Aren,” Laeder muttered.

  “The throne?” Telm asked. “The throne said that?”

  “They got Av drunk and started asking him questions,” Laeder said quietly. “In the morning, he didn’t recall threatening to skin us all alive because we’ve now put her in danger.”

  “Did it say anything else?” Telm asked.

  “As to where Aren has gone or why? No.” Laeder gave his head a shake. “A small village that Av will raze to the ground and make certain it stays razed this time. The village has a low population, few casualties. Also allows them to plan the retrieval of our wayward queen.”

  “How low is the population?” Telm asked.

  “Two,” Laeder said. “I’m guessing that’s two plus Aren, as she doesn’t live there, therefore she wouldn’t count towards population.”

  “Like as not, they’ll set Av loose on those two,” Telm said.

  “Like as not they’ll pray the two are enough to sate Av’s bloodlust,” Laeder said.

  “What do you mean?” Telm asked.

  “Are you aware that Jer and Av are capable of taking to the fields?” Laeder asked in turn.

  Telm went quiet and very still. A tremble ran through her suddenly and the woman adjusted in an uncomfortable fashion.

  “I thought their rank was no longer capable of that,” she said finally.

  “Do you know what that means?” Laeder asked. “The saying, I mean. Ervam led Jer to it through some exercise, whatever that means, and told Jer what it was, but not…” Laeder struggled for the right way to say what he wanted to say. “… But not what it actually was.”

  “I’ve seen it a time or two,” Telm said. “When I was a child a warrior came to my village and purposely took to the fields. He killed everything that moved, including several of his own men, before they realized he was out of control and took him down. It cost them several more men to bring him down.”

  “Strong warriors can make quite a mess,” Laeder muttered.

  Telm gave Laeder a dirty look, then said, “He wasn’t strong. The others referred to him as a muddied one, half a rank, not quite a warrior. He was weaker than them by far and they were all full, trained warriors. He still cut through them like a grown man through cripples.”

  Laeder contemplated the wording. Jer had described the fields as a rage, as a queen’s rage, but for warriors. Obviously this was not the case.

  “Fallen,” Laeder said suddenly, the term coming to him in a flash of brilliance. “Texts from before the short-lived queens sometimes said a warrior died by falling, they’d then refer to him as fallen
in any later texts. They didn’t fall in the battlefield, they fell into the fields.”

  Telm nodded. “And probably killed a great many innocents before they went. When warriors were plentiful, a man could stand toe-to-toe to a warrior, could fight him and keep his own. But with few warriors, the rules changed. Too few ranks to risk that sort of anger, to risk crippling the few that we had left. It became even more dangerous. Only the north knows how to bring a warrior back from the fields. In every other land, at every other time, when a warrior falls, it is his demise and the deaths of tens or hundreds of people, unless a stronger warrior is clever enough to dance that edge between the madness of falling and sanity.”

  “Lovely,” Laeder muttered. “Whatever happened to your village, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “They razed it to the ground after raping the women and slaughtering everyone they could find,” Telm said quietly. “The village rebuilt and was later razed again.”

  “Maybe this time Av can make certain it stays razed,” Laeder said without thinking.

  The pair stared at one another. Laeder felt the life draining out of him. Fear kept him rooted in place even though he wanted to bolt for the door. If he moved, he was certain Telm would kill him.

  “Perhaps you and I should have a talk,” Telm said, standing to move to the door.

  Laeder swallowed the lump in his throat as the woman locked the door. A frustrated queen turned back to look him over, ending any thoughts of fleeing. He wasn’t certain the words had been his own, but either way they had come from his mouth and he would be held responsible for them.

  Spirits, have mercy.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  A frantic knocking on the door woke Av in the middle of the night. He had been dreaming that he had been looking for Aren through the village. He could hear her shouting, but he couldn’t find her anywhere. Her voice seemed to rise from the ground itself. The first knock did not completely wake him, but the sound caused Aren’s shouts to turn to screams of pain.

  He stumbled to the door and snapped it open.

  “Someone had best be dying,” he snarled at the hooded, blurry figure.

  “Sort of and yet never again,” Laeder’s voice squeaked out.

  The scribe pushed back the hood of his travelling cloak and stared at Av. He looked paler than usual. Av peered past Laeder into the darkness, wondering if there were a threat waiting in the night that Laeder couldn’t voice.

  “Av, down,” his father grumbled, shuffling to Av’s side. “You’ve frightened the boy.”

  Frowning, Av pulled away from the door, not understanding how he had scared the scribe. He was clothed. With children in the house he made certain to sleep with at least something over his hips. With all that had already happened to the children, he didn’t want to accidentally show them something that they weren’t old enough to understand.

  “He’s—” Laeder said quietly to Ervam, moving into the house slowly. “Is he…?”

  “He’s obviously had a bad dream. Have a seat, scribe,” Ervam said sternly.

  A command for Laeder to sit before he fell over, and a reminder for Av that Laeder had no training and was not a threat. Av almost took the seat across from Laeder, but thought better of it. He walked down the hall and knocked on Jer’s door before he entered the room. The children were sleeping in the fourth bedroom beside their father’s, once meant for guests, now hesitantly belonging to Mie.

  Jer and Av had claimed, and kept, bedrooms at their father’s that would never be slept in but for by them.

  The first step in training a warrior was teaching him control. They hadn’t found a bit of territory to ‘lose’ to Mie yet, but the boy was slowly coming to claim Anue. He made certain the girl ate breakfast, followed her around telling outrageous stories. Mie was much like a younger brother in how he behaved, and Anue seemed patient to a point.

  Mie had yet to assert this claim over the will of his older brothers. They had been careful to only tell Anue to do things that Mie might support. This built in Mie’s mind the proper way to treat one he had claimed. Normally, when a person was claimed, that person was let in on the secret.

  There hadn’t been a chance to tell Anue, and then what would they say? That the boy she thought they had brought in order to force her with a male of their choice, had attached himself to her? It seemed a fast way to see just how far the little queen’s rage could go.

  “What?” Jer asked from the darkness of his room.

  “Laeder’s here,” Av murmured quietly, not wanting to alert the scribe to the fact that his brother was awake.

  If Jer didn’t want to see Laeder, then so be it. Av would take the information from Laeder and send the man back into the darkness to find his way home before the sun rose.

  “I’ll be out in a minute,” Jer grumbled, sliding out of bed. “Stall them. When they get going it’s like two gossiping hens.”

  “Oh dear,” Av said, closing the door quickly.

  He walked back to the living area, half expecting Laeder to be mid-tale. Instead, he found his father pouring steaming water into a teapot. Small buns with cold meat from dinner were on a plate in front of Laeder, waiting to be eaten.

  Of course Ervam would offer food and beverage to his guest before he started questioning. The dark was cold. Laeder needed to come back to himself before he was questioned about what had happened.

  Av took the seat across from Leader, helping himself to a bun. Laeder watched Av eat and hesitantly took a bun for himself. Jer joined them as tea was poured for all four of them. Leader looked at Jer, looked as if he had something he wanted to say, but made no comment as he turned back to focus on his tea and the half-eaten bun before him.

  “Why are you here?” Jer asked.

  “Telm came to me and unburdened herself,” Laeder said. The scribe glanced up at Av, concern playing over his features. “Story goes somewhat similar to what we know. Her cousin bedded her, bred her, and took her home to his parents. There was an old magic in the village, latent at the time because it can sleep without a queen present, much like how the throne can sleep when there are no queens available. Except it's weaker, a great deal weaker, and doesn't drag down the minds of others.

  “When the village was razed the first time, Telm was taken hostage by the throne. Each queen cared for her, simply passing the girl on to their successors. When she came of age, Telm found a man she fancied and bore a daughter.”

  “Er's mate?” Ervam asked. “My son's aunt is Telm's daughter?”

  Laeder nodded and said, “The daughter was as beautiful and dangerous as the mother. The daughter grew at court and headed north, forced out by Telm who didn't want her daughter linked to the throne. I don't know if her daughter knows this, but Telm was vicious on purpose and it broke her heart to do so, but it was the only way to save her.”

  “She's still pissed,” Ervam said. “Only thing I've ever seen her take to anger about is when her bloodline is brought up. Says they're dead. But let's face it, something doesn't feel right when she tells that story.”

  “She might have sat the throne, Telm said,” Laeder said. “She might even have been a long-lived queen, but the court wasn't ready for a long-lived queen, nor the throne. Whatever that means, because the throne was pissed at Telm for sending her daughter away.”

  “The throne wanted her?” Jer asked. “But it's spent generations making Aren.”

  “Aren's not the first, nor the last,” Laeder said. “After losing Telm's daughter, the throne seemed to change its intent.”

  “Make two, instead of one,” Av said, drawing the eyes of the others. “That's why Para had two daughters, that's why Anue is like Aren in magic. Both are long-lived queens, aren't they?”

  “Without putting them on the throne, there's no way to tell,” Jer said to Av.

  “That was what Telm thought,” Laeder said. “It wants Aren to sit it, but is perfectly fine with accepting Anue, given she's immune from consumption.”

  �
�More people are going to die,” Ervam growled.

  Laeder nodded. “Telm figures another bout of consumption will strike the palace once Anue returns to court. We could keep her away, but it's best if she's made immune while the throne has control. Others will die, yes, but would you want to lose Anue later on? Aren didn't mention her sister much, but when she did she made it very clear that she cared for her sister a great deal. If Anue dies of consumption because you didn't bring her to the palace when she should have been at court, and the throne tells Aren... She'll rain terror down on you like you would not believe.”

  “Back to Telm, perhaps?” Ervam asked.

  “Telm told me to tell you that before I told you the rest. Though, she also asked I wait until spring for this story.”

  “Why tell us that first?” Av asked.

  “So that when I tell you what Telm did, you will know that Aren could do the same to you,” Laeder said. “And Aren is stronger than Telm ever was.”

  “What do you mean, ever was?” Jer asked. “A queen is born strong or weak, and it doesn't change over their lifetime.”

  “Aren became stronger,” Av said to Jer, cutting off his brother's protest. “And a warrior becomes weaker with age, so why not a queen?”

  “Boys,” Ervam growled at the two of them. “Let the scribe tell the story. Laeder? Stop hesitating and giving them the opportunity to interrupt.”

  “Sorry,” Laeder said. “Telm's cousin took her out when she was pregnant, to keep her from fighting back. But the link there won't latch onto a queen who's about to birth a queen. Which is what Telm was carrying at the time, a little queen. The reason for this is because that link was created in order to prevent the destruction of the queen attached to it. It links a queen to give her the territory, but if she has magic, it takes it the way the throne does.

  “Finding out that he couldn't force Telm to link to the magic, and finding Telm capable of using her legs and her knees, her cousin cut the babe from her belly. Meaning to then force the magic on Telm. Mother and babe were dying. Telm described it as going all cold and then all emotion disappeared, the terror vanished and she knew that the only way to save them both was to fall into the rage.”