JOURNEY OF THE SACRED KING BOOK I: MY SISTER'S KEEPER

by JANRAE FRANK

  Aejys pressed her hand to the wound again, bending forward as she worked to focus past the pain. "Hell shitting damnation! What are you saying?" Even as she said it, she remembered Aroana's admonition that the war was not over, merely gone a different and more insidious direction.

  "I did not want to show you this until you were stronger." Cassana extended the letter from Margren to Farendarc. "I didn't want you racing off half-healed, but you seem determined to do that anyway."

  Aejys read and her face grew grave. "I must get Laeoli out."

  "I thought you'd probably want to kill Margren."

  "I do, but I cannot. I guess it's time I made this known. The year Kalestari died. When the levies were gathering at Castle Rowan to carry the war to Waejontor. I promised my ma'aram that I would never, in any way, harm Margren. My life be forfeit to God."

  Cassana looked deeply shaken. "She condemned you with a promise."

  Aejys nodded. "Deep inside myself I keep thinking that going back will lead to breaking that vow in some way – some little way. And my life be forfeit–"

  "Then we've called you back to die."

  "You had no choice. I'm the only one who can make Kaethreyn let go of Laeoli without starting a war." Aejys pressed harder on the wound, bending more. "Better to die with honor, than to live without it." But if all I do is get my daughter out, if I abandon Shaurone to its enemies, what honor will I have left?

  Cassana fetched a satchel from Ajandar. She opened a small flask and raised it to Aejys' mouth. "Just a small swallow. I don't want you fainting in the saddle."

  Aejys nodded and took a little. As Cassana helped her mount Aejys spoke out of the depths of her pain and exhaustion and grief, "Maybe I should just kill Margren and then myself. Put an end to all this shit."

  "Not if I have anything to say about it," Cassana said sharply. "I am placing my life between you and your sister from this moment forward."

  CHAPTER FIVE. OF MAGES AND MERCENARIES

  Clemmerick looked up from a pile of papers spread out next to a large ledger book as Zacham showed the pilgrim into the office. Several bundles of the notched tithing sticks Becca used to keep track of stores and purchases lay at his left hand in two stacks. He laid aside his quill, turning in his enormous chair to see the mon. He gave Becca, sitting beside him in a loose-sleeved red shirt laced at the neck and wrists under a black suede jerkin and her pants, a nod and she turned also. The end of her sling poked out of the corner of the long waist pouch. It did not seem as comfortable there as it had in her apron or pockets.

  Becca rose from her seat, stepping away from the table. The pilgrim was lean with a scrawny wheaten wisp of a beard and spiky silver-blond eyebrows on a rounded, deceptively immature face. After taking in his unimpressive appearance, the ogre went back to his work.

  "What can I help you with, sir pilgrim?" Becca asked in a direct, stare down fashion.

  "I wish to see Aejys Rowan," he said politely. "You are her seneschal?"

  "Lot of people want to see Aejys Rowan," Becca said, guardedly, her hands settling on her hips, fingertips hooking and twining the edge of her sling. It occurred to her that she really ought to learn to use a blade. "Why should she see you?"

  "Because I have found something she wants and am returning it to her," Eliahu extended the black armband and the lock of auburn hair.

  "You found it!" Becca's eyes brightened, her expression softening. "I looked all over..."

  "I lingered at the Dueling Grounds and found it," Eliahu's voice was high and almost sweet. "I did not want to risk it falling into any hands but hers so I picked it up." He extended the band and hair to her.

  Becca nodded, taking it from his hands. "She'll want to thank you for it. Wait here."

  * * * *

  Aejys sat at her desk in a pillow stuffed chair with her feet propped up in an adjacent chair, smoking her pipe thoughtfully. "What is it, Becca?" she asked when the tavern master entered.

  Becca extended the black armband and the lock of hair.

  Aejys' lips curved into a grateful, yet sad, smile and her eyes misted just a little at the edges. Since his death, Aejys Rowan wore her feelings for Brendorn on her sleeve where everything seemed to brush against it. "You found it," she said, taking it from the tavern master's hand.

  "No," Becca said, "A pilgrim named Eli Jonasson found it. He wants to meet you."

  Aejys kissed the lock of hair. "Send him in."

  "Do you think it wise to see a stranger?" Hanadi's measured voice broke in on their awareness, startling Becca who had not been aware of the assassin curled up silently on the couch near the window.

  Becca's expression dissolved into schooled neutrality she reserved for distasteful customers of high rank whom she could not afford to smack. Twice in the last year she had smacked them anyway, she reminded herself, and only Aejys' intervention had kept her out of the stocks or worse. Aejys was far more tolerant of Becca's infrequent lapses than any employer before her: Becca repaid this tolerance with a loyalty as ferocious as Tagalong's. "He's a harmless little mon. Clemmerick checked him out."

  "My most dangerous agents are harmless looking little myn."

  Becca's lips thinned in the tiniest possible sign of irritation. The tavern master knew Hanadi's profession and could not be certain whether it was that or the mon herself that rubbed her the wrong way; just being around Hanadi put Becca on her guard and on edge. "I am a very good judge of character."

  Hanadi shrugged. "Hmph! Everyone is until they are not."

  "He found this, I will see him," Aejys told her.

  "So be it." Hanadi moved into the shadows by the door where she could not be seen as he entered.

  Becca returned shortly and escorted Eliahu to Aejys' sitting room where he stood hesitantly in the doorway. She took him by the arm, propelling him firmly, but gently by the elbow to within a few feet of her desk. Becca fought down a wave of irritation at his meekness, reminding herself that pilgrims, of which she knew only from gossip, were supposed to be meek and hesitant.

  Aejys' eyes grew misty as she held the lock of hair, raised it to her face; the hair still smelled of him. She sucked back a sigh, dismissing Becca with a wave and turning to Eliahu, "What can I do for you?"

  Eliahu met her measuring gaze with more confidence than he had shown Becca. "I wish to join your company."

  Aejys looked his slender, almost fragile form over again: he did not look like much of a fighter, but she asked anyway. "Can you fight? This is no quest for the faint-hearted. Those who cannot fend for themselves in a battle cannot go."

  "Then let me demonstrate," he said, a long amused smile completely transforming his face from meek to supremely confident. He whipped out three daggers concealed in his robes. They thunked into the table exactly one inch from Aejys' right hand.

  Instantly Hanadi had her arm around his throat, jerking him off balance, her dagger pricking his side level with his kidneys. A single move and she would kill him; he could tell that Hanadi was an expert by the way she held him, yet the smile never left his face. He had other cards to play but wished to withhold them for the present.

  "Release him, Hanadi." Aejys lifted a questioning brow, regarding him with interest. "If he had meant to kill me, I'd be dead," she said evenly. "What kind of position are you looking for?"

  "I'm a cook."

  Aejys thought about that one in surprise, then nodded. "A good one, I hope. Where are you from and who are you?"

  "My name is Eli Jonasson, my father is armsmaster to the Lord of the Iron Glacier," he pulled a sheaf of papers from a pocket in his robes. "My lord gave me these as letters of introduction should it be required."

  Aejys read them.

  TO ANY IT MAY CONCERN,

  Eli Jonasson, youngest son of Jonas Gunderson, my arms master, has served me faithfully for ten years and should he require aid or employment during his wanderyears, I attest to his good nature, dependability, and loyalty to both persons and causes noble.

  On this th
e tenth day of the sixth moon of the year 1055.

  Eliahu Solistis

  Lord of the Iron Glacier.

  It was affixed with a seal Aejys had never seen before, a staff radiating thunderbolts. She decided to have Hanadi or Cassana investigate its origins just to be cautious.

  "I assume this means you can use other weapons as well?" she asked.

  Eliahu nodded, "Sword, lance and halberd."

  Aejys gave his slender form another doubtful look. "You're hired. We have three cook's helpers, but until now no cook. Write him a note, Hanadi, and send him along to Tag."

  * * * *

  Cassana brought the lunch tray up herself. Aejys sat in a soft chair with pillows to her healing side. Nine days had passed since the duel. The stubborn strength of the lapsed paladin surpassed all but a very few she had known during the war. Theirs was a resilient, hardy race capable of tremendous toughness when circumstances demanded. They had become recognized as the bulwark of the West when the banewitches swept out of Waejontor; and those races who had forgotten during the five hundred years respite remembered that only the vigilance of Shaurone had given them those years of freedom from the shadows that broke upon them when the Great War came. Where they had been held in suspicion by their western neighbors before the war, after it they were held in awe and respect.

  "How is it going?" Aejys greeted her, lifting her hand from the pages of the book on her lap to reach for her pipe. The healing arm twinged as she slipped it out of the sling and brought the pipe to her lips.

  Cassana settled the tray on the table beside her chair. "Tagalong has tents set up on the green outside Vorgensburg. Your drivers are unhappy about you taking the wagons and not them. Two of them tried to demonstrate their martial skills in the taproom to impress me. Becca vanquished them with a broom."

  Aejys laid aside her pipe. She spread a blended nutbutter on the crisp hot acorn bread, speared a steamed clam, wrapping it in the buttery folds. "Becca's quite feisty for an outlands woman. That's one of the reasons I put her in charge of the Cock and Boar."

  "I think you should officially make her your seneschal, Aejys. She's doing the job already."

  "Tag said something like that just before you got here."

  "In that case you're out voted," Cassana grinned.

  "Yes, I guess I am. When lunch is finished have Becca sent up and I'll promote her."

  "And a bonus. The seneschal of a Sharani ha'taren," she used the Sharani word for the paladins of Aroana, "should never be going around in skirts."

  Aejys nodded. "Done," she said: Then her expression turned sober, "Cassana, what I said a few nights ago ... about killing Margren..." she said, leaving out the part regarding herself, "I didn't mean it. I was just tired."

  "I know."

  Aejys clasped Cassana's hands. "I have missed my friends, Sana. You sift what I say like a miller discarding the chaff and keeping the wheat. Now what is this about my drivers?"

  "They do not wish to be left behind."

  Aejys took a sip of plum cordial, nodding. "I'm taking just six wagons. I have thirteen drivers. In case you haven't noticed, Cassana, I have no white feathers among my retainers." Aejys speared another clam, "If Becca bested them, it's to her strength."

  "Is that enough to convince folks it's a trading expedition?"

  "Should be. Before the War of the Three Queens, there was a trade road running across the top, from the Kwaklahmyn villages through Cherdon'datar and Vallimrah then straight on to Shaurone."

  "Five hundred years ago," Cassana said, with an emphatic tap. "Things change."

  "Yes, but it was legended to be a very rich route. That's a legitimate reason to try it as well as to bring only so much stuff in case it isn't there. And it's off the well worn ways, that should make it harder for Margren to keep track of us." Aejys speared another clam and chewed for a moment. "Tell Tag to keep an eye out for spies, but don't hurt them, just keep their noses clean."

  "Spies?"

  "Cedarbird wanted a piece of the pie, but I turned him down."

  * * * *

  The kandoyarin captain Johannes Redbeard stood in the doorway of Aejys Rowan's office, he wore soft riding leathers and a long sleeved shirt, a parting in the neck lacing showed the gleam of well-kept chain mail. His close-cropped straw-colored hair contrasted sharply with a red beard just a shade more orange than Tagalong's crimson mane. He was a burly man, huge torso, and short legs, built for power, but he had speed enough and cunning with the longsword he carried. At least that was what Aejys had heard and her sources were not given to exaggeration. The mercenaries out of Ocealay, kandoyarin, were bonded by the Five Captains who ruled the city-state. However, they were also reputed to occasionally display a certain capriciousness in their own realm, which made Aejys cautious. She had not dealt with the grey badgers before, as they were euphemistically referred to in some quarters, so she intended to keep a tight rein on them.

  Aejys moved her legs from the table to the seat of the chair next to her. She wore brown leggings, comfortably well-worn boots, and a tunic of deep green. The left arm in its sling rested on the table. She pulled her pipe from between her teeth long enough to say, "Come in and sit down."

  Red Beard took a seat across from her, leaning forward a little on his elbows. "What will we be fighting on this expedition of yours?"

  Aejys met his eyes steadily. "I cannot be certain, that's why I need more arms than I can field just now. We're going to Shaurone to pick up what I'm owed from my estates there and then on to Iradrim. Good dwarf and Sharani steel should bring a fine price on the coast." As she spoke she rolled a small round object back and forth with her left hand.

  "If you expect trouble, you'd need more units than you're hiring." Johannes' eyes kept being drawn to the bright object in her hand.

  "No," Aejys corrected him. "I have it on good authority that what I have will be enough."

  "And how do you get us over the Sharani border? Shaurone's still not wild about armed men."

  "Times change. My livery will get you in. You wear my colors and no one will question you. I've hired all the tailors and seamers in Vorgensburg, there will be more than enough tabards for all."

  "Then you are who they say," he said pointedly. "The Lion of Rowanslea."

  Aejys seized his eyes with hers, studying him, challenging him. "Does that bother you?"

  Johannes looked uncomfortable for a moment, letting his eyes drift again to her bauble. "I know what the Lion of Rowanslea can do. What you did during the war."

  "Then we have a deal?"

  "It's been seven years or more since you last commanded troops..." He met her eyes again, pushing, "You should let me take charge."

  Aejys burst out laughing and slapped the table. Johannes frowned, clearly confused: was she insulting him? She sobered as suddenly as she had laughed. "No. We are going where you have never been. But I have."

  "And this livery thing... We've always worn our own colors..."

  "When we reach Shaurone, those colors of yours will make your people bait to every sword in the realm. You cannot cross the border in them. Further more, from the outset I want to create an impression that I already have my own force of arms, under my own banner. You may not realize, but I have been quietly hiring and training for months now."

  "Yah, I've heard. Your household turned those pirates."

  Aejys smiled thinly. "If I wanted to take a month or more I could raise the rest that I need and train it myself. But that would put us arriving in winter. I want to get there ahead of the snows." Suddenly the distance, which had previously meant a measure of safety from Margren, had become a danger to those Aejys loved.

  "And what kind of chain of command are you figuring on?"

  "You would take your orders from me, Tag and my amanuensis, Hanadi."

  "That's a lot of leaders ... could cause confusion..."

  Aejys allowed a small smile at the way he maneuvered for more authority. "Not at all. Tag and Hanadi speak for me. But y
ou will be part of my inner council on this expedition along with Tag, Hanadi, Tamlestari and the Ajan Odaren." Aejys slid the ball she had been playing with over to Red Beard. He took the smooth round globe in his hands and gasped. It was a huge polished but as yet uncut ruby.

  "That's your personal advance above and beyond what I pay for your myn," Aejys told him. "You will find me a generous employer. You and your men have never ventured into the lands we will be passing through. I have. We will not be following the trade routes. I am going across the top and east into the Yarrendar Mar'ajante. We are going in through Shaurone's 'postern gate' so to speak. You will give me strict obedience. You will not question my orders at any point. Understood? I do not want drawn sword quarrels when diplomacy will suffice. I will deal severely with anyone who disobeys my orders."

  "That is understood," he said, rolling the ruby around in his hand greedily. "You have yourself an army." He extended his hand and clasped Aejys' hard. She matched his grip and her strength lived up to her legend as it had come out of the war.

  Aejys gave him a crooked smile and refilled her pipe. "Go on down to the common room, my seneschal will see to your needs. Today everything is on the house." Aejys lit her pipe as she watched him leave, saying softly under her breath. "You old wolf, I'll be keeping close eyes on you."

  * * * *

  Tamlestari walked through the market square, going from booth to booth and from shop to shop. Already the pale cream color was beginning to show at the roots of her hair. She had considered touching it up, even gotten her dye out, but Aejys' words of that first meeting hung in her thoughts and she put the stoppered bottle in her pocket instead, feeling a strong wave of defiance. Besides, she was in a strange land where no one knew her, where no one could say whether she was or was not the wrong color. What was the wrong color anyway? Had it really been expected of her? Or had she merely given expression to those deeply buried self-doubts that sometimes rose so ferociously in her heart.

  A small gang of street children rushed past her, chasing a ball. Tamlestari stepped from their path only to collide with another child she had not seen. She stared down into a dirt-smeared face, noticing the child's skin was light beneath the brown caking and his hair a sun-bleached blond.