“I have one question,” Cor’El said softly.
“Go ahead,” Doc answered with an approving nod.
“Could my mother be there?”
Doctor Harold Brown smiled ever so slightly, though he doubted that the boy could infer the actual reason behind the smile. “Of course!” he reassured.
Cor
He rose early the next morning, a new habit since leaving Byrverus, or actually an old habit revitalized by necessity. He donned his armor, a laborious task by oneself that he had learned to manage many years ago, and as he did so, it gratified him to see the change in his torso. When they had left Byrverus those weeks ago, his own torso contrasted terribly against the muscled one portrayed in the black steel of his hauberk. Weeks of riding and training seemed to be finally pushing the softness out of his body again, and he wondered how Thyss had ever tolerated a lover with the squishy body of a minor noble or even a merchant.
Once fully ready for whatever battle may present itself on this morning, Cor stepped outside into the crisp, summer mountain air. The sun had just started to edge over the horizon to the east, and it would soon warm the day, likely quickly and to an unpleasant degree, but for now, he enjoyed the cool air as he breathed, stretched and exercised his muscles. He could feel the change that he saw, for several weeks ago, his body would have protested even light training, muscles burning and screaming with the effort of wielding a sword while clad in steel. Now, his old fighting body nearly restored, it was almost an hour before this happened, more than enough time for Menak’s small town and its surrounding lands to begin to bustle with morning work.
Keth and the other Dahken all joined his training within a few minutes. He had set no requirement for them to arise early or quickly, deciding that they could enjoy one good, long night’s sleep in comfortable surroundings, and though some of them were barely out of childhood, the early habits of professional soldiers, once ingrained, take more than one day to break. Cor stood at the head of his Dahken, the point of a terrible sword of black plated death, and even if they didn’t know who or what Cor was, the Westerners, Loszians and mixed persons about knew they looked upon a fighting force that could not be challenged by any in Aquis or the West, or maybe even all of Rumedia itself.
Actually enjoying the burn he felt in his arms and legs, Cor was loathe to end the workout, only doing so when he saw Menak standing outside of his personal residence watching them. In what he hoped to be a completely unexpected move, he whirled around, a dervish of black steel with Soulmourn’s blade reflecting purple sunlight onto the faces of those around as it whistled through the air right at Keth’s head. To the collective gasps of the Dahken, as well as all of those who had stopped to watch, Keth’s sword came up just in time to parry the death blow with the loudest of clangs. Cor smiled, and Keth lopsidedly returned it as Marya looked on in sudden, heated anger.
“You could’ve killed him,” she cried.
“I should hope that I wouldn’t be ended by such a clumsy blow,” Keth chided, easily dismissing her concern. “You’re still a bit slow, Lord Dahken.”
“I’m working on it,” Cor replied in faked annoyance as he sheathed Soulmourn. He called over to Menak, “Are you ready?”
“If you are done playing soldier,” Menak mocked as he limped and thumped his way across the ground to Cor and the Dahken. “I have never understood the desire of boys to swing sticks at one another, especially as they grow older and the sticks turn to steel.”
“I am no boy,” smoldered Marya from behind Cor.
Menak stretched his neck up and to the left in the pretense that he hadn’t seen her there and stated, “I would not know, as I do not believe I have had the opportunity to find out for myself.”
Marya started forward, her sword and dagger still in each hand, and her face would most certainly have turned red with anger were it not for her Dahken blood. Only a restraining hand from Keth held her back as he hoped to hold her ire in check. Cor saw this and then turned his gaze back to the Loszian, who he saw wore a most mischievous smile, like that of a troublemaking toddler, and a deep, hearty laugh burst forth from the Lord Dahken.
“Two jokes in as many days? What is happening to you, Lord Menak?” Cor asked, placing a friendly hand on the Loszian’s shoulder. Keth smiled broadly, but Marya still fumed even as she sheathed her weapons.
“I am trying to learn from you Westerners. Are you ready to reach out to King Rederick, or would you prefer to breakfast first?”
“Food will wait,” Cor declared. “I want to talk to Than’Tok before the king.”
“I cannot promise he will answer,” Menak said with a slight twitch of an absent eyebrow.
“He had better.”
* * *
“So, what of the Loszian?” Rederick asked, his grave face rippling in the bowl of water. His voice seemed hollow somehow, as if it were from a distant memory instead of hundreds of miles away.
“Nothing other than what we thought,” said Cor. “Than’Tok admits to declaring himself a Master, claims that Westerners literally begged him. I’ll be leaving here soon to travel to his lands.”
“To what end?”
“I want to see it all for myself.”
“Slavery will not be tolerated within Aquis,” Rederick stated bluntly, as if Cor needed any reminder of the law, a law he had personally helped forge.
“No, it won’t,” Cor agreed, “but I need to see if the people truly desire it. On the king’s authority, I demanded of Than’Tok that he contact the other two Loszian nobles who have taken slaves – Routan and Joru’us they’re called – to make sure they’re present when I arrive.”
“Do you think he will?” asked the king.
“I was very convincing,” Cor replied with a smile. “Maybe it was that I invoked your name, or perhaps because Lord Menak will be with me. Somehow, I think the memory of what I’ve already done to his people helped my cause the most.”
“Indeed,” Rederick said thoughtfully. “Very well. Have you determined what you will do when you reach Than’Tok’s lands? To end this abomination?”
“Not a clue,” Cor replied honestly. “I’m hoping he’s simply an evil man, and I can just kill him and all of his people.”
“I’m not sure it will be so easy for you, Cor.”
“Why would it be, Majesty? I’ll have Menak bring the bowl, and we’ll contact you when we arrive in... two weeks or so.”
“Very well, Lord Dahken. Fare thee well.”
The king’s face faded away from the water’s surface with not even a ripple, leaving nothing but a wooden bowl full of water. Cor simply stared at it for a moment before turning in his chair to behold Menak’s rather blanched countenance. He was rather pale, even as Loszians go, as if he had eaten something rotten or undercooked, and whatever it was, his stomach had a hard time finding an agreement with it.
“What’s wrong?” Cor asked.
“I sincerely hoped you were jesting when you told Than’Tok that I would be attending your little meeting,” Menak explained, “but I see now that you were serious.”
“As serious as a mortal wound, I’m afraid.”
Menak audibly sighed before he responded, “I know you have no real authority over me, Lord Dahken, but I suppose I would look poorly in King Rederick’s eyes if I did not join you. Why will no one leave me be?”
“You could renounce your seat on the council and stop bringing these things to our attention,” Cor returned with a shrug and a sly smile.
“And then who would keep an eye on you people?”
“Very true.”
Cor’El
No sooner had he decided to really settle into the minor luxuries that the Loszian afforded them, they were off again. His father had told them it would take about another two weeks to reach their final destination – some Loszian’s lands in northeast Aquis where the lord had returned to his “old ways”. Why his father, or anyone else for that matter, cared so much about this, Cor’El simply could
n’t discern. In the end, as long as it works for them, who cared? But this thinking was not shared by anyone, or if it was, they didn’t voice it, and they endured another two weeks of sweaty riding and sore asses. He managed it all with hateful glances toward his father and begging gazes towards his mother, both of which went completely unheeded.
Finally, Menak declared, “That is it,” when the tip of a dark tower came into view on the horizon. As they continued to cross the last few miles, the tower rose from the ground, an ominous homage to the evil powers that once ruled this place as it reflected the afternoon sunlight purple and black. It was at once spectacular and unnerving, clearly belonging to one that saw himself as above all of those below him, giving him the perfect vantage point to watch their lives closely.
They were perhaps two miles out when Cor’El realized that their road cut through overgrown and twisted fields. Farmland turned dormant after years of neglect showed the smallest hints of green life, and he noticed persons among the crops and weeds that he had not seen before, as if they suddenly appeared, their presence not important enough to be noticed before that moment. They were an unkempt lot, as if they hadn’t bathed in weeks if not months, their skins and clothes covered with the grime, dust and muck of their existences.
Continuing on, they approached a wooden pedestal that stood perhaps five feet off of the ground, upon which lorded an imposing man in black, boiled leather encrusted with interlinked bronze rings. He wore a plain longsword on one hip with a wicked looking whip on the other. Even through his armor, Cor’El plainly saw that he was well muscled, especially his arms from use of the tools of his trade. He had clearly watched them from afar, and as they approached, he jumped down from his perch to kneel as Cor and Menak stopped their horses.
“Lords,” said a surprisingly soft voice as he kept his eyes on the ground, “my lord Than’Tok expects you.”
“You are an overseer,” Cor said to him, motioning at the whip.
“I am, my lord.”
“Allow me to make myself very clear then. Look me in the eye,” Cor commanded, and once he was sure he had the overseer’s full attention, he continued, “If I see you raise one hand against these people, you will lose that hand. Use that whip, and I’ll take your entire arm. Pass this on to the rest of Than’Tok’s overseers. Do you understand?”
The overseer swallowed with some difficulty, and the longer Cor’El looked at the man, he began to wonder if he shared some Loszian blood. His forehead seemed just a bit too tall, his arms and legs somewhat rangy. It seemed he took a little too long to answer, and Cor’El hoped for just a moment that the overseer might try something, though to do so would be suicidal against Cor alone, much less the assembly before him. Even still, Cor’El leaned forward in anticipation.
“Clearly, my lord,” the overseer finally replied.
They continued on toward the tower, its mere presence seeming to cast a gloom upon the entire area, even though the sun shined brightly on Cor’El’s back. He spied more and more Westerners, all generally in the same state, working the fields more densely, and the closer they rode, the cleaner and more productive the fields seemed to be. Along with more workers came more overseers, some of whom shouted and barked harsh commands and insults. Cor’El watched eagerly for one to mistreat the slaves, though he wasn’t really aware as to why, for surely these overseers hadn’t heard his father’s words as yet. However, this did not occur, as the overseers watched their small column warily, likely already made aware by their master.
For a half mile around the tower’s base, Cor’El saw everything he would normally expect to find in a village or town. There were hundreds upon hundreds of houses, little more than one room stone huts with dirt floors, the most luxurious of which had an animal skin or some discarded planking to use as a door. He heard the clanging of a smithy, the sound of a hammer on iron carried by a light summer wind, the same wind that brought the unpleasant odors of a tanner. A temple to Garod even stood some two hundred feet off to his right, though it had been completely overgrown, the whitewashed walls discolored from lack of care or use.
The dark tower appeared to be at least a hundred feet across at the bottom, and it had one great door, large enough to allow two riders to enter side by side without ducking or huddling close. This opened silently as a trio of silk robed young men, none perhaps more than twenty and all partially Loszian due to certain obvious physical traits, exited to kneel before Cor and his entourage. There was little to differentiate the three excepting the colors of their robes – black, purple and red – and the Loszian runes upon them that Cor’El couldn’t read but he knew would dictate whom they served.
Cor’El knew better than to dismount before his father, but he nearly did so anyway in his excitement that yet another hellish journey on horseback was at an end. It hadn’t yet dawned on him that they would have to actually ride back to Byrverus.
“Lord Dahken Cor and Lord Menak,” the purple greeter intoned while climbing to his feet while the others remained. “Lords Than’Tok, Joru’us and Routan are pleased you have arrived.”
“Yet they sent you to greet us rather than come themselves,” Cor argued, his warhorse shifting uncomfortably.
“As is our way,” he replied, and he squinted to look at the Lord Dahken, peering into the sun behind them. “They await you inside, my lords, along with food, drink and whatever amenities you may require after your hardship. May I have your horses attended to?”
Cor grunted his assent, quickly dismounting, an action followed by all behind him. Cor’El really couldn’t get off the beast quickly enough, and he absentmindedly rubbed a spot on his backside, the sharp pain of a popped blister reminding him why he shouldn’t have. The mention of a meal and the thought of a soft bed permeated his thoughts as a number of servants appeared from inside the darkness of the tower’s maw and led the mounts around the outside of the tower, presumably to stables.
“They will be well cared for,” purple assured.
Cor’El had never been inside one of the Loszian towers that he had heard about through both his father’s and the Chronicler’s stories, and unfortunately, it was not nearly as exciting as the great, foreboding edifice seemed it should be. Inside he found bare stone walls and a great stone staircase that helically wrapped the inside of what he assumed to be the building’s outermost wall. He had expected tapestries and idols, statues depicting some sort of dark sacrifice or evil power, and he found none of that. There was nothing here but empty rooms or, as they began to climb, floors and rooms devoted to all the same things one found in a Western castle. Even Loszians, the great oppressors and dark magicians of the West’s past, were tame and boring.
The staircase seemed to enter the ceiling of the ground floor, and after that, the group found themselves walled in on both sides, the steps continuing to spiral upwards. They passed an oak door set into the basalt inner wall, followed by a second as they ascended to what Cor’El thought was the third level. Finally, as his legs began to burn and ache with the continued exertion of climbing steps, they came to a third such door, and the Loszians stopped while purple inserted a black iron key to turn a lock.
“This entire floor as been made at your disposal,” he said. He opened the door and stepped inside to make his point that they should enter. “You should find everything acceptable, and my lord requests that you make yourself at home.”
Cor’El nearly pushed by his mother and father, but was stopped short by his father, who shook his head as he disagreed, “Not now. You’re taking us straight to Than’Tok and the others.”
“Surely, you would –,” purple calmly implored.
But Cor cut him off with a tone that allowed no discussion, “No, I would not. We’re going to meet your lords. All of us. Now.”
Purple looked to black and red, the latter of which merely shrugged, and then he stepped back through the doorway and onto the stairs. “Everything awaits you inside should you change your mind,” he said almost despondently, and t
hey continued their tiring ascent. They passed another three doors, and by the time they finally stopped at a fourth, the entire group seemed to be huffing, puffing or groaning. The stairs continued to spiral up and out of view, and Cor’El looked at them thankfully that their journey was finally at an end. Purple opened the door, simultaneously announcing the admission of Cor and his entourage to the three Loszian lords who sat glumly at a round table inside.
The room itself was huge, clearly requiring the entire floor, though for what purpose Cor’El wasn’t sure. As he looked around, it seemed to be more wasted space than anything. To one side appeared to be an alchemical bench of sorts, not dissimilar from Menak’s, and about thirty feet down the curved wall was a series of dark stained, wooden shelves containing various books and scrolls. These occupied the largest amount of the room’s space, taking up nearly a quarter, perhaps sixty feet of the circular wall, and they stood floor to ceiling, which would necessitate a stool for a Westerner to reach the top shelf. This likely wasn’t a problem for a Loszian. And that was almost all there was to see in this giant, circular room almost eighty feet across, giving the place a notably empty and lopsided feel.
The last item of note was the entirely too small table at which the three Loszians sat, their thoughts and feelings inscrutable. It too was circular, no more than four feet across, and clearly wrought of pine, if the knots were any indication, which combined with the apparently yellowish stain used on the wood was a substantial departure from the generally dark idioms of the Loszian race. The Loszians themselves wore the same colors as the three servants, who filed in to stand behind their respective masters, with black on the left, red on the right and purple between them.
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