by Derek Barton
***
His eyelids did not want to cooperate. Taihven knew that he was awake, but his eyes would not open. Every part of him seemed aflame with muscle aches. The fall must have done more to him than he imagined.
Or it was the straw that broke the camel’s back; he had been pushing himself the last few days. He wondered to himself.
“I have a couple of eggs and slices of toast for your menaa, Your Highness.” Taliah’s voice was cheerful but wavered and he sensed her nervousness.
“Do you have more water? My throat hurts a bit.”
Again, she offered him the clay cup from the table. After he washed away the sandpaper within his throat, he forced his eyes open. Taliah stood next to a table near the fireplace. His plate sat across from his folded clothes. She was dressed in her normal court servant attire. Her fiery hair bound up in a proper bun. The mischief in her eyes had been replaced by something else. He spotted it immediately, but could not guess the change.
“Would you prefer to eat there in the bed, sire, or do you need help to the table?”
“I am not hungry.” Taihven lied. “Thank you though, Taliah.”
“Prince Taihven, I… I was surprised to find you outside the castle. Where were you going? It is dangerous for you now, sire. Some of the commoners have made serious threats.”
He sat up and held out his hand toward the neatly piled clothes.
“I can give you a robe to wear while you eat, M’lord? I will see Princess Letandra today. She is sure to be worried. I will tell her you are here. Did she ask you to leave? Or…” Taliah fished for more words.
“I should just dress.”
“You are way too sick for that!” She snapped at him.
There was a bubble of silence. Taliah crossed to the fireplace and stirred a tiny pan of morning hash reeds with her back to him.
“What is wrong, Taliah?”
She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders.
“Look, it is fine. You can relax. Nobody is going to look for me here and you are not in any trouble.”
“Why would they not be looking for you, sire? If you tell me what is wrong or what you are doing, I could help.”
He wrapped the sheet around himself and left the bed. She rushed him and grabbed his arm, “Please, please stay! Get back into the bed and I will—”
“—Stop it!” He interrupted her, yanked his arm free and scooped up his clothes.
“I just do not want you to get worse, Prince Taihven. Please let me help you.”
The prince ignored her, dropped the sheet and turned his back to dress.
“It has snowed as well and it is freezing outside. You still have a fever and I need to change your bandages. You need me,” she ranted as he continued to dismiss her pleas and put on his clothes.
“You are being ridiculous. I am going. Thank you for all your kind—” he tucked in his shirt and looked for his boots. He turned around to face a long, serrated dagger. She trembled in fright and her arm swung in wild arcs as she pointed it at his stomach.
“Get back into bed!” She ordered, desperation tainting her voice.
“Taliah!” He gasped and stood locked in indecision. “I do not want to hurt you. And I do not believe you want to hurt me.”
“I cannot let you leave,” she pleaded. “I am so sorry, but he… he hurts me bad if I fail him.” Tears flowed down her cheeks.
“What are you talking about? Who is going to hurt you?” The girl had transformed over nightfall. Why was she so desperate and panicked?
“Auste is… he will,” she sobbed. “He will not stop and he is bringing the Viestrahl to Wyvernshield!”
“I do not understand. You need to drop that knife!” Taihven scolded back.
“You do not understand! You will be safe here. I will be safe if we obey him!”
Taliah lowered the blade to her side and had sunk to her knees. “He will kill all of you…” she wailed. “Going to kill all of us!”
Taihven spotted his boots stacked by the door, but she followed his gaze.
“You cannot leave!” She lunged to her feet and took a frantic swipe with the knife near his face. Taihven twisted to the right, ducked under her arm and grasped her elbow. He popped Taliah’s arm up and punched her in the stomach. The knife flung from her hands as she sprawled upon the floor. She moaned and hugged herself under the table.
He bolted over to his boots and ripped the door open. The prince felt a surge of guilt as he heard her pleas following after him.
“Save me!” Between sobs she begged. “Save me from Auste!”
PART VI – SISTER OF MERCY:
Afternoon of Helmlaadar 9th~~
1#
Nearly an hour before the Meridian Suns, the skies were clouded and the ceiling hung low over the entire city. A chill had emptied out the practice yards in front of the Wyvernguard Barracks and the city streets were sparsely populated. Twin archways led into the two-story military building.
Princess Letandra stopped to wrap her scarf tighter around her neck. A leather parcel bag hung at her side. In her left hand, she cradled a cloth-wrapped bundle. Stress furrowed her brow and camped along her shoulders. The meeting could not be postponed any longer; the princess had to report her mission results during the next morning Court’s session. She barreled through the eastern entry.
She walked past the standing door guards and marched through the halls till she came to Captain Bardun Ruessard’s office. She rapped her gloved hand upon it harder than she meant to. After a count of five, she stepped inside.
The cramped office was cluttered with jumbled shelves and a rickety wooden desk and a bench seat. A pair of candles sat on the desk corners, weighing down a canvas map. Ruessard counted scout troop markers to himself and did not acknowledge the Lady Magistrate when she planted herself on the bench in front of him.
“I am not ignoring you, just do not want to mix up my numbers. One moment,” he mumbled with a raised finger as he scrawled notes.
She slammed down the bundle and unwrapped a flat marble tablet in the center of his map. “Let us get on with this.” She huffed and dug into the parcel bag.
“Alright. Fine!”
“Captain?” She snapped, locking eyes with him. “Is something wrong?”
He glanced down subconsciously at the stub of his left arm. Magic had robbed the warrior of his hand and the life he had deserved.
Bardun had been assigned to the Courts that day of the Cros’seau coup attempt. His career as a soldier stalled after that battle. He had been a promising leader among his class and even losing his hand and partial use of his arm only delayed his rise to the honorable rank of Captain of the Wyvernguard, but… He was a haunted man.
“No, no. Sorry. You know I just do not like relying on spellcraft to help me do my job!”
He brushed aside his notes and removed dusty stacks of books to make more room. Princess Letandra produced a vision-gem which she set in the center of the marble tablet.
“This it?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Take notes, alright?”
She ran a finger along both ends of the tablet; her parallel motions invoked ensorcelled runes. As her fingers passed over each, the symbols lit with a neon blue flare. Moments later, a circular image appeared several inches above the flat marble.
Princess Letandra recognized her own shadowy form among others walking along a cliff wall. This was the beginning of the vision-gem’s captured record of the attack on the Viestrahl Hive.
The record cut out briefly but restored and depicted Deliah’s trek into the Leader Tower.
“Why would she have turned off the gem?” The captain inquired and looked concerned.
She shrugged, “Perhaps by mistake when we were climbing down the cliff?”
Minutes passed as they watched the scout delve further into the tunnels.
“Good girl,” Ruessard murmured when the Viestrahl battle formation map came into view. The scaled map was drawn reasonably well and de
picted noted landmarks. Scribbled characters and symbols along the borders were illegible to both of them.
“Look! They have already set up under Crestfall Ledge. Did you know that? You have got to send scouts again.” Letandra remarked. The Viestrahl were moving fast and were well prepped for a Horde March. Too many villages and farms were pinched between the beasts and Adventdawn.
“But—”
“—Use cloud cover to do flybys at least. We need more eyes on their preparations and I do not care who has to face the cold!”
“Understood, Your Highness.” He sighed again heavily, leaned back and folded his arms together.
She sensed his irritation, “Sorry. You know what you are doing. I apologize.”
Their attention returned to Deliah’s record. There was some sort of Viestrahl altar room with statues and fountains. They could see a broad-backed Viestrahl crouched by a swirling pool.
“That is Ramnethas.” Ruessard identified. “He has developed shaman skills as of late. Brutal warrior and now a religious zealot.”
“That is their leader, right?”
“From what the scouts have learned, he has a…” his words trailed off as they witnessed the Viestrahl’s horrific transformation. The abomination spoke out and its voice raised the hair on the back of Letandra’s neck. I may not see you, filth, but I know you are there.
Its words could have been spoken directly to them. She glanced across at the captain whose pallor had turned pasty and his jaw dropped open.
“W-what was…” he stammered.
The image was shrouded, but it did not end. ...none of you will live through this. The creature’s voice and movements were still coming through.
They sat speechless as they watched Deliah’s form race down the tunnel and then her capture by the Bal’Avals. Ramnethas had been restored or had at least been altered back to his normal form.
“Gru’Renthral wants blood,” he spat into his victim’s face. “Or...you...you shall take Taliah’s place.”
Princess Letandra flinched upon hearing her personal maid’s name.
“Who is Gru’Renthral?” Bardun exclaimed over the sounds of the battle.
She did not answer, but blurted out, “Pause!” The image froze in time. “We have a spy in the castle!” She ran over the implications and shook her head.
Tears welled up in her eyes. “How can we win this war? They have superior numbers, advanced preparations and tha—”
“—No! Deliah died to give us the very edge we needed! Without her sacrifice we would not know what is behind this, where they are positioned or even have some idea who is their secret leader.”
The captain stared in disbelief at the young woman across from him. “Uh…Look, I understand that this is all new to you and that this position of power was forced upon you, Lady Magistrate.” Captain Ruessard dropped his gaze and held her hand in his. “But you have to continue to be the city’s rock. You cannot let anyone see emotion.”
Letandra pulled her hand back and squared her shoulders. She wiped her cheek and rewarded him a brief smile.
“It is alright. We are all going to work together to get through this.”
Nodding, she called for the image to continue.
Both struggled hearing Lieutenant Jurvanch’s anguished screams. Neither Deliah nor Jurvanch had had a chance of surviving in the Leader Tower. Her desperate flight down the hall was more to ensure that Letandra retrieve and view this very recording.
In the vision circle, Mareor leaped up and ambushed Deliah. His body was blistered and marred with boils. Black ichor streamed down the sides of his jaw.
“Devin!” Princess Letandra cursed. “You complete bastard!”
“What?”
She pointed at the figure on the image. “He should be dead! Devin promised me he disposed of him with mercy! Does that look lik—”
“—Devin told me that Sergeant Blackstaff disposed of him. I… I never saw the body though.” Ruessard shook his head then scratched his chin.
She slapped the desk with an open palm. “Where is Sergeant Devin now? He is going to explain himself right now!”
“He left an hour ago, escorting the Envoys to the Kappora Docks.”
The princess snatched the tablet and stone and knocked over the bench seat in her haste to leave.
“Wait!” The captain yelled after her as she left his office. “What did you mean about a spy in the castle? Devin can answer for that later, but a spy…”
“I will deal with both myself!”
Letandra had no way to wrap her mind around what she witnessed. She descended the hall and charged through the door, ignoring the looks from passing guards.
No matter what, this cannot be revealed or known to anyone else. What was Deliah or Devin thinking? Letandra ranted in her mind. A disease in the Hive? It was insanity, terrorism!
It was beyond evil.
Her stomach seized and she vomited into a snowbank.
#2
“I had just come back downstairs from washing my hands, getting ready for dinner, when my stepfather and my brother…” Sergeant Renald Devin paused a moment in thought; the image of his younger brother lying in a pool of feverish sweat flashed across his mind. Sadness flooded his eyes for a second, but vanished as quick and he continued, “Well, the two of them are standing there next to the table – my stepfather with hands on his hips and a belt in his hands.”
“You are done for! The belt always means you are going to get it! He must have found that broken window for sure!” Private Joshier Wynn guffawed as he sat as Stage-sword next to the sergeant in the stagecoach’s driver box. He was a young recruit to the Wyvernguard with short, spiky black hair and freckles that crisscrossed his cheeks and nose.
Devin laughed and held up his hand, “He growls at me — ‘Boy! My father wants to know why exactly you are trying to kill him.’”
“Oh no!” Gasped one of the Envoys, a young woman with mousy brown hair who had been leaning out of the window to look up at them. She and several of the other members of the mission were listening intently to Devin’s tale. The Envoy Leader, who had no hair left and a bulldog-like face with a thick set of jowls, shushed her. He also had no real sense of humor to speak of.
“Well, remember when I had been target practicing in the morning as I had said and missed that hay bale and broke the window? It turned out that his father was asleep in that room.”
Laughter erupted from the confines of the stagecoach.
“He had spent the whole day I guess hidden in the privy thinking I was coming for him! That got me fifteen lashes – five for lying, five for not completing my chores and five for attempted murder!”
The Envoy Leader pulled his charge away from the window as more laughs filled the coach.
“It is, uh, getting a bit chilly. Thank you again, sergeant, for you and your men’s escort.” He called out from inside as he unfolded the shades and covered up the coach’s windows.
Wynn giggled under his breath and locked eyes with his superior. Renald shrugged his shoulders and snapped the reins at the horses.
Armed guards on horseback were ahead, several scouts were further down the Kappora Road and four more Wyvernguard trailed behind the carriage. On both sides of the pass, snow piles were stacked higher than their heads. Bordering the left side was the edge of the grand Nestermaryn Forest. The right side dropped away down steep cliffs and into the roaring ocean waters.
“Private, can you climb on top and get those pair of cotton blankets for our guests?”
While it was sunny and bright, the valley west of Adventdawn castle had a chill about it. The trip itself would not be too much longer, roughly two miles each way along the coastline.
The Envoys and the Envoy Leader were set to board the wavebreaker called the Neo Dasia.
“Are you alright back there, Private Wynn? What is the hold up?”
“Uh, nothing I guess, sir.”
Renald looked over his shoulder to see the pri
vate remaining in a crouched posture over the tied blanket bundles and staring off into the forest-line. He followed the soldier’s line-of-sight to a drifting flurry of snow and Jeamnole birds flying away. “You spot something?”
“No, sir, but those Jeamies sure got spooked.”
Private Wynn untied the blankets, leaned over and knocked upon the stagecoach door. “Got some blankets for you in there.” The pudgy Envoy Leader snatched them from his hands without comment.
The Stage-sword returned to his seat, but the troubled expression did not leave his face.
