by Travis Kerr
“I want to take Raine to someplace safe, for our children to be born,” the sorvinian stated bluntly. If he couldn’t listen in as Raine tried to convince him, he had to try. He had thought for weeks about how he would broach the subject with Raiste, and had decided before that simply plowing right through might be the best and fastest course. As Raiste had already said, what happened between him and Raine was his own choice, and he would not be swayed.
“Why is it that you think that we’re not safe here?” Raiste asked, trying to sound reasonable. Drom had expected something like that. The assassin was quite skilled at getting people to do what he wanted them to do, Drom knew. He didn’t know exactly what tactic the man would use, but he had steeled himself against changing his mind. He knew what the best course for them to take, he felt certain of it, and would not allow himself to be convinced otherwise, at least not easily.
“You were just chased here by a dragon. Do you really have to ask that question? Bloodheart isn’t going to stop looking for us. We need to go somewhere that he isn’t going to think of looking. Besides, Raine and I are getting married. I’m sure that there are people in her home village she would like to tell. I would like get word to my family as well. I’m sure my mother would be very upset if I didn’t tell her the good news. She’s going to be a grandmother soon.”
“I suppose you’re right about that,” the assassin admitted. “Still, even if Bloodheart could find this place, which, aside from summoning another dragon, we don’t know for certain that they would be able to, it would still be safer here than anywhere else. Plus, don’t forget that traveling on foot is often difficult at the best of times, and we would be traveling with a woman who will soon be heavy with child. Trying to take her elsewhere right now could be more difficult for her than staying here would be. It could put a greater strain on the child as well.”
Drom heard the argument, and could see some of the points that his friend was making, but he ignored those arguments for now. A thought, one that had not occurred to him before, had taken root into his mind. He knew of a place that might be safer for them than the Hut; a place where anything Raine might need could be provided for her.
“If Raine agrees, I think that we should go back to my home village,” Drom said. “Bloodheart thinks that I’m a human, as far as I know. He would never think to look in the sorvinian lands. We could stay there safely for a while, at least until the children are born. We’ll figure out what we should do afterward, when the time comes.”
“It could take us at least three months to reach the sorvinian farm lands,” Raiste replied. “By then Raine will not be able to travel well. It could be dangerous for the baby.”
“There are dozens of small villages between here and there where we could purchase a horse for her to ride,” Drom returned, unrelenting. The more he thought about it the better he felt about the idea. At his parents home they would be safe, they could find a midwife without worry, and they could make their marriage intentions official and finalized. Drom would prefer to have the wedding at a location where his parents might be able to attend, and their own village would be ideal. He was not going to let Raiste talk him out of it.
“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Raine commenting, adding her support to her intended husband. She had been listening to the two without saying a word one way or the other, perhaps waiting to hear everything before making a decision herself. Drom was glad that she had decided to take his side. “I would like to meet his parents anyway. I don’t think we should mention what else is going on to them, at least not at first, but aside from that, I don’t see anything wrong with the plan.”
“We’d have to avoid the cities,” Raiste cautioned thoughtfully. “Bloodheart is likely to have spies posted in all of them, watching for me.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Drom pressed. “The two of you already know the safest routes, or at least most of them I’m sure. When we get to a small town, Raine and I can go in to purchase the horse, that way if Bloodheart has spies looking for you there, they won’t find you. He shouldn’t be looking for us after all, and you wouldn’t be there.”
“Bloodheart is looking for you actually,” Raiste informed him. “Or more accurately, he’s looking for a human man by the name of Roland. That’s why I was in Miani for so long. I was gathering information, trying to find out how much Bloodheart knows about us. He also has people looking for Raine, though when I left the city the only name they knew of for her was Tara. Still, they know about my other aliases. I’m sure it won’t be long before they know of hers.”
Raiste went on to tell them about everything he had learned during his sojourn in the city, and everything that had happened there. He had not intended on telling them about the assassin's guild, but in the end decided that it would be best to tell his friends everything. The only thing he left out was his relationship with the guild leader, Loretta. That was his business, and his alone.
“So even according to everything you learned there, it should be perfectly safe for me to go into one of the small towns,” Drom concluded for him. “They aren’t looking for a sorvinian, but a human man. Once we have mounts we can stick to the roads that Bloodheart's men won’t be guarding. It’s as safe as staying here would be, at the very least.”
“We’re going to do this Raiste,” Raine stated with an air of finality. She had made up her mind, and was going to follow Drom's suggestion. Once decided, nothing was going to sway her. Raiste recognized that immediately.
“I would like you to come with us,” she continued. “If you feel so strongly about staying, we will have to leave you behind, though I don’t want to do that. Still, what you do is your choice. This is our choice, Raiste. This is something Drom wants to do, and I understand why it’s important to him.”
Drom looked at his future wife with surprise. He had never, even for an instant, considered leaving Raiste behind. He wouldn’t have thought that she would have either.
Raiste didn’t even need to consider that. He had no intentions whatsoever of leaving his friends again. He had his own reasons for wanting to avoid Drom's farm, at least for now, but if this was the course that his friends set, than he would see it through.
The assassin let out an audible sigh. “Alright then,” he said at last, relenting. “I need to go take a bath. Afterward, we can make the travel plans. We’ll have to travel light. We don’t have any horses right now to carry any of our things, so we won’t be able to take more than what we can carry ourselves. Our travel packs can hold quite a bit, but even they have their limitations.”
“Don’t take too long,” Raine cautioned. “Everything that we are going to take will have to be packed tonight. I want to leave at first light tomorrow morning. Come on Drom, let’s go upstairs. Raiste and I are used to traveling fast and light. I’ll help you pack.”
Without another word, she turned and quickly left the room. Drom watched the rapidly retreating feral woman with amazement. He had never expected that sort of a response to his plan, which was little more than an idea that had come upon him at the last minute. He heard Raiste chuckle behind him.
“You do realize that neither of us are going to get to make decisions anymore, right?” he said. Drom turned around to find the assassin grinning ear to ear. “I’m almost thinking that I should be offering condolences instead of congratulations, but you seem to be happy, and I’ve never seen Raine like that, so I know she is. I wish the two of you the best of luck. I think you’re going to need it.”
Drom feared that the assassin was right. They would all need every bit of luck they could get, just to survive. Regardless of what happened though, he was grateful for one thing. They would be together. They would have each other. Working together, Drom thought that there was little they couldn’t accomplish.
He was a little worried about what his parents would think about his chosen wife, but only a little. He believed they would be happy with whatever choice he decided to make, and he was certain of h
is choice. Without a single word, he left Raiste behind, heading out of the room and up the stairs after the woman he loved.
Epilogue
Bloodheart glared back at the men who surrounded the massive, round, oak table that dominated the center of the room. Like the other men around him, he wasn’t actually in the room at all. What they all saw, the men he looked at now and the shining suits of armor that surrounded the room, were nothing more than projected images. The room he actually sat in was completely empty. The only real thing here was the chair he sat in.
The inside of the council chamber changed from session to session. Each and every mage in the council had a room like this, or very nearly like it. The location of the council session would change every time. It was considered a great honor to host the gathering of the mage's council. Bloodheart had hosted it only twice himself. With the latest debacle, he didn’t think it was likely that he would be hosting it again any time soon.
“So could you tell us once again how it was that a single man has somehow continued to elude you and your men?” Slyvax asked with false sympathy, a wry smile played out on the man’s thin lips. Bloodheart wasn’t fooled. Slyvax was a well known sadist. The only time he ever smiled was when he was torturing someone, watching someone being tortured, or was thinking about torturing someone.
Most likely he’s considering torturing me at the moment, Bloodheart thought.
Unfortunately for Bloodheart, Slyvax was also one of the oldest and most politically influential members of the mage's council. On more than one occasion he had pitted himself against Bloodheart. Bloodheart would have loved to send him a nice gift, perhaps a poisonous adder to visit him in his sleep.
As much as he desired it, he knew that it was impossible. Such magic required a mental picture of the person it was being cast upon, and, like all of them, only part of Slyvax's face was visible. The rest of his face was hidden in the depths of the thick black hood that he wore. Bloodheart was wearing one just like it. It was the only way that they could protect themselves from each other.
If a mage wanted to go to war with one of his fellows, he had to do so openly, sending either men or created monsters to do the work for him. It was a rare enough occurrence, one that had only happened once in Bloodheart's lifetime. It was, in fact, that one occasion, over thirty years past, that had sparked the dangerous situation that he now found himself in.
Against all odds, the son of Goldstone had survived. More than that, he had returned wielding the power of a battle mage. According to the men he had questioned, either this Raiste Goldstone was a battle mage himself, or he had one with him. The reports varied from person to person, none of them truly certain of what they saw. They had not lied, under the spell of his magic they would not have been able to, but that did not mean that they knew what it was they had seen.
The woman from the inn had proved more valuable in her information, though she had not been present during the fight, and had been much less willing to tell what little she knew. Against his magic, however, she had not been given a choice. She had given detailed descriptions of Goldstone's companions, as well as a description of the sword that the red-haired man wore on his back on their last encounter.
From the information he could piece together, it was likely that it had been this man, not Goldstone, who had been the battle mage. It was also possible that neither of them had battle magic, but had merely been powerful warriors. It didn’t take battle magic to be dangerous. Raiste Goldstone's father had been a powerful mage, but it was not his magic that had been feared. It had been his beliefs.
Fallon Goldstone had been a dangerous man, with dangerous ideas. His plans for the control of the people of the world would have destroyed the power that the mages enjoyed. Bloodheart would never understand the man’s ideals. He had been a threat to them all, and so all the mages, or most of them anyway, had agreed that he had to be destroyed.
Bloodheart remembered that time fondly. He had been young then, and had been rising in the ranks of the magi for some time. More importantly for the ruling mages at the time, he was at a point in his career that, if he was willing to take a risk, he would be well poised to fill the position that they intended to make vacant.
He knew that they had intending on using him. He had known it when he agreed to their proposal. They intended on pooling their magic and attacking one of their own, and they needed someone to wield that magic for them; someone who could take the blame for them if their venture failed.
The risks of attacking a mage with great power were exponentially increased with the power of the mage who was its target, and Fallon Goldstone might very well have been the most powerful mage alive in his time. Attacking someone like that was a terrible risk. As great as the risk was, however, the reward would be even greater.
Under normal circumstances, Bloodheart would never have had an opportunity to move into the position of a ruling mage. However, this was hardly to be a normal circumstance. If he could defeat Goldstone, he would be thrust into the position that the man filled. If he failed, he would take the fall for that defeat himself.
Had he been wielding nothing more than his own magic, Bloodheart wouldn’t have had any chance at all of defeating Goldstone. Bloodheart, however, had all the power of the mage's council at his disposal, and he knew just how to use it. He did not know what Fallon Goldstone had looked like beyond vague descriptions, like now the mages hid their features from each other when they attended the council, but he did not need to see the man to send a dragon.
With the power infused into him by the other mages working together, he had summoned a great red dragon, one of the oldest yet living of its kind. With the power of all of their magic together, he bound the mighty beast to his will, and sent it to kill Fallon Goldstone and his family. He had thought that the beast had succeeded, despite the rumors that the mage's children had somehow survived.
Since then, he had often employed the use of dragons in his endeavors, though with only his own power he could only summon young ones, and could not bind them. He could, however, use their image to create his shadow dragons. Such a creature would be useless against the power of a great mage, certainly none of the men in this room would have difficulty against one, but they were more than enough to deal with the general rabble when such a thing was necessary.
He had sent a shadow dragon to hunt down Goldstone's son, Raiste. His spies had told him that they had witnessed the dragon following the man outside of Miani, deep into the swamps. They had wisely not followed, knowing that there would be nothing they could do against a man that the dragon couldn’t handle. The dragon would do its work well enough, they had believed. Bloodheart would have agreed with them at the time.
That belief had been shattered, along with the delicate, glass dragon figurine that had sat on his desk, a precise replica that create a link between his magic and his creation. Somehow, this Raiste Goldstone had defeated that creation, though Bloodheart could not fathom how he had done it. Certainly shadow dragons were not as deadly as the living animals that they mimicked, but only the greatest of mages could hope to defeat one.
He had believed that the battle mage his soldiers claimed to have seen had to have been faked somehow, a glamour perhaps to make the men think they were facing an opponent that was more than the man they truly faced. There hadn’t been a battle mage in well over a century after all, and many low level mages could construct a decent enough illusion if given enough time to plan ahead. It was far more likely, in his opinion, than believing that a battle mage had suddenly appeared out of nowhere and attacked one of his men. Such a man could have gained power for himself in a dozen other ways. Starting a fight with the mages so unexpectedly didn’t make sense.
As unlikely as Bloodheart believed that to be, however, that seemed to be the case. A battle mage, trained in the use of his power, might have been able to defeat his shadow dragon. He was beginning to think that perhaps he would not be able to defeat this opponent as easily as he had
hoped.
“This single man has done more than just elude my men,” Bloodheart replied. “I sent one of my shadow dragons to hunt the man, and my beast found him outside of Miani. According to reports I have been given, the beast followed him out into the swamps. What happened there I cannot say for certain, but my shadow dragon has been destroyed. I fear I may have underestimated this man. I will not allow it to happen again.”
“What about these stories I have heard about a battle mage? Is there any truth to these rumors?” Slyvax asked sweetly. Bloodheart felt a stab of apprehension at this. Slyvax was a dangerous man, who was never sweet to anyone. He only showed his enemies a smile just before their execution, or before some torture he was relishing the prospect of. Kindness was as foreign to him as breathing air would be to a fish. “You wouldn’t be hiding anything from us now, would you?”
“I hide nothing,” Bloodheart replied instantly. Nor did he. Keeping some information to himself wasn’t the same as hiding it, after all. “I had also heard those rumors. That was all I believed them to be at the time. I would be interested in knowing where you have heard them. You wouldn’t have put spies in my cities, would you?”
“Of course not,” the elderly mage replied, that false smile never leaving his face, mocking him. Bloodheart knew immediately that it was a lie. His magic told him that. He knew as well that most of the mages around him would know the same thing. Bloodheart struggled to keep his own boiling anger contained.
“People in your cities talk, just as they do everywhere. Peasants have nothing more to do than to gossip, and much of that gossip can reach the ears of those who listen.”
“You should know better than to listen to the rumors of peasants,” Bloodheart growled. He didn’t believe for even a single second that Slyvax heard about the battle mage through peasant rumors. He most likely had spies hidden in every aspect of Bloodheart's government, maybe even one or two hidden inside of Bloodheart's own personal guard. Bloodheart had two spies posted in Slyvax's bodyguards. Neither of the two men were foolish enough to think otherwise.
