by A. C. Ellas
Jisten looked away. “I’m not convinced, but there is evidence to implicate you.”
Rak looked away, too. He walked to the window, looked out it. “What evidence? A single glyph that every child in the world should know?”
“Vrathis didn’t, and won’t, show you everything,” Jisten said.
“That makes it impossible for me to refute his claim. I cannot counter evidence or offer explanations when I do not even know what he has that implicates me.”
“I know, but the investigation must progress further. You haven’t been formally accused or arrested,” Jisten said. “If that happens, then all the evidence will be laid out.”
“Why not?” asked Rak. “Everyone is already convinced of my guilt... why not arrest me and get it over with?”
Jisten frowned. “We are not all vapidly thoughtless. We do want sufficient evidence before arresting.”
Rak’s back was so tense, his wings were rustling restlessly. “I was referring to noblewomen when I said that, not all sun worshippers. So I remain free until this Vrathis can fake up enough evidence for an arrest?”
“Yes, of course,” Jisten replied, but his face was still stony. “What do you know of Vrathis? Other than that he is a sun worshipper? And has evidence to implicate you? You are sure that he is a liar, a manufacturer of evidence?”
“I know nothing of him,” Rak said, “other than what I observed this past morning, when he marched into my suite so he could accuse me of murder.”
“We do tend to take murder seriously,” Jisten said. “If you’re as innocent as you claim, why not go to the justicers voluntarily?”
Rak snorted. “You know why not. They could not read me last time I was there, why would this time be any different?” He bit off what else he might mention, such as a night he’d spent in the justicer’s bed, serving the man’s pleasure. “I... am not hungry.” Rak turned and walked off.
“I need to go back to work,” Jisten said to Rak’s back. “Try not to kill anyone else.”
Lord Maziel, surrounded by his retainers, appeared in Rak’s path as if he’d been lying in wait for the dark priest. He glared at Rak with eyes reddened by grief. “All I want to know is why? She never hurt you. She never hurt anyone. Why’d you do this? Why her?”
“I did not kill her,” said Rak calmly. “I had nothing to do with it.”
“You expect me to believe that?” Maziel’s hands clenched into fists. “You murdering bastard! I’ll see you beheaded for this, mark my words.”
Rak shook his head and pushed past the councilor’s men. “You are free to do as you will, I suppose, but I would suggest finding some proof first.”
“Sir?” asked one of Maziel’s guards, his eyes on his superior.
“Let him go,” said Maziel. “We won’t stoop to cold-blooded murder. Commander Vrathis will deal with him.”
It was difficult to resist turning in order to continue the exchange. Rak’s back crawled with tension until he’d exited the palace. He slipped into the stable with a feeling of relief. Of all the places in the palace, this was the only place he felt welcome. He nodded to the nearest stable boy and received an answering grin but no immediate requests for aid. That was good; it meant he could tend to his own beasts without delay. When he’d first arrived here, he’d met and eventually purchased and freed a young stable boy named Kennit. The lad had remained his groom for the avtappi until very recently. Rak had sent him to Okyro to attend the novitiate only a week ago, and as of yet, Rak had no replacement for him.
The first thing Rak did was check the stalls. They were clean—the avtappi were housebroken and refused to soil their bedding—but the straw still needed replacing from time to time. That night, the straw looked relatively fresh. The water barrels were full, the mangers stuffed with sweet hay, the feed buckets had been licked clean and recently. Rak stepped out of Vyld’s stall and checked Gun’s next, finding once more that the work had already been done. He returned to the aisle and looked for someone to speak to.
One of the stable boys trotted up. “Sir?”
“Dahser, has someone been assigned to take Kennit’s place? I came to tend to my beasts and found the work has already been done.”
“Nobody’s been assigned, sir, but I had the time an’ they know me ‘cause I used ta help Kennit with ’em.”
“The position is yours if you want it,” Rak said easily.
“I’d like that, sir.”
“I will speak with Bharis in the morning.” Rak flipped a silver penny to him. “Thank you.”
“Oh, thank you, sir,” Dahser replied, half gaping at the coin, for all that tipping was customary for a job well done.
Chapter Five: Into the City
Rak returned to Vyld’s stall and quickly groomed the stallion who wasn’t a horse. He only looked something like a horse, but he was a carnivore, a predator, and his behavior was closer to that of a dog. Rak’s personal mount was pure black, with a deep chest, long legs and an arched neck; his build that of a racehorse. But like all avtappi, he also had glowing, crimson eyes, fangs, a pair of horn nubs above his eyes, cloven hooves and wickedly sharp dewclaws held up along the cannon bones, useful for both climbing and fighting.
The avtappi had been created three thousand years ago by crossing real horses with the sacred vranyxia, what the Koilathans called nightmares or demon horses. They were almost as intelligent as their vranyxia ancestors, communicating telepathically to their riders using imagery in place of words.
Rak smoothed Vyld’s saddle blanket over the broad back. Vranyxia couldn’t be ridden due to the bone spikes protruding from their spines along their necks and backs. He was sure there was some purpose to the spikes, a defense against aerial predators, perhaps, but it made sitting on one very problematic. Rak saddled Vlyd, drawing the girth tight in a single smooth motion, unconcerned that the stallion might try the tricks horses were fond of. Vyld simply wouldn’t do that to his rider.
He mounted a moment later, and Vyld ambled down the aisle toward the exit, causing a series of anxious snorts from the horses in the stalls they passed. The horses knew Vyld for the predator he was, and even now, after having been stabled near the avtappi for months, they still reacted to his passage. At least they no longer panicked. They had just emerged into the stable yard, adjacent to the guard courtyard, when a mastigi hurled itself at Rak, clicking urgently.
The lizard, with a body no longer than the palm of his hand, was patterned with interlocking red diamonds over a light-brown base. The translucent red wings beat frantically as the lizard hovered, a scroll clutched between its four feet with their gecko-like toes. Rak took the message and gave the mastigi an arm to rest on. He offered the lizard a bit of sausage before he unrolled the scroll. Mastigi, with their remarkable ability to home in on anyone they knew—or anyone their owners could mentally picture clearly enough—had long been used as messengers by the dark servants. This one, however, didn’t belong to a dark servant but to the mercenary captain, Betrin.
Betrin had been in Rak’s employ since the time he’d been captured after his company had failed to remove the prince. Rak had turned the man to his own uses, but now, Betrin had need of him for personal reasons. The man’s son was gravely ill, according to the note. What does he want me to do? Rak wondered. I am not a healer of men. He shook his head as he indicated to Vyld that they could resume their journey.
The Koilathan palace wall had but two gates, and both were guarded. Rak chose to leave by the kitchen gate—it was less formal and had the advantage of not dumping straight out onto the main trade road that bisected the city like a spear from the southern edge to the palace on the banks of the Otla River. Vlyd paused for him as he nodded to the guards on duty at the gate. “I have business in the city. Please make note of my departure.”
The ranking guard inclined his head. If he thought Rak guilty, he didn’t allow it to show, saying only, “Be careful, your eminence.”
Rak waved an acknowledgment as Vyld ambled
into the city. He ignored the unfriendly looks and the hostility he sensed from the people on the streets. They kept their distance, either out of respect for his office or out of fear for the fanged, carnivorous steed he rode. He had considered walking in an effort to blend in but had quickly realized that he’d stand out in a crowd here no matter what he wore. His hair made him stand out even more than his short stature and wings, and not due to the wild mingling of red and gold strands. Koilathan culture proclaimed that long hair was the norm. Only slaves and those who’d lost their honor had their hair cut short. As a priest of the Lord of Night, he cut his hair short out of respect for the God he served.
The hostility decreased but never entirely vanished the further from the palace he rode. He passed from the district of the noble mansions that lined the approach to the palace down into the area of merchants and craftsmen. This section of the city teemed with life even at this late hour. Taverns spilled light, scents and occasional drunken bodies into the street along with snatches of song, conversations and pure noise. Shops lined the street on either side, most closed, but a few remained open.
Since the directions the tiny lizard could provide relied on an aerial viewpoint, which Rak didn’t have at the moment, he decided to find Betrin the easy way. First, he fished a bit of charcoal from a pocket and wrote, “I am coming,” on a scrap of parchment. He offered this to the mastigi. “Take this message to Betrin.” The lizard’s wings whirred as it took off, grasped the parchment in its sticky toes then darted off into the night sky.
Rak slipped off Vyld’s back, and with a cluck of his tongue and a bit of power, he summoned Morth. First came a wisp of smoke. Then, there was a shimmer to the air as the boundaries stretched thin. Then, the hound arrived with the slightest of popping sounds. He ran his fingers through the hound’s dull charcoal-grey fur, greeting the beast he’d raised and trained from weaning on. Morth was his pack leader for the thansymi, what the Koilathans called death hounds, and his personal pet. Many of the Thezi ended up with one or two hounds that they called theirs, and Rak was no exception to this. He whispered to his hound, “Find Betrin.” With his words, he sent a mental image of the man.
Morth set off, head up as his glowing eyes penetrated into the spirit realm, seeking the soul of the man Betrin. Rak remounted Vyld before following in the hound’s wake. Morth’s presence caused a bigger stir than did Rak and Vyld alone. Rak always rode Vyld; the people were used to them both after being in this land for half a year. But Rak, Vyld and a death hound? That was unusual, and unfriendly expressions were turning in their direction.
Rak sighed and decided to ignore what he couldn’t, at this point, change. Even if he were to stop in an attempt to gain distance between himself and the hound, it wouldn’t work. Morth would stop when he did, and then, he’d come back to his master’s side to see what was keeping him. Morth could not track Betrin from within the spirit realm because that realm was not analogous with this realm of physical existence.
The spirit realm had its own laws and its own geography. Not that Rak had ever been there to see this for himself. Men lacked the ability to survive in the spirit realm. Beasts like the vranyxi and the thansymi were mortal, but they were different in this one way: more closely linked to the magic of the world’s creation, they could survive the translation between the planes of existence.
He followed Morth as the hound turned off the main road and onto one of the many side streets. The number of taverns and eateries abruptly decreased; the number of shops, most with the owner’s home right atop them, increased. Two more turns, and now, the street Rak rode down was almost purely residential. The buildings he passed grew older and smaller, but in the typical style of Karpos, each house, no matter how poor, had green grass about it and trees shading it. There were vegetable gardens growing between houses, and Rak could spy chicken coops behind many of the dwellings.
This wasn’t the best area of town, but the young toughs who eyed him seemed as cowed by Morth and Vyld as the more well-to-do had been, and Rak passed on. Before long, Morth led him through a maze of almost shabby tenements interspersed with tiny houses and small, dirty taverns hardly worthy of the name. Morth stopped at one of the tiny houses and whined, resting a paw on its wall.
Vyld came to a stop beside the large oak tree that would shade the entire front of the dwelling during the day. Rak dismounted and walked up the flagstone path to the front door. “Excellent, Morth. Thank you.” He slipped the hound a chunk of sausage before dismissing the hound. Morth’s flame-centered eyes danced for a moment before the hound popped back into the spirit realm.
* * * *
Jisten slowly reread the report on Kazia’s murder, attempting to glean answers from it. The ward had been assaulted but was undamaged, according to Photas. The glyphs found on and around the body had been carefully replicated on a separate sheet, and even though he’d learned to read the Okyran language, he didn’t recognize anything other than the sigil of the Lord of Night and that of the Thezi sect. He frowned. Vrathis hadn’t mentioned the sect symbol, which was potentially more incriminating than the sigil of the God.
The cut which killed Kazia had been a clean slice across her neck, precisely placed to sever both the carotids and the jugulars. The glyphs had been carved into her after her death, or so it appeared from the relative lack of blood. The whole investigation had been complicated by the katrami flies, which had done considerable damage to the body before they could be driven off. The body would be buried that day, ten feet down in solid stone. They couldn’t risk giving her to the flames with fly eggs inside, for the destruction of those eggs was like lighting a beacon for the adult flies to come, seeking vengeance.
Jisten sighed and put the report aside. Either Rak had killed her or not, but the evidence suggested that he had. The dark priest had never liked the cheerful, but vapid, lady. Jisten had to weigh that against the knowledge that Rak was forbidden to lie. It was commonly believed that he was incapable of lying, but Jisten knew that was false. A dark priest could lie, so long as he was willing to be punished for it. And Rak had a very high tolerance for pain.
His office door creaked open, and he glanced up in irritation. He’d told Kordri that he wasn’t to be disturbed. A shadow rushed in, a dark blur that was vaguely man-shaped, and it grappled him through his desk, the solid wood providing no barrier to a spirit attack.
“Murderer,” it hissed.
Jisten tried to push it away. His hands sank into the murky substance of it, but there was nothing solid to grasp, only an icy chill that grew colder moment by moment. “I’m no murderer,” he protested.
“You and the dark priest are bonded. You are one in the eyes of the gods and thus shall you be marked.”
Burning pain flared on Jisten’s forearm, and with a startled cry, he jerked his hands out of the shadow. He looked down at his arm and saw nothing but the sleeve of his uniform jacket. His arm throbbed painfully, however, and it was growing more painful by the minute. He ripped his jacket off, pulled up the long sleeve of his shirt and gaped, stunned past speech, at the livid wheals that formed a precise rendering of the sigil of the Lord of Night.
The shadow mocked him, “Jisten the Pure, what has your purity earned you? Jisten the Pure coward, you deserved the scorn of your men as they used you. The dark woods judged you well; you gave your bonded mate to them. User, abuser, monster in training, this is the reward you’re due.”
Jisten shook his head, denial on his lips, as the shadow told him things he’d thought secret, insecurities known only to Rak and himself.
“I am come from your priest; on his behalf, I mark you before the gods so that all know that you went willingly into darkness and evil. Your guilt is as deep as his; the blood of the innocent is on your hands as surely as it is on his.” At last, the shadow faded but not before delivering a final taunt, “You are trapped. There is no escape. You have willingly bound yourself to evil and chaos. By the strength of your whip, you have proven yourself a true user,
a monster. You belong to the darkness now. Forever.”
Chapter Six: Ketrin
Rak paced silently up the path to the door then rapped on it firmly. It was opened almost immediately.
“Thank you fer comin’, sir.” Betrin looked tired, as well he might, it hadn’t been that long since he and his men had helped drive off the Lythadi horde, united for the first time in generations under the leadership of a skilled general. The attacking barbarians had made it nearly to the capitol before being driven back. But he also looked nervous. “I be hearin’ things about ye, sir.”
“What have you heard?” Rak wondered how far the rumors had spread. He’d never ridden through Karpos without sensing a great deal of hostility from a people who wore sun symbols openly, and tonight had felt no different.
“They be sayin’ that ye killed a lady in cold blood and did horrible things to her body.”
“Yes, I have heard that as well. No, I committed no such act, but it is clear that someone very much wants it to look as if I did. If you can find any source to these rumors without putting yourself at risk, I would be much obliged to you.”
Betrin looked relieved, which at least implied that the man believed him. After a moment, the man whispered, “Sir, best ye be careful, then. If any o’ ye dark ones be caught without protection, ye’ll be attacked. Also, I be hearin’ that th’ lady’s family be offerin’ gold fer yer death.”
“Thank you, Betrin.” Rak sighed. “Let me see your son. I am not a healer of men, but maybe I can do something for him. I might have some herbs that could help.”
A moment later, he was ushered into the house. It was small but private. The front parlor was scrupulously clean, the wood polished, hand-knit throws covering furniture that had seen better days but was still serviceable. A woman came out of an archway that looked to have a kitchen on the other side of it.
