The Zi'veyn: The Devoted Trilogy, Book One

by Kim Wedlock

  "Sahr--"

  "I'm not 'Sahrot' anymore. Now please leave."

  The inquisitor stared at him, trying to read his stern pale face, trying to find something he could work with, but no matter how hard he searched, there was little evidence of his thoughts. His jaw soon tightened in frustration, and after a slight and rigid bow, did as he was asked, stepping over the boxes of vegetables still scattered across the floor and closed the door quietly behind himself.

  Rathen released a long sigh as the latch squeaked and clicked, falling into place. The weight of the atmosphere still pressed heavily upon his shoulders as he dropped back down into his chair, and his head sank into his hands. He was angry, but he was equally as confused, and it took him several long minutes to wrap his mind around the fact that the abrupt encounter had, in fact, happened.

  For years he'd thought everyone believed him to be dead, and yet here was this man - no ordinary man, admittedly - who had not only been able to find him, but who also had the audacity to approach him out of the blue with the most absurd request.

  ...Unless he'd finally gone mad out in the woods and started imagining more than just noises.

  A soft and careful creak sounded at the far end of the kitchen, followed by a light patter, and the weight on his heart immediately relented, forgotten as quickly as his rage. He looked up, brushing his long, black hair from his face, and his miserable countenance broke into a warm smile as the little girl slowly approached him. Her fair eyebrows were raised high, her eyes wide in cautious curiosity, and her doll was clutched tightly to her chest.

  "Aria," he sighed as he held his arms out to her, grateful for the simple reminder of what a true priority was, and she hurried into his embrace.

  "Who was that, Daddy?" She asked quietly as she wrapped her little arms as far around him as they'd go, her big eyes fixed firmly on the door, and though he squeezed her, her giggled protest was disappointingly brief.

  "No one important, little one."

  "I heard shouting."

  He sighed sadly and released her, but his reassuring smile quickly faded when he saw the fear in her eyes as she glanced between him and the door again. He pulled her back in for another hug. "I'm sorry - but it's nothing to worry about. Someone just got lost and wanted directions, and when I couldn't help they got a bit upset. Understandably, of course."

  She nodded slowly as he released her again, but she looked back at him with eyes too speculative to truly belong to an eight-year-old. "You're lying."

  His lips twitched into another small smile. "Do you want to know the truth?"

  She stared at him for another long moment. "No," she said eventually. "You wouldn't lie if it was something you wanted me to know."

  He breathed a laugh and kissed her forehead, and when he looked back into her eyes he found that her concern had been replaced with her usual cheer. She sniffed at the air, 'mmm'ed and hurried towards the oven. "It smells so lovely!" She declared, trying to peer inside.

  "You say that about toast," he laughed.

  "But toast is lovely! How long do I have to wait?"

  "Not very."

  "Good! My tummy's rumbly."

  Rathen rose with a smile and resumed his tidying, but as Aria dutifully stepped away from the oven to help, he noticed a thin strip of cloth wrapped around her hand and sawdust speckling her clothes. "Oh, Aria..." He took her wrist as she reached out to lift one of the pans from the floor, and she returned his disappointment with a sheepish look, realising she'd forgotten to keep it hidden. "You slipped again, didn't you?"

  "I did," she admitted, adding quickly: "but I'm fine!"

  "I know you are," he replied wearily, and sat her down at the table before unravelling the makeshift bandage to find the cut across the heel of her hand. It wasn't too deep, but it certainly needed a clean, and after taking quick and all-too-practised care of it, they tidied the kitchen away together before sitting down to dinner. Aria declared that it was 'lovely' once again, then proceeded to tell him all about her evening.

  "Everywhere, you say?"

  "Everywhere," she assured him. "I chased it all around my room - it hit the floor, then the box, then the wall, then the ceiling, and then me! And then it hit the floor and it started all over again! I called it, I ordered it, but it wouldn't land in my hand, and no matter what I did, I just couldn't catch it!"

  "Rubber balls can be like that."

  She narrowed her blue-grey eyes. "Did you put a spell on it?"

  Rathen couldn't help his already amused smile from broadening. "I really wish I had - almost as much as I wish I'd been witness."

  She huffed in offence, but though she seemed intent on keeping quiet rather than provide him with further reason to laugh at her, her dedication was fleeting. She looked back at him barely a moment later, the cheer quite suddenly lost from her eyes. "Was the man really lost in the woods?"

  Rathen paused mid-chew. "I'm sure he found his way out."

  She gave him her familiar slow, unconvinced nod. "He needed your help, but it wasn't with directions, was it?"

  "...No." He found himself suddenly unable to meet her gaze. "But I couldn't give him what he needed."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Quite."

  She nodded again, but asked nothing more. She knew that tone. He didn't wish to speak of it. "Well," she said, giving in to his stubbornness, "I hope someone else can."

  "So do I," he replied quietly, and for the third time that evening he wrestled away the irritating thoughts the encounter had stirred. Fortunately, while Rathen was one to endure a heavy atmosphere, Aria was not, and she quickly began telling him another story about her trials with uncooperative toys to cheer him up.

  She kept his mind mercifully occupied throughout the evening. She sang silly songs, ran around and forced him to play with her, but her own efforts inevitably wore her down, and though she assured him that she wasn't tired even while stifling a yawn, he soon ushered her to bed with the excuse that he, at least, was exhausted.

  But no sooner had he tucked her in, closed the wooden hatch in the floor and slumped down in a chair beside the fire than his still-reeling thoughts tumbled back to the forefront of his mind, dragging him into a deep, dark well of fret.

  He found that he was still furious. His confusion had abated, but the sudden arrival of the inquisitor and subsequent upheaval of his comfortable routine of being thoroughly undisturbed had quite distressed him. As far as the world was concerned, he was dead - not by his own choosing, but certainly for the best - and pushing his past life aside to try to make a new one had been the hardest thing he'd ever had to do. Every thing, every one and every privilege he'd ever known had become suddenly far from his reach.

  But, in time, and in spite of both himself and the Crown, he had grown rather fond of his modest life and the few expectations that sat upon his shoulders - by comparison, Aria was easy to handle, and she was relatively independent. And this little home of his in the scowles was just that: his. This was a life the Crown couldn't take away from him for the simple fact that it was so small he could hold onto it. He'd made the best for himself out of it, even if he'd never intended to.

  But all of a sudden, out of the blue, without a hint of warning, he had been found. And not by mistake. He'd been hunted down by an individual with an arsenal of varied and considerable resources, and though a small part of him had expected such a day to come, somewhere down the line, he hadn't expected it to come bearing a proposal. A death sentence, perhaps, but not a request for help.

  His tired and twisting mind absently wove into pondering the lengths he must have gone through to find him, and who else knew besides. After all, he was largely left alone; the only contact Rathen had with people were the occasional traders he waited for along the forest roads - and who made a hefty profit out of his isolation - but none of them knew who he truly was, and neither Aria nor Kienza, the only two who did, would ever betray him.

  He also wondered, in deepening dejection, what would
happen now that he had been discovered. Surely such information wouldn't just be disregarded, especially by people who acted for the safety of their countrymen - but what would they do with it? Merely warn people and traders away from the area? Or would they finally correct his unjust punishment? He hadn't died from his wounds as they'd expected him to...

  He adjusted his seat, turning further towards the heat of the tiny fireplace.

  None of that mattered right now. Foremost in his thoughts was the fact that the world that had abandoned him over a decade ago suddenly wanted him back, and not on a passing whim, but for a matter of substance. For the Hall of the White Hammer to be involved, it had to be severe - they didn't exactly deal with run-of-the-mill criminals or mildly unpleasant situations; they were a royally-appointed organisation of intelligent minds and problem solvers, mobilised to deal with the most difficult crises that were both far beyond the skills of standard guards and their superiors and quite unsuited to the military - in short, matters that required a precise and subtle hand, be it tracking and catching mass murderers and grand thieves, or quelling rebellions and preventing insurrections. And an inquisitor was the one who would be at the forefront of the investigation, putting themselves directly in harm's way to personally obtain the strongest evidence and information needed to lead to an arrest that they, too, would make. In short, they never needed help.

  Except now, apparently, they did, and this Inquisitor Brack was adamant that it had to come from him. That decision couldn't have been easily made, if even taken seriously when proposed, but all the same, Rathen had little idea why this matter truly had anything to do with him. The Order could certainly be trusted, and even if, somehow, a rebellious faction of mages was forming, it would be of insignificant proportions. The Order was better than that; the rebellion itself was just a fear fuelled by the actions of a handful in other, less sympathetic countries - not that that was to say he thought it couldn't happen in Turunda, nor that it would be unjustified if it did regardless of their comparatively fairer treatment. He had just been trying to antagonise the inquisitor for his own amusement, because he knew in his heart that, after his own experiences, he would likely support such a movement. After all, even in their fine country mages were hated and feared beneath the masks of respect people wore in their presence, and for little reason beyond not understanding them or for feeling inferior. Their power was 'inhuman', it 'didn't belong to them' - and he supposed in a way that it didn't, but that was no reason to detest people for something they couldn't help, especially when they pledged to use that power to protect everyone within Turunda, including those who would look down on them from even the lowest of society.

  He snarled to himself and pushed this useless, spiralling thought from his mind.

  No, a mage rebellion would be far from unjustified. But, even so, he doubted that these cases were tied to them, and neither was it a good enough reason to give up on the Order and trouble him with it instead.

  A small, brief but welcoming bleat came from just beyond the window, and his heart leapt in hope. It was a sound that could only ever be for two people, one of whom was asleep downstairs. But when he heard no rustle of hay, patter of hooves nor an answering coo, he realised he'd imagined it.

  His dejection returned and he wondered, not for the first time, just where Kienza was. He wished he could talk to her - not to discuss the situation, he was quite certain in his decision not to help, but she could certainly soothe his mind. As it stood, he doubted he'd get any sleep that night.

  But then, if she was here, would she help him brush it aside?

  His thoughtful frown deepened. This was admittedly not the first he'd heard of these matters, though he'd been disinclined to inform the inquisitor as such. Kienza had told him about these distant happenings a number of times, some even as they were occurring, and though he'd not paid too much attention, as his grudge with the world often caused him to stick his fingers in his ears whenever she came bearing news of it, he did recall that she'd been troubled by them - and just like he hadn't told the officer that he was aware of the matter, he suspected that Kienza knew more than she was letting on to him, too.

  But why would she want to encourage him to help? She was fully capable of leading her own investigation into the matter - in fact, she was so well-informed that she probably already was, if something else hadn't caught her wonderfully active, if fickle, attention.

  His mind slowed as he watched her glide through his thoughts and his heart suddenly jumped, but he quickly and begrudgingly realised that it, as well as the pit in his stomach it had lurched from, were formed of concern, not of passion.

  Kienza wasn't one to be troubled by insignificant details. He knew that well. And neither was the White Hammer - even if they were over-staffed. They were more likely to keep their officers close and ready to move should a matter worth their time arise, not send them off on fools' errands to satisfy an individual's niggling curiosity. Whether Brack's superior admitted it or not, it was clearly a matter that disturbed the Hall, but as they hadn't been given the official order to see to it, an off-the-books investigation had been approved instead.

  He growled to himself and thundered to his feet, finally tiring of his train of thought and deciding to sleep instead, hurrying in the next morning and doing away with the matter. The inquisitor could deal with it himself. If he had the resources to track him down, he could just as easily discover whether an Order mage was trustworthy or not. And if the individual he chose in Rathen's place did turn out to be a scoundrel, well, the inquisitor would surely have safe-guarded himself and his investigation against it. Assuming, of course, that his concerns were well-founded.

  Rathen threw off his clothes, tossing them aside with a touch more aggression than needed, and dropped into the bed that stood in a corner a few feet from both the kitchen and the sitting room. 'These very scowles could close up and swallow your curious little home with you still in it!' He shook his head as he pulled the covers over himself, and cast a spell to extinguish the fire when he realised he'd left it burning in his distraction.

  It had been a nice try, but even disregarding how unwise it was for him to be around people, he had not even the slightest interest in returning to the fickle world that would ignore his existence one minute, and then send a messenger with a host of cheap tricks to summon him to its aid the next.

  'Scowles could swallow my home...'

  What a preposterous notion.

  Chapter 2

  Tall, sheer rock faces loomed like sentinels over the narrow passes, making the dark, wild lanes seem even more slight and constricting than they truly were, and more than a touch unnatural. Their near-perfect flat surfaces seemed so intentional that a roof was almost expected overhead, but there hung only the forest canopy, the distant leaves of trees that grew above the maze and plunged the landscape into perpetual dusk, even at mid-morning.

  But the inquisitor paid no mind to the claustrophobic conditions. He traversed the hostile, dew-dampened ground as best he could, taking care with every treacherous step and relying on the moss-covered walls to steady himself when the ground dropped abruptly through the ferns. It was no wonder the mage had survived unknown for so long - no one but the truly desperate would wander willingly into these woods.

  Garon conceded that, in a way, he numbered among them. But just as he'd navigated the natural fortress the previous evening, he would do so again now. There were no two ways about it: he needed Rathen's help, and he would get it, one way or another.

  The path eventually began to lead uphill, and after shuffling through a few more careful squeezes, he stepped out from the ominous shadows and into what was probably the closest thing the labyrinth had to a clearing. The trees overhead were a little thinner, offering some relief to the stiff darkness, and the dramatic rocky growths that made the maze so forbidding spread apart and eased their oppression. And yet, despite what amounted to a meagre difference from the rest of the forest, somehow it had been made liveab
le.

  He dusted himself down, deciding once again that the filth from the ordeal of reaching this place would only compromise his authority in the face of a difficult individual, and started towards the largest rock, about the size of his superior's office, that stood to one side of the glade. Just as the previous evening, he heard a goat begin to bleat long before its pen came into sight, and passed a small vegetable patch that looked extremely out of place in such wild terrain, both nestled neatly between the shortest pillars. He ignored them and circled around the rock until he found a wooden door set within its flattest face. Once again he couldn't help marvelling at the extraordinary housing the mage had found for himself - but what better way to remain hidden than to live in a rock in the middle of a stone forest? And who else but a mage could?

  But just as he raised his hand to knock, preparing himself for another strenuous encounter, the door abruptly swung open and the same pale, unfriendly face framed by raven-black hair stared back at him, just as it had the first time. Once again, Garon thought he seemed ill and long-suffering upon that initial glance, but the man's strong, stoic bearing and dark, lively eyes disproved it just as quickly, especially when they looked back widely in startlement.

  "Good," Rathen said before the inquisitor could speak, his surprise quickly passing as his expression turned serious, and his tone became equally decisive. "I was afraid I'd have to scout all around the woods looking for you."

  Garon frowned in deeper confusion, moving aside as the mage continued out of the door with a bag slung over his shoulder. Both of them ignored the goat's continued protest from the other side of the rock-house. "What are you--"

  "You said you only needed a mage to determine if it's magic or not," Rathen reminded him, eyeing him firmly and giving the unmistakable impression that he was disinclined to do absolutely any more than that, "so this shouldn't take long. Then you can either go home at ease or find some way to deal with it - either way, you'll be able to leave me alone. And I wouldn't mind finding out just what it is I stand to gain from it. For you to come all this way and ask for my help, you must be truly desperate - how far is the nearest Hall, anyway?"