It had been Abrena’s ambition to build a fortress for the Dark Knights in southern Neraka, near the location of the old temple. She had the plans drawn up and sent in crews to start building. Such was the terror inspired by the accursed valley and its eerie and haunting Song of Death that the crews immediately fled. The capital city was shifted to the northern part of the Neraka valley, a site still too close to the southern part for the comfort of some.
One of Targonne’s first orders of business was to move the capital city. The second was to change the name of the Knighthood. He established the headquarters of the Knights of Neraka in Jelek, close to the family business. Much closer to the family business than most of the Neraka Knights ever knew.
Jelek was now a highly prosperous and bustling city located at the intersection of the two major highways that ran through Neraka. Either by great good fortune or crafty dealing the city had escaped the ravages of the great dragons. Merchants from all over Neraka, even as far south as Khur, hastened to Jelek to start new businesses or to expand existing ones. So long as they made certain to stop by to pay the requisite fees to the Knights of Neraka and offer their respects to Lord of the Night and Governor-General Targonne, the merchants were welcome.
If respect for Targonne had a cold, substantial feel to it and made a fine clinking sound when deposited together with other demonstrations of respect in the Lord of the Night’s large money box, the merchants knew better than to complain. Those who did complain or those who considered that verbal marks of respect were sufficient found that their businesses suffered severe and sudden reverses of fortune. If they persisted in their misguided notions, they were generally found dead in the street, having accidentally slipped and fallen backward onto a dagger.
Targonne personally designed the Neraka Knights’ fortress that loomed large over the city of Jelek. He had the fortress built on the city’s highest promontory with a commanding view of the city and the surrounding valley.
The fortress was practical in shape and design—innumerable squares and rectangles stacked one on top of the other, with squared-off towers. What windows there were—and there weren’t many—were arrow-slits. The exterior and interior walls of the fortress were plain and unadorned. So stark and grim was the fortress that it was often mistaken by visitors for either a prison or a countinghouse. The sight of black-armored figures patrolling the walls soon corrected their first impression, which wasn’t, after all, so very far wrong. The below-ground level of the fortress housed an extensive dungeon and, two levels below that and more heavily guarded, was the Knights’ Treasury.
Lord of the Night Targonne had his headquarters and his living quarters in the fortress. Both were economical in design, strictly functional, and if the fortress was mistaken for a countinghouse, its commander was often mistaken for a clerk. A visitor to the Lord of the Night was led into a small, cramped office with bare walls and a sparse scattering of furniture, there to wait while a small, bald, bespectacled man dressed in somber, though well-made clothes, completed his work of copying figures in a great leather-bound ledger.
Thinking that he was in the presence of some minor functionary, who would eventually take him to the Lord of the Night, the visitor would often roam restlessly about the room, his thoughts wandering here and there. Those thoughts were snagged in midair, like butterflies in a web, by the man behind the desk. This man used his mentalist powers to delve into every portion of the visitor’s mind. After a suitable length of time had passed, during which the spider had sucked his captive dry, the man would raise his bald head, peer through his spectacles, and acquaint the appalled visitor with the fact that he was in the presence of Lord of the Night Targonne.
The visitor who sat in the lord’s presence this day knew very well that the mild looking man seated across from him was his lord and governor. The visitor was second in command to Lord Milles and, although Sir Roderick had not yet met Targonne, he had seen him in attendance at certain formal functions of the Knighthood. The Knight stood at attention, holding himself straight and stiff until his presence should be acknowledged. Having been warned about Targonne’s mentalist capabilities, the Knight attempted to keep his thoughts stiffly in line as well, with less success. Before Sir Roderick even spoke, Lord Targonne knew a great deal of what had happened at the siege of Sanction. He never liked to exhibit his powers, however. He asked the Knight, in a mild voice, to be seated.
Sir Roderick, who was tall and brawny and could have lifted Targonne off the floor by the coat collar with very little exertion, took a seat in the only other chair in the office and sat on the chair’s edge, tense, rigid.
Perhaps due to the fact that he had come to resemble what he most loved, the eyes of Morham Targonne resembled nothing so much as two steel coins—flat, shining, and cold. One looked into those eyes and saw not a soul, but numbers and figures in the ledger of Targonne’s mind. Everything he looked upon was reduced to debits and credits, profits and loss, all weighed in the balance, counted to the penny, and chalked up into one column or another.
Sir Roderick saw himself reflected in the shining steel of those cold eyes and felt himself being moved into a column of unnecessary expenditures. He wondered if it was true that the spectacles were artifacts salvaged from the ruins of Neraka and that they gave the wearer the ability to see into one’s brain. Roderick began to sweat in his armor, though the fortress with its massive stone and concrete walls was always cool, even during the warmest months of the summer.
“My aide tells me you have come from Sanction, Sir Roderick,” said Targonne, his voice the voice of a clerk, mild and pleasant and unassuming. “How goes our siege of the city?”
It should be noted here that the Targonne family had extensive holdings in the city of Sanction, holdings they had lost when the Knights of Neraka lost Sanction. Targonne had made the taking of Sanction one of the top priorities for the Knighthood.
Sir Roderick had rehearsed his speech on the two-day ride from Sanction to Jelek and he was prepared with his answer.
“Excellency, I am here to report that on the day after Midyear Day, an attempt was made by the accursed Solamnics to break the siege of Sanction and to try to drive off our armies. The foul Knights endeavored to trick my commander, Lord Milles, into attacking by making him think they had abandoned the city. Lord Milles saw through their plot and he, in turn, led them into a trap. By launching an attack against the city of Sanction, Lord Milles lured the Knights out of hiding. He then faked a retreat. The Knights took the bait and pursued our forces. At Beckard’s Cut, Lord Milles ordered our troops to turn and make a stand. The Solamnics were summarily defeated, many of their number killed or wounded. They were forced to retreat back inside Sanction. Lord Milles is pleased to report, Excellency, that the valley in which our armies are encamped remains safe and secure.”
Sir Roderick’s words went into Targonne’s ears. Sir Roderick’s thoughts went into Targonne’s mind. Sir Roderick was recalling quite vividly fleeing for his life in front of the rampaging Solamnics, alongside Lord Milles who, commanding from the rear, had been caught up in the retreating stampede. And elsewhere in the mind of the Knight was a picture Targonne found very interesting, also rather disturbing. That picture was that of a young woman in black armor, exhausted and stained with blood, receiving the homage and accolades of Lord Milles’s troops. Targonne heard her name resound in Roderick’s mind: “Mina! Mina!”
With the tip of his pen the Lord of the Night scratched the thin mustache that covered his upper lip. “Indeed. It sounds a great victory. Lord Milles is to be congratulated.”
“Yes, Excellency.” Sir Roderick smiled, pleased. “Thank you, Excellency.”
“It would have been a greater victory if Lord Milles had actually captured the city of Sanction as he has been ordered, but I suppose he will attend to that little matter when he finds it convenient.”
Sir Roderick was no longer smiling. He started to speak, coughed, and spent a moment clearing his throat. “I
n point of fact, Excellency, we most likely would have been able to capture Sanction were it not for the mutinous actions of one of our junior officers. Completely contrary to Lord Milles’s command, this officer pulled an entire company of archers from the fray, so that we had no covering fire necessary for us to launch an attack upon Sanction’s walls. Not only that, but in her panic, this officer ordered the archers to shoot their arrows while our own soldiers were yet in the line of fire. The casualties we sustained were due completely to this officer’s incompetence. Therefore Lord Milles felt it would not be wise to proceed with the attack.”
“Dear, dear,” Targonne murmured. “I trust this young officer has been dealt with summarily.”
Sir Roderick licked his lips. This was the tricky part. “Lord Milles would have done so, Excellency, but he felt it would be best to consult with you first. A situation has arisen that makes it difficult for his lordship to know how to proceed. The young woman exerts some sort of magical and uncanny influence over the men, Excellency.”
“Indeed?” Targonne appeared surprised. He spoke somewhat dryly. “The last I heard, the magical powers of our wizards were failing. I did not know any of our mages were this talented.”
“She is not a magic-user, Excellency. Or at least, so she says. She claims to be a messenger sent by a god—the One, True God.”
“And what is the name of this god?” Targonne asked.
“Ah, there she is quite clever, Excellency. She maintains that the name of the god is too holy to pronounce.”
“Gods have come, and gods have gone,” Targonne said impatiently. He was seeing a most astonishing and disquieting sight in Sir Roderick’s mind, and he wanted to hear it from the man’s lips. “Our soldiers would not be sucked in by such claptrap.”
“Excellency, the woman does not make use of words alone. She performs miracles—miracles of healing the likes of which we have not seen in recent years due to the weakening of our mystics. This girl restores limbs that have been hacked off. She places her hands upon a man’s chest, and the gaping hole in it closes over. She tells a man with a broken back that he can stand up, and he stands up! The only miracle she does not perform is raising the dead. Those she prays over.”
Sir Roderick heard the creaking of a chair, looked up to see Targonne’s steel eyes gleaming unpleasantly.
“Of course”—Sir Roderick hastened to correct his mistake—“Lord Milles knows that these are not miracles, Excellency. He knows that she is a charlatan. It’s just that we can’t seem to figure out how she does it,” he added lamely. “And the men are quite taken with her.”
Targonne understood with alarm that all of the foot soldiers and most of the Knights had mutinied, were refusing to obey Milles. They had transferred their allegiance to some shaven-headed chit in black armor.
“How old is this girl?” Targonne asked, frowning.
“She is reputed to be no more than seventeen, Excellency,” Sir Roderick replied.
“Seventeen!” Targonne was aghast. “Whatever induced Milles to make her an officer in the first place?”
“He did not, Excellency,” said Sir Roderick. “She is not part of our wing. None of us had ever seen her before her arrival in the valley just prior to the battle.”
“Could she be a Solamnic in disguise?” Targonne wondered.
“I doubt that, Excellency. It was due to her that the Solamnics lost the battle,” Sir Roderick replied, completely unconscious that the truth he had just now spoken accorded ill with the fabrications he’d pronounced earlier.
Targonne noted the inconsistency but was too absorbed in the clicking abacus of his mind to pay any attention to them, beyond marking down that Milles was an incompetent bungler who should be replaced as speedily as possible. Targonne rang a silver bell that stood upon his desk. The door to the office opened, and his aide entered.
“Look through the rolls of the Knighthood,” Targonne ordered. “Locate a—What is her name?” he asked Roderick, though he could hear it echo in the Knight’s mind.
“Mina, Excellency.”
“Meenaa,” Targonne repeated, holding the name in his mouth as if he were tasting it. “Nothing else? No surname?”
“Not to my knowledge, Excellency.”
The aide departed, dispatched several clerks to undertake the task. The two Knights sat in silence while the search was being conducted. Targonne took advantage of the time to continue to sift through Roderick’s mind, which affirmed his surmise that the siege against Sanction was being handled by a nincompoop. If it hadn’t been for this girl, the siege might well have been broken, the Dark Knights defeated, annihilated, the Solamnics in triumphant and unhindered possession of Sanction.
The aide returned. “We find no knight named ‘Mina’ on the rolls, Excellency. Nothing even close.”
Targonne made a dismissive gesture, and the aide departed.
“Brilliant, Excellency!” Sir Roderick exclaimed. “She is an imposter. We can have her arrested and executed.”
“Hunh.” Targonne grunted. “And just what do you think your soldiers will do in that instance, Sir Roderick? Those she has healed? Those she has led to victory against the detested foe? The morale among Milles’s troops was not that good to begin with.” Targonne flipped a hand at a stack of ledgers. “I’ve read the reports. The desertion rate is five times higher among Milles’s troops than with any other commander in the army.
“Tell me this”—Targonne eyed the other Knight shrewdly—“are you capable of having this Mina girl arrested? Do you have guards who will obey your order? Or will they most likely arrest Lord Milles instead?”
Sir Roderick opened his mouth and shut it again without replying. He looked around the room, looked at the ceiling, looked anywhere but into those steel eyes, horribly magnified by the thick glass of the spectacles, but still he seemed to see them boring into his skull.
Targonne clicked the beads upon his mental abacus. The girl was an imposter, masquerading as a Knight. She had arrived at the moment she was most needed. In the face of terrible defeat, she had achieved stunning victory. She performed “miracles” in the name of a nameless god.
Was she an asset or a liability?
If liability, could she be turned into an asset?
Targonne abhorred waste. An excellent administrator and a shrewd bargainer, he knew where and how every steel coin was spent. He was not a miser. He made certain that the Knighthood had the best quality weapons and armor, he made certain that the recruits and mercenaries were paid well. He was adamant that his officers keep accurate records of monies paid out to them.
The soldiers wanted to follow this Mina. Very well. Let them follow her. Targonne had that very morning received a message from the great dragon Malystryx wanting to know why he permitted the Silvanesti elves to defy her edicts by maintaining a magical shield over their land and refusing to pay her tribute. Targonne had prepared a letter to send in return explaining to the dragon that attacking Silvanesti would be a waste of time and manpower that could be used elsewhere to more profit. Scouts sent to investigate the magical shield had reported that the shield was impossible to penetrate, that no weapon—be it steel or sorcery—had the slightest effect on the shield. One might hurl an entire army at it—so said his scouts—and one would achieve nothing.
Add to this the fact that an army heading into Silvanesti must first travel through Blöde, the homeland of the ogres. Former allies of the Dark Knights, the ogres had been infuriated when the Knights of Neraka expanded southward, taking over the ogres’ best land and driving them into the mountains, killing hundreds in the process. Reports indicated that the ogres were currently hounding the dark elf Alhana Starbreeze and her forces somewhere near the shield. But if the Knights advanced into ogre lands, the ogres would be quite happy to leave off attacking elves—something they could do any time—to take vengeance on the ally who had betrayed them.
The letter was on his desk, awaiting his signature. It had been on his desk for several
days. Targonne was fully aware that this letter of refusal would infuriate the dragon, but he was much better prepared to face Malys’s fury than throw away valuable resources in a hopeless cause. Reaching for the letter, Targonne picked it up and slowly and thoughtfully tore it into small pieces.
The only god Targonne believed in was a small, round god that could stacked up in neat piles in his treasure room. He did not believe for a moment that this girl was a messenger from the gods. He did not believe in her miracles of healing or in the miracle of her generalship. Unlike the wretched and imbecilic Sir Roderick, Targonne didn’t feel a need to explain how she had done what she had done. All he needed to know was that she was doing it for the benefit of the Knights of Neraka—and that which benefitted the Knights benefitted Morham Targonne.
He would give her a chance to perform a “miracle.” He would send this imposter Knight and her addle-pated followers to attack and capture Silvanesti. By making a small investment of a handful of soldiers, Targonne would please the dragon, keep Malys happy. The dangerous Mina girl and her forces would be wiped out, but the loss would be offset by the gain. Let her die in the wilderness somewhere, let some ogre munch on her bones for his supper. That would be an end to the chit and her “nameless” god.
Targonne smiled upon Sir Roderick and even left his desk to walk the Knight to the door. He watched until the black-armored figure had marched down the echoing, empty hallways of the fortress, then summoned his aide to his office.
He dictated a letter to Malystryx, explaining his plan for the capture of Silvanesti. He issued an order to the commander of the Knights of Neraka in Khur to march his forces west to join the siege of Sanction, take over command from Lord Milles. He issued an order commanding Talon Leader Mina and a company of hand-picked soldiers to march south, there to attack and capture the great elven nation of Silvanesti.
Dragons of a Fallen Sun Page 21
