The Unseen

by Gregory Blackman

  “Sire?” a familiar voice asked from behind. “May I have a moment?”

  “Leave it to the spymaster,” said Simeon as he raised his hands in surrender and turned to face the man, “to be the only man on this earth capable of sneaking up on me.”

  “You flatter me,” he said, coyly, “but I was hoping to get the chance to discuss your return in private. It would seem your official return provided us little chance of that.”

  Simeon never cared much for the unknown. It may even be the root of his distaste for the snakelike spymaster. Despite his reservations Simeon let the man speak his mind. There were details that bothered him, as well, and if there was any man of the isle that held the answers he sought, it would be this man.

  “So?” asked the prince after some time had passed. “Let’s discuss.”

  “I’m afraid delicate subjects should fall upon lesser ears,” the spymaster said as his eyes darted from one corner of the bazaar to the next. “I have lodgings not far from here. Let’s go.”

  Simeon waved his hands in protest, his feet firmly rooted in the ground and not likely to be moved anytime soon. “That’s not happening, Salamander. You’ll speak here, among my people, or you won’t speak, at all.”

  For the first time in Simeon’s life he saw the spymaster caught off his guard. A better man might have taken the opportunity to mend fences and see that order is kept within the isle. Simeon Lyon wasn’t a better man. He was rarely a good man. For him this was one more chance to poke the bear by way of his most trusted confidant.

  “Tell me, he who bends the high king’s ear,” said Simeon, “does something not appear to be amiss within the city walls? I left a prosperous isle. Where has that home of mine gone? You ask that I leave with you for private discussions. To whom would you return your puckered lips to upon discussion’s end? What trust have you earned in me? What rights should you be so haplessly granted? No, I think not.”

  “It is as you say,” Salamander replied with a formal bow. “I am spymaster of the ashen court and ear to the high king. Most are my enemy, young prince, but I am not your enemy. You will come to learn that in time. I only hope it’s not too late for us both.”

  Simeon wasn’t quite sure what to make of the coldblooded spymaster, graceful even in his departure. He chilled the prince to the bone, a feat not so easily accomplished, but still, the prince vowed to keep up pretenses.

  “Nonsense, the people love me, and if you removed yourself from the high king’s rectum, spent some time with the people they might love you.” Simeon paused when he remembered to whom he spoke. “Perhaps that might not be in your best interest.”

  Salamander was almost gone from sight, not so far removed from mind, but he, too, felt the need to leave that everlasting impression. He turned to the beleaguered prince, and said, “Times change. You speak the words, but do you truly understand what it means? When you do, seek me out. I’ll be waiting…”

  Chapter Six

  Shadow Brokers

  Gregory Blackman

  Into the Wild Lands

  The road to the Wild Lands wasn’t paved with stone. It wasn’t even paved with dirt. It was as far off the map as one could be in the world of man. The forest was thick, knotted, and it proved difficult for the two soldiers to traverse in a timely manner. They were late, far later than they hoped to be, and no matter how much terrain the two of them covered it didn’t seem to get them anywhere.

  The sun’s light was nearly behind them. If Cylena Barst and Jaric Goldrun didn’t find their way to the armies of man tonight they might not get there at all. So, they left their sleeping rolls behind and continued on, unencumbered, and ready for one last march forward.

  “You’ve been humming and hawing since we left Hornshire,” Cylena said. “If you don’t mind my brashness, commander, what in the nether is wrong with you?”

  “It’s a crisis of faith, I’m afraid,” said Jaric, sullenly, “and it’s been pressing me since that damned captain almost got me killed on the high seas.”

  Cylena wasn’t sure how to maintain this newfound conversation. She was never one to commune with the pillars and ask of them what she could do to better herself. She didn’t need the gods for that. She already knew the answer. So, she let the old man have the spotlight and continued on beside him as they trudged through the wilderness.

  “Are you a believer?” Jaric asked.

  She was stuck, unsure how to proceed, for it made no difference if she nodded her head or if she shook it. Her answer would only bring about more questions—questions she wouldn’t be able to answer. Without a proper schooling, she only had the word of her mother that the gods existed, though she could neither show an ounce of proof nor recall more than a dozen from their lengthy list of names.

  “I see,” Jaric said with a friendly smile. “Well, no matter. It’s more of a personal crisis, anyway.”

  Cylena Barst thanked her commander for the show of kindness and let him lead her onward into the forest. It wasn’t that the topic of the gods drew uncomforting feelings within her. It was that she had nothing to bring to the table. She knew of the four pillars and the divisions they brought to the gods. There was the pillar of water that brought hope to a lifeless world; power saw the fires of creation burn bright across the lands; the winds of wisdom doused those flames, but not before it allowed the pillar of earth the fortitude to sow its seed throughout the new lands. That was the extent of her knowledge. Not exactly what one would expect of a priest or scholar, but she wasn’t a priest nor was she a scholar. She was a soldier, perhaps, she decided, it wouldn’t be so awful to listen to what he had to speak.

  An axe soared through the air and lodged itself in a tree next to Cylena. A battle was upon them. Cylena unsheathed her blade, watched her commander do the same, and dropped to the ground to avoid unnecessary blood loss.

  “What are we looking at?” Cylena asked.

  Jaric popped his head up from the bushes and tried to take stock of their surroundings before he ducked back down, and said, “I’m counting at least a dozen gnolls, maybe more.”

  “Well, I’ll be a Lowgardian hill dwarf,” muttered Cylena into her chainmail coif. “I bloody hate gnolls.”

  Rank, miserable creatures that infested the deep forests that mankind dared to tread. Commonly referred to as pig-men among the populace, they were more akin to boars, with their matted brown fur and piggish snouts. These creatures weren’t intelligent enough to fashion weapons for themselves, but they were smart enough to use what they pillaged from the hands of men. The same went for their armor, often mismatched or incomplete sets; whatever they could get their greedy, little fingers on.

  The first few gnolls sent their way were put down by the combined efforts of Cylena’s bastard sword and Jaric’s engraved broadsword. They made foul screams to go with their foul forms, and it drew more out from the woods. They fired their arrows, hurled their crudely made axes, and bound through the forest without a thought to their own wellbeing.

  “They’re surrounding us!” Cylena shouted.

  “Wrong,” said Jaric as he forced the hand of her lieutenant down to avoid further incident. “They already have.”

  “What are we going to do?” Cylena asked.

  “When I figure that out,” said her commander, “I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  The gnolls snickered and snapped their tusks as they approached. Cylena waved her sword all about, but it didn’t seem to do her any good and the creatures continued forward. Closer and closer they came, step by step until they circled around the soldiers.

  The two soldiers weren’t going to find a common ground with these brutes. They weren’t going to talk them down from a certain bloodbath. This was the end of the line, or so it should have been.

  An arrow struck one of the gnolls in the forehead that sent them into disarray. Their confusion proved the ample opportunity for the two in their midst who seized it with a flash of their steel blades. Others clad in similar steel to th
e young lieutenant broke through the pack of gnolls, and with a clash of blades and shields the battle began anew.

  “Run the beasts down, my brothers!” shouted the man in the forefront of the skirmish. “No quarter shall be issued!”

  The soldiers charged into the thick of it for their leader, a man that embodied the purest of virtues within the empire. His voice was unmistakable, rich in the royal tongue, yet forceful enough to bring a hundred more troops into the fray. It was as if the pillar of wisdom and wind itself had taken root in his lungs and forced his thoughts out upon the world. In his azure blue eyes the soldiers saw the pillar of hope to see them through the darkest night. It steeled them to the sights they looked upon, monsters of the foulest order, grotesque and only getting worse as they came into view. In his golden mane the soldiers saw the power, and the strength of character one could achieve if they strived for the highest. When all was said and done, it was the man’s conviction to channel the fortitude that completed the circle for the soldiers and allowed them to achieve the heights of the idealistic titans they aspired to be. This man was the high prince of the Ashen Isle, Vyers Lyon, and soon to be ruler of the kingdoms of man.

  Vyers lead his men, coupled with the two soldiers they had come across in the night, and together the legion made quick work of the aggressive, yet untrained gnolls. The moment the last gnoll hit the ground, the commander in golden plate turned to face the two soldiers with a particularly nasty scowl upon his face, and said, “You’re late.”

  The soldiers looked around at each other nervously in fear they might have to battle two of their own. The high prince wasn’t known to lose his cool, whether that meant in the middle of a battle or those times in between. The two were mutually exclusive, and so they stayed their hands on their blades, in case it came down to it.

  “Yes,” said Jaric with a loitering lump caught in his throat. “Well, the duchess sends her regards.”

  The high prince, Vyers, burst forth with a bellyful laughter that saw two old friends reunited at all. The troops that surrounded, and even the ill at ease Cylena Barst, breathed a sigh of relief as they relaxed their collective hands on their hilts.

  “Never did care for the woman,” Vyers said as he turned to lead the two soldiers towards his waiting armies. “Ah, and this must be my second in command.”

  Cylena looked to her commanding officer in wait of his response, but none came and both Jaric and Vyers looked back to her. Flustered by the engagement, she looked to her high prince, and asked, “I thought that role fell to Jaric?”

  “No, no that can’t be,” said the prince with a vigorous shake of his head. “Jaric will forever be my unofficial second in command, but the marshal, Mantas Varg, is a stickler for the rules and that mandates I have a viable second in command.”

  Cylena was shocked by the high prince’s callousness. She was appalled by his discrimination of age. She knew Jaric Goldrun was headed into his later cycles, but he had already proven himself her better on more than one occasion. She fought through all her training and good manners, fought as hard she could to work up the courage to defend her commander, but all she managed to was sweat profusely and turn beat red.

  “Where are your robes, man?” asked Vyers as he stopped to survey his friend’s attire. “I know the empire doesn’t pay well, but you could at least dress the part. We have an image to uphold.”

  “What robes?” Cylena asked.

  “Oh?” asked Vyers as his hand moved from the shoulder of Jaric to the young soldier beside him. “Jaric here is a battle priest, my battle priest, and he has been since I was a fresh faced recruit. I wouldn’t want to go into battle without him. Luckily, he had our maps and I was forced to stall the army—a tall task I have to admit—one that best be ended before any more fights breakout amongst the troops.”

  He was a battle priest and for the last hundred miles Cylena hadn’t the slightest inkling of whom she spoke to; not entirely, at least. She figured he was some roadside scholar or battlefield poet, not a man of the cloth, trained in both steel and scripture. She couldn’t have felt more foolish, and shrank back from the limelight to where the other soldiers tread.

  Vyers lead them to a place where the trees finally parted to an open field where hundreds of war tents had been painstakingly set up. Beyond the tents lurked more forests in the horizon, but the billows of smoke that arose from the many camp fires blocked out all but the machinations of a high king.

  The soldiers were swift to join their comrades by the fires and grab a bite to eat, but Cylena and Jaric had no such place to go. The two of them stayed with the prince as he strode into the camp, past the columns of piss pots and holes with contents best left unsaid, to his private tent.

  “Get fed,” the high prince said as he motioned to everything that lay inside the tent, “get some drink and get some sleep. You’re both going to need it.”

  “Why?” Cylena blurted out, so enchanted by the feast before her eyes that she once again forgot her place.

  Vyers flashed his battle priest a grin of approval. He wanted someone who could speak their tongue when in the presence of royalty. In Cylena Barst he could see that someone. Perhaps more if the wrong kind of fate awaited them in these lands.

  “We depart in the early morning,” said the high prince, “and into the heart of the Wild Lands.”

  When the prospect of a decent meal was at last upon her, Cylena found that she could no more eat a meal than stop herself from wandering out of the tent and towards the forest in the distance.

  She passed by the soldiers in the high king’s army, each of them lost in their own affairs, be it a game among friends, or a quarrel among foes. Cylena continued on, through the drunk and the disorderly, all the way to the camp’s perimeter.

  “The Wild Lands,” Cylena said with both trepidation and awe. “I don’t think I’m going to like you.”

  Never had Cylena Barst imagined in her wildest dreams to see the fabled lands of the world’s oldest empire, a land now inhospitable to all but the fiercest of people.

  Before her eyes stood a wall of trees elevated above any sight she had ever seen in the world of man, and its ominous shadow crept over all the lands she surveyed. This would be the land where she made a name for herself. She could feel it within every fiber of her being. All she lacked was the clairvoyance to know if that was to her favor or if it was to her downfall.

  Chapter Seven

  Shadow Brokers

  Gregory Blackman

  Wisps, Kaerns, and Even a Wyrm

  Numerous races in the land of men fell under the label of beastkind. These were various peoples such as the kaern, wisp, lycan, and nosferatu, all striving to survive in this dark world. There was a place, Moorland, in Amoria Minor that accepted beasts of all kinds and creeds, but that place was far from the shores of the Cordisan Bay and in this land, those that called themselves beastkind had no name or home.

  They weren’t slaves, like the dwarves and the rare elf, for the slave life wasn’t for beasts of their stature. They were relegated to private holds, zoos, and the celebrated big game hunt. That was the life meant for Finley Mudbottom, but it wasn’t the life he had lived.

  The generosity of strangers, in this case one Korine Dorset and a puckish Axel Thorogard, provided Finley a life not afforded to many kaerns in the human world. He knew compassion, friendship, and because of the dwarf he rode with, more than his fair share of slurs and insults.

  The kaerns of the Rahgul Zoo knew nothing of Finley’s world. They only knew what their beast tamer’s provided them, namely cruelty. Finley looked into the eyes of many kaern caged within its tent. In each of their eyes he saw the same story. They were young, malnourished, and unable to speak the common tongue, no matter how many times he tried to communicate with his people.

  They didn’t recognize him, not under his back hair beard and layer upon layer of overcoat. He tore the beard from his face and started the lengthy process of disrobement to show his people that he w
as of their breed. Maybe then they would begin to peel themselves from the back of their cages.

  To many humans the kaern was a ragged creature, from its furred haunches to their cloven hoofs, kaern were more beast than man. That wasn’t the kaern the group of four had come to know. To them, kaern were a playful sort, often in the mood for song and libation, childlike beings with the spirits of a dozen adventurers rolled up into one, always eager to search that next mountain in the distance. He was a quick study with the often sought after sleight of hand; young in age, but old in heart, and loyal to a fault. Now he stood free of his overcoats, before his brethren and the other sort that had been collected. Would they accept them?

  Finley turned to show himself, proud and free, to all the kaerns in his audience. They began to stir about in their cages, their eyes locked on his meaty limbs and full, humanlike face. There wasn’t a rib to be seen through his skin, and although he could see more than a few of them checking to see, he stood there in his birthday suit as free as the day he was born.

  He bent over into his belongings and began to rummage through his contents. There he found a single lock pick, the only one he had ever needed. There was work to be done, but it wouldn’t be enough for him to rally his brethren on this night. Finley Mudbottom needed to unite the rest of the beasts if he wanted them to have any hope for a new life.

  He moved to the wisps locked in their glass jar prisons, tiny spheres of shimmering light that like to sing on those rainy and dark nights. These particular wisps were nearly out of their light, not likely to sing for some time. It was when his head poked over the dusty jars that he saw the largest cage of all.

  Large as the cage might be, the one before Finley was hardly enough to support its creature’s mighty wingspan. Wyrms were nefarious creatures of legend, rumored to be the spawn of drakes and not to be seen up close, creatures that breathed fire, acid, and all things evil. There weren’t many truths to those rumors, but the fear that bore them was all too real, and if the humans wanted to see one alive they better be prepared to pay top dollar for the experience. This particular wyrm wasn’t much to fear, less to pay top dollar to see, but there was no mistaking the beast past its emerald scales, horned scalp, and deadly, albeit clipped talons. This was a sad beast inside a sadder zoo, but if there was one thing in this world that Finley Mudbottom understood it was that everyone needed help at some point in their life.