Prologue
The tavern room was getting dark, the pale light of the waning dusk tossing shadows onto everything it touched, and the moist air of the evening was warm and heavy with the whispers of a coming rain. Through the shadows of the room, a small fire could be seen against a far wall, its flickering flames adding to the shadows. The flames twisted and leaped, the shadows cast seeming to take on life and move slowly around the room before circling back and beginning anew.
Brohmin watched the shadowy movements from his table in the corner, his face the blank expression of a man grown hard from long travels and many journeys. His eyes jumped and darted with the jerky movements of the burning fire, his senses heightened for movement within the smoke and darkness, and his body tensed for it. Nothing ever came.
At another table not far from Brohmin sat four men drinking mugs of ale, each man deep into their glass by this time with the loosened tongues the drink gave. He sat and listened. Men like this knew rumors, and those were what Brohmin needed.
The first hour of watching the men carry on had been amusing to him, but as the men had steadily grown more raucous, he had turned away and begun watching the flames. The earlier stories the men had shared among themselves were what he had focused on, his amusement feigned to more easily watch and listen to what was said.
One of the waitresses approached his table. “Do you need anything?” Brown eyes bunched up along her tall forehead begged him to say no while the crossed arms under her breasts almost dared him to ask her for anything.
“Only more water,” he said.
“Water, not ale?”
He shook his head and she scowled at him as he turned back to the moving flames. Brohmin scanned the room as he listened.
Two men with sword belts looped about their waists ate quickly and without talk. The quality of their steel and the shine to their boots screamed to his eyes of an organized army, and he suspected that they were among the troops sent north out of the city to maintain peace on the Old Rehne Road. Stories told that the sheer number of people moving south on the road was causing local problems, and he wondered how many armored men had moved north already and how many more would have to go.
At another table sat an older couple and their young children, a boy and girl, huddled over a meal that he guessed was given to them through the kindness of the owner. They didn’t look as if they could buy Bastiinian sand let alone the large dinner that was placed before them. He suspected that the owner, a stout man with a large gut and a face now permanently reddened by excessive drinking, had given away many such meals in acts of kindness. With the increased number of southward travelers, such generosity could not last much longer or the owner would soon be facing empty pockets as well.
As he turned to observe the rest of the common room, most had the dirty look of travel and sadness in their faces. He had seen that face on many of the people he had passed on the road, sadness and the look of dejection at leaving one’s lifelong home. Each person’s eyes also carried the look of fear; the near mad fear that one feels when fighting and facing an invisible and unknown foe. None knew what they faced. Brohmin considered that a blessing. Few knew they were lucky they still lived.
After the waitress returned with his water, she stopped at one of the lanterns hanging on the wall to the left of his table, her arms reached up stretching for the almost-out-of-reach wick, and Brohmin looked down at the floor as she strained. He could see the muscular definition in her calves beneath her long skirt as she raised herself up onto her toes, and his eyes caught on the dark outline of something around her inner ankles.
As she lowered herself back to her heels, her skirt covered what he might have seen.
He quickly sat upright, pushing his chair away from the table, the shape marked on her flesh now burned into his mind.
His eyes darted up to her face as she turned around, catching her glare, and he flicked his eyes back down to her feet before looking into her eyes again.
She froze, realization sweeping across her face before she gathered her composure and hurried off, looking back long enough for him to catch the frantic gleam to her brown eyes.
As he tried to rise and chase her, the air seemed heavier around him.
He struggled against the sudden weight to the air, before closing his eyes and felt a familiar tug at his mind before the weight lifted from him.
Brohmin turned in the direction that she had gone, but saw nothing.
Had he any doubt, what happened after he’d seen the marking verified his suspicions.
He sat again. The waitress wasn’t going anywhere for now, and he still needed to listen for more gossip before deciding what he would do. The front door swung open and then shut quickly. Several more men streamed in, grabbing tables and hollering for ale. Town locals by the look of them.
A second waitress, younger and rounder than the first, came out to whistles and shouts from the men. Her hips swayed as she walked as she approached the men carry mugs of ale.
Brohmin shook his head as he turned away, his gaze again falling on the soldiers while he thought of the other waitress and what he needed to do. He should leave her, but if what he saw had been real… Brohmin knew he couldn’t.
Shouting caught his attention and he turned.
“I don’t know why anyone would be heading north these days!”
Brohmin’s ears perked up, and he turned his head slightly to the side to hear better but not be seen listening.
“Why’s that, Ricken?” he heard another man ask in response.
“From what I’s seen,” the man Ricken began, his speech heavily slurred and his mug waving about in front of him as he spoke in a slow drawn out tone, “men be coming down from the hills without their families. Sons disappearin’, daughters the same way, and wives either missin’ or so scared they already left their men and are waitin’ for ’em in the south. Something’s going on up there, and I wouldn’t want to have to go up and find out firsthand, if you know what I mean.”
One of the smaller men, his face drawn thin and tight with age and hunger, nodded. “If we don’t know what is going on, and we don’t know how to stop it, what’s to keep it from coming further south?”
“We send Davin and his brother to block the road!” someone shouted, arm outstretched and finger pointing to a huge man across from him who engulfed the stool he sat on.
The tables erupted in laughter, a couple of men clapping hands to the back of the man who pointed at Davin, but the thin man who had spoken earlier shook his head quickly, and his eyes could be seen jumping from man to man.
“I’m serious. What happens if whatever it is moves south? I don’t want to move my family because some northerners can’t control a pack of wolves or whatever.” The thin man’s eyes glanced over at Ricken.
“I never heard it was wolves or nothin,’” came the voice of one of the men at the end of the table, his head balding and the long nose jutting out from his face demanding attention. “I heard it was a village of cannibals who live high up in the mountains and can’t catch food no more.”
Brohmin’s mouth turned in a wry smile when he heard the explanation, a new one to his ears.
“Then we just send them Davin, and he’ll feed them for a year! Either way, we’re set!” the joker piped in, the table filling once again with the sound of most men’s laughter, Davin’s own face grinning broadly.
“You know what I hear?” Ricken began somberly. “I hear that it is some strange creature from the unknown lands to the east, flying overhead and snatching up people for food.” He nodded his head grimly as he spoke.
“I heard that the rocks came alive and started moving, mad at all the people climbing all over them,” came another.
“I thought they said it was the gods throwing angry fire from the sky!” another said.
“No, no, no,” started still another voice. “It was the gods coming from their homes in the earth, angry that the miners had awakened them and were stealing their wealth, so they rose up and attacked them.”
Brohmin sat and listened as the differing explanations came in a constant stream, oftentimes the same man having several different explanations for what was going on, and smiled as the rumors became more bizarre. He had heard most of them before today, travelers along the road were more than willing to share their gossip and their fears, but some were new. He suspected that the new ones were not so much rumors that were filtering south as they were stories that some of the men had come up with on their own.
Finally, the tirade of stories tapered off, the laughter from some of the more exotic stories dying with it, and the group sat quietly for a moment before one of the men who had not offered a story spoke up quietly.
“I heard none of those stories, ’cept the talk of the children missing and the wives leavin’ scared,” he began, his speech slow with a strange accent to it that was every so often accentuated by the drink. “I hear that when it comes, you can’t see a thing. It just comes. And sometimes, you can see shadows if the light is just right, shadows that make you feel sick as it moves around you as if it was dancin’ on you. Sometimes, you can feel something there, but you can’t see nothin.’” He looked around at the other men who were silent now, no trace of the smiles and laughter that had been there before. Drinks were forgotten for the time being.
“One thing that I heard most often from people,” he continued, his eyes darkly intense, a sad look on his worn and wrinkled face, “was about this smell. Some say the stench alone has killed men. Others say it makes you so sick that you can’t see anything, and you pass out. That’s when you disappear. Still, others told me they always smelled the odor after someone had disappeared. Like nothing in the world, they say about it.” He took a drink as he finished, his eyes watering over slightly as if he remembered something horrible, and no one spoke.
Brohmin looked at the man, seeing his short, graying hair disheveled about his head, a brown cloak thrown carelessly over shoulders that slumped with the weight of pain and sadness. He had the look of dirt to him, the kind of dirtiness that only the road can do to a man. He’d said too much that was accurate not to have experienced it.
The men fell silent for a moment, the road-wearied man turning to his drink.
“I’ll tell you what else is strange, besides them goings on in the north, is the king’s new advisor. Rainstaff... Reillem... Raime… or whatever his name is,” Ricken said.
Brohmin tensed at the comment. It couldn’t be coincidence, could it?
Not coincidence, not when it came to that man.
He cast another glance at the men before rising and hurrying up the stairs that led to his room on the second floor. As he topped the staircase and turned the corner to go down the hallway, his focus was drawn to a slight movement along the wall further down the long hall.
He moved quickly, not quite a run, but never taking his eyes off the spot where he thought he had seen the movement.
As he neared the location, he concentrated on the differences in darkness between the doors along the hall and the rest of the wall. Finally, he saw what he knew he would.
Instead of the shadow deepening where the door recessed from the wall, he saw something that almost looked right, but he knew was not. He reached his arm into the doorway and grabbed.
Suddenly standing before him was the waitress from earlier in the night, still wearing the brown skirt and the dirty shirt that she had been wearing last he saw her. He dragged her down to the end of the hall to his room’s doorway and quickly pulled a key from his pocket, shoving it into the keyhole and hearing an audible click as the lock tumbled out of place. He opened the door and roughly shoved her inside.
He closed the door and locked it again. He could see her eyes widen in fear as he put the key back into his pocket. “You are,” he started before catching himself, “excuse me, were a Mage.” He said the statement simply, no sign of fear at having mishandled one of the Magi were he correct, and saw the fear in her eyes change to surprise.
“How did you... how could you know?” she asked as she sank onto the bed at the far side of the room.
“You don’t carry yourself like a waitress,” he replied as he crossed the small room to where she now sat. “And there were other things,” he muttered as he grabbed one of the already lit candles in the room and lit the remaining ones. He then turned to her and casually pulled up her skirt, exposing the length of her calves.
She gasped as she tried to pull away from him, but a firm arm across her legs and a rough squeeze to her exposed calf froze her.
“I will not harm you,” he assured her, but noting the scared look still in her eyes, said, “nor violate you.”
He could see that she began to relax, and his eyes looked at the marking he’d seen on her ankle earlier. He noticed now for the first time that she had an identical marking on the other ankle as well. Burned into her skin, both looked to be three jagged teeth biting at her foot, but he turned the shape over in his mind and took it for what it was meant to be. Any question about what had happened faded when he saw the brands. He released her skirt, and it slowly fell back to the floor.
“You are weakened?” he asked, more of a statement than a question, and she nodded. “You were in Rondalin?” Another nod. “You are, or were, the Great Teacher of the city?” Another nod, so brief and full of embarrassment that he almost didn’t catch it. He sat thoughtfully for a moment, his eyes taking in her aged face, dignified in its wrinkles, and shook his head slowly. “The new advisor?” he asked, this time the answer not a foregone conclusion. Could Raime actually have shown himself in Rondalin?
She looked at him, her expression now full of wonder, and her mouth struggled as she searched for the right words. “Who are you?” she finally asked, his question left unanswered, but the look on her face all the answer he needed.
“I have gone by many names,” he said as he looked around his room, “but you can call me Brohmin,” he finished. A glimmer of near recognition flashed in her eyes and was gone again. “I go north in the morning. You may come if you choose. I can offer some shelter. Perhaps some healing.” He doubted she wanted to return to the Mage city of Vasha. Powerless and tossed out of Rondalin as she had been, a return would mean certain humiliation.
She nodded slowly, and he grabbed her ankle again, each hand cupped around the width of it, and it felt somehow both hot and cold at the same time. He closed his eyes as he traced the lines of the marking, his fingers feeling along the unnatural groove in her skin. He felt the soft tug at his mind and mumbled something inaudible under his breath for a time as he followed the design with his hand, then finally took his hands away.
She shivered as he released his grip, her mouth slowly opening before she shut it again with the unspoken question hanging in the air.
“We should see if we can do more about that at a later time, but for now, we need sleep.” She nodded, and he left the unspoken question unanswered. He rose and unlocked the door, opening it for her before saying, “I leave with the first light. If you should come, you will meet me here before then.”
* * *
A knock at his door awoke him in the morning, and through the window, he could see the faint lines of the morning sun peeking over the horizon. He had slept longer than he’d intended, but at his age, he didn’t care so much anymore.
The woman standing at the door only vaguely resembled the woman from the night before. Where last night there had been a dirty skirt and face there was now a well-dressed woman before him. A light blue riding dress fit snuggly over her proportioned frame, and he discreetly admired the tightness of it over her bosom. She blushed slightly, and he realized that he’d not been all that discreet.
“I will come with you,” she said with eyes forcing his gaze upward. “And you can call me Salindra.” She had a small bag slung over her shoulder and a plain, brown cloak in her other hand. As she turned, he caught sight of a thinly bladed knife tucked inside her belt.
He followed her out of the inn and to the stables behind the large building. They waited silently while the stable hands saddled their horses. He quickly tied his pack to the back of his horse, along with some other wares that he had purchased from the kitchen the night before, and climbed into the saddle. Moments later, he led them away from the inn and headed north.
Time passed slowly, the sun’s position gradually rising higher into the sky until it reached its peak. They had come upon the forest, and the great trees’ limbs arched high above the well-trodden path, an occasional stone from the old road turned up to reveal the past. They traveled under cover of the trees for a long time in silence, the only sounds from deep within the forest. Every now and again, they caught a glimpse of the sun through an opening in the trees unfiltered by the leaves. It was then that they could see how the day progressed, each opening revealing the sun moving higher.
As they came around a turn, they caught sight of the two soldiers from the night before resting along the path. A giant red leaf tree had been felled and lay across the path.
He looked at the tree that blocked the road, noting that the base of the trunk ended in a gully not far from the path. The branches were spread out in the opposite direction, hundreds of feet into the forest. They would be forced to go around the end of the branches. The gully would provide too much of a challenge for the horses.
“We’ll stop here for now, and then travel around the top of the branches.” He pointed, and she nodded.
“Something about your name has puzzled me,” she said after a long pause. “Do you know who else shares the name Brohmin?” He slowly nodded his head, and she smiled. “I suspected as much. Curious.” Another pause and then, “Brohmin Ulruuy, the last great failure of my people.”
He smiled at that, almost to himself, and said, “I do not know if you should say he was your last failure.”
“There aren’t many who claim knowledge of the Magi history.”
“I know... some,” he replied.
They ate the rest of the meal in silence, then stood at the same time and brushed themselves off. Brohmin turned to the two soldiers who were now repacking their horses and said, “We’ll go off around the top end of the tree. You’re welcome to accompany us.”
The soldiers glanced at each other before one nodded.
They reached the top of the mighty tree and turned their horses back toward the road when one of the soldiers suddenly sat upright in his saddle.
“Does anyone smell that?”
Brohmin’s eyes widened quickly as the soldiers wrinkled their noses in disgust. He scanned the forest but didn’t see what he feared.
“Aye,” grunted the other soldier. “And it’s getting stronger.” The man suddenly leaned over in his saddle and vomited.
As he did, Brohmin caught sight of two dark shapes sliding along the fallen tree.
“Go north through the forest. Catch the road, and we’ll meet you!” he commanded.
The men looked at him questioningly, hands moving to swords.
“Don’t be fools! Move!”
The soldiers paused, uncertain, then released their swords and spurred their horses on.
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
