Ralnor

Dar Eherdir

The Assassins moon

Part II

-A thread at a time-

The city was dead. Oras eye and Nesande’s moon illuminating its carcass. It stood torn apart, the buildings half-collapsed and blackened. The few that had survived carrying deep wounds as well. No more than two neighborhoods worth of real estate, left standing, a bank amongst them and a famed inn being the highlight.

What the fires and the bombardment didn’t destroy outright, the rape that followed took care of. The Khan’s army enslaved one for every three civilians that they butchered. When the killing stopped and the old Duke was long dead, what was left slowly died of hunger. What at first shocked the surviving locals as a horrifying tale, had turned into reality.

Those that dropped dead succumbing to the famine, were consumed by thousands of rats and those left behind. Hence the story of the old Duke served as dinner to the witch living high up the pyramid, lost some of its initial luster.

But people survived even so.

Pockets of them, slowly came out of the rumble, refusing to leave and started living again. What once was a famed city though, had turned into several small villages, hidden in a maze of stone and debris.

The rats paid a heavy prize for that early feast.

They were driven to extinction.

The Prince offered amnesty to those that had survived those hellish summer months, but every night, when the small markets that had sprouted in the destroyed parts of the city closed, and the people retired, the moonlight reminded those that lurked in the dark of what had happened.

Death, brings opportunity, Ralnor thought. He watched the pebble roll down the cracked wall, the sound clear in the eerie silence. The shadows thick as cold fat. He placed a small cube of cured flesh on his molars and chewed on it, appreciating the taste. His eyes on the quiet road leading to the still under repair harbor. The pebble reached the cobblestone road, bounced once and came to a stop at a quarter of its width.

The silence following the disturbance deafening. Ralnor reached for the bag Aelrindel had given him, grabbed a handful of incense gums and seeds and waited. The shadow moved, when he swallowed. It came out on the street, turning solid after a moment, the figure emerging dressed in black, white hair braided. Nervous and unsure, if she’d heard right. Not Yllir, though. Ah, that imperial cunt, is cool as a cucumber, he thought licking his lips.

Another… hmm.

The female assassin, an Issir, glanced once more at the empty road, missing Ralnor watching her from above the collapsed wall and turned around. The next moment she was gone.

“Have they left?” Mezera asked him, after yelping when he landed next to her spot. Her fear rich and enticing.

“You can only see one way,” Ralnor rustled and placed his back on the internal wall surrounding the Duke’s palace.

“There’re guards posted.”

“Assume they are already dead,” Ralnor advised her. “Do not trust a man with a boring job, to stay alert enough, to save your neck.”

Mezera sighed and stretched out, it turned into a yawn.

“Apologies, I’m not sleeping well,” She blurted.

“I do not sleep at all,” Ralnor retorted. “Where is the boy?”

“He’s sleeping? The moment he eats, he’s out,” Mezera explained with a grin, she quickly covered looking away.

He sighed and put a hand on her shoulder. “Get some rest,” Larn offered and she clasped his hand with hers for a moment, her skin warm. It was a simple gesture of gratitude, the woman too emotional still, but it made him feel a little better.

Nobody likes being treated as a monster.

Not when real monsters are about to feast on the Realm.

“I’m here,” Ralnor said and came out of the heavy shadow, near the narrow stairs leading up to the parapets.

Lithoniela pouted, eyes turning a royal bright purple, under her hood.

“How do you... where did you learn that?” She queried haughtily, crossing her arms on her chest.

“It wasn’t a spell, your grace,” Ralnor replied and came to stand close to her. She smelled of the sorceress’ oils. “The spot offered plenty of shade,” He added.

“Hmm. You’ve learned the greater Gift of Stealth,” She noted not backing away from him.

“Nobody has, but for Nym.”

“Why?” She probed curious.

Ralnor took a deep breath and stepped away. He pressed his lips into a thin line, thinking of the Silent Servant back in the city.

“Incense and seeds, won’t cut it,” Ralnor replied, the fact he was talking to the Empress’ daughter not lost to him. The moment, while highly coveted in the distant past, lesser somehow than he’d expected it. “A part of yourself, must perish. There’s only so much one has to spare,” He replied cryptically, even so giving away more than he should have.

“What about healing?”

“You saw her,” Ralnor said, understanding what it was she was looking for.

“She didn’t need a life to heal you,” Lithoniela pointed, looking at him.

Ah, the privileged, Ralnor thought, returning her stare. The city is flooded with assassins, itching to slit our throats and probably gorge in our blood, Old Nym be damned and still they find the time to satisfy their academic curiosity. Debate magic and high level spells, under the moonlight.

“Aelrindel was very talented always,” He replied staring at the twin moons over their heads, an idea forming in his mind.

“You’ve known her for that long?”

“I’ve known her from afar,” Ralnor said, his jaw clenching. “Through her mother.”

Watched her grow up.

Always unseen, even when I wasn’t hiding.

“Aye, it makes sense,” Baltoris daughter replied with a nod. “You were a stray. Edlenn had that reputation,” Lithoniela continued, what she’d probably heard in the gold-painted walls of her palace. “Orphans coming out of the woods, found in the lake, half-dead. What was she like? I never got to meet her.”

I can see you boy, the old sorceress whispered. Her words a soothing song. Why are you sad?

Ralnor gulped down, his throat dry and took a deep breath to regain his composure.

“She found value in all things,” He replied, forcing a smile on his face to answer her querying eyes.

“And now you serve her daughter. Will you serve me as well?”

“It’s what I do, Princess,” Patiently and for long. With no reward worth of note. Lithoniela had clasped his hand, the second person to do it in the same night. Ralnor looked into her golden cheerful eyes astounded.

“Gratitude,” The Imperial Princess said warmly.

“She’s inside,” Toutatis informed him, mouth full of grapes. “Wearing a wig, or something. She didn’t mind giving me food.”

Ralnor nodded staring at the guard posted outside. “The Prince?” He asked, keeping his face neutral.

The boy swallowed and wiped his mouth. He eyed the guard in turn. “Thoroughly satisfied. He left earlier,” the little rascal replied and a tick appeared at the side of Ralnor’s mouth.

“Where did you get the shoes?” He asked and it came out a hiss.

“A dead guy, or girl,” Tot replied looking at him curious.

Ralnor sighed.

“Stay, while I talk with her. Don’t steal anything else.”

Aelrindel had a large silver bowl placed on the mahogany table next to the balcony’s doors. She poured clear white oil in it from a silver decanter, the smell of lavender and rose extract strong. Her long cobalt hair reaching her waist, the shrill tunic she wore a bright red, with gold details, touching the marble floor. The sorceress added two measures of frankincense, half a handful of sarsaparilla seeds, myrrh and balsam resin, before turning to watch Ralnor approach.

Silvery eyes taunting.

Edlenn’s daughter was a seductress first and foremost.

“You talked with the Princess,” She pointed. “You’re way gloomier at this time of day. I suppose, it’s refreshing.”

“How did it go, with the Prince?” Ralnor countered, the left side of his mouth curling upwards.

“I don’t think it worked. I shall keep trying. He’s very eager to please.”

Not if he runs himself through with his sword.

It can be an accident. People stumble onto their blades all the time.

“Perhaps, the gods are telling you something.”

Aelrindel chuckled, seeing his expression.

“I don’t perceive the matter as amusing,” Ralnor hissed, glancing inside the bowl. “Will it work?”

He had to change the subject.

“Three days of slow amalgamation are required. You expect something? They haven’t acted for weeks.”

“Maybe they have, there’s an assassin of the Guild in the city,” Ralnor said.

“The Guild you control,” She mocked him openly.

“Do you control the Khanate?” Ralnor countered and she all but hissed in frustration. The sorceress walked away from the narrow long table, she’d brought in the throne room. Two new large book-selves adorning the opposing walls. Aelrindel kept changing stuff, adding her touch to the once rather empty hall. “Are the myths bards spread, your reality now?”

“Eventually I will,” Aelrindel whispered and reaching the Duke’s old throne, two large satin pillows on it, plopped down troubled.

Through an offspring was her meaning.

“They’ll never accept a half-breed. Not on this throne, or any.”

“I’ll make sure they will. The Realm changes all the time.”

Ralnor sighed and walked towards her.

“A wyvern might’ve noticed him,” He repeated her words from the other day. Aelrindel licked her sensual lips, a pink tongue over pearly teeth, canines sharp. Her eyes warning him to drop the matter. But he couldn’t. Old sins and the past walked their present. “Which one?”

“Does it matter?”

“Now it does. You never learned to hide your anger.”

“It’s easier to hide, when you’re only using one expression, or variants of it. Unhappy scowl, gloomy sulk.”

That was much better, he thought. Personal and taunting enough.

“Which Wyvern Aelrindel?”

She smacked her lips, tiny wrinkles marring the edges of her eyes. The sorceress wore no makeup.

You can’t improve perfection.

“Gimoss, the Foul.”

Hmm.

Now the monsters come knocking.

“That’s… the demigod of myths?”

“All myths were history once,” She said.

“How do you know?”

“I studied more than you, Ralnor,” Aelrindel reminded him. “And my mother met him, before the great Ninthalor of Myraniel passed.”

Ralnor frowned and clasped his hands on his back.

“The Emperor,” He rustled. “Baltoris father. When was this?”

“At the end of the First Era,” Aelrindel replied, a hint of pride in her voice. Her lineage second only to the Royalbloods.

“Continue,” Ralnor hissed. His own line unknown, probably tainted at the very least.

“My mother went to save our people on the Last Isles,” That would be Plague Isles, Ralnor translated. “The King of Kings was busy defending the mainland and couldn’t spare the recourses. She wanted to evacuate as many as it was possible, but when she arrived, the Aken had spread like cancer. Edlenn killed more than she saved.”

Ralnor cleared his throat, giving her the time to recover. Aelrindel pressed index and mid-finger on her forehead, her eyes closed.

“Then Gimoss arrived,” She said.

“Like in the story,” Ralnor added. He’d heard it in his youth. The Crafter God from the lands of the Aken.

“Eh, not exactly. Politics, pride and a lot of embellishment went into it.”

“A Wyvern from Mistland. Is that part true?” Ralnor asked.

“That’s not what they call it. The Aken came from there, but Gimoss followed them and Edlenn, I suppose. Drawn to their magic.”

“You’re stalling. What did he do?”

“He wanted a Lighthouse build,” Aelrindel replied. “Ruined the villages, scoured the land and killed Aken and Zilan alike.”

“A lighthouse.”

“The biggest there was. Shine a light on Eplas. That’s what the Aken said.”

“What did your mother do?”

“She listened. Our people were getting eaten, enslaved. Her magic didn’t work on him. Gimoss was ancient then.”

Ralnor stared at the sun coming from the open balcony. Rida had gone through something similar. People never learned their lessons.

“What did the Aken proposed?” He asked, with a frown.

“We shed the islands to them, agree on a truce,” Aelrindel replied. “They would kill the Wyvern in exchange.”

“How?”

“A cursed brew made of bone marrow and Death Magic.”

“What about our people?” Ralnor asked, although he knew.

“She had to give them up, for the spell to work. A Wyvern’s appetite is gargantuan.”

Of course. Let’s feed the strays to the monster.

“I assume it worked,” He croaked.

“Gimoss managed to fly away, but yeah it did eventually,” Aelrindel replied. “My mother came back, but the King refused to agree to a truce. With the old Wyvern gone and Turlas strong enough to cross the Haze Sea, Ninthalor wanted the Isles back into the fold.”

“Then the King died,” Ralnor guessed.

“He did. Young Baltoris took over, agreed to my mother’s truce. She wasn’t as confident then.”

A thousand years will make a lion out of a cub.

“Did Edlenn had the King killed?” Ralnor asked. “Was Nym involved?”

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t do something like this.”

Edlenn had just agreed to genocide the islands population for that truce, Ralnor thought. I wager she took the King’s rebuke a bit more personal.

You would.

“Where did you get the bones? I assume they are his,” Ralnor asked her instead, the sorceress staring at the Duke’s coat of arms still hanging on her wall.

“Talons,” Aelrindel murmured, her mind elsewhere. “They’ve taken the bones, before I got there.”

“Who had? Here, on Eplas?”

She stared at him unsure for a moment. Then breathed deep, her breasts swelling under the thin material and pushed herself up.

“In the desert. Close to where the earth got torn. The Aken found the body, many centuries later,” Aelrindel’s eyes asked him to stop, but Ralnor couldn’t.

This didn’t make any sense.

“Intact?”

“Gimoss demise wasn’t natural. He got… exorcized from the living. We don’t practice this,” The sorceress whispered. Until we do, Ralnor translated. “The body remained. Until they found it.”

Ah, the dark paths noble folk travel without batting an eyelash.

“The Aken are here again, Aelrindel. Have they ever left? They don’t have to be present to watch,” He thought about the one he’d met in the woods and his constructs. “They favor a long scheme,” He pointed out the obvious. “Why did they help you?”

“They remembered my mother. I can be very persuasive.” Beauty and vanity makes idiots appear smart. “They just gave me directions. Does it even matter? It’s been ages.”

Pray we won’t have to find out.

He sighed deeply.

“I did what I had to do,” The sorceress said simply, sensing his inner turmoil.

Love-struck little girl, playing with the Realm’s fate.

Trying to mate with a human and waste her mother’s line away.

The fact she still stubbornly, as much as selfishly, worked on that same stupid plan, not missed to him.

A Zilan can only give birth once.

The Prince has to go, he decided. Ah, another name to scratch out.

Then there’s Reeves.

“What if the boy hatches that darn egg?” Ralnor asked. “What then?”

“A human. Are you serious? That egg is dead! A chunk of rock. The moment it sees the light, it must be placed near fire. The Blacksmiths were tasked for this. Two hundred years. And who would help him? Gimoss? Haha,” She shook her head right and left, finding it absurd. Her chuckle unforced, childish for a female Zilan that had lived half a millennia. Lithoniela is still a teen, she is not. “I’ll talk with Reeves again. He’ll listen,” The sorceress added, strangely pleased.

Even hopeful?

Ralnor was thinking of the locked box. He’d opened that darn box, almost gotten himself killed because of it. Reeves had escaped. Didn’t take the ship to Altarin. Did he travel down the Merchant Path? Mayhap he'll brave the Desert? How much heat, was warm enough? He wondered, not as certain as the sorceress.

I’m here on another matter as well, Dar Vranga had said, the memory worrying. Unless I’m not.

Where had that Gish gone?

No bigger Imperial fanatic, than a freed slave.

Ralnor narrowed his eyes, the mess she’d just dropped in his lap, epic in proportions. No wonder the numbers make no sense. He almost gave up, right then and there. Then Ralnor stared into her mirthful face, now grown into the beauty she was always destined to be and remembered why he’d spared her.

For a moment he’d turned into that boy again, lurking in the shadows.

Wonder in his eyes.

In a sense, the stray always knew.

“Reeves is moving away from us,” Ralnor explained to her again, what she couldn’t understand. The Realm doesn’t care about your plans and the Gods are always watching. “You’ve no idea what Gimoss will do, or if young Reeves has a plan. He found the dagger and he found the egg. Using spells should have killed him you say, but it didn’t. Sometimes it’s better to go with what’s in front of you. He’s a threat.”

“I will take care of that. You just have to find him Ralnor,” She argued blind, her heart still holding on to hope.

“What about the assassins?” He asked tiredly.

For they are many.

“You have a plan?” Aelrindel asked.

“Do you?”

She pouted. It was surprisingly effective. “You’re angry. Why?”

We just expended an hour explaining it dear.

“It called self-preservation. Steel cuts through all flesh alike, sorceress,” Dar Eherdir told her instead, sending the boy back in the Circle.

When you have a maze of different threads, plots and dangers, thrust upon you, through no fault of your own, you must cut through it with the outmost patience.

A thread at a time.

“Stop decorating this darn place,” He admonished her, a plan forming in his mind. A poor plan, but you got to have something, else Oras would just toss you overboard. Aelrindel’s face turned a bright red, her eyes sparkling. “I need you to make a very public statement. We’ll worry about the repercussions later.”