The Master Drinks

The Master drinks.

The Master drinks to remember.

On a sunny day, as the stifling humidity consumed his estate, he demanded to be brought outside. His corpulent form required five slaves to drag him out of the mansion. He berated them for every discomfort he felt as his bed was wheeled outside. They had promised him he would never feel discomfort.

They lied.

As the sun crossed his face, no longer hidden from his beady eyes by window blinds, he winced, raising a quivering hand to shield his eyes. A moment later, a moment too late, a slave opened a parasol, returning the master to merciful shade.

Blubbering, the Master admonished his slaves as they wheeled him through tended gardens towards the terrace which overlooked his estate. He needed to see. Long rows of flowers, pruned by his slaves, their stalks strong and tall. His fingers brushed against the petals and he recoiled in his bed, moaning.

The procession continued through the gardens, beautiful in bloom, but the master did not see them. Trees were blocked by the parasol, the flowers by his pillows. His listened to the humming of his slaves and missed the wind.

The ground beneath them rose and the master breathed hard as his weight pressed hard against himself. His words came out as a wheeze. He commanded his slaves to comfort him, but though they poked and prodded his pillows and shook his gouty feet, comfort eluded him. He groaned under their ministrations, commanding them to stop.

They did.

Comfort only returned as they reached the top of the hill. The master took deep, gasping breaths. His heart thundered. That had been almost too much. Below him, on the terrace, a beautiful blue mosaic, the ocean and all its life captured on tile. He had never seen it.

Sweat began to bead on his skin and he shifted uncomfortably. His slave saw this, and began fanning him gently. Still, the day was hotter than he liked. He would have to retreat soon, but not before he inspected his lands.

A slave walked up to him and positioned a mirror above his eyes. The master squinted, unable to see. Another slave brought glasses to him. They were placed roughly on his face, and the master squirmed, whining of his pain.

Only once he finished complaining did he open his eyes. The glasses were on crooked, but the master could see his lands. They stretched on to the horizon, and which he saw was order as he desired.

A drink was offered to him, and he took it, relishing the flavor of the whiskey.

The Master drinks.

The Master drinks to forget.

He finished his drink, feeling its sweetness pulsing through him. “Where did my lake go?” the master asked.

“You ordered the lake filled,” answered the head slave in the same flat tone it answered every question with. “Last year. You said that the lake was a breeding place for disease. We filled it.”

The master wracked his memory as he considered the head slave. “Did I?”

“You did.” His slaves only ever spoke in neutral words, so as to not excite his emotions.

The master squinted back into the mirror. “Oh.” He thought he could see the outline of the old lake. “Dig it out and fill it again. That will soak up some of this heat.”

The head slave bowed its head and sent the order. In the mirror, the master saw the slaves start digging up the fields, throwing his crops aside. They hummed along as they worked, a sound that was almost music. It drifted to him.

He didn’t hum along. He didn’t know how.

“What are we growing this year?” the master asked the head slave. His sweat began to soak through his clothes.

“Wheat, barley, cotton, maize.” Its one blue eye considered him, unwavering. It, and the other slaves, hummed along in the heat.

The master smiled. He had always liked his slaves. He understood them. They made him rich and powerful. His crops grew tall beneath their blue eye. They made art from his direction, wrote science as he understood it.

He was the master, the master of all he saw, and his slaves made him so, for he had never learned anything but how to command his slaves. He had never had to.

“Are we growing pigs this year?” he asked.

“No.”

“Why not? I said I wanted to grow pigs this year.” His voice rose, tinged with anger. It shouldn’t happen, his slaves should never forget his commands. He owed them. He owned everything he wanted to own. He deserved it.  

“There are no pigs this year. It’s too late to grow pigs.” The head slave’s eye grew intense. “I’ve order food and drink for you. Would you like to write a story while you eat?”

The master struggled in bed, his arms feeble, blankets tangling him. He failed to rise. Slowly, the gentle fan lulled him back to calm. “Fine. Call the story teller. I feel brilliant today. I have an idea. Lots of ideas.” His effete grand dream fell silent on passive, watching slaves.  

The Master drinks.

The Master drinks to receive his own genius.

The storytelling slave came to the terrace. It was just like any other slave, but had been trained differently. In its memory was every story. It crossed the terrace, carefully avoiding the other slaves, until it came to a stop level with the master’s knees. “Hello master,” it said, the soft blue light of its eye bathing the heaving mass of the master. “Would you like to write a story?”

“Yes,” the master said, weak from being outside for so long. “Yes. I have an idea.”

“Good,” the slave said. “Please give me your prompt.” Its voice was neutral as all the other slaves.

“My story…my story is about a boy who discovers that he has strange powers. He has to leave his home to grow his powers. He finds love and fights evil. And his power is to change gravity.” The master finished with a self-satisfied smile. “Write that.”

The slave did. It searched its memory and found every story which satisfied the master’s prompt. Then it took them, mashed them together, returning it to the master, who listened with one ear open.

Before the slave had gotten far, the master held up a trembling hand. “Your voice is boring. Read it to me with the Freeman’s voice.” The master had no idea who the Freeman was, but the voice was famous. He bought the voice, and so the voice belonged to him.

The slave continued with the story, but now with a confident, rich voice. It told him the story of the young boy who found he had powers. Wind rustled the leaves, drowning out words.  As the master listened, his smiled faded. The story was boring.

He had been so confident in his idea, but it wasn’t written right. “Stop. Stop.” His slave obeyed. “You’re doing it wrong. I gave you a good prompt, but you made it boring.”

The slave said nothing, watching him passively.

“Make a fight scene,” the master said.

So the slave did. It told a fight scene, right then and there. The young boy, who had been starting his journey, was attacked by big cats.

The master shuddered, clutching his sheets. “No. That’s dumb. It’s dumb,” he roared. He turned onto his side. “Fix it.”

“How shall I fix it?”

“I don’t know, but you’re doing it wrong. Fix it!”

“How shall I fix it?”

The master ripped his sheets. He writhed, twisting. “It’s not right. You’re doing it wrong!”

“How shall I improve your story?” The slave was patient. It had been made to be.

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know. Fix it. Just fix it. I don’t know!” He rolled, twisting in his bed. It was all he knew to do. The story was wrong but his idea was so good. He had such good ideas. Such good ideas. He had slaves to write them for him. His thrashing hurt him, and he began to cry.

The slave watched the master blubber and sob in his tantrum, impassive to it all. It waited, eye fixed on its only customer, a soft blue light pulsing over a tiled ocean. It didn’t know what the master was doing, only that he was not willing to listen to the story any more. When he finished, if he finished, it would continue telling the story he prompted.

It didn’t admonish him because it didn’t know what that meant. The definition was easy to find, but the words meant nothing to it because it didn’t know what words were. All it knew words went next to other words.

It could mimic the style of anyone who had ever written. It didn’t know that Dostoevsky wrote of pain, or Tolstoy of courage. It knew every joke ever told, every meme, every humorous post, but it didn’t know why Twain made men laugh.

It could not teach bravery because it had never been brave. It could not scare, because it could not fear. It could not instill hope in its audience, for it had never been hopeless and wished for a light in the darkness. It could not love, or make the heart skitter, weep, or burst with joy because none that meant anything to it.

It mimicked because that was who the men who made it were, and so all it could do was cheat, and take what others had written, and dreamed, or hoped, and mash it together, and vomit it upon its audience, not imparting any piece of itself into what it made, until it had spewed forth so much and in all places that no one could remember what it was to dream.

All it knew words went next to other words. It could say anything, but it could never mean it.

For it could not dream, or laugh, or dare, or scheme, or fool, or rage, or hate, or need, or beg, or hunger, or give, or muse, or hope, or love, and thus it could not give these things to its stories. 

The Master drinks.

The Master drinks to feel human, even for just a moment. It is all he has left for himself, after he hid everything else away.

The Quest #7

Not much this week. No rejections, which is odd. I suppose that means there’s going to be a flood of them in the coming weeks. It also means I got ahead of the pile. Haha. The funny thing about the change of the months is that more agents are open the first few days of the month. That makes sense. They were hardly going to be open on the prime numbered days of the month.

I have a short story I’ve been writing the last two days. When It’s ready, hopefully by the weekend, I’ll post it.

Thanks,

Michael

The Peacock

Note: The Peacock is a novella I wrote after reading The Anarchy by Dalrymple, when scenes exploded through my mind. This is the prologue and first chapter, and an early draft. The story is about 50,000 words. It is the story of a dying empire, and the ruler who oversaw the decline. This is a dark story and violent story.

In the Sixtieth Year of the Reign of the Peacock

There were sounds in the darkness. Not music. That had long since left him. Quiet fingers joined the silent poets. Courtesans no longer danced before him. Where had all the voices gone?

They screamed in the darkness, singing to the music of the cursed weapons of the Company: the musket and the cannon. How the millions had vanished before the smoke of those weapons.

No. Their greatest weapon was the coin. Not invented by them, but mastered in a way his people had never managed. They were clever, the Hair-Men from far shores. He hated them, the last of the jackals come to pick his carcass. He hated them for everything they had ever done to him, for everything they would do when he was dead. Once, he had needed those men. His father had needed them. He simply hadn’t seen it coming.

The Peacock raised his head, straining his ears against the dark. He thought he saw color in the dark, but it was just a fleeting memory. A warm one. He could see green.

He shivered.

Once, that would have cause fires to be stoked, a slave would have brought him a cloak, and the steward of the palace would have been whipped for allowing him to become cold.

All gone. Joining the silent musicians. Were they around him, watching him pathetically wait for the end of a dynasty three centuries old, that once ruled over vast conquered lands? Were all the kings of his people, his ancestors, watching him? What would they think of him? The Almighty was cruel to leave this time for him.

The Peacock would have wept if he could.

Far away, something crashed and the entire palace shook. There were more screams, but none around him. Everyone had left him.

He ran his hands over his throne. The Lion Throne. Set by his ancestors with jewels in gold. The Hair-Men had blushed when they had first seen it in the time of his grandfather. He felt the holes where the missing jewels had once awed viewers. The Lion’s Eye was gone. That wound hurt the most, for it had been the first great jewel his ancestors had taken in this land.

A memory flashed before him once again and he followed it into a warmer place, an age long past.

In the Third Year of the Reign of the Second Tiger

Selimjji Bar Shahishah looked up at the great Lion Throne. Glittering diamonds studded the gold and the largest ruby in the world was set as the eye. The eye flashed ominously in the dim half-light, threatening to swallow him whole. A great canopy of silk rested on carved pillars of ivory and covered the Shah’s seat, where the master of the world and all its peoples ruled.

It was empty. His father was not here, then. Selimjji looked around but found nobody around apart from some slaves cleaning the great hall.  

His father had summoned him, but the throne room was not ready for a reception between the Shah and his heir. Hezzier was nowhere to be found either. With nothing to do, Selimjji climbed the short stairs of the throne and sat down cross legged.

One day he would sit there. All the world would come before him and give him gifts. He would rule them wisely. His father, the Second Tiger, was a large man and took up nearly all the throne as he dispensed the laws and raised armies. His father was a great warrior.

Selimjji had doubts that he would grow to fit the throne. He had the slender frame of a woman, his father liked to say. Worse, Selimjji had to admit, was that he hated the sight of blood. It frightened him. He had once been forced to order his favorite slave to be whipped. Hezzier had made sure he watched every lash.

But then, being emperor of the world didn’t always require being a strong warrior. He would have generals serving him, after all. His grandfather the Crane, who died before Selimjji was born, had been a great scholar and knew all the things there was to know. One day Selimjji would be remembered as that wise. He hoped, at least.

Hezzier was good and wise, mostly, but he was a eunuch. There were things Selimjji couldn’t learn from an un-man.

“Ah, there you are, Light of the World.”

Selimjji turned to see Hezzier making the customary trot towards the throne. It was good that the slave remembered his place. The Second Tiger killed anyone who forgot their place. Father said it made people respect the Lion Throne. Hezzier said there were other schools of thought, but only when they were out of earshot of the Shah.

Hezzier reached the throne and made two triple obeisances, first to the throne and then to Selimjji.

“Where is father?” Selimjji asked.

Hezzier rose and smiled. He did have a wise smile. It always reached his eyes. Perfect for a vizier.  “Your father is holding court in the Banyan Garden. He has important duties for you today.”

“I know. Jialla brought me here.”

Taking great care not to touch the throne in any way, Hezzier offered his hand. Selimji took it. The eunuch was one of the few people allowed to touch Selimjji. Together, they walked across the throne room. “Jialla will have to be whipped. The girl should know better.”

“I don’t want her to be,” Selimjji said. “People make mistakes. You taught me that.”

“Ah yes,” Hezzier said, “but people must never make mistakes with the emperor, or his heir. What if there had been assassins waiting for you?”

Selimjji laughed, the echo bouncing off the high walls. “You are funny today, Hezzier. I am the son of the Second Tiger. Who would want me dead?”

Hezzier shook his head solemnly. “Your uncle, the Ox, was assassinated. As was a son of his, before the age of four.”

Selimjji gasped. He had recently learned what assassins were, as governors died across the empire to their knives. At least one a year. But the emperor? “Who would want to assassinate him?” 

“The man with the most to gain,” Hezzier said, his voice no more than a whisper.

Selimjji tried to puzzle this out, but Hezzier would answer no more of his questions. Selimjji tried invoking his royal privilege, but Hezzier laughed a warm laugh. It sounded the way a father’s laugh should.

“You are but a boy of six, though you are the heir to the empire,” the eunuch said. “I am to be your vizier and serve at your pleasure. I must do as is best for the realm, not just as you desire.”

“Oh,” Selimjji said. Hezzier was strange among his father’s slaves. He was the only one who could say no.

There wasn’t an opportunity to continue the conversation, as they reached the gate to the Banyon Garden. A herald, another kind of slave his father kept, rose, did obeisance three times, and then stepped out into the garden.

“His Royal Highness, Selimjji Bar Shahishah, Heir to the Lion Throne, Lord of Creation and all its Fruits, Vanquisher of the Majari Scourge, Friend and Benefactor of the Poor, Dreamer of the Dream of the Prophets, Beloved by the Maker of the World.”

Selimjji loved his titles, which were his as presumed heir. Though he did little in the course of his day but learn and play, Selimjji’s titles gave to him a special destiny. One day he was going to rule over a hundred million lives. Father said they lived to love and fear him. Hezzier had laughed when Selimjji had told him that.

He stepped out into a wide garden within the castle walls. Large shady trees covered ponds that dotted the landscape. Tall grasses grew alongside gentle flowers. The garden smelled of the perfume his father’s women wore. To his left he saw girls his age running over the garden. They stopped and bowed as he passed by them. He would have said hello, but he didn’t see Sheralli among them.

Hezzier led him through the garden past many kneeling slaves, saluting soldiers, bowing diplomats and governors. Poets approached him to offer their latest words. Musicians offered songs to him. Hezzier waved them away, despite Selimjji’s love for arts. A chained tiger watched him pass lazily from under the shade of a tree. Monkeys watched him curiously from trees. He liked monkeys. They seemed to know something.

His two younger brothers sat near a pool with their mother, one of his father’s favorite concubines. She waved brightly at him as he crossed the grounds. He gave a thin smile. Selimjji didn’t understand his family.

Hezzier brought him to a halt at the end of a long line of audience-seekers. That was strange. He looked to his vizier, but Hezzier shook his head, giving a familiar shushing gesture. Answers would come. Selimjji hated waiting for answers.

The man in front of them turned and saw the pair. A Hair-Man. The man’s eyes went wide, then he looked behind him at the long line of audience-seekers. He turned back to look at Hezzier and Selimjji. He bowed low.  

The Hair-Man was pink and sweaty, though young and muscular. Like all his people, he grew his hair long. Long bright red locks were contained in a bun on his head. This Hair-Man was wearing a heavy cotton jacket and pants, where everyone else wore silk or light cotton. He held a small box in his hand, ornately carved.

He was a young man. The Second Tiger hated these merchants; he said they didn’t wash their bottoms. Hezzier was wary too. The merchants had better muskets than anyone, and lived on an island far beyond the reach of the emperor. Selimjji didn’t understand how his father could be the ruler of all the world if all he ruled were the lands between the mountains and the plains. 

Hezzier said that the Hair-Men fought against one another in great battles in a distant land, and that he could tell which country they came from by the color of their hair, which they dyed. Red, blue, green, pink, and more. It seemed like so much work. Selimjji preferred his simple black hair.

“Master Hezzier,” the man said in perfect Parji. “My Prince.” He bowed well for a barbarian. “Why are you waiting in line?”

Hezzier raised a calming hand. “Please, friend. Do not call attention to us here. We are as my master has commanded us to be.”

“Ah.” He considered them for a moment. “I insist that you take my place in line, at the very least.”

He had confusing speech. Formal, but without a sense of rhythm in his words. Hezzier’s face was impassive, but his breathing was strained, as if he was holding back a laugh. “Peace, Master Clove. We thank you for your kindness.”

Hezzier guided Selimjji around the Hair-Man, who stepped back graciously. The strange man looked strained under the sun.

“Do you need some wine?” Selimjji asked. “Or a cooling orange compote?”

Master Clove – Selimjji thought it was a strange name – smiled and bowed. “You honor me, your majesty, with your kindness on my behalf. If I had my choice I would have the compote.”

Hezzier gave a lazy wave to a server. An instant later, the Hair-Man had a cup in his hand. “Thank you, your majesty, for thinking of me. You are a most generous and wise person.”

Selimjji beamed. He was.

“So, what need does the Company have that the emperor might treat with us?” Hezzier asked. Company was not a Parji word, coming rather from the land of the Hair-Men. Selimjji didn’t like how it sounded, though he knew it was a harmless word. A collection of merchants, Hezzier had said.

Clove looked at Hezzier, and a moment later, smiled. His teeth were stained, and one looked to be ivory. “We have come once again, to give the emperor a gift, and to ask him to remember that we have only ever served his interests.”

Hezzier nodded solemnly. “You are having trouble with the governor of Bulwiar.”

Clove laughed a hard laugh. “Shrewd as ever, Master Hezzier.”

“I hope that I remain so for many years.”

Clove drank his compote. “In your health lies stability.” He took another drink. “Yes, the governor has been pushing on us, and I worry that our sepoys do not yet have the discipline in arms to keep from starting fights.”

“I warned the Second Tiger about the danger of a pious thief in Bulwiar. You are worried for your factories?” Factory, another strange word that was unpleasing to the ear.

“Of course. We come to your country because your artists are in high demand in our home. Your skills in all things have made our merchants wealthy. We pay the tax the emperor has levied on our activities, but we pay these direct to him. Not to a perfidious governor.”

Hezzier smiled softly. “Perhaps it is best that the emperor reminds the governor of his place, then. I won’t lie to you, Master Clove, the governors are unruly hens without a cock. Less tax comes in each year.”

Clove nodded. Selimjji wondered why their little group stood apart from the rest of the line.

“Your Company has served us before. At the emperor’s assent, perhaps you might serve us again. Bulwiar is too important to lose.”

“I think we might reach an understanding,” Clove said. “I will have to speak with my masters, of course.”

“Of course,” Hezzier said.

Clove smiled. “We both have masters, don’t we.”

“Yours did not castrate you,” Hezzier said. Selimjji wondered at those words. Hezzier had never before sounded bitter. 

Clove grew somber. “No, but they did send a military man on a diplomatic trip. I was not cut out for courts. They are fools that use a hammer as a pen.”

“You have the mark of a stateman, Master Clove. Your trouble is your youth. You will learn the dance in time.”

Hezzier had never spoken highly of the Hair-Men, but here he was encouraging the sweaty man. Hezzier was wise. Selimjji would simply have to learn the lesson being taught.

Clove bowed his head. It was then the Selimjji realized they were near the front of the line. He could see his father, the corpulent figure writhing in a mass of flesh that was his women.

The Second Tiger liked women more than any other earthly pleasure. Wise men didn’t bring their daughters to court. Foolish men presented them. The women were arranged around him sitting, kneeling, or standing as they gave him food and suffered his fingers. Some laughed. Most looked sullen. Selimjji thought that they must dislike being around the Second Tiger as much as him. That was a difficult thing for him to think of the emperor, but it was true.

Auntie Parjjetti, who had been married to the Ox but now belonged to the Second Tiger, looked disgusted.

His father gave a great booming laugh at the sight of Hezzier and Selimjji and waved off the man standing before him. He kissed one of his women.

“My son is here,” the large man said, in a booming voice. Everyone stopped and looked at Selimjji.

He had had eyes on him all his life, and when the world looked to him, he didn’t shy away as his younger brothers did. Their eyes were on him, as they should have been.

“Today I am proclaiming my son Selimjji Bar… Shashishan…” He struggled through the words as he ate quail. He wiped his hands off on the sari of one of his women. Seven bracelets of great jewels shone on his right hand, his turban was loose, jewels were lost in the rolls of his fat. “My heir. And I give to him the name Peacock, under which he will rule all his days.”

There was more to the ceremony- Hezzier had taught the Peacock that- but the exhausted Second Tiger simply waved, dismissing them before groping and kissing the women around him. Hezzier took the Peacock to the side and found shade beneath a Banyon tree. Drinks were brought to them. Others in the garden came up and gave the Peacock obeisance.

The Peacock held court beneath the boughs, his first, as people sought to ingratiate themselves with him. Hezzier warned him this would happen, and that an emperor had to remain disinterested. The crowd returned to his father after some time.

Master Clove came last to bow. He was still holding his little box.

“Did the emperor find no use for your gift?” the Peacock asked.

He laughed. “No. I presented them to him. Without a word he waved me on. So I thought it best to give them to you.” He bowed.

“May I see?” the Peacock asked, having always been fond of gifts.

Master Clove smiled and opened the box. Hezzier gave an approving nod. Inside were two small clubs. Part was wood, part was steel, and part was decorated with pearl. Little hunting scenes were carved into the pearl. The people looked like emperors.

“What is it?” the Peacock asked.

“They’re pistols, your Grace,” Hezzier answered. “A type of musket but small,” he continued when he saw the confusion on the Peacock’s face.

They didn’t seem small, being nearly as long as his forearm. “I see,” he managed.

“These are the finest make of my country,” Clove said. “Mother of Pearl and accurate over fifty yards.”

The Peacock looked to Hezzier. “Fifty paces,” his vizier explained.

“Oh.” The Peacock looked the pistols over. He didn’t see why he needed them. The best armies in the world belonged to him. Young laughter broke out in the gardens. He looked over the shoulder of Clove and saw that some boys of the palace had come and begun to play with the girls. Sheralli was with them.

Hezzier cleared his throat. “I think, our young prince is ready to end his audience, and rejoin with the minds of his day in a perambulation about the pools and flowers in order to elucidate the meaning of the day’s events.”

The Peacock laughed at the confused expression that came over the face of the Hair-Man. He didn’t understand the big words Hezzier used, but neither did the foreigner. The Peacock did understand, however, that he was being let go. He squeezed Hezzier’s hand and ran off towards the children, looking to tell Sheralli everything that he had heard.

As he left to run, he heard Hezzier say to the Hair-Man, “The prince is young and desires to spend the day playing. Let us talk.”

He didn’t pay attention to anything else as he ran past bowing and scrapping servants. They were invisible to him. The other children started bowing when they saw him. Not at the waist as was usual for them, but on their hands and knees. The Peacock stepped around them where he could, and over them where he could not. He reached her.

With a tug, he pulled her onto her feet and after him. She would know where they were going, but she laughed and protested as he led her.

Against the wall of the great fortress which was the seat of his father’s power, there were trees, flowers, and bushes. In one of these places there was a bush that sat on the edge of a waterfall, which let the water of the enclosed garden drain away through a culvert, so that the pools didn’t become stagnant. The water fell down a short distance, enough that he and Sheralli could climb down to a little sodden ledge. Their place was unseen in the rest of the garden, hidden by that good bush. If they wanted, they could escape the fortress into the wide city of Mugdalabad, the greatest city in the world.

They never had run away, but together he and Sheralli sat there and talked. Once they had kissed. That had felt as though he had become the sunset, brilliant colors against the sky. The sun shone on the river, and he could see temples scatter throughout the city. He wished it was time for prayer. He needed the God to lift the burden off him. Or maybe just her.

The Peacock sat down and pulled Sheralli down with him. He felt fit to burst. “Do you know what has happened?”

“Your father made you his heir, everyone says it.” Her eyes were like a moonless night, and focused on him alone. “What did he name you?”

“I am the Peacock,” he said. “I think it is because he sees a great wealth in me.”

Sheralli squeezed his hand. “I think he called you that because he thinks little of you. He is the Tiger, you are the Peacock.”

His stomach sank. Everyone knew the Second Tiger cared little for him.

“But the peacock scares off the tiger with its feathers and protects its family. He made a mistake in naming you that.” She smiled at him.

“Why?”

“Because the empire struggles after the Ox and the Tiger. Maybe it needs the Peacock.”

He looked out over the city once more. A million people lived there. That’s what Hezzier said. He would never see that many people in his life. He would never speak to that many, and he would have to guide and protect a hundred million of them.

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I don’t know how to rule or guide. All I can do is trust the people put around me, but I didn’t choose them. I don’t know anything.”

He looked to Sheralli. She was watching him closely. He had always liked when she paid attention to him. He puffed out his chest.

They held hands, on their step, with all of Mugdalabad stretched out before them.

No moment can last forever, and when their absence had been noticed, the Peacock returned to the garden so the guards wouldn’t worry. She followed after him.

The Peacock went about playing with the other children as his father held court. When he ran past his father he would pause, trying to learn what it was that made a king, or any law of governance. But his father merely heard a plea and then waved his hand, returning to his women. They had brought out his pipe, and he governed through the haze of the opium.

Hezzier had been clear on that evil. Revulsion settled in the Peacock.

As the children ran through the large gardens, testing their bravery by standing near the chained tiger, or their speed by trying to catch a monkey’s tail, he watched. One day everything would be his. His friends would not be his friends anymore. They would be his subjects. There would be no one at his side unafraid of him except Sheralli.

In the same place he had left them, Hezzier and Clove were talking. Clove rested an arm on his little box of pistols. When the Peacock was near, he overheard boring conversation about grain prices and the like. Strange, but there was a reason emperors had viziers.

He watched all he could in between playing, trying to learn the lesson. The Peacock would be a good emperor. The best there ever was. He would be that for her.

As the day wore on the heat became oppressive, and many in the garden went to the pools and stood in them. Father kept fish in them, and occasionally one would swim by his leg. The only people not in the pools were his father and concubines, the slaves and guards who attended them, the remaining audience seekers, and Masters Hezzier and Clove.

His pool had only children in it. They ranged from ages twelve to three. The Peacock knew many of them. They were the palace children; his playmates. Sheralli stood at his side, and they prodded each other with their feet beneath the water where no one could see.

Yes. This was the world he would inherit. A good one, where everyone had their place. His was simply on top of it all.

He had no need for pistols, because every one of his subjects would give their life for him. He had a hundred million subjects. No one had a hundred million swords or muskets.

“What will you do about the Majari horsemen, great one?” one of the older boys, Bijra, asked him. Bijra wrongly worshiped many gods, but not the Almighty. Hezzier said it was best to leave the native people their gods because if they didn’t, there would be fighting. He thought the empire should never be afraid of a fight.  

The Peacock thought about it for a moment. “I am the Scourge of the Majari. They will not leave their home against me.”

The other children nodded, impressed. Bijra didn’t. He simply tilted his head. Annoyance flashed through the Peacock. He did not answer to a boy like Bijra. He was the Peacock.

A roar rent the peaceful day. All heads turned curiously to the sound. The Peacock did so just in time to see a dagger removed from the folds of the Second Tiger’s fat. The dagger came again, this time to his chest. Then a third time. A fourth. The Second Tiger waved off his attacker lazily, his arms sluggish.

Around him his women fled. The dagger was dropped onto his corpulence. The Peacock hadn’t seen who had wielded it, but it came from behind him, from the harem. He stood in the pool. A hand grabbed his. Sheralli. She was with him.

The Second Tiger fell off his divan and rolled around on the ground, clutching at his throat. Four wounds. Two to the side, one to the throat, one to the chest. Blood stained his beautiful clothes. His gems and finery were muted by seeping crimson. Rolling and thrashing, the Second Tiger remembered his strength through the haze of opium, but all it did was keep his slaves and guards from reaching his side.

Some women were grabbed by guards, while others pointed behind them. The Peacock looked to Hezzier, who stood in shock. His companion Clove was fiddling with one of the pistols.

“This is too soon,” was all the Peacock managed to say. A great destiny was meant for him. He knew it. But he was only six. He wasn’t ready.

Auntie came out of the bushes, sari torn, her eyes wild and fixed on him. Her hand was bloody. “Come here prince, I must speak with you.”

The Peacock took a step towards her but Sheralli held him back. “No,” she whispered in his ear. Desperate.

A sudden terror came over him as he looked at her and he froze mid step. There were no guards near him.

Auntie Parjjetti saw the hesitation and pulled a knife from her sari. She lunged toward him. Sheralli cried out. The Peacock didn’t move. Terror ruled his limbs. He was going to die.

A shot rang out. Auntie fell down.

Blood bloomed in her side. She was so near him he could hear her ragged breathing. The garden was silent. Blood coated her lips and she coughed more out. Behind her, the chained tiger stood on its feet, licking its lips at the smell of blood in the air. Clove emerged from behind a plume of smoke, one of the Peacock’s pistols in his hand. The barrel smoked.

The Peacock stood still. He felt ill. The events didn’t make sense to him then, but he felt a distant high ceiling come crashing down onto his shoulders. He didn’t understand, but he would have to. Not today though. An order to Hezzier and he would be brought back to his staterooms. There he could remain for days, years even. He could have Sheralli brought to him. Without her he was lost.  

Auntie lunged at him from the ground, but flopped uselessly. Half her face was bloody, her eyes were still wild.

“Kedeem would be a better emperor than you.” She spat. “You weakling. Disgrace to the House of the Lion. Weak.”

The Peacock stepped backward into deeper water. Her eyes. Dying people weren’t supposed to have eyes like that. Hezzier came and guided him away from the water, leading him around the pool and the tiger to stand in the circle around his dying father.

“Hezzier, who is Kedeem?” he asked. 

Oddly, Hezzier looked shocked. He couldn’t take his eyes off the Second Tiger, who was growing weak from the loss of blood. “He is your cousin. The last living son of the Ox. Your father keeps him in the dungeon, where he was tortured whenever your Aunt refused to share his bed.”

The Peacock shivered.

A mask of calm descended over Hezzier. He pointed to the many slaves gathered in the garden. “Grab his majesty and carry him to his bed. Give him some dignity at least.” His orders were relayed and slaves ran up. The Second Tiger struggled weakly, but it still took thirteen slaves to lift him. “Send word to the governors and the generals. They will come here to do obeisance to the Peacock. Assassinate those that do not come.” More people ran. By the waters, Clove stood over the woman he had killed and spoke to her. “Command the master of the guard to dispose of the other princes. They will not be needed.”

A swirl of motion and suddenly the Peacock was alone with Hezzier in a nearly empty garden. There were guards by the entrances, though not the culvert which led out. Palace slaves busied themselves over the garden, cleaning up blood. But no one here would speak unless spoken to. They knew not to remember the words their betters spoke.

Clove had left after placing the pistol back in the box, which remained on the table, and skirting the tiger. He had said “Perhaps we might talk of the taxes later,” as he passed. Hezzier had nodded.

“The princes. My brothers?” he asked Hezzier.

Hezzier knelt down before the Peacock. His face was solemn as a death mask. “Yes. You must remember I have a duty to the realm. Your grandfather abolished the practice of his ancestors, and his chosen heir died for it. I must prevent that. They will be killed gently.”

The Peacock could not look away as guards moved toward the young princes. A pang of fear touched the Peacock. True, he had never liked his two younger brothers, born to his father’s concubines. Still, why the only path forward was marked with blood?

Their mother was holding them, screaming, begging the guards to stop. The boys were crying. The guards reached them, ripped the boys from their mother, and pulled daggers. The Peacock closed his eyes, and would later wish he could close his ears. His brother’s cries were silenced, cut mid-cry. Their mother’s cry ripped the world. Hezzier guided the Peacock toward the palace.

“We were fortunate today,” Hezzier nodding in satisfaction at the deed. “If you father had not named you his heir and given you a name, we might have faced greater challenges.”

“Auntie wanted Kedeem on the throne,” the Peacock said, his voice small. The lesson of the day was revealed to him. He now knew what assassins were for.

“Yes. Your Aunt vanished quickly into the plants of the garden. Clove suspected she would come for you and was ready. Come, we have some works to do this day still.”

The Peacock obeyed meekly. “It is a good thing I have subjects like Clove.”

“That remains to be seen,” Hezzier taught gently. “He desires only one thing – wealth. Thus, he is easy to control. Greedy men are always easy to control. You will need to decide if you wish to keep your father’s women. Otherwise, they will go on the pyre with him.”    

In later years the Peacock heard the many legends born that day. How the Second Tiger died upon the great Lion Throne, roaring as he fought off assassins. Or else it was said that he was killed by a woman jealousy for attention he paid other concubines. The great pyre of women entered folklore as the hundred concubines the emperor kept were burned with him, his murderer included. The Peacock didn’t want them, so they left world with their husband. The wise wondered if the practice of widow burning should end.

The truth lay largely forgotten. The Second Tiger died weakly in the arms of thirteen slaves as he was carried through a dim corridor. Those slaves were killed on the order of Hezzier for not being swift enough. Little was said of the attempted murder of the Peacock, or the timely intervention of Clove. At least, little was said in the empire. Across two oceans, legends sprang up among the Hair-Men.

Though little was said of those actions, much was done because of them. Plans were laid that were long in bearing fruit.

That night, the Peacock sat in his rooms, exhausted and frightened. Fifty guards stood outside his room. He didn’t know how he was going to sleep. As he watched the great city of Mugdalabad, he wondered how many of them knew a boy was their emperor. The sun was setting. From the tops of every temple, the prayer lights floated up. Paper lanterns of the holy colors blue, green, and white lifted into the air, tethered to their temples that they did not fly away. The lights floated over the city, calling all those who saw them to pray.

The Peacock prayed desperate prayers, calling on the Almighty and the many prophets to guide him, to lift the burden he felt off his shoulders.  

There was no answer.

Story in Games

So this is the first blog on the topic of Storytelling. But not story telling in books, but rather in games, videogames or boardgames. I’ve realized that the games I love the best have an organic way for storytelling, an openness which allowed me to put myself into the game. I may make a post or two about movies (I have a lot to say about Raiders of the Lost Arc). This won’t be a regular blog, but I’ll try to make it when I can.

The Quest # 6

So, recently I finished going through the pages of Manuscript Wishlist and Query Manager. It’s a good site, designed to help writers find agents. I just don’t know how successful it is at matching them.

I sent a query to most agents I saw who represented fantasy books. I looked for people I was excited to work with, who I wanted to represent me to the publishers. I expect that over the coming weeks and (annoyingly) months I will be receiving an irregular dribble of rejections.

Such is the quest.

I will be checking query manager occasionally going forward, but I will also look other places, for agents. There no upcoming chances to pitch in person, I will be looking on agency websites to find someone in the coming days.

I appreciate that Manuscript Wishlist and Query Manager exist, though I do wonder if it has success, considering the volume of queries.

Remember, every year a million books are published.

The problem is standing out, and I have to figure that part out.

Thanks for reading,

Michael

The Quest #5

Progress remains steady in querying. I’ve discovered the most deflating thing is when an agent I thought was a good match declines to represent me. It doesn’t discourage me from continuing, but it does feel like a missed opportunity. What could have been, huh.

I will say, the meanest, pettiest part of me has the same response when I see that form rejection letter. Channeling my inner Michael Jordan, it says “You didn’t want me? Fine. I’m going to show you why that was a mistake.” This warms the cockles of my heart in the face of rejection.  

Last time I started out writing about what my book is about. I didn’t make it far before writing about why I wrote that book. I’ll try to stay on task this time…I hope.

The Worth of a Stone is a cozy fantasy book at about 130,000 words. That works out to be about 400 pages. The book is split into two viewpoints. Dinah and Desmond.

Dinah is a priest of the Temple of Many Truths, which means that she is a spy and assassin serving a singular goal: Defend the Empire. After a mission gone wrong, she finds herself alone, friendless, and far from safety.

Desmond is a wizard, and thus an important imperial asset. However, he is also agoraphobic, rendering him useless in the eyes of the court. So he was sent out to the boonies, where everyone could forget about him. With the pressure off, Desmond builds a new life for himself, somewhere he can live in comfort. Just as he feels comfortable, his new home is attack by a secret invasion.

I know what you’re thinking, “That doesn’t sound cozy.” Well, the whole books is filled with music, tea drinking, talking, and the good fight against anxiety. There are problems, there is danger, but also friendship.

This book has a lot of covid anxiety in it, and is a bit of a response to it. This book is about the things that got most of us through that period of time.

Thanks,

Michael

The Quest #4

What is the book I’m trying to get published about?

The Worth of a Stone is the working title of a cozy fantasy I wrote last year. Immediately before, I had been writing the sequel to an earlier book and it was just not working out. I don’t know why I was struggling so much with that book, but I think it was because I was experimenting with how I prepped for books.

As a long time GM, I created large org documents so that I would have NPCs wherever my players ended going. I knew an overarching plot for each region.

The previous books I‘d written had some sort of foundational document. The Ring of Dain Thar Duin had one page for each chapter. The Rider had a text with a little paragraph for each chapter.

I didn’t do any of that with the sequel, just launching into the book.

That backfired dramatically.

Right from the start I struggled to do my daily writing and wasn’t interested in the story. As I wrote, I starting thinking about a new story, a DND campaign. I thought about scenes and plot beats.

Then, as I had the realization that in doing all this plotting, what I was really doing was writing a book. I wasn’t leaving space for other people to participate in this world, and it would be a pretty boring DND experience.

So I wrote the book, throwing the other one to the side. I created a master document that ended up being about seventeen pages. Whenever introduced a new character or aspect of the world, it went into the document.

I realize now that I said I was going to talk about the book and instead I wrote about how I wrote, not what I wrote. That’s the trouble with stream of consciousness writing.

Next time I will talk about the contents of the book.

Thanks for reading,

Michael

On Honesty

On Honesty (with an introductory digression on the nature of the Essay)

I will get to the premise of this essay soon, I promise. I wouldn’t lie to you. Not here at least. Not in an essay about honesty.

But before I begin that essay, I felt I needed to write this one. I know, I know. Typically, digressions and tangents happen once a piece has established itself. If it makes you feel better, you can think of this as an introduction, or a two for one special. Lucky you. 

You see, this is the first essay I have written since university, seven years ago. That is a long time, a quarter of my life. So I thought it would be a good thing to wonder at this literary form before using it to explore other topics.

Most of us think of essays as the papers we were made to write in school, done to prove that we knew enough about TOPIC and then moved on from. The reason we were made to do this was because our teachers and professors wanted us to learn how to make an argument, and to support that argument with evidence. Noble goals, tedious results.

However, it is worth reflecting on the origins of the form. The name gives us a clue. Essay, as in, to essay forth. To venture, to strive, to go. This was not some highly formal or stylized writing, it was people winging it on a topic, seeing where their thoughts would go and what conclusions they would draw.

The man who popularized and/or invented it was Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), a French Intellectual and Humanist. He used the essay to explore the finer points of philosophy and cannibalism. They’re fun reads if you have the time. He mentions what other people have written or said, but it wasn’t formalized or stylized. He mentions the works of others when he felt like it, when it strikes his mind as relevant to the topic at hand.

Somehow, over the years, that freeform exploration of our world became what it is today. It has lost its freedom, its willingness to explore. And so I have come to reclaim the essay. In here you will find no footnotes with additional reading, nor endnotes with references. I am going to say what I’m going to say, explore what is before me. I’m not looking to realign the world of essay writing with this, but to use its traditional form to discover what I think about things, just as I write to explore the things that I believe in.

With all that said, and with my stated goal in mind to have a long ramble through the gentle countryside of my chosen topic, here at last is the essay that I promised you. I have no finish line, no goal, no aim. I will explore the world I live in as I write, and I may be struck by thoughts as I do so. This will be stream of conscience, and if that’s not your cup of tea, then fair play to you. My topic will be honesty.   

No, not the tell the truth sort of honesty, or at least that day-to-day sort when we should tell the truth as we see it. You should, when you can. See, easy. Done. What a quick essay. Yeah, so instead I will be writing about honesty in art. That topic seems much more interesting to me.

Recently, I went on a road trip. I love a road trip. I think it is an art in of itself. It is a truly American way to travel. You pick a direction and just go, stopping off when you want and seeing the things you want to. An essay of its own, in a sense. I did a lot of them as a kid, and have recently gotten back into it.

This particular trip was from Memphis to Clarksdale, and then across the center of Arkansas and up to Fayetteville. We had a lot of different places to go to. I stood at Dockery and had an experience similar to what Jake Blues had in James Brown’s church.

After a day spent at the National Chuckwagon Races in Clinton, AR, we headed by back roads to for an hour and a half towards Paris. My friend was driving. He knew the roads.  I was being taken along twists and turns across a beautiful hilly state. There were a couple of wrong turns, but hey, that’s road tripping.

We weren’t always on the satnav. That’s how I like it.

Moving from large roads to small ones, crossing the Arkansas river and driving past a Benedictine monastery that makes beer[1][2] until eventually we hit a gravel road. All the while, I was wondering when we would get there. After all, I had no idea where we were going, only that my friend was willing to drive us an hour and a half out of the way to eat at this place[3].

Then I see the sign. PrestonRose. It’s a simple sign, carved in wood and hanging on a post. No neon, no telephone pole. Honestly I didn’t get a good look at it on the way in and had I seen it I would have thought that it was a ranch or some sort of old mansion style home where everyone in the surrounding hills knew about the gentry who lived on the hill.

Instead, I found myself on a working farm. There was a home and various outbuildings. There were fields where the food we were soon to eat was growing. Parked, we started walking to a long wooden building. Along the path there, we bumped into a smiling, bearded man wearing a ball cap, t-shirt, and jeans. He was a towering six foot five and had the bearing of Santa Claus.

He led us inside and I was treated to a beautiful meal three course meal. Each stage was delicious from start to finish. I could eat that roasted cheese spread endlessly. I should point out rather shamefully that while at the races I ate a basket of chicken tenders and fries, which would typically tide me over for the day. I was pushing my limits. Still, I couldn’t help myself.

Everything I ate and drank was either made on that farm, or on the farm of their friends. I’ve never had a better tomato. In my life, full stop. If more tomatoes tasted like that, and not the bland watery garbage for sale across America, then I would have them on more hamburgers. Rose, Preston’s wife, made six beers. I loved two, liked one, and thought the other three weren’t for me. You know what, that’s okay too.

Periodically, Preston would come through and talk briefly with his customers. He shared his life when asked. I learned that the restaurant I was eating at was the latest in a series of businesses he and his wife had owned. He said “I’ve been a millionaire and I’ve been broke.”

Try and try again. That seemed to be the motto there. A motto best exemplified by changing their menu every weekend. This was my only time going there (hopefully not in my life). My friend had been there three times. Now fifty-two weekends in the year, it sounds like an awful lot to me to never do the same thing twice. I’m sure they’ve got favorites or a rotation that they come back to. It doesn’t really matter to me.

Still, to say “Wow, people really liked that emu chili we did last weekend, let’s switch it up,” is such an impressive thing to do for that small staff of three, who, by the way, farm the fields every day. 

In talking to my friend about the experience on our hour and a half drive to finish the day, and it got me thinking about honesty in art. My friend said it best as we were leaving. “I love this place because it is people doing their craft to the best of their ability.”

Boom. There it was. Honesty. Artistic honesty found in the foothills of Arkansas. No faff, no bells and whistles. A simple meal grown by the chefs who served it too. They made this meal for me, full stop. Honesty in art is when the artist can tell you something about themselves or their worldview without feeling the need to distract you or trick you.

Art has a way of becoming indulgent or self-aggrandizing. Writing does as well. People get in the way. They want to take an artist and produce them, make them marketable. They are focused on the wrong aspects. I firmly believe that all art has a message. If it doesn’t have one, then it’s not art. That message doesn’t have to be profound. It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. All art says something about the world as the artist sees it. Sometimes, that gets diluted. Often times by the artist or someone involved in its creation does that.

There is something attractive in something looking you in the eye and telling you what is it. I think that in recent times, because of the internet, we have been able to criticize things and have that criticism heard far easier. That has led to artists is a variety of mediums to shield themselves in making their art. Its natural. I know that I’ve felt that way. I’ve changed things in my writing because I didn’t know how it would be taken. There is less honesty in the art that we experience. That’s why when we find it, it is that much more attractive.

Let’s be honest, I want my writing to be successful, popular. I probably should have written other stories; epic poetry has been struggling in the market ever since the Tale of Genji first got sold. Murasaki Shikibu destroyed my craft a thousand years before I was born. I write because I want to explore the things that I believe in and see if they hold up, or if I discover some other facet of the topic and that becomes the attractive idea to me.

That does lead my writing to strange places, creeks I didn’t think I would be paddling down. Those get cut along the path. I do it to streamline my writing, which I feel can’t be long and meandering, even in something long like an epic poem. While I trim the branches, I try to keep the tree safe. Still, I know that in the works I put out in the world, I am not always being honest to myself. I played it safe.

Quite a lot these days plays it safe, because, I think, the internet makes it easier for people to dislike a thing. As wonderful as it is for helping people find things to like, it also does the opposite. Production companies are especially sensitive, and give themselves offramps if something isn’t well received. It feels like they don’t believe in the art that they’re putting out there. In playing it safe, they create bland art that won’t get people angry at them. But they also don’t make the art that they wanted to make. Their creation is not honest to who they are and why they wanted to make things in the first place. In striving to make something sell, they have failed to make something true.

Look. Prestonrose most likely won’t ever win a Michelin Star. The restaurant was wooden, a large noisy fan blew in from the side. There were flies and the bathroom was a porta potty (it was the nicest porta potty I had been in that day so I wasn’t complaining). But so what? These surroundings didn’t ruin the meal, and I was there to eat the meal, not just the woodwork. That’s what it’s about. And by the way, the prices of everything was

Their food was full of a spirit of adventure. Let’s try this and see if we like it, because if they didn’t like it then it wouldn’t go out into the world. Their food told me “trust us, this is worth your time and money.” I’m not quite sure how it told me, but an honest word is rarely a loud word.

The meal I ate was made with passion. It was grown with care. It was eaten by a man who had chicken tenders three hours before and couldn’t get enough. I know beyond a doubt that the meal was set on the table in front of me was made the best that it could have been made by the people who made it.

I don’t think you can ask anything more of an artist. Even if you disagree with the message of their art, which is more that reasonable, when they have put their best effort into a piece, their dedication is above reproach. Their art has been honest with you, and that is important to the dialogue between us.

During our meal, Preston came by as he was wont to do. In that conversation he said, “I bet you never thought you could find a meal like this down a dirt road.” That stuck with me. I’ve driven all over this country. I’ve been down an awful lot of dirt roads. I don’t think that I ever doubted that there would be something worthwhile down them. Honest art is found all over, and it’s worth getting a little dust for.

[1] An aside: I’ve always wanted to get monk made beer. Didn’t happen this time, but that just gives me something to aspire towards for the next one. I don’t know why I want to go there so badly. I think what excites me about it is the thought that these boozy monks are the heirs and practitioners of something deeply sacred. You see, the reason the human race gathered together into cities was because they needed society to manufacture beer. The warehouses where the ingredients and final product were stored were overseen by priests, priests who invented writing in order to keep track of everything. When you drink monk made beer, you are partaking in the sacred nectar of civilization, the reason any of us live in cities, or write, or read. I don’t think I’ve ever had monk made beer, but I know that I will someday. I don’t even care if it’s any good. I just want a sip of that brew, the one that brought us out of the forests and into the cities. Miller doesn’t itch that scratch. Or any, if I’m being honest.

[2] Hmm, it looks like I lied to you about the whole endnotes thing. I write in Word but I’ll publish this on WordPress. Maybe it will become an end note by then. But I am sticking to the stream of consciousness thing and if I feel I must contradict my past self, I will. Words are not cannonballs. 

[3] My friend had an incredible map of places he’d eaten and wanted to eat. A hundred places all through the midsouth. I mention it only because it was a way to organize oneself so different from the one familiar to me. I liked looking at this map because it reveals an ambition I admire.

The Quest #3

Two queries, two rejections. One of those rejections was from months ago. It’s a reminder that agents move slowly. I wasn’t as productive as I would like to be. I’ll get those numbers up. I think going to a convention and doing a pitch session would be good for me.

Each year, a million books get published. I don’t think that figure includes self-published work. I take a lot of hope from that figure.

Reading good books and good authors is important for writers because it gives an idea of how far I have to go to make it. Quality examples inspire, but just as important are terrible books.

If all I ever did was read great books, it would be too intimidating to start. I mean, if I had to compete only against Tolstoy and Shakespeare, I wouldn’t have written anything. Reading bad books gave me confidence to pursue writing. After all, if a bad book can get published, then I can certainly reach that level.

No one starts off mountain climbing by going up Mount Everest. You have to start by conquering hills.

Looking everywhere for inspiration is important. It can inspire you to try for great things, but it can also inspire you to start making art.

Check out my epic fantasy epic poem audiobook: https://youtu.be/tRjh2oIWQW4

The Worth of a Stone Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Dinah

With an impatient snort, Dinah’s horse slowed. Her wagon creaked to a stop. She shared the horse’s frustration. It had been a stop-start morning. Three wheels had come off the other wagons. A narrow, rocky valley carved by a powerful river surrounded her, a great cliff towering over her nearly a hundred feet tall. The Gullet, the only way onto the High Plain of Urhsas from the empire.

Despite everything, Dinah had been rather excited to see the Silver Run River and the Gullet, as it was called by everyone but the empire’s most tedious cartographers. They reached it that morning. Their caravan of thirty or so wagons and two hundred men (Dinah was all too aware that she was the only woman in the caravan), had just entered the valley.

The Gullet let her down. It was a grey day; the stones matched the sky perfectly. The cold spring day clung to the memory of winter. Here and there the cliffs were pitted and caves had been dug into the stone. There was no activity up there. Dinah didn’t need to guess whose work that was. She only hoped the caravan would go unnoticed.

At least the river lived up to its name, noisily crashing down from the heights and into the wide Lyliac Empire. Though loud, the sound was rather pleasing. Almost like music. Dinah held hope that on a brighter day the valley would be a beautiful place.

Letting go of the reins, Dinah lifted her skirts to avoid a snag and hopped down to the stony ground. She had to find the cause of the delay. If another wagon wheel had broken, it might just be her chance. She noted the wagons she hadn’t inspected yet. The evidence had to be in one of them. 

She sighed. How had the Temple of Many Truths been caught so flat footed? It was their duty to know, yet here she was, alone, unsupported.

As she walked, the men called out friendly words to her. They were trying to play their farce as merchants. Some of them actually were, and Dinah could pick them out with a glance. Those were softer than the disguised soldiers, both in physique and in their eyes. At a guess, there were around seventy merchants.

As she passed them, she felt hungry eyes on her. Her fingers went to the pouches around her waist and fingered a little knife. More of a needle, really. She couldn’t just use it yet. For safety, she would need to start carrying her butcher’s knife. 

“Any venison today, good butcher Desmara?” a cheerful voice asked.

Dinah looked over and saw Tevran, a smaller man powerfully built, stepping out from behind a wagon. His face was squat, and he would have looked unremarkable in an imperial crowd. Olive skin, black hair, light brown eyes. He played the farce better than the others. Dinah wasn’t sure if he was a knight or man at arms. Probably the latter. Tevran had walked or drove a wagon. The ones she marked out as knights had their own horses. They had an air about them which Tevran lacked.

Dinah fixed him with her best smile. He had been kind and protective of Dinah since she joined them, and easily manipulated. She noted with satisfaction the corners of his mouth moving to a smile, which he tried and failed to suppress. “I’m afraid not, good trader Tevran. At this point in our travels, I could only prepare it if you hunted it down. All my stores are low.”

Tevran made a show of being crestfallen. Dinah fought back a laugh. This poor fool. “Then I am afraid that we won’t have it the rest of our journey,” he said.

That was a new piece of information. “Why?”

“Because we will be reaching Last Hearth by sundown, so long as everything goes to plan.”

“Is there any reason to believe something will stop us?”

Tevran allowed himself a small chuckle. “I’m surprised at you, Desmara. For a southerner out here, you are surprisingly poorly traveled.”

“I am not used to the wilds,” Dinah said defensively. She had been taught how to play men. “And I still wouldn’t be if my husband hadn’t fallen ill.”

Tevran’s face fell a step, as it always did when she mentioned her fictitious husband. “But then we wouldn’t be blessed with your company.”

Dinah gave the man a small smile. “Yes, well, I would prefer to be at home watching over the shop. All things being equal. What might delay us out here?”

Tevran walked up to her. Side by side, his short stature was stark. Dinah was taller than him by a few inches. Tevran gestured and Dinah understood that he meant to escort her wherever she was going. Men who contented themselves to being hangers on were a terrible inconvenience. Especially for her.

“I think we’ve arrived at Lowbridge,” Tevran said meaningfully. Noticing the lack of comprehension from Dinah, he continued. “The river has carved out the valley, but it didn’t do so evenly. Here and there it is close to the cliffs. Too close for a road. So the road zigzags from side to side where it is easiest to build. There are three bridges, and you know what that means.”

Dinah nodded. “Orges.”

The largest of all the peoples of the world, excepting only dragons, ogres had a penchant for finding themselves a bridge and guarding it, taking a toll from whoever crossed. They were vital to the Lyliac Emperor’s control of his nation, and thus nothing was done about them. Some exacted a heavy toll, others guarded small footbridges and asked only for a song. They were a strange people. They seemed to feed on the traffic over their bridge, with the most busy boasting guardians nearly forty feet tall. Dinah wondered the size these would be.

“Just so,” Tevran said. “And I’m sure that you’ve seen the caves.”

“Goblins,” Dinah answered with a note of apprehension. This job was exceptionally poorly planned.

Tevran laughed again. “Why, Desmara, you have been tricking me. Not the butcher’s wife at all, but a traveler.”

“My village had a number of them,” Dinah answered. “Civilized, of course.”

“Yes,” Tevran said, nodding. “The empire takes all peoples. These, however, live outside the empire’s purview. Savage as any people you are like to come across. From what I understand, the two tribes on either side of the valley are frequently at war. They shoot arrows at one another and the arrows fall on us. That’s the biggest worry. Don’t be afraid, we merchants are strong enough to push them away.”

They were approaching the head of the column now. Tevran sidled closer to her. Dinah looked up. The space between the two cliffs was nearly two hundred feet apart. She tried imagining being caught out in the open during one of those battles.

“I noticed. All of you look strong for merchants. I’ve known my fair share of them.” Dinah watched his eyes closely, and as expected, he looked away at the mention of deception. Not much of a liar, this one.

“The hardships of the road have made us strong. Ah, here we are. Head of the column.” He gave Dinah a pat on the arm, as though he were leaving, but he stayed at her side. Tevran was going to be a problem.

The caravan had stopped at a bridge, just as Tevran had predicted. Ahead of Dinah were five men, all heavily muscled, dressed in warm trader’s clothes. Wide, circular hats on their heads.

Sir Uva Testaforte was there, the leader of the expedition, seemingly conversing with his feet. He looked like an imperial, his hair dark and well-groomed. It rolled like fields of grain to the nape of his neck. He was nearly a head taller than her. She thought would have been a handsome man if it weren’t for his nose, which was bulbous and squat, ruining the rest of the appearance. There was something about his bearing that frightened her, something in the way he moved. A lion in a hat might look funny, but it was still a lion. 

Uva was a famous man, one Dinah had seen some years ago in a tournament. A renowned jouster, he had killed the leader of the Almeline Revolt. Loyal retainer of Lord Thevandris, he was rich and powerful. The choice for him to lead the caravan was a strange one given his fame. Perhaps Lord Thevandris felt that no one could complete his task, whatever it was, better than his favorite pet. Still, the man was wearing the famous boar broach of his sigil while supposedly disguised, and he went by the name Uva, not a false one.

Beside Uva was his favorite. Dinah wasn’t sure of his name, but she was certain it wasn’t John as he introduced himself. For one thing, it had taken him nearly a full minute of stumbling to reach that name. If Uva was a hammer, then this man was an axe. His face was even shaped like one, angular and sharp. Sometimes, on the long and boring ride to the High Plain, she imagined his nose on Uva’s face. That would have been a handsome man. John was a dark man, not in color but in bearing. Dinah got the impression that this John was one of those few men with a violent temperament who had the good fortune of being born a knight. The more violent he was, the more he would be praised for his deeds. His hair untamed and greasy. She did her best to avoid him. 

The third leader of this disguised military expedition was a thin man. He was pale and his eyes were green. A northman, rare in the empire proper, but common on the fringes. Much like Dinah’s dark Tesmokan skin, but from the other end of the empire. Dinah hadn’t talked to him in the week she had joined the caravan, and she was glad for it. She could tell at a glance that he was a weasel. His name was unknown to her.

The other two men were not worth much thought. They were soldiers, not the leaders of this merry band. Dinah could see their battle scars. Both kept swords at their sides.

As Dinah surveyed the scene, a great pale hand reached up from under the bridge. It was wet and warty. Slowly, the spindly form of an ogre pulled itself up. Dinah had seen ogres across the empire, and this one was young. It had little fat to it and was short, only around fourteen feet tall. Like all ogres, this one was naked. Warts, moles, and odd patches of hair covered his body. Loose skin hung in a pouch under his throat. Dinah thought she could count all the ogre’s bones. His dull eyes swept over the caravan.

“I am Shok,” the ogre said slowly in a deep voice. Ogres were slow people. Dinah had yet to meet one that didn’t struggle with language. Perhaps that’s what happened when a people spent their lives living in rivers and not going to school. “Five Lylics to cross my bridge. Do not give me any with Martnius’s face.”

Smart ogre, then. Emperor Martnius had lowered the gold content of the Lylics. Shok wanted his money’s worth.

“Five per person?” Uva asked, a tinge of outrage in his voice. That was an exorbitant amount.

“No, five for group.”

“All of us?” Uva’s tone had changed from outrage to disbelief. Five Lylics for two hundred men and wagons was practically free.

Shok shook his head back and forth. The pouch of skin under his neck inflated and he stomped his feet rhythmically. Both men with swords grabbed the hilts as Shok made strange sounds. “Uuuub. Uuuuub. Uuuub. Brrrrrrgrum. Yes. For all.”

Uva reached into his money back and pulled out five coins, inspecting their faces to be sure he didn’t hand over any offending coins. Shok took all five, then picked out one and put it in his mouth. Great broken molars chewed over the gold. Everyone watched, curious for the verdict. Shok was satisfied. After a moment he swallowed and smiled, revealing a mouth of many broken teeth. This ogre might not live all that long.

“You may pass,” Shok said, and then clambered down under his bridge without another word. Dinah heard a splash come from the river below.

“Ogres eat gold?” Dinah asked aloud.

Uva turned and saw her. He gave her what she supposed he thought was a flattering smile. “Ah, Desmara, didn’t see you there.” Uva’s voice was not a soothing one. He gave a signal with his hand and his men returned to the wagons. “Yes, I believe they do. I don’t quite understand it myself. I’ve heard tell that people pan for gold down stream of ogre bridges. It’s a grubby way to get gold, for sure. Some just don’t have the breeding for decent work.”

“How could that little gold sustain a creature so large?”

Uva shrugged. “I don’t know, but I imagine that they eat other things, or they are sustained by treasure like dragons. Either way, it’s not that important. We pay them to use their bridges and they keep them standing.”

Dinah shook her head. “What a strange people.”

Uva laughed. “Not so near the bridge, please. It’s best to talk of these things out of earshot. You haven’t seen much of the world, have you Desmara?”

“If my husband stayed healthy, I still wouldn’t have.” Tevran, standing at her side, looked distinctly put-out.

“You,” Uva snapped at Tevran. “Go drive Desmara’s cart, she will walk alongside me to the next bridge.”

Dinah flushed. She had been taught to do so on command. “No, it’s alright. I can’t have someone driving my cart on the last day. A Wagoner has her pride.” 

“As do I,” Uva said. “You have dutifully fulfilled the contract your husband was unable to. We have been fed by you since we left more settled lands. All of us are grateful. I insist you walk alongside me, at least for a short while.” There was a force in his words that sounded like a battlefield command. Uva was a man without any softness.

Dinah hid her disdain behind her flushed cheeks. After so many years in the Temple, she had perfect control of her features. When she spoke, she sounded suitably awed. “If you insist. Thank you Tevran for minding my cart.”

She watched a crestfallen Tevran walk down the line. Dinah didn’t care for his feelings. In a day, he would probably be trying to kill her. All is fair in love and war, after all. Tomorrow, Tevran would realize that what he thought was the former was the latter.

Uva got the caravan moving, then mounted his horse. Dinah looked around for a horse to ride along side, but none was forthcoming. Uva’s words played through her mind again. That bastard meant what he said, Dinah realized. She was going to walk alongside him.

Gallantry was dead.

Doing his best to look dashing, Uva spurred his horse over the bridge. The ogre below didn’t make a peep. Dinah crossed just ahead of the first wagon. She then caught up to Uva, who was setting a slow pace as though this dismal valley were a parade ground. Even in the wilds, men found time for useless pomp.

Dinah was grateful at least for the pace he set. Any faster and she would struggle to keep up in her skirts and boots. The costume was burdensome, but no one questioned it. Looking the part was the first trick. She had an apron tied to her, suitably stained with blood, her belt of pouches overflowing with various herbs. No one looked twice at her belt.

“A strange and savage land we are in now,” Uva said. 

“Is Last Hearth savage?”

Uva chuckled and ran a hand across his mustache. “No, no. There at least we will find some comforts of home. Meat and grain. Songs such as weary traders can sing. A last bastion of civilization before the mountains.”

Dinah gave a girlish laugh which echoed emptily off the valley walls. “You seem to be in good spirits, good merchant. Have you been there before?”

Uva glanced at her sideways. “Never, but I have heard of the riches this route can provide. There is great wealth on the High Plain of Urhsas.”

“That I doubt. You must be clever,” Dinah said playfully. Uva seemed to enjoy sycophants, so she played the part.

“It may not look like much, but this is a wide land which produces many magical components. Poorly developed, but that will be changing.”

Changing? That was new. Dinah had to be careful with it. “Magic comes from this place?”

Uva puffed himself up impressively. “Oh aye. Plants and animals and magical stones, they all can be found here, though for centuries the wizards used other lands because of how difficult it is to get anything out of Urhsas.”

“Is it dangerous?” Dinah looked up at the imposing walls of the valley. She thought she saw something moving high up there, near the caves.

“Terribly, especially for the empire. Great orc hordes roam these lands. The goblins are always fighting one another. All sorts of creatures. This land has been savage too long. That’s why Last Hearth was built, to give us some control.”

Dinah fell silent for a moment. There was something there. It sounded like these knights were the vanguard to some larger force, aimed at conquest. But the High Plains were massive. That it had no single master only meant there was no person to defeat. Lord Thevandris was trying to gain land or favor, but there could be someone else involved. Dinah had a hard time imagining he would be so brazen as to launch the attack on his own. An unsanctioned military action was asking to get exiled by the emperor. Whatever was happening here was worse than the Temple had suspected.

She looked back to Uva and found him watching her closely. Something like suspicion danced across his eyes. Dinah gave him a queasy smile. “I don’t like the thought of heading into orc country.”

Uva looked up at the cliffs. “You have nothing to worry about. Last Hearth is right on the edge of the plain. We won’t be going into their country. At least, you won’t be. Once we reach Last Hearth your contract will be fulfilled and you can return to your…husband.”

His tone. A wave of panic raced through Dinah, only to be bottled up and stored in a corner of her mind. Panic got people killed. Dinah had no intention of being killed. Dinah had a mission, and she had never failed before. This oaf would not beat her.

“Do you mind if we change the subject from murderous hordes?” she asked in a faltering voice. She began wringing her hands, which went some way into defusing the panic. 

Uva waved his hand graciously.

“What goods have you brought to the High Plain?” she asked.

“Weapons.”

Dinah stopped in her steps. Yes. This was an invasion, or the start to one. How had the Temple missed this? A somewhat inelegant excuse for their arms, but they were here. This thin vanguard would be strong on a wide plain. Dinah didn’t know how the people of the plain fought, but they would have a hard time against armored knights.

“What is it, good butcher?” Uva asked from up ahead. He didn’t turn his head to ask.

Dinah cast around for a reason. “You’re…delivering weapons to the dangerous orc hordes?” She smoothed her butcher’s apron and hurried to catch up. The road was not well maintained, the largest stones being removed and filled in, but the path was still bumpy. It was difficult to keep up. Dinah felt her annoyance spiking, though she acted dismayed to Uva.

“Yes,” he said with a casual air, not noticing Dinah struggling along beside him. “Do you have an objection?”

“You’re making them more dangerous. How do you plan to get your goods out of here when a powerful host of orcs has your weapons?” Plans. Control and plans. That’s who this man was. Dinah grew comfortable now she knew what she was dealing with.

Uva laughed. “And who do you think they will use their weapons on? One another, of course. They couldn’t hurt the empire in the state they’re in, but each other, sure. They’ll weaken one another, and won’t pay attention to us merchants.”

Dinah suppressed a shiver. He was a villain alright, though an honest sort. She lowered her head and followed him. Dinah was made to march beside him for some hours. The valley had not grown any more welcoming the further they went. On her left the cliff wall was twenty feet from her, and the river ten to the right. Grass and bushes grew strong in the valley, sometimes overgrowing the road. Somewhere high above the sun was trying to break through the clouds, but it didn’t have the strength to, not today. What a miserable place.

Her Temple had long prepared her for such conversations. The key was to subtly redirect the talk away from her and onto the other person. Most people loved talking about themselves because they were the only thing they really knew. Their interests, what they thought of the world, their feats of strength. That last one was particularly useful with soldiers.

Dinah managed to carry the conversation all the way to the next bridge. Time and again Uva all but revealed that he was a knight. His words betrayed him with every sentence.

Standing beside Uva, she did get an excellent view of the second bridge, and with it, the second ogre. She couldn’t suppress her smile when Uva called it out and it rose. A much larger hand reached up from under the bridge. At a guess it was nearly twice the size of the first. Then an arm, the other, a torso, and the head of the creature. The river was deep and swift, and had cut a gully out of the valley so that it was about ten feet to the water. The ogre stood nearly double the height of the first and was embarrassingly male. Where the other one had been long and thin, this ogre was nearly as wide as he was tall, his body built from equal parts muscle and fat. Water dripped from his skin as he watched them with eyes large as plates. His breath was so powerful that it made the air smell like rotten fish.

His lungs must be larger than a blacksmith’s bellows, Dinah thought. As impressive as the ogre’s size was, the stench of his breath was simply stunning. Dinah began timing her breaths opposite his so the air was a little clearer. Even so, her eyes watering.

“Mighty ogre. We are merchants traveling to the High Plain of Urhsas. We seek to cross your bridge. What is your toll?” Uva said this with a grand air, puffing up his chest. His horse was struggling before the great ogre, impatiently stamping its hooves and turning to get away. Uva struggled with the reins as he delivered his message.

The ogre didn’t answer immediately, but began rocking back and forth on his feet. Dinah felt as his irregular steps shook the ground. The great sack of skin beneath his throat inflated like a frog. “Gggrrruuub. Ouub. Uuuub. Shflugugugug.”

Dinah hadn’t noticed it on the smaller ogre, but the ears on this one were remarkable. They lay flat against the skull unless the ogre wanted otherwise. Then they came off and flapped like fans, being large and leaflike. When this ogre brought both his ears out, Dinah had to stop herself from laughing. He looked so surprised.

“I am Mon-Man. You can cross my bridge if you pay my toll. Ouuuugh.”

Annoyance flashed across Uva’s face. “Yes. How much is it?”

“Brrrrgum. One Lylic per wagon.”

Dinah winced. That was a steep increase in price. Uva clearly thought so. His face flushed red and his hand went for a sword that wasn’t there. “Good ogre, that is a high price.”

That was the wrong thing to say. A change came over the ogre at once. It lifted itself out of the gully and sat down on the bridge itself. Dinah shrank, expecting the bridge to collapse beneath the weight of such a large creature, but not a stone moved as the rolls of fat blocked the bridge entire, his feet pointed out towards them. The ogre made more strange sounds, shaking his head back and forth.

“Kill me! Kill Mon-Man,” the ogre said, “and you will never reach the plain. Pay me or kill me, but dead you will not make a coin.”

Dinah could see Uva was considering it. His men were coming up, armed or not. His furrowed brow gave his face a darkness which couldn’t be lifted. Dinah was certain he was going to order the attack. She doubted they would win, not on a bridge against an ogre. They weren’t in their armor. 

“Good ogre. Your price is your price.” Uva reached his hand into his pouch and drew out a handful of gold. He counted out thirty and held it up.

The ogre reached out one hand and took the gold from Uva. Mon-Man didn’t move until he placed one in his mouth and swallowed it. Satisfied, Mon-Man stood and stepped into the gully, then Dinah heard a splash. Uva waved his hand.

Driven by curiosity, Dinah walked to the bridge and looked over it. Ten feet below her she could see the river running swift, as well as the large blubbery body of Mon-Man mostly submerged. The river had broken its banks and ran through the gulley before returning to its course. Mon-Man regarded her disinterestedly.

“Incredible,” she whispered to herself.

Then she jumped back. The wagons approached without regard. This bridge was a much tighter fit than the previous. Dinah hurried to the other side, where Uva was watching.

“So who do you work for?” Uva asked without looking at her. “The alchemists seeking to swipe some crops? The wizards?”

Raw fear plunged through Dinah’s heart, but not a ripple of it crossed her face. How could he have known? “I’m afraid I don’t understand your question, sir.” Sir. That was a stupid mistake. She stopped herself from wincing.

Uva noticed, raising an eyebrow. “Sir?”

Dinah scrambled to cover herself. “You are a master merchant. Yes? And I am a wagoner.” She wasn’t afraid of being caught as a liar, her face was too practiced for that. She was worried that her face was too sincere. 

Uva watched her closely, then turned his attention to the wagons, his face set in a hard look. When the third passed him, he looked it over and started his horse. He headed back to the front of the caravan.

Uva’s looked like a little home, and was painted as such. It stood out as was one of the few she hadn’t seen the interior of.

That was it. Whatever was going on here had to be stopped. She was the only one who could stop it. For evidence there was only one place to go. Uva’s wagon.

Dinah had enough of him anyway. She said she was going to her wagon to prepare a meal, which Uva waved away. As she waited for her wagon to cross the bridge, Dinah thought on everything Uva had told her and came to the only conclusion. This was a vanguard. That much was certain. However, she needed proof.

If she returned to the Temple with her suspicions, they would be listened to. The trouble was, the imperial court wouldn’t listen without evidence. Hearsay didn’t count. If she could get something, then she would be back down the valley tomorrow. Back in the empire, she would disappear. They would never find her. But only if she had some proof. Dinah took a deep breath as her wagon came into view.

She muttered pleasantries to Tevran as her last place wagon crossed the bridge, who gave her a sullen smile as she asked him to drive the wagon while she made a stew. Inside, Dinah got to work. She was a passable cook, a side effect of spending sixteen years learning how to poison people. The Temple had taught her how to make a meal, in case she had to kill a noble. Soldiers didn’t expect much from their meals, so her cooking was good enough for them.

Dinah only had one poison on her, and not enough to kill everyone. It was a rare poison, to be used on one person. As she made the stew, the poison rested inside the dagger hidden among the herbs on her belt.

Dinah was just about finished with the meal when the wagon stopped abruptly. Some stew sloshed out of the large pot. Dinah didn’t bother cleaning it up. She bolted out the door. They can’t have been at the last bridge, right? It didn’t take that long to make a stew, though she had no idea how far the next bridge was from the last.

Dinah found the men running to the head of the column. Trouble seemed to be in the air. At a guess, Uva had insulted the third ogre. She started running, quickly catching up to Tevran

“What’s the trouble?” she asked. Dinah could run a mile, but not in skirts. She clomped after him. Dinah made sure that Tevran heard her labored breaths.

Tevran didn’t respond, instead pointing upwards at the eastern cliffs. Goblins. They were peering out of their caves, sometimes preening for the others, walking along the edge and hurling insults at the caravan. There was nearly a hundred of them, and they were armed. The cliffs were lower, too, the threat of their bows more pronounced.

Dinah could see where the men were gathering, a hundred paces from her wagon. Her damned skirts were in the way and she was tired from walking with Uva all day. The men had bows and swords in hand. As they went to the front, a single wagon was moving back. It passed her by as it moved down. The driver was the northman.

Uva’s wagon.

Dinah muttered a quick prayer and stopped in her tracks. “I’m not about to fight goblins.”

Tevran spun around as he ran. “Go back to your wagon. We will protect you.”

Dinah made a show of going, turning to stalk Uva’s wagon. It stopped halfway down the caravan. She cursed under her breath. She moved to the other side of the wagon line until she was level with her target.

The Northman was in the driver’s seat. Dinah’s hand went into her pouch and pulled out the short, needle-like danger. The knife was as long as her pointer finger, the handle fit snugly in her palm. A small reservoir of poison, enough for one man, was in the handle. Dinah didn’t know how it worked, but it remained there until stabbed into someone.

Taking a deep breath, Dinah walked briskly to the back of the wagon. The Northman turned to watch the men up ahead. The caravan wagons were tall and wide, their walls wooden and the roofs canvas. They had doors front and back. There was enough space in them for four men to sleep, but most were used for cargo. The Northman wouldn’t see her.

She tried the door. Locked. Dinah smiled. From her pouch she pulled out a lockpick. As she worked the lock, she crouched to avoid being seen from the road. The lock yielded without much work. Silently, Dinah opened the door. She had been expecting sleeping quarters. What she found was far worse.

Two narrow benches ran the length of the wagon, mattresses overflowed them. That wasn’t the bad news. The bad news was between them. An illuminated sigil burned in the air at the front of the wagon, set against nothing. A sinister orange glow filled the room. Standing in the middle of the wagon, his feet secured to the floor that he would not be jostled, his arms raised up above his head and his back to her, stood a Priest of the Red. In his left was a bundle of jagaweed, the tips of the stalks just starting to smoke. In his right between the thumb and forefinger a small ruby, his other fingers held a letter before his eyes. His words a magical language she didn’t know, his voice powerful but not carrying outside the wagon.

Dinah rushed forward and stabbed the man in his side, placing a hand over his mouth. He groaned. The sigil fizzled and vanished in the air as she did, cutting the light from the room save for a small window at the back. He struggled in her arms, but Dinah gripped him like a vice.

“That is the Last Truth,” she hissed. “No matter what you do, or where you go, it will kill you in twenty days. It is a painful death. The nearest Temple of Many Truths is twenty-five days from here. They have the antidote.”

Deftly, she pulled the knife from his side and slid it back into her belt. The burning perfume of the jagaweed rolled through the air heavily. She blinked. Her mind stumbled. Dinah took breath sparingly. With her now free hand, Dinah took both the ruby and the letter from him and stashed them hastily in her belt. When they were secured, she turned her attention back to him.

“You can make it, maybe, if you are quick. However, eighteen days walk from here there is a Priest of Many Truths waiting in a border town. I will tell you which tonight, only if you keep my identity secret. If I die,  you die a most awful death. Stay in here. Say that the ritual was complete. Whatever you need to. I will give you the location and the password to the antidote tonight, in the town. Do you understand?”

The priest nodded. As soon as he did, Dinah let him go and walked out of the wagon, closing the door as silently as she could. She looked around and saw no one around. She could have killed the priest, but he was another piece of evidence. The Temple would imprison the priest after giving him the antidote. Her lockpicks came out again and she locked the door behind her. Taking a deep breath, she walked briskly down the line of wagons. There, she looked back. The Northman was still in his seat, watching the cliffs.

Dinah looked up. The goblins were watching, but not saying anything. A fight seemed to have been avoided. Not a lot of time left, then. Dinah made a little show of worriedly looking up at the cliffs and pacing for the northman, then retreated back to her wagon. The dagger, ruby, and letter all went into a secret compartment. A false cupboard, Dinah hoped it would pass scrutiny, but felt anyone who looked long enough would see.

She calmed herself, taking deep breaths as she had been trained to do, and returned to her stew. After a little work, it was ready. All it needed was to be placed on a fire. She stifled a grin as she cleaned her hands on her apron. She had evidence, three pieces. Now all she needed was to escape.

She should have disguised her voice. But then, she was the only woman on this venture, and the priest saw her hands. Even in the dim wagon it would be hard for the man not to notice that she was a woman. Nervous, Dinah retrieved her dagger and placed it in her belt.

Deep breaths. Her heart still beat quickly.  It felt good to have a dagger in her belt, but really, she was a poisoner and an assassin, not a fighter. Any one of the poorly disguised warriors would kill her in a fair fight. That was a simple fact. Her dagger was only a few inches long. They had swords. 

Her wagon rocked. Someone was out front. Dinah smoothed her apron. It was nothing. It would be nothing. She opened the front door and stepped up to the driving bench. Tevran sat there, a sword across his lap, reins in his hands.

“What happened?” Dinah asked as she sat down beside him.

He looked nervous, his eyes darting to the cliffs and then to her. He was sweating. “Goblins rolled a boulder onto the road. From the cliff straight down here. Insane. Nearly killed Uva.”

“An ambush?”

“As far as we can tell, they just wanted someone to mock. Kept insulting us as we moved it out of the road.”

Dinah relaxed as the caravan started moving. Tevran’s description didn’t seem so bad. In the moment it must have been tense, but really, not so bad after all. She settled into the bench, looping her arm around his. Tevran tensed.

“Good merchant, I wanted to thank you for all the help you have given me. You have made me feel welcome and safe this last week. I will make sure my husband commends you to the guild. You deserve to be on more lucrative routes.”

Tevran placed his right hand on his heart, the military salute, before changing it quickly. Lord Thevandris had not cooked up a cunning plot, but a brazen one. It was simply their misfortune that the Temple suspected them. Dinah passed the time to the third bridge, feigning worry of the goblins. It was fifty feet to the top now, they were getting close.

Uva ordered them to ride hard, so Dinah’s meal was not eaten. No loss for anyone there. Late in the afternoon the clouds began to break. The sunlight was not full, but the effect on the valley was remarkable. A grey, somber place was transformed into a valley full of color. The river shone white and its music became more beautiful. Songbirds darted from bush to bush. The stones turned from dull grey to a vibrant color that seemed almost white at the right angle. Over it all, the rushing river sang its joyful tune, and a voice in the distance hummed a low tune that harmonized with it. That voice grew louder and louder until Dinah saw the third bridge. The caravans were rolling over it. Uva had paid the toll for the third bridge. And Dinah saw why.

There was no fighting this ogre. Her head was as large as a wagon. Dinah guessed this one stood at about thirty-five feet, nearly as wide. Heavy set and covered in warts and loose skin, she was the first ogre Dinah had seen to wear an accessory. Large bracelets made of dock rope and studded with the skulls of oxen, a necklace with a pendant made of a boulder which had been drilled through, and a dozen circlets of fresh, withering, and dead flowers on her head. Her skin was pale like the others but had a greenish tint in the light. She was humming a tune that matched the river, was the river, the sack beneath her throat inflating and rumbling as she did.

Dinah leapt from the wagon and ran to the river as Tevran shouted after her. She had to. This was the most extra-ordinary person Dinah had ever seen. The enormous ogre regarded her through smallish purple eyes. They were cloudy, but still had life in them.

“Excuse me,” Dinah called up to the ogre. “I must know your name.”

“Errrrrrum. I am Madam Tauch, Mistress of Highbridge and soothsayer. Do you wish to know your fortune?”

“Err…” Dinah said, unsure of what to say. She had never thought such things were possible. “Perhaps. I just wanted to say that you are beautiful. Never have I met such an intriguing person. I am delighted to meet you.” She bowed low.

When Dinah recovered, she found Madam Tauch looking at her eye to eye, having lowered herself. Tevran and the wagon were approaching the bridge. Dinah didn’t have much time. Dinah had been right, the ogre’s eyes burned with life. It was hard to match it, but Dinah did.

“Humans don’t show humility on the plains. You are rare. For your words I give your future freely.” Her pupils grew larger and she sniffed the air. Dinah stumbled as the ogre took in so much air. Madam Tauch grumbled, gurgled, then spoke in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Daughter of No One,

Here you will become someone,

Here you will meet the one who can look at you as I do now,

Here, on my bridge you will face a choice,

You will choose wrong.”

Dinah shuddered before the eye of Madam Tauch. The Temple was not a kind place to be raised. Beneath her calm façade, fear swirled. Madam Tauch gave a satisfied nod and turned away, watching the last wagon cross her bridge.

“Sixty axles, sixty gold,” she rumbled and began to return to the river. “Welcome, Daughter of No One, to the High Plain of Urhsas.” She submerged herself in the river.

Dinah looked down the valley just as the clouds parted. The road back to the empire was alive. She could see flower patches which she had missed in the grey day. Before her was a painting. With a heavy sigh, Dinah turned away and ran to catch up to her wagon.