| |
––––––––
Queen Isabelle looked up as Tal and Morgiana entered the meeting hall. “What happened?”
“We’ve just seen one of your falconers,” Tal said. “He’s been communicating with one of Sól’s old scouts up north and the rumors about Valahir have been confirmed. It fell the same day as Arahir. And Erahil was taken yesterday.”
“Good grief,” Isabelle exclaimed. “All the lands of the Eirahir. The Greater Realms are falling like dominoes.” She was quiet for a moment. “And King Kaodas was taken prisoner when Valahir fell?”
“Yes,” Tal replied.
“And Lord Asmundyr in Erahil?”
“Him too,” Tal replied. “They’re being kept with Lady Kaolin and Lord Keld in Askenroth’s old fortress at Wyvern’s Peak. Savenya’s made it nice and new again, bless her.”
“Yes,” Isabelle said. “That’s wonderful. Just what we need.” She arched her back, stretching out some tension. “Please tell me that’s everything.”
Tal sighed. “I wish I could.”
“All right. What else have our new friends been up to?”
“Some of Savenya’s dragons... not Savenya herself but the emerald ones... They’ve been taking women from some of the Arahir villages.”
“Why?”
“The dragons said they needed servants at Wyvern’s Peak.”
Isabelle shook her head. “What are we going to do?”
“For the moment, we can’t do anything,” Tal told her. “Under these circumstances, there can be no open resistance against the dragons. They have a power over us Marshal Artaeis never had.”
“They can roam freely in the skies,” Morgiana added, “killing with impunity. And then there are all the people they have taken prisoner. We can’t sacrifice them any more than we can sacrifice the villages that don’t have the strength to resist these creatures.”
“All right,” Isabelle said. “So none of us can resist them as things stand at the moment. Unless you know differently.”
Morgiana frowned. “Do you know something we don’t?”
Queen Isabelle looked surprised. “Karn and Shaala haven’t been in contact with you?”
Morgiana shook her head. “Should they have been?”
“They might be waiting until they’re sure of their plan and everything’s ready. But they’re in Ensari at the moment and they’re preparing for a sea voyage.”
“Do you know what they’re up to?” Morgiana asked.
“They haven’t told me,” Isabelle replied. Her gaze flitted down. “I imagine they don’t want to tell me anything since they expect I’ll be taken prisoner soon too.” She let out a sigh. “You two shouldn’t stay here. I have to. I’ve got no choice. If I hide, the dragons will make people suffer for it. But you two could disappear for a while. Savenya seems to know quite a lot about the Greater Realms, and I think it’s safe to assume she knows about you as well. And considering that she’s paid little heed to you so far, she probably doesn’t consider you much of a threat to her power. However, I doubt she’ll ignore you for very long.”
“Yes, I guess she’d be happier knowing we were out of the way,” Morgiana agreed.
“I’m not hiding,” Tal protested.
“You said it yourself though, Tal,” Isabelle reminded him. “You can’t do anything here. This isn’t a war. The Greater Realms are being held to ransom.”
“That’s true,” Tal replied, “but all the same, I’d like to stay here as long as I can to keep an eye on things. I imagine the time will come when we’ll have to cross the strait and hide out until we can work out a way of dealing with the situation but that time hasn’t arrived yet.”
“If you wait too long though, you might not have a chance,” Isabelle countered.
“Maybe,” Tal conceded. “However, since Savenya and her friends seemed to have eschewed subtlety at the moment, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of warning.”
“All right,” Isabelle sighed. “Now, on a different note, are Lorial and her family comfortable enough? All their needs are being looked after?”
“They’re fine,” Tal assured her.
“Because if there’s anything they need –”
“Don’t worry. I saw them this morning.”
Isabelle nodded. “Well, that’s good at least. How’s Kelahil?”
“He’s doing all right, all things considered.”
“He doesn’t know where his parents are, does he?”
“No,” Tal told her.
“Well, that’s something,” Isabelle said. Then she shook her head and rose to her feet. “Tal, this is ridiculous. You should go. Take Lorial and the others with you. There’s nothing to be done by waiting around here. Go to Khalahi. Hope that the dragons have no interest in any of the Southern Lands yet and work on your plans there.”
“I don’t know...” Tal started but Morgiana stopped him, holding his hand.
“The queen’s right, Tal,” she said. “It’s time to go.”
“But to flee –”
“We’re not fleeing,” Morgiana told him. “We’re regrouping.”
––––––––
“How long have we been here now?” Kaolin murmured as she sat up and looked around the room that held her, Keld, Kaodas and Lord Asmundyr prisoner.
It could have been much worse, she realized. It wasn’t cramped and there were private alcoves for certain necessities. They were walled in on three sides with a row of bars lining the front of the cell – a recent addition, by the look of them – but on the other side of the bars, the outer wall of the fortress lay several yards away and there were windows there so they could at least see some natural light throughout the day.
“I think we’ve been here for about two weeks,” Keld said. “But it’s better not to think about it. Savenya’s unlikely to let us go any time soon.”
“Yes, you’re right,” Kaolin muttered. “I don’t believe for a second that Savenya honestly meant that she would let us free before the winter if she got what she wanted. If she’s ruling our lands, then what use would she have for ladies, lords and kings?”
“More than you may think.”
Everyone turned at the sound of the voice. No one had heard the dragon walking up the steps that led to that level of the fortress but there Savenya was, standing a few feet from the bars of their cell.
Behind Kaolin, Kaodas and Asmundyr rose to their feet.
“You doubt my word, do you, my dear Kaolin?” Savenya asked in that increasingly irritating sweet voice of hers. She ran her hands along the bars of the cell. “There’s no need to keep you here indefinitely. Once your people accept the new order of things and everything is running along smoothly, there’ll be no reason to keep you any longer at all. You’ll be free to return to your people. You will no longer be their ‘lady’, of course, but then again, you no longer are.”
Kaolin didn’t react. None of them did. Savenya could control them only so much and by refusing to allow themselves to be provoked, they could at least deny her some satisfaction.
“Anyway,” Savenya continued after a moment, shrugging off the indifference with which her words were met, “I want to talk to you and your husband about something else. Does the name Kelahil mean anything to you?”
“He was the founder of the original city of Orishelm,” Keld told her, reflecting the question, “along with the land of Arahir.”
“Yes,” Savenya smiled. “And what a fitting man to name your son after, as he would be the first lord born in the new Arahir. Where is he, please?”
“Why do you need our son?” Kaolin asked, her voice calm.
“Because, my dear, the people of your fine Arahir have a little too much spirit for their own good. We are slowly ridding them of their foolish notions of defiance but there are those who think they can flee their villages and hide out in the mountains and perhaps, additional incentive may be required in the coming months. Is that where he is, in the mountains?”
“We don’t know where he is,” Kaolin told her. “We simply told an Arahir soldier to take him as far away as possible, and only to return when it seemed safe.”
Savenya smiled. “Clever. Well, you win this time, my dear.” She shook her head. “Oh, I like you. I really do.”
Kaolin remained impassive.
“You doubt me,” Savenya said. “I can see that, but I mean it. You’re a woman after my own heart. Who knows, perhaps special accommodations can be arranged for people of exceptional quality. Maybe when you are released, you and your husband can assist me in the governing of my new lands.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather join my people as simply Kaolin.”
Savenya smiled again. “Of course you would. But you never know. Maybe after a few more months here, you may change your mind. Maybe one day, you might even consider me a friend. Think on it, Kaolin. Arahir is a pleasant little country at the moment, but combined with Valahir, Erahil and the entire Greater Realms, it can be something magnificent.”
“It already was,” Kaolin told her.
––––––––
Elenskaer strode into her new abode, a simple but strong building of hard timber that the Angdar had assembled under a peak that towered over Issalia. Although she couldn’t stand the creatures, she had to admit they did good work. And they did it fast.
She walked into her room naked, then threw on the dress that she had left lying across her bed and strode out again. She didn’t feel uncomfortable naked – life would be pretty difficult for any dragon that did – but she didn’t like the thought of those awful Angdar lusting after her. She didn’t know if their tastes ran that way, as for all their similarities they weren’t human and they certainly weren’t dragons, but she wasn’t interested in finding out.
She then went outside, passing by a smaller structure that had been made to house her prisoners. She had Lord Falk already in one of the buildings and a couple of other civic leaders.
Elenskaer spied one of her dragons standing around doing nothing. “Harvindar,” she called out. “Come with me. I want to talk to my Angdar captain, and I’d rather not do it alone.”
Being a male emerald dragon, Harvindar was of towering height even in his human form.
“They wouldn’t dare hurt you, Elenskaer,” he said, although he came straight over to her. “They know what the consequences are for harming any of us.”
“Yes, but maybe they might give in to those violent primal urges they’re famed for,” Elenskaer countered. “Maybe they might not care about what happens to their companions. So all the same, I’d rather have you with me.”
“All right,” the younger dragon replied.
Together they walked along a path that climbed down the mountainside to a wide ledge where the more senior Angdar were in the process of building their homes. Thankfully, the rest of the beasts were out on the plains or by the edges of the woods.
“Gundvar,” she called out to a large Angdar sharpening a sword on a rock.
She didn’t like him doing that. None of the Angdar were required to fight. They only needed to intimidate people, and they could do that perfectly well without any weapons. However, she wasn’t going to make an issue of it. It was probably good to have a few sharp blades around. Still though, she would have preferred it if such weapons were kept a little farther away.
The Angdar put the sword down and walked over to her. Elenskaer was relieved to see that while the creature stood well and truly over her, he wasn’t as tall as Harvindar.
“Your ladyship,” Gundvar greeted her in that tone that so many of the Angdar seemed to use with her and the other dragons. Their manner was always obedient, but it was a resigned and disinterested form of obedience and that always came across in the way they spoke.
“I want to talk to you about this morning.”
“Yes?”
She stared at the Angdar captain’s eyes, looking for any sign of disrespect but she couldn’t see any. Just boredom and defeat. The Angdar had submitted to them, but they would never serve them with the same fervor with which they had served Strahd the Invoker or, after his death, his lieutenants. She knew the reason for this of course. Strahd and his lieutenants had given them a sense of purpose during the war – Marshal Artaeis as well – and that purpose had been lost with their defeat. Then over the intervening years, they had united as a people and had tried to make themselves into their own powerful nation. And then she and Savenya, along with their other companions, had taken it away from them.
However, Elenskaer couldn’t see what they were unhappy about. Their nation had been pitiful and without corrupt mages using the power of the gift to help them breed, they were a dying race anyway.
“When we took Cirreone,” Elenskaer said to the Angdar captain, “we saw some unusual people close by to the city, as you no doubt remember. They appeared to be kin of your kind. I want to know who they were.”
“I don’t know who they were,” the Angdar captain replied. “I’ve never seen them before.”
“They were assisting Lord Falk in guarding his city.”
“Yes, I remember.”
Again, Elenskaer looked for insubordination in the captain’s gaze. And again, she found nothing but bored obedience.
“So it probably follows that wherever they live, it’s close by,” she said.
“Yes, that follows,” Gundvar agreed, then hesitated. “What is it you wish to ask of me?”
“I saw villages on the plains as we returned here,” Elenskaer told him. “I suspect this is where these kin of yours dwell. We are going there this morning.”
“Very well.”
“Choose two of your men to accompany you and meet me above the path in half an hour.”
––––––––
In the early afternoon, Elenskaer had another prisoner. She watched with much interest as the Angdar men escorted the woman along the path.
The similarities between the Angdar and these... Ulak... were visible, but seeing them side by side, it was difficult to imagine that they were truly related.
Elenskaer had seen some of the Angdar women. They were clearly women. They had slighter builds than the Angdar men, somewhat more rounded faces and hard lumps that passed for breasts. However, apart from these things, there was very little about them that suggested femininity.
Queen Haadeiya on the other hand was an exquisite creature and Elenskaer imagined a human man would find her as equally beautiful as an Ulak man would.
No, the Ulak were something else. And as she saw the supple arms of the Ulak queen in the dirty hands of the Angdar, she understood. The Angdar were a corruption of the Ulak. Someone somewhere must have seen the powerfully built Ulak men and decided to breed some of them for nothing but war, bringing out their very worst qualities and burying the others over successive generations. The more she thought about it, the more she loathed the Angdar until she felt repulsed by the idea that they were handling the Ulak woman at all.
She quickened her pace, walking behind them. They had just come back from the plains of Araseu, and so she had not had time to get dressed, but right then, she didn’t care. She wasn’t going to let the Angdar go any farther with Haadeiya. Also given the similarities between the two peoples, it occurred to her that the Angdar might well get ideas with regards to this Ulak woman before too long, so it was best to dismiss them before they’d have a chance to.
“Thank you,” she said, reaching out and holding Haadeiya’s arm. “I will take her from here.”
“Yes, your ladyship,” one the Angdar guards replied, releasing the Ulak Queen. They didn’t ask her if she was certain and they didn’t offer to stay with her to keep her safe. If Haadeiya injured her because she had sent them away, it wasn’t their problem.
Elenskaer shook her head as she watched them leave. Bored obedience had its uses but she’d have to have a long hard reflection on the subject some day.
She then prompted the Ulak queen to move forward. “This way if you would, my lady.”
“Why do you speak to me as if I’m a guest,” Haadeiya asked her, “when I know I’m your prisoner?” Her eyes lay on the path ahead and her posture was proud but her voice was tinged with sadness.
“Well, there’s no need to be uncivil,” Elenskaer replied, “is there?”
Haadeiya sighed. “You think this is civil?”
“No blood has been shed,” Elenskaer countered. “No swords have been drawn, and we are uniting these lands.”
“These lands were already united,” Haadeiya told her. “And the people of the Greater Realms fought long and hard to make that happen. What you and your friends are doing is destroying everything we’ve worked to achieve. What’s the point of it?”
She was defiant, this woman, Elenskaer thought to herself. She was beautiful, obviously intelligent and quite fascinating, but she was defiant.
“Spend a few hundred years on Drach’nsvoiya,” she told Haadeiya. “Then you can tell me.”