BOOK II OF III: The Reign of the Sultan (52 page)

From across the room, a woman’s voice quietly
spoke, “Doesn’t much matter who I am. But I will say that I came to
kill you, my Sultan, which I could have already done.”

Without so much as a sound, Baltor had
already drawn close to the spot where he believed the voice had
last been.

Using ventriloquism that he had learned from
Cheo, Baltor cast his voice back to the approximate location of his
bed. He asked, “Would you please give me one good reason why I
should not alert my guards to your presence, and have you
immediately sentenced to death for the plot to assassinate your
Sultan?”

From a completely different location from
somewhere far off to his left, the woman answered, “Because they
will find two assassins in here—not one.”

Despite the fact that Baltor realized that he
would never be able to find this woman in the dark with her short
answers, he decided to continue casting his voice into other parts
of the room, so she wouldn’t know his whereabouts.

That is, he thought, unless he could goad her
into a lengthy explanation, or maybe even get close enough to take
her out in this cat-and-mouse game. Doing just that, he asked, “So
you’re with someone else?”

About fifteen seconds later, from somewhere
behind him, the woman answered, “Yeah… Within this room are the two
best assassins in the land, actually. Me and you!”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”
Baltor accidentally asked from his current whereabouts.

The woman answered, “There is a very good
reason I did not make the final cut into the first orphaned boy in
history to become a master thief
and
an authentic
Sultan—even though my dagger is still quite warm from the blood
that now tarnishes its steely surface! Something inside of me
stopped me.”

Baltor could have made the “final cut” after
she had uttered the word “orphaned,” but his curiosity stayed his
hand. Throwing his voice into a different location, he asked, “So
you’ve been sent by a remnant of the Thieves’ Guild to assassinate
me, eh?”

She answered, “Yes. However, there’s much
more to it than just that—I am, in fact, the Secret Chief to the
Thieves’ Guild of Pavelus. Yes, I have been watching you for
decades, though I have never before seen you in this light, until
today…”

After clearing her throat, she asked, “Will
you allow me to light a candle so that you can see my face? I
promise that the light will be nowhere near to your position, but
it is very crucial that you see me as I give you the full
explanation with proof, my Sultan.”

“You better have proof, or I will finish you
off myself,” Baltor promised from his new location.

“If you’re not satisfied with my proof, then
I will allow you to plunge your swords into me, my Sultan,” the
woman countered evenly.

“Go ahead,” Baltor said.

A few seconds later, his eyes observed as
this woman lit a candle several inches below her neck, revealing a
young face that not only was very soft and beautiful with gorgeous
green eyes—surrounded by soft, brown hair that was long and curly.
He would have remembered this stunning woman had he seen her
before.

A few more seconds passed before she
explained, “Baltor, I have been very wary of you ever since the day
that you returned from your quest for the Guild—more than fifteen
years ago!

“Yes, I was there in an adjacent room to the
throne room watching you through a tiny peephole. I listened as you
not only revealed a fractional portion of information regarding
your journey to find the rod, which you said did not exist, but
your ‘noble intention’ to assassinate Sultan Brishavus Helenus and
free the people of Pavelus from tyranny.”

She asked, “Yet instead of you fulfilling
your intentions, what do you do after arriving at the palace? You
end up stealing his very own beloved daughter, the very heiress to
the Sharia Empire! And where do you two lovebirds go first?”

Answering her own question, she said,
“Directly violating the oaths that you swore to upon entry into the
Guild when you were a wee lad, you bring the princess back to my
headquarters. With of course the assistance of Mistress Lydia, who
was very confused about the situation and most especially did not
know that the woman you brought with you was the princess, she
still helped you hide away in one of my underground tunnels.”

Even though the woman had delivered a lengthy
pause that lasted about twenty seconds, Baltor remained silent as
he could tell by her facial expression that she had much more to
say … she did.

After taking a deep breath through her nose,
she added, “While the two of you slept throughout the day, word
rapidly spread throughout the entire city of Pavelus that ‘the
princess had been kidnapped,’ and that there was a ‘five million
parsec reward’ for her safe return!”

She purposefully cleared her throat twice,
before stating, “Early the next evening, the High Council convened.
It wasn’t hard for us to add one plus one, figuring out that you
were the one who stole her. We immediately informed Mistress Lydia
that she needed to go retrieve the two of you, along with six
escort thieves in case you were unwilling to come along, so that
you could explain yourself to us—they did…

“But, instead of abiding by our summons, what
do you do, Baltor?”

Without waiting for an answer from Baltor,
she answered for him, “Not only do you kill a Ruling-Mistress, yet
kill three more of my thieves, shortly before you accomplished your
miraculous escape with the princess!

“I kid you not—hundreds of Guild members and
I spent years and money trying to track you down. We even combed
several times through the Galgaa Jungles, but found no traces of
you or human civilization! A few dozen of my thieves died … from
quicksand, or lions, or mosquito bites, or ants, or crocodiles,
etc.

“And while we’re all off in another continent
searching for you, you and the princess return to Pavelus, but
instead of patiently waiting for your turn to rule like every other
good princess and prince, during the first family reunion, the
princess murders her own father.”

Baltor’s mouth slightly dropped open in shock
that this woman was aware of that most-top-secret truth.

Finally, the woman continued with a smug
smile on her face, “And only several days later, without even so
much as a funeral for the dead Sultan, you two inherit the
empire—very impressive for an orphaned thief!”

Baltor could tell that this woman still had
more to say, so he remained silent.

About three seconds later, the woman
continued, “I must admit, however, that I was even more impressed
that you didn’t immediately send your troops to the Thieves’ Guild,
and try to annihilate us all! Instead what do you do?”

Answering her own question yet again, the
woman continued, “You go alone without Humonus, beat nine of my
thieves in combat without killing a single one by your own hands,
and ultimately manage to convert my entire Guild to your own
Special Forces Guild—most impressive.”

A few moments later, Baltor finally
responded, “So, the reason why you waited more than a decade to
assassinate me was because I stole your Guild?”

The woman chuckled out her nose before
answering, “No, that’s not the reason, because I kind of like what
you did, even though I lost a lost millions and millions of parsecs
in the process. First allow me to tell you the reasons I was going
to assassinate you, before I tell you the reason I changed my mind
in the end.”

Baltor said, “Okay.”

“My name is Maline. Even though I only look
eighteen years old, I am actually six hundred and thirty-two years
old. I have recently begun to wonder if I may be an immortal, as I
have never aged a day since my eighteenth birthday.”

Baltor looked on with disbelief, but he
remained silent.

After a five-second pause, Maline continued,
“The first four years of my life were spent with my parents. I
still have relatively strong images of what they looked like, both
young and attractive, that they loved me very much, and that things
were vastly different than the way things are here on this
world.”

Baltor remained silent.

Maline took a deep breath of air through her
mouth, before continuing, “However, this was not to last. One day
in particular, I remember that I had just finished eating a tasty
lunch that had been stored in a metallic can, and that my mother
let me go outside so that I could play with my dolls in the
sandbox. While sitting and playing, all of a sudden, I found myself
getting very sleepy, and before I knew it, I even conked out in the
seated position.”

After taking another deep breath, she said,
“When I awoke from my nap, I was no longer dry and comfortable in a
sandbox, but very wet and cold because I was lying on my back and
floating in a puddle of water; upon opening my eyes, I saw clear
blue skies all around me...

“Even stranger was the fact that after I sat
up, I saw that I was sitting in the middle of a flooded farm field
with no signs of civilization. It was only after I stood to my feet
and looked around that I saw a dry dirt road nearby. Alone, wet,
and scared, I walked over to the road, but still, there was no one
in sight. As I didn’t know what to do next, I began to cry.”

Baltor was about to ask Maline where she was
going with her story, but he didn’t get a chance as she stated,
“Next thing you know, I look up, and there’s both an oriental man
and woman dressed in peasant attire standing before me, and a
strange-looking horse-drawn wagon behind them. This may surprise
you to hear, Baltor, but where I had originally come from, people
drove machines that ran off the power of electrical batteries—in
other words, I am not from your planet!”

Now totally in disbelief, Baltor said his
first word with sarcasm, “Right…”

Maline shrugged her shoulders, just before
she said, “I don’t expect you to believe me just yet, but keep
listening to my history—please. Anyway, this oriental man began to
ask me some questions in some foreign language, but as I didn’t
understand their language one smidgen, I said nothing—only
continued to sob even harder. The woman said something to the man
in that foreign language of theirs, and then she began to speak to
me in very soothing tones.”

After releasing a deep sigh, she added, “The
tone of her voice is what calmed me down, and after I was calm, the
woman gestured for me to enter into the back of their wagon. I did,
and they took me to their straw hut that was on the far northern
end of that farm field, which was only a few miles to the southeast
of an oriental seaside village.”

Baltor was confused as to why he was getting
all this history of this woman who claimed to be over six hundred
years old. He was even more confused as to how this all related to
him, except for possibly the immortal part. He really didn’t know
what to say yet, so he continued to remain silent.

A few seconds later, Maline continued, “That
very first night in my new strange-looking home, I realized that
something had also changed within me—even with no light at all, I
could completely see like a dog or a cat!

“Ever since, I have been able to see this
way. Even in the pitch-blackness of your bedchambers, I watched you
as you threw your voice into different parts of the room, and I
assuredly stayed as far away from your two lethal blades as
possible. This is but one of the many abilities which have made me
into the
supreme-master thief
I am today.” She had whispered
those three emphasized words.

Baltor was shocked.

Maline obviously wasn’t done with her story
as she revealed, “Anyway, to keep with my history, despite the many
months that passed, as my new parents spent in search of my
biological parents, I quickly picked up the language. Moreover, I
began to learn the skills of sewing, cooking, and cleaning from my
mother, and fishing, hunting, and martial arts from my father.
Shortly before my sixteenth birthday, my mother died; only a
year-in-a-half later, my father joined her in death…”

After releasing a sad sigh, she said, “I
decided that the time had finally come to try to find my biological
parents, so I spent the next thirty-four years traveling across the
lands and the oceans in search. Dozens upon dozens of adventures
occurred throughout this timeframe, which I will not get into right
now, as it will literally take months of explaining...

“To keep with how this relates to you, it was
only when I had come across an imperial city, controlled by a
tyrannical Sultan Horas Helenus the Second that I decided to
temporarily stop the search for my parents…

“Right away, I found a couple of volunteers
to join my special thieves guild, in order to give the poor a
chance to become rich, as well to help me track down magical
artifacts. To get to the point, I am the original founder of the
Thieves’ Guild of Pavelus—more than five hundred years ago!”

Baltor asked, “So how does this all relate to
why you tried to assassinate me, but didn’t?”

Maline answered, “I was just coming to that.
Even though I have carefully planned more than a decade to
assassinate you, which shortly began after I arrived back at
Pavelus, which timeframe was only about six months after the ‘Dark
Gnome Wars’ had ended, something inside me happened tonight as I
held the dagger against your throat.”

After a short pause, she next said tenderly,
“As I watched your peaceful face in slumber, I must confess that I
have instantly fallen in love with you—you are, by far, the most
beautiful and soulful man I’ve ever seen…

“You are also an immortal, as you haven’t
aged a day in the last fifteen years, and I was thinking—when I
held the dagger against your throat—that you and I could maybe
travel the world and explore it together forever—maybe even other
worlds. Yes, yes I am most certainly in love with you, my
Sultan!”