Sunset of Lantonne (78 page)

Four of those standing in front of him were elven soldiers, three men and a woman, all armed heavily and wearing well-fitted chain and plate armor. Even aside from the finery, Raeln recognized the blue sashes they wore, marking them as the king’s personal guard. These were among the most skilled warriors in Lantonne and the type of people that had trained Raeln on and off through his childhood. He stood no chance against four of them and was not even sure he could safely handle one.

Behind the elite guard, the Turessian Therec stood glaring angrily at Raeln. Tucked in the crook of his arm was the very staff Raeln was sent to examine, making Raeln want to shout for Nenophar, though he knew he was foolish to even consider it. He briefly thought of simply grabbing the staff and running, but he did not even know if this was the right weapon yet. Blowing his cover for the wrong item would doom the rest of his companions.

Unlike the last time Raeln had seen Therec, the man now wore Lantonnian finery, including embroidered white pants and a blue tunic that might have been silk. Gone were the black robes and hood he had always worn previously, though his tattoos still made him stand out against anyone from Lantonne. During Raeln’s last visit, Therec had worn simple Lantonnian clothes on occasion, but always went back to his robes in a hurry after a public appearance.

“I ordered any wildlings banished from my sight at all times,” Therec roared, shoving aside one of the guards to walk toward Raeln. “Explain yourself, beast!”

Raeln could hardly believe the change in the man’s tone. He sounded on the verge of having Raeln executed on the spot, simply for being seen, without even knowing who Raeln really was. He immediately thought of Ilarra’s reaction to seeing him for the first time in months and wondered what Therec’s excuse might be. Sniffing, he realized he could smell each one of the soldiers and the servant beside him, but on Therec, he smelled nothing. What precisely that meant, he had no idea. There was something wrong here.

“I am sorry, regent,” Raeln offered in his best attempt to sound contrite. To add to the tone, he took a knee, lowering his head as far as he could without putting his nose on the floor. “I had forgotten the time and tried to be gone before…”

Therec walked right up to Raeln and grabbed the loose fur beneath Raeln’s left ear to tug his head up, shifting the staff to the crook of his other arm. “If I ever find you in any public place while I am there again, or on any floor above the ground, I will have you skinned and your pelt hung from the walls. Do you understand, or should I use smaller words more fitting of your species?”

Nodding vigorously, Raeln ducked his head again the instant Therec released him, though his reason was not so much to look more shameful but to get a better glimpse of the staff. At a distance, he had not previously noticed the faint carvings that ran the length of the wood. He made frantic mental notes of several engraved symbols on it, hoping to remember them when he found—and possibly throttled—Nenophar.

“Get out of my sight,” Therec told him, sneering as though he was considering killing Raeln anyway. “Your kind stinks up the place. You are not to leave your quarters until you have been bathed and cleaned up to look like you are worthy of standing in this keep.”

Bowing, Raeln hurried backwards to the edge of the steps, then spun and ran down them. At the first turn in the staircase, he quickened his pace, taking the steps two and three at a time until he reached the ground floor.

Thinking he had to find Nenophar and get out, he sniffed the air. He then realized Nenophar’s strange ability to leave no scent meant Raeln could do nothing to find him. He would have to wander about aimlessly across any number of floors to have any hope of locating the man.

So many furless people with no scents. It was bewildering and frustrating.

Raeln decided to explore the first floor of the keep—likely the only one he could travel easily through, judging by his conversation with Therec—on the off-chance Nenophar came back down somewhere Raeln could spot him.

For the next two hours, Raeln stopped at every painting he could find and wiped at the frames with a rag he had found near another of the servants’ stairs. The act apparently was good enough that he drew no more unwanted attention from guards that passed him from time to time.

Night began to darken the keep and other servants appeared to light torches and fireplaces in larger rooms. Raeln made his way back up to the second floor on the belief that Therec would likely be gone. He remembered Therec had been quite insistent that he retire to his own floor when the sun set and had to hope the habit was still the way he lived. Months before, he had claimed it was to avoid times when assassins were most likely to do their work. Raeln hoped he had only become more convinced of that risk.

After reaching the second floor, Raeln heard an argument coming from another staircase that led up to the next floor. He debated for a while at the foot of the stairs, but after listening long enough to be sure neither of the voices sounded like Therec’s, he crept up, pausing every few steps to search the air for scents. Only one scent drifted down and stunk of sweat and dirty clothing—a servant.

Raeln climbed until he could peek around the curve at the next floor. Standing right at the edge of the steps were Nenophar and a serving woman.

“You can’t go in there, no matter the reason,” the woman was saying. “The king forbids anyone entry to the war room.”

“I told you, forget you saw me there. I was just taking a quick look,” Nenophar pleaded.

“No! You know the rules. I have to report it. They probably won’t punish you much, but if I don’t tell, I’ll be whipped and thrown out of the keep.”

Nenophar sighed and nodded at the woman, then checked over his shoulder. Turning back to the woman, he reached out quickly and grabbed her shoulder. As he did, the woman’s eyes widened and her skin darkened as flames erupted from her whole body. Before Raeln could react, she collapsed into ash, drifting all around Nenophar and settling into a large grey pile.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Raeln called up the stairs. “Are you crazy? You just murdered a woman.”

“She was going to report my presence,” he explained, motioning Raeln to follow him. “Her fate was already set in a way that does not affect our mission or the outcome of the war. What I did find will have more impact, and I wish for you to see it before we are found out.”

Raeln came up the stairs more slowly than he probably should have, unable to take his eyes off of the pile of ash at Nenophar’s feet.

“If you walk any slower, we may as well spell out our intentions in the keep using the bodies of the king’s soldiers,” Nenophar said dryly. “Come along, Raeln.”

Raeln stopped at the top stair, the pile of dust that had been the woman captivating him. Reluctantly, he lifted his foot and tried not to step in the ash, but no matter how careful he had tried to be, he felt it coating his paw pads and toes. His stomach churned, but he kept walking to prevent himself from dwelling on what covered his feet.

“For a trained warrior, you are very easily offended,” Nenophar said, leading the way down one of the halls. “Have you killed before, Raeln?”

“Only in battle.”

“Battle is what you make of it,” the man replied, turning them down a narrower passage. “We are at war with the forces of the undead. If a serving woman stands between a partial victory and certain defeat, would you not kill her without a second thought?”

“I would question whether it was the right decision and look for another way. If there was no choice, I probably would kill her.”

“Hesitation allows for chance to get the upper-hand in the moment. Act decisively and there will be less opportunity for your fate to catch up with you. This is a valuable lesson for any mortal.”

Raeln glanced down at the powder coating his feet. “What’s to stop my fate from ending up like hers?”

Smiling, Nenophar shoved open a door on the left side of the hall, motioning for Raeln to go in. “Raeln, there are many ways that one can meet their fate. Yours has been unwritten. What little I do know is that if I were to kill you as I did that woman”—the man pointed at the pile of ash far behind them in the hallway—“it would set my own fate in stone. I don’t know why that is yet, but I have no desire to forego any hope of a better outcome for my own life. You are as safe with me as Ilarra is.”

Raeln looked into the room they had stopped at, finding a large study with an ornate desk covered with books and unrolled parchments. “And how safe is she?” he asked, still not going into the room.

“My life and the lives of many others depends on your continued survival. What little I have been told of my future makes me dearly wish that, if we fail in this task, you can find a way to kill me and spare me from my fate.”

“Let me guess,” said Raeln, glaring at Nenophar. “Somehow you know that you’ll become a Turessian, like Ilarra.”

“Precisely,” replied Nenophar.

“Who are you?” Raeln asked. “I’ve never met anyone who talks about the future and their own fate like you do.”

Nenophar grinned and shrugged, moving into the room. He pointed at the door once he was inside. “Close that behind you. The stakes in this war are dire. Who I am matters little in the face of what I am going to show you.”

Reluctantly, Raeln entered the room and closed the door behind him. Once he had, Nenophar went to the table and pulled several of the parchments out of the various piles and turned them to face Raeln.

“Read and tell me what you think is happening in this war,” he said.

Raeln went to the table and bent over the parchments. They were in a tiny script that was difficult for him to decipher, forcing him to squint and figure out each word as he read. He tried to hurry, knowing they could be found out at any moment, but the reading was slow-going. He soon began skimming the text, trying to get a general idea of what he was looking at.

“They’re documenting troop movements on this one,” he noted, sliding one of the sheets aside. “This one is a map of the mountains, including much of the southern range. The others look to be stories about legendary battles between the founders of Lantonne and creatures of the region. Only the troop movements matter here.”

“Wrong.” Nenophar placed a map beside the list of troop movements. He pulled another sheet from the stack Raeln had skipped, judging it to be another long list of undead sightings in the region, and placed it beside the other two. “Do you not see the overlap of these?”

Raeln stared at the parchment a while before realizing one of the sheets was a record of orders sent to Lantonnian troops. The other told of where Turessian forces were spotted and predicted to be moving. Using the map, he slowly pieced together the locations and tapped four specific spots on the map, west and southwest of the city.

“A large group of undead have turned and are headed back into the mountains,” he noted, feeling truly confused. “From the looks of this, Therec dispatched part of the army to intercept them. Every soldier is mounted, so he’s trying to beat them to something. I don’t see why this is so important or worthy of sending the army outside the walls.”

Nenophar pulled out a book from the pile and opened to a page containing much of the information Raeln had seen on the parchments about legendary battles. The book looked to be the original from which the stories had been transcribed.

“Read carefully, Raeln.”

Squinting again, he searched the text for anything that stood out. He noted there were descriptions of the places where the heroes of old had fought and died. Comparing those notes to the map and some of the comments made in the troop movements, he realized they were describing some of the same places.

“The undead are looking for something in the mountains,” he said, eliciting a nod from Nenophar. “Given that these places were referenced in the storybooks, it is likely an old weapon or other magic they think will give them an advantage. The king or Therec is dispatching soldiers to try and get there first.”

“Not a small number of soldiers, either,” Nenophar added, tapping one of the parchments. “Nearly three quarters of the army is divided between two of those locations. Lantonne is undefended, if and when the undead arrive. The king has left this city to the mercy of the undead.”