The Larion Senators e-3 Read online

  The Larion Senators

  ( Eldarn - 3 )

  Rob Scott

  Rob Scott

  The Larion Senators

  SANDCLIFF PALACE

  Second Age, First Era, Twinmoon 2,829

  Lessek paused long enough to cough up a mouthful of viscous phlegm; he spat into the mud beside the tower wall and wiped his face dry. They were coming; he could feel them close behind him now. His side burned with a runner’s stitch, a pain he hadn’t felt in almost a thousand Twinmoons. The Larion brother mumbled a spell, coughed again and waited – it’s taking too long – for the sting to fade. His feet were bleeding, his boots forgotten in his bedchamber; his hands and face were marked with a cobweb of glass and bramble scratches, and his fever had returned.

  Flu. Influenza. That’s what Francesco Antonelli had called it, an infection: a sinister and calculating virus, and to date the Larion Senate’s most reprehensible – if inadvertent – contribution to Eldarni culture. He didn’t know which of them had contracted it, or who had brought it back, but that was irrelevant. It was here.

  And thousands had died.

  Tonight, they were coming; it was time to atone.

  The first pursuers appeared as shadows from around the southwest corner of the keep. They had no torches, yet they were visible enough in the backlighting of the southern Twinmoon. The full Twinmoon was still a night or two away, but the winds had picked up noticeably since Lessek had gone to bed an aven earlier. The Larion founder used the howling gale and crashing surf to mask his retreat. He supposed he could kill them, conjure some spell to eviscerate the entire mob, but that would do nothing to exonerate him, or to redeem the Larion brotherhood in the eyes of their true appraisers: the Eldarni people. His only real choice was to flee, to reach the tower and to escape back to Italy for a cure. Besides, his own brother was with them, and Evete was there, too. He wouldn’t risk either of them.

  Just run, he thought. It’s not far now.

  Magic quieted the ache in Lessek’s side and he ran for the north tower. The spiral stairs would be cold and unforgiving this evening but with the tribesmen, Harbach, that meddlesome businessman, and Gaorg – and don’t forget Evete, how could she side with them? – running him to ground, Lessek used another incantation to quicken his stride, lowered his head and sprinted the last fifty paces to the tower entrance. I hope they haven’t posted a guard.

  He shouted the spell to unlock the wooden door and watched through the half-light as it swung open to welcome him, the master of the house.

  Metal hinges. Do you see that, Harbach? The rest of you? Metal hinges. I brought back metallurgy unlike anything you’d ever seen – and what did you do? You forged weapons. Selfish bastards.

  For the tenth time since leaping through the window of his bedchamber, Lessek thanked the gods of the Northern Forest that he had remembered to take the keystone. It had been lying on the nightstand, beside a basin of cold water and a stump of paraffin taper. Picking it up had been second nature; he’d been half asleep, still lost in the heady slumber that accompanied his weakening symptoms, for he had been getting better, no question. Lessek patted the pocket of his nightshirt and felt it there, irregular and nondescript: a rock.

  I’ll take it with me, he thought, that, and the book. They’ll be begging for me to return. Antonelli will know what to do; I’ll find him. He’ll be in Roma, his civitate Dei.

  He made it across the threshold, spinning around when an alarm, faint behind his fever, clamoured in his head. Arrow! He cast quickly, flailing with one hand as he incinerated the shaft in midair. The spell was a simple one, slow, but effective; he hoped he wouldn’t be forced to summon anything of consequence before escaping across the Fold. The mob behind him had grown to perhaps twenty or twenty-five. There were senators with them, too. A handful carried torches, and sporadic light fell over the group, illuminating some while masking others in darkness. It left his pursuers, his friends, colleagues and family, looking nefarious and deformed.

  Would they kill him? Lessek couldn’t imagine they would, but Harbach was there, and at the very least, the merchant wanted to see the Larion leader banished from Sandcliff and a new director appointed in his stead. That alone was enough reason to flee, for the moment anyway.

  With a spell Lessek slammed the tower door closed behind him, but as the ponderous echo resonated up the stairwell, he heard a voice from somewhere in the midst of Harbach’s mob, shouting, ‘No, please! Don’t shoot him. Don’t shoot!’ It was Evete, and at that, Lessek felt a surge of adrenalin, energy his magic had failed to provide over the last few days.

  Perhaps she is with me still. He started up the steps two at a time, emboldened by love and a sense that there was hope yet for his vision.

  Then he fell. Landing hard, he felt blood seep from a gash above his left eye. He pressed on it, regained his feet and kept moving. When he heard the tower gate breached, he wasn’t surprised; the spell securing the door was known to almost all the senators. Any one of them could have called it. It was Gaorg; you know it was. Lessek wiped his eye clear again and ran on, his bloody feet slipping on the smooth stones.

  By the time he reached the spell chamber, he was gasping for breath. He had tried twice to cry a spell that would strengthen his lungs, something to keep them full. But the fever, the fall from his chamber window, the cuts, gashes and bruises and especially the long sprint up the dizzying stairway had left him starved of air, too weak to mumble the words. Whatever adrenalin he had felt when Evete shouted for him had ebbed in a bloody trail along the stairs, and now Harbach’s men were only a few steps behind.

  Get the book.

  Lessek moved hurriedly into the room, sidled past the spell table and started towards the scroll library, his private office.

  An arrow, undetected this time, cut the air above his shoulder and glanced off the wall. As it clattered down the steps Lessek stumbled, then used what strength he had left to slam the chamber door, locking most of the mob in the stairwell for a few precious moments. The archer, a tribesman, from the cut of his tunic, looked as though he had seen a ghost. He was alone in the Larion spell chamber with the great one, Lessek himself, bloodied, raging and dangerous. The bowman dropped to his knees. In a tribal dialect Lessek had encountered a few times on trips south of the Blackstones, he begged for his life.

  The Larion Senator considered knocking the bowman senseless but decided not to waste the time.

  Get the book.

  He drew a far portal from its place above the spell table and cast it across the floor.

  Behind him, the door clicked open; there was no time to reach the scroll library or the spell book. Gaorg, you horsecock. When I get back, I’ll flay you alive.

  ‘There he is!’ It was Harbach. ‘Don’t let him escape! Gaorg, do something!’

  Lessek called a spell he had used on hundreds of occasions to bring a far portal across the Fold with him, a doorway home. Like picking up the keystone, calling this spell was second nature, but mid-verse, the Larion founder coughed, a feverish hack, wet with infection and phlegm. His last few syllables were lost in a guttural rasping fit and when Lessek disappeared from the spell chamber, the far portal remained behind. Green and yellow flecks of Larion energy danced in the air above the intricately woven tapestry until Gaorg Belsac, Lessek’s own brother, folded a corner with his boot. The Larion spell chamber fell silent.

  In one hand, Gaorg held a small grey stone, a piece of granite that had tumbled from his brother’s pocket when Lessek slipped on the spiral stairs.

  ‘Get started,’ Harbach panted. His hands on his knees, the old merchant looked to be only a breath or two from a massive heart seizure. ‘Do it now.’

  Gaorg stared numbly at Lessek�
��s keystone.

  ‘You said you could work the spell.’ Harbach turned to Evete and the others. ‘Out of here! All of you. Now!’

  Evete pushed past two bowmen and a scared-looking Larion apprentice. ‘Don’t do it, Gaorg,’ she whispered.

  ‘Get her out of here!’ Harbach shouted, and the archers wrestled Lessek Belsac’s lover towards the stairwell.

  ‘Gaorg!’ she cried.

  Harbach ushered them into the stairwell, then slammed the chamber door. He leaned over the spell table with an air of complacent corruption.

  Lessek’s brother hadn’t moved; the portal still lay crumpled at his feet.

  ‘Get started,’ Harbach said, examining a cracked fingernail, ‘and secure your place in Eldarni history. You’ve been in his shadow too long, my friend.’

  Gaorg Belsac woke from his reverie. ‘Very well,’ he said.

  SCHONBRUNN PALACE, VIENNA

  October, 1870

  Saben Wald, valet to the Falkan prince Tenner Wynne of Orindale, the renowned doctor, stepped into the massive rectangular clearing as the sun coloured the gardens. To the north, a palace big enough to rival Riverend glowed yellow and ivory in the early light. Dry leaves blew about Saben’s feet and tumbled across the now-empty flower beds. To the south, an unexpected hill jutted abruptly from the gardens. A switchback path carved into its side led to a collection of marble columns, arches and ghostly white statues of horses, raptors and powerful-looking men, gods maybe. The artisans who shaped them must have been amongst the most talented in this foreign world; Saben marvelled at the idea that such beauty could be left outside, exposed to wind and weather.

  ‘What is this place?’ he muttered to himself, a wary hand on his dagger.

  A doorway opened in a low building adjacent to the palace; a group of men emerged. Dressed as they were, smoking, and carrying shovels, picks and wooden buckets, they had to be groundsmen. They were certainly not the estate’s landlords – at this aven, anyone that wealthy would be still abed.

  Saben backed beneath the trees. He hadn’t been seen.

  ‘What is it?’ Regona Carvic asked, worried. She had been a scullery maid in Riverend Palace; now she carried Prince Danmark’s child, Rona’s heir and Eldarn’s future monarch, and she would not put the baby in harm’s way by being too stubborn to listen to those trying to help her. The sepia-skinned servant peeked into the clearing, watched the men disappear inside the palace gates and then glanced at the hilltop and the elaborate fountains and stonework of the now sunlit marble edifice.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Saben said, worried, ‘but we can’t stay here.’

  ‘That palace,’ Regona started, ‘perhaps if we-’

  ‘No,’ he cut her off. ‘We have to find somewhere safe to hide while we learn more about where we are.’

  ‘It’s cold, nothing like Estrad.’

  ‘This isn’t Rona,’ he said, urging her gently backwards, deeper beneath the foliage. ‘That palace, those carvings, even the way the flower beds are laid out: none of this is Eldarni.’

  Before this, Regona had never travelled further than Rona’s South Coast; she would have to take Saben’s assessment on faith.

  Saben’s head felt like it was cracking open. They should have sent a soldier, he thought again. He didn’t belong here. That man, the horseman – he had to be a Larion sorcerer – he was the one who had sent them away. Riverend was burning and he and Regona had watched as the mysterious man waved to Prince Danmark… and then Danmark had stood up straight, looked around for a moment – which was curious, because Saben had heard rumours the young prince was blind – and then leaped to his death. It had to have been the work of a Larion magician. And that tapestry – as soon as Saben had unrolled it he knew they were not on their way to Randel, and they would not be staying with the merchant Weslox Thervan.

  The horseman had told him Tenner’s plans had been jeopardised by an enemy named Nerak. Saben had never heard of Nerak, but the horseman appeared to know everything: where they were going, with whom they were supposed to hide, even how they had planned to get away.

  Do not touch me, the stranger had said. Why not? What was it about that man? He didn’t show his face, and he told them only what he had apparently decided was absolutely necessary. So why did they comply? Saben shuddered: what if he were the enemy, this Nerak? The horseman said Nerak was inside Riverend Palace, destroying everything, murdering everyone, Prince Tenner included. They had a narrow window of opportunity to use the tapestry hidden in the abandoned farmhouse. But if the rider knew so much about what was happening in Estrad and why Nerak was bringing death to Riverend, why had he sent them here alone?

  Stories had spread through Estrad like a prairie fire: the Larion Senate had fallen, and the senators were all dead – but was that all but one? Or was the horseman someone else entirely?

  Do not touch me.

  Had he really been there?

  Saben tried to recall if the dark rider had physically touched anything, and had concluded the answer was no: not the dilapidated fence, nor the leather strap holding the door closed, nor even the tapestry tucked inside the empty fireplace.

  Take her hand, and step onto it, that was all he had said, and they had obeyed him – and now where were they? He wondered what had happened to the tapestry; it hadn’t come with them. How were they expected to get back?

  ‘Where can we hide?’ Regona’s voice broke into his thoughts. ‘We haven’t seen a village yet, just these grounds, that palace, and that

  … whatever it is there on the hill.’

  Something screamed in the brush behind them and Regona shrieked.

  Saben felt his heart thud. He had to fight the urge to bolt across the clearing, pound on the palace gates and beg for protection.

  ‘What was that?’ Regona whispered.

  ‘Some kind of animal,’ Saben said, ‘maybe a wild bird or a monkey.’

  A roar, throaty and unmistakable, split the morning. It was answered by another scream, and then a trumpet.

  ‘Wild cats? Grettans? Elephants?’ Regona was shaking. ‘Isn’t it too cold for elephants here?’

  ‘We can’t wait around to find out,’ Saben said, taking her hand. ‘Come on. We’ll sneak along the edge of the gardens and see if we can get around that hill. Anything as large as that palace is bound to have a village nearby.’ He looked at her. The young woman was beautiful; he wasn’t surprised Tenner had chosen her to carry Eldarn’s heir. He would fight, and die if necessary, to protect her and her baby – but would he be up to the task? They hadn’t taken three steps in this world and already he’d carelessly ventured into the open, almost being seen, and roused the breakfast interests of a grettan, or whatever the beast was. Why hadn’t he brought a broadsword, or a bow, or a rapier, even?

  ‘Come with me,’ he said again. ‘We’ll go east, away from whatever’s making those noises.’

  ‘No.’ Regona’s face had changed and she looked strangely determined. ‘Not east, that’s not the way.’

  ‘You heard what’s back there; you can’t possibly want to-’

  No!’ Her voice rose.

  ‘Where then?’ he asked, trying not to lose his temper. ‘Which way do we go?’

  Ringing the gardens were watchlights, lanterns that burned without sign of wood or thatch for fuel. Each was housed in a glass container and perched on a thin metal pole. Light fell in radiant waves down on the fallow flower gardens, and as it mingled with the morning sun it was lost.

  ‘Regona,’ he asked again, most gently this time, ‘where would you have us go?’

  Without speaking, she raised one hand and pointed west, through the palace grounds and past whatever creatures lurked in the remaining shadows.

  ‘That way? Past the grettans and whatever was screaming at us?’ Saben held her hand loosely. ‘Why that way?’

  ‘I don’t know how, but I know that’s the way: west.’

  ‘All right. We’ll find a place to hide for now and scout out the area on
ce we’re away from here.’

  ‘It will be that direction tomorrow, and for many days, Twinmoons maybe,’ she said.

  Saben was sceptical, but he didn’t push her further. Her mind was obviously made up and in the end, one direction was as good as any other.

  BOOK I

  The Larion Spell Table

  WRAITHS

  Jacrys awakened, and listened carefully. There were others in the chamber: Pace, and someone with a familiar accent, a lilt in his voice that was not unpleasant. It was the one leading the Orindale hunt for Sallax Farro. What’s his name?

  He could hear them talking.

  ‘About twenty-five days now, almost a Moon,’ said one.

  ‘Querlis?’ came the reply.

  ‘Every day, but progress is slow. The only healer in the barracks that night was a lieutenant from Averil, a farmer’s son who knew something about horses and pigs. He helped us stabilise him until the general’s healer could get back on the Medera.’

  ‘En route to Rona by then, I’m sure.’

  ‘Yes sir, he was.’

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘Lung punctured and collapsed. Thankfully, the general’s healer had enough magic to clot the blood and inflate the lung. Otherwise we would have lost him.’

  ‘And Oaklen left his healer here?’

  ‘Not the only one in the division, sir, but yes. He ordered me to remain behind as well… wants Jacrys healed, said something about the prince.’

  ‘Word of him?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  The voices drifted too far away for him to hear any more so he turned to his own body. He tuned his senses to the hollow cavity inside his ribs. The pain was gone; it had been astonishing. He tried to fill his lungs, but failed. Time passed, and he tried again. Still no good. He was breathing, but not well. Twenty-five days, almost a Moon. That seemed significant, but he couldn’t home in on why, exactly; answers eluded him, sneaking away behind shadowy folds of confusion. After a while he didn’t care.