Chapter Seven

The Death of Ket

O Ket the Beautiful

Joy to behold.

Fallen on the thorns of Ashenmoire

fodder for Tasen.

None rest

until Ket the Dead is renamed.

 

Countess Krostic had instructed Aflarien exactly where to find a rusty, bloodied dagger and how to gut the stomach of her Sergeant Belagar.   She could tolerate that bumbling oaf no longer.   He was lazy, a thief, and couldn’t possibly be clever enough to organise the attack, a day away, of Ket and her plans to massacre the Shouels that lived there in harmony with humans.   Ket was a city of truce, a place without weapons, of peace.   She scorned the fabrication of peace, especially as it got in the way of her plan to dominate the fertile lands of The Meringal.    She could no longer allow the fallacy to continue.   Ket sucked the wealth from the Meringal and those lands she coveted, and were hers by right, long lost from the dominion of R’thera of old.   Ket desperately needed her firm hand. She would the control of all the trade routes and eventually the domination of the languid greed of Tasen and end of its inconsequential rulers and their fey games at the kingship of Menerth.

                Belagar had been lax in his attack of Delgdreth and had left the spoor of the Countess’ swords and emblazoned shields.   The attack was supposed to show the rising war-likeness of the Shouels and he’d left the evidence that reeked of the stench of her designs.   He’d failed for the final time.   His death was the task she had put upon the naïve Aflarien, as a test, to either fail in cowardice or obey her every command.

                Aflarien fell to the deed with gusto and soon the sergeant’s entrails and exposed heart coloured the traitors drab office.

                “You little mushroom picker will lead my army to Ket,” she told him on the mound one long night in the walled garden.

                “The preparations are well under way and you will leave with the vanguard of a thousand men when the sun rises.   But, tonight, the strength of your body will please me for you shall not sleep until the Shouel flesh is piled high upon the market place of Ket.”

                Even by morning her lust was not satisfied.   He was finally allowed to dose between  her spread pale white legs.   Yet not for long.   She dragged him up by his hair and fed him some theem, then took him to the stables where her soldiers awaited her command to depart.   The rush of the drug to his head propelled him onto his black stallion.   He took the reins of the horse and Krostic commanded the vanguard of her finest men to mount their own steeds then slapped the flank of Aflarien’s horse and the cavalry of silver armoured men followed after their galloping leader to wage war upon the defenceless of Ket the Beautiful.

***

                After the burning of the Shouels in the Market place there was the rounding up of the humans that lived, after indiscriminate slaughter.

                Alfarien wept.   Countess Krostic’s voice had diminished from his mind, as if like the skittering shout of an absentminded god.   The thrumming of her thoughts upon his mind and body had switched to other needs, urged, as she made new evil prayers or the culmination of new and perverse plans.

                The lack of her coaxing brought only a void in him as if he were as forgetful as a lost child.   He blubbered with tears and streaks washed some of the Shouel blood from his eyes.   What had he done?   What had he become?   He had beheaded the wounded yet could hear the crying agony of those that they’d burnt alive, piled, the pig stench encompassing him.   He began to run, slithering in the patchwork pools of blood until he came to a group of three Shouel children.   They rushed to him blindly as if he were some sanctuary yet she’d not finished with him and a new strumming music of her voice returned.   He picked one up, clung a moment to her as if there was still hope.   He swung her around almost as if he was playing and she giggled between hiccups of held back tears.   Faster, he spiralled her around.   Then he grabbed her ankles, swung her swiftly and smashed her head into the stone wall.   Then he slit the other two’s throats.

                He ran from them as if he could leave the past behind.   The echo of the Countess’ voice rang after him,

                “You will love none but me.   You are mine.”   Then he became a boy again.

                “She made me do it,” Alfarien cried at the nothingness, maybe he had but he didn’t speak the words.   Pitying and hating himself he ran into a high building and stood upon a balcony needing to jump.   It was not me.   It was not meant to be like this.   How he despised her.   A rain storm fell upon the city and washed his face clean.   None of his own blood had been spilt that night yet i his lonely heart was empty even of ashes.   He saw the sword that she had given him, at his belt, and he threw it off the balcony.   Yet it did not take away the anguish in his veins.

                Tiredly he slunk away from the building and wandered, exhausted, down a dimly lit side street.   Here he saw a drunken whore still looking for business as if the world had not crumbled away from him.   Aflarien wandered desolately past her, his hatred of himself growing with every step.   Yet, he turned back to the pock-marked hag who bared her black teeth at him.

                “Want something sweetie?”

                “No.   Yes, I want a drink.”

                “Well I’ve done all mine.   There’s a jug shop two blocks down.   Maybe you will come with a tipple for me and we can have some fun.”

                He almost struck her but stalked away.   I’m not that man, he told himself.   Before long he found the jug shop.   It was closed and he banged determinedly on the door until a white faced terrified man came to the window.

                “Let me in,” he commanded, somehow his voice full of force as one who would not be disobeyed.   Thankfully he heard clinking keys in the lock as he looked at the multi-coloured vessels in the window.   He realized beer or spirits would not help him, not bring a quick death.

                “What do you want?” the man asked.

                “I want poison.”

                “Bit late in the day but I’m sure I can cater for you.”

                “It must be strong and quick.”

                He left with a vial of poison and wine.   The Apothecarist banged the door shut and locked it behind him.   Aflarien sought a place to kill himself.   Yet, as he walked alone in the dark, a new thought came to him.

                He took the wine to the woman.   As if in thanksgiving she fell to her knees groping for him. Once more the void of thought and emotion took over his body and like a marionette in a butchers hand he hit her, then again and again screaming at her as if he were saying the world had no hope.  

               Aflarien found himself standing over her pulped flesh, his boot prints left in the blood muddy earth beneath the shattered architecture of her ribcage; he stood there breathless as if waking suddenly from a dream. He ran then, calling back the way he’d come:

                ‘It was her, not me, all of it, all it was her, please make her stop.’  Before he reached the main throng of the soldiers from R’thera he could have taken the poison.  Yet an urge to remain alive, once more, returned to him fed by a need for revenge.   Not me, but she must die.   He stuffed the vial of poison and the wine into his pocket and found his horse whilst Krostic’s soldiers still looted and revelled in their victory.

                Aflarien rode all night back to R’thera.

Chapter  Eight

The River Grule

 

                Dalrosse said goodbye to his escorts from the cave city of Thet.   They had led him to a set of steep steps down the cliff face of Mull Mountain where, grey in the early morning mist below, the River Grule languidly flowed.   The three Shouels who had accompanied him had hardly spoken as they walked through the Forest of Soen and he had been left with his own thoughts.     Naturally he was still concerned about his brother and Shaneal.   It annoyed him that his journey was taking him away from them.   He should be looking for them, trying to protect them from the world divorced from the simplicity of their life in Delgdreth and the slow life by the Lake.  Yet the ancient Shouel had insisted Dalrosse go his appointed way and leave them to their own fate.   In his mind, his words seemed like a voice of reassurance that they still lived and that one day he would find them again.   However, he felt divided.   He yearned to ignore the Shouel’s words and turn back but in his mind he knew he should go on the path the Shouel had insisted upon.   He started down the cliff.

                The way down the five hundred steps was reasonably easy as they were obviously made for Shouels with their short stature and thin, agile feet.   As the morning brightened and the mist rose, slowly dissipating above the valley, he could hear a multitude of melodic and joyful music as the birds sang.

                He remembered how surprised he was when the ancient Shouel had told him that Jon Esierk was his father and he had thought the Storytellers never took wives.   He had always known that Erafien Omely was not his father as he had not loved Dalrosse as he had Aflarien and Shaneal.   Erafien begrudged having a Shouel in his house and was ashamed of what the people of Delgdreth thought of him.   Shaneal had once told him that Erafien had been in the vineyard, after his mother had died, when an old woman had come up to him with the tiny bundle of Dalrosse in her arms.    The woman had told him not to weep any longer for his dead wife and that soon he would find another and know love again.   Yet this future, she had said, was determined on the fact that he take the infant Shouel into his house and take care of him for he was precious and bound to the Fate of the Five Roses and the destiny of Menerth.   However, soon Erafien became the laughing stock of the villages.   If he had not been so wealthy and once, so well respected as a leader of the village, they would have forced him to leave and take the dirty Shouel from their sight.   As the old woman said, Erafien had fallen in love and took a young wife into his life, yet, sadly she had died and the vintner and innkeeper had suffered Dalrosse’s presence as he was so young and helpless.   Only when he was older Erafien did not hide his resentment and many times beat Dalrosse, in savage rages, and the rest of the time would treat him like a serving boy, confining him to the kitchen.   He didn’t go to school or spend any time with the other children of Delgdreth but this was mainly out of choice for he was continuously bullied.   So, all in all, he was not missed when he went to live on the beaches beside Lake Leme nor did he miss Delgdreth.

                “Jon Esierk is my father,” he said aloud.   Then he remembered the Shouel saying that a Princess Marriamme was his mother.   Would he ever meet her?   With this thought he found himself at the base of Mull Mountain and on the bank of the River Grule.   The air was alive with wasps, honeysuckle bees and clouds of midges.   The water was clear and butterflies, white as clouds, flew over the river.   On the sandbanks of the river lethargic storks and grey-green herons grudgingly awoke to the new day and stretched their wings like a bush yawning.

                The river itself was almost thirty sages wide; across it the valley rose less steeply than the cliff behind him.   The sunlight seemed imbued with vitality, the vibrancy of bush and trees shone like a many coloured cloth cloaking  the contours of the land ahead, the red earth of the far bank of the river healthy greedy with life.   Here in the valley he felt, after the tiring walk through Soen the long climb down to the river, such a peace, a buzzing joy of life and a new springtime.   Each step he took Dalrosse felt he was an explorer venturing into an uncharted world.   All about him there was a diversity of a new world, uncountable animals and birds, flowers that he had no names for.   He felt that he had fallen from a world of hate and bloodshed into a paradise.   The Shouel sat upon a rock beside a pool and became entranced by a water snake, twisting and turning like a black necklace.

                Now the heat of the morning made him feel lethargic.   He lay back and closed his eyes, recalling a story Jon Esierk had told the lake folk in the Inn.   Dalrosse was hidden, forgotten by the enraptured listeners.   The sound of his real father’s voice echoed in his ears.

                Shush now and listen. 

 Long, long ago in a mountain cave beyond the Wastes of Drendunde a child, Astor, was born.   His parent’s names were Ely and Maronel. They were herders of the great half-horned goats in the pasture in the high plateau above their simple home.   Unfortunately, there was a vicious storm of fierce ice and snow which lasted for months.   One by one their flock died and Astor’s parents feared that he would die.   The storm never seemed to abate and for over a year it raged and raged.   Soon the whole flock was dead and soon the family would die of hunger.   So, Astor’s parents decided, although it broke their hearts, that they should travel through the storm down the mountain to a caravan site where they could sell their son to slave traders in the hope that he would be sold to some people who could take care of him better than they.   Ely and Maronel returned to the mountains and Astor never saw them again.   Since he was only five years old he only recalled them in lost dreams and déjà vu.   He was whipped and beaten across the Wastes of Drendunde, yet survived on the long march along the slave route that passed through the forest of Soen to the market town of Eaun.

Astor was sold to a priest of Ashenmoire, Han, and became an acolyte of the Black Rose which he served and tended.   As he grew older Astor became a priest and in middle age was appointed the Guardian of the Rose, the highest priest of Ashenmoire because he was knowledgeable of the subtleties and needs of the Black Rose.   Under his guardianship the power over the Rose grew and there was a summer time in the land that the people of Menerth had not known before.   Since the death of Astor, no priest or guardian could truly fill his place.   The Rose diminished and the poison in the hearts of men and Shouels took hold once more in Menerth.   Yet, it is foretold, or perhaps a mere wish of a mourning world, that a new Guardian, as powerful as Astor, and as pure in heart, shall come to Ashenmoire and heal the sickness in the Rose.   One, it is said, will come who has gathered the fruits of the Five Roses and with his healing hand imbue new sustenance into the Rose of Ashenmoire and once more heal the sickness of Menerth.

                Dalrosse woke from his reverie.   When he had first heard the tale of Astor he’d thought so little of it, a pleasing child’s story to bring false hope into men’s hearts.   Only a story.   Yet, in the echoing memory of it he had felt Jon Esierk’s eyes upon him and the piercing blue of his gaze instilled a hope in Dalrosse’s heart, a kindling of purpose.   The ancient Shouel had said that he would find the path of his destiny at the foot of the Mull Mountain and it seemed that despite his need to search for Shaneal and Aflarien, in truth, he should go in search of the fabled Five Roses and somehow heal The Black Rose of Ashenmoire.

 

Chapter Nine