How would you like to read just a little snifter of book 5 before it comes out? You would? Oh, alright then :D
A light
wind blew from the east, carrying with it the scents of the dwindling summer
and emergent winter. It felt as if it could be the last gasps of the final
summer the world would know, or the virulent whispers of the first winter it would
truly experience. There was a fierce chill upon that current, and Morghiad felt
it keenly.
He
should not have done, not in the sealed sanctuary of Gialdin’s white stone palace
- not where the air was heated by fires from another world. But he had come to
accept that something was out of balance within him, something that made him feel
the cold over the warmth. Morghiad drew his cloak across his chest and swung
his legs over the arm of the chair while he read. Someone, evidently a someone
with a sense of humour, had managed to locate an old and battered armchair for
his rooms that precisely resembled the one he had owned in Cadra. It even bore
the same worn patches of leather upon the armrests. The individual who had
masterminded that particular idea must have fought valiantly to have the chair
installed amidst this palace of perfection and newness!
Morghiad
smiled to himself at the thought. The book in his hands was a treatise on
peacemaking and diplomacy between two long-extinct countries, named Kilfrae and
Morn. Artemi would have known the more personal stories associated with it of
course, but she was not there to help him. Shadows danced at the corners of his
consciousness when he finished thinking that particular thought. As it was, the
shade creatures seemed to become very active following most of his musings of
Artemi. That was the wrong way around, somehow.
He shut
the book and gazed at the ceiling to study the swirls of blue and gold amongst
the white. There were things that needed to be done urgently, problems that
required solving, and yet he had procrastinated here in the palace for more
than a fortnight. Postponement of duty was really not a thing that settled
lightly upon his shoulders, nor a thing he ever did, but he had held off doing much
of note since Artemi had departed. The simple fact was that he was waiting for
her to return before he left Gialdin. He had no idea if she would return to
this place over any other in the world, and really no clue as to the length of
time she intended to spend in The Crux. She had urged him to make his peace
alone, and together with Silar’s letter, it did seem to indicate she would be
gone for some time.
Still,
he was rid of nalka and in good
physical shape, if not quite so steady in his mind. Morghiad closed his eyes
and searched the vast network of Blaze streams for any sign of his wife’s. He
knew very well that the adult version was absent, but now he also knew how to
recognise her immature fires. No sign of her stream, young or emergent, was
present.
Seek the light.
The
daylight, as it turned out, made his eyes squint when he opened them again. He
walked to the nearest window, and gazed greyly out of it. Gialdin had become
heavily populated over the last decades, and open spaces that had once seemed
placid and serene now thronged with moving, hot bodies. The more people there
were, the more likely it was they would fight over space and property. The
rules of peaceful living would soon be more necessary within countries than
without. Blazes, but his daughter had trickier problems to deal with than he
ever had as ruler.
He
hissed at himself – a very Artemi
sort of thing to do, but she had left more fragments of her personality in him
than he could count. It was time to do
something.
Within
a matter of minutes he was in the council chambers, drawing a seat for himself
at the grand table of House Leaders. Medea was there, of course, one of the
last representatives of the Jade’an House. Everyone else would have been very
aware of that fact. But for Kalad, who seemed determined to do away with every
one of his responsibilities, their family faced extinction. Artemi had
foolishly removed herself from the Act of Succession, and that meant the
kingdom might soon face a war of the Houses unless Medea named an heir. The
situation was not a secure one. Morghiad very nearly smiled to himself. Acher
had said much the same thing to him over a century ago.
“I
didn’t realise Hirrahans were welcome here,” Lord Collibry said with an arched
eyebrow.
Morghiad
gave him a look intended to make the grandest of oak trees wither away. Keeping
the lidir, or braids in his hair, had
been a calculated decision on Morghiad’s part, and he made no effort to conceal
the slight accent he had acquired.
“Your
advice is most welcome here, father,” Medea said, “Perhaps you will be able to
offer us some useful information about our friends and our… not-so-close
friends.”
When
had his daughter become so calculating? “My queen, if you want me to be your
spy, you’ll be disappointed. I no longer belong to Calidell or Hirrah. I am of
no country now, and my purpose is to serve the entire continent. If I can.”
Unlike
her brother, Tallyn, she did not balk at the honorific. Her reaction, if she
had one at all, remained entirely concealed. Morghiad had to admit a small
amount of pride at that, even if he had always known she would make an
excellent politician. The other lords and ladies, however, stared at him with
unabashed surprise. It was a shame that Silar’s father, Lord Forllan, was
absent from this discussion to add some much-needed rationality, but Morghiad
knew better than to challenge his daughter on her choice of representatives. He
pursed his lips. Perhaps he would send her a note about it later.
Lady
Faramine turned her head toward the queen. “Do you think he should be party to
the discussions we have here if he is no longer-”
“I am
not going to do anything that might put my daughter and her position at risk.”
Morghiad made sure to keep his voice sharp and hard. “The same goes for
Calidell.”
Medea
nodded sagely. “Very good. Is there some business that you can share with us today?”
“Yes. I
am in need of a representative of Calidell to accompany me to Astalon. You know
of my plans there, but Calidell will require someone who can be independent
from me, and they must defend this country’s interests. I know that you already
plan to stay here, so whom will you name as your envoy?”
She
looked down at the table surface for a moment, no expression apparent upon her
features. But her pause was for show. It had to have been. Medea had known for
some time that he would ask this. Eventually, she raised her chin and levelled
her gaze at something in the air behind him. “You must take my brother.”
Kalad? Kalad? Morghiad was not ready to deal
with Kalad yet! Kalad was not ready to deal with him! He fought to match his
daughter’s stoicism and pressed his blind panic into a corner of his thoughts. It
didn’t go there lightly. Blazes! That must have been what Silar meant when he
wrote in his letter, ‘You’ll have to find him
if you want a chance of it working, and he’ll be in a tavern in Curkovi. Don’t
get angry about it.’ Don’t get angry? What
reason would he have to be angry with Kalad? Morghiad decided that he needed to
break something soon. Or have a fight. A fight would probably be less
destructive and make him feel better afterward. “As you instruct, my queen,” he
said with a calmness that surprised even himself.
The
meeting descended from there into dull discussions of the price of wheat and
tax collections. Morghiad managed to remain half-awake through most of it, even
venturing a few ideas of his own, but his daughter appeared to have a good
handle on the solutions available to her. By the end of it, his right hand was
gripping the side of his chair in an effort to remind himself that he had much
of a purpose here at all.
The end
of the meeting was welcomed by all, and Morghiad was the first to stride out of
the stuffiness of the chamber and into open air. His thoughts immediately
turned to the search for a suitable opponent.
A man
with bright orange hair was the first to step in his path. “Alright, my lord?
Where’s your bit of chewing toffee these days?”
“I take
it you mean my wife? Business has drawn her away, but she’ll be back. Do you
know, Beetan, you’re just the sort of man I was looking for?”
“I hope
that being without her hasn’t made you that
desperate for romance, Mor.”
“Oh,
this isn’t for pleasure.” Morghiad nodded toward the area of gardens most often
reserved for practice. “This’ll be punishment for us both.”
The
soldier nodded. “Sounds more like my kind of thing, but only if I get a drink
out of it afterward. You can’t just lure me out there with your big green eyes
and promises of pain. I want a pint of Baydie’s finest ale and some talk of
what it’s like to be...” He looked Morghiad up and down. “…foreign.”
“Ale, I
can do; talk, I’ll try.”
Beetan
nodded, his pale eyes glinting with excitement. Morghiad was forced to set
aside his white sword for the battle, since it tended to slice through and
blunt ordinary blades. That surely counted as cheating in such matches. He
still had the Hirrahan steel sword his father had obtained for him, though it did
look and feel rather out of place here. Calidellian weapons were made smooth
and sinuous like the voices of the men who wielded them. Hirrahan blades tended
to have an inordinate number of extra points and sharp bits wherever possible. Beetan
did not appear to blink at the sight of it, however, and they were soon going
at each other with teeth gritted and grunts in their throats.
Beetan
was more than a fair bladesman when he put his mind to it, and though he was no
Kusuru, he did have a surprising amount of strength in his wiry arms. Morghiad
dodged and danced around many of the attacks to begin with, only landing a few
of his own on the occasions he felt tempted.
“Have
you seen Kalad lately?” Beetan asked mid-attack.
The
question hit Morghiad just where it was supposed to, and he found himself
stumbling to avoid the sword edge that was directed at his neck. It was a
foolish error for a man of his experience! “No,” he replied, “But I have to
find him.”
“Bit of
a mission that,” Beetan said, righting his blade after the attack, “Though it
might help to remember the influences of Silar and The Hunter upon him. Where
there are pretty women, Kalad is sure to be about.”
Morghiad
grunted. His son - the sort that
flirted and chased skirts! How could such brief and shallow affairs ever be fun
for a man with any intellect? Then again, Beetan ought to be the sort to know. “Why
flirt with a woman-” he stepped to the side and took a more measured swipe at
his opponent, “-when there is no guarantee that she will like you, or that you
will ultimately like her?”
Beetan
coughed a chuckle, signalling a brief halt to their fight. “Well, you’ve hit it
exactly. It is like the thrill of gambling. One throw of the dice, and fortune
might provide you with a night of unbridled passion. Or you might get a slap in
the face. Worth the risk, I say.”
Gambling.
Morghiad had never seen the appeal of it. Why pitch your money in a pot when
the owners of that pot seemed to be so fabulously and reliably wealthy from it,
and the gamers so poor and ragged by comparison? Were womanisers the same?
Silar had never looked particularly ragged through his affairs. Then again, the
man had never found himself a suitable wife, either. “But suppose…” Morghiad renewed
his attacks, sweeping his blade down from the air above and then low enough to
lift a clod of earth from the ground beside him. “…Suppose you did get your
night of unbridled passion. What happens after that? Do you see the woman
again, or leave and search for the next one?”
“Leave.
Almost invariably. You don’t want to risk it being less than-” The soldier
parried clumsily. “-perfect later.”
“Why?”
Morghiad had endured one or two rather imperfect arguments with Artemi, and had
slept uneasily beside her on some nights, but to give up her company over those
trivialities – that was utter nonsense. And when the difficult times came, the
sad times, whom would he want at his side but the woman he loved?
Beetan
stopped fighting again. “Because it’s nice to reminisce over later, and nothing
will ever mar the memory of it. Look, we don’t all get to meet our vanha-sielu,
warrior soul mates who think the same as we do. I had a wife once, and she was
alright, but she didn’t like drink. And I like drink. So the drink stayed.”
“Artemi
and I do not think in the same manner. And I would have given up drinking water
for her if she asked it of me.”
The
soldier screwed up his face. “Are you trying to put me off my stride by making
me feel sick?” He drew his blade into a spinning side-slash, saying afterward,
“But the fact remains. I bet Artemi never tried to change you. I’m me, and my
wife didn’t like the part of me that enjoys being drunk. So follocks to it.”
There were aspects of Morghiad that Artemi had
tried to meddle with, principally the monster that lived in his head. Though,
as much an integral part of him as that seemed to be, Morghiad didn’t much like
it either. At the end of his battle with Beetan, Morghiad came to a conclusion
he had not expected to reach at all. Perhaps it was cynical, but for all of
their bravado and easy charm, the one thing all womanisers appeared to have in
common - the one thing that drove their reasoning - was a fear of what women
might one day do to them.
Love this series! Thank you for the sample of the next book. Any idea when we will get to enjoy the rest of it?
ReplyDeleteHello - glad you like it! Yes, it's still under construction. I keep writing it in fits and starts, but I'm hoping to have it done within the month. Updates to follow soon...
ReplyDeleteYay! Thank you - can't wait!
DeleteDear commenter/commentator/commenteer,
DeleteVolume 5 is now available for pre-order at several outlets. Hooray! Please check out the "Where to Buy" links here:
http://cityofblaze.blogspot.co.uk/p/buy.html