The Destroyer Book 3 (40 page)

I gulped the rest of my wine and set the glass down on the wood next to my sitting pillow before another stream of servants entered carrying terracotta dishes. My servant placed one in front of me, then filled my glass with a rose liquid. He removed the lid of my plate, revealing two split artichokes that had been drenched with a red vinegar, and sprinkled with salt and pepper. It seemed to have been cooked by a close fire, some of the leaves were slightly burnt. To the side of the vegetables were four small dishes that contained dipping sauces of white, purple, pink, and yellow.

I tore off one of the grilled leaves and dipped it into the white sauce. It looked milky but tasted of horseradish. I chased it with a sip of the red wine, which was much drier than I had expected and complemented the taste of the vegetable and sauce wonderfully.

As I grabbed another leaf, I noticed Vernine walk in quickly and hand a small note to the empress. Her ruby eyes looked somewhat concerned and the empress's face shifted to intense anger. Her emotions were not lost on the room and the others stopped eating to look at her.

"He is here?" she whispered. I could hear the sound of the blood moving through their bodies if I tried.

"Yes, Empress. He is walking through the camp now with two others." Vernine's voice was softer than Telaxthe’s.

"Delay as long as possible." Vernine nodded and then sprinted faster than a horse out of the tent. Her movement caused a breeze that accentuated the scent of sage and food.

"Your kin have come to visit me, Kaiyer." The empress seemed to have gained control of the brief flash of anger I had seen. "I can only assume that you are the reason they are here. None of us guessed that you were from Turnia's clan, but that makes some sense."

"Ahhh. It does." Alatorict leaned back with a smile. "I asked you about her in the dungeons under Castle Nia and you denied that you were part of the Two Bears."

"I do not know of anyone named Turnia or Two Bears." Turnia had not been the name of any human I knew in my army.

"You again profess ignorance of the simplest facts." Fehalda shook her head and gave a sound of exasperation.

"Kannath is in our camp and wishes to speak with me immediately." The empress's words seemed to alarm her gathered Elvens. I guessed that whoever was coming may have been a familiar name amongst Telaxthe's warriors.

"He might ask you to leave with him, Kaiyer." The empress's amber eyes shone dangerously in the soft light of the colored shades. "You will follow my lead in the conversation, or your duchess will not live to see the dawn." She gave a nod to her right side without looking at Isslata. "Do you understand?"

"Fine." I shrugged and struggled to think of a new plan. Maybe my kinsman could be a potential ally. "Who is this Kannath? He seems to make you all nervous." They stared at me with open mouths and startled expressions

"He was once a Game Champion. He retired once his sister broke away from the clan of Thayer and formed her own clan." Yillomar looked at me like I was a complete idiot and spoke the words as if teaching a child a simple task.

"Two Bears?" I asked

"The nickname the pair adopted." Alatorict confirmed my guess.

There were a few dozen more questions I wanted to ask, most of which would probably further confuse the Elvens. But before I could ask them, Vernine entered from behind me and walked down the wooden steps with loud boot strikes.

"Champion Kannath and his arms bearers Naom and Gaizka." Vernine's face was back to her usual expression of emotionless boredom. She moved deeper into the pavilion to take her spot behind the empress and my three kin descended the polished wooden stairs.

The twin pits of vermillion coal around which we were seated reminded me of Kaiyer. We had spent so many nights beside cooking fires like these, either in the cave or out in the forest wrapped around each other, loving each other, tasting each other, and talking to each other. I would probably never be able to look at a fire or feel its warmth without thinking about the time we enjoyed together. I wished he was here, but the hole in my heart was now just a familiar ache that I doubted would ever go away.

Beltor cleared his throat and I turned to look at him. I could tell my uncle was exhausted, but he was too nervous to sleep. He may have briefly met Iarin in the castle, and probably knew of him from Nadea, but I sensed he didn't trust the other two muscular men or appreciate the way that the bulkiest one looked at me.

Not that he could have done anything to prevent them from trying to rape me. The smaller of the two had pulled the boulder we were seated upon from its spot halfway in the mud. Then he had carried it above his head for thirty feet before casually tossing it on the ground near the fire. I couldn't guess how much it weighed, but I knew that these men were probably as strong as Kaiyer. They were weathered warriors that seemed used to traveling together. They exchanged no words as they efficiently set about their camp tasks.

The larger man glanced at me again and our eyes made contact before I quickly looked away. Jiure had blamed me for tempting him with the way I looked at him. Was this man now thinking I wanted to lie with him because we had made eye contact? I vowed to try harder to avoid his eyes, though his constant gaze and our close quarters made that difficult. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears and I found it impossible to breathe, I inhaled deeply but felt no satisfaction, as if I were drowning. I gripped the stone beneath me with my hands to keep them from trembling and looked at the dirt at my feet, trying to focus. The pain of the sharp rocks on my palms distracted my mind and I felt my heartbeat start to slow.

It had been some time since Jiure attacked me, yet I still felt the same fear anytime something reminded me of him and what had almost happened. Sometimes for no reason I could discern, the grip of fear would overtake me and it took all my strength to ground myself back in reality and feel safe again. The looks from this new man brought my thoughts back there and my body reacted with adrenaline and panic as if I were about to be raped again. Surely Iarin wouldn't let them assault me. He was my friend; we had traveled together for months, and he had amused us all with fireside stories of his travels through the lands. I looked over at the thin man and hoped that he would glance my way, give me reassurance that everything would be okay.

The woodsman seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts, along with the task of cooking the boar and quail that the largest of his companions caught earlier. Just like Kaiyer, the big warrior had disappeared silently into the oak trees that surrounded the pond and returned quickly with more game than I thought we might possibly eat. Iarin also had a large pot of water he had gathered from the pond that I assumed he was boiling for drinking or perhaps stewing the leftover bones.

"How is it looking, Iarin?" Beltor’s soft question broke the crackling rhythm of the fire.

"Should be done shortly, Duke Beltor." The woodsman smiled at both of us with his casual manner.

"I'm so hungry, I could eat half of that boar," the man that had lifted the boulder said with a laugh. "Too bad we ran out of mead."

"There will be a river of mead once we return with this latest Pretender." The bigger man who had hunted made a small gruff laugh that reminded me of a big dog's bark.

"Why do you call Kaiyer ‘the Pretender?’" I asked before I could convince myself not to speak. The two men turned to look at me with shocked expressions. My heart started to pound again and I looked away.

"This world knows none of the legends," Iarin explained to his companions. "What they do know has been twisted by time and lies."

"Ah," said the large man before he leaned toward me across the fire. I leaned away and kept my eyes averted. "Kaiyer was the name of one of the founders of the O'Baarni. He was once a great general, the leader of our kind, but then he betrayed his friends and succumbed to evil. He murdered tens of thousands of our people when we tried to free ourselves from his rule." His voice was hardly a whisper. I realized that both my uncle and I had leaned forward to hear him better.

"That doesn't sound like Kaiyer. He is gentle and kind." I felt anger replacing my fear. Kaiyer would not betray or murder his own people.

"No, no, no pretty princess," the smaller man said. "The man you know is not Kaiyer, which is why we call him a Pretender. Every few hundred years or so someone claims to be his reborn effigy. We find him and bring him before the clan leaders. Then he is tried and executed for crimes against our race. Your friend is just some fool who thinks he can use the name." I noticed that the two men seemed to hesitate slightly before saying my lover's name, as if they were worried that someone would hear them.

"Iarin was there when we awoke him from his slumber. At first he didn't even remember his name. Then over the course of a few hours and days he started to recall more of his past." I looked over at the tall man and he shook his head at me while he sliced a few chunks of meat off of the boar onto a thin metal plate. "Tell them," I urged him.

"I don't know what I saw that day. Nadea made us all wait outside of the Radicle for an hour while she did something in there alone. Then she asked us all to enter so that Paug could do whatever ritual he needed to do to wake him." He looked at me with eyebrows peaked. It was an expression of sympathy.

"You are all like Kaiyer then? With the same magic and strength?" My uncle cut into the conversation.

"Yes," the larger man said. "Or so Iarin reports. This Pretender possesses our magic. Once Kannath returns with him, the clan leaders will determine how he acquired our gifts and what his ultimate intention was. Then punishment will be execution for the guilty parties."

"Punishment?" I cut Beltor off as he was about to ask another question.

"Whoever gifted him is responsible for his deeds. They will be executed. His clan will be fined heavily."

"Who are these clans? Where do you come from? I have never heard of such things," I interrupted my uncle as he tried to ask another question. My voice cracked with anger when I spoke. My body felt cold but I was already too close to the fire and I didn't want to get burned.

"There is much mystery in the sky," Iarin said solemnly as he cut into the boar while balancing a metal dish to catch the meat. "This is just one world in a few dozen on which humans flourish. We can travel between these worlds. This one," he motioned with his knife over his shoulder toward the pond and the hills, "is far removed in terms of travel. We've had no reason to visit, so it is expected that you would not know much about us or the Elvens."

"How did you come to our world?" Beltor asked.

"There is a device contained within structures similar to where we found the Pretender. We call it the Radicle." Iarin looked from the full plate back to my uncle. "I imagine that your daughter gave you a report on it once we returned to Nia." Beltor nodded and accepted the plate. He scooped a few slices of the boar onto a smaller dish from a stack Iarin also passed to me. It was a little awkward handling two plates, but I managed to push a few small slices of meat onto my dish without spilling it all. I wasn't feeling particularly hungry but the warmth of the food was pleasing and I needed to eat.

I looked to pass the plate to my right, across the fire to where the other two men were, but they had already cut large slabs of roast off of the boar and were eating them with gusto. For a few minutes there was silence while everyone ate their food. The meat was no royal feast, mostly because Iarin lacked the necessary spices to season it to Nia standards, but the first few bites tasted unbelievably good, warmed my stomach, and relaxed my aching body.

"Iarin?" The woodsman looked up over his plate and raised an eyebrow. "If you can use magic like Kaiyer, why didn't you reveal your powers? We traveled together for over a month and I didn't notice anything."

"I've been hiding my gifts for a while, Princess." The smaller of the other men snorted and Iarin glanced at him sideways. Anger broke across the tracker's face for a brief second and then was masked by his usual smile.

"Truth be told, I am not very powerful. Even with access to my magic I am only slightly stronger than a normal human." He sighed and leaned back on his perch. "I can only touch the Earth in the smallest amounts. I can't even think of Air."

"Is that the magic? Kaiyer told me a little about it, but he didn't want to speak in depth." I remembered asking him about it while we were basking in the afterglow of a lovemaking session. He had dodged the questions and turned the discussion back to me after a brief explanation.