The Hickory Staff

WELSTAR PALACE, MALAKASIA

Torches hanging in sconces dimly lit the stone walls of the narrow passageways in Welstar Palace. Soldiers of the palace garrison lined the halls leading from Prince Malagon’s royal apartments to his audience chamber in the north wing. Each warrior was clad in the uniform of the Malakasian Home Guard, with the prince’s crest on a thick leather breastplate draped over a chain-mail vest. Black leather boots were laced tightly over dark leggings and flowing hooded cloaks made the platoon look more like students of holy writ than highly trained defenders of the prince. Beneath the folds of each cloak, Malagon’s soldiers were armed with broadswords or longbows.

There had not been an assault on Welstar Palace in nearly a thousand Twinmoons, but the Home Guard took their preparation and daily drills seriously. Officers in the garrison demanded nothing less than slavish – and obsequious – obedience from every soldier posted at Welstar Palace. Many had never seen their prince, but each was happy to die in Malagon’s defence if necessary. To be stationed at Welstar Palace was deemed a great honour by Malakasian men and women, and most occupation soldiers dreamed of the day they would be ordered home to safeguard Eldarn’s supreme monarch. Most did not realise that Prince Malagon rarely left his apartments. His generals and admirals met regularly to discuss the ongoing needs of occupation forces around Eldarn, but the prince rarely joined them.

Instead, he spent days on end meditating in the dark recesses of his chambers. Food was sent up from the palace kitchens, yet his guards spoke in hushed tones of elaborately prepared meals going untouched. Rumours abounded that the prince did not require food for sustenance.

On this night, Malagon had sent word of his intention to meet with his military council: he had a change in policy he planned to implement throughout Eldarn. As his closest advisors waited in his audience chamber, uncomfortable in dress uniform, they chatted nervously about the state of the occupation and the efficiency with which their respective military branches operated. Admiral Kuvar Arenthorn, from the northern coast, appeared to be particularly nervous at meeting the prince: sweat beaded his brow and dampened his armpits as he twittered on anxiously about Malakasia’s naval presence in the south. Admiral Arenthorn was the youngest officer present; he had risen quickly through the ranks after several ships were lost in the Northern Archipelago and the prince had ordered a summary execution of the entire naval executive staff. The Malakasian fleet had been pursuing two pirate vessels through the Ravenian Sea when they ran aground on the rocks that dotted the ocean between Malakasia and Gorsk.

Arenthorn drank deeply from a goblet of Falkan wine and quickly refilled the chalice. His under-tunic was soaked through; he feared he would soon discolour his uniform with unsightly sweat stains. A few of his colleagues looked askance at him as they picked at trays of tidbits prepared by Malagon’s team of chefs, but Arenthorn didn’t care. He gulped the wine, refilled the goblet a third time and moved towards the open window, hoping to find a measure of calm in tobacco.

Back in the shadowy halls of the royal residence, a garrison lieutenant barked an order and his entire platoon snapped to attention. Without fanfare – or even a telltale creak from the ancient oaken doors – Prince Malagon of Malakasia, almost invisible among the folds of a heavy wool cloak, drifted silently from his residence and on towards the palace audience chamber. None of the soldiers dared to look at their prince, but many noted the absence of sound as he passed by. It was as though his feet never touched the floor: he simply floated, more spirit than man, as his cloak billowed around him in the windless inner passageway. It was almost impossible in the half-light to discern where Prince Malagon’s robes ended and the ambient darkness began.

Loyal and obedient to a fault, not one of his personal guard would have dreamed of reaching out to test the edges of the infinite blackness that surrounded the prince. All understood their death would be swift and without warning if they so much as twitched. They escorted the prince to his audience chamber, where the door swung open before them, seemingly of its own volition. The guards glanced uneasily at one another as the chamber resealed itself once the shadowy apparition had moved inside. Surrounded by his most trusted advisors, there was no need for the palace garrison to accompany Malagon any further this evening. There were already four guards posted in the chamber.

Hearing the chamber door open, Admiral Arenthorn took a long last draw on his pipe and emptied its bowl into a discarded wine goblet on the windowsill. As Prince Malagon entered the room without a sound, every man dropped immediately to one knee, heads bowed low and eyes on the floor. The prince gazed across the bowed heads of his most deferential and loyal servants for a moment before gliding to the head of a large rectangular table in the centre of the room.

‘Join me,’ he said quietly, his grim voice echoed in their heads, breaking the strained silence.

Arenthorn looked about the room as the others rose slowly and moved to take their places at the council table. His seat was on the opposite side, near the wall. He crossed behind Malagon to take his place among his colleagues, but as he drew level with the prince, Admiral Arenthorn, his stomach turning and his heart pounding a nearly audible rhythm in his chest, drew his sabre from a jewelled scabbard and struck with all his might at the back of the prince’s robes.

Cries of, ‘Arenthorn, no!’ and ‘My prince!’ rang out across the room, but it was too late. Arenthorn was grinning at the thought of killing the demon lord who had been oppressing and torturing the people of Eldarn for a generation, and he brought the blade down with all his strength.

The sabre flashed in the torch and candlelight and passed through Malagon’s form to embed itself deep in the heavy wood of the council table.

Arenthorn’s face blanched and he choked back a cry of alarm as he struggled to free the blade for a second blow. Two palace guards, their own broadswords drawn, were moving towards him, and the nearest general, an elderly man from Pellia, had pushed his way between Arenthorn and the prince.

The young admiral pulled hard on the sabre, determined to try once more before he felt the heavy tearing pain of a broadsword ripping through his body. The blade suddenly came loose from the table and he nearly fell backwards with its unexpected release. He lifted the weapon to strike, but as he did so, he felt something strange. He looked quickly at the grip to ensure it had not come apart, shattered, or bent with the initial blow, but it was no longer a cunning basketweave of gold and iron studded with precious stones; it was a snake, a marsh adder, nearly as long as a tall man, the diamond pattern along its back as bright as the gold and rubies of his sword.

He had little time to admire the deadly beauty of the serpent, for it had already coiled back over its own body and lunged, biting him hard on the wrist, then striking at his face, sinking its venomous fangs into the flesh beneath his right eye.

Arenthorn screamed in terror and collapsed, writhing, to the floor. The snake fell nearby and clattered several times: a metallic clang, a sabre once again. Through blood and tears, Arenthorn saw one of Malagon’s guards standing over him, broadsword raised. Then above the cacophony of shouts and curses he heard Malagon’s voice boom, as much inside his head as without, ‘Stop!’

The soldier held fast, his sword hovering above the would-be assassin cowering on the stone floor. A bloody hand held over his injured eye, Arenthorn wept like a lost child.

Except for the admiral’s pitiful cries there was silence. Malagon spoke again. ‘Sheath your weapon, soldier.’

The guard immediately complied, but remained standing over Arenthorn.

‘Admiral,’ Malagon said. Arenthorn was certain he could hear the prince within his own mind; a deep, resonant voice echoed like a god trapped inside a hollow mountain.

‘You dared to strike me down.’ The prince’s cloak was an inky void. ‘I commend your bravery and conviction, but you have failed. Now, rise.’

Arenthorn struggled to his feet. His face and wrist were bleeding from the deep puncture wounds. He dropped his arms to his side, knowing death was certain. He choked back a sob and tried to gain control of himself: after all, he had never expected to leave the audience chamber alive. He thought of his father and prepared to die with dignity.

‘You are a demon,’ he accused as calmly as he could. ‘All Eldarn suffers because of you.’

The hollow voice answered, ‘Yes, Eldarn suffers, but only because I take pleasure bringing suffering to Eldarn.’ He motioned to a guard. ‘My coach, now.’ The man hustled away and the still-invisible monarch turned his attention back to Arenthorn.

‘You come from Port Denis, I believe. We will travel there together, tonight.’

Arenthorn had no wish to discover what the evil lord had in mind for the people of Port Denis; he threw himself at the prince, hoping to be struck dead at that moment, but Malagon waved one hand, almost negligently, and Arenthorn collapsed as a burning sensation flared up inside his mind, pain so strong, so unbearable, he screamed and curled into a foetal position.

‘You will live through the night, Admiral,’ Malagon commanded as Arenthorn fell away into a dark and tortuous nightmare.

The village of Port Denis was many days’ ride from Welstar Palace, but the caravan of coaches and riders made the trip in less than an aven. The officers felt the world around them blur into a continuous fabric of darkness; only the ground before their mounts or beneath their coaches was visible in the light of Eldarn’s twin moons.

Soon the scent of low tide and the feel of the heavy salt air permeated the night. Malagon’s coach slowed to a stop on a bluff above an inlet. Port Denis was built on either side of a narrow stream that ran northwest into the sea, its simple homes and buildings built into the sides of the hill. The members of the prince’s military council secretly shuddered. The village below was about to feel the full force of their prince’s anger; it might one day be their own homes.

Arenthorn was dragged from the coach and dropped to the ground at the dark prince’s feet. Waving one hand over the admiral, Malagon spoke softly, ‘You will suffer no longer.’ The puncture wounds in Arenthorn’s face and wrist healed instantly. The burning pain caused by the snake’s venom subsided and the reeling, turning confusion of the agonising nightmare spun slowly to a stop.

Arenthorn climbed to his feet. ‘Don’t do this, Malagon,’ he told the nebulous form standing beside him. ‘These people have done nothing except struggle to survive under your thumb.’

‘I did not free you from your pain to listen to you giving me orders,’ the dark prince said coldly. ‘I freed you from your pain so nothing would distract you from witnessing my power.’ Malagon pointed towards the village. ‘Your wife, children and father live here, do they not?’

‘No,’ Arenthorn lied. ‘I moved them away several Twinmoonsago.’

‘Liar!’ Malagon screamed. Though Arenthorn covered his ears, nothing could alleviate the force of the evil prince’s powerful voice bellowing inside his head. ‘They live here still. They probably sit together this very evening, wondering where you are. Would you like to go down and see them one last time, Arenthorn?’

At last the young admiral’s facade cracked and he dropped to one knee. He begged forgiveness, and pleaded for the lives of his family. He tried in vain to grab hold of Prince Malagon’s robes, but in the darkness their folds escaped his grasp. ‘My lord, please,’ he pleaded, ‘kill me, kill me ten thousand times, but spare the village.’

‘I have no intention of killing you, Admiral. You will live for many Twinmoons, enjoying the memories of what happened here tonight: what you did tonight.

‘Your wife will live as well. She will join us at Welstar Palace. Every morning you will report to my chambers, retrieve her and spend the day nursing her back to health. You will gaze into her vacuous eyes, knowing you murdered her children and killed her spirit. Every day she will beg you to take her life, but you won’t. Instead, you will love and care for her, pleading for her forgiveness as you now plead for mine. And every night, I will send a servant to collect her once again. Who knows? Perhaps after a few Twinmoons, I will tire of torturing you and you will be permitted to die.’

Turning to the others, he added, ‘This is a lesson to each of you. Never cross me.’

Malagon swept one hand towards the shallow sloping hills flanking the seaside village. Against the already dark night, the landscape seemed to darken even further, as if a blanket had been draped over the hamlet, smothering all light, all hope. The wall of inky nothingness crept slowly along the stream, across the village to the wharf below. Fire and torchlight, a constellation of flickering orange and yellow, died out, leaving the expanse that had been the village of Port Denis as black as pitch. Nothing moved and no one spoke. There were no cries for help and no shrieks for mercy. No survivors fled into the sea.

Then, quietly at first, a lone voice carried through the annihilated village and up the sides of the bluff to where Malagon and his military council stood. A tortured scream, like one damned for ever to hell, carried on the night air.

‘Ah,’ Malagon said, amused, ‘that will be your wife, Admiral.’ Motioning to two generals nearby, he added, ‘Run and fetch her, will you?’

Admiral Kuvar Arenthorn of Port Denis knelt in the dirt above his village screaming into the night. He began with a plea for forgiveness to the souls of his children, then to the hapless innocents of Port Denis, murdered because of his own stupidity. His screams matched the tortured wailing of his wife, Port Denis’s lone survivor.

Marshalling his wits for a moment, he sprang from the bluffs into the darkness, hoping to plummet to death on the rocks below, but Malagon would not permit it. Reaching out, the dark prince caught Arenthorn in a vice-like spell and threw him back violently into the side of his carriage where the admiral finally lay still, whimpering beneath his breath.

‘Come, everyone,’ the dark prince commanded. ‘Let us return. We have a nation to run.’

The heat inside the tavern was stifling and the smell overwhelming: a fug of unwashed bodies and pipesmoke, that heady mixture of Falkan tobacco and fennaroot that was so popular. Brexan longed for a breath of fresh air. She had been sitting for nearly two avens and moisture was running down the small of her back. It was at times like this she missed the chilly evenings of northern Malakasia. Rona was a swamp compared to her homeland and she had no idea how anyone managed to survive in this climate for any length of time. Fighting to keep her mind sharp while she nursed a sixth beer, she laughed along with the jokes and innuendoes as the local lads battled to win her affection. The reprehensible – if handsome – assassin she had followed sat alone, drinking wine and ignoring the other patrons.

She had tracked the killer north from Estrad Village all day, riding with other travellers along the Merchants’ Highway when she could so he didn’t notice her. He had made several forays into the forest along the river, but invariably returned to the road; she guessed he was tracking someone as well.

As they neared the turn-off for Randel she had joined a group and ridden ahead of him; no one elicited more than a passing glance from the man. It was getting late, so she stabled her horse at the town’s largest inn and waited for him to arrive. Unless he planned to sleep alongside the Highway – a potentially dangerous decision for anyone – he would secure lodgings here in Randel and continue his journey the following morning.

Randel was a prosperous town surrounded by family farms that produced much of the beef, pork, milk and cheese, and vegetables, especially green root and pepper weed for Estrad Village and the southern coastal region. Judging from the clientele, Brexan could see the establishment catered for a wide variety of patrons. Farmhands downed copious quantities of beer alongside landowners sipping fine wines; merchants bargained with farmers while travellers passing through took advantage of the fresh produce to vary otherwise monotonous diets.

Lieutenant Bronfio’s killer came into the tavern a while later and took a seat at the end of the bar. He ordered a small meal from the kitchen and a flagon of Falkan wine. Brexan had eaten alone, but soon attracted a group of locals, who were eager to buy her drinks and shower her with compliments. She told them she was travelling north through the Blackstones with her brother, who had been taken ill earlier in the day and was now asleep in their room upstairs.

Although persistent, the boys were harmless; Brexan was glad she didn’t have to fend off less-polite suitors. These boys, however awkward, had obviously been raised well and were mindful of their manners, even six or seven drinks into their clumsy seduction. Under different circumstances, she might have enjoyed the attention, but this evening she would have been happy to add several rolls of unsightly flab and sprout a crop of ugly moles on her face so the local pack of sex-crazed youngsters would take their enthusiasm elsewhere.

At last her diligence paid off. A tall man who had been drinking in the corner near the fireplace stood and moved across the bar. He wore a hat pulled low over his eyes; she couldn’t make out his features with any clarity through the smoke and bodies. She sat transfixed as the man approached the Malakasian spy. Brexan watched their lips with a faint hope of lip-reading their conversation – but they didn’t exchange a single word. Instead, the man reached inside his coat, removed a small piece of parchment and placed it on the bar under his empty tankard. Without a glance in the merchant’s direction, he turned and left the tavern.

The barman moved to collect the empty stein and as he did, the spy lashed out with snakelike quickness, gripping the man’s wrist. Brexan could not hear what was said, but saw the innkeeper wrench his arm free and motion angrily towards the door. The assassin raised his palms in a gesture of supplication, dropped a handful of coins on the bar and discreetly gathered up the parchment as the tavern owner collected his payment. With a quick look around the tavern, he stood and strode purposefully from the room.

Brexan knew she had to act quickly or risk losing her quarry in the night. She walked up to the bar with her empty trencher and asked the barman casually, ‘Do you know him? That man who just left? He looks very familiar to me, but I can’t place him.’

Trying not to stare too pointedly at the moisture gathering above her breasts, he said, ‘Sure. He’s in here from time to time. Says his name is Lafrent, but I’ve heard others call him Jacrys Marsel, Marseth- something like that.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He moves about a lot. Does a good bit of trade here in Rona… fancy fabrics and textiles.’ He cleared several empty goblets from the bar.

‘I think my brother must know him from somewhere… that must be why he looks familiar.’ To the chagrin of her suitors, Brexan waved airily at them and excused herself, claiming she needed to check on her sick sibling. Hurrying upstairs, she moved along the second-floor hall to a window that overlooked the innkeeper’s stables. She peered back down the hall to be certain she hadn’t been followed, then pushed open the window and leaped out onto a pile of firewood stacked neatly against the wall.