The Blighted City_The Fractured Tapestry by Scott Kaelen

Author:Scott Kaelen [Kaelen, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1976823404
Published: 2018-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

AMMENFAR

Oriken sweated beneath his fleece-lined jacket. His sodden trousers chafed against his thighs. The rain drummed upon his hat’s wide brim. He was in no mood for politeness, and certainly in no mood to be subservient to anyone, least of all a king.

This whole fiasco has gone to cowshit, he thought. And now I’m soaked to the skin on the summons of some turgid cock of a king. The nerve of it!

With the deluge blanketing the city in a darkened shroud, there wasn’t a single positive thing he could see at that moment. “Shouldn’t have camped last night,” he mumbled into the wind and rain. “Should’ve kept on walking.” A gust of wind lashed into his face, and he pulled the hat tighter onto his head.

Gorven was setting a quick pace for the castle. Occasionally Oriken would glance to the side to see a lone figure, or two or three, stood behind panes of glass or open shutters in the shade of their houses, looking out at the so-called ‘outlanders’ as he and Jalis passed swiftly by with Gorven Althalus. Silent, staring, blighted figures, every last one of them. All the while, the hulk of Lachyla Castle loomed on its low hill at the rear of the storm-darkened cityscape, its domes and towers and spires melting into the louring squall.

Thank the stars we done away with the rest of those things long ago. Who wants an unsightly horror like that as a neighbour? I’d say curse this whole city if someone hadn’t beaten me to it. His earlier suggestion of looting the place seemed now a naive and wholly unsavoury notion.

To Gorven’s other side, Jalis’s shorter legs were working double-time to keep up. She held tight to the hood of her cloak as the wind whipped it around, exposing her drenched leggings to more punishment from the storm. “What is this all about?” she asked, spitting the rain from her lips. “What does Mallak want with Oriken? And why only him? Are we heading willingly towards trouble?”

“Whatever the reason,” Oriken shouted across to her, “he’d better have a solution that’ll help Dagra.” To Gorven, he said, “I don’t care for being called on the whim of this Mallak fellow. He may be king here, but he’s no king of mine. Himaera got rid of his sort with the Uprising, and it’s doing fine without them.”

Gorven’s hair was plastered to his scalp like a skullcap, but he seemed almost to be enjoying the downpour. “Not that I’ve experienced a post-Uprising Himaera,” he said, “but I don’t entirely disagree with you. As to why you’ve been summoned, though, I’m afraid I cannot say.”

“Cannot?” Oriken asked. “Or will not?”

“Cannot. King Mallak shares his thoughts only when he chooses, just as I have closed my mind while we speak now.”

“It doesn’t surprise me,” Oriken said. “He doesn’t exactly win votes as the most benevolent leader. Paranoid and isolationist, history says. Shut the gates to keep the influence of the other kingdoms away from his own.

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