The Far Kingdoms by Allan Cole Chris Bunch

Author:Allan Cole, Chris Bunch [Bunch, Allan Cole, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2009-10-18T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE DARK SEEKER

What I write next is difficult. I would pay almost any price if I could scrape this time from the scrolls of my life. Orissa had been blessed by the gods for years. Our sacrifices had been rewarded many times over: the harvests bountiful; the river quiescent; soldiers victorious; health excellent; and our children obedient. Then the gods called in the debt.

For a short time after Janos left, my life was nothing but joy. I spent every moment of free time — and robbed my business for more — with Deoce and Emilie. My wife was all things to me: lover, partner, advisor and friend. She had a head for business and was beginning to come to the docks with me to help organize the trade to the lands Janos and I had opened up. At home she was the delight of the servants — a much cheerier group now that they had been freed — for she relished diving into the work at hand, fearing no dark corners where cobwebs gather deep. And sometimes she would surprise me at my desk and lure me away to a quiet, leafy bower where me made love as we had in the days of the valley of paradise.

Emilie proved to be as delightful a child as Deoce had predicted. She was a merry little girl with plump cheeks, fair skin, and eyes alive with curiosity. My heart ached when I heard her laugh and the moment she came into my sight she would cry out with delight and hug me with her chubby arms, and my senses would fill up to the overflowing as her laughter and milky perfume overwhelmed me.

“You are clay in her hands,” Deoce would tease. “If there was ever a child who was her father’s little girl, our Emilie is that toddler. You had best be wary, my dear, or she will become insufferably spoiled.”

Of course, all was not blossoms under a spring sun. There were problems: Deoce suffered a sprain; Emilie the colic; and a small cargo from the Northern Lands was lost. Also when Janos set out, he left our enemies behind. For a time, however, they were too fearful to do more than whisper foul charges.

There were things, however, that might have given us warning of what was about to come; but most of us had been lulled into sweet dreamings of the treasures that would soon pour forth from the Far Kingdoms. The Kissing of the Stones had gone badly that season. The criminal the Evocators crushed to bless the harvest was a starveling turned thief, who produced only a slender trickle of blood when he was ground between the two ancient stones. Then we had many days of lighting storms that rent the air with their hot breath and set the dogs and lizards howling. Afterward the dawning sun lit the skies a fierce red and thick black clouds swirled about making ghastly images. The rumors also heated up. There

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