The Heart of the World by Nicholas Kotar

Author:Nicholas Kotar [Kotar, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Waystone Press
Published: 2018-03-12T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The Slave Plantation

For five days, Voran and Llun remained near the destroyed Gumir camp, just far enough not to smell or see the horror. Close enough for Voran not to forget his new-found purpose. He felt reborn, even though his body could hardly move without a creaking kind of pain he associated with old age. The inability to move was draining, but he knew, through the weight of experience, that the excitation of a new purpose could wear off quickly. It was wiser to keep it in check, to feed it with contemplation, to assess it and make something real of it, even if only in his mind. He also yearned to hear what was happening in Vasyllia.

Llun avoided looking at him. The former blacksmith spent much of the first three days hunting, or so he said. He had enough food in his saddlebags to feed both of them. Though he never brought anything back from his “hunts,” every evening he stood a fraction taller, and his eyes were a fraction less leaden. They were both coming to terms with a new reality.

By the fourth day, Llun himself spoke to Voran as they shared the last of Llun’s dried meat, drinking it down with very sour ale.

“So which reach do you hail from?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” said Voran.

“Ah, a third-reacher, then. I thought as much. Your kind didn’t do so well after the invasion, did they? How did you get out?”

“I was exiled. Before the invasion.”

“That’s right. I had forgotten. So much I have forgotten these years.” There was still so much guilt in his voice. Voran hoped it would drain away with time.

“Tell me,” said Voran. “What position does Yadovír now hold?” Voran was careful not to mention the Raven, not yet. Too dangerous even to name him in his own domain.

Llun laughed—a grating, bitter sound. “You have been gone long, haven’t you? Yadovír was killed by the Gumiren more than ten years ago.”

Voran nearly choked on the ale. That he never expected. In fact, he had expected Yadovír to be the vessel of the Raven to last the longest. If he was gone, whose body did the Raven take? How would he know him?

“Then who rules in Vasyllia?” he asked, his mind spinning.

“Ostensibly, the representative council of the people.”

The Dumar? That made no sense at all! Where was the reign of terror, the tyranny of the Raven?

“Ostensibly? Who rules in reality, then?”

“The Consistory. We dog-men, led by our great lord and master.”

“The weasel-faced man that bought me?”

“Yes. Aspidían.”

Voran filed away all the questions about him for another time. He was pitifully out of touch with the Vasyllian reality.

“Llun, I don’t know if you realize how effectively Vasyllia was closed off from the rest of the world. I need to know what happened in Vasyllia after its fall. How did the power change?”

“It’s not clear, really, not even to us in Vasyllia.” Llun leaned against a nearby pine tree and sighed with relief. His cheeks were ruddy for the first time since Voran had seen him.

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