Mere Acquaintances

  They were herded along like animals, poked and prodded by the Keidenelle when they were too slow or if they started talking to one another. Roark bore it all with solemn wariness, his eyes either darting around looking for an opportunity or locked on the back of the wagon where Sonsedhor was. He was more than a little worried about his sword. He had to kill someone every day because of the damned thing– what would happen if someone else used it? Not only that... he had already killed some of the Keidenelle today; that would sate him for the night. But what about tomorrow, if they lived that long? What would happen if he couldn't use Sonsedhor to do someone in?

  There were quite a few other prisoners; the line stretched far in front of them. And the line was added to constantly by savages going out in groups and returning with other prisoners. So they weren't just "on the move" anymore. Now they were full-out taking everyone they could captive.

  It became plain to him early on that they weren't killing their prisoners. Once they finally stopped for the night, small parcels of dried meat were handed out, waterskins passed, and guards set. Weslyn and some of the others fell asleep out of exhaustion. It was only after everyone was fed that a great fire was built, and the Keidenelle who weren't watching the prisoners began a dance around the fire, chanting in their strange, high-pitched language. It was like a prayer, but he knew it wasn't a prayer to the Mother. Who else could they be worshiping but the Dark Father?

  As if to confirm his guess, the woman at the front of the prisoner line was untied and dragged over to the fire. The chanting grew higher and louder as the woman's clothes were torn away and she was wrestled to the ground. Afraid of what she would see, he wanted to turn away but couldn't make himself. The more he knew about his captors, the better off he would be when the time for escape came.

  Blades were brought out, and the shrieking woman was subjected to very methodical removing of fingers and toes; then hands, feet, and ears; scalp and arms and breasts; and finally, when she had bled so much she must surely be dead– at least her horrifying screams were silenced now– her legs were removed, and all the parts of her, from fingers to torso, were thrown into the great fire. The air became putrid with the stench of burning flesh; more than one of the prisoners who was still awake threw up his or her dinner. Weslyn and some of the others remained blissfully asleep despite the racket the Keidenelle and the woman had made. He thanked the Mother that Weslyn had been spared that grisly sight.

  He was almost asleep himself– the chanting and dancing of the Keidenelle had grown softer and somewhat hypnotic– when the smoke over the fire seemed to congeal. He swore a man's face appeared there, blue-eyed and pale and handsome.

  "Needringhusshuck," came a smooth voice. Roark couldn't quite tell if the man's lips actually moved, but the voice was clear. At the sound of his voice, the Keidenelle halted their dance and fell to the ground, prostrating themselves. Except one man. He went to his knees instead, his hands raised to the floating face. "Needringhusshuck," the voice said again. Was that the Keidenelle man's name? It seemed unnecessarily long to Roark. "You have done well. You have found what it is I seek. I can sense it, even through the fire. Sonsedhor! I touched the blade once, long ago. It's throbbing now. It knows I'm near! It's mine, marked and forged!"

  Golden fire appeared behind the great blue eyes of the ethereal face, and his gaze traveled over the prisoner lines until finally, they settled on Roark, as he had known they would. He struggled to his feet.

  "You feel the pull, don't you?" said the Dark Father. Roark had suspected the man's identity, but now he knew for certain. "You feel the desire to serve me, the need to kill, the urge to main, all brought on by the tool I've left you. You are my tool now. You are my servant, unwilling or not. Whatever you believe you may be, you are mine."

  "What belongs to the Mother can never serve the Dark Father. That includes people," Roark replied.

  The Dark Father's face sneered, and the eyes went back to the Keidenelle man. "He will need to kill, with or without the sword. Let him sate his thirst on people of your choosing, Needringhusshuck. Let him kill struggling hostages, weak or dissenting Keidenelle, those who deserve death. But do not let him have his sword. I don't want his Mother-stained hands touching my blade anymore. Let his murders be done hand-to-hand. Make it sport for the others to watch. Let him fight to kill, fight for his life. Make him fight every night, before the fires. Let him kill your sacrifices. It will please me."

  The face disappeared into the smoke. The Keidenelle man turned and settled his own gaze on Roark. He smiled.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  As much as she hated telephones, Becca certainly spent most of her morning on it. She spent a good forty minutes talking with the director of the group home where Vale had spent his late teen years, but the woman didn't have much to say about Vale's mental faculties. As a matter of fact, the woman was the former director; she had retired six years ago. And the only reason Becca spent so much time talking with her was because she seemed to be one of those aging ladies who was all alone and just loved having someone to chat with. When Becca asked if Sawnsador meant anything to her, she had to repeat the word four or five times before she just dropped it.

  Her next call went out to Vale's former employers at the newspaper. While some of the coworkers of his that she talked to were interested in hearing how Vale was doing, they had no real insight on Vale's personal life, either. "He was a very private person," seemed to be the most common description of the former reporter. Sawnsador meant nothing to them, either, nor did any of the other patients' names.

  She hung up the phone and put her forehead on her hands. She'd talked to a handful of his colleagues, and they'd all said the same thing about Vale– almost verbatim. The only one who had deviated from the mantra about Vale's personality was a girl who had worked in the mailroom and had claimed to see him everyday. "He always seemed to be the jealous type," the girl had said. "And even though he never was a group person, he seemed to hate being excluded."

  None of the other journalists could give her the names of any friends Vale might have had outside of work. One man went so far as to say he would be surprised if Vale had friends at all. Becca gave that up as a dead end.

  The man who slipped quietly into the rented room Draegon was sharing with Kemeny was dressed well underneath a wide cloak that did little to keep his identity a secret. He had to be Zanthys Advissen, the nobleman they wanted to speak with, even though he didn't waste time with introductions.

  "Tell me where that tale you told came from," he said, more of an order than a request. Draegon didn't think this young man had ever been disobeyed. "I've never heard that one before, but it seemed... familiar. Where was it from?"

  Kemeny had agreed to take the lead in this, since Draegon was still feeling a little off from performing the night before. She had told him what had happened, but he didn't remember anything from what she said happened. He had completely blacked out, felt like he was falling, like he was somewhere else, or even... someone else. It had been distant, though, strange and familiar all at once. It was disconcerting. He was still shuddering now and then just thinking about it.

  Kemeny gave Zanthys the whole story, starting from the four of them joining up in the Search and then Roark finding Sonsedhor. She gave him lots of details, from where they found Sonsedhor to the looks on their faces to the colors of the flowers and the scent in the air. Draegon was both surprised and impressed– the girl could certainly tell a story.

  When she started detailing just what Sonsedhor had done to Roark– the curse– Zanthys went pale. He said nothing, however, and Kemeny didn't comment. She just went on and finished the story.

  Zanthys swallowed, letting the silence linger, and looked ready to leave. Draegon wasn't about to let that happen. Something was up here. This lordling was holding something from them. "Now tell us about this Jaidyn," Draegon said, suppressing another shiver. "You say he's proven himself to you that he's Cheyne reborn. Tell us how that is, when we'
ve seen another man holding Sonsedhor."

  The proud young man eyed the door, looked back at them, eyed the door again, and swallowed. Kemeny, her attention now on him rather than on telling her story, realized what he was considering and pulled a chair between Zanthys and the door, plopping herself down into it. "Yes. We're very interested in hearing about Jaidyn."

  He went even paler at the sight of his escape route being blocked, and now Draegon and Kemeny had him flanked. He glanced warily from one to the other. Draegon swore he could see the sweat starting to form on the his forehead.

  "It was a fake, alright? I had a sword made to look like Sonsedhor! It was just a hoax! Who could believe that the sniveling Jaidyn Huntley was actually Cheyne reborn? I overheard him telling Hoeth Karzark at the onset of the Search, and I thought it would be funny to play a joke on him. It was just a joke! I planted the sword for him to find, but... he never did... where you said this Roark found it...... that's where I left it. I followed Jaidyn to Dracmere. I knew he couldn't be the real rebirth... it was a joke..."

  All this he spilled out, practically spinning in place to say a few words to Draegon, a few words to Kemeny. The little contortionist glared at him. "Well, Zanthys, my lord, that prank of yours has caused much more trouble than it was worth, and no laughs."

  "Kemeny," Draegon said, "but if not for that plant, Roark might not have ever found Sonsedhor..."

  "Maybe not, but who's to say it's really the time for him? I mean... what danger is the world really in that we need Cheyne back? Not to mention the sword is cursed! Maybe this has all gone wrong!"

  "The Mother's plans don't go wrong, Kemeny."

  "Well, the plans of men do. And I'm not going to let this little prudish lordling get out of righting his wrongs." She seized Zanthys's arm. "I'm not sure how, but we're sorting this out, and you're coming with us."

  Draegon raised an eyebrow. "Um, Kemeny? Where exactly are we going?"

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  Lauren, Lydia's daughter, was living with a foster family that lived an hour away from Ighosia Falls, and Becca was actually invited to meet with her rather than do their talking on the phone. Lauren was now seventeen, tall and beautiful like her mother, but she had the cold resentment of someone abandoned in her eyes.

  The girl was snappish when the subject of her mother was approached, and she had nothing positive to say. It was clear that she blamed Lydia for everything, from her first failed marriage to her mental instability. Lauren wasn't interested in hearing explanations; she pointed the blame at her mother, and that was that. Becca had been able to look at some of the reports from the group home where Lauren had been staying before placed with her foster family. She had been seeing an appointed therapist, and there was improvement behavior-wise, but she still had a lot of therapy to undergo. A brief phone conversation with Lauren's therapist– no confidential information was shared, of course– told Becca what she had already figured out: that little or nothing Lauren said concerning her mother could be taken at face value. Lauren was an only child, her father and stepfather had nothing to do with her, her mother was out of reach, her grandparents were dead, and any other extended family was far away and out of touch. Lauren was very alone in the world and wrongly held her mother accountable.

  So Lydia and Lauren had no extended family to contact. While she was in the city, she found the bank Lydia had worked for and got in to speak with Maria Ferrera, Lydia's old manager. "Lydia was always a good teller," Maria said. "She never brought personal drama with her to work, so I have to say it was a surprise when she broke down like she did. No one here, her coworkers or customers, had any idea what she was going through."

  More dead ends. Well, there were still Lydia's two ex-husbands who might have something new to tell her. She wrote notes to herself to find them ASAP.

  Jaidyn didn't like this new man who was bossing him around. Akotherian. What a silly name. It was worse than the names of the Keidenelle. The one good thing about the man was that he knew Jaidyn was Cheyne reborn and kept helping him fill those holes in Cheyne's memories. Akotherian told him things should have been readily remembered but could never quite grasp in his mind. Under Akotherian's guidance, he was growing more and more comfortable in his role as Cheyne reborn. Once, he actually let Akotherian hold Sonsedhor so the man could affirm it was, in fact, the great sword of legend.

  What really bothered him was that Akotherian seemed to think he was in charge. He never actually sat in the ruler's chair or made decrees, but he seemed to think Jaidyn should obey his every word and whim, and he expected that obedience. Well, he never actually gave a real order or made his own decree, but the effect was the same. People he overheard talking in the castle corridors knew that Akotherian was the real power behind the occupation, even though Jaidyn was really the face of it.

  After all, wasn't it Jaidyn who sat in judgment when a pair of Keidenelle had a squabble? Wasn't it him who decreed that any female prisoners should be brought to him for inspection. He had already, in just a few short days, built up quite a nice little harem. Some part of him remembered passing a decree like that before. He shook it away. Lexan wasn't barging into his thoughts now. Akotherian did help with that. And wasn't he the one with Sonsedhor, with the memories of Cheyne Firdin in his head? Yes, they were incomplete, but whose memories of past lives weren't full of holes?

  The ruler's chair wasn't a throne, exactly. Arlennia didn't have a monarch exactly. Estria, the capital, was the seat of the ruling body. A new ruler was voted on every six years. Well, the poor sap who had been occupying the seat was dead now, slaughtered by that woman, Senne, by order of Akotherian. If there was one other person who never took an order from Jaidyn, it was Senne.

  He wasn't completely sure what it was between Senne and Akotherian. Were they lovers? Partners? What? He had finally come to the conclusion that Akotherian might not be the Mother. At least the man didn't claim to be her anymore, but he didn't outright say who he really was. Some sorcerer, perhaps. Either way, he was a thorn in Jaidyn's side. And Senne was right by him pretty much constantly.

  Jaidyn sat in the ruler's chair idly. No one was bringing him any prisoners to look at today, things were going well. Keidenelle kept coming in, the Arlennians were subdued, and surely word was going out that Cheyne's rebirth was settled in the city. Soon more followers would come. Soon, he would take his army out of the city and search for this false Cheyne he kept hearing about, this man Roark who served the Dark Father, killing everyone he came across. He was giving Cheyne a bad name, putting fear into the people and generally making Jaidyn's job harder. He would set things right. Soon the whole world would know who the real Cheyne was.

  But for the moment, he was bored.

  He slid down from the chair and made for the rooms he had claimed for himself. Akotherian and Senne had taken the former ruler's rooms for themselves, leaving Jaidyn the second-best rooms in the castle. Another slight, but one he couldn't argue with. There were times he did have to listen to Akotherian. He was the only one who really kept Lexan's memories at bay. Besides, his rooms were still spacious and very fine. He would have the best rooms soon enough.

  Before he even got to the corridor his rooms were in, he happened upon Akotherian and Senne. They were in their rooms, secluded, but the door was open. As he walked by, he just happened to pass closely to the door, and his ear just happened to lean in enough and strain just enough to hear what the man was saying.

  "...have him. My servants found him. At this very moment, they are bringing Cheyne and Sonsedhor to Estria."

  It felt like he had run into a wall. What did he mean "they are bringing Cheyne and Sonsedhor to Estria"? They were already in Estria. He was Cheyne, and his sword was Sonsedhor. Akotherian had told him himself, affirming what Jaidyn already knew.

  Or had the bastard been lying? Was everything false?

  It couldn't be. Akotherian was playing a joke on him. That was all. He had heard Jaidyn coming and was playing a little joke. T
hat was all.

  Trembling, he hurried to his rooms. A part of his mind screamed at him, telling him that this man wasn't just some sorcerer, that maybe he was... He forced the thought away. He didn't want to think about the Dark Father right now.

  He flew into his room and closed the door behind him. Where had that thought come from, that Akotherian was the Dark Father? He didn't follow the Mother's enemy. But... the man had power. With that kind of power, Jaidyn could challenge the Mother herself. She had abandoned him, abandoned him to this suave, oily... very powerful man. Hadn't he come and gone at will? Wasn't he giving Jaidyn everything he wanted? Wasn't he bringing Sonsedhor– Jaidyn's birthright– to Estria? If he was the Dark Father, so what? If the Mother had really loved him, she would have stepped in herself and saved him.

  He stumbled away from the door and to the ornate marble washstand. There was a small mirror attached to it. He looked up at his reflection. "I serve the Dark Father..." he whispered. A smile crept across his face. "I serve the Dark Father, and I have power!"

  He let out a loud laugh that echoed through the room.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  Denise Pellin was more than friendly on the phone when Becca called. It had been a few years now since she had heard anything concerning her ex-husband, and she was eager to hear how he was doing. Becca didn't go into all the details; she didn't want to worry the woman. Besides, since she and Ryan weren't married any more, she was no longer privy to his medical information.

  When Becca started asking about any peculiarities in Ryan's behavior before his committal, any strange habits or interests or anything she could benefit from knowing, Denise provided.