Prince Walder was somewhere south of forty years old, had a warrior’s body and a cleanly shaved face, and from beneath his hood poked hair that was in the early stages of greying.
He arrived with five other men, which Irina supposed counted as a small retinue for a king’s son, and all wore sword belts and clothes of fine make but muted colours. The man took the interior in, then walked over to their table.
“Good evening,” he said, in a refined version of the West accent. “I am surprised to see you again,” he added to Irina.
He turned to the others.
“I take it this means your mission was successful?”
“It was,” Jon said. “Though only narrowly. That knife of yours did work.”
“A strange little thing, isn’t it?”
Walder held his hand out and Jon returned the knife.
“Well, this is excellent,” he said, turning back to Irina. “I ought to be able to finish this whole matter off in one sitting.”
“So you simply want an honest account of my experiences?” Irina asked him.
“Of your impression of the Bright Lords. All shall become clear once my counterpart arrives.”
He pointed off to the far corner.
“My party and I shall be over there. I will send for you when needed.”
With that the incognito prince walked off. Irina wondered whether the high-born realised how much they revealed themselves in their general manner.
The four of them finished their beers, then ordered another round and worked through it slowly.
In time the door opened again, and in strode another six-man group. All wore those distinctive eastern boots, travelling cloaks, and of course swords.
One separated from the group to approach the innkeeper, while the rest completely ignored their surroundings in favour of walking straight to that far corner.
More beer and food was brought over for the new arrivals and Irina decided to hurry to the outhouse before getting called over. After she came back, there was a bit more waiting yet.
Finally a young man with straw-coloured hair and a battle scar on his cheek walked to their table.
“You are wanted now, Irina,” he said, pleasantly enough.
“Good,” she said and brought the rest of her beer with her.
Two tables had been pushed together for the sake of this meeting, and the two sides sat opposite one another. She was directed to a stool on the side, placed halfway between them. Prince Walder sat in the centre, of course, and opposite him sat...
The man was a few years older than his counterpart. Piercing eyes sat beneath a heavy brow, his hair reached his shoulders and he had a small, perfectly trimmed beard. And through some odd quirk of the years he was greying, but only on the left side.
Prince Kalgan. Brother to the eastern king. Sorcerer, and leader of that awful invasion that had preceded the Demon War.
“Yes, I am Prince Kalgan,” the man said in reaction to her stare. “For all that this affair is meant to be discreet.”
His voice was strong and largely inflectionless. Somehow it fit those eyes just perfectly.
“Greetings,” was all Irina could think to say.
“So you are that freed chalu,” he went on. “Interesting.”
“What exactly does West and East want from me?” she asked.
“We are here to discuss the Bright Lords,” Walder said. “Their intentions and what to do about them. And I understand they keep their slaves in full confidence.”
“They have no reason not to,” Irina said. “Their control cannot be defied. There is no danger of betrayal.”
“Enviable, I’ll admit,” Kalgan said. “But worrying when it is your neighbour. Especially when said neighbour is holding onto lands that belong to you by old right.”
Walder turned a decidedly neutral gaze to Kalgan for a moment, then addressed Irina again.
“They have already swallowed up one kingdom and remade it as they saw fit. Does anything at all remain of the old system?”
“Very little,” Irina told him. “A few of the old lords remain as... regional overseers, one might say. Which a landed lord is, I suppose. But they have no special rights in the reign of the Bright Lords. No one does.”
“Save the Bright Lords themselves, of course,” Walder pointed out.
“The mystics who brought them into our world... they were seeking a cure for the Demon War,” Irina said. “The demons ravaging the land were pure chaos. Cruelty. Pointless destruction purely for its own sake. So those men and women cast a desperate call out into the outer planes for their exact opposite. Entities of pure order and benevolence. And that is precisely what they got.”
Irina had some more of that beer and used the break to search for the right words.
“I would say the Bright Lords and the demons are equally pure, just on different ends of the spectrum. And each acts on their nature and can do no other. Crime is a form of chaos, for instance, and often born of want and made easier by unsafe roads. So they act against those factors. The Lords are kind. But they have no concern for superfluous things like tradition, identity, individual determination or other vague concepts. They care about well-being in the simplest terms. They are either very naïve or very wise, and which it is is a question I’m not sure can be answered.”
“But can you address the matter of their intentions?” Kalgan asked. “That is why we are here.”
“You worry that they will in time spread their way of things beyond Mid-Melgen’s borders,” Irina said. “Beyond the treaty. And you wonder if you should act first.”
She had another sip and took her time with it. Then she put the mug down and drummed her fingers on it.
“You needn’t worry,” she said. “Thirty-three entered our world to save Mid-Melgen from the demons, and thirty-three remain to this day. They are not massing a force. And each slave gets a fraction of power from their lord, so they can only control so many. In my three years in their service I never saw any sign that they intend to break the treaty. Their purpose here is to protect the people of Mid-Melgen, and that is what they will do. And as for getting rid of them...”
She turned to Walder.
“That summoning pole you originally hired my group to destroy... it doesn’t exist. I reached the room before being captured and there was nothing there. Either the mystics used some other method or the Bright Lords do not need it any more. I think the rumour of it simply exists to weed out people who would oppose them, so they can be turned into obedient servants.”
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She looked at both of them in turn.
“And an invasion would be a doomed endeavour, I think. Remember, they did break the demons. And you would find little support among the populace. It has adapted to a new reality. Bellies are full, as crop failure or flooding is swiftly met with opened granaries. People are in good health. The Lords themselves and their chalu cannot be everywhere at once, but traditional healers are being trained and spread about the land like never before. Considering those two factors people have little to complain of.”
She went silent again, and reminded herself that her interactions with Mid-Melgeners these last three years had all been as a chalu.
“I am sure some discontent exists, among those who lost privileges and those who simply insist on distrust. But those aren’t numerous enough to make any difference.”
She cleared her throat.
“Have I satisfied both of you?”
“I would have expected you to bear more rancour towards those who enslaved your mind,” Kalgan commented.
There was still that cold focus to him; no sign of whether he was satisfied or not.
“I was brought here to present facts, and these are the facts as I see them,” Irina told him. “I think you neither can nor need to battle the Bright Lords.”
“Well, I am satisfied,” Walder said. “Everything you have said essentially matches the impression I’ve gotten from other sources. I simply wanted to hear from the best source possible before advising my father. Thank you, Wanderer Irina, and congratulations on your freedom.”
“Thank you, Your-”
She caught herself.
“Thank you.
He dismissed her with a wave of his hand and she stood up.
“Olson, do pay her group. As agreed.”
The young man with the scarred cheek got up to rifle through their bags and Irina had her beer refilled, then joined her friends.
Olson came over with the money, divided into three bags. Jon took out an extra bag he’d acquired earlier and he, Elseth and Kent counted equal amounts into it.
“One hundred and fifty each,” Jon said as he pushed the bag Irina’s way.
“We must toast to that,” Elseth said.
They did, and Irina tried to remember just how often she’d taken part in this little ritual.
“And now for that old question,” Jon said. “What next?”
“Yes, what next?” Irina repeated as she stared at her bag of rils. She held it in her hand, feeling the weight.
“It’s a delightful sound, isn’t it?” Elseth said through a giant grin as she squeezed her own bag, moving the coins about. “But we had a vague plan to go back west after all this. Do you have any objections to that, Irina?”
“Objections?” she replied distantly. “No. No objections.”
“We can discuss it all in the morning,” Kent said. “Rested and sober.”
“So we can,” Jon said. “Now, Irina... how about you tell us what just went on?”
They were far enough away from the princes’ table to make gossiping quite safe as long as they kept their voices down. The princes and their men did the same, and the meeting dragged on for a while as Irina repeated what she’d told their client. By the time she finished everyone was ready to retire and they walked together to their part of the inn.
“Sleep well,” Jon said with a tired smile. “And tomorrow our travels continue.”
Irina nodded.
“Sleep well.”
She closed the door to her room, plunging herself into darkness.
“More travels,” she whispered.
She found her way to the hay bedding, disrobed and made sure the stick was within reach before lying down.
Travels. The thing that had sent her away from home, out into this vast world most people only saw a fraction of. But how long could one travel? She thought of the conversation with the princes, recent events and distant ones, and herself. Outside her room were the sounds of the two retinues retiring as well, and in time the inn was entirely silent.
Still sleep eluded her. It seemed only exhaustion would let her rest these days and she simply wasn’t exhausted. Her mind slipped into anger at being denied the peace of dreaming, and anger in turn made relaxation even harder.
In time she admitted defeat and stood up. She dressed, took the stick and stealthily opened the door. She walked to the main hall and exited out into the street.
The night was rather warm and quite still. She couldn’t help but reflect on how different the entire world felt at night. The stillness and sense of mystery still had power to fascinate her, even after all those reminders of the dangers.
Irina continued to move quietly as she walked through the village, both out of habit and so as to not wake up a local who might suspect her of being a thief. She wasn’t doing this to add to her tensions, after all.
She switched to a slower but less guarded gait as she left the houses behind, just idly swinging her feet along a well-trod path. Reaching a distance took some time. Then she closed her eyes, took several soothing breaths, then opened them again.
She faced the night and recalled a poet who had described it as the realm of the future: Opaque and full of dangers. She let out a slow breath. Then she heard the shouting.
Irina whipped around. There were fires in the village, small but growing, and far too spread out to be an accident.
This was an attack.
Irina ran towards it as stark fear exploded to life within her.
Ynglas started waking up to fire, shouts, and violence. There were men in the streets with torches and weapons, adding to the chaos and preventing firefighting efforts. She heard the familiar screams of the gravely wounded from there and there, shouts of terror and confusion, and a concentration of chaos by the inn.
One torch-bearing trio rounded the corner of a house as Irina arrived into Ynglas. They were Tallin and two of his men, from that demon-destroyed village.
She threw herself down behind a cart and managed to land softly. They passed at a brisk pace, and she got up and continued on towards the inn. There were different ways to be stealthy, depending on circumstances. Luckily her life had taught her just about all of them and she was able to evade both violent bandits and panicking locals, and she arrived at the back of the inn. And then she came to a sharp halt. There was a concentration of these ruffians in front of the building. She couldn’t tell quite what was going on, but she had no hope of getting past them.
She kept her profile as low as possible as she crept to the nearest corner of the building. Peeking around it she saw Camdyn approach, torch in hand and accompanied by two of his mail-clad warriors. One of the men already present moved, letting her get a glimpse of Prince Kalgan.
He was cleaning blood off his sword.
“Hello again, my lord,” Camdyn said. “Is all in order?”
“We have my western counterpart,” Kalgan replied. “We will see how his father feels about a joint invasion now.”
“And those adventurers?” Camdyn asked. “My men owe them a debt of blood.”
“The men you’ve gathered are little of the sort. We do have three of those vagabonds, but they will live a while longer. They might be able to tell me something useful. We will take them to Hard Hill along with the prince. You may collect your debt once I’m finished with them.”
“As you say, my lord.”
“Of course.”
Irina bit down on her hand. Her friends lived. But only for a little while yet. Still, her mind worked in solutions. It always had. It lined up the factors and tools at hand, and judged them by likelihood of success. And then she acted.
Staying bowed she snuck away from the corner and to the stable behind it. The horses the two princes and their men had arrived on were agitated by the nearby chaos, but someone was making an effort to calm the beasts.
Another man stood outside the door, slightly illuminated by a lamp within. She recognised him from Kalgan’s retinue and did not fancy testing her stick against his sword. But time was not on her side. She had to act, and so she did without hesitation.
Irina approached him from the flank with soft steps, hoping to get within striking range before he noticed her. She almost darted at him when he moved, but he simply turned around and addressed whoever was inside.
“Well, hurry up!”
“I am hurrying.”
Now she darted, and swung her stick into the back of his head. Wood met bone with a crack and the man collapsed. The one within had just finished saddling a fine steed and turned as she came at him. His blade had just left its scabbard when she struck him in the head. It was an imperfect blow and he stayed upright.
He retaliated with a swing. Irina had never been Jon’s equal in combat, but she could readily parry a clumsy strike from a man swaying on his feet. She struck him a second time, then a third, then turned her attention to the horse.
It didn’t like her, that much was obvious. The violence had set it even further on edge and she only had time for the briefest of soothing noises. More men were coming. She dared grab the reins and swing herself up into the saddle. The horse objected and bucked a bit, but a kick at his sides did send him out the doorway and over the groaning man in it.
She sped away, into the realm of the future.