‘I…I…’
He was lost for words. He knew Desri was right.
If he really believed the Frendens’ daughter had been lost to the Officer Training Academy, he could have notified their official body of Clearen’s loss. He could have demanded a ‘Triple E’ – an ‘Exercise Expedience Expenses’ payment.
His confusion abruptly vanished, replaced by intense anger once more.
‘This witch, Desri! You see how she’s even coming between you and me, father and daughter? The power she has! Thousands of years she’s ruled now, Desri! Never aging! It’s her, don’t you see? She’s responsible for the Disappearance. She bathes in their blood! Feasts on their flesh, like they’re some buisoar–’
‘These are all just evil rumours, dad! Stupid myths!’
Desri knew from experience that it was useless to try and reason with her father over this. She’d decided she would have to try yet again anyway.
‘It’s not just young people who vanish! Not just women!’
To Desri’s surprise, her father paused a while, as if considering this. Even more surprisingly, he nodded. The despondent agreement of a broken man.
‘Yes, yes…you’re probably right, Desri.’
He reached out to her once more, crying again as they held each other lovingly.
‘It…it’s just that I miss her so much, Desri!’
‘I know, Dad, I know. We all miss her.’
The door behind them swung open as Jaben apologetically peered around it.
‘Sorry, master; there’s a lord, just returned from hunting. He says he has fresh buisoar meat you might wish to purchase.’
*
Chapter 3
1,000 Years Earlier
As Imp’s arrow sank deeply into the charging buisoar’s eye, the beast instantly began to stumble.
It crumpled on rapidly sagging legs.
Hoak wrenched his trouser-barbs free of the flesh. He let go of the handles of the hooks.
They were all actions he’d been preparing for, had his own method of bringing down the beast worked as successfully as it was supposed to.
He leapt free of the falling beast as it began to topple forward.
Too many butchers had been lost to an already successfully killed buisoar that had simply crushed them in its own death throes.
Imp had presumed that Hoak would be fine. That he’d done this so many times he’d simply absorb most of the impact in a roll.
Jumping down from the cart, she darted towards the great beast as it slewed to an abrupt halt before her.
Focusing her entire mind on the strength she needed in her right arm, she firmly grasped the feathered end of the deeply embedded arrow. She wrenched back on it, with all the power she could bring to this one, single action.
Thankfully, the arrow slid free, bloodied and slippery. Quickly, she slid it back into the quiver strapped across her back, intending to clean it later.
‘Thanks, Imp! Great shot!’
Desri turned around to face Hoak. He drew up alongside her, giving her a grateful pat on the back.
‘Don’t tell Dad–’
‘Don’t worry,’ he grinned. ‘I won’t. Besides, I think it was angry enough, don’t you?’
He chuckled elatedly as he patted the beast’s ridiculously thick hide.
‘Hoak, Hoak! You did it! Well done boy!’
Their father ran up alongside the massive bulk of the fallen buisoar.
‘Imp, what’re you doing here without the equipment?’ he continued excitedly.
He looked towards the nearby cart. Their heavily blinkered and nose covered horse thankfully remained oblivious to the nearby presence of the beast.
‘Not that it looks like you’ve far to bring it today,’ Imp’s father added merrily.
He fluttered his hands before him, urging Imp into immediate action.
‘Quick, quick girl: there’s no time to lose! And we’d better tie Greny up somewhere farther away: or she’ll end up sensing our butchering despite her food bag and blind!’
*
‘What happened?’ Imp asked curiously as she prepared the scales and its timer. ‘Did it bypass the nets?’
It happened regularly in buisoar hunts: the short, metal nets were strewn across the wood only as a means of corralling the beast into an area where it could be controlled, enraged, and killed, preferably at close quarters. The netters employed to do this were generally highly skilled themselves, but there were always gaps the more intelligent beasts could work their way through.
Once an enraged beast had escaped, it had to be killed quickly: before it calmed down, losing all the most intuitional juices that had flowed through it; before it didn’t calm down, and killed someone.
As he swiftly, deftly, hacked away at the great bulk of meat lying before him, her father nodded sourly. There was no time to spend just chatting, or even congratulating oneself on the completion of a successful hunt. Every second counted.
The scales’ timers would actually measure when a certain piece was cut off the freshly killed animal, the quicker it was done ensuring the higher prices, the best cuts of meat.
Even so, it wasn’t a job that could be done by just anyone, even though it appeared to be a simple procedure of cutting away at dead flesh: in a sense, the meat was still regarded as alive, alive with its highest levels of intuitional essences. And so all this was regarded as being more of a surgical operation, cleaving the meat at just the right points that would ensure no undue loss of the knowledge-rich blood.
Getting dirt, even insects, on the meat didn’t matter. All this could be washed off as you packed the joints into the large boxes of salted-hay they had on the back of the cart. ‘Time is of the Essence’ was the unofficial motto of the Guild of Intuitionally-Rich Meat Butchers.
‘Dad and the netters delayed it while I rushed on ahead,’ Hoak explained further, while continuing to sever the flesh every bit as efficiently and hurriedly as his father.
That explained, too, Imp thought, the earlier, noisy shuffling of what she’d mistakenly assumed to be a panicked deer running through the undergrowth.
‘How did you know it would be heading this way?’ Imp asked suspiciously.
As she breathed in the foul smell of the animal dung Hoax and her father had covered themselves in to hide their scent from their prey, she was already wondering if she knew the answer to her own question.
Hoak and her father swapped fleeting, embarrassed glances.
‘Bait: you used me as bait, didn’t you?’ Imp answered for them irately. ‘You knew it was close enough to pick up my scent!’
‘You were never in any real danger,’ her father insisted, adding, as a means of changing the conversation, ‘Look, Imp, take the money from the cart and go off and pay the netters, could you? Give them a bit extra, too, for endangering themselves helping me delay it.’
‘And do I get a bit extra for being endangered too?’ Imp asked cheekily.
Her father rewarded her with a spray of blood from his flicked knife.
‘You might get something for giving me extra lip, girl,’ he chuckled.
Their laughing was brought to a sudden, anxious halt when they all heard the urgent blast of the queen’s hunting horn.
They’d forgotten all about its earlier calling. Now it sounded like the hunting party was nearer and, worse by far, perhaps heading towards where their own hunting nets had been splayed out amongst the trees.
‘Get to the netters, quick,’ Imp’s father nervously ordered her. ‘Let’s hope they’re getting those nets down quickly; or we might end up catching ourselves an angry queen!’
*
Chapter 3
1,000 Years Later
‘Has it been expertly butchered?’
Desri’s father looked uneasily at the bared piece of buisoar meat he’d partially uncovered. It was just one of a number of massive pieces he was being shown on the back of a large cart, each one wrapped in canvas, cloth
or even silks – anything that the hunting party had been able to gather between them to protect the meat. It was expensive packaging, but prime, fresh buisoar meat would fetch an enviable price.
‘It’s only just been killed.’
The lord seemed more than a little annoyed that Desri’s father was questioning him as if he were nothing but a common tradesman. Then again, as he was wanting to deal in buisoar meat, that was what he had indeed briefly become, no matter how distasteful he might find it.
‘How “only”?’ a young man confidently asked. ‘Do you have a scale and timer?’
When passing through the bar, Desri’s father had asked a regular customer if he’d mind casting an expert eye over the meat the lord was offering to sell him.
The lord recognised the small Guild insignia embroidered on the young man’s jerkin. Ignoring the butcher’s query, he spoke directly to Desri’s father once more.
‘Half price: to you, half what you’d normally pay for meat like this. Hunted and killed by lance and pack hounds, isn’t that right, Barane?’
He turned to a much younger yet equally expensively dressed man.
‘That’s right, father,’ the boy replied imperiously. ‘Though why these people should be doubting your word in any way, I’m not entirely sure!’
He cast a scornful eye over everyone who had come out into the yard from the tavern, including Desri and Jaben.
Desri noticed that Jaben was trying hard to hide his loathing for the young boy. Little wonder – the boy proudly wore a cloak bearing the emblem of the Officer Training Academy.
Even if Clearen had suffered the Disappearance, rather than being abducted and killed by the boy’s corps, as Desri’s own father thought, the trainees were expected to make a night-time raid on a nearby town and murder a slave as an important part of their military education.
Of course, some of the more excitable and crueller young boys weren’t satisfied by even this horrific right. They liked adding to their tally, as if it were a competitive game amongst them. Barane had the sneering look, a certain arrogant air about him, that gave Desri the distinct impression that he would be an avid player of this cruel, thoughtless game.
It didn’t go unnoticed by Barane that Desri’s father ignored him.
‘A lance?’ With a doubtful pursing of his lips, Desri’s father looked to the young butcher for his opinion.
The butcher similarly appeared doubtful.
‘It can work, provided the beast’s enraged enough, but…’
He shrugged his shoulders, his voice fading off, a sign of his lack of certainty that he could safely vouch for the meat’s quality.
Desri’s father looked to the lord once more.
‘Perhaps not enraged; perhaps not fresh; definitely not expertly butchered…’
The lord’s eyes flared angrily.
Desri was surprised that she seemed to instinctively know what this angry flaring of the eyes implied.
The lord was tempted to use the Knowing, was fighting that temptation.
Using the Knowing as part of a transaction was a capital offence, one of many such punishments enforced by the empire. It was regarded as a particularly heinous offence to use such skills when conducting any trading involving something as important for the empire’s survival as the preparation or sale of buisoar meat.
‘We’ll take it elsewhere,’ the lord snapped furiously, throwing the cover back over the meat.
Desri’s father answered his threat with nothing more than a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders.
Barane observed them all with a loathing surpassing even Jaben’s hate for him.
He smiled, as if he had thought of the perfect way to avenge his father’s humiliation.
*
Chapter 4
1,000 Years Earlier
Imp ran as fast as she could towards the area where her father had said she would find the maze of nets strewn throughout the bushes.
She couldn’t just hear the horn’s harsh blare now. She could also hear the angry, excited howling of a pack of hounds closely pursuing their prey.
Glancing over towards where she could hear the noise coming from, Imp caught flashes of pure white amongst the thick, mainly green undergrowth. With a burst of breaking braches and twigs, a beautiful white hind broke through a clump of bushes.
Imp instinctively shouted out in warning, even though she realised it was useless.
The poor hind was heading towards an array of nets. She slammed into one, the net wrapping around her the more she frantically struggled to free herself.
The pack of furiously yapping dogs immediately followed her into the net’s iron clutches, barging into the wire, into the soft flesh of the hind, into each other. They tore and rived at their captive victim, transforming white skin into increasingly bloodied meat.
Although horrified and sickened, Imp hung back, terrified that the frenziedly attacking dogs might set on her if she drew too close.
With a frightened whinnying, the surprised shout of a man, a richly garbed rider and his horse plunged headlong into another net, sending him toppling to the floor. Nearby, another net pinged metallically as a second rider and his mount thudded into it. A rider following close behind careered into them, also instantly becoming entangled.
As more charging riders from the hunt slammed into the nets, the panicked netters ran urgently around trying to rip down the remaining nets strung between the trees, or help those already caught untangle themselves. Imp dashed towards the nearest net containing its wriggling catch of a wealthily dressed lord, only to receive a furious curse from him for ruining the queen’s hunt.
Imp glanced worriedly about her, looking for any sign of an entrapped queen.
If the queen was humiliated in the same way as this lord, her father would be in very serious trouble. Leaving the entrapped lord to be rescued by a pair of swiftly approaching netters, Imp broke into a run once more, searching for the queen, wondering how she would be able to apologise enough for what had happened to her.
The whole scene was one of chaos, with riders everywhere trapped within the strong nets, like wildly coloured insects frantically squirming in a great many spiders’ webs.
Imp sighed with relief when she at last caught sight of the queen, for her majesty was still mounted. She had obviously drawn her mount to a halt before plunging into any net.
‘You girl! You’re in charge here, yes?’
Amongst all these relatively poor netters, only Imp would have a highly tangible aura of Knowing about her. Even amongst all this panic and shock, the queen had sensed that.
On her massively powerful white steed, with her mass of fiery red hair blowing about her, the queen was a terrifying, imposing figure.
‘Yes, yes your majesty.’
Imp fell to her knees before the queen, bowing her head low, ashamedly.
‘Is she the one responsible for all this mess?’
This was a man’s voice, angry but also surprised.
Imp glanced up. The queen had been joined by another impressively mounted rider, this one a lord wearing expensively embroidered clothes. Even so, his dress paled in comparison to the pure white riding clothes being worn by the queen. Her cloak flowed in the wind like a foaming sea.
‘Not her specifically, I guess, Lord Krag. You’re butchers, yes?’ the queen demanded of Imp sternly. ‘Have you got your licence with you?’
‘Yes, yes, your majesty.’
Reaching into the inner pocket of her work jerkin, Imp nervously extracted the signed documents proving their right to hunt the buisoar.
Rising to her feet at last, Imp reached up to hand the documents to the queen, thanking the great good reason of the Knowing that her father had had the sense to leave them with her while he and Hoak went hunting.
‘Bow to your queen when–’
‘Lord Krag, she can hardly bow when I’ve asked her to hand them to me, can she now?’
Imp was both thankful and a little sho
cked to hear a slight chuckle in the queen’s admonishment of the lord.
‘If the documents are in order – which yes, they seem to be – then all this must be put down to being nothing but an unfortunate event.’
Having quickly scanned the documents, the queen neatly folded them. Leaning low in her saddle, she handed them back to a grateful Imp.
Imp thought she had never seen a more stunningly beautiful lady.
No wonder her emblem was the All Knowing White Swan. Her eyes alone where remarkable in their gorgeousness, their hues of kingfisher green and blu–
Too late, Imp realised she had allowed the queen to Know her.
She sensed the queen’s Knowing rapidly flowing into her, like water into an empty vessel, spilling everywhere, reaching into every corner of her being.
She was dazed, frozen.
The queen could, if she wished, fool her now into doing anything she wanted her to do; and she would believe it was her very own intention all along.
At least, Imp thought, I’ve learnt enough to know that. Learnt enough to know how to remember that fact even as the Knowing swirls through me, to fight it if–
The contact broke.
Damn!
Did the queen read what she was just thinking?
Probably!
The queen was observing with a wry smile. A Knowing smile.
Imp felt herself blush.
This was dangerous, very very dangerous.
If the queen suspected that – or worse, had even found out, while whirling through her very being – that Imp had been reading about the Knowing: well, as her father had warned her so many times, she would be regarded as being guilty of making plans to rise above her station.
She had hoped she had learnt enough to block any inquisitive flood of Knowing: but, against the queen, she had been no better than a rabbit petrified by an attacking fox.
She had even let the queen lock eyes with her, a sure invite to anyone with even the most minimal Knowing ability to slip inside you.
‘You seem to have achieved a surprisingly high level of Knowing for someone of your station,’ the queen stated, keeping her voice free of any tone or emotion demonstrating how she felt about this.