As Maerillus walked, an unseen figure slipped in behind him unaware. For the first time in a long time, he was free to walk alone, and before he eventually met up with Davin and Niam later in the evening, he wanted nothing more than to find a quiet spot and soak in the solitude.
The only problem was that the end of the trade conference signaled the busiest time of the year for Pirim Village. Maerillus always thought that it was ironic how quiet the place became just a few days later. Soon, Maerillus’s father and Lord Joachim, along with other lords who sat on the assembly would make their last trip to Kalavere and to Pallodine to tie up business before winter took its first real bite out of the area. Usually he looked forward to taking those trips with his father, but this time he was remaining behind. He had to. So did Davin. So did Niam. His father and Lord Joachim had been adamant about that. They had been discussing about the murderer in Kalavere just two days ago. Apparently Davin had managed in one day to set the whole northern part of the kingdom alight with rumors about the return of the Dread Lords. And if he could manage that in one visit, neither their families nor Joachim were eager to see what kind of trouble they could manage to fall into in a larger city like the capital.
Maerillus grunted at that thought. The Dread Lords. Ha! Stories of the Dread Lords were told by candlelight on the darkest evenings of the year to titillate and scare young children. Until the things he had seen at the Vandin camp, Maerillus never gave much credence to the campfire stories whispered when he was a young boy. As a child, however, he ate them up. The stories told of powerful madmen who had once gone too far in their quest to tame the wild energy of another plane of existence—a place that had been set aside from the world of men by the Creator at the dawn of creation. Their lust for conquest gave rise to terrible sorceries that raised up armies of unnatural creatures and set them to ravage the civilized nations of the world.
A glorious era came to an end at their hands as they fought one another for dominance. Stories abounded of the marvels still visible in the forbidden ruins of the haunted cities in the southernmost lands of the continent—cities where the skeletal remains of buildings rose high into the sky, and fireless lights still burned in the dark of night, though no living soul existed within the ruins. No one dared cross those walls, which had been built, depending upon who told the stories, to possibly keep something within the cities rather than thrill seekers and looters out. In the darkest stories, the walls existed to protect those foolish enough to consort with the Prince of Lies from getting in least they wake something that slept and ought to remain asleep forever.
Maerillus eventually grew up, though.
As he looked around, he sighed. There was no way he was going to find a place entirely to himself. People were everywhere shopping and talking. The end of the trade conference was as much a festival as a chance to be the last to buy the goods from overseas.
Maerillus slowly made his way to a vendor selling crispy sausages with a small loaf of bread and took one, then carried it over to a where a great maple stood, ringed by holly bushes in the heart of the thinly wooded park that dominated the center of Pirim Village. Within the ring of bushes, there was a clearing large enough for several people to sit and remain hidden from anyone not close enough to stand on top of them.
Maerillus sat down and helped himself to his lunch. Nearby, a pair of angry eyes stared with a devouring intensity that verged on murder. If anyone else had chanced by and caught a glimpse of that stare, a cold chill might have run down their back and struck the place where intuition and observation combined. If they had seen that stare and felt the chill, they would have known that someone was going to die before the sun went down that day.
But Maerillus wasn’t privy to such a view, and so he went on thinking as he ate slowly. He could not seem to get events at the Vandin camp out of his mind. He had always doubted the veracity of stories that told of how the Dread Lords wielded sorceries that allowed them to control lightning and turn men into nightmare monsters.
Now he knew better. It was possible for men to harness dark powers and bend them to their will. The exploding boxes and the creature that had nearly killed him and his two friends were proof of that.
A final battle of powerful Mages united against the Dread Lords brought their reign of terror to an end. Because of men wielding forces beyond their ability to control, Wizard’s Hammers enforced the laws established to keep magic wielders from running amok. Nearly every mage powerful enough to be dangerous was tightly controlled in some way by the royal court of each nation. Sometimes there were rogue practitioners . . . or worse, sorcerers. And now there was obviously one at work near Pirim Village. Maerillus shuddered. But there was another thought that weighed on Maerillus even heavier than this one, and he was embarrassed to admit to himself that this was so.
Lately, all he could think about was Betsy.
He had never expected to develop feelings for a serving girl. Since getting to know her, he came to believe she was everything other girls he met were not. Most girls saw him as a ticket to a better life. The ones already born to the same class Maerillus belonged to saw him as a continuation of the life they had become accustomed to. But none of this mattered to Betsy. Like Niam and Davin, she liked Maerillus despite his family’s money. She simply didn’t care.
Or that is the way it had seemed.
Yet ever since the conference, she had acted as if they had never kissed, or walked the trails around the estate holding hands. Her behavior hurt Maerillus. And now he could not stop thinking of her.