The Arkanist

The Red Hand

Chapter 3

The Red Hand

Visir nudged the single page of parchment out onto the round wooden table. The bloodied hand glowed darkly in the ruddy torchlight and the words beneath danced with light. Every time he looked at the hand, he saw Ior lying face down on the floor, dead. An inner hatred flared within him, great and powerful. He never forgave and he never forgot.

         Ioden sat beside him, garbed in long robes of red velvet trimmed in gilded lace that glinted in the flickering light. His dark skin danced with warmth and his hair was pulled back and glistened with oil. Around his neck hung golden chains and his ears drooped with the weight of gilded medallions. The gash on his face still glowed red, inflamed and grotesque, walled with dry cracked blood.

         In the tight confines of the circular room, Ioden and Visir were accompanied with five others, who sat beside them in the darkness. A man in a black cloak and a pale face spoke at the sight of the hand. “How did you come by this, Visir?” he asked in a thick Kharaki accent.

         “What does it matter, Rahs?” said a man from Saem, with thin brown hair and a brown leather coat. “Either way, this is significant.”

         “Indeed it is, Daem,” said Visir. “This letter laid on the floor of my home, written with the blood of my servant Ior who stood guard for me a few nights ago.”

         “Where were you?” asked a man named Dockz, from Khondor, along the Mountains. He wore a long hood that veiled his eyes. “Seeing what had happened to Ior, you have been granted lucky by the gods above. The Gods of Old Vhalar.”

         “I did not gather you today to dispute the gods,” said Visir.

         “Then why have you brought us here?” asked Rahs. “A strange time of the year for us to meet, is it not?”

         “I summoned you all here because of what Ioden has told me and what the death of Ior confirms." Visir spoke with a calm control. "Upon our meeting in the Temple of Qvas, Ioden spoke of how he acquired that gash. He says the varran have come back. These men who did this to him were no mere Snatcher or rogue Scirr. They were direct servants of the Enemy, sent down from Harfir.”

         “How do you know this?” said Dockz. “They could have been sent anywhere. They might not have even been from Moram.”

         “What other creatures would dare ride a varran?” said Ioden. “Besides, we have proof they were after us.”

         “What proof? I see nothing,” said Daem.

         “Read,” said Visir, pushing the parchment in front of the man of Saem.

         Daem narrowed his eyes and read the spidery text beneath the red hand. “How do you know?”

         “It was written with Ior’s blood,” said Visir. “My room was ravaged as if a great wind had barreled through and scattered everything across the floor. I tell you they were looking for something. Something that I had.”

         “More like someone,” said Lorad, a man of Eaxos, garbed in fine silks from the Isles of Qethos.

         “Indeed,” said Rhas sharply, “They were looking for you, Visir.”

         “I know,” said Visir darkly. “They know, it says it on the parchment. They have wind of our rebellion.”

         “But how?” asked a man cloaked in grey woolen robes of the far north, of the great city of Vaelon, Lord Vhssar. “How could they have possibly know? We have been as quiet as possible.”