The Withered Land: Dragons and Marauders

Dragons and Marauders, Part Twenty-Two

Karliandras Dru'ell, Grand Vizier to Kolag Y'phree, he who was called the Lord-Marshal of the Western Plains and the territorial High-Protector of Niyaddour-Buried and Niyaddour-Reborn, was alone and lost in thought when they came for her. She'd been in the midst of reviewing her latest solar circumnavigational logs against prior almanac information from her collection of older star maps when the Centurion-Major in Y'phree's internal council service came to her library-sanctum to fetch her. The Centurion-Major was accompanied by a pair of Yeoman Goh-Murkeu swordsmen, an athletic, fresh-faced young man and an even younger, lithe and sinuous woman warrior, both of whom were part of a small military unit that acted as palatial Honor Guardsmen to the Warlord and his council members.

"We apologize for the intrusion, but you are needed to advise His Excellency the Warlord in a pressing matter of immediate diplomatic importance," the Centurion-Major said officiously. "There are guests visiting at the palace from outside the Forever Plain. The Warlord suggests you bring your most recently revised editions of scientific texts and encyclopedic journals with you. Will you require assistance transporting these texts and documents?"

Karliandras looked at the Goh-Murkeu swordsmen and frowned. The Centurion-Major was dressed in the standard daily duties uniform given the command officers under Kolag Y'phree, that being a form-fitting, high-collared tunic of metallic gray-hematite cloth fitted with flexible plates of obsidian-hued trauma armor. It was a dour and solemn uniform denoting a serious collectivist, authoritarian attitude. However, the uniform for the Goh-Murkeu was vastly different, hinting at an older and wilder, more barbaric warrior culture prone to heathen excesses. Dressed in gray and crimson, gold-belted robes over wide-legged pantaloons, the cuffs tucked into band-wrapped, wooden-soled sandal footwear, they carried dual curved shamshir-like swords in shiny, lacquered scabbards. On their scarred and calloused hands, they wore fingerless mesh-gloves fitted with metal knuckle-studs. A wide metal collar-guard encircled each of their necks, the guard decorated with primitive images of pagan spirit-creatures. The pair didn't particularly strike Karliandras as having accompanied the Centurion-Major simply for the purpose of carrying her dusty books.

"You honor me with your courteous offer of assistance. However, I will be quite fine carrying my own materials, thank you," she said. Inwardly, she wearily wondered what aggravating insanity Kolag Y'phree was in the midst of perpetrating now.

The Centurion-Major nodded unsmilingly and gave her a short bow. He led the swordsmen over to one side of the small library's foyer, the side where they could easily survey the corridor outside the room and see out the room's single, wide window, where they waited for her to prepare herself to be accompanied down to the motorized, ancient swift-carriage no doubt waiting at her front doors. She found their caution to be more than a little unsettling. They acted as if they expected someone or something in her employ or in her thrall to attack them. The various whys behind that theorized supposition could be disastrous for her.

What did Kolag Y'phree know?

She knew better than to ask the Centurion-Major. If the Warlord's motives or plans had been shared with him, he would not reveal them to her and if she questioned him about the reason for his and his team's caution in her presence, it would likely unintentionally spark in them a suspicion that maybe there were particulars in her affairs that, indeed, should be investigated.

She went to her closet, gingerly changed her footwear from the soft and comfortable slippers she wore in her chambers to the pillow-soled, braided boot-sandals she reserved for public appearances, and retrieved her voluminous cloak, wrapping herself in its soothing, conductive neuro-analgesic folds with just the barest of whimpers as it touched her perpetually-aggrieved flesh. The Warlord knew full well how much travel through the physical world outside her specially-modified laboratory and living quarters hurt her. Generally, he was quite solicitous of her neurological disorder, but obviously he was going to use this situation to remind her of her vulnerability and of his power over her.