The Lord's Tale (part one)(volume two)(excerpt)

scene one

If Lord Vyomsi Teranasin closed his eyes, he could still see Ishia, covered in bandages, with wounds that would scar her once-beautiful face. He did his best not to close his eyes. It would ruin his focus.

Zhiv would pay for that. Every scar, every wound, he would pay for it all, him and his nascent, Ornic tribe. The question was how. How does one destroy someone who has already lost everything except his life? What else could he take from the man? Vyomsi tried to ignore the fact that it was Ishia’s suffering, and not any threat Zhiv posed as a witness to Vyomsi’s murder of the royal family, that drove him.

He let only a portion of his fury show as the nobles argued in the Grand Council Room of the capital city, Hurush. Let them. Let their own fear and indignation carry the whole of them to wherever “the Ornic” might be. Vyomsi would follow them and be the one to take what little Zhiv had left.

Not his life, though. Not yet. A little more suffering, first.

Only one noble remained quiet. Lord Felldesh. It hadn’t escaped Vyomsi’s notice that Felldesh watched the crowd from the Primacy Chair at the center of the room with the eyes of one who wanted to calmly turn the tide of rage his way.

All seventy-six representative nobles had gathered, save one. The spacious, semi-circular room, with its rising tiers of chairs radiating from the center, seemed barely large enough to hold everyone. Its plain, white walls and high, vaulted ceiling allowed for no distractions from the cause forming inside it. It concentrated it.

“Twenty-five Dogs burned!” one of the older ones could be heard shouting from one of the higher tiers. “Three survivors! If one man could do that--”

“He’s not a man,” another snapped, while a third, a woman this time, said, “It was more than him. The whole lot of them need to be burned to ashes.”

Felldesh tapped the arm of his chair, the sound reverberating through the chaos like the hammering of a bell. Murmurs still ran through the room, in spite of the call to order. “Have we lost so much self-control, my friends?” Felldesh said, and the murmurs died away. “History teaches us better. The Ornic were the ones who let emotion sweep them away. It made them weak. Let us be better than that, my friends, and remember who is the stronger.”

“Lord Felldesh,” one of the more nervous ones, Lord Pyorin, said. “Has there been any news from the Dogs regarding the whereabouts of the Ornic?”

“Would there be?”

Pyorin glanced at Vyomsi, almost sheepish. “The report from Lord Teranasin claimed portals were used to transport the Dogs.”

That was one good thing, Vyomsi tried to tell himself. The nobles expected the portals to be used, not discarded like other Ornic knowledge. Perhaps, part of him thought, they’re as hungry for the old ways as he’d hoped.

Part of him waited for the answer of Lord Felldesh.

“We have not yet used portals in the manner you imply,” Felldesh said. “We--”

“The Ornic were defeated through Ornic ways,” Lady Gonsin, who ruled lands in the north, said, “wielded--”

“What kind of--” Pyorin began, but Gonsin kept speaking as if she hadn’t heard him.

“--wielded by followers of Toth. It would be no sin to use every means at our disposal, even Ornic magic, to capture a criminal as dangerous as this.”

“Preposterous!” another noble shouted. The murmurs began to grow in volume, and Vyomsi had to fight against the need to shout them all down. Everyone was furious. Everyone was scared. Everyone was praying the days of fire and destruction hadn’t returned, the same days that had created the Rift, a burning that could destroy the world if not for the King and his nobles who held it back each year.