"You double-crossing bastard!" Tan cried. Red saliva fired from his mouth. "Dingo knew what you were! I should've listened! Gods damn you thrice, Cassa!"
Cassa's shoulders tensed a little at the insult. "Hmph. And where is your pet dog now, you stupid boy? Miles across the Wastes to save a child who will die before he even gets there. My heart bleeds." The ring of fire burned low and extinguished.
"Alimayas!" Cassa waved his arm towards his deputy at the foot of the gates. "Round up your men and take the boy into the city. He will undoubtedly try and run, so don't take your eyes off him for one second. Lose him and lose your damn sword-hand!"
The guard kicked his horse into a trot and General Jaikham bellowed for the gates to part. Tan struggled to his hands and knees only to find Alimayas more competent than he looked. Within seconds a group of twenty men had him caged within a dome of lance blades. Several pressed into his skin. Alimayas - the lofty guard with the inked snakes' scales - came forward, bound Tan's hands behind his back and ordered the formation to realign. Tan felt the tips of two lances either side of his neck and a third poised between his shoulder-blades.
"Walk," Alimayas said.
Shaken, he did as the deputy bid him and rose to his feet as best he could without slicing his own neck. The guards marched him up the central avenue past hundreds of crimson-clad warriors stationed outside shops and homes, keeping the public ignorant. The sky shifted from a serene pink to a leaden violet, and the smallest of the three moons peered at him sadly through shredded clouds high in the atmosphere. The cries of ghûls pierced the night air even louder as they approached the capital to feed.
"Perhaps you are fit for your post, after all, Faro," Jaikham said over the clatter of hooves as the pair rode parallel on horseback somewhere behind Tan. "I was mistaken to begrudge you your promotion, but this time you have genuinely impressed ... Yet it may be somewhat premature of me to say so."
"My thanks, suh," Cassa replied. "Sol may be a thief, but he is no smarter nor swifter than he was at thirteen. Will he be trialled tonight? How long until he'll face execution?"
"I do not know how Emperor Dashaan will react when he learns that Sol is within these walls after believing him dead for so long. I would not put coin on the Oval Court granting him a formal trial, though if His Imperial Majesty is involved, I don't foresee his immediate execution either. Not until we have some answers, at least."
"May I ask one thing?"
"What?"
"See that the boy is fed and left to rest in the meantime. I owe my old friend that much, at least."
Tan's eyelashes grew damp at Cassa's words; that final touch of concern. Images of his horrific death in the days to come flashed in his mind's-eye. He saw the weather-battered post, the chains, the blood-red sunset; the glowing eyes of thousands of beasts in the distance. Their screeches came closer. His own body lay lifeless, contorted and bloody ...
How would his family react if they ever learnt what had truly become of their son? Just another corpse in the desert somewhere. The more he thought about his demise on the long walk to the palace, the less he could define the boundary between Cassa's truth and lies. All the things he'd said about being important, being vital for something else, had been used just to gain his trust. But why had he bothered?
He dared to look back at his old mentor and weigh the expression in his calculating dark eyes. It was not to be. Tan's captors corrected his motion and pressed the blades more firmly against his flesh.
"Eyes forward."
He guessed he'd never find out what Cassa felt at that moment. He whipped his head back around and glance up at the majestic palace awaiting him in the distance. He could almost sense it judging him, scolding him, and wearing the same conceited expression Dashaan had always wore. The roiling acid in his stomach burnt his throat. His dreams of returning to Almysia would die with him, though he prayed to whatever deity might still be listening to him that Phaladri didn't suffer the same fate.
At least then Tan hadn't failed.
Shara may finally love him, even if it meant in death.
YOU ARE READING
The Venomancer
Fantasy[Fantasy/Novel/Slow Updates]The world believed the Venomancer was dead. And since his disappearance the deserts have slept soundly at night, safe in the knowledge that the sorcerer from the forests will never return. But Tandei IS alive, now a youn...
