The Withered Land: Dragons and Marauders

Dragons and Marauders, Part Twenty-Two

Fine. She had endured worse.

The trip across the six blocks between the palace and the Grand Vizier's tower went uneventful and was mostly quiet except for the brief blare of The City's public announcement loudspeakers to declare there would be a temporary rolling power blackout occurring in Sector Three, the Kam'e'flecho District, due to the Utility Commission's declaration that rotational load shedding would, in the end, head off a larger public blackout period.

The swift-carriage, an internal combustion engined-holdover from a more prosperous and more elegant time in Teshiwahur's urban history, was claustrophobic with worn a worn beige-colored interior and an engine that droned with a groaning sound that resembled that of an old mill-wheel.

The boulevards around the Municipal Center and the Vizier's Offices at the Square of the Gate of Divination were densely populated with low-level, divisional corporate bureaucrats, merchants and tradesmen going to and from meetings, license signings and civil legal proceedings. Most walked with their eyes firmly focused on their feet, not looking up, with the few faces she could clearly see set in solemn expressions of spiritual desperation, of stoic resignation, while here and there a few rebel souls wore masks of dissatisfaction and simmering anger, silently raging against their lot in life. The Grand Vizier fleetingly wondered what her own face looked like to someone observing her as she was driven by. Karliandras Dru'ell did not notice any particular increase in the number of urban constabulary or street soldiers enforcing edicts of martial law.

"We're here," the Centurion-Major announced shortly.

He led her up the three sets of tiered stairs leading down the entablatured colonnade to the ornately-carved marble portico in front of the palace.

"He's waiting in the Audience Room," she was told.

"I know the way," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. The Centurion-Major bowed curtly and left, walking in the opposite direction from the palace doors and down the street away from the carriage.

The Goh-Murkeu swordsmen, however, remained with her and followed her, wordlessly, down the corridors and up two lengthy sets of stairs to the mezzanine area under the building's first of three first rotundas. She noticed there were small clusters of Inner Court Advisors gathered in intense conversation near the palace's central internal fountain and over by the Warlord's specially-designated law chambers. The palace was abuzz with hushed activity. Something unusual and perhaps dangerous was taking place within its walls. This troubled Karliandras in a way she had not before experienced. Kolag Y'phree was a disciplined man and ran his affairs with as close to clockwork precision as could be maintained when involving the participation, whether voluntary or involuntary, of other participants. The feeling she was getting was one of surprised anxiety and nervous dread. She hoped that her own physical discomfort wasn't coloring her perceptions. By the time she reached the Audience Room, she was a mass of throbbing aches and shooting pains, even her teeth ached.

A palace guard, a trim, rawboned, young man with his gauntleted fist around the thick haft of a ceremonial war-pike and dressed in a chest piece of pewter-hued plate armor that had been inscribed with the stylized depiction of an angry wildcat's head in mid-screech, favored her with a cold, grim stare and a small nod before opening the Audience Room's heavy dual doors to let her in.

The Warlord was standing off to the room's right side, framed in the grassy-silver glare from the multi-paneled window onto the partially-enclosed courtyard beyond. He was arraigned in snug, body-contouring, segmented armor of overlapping metal bands and a billowing, ankle-length cloak of assorted tanned reptile skins. He was casually leaning against a waist-high carved wooden console atop which sat a geographic world globe made from smoky crystal. His bearded and mustached, dour, sullen countenance belied the sparkle of acute interest in his piercing eyes. He lazily waved her deeper into the room. She walked in...