She stood outside the door, waiting to be bid to enter. She remembered the first time she had come here, fresh from her training at the temple in Kesh. She had returned to Krondor with a mixture of anticipation and fear, for she had not been back to the city during the five years since her sale to the Keshian. But just one minute in the Father-Bishop’s presence had made all of her concerns about returning to the Kingdom’s Western capital vanish.
He noticed her standing and waved her in. ‘I have something that needs investigating, Sandreena.’ He didn’t give her leave to sit in one of the four chairs placed around the room, so she moved closer but continued to stand.
His desk was simple, a plain table with a stack of woven trays in which to file documents for his staff to dispose of. He kept them very busy.
He should be considered a handsome man, Sandreena considered not for the first time, but there was something about his manner that was off-putting, a quality that could be considered arrogance, if he wasn’t always proved right. Still, he had been instrumental in helping the former Krondorian whore find a meaningful life, and for that she would always be grateful. And, she had to concede that he always found for her the most interesting tasks. ‘I am ready, Father-Bishop.’
He glanced up, then smiled, and she felt a strong surge of pleasure at the hint of approval. ‘Yes, you always are,’ he said.
He sat back, waving her over to a chair. She knew that meant a long discussion, or at least a very complex set of instructions. ‘You look well,’ he observed. ‘How have you been since last we spoke?’
She knew he was already aware of what she had been doing in the year and a month since she had last been in his office. She had been sent to investigate a report of some interference with lawful Temple practices in the Free City of Natal – which proved false – and she had then travelled on to the far Duchy of Crydee, where an isolated village was suspected of harbouring a fugitive magician, by the name of Sidi, which had also proved false. But she gave the Father-Bishop a full report anyway; of her encounter with a mad sorcerer who had dabbled too far into what were called the Dark Arts, and how she had saved the villagers from his depredations. His small band of dark spirits had completely sacked the settlement, leaving the survivors without any means to endure the coming winter. She had interceded with the younger son of the Duke of Crydee, who had agreed to send aid to the village – his father and elder brother were away from the castle at Crydee, but the boy had easily turned the castle’s reeve from ignoring the villagers’ pleas to sending immediate help.
In all, it had been an important but prosaic burden, once the mad magician had been disposed of. The Duke’s second son, a boy of no more than fifteen summers old, namesake of his father, Henry, had impressed Sandreena. He was called Hal by most, and had showed both maturity and decisiveness when acting as interlocutor between his father’s surrogate and the itinerant Knight-Adamant of the Temple of Dala. The outlying villages often seemed more a burden than a benefit to the local nobles, producing little in the way of income from the land, but requiring a disproportionate amount of protection from marauding renegades, raiding goblins, dark elves, or whatever other menace inhabited the region.
Sandreena had spent the better part of the past year in Crydee, and had only left when she had seen the village back on a firm footing. On the way back to Krondor she had intervened in half a dozen minor conflicts, always taking the side of the outnumbered, besieged, or beleaguered as her calling dictated, attempting to restore balance and work out a peaceful solution, always mediating where she could. She was often struck by the irony of how violence was usually needed in order to prevent a more violent outcome.
‘What are your orders, Father-Bishop?’
His brow furrowed slightly. ‘No time for pleasantries? Very well then, to your task. What do you know about the Peaks of the Quor?’
Sandreena paused for a moment before answering. The Father-Bishop had little time and less patience for overblown attempts to impress him, so she finally said, ‘Little that is germane to what you’re about to tell me, I suspect.’
He smiled. ‘What do you know?’
‘It’s a region of Kesh, south of Roldem, isolated and sparsely populated. Rumour suggests that smugglers put in there from time to time, seeking to circumvent Roldem and Kesh’s revenue ships, but more than that I do not know.’
‘A race of beings live there, called the Quor. Hence the region’s name. They are in turn protected, if that is indeed the correct term, by a band of elves.’ Sandreena raised an eyebrow in surprise. To the best of her knowledge, elves only resided in the lands north of Crydee.
‘We have a little information beyond that, but not much. This is why I have decided to send someone down there.’
‘Me, Father-Bishop?’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘There is a village on the eastern side of the peninsula, named Akrakon, the inhabitants are descendants of one of the more annoying tribes of the region, but were long ago subjugated by Kesh. They mind their manners, more or less, but lately they’ve been troubled by marauding pirates.’ The Father-Bishop’s tone changed. ‘We’ve had sporadic word of these pirates for over ten years. We have no idea who they are or why they bother to trouble the coastal villages…’ He shrugged. ‘All we know is that they seem to have a liking for black headgear, hats, scarves, and the like. Where they come from, what they want, who they serve …?’ Again he shrugged. ‘Be cautious, Sandreena; occasionally they number a magic user or two in their crew. Our first report involved a demon, as well.’
She nodded. Now she understood why she had been chosen. She had faced down more than one demon in her short tenure with the Order.
‘As Kesh’s Imperial Court is occupied by far weightier concerns, it has fallen to us to investigate this injustice.’
‘And if I should also happen to discover more about these people in the mountains, the Quor, all the better.’
‘All the better,’ he agreed. ‘But be careful, for there is another complication.’
Dryly, she said, ‘There always is.’
‘Very powerful people are also interested in the Quor and the elves who serve or protect them; people who have influence and reach, even into very high office.’ He sat back and said, ‘The Magicians.’
She didn’t need to ask whom he meant. The Magicians of Stardock were looked upon with deep suspicion by the Temples of the Kingdom and Kesh. Magic was the province of the gods, granted only to their faithful servants to do the work the gods intended. Magicians were seen as expropriators of power intended for only a chosen few, and as such were considered suspect at best, untrustworthy at worst. Many magic users became seduced by the darker arts, several having been marked for death by the Temple’s leaders due to past wrongs.
Sandreena had encountered several magic users over the years, most with unhappy outcomes, and those that weren’t had still been difficult. It was a sad truth that even the most depraved had believed they had some justification for their behaviour. She recalled one particularly ugly incident with a group of necromancers, a trio of maniacs who had been so overcome by madness that the holy knight had no alternative but to see them dead. She still carried a puckered scar on her left thigh as a reminder that some people were incapable of reason. One of the magicians had thrown a dark magic bolt at her before he died, and while the initial injury had been minor, the wound would not close, festering and growing more putrid by the day. It had taken a prodigious amount of work by the Temple healers to keep Sandreena from losing her leg, or worse, and she had been confined to her bed for nearly a month because of it.
‘I’ll be alert to any sign that the Magicians have a hand in this, Father-Bishop.’
‘Before you go, have you paid a courtesy visit to the High Priestess yet?’
Sandreena smiled. No matter how devout the members of the Order might be, there was always politics. ‘Had you not summoned me from my meditation and cleansing, I would have made that call first, Father-Bishop.’
Creegan