096 – Meet Karen

  Skarg. The capitol city of the kingdom of Krogg. Like many cities on Tywacomb, Skarg had started out as a fortress village next to a river. Over the centuries the city grew. Four sets of fortress walls ringed the central city at increasing and irregular distances and connecting walls divided the internal areas into various districts. The walls demarcated where the city had grown to when the next series had been built over the centuries. The newest walls were a double set of low outer and high inner walls five centuries old, many miles around, on both sides of the river, and the city had out grown them. Some sections of wall snaked out to the current limits of the city proper, and guarded some districts from whatever was beyond. Fortress gates straddled the main roads into the city, regardless of whether there was a fortress wall to be built upon. While stone was the primary construction material for martial and government structures, much of the civil and merchant society preferred timber, plaster, slate, and brick and mortar. As with older cities, construction age and style could tell a careful observer where fires had destroyed individual buildings, whole blocks and a few districts over the centuries.

  Farm lands fronted much of the city’s circumference, but a significant portion was also timbered, with villas for the cities wealthy tucked into the meadows and hills. The area was not very high in elevation, despite being three days travel inland from the coast. As such, the humid air did get cold and there were snow and ice storms in the winter, but snow did not accumulate on the ground for very long.

  A road ringed the city at between one and five days foot travel depending on which direction one traveled. This road anchored various towns that further demarcated the highway system of and through the kingdom, leading off to the duchies that subdivided the kingdom. These duchies each boasted their own capitol cities, and stretched west to the coast, and east past the tallest mountain range in this area; north to the next river and its seaport, and south to fertile grasslands.

  Where other cities were founded on trade of a given resource, Skarg. was founded on the control and intersection of two trade routes. One a north-south highway; the other the Krogg river, which stretched to the sea. All but the largest of ocean-going vessels could sail up to dock at Skarg. Barge traffic could go further up the Krogg river to a small port town north east of Skarg., but beyond that the river was too shallow for anything but personal dinghies. Larger traffic could also go up the Garmad river but there was only one port past Skarg. It was a fortress that did turns as a shipping point for fall harvests.

  The monarchy that reigned in Krogg set its throne on an island with access by bridge to either side of the river, north, east or south, where the Krogg and the Garmad rivers joined. Most of this island was dominated by a castle. Time and manpower had diminished the island to the point that on all sides, the river ran past the foundation stones of the outer fortress wall. Though Krogg had not seen major war in almost two dozen years, the current monarch had taken the throne by marriage at the force of arms, and had expanded his territory to its current boundaries by the same.

  Today a woman walked across the main northern bridge to the fortress gates, and to the guard at the post. She showed him her written summons/pass, and was waved on. This repeated several times, at each portal. She crossed the courtyard, and into the palace proper. Across the hall, left down that hall, and to the doors. The guards stood with crossed pole arms.

  The woman, named Karen, stopped and waited. She held herself well. Brown hair hanging to below her shoulders. A heavy tunic and leather vest above, a woolen skirt below, boots beneath, a winter cloak tied about her shoulders. As she went further into the structure and its warmth, she opened her cloak and turned the front open across her shoulders to keep from getting to warm. Her features were soft enough to be unremarkable.

  A crazed looking old man finally scurried from a side room, and took Karen’s papers. As she turned to follow, the man motioned her to stand where she was.

  Karen noticed that the guards had shifted their weight slightly at her movement. As had a shadow off to her extreme right. The man shuffled away into the side room, looking increasingly mad with each step. Finally he returned and spoke, in the high voice of supplication.

  “Come. Come.” He moved between the pole arms and opened the right hand door. He held the door for Karen as she entered the dark room beyond it.

  Karen’s senses told her that two people stood in the corners behind her. The Queen could be barely seen sitting across the room in the dim light, with its dimmer shadows. A quiet whisper, full of meaning, rustled across the darkness, as The Queen spoke.

  “You are Silver Adder. Sent to fill a contract.”

  Karen held herself straight. “I am.” She held her extra senses to herself, sensing the probe of a fifth person in the room.

  “You know of the two children recently here, and the prophecy attached to them?”

  “I do.” Karen could sense meaning in what was said, like roots under the earth. ‘Speak as little as necessary’ was a guild motto.

  “Good. I will pay you twenty five pounds of gold, and gems, plus reasonable expenses, to eliminate the wizard guiding the parents, and arrange for the parents capture.”

  The Guild also had a standing rule ‘as opposed to other customers, never haggle with Royalty.’ Expenses were a different story. “Do you have a preference on how, where, or when?”

  “Before they can retrieve the children if possible. Before they leave The Kingdom at all costs.” The voice was a dry wind across fall leaves.

  “Expenses may be considerable. I would hate to cost you a good man, should your people get in my way. They shall wait for my signal before coming to capture the parents. And they shall have the completion of my payment with them at the capture.” Karen preferred to work unhindered. Arranging capture was troublesome. Every assassin knew the corollary to ‘don’t haggle with Royalty.’ ‘Always have payment in hand before delivery.’ Royals had a habit of eliminating assassins upon completion of a contract.

  “Done.”

  A squire brought forth a parchment with the contract, a quill, and a small bag.

  Karen produced her own stylus, wet it in the available ink bottle, and signed the parchment with her professional signature.

  The squire handed her the bag. Karen opened it, giving it a good shake, seeing coins and gems tumble about in it. She pulled the drawstrings, feeling them as untreated leather. She took her copy of the contract, and followed the squire out.

  Karen left the palace, and went to one of her safe houses: a room over a tavern that she owned. She sorted the bag’s contents into a large casserole pan of soap and water. Satisfied that she had washed it all sufficiently she set the money aside, changed clothes, and went downstairs for her turn as bar-lurker. While of average height, Karen always held herself erect, and so looked taller than she actually was. She also paid attention to what she ate and how much, and exercised regularly.

  The lunch rush was petering out, when she quickly spotted the two irregulars from the crowd, and they spotted her. One came over to where she stood at the bar.

  “The Gentleman would like to buy you a drink.”

  Karen looked at the messenger, almost ready to give her usual response. She worked as security and backup server, not as a wench or guilds-woman. But something about the confidence and bearing he stood with told her he wasn’t even considering that sort of proposition. His winter coat was hung on the hook of a booth-coat-tree. His clothing said he was 'important' without being contemptuous of others.

  “Very well.” She stood, and motioned the man at the table to one of the curtained booths on the inside wall, as she entered carrying her glass of water she had been nursing all afternoon.

  A moment later, The Gentleman entered, and his man closed the curtains. The Gentleman sat opposite Karen, with his work hardened hands clasped on the table. An older man, but not yet into physical decline. He wore the seasonal business-formal attire of a man of means. He spoke without preamble.

  “You received a contract today. I would counter it.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.” Karen had her senses on full, but found no threat. She took a drink from her glass.

  “You went before The Queen, and received a contract for twenty five pounds of gold and gems plus expenses to kill a wizard, and deliver the parents of the children of prophecy.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Daughter of Oleg, I know the stipulations of your guild, and I have met them. Now speak truthfully.”

  Karen spun the glass with her thumbs for a moment. “You are correct in your information. How do you come by it?”

  “There are few secrets that The King and Queen keep from me.”

  “Ah. You are a Chancellor, or a Viser.” Karen knew precisely who she had sitting here, and was a bit surprised. She let him carry his facade a bit longer.

  “Something like that.”

  “So what is your counter offer?”

  “Do not just turn the parents over. Instruct them on what they need to know to defeat The King and Queen in battle.”

  “You know that prophecy as well as anybody. Only the children can kill them.” Now that’s ambition, Karen continued the thought to herself.

  “Is that so,” he responded dryly. “Then I guess they will need to get the kids first.”

  “And why should I do this?” He had her interest, but not her commitment, yet.

  “Civic Duty. There can be no heir, and The Queen is a festering disease upon the land. And I will give you five times her price to do this thing.”

  “Civic Duty is a curious subject, to my Guild. Greed is not a temptation to me, Viceroy. But you are right about The Queen.”

  “More than right. The King won’t get rid of her. She is a familial dead end, connected to that daemon. Both are going to die anyway, at the hand of the harbingers of the Chaos Bringer. And The Queen and her daemon’s actions will destroy The Kingdom long before he shows up, thanks to the proliferation of evil magic, especially among the youth.”

  “And they say you only pretend to be civic minded,” Karen said drolly.

  “Enough fooling around. The prophecy tells that luck and skill will keep the parents on course. Then there is the influence of that tribe of elves. The way things are going there will be one of two branches of outcomes:

  “The three will get careless and killed here while trying to find where the kids were taken. They will get the kids back, and someday come and kill the King and Queen. On that one, if the parents face The King and Queen alone, they are as good as dead. If the parents face The King and Queen with the kids, the thrones will be left vacant.”

  Karen interrupted him. “So the parent’s need to get the kids. Then be instructed in how to kill The King and Queen.” This should be best done while asleep, Karen thought, already planning.

  “Then you will do this?” His words betrayed his anxiety.

  “It will be difficult.”

  “I recommended you to The Queen. I know your work. Killing the one who… took your sister, and liberating her: that took skill and courage.”

  Karen wondered by what means and how much he knew about that incident from the last spring, nearly eight months prior. 

097 – Karen Starts Investigating

The Viceroy continued. “That tells me you are good. And I remember your father, Oleg. He was as good at his work as you, but a pain in the…”

  Karen interrupted again, partly to salve an old wound. “His daughter is much better.”

  “Good,” the Viceroy responded. “That is what I wanted to hear.”

  He snapped his fingers, loudly, and his man entered. The man put down a parchment and a bag, and departed.

  Karen read over the contract, and was surprised at it.

  “No sense going halfway,” he responded to her look. “Your job is to join with the parents and mage. Take them to where the kids are, and get them. Teach the family how to kill The King and Queen, and her daemon. Be sure that they are able to. Remove the mage, and deliver the family into the hands of my troops.”

  “Simple enough. Where are the kids?”

  “The girl is in Chigoria, a village of the Chithare elves. The boy is in the talent’s village of Kadomu.”

  “Anything special that they need to be taught?”

  “The Queen is magically bound to the daemon. The daemon needs to be driven away before The Queen can be killed. But only the daughter can kill The Queen. The King can only be killed by the son.”

  “I think I can figure the rest. This is going to cost, though. And I will not go into any caves. Five times The Queen’s fee, you say?”

  “Or more, depending on my satisfaction.”

  “Do you think that is enough?” Karen wanted to be sure of his motivation. His reputation was of being a good leader and loyal, concerned about those he had charge of. And when all else failed, he got by with brute competence. What he had said about The King and Queen needing replacement was correct. The Queen being the real problem.

  “Instigators of a coup, and traitors, get paid more than patriots.”

  “Which do you think I am?”

  They sat quietly for a moment, looking at each other. A smile lurked at the corners of his face.

  Karen broke the silence. “Have your men ready. But they will wait until I give the signal that the family is ready. If they come too soon, they will have to face me.”

  “They will be instructed.”

  Karen signed the contract. The Viceroy rolled his copy of the parchment and pocketed it, left his payment for his drink, and contract, and departed.

  Karen had never taken a counter contract before. It was generally against guild rules, and ethics. But in the case of this job, it wasn’t so much a reversal of the original contract, as a modification, and minor extension of terms. The Queen wanted the parents delivered, and the wizard killed. She could do that. The Viceroy wanted the family taught what was needed to do to kill The King and Queen. She could do that, thought she needed a bit of research first. Whatever happened after that was none of her concern. And what about patriotism?

  Karen had heard rumors about The Queen for much of her adult life. Now she was tasked with killing her, via these half-elves of prophecy. So first she needed to learn of the specific prophecy, in its entirety. Problem was the prophet had been killed, executed at the order of The Queen. So next was the official record. That was not public knowledge. But The Guild had a copy.

  It was a routine exercise for guild members to sneak into the palace and copy parts of the court's records. One summer, the guild and guards had made such a commotion about it that an open brawl had occurred on four different occasions. The guild had compassion in the fights, and none of the guards lived to face punishment. They would have been executed anyway. The guild just did a quicker, cleaner job.

  At any rate, this evening Karen went to the Guild Hall, and to the library. This only cost her two bruises. She quickly found what she wanted and copied the passage. The language was prophetically clear, for Karen’s exposure to prophets and scripture. Point blank, the prophet said that the Harbingers of the Chaos Bringer would kill this king and queen. Male for male, female for female. And this would happen before the Chaos Bringer came into mortality. Annotated to this was all that was known about this Chaos Bringer, including a copy of the original prophecy about that person. Karen read and copied all this, then went back to her primary residence.

  This did not answer the question of how, but it did tell for sure who; just as the Viceroy’s contract stated. So she needed to learn about The King and Queen, and how to get some children to kill them. That meant a trip into the palace. While the guild kept tabs on how to kill everybody of note in the area, they had to update this regularly, and that meant surveillance. Karen had kept her extra senses suppressed when she went in to receive her contract. But her eyes and ears had told her much. Her best target would be among the bodyguards of each monarch. The longer lasted the better. So she got her costume together, and went down to the river: it was going to be a cold swim.

  The Palace sat on a large island. The guild found the easiest approach was from the Garmad river side of the fortress. But to get there meant starting upstream, swimming the river, and fighting the current to the fortress wall. At that point the choice was four easy ways, and one hard way into the fortress. The hard one was the only one not guarded regularly.

  Karen swam across the river carefully, avoiding the eddy currents while also not making any big splashes. She had to concentrate some to stay warm, as her clothes waterlogged and started to drag her down. She got around the fortress wall to the down-river side, and began counting bricks. On twenty one from the corner, she dove down and to the grate. Pulling herself down it, against the current coming out of it, she found the hole at the bottom and went in. She had to pull herself against the current in the tunnel. Along the way, Karen’s air began to give out, and the tunnel began to collapse on her, as panic looked for a way into her concentration. The current lessened and the water was warmer, and the tunnel ended as Karen got to the end of her air. She got her feet under her, and pushed up. She quickly surfaced. The air was a bit foul, the water dirty. The chamber was a final mixing point for water from the river and fortress sewage. She could track up the sewage lines and get to many of the secured areas of the palace, but Karen did not want to risk any further encounters with claustrophobia. She got over to the one walkway in the room, used by the service sector to keep the place running. Karen pulled herself out, stood on the stone and concentrated.

  She focused her mind on pushing all the water out of her costume; her balaclava, canvas jacket and trousers, the cloth pieces under those, and out of her socks and out of her low boots. The rolled up cape wrapped around her waist took a bit longer to wring dry, but it was before she left. The water ran down her and off leaving a puddle. Her leather components retained a little water but were all but dry to the touch. As she left the puddle she shook the last drops from her boots, leaving no foot prints.

  Karen quickly made her way out of the utility area and up to the garrison barracks. She listened carefully the whole way with all her senses. The hard part was looking like a shadow on the wall for the few guards standing watch. She simply paced the patrolling ones. Finally she got to the barracks, and found where The Queen’s personal guard stayed. She had to wait for the right moment, but was able to cleanly slip into the bedchamber of the second in command. Unmarried, he was wrapped around a harlot on his bed.

  Karen moved around the bedchamber, a cat would be noisier. First she reached for the harlots head, and gave her a quick scan, confirming her asleep. Then a psionic push to deeper sleep. No sense having her disturb this. Karen then put her attention on the guardsman. She touched his mind. He dreamed of this harlot. Karen took a soft hold of his thoughts, and put the idea of The Queen in the harlots place.

098 – A Queen's Transformation

  Swiftly his mind raced to some old memories. Karen had not grown up in Skarg. proper but in the area beyond, so she had never seen The Queen as human. But the memory was of the guard having sex with a beautiful black-haired woman. But only once, as the binding of him to her service. Then Karen guided his dream to the time when The Queen changed, and what she did to accomplish this. His memories again played out, Karen now in his perspective, with commentary from his memories.

   This guard watched as The Queen stood in her chamber. All was prepared. She was looking herself over in the mirror, admiring her flesh for the last time. She had worked hard to stay fit, young looking and strong. She regularly commented about how she was still desirable above all others to her husband, The King. Three virgin women had sacrificed their blood three separate times for that. Now, though, she commented on a different desire burning in her heart. Age was continuing its inexorable march, dragging her to eventual ill health, ruin and death. She had lost her interest in The King. He still held the seat of power, but their almost twenty year union had proven a barren one, and she wanted to have offspring as strong as she which would strengthen her. The dark arts had led her to an answer. It had taken some time to find the answer, and then to find it palatable. But now she found it desirable, more than anything else.

  Briefly other memories flitted past of the dark haired Queen reading and doing research. Then the narrative returned, as did the guards commentary.

  The preparations were accomplished, and she was ready. The last thing to be done was this last ceremony. The warlock and witch were waiting, as was the sacrifice, and the rest of her personal guard.

  Karen had to suppress the thought that this man had been in the queen's personal guard and thus her personal company for near twenty years, lest it direct his dream to other less needful memories

  The witch had helped her bathe, and purify her body this morning, then departed to the Arbor for the final preparations. Now The Queen looked her naked body over for the last time in this flesh.

  Karen dove into peoples dreams rare enough that it was always uncomfortable, like swimming naked in ice water, or more so swimming in someone else's body in the ice water. But she always marveled at how much meaning she picked up, as opposed to just the memories of the observable.

  The Queen put on the black silk shift and her black robe and left the chamber, her entourage stepping in to plate to escort her. She entered the Arbor and walked to its center. The guards had seen to the Arbor’s construction on an unimproved section of the fortress island, after the pattern of an orchard she had spent her childhood in. After the conquest of her father’s kingdom, and its mergence to Krogg, the Crown Prince had taken her to the same orchard and raped her, claiming her as his own conquest, or so her story was told to her guards. She had been at Crown Prince's side ever since helping his rise to King, and had come to love him, and by extension her own power. Now she was going to gain her own measure of power, though shared with a different lord.

  In the center of the Arbor she had a place cleared and prepared. One tree stood in the middle. It was a relatively young tree, of an old species that would grow tall and straight. A monarch of the forest found and transplanted here especially for this. It stood nearly four stories tall, with a trunk small enough to reach completely around. The bottom half of the trunk just went straight up, before any branches came out. These branches then spread to a ball of branches and leaves around the top of the tree.

  The warlock and witch had been drawing on the ground around the tree and laying patterns in the soil; a sigil for summoning. One of the carpenters, working with a woodsman had carved a spot on one side of the tree earlier this morning; where the sacrifice would be bound to the tree. As she stood and watched the witch and warlock finished their preparatory chanting. A low level of static charged the air around them. Then the witch motioned and others of The Queen’s guard brought the sacrifice.

  He was a loyal, willing young man, chosen for just those qualities. He also had spent the morning purifying himself. He removed his black robe, letting it fall to the ground. He wore nothing, and his freshly shaved head gleamed slightly. He walked across the boundaries of the magic circles, and the sigil, on a proscribed path. He stopped in front of the tree, and turned his back to it. The cuts in the trunk matched his head, neck, back, and part of his legs. The witch and warlock backed him against the tree, and then produced knives. They sketched from the top of his head down to his legs, where his body touched the tree, with the sharp blades. They had him step forward, and used magic to peal the skin from his head to his legs, along the line they cut, exposing his flesh and blood. The removed skin was placed on the side of the tree opposite the young man as he was backed against it again. The witch and warlock chanted and danced around the tree and young man one complete revolution. The young man spoke his one line, inviting acceptance of his offering to this daemon.

  For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then the young man grimaced in pain, as the tree convulsed. In a spurt of energetic growth the tree expanded to twice its width, its roots writhing across the sigil to trace it themselves. Its height increased and it shot out several new branches. The young man sagged a bit, but under his skin it looked like myriad shoots connected to the tree where their raw flesh had been touching. His head was immobile, looking straight at The Queen. Then his mouth moved. The voice was still that of the young man, but with more behind it.

  “What would you have of me, mortal?”

  The witch and warlock remained silent. Only The Queen had its attention.

  “I would have the power of life. The strength of the trees.”

  “What do you offer to me, that I should grant you this?”

  “In this flesh I am barren. In the Power of Life I would have seed. I offer that, and my free will unto thee.”

  The young man/tree stood quiet for a moment, and then spoke again. “Of your own free will, approach.”

  The Queen dropped her robe, and then removed the shift. Naked she followed the same path the young man had earlier. As she approached, she observed that his penis went erect.

  “Make your offering,” the voice intoned.

  She stepped up and mounted. His arms wrapped her, holding her against him. She put her arms around him, and clutched at the trunk. She began grinding against him, reveling in the pleasures she was experiencing. She put her mouth over his, and sought out his tongue.

  The guard remembered the voice came to his mind

  “Your offering is accepted.”

  The arms moved to her thighs, and lifted her off her feet, pulling her closer against the young man/tree. She wrapped her legs around his hips. And her transformation began.

  Again the guard remembered thoughts coming into his mind.

  First the Queen's voice. “For your strength I also offer the two in the circle. One willing and knowing, the other not.”

  “Accepted.”

  Karen was not sure how much of what she was experiencing was memory experienced then or understanding added later on as the guard learned more.

  The guard watched the witch watching as the young man writhed some in response to The Queen. Then the tree groaned. The daemon now within drawing power, a breath before a cry. The tree’s structure suddenly changed again, consuming the flesh of the young man, melding it with its own, wrapping around The Queen. It covered her completely. Then the entire tree began to glow. The warlock gave a startled yell and fell over as the roots grabbed his feet. The tree’s roots and branches pulled the witch and warlock against the trunk, and the bark quickly cut through their clothes.

  The witch had known this was the cost of this summoning, though the warlock had not. The reward for her was death. For her order it would be very great. The bark retracted, scraping off all the skin that it touched, and the meat of the tree within expanded, growing into her flesh. It was rapid enough to be nearly painless.

  With the added mass and energy from these two, as well as the young man, and all the mana already organized and arrayed, the daemon had more than enough strength. The tree’s trunk expanded by the width of the bodies it consumed, and its height near doubled. More branches sprouted at normal points.

  When The King had asked what happened, he was told the truth. When he ordered the tree destroyed they threatened his life, and to reveal what The Queen knew of his doings that would get him dethroned at the least. So he yielded and left.

  Three complete days passed.

  Four members of The Queen’s bodyguard stood vigil in turn. The tree had been quiet after it had consumed the warlock and witch, and finished its initial spate of growth from that.

  Now The King stood with his own guard as the four from The Queen’s guard stood by the tree waiting. Slowly an outline on the trunk became discernible. Body, arms, legs, head, more.

  Like a person releasing a grip, the bark of the tree relaxed and contracted from the form. Its back was to them. First six tubes stood up from its back, then the tail tensed and wings spread. The head rolled back, and the entire creature stretched for its first time, an infant from the womb. It stepped back, and caught hold of the tree as its balance wobbled. Two thickly muscled legs, with high set barbed heals and large toes moved to a wide stance. The tail had a stinger on its end, and swished some as the wings flexed. It stood as tall as the tallest man there, its body shape looked feminine, and covered in bark. After a moment, it turned around.

  The Queen looked at the ten people there to greet her, and smiled. She worked her arms to get some stiffness out. Then her second set of arms. These had some wing to them that looked more like leaves. These limbs had stiff wrists and long single edged blades instead of hands. The third set of limbs at her shoulders had the wings attached to them. Her tail seemed to move almost on its own to balance against her arms movements.

  The voice seamed to speak directly into the guard’s mind.

  “Your structure is not suitable for flight, but it does have the strength you desire.”

  She looked herself over, also noting that her body was now covered in a thin bark. Her long black hair was gone. The Queen took a deep breath and the guard saw the air flow through the six tubes on her back, around her ribs, and to her lungs.

  “Well. It’s done.” She looked at the guards and smiled again. Then at The King, still smiling.

  The King scowled, then turned and left, his guards following him.

  Karen understood from these memories that the guard did not know or care about the magic specifically involved. Only that The Queen now sleeps within the orifice for her in the trees trunk, of necessity.

  She had the dungeons emptied, and the prisoners crucified in the arbor. She occasionally took one and attached that person to her own tree. In the fourteen years since, the tree has grown, so also The Queen has gotten powerful. Not fully a magic user, but very strong.

   Karen was surprised to find veiled disgust and contempt in the guards thoughts. She finished her intrusion by quickly bringing him back to the woman in his arms, and letting his mind go from there.

  Karen returned to the world, finding all as it should be. She pulled the harlot from her imposed sleep back to where she had been. Then she left the room and slipped out of the barracks area.

099 – Within The Queen's Chambers

  Karen had to prowl the palace wings and corridors a bit and pace the patrolling guards, before finally arriving on the second level of the residence wing, and the chambers set aside specifically for The Queen. These were directly adjacent to The Kings chambers. At first, Karen was surprised that there were no guards standing outside the doors to either chambers. She put that aside and set to work. Here Karen had to break in. She focused her talents and senses and felt the mechanism, then focused on the tumbler that the key would engage, aligning its lock pins, turning the tumbler, and causing the mechanism to open. She took the door handle, and carefully opened the door enough to slip through, and closed and then relocked the door.

  These were not the rooms Karen had officially visited earlier; those were in another wing. These were the unused Queen's Bed and Dressing Chambers. These had been unused since she took up residence in the Arbor. Karen recognized these chambers from the guard's dream.

  This first chamber was a wide, narrow sitting room; the inner wall behind Karen and two at either end of the chamber rose two floors worth to the ceiling. The opposite facing wall of this part of the room only went up one level and traversed the room the long way; the side facing this part appeared to be lined with shelves, contained a fire place for either end of the room and had arched double doors in the middle. The overall chamber was spatially subdivided into rooms.

  This chamber was open for its width, with two sitting rooms to either end clustered around the fireplaces and shelves that lined all the walls. In between was a greeting foyer. Almost half of the furniture had been removed over the years, the rest was covered by loose fitted dust covers. All the hangings and painting that would have hung on the walls had been removed.

  Her senses identified the outer two thirds of the overall chamber on this main level was divided into three approximately equal rooms.

  Karen went through large double doors between the shelves and into the center room, it being a changing and dressing room. These three rooms were only one story tall. The dressing room opened through arches into the other rooms on either side, on the left was a bathing room, on the right the bed chamber. All three of these rooms had large windows looking out into the gardens below. The window curtains had all been removed. Moonlight came through the partial overcast of clouds lighting the chamber dimly.

  Karen moved deeper into the dressing chamber, looking in the chests and wardrobes. Everything in the room was covered in dust. Some periphery memories from the guard said The Queen rarely wore any fabric now, so what little was here was too old to be of use to Karen’s investigation. Karen dug through what she could find, but the majority of the psychometric information was of the attendants who had last handled the cloth.

  Moving on from here, Karen looked over the bath chamber, but it was clean, though covered in a layer of dust. A medium sized fire place mirrored the one on the other side of the wall. The larger pieces of furniture, chairs, tables, and such, were covered in dust clothes.

  In the bed chamber, the large four post bed was bare. The mattress had been removed, and the canopy taken down. From the memory of the guard, there were several pieces of furniture absent, probably moved elsewhere, or possibly destroyed. As in the bath chamber, there was a fire place that mirrored the sitting room side.

  Karen went back to the sitting rooms. The two conversation areas were defined by groups of couches and chairs around tea tables, each facing one of the fire places. Now there was enough in the room to make one complete setting, and a little more, but all spread out. From either side of the double doors into the dressing chamber, behind the bookshelves, a pair of stair cases ascended up to the floor above, over the outer rooms. There were support pillars that echoed the arches between the rooms that rose from the wall, demarcating the space above in thirds. Karen figured the fire place chimneys must be diverted to go up those.

  Karen climbed up the stairs over the bed chamber and found an open area across the whole, like the sitting room below, though with pillars and arches demarcating three areas two stories high. The inner wall extended high enough to have a comfortable bench along its whole length. The fireplaces up here echoed the location and size of the fireplaces in the bathroom and bedroom below. The windows on this level were taller than the ones in the three rooms below. Also two sets of doors led out onto the battlements of the fortress.

  As Karen looked over the furniture and arrangement, and compared the memories of the guard, this was The Queen’s primary study and sitting room, and private eating and entertaining area. Again some of the furniture had been removed. But some work tables and book shelves were arranged into an office or study and library over the bed chamber.

  Karen moved into the study and found that while most of the furniture had dust clothes, about half of the shelves here were still occupied with things; like below most of the shelves had been cleared of books and decorations. It looked to Karen that this part of the room was still used occasionally, as one book shelf did not have any dust on it.

  Karen opened the dust free books and found a journal of several volumes. She paged through it looking for the entries about the transformation. The text was almost impossible to read in the dim light, but Karen’s psionic senses helped; she could read the ink on the page, as easily as see the dark on the light. She also took psychometric impressions with her other senses as she went. The early ones were of the same black-haired woman from a teen up to her mid 40’s. It was in a slightly stilted script. Not the flowing script of a trained scribe. This was The Queens own handwriting. The Queen was a complex, though straight forward personality. She wanted much, and moved methodically to get it. Then in the middle of the last volume she found the transformation notes and some of the setup.

  Paging slowly through it Karen found a detailed record of The Queen’s preparations and of what she expected would happen. The last entry was from the morning that she performed the ceremony. This entry posed the one note of fear in the whole sordid array. Fear that the daemon would not do as she desired. There were no further entries past that point. Karen put that volume back and pulled out the next one.

  The first entry was the day after she first emerged. It was a joyfully incoherent rhapsody to the daemon. Evidently The Queen had an initial hard time filtering between her own thoughts, and the daemon. The subsequent volumes were of the transformed Queen. They radiated a guiding of malevolence to all else within them. This confirmed to Karen what the viceroy had said. The two were bound; killing The Queen would first require banishing the daemon. There were ways to do that.

  Karen’s senses suddenly alerted. She sensed a strong presence scanning in her direction. Karen first jumped to the ceiling above her, concentrating on inverting her personal gravity. She turned to face the presence, while instinctively moving to a darker area among the stone rafters, and psionically shielding herself further. The two moons casting light into the room showed nothing in the room with her, short of some kind of invisibility. But magic or more so minds were still detectable, at least in presence, to a psionic talent. And she sensed none in here with her. She found herself looking out the windows and at the tree.

  There was a bastion wall between here and the arbor. The tree stood nearly as tall as the tallest tower on the fortress around it. Its branches did not spread far from the trunk. Only about three lengths of a person, splitting several times along the length. And they were spaced evenly around the whole of the central trunk.

  A sense of some kind of general scan seemed to come from it. But on a magic level that Karen had never experienced before. She had directly experienced a kind of magic similar, once, recently. That was not a pleasant memory.

  Karen moved to the darkest area of the room, and dropped two stories back to the floor. She then concentrated on the journal, memorizing the last entries, about The Queen’s transformation and the bond to the daemon. That done, she moved back to the study area and put the journal back on its shelf.

  Karen then scanned the room, to be sure she was not leaving any residue of her own. Beyond in the hall, two guards were approaching, on patrol. And yet the tingle of mortal danger lingered. She dismissed going through the fire place, and chimney. Those were barred against such, and finding the hidden bolt hole would take too long.

  Karen blocked the brooding malevolence and focused on the hall outside. The guards had passed, the next set was not yet to the corner. Karen worked the lock, eased the door open, tripped the lock, and slipped back out of the room. She psionically held the door latch to keep it quiet, then slunk down the hall pacing the patrolling guards, shrouding herself as she went.

  Karen made her way into the garrison of The King’s Guard. This was in a different wing from the Queen's personal guard. She put aside what she had learned about the Queen to focus on what she could learn about the Kind and his potential weaknesses.

  After surveying the garrison's barracks, she selected a member of The King’s Guard, and dove into his dream as she did the member of The Queen’s Guard. This was a simpler probe.

  This one had not been in attendance at The Queen’s doings, he was too young. However she did learn from him that The King had long since given up any hope of a relationship with The Queen, beyond a formal one. Even before she transformed she had left his bed. He had expressed regular hope to grow old with her. Now he quietly hoped to outlive her, that someone might figure out how to kill her, and banish the abomination from his castle.

  Also the King treated his guardsmen like fellows, honored them, and was loyal to them. As such they were professionally loyal to him. The King seamed to long for the battlefield, and still wore armor regularly. He tried to dress as the guard did, but accepted that his station required fancier dress. He practiced on the same pitches and fields as the guard.

  She also found that the King kept a regular concubine.

  Karen knew as well as anyone in Krogg that the armed services were co-ed, and mostly segregated by sex. She was mildly surprised to learn the open secret among the guards that the King's concubine was an officer on his Personal Guard. She passed by this information as it did not appear to have any current bearing.

  Deciding that there was nothing to learn here, Karen extracted herself from the man's dreams.

100 – Extraction and Debrief

Karen crept back out to the garrison, and headed back the way she came. At the maintenance room, she encountered a familiar tingle in her senses. The psionic that had been in The Queen’s Audience Chamber was in the water room. For a brief moment, Karen thought of going another direction.

Would confronting this psionic spoil her assignment? Would not? Karen guessed that the tree had alerted this other psionic, after it sensed her. So, not confronting would spoil things. This left one course: swift victory and departure.

Karen crept into the room. The psionic was examining the puddle she had left when she had wrung the water out of her outfit. So intent was the examination that the psionic failed to notice her presence. Karen lunged along the walkway, leaped into the person, and carried that person with her into the water flowing out of the room. The other person had turned and stood as she came and lunged. It was a male Chithare elf. One of the local subterranean elves, commonly called a black elf for their skin color, as opposed to the blue elves who mostly lived to the north. As she carried him into the water and crashed against the outer wall, Karen felt the elf smack hard against it, then again against the lip of the outflow tunnel knocking him senseless. The chilly current swept them into the outflow tunnel. Karen did a quick scan, and found the elf was out cold, and bleeding from his head. The water carried them the terrifying distance out to the catch screen. They slammed against it hard, the elf’s body struggling to breathe the cold dirty water. Karen’s panic proofing lessons paying off as she felt the tunnel beginning to collapse around her.

She assessed the elf as already drowning, so not needing any additional effort from her. Karen left him unconscious, pinned to the grate by the current, and pulled her way down to the hole and let it spit her out and away from the fortress, down stream. The elf would drown by the time she got out of the water. Clear of the tunnel, her claustrophobia stopped threatening to push her into panic, and she was able to marshal her remaining air to get a good distance away.

She stayed underwater for as long as the air in her lungs and the biting temperature would allow, before heading for the surface. She looked around and scanned, checking for pursuit and witnesses. Sensing and seeing none, she swam north for the wall to her right and along it to a storm drain hole. She got on the lip of this, and climbed out of the river. She psionically warmed her body, again pushing all the cold water from her costume.

To her left was a narrow stair built into the wall. Some of the river traffic used points like this as points to tie to during the day. The city cleaners used these to get into the sewer system to service it. Karen had explored all she could stand to of the sewers. Every time she got where she could not see the exit, or feel fresh air, she began to panic. As such she avoided using this system, unlike some others from her guild. Instead she preferred the roof tops, and shadows of buildings.

Karen carefully moved up the stairs. As she went she untied her cape from her waist and unrolled it. She first put it on dark side out. Then she pulled her balaclava off, fluffed her hair a bit, then pulled the cape’s hood over her hair. She looked around the concourse that ran along the east and west riverbank. There were constables off that way, and other street and night people over the other, but none looking this way. Karen shrouded herself, and set off north across the street, and into the shadows of the building. She moved quickly for several blocks, before ducking into another alley. This was the edge of the upper class areas.

In the darkness of the alley, Karen took her cape off, and opened the seam between the hood and cape, reached in, and pulled the cape insides out. It now showed the dark red velvet of a woman of means. She resettled the cape over her shoulders and started off into the streets of the district. She moved quietly along the main avenue to a tributary street, and turned up it. Nobody was out at this hour in this area of Skarg, and anybody that was, was generally left alone. She got to the street she wanted and turned onto it. As she walked, Karen formulated her report on what she had learned. It would not be turned in until her job was completed. But many assassins kept journals, at least of target information, in case anybody needed to follow in their path, and complete a botched job.

The structures in this area were the town houses of the wealthy merchant class, and the lower level gentry. Most of the houses were four or five stories with impressive facades and wings to the back, with closed balconies for privacy. They stood very close together, with only space for a carriage to slip between. Several had walls or fences around small front or side yards.  The constables patrolled this area regularly, but unless noise or weapons were in evidence, they would not bother people. Two constables on routine patrol did fall discreetly into step several houses away from Karen, after rounding the corner behind her. She went several houses along, to one with a small yard in front of it with a low wall and tall iron fence.

Two stone pillars flanked the gate, with a wrought iron arch above it; a decorative filigree of iron work vines filled the arch. A carved lion sat on either pillar looking down on whoever entered; the right hand one had a cub under its paw, the left hand lion had an orb. Karen opened the gate, closed it behind her, and went across the yard. The scents of winter wafted past as she climbed the stone stairs. Two more lions flanked the base of the stairs, and another set the porch; each set was increasingly intricate and ornate in its decoration the closer one got to the house. She pulled the bell pull by the double doors and waited. The constables walked on down the street, on the opposite side from her. They were two houses beyond when she saw a light through the windows coming to the doors. A small panel in the left hand door opened from within.

“May I help you?” An older male voice spoke from within.

“It’s Lady Konsalva. Let me in.”

“One moment please, my lady.” The panel closed.

After a moment, the door clicked as the latch was released and it swung in. The house keeper closed the door behind Karen as she entered.

“Welcome home, my lady. What may I do for you?”

Karen turned to the old man. “Nothing tonight. I will eat and tend to business when I get up.”

He bowed, and took the candlestick with him into the bowels of the house to his quarters, leaving Karen in the dark.

Older than her father, Jasper served the family since Karen’s grandfather hired him.

At that time the family was an up-and-coming merchant family. But a series of quarrels had led to Karen’s father Oleg, the third son, pursuing a second career as an assassin. The older brothers were murdered before they could start families. Of the two sisters, one had been brutalized and found floating in the river. The other had been kidnapped, cut open and her womb removed. She later lost her life while getting revenge on the group that mutilated her. That event ended most of the overt quarreling. Oleg had seen to the rest. Jasper watched it all. His only comment on the whole affair was that Oleg had unfortunately left no sons to carry the family name.

Now Jasper and his wife kept the house. Karen kept no secrets from Jasper. Karen had been taken into the guild and raised in their houses as soon as she could walk. Most of her childhood was spent outside of Skarg. Karen was raised with her older sister, and learned all the skills of her father, eventually surpassing him.

One time her older sister had gone on a trip with their mother, and was nearly killed in the attack that killed their mother. Oleg’s only overt comment on the subject was that his wife had acquitted herself well, killing all who attacked her. Covertly he mourned her greatly.

Karen’s sister, however, had an utter lack of stomach and skill for anything the guild had to teach. She could handle herself well enough. But she was loath to even slaughter dinner. She did excel in business and management. Karen helped her sister set up and improve upon the family businesses she now used to take care of her public means. This included four taverns; one which had a brothel attached to it, two that had inns. Also shares in two major and a handful of minor land and sea shipping groups. Finally the two merchant shops their grandfather had started with his brothers, which Oleg had inherited. In all the quarrels, Karen and her sister had been the only ones left alive. No cousins of any close relation. Then her sister had been attacked and killed.

After cleaning that up, Karen continued the businesses. And she used the taverns and related businesses to help facilitate her primary career. The result was that she only came home once in a while, spending most nights at one of the taverns or inns.

Growing up, she had many bittersweet memories of the house. Sometimes they were more than she could bare, and she would avoid the reminder of family. Other times she needed to rest, and let the world alone. She would come here and forget anything beyond the walls of the yard. Oleg had made a point of never bringing work home with him. Karen had followed that example. Unlike her other properties, no blood or poison had ever stained the floors of the house.

Karen crossed the foyer, and went up stairs. The first floor had the kitchen with an informal dining area, Jasper’s quarters with his wife, a receiving room and the foyer. A mud room at the back exited to the coach yard and shed, and a privy. The second floor had the parlor, drawing room, library, study, and formal dining room. Isolated where it would be unobtrusive was a rare indoor privy with a flush and pump mechanism. The third floor had two guest suites and the ball room, which was just as often an exercise and training room. There was also a small balcony off the ballroom. On the forth floor floor were the resident bedrooms and one medium sized bathing room, the tub fed from a roof top tank heated by the central chimney. The pitched roof covered the attic storage space, save for where the water tank rested. Water from the tank was primarily by precipitation, collected from the roof; there was a wind driven pump that tapped the local aquifer that also kept the tank topped off with relatively fresh clean water.

Karen sold some of the furniture that her family had collected. She had little sentimental attachment to most of it. In some cases, she sold it because it had too much sentiment. The few pieces she kept were of specific value. Her grandmother's and her mother’s chests were in her bedroom. A bureau that a great-uncle made by hand stood between the chests. Her father’s desk and chair were still in the study. Hidden behind some of the book shelves in the study was most of Oleg’s armory.  The canopy bed that her grandparents had used was in her private room at one of the inns. Jasper and his wife had taken implicit possession of many of the other things. The china, silver, and crystal were all still in the kitchen, or down in the pantry. Some of the other finer furniture was still about the house, where they had always been. Other pieces had been replaced by Jasper’s wife. As time passed, the house gradually took on more of their character, and Karen felt more alien to it.