‘Six will do. Have horses prepared for these two,’ said Kaspar, pointing at Amirantha and Brandos. ‘We’ll need enough provisions for a week of travelling overland to the east. That will be all,’ he finished, waving the man away.
Returning to his desk, he sat down. To Amirantha he said, ‘Belasco, you say?’
‘Yes,’ said the Warlock.
‘He was your middle brother?’
‘Yes,’ said Amirantha. ‘He’s become something far greater than I imagined.’
‘Your eldest brother,’ asked Kaspar. ‘What of him?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Amirantha. ‘He was, as I said, obsessed with death and dying. He was a powerful necromancer by the time I left home. By then my only reason for being there had gone. My eldest brother had become fascinated by a necklace mother had found. He’d remove it from the small cache of her most treasured things at every opportunity, bringing down her wrath.
‘He claimed it spoke to him. Finally, one day, he murdered Mother for it.’ He spoke almost dispassionately, though there was still a hint of feelings behind his words, it was a particularly gruesome and messy murder, but it provided him with a very powerful burst of magic.
‘I glimpsed him covered in her blood, invoking some dark power as he stood wearing that necklace.’
‘Glimpsed?’ asked Kaspar.
‘I was running for my life at the time,’ said Amirantha. ‘Belasco had already fled using some translocation or invisibility spell, or something of that sort. I was forced to outrun my eldest brother, who was fatigued from killing our mother; else I think he might have overtaken me.
‘I was desperate and summoned a demon named Wusbagh’rith, who carried me off. He’s a foul creature, but he has massive wings. Fortunately, I had enough control over him to get miles away from Sidi before the demon tried to kill me.’
Kaspar’s eyes widened. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said I had enough control to get miles away from my brother before the demon tried to kill me.’
‘No, the name? What was your brother’s name?’
‘Sidi. Why?’
Kaspar took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. ‘Do you know the name Leso Varen?’
‘No,’ said Amirantha. ‘Should I?’
Kaspar regarded the warlock. ‘You never saw your brother Sidi again after he murdered your mother?’
‘No, I saw him twice, once in the City of the Serpent River, and once across the sea in the town of Land’s End, in the Kingdom of the Isles.’
‘I know the place,’ said Kaspar.
‘Both times I avoided him before he saw me; I never spoke with him again, if that’s what you’re asking. If I could, I’d happily cut out his heart and feed it to one of my demons. She may have been a crazy witch, but she was our mother.’
‘Your brother is dead.’
‘You knew him?’ asked Amirantha, showing the most emotion he had since entering the palace.
‘I had the unfortunate luck to have him guest with me for a while. He used the name Leso Varen and caused me . . .’ Kaspar stopped, as if weighing his words. Finally he said, ‘He caused me great personal injury; and was identified as a necromancer named Sidi by someone I trust implicitly. He is dead beyond reclaiming.’
‘General,’ said Amirantha, ‘please, I must know how he died.’
Kaspar nodded and quickly recounted the role Leso Varen had played in the war with the Dasati. He glossed over the Conclave’s part, deciding to let Pug decide how much to trust this Warlock and his companion. Kaspar was a good judge of men and thought the pair reliable enough if watched closely, but it wasn’t his decision to make.
Ten years after the event, knowledge of what befell the Tsurani home world had spread throughout the land; many of the survivors had sought refuge in Muboya, a large cadre of Tsurani warriors even served as the Maharajah’s core troops. But the exact details were shrouded in rumour and speculation, for even those who had lived through the horror of the Dasati invasion knew little of the truth about that war, that an army from another plane of reality had attempted to obliterate all life on Kelewan in order to make it their own.
Kaspar told the story as best he could, surprised at the long-buried emotions that threatened to rise, for it had been one of the most difficult and horrific experiences of his life. ‘At the end, we think your brother perished on the Dasati home world at the hands of some horror attempting to enter our realm, or that he was obliterated with the utter destruction of Kelewan.
‘More than one witness can confirm his presence on Kelewan near to what we called the Black Sphere, the gateway to the Dasati home world. I have friends who are convinced that had he possessed one more soul vessel with which he might flee his death, it would have had to have been hidden on Kelewan, and was therefore also destroyed with the planet.’
A mix of emotions played across Amirantha’s face. ‘I ... I accept what you say, General, and put aside . . . old hatred.’