This trip at least was at the behest of the dame and not Jahna’s soon-to-be sister-in-law. She paused at one of the doors near the end of the hall and knocked. There was a short wait before the door swung open, revealing the biggest man she’d ever seen.
Serovek Pangion of High Salure stared at her with eyes the color of deep, deep water—so dark a blue they appeared almost black. The rumors of his attractiveness were accurate. The shoulder-length black hair and neatly trimmed beard emphasized a handsome face guaranteed to garner more than a few admiring gazes. His height and impressive musculature only enhanced his presence. No one would miss seeing this man in a crowd.
He eyed her and the satchel she held for a moment, a flicker of dread in his gaze. “Tell me you’re one of the king’s chroniclers and not another lady wanting to welcome me personally to the capital.”
Jahna grinned. He hadn’t flinched when he saw her or looked away when he spoke, as if he couldn’t bear the sight of her birthmark. She liked him already. “I am a lady here to welcome you to Timsiora, my lord, but I’m also a king’s chronicler. Dame Stalt sent me. I’m Jahna Uhlfrida.”
He motioned her inside, leaving the door partially open. Jahna appreciated the unspoken assurance. The rumors continued to prove themselves valid in one respect. The margrave was charming, but in ways beyond his renowned ability to seduce.
She followed the motion of his hand to a small table and two chairs placed before a lit hearth and set her satchel down. She didn’t sit until he joined her, two cups in his hands. He passed one to her. “Hot tea,” he said. “To warm your bones.”
They sat together, and Jahna emptied her satchel of its contents as Lord Pangion watched. “Uhlfrida you said. Any relation to the one marrying the king’s niece during Delyalda?”
“My brother,” she replied. “Be prepared to witness a lot of comings and goings in this corridor for the next few days.” She didn’t exaggerate. The stones paving the hall’s floor should have worn smooth at this point with the constant stream of traffic trekking to and from Manarys Duron’s chambers. Servants, seamstresses, friends, and the endless number of family members that made up the Duron clan and assured Jahna that if family blood held true, Sodrin would be a father many times over in the future.
She laid out her writing utensils and parchment. Lord Pangion’s room was warm so she removed the gloves she usually wore to keep her chilly fingers from stiffening and dipped her first quill in the ink. “Any time you’re ready, my lord,” she said.
The margrave eyed her over the rim of his cup, amusement glittering in his gaze. He toasted her. “I admire your readiness, Lady Uhlfrida. By all means, let’s begin.”
Serovek was a natural storyteller, and Jahna soon found it difficult not to pause in her writing and just listen to the man detail the events of the galla infestation that had destroyed the capital of the kingdom of Bast-Haradis and wiped out the entire royal family except for the heir’s youngest child and her uncle who acted as regent.
Everyone knew of the galla, those malevolent entities born of the blackest, most powerful Elder magic. Banished and imprisoned in a realm outside of this one by their long-vanished creators, they had somehow managed to break free and cross over into this world to ravage it. Ravenous and immune to weapons of steel and fire, they had devoured much of the Kai population in Bast-Haradis’s fallen capital and begun spreading to the neighboring kingdoms of Gaur and Belawat.
Beladine seers had prophesied the world’s ending in an apocalypse of unimagined horror. King Rodan had burned two of the seers at the stake for their unrelenting fear-mongering, but only the news of the galla’s defeat had finally quelled the panic that gripped all of Belawat.
This man and four others had literally saved the world, and Jahna’s cynicism made her wonder how long it would be before Rodan decided that Serovek Pangion was far too powerful and popular to remain alive. The wily king brooked no threat, perceived or real, to his rule, and world saviors were threats to ambitious monarchs.
Serovek took a break in telling his story to refill their cups. “My tongue is starting to stick to the roof of my mouth,” he complained. “I think I’ve talked more this past hour than I have in the past year.”
Jahna used the interval to search through her parchment and pull out a drawing that made her blood run cold every time she looked at it. She slid it to Serovek, whose expression shuttered instantly at the sight.
“Did the galla look like this?” she asked.
The illustration, rendered in charcoal by a talented hand, depicted a creature born of a madman’s nightmares. Even on the static page, it gave one the sense of a writhing darkness whose edges were thin and razor sharp. The vague outline of a skeletal frame hid behind a gobbet of vaporous blackness, and where a face might be, there was only a dark socket for an eye and an open maw full of jagged, tenebrous fangs. The thing looked starved, not for food, but for souls.
The margrave picked up the drawing by a corner pinched between two fingers, as if touching it risked plague. His voice, previously warm and jovial, sounded flat. “Shadowy, yes. Unnatural.” He set the paper down and wiped his fingers on his sleeve. “Imagine if you took the broken bones of various people and animals and stitched them together without plan or purpose, using thread made out of black mist.” Jahna shivered as a tendril of revulsion slid down her spine. Serovek looked from the illustration to her, a frown knitting his brow. “Someone else you spoke with saw one of these things?”
“Not me. Another king’s chronicler. She sat with a farmer who described seeing a clutch of galla gathered on one side of a stream that borders his land. He drew the picture. According to him, they would have swarmed him had it not been for the stream.”
Serovek nodded. “They can’t cross water. We used that weakness against them on more than one occasion to trap them in a pincer maneuver.”
Jahna tucked the illustration back into her stack of parchment, glad to put it away. “They’re hideous.”
“That sketch doesn’t do them justice, and how they look isn’t as bad as how they sound or move. They can mimic the voices of those they devour, even take on their victims’ appearances for a few moments. They hunt in swarms. Not like bees or locusts. More like roaches.” The revulsion in Serovek’s voice could have curdled milk.
Jahna scribbled fast to capture every word and wrote as she spoke. “It’s said the Kai regent created a spell that allowed you and the others to fight the galla without coming to harm.”
Serovek’s gaze took on a faraway cast. “A powerful enchantment. Elder magic no human has ever wielded and most Kai have forgotten. We became what the Khaskem and his Elsod called Wraith Kings. Split apart three ways and then brought back together again.”