[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Jarult awoke with a start, and immediately the coughing was upon him. Every morning this happened, and he sat upon the edge of his bed, his thin frame wracked with spasmodic pain as he hacked and wheezed, until it was over. Each day, it seemed, the attack grew a bit longer and a bit more ferocious and someday soon, he knew, it would end in his death. He did not regard the thought with any emotion, only acceptance. He had lived his life well and done good service to the King and to the King before him. He would go to the seat of Rhais with confidence.

When he was finally able to stand, the aged Chamberlain went out of his bedroom and into the courtyard of the small villa sheltered beneath the imposing wall of the Palace. It was, he had been told, an abode far beneath his station but he liked it all the same. It was small and bare and comfortable. He took a slight breakfast in the grey light of pre-dawn and collected his thoughts for the day ahead.

It had been just over a month since the coming of the Emissary, and still the courtier from the West remained a mystery to the old man. The meetings between the Emissary and the King had dwindled of late, which was good, but the King had taken to retiring to bed early and not allowing any visitors to his chambers at night. Jarult was made uneasy by this, for the memory of what he had seen pass between the King and Queen was still raw in his memory. He had watched both keenly since then, but on the surface they appeared unchanged by the encounter. In general, the uproar caused by the appearance of the Emissary had subsided, until the presence of the Man from the West had become part of the background to life in Pashtia.

This change had been helped by new and disturbing developments much closer to home. The new High Temple to Rae had been approved by the King and was already being built close by the Temple to Rhais. More disturbingly to Jarult was the news – or, rather, the lack of news – from Alanzia. Commerce with their northern rivals had always been sporadic, but of late it had ceased altogether. It had been weeks since any traveller or news had arrived from there. Even the Queen’s correspondence with her brother had ceased.

Jarult felt the touch of a cool breeze run down his thin neck and he shivered, drawing his cloak more tightly about him. Soon it will be the cool season, he reflected. The nights will grow chill and the winds will come from the mountains, perhaps bringing rain. He quickly uttered a prayer to Rae that he withhold the fury of the water that fell so unnaturally from the sky.

The thought of rain turned his mind to other, even stranger matters. Reports there were abroad of demons and monsters. Strange beings like the giants of old, the peasants said, were stalking about the farmlands. Others who ventured into the desert returned with tales of monstrous man-like fiends who travelled in packs like wild dogs, ravening and destroying what they could find. Most harrowing to Jarult, though, were the tales of ghosts. Whispers there were of creatures which passed unseen in the night, freezing those who felt them with terror. From within the Palace itself there had come rumour of doors that opened on their own, and of curtains moving when there was no wind. Some of the servants had even claimed to have heard footsteps along empty hallways in the dead of night, and one impressionable girl had sworn that she had felt a touch like that of a man’s cloak brushing up against her. Jarult knew better than to believe such gossip, but it worried him still, for such news could not augur well…