3
Laera’s life had taken on a surreal quality, fascinating and simultaneously frightening. For the first time since her childhood, she did not feel in control. Yet at the same time, there was a thrill to being balanced precariously on the abyss. It energized her and made her feel alive. In the past, she had looked to her sexual adventures to provide her with the stimulation of risk she craved, but nothing had ever provided her with the same dangerous edge of excitement she felt now.
When she had made her pact with Callador, the one thing she could never have anticipated was that the wizard would have chosen and been accepted by Raesene, the infamous Black Prince, known and feared throughout the empire as the Gorgon.
When Callador had revealed the name of his patron, it had sent her mind reeling, and she had almost given way to panic. The wizard had tricked her. He had allowed her to believe the token of a lock of hair taken from her head was merely that, a token and nothing more, to seal the oath between them, similar in principle to a favor given by a lady to a knight. She had known almost nothing about magic, so there was no way she could have realized the true significance of the ritual.
When she and Callador had cut their palms and clasped hands with the lock of her hair between them, it had been a great deal more than merely a symbolic mingling of blood to seal the oath. That lock of hair alone could have served to give him power over her, but impregnated with both her blood and his, it had forged a link between them for as long as it remained in his possession, and by practical extension, that same power would also be granted to his master, Prince Raesene.
At first, the idea had so frightened her that she had nearly succumbed to panic and the temptation to reveal all to her husband. However, common sense prevailed, and she soon realized that if she told Derwyn the truth, nothing would be changed. Callador would still hold power over her, and nothing short of killing him would cancel that. Such an act would incur the wrath of Prince Raesene. Even though she had Derwyn firmly under her control, Laera did not think he would be blind enough with love for her to risk taking on the Gorgon.
More likely, she thought, if she confessed the truth to Derwyn, she would lose her hold over him and he would banish her to Ice Haven, where she would be forced to spend the remainder of her life in constant prayer, solitude, and chastity as a temple priestess. Aside from the utter misery of such an existence, all her plans, everything that she had worked so hard for, would have been for naught. And there was no telling what sort of revenge the Gorgon might exact for her betrayal.
After several sleepless nights, she finally concluded there was nothing else to do but ride it out and hope for the best. The more she thought about it, the more clearly she saw that her situation, while precarious, was far from hopeless.
She reasoned that she was far too insignificant to attract the notice of the Gorgon. She was merely a means to an end. She was not certain precisely what that end was yet, but almost certainly it had to involve her brother, Michael. The Gorgon had some plan in mind, and she must have become a part of it at Callador’s suggestion. Either that, or Callador himself had hatched some plan to increase his standing with his awnsheghlien lord. Either way, she would only be an agent, not the object of that plan.
Raesene’s lust to control the empire was what had led him to betray his half-brothers, Haelyn and Roele, and sell himself to Azrai all those years ago. The illegitimacy of his birth had denied him a place in the royal line of succession, despite being his father’s firstborn son, and his resentment and jealousy of his half-brothers had twisted him and eventually grown into a burning hatred.
After the Battle of Mount Deismaar and the defeat of the Dark Lord, Raesene had fled to the far northern territories and remained there ever since, doubtless brooding on his failure while he slowly built up his powers. Over the centuries, he had carved out his domain and established a stronghold at Kal-Saitharak, the castle fortress he had raised in a forested valley nestled high in the mountainous, rocky, and volcanic wasteland once known simply as the Crown. In time, the black stone castle became better known as Battlewaite, and the jagged cliffs and rocky escarpments that surrounded it came to be called the Gorgon’s Crown.
Much of Raesene’s history following his self-imposed exile in his remote domain was shrouded in myth and folklore, the accounts of the few travelers who had seen him so much embellished by the bards over the years that it was no longer possible to tell where truth ended and legend began. Most accounts at least agreed on a few basic points. Raesene had brought an unspecified number of his followers from Deismaar to Kal-Saitharak, and this force had grown over the intervening years into an army composed of the dregs of Cerilia.
He numbered gnolls and goblins among his followers, as well as dwarves who had been cast out of their tribes, trolls from the surrounding mountains, and ogres from the southern regions. In addition to the demihumans, he also had the descendants of his human followers at Deismaar, as well as bandits, escaped criminals from the empire, and mercenaries so savage and depraved that they no longer cared for whom they fought, so long as they had a patron to support them.
A walled city had grown up around the castle, and that city was now known as Kal-Saitharak, while the castle itself was called Battlewaite. Raesene never ventured outside his domain, and according to some stories, his power would be diminished if he did, though Laera doubted that. He had gained his powers through bloodtheft, and blood abilities were not bound to the land. More likely, Raesene had reasons of his own for remaining in Kal-Saitharak, though what they might be was anybody’s guess. Perhaps the mutations in his body brought about by his powers rendered travel difficult, or he was dependent on the confluence of ley lines in his region for the energy required to increase his power. But whatever the reason may have been, it seemed to hold true for most of the awnsheghlien, who were rarely known to venture far from their domains.
By all accounts, Raesene did not look human anymore. He was said to be a massive, powerful giant with the head of a bull and the legs of a goat, which ended in sharp, diamond-hard hooves. His skin was described as dark and stony, and he was reputed to possess the power to slay with just his gaze, which could turn people to stone. At one time, Raesene was said to have been one of the greatest swordsmen of Anuire, and he had instructed his younger half-brothers, Haelyn and Roele, in the arts of combat. Legend had it that in the centuries since, he had perfected his abilities with every weapon known to man and periodically held death matches to keep his skills honed.
The most recent account of a meeting with Raesene was over a hundred years old and was stored in the Imperial Library at Anuire. It was the report of a trader who had traveled to Kal-Saitharak and met with him. This trader’s account had described the walled city as an armed camp, a rough-and-tumble agglomeration of boisterous taverns, crooked gaming houses, and steamy fleshpots where the only law was whatever authority Raesene’s lieutenants chose to exert at any given time.
To walk the streets at night, the trader wrote, was to take one’s life into one’s own hands, even if well armed. Kal-Saitharak was a melting pot of races, most of which nursed age-old enmities, and battles in the streets were not uncommon. It was, perhaps, the main reason Raesene had not expanded his domain much farther than the Gorgon’s Crown. His army spent almost as much time fighting itself as raiding nearby territories.