The Myrnean Goddess: The Krosann Saga, page 1
Sam Feuerbach
The Myrnean Goddess
The Krosann Saga
Volume Four
Translator: Tim Casey
Thanks to the best proof-readers: Neil McCourt, James Brian
Copyright © Sam Feuerbach
1st edition 2023 (1.1)
Volumes in chrono-"logical" order:
The Krosann Saga
(Volume 1) The Murderess Crow
(Volume 2) The Swordmaster
(Volume 3) The Sand Timer
(Volume 4) The Myrnean Goddess
(Volume 5) The Soul Spear (tbr)
(Volume 6) The Traitor (tbr)
The Saga of the Gravedigger’s Son and the Waif Girl
Link to Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4
There are more adventures to come …
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Content
old habits
at the royal court
the family
onward bound
decisions, big and small
justice
the weak king
the spotted cat
awakening
enquiries
clarification
the sign
the end of the world
life after death
by the river Kang
the jungle
the stithy
how many lives is a life worth?
unequal fight
the chieftain
swift as an arrow
once a king
the way to the top
death by scrabbling
arch enemies
laughter
the Myrnean Goddess
curiosity
back with the Jovali
chapter and verse
secrets
Index of persons at the end
The story so far…
The young Prince Karek was forced to leave his home, Castle Cragwater. For starters, his father, King Tedore, felt that his son needed toughening up. As it was, the lad loved nothing more than to spend his days eating and had thus become overweight and clumsy. Furthermore, there were reports of an imminent assassination attempt on the young prince by a hired (female) assassin. Karek was to attend (incognito) cadet training in a fortress where he would learn to fight.
He trained diligently and made new friends: Blinn, Impy, Eduk and Brawl.
The hired assassin (Nika, the murderess crow) figured out where he was and confronted him alone in the forest. She spared his life, finding a strange connection between them through the ancient language of the Myrnean deities. Slowly but surely, they began to trust one another.
Duke Schohtar from the south of the country was intent on seizing the Toladarian crown. He broke away from King Tedore and declared himself ruler of Southern Toladar. In seeking to expand his power, he had Swordmaster Forand killed and destroyed the fortress where Karek was training. The prince, his friends and the hired assassin had left it only a short time earlier to go in search of a magical sand timer. A map led them to a graveyard, where they took possession of the artefact.
Duke Schohtar had Karek followed so that he could seize him as security and thereby gain the sand timer. Karek and his friends survived many dangers and even had to destroy the artefact in order to escape their pursuers. Together with Bolkan ‘Belch’ Katerron, an erstwhile admiral of the enemy southern kingdom Soradar, they fled to Karek’s home.
Back in the supposed safety of Castle Cragwater, the prince was almost kidnapped by Sergeant Karson, the father of his girlfriend Milafine, who was in the pay of Schohtar. Karson fled onto his ship when his plot failed at the last moment. Karek and his comrades stayed in Castle Cragwater, as did Belch. The prince was deeply concerned about his father’s faltering health. The murderess crow, Nika, couldn’t bear courtly life and made her way back to her hideaway in the forest.
This is where ‘The Myrnean Goddess’ begins.
old habits
A woman in black leathers walked briskly down the main street of Cragwater in a southerly direction. Most of her dark hair was hidden by a headscarf. A short sword dangled from her hip. It seemed to suit her perfectly, for her lithe frame and her slim wrists suggested that wielding a longsword or a two-hander was probably beyond her. Her appearance suggested that she was harmless and somewhat forlorn.
From a distance! But woe betide anyone who came too close to her. She sensed her coal-black eyes smouldering and flaring. The few people who noticed her didn’t give her a second thought. The citizens of Cragwater were too caught up with their own worries. In times of civil war strangers were considered particularly suspicious and particularly unwelcome. They left her well alone.
The breath in front of her face formed little clouds in the cold winter air – as though she were smoking. Yet she despised smoking. It was men who smoked in the main. Using the tobacco to cover up their own stink. Logical.
More important thoughts were whirling wildly in her head, resembling an autumn wind churning up the fallen leaves and spinning them furiously.
She took a deep breath. For the first time in a long time, she felt free again. For too long she had subordinated herself to the rules of friendship and society. She had helped Karek, the Prince of Toladar, get from his training fortress back to his home castle and to his father, King Tedore – even though her initial plan had been to kill the boy. It was Duke Schohtar who had contracted her to assassinate the prince. He had thrown the kingdom into a state of civil war by proclaiming himself King of the South. With a great effort, she had helped the prince to unmask conspiracy and treachery. And to cap it all, she had assisted the lad in finding a magical artefact – a sand timer – which he had smashed to pieces at the first opportunity.
She had more than her fill of this political skulduggery – now it was time to look after number one again and free herself from societal obligations.
What did it mean – to be free, as a woman? Free of having to think about all those lords, lording it over everyone. Puh! She saw things fundamentally differently. For her, freedom was having a choice. To do what she wanted. Of course, every decision she took brought with it the consequences of either living or dying. She exhaled.
She would travel through the night and in the early morning she would reach the outskirts of the Blood Forest. This repetitive movement was doing her good. Her breath provided the beat. She felt alive again – at one with her body.
The night banished the light of day. Now and again, the starved-looking sickle moon made an appearance through gaps in the cloud. Despite the darkness, her eyes could make out every stone, every pothole in front of her, so maintaining her pace was not an issue. The coldness tried – and failed – to wear her down. It wasn’t only her eyes that were blazing, her entire body was steaming in the freezing air.
Her secret lodgings lay in the heart of the Blood Forest. Even in summer very few people strayed within the inhospitable vegetation. Thick undergrowth hindered movement, but by now she was close to her little hut. She had reached her hideaway more quickly than she’d anticipated. It was still pitch black in the early morning. She slowed down and gingerly approached her dwelling place, which was well camouflaged among the densely packed trees and was barely visible from a distance.
Everything seemed the same as it been when she had left it, so long ago. Had that many weeks really passed or was it because she had experienced so many things since the last time she’d been here?
There were no signs of unwelcome visitors in the darkness. She lifted her nose in the air. No unusual smells – no fire had burned in the hearth within the hut – over the past few days at any rate.
She pushed open the door and lit a small oil lamp. Everything looked the same in the flickering light, only the straw mats smelled musty. Dust and spiders’ webs had made themselves comfortable in every nook and cranny too.
Not to worry. Home alone – there was something to be said for that! She took the woollen blanket out of her rucksack and divested herself of her weapons and leathers. Then she made herself comfortable on her straw mat. Exhausted, it wasn’t long before she was fast asleep.
Shafts of light broke through the slits between the timbers that had been roughly hammered together to form the walls. Wide awake, she began to plan for the winter months. She would need enough provisions to keep hunting to a minimum. Berries wouldn’t grow again until early summer and scrabbling around in the frozen earth for edible roots didn’t sound particularly tempting. Still, at least there was water in the nearby stream. She would have to head off to the nearest village by tomorrow morning at the latest to do some shopping. And unless she planned on hauling everything back here herself, she would have to use a pack mule or a horse.
She stretched and, stark naked, went out of the hut. She was surrounded by nothing but nature. It was cool and quiet – no obligations to meet, no requirements to speak, no reasons to scold. A boon!
She hadn’t looked after herself in such a long time. This was going to change. She washed herself in the stream behind the wooden hut, went back inside and put on her leathers, not forgetting her weapons.
A little away from the hut, deeper in the forest, she checked the ground. She had buried two chests filled with gold coins here. Everything was in order – the gold was still there. Not that wealth meant that much to her, but the gold was hers all the same. Honestly earned. After all, she had eliminated an awful lot of people to earn it. Some had been the victims that she had been contracted to kill – and then there were her educators in the Establishment, not to mention the Black Chancellor.
A strange commodity – gold coinage. Still, it was handy enough for greasing the palms – not to mention the hinges, nuts and bolts of the unwieldy object that people called ‘society’.
She walked deeper into the Blood Forest. The thick concentration of conifers made for a closed roof even in winter. She arrived at a clearing surrounded by trees. She stood in the middle and relaxed.
There was no-one nearby to wonder at the solitary woman who despite the cold was standing motionless in a clearing in the heart of the forest. Fixed and silent as a mushroom she remained there, only her eyes and ears were alert, aware of every movement in the undergrowth. A bird rustled as it searched under the leaves and needles for worms. A curious fox pushed its nose out of the thicket. She almost lost her concentration for it made her think of the fox in the fabulous song from the banquet she had attended.
Now the only things that counted were the combination of raptness and relaxation. Withdrawing into herself and yet aware of everything, she was sure that she could hear the squirrels breathing as they hibernated in their dreys.
Time passed.
Then it happened! Suddenly, the woman seemed desperately eager to carry out all the exercises that she had missed so much. With lightning speed, she shook two throwing knives out of her sleeves, flinging them easily so that they sank into the top third of the tree trunks to her left and right. Two daggers in her boots followed their companions’ example, slamming into the wood a handspan below the throwing knives. She felt reasonably satisfied. She wanted to be faster, so she gathered her weapons and repeated the exercise. And did so again. Time after time, she flicked the missiles into the tree trunks that surrounded her. She felt her steaming body warming the cold forest air around her. As if in a trance, she carried out a succession of moves in imagined skirmishes. Practise, practise, practise. All the while, trying out the most varied of patterns. Enemy behind her, enemy to her right, enemy to her left, enemy in every position imaginable. The most important thing was – enemy. And even more important than that – enemy dead at the end of it all.
She paused. Heat flowed through her muscles like hot water. Lava was creeping through her veins. This was how a volcano seethed before it erupted. This heat had been manifesting itself more quickly over the last few months. The first few times that the symptoms had appeared, she had been convinced that a debilitating fever had afflicted her. But the opposite was the case – she sensed the fiery force within her. A beguiling feeling of power and superiority took hold of her.
The knives were flying faster now, still hitting their targets. Was something magical really slumbering within her – as Prince Karek had suspected – a power that gifted her with this mental awareness and speed? Crap! If that really was the case, then she wouldn’t need to practise so hard. Her training to be a hired assassin had always been a part of her life – it had started when she had been a mere ten-year-old strip of a thing in the Establishment. That was why she didn’t need any old sand timer to be faster than the rest of the world. She cocked her head. She must stop allowing these thoughts to play with her mind. She shook her head. Anyway – where her gift came from was of no relevance. She possessed this gift. She used this gift, which was why she still remained the indomitable warrior. After all, Death had looked several times into her coal-black eyes, only to shrug his shoulders and shuffle off again.
She had hardly broken into a sweat. Her body was becoming accustomed to the heat. She was surrounded by her own steaming breath. She gathered her thoughts and concentrated on cooling down. It took a long time, but she sensed that she had caused something to happen. She would work at controlling better the extreme fluctuations of her body heat.
The prospect of investigating her gift any further, probably with Karek’s help, was a step too far. The last thing she wanted to do was to risk her newly won freedom through old – and new – responsibilities.
Her hut needed a good clean and tidy-up. She swept the leaves and dirt into a pile and pushed it out the door. Her cupboard contained some mouldy paraphernalia that she used for disguising herself. She could throw that old rubbish away. With both arms she dragged the cupboard a little forward. At the bottom of the back wall, she pressed on a knothole in the wood. There was a low click. She bent over. From under the floor of the wardrobe she pulled out a hidden drawer. Within it were jars containing powders of many different colours, as well as ampoules and vials filled with liquids. An impressive array of poisons. Poisons from all corners of this poisonous world. She had taken a handful of little bottles from the Black Chancellor’s chamber in the Establishment. Before that, she had stuck him in the very same hole, within which he had regularly tossed the children as punishment. Then she had put the cover on it and clean forgotten about him. Following his longer than expected sojourn in the grave, he’d no longer had any need for his deadly poisons.
She wondered what would have happened had she forced the Black Chancellor to taste one poison after another – in the name of science, of course! What fun that would have been!
Her hand gripped the handle of her sword. When it came down to it, she preferred the cleanliness of death by naked steel – preferably through the eye – although sometimes she acted in a more feminine manner. Poison was a woman’s weapon of choice – or so they said. She looked at the bracelet on her right wrist. It seemed a harmless piece of jewellery yet contained a track with little barbs that could spring out. A flick of her wrist and the circlet would slide onto her fist and serve as a deadly knuckleduster, what with its paralysing poisonous needles and all.
Her eyes were drawn to the drawer and to the glass ampoule which contained the translucent liquid. She had found it a while ago on a corpse that had been lying near her little house on her return from Star Fastness. She held the little receptacle up. At first sight its contents looked like water. She carefully uncorked it. There were poisons that killed within seconds of making contact with the skin, but only an irredeemable idiot would carry such substances in a glass ampoule. Then there were the poisons that killed within seconds of inhalation. The rule of thumb was – if you could smell it, you were already a goner. How sad! But only world-weary morons would carry them in fragile containers. Which meant that this particular poison had to be special for some other reason.
She held the uncorked ampoule in her outstretched hand. A whiff of algae and lemon filled her nostrils. Aha! Why was this aroma so familiar to her? She sat down on the floor and tried to remember. A memory of the Southern Islands wafted through her head. A small shop on the island of Azar came to mind. That was where she had collected most of her poisonous collection some years previously. It hadn’t been an old witch with a shaky voice who had shown them to her and explained their properties – no, it had been a dark-skinned beauty who had instructed her on the horrors hidden within these harmless looking and cheerfully coloured powders and liquids. A real darling! With a silken voice she had explained how one particular poison was ideally constituted to cause the body to deteriorate unnoticeably over a considerable period. After a year or so the victim would die from an illness without attracting attention or suspicion – it was a dead cert. Had it been the same liquid that was now holding between her fingers? She couldn’t remember. But where was it that she had inhaled this aroma? It must have been fairly recently. She continued to sit on the floor. She frowned. All on her own and deep in the forest, she wrinkled her brow. A gesture that was out of place here – after all, frowning was an act that she had wanted to leave behind her. But if thoughts insisted on creating wrinkles… She suppressed the fleeting memory of this peculiar smell.
What should she do once winter was over? Should she travel south in the spring? For some time now, she’d wanted to do some digging for her roots – on the Southern Islands.
