Twins of Trallis: Snowstorm

"I will keep your secret, Prince Arimus," Janus said looking the man in the eyes to show the truth of his words, "but we must speak in private if you will."

"I will send Nahn back in to help you dress, Princess," he smiled and walked toward her to kiss her chastely and whisper in her ear, "I love you also." Turning to face Janus, "Let's go have this talk we must have."

Janus explained that due to age and recent injuries, the fever would take Gerahn's life within the week. It would also take the youngest five of his many brothers who still had constant contact with their mothers and the women of the upper floors. It was a very clever assassination and by the end of its course it will have decimated the ruling family. Ari was in a unique position in that he did not have contact with any of those infected so far and Janus gave him instruction on how to keep those loyal to him from catching the virus which seemed to be transmitted by touch, hand to mouth as it were. The initial infected girl had been a food server in the women's quarters, the women then took the virus to their partners and the epidemic began.

"The battle for lordship of the realm will begin soon, with only a few heirs to lay claim to the throne if any. Whoever perpetrated this has done his job well," Janus finished his speech about the upcoming battles he saw in the future. Ari nodded deep in thought his mind ticking over his next move, aware that his men at arms were seated nearby and had heard all of what the Physician had said. All their lives would be forfeit if he did not join the battle and win but he had no long held desire to be Lord of the realm and be an even bigger target of attack.

"Thank you for the warning of coming events," Ari said stiffly realising he had no real choice in the matter. "I will consider all of the advice you have given me."

"I am not done," Janus replied and looked at Ari seriously. "We both know who that girl in there truly is. I will not demean you by treating you as a simpleton and explaining it to. We both cared for her mother in our own ways as we both care about her." Ari nodded looking at Janus with suspicion. "You will be endangering her keeping her at your side during the battles ahead, and while many of your brothers may spare a pretty young girl and place her back into slavery, if her arm band remains removed, as you have done, they will recognise the brand faded though it is."

His words were not lost on Ari, who looked at the large closed doors that led to the bed he shared with Allora. "I have no wish to give her up."

"Then we must plan the best way to approach the coming battle. For now you have earned my loyalty as your father once did before he turned cold and bitter. You have less than a week to raise a small army and protect not only yourself but those closest you." Janus said meaningfully. "I will move to the castle today and stay on this floor. I will bring with me several assistants including Clio. There is no one who could protect that girl better and prepare her for what she must do should you be defeated." Ari looked dubious at the last so Janus added. "Her love for Allora is so great, she will not betray any of us and she will see to what needs to be done if that time arises." Again Ari nodded dark thoughts clouding his mind.

Janus was all business having been through this type of battle twice in his life already. Gerahn had held power longer than most in his position but Janus remembered the blood feuds well. "I will return to this room tonight an hour after the feasting time. Attend and be seen as hale and hearty but eat nothing unless the servant who serves you is willing to taste it first. I will bring antidotes with me just in case." Ari was taken aback at being given instruction and began to protest but Janus held up his hand. "You can choose to accept me at my word and that you have my loyalty for the battle ahead or you can have me killed upon my return tonight but take heed of my words, I have been through two such battles for lordship and I can keep you and those you care for alive."

Janus stood and left the room. Ari and his men at arms immediately began to plan, firstly they needed to confirm that Gerahn was gravely ill. One of the men donned soft gauntlets and heeding the words of the physician about how the virus was spread went in search of proof. Ari returned to Allora to reassure her that all was as it should be and to gently probe her about how she knew Janus so he could match the stories.

*****

The foresight and skill of the physician in conjunction with Ari and his men at arms, who had good minds for warfare and subterfuge, had pre-empted the battle. After the death of Gerahn, Ari kept a low profile safe guarding both himself and those he cared for. He watched from the sidelines as his brothered battled. No one thought him much of a threat and went after the more robust and warlike contenders that stood in the way of the throne first, not noticing the defections to the smaller more stable forces of Prince Arimus. The physician and his attendant Clio had been pivotal in turning the tide of the battle when it came to Ari. They had connections in every guild of the lower castes and they managed to form allegiances with the very people who were mostly forgotten in times such as these.

His brothers suddenly found themselves with broken equipment that was not mended in a timely fashion and food that lacked substance and taste. In the case of one particularly cruel and vile candidate for the throne, he found his food laced with a slow acting poison that killed him as he slept. With so any guilds refusing service to all but the new lord himself the coup when it came from Ari's forces was far from the bloody riots that had preceded it.

He spent the first six months of his reign as Lord of Stolle making the promises Janus and Clio had made to the guild masters who had supported him so well during the battle a reality. The castle prospered and with that prosperity so too did the lands of Stolle benefit from good will. After the battle the remaining two brothers had been executed and the direct descendants of Gerahn's line aside of his own family had been sold into slavery as was the tradition.

Believing all of Gerahn's progeny slain or sold into slavery at this point, the entreaties from Solaris and Cavalia regarding the whereabouts of the woman, Dana, vcc ceased and as time drifted on Ari remained a benevolent ruler and took Allora as his bride legitimising her right to be treated as a Lady of the realm alongside the lady's from other noble houses. He gifted his men at arms titles and large parcels of land which were then placed in the hands of care takers until they wished to leave the castle and claim them. Clio and Nahn became the constant attendants of Allora and the physician was rewarded heavily.

*****

It was two years after his ascendancy to the throne of Stolle that Lord Arimus stood in the tent of the Sand Lord his face frozen in a look of dignified disinterest as the mirror image of his wife, his great love, danced lewdly before them. His cold grey eyes locked instantly with his most trusted advisor, the physician Janus.

Leaving the celebrations shortly after the dancer had completed her entertainment, Ari exploded. "I thought we were beyond secrets! Tell me it is just bizarre coincidence, a doppelganger, I dare you."

"Twins," Janus said sadly. "I believed her dead. What was the point in causing Allora distress? I had searched for years for that girl to no avail," Janus covered his face with his hands shock and relief at seeing her alive again warring within him as he reasoned with Ari.

"You should have told me! How could you not tell me!" Ari was still angry and disappointed in the man he trusted.

"What good would it have done to tell you of a dead girl? I was so sure she had died as her adopted father had when she would have been less than ten years old. I had buried the memory of her so deeply it has truly shocked me as much as you to see her here." Janus had no answer except his original statement.

"Tell me now then." Ari sat on the edge of a large chair within the big tent. "Tell me the whole story of how Dana died."

Janus unburdened his guilt at not having protected Dana better, of not having looked after the girls with greater care, of having lost the small dancer that they had seen tonight. It was with tears in his eyes he finally stopped talking remembering his promise to Dana that her child not be a slave, and the sense of betrayal that seeped into him.

"I won't endanger Allora." Ari paced the room his mind working quickly. "We will go to Iken and see what we can find about how she came to be in his possession."

The following morning, Lord Arimus of the Realm of Stolle, followed by his second and the physician entered the tent of the sand people and stood stiffly looking at the Horse Lords.

"I am quite the popular man this morning Lord Iken chuckled, "And what brings you here this fine morning gentlemen? Did my dancer also appeal to you?"

"The physician feels he may have knowledge of the dancer's parentage," Ari said stiffly, "I am here to see that his suspicions are put to rest one way or the other." Toka arrived as he finished speaking and he turned to eye the other men in the tent.

The four powerful Lords all eyed each other with a mixture of hostility and interest when Mahan arrived with Nyx. Dressed in the diaphanous garb of a dancer she went first to kneel before Iken and asked sweetly, "How may I serve you, my Lord?"

Ari and Janus hung on her every word as she recounted her early life with little to no detail. It confirmed to them however that Janus was correct about her origins. Then just as closely they listened to the questions and information brought forth by the other Lords. Ari remained impassive but Janus recoiled several times as some information was brought anew from Dana's long lost family.

As they left the tent to reconvene in the proper council tent Lord Iken called to them. "Lord Arimus," he called, "The man with you is a physician you said? The reputation of the physicians of Stolle precedes them, perhaps after the meeting he could prescribe me some balm to ease my old bones, in the dry desert heat."

Ari grunted in a non-committal way but Iken saw the look of interest flash over the doctor's face before they left his tent to reassemble in the council hall. Janus was mulling over what he had seen and heard. If they admitted to knowing that Dana was the mother of Nyx he endangered her from his own country men who did not like to leave the children of deposed Lord's alive to claim title to the throne. Even if Ari did not pursue that course of action his men at arms would.

Ari pulled the physician aside before he reached the tent. "Your face gives you away. You cannot come to the deliberations, you will wait in my tent."

Janus appealed to him reasoning that while, somehow information had got out that Dana had in fact been abducted rather than having died as originally thought on the night of her sister's wedding feast and that there was a child, they did not seem to know that she was a twin. How could they, even those who had been in the room that day, twenty years ago had only seen the birth of the first of Dana's daughters.

Ari disagreed . They could admit to Dana having a child by Gerahn and discount the girl as being her as she bore no brand but then the search would continue and he would not wish to put her in any more danger than she already would be now that his men had seen her mirror image here at the Council of Nine. They decided to stay silent, no one had any proof, no one could for any certainty claim they knew the girls origins, no one but Janus, himself that was. If he stayed silent life as they knew it could go on for the two girls.

The delegates from each realm had assembled again to form the council of nine and the tensions between the men of Stolle and the horse lords of Cavalia were palpable. The absence of the physician, Janus, was noted and Ari stepped forward to speak on his behalf claiming that the girl was a daughter to a physician that trained with Janus, he had died an untimely death and his family had fled before Janus could make the journey to offer them shelter in the palace grounds. Should he be allowed to return her to the country of her birth she would be treated as a princess not a slave.

It was Rhys who stepped forward saying that a freed slave woman had journeyed to the clan of the Horse Lord to tell them of a great wrong doing. A horse woman named Dana had lived when all else thought her dead. She had taken the name Nyx and lived an unhappy existence, weak and unwell she had died in childbirth. The child had been raised by herself and her husband until his early death and he had tasked his wife with finding a healer in the grasslands named Hohepa. As they travelled to the grasslands to seek out the child's mother's clan, they had been captured and sold into slavery. The woman had loved the child and once free she sought out the healer and told him her tale.

Keharn concurred with the Horse Lords story adding that his wife, the sister of Dana never believed she had passed over into the great unknown. It was sometime later that she said she had dreamt that Dana was free and happy and finally let the search for her sister die.

After allowing the petitions to come forth Iken stood and looked around at the gathering of lords and Ladies, "They are all wonderful tales and I feel for each of you in what you say, but there is no proof that this girl is anything more than a slave and dancer. She has lived with the people of my realm for the last decade, where were you all then? I put it to you that her talent is so great the desire to own one such as she has created these entreaties for her release from servitude."

Ari watched as the men of legend rose to their feet and Lord Iken waved his hands at them, "I know you brothers of legend and you Sealord in waiting, do not think to intimidate me with your status amongst this council, for whatever reason, the girl was sold into slavery, she belongs rightfully to me and I will not hand over such a valuable commodity on supposition and say so."

"At least let her hold the orb of the storm-dancers," the softly spoken Lady Camille said. "It cannot hurt to see if it glows, and then we can talk of proof."

Ari clenched his fists trying to think of a way to stop the testing as once again Keharn took an orb from his pocket and approached Nyx with a kindly smile, "Will you come with me to the center of the tent? No harm will come to you, I promise."

The orb seemed like all others of its kind. A white glow emanated from it and its contents swirled like clouds. In the hands of the dancer though the orb pulsed and changed rather than glowing brightly white and throbbing with her heartbeat as it would have if she had been a storm dancer, it instead pulsed deeply and changed from white to a deep golden glow. It was as if the clouds of white energy trapped within the sphere had turned to clouds of sand. Ari stayed strangely silent and stoic as the others within the tent gasped in shock.

"Give the orb back to its owner, Nyx," Lord Iken said softly his shock making him careless.

Keharn faltered in his step toward the girl as he whispered, "Your name is Nyx?"

"Yes," she said softly, "Named for my mother." It was the last shred of proof Ari needed. He prepared to finally speak when Lord Iken shouted above the din.

"It means nothing," Iken jumped to his feet, "It is a common slave name we all know that." The orb once in Keharn hands turned back into the pulsing white light, the energy clouds chased each other around the glass sphere. "It should be obvious to all who saw it that the girl is a sandstorm dancer."

"We all have legends from our own realms, I must admit that was an interesting example but I am not convinced, show me a stone walker or a water sprite from the fens and I may believe that the stuff of myth has returned but that was a trick, I am not sure how Iken but I think you have bamboozled us again," Lord Gabriel rumbled into the now hushed voices as the lords and Ladies of the nine realms talked quietly amongst their own kind.

"In any case," he continued, "It is no proof of anything, take your girl Iken, let the others find proof of this Dana and if she gave birth at all, someone who knew her that could say for sure." He measured each of the three men who seemed about to protest with a level gaze. "Should I come to your clan and tell you that your mistress is the daughter of my long dead sister would you just hand her to me?"

The three men spluttered to form a reply, "The code here is very clear, come next council with proof and we will reconsider your requests. Do you agree, Ladies and Lords? Or shall we put it to a formal vote?" Gabriel eyed everyone seriously looking for nods of assent.

The council disbanded to enjoy lunch and Ari stalked from the tent to the tent of Janus, "You will meet with the sand snake and you will find out if the girl is happy and healthy. No more no less," he fumed. "I will not endanger Allora for no reason. We must wait until and be cautious until council reforms again next harvest moon."

Janus agreed, the Lady of Stolle was a precious woman, the problem was that at that moment she was in danger from anybody at this council who visited Stolle and could put the two girls together in their minds or at worst the same room. "I am sending Gerhardt back to guard her, write your letter to Clio as I will to Nahn," he looked at Janus sadly, "You should have told me old man, this is not good news."

*****