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= FAR WARS =

a novel in the Empire of Time series

by John Argo

12.

We came to Tellerine, where she was fourth or fifth in line to become the next Trask. She had two older brothers, military pilots and commercial doctors both, named Romen and Caleo. They were handsome, of course, in that athletic, horse-riding manner of the Tellerine nobility. Their wives—my new sisters to be—were a bit like Zara in spirit as well as in that sportsy, healthy, plain but attractive way. The women, though not directly related except through marriage, all seemed to have that same bony, athletic, horsy, handsome easy-riding confidence of power and wealth. Zara's two sisters were dark Caliste and young, pretty Artemi.

Caliste was married to a young man of the Sender clan on the other side of the world. Caliste was wiry and dark-skinned, with a frizz of black hair, and eyes as fiery as they were olive colored. Only the facial features and the athletic limbs gave way their parallel lineage. Trask had been a busy man in his youth, siring offspring with half a dozen prominent daughters of other clans, in the accepted custom of their world.

Trask, in his old age, was still a robust figure with wild snowy hair and challenging gray eyes. He was my height (medium), with a steely paunch. He wore plain gray wool and brown leathers, including a wide belt and matching boots of farmed fawn leather. He welcomed me into his innermost study. It was a place few men or women ever saw, so I felt privileged. Zara, choosing a young wild man in a garden many parsecs away, had willed it. Otherwise, I would have never set foot in this rarified atmosphere.

The hardness around his mouth told implicitly how he became one of the world's richest freeholders. We met soon after my arrival—why waste time?—in a library study high in the family fortress overlooking the city of Zond with its flags and lakes and many lights on day and night, or were they myriad windows glowing golden in Corduwaine sunlight? Trask walked with a slight limp, and held himself a bit sideways, from old sporting or war injuries. He didn't offer, and I didn't ask. Frankly, my mouth was dry and I felt intimidated as two eunuchine droidals ushered us across a sea of carpets, past astrolabes and other affectations, among wall maps of seas of stars, to a pillared window where the famous general awaited me. Zara was his favorite child, and Trask wanted to examine me under a microscope. Apparently, he already knew everything about me, and liked what he saw. His voice had a mix of abrasiveness and affection in its timbre as he pumped my hand. "Welcome, my boy. How was your trip?"

"Uneventful, my lord. It's the best one can ask."

"Well said, lad. Come, let me offer you a robust little shalignac to warm your synapses." He led me to a darkly gleaming table covered in leather, with a plate of sea-green glass over it. There, he poured us each a finger-glass of amber liquor. We toasted, clinking our glasses gently together. He asked me about my family as we sipped the sweet, fiery moon berry liquor. "My daughter seems to be in your spell."

"I am more in her spell, lord."

He laughed a bark. "Hah! Her mother still has me enchanted, the witch. Poor thing, she died a few years ago. We all miss her so much. Yet I am a happy fool these days. Run while you can, my boy. Run for your life. Once you are in their grip, there is no escape."

I held the little glass to my shoulder and looked out over the misty seas and streets. "I have lost all desire for freedom."

"You've got it bad," he barked. "We'll have to give you care and attention. I understand you have rank."

"I am an officer, sir."

"A cub."

"Admittedly."

"Left junior, I imagine?"

"Yessir. Soon to be senior tenant." Those are military ranks. Ironically, their family name (Upholder) in part derives from the vassalage. Tenant and holder are from the same root of meaning. I could have looked it up in the electropedias of his faux libraries in that room. I am a lover of etymologies—the archeology and paleontology of words and their meanings. Trask was a generalissimo of land forces as well as a supreme admiral of his system's fleets. Both of his older sons—Zara's brothers—were wing commander pilots in the star fleet of that particular ocean of stars, known as the Sea of Green Glass in the ancient Mercurian system of stellar mapping, thousands of years ago when there was a mythological Earth Home, lost during the two thousand year Inversion.

"Excellent," rasped my father-to-be. "You won't find any special treatment among us." He dug a rough elbow into my side. "Nor will we oppose your rise in rank and influence." He gave me a conspiratorial laugh and a wink with wild eyebrows. It meant he had accepted me into the clan's power structure. I was free to stay, to marry his daughter, to become his son, and to be his vassal. I was scared to death, as much as I was head over heels in love with Zara. All my plans, my future, my hopes and dreams, were now phantoms as the new reality set in. I had not yet decided that I would spend the rest of my life here on this world that seemed like the inside of a shalignac bottle: heady, rich, swirling with potential and destiny, yet a stale end of contentment. To a young man, it was the death of adventure, the little death of orgasm, the harness of adulthood when I was still a stallion galloping break-neck I knew not where nor did I care.

"We will take good care of you," Trask said. "You will take care of Zara, and she knows how to take care of herself. You couldn't ask for a stronger or better woman to be your wife."

"I humbly admit to my great fortune, lord." My knees were knocking together, and my teeth chattering at the enormity of the pact I was making with this violent goat who could have me disappear if I showed any sign of violating his powerful trust. He was a war lord, beneath the civil veneer. All people of such power and station are war lords who will stop at nothing to hold their fiefdoms together.

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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.