By the last night of the midsummer festival, Teal was exhausted. The parties and celebrations throughout the city could be heard from the palace, and when Teal climbed to one of the towers, he could see people along the beach dancing and watching fireworks.

The next day brought in a heavy humid heat that was oppressive, stifling and draining. Nursing a hangover, the city was silent and still, most of its occupants taking refuge inside during the middle of the day or as Teal soon learnt, underground. The palace did much the same where only the cicadas and occasional bird could be heard as they flitted about their day.

The Emperor's mother also left. The consorts sat at the long table on the veranda of the Purple Jade palace. Teal noted everyone’s exhausted and drawn appearance. Most likely all of them only had a couple of hours sleeps the night before.

“The new consort,” Jale began, after drinking down a long glass of water, “is going to stay in one of the guest quarters until after we have held our private celebrations. The Emperor will then spend some time getting to know her and decide on what he was going to do.”

Teal watched Jale closely. It was intriguing to think of another consort potentially entering the harem where he wouldn’t be considered the new person.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Delba told Teal.

“The Emperor believes that she is pleasant enough to the eye, but he has seen her application before and had found her unsuitable.”

“What will happen to her?” Teal asked.

“Since it was his mother who brought her here and the Emperor does not wish to bring shame to her family, she will probably be sent to live in another city.”

Teal didn’t comment and neither did the other consorts. The act of sending her to another city would still be very shameful for the young woman.

"We're leaving for Askoflin later today," Jale suddenly announced, changing the course of the conversation.

His news was met with several sounds of agreement from the other consorts.

"It's the summer palace in the mountains not too far from the city," Jale explained to Teal. "It's where we go every year at the end of the Midsummer Festival for our own private celebrations."

"Is life always like this in the palace?” Teal asked, shaking his head in amazement. “Always celebrating and travelling?"

"This time of year is particularly relaxed due to the season,” Ralen explained for Jale.

“Make the most of it,” Jale stated with a friendly laugh. “Once the heatwave has passed and with the Midsummer Festival over, life will soon return to normal and you will continue with your training.” He started to rise to his feet and gazed at the other consorts. “Be prepared to leave in three hours,” he informed them. Jale glanced at Teal. “Walk with me.”

Jale didn’t wait for Teal to respond. He turned and started walking away from the table and the other consorts forcing Teal to jump to his feet and jog after him.

“I heard you had fun the other night with the Empress and Emperor," Jale asked as he walked towards the entrance of the Purple Jade Palace. "Did you enjoy yourself?"

"Yes," he responded. "I did."

"Interesting," Jale said with a smirk on his lips. "I’d better be careful then. Your eunuch will help you pack for our trip. Care to join me in my quarters for an hour?”

Teal laughed. "I could never say no to you, Jale."

"I hope not," Jale said.

>>

It had been a long arduous journey for Nala, the health giver, to reach the remote Denroin Temple nestled high in the mountains, especially for someone of her age.

They were old acquaintances, the Denroin monks and her. A person couldn't say friends when it came to the Denroin monks. Nala's good ties with this furiously independent group of men, stemmed from a decade earlier when she had tended to one of the head monks who had fallen ill.

On a journey acquiring roots and herbs on the far distant Mahem Mountains, she had stumbled into their territory and had nearly been subjected to severe punishment. Their elite healers had failed however, and upon hearing her position as healer to the Emperor, they had asked her for assistance. The sick monk was a member of the Embodran elect, their high council, and Nala had been the one to find the poison that had inflicted the man and cure him.

From that day on, Nala had held a unique relationship with the monks. Not too unique though. Her first request to access their materials on the Lombock race was declined, until she revealed that there was an actual Lombock living amongst them. The Embodran elect deliberated for a whole day until they approved her access to one of their vaults.

For her entire time at the temple, since they had allowed her to enter the catacombs of the underground archives, she had a shadow. He was a middle ranking monk who had been given the task of ensuring she didn't access anything she wasn't supposed to - and even Nala's curiosity was piqued as to what information could be of such worth that it was considered to be more classified than the Lombock race.

That thought was only heightened now that Nala was coming to the end of her research, and she knew what no one else in the empire knew. The few documents they held in the Grand Library were not completely correct. Now she understood what the Lombock were truly capable of and, she also knew what had truly happened to them all those years ago.

Nala wiped her brow. The vault, a cave of sorts that was guarded with a large iron door, was stuffy and hot. She was not allowed to take the parchments anywhere else. Nala squinted over the material with a long burning torch beside her. An uncharacteristic impatience tempered her work, so eager she was to get moving again and share what she had discovered with the Emperor.

Finally, not knowing what hour of the day it was, Nala laid her ink stick down satisfied with what she had copied. She turned to her shadow, and he smiled. He was an older monk, possibly in his late fifties, and had not uttered one word since he had been in her presence. He took a step forward and stopped, the sudden sound of a scuffle from outside of the cave and further down the tunnel, reaching their ears.

The monk instantly raised his hand, cautioning Nala to be quiet. He turned, as did Nala, both poised in confusion, but instinct causing a prickling sense of fear to churn over the back of their necks.

Nala rose to her feet, her hands turning the parchment of her copied work into a tight roll. She thrust it inside her long dress just as the monk turned sharply and grabbed her elbow. His grip was firm and urgent. It appeared he was going to protect her just as much as he had been warned to protect the archives.

They approached the entrance of the cave slowly, their ears on alert as the sound of the scuffle, the fight, they dared to think, grew louder. The torches in the tunnel gave a view of what was occurring. A Talekan Assassin and a Denroin monk in battle, a fierce battle with the Denroin monk struggling despite his skilful fighting. In one swift act, the assassin faked a swing with one hand and as the monk went to block, the assassin's other hand came up hard, the blade in their hand jutting up and into the monk’s neck.

Without a word, Nala's monk pulled her down the tunnel in the opposite direction, deeper and darker into the depths of the mountain. They traveled quietly and as fast as Nala's old bones would allow her.

She wasn't going to ask how the assassin had managed to get that far into the archives or how many monks had possibly been killed to get there. Neither was she going to ask how the assassin knew where she was or what she was doing. Not that she was conceited, but there was no doubt in Nala's mind that the assassin was only there because of her.

Obviously, someone did not want her to gain information on the Lombock race. Her thoughts continued to wander despite the grime that was finding its way onto her skin, under her nails, and over her clothes.

They paused and listened.

All of a sudden, the monk pushed her, blindly into another tunnel to her right and into the darkness where no torches were lit to guide her way. There was the sound of fighting behind her, her shadow, her monk, fighting to allow her to escape. She could only hope that this dark tunnel would lead to somewhere fruitful.

Her hands grappled over the slimy wall using it to guide her way. She followed it around what she guessed was a corner and relief hit her. There, only a short distance away, an opening with light streaming through what appeared to be branches of a vine half covering the entrance.

Nala reached out pushing the vines to the side. Awkward and resisting, the vines did not want to move. This was not an entrance or exit that was used very often.

Nala struggled through. A gasp escaped her, and she instantly reached for the vines to prevent her from falling into the deep cavern at her feet. Still deep within the mountain, it wasn't the large dark hole before her that had made her cry, it was the walls of the cavern lined with books and scrolls as far as the eye could see above and below her that made her gasp. This had to be the world's largest library.

It was this knowledge, this abundance of knowledge before her, untouched by the everyday man that caused Nala her death. Preoccupied by what she was seeing, she failed to continue to move and she was therefore far too easy a prey for the assassin. She never heard their approach and never sensed their presence. The blade, sharp and brilliant, sliced swiftly and easily over her neck. The shock of it overwhelmed her and then, so did the darkness of the cavern as her body fell into its depths.

Her monk, Nala's shadow, stumbled down another tunnel. He limped, blood trickling down his left side. It was a mortal wound that much was clear. He had one last task to do before he died and he could make it. He could. His free hand, the one that was not holding the wall for support, held the copied scroll that Nala had written.

She had passed it to him, just before he had shoved her off into the tunnel, as if she had known he had more chance of escaping than her. The last flickering flames of the torch held the silent agreement between them. Nala would attempt to lead the assassin away, and the monk would get the scroll out and to the waiting eagle that would carry the scroll back to the Emperor.

The plan, so simple in design, had worked. The monk had managed to get away without being followed but not before he had been stabbed in the chest. There was poison on the blade, he could smell it so there had been no need for the assassin to continue with their attack to ensure their job would be complete. One snick of the blade was enough to know that he would die, and die fast.

Now staggering out of the archives through a back entrance. He stumbled past the other dead bodies of monks that had fallen at the assassin's whim. The messenger birds were towards the back of the compound. His vision blurred, blood dripped and he gasped in pain. It didn't matter. It was the last thing he was going to do and nothing was going to stop him.

The eagle accepted its package, the scroll placed inside a secure pouch and bound to its leg. It was an odd shape and large, but the strong bird would be able to carry it. He removed the chain, uncovered its eyes and bade it off.

The monk watched the eagle fly into the sky and smiled as it disappeared. His body slid to the ground, leaning against the wooden cage that the eagle had been residing in.

A laugh escaped his lips when he saw the assassin approach, their face covered and only their eyes present – bright sparkling blue eyes.

"You're too late," the monk spat. They were the first words he had uttered in over twenty years. "The Emperor will now know how to stop the Lombock from coming back."

The assassin pulled off their head piece and the monk laid his eyes onto a young woman with long brown hair.

"You foolish man," she whispered, squatting down in front of him. "They never left. The Lombock never left."