DIE RACHE

German, "the revenge".

I will hurt you for this. I don't know how yet, but give me time. A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you'll know the debt is paid. -- G. R. R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

For years after that everything seemed to go on as normal. No one spared another thought for Karandren. No one, that is, except Teivain-ríkhorn-hrair. For over ten years she kept an eye out for any news of him. She never heard anything. He might as well have fallen off the face of the earth.

The mage was eccentric but not stupid. She knew perfectly well what the likely result would be of throwing a teenager into a foreign country with no resources. She knew her colleagues had essentially sentenced Karandren to a slow death of starvation, exposure, or illness. At best he would be forced to beg on the streets. He didn't speak a word of Miavish; how could he ever make a life for himself there?

After ten years Teivain-ríkhorn-hrair officially stepped down as a Great Mage. In her resignation message she told her former colleagues exactly what she thought of them.

Five years after her retirement, the other Great Mages elected a replacement. And who better than one of her former pupils, someone who had already proved she was a competent magician and a skilled fighter? If Diarnlan had any regrets about how she came to get her new position, she didn't show them.

Two years after that, another monster crawled out of the sea. Once again Diarnlan was the person to kill it. That was when she gained her title. Diarnlan Kergínelsdóttir essentially ceased to exist, and Guireth-melaðr-hremón took her place.

Did she ever spare Karandren a thought? Did his probable fate ever trouble her? No one was close enough to her to know. Whether it did or not, she refused to ever take a student again.

The first year was the worst. Foreign languages with a hundred different dialects were the least of Karandren's worries. True, he'd never studied Miavish. He'd never thought he had any need to. But he had grown up hearing his father speak his hometown dialect of Avallese while his mother spoke the dialect of the scholars she had learnt from. Her relatives spoke their own native language, which was nothing at all like Avallese or any human language. In the academy Karandren quickly picked up standard Avallese. So with all that linguistic experience behind him, he had no trouble learning enough Miavish to get by.

If sometimes he learnt it far more quickly than anyone should, and if he occasionally found he knew words he had never even heard before, he shrugged and dismissed it. There was probably a good explanation for it. He just didn't care enough to find out what it was.

No, learning Miavish wasn't a problem. Finding food and shelter was. And the biggest problem of all was staying out of the clutches of the Bone-Worshippers.

The academy didn't only teach magic. It also offered courses in history, politics, geography, and many other mundane things. They were mandatory for the first year and optional from then on. Karandren opted out of them as soon as he got the chance. Now he regretted that decision immensely.

When he first landed in Miavain his mind was entirely occupied by finding somewhere to stay. He stumbled along a dirt road -- little more than a hiking trail, really -- until he saw a building in the distance.

Karandren forgot about his anger, hurt, and fear as he ran to it, hoping desperately it was a house and someone was home. Then he got close enough to see what it was and his heart fell again. It was a house, all right. But it was a house that looked like it hadn't been lived in since King Andin's time[1]. All the windows were broken, the front door hung off its hinges, and part of the roof had caved in.

An icy chill filled the air as the sun sank beneath the horizon. Like it or not, he would just have to stay here. There was no way he could get to an inhabited house before it was fully dark.

Karandren climbed in through one of the broken windows. He looked around. This had once been someone's living room. Flower-patterned wallpaper still clung to some parts of the crumbling wall. An old chair lay on the floor, all its legs broken. The empty fireplace looked like a gaping mouth in the half-darkness. Karandren cast his magic around the place warily. All he found were birds nesting in the roof and mice in the walls.

On one side of the room was a strange table attached to the wall. It was covered with still-intact glass bottles. Curious, Karandren went over to have a closer look. Now he saw it was actually an altar. The bottles were candle-holders. A small indentation in the wall showed where the statue of the god would have been placed.

Something about that altar set Karandren's teeth on edge. He backed away slowly and examined it with his magic. There was nothing inherently sinister about it. No spells or echoes of rituals lingered on it. Yet he felt the same revulsion he'd felt when he learnt about the sorts of dark magic that required human sacrifice.

He sat down beside the fireplace with his back against the wall and tried to remember everything he'd ever learnt about Miavain. His memories weren't encouraging.

Avallot had always looked down on Miavain and its inhabitants and viewed them as barbarians. Four hundred years ago that opinion became horribly justified. During Queen Aigaer's reign the Holy and Virtuous Empire of Drekakuria invaded and conquered Miavain. They intended to use it as a stepping stone to conquer Avallot. Aigaer drove them out of Avallot but not out of Miavain. They reshaped it in their image, forcing their own horrible religion on the people and murdering anyone who refused to convert.

Ever since then Miavain had been a stronghold of the Bone-Worshippers. The priests had their claws so deeply in the country that their word was law. They told people the only way for them to get to heaven was to pay the priests half of everything they earned. They took the bones of dead criminals or even of livestock and claimed they were the bones of gods and saints. Anyone who questioned this or refused to show proper respect to the bones was declared a heretic -- and the Bone-Worshippers knew of only one way to deal with heretics. People suspected of heresy were tortured into confessing. Then they were burnt at the stake and the priests stole all their property.

Then there was how they treated women. Karandren spared a moment to be devoutly thankful he wasn't a woman. The Bone-Worshippers had a very narrow idea of what a woman should be. Any woman who didn't fit that idea was considered a demon sent to tempt men. She was sent off to a convent -- euphemistically called a Place of Prayer and Reflection -- and never heard of again.

By far the worst part was how they treated children. At some point one of their archbishops had a revelation that it was moral and right for priests to rape anyone they wanted -- including children. Karandren's history teacher only mentioned that in passing. At the time he'd been happy not to think about it. Now he wished he knew more so he could know how to protect himself from any priestly perverts he encountered.

His stomach twisted at that thought. It was just as well he'd eaten nothing recently or it would have made him physically sick.

Karandren hadn't eaten since-- Was it really only a few hours ago? It felt more like a lifetime. He and Erdreda had a sandwich before they left for the farm. Strange how he could think of the events leading up to his exile with as much detachment as if they had happened to someone else. He felt like he had been completely hollowed out and filled with nothing but cold rage and the determination to get revenge.

He was hungry, all right. But it wasn't the sort of hunger that could be satisfied with food. As a small child he'd heard of a starving vampire going on the rampage. Usually vampires were satisfied with draining only one person of blood. That one killed an entire village, far more people than it could ever hope to feed from without bursting its own stomach. It would have killed more if it hadn't been killed first. Karandren's mother said it was so mad with hunger it would kill anything resembling food just so it could convince itself it would never be hungry again.

Now Karandren knew exactly how that vampire had felt.

He lay awake for most of the night. Occasionally he dropped off for minutes at a time. Then some noise, real or imagined, would startle him awake. When dawn stained the horizon red he finally gave up. Staying here would do him no good. He needed to find an inhabited house -- preferably one far away from the nearest priest.

Karandren climbed out the window and set off in a random direction. He still had no idea which part of Miavain he was in or where the nearest town was. The sooner he found out, the better he could make plans.

Fate had a very cruel sense of humour. Within twenty minutes of walking Karandren came across a huge house. He couldn't see anyone in the grounds or through the window. In spite of his own misgivings he risked going closer. There wasn't even a guard dog. Whoever owned this place was either trusting to the point of idiocy or had some powerful magic protecting their house.

Karandren cast every ward-finding spell he knew. None of them showed even a hint of magical protections. It looked like the owner was the suicidally trusting type. Good. Someone with such a large house would have plenty of food, plenty of money, and probably a map lying around somewhere. And if they didn't want to be robbed, why, they should go to more trouble to protect their property.

He cast an unlocking spell on the kitchen door. The kitchens were as large as he expected and mercifully empty. He tiptoed out of them, up the stairs, and into the main hall.

His blood ran cold. In the middle of the hall stood an enormous altar surmounted by a sculpture of a skeleton. Candles burnt all around the altar -- candles placed in human skulls.

Bone-Worshippers.

Even though there was no one around Karandren dived behind one of the heavy velvet curtains. He held his sleeve over his mouth to muffle the sound of his breathing. Minutes ticked by. No one threw aside the curtain and dragged him out of his hiding place. The building remained silent and lifeless. Maybe no one was home.

Karandren ventured out warily. He kept a sharp eye out for anyone waiting to pounce on him. Carefully he made his way out of the hall. Any thought he'd had of looking for food here had long since vanished. He began to tiptoe back down to the kitchens. Then he paused. Whoever lived here must be very rich and important. The common people of Miavain were kept in perpetual poverty by the priests leeching off them. Combine that with the ostentatious altar and it was easy to deduce he'd ended up in a priest's house. The priests were perverts and monsters. It was practically his duty to rid the world of them.

Unlit candles lined the walls. It was the work of a moment to light them and hold them against the curtains, the carpet, anything that would burn.

The fire took hold immediately. Karandren scurried down to the kitchens and out the door. He kept running until he was far away from the house.

When he looked back he saw the smoke rising from it.

After that he wandered aimlessly around the country for several weeks. When he found a village he stole food under cover of darkness. He stayed out of sight and eavesdropped on conversations to pick up as much of the language as he could. When he finally reached a large town he was reasonably confident in his ability to be understood. His accent was the thing most likely to give him away.

For over a year he lived in that town, doing odd jobs for the baker and running errands for other shopkeepers. He managed to stay well away from any priests. In his spare time he practiced his magic. He forced it to do things he had only heard of and things he had never before realised magic could actually do. Things like completely taking over someone else's mind and making them obey his will.

Within two years the entire town was his mindless slave. Within five years he'd expanded his reach to the other towns nearby. As the years went back he continued practicing dark magic on priests, lawyers, and anyone else who no one would miss. Soon he was in control of the whole kingdom. His control was as dictatorial and absolute as the now-overthrown Bone-Worshippers.

It wasn't enough. He was even more like the vampire than he realised. It didn't matter how much blood he spilled. It didn't matter how many priests he skinned alive with his bare hands. It didn't matter how many people he clawed apart and stitched back together. He was still starving, and only one person's blood would satisfy him.

He had to kill Diarnlan.