AN HOUR LATER, Kellen rode through the front gates of the Easthaven Barracks. After tying off Your Highness, he scanned the buildings for any
signs of the Black Watch. There were a few armsmen wearing the green and yellow livery of the Sidaran Lancers scattered around the outer buildings, but no sign of the white riders anywhere. Kellen stepped into the main barracks’ offices.
An elderly guard lifted his head from where he was busy fussing over some papers at his desk. “How can I help you, sir?”
“My name is Kellen, and I have a meeting with Captain Hatch.” Kellen glanced around the empty waiting room. With winter approaching, most of the Sidaran Lancers had already gone home to be with their families. A small regiment of men from Easthaven were kept on duty as they rotated
assignments during the colder months from Èshan to Nùwen.
It had been a long time since the Kingdom of Sidara had been required to recall its troops. Kellen couldn’t help but wonder if such complacency would eventually be their downfall.
The guard laid his quill across a stack of loose parchment on which he had been scribbling. “I’ll see if the captain is available.” He gestured to an empty bench along the adjacent wall. “It shouldn’t take long.”
Kellen thanked him and took a seat.
The guard marched down the back hallway and knocked on the last door on the left. Not waiting for a reply, he stuck his head inside. Kellen couldn’t quite make out what the man was saying, but he did hear his name mentioned somewhere in the conversation. The officer closed the door and returned to the lobby area where he plopped himself back on his stool. “The captain will see you now.”
Kellen left the sitting room and walked down one of the back corridors. Bracketed torches lined the stone walls to either side as he made his way to the last door on the left. He knocked and waited for a reply.
“Come.”
Kellen opened the door and stepped inside. The room was rather plain for an office, not much more than a desk, three chairs, a small shelf, and a window that had filmed over from lack of proper cleaning.
“Right on time, I see,” Hatch said. “I like that.” The captain pushed his disorderly fall of brown hair from his eyes as he leaned back in his chair. “It shows a strong moral character. I believe you can tell a lot about a man by
his time of arrival. For example . . .” He tapped his fingers on the desk in front of him. “Arriving late shows a total lack of respect for the other party as well as a lazy and self-indulgent attitude. However,” he said, raising his finger to emphasize what he was saying, “a man who arrives too early
demonstrates fanaticism, which leads me to believe they are either eager to get our business over with, or they are attempting to curry favor by
overcompensating.” Hatch leaned forward. “But, a man that shows up precisely when he is expected validates my belief in his attention to
instruction.” He dotted the end of his speech by rapping his knuckles on the wood.
Kellen conceded with a nod. Hatch had obviously given the subject some considerable thought, and he didn’t want to appear less than lackluster about the man’s well-thought-out argument.
The captain studied Kellen a moment longer before rising from his seat to grab a large piece of rolled parchment from the top of a nearby shelf. He spread it out on his desk and used a few random items to hold it in place.
Kellen glanced at the thick material and recognized it as a map of the southeastern section of Sidara, including Easthaven and its surrounding countryside.
“This is where we’ve searched so far.” Hatch circled a couple places on
the map with his finger, which included territory as far west of Easthaven as Reed Marsh, and as far south as the border between Sidara and Briston.
“How familiar are you with this territory here?” He pointed to the woods in between Reed Marsh and the southernmost side of Crystal Lake.
“Very familiar,” Kellen said. He had been raised in those woods his
entire life. He had taken on the role of the overlord’s gamekeeper after his father’s mysterious disappearance back when Kellen was no older than Breen. He knew the land like the back of his hand.
“Good. We’ll leave after lunch then,” Hatch said, excitement flickering across his face.
After a quick meal, seven of the original ten riders were mounted and making their way through the barracks’ north gate with Kellen riding
alongside Hatch at the front. They rode north along a pre-determined search grid Kellen had designed to meet the captain’s strict specifications.
Thankfully, he knew the surrounding area and those who were settled there, which gave him the advantage of steering the troop away from any qualified suspects they might find of interest.
“I thought there were ten of you?”
“Three of them have been assigned to our prisoner.” “Three men just to watch one bound woman?”
Hatch stiffened in his saddle as he turned to look at Kellen. “And how did you know it was a woman?”
Kellen’s stomach tightened and his mind raced for a plausible explanation. He attempted to laugh it off. “Captain, even a city our size would be hard-pressed to miss a contingent of the Tower’s guards riding through, especially when they’re escorting a young woman as their prisoner. We might be the capital city of Sidara but gossip still travels faster than a race horse around here.”
The answer seemed to appease the captain as he shifted his attention back to the front.
“I still don’t see how someone as small as she is could be so dangerous.” Kellen was trying his best to appear ignorant to matters concerning the ven’ae. He needed to coax the good captain into revealing something useful for the council to use in Saleena’s rescue.
“I see you have never run into a wielder before,” Hatch scoffed, glancing sideways at Kellen. “Thank your Creator for that. I’ve seen a single wielder take down an entire company of battle-hardened armsmen without so much as breaking a sweat.”
“How is that possible?”
“They call on the powers of the Defiler, of course. They’re all full of dark spirits, and it’s our job to weed them out through purging.”
“Purging?” Kellen cleared his throat. “I hate to sound like a backwoods simpleton, Captain, but what exactly is this purging you speak of?”
Hatch gave Kellen a beleaguering look of astonishment. “Easthaven might not be the largest capital city in the five kingdoms, but surely it’s not so small as to be completely ignorant of the White Tower and its mission?”
“I beg your pardon, Captain, I did not intend to imply I knew nothing of the Tower or its benefit to our land, of course. But I was just unfamiliar with this term of purging.”
“Ah, I see. Well, the purging is just another name The White Tower uses for the process they put the wielders through to extricate them from their dark spirits, giving them a chance to then live a normal life.”
“That sounds . . . interesting.” Kellen’s curiosity was piqued. “How does it work?”
Hatch scratched at the dark hair on his chin. “Well, I’m not exactly sure. That’s the job of the Legate and the Arch Chancellor. I’m just here to round them up. Anything after that is above my purview.”
“Hmm?” Kellen pondered his musings out loud as he tried to keep the conversation flowing. “Have you ever seen a wielder return home after this purging process has been completed?”
Hatch was about to reply, but held back. He twisted the leather straps of his reins around in his gloved hands. Kellen could see he had caught the man off guard. “No,” he finally replied. “I guess not. But that’s no surprise, since we spend most of our days out in the field. It’s not my job to keep up with them after I’ve turned them over to the Tower. That responsibility
belongs to someone else.”
In a way, Kellen could understand the man’s sentiments. After apprehending poachers on the overlord’s property and turning them over to the city patrol for confinement, Kellen’s job was done. He had little say in the justice that was levied on the poachers afterward.
The rest of the day went about the same. Kellen led them away from any potential targets while gleaning any vital information he could from Hatch about the White Tower and its aims. But after an entire day of direct and indirect questioning, the only item of value Kellen had managed to learn
was how ignorant the Black Watch truly was to the inner machinations of their work and those who ultimately made the decisions. As long as they got their coin, they didn’t seem to care one way or another as to what else took place. They had been kept in the dark to prevent them from asking too many questions.
Most of the guards had joined because of either a strong misguided belief in the corruption of magic—which over the last thousand years the people of Aldor had been brainwashed into accepting as truth—or because of a direct encounter with a wielder that had ended poorly, as was the case
with the good captain. Hatch relayed the story of his brother’s death by a rogue wielder in one of the skirmishes between Elondria and Cylmar, and his subsequent joining of the Black Watch.
“As long as there are wielders out there, our lands will never be safe,” Hatch said as they rode back through the barracks’ south gate. “So I will get up every morning as I did the last and do whatever I must to ensure our people’s protection.”
Kellen almost felt sorry for the captain. It wasn’t so much the man as it was the false narrative he had been taught to believe that had the potential to destroy them all. But as Kellen already knew, ideology was a most difficult nut to crack, and many times left the one clinging to it ruined.
