The Faun, the Thief and the Prince of Cats (Ward: Book One)

By Will Perks

Ward kept his mask on. “You said you could tell me who one of my parents was, my liege,” he said.
“It’s more that I know what they were. You’re from a demonic bloodline. One of your parents was probably some sort of hell beast or interdimensional monster or soul-eating demon. I expect that’s why you were left at the temple.”
“Oh,” said Ward, deflated. That much of his past he had guessed already.
“How’s the eggs?” Nero asked.

Three disparate souls have been linked by a common goal: the end of the magic ban. The faun prince Nero, the masked sorcerer Ward, and the stoic princess Pathor are gathering allies and information to bring about a revolution. A continent united on the surface is quickly breaking apart underneath, with secret courts and sinister factions popping up in all sorts of places. And it's becoming increasingly hard to tell which side of anything anyone is actually on, let alone which is the right one.

The first book in the Ward trilogy, The Faun, the Thief and the Prince of Cats transports you to a not-so-magical land where those with arcane gifts are persecuted and hunted for reasons that become increasingly confused.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Will Perks
• Release date: May 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463681305

Will Perks

Imaginary.

Book preview

The Faun, the Thief and the Prince of Cats

Copyright 2018 Will Perks

Published by Will Perks at Smashwords

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Table of Contents

The Misfortune of Erskene Agenault

Ward of Wilfgard

The Cabal

Dresilla Stands Alone

The Fall of Hamelwill

A Diplomatic Exercise

A Camp in the Aramids

The Last Days of Magic

Foreword

All heroes’ journeys have many witnesses, but no one of them--not even the hero himself--should be left to tell the story on their own. They will miss some things; they will choose to neglect others; they will add their own twists and turns. Some may even invert the roles of hero and villain. A hero’s journey is never just the story of one man, it is a record of a city, of a place, of a time. The only way to tell a tale truthfully is to look upon it from all sides, from multiple perspectives.

The Misfortune of Erksene Agenault

THE SECOND GREAT ESCAPE

Two travellers, a man and a girl, rode into the city of Meduna.

The man was of middle-age and wore his red hair short, a style popular among former soldiers. His clothes were finely made and expensive, and fit his slim body well. At his side hung a black-sheathed sword and a purse that clinked with each step his horse took. The girl was fair and beautiful in an elegant, old-fashioned way. The silver flower in her hair and her black cloak marked her as a disciple of the Goddess Alecia.

It was a cold and early spring, and the chilly air turned their breath to steam; the road beneath their horses’ hooves was muddied by the last snow. Meduna was a mountain city set in the cleft of two peaks; its main street ran like a seam down the centre of the valley. On each side of the main street the land rose steadily upward, following the rise of the mountains, as if someone had taken the city in both hands and folded it briefly in half.

As they rode the girl could not help but notice that Meduna was in a state of celebration. Coloured bunting hung from balconies and shop awnings. Carts loaded with ale and fine wine stood outside the inns and taverns. In the city square they had erected a wooden stage. Red and yellow flower petals littered the streets. Even the people wore bright colours, and many had ribbons woven into their long hair.

What is going on? the girl asked her travelling companion.

The Medunites are preparing for the White Chase, said the man. It is said to be the greatest horse racing event in the continent. In a few days the city will be flooded with people. If you are lucky, Arielle, we may still be here when the race begins.

The girl, Arielle, wrinkled her pretty nose and said nothing more.

The road ahead was covered by a long, lattice tunnel covered with vines. Sweet green winter-grapes hung from its ceiling and walls. Arielle plucked one and ate it. Its soft flesh stuck to the roof of her mouth.

Meduna belongs to the Raskin family, said the man. They are connected to the Napaldi family by marriage but not by blood. In wars between the states the Raskins have always sided with Napaldi. They value our trade and the protections of our army.

Arielle ate another grape. Why are you telling me this, Inquisitor?

Meduna was one of the first cities in the North to adopt the magic ban. We will be welcomed here.

The Inquisitor reined his horse. They had reached the end of the street. Here the road narrowed and branched sharply both left and right. Directly before the travellers was a low stone railing and then a sharp drop to the ocean several hundred feet below. Squinting against the morning sun, Arielle could see the tip of Lapis country on the horizon, its verdant greenness broken only by the brown of a village.

We are not here to sightsee, said the Inquisitor, amused.

The grapes had begun to sour in Arielle’s mouth. She threw the last ones over the railing one by one.

***

Raskin castle was large and disjointed in structure. Its core was a stone keep with high, crenelated walls. The rest of the building was made of wood and brick and had a modern, stark style. It appeared to the Inquisitor that successive generations of the Raskin family had modified and extended the castle without a thought for the outward aesthetic. This fit well with what he knew of the Medunites: they were a practical people.

At the castle’s entrance was a red-haired young guard, recognisable as such only by his livery. He sat behind a low table covered in papers. His shield and sword had been discarded, propped up against the castle wall. The Inquisitor dismounted. Arielle remained in her saddle, staring.

Can I help you? the guard asked brightly.

The Inquisitor approached the table and committed a short, formal bow. I am Erksene Agenault, an Official Inquisitor from the state of Napaldi. With me is Arielle Berne, a sister-novice of Alecia. We have come to investigate rumours of the existence of magic users in your city.

He held up a letter bearing the seal of Napaldi. The guard leaned forward to examine it.

You aren’t here for the chase? he asked.

Erksene smiled. In a manner of speaking…

Why do you suspect there are magic users here in Meduna? The guard’s expression was concerned. We have always followed the rule of Napaldi. I assure you any magic users who lived here have been bound or…

He broke off. The word killed hung, unspoken but unavoidable, in the air between them. Killing magic users was considered a last resort, even in Napaldi. But use of that last resort seemed to be growing more common. It never ceased to surprise the Inquisitor that many magic users would choose death over a life without their powers.

I believe you, Erksene said. I am sure the rumours will amount to nothing. But we must be sure, you understand. The continent must be made safe for all people.

The guard wavered. Should I let Lady Raskin know of your intentions in the city?

It would be my preference to meet with her so that I might tell her myself. But I am a stranger in your lands and will do as your custom dictates. Perhaps the activities of an Inquisitor do not merit your Lady’s attention…

He spoke gently, kindly, like a teacher prompting a failing student. A blush of embarrassment coloured the guard’s cheeks.

Sorry. I’ve never done this before… I mean I’ve never met a real Inquisitor… The guard fumbled with the papers on his desk. I will need to find you a place to stay. I apologise in advance if I cannot find lodgings for you of the standard you are accustomed to. The city is full of visitors who have come for the White Chase…

I understand, Erksene said. I am sure you will locate something suitable for us.

***

Adjoining rooms were found in a respectable inn not far from the castle. By the time their belongings were brought in from the stables, it was late afternoon. Erksene decided to wait until the next morning to begin his investigation.

He stood by the window, watching the city, while Arielle unpacked their things. Her reflection was a ghost in the glass. She was perhaps a little too thin, Erksene thought, but her features were exquisite indeed. Unbound, her fair hair fell to her waist. Erksene wondered what circumstances had led such a beauty to become a disciple. It would have been very easy for her to find a rich husband and live a life uncomplicated by Goddesses and Inquisitors.

His last assistant had been a slow-moving, elderly woman named Jarla. They had worked together for almost a decade until Jarla’s health began to fail. Reluctantly he had let her return to her temple. Not long after, Arielle had arrived on his doorstep. She bore with her a glowing letter of recommendation from Jarla’s temple. In truth Erksene had not wanted to replace Jarla so soon—to do so felt callous, somehow, a disrespect to their long and successful history—but Arielle was so eager and so young he did not have the heart to reject her.

That had been a week ago, and he still did not really understand the girl. She was a child of contradictions, sometimes overly formal and withdrawn, sometimes rude and permissive. Yet she was intelligent: she could read and write to a standard that Erksene suspected surpassed his own.

Arielle finished unpacking and joined him by the window.

Well that’s done, she said, dusting her hands on the front of her smock. How do we find the magic users?

Erksene sighed. Really, Arielle? I was told by your temple that you had worked as an inquisitor’s assistant for years.

I have. But every inquisitor I’ve met is different. Some of you rage in and push people around until they confess. Some of you pretend to be magical so you can infiltrate their communities. Some of you are scientific in your approach: you seek out clues, you follow rumours...

She shrugged and pulled a face. She was very beautiful but, strangely, not very feminine. Erksene had noticed this on the journey to Meduna. She walked like a man, without a sway to her hips. At meal times she ate with both hands, chewing little. One day he had returned to their camp to find her brushing her lovely hair in jerks and flicks, the way a poor stableman would clean mud from a horse.

I consider myself to be more scientifically inclined, Erksene said. He opened his bag and took out a small velvet pouch. He tipped its contents into his palm: a flat green stone.

A pericept, said Arielle, watching. I’ve heard about them. You use it to track magic. Why is it glowing now, though?

The Inquisitor held the stone up between finger and thumb. To his surprise, the pericept was bright with colour and warm to the touch. Both were signs that a source of magical power was nearby. He started up from his chair, went to the door, and flung it open. There was no one there.

By the time he had returned to his chair the pericept had faded. Now it looked like a regular grey stone you might find at a riverbank.

What happened? Arielle asked, peering over his shoulder.

A sign. Erksene rubbed the pericept’s surface. "So the rumours are true. There is magic in Meduna."

Before he was an Inquisitor, Erksene Agenault had been a priest, and before that, a soldier. He had served honourably as a private on the front lines of the Napaldi-Inville war, and had risen in the ranks to commander by the time the Great Northern Battle delivered Napaldi its victory.

It was in the Great Northern Battle that Erksene had made his name. As the tide turned against Inville, he had found himself locking swords with Inville’s champion, a southern giant known as the Nargul. Standing almost twice Erksene’s height, the Nargul forced him back easily, until Erskene, light on his feet and quick-witted, dropped prone and struck the Nargul’s thigh. The blow opened an artery. A second blow opened another. The Nargul roared and chased Erksene, intent on revenge… and in less than a minute was dead from blood loss, his great body toppling onto the field like a golem that had lost its magic.

It was not a glorious way to kill a man. Despite this, Erksene emerged in legend as one of the heroes of Napaldi’s army. Bards sung eloquently of the fight: the man versus the giant. King Faine Napaldi himself, then barely sixteen years old, awarded Erksene a knighthood for his courage—a knighthood Erksene chose not to accept, in respect to those in his regiment who had fallen.

No true hero, Erksene believed, ever left a battlefield alive.

After the Napaldi-Inville war, he left the army. He considered a marriage to a cousin, and a vocation running the sawmill owned by her father. But one summer day he was walking through a sun-kissed field and saw suddenly before him a vision of the snake God Persethys. A sense of overwhelming goodness and warmth rose in him and he crumpled to his knees, at peace. In that moment his future with the temple was made.

He trained as a disciple; a year later, after completing his rites of passage and promising his soul and service to Persethys, he was made a priest of the snake God. Neither love nor battle had ever brought him such absolute joy and fear. Every day he saw new beauty in the world his God’s sun illuminated. He imagined he would stay in the temple forever, praying, healing, counselling, and simply feeling his God in every breath and every heartbeat.

Then the world changed.

He remembered going to bed one night and waking up the next day to state-wide chaos. The streets were filled with hysterics. The army was on the march. The castle was locked down, its gates barred, its every tower guarded. What had happened? The reports coming from the castle conflicted on the details. But the crux of the story remained the same.

At some point in the night, a sorcerer had entered the castle and stolen the King’s most sacred jewel, the Heart of Napaldi.

Erksene had never heard of the jewel before. In this, it seemed, he was not alone. Its existence had been kept secret from all but the most senior members of the court. The question was, how had the sorcerer known of the jewel’s existence?

King Napaldi’s justice was swift. By the end of the week, every magic using member of the castle staff had been bound and thrown into jail. The entire Napaldi army was dispatched to hunt down the sorcerer. By the end of the next week, the magic ban had been written into law. All magic users, from the lowliest conjurer to the most powerful wizard, were sent to the castle’s forge to be bound.

Initially there was little resistance. Faine Napaldi was a well-loved king, perhaps the best-loved king the state had ever had. Through war and diplomacy, he had achieved a true peace among the continent’s sixteen citystates. Trade was booming; crops flourished; people were happy. Visitors to the state often remarked upon the lack of beggars. Even the plagues had been driven back through medicines devised by Napaldi’s scientists. So when Napaldi asked his people to sacrifice their powers and be bound, they trusted him. They came without hesitation.

There were a scattered few who chose to resist Napaldi’s demands. These were the sorcerers and warlocks, the most powerful classes of magic users. A group of these resisters, who had begun calling themselves the Exiles, came to Napaldi’s court to make a case for clemency. It was not fair to judge all magic users by the action of one, the Exiles said. It also made the case that warlocks, whose souls were bound to their magic, could not safely be bound without risking death.

In response, King Napaldi decreed all Exiles to be enemies of the state: they were to be killed on sight. Seven warlocks and two sorcerers were slaughtered by the end of the month.

It was at this point that support for the ban began to waver. There were protests. These were stifled. The remaining magic users fled the state. Napaldi pursued them, sending first his army and then his Inquisitors: high-ranking members of the priesthood King Napaldi had selected himself for the sole duty of rooting out any magic user and binding them against their will.

The other states made no attempt to stop Napaldi’s incursion. Inville’s defeat made them wary of tangling with the King. Many also had their own problems with magic users. Gradually they too accepted the ban. Only the southern states—those with trading ports at the edge of the continent, and therefore strongly influenced by the views of nearby Lapis country—tried to shelter magic users from Napaldi’s wrath. For a time places like Wilfgard and Kelmar had openly helped magic users to sail to Lapis as refugees… but pressure from Napaldi had slowly cut off even this avenue to escape.

It would not be long, Erksene was sure, before all magic users in the continent were bound. He had met Faine Napaldi many times, and had always been impressed—and a little horrified—by the man’s single-minded passion for his cause. Napaldi simply did not accept failure. He saw the world as he wanted it and forced it to comply to his will.

Erksene had become an Inquisitor because he loved his King and also because he believed he was better equipped than most to bring in magic users safely. He had no wish for needless death. The snake God Persethys had taught him how to reason with the essential goodness in every man’s heart. It was a new calling, but it felt like it was the one he had been born for.

Now it was fourteen years after the ban had begun. Erksene had served as an Inquisitor for almost a full decade.

It was notable that in all this time the sorcerer, the thief who had begun all this, had not been caught. The Heart of Napaldi was never returned.

***

They were ready to begin the investigation before daybreak. Arielle packed a small bag with paper and pencils for note taking. Erksene took only the pericept, which he held in an outstretched hand as they walked to the castle. Its colour did not change but at times he imagined he felt a slight heat against his skin.

The red-haired guard they had met the day before was still at his post. As they approached he rose to greet them. This time he remembered to introduce himself: Leopold Foley. He had not been able to secure them an audience with Lady Raskin, but she had made it clear that Erksene and his assistant were to be granted full access to the castle and city in order to carry out their investigation.

Then we will start here, said Erksene. It is a fact that magical ability is more common among the nobility. Even the lowliest magician must be able to read and remember his spells.

Who lives in the castle? Arielle asked.

Normally, only Lady Raskin and her family. But during the chase she opens her home to many visiting nobles. There are people here from all over the continent, from Kelmar to Lindenhaste. It is… It has become very busy here.

I shall need to know the names of all who are staying here, said Erksene. I want to know the name of their home state, too. As you know, there are still states which shelter and accept magic users.

I will have the information delivered to your rooms at the inn, said Leopold. Would you like me to accompany you?

Erksene graciously declined the offer. He could tell already that Leopold, so nervous and earnest to please, would be a distraction to his work. Erksene did his best work in silence, with nothing but the pericept and his own intuition to guide him. With a nod to Leopold, he put his hand on Arielle’s shoulder and led the disciple into the castle.

***

Within, Raskin castle was a bright place. Its rooms were hung with rainbow coloured banners. All the windows and shutters were flung wide; sunlight bathed the stone floors. As Leopold had said, there were many foreign nobles in the castle. There was no order to their presence: there were people talking near the kitchens, others sipping sweet tea on a stair well.

After a sweep of the lower floor, Erksene and Arielle entered the castle ballroom. As they passed a group of young people, the pericept jumped in Erksene’s hands as it if had been struck by a hammer. He stopped and turned to look at them. His eye was met defiantly by a youth at the centre of the group.

Is this how you hunt for us these days? asked the youth. Slinking around our homes like a rat sniffing out cheese. Next I expect your Master will grant you access to our bedrooms. Well, what does your pericept tell you? Are we to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the continent?

His tone was dry. The group surrounding him laughed. Aside from the youth, they were all girls, and the way they leaned toward him was both protective and proud. Erksene looked thoughtfully at the pericept. The stone was still in his palm, and its glow had faded completely.

He looked back at the youth. The boy was handsome, if a little overfed. He had straight, dark hair to his shoulders, a clever brown face, and a slightly hooked nose. He also, curiously, had horns: they curved from his temples like those of a goat or a ram.

A faun, or a part-faun, probably from one of the cities in the south. Which explained, to an extent, the youth’s rudeness toward an inquisitor from Napaldi. The south of the continent had been the only region to seriously resist the magic ban. There had even been a civil war in Wilfgard—a short one, but it had cost lives on both sides.

Come on, speak up, said the faun impatiently, clicking his fingers. There’s no point in hiding it. We’re not stupid, we know what you’re doing.

There was something familiar about the brown face and the horns.

Who are you? Erksene asked.

"Don’t you recognise me, inquisitor? My portrait hangs in the gallery of your Master. I am the great, the mighty, the magnificent, the very handsome Nero Pallavinci, Prince of Wilfgard."

He poked Erksene in the ribs, play-fighting. The girls tittered. Angrily Erksene swept Nero’s hand away, but not before he had seen the silver bands that encircled the faun’s wrists like manacles. Each one was inscribed with Nero’s name.

I have seen the portrait you speak of, Erksene said. I do not know why you are proud of it. It is a picture of the day you were bound by inquisitors. If I recall correctly, it is also the day you were relieved of your title. Does the King of Wilfgard know you still call yourself a prince?

Oh, don’t be a spoil-sport, said Nero, grinning. I know you’re secretly delighted to meet me in the flesh. I hear I’m still the most powerful sorcerer the inquisitors ever caught. It’s very flattering. I wonder, Inquisitor, do you ever worry I might one day find a way to escape my bonds? Once upon a time, not so very long ago, I literally moved mountains…

Erksene sighed. Why are you here, Pallavinci?

I’m here for the chase! I love horse races. They’re my favourite thing, right after raising the dead and making lightning rain down on my enemies and turning the minds of the weak willed to my bidding. He fingered the silver bands, frowning. "Don’t you think it’s a little, I don’t know, ironic that you have to bind magic users with more magic?"

We bind magic users to their names, said Erksene. It is not magic. It is an ancient invocation.

Same thing, mate, isn’t it?

Surprisingly, it was Arielle who spoke: "Both of you are correct, in a fashion. An invocation is old magic, soul magic. At the same time it is not the same magic that a