Raising Evil Read online

  Raising Evil

  A Huntsman’s Fate: Book 4

  Liam Reese

  Contents

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  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  End of Book – Please Read This

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  Prologue

  “That’s right Em, walk to Dada,” Queen Arteera told her young daughter as she toddled toward her father.

  Besmir watched his daughter concentrating on putting one foot before the other, her chubby little legs barely able to support her. She grinned at him, her lone tooth on display like a trophy, and an overwhelming sense of love hammered at his chest.

  “Come on Em, that’s it,” the king encouraged his daughter.

  A few wobbly steps later, Emmerlin’s legs failed her and she plopped to the floor, laughing and waving her arms at her father. She crawled the rest of the way across to him, where he caught her up in a tickling hug that made her squeal with delight.

  “Hello, papa!” Emmerlin called as she walked into her father’s state chambers, her five-year-old steps confident and bold.

  It looked gloomy inside and smelled like old men, all musty and dry. Papa sat with two other men; one short with a funny, tall hat, and the other as tall as her papa. The short one was from Ninse, and always seemed to be somewhere near, but the taller one was new.

  “Hello,” the princess said to the new man. “I’m Emmerlin. Who are you?”

  “Greetings, princess,” he said in a deep voice she liked. “I am Rontard Vespan from Waraval.”

  He bowed low to the princess, and she giggled. The Ninsian ambassador grunted and bit at the edge of his goblet before draining it.

  “I’m a little busy at the moment, Em,” her papa said. “I’ll come find you soon.”

  “But you said we could go riding!” Emmerlin pouted, folding her arms.

  “And we will, but I have to sort some things out first.”

  Emmerlin was about to complain that it wasn’t fair when Papa held his hand up. “If you let me finish these trade agreements, you can ride Teghime.”

  Excitement bubbled up inside Emmerlin. Thoughts of the great cat her papa rode flooded her mind, and a squeal of pure delight exploded from her.

  “I’m going to go get changed now, Papa!” she chirped, bounding across to hug Besmir.

  The king kissed her on the cheek. “Run along now, like a good girl,” he said.

  Emmerlin trotted out of the chamber, leaving the musty smell of old men behind. Even though she was happy to finally be allowed to ride Teghime, something bothered her. Her young mind turned things over as she made her way back to her bedroom.

  Whatever was bothering her had to do with the little Ninsian man who had been with Papa. Emmerlin frowned, thinking back to how he had looked at her when she had walked in. His face had looked cross, and like her brother Joranas had when she had spilled her drink all over his leggings at an important dance they had held.

  “Well, I don’t like you either,” she said to her empty room.

  Emmerlin concentrated on one of her dolls, pretending it was the little man from Ninse, and watched as it flew across her room to smash into the stone wall on the opposite side.

  “And that’s what’s going to happen if you make me cross,” she told the doll with a little smile.

  “I’m going to get you!” Emmerlin’s older brother, Joranas, moaned in a silly voice.

  Emmerlin squealed, her chest filling with excitement as she pelted through the maze. Tall, tightly-trimmed hedges soared above her on either side, but she knew her way through to the middle almost automatically, and trusted her legs to guide her there.

  “Last one to the center is a rotten Corbondrasi egg!” Emmerlin cried as she sprinted past the point where her brother stood on the other side of a hedge.

  She screamed in laughter when she heard him growl, running headlong towards the middle of the maze.

  Joranas took the turns as he had for years, his knowledge of the maze a sure win in his mind. The thought of his sister’s face when she saw him in the middle drove him on.

  Her young eyes traced the lines of the elegant woman who stood eternally at the middle of the maze, water gushing from the mouth of the fish she held. Supposedly created in the image of Sharise, Goddess of the oceans, she was beautiful and voluptuous while still retaining an air of mystery.

  Emmerlin hid behind the low wall of the fountain a few seconds before Joranas entered the clearing, her heart pounding with excitement and adrenaline even though this was a game. She listened to his feet crunch across the gravel to the seat before the pool and heard him settle on the stone bench.

  Gingerly, she raised her head to peer over the rim of the fountain, her breath caught in her throat. Joranas sat with his back to her, unaware she was even there, his attention focused on the hedge he thought she would come through.

  I could kill him now, and he’d never know.

  The strange thought came to her young mind unbidden. She had no desire to kill Joranas; she loved her older brother. But the knowledge that she could do it sent a tremble of power through her young body, a desire she had to fight hard not to give in to.

  Using the stone wall for cover and sneaking as silently as a butterfly on the breeze, Emmerlin crept towards Joranas, who remained fixated on the maze. At just a few paces she pounced, leaping like a predator, to wrap her arms around his neck.

  Joranas grunted in shock and fright, his face paling as he swung to free himself of the attacker who had grabbed him. He twisted and threw Emmerlin to the ground, not realizing it was his sister until she squealed as the gravel bit into her skin.

  “Em?” he asked in a hushed voice. “What were you thinking?” Joranas knelt beside his sister, who was holding back her tears, and examined her grazes with an experienced eye.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, stroking her cheek gently. “But I’ve been trained to react if someone attacks me.”

  “I wanted to scare you,” Emmerlin said in a sulky voice as she peered at her red knees.

  “Well, you did that!” Joranas cried. “I nearly soiled myself!” he added with a grin.

  Emmerlin felt the laughter bubble up in her chest, and knew she couldn’t be mad at her brother for too long. Besides, the image of him soiling himself was too funny, and she began to chuckle. Joranas started to laugh as well, and the pair rolled on the gravel in hysterics for a long while.

  Emmerlin sat, surrounded by the crumbling remains of an old palace. Her mind whirled with the possibilities that came to her as she read the scroll before her. Written by one of her ancestors, a king called Tiernon, it detailed how he would take whatever he wanted by force.

  “Here you are!” her father boomed, making her jump. “What are you doing sitting in this dark, dusty library?”

  “Reading, Father,” she said, with a little edge to her voice.

  Besmir frowned, glancing at the scroll she had open before her. “Where did you get this?” he demanded, grabbing the scroll and screwing it up.

  “Father! It’s priceless, don’t!” Emmerlin wailed.

  She watched as her father crumpled the writings up into a large ball. He took them to the hearth and dropped them into the empty grate. Emmerlin grabbed his arm, trying to rescue the parchment, but he held her back, immensely strong even at his age. Fire burst from his fingers, engulfing the scroll and turning it to ash in a matter of minutes.

  “I don’t want you reading any of that kind of stuff,” her father said, his eyes blazing with anger and hurt. “Do you hear me?”

  “You’re hurting me!” Emmerlin cried.

  “Do you hear me?” Besmir shouted, shaking her arm hard.

  “Yes!” Emmerlin squeaked. “Yes, I hear you!”

  Her father let her arm go and she fell to the dusty floor, sobbing. Besmir looked down at her with sorrow in his face.

  “It’s for your own good, Em,” he said in the kind voice she had always known. “You’re fifteen. You should be out making friends and having fun, not stuck in some dusty library reading the words of a madman, Em!”

  Her father’s shout followed her as she pelted through the palace and out into the sunshine, running headlong through the abandoned gardens and out into the city of Morantine.

  Tiernon wouldn’t have been treated like this. She thought as she ran. He would have struck out.

  The deer’s head came up as Emmerlin approached. She sent out soothing, calming thoughts as she approached, her father’s affinity with animals transferring to her. The animal watched her with curiosity in its gaze as she silently walked through the grass towards it.

  She trailed her fingers gently along the doe’s flank, watching the twitch of muscles
beneath her fur. The doe’s ears flicked, and she licked her nose with a long tongue as Emmerlin reached her head.

  The princess laid one hand on either side of the doe’s head and lowered her face to the deer until they stood with foreheads together. Emmerlin could smell the fear coming from the animal, sense the trembling that made her entire body twitch, but soothed it away with calming thoughts.

  The doe took a deep breath as Emmerlin stood up to stare into her eyes. She took her hands from the deer’s head and simply stood, looking at the creature. When it turned to leave, Emmerlin raised her hand as if to wave the doe farewell.

  Fire exploded from her hand, engulfing the startled creature and making her scream in agony. She bounded away, trying to escape the flames that boiled her skin and burned her fur off, but there was no way it was ever going to happen.

  Emmerlin walked through the scorched grass to where the deer lay, moaning in pain. She watched as the doe’s eyes rolled in their sockets, the stench of singed hair and cooked meat filling the air.

  Such pain, she thought. And I have the power to cause it.

  1

  “I still don’t see why it’s our problem,” Emmerlin said to her father. “The Ninse have been foolish enough to tunnel through that mountain they live under, and now it’s collapsed. How is that Gazluth’s problem?”

  Her father sighed, anticipating yet another argument with his daughter.

  “Ninse has been my ally for forty years, Emmerlin,” he explained patiently. “When I vanquished Tiernon and took the throne, they assisted. After the battle at Ursley mine, Gazluthian forces had been decimated. I had no army.

  “The Ninse could easily have marched in and taken over the whole country, but they didn’t; they sent aid and supplies.” Her father fixed her with a stern stare. “I won’t fail them in their time of need.”

  “So what are we supposed to do?” Emmerlin demanded, with her hands on her hips. “House them all for years, until they dig all their dead out?”

  Her father gaped at her with an expression of horror on his face, his skin pale. “Don’t you have any sympathy?” he asked in a shocked voice. “Hundreds of people have been killed in the worst landslide I’ve ever heard of!”

  Emmerlin shrugged. Ninsians. Does it even matter?

  Besmir swallowed, his expression changing, his face hardening as he stared at her. Something chilly grew in her chest, squeezing like a fist.

  “I don’t know what your problem is, Emmerlin,” he said in a cold voice. “I know you’ve had an easy life, never suffering the kind of hardship the Ninse are suffering now, but there must be something within you that cares.”

  “Of course I care,” she lied easily. “I care that Gazluth will suffer once she is full of creeping little Ninsians.” The princess folded her arms across her chest.

  “Get out!” Besmir said.

  “What?” Emmerlin demanded incredulously.

  “You heard me. Get out, and don’t let me see you for a long time, Emmerlin.”

  The king turned from his daughter, so he didn’t see the sneer that curled her lip.

  One day, old man, one day we’ll have a bigger problem than this.

  Emmerlin stormed from her father’s stateroom, slamming the door behind her and stalking through the corridors of his home. Her guard fell in behind her, and she could almost feel his disapproving eyes boring into her back.

  Senechul had been her guard since her teens. He had caught her eye while serving as her father’s royal guard, and she had recognized something within him. He was infatuated with her.

  At just short of six feet, slim but muscular, with the broad shoulders and narrow waist of a swordsman, Senechul was impressive to look upon. Moreover, Emmerlin took great pleasure in teasing him, dangling tantalizing morsels of information and whispered promises she would be his one day.

  “Leave me alone,” she said as she threw the doors to her father’s house open.

  Senechul slowed, but carried on following as the princess stalked out into the night. She could hear his soft footsteps a little ways behind her as she walked up King’s Avenue, darting behind one of the massive oak trees there and across between two buildings. Fleet of foot, the princess wove her way down dark alleyways, her eyesight easily able to pick out details in the low light that others could not.

  Trash and rotting debris littered these alleys in greater amounts as she approached the poorer area of the city, and the smell grew worse. With Senechul lost in the twisting maze of passages, Emmerlin darted across a wider, cobbled street and into another alley, this one surprisingly clean. Not until she reached the far end of the building to turn the corner did she understand why it was so clear of rubbish.

  Three men stood in the shadows at the back of the building she had been following. A fourth darted past her with a guilty look on his face, tucking something into his cloak as he passed her.

  “Well now, who’s this?” one of the men asked.

  All three were armed with nasty-looking rusty swords and wore leather clothing that stank of unwashed bodies and general filth.

  “You’re a pretty one, aren’t you?” the first said, as he approached Emmerlin.

  “You’re not,” the princess said, stopping the man in his tracks. He grinned, revealing gray teeth that made nausea creep up Emmerlin’s throat. His two lackeys laughed at her comment.

  “Feisty little one,” the first growled. “I like that. Like to break feisty little ones like you.”

  Emmerlin nodded, screwing her face up sarcastically. “Of course you do,” she said. “I bet you get a lot of opportunities to do so as well.”

  He grinned wider.

  “As long as you count goats and sheep among those you bed,” she added, leaning against the wall.

  His eyes went wide with anger, while the pair behind him guffawed with laughter. “She must know you well, Gimol,” one of them called to his back.

  Gimol, meanwhile, was staring at Emmerlin with a mixture of desire and torturous intent in his eyes, while she sneered back at him. He pulled his sword free with a metallic ring and pointed it at her.

  “You’ll pay for that, lassie,” he grunted.

  “No,” Emmerlin replied in a light voice.

  Her eyes locked onto the sword he held, and she watched as Gimol put the tip against his own throat. His eyes were massive with fright as she slowly pushed the blade up into the soft tissues of his neck with the power of her mind.

  Gimol grabbed at the sword with both hands, cutting his fingers and showering his clothes with blood. He cried out as the tip punctured his skin, cutting up through the bottom of his jaw and piercing his tongue.

  His two friends came closer at his cry, staring at him in horror as the sword rose slowly up through his mouth, splitting his lower jaw with an audible crack, and onward up into his brain.

  Gimol’s eyes rolled back into his head and his feet drummed on the floor as he died in searing agony, speared by his own sword. With a casual flick of her hand, Emmerlin sent his body crashing to the ground as his two friends stared in shock at his corpse.

  “W-who are you?” one of them finally managed to ask.

  “Me?” Emmerlin said in a girlish voice. “No one special.”

  The shorter of the pair turned to run, but she grabbed one of his legs with her power, lifting him into the air with ease.

  “Help!” he shrieked as he hung upside down, coins dropping from his clothing along with his sword. “Help me!”

  Emmerlin swung his leg savagely down, hammering his head at the ground. The force she used was already immense, but added to the centrifugal force that pulled him out straight like a puppet, he had no chance. His head hit the flagstone floor beside where Gimol lay, splitting open to spray his brains over the ground.