Damon Eram glared at her, then staggered back as if backing away from some large creature. "This audience is ended!" he announced, ripping his crown from the hands of the Guard who handed it to him, then fleeing back to his private office behind the Hall.
Keritanima sniffed loudly, then turned and stalked from the Hall. Creating an Illusion only he could see was easy enough. It was a matter of perspective. What he thought was this huge beast was actually no larger than a candle wick, but it was placed so close to his eyes, and set so only people looking at its front could see it, that only he could see it. Tiny movements of the Illusion made it look like it was streaking about the Hall, and doubling its size made it appear to rush him. Since he couldn't associate the Illusion with the rest of the Hall to determine its true size, it appeared to be much larger than it really was.
It wasn't the first such vision that Damon Eram suffered. He suffered them at random times, in court, in the hallways, at parties, in private session, at the council of his new advisors, even in his private apartments. They made his eyes look haggard as he began to doubt what was reality and what was not, but there was a burning behind them because he knew that Keritanima was somehow doing it to him. He had indeed brought in a priest the next day, mainly because of the hard looks from court when he suggested the rack, and the priest was absolutely adamant that Keritanima was not lying about somehow using magic to mess with her father. He questioned her before court for nearly three hours, direct questions about her activities and her associations, even a blunt question as to whether or not she was involved in the round of assassinations that had killed most of his advisors. And court heard the priest swear up and down that she was telling the truth, that she was not in any way entered into intrigue against her father, that she was doing nothing to him.
That seemed very hard for most of them to swallow, but the word of a priest was almost as towering as the power of the gods they served. If the priest said she wasn't lying, then no matter how impossible it seemed, she could not be lying.
Two days after the questioning, Damon Eram cancelled court until further notice. He holed himself up in his room for two whole weeks, as a long line of doctors and priests filed through and offered suggestions. Damon Eram didn't order the presence of the doctors, so he was livid at their intrusion. He was absolutely convinced that Keritanima was doing it all to him, but not even the priest's magic would back him up in his belief.
Keritanima was very pleased with the progression of things. She had her father completely disjointed, scrambling to make people believe that he wasn't losing his mind. Damon Eram's illness was all anyone could talk about in all of Wikuna, and many had started calling him the Mad King of Wikuna. Commoners and nobles alike began to quietly mutter about the king, about how Wikuna would be better served if someone else was sitting on the throne. Many even went so far as to say that the highly suspicious Keritanima would probably be better than Damon Eram, because at least she would be easier to get off the throne. That singular treasonous idea rippled through Wikuna like waves in a pond, setting the stage for very intersting events to occur.
Such an idea was easy to talk about, but hard to organize. The army was still loyal to Damon Eram, so any attempt at physical force was out of the question. It was even harder because the successors of all the larger houses, with their large armies, had not consolidated their power enough to be able to use those armies in a revolutionary coup. Such an attempt would require alliance between the larger houses, and since nobody knew who had who killed, none of them trusted one another to do something like that. With Damon Eram sequestered in his chambers, ruling by written decree, nobody could get anyone close enough to kill him. That left all of Wikuna in a tense waiting game, waiting to see what would happen next, wondering at exactly what was going to come of all the uncertainty. Keritanima rode the storm calmly, keeping things just off-balance enough that nobody could make any attempt to take the next step. Keeping things as they were.
And it remained like that until the day that ten thousand Vendari marched into the capital city.
GoTo: Title EoF
Chapter 16
Keritanima awoke to Azakar that morning. He was in the bedroom she shared with Miranda, throwing open the curtains to let the sunshine pour in from the east. Keritanima had been awakened by him opening the door, where his iron-shod boots made a familiar clump-clump on the floor that identified him to her. She had been having a rather nice dream concerning Rallix at that moment, so the intrusion was quite unwelcome.
Thoughts of the slender badger had not dimmed in her mind over the two months since the revelation that she wanted to pursue him. The situation she was in required her undivided attention, however, so she had successfully shunted thoughts of the man out of her mind to deal with more pressing matters. She had no intentions of letting him get away, but first things first. She'd be in a much better position to get her hands on him when she was the Queen. She could just command him to fall desperately in love with her. And if that didn't work, she'd use the ultimate tool of catching a man in Wikuna… she would bribe him. Rallix danced in her thoughts in quiet moments, private moments, times when she could allow her mind to wander, and they helped keep up her morale. Dealing with her father required her to stay up to all hours of the night, then turn around and wake up early to sift through the information Miranda brought in, make plans with her, and issue what orders she needed accomplished that day. The morning always began in earnest after she fetched their breakfast, then used Sorcery to kill any spies trying to hide out and listen in on them.
Miranda yawned and rose up to a sitting position, pulling the shoulder of her nightshirt up off her arm. She had done her part in those months, using her ability to gather intelligence to the utmost, drawing information from the nobles, from the other servants, and even from the commoners. She was the one that retrieved the reports she received from Ulfan, reports of who had inquired to hire his men to kill who, and that let her stay one step ahead of the competition. There were some people she wouldn't mind seeing go, but there were others that she would prefer remained alive. Keritanima approved any contracts that Ulfan accepted by paying the contract price on anyone she wanted kept alive, then having Ulfan report back to the hiring party that the attempt on the person had failed. It had gotten a bit expensive, draining what small money she'd managed to amass in the public eye, because she really didn't want to have to go to Rallix for the money. Seeing him again would just put him back in her mind, and she couldn't afford to be distracted at the wrong moment.
Keritanima was just a little nervous. The time for Sisska to get back from Vendaka was right on top of them, and when the Vendari showed up, she had to move fast. Nobody could miss a battalion of Vendari warriors marching into the city, and it wouldn't take long for people to wonder just who had called them in. She had to be in position before certain ugly truths became evident, truths that could get her killed by none other than the Vendari. She just couldn't go get her father when the Vendari arrived. There were some things that had to be done first, things that would make everything else fall into place if things worked as she planned.
Keritanima tested the air blearily, and the truth crept into her half-awake awareness. She sat bolt upright in bed and nearly ripped the curtains down when she drew them, then bounded out of bed wearing a nightshirt that had rode up over her tail during the night. Azakar gasped and turned his back quickly as she raced to the door and threw it open, and saw Sisska standing calmly at the far side of the room, holding her lifemate's hands in the ritual greeting among Vendari.