Reave the Just and Other Tales Stories

I had wealth--an enviable villa graced by servants and soothing grounds, courtesans both imaginative and compliant, and a thriving merchantry, coupled with social standing just below that of the Thal himself. I had friends, well placed and gracious, who might have come to my aid--if they could have done so without inconvenience. I had a substantial, if somewhat overfed, cohort of guards sworn to my service and, presumably, to my protection. But necromancy and the fatal arts were Sher Abener's province, and at last I fled from them. The nature of his quarrel with me was at once mystically arcane and stupidly practical. The caravans of my merchantry extended their travels to Sher Abener's distant homeland, from whence his occult passions and powers derived. In hushed whispers, it was often said that there men trafficked openly with the dead, while here such practices are only feared and shunned. On the day when Sher Abener's enmity toward me was set in motion, he approached me, asking that I command my caravans to obtain various necrotic objects and potencies for him from his homeland. Naturally, I acquiesced. I had never sought conflict with any man. Indeed, during the years since my kind and indulgent father had succumbed to the plague, and I had inherited his villa, his riches, and his merchantry, I had studiously avoided contention of any kind. I saw no purpose in it. I desired no alarms and apprehensions to trouble my satisfied life. The manly skills appropriate to my station--primarily the saber and lance, supported by some few techniques of unarmed combat, and a smattering of theurgy--I had learned without interest as a youth, and forgotten as swiftly as I could. My business dealings were marked more by pleasure and comradeship than by profit. My sport with my courtesans and friends accommodated no discomfort. No doubt Sher Abener had come to me because he could be certain of my acquiescence. Unfortunately, the man whose duty it was to carry out my assent refused. He was Tep Longeur, the overseer of my merchantry--the man who both commanded and represented the drovers and carters and ware-hawks of my caravans. Two days after Sher Abener's request, he approached me with his unwelcome reply. "Sher Urmeny," he informed me stiffly, "it won't be done. We won't do it." "My good man, why ever not?" I responded in protest. Truth to tell, I had at that moment no notion what he meant. My transaction with Sher Abener--ominous though it was--had already vanished from my mind. "The men won't do it," Tep Longeur explained. "And I won't force them. I wouldn't do it myself in their place. That trek is already dangerous enough. These things--" The neat scrim of his beard lifted in disgust. His eyes flashed a careless anger past the sun-belabored leather of his cheeks. "They're evil, Sher Urmeny." "'Things,' Tep Longeur?" I made no attempt to conceal my bewilderment. He had served my family longer than I had been alive, and knew me too well to be misled by feigned certainty. "'Evil'? Have you dismissed your senses?" "No, I haven't, Sher." My overseer brandished before me a parchment marked by Sher Abener's crabbed hand. A thrust of his finger indicated one illegible item. "This is a mechanism used to suck the blood from a man while he still lives.Donaldson, Stephen R. is the author of 'Reave the Just and Other Tales Stories' with ISBN 9780553580143 and ISBN 0553580140.