Dran

"A Varren captain who dishonours his lord is a Varren captain no more," came the low, hoarse voice from the shadows. Zyre had known this from the first moment he had held a Varren spear and seen the banner of the great house of Dran flutter in the breeze above his head. He had known this truth all his life as a soldier. Zyre no longer recognised anything that had come before the day he swore to serve the Varrens, so it had been a truth that shaped the only life he had ever known. Death held no fear for him at this moment, to live as an outcast and to have failed his lord was death enough; a life without the honour of the house was the definition of a fate worse than death.

When the Wind of Gol had weighed anchor at the great Mondrian Wharf, Provel had disembarked first, vanishing into the crowds of the dockside markets. A short while after, Zyre and his Dranian escorts were allowed to go ashore. Provel had moored the ship at the Dead Point, a part of the dockside that was designated for prison ships alone. Whatever human cargo disembarked would face a swift transit to the dungeons below Nurian's Rock. A Varren captain who had lost the crest of his house was, in the letter of the law, no exception. However, the reality of the law in Dran was quite different from the letter.

Provosts at the dockside, looking for errant soldiers to punish hesitated for long enough on seeing a disgraced Varren captain in front of them for Zyre to realise that he had an opportunity to save not only himself but the honour of the house. Their pause for thought was understandable, the power of Sorias Varren in the past two decades had distorted every rule, practice and principal that was designed to keep individual houses and the lords in check. This was his city and his vengeance was absolute. 

"I am my master's servant, to be dealt with as he commands, I answer to no other," Zyre said simply as iron shackles were placed on his wrists. The Varren men who had accompanied him from Harenis were then given the task, in a tacit understanding with the Provosts, that he would be taken directly to the Varren Korag. The fortress compound at the heart of the city that served as the seat of Lord Sorias Varren, then, would be where Zyre met his end.

It was here that he now knelt in the dark, warm candle lit cellars below the Korag. He had silently waited his fate for hours, and in that time Sorias Varren had knelt in gloom in front of him some ten feet or so away. The candle light fell over Varren's knees, leaving his torso and face obscured by darkness; Zyre stared intently at the stone beneath him until it began to swim before his eyes. This was not the lord he remembered; a different man had sent him to Harenis, one who did not dwell in the dark.

"Harenis," Varren said after an almost interminable silence, "I never really cared much about it. I was content to give the Evayns something to do, some way of keeping them....satisfied. I never cared myself though. And now, now so much pain has been caused, so much pain for so small a thing. Why?"

In the pause that followed, Zyre knew that the question was not rhetorical and he could speak.

"Harenis is not meaningless any more. An entity of light and fire, a shadow man wreathed in flame appeared there, twice. Valis, he became obsessed with finding those that had seen it; they were valuable to him."

Varren was silent.

"I know," he said. Revein's letter had arrived with him that morning. Despite what Provel thought, there were faster ships than the Winds of Gol.

"I know everything," he continued.

"Hartmann, my lord, he has alerted the council to my actions. They will know soon that I authorised the killing of the Evayn rider."

"The messenger will not live until sun down," Varren replied simply.

"There is something you do not know my lord. As I waited as a prisoner of the Evayns, Revein was also removed from his command. His men mutinied and took Hartmann as their captain. An Evayn captain now commands Varren men."

In the silence and the dark, Varren seemed to visibly stir.

"And they await my terrible vengeance then," he said, "you were right captain, Harenis is not meaningless any longer. It is the site of our ruination yet to come. What liberties these men have taken."

With that, Varren stood, and stepped back into the darkness. It appeared that Zyre would live at least until he returned.

***

Sorias Varren had not called the council in months; he could not bear to look at them. The heads of the great houses had written to him one by one to urge him to leave the confines of his korag and meet them, but their pleadings were useless. Varren had found himself slowly retreating from the outside world and even from the gardens of the Varren stronghold that he had once so enjoyed. Every motion, gesture, word and sentiment that poured forth from the lords of the Mondrias, Hauke, Greylls and the rest made him cringe. Varren could no longer tolerate their self serving hypocrisy and repulsive cowardice; Dran was fortunate that it had no major war to fight with these fools in charge. Lack of war was also Dran's greatest crisis too, for without war the city was nothing. 

Varrens gradual withdrawal from the world had begun at the start of the long Arcland summer. As the nights grew lighter he slept less and less, until he found himself walking along the korag's battlements each dawn, half delirious from exhaustion. The sleep that he did have was unlike any he had known; dreams, now half remembered full of fear and flame. He had the vaguest recollection of only one of them, where he found himself stood on a hillside of wheat fields, the golden sea of plants swaying gently in the breeze. In the distance a fire so great that it blocked out the horizon burned, sucking the air from his chest. Shining weakly through the smoke was the sun, low in the  horizon over the flames. Varren had only one thought in his dream and one thought that had occurred to him since. The position of the sun showed that the black smoke hung over the east. 

Varren had rarely dreamt before, and if he had, he tended not to remember his dreams. This was different though, the dream was no more vivid than any other, but it lingered in his mind, like a ghost that would not rest. In his frustration and sleeplessness he called The Lord High Chalice of Dran, the embattled lord priest of the city's Aruhvian Church to his chambers. Varren loathed priests and his wife, Noore, who spent most of her life in the far distant chambers of the korag, assumed that the inevitable had happened and Varren had gone mad. 

Sorias Varren had not lost his mind, not by any reckoning. At the age of fifty, the slender, greying man was still the most formidable opponent to any council member who saw fit to challenge him. The dream, he concluded, was not a curse but a gift; when the Lord High Chalice failed to offer anything other than meaningless platitudes, Varren chose not to sink any lower and have the various frauds and drink addled mystics that clogged the markets and taverns in Dran with their superstition dragged before him. He decided that he had enough meaning of his own, that his dreams, wherever they sprang from, were sending a message. One about the east.

To be a Lord of Dran is to carry a great weight, Varren knew. It was to carry the weight of history itself and this was a burden that could not be set aside or abandoned. A Lord of Dran must not simply just be history or appear in its pages as an unassuming actor, reading the lines he is given. No, a Lord of Dran must make history, the city known as the Hammer of the East demanded it and Varren had answered the call many times before. His dream, he thought, was history's last call. At the age of fifty, time was not fully gone but there were fewer days ahead than behind. He thought of his dream as he slipped away into the darkness, leaving Zyre to contemplate his fate. History would be answered one last time, he thought, and it would be answered in the east. To this end, complications in Harenis must be resolved without mercy.