The party travelled nonstop all day long and into the night. The first sign of civilization was a village and the insignificant city of Alleggon, where they took a three hour rest and drank in an empty rum hall, and managed to find a man with enough horses to exchange, with a small extra payment in silver artefacts. With the fresh horses they cleared another chunk of terrain, and by night avoided two cities, including a fortified one, and rode in the open through the night. Near midnight, they found a crag on the steppe and slept in its cover with knights-grade military small tents, unlike the large one like the one he had set up at Botterein. In six hours they were already on the move again. This blistering pace bewildered the sailors with them, but they kept up. With only one more stop, the party eventually reached the green knolls of Malgazar, late afternoon on the third day. K'rar stopped on one of these knolls and marveled at the landscape.
'My father's hunting grounds,' he said to his companions, 'Ashdud's estate is just over that third hill.'
These knolls were fertile farmlands, where many nobles and well-to-do merchants and officials raised their estates, Ashdud being one of them. Large parts of them were king's lands that the old kings would bequeath or reward to certain individuals. Ashdud was one of those who received such a reward, and raised his retirement home here.
'Think his family will be there?' Shaniz asked.
'Unlikely not to be. Garrera is a treacherous man, but even thieves keep some honor and decency.'
'Was he a family man?'
'Yeah. I was planning on retiring him so he could go and be with them. He would be 68 years old now,' he urged his horse, 'let's go then, shall we?'
'I'll race you there!'
The people in the bungalows and estates along the route saw or heard the din of horses, and some came out to see the 24 horses racing on the road, between fields of crop. The fields, of barley and maize and groundnuts and wheat, belonged to different homeowners, and were partitioned as such with stone walls or wooden palisades. In some there were workers, while others were empty. Ashdud's farmland was enclosed by a relatively short stone wall. It was as large as four fields, situated on, and around, two hills. The large house sat on one of the hills, and a barn and other farm structures on the other. Somewhere in-between was a large well and a mill. At its base were a bunch of workers. They saw K'rar's horses along the road on their land, and began shouting at them. K'rar ignored them, because he was looking at a graveyard with about five gravestones in it, just at the foot of the barn hill close to the road. K'rar had been to Ashdud's home before. The family knew him. He knew that eleven years ago, there had been three, not five, gravestones in that yard. He moved his horse to the edge of the graveyard, which was enclosed in a round paddock. There was crop around the yard, but it was itself clean, pruned of any growth. K'rar dropped off his horse, and jumped over the fence. Four of the others did this too. But they stood off from him and stood along the fence as he removed his hat and walked to the newest gravestones. He couldn't tell which one of them was Ashdud's, nor if he was buried under one of them. Nonetheless he stayed there, to let the thoughts and memories run through his head. He was still there, squatting over the stone, when the servants from before showed up on the hill. They had with them a young woman in her thirties clad in a purple dress and expensive jewels, including a bangle around her neck. K'rar did not see her until she was close enough, remaining outside the fence, in the narrow path outside of it. She said nothing to him, and just watched him for a few moments because he obviously was not standing over a random person's grave. He looked up at her and said aloud,
'Is Ashdud buried here?' he knew many people in this family, but not this woman.
'Yes, he is. You are looking at the right stone. How do you know him?' she said. She was continually passing her eyes from his face to the others. K'rar dodged the question and first asked,
'And this one. Whose is it?' he was referring to the fifth stone.
'Affe, my nephew. He was only a few weeks old.'
'Nephew?' said K'rar. He raised his eyebrows, 'oh, you must be Ashdud's daughter-in-law, I presume?' this was true because Ashdud had just one daughter and three sons. Before K'rar died, the eldest son was already married, and though K'rar did not know him or his wife, this one was too young to be the one, and besides, that son lived in his own home in the southern regions. This woman had to be the wife of one of the other two sons, married after K'rar's disappearance.
'Kattian is my husband. I am Ketrah.' Or, Chetra, the more formal variation of the name.
'Kattian got married?' K'rar was either surprised or something else.
'Yes, he is. Why?'
'Oh, nothing. It's just that I remember him only as a boy.' K'rar stood up, as the woman said,
'You are yourself only a boy. How do you know Ashdud? Who are you? Who are these people?'
K'rar walked closer to her, and smiled, saying,
'Would you mind if I paid a visit to his widow? We can talk over a cup of gingered tea.'
She studied his face quietly for some time, and nodded her head,
'Okay, then. My husband is in the capital. He returns by night. So I'm alone by myself with mother.' She sent one of the manservants ahead, and all the other four to take the guests' horses to the stable. K'rar's party all followed closely from behind as they went up the path, and then onto a main one paved with stone. They approached the concrete five meter fence of the massive two-storied, two-structured house from the left, and had to turn round to the front and enter the gate. The first thing that greeted them was a large round patio in the center of the compound, arranged with pristine, immaculate furniture, and tables packed length-wise next to each other along the middle of the rectangle. Its roof was made of fine, straight grass. There was a long dark line of drying water on the stone pavement along the edge of the roof, the remains of recent rainfall. There were more servants in the home, and three of them walking along the verandah on the adjacent block stopped to look. One of them, an older one, did not return to her work like the others after they had a look. She continued to stare intently at K'rar.
'Will you please sit in the shade? I will fetch mother,' said Chetra.
K'rar nodded, and two servants rushed to prepare the patio. All 24 guests could fit in it, so they sat down. Shaniz settled next to K'rar towards the top, and said,
'I think some of them recognize you.'
'Huh?'
'The servants. That one, the older one.'
K'rar didn't recognize her, but it was likely that she did indeed recognize him from all that time ago. Chetra returned with Ashdud's widow, de Luna, after some moments. De Luna carried an earthen vessel in her hand and a wipe with which she had been, and was still, cleaning it. K'rar's seat was directly in front of the house's front porch, so their eyes met immediately. While K'rar walked to the porch to say his greetings, the widow, a 62-year-old, was rooted to the ground where she stood, with only her eyes following K'rar as he approached. Her face was aghast with either terror or confusion or both.
'Mother, what's the matter?' asked Chetra, 'do you know him?'
K'rar stood in front of the widow, and let her study his face. In a few moments the vase in her hand slid out of it and dropped on the wooden floorboard. Chetra flinched.
'Mother!' exclaimed Chetra. K'rar waved away a maid rushing to pick the vase, and picked it up himself. It had cracked in the mouth, but was still intact. K'rar gave her the vase, but her hands could not move from her mouth. So Chetra took it, and said to K'rar once more,
'Who are you? Why is she acting like that because of you.'
'Ketrah, take the vase inside, will you?' the widow said. But Chetra wanted an answer to her question, so she stuck around to ask for the umpteenth time,
'Mother, who is he? Is he a government person?'
'If he is who I think he is, then you best treat him with respect,' she then directed the next words to K'rar, 'if you are an apparition, I reject you in the name of Ashtoreth.'
'I am not a ghost, lady de Luna.' The maidservants standing paces behind them were now chattering like monkeys. K'rar took a brief look at them. They knew. The old servant had told them, and now her suspicions had just been confirmed by lady de Luna's most recent animated reaction to seeing him. K'rar said to her, 'whatever they know, please make sure it does not leave this estate. No one must know, especially in the capital. That is very important.'
'What do they know?' Chetra was getting unhappy because even the servants knew something she didn't, 'what do they know, mother?'
'Are you here to tell me, he did not die in vain? That you lived?' the widow seemed oblivious to her daughter-in-law's existence.
K'rar had indeed come to tell her this, the gist of it at least.
'None of them died in vain. I will make them pay for all the lives lost, including my father and mother.'
'Your mother?'
'Yes, lady de Luna.'
'But, Her Highness Noor-shan lives. The usurper exiled her to the palace of his master, Tao.'
'What?' K'rar's heart skipped a beat.
'What?' Chetra also exclaimed, 'what do you have to do with Tao?'
De Luna at long last decided to end her misery.
'Ketrah,' she said, 'this is K'rar von Caspar, your king, the true king of the realm.' As she suddenly gave K'rar a hearty hug, Chetra became almost hysterical. She even had to put the vase down to hold her head, run into the house and back outside.
'How?' she said loudly just as the widow explained that she had also only recently found out, during the war, that Noor-shan was alive, and that she could have played a role in how it turned out. Shaniz came forward to her and led her away quietly, issuing a stern warning to her in the process. K'rar couldn't say a thing for some time, as he came to terms with this newest information. The widow said,
'Please, allow me to offer you something to eat.'
'That would be wonderful, lady de Luna. But I must go to the city now. I need lodgings for me and all my friends.'
'I insist, my lord. Surely you know, I want to know how this is taking place. How you're still alive. I am still the king's godmother, you know. The nation and I mourned you for weeks, even more so when the usurper invited our enemies. Now it is time to celebrate. This is a momentous occasion!'
K'rar capitulated, but he still added a condition,
'I need lodgings for all my friends in the city. There's 23 of them, and I know they cannot all stay here. Once I have secured that, I will return, and we can have the cup of tea.'
Lady de Luna looked over K'rar's shoulder at the servants standing there. The older one came running, and she said to her,
'I know you recognize His Majesty. But he requires you to keep your mouths shut about it, so I need you to swear that you and the others will remain silent.' This wasn't a request. The maidservant understood there would be consequences if she divulged any information. She curtseyed before K'rar and said,
'We will say nothing of this, Your Majesty, I swear. Please forgive us, we are merely overjoyed that you lived.'
'There is nothing to forgive, friends.'
'Go and prepare the king a meal for him and all his men. He will be returning by night.'
She bent at her knees briefly, and scuttled away. Then Lady de Luna said,
'My lord, I know a place you can lodge in the city. Go with one of my men, they'll take you there. All your men can lodge there.'
'That would be nice, Lady de Luna.'
'But, who are all they? Do I know them?'
'No, but you will soon.' he was leading her to them, so as to introduce all the knights with him. He didn't say that he was engaged to Shaniz though, and Shaniz wanted to know why later on as they rode out of the farmland toward the city.
'If it was Ashdud, I would have. She can wait. She was my godmother only because Ashdud was my tutor, but there was nothing special.'
'Will she keep quiet?'
'Oh, yes. For that, she will.'
K'rar wanted to go through one of many narrow gates somewhere on the northern wall of the city, the same one he had escaped through all those years ago. The evening was fast approaching, and K'rar wanted to complete the first phase of his plans by the close of the night. The man Lady de Luna had sent with them said the lodge where they were going was located on the cusp of the lower grid of the city, where most of the city's population was based. That they needed to settle themselves in before the fifth hour of the night, when the marauder band would be out on the hunt through the city.
'What marauder band?' K'rar asked the man. They were stationary now on horseback, watching the walls of Chaldea from the high rise on the road, before the descent that led to the city's north face.
'It's a gang. They call themselves the Iron Whippers. The authorities pretend that they're wanted criminals, but most everyone in Chaldea knows they are in bed with the authorities. Some big shots hire them to instill fear.'
K'rar scoffed, and muttered to himself,
'What the hell are they doing to my city?' he then said loudly, 'we need to go in in twos. We cannot all go in at once.' The group automatically grouped themselves in pairs, but K'rar would go in with three people including Shaniz, Bekka and the guide.
They descended down the road, which, when it reached the wall, ran along it for a few hundred meters before culminating at the narrow gate. The Xaxanikans were marveling at the architecture of the city wall. It was thicker and stronger than Zadok's by more than two times. Unlike Zadok's wall whose rampart castles were simply extensions of the wall, Chaldea's castles were wider than the wall, and protruded it like vertical humps.
The inn was a large building with many rooms for residence. K'rar sent back the escort outside to help the other pairs although it was unlikely for them to get lost, as they kept a long, but considerable distance between each other, and were using much of the main road. There was a reception in the small entrance hall of the building where a young, well-dressed woman sat behind a wide table with some of her ledgers. On two benches next to her and on the wall adjacent, uniformed attendants sat, waiting to carry the luggage of new lodgers as soon as they were cleared. There were also two armed men closest to her, hired for security. K'rar dropped his large bag at his feet, while Shaniz and Bekka placed theirs on the table. He said to the woman,
'Afternoon, ma'am.'
'Afternoon to you too,' she, and her mates, were all staring at K'rar and company, which shouldn't have been an issue because it was routine, 'one of the early birders?'
'Early birders?' said K'rar, placing a box full of gold and silver on the table.
'Yes, sir. You know, for the festival.'
'Festival?' K'rar's mind did not have the faintest picture of any festival.
'Yes, sir, the festival,' the young lady said. She looked back at her friends confusedly, who shared her bafflement at K'rar's question. She said, 'are you not lodging for the festival to Ashtoreth?' it was mid-March, and the said festival was only as old as K'rar's disappearance, his death, so he knew nothing of it, nor did he have any memory of it, as it had already faded out many years before his own birth. After he looked at her for some time, he diverted the conversation,
'I need 25 spaces. My friends are minutes out. I believe you know Lady de Luna. She indicated this place would be good.'
'Lady de Luna?' the woman said, 'oh, well she was right. But, did you say 25 spaces, sir?'
'Yes,' K'rar said, 'anything the matter?'
'No, sir. There is still sufficient space. It's just that, we've never received 25 people in the same group.'
'Well, we're a large family. But I will not be paying in kori, I don't have any.' he opened the box and revealed a small but expensive amount of shiny gold and silver bars and trinkets and jewels. It was unlikely that she would reject them for hard currency, since it was easy in Chaldea to visit money changers and get even more money in exchange for the valuables. The lady gasped at them for some time, and then said, without looking up.
'Sir. This is enough for more than 25 spaces, but I do not know if the landlord will accept…'
'What is your name, ma'am?'
'My name? My name is Deliah. Please don't call me ma'am. I'm not that old.'
'Well, Deliah, I'm giving you two options. Take the jewels and exchange them for cash yourself and keep the balance, or…'
'I'll take the jewels, sir. Would you like rooms for two or lone rooms?'
'Good choice. Rooms for two will do. I understand you have some large dinner rooms for some of your guests? For the balance we'll be taking one of them for ourselves. Preferably the highest one.'
'Of course, sir. If you don't mind me asking, sir, why did you choose this place? You could have rented out one of the larger inns on the hills.'
'Should I?'
'N-no, sir. You are welcome to this inn,' she then commanded the attendants there to carry out their duty. They had to wait for all the remaining knights to show up, before carrying up large and heavy leather bags, apart from the clothes bags, whose contents they couldn't imagine.
Soon, K'rar was in one of the large rooms in the fourth floor with his team to brief them again on what they wanted to do.
'Many of my men should still be in this city or nearby. Garrera arrested them when I left, so they might still be in prison. Now, I need three teams of threes, to take a tour of the city. Make random inquiries with random people about the men who worked with the boy king. Look out for the names Pliny, Ederin or Mongoose, Ossus, and Mershak.' Three of these were with K'rar when Garrera paraded him at Mahideen, while Mershak was the old Principle Superintendent of the Constabulary, who was so loyal he fought for K'rar remotely without ever meeting him. There were other men, but K'rar mainly needed these ones, as they were in his close circle. K'rar went on,
'I'll go with Shaniz, Bekka and Suchy. Romiel, take Uche and Hazael. Seth will go with you. Rubabel, take Khassius, Damaris and Damaris. But you wait here for some time, I'll go out first with my team and get some money. Tedros, you come with us. You are our treasurer for this episode. When you return, give the other teams some money. They'll need it for the assignment. Is everything understood?'
No one said no, so everything was understood. K'rar, though, added,
'Right. The rest of you stay close. You may roam, but don't go far.'
K'rar and his team carried out this assignment in a northeasterly direction, because K'rar wanted to check the exit of the secret tunnel under the palace that culminated in a spot near to the small gate through which they had arrived. And, he was having the rudest of awakenings as he walked through the city.
While the architecture and the beauty of the city remained, the same couldn't be said of its denizens. They were mostly living in squalid conditions, especially the lower divisions of the city, where the city's poor were situated in closely packed tenement blocks. Even the middle class citizens couldn't be said to be enjoying their lives. K'rar hoped it was because of the war so he could mitigate his rage at how bad things had turned out under the usurper, but he knew this was unlikely. Besides, Garrera had opened Korazin's doors to Goldorans, and many of them had caravanned to Chaldea and other cities at once, numbering to the thousands. It was not hard to imagine how bad this was for his people, knowing how the Goldorans had tapped the fruits of their nation's might over Korazin, by backing Garrera in a corner and making him grant them privileges. As he walked on through the city, K'rar noticed that even the lifestyle of the people had stooped so low. The city was morally debauched. There were brothels in most every three or four turns. This was not new, because the city was certainly not holy before his death, but the levels of the badness had no doubt swiftly skyrocketed. This was in spite of—actually directly because of—Garrera's reinstallation of an active religious arm of society. K'rar saw the physical manifestation of this in the newly reconstructed temple of Ashtoreth. Because of Goldoran immigration, Garrera had also transformed one or two of the smaller Ashtoreth sanctuaries into Dagon sanctuaries, including one that shared an altar with the Ashtoreth temple. And, when K'rar came to the entrance of another new construction, a fighting arena, he stopped and shook his head from across the road, watching people getting in and out excitedly.
'Wow,' he said to Bekka and Shaniz and Romiel, wearing a disgusted look, 'as long as he gives them entertainment and bread, the people will not riot. When they do, the marauder bands to disperse them. There are also sex halls and priests to encourage the people.'
'And a parade of gods,' Romiel said.
'Ashtoreth looks just like Astarte,' Shaniz pointed out.
'It's a variation of the same deity,' K'rar had figured, 'people's minds are alike in many ways.' After a pause and another moment of looking, he said, 'those dirty gods cannot be allowed to continue.' K'rar's, and his companions' god, Ihanga, was fundamentally different from these gods and Zenji gods. The foremost difference was that Xaxanikans worshipped him invisibly, and made no sexually implicit images of him, nor carvings of his animal likenesses. Also, this god had not only revealed himself to K'rar, but also showed a high moral standard that was evident in Xaxanika. In Xaxanika there were no brothels at all for instance, although people did have some kinds of prostitution, but which was clearly against Ihanga's standards. Xaxanikans married only one wife, as Ihanga required it in his Writ, while Moabians and Zenji peoples, had no rules regarding this matter, and certainly no restrictions.
They found a beer hall one block away, and K'rar thought it would be an ideal place to collect information. But only he and Suchy could get in, as they were men.
'Wait around for us,' said K'rar to the ladies, 'you can tour the area too.'
'Will it not bother some people if the same questions are being asked in many places at the same time?' Shaniz wanted to know,
'That is the idea,' said K'rar, smiling.
He and Suchy looked out of place when they stepped through the corridor at the entrance, and into the hall. Adjacent to them in front of the sitting area was the counter, behind which stood a man and a woman, possibly spouses, the owners of the place. The droning buzz of male voices filled the room, and so did the smell of banana-and-sorghum beer. K'rar was careful to keep his face under his hat, although it was impossible that he would be recognized right off the bat. He said to Suchy, whom the men in the room were mostly looking at thanks to his tall and stocky structure, to find himself a seat. K'rar himself went to the bar, where the man behind it quickly said to him, without looking up from his wiping of the table.
'The attendant will come to your table, bloke. Sit down.'
'I'm not here for a drink,' K'rar said.
'Then you're in the wrong place.'
K'rar stood there and waited for the man to look up because he hadn't walked away. Before he spat out more insolence, K'rar said,
'I suppose you know your customers well, barman?'
'And if I do?'
'I am a historian. I am compiling a book for the future generations, about our society, lest we forget.'
The man was both confused and bemused. He chuckled softly, then loudly, attracting some people's attention including his wife, who was cleaning up the goblets and cups.
'You hear this young lad?' he said loudly to her, 'he's compiling a storybook. About us drunkards and fish mongers and prostitutes.'
'Keep your voice down,' K'rar said austerely, 'now look. I am collecting information about the coup from ten years ago, and the subsequent death of the king.'
'What's this?' the wife said.
'Look, boy,' said the man to K'rar, 'you want to write about the king, the scribes already got there before you. Anyone can write about the king and his coup.'
'Jairus, we don't discuss the civil war in this hall,' his wife sternly warned him. K'rar reached into his coat pocket, retrieved 10 kori, and rolled them on the desk. He had already exchanged gold for it. He said,
'The scribes write for the king and leave out the undesirable truths. I do not. Now, tell these men, I'll pay twice this to anyone who knows the details. Come on, you want to tell me someone will reject 20 kori?'
'There are Whipper spies everywhere, young man. Even that much will not rebuild my hall when they come here…'
'Just point to me the best suited man for the job, and the Whippers don't have to know anything, do they?' he slid the coins across the narrow desk. 10 kori was the price of a barrel of beer. It was good money, regardless of the seemingly young fellow who had just dropped them. Jairus pondered quietly for some time, and his wife said,
'Honey, for all we know he's a Whipper. Where did he get all that money?'
And apart from that the men in the hall were beginning to ask questions.
'Is something the matter, Jairus?'
'Is he a fucking invader?' asked one near the front loudly, and he and another guy stood up and walked to the desk. Jairus said,
'Keep your fists down, Kike,' he swept the two coins with his fingers over the edge of the desk, where they fell into a safe below, 'he's just an innocent lad. But he's got money. Says he'll pay 20 for a good story about the Casparon boy king's civil war.' He then took two steps to his left, and pointed to a man sitting by the wall in the center of the hall, 'that man there will tell you all you need to know. He was in prison with some of his men.'
'That is brilliant.' K'rar meant this.
The man called Kike said,
'I'll tell you those things for 20, boy.'
K'rar chuckled and said,
'Can you tell me their names, and how many they were?'
Kike stared in K'rar's face, and then called out to the man.
'Oi, Gisham, this lad's got free 20 for you!'