wonder about my Sisters sometimes.” Suddenly she looked at the three Defenders and grimaced. “I trust your discretion will ensure my remarks never leave this room, gentlemen?”
“You can rely on our honor, your Grace,” Jenga assured her. Draco made no comment. He was privy to every secret of the First Sister and to Jenga’s knowledge had never broken that trust in over thirty years.
Mahina glanced at Tarja. “Four years you were on the border, weren’t you, Tarja? And forbidden to cross it? I’ll send an order to Verkin today, countering Trayla’s order.” She smiled at Jenga. “See, that was easily taken care of, wasn’t it? What was the next item you wished to discuss?”
“I want to strengthen the defenses on our northern border,” Jenga told her, privately delighted at her reaction to his first request. “Or, to be more accurate, I would like to
Mahina leaned back in her seat. “Our northern border is protected by the treaty with the Kariens, my Lord. It has been for nearly two hundred years. What need for defenses in the north, when the money could be better spent elsewhere?”
Jenga glanced at Garet and nodded. This was his area of expertise. “We don’t believe the Karien treaty is as mutually beneficial as they would have us believe,” Garet said carefully.
“I’ve just signed a treaty with them, assuring our protection for another twenty years,” Mahina pointed out. “Are you suggesting the Kariens are not planning to honor that treaty?”
“Your Grace, I think we need to consider the history behind the treaty,” Garet replied, “... what brought it about in the first place.”
“I know the history of Medalon,” Mahina reminded the Commandant. “I was Mistress of Enlightenment for quite some time, young man.”
“I’m aware of that, your Grace, but I would ask that you hear me out.” Mahina nodded and indicated that the Commandant should continue. “You need to understand the situation in Medalon at the time of the abortive Karien invasion, two hundred years ago. In those days the Sisterhood, although growing fast, was not yet a power to be reckoned with. Medalon was little more than a loose collection of towns and villages, most of which followed the pagan gods of the Harshini. The Sisterhood had evicted the Harshini and taken over the Citadel, but that was as much a sign of the Harshini aversion to confrontation, as it was to the strength of the Sisters of the Blade. Medalon had no military power to speak of.”
“None of this is news to me, Commandant,” Mahina told him.
“Bear with me, your Grace,” Garet asked. “As I said, Medalon, as a nation, was nothing. They had no army. They had nothing that could be construed as a threat to Karien.”
“But they planned to invade us, nonetheless,” Mahina said.
“Actually, I doubt if they cared about Medalon much at all,” Tarja added. “The Kariens were on their way south, to Hythria and Fardohnya. Wiping out the Harshini along the way was only
“But they failed,” Mahina pointed out, obviously enjoying the debate. “They were turned back at our borders by a storm.”
“They weren’t just turned back,” Garet said. “They were decimated. Incidentally, the heathens believe that Lorandranek called down that storm by magic and it was he who saved Medalon. But whether it was divine intervention or sheer good fortune, the end result was devastating for the Kariens. They had taken years to amass their invasion force, and King Oscyr of Karien had beggared the nation to do it. The failure of that invasion cost him the support of his Dukes and eventually caused the downfall of his whole house. But more significantly, it cost him the support of the Church of Xaphista. He was excommunicated and died in shame less than two years later. His half-sister’s son inherited the throne, and it is from her children that the current royal house is descended.”
“Commandant, I admire your grasp of history, but is there a point to all this?”
“Yes, your Grace,” Garet nodded. “The point is, that when the treaty was first negotiated between Karien and Medalon, the Kariens were an impoverished nation, ruled by a fourteen-year-old boy. The Sisters of the Blade controlled the Citadel and a few villages surrounding it. Neither party to the treaty was in a position of strength, but both gained from it. Medalon earned a measure of security – with the treaty in place they need not fear for their northern border and could turn their attention to protecting their southern borders. Karien gained breathing space, but more importantly, they gained a measure of redemption from the Church, by making the eradication of the Harshini and all forms of heathen worship in Medalon a condition of the treaty.”
“Which in turn,” Tarja said, picking up the narrative, “led to the formation of the Defenders. The Sisters of the Blade supported the Kariens’ demands because it suited their purposes to agree with them. The Church of Xaphista the Overlord is the most powerful force in Karien. It was safer to agree to their terms and keep them on their side of the border than to disagree and risk Karien knights on Medalon soil, or worse, their missionaries. The Defenders were created to rid Medalon of the Harshini and to crush all forms of heathen worship.”
“A task they performed more than adequately,” Mahina acknowledged. “And a philosophy we still hold to.”
“And therein lies the danger, your Grace,” Jenga said, deciding it was about time he added something to the discussion. “Just as the Sisterhood believes in the same thing it believed in two hundred years ago, so do the Kariens.”
“Three years ago,” Garet continued in his soft, deceptively mild voice, “King Jasnoff’s son, Cratyn, came of age and was formally invested as the Karien Crown Prince. During the ceremony, he made his first address to the Dukes. He promised to finish the job Oscyr started. ‘To see the Church of the Overlord stretch from one end of this mighty continent to the other,’ I believe were his exact words.”
Mahina shrugged. “The rhetoric of a boy newly come to manhood, surely? I cannot divert the sort of resources such an undertaking would consume on the idle boasting of one young man. Besides, as your very presence proves, we have the Defenders now. If the Kariens look like they are breaking the treaty, you are well equipped to defend us.”
Tarja shook his head. “Actually, your Grace, we’re not. We can defend the south, or we can defend the north. We can’t do both.”
Garet nodded in agreement. “Tarja’s right. There are too many Defenders utilized for duties that can only be described as ceremonial. If the Kariens made a move on us, we wouldn’t be able to stop them. For that matter, they wouldn’t need to declare war on us. A foraging army the size of the Kariens’ would strip Medalon clean in a matter of months.”
Mahina held up her hand. “Slow down a minute,” she pleaded. “You’re getting way ahead of me here. Let’s go back to the issue of whether or not the Kariens are even planning to break the treaty. You’ve given me nothing to suggest that they might.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, your Grace,” Garet said, knowing full well that he wasn’t. “But the treaty with Karien requires Medalon to stamp out all pagan worship and anything to do with the Harshini, doesn’t it? In the past two years, we’ve uncovered more cults devoted to various Primal and Incidental Gods than were discovered in the thirty years prior to that. And rumors of the demon child are stronger than ever. Nobody has even seen a Harshini for over a century and a half, yet the cults continue to surface.”
“The work of the Hythrun or the Fardohnyans, surely?” Mahina asked. “They still hold to the pagan beliefs. I hear that even after all this time, the Sorcerer’s Collective in Greenharbor still keeps vigil over some lump of magic rock in a cave somewhere, waiting for the Harshini to speak to them again.”
“It’s called the Seeing Stone,” Garet corrected. “It’s in the Temple of the Gods in Greenharbor.”
“Whatever,” Mahina said dismissively. “Surely they are the ones encouraging the spread of the pagan cults?”
“I believe it is the Kariens who are encouraging the spread of the heathens,” Garet replied.
“To what purpose?” Mahina asked. “They want to see the end of the pagans as much as we do. What possible reason could they have for encouraging them?”
“It’s because they wish to eradicate the heathens. All of them, including every heathen in Hythria and Fardohnya. Far from being helpful, Medalon stands in their way now. Two centuries ago we were nothing, and but for a fortuitous storm, the Kariens would have marched straight through Medalon to reach the southern nations. But in a moment of weakness, they signed a treaty with us that they are honor bound to uphold. The only loophole they have is if we are not keeping our side of the bargain, which is the suppression of all heathen worship. The more cults that spring up in Medalon, the more reason they have for crossing our border to put them down. They don’t
