Dimwater's Demons Read Free

say.”
    Feberik reached up and drew his claymore. The sword ground against the scabbard and filled the room with a terrible schring!
    Lord Caspen looked to the blade and began to cry and shake his head. “No, please, I’ll pay, I swear it by Icadion!”
    Feberik nodded. “Kyra is boarding at the school for each summer as well. I expect you to pay every month of the year.”
    Lord Caspen nodded as tears streamed down his red face. The noble’s eyes were locked on the shining blade. “I’ll do as you say.”
    “And make sure you stay away forever. If you should come looking for her, or if you should ever miss a payment…” Feberik stabbed the blade through the chair just an inch away from the left side of Lord Caspen’s face. The nobleman’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and his body went limp.
    Feberik turned and replaced his sword.  With a sniff he wondered what the headmaster and the local magistrate would say when and if they received word from Lord Caspen about the manner in which this visit had been conducted. What he had just done was far more than what he should have. He had come only to have a discussion after all. Still, he couldn’t help but hope that perhaps somewhere in the plane of the dead, Kyra’s mother was smiling, appreciative of his actions. As he left the parlor he caught sight of the servants he had encountered when he first arrived. He offered them a limp salute and a tight-lipped smile that likely betrayed too much amusement for the potential consequences of this visit.
    Climbing atop his horse, Feberik made a decision. Though the young girl didn’t yet care for him, he would watch over her in any way he could. Perhaps one day she would see that his efforts on her behalf were worthy of her affection. For now, though, it was enough to know that Lord Caspen had been chastened.

Chapter 2
     
     
    Kyra walked through the tall pines, taking in a breath of warm, summer air. The first full week of summer term had finally come, and she couldn’t help but feel utterly relieved that most of the other students who attended Kuldiga Academy had gone home until regular classes would reconvene in the fall. She could finally move through the corridors, eat in the dining hall, and wander the school grounds without hearing whispered conversations that featured her name, or catching stray glances from unfriendly faces everywhere she went.
    Since her encounter with a shade, a dark creature not unlike a vampire that drained a person’s life force and magical essence instead of blood, the hostility toward her had become different from what she had faced shortly after initially arriving at the academy for the first year of sorcery training. At first she had been teased because of the rumors that had cropped up as a result of too frequent visits from her overly attentive fiancé, a man twenty years Kyra’s senior to whom Kyra had been betrothed by her father just before her 14 th birthday. A man who, to Kyra’s chagrin, had taken up a teaching post at the academy. However, the treatment she had received as a result of her relationship with Feberik had melted away once word had spread that she had needed to be interviewed by a tribunal of priests from Valtuu Temple after surviving a battle with a shade. The news of Kyra’s true identity as the daughter of a vampire had somehow been leaked as well.
    As a result of these two bits of supposedly confidential information becoming widespread knowledge, a general fear and awe for Kyra had overtaken the disdain and teasing she had previously thought to be the most unbearable of treatment from her peers. Instead of openly bothering her, they whispered quietly whenever she entered a room, and were quick to look away if she glanced at them. Now she found herself fantasizing about how much easier it would have been to complete the next three years of schooling if the only peer difficulties she had to deal with were a few pranks and some childish teasing about