Hello guys. This is a test chapter to see whether you like this story or not. Please post a review at the bottom. If this chapter is confusing please ask me any questions and if I've made any mistakes please feel free to inform me and I'm sorry for any spelling and grammar that has gone wrong, there not really my strong points.

Forgotten of God 1: Meetings of Friends and Foes

The room was awash with bubbling laughter. Servants bustled through the rooms, their long fingers spread wide like spiders holding silver platters to and from the smaller, white-washed hall way that led down to the kitchens. Men lounged at tables piled with food, laughing and swinging skins of wine so that red liquid spilt and splashed down the fur covered edges. Light haired, dark skinned woman danced on their laps. Bright eyes diluted with heavy drinking, their lips- shades of red and pink- exposed laughing white teeth, but I knew better. However much the girls smiled it was all fake. A mask to hide the sadness behind.

I sighed and sipped at my drink, looking across the tables to see if Tethous was leaving yet. He was easy to find, even though I was looking through a haze of smoke that coiled and uncoiled like rings in the air, and past a sea of sweaty bodies, packed together like one person instead of a hundred. Tethous was tall, his posture as straight and perfect as a twig. He wore swooping black trousers and a leather studded jerkin but what was most recognisable was the long blue veil that hug around his face, showing only a tanned skin stretched across a long noise and two piecing green eyes.

He was standing a little way of from the double doors that lead to the centre courtyard of this establishment. A blond girl, wearing a deep blue rap, showing her dark collarbone and the start of a heavy cleavage was hanging off his arm. Even from this distance, and through the dark veil, I could see his look of distaste in a low snarl but the girl kept hanging on, he long fingers rapped like a vice around his leather clad wrist.

But what was he doing here?

I could still remember the first time I'd been to an establishment like this. I had been seven. Too young to understand the ongoing banter that passed between woman and man, too understand that this was all fake, all for money. The owner of the house I went to had been a woman herself. A deep rich colour of brown, with dark eyes and long curling hair. She had been beautiful, I though, even though she had surpassed her girls by many years. This owner on the other hand did dealings upstairs. Not just what normal houses like this, but more the criminal type of dealings, like planning a killing or buying information for a raid, but Tethous had his own suppliers of information, I knew that.

Why not come to me instead?

The first time I'd come to a place like this, my father had watched me closely in fear that someone would presume I was new stock. He clutched at my wrist and not let go and till we'd get back to the stable and saddled our horses. He had told me to put on my own scarf at the time.

'Cover you face, girl,' he had said passing me a thick black scarf that slipped like water trends through my fingers.

'Why?' I had asked, running a finger along the material.

'There are people who will see your beauty and use it for their own enjoyment,' he had replied and had helped me rap the scarf around my head. The soft cloth had rubbed gently on my scalp, but I did not mind it, it was like clouds from the heavens.

I had not understood then, but I do now.

Tethous suddenly slipped from the doorway, disappearing down through the corridor that lead to the rooms upstairs. I followed silently. Twisting my way through the jumped pine tables and overly populated red and gold futons. Passing severing girls, only aged seven or ten with their wide eyes, unmarked faces from the orange-red powders and greasepaints that the older woman smothered their faces with to make them look prettier. Girls wearing silks, with long open backs, gold and silver chains glimmered at their necks and wound around their long graceful arms. Men at arms, carrying swords and clad in metal studded leather coats and there red chubby faces were spread in wide smiles. All of them moved out of my way as I passed. Fear flashing through their eyes, but the silence would never last long. It was a harlot snuggery after all.

The corridor was long and thin. Darker than the main room, which had yellow tinted fenestra window covered in light wood venetian blinds and white jalousies. Oil lanterns hung from iron brackets on the walls, unlit to reserve the precious lard for the darkness of night. It had rose wood flooring slates, sent in a slanted fashion from the doorframe that opened at the other end. A white curtain tucked behind a grapnel. I passed through silently.

The house was set up like a square with on sector taken from the middle, peer Arrid tradition. The main room was set in on side, running lengthwise on the street side. The other three sides were private rooms and business rooms and upstairs was where I was going. Upstairs was set up similarly to downstairs apart from the square orioles that lead to rounded terraces and lightly painted gables that covered them.

Upstairs was warmer and I felt almost as if I wanted to tug at the blue veil rapped around my neck and throw it through on of the gaping windows but I knew that would be counter-productive for my task at hand. Tethous trusted me or the person I was pretending to be anyway, but my task had never been to get him to confide in me but to find out what he was going.

I followed the only sound that I could hear and till I reached an open door. There was a woman inside. Her hair a fiery colour of red. Faceless to me, her slim slightly tanned skin turned away from me. A mystery woman. Although I could see the lack of clothes that covered her glowing skin, she was seated across from Tethous, not even touching by the hand. A table had been set in the middle, covered in a dark red filament cloth, and golden coins littered the table.

Tethous's eyes rose to meet mine and he blanched slightly before saying, 'Rosa. Leave for a moment.'

The woman hulled a pelt from around her waist and tugged it around her shoulders so it fell around her naked body like some kind of cloak. As she left, her eyes dropped away from mine and her feet moved silently away from the room and drawing away to small padding noises in the distance.

I sat down, annoyed and glared at Tethous. 'What are you going here?' I asked.

I returned my glower, with storming eyes. 'I could ask you the same question.' He replied.

I huffed. Play it, I told myself, keep calm. He does not know anything about the real you. 'We had a meeting, which my I hasten to add,' I pointed a finger at him. 'You did not bother to come to.' That's what the Tualaghi were like, they do not care about anything. 'So I sent someone to find you, and they took hours and found nothing- insolent cow- so I went looking myself.' I looked down at the table. At the shinning coins, then back to his eyes. 'And I think I know why.'

'If I had gone to your meeting, you would have made me pay extra just to borrow money,' his glower deepened. 'And here it's less expensive and anyway you said you will not give me any money so what was the point to go anyway-'

'I said, I would not give you any money unless you tell me what it's for.'

He looked outraged. 'Do not interrupt me woman!' he shouted standing up.

'Well you should have come to our meeting then,' I hid my fear. Maybe it had been a stupid idea to come here after all, but that did not mean I had to let him see I was afraid of him.

For a moment Tethous looked as if her was going to kill me, but ended up reaching across the table and slapping me in the face. A deep sting exploded in my cheek, but I was pretending to be a Tualaghi and they did not show pain or fear. I looked back at him and he hissed, 'that is for you insolence.' He stood up then. 'If you really want to know, we are planning a raid.'

Finally, what I needed. Information. 'What kind of raid? Desert? Town?'

He looked at me squarely, 'I'm sure you can find out by yourself, woman.'

In the Khadif there was no need to wear the blue veil that kept my identity hidden while I was undercover. I felt better to have my hair down, tumbling down my back with a familiar weight in its brown tresses and curls. I had been in the Khadif many times before and knew the building like the back of my hand.

I was cool inside, the windows open and letting in a cold night wind, and the roof baffles allowed moon light to case itself across the blue and white mosaic floor. The audience hall was long and the walls were a glowing white in the dim light. Thick trunked columns sped up from the covered ground on the first floor and terminated when it reached the cleverly designed roof of glazed windows that vaulted like a square-based pyramid.

I had changed out of my dark set of clothes and put on a light shirt that tucked into swooping, baggy breeches that collected together at my ankles. A thick leather belt covered the ending of the breeches with a long bladed dagger slit in its attached sheath. I fiddled with it as I walked towards the staircase that led to the upstairs gallery where the Wakir lived.

As I moved forward towards the Wakir's rooms, the guards at the station let me through without little more than a glance. I was a common figure in the Khadif. The room beyond was small with two windows on the wall that looked into a private courtyard. I looked through the open glass doors and saw the Wakir sitting in on of the shaded benches. I walked towards the entrance of the courtyard, talking the stairs down, two steps at a time and leaping the bottom ones. The guards stationed at the entrance halted me though and went to tell the Wakir of my appearance.

'You can go in now,' said the guard coming back and I slipped past him and into the courtyard. Most Arrid houses had private courtyards, in fact I could still remember my father's one however it had been noticeably smaller and less grand.

The Wakir's courtyard was neatly laid out with four archways on each of the four walls- one of which I had entered through- adorned with tinted glass panels. As I looked up I could see white cotton shades floating through the windows and coiling like smoke in the wind. The courtyard was alit with three coal pits set in a triangle in the middle of the expansive space. Divans had been placed underneath cotton gazeboes and flower beads and yellowed shrubs littered the dirt between the stone mosaic paths. The Wakir was standing in the middle and next to him was a woman.

As I neared the two I could see the woman was what you could call a foreign beauty. She had very long blond hair, plated down her back in an assortment of twists and twirls. As she turned I could see she had very green eyes with a light intensity to them. The Wakir looked very different in comparison with tanned skin and dark eyes and hair. He was at least a head and a half taller than her.

We greeted each other with the normal Arrid greeting then I bowed my head in a sign of submission before bring it back up. 'Wakir Seley el'then,' I said as a way of formal address, 'I have to come to report on the Tualaghi called Tethous.'

The Wakir nodded, 'report then.'

I told him from the beginning. Of when I had invaded into Tethou's clan and been gaining information slowly. I told him of the meeting that he did not turn up to and to the events that had been played out in the snuggery. 'But I don't think this is any normal type of raid. The caravan does not go out for another five months and the towns are all bled dry of supplied and goods at the moment. But Tethous seemed like it was going to happen soon and…' I pulled off not wanting to ramble.

'And? And what?' the Wakir asked.

I looked him squarely in the face before saying, 'I don't think it's going to be a raid.'

'Why?'

'More and more of the Tualaghi have been joining in the desert. They had a massive camp by the Khor-Abash Wells and more coming by day. There are more than hundreds and I think, well I more than think, there planning something Wakir I just don't know what.'

'I though the Tualaghi had been disbanded,' said the Woman, speaking for the first time.

I turned to face her. She was really beautiful. Not the feign beauty that the woman of the snuggery houses had owned, but like a radiant glow and no amount of cosmetics was going to change that. 'You can't disband Tualaghi-' I started to say but the Wakir cut me off.

'What she means, Cassandra, is that you can destroy one Tualaghi clan but then another will fill its place. There killers and it's so hard to travel with a big force of men through the desert, you know that as well as I do. But a force this size... I've never heard of it happening before.'

The woman- Cassandra blanched. 'But when we went out, there were two hundred-'

'That is most irregular,' I said. 'They normally travel in clans of maybe ten or twenty. For the raids they normally commit to doing they need no more than that and it's hard for people to live in the desert for so long. It's really quite cleaver the way they've set up their camp as well, protected on all sides and of course there's like a small town around the Well.'

'A mind for scheming I see,' said Cassandra laughing, then turning to Seley el'then she said, 'this spy of yours reminds me of Halt.'

'Who's Halt?' I asked.

Cassandra smiled, 'nobody important.' She reached out her hand for me to shake, 'I'm Cassandra, of Araluen.'

I had heard that name before and quickly I realised that it was the same person who, with her friends had come and to get the Oberjarl and had in fact been captured by a clan of two-hunderd Tualaghi. 'The princess?' I asked, just to make sure.

'The same,' smiled Cassandra.

'Well I'm Aya. Please to meet you.'

So that's for chapter 1. If you want me to continue please tell me and I will try and fit in any writing when I can =D