Dresh Boaral was the latest Dresh-Preda of a fortified Letherii estate named Boaral Keep, which was located thirty leagues south of Rennis. Dresh Boaral had lost his wife three years earlier at Noose Bog and most of his Boaral kin perished during the Tiste Edur conquest.[1]
In Reaper's Gale[]
Yan Tovis and her elite company stopped at Boaral Keep to refresh and resupply on the road between Letheras and Fent Reach. She found the keep's outer gate guards drunk on duty and the Master at Arms away with a detachment of soldiers chasing rumours on the nearby coast. Inside, the two housemaids Pully and Skwish insisted Dresh Boaral was indisposed, sleeping off whatever drink had caused him to become sick on the floor. They let slip that Dresh Boaral had murdered his wife, so Yan Tovis placed the Dresh under house arrest and sent a rider to Rennis to request adjudication from the Tiste Edur.[2]
Under Yan Tovis' further questioning the two admitted they were Shake witches who had cursed the keep and its owners since the time of its founding. The original Dresh-Preda had killed many Shake and attempted to force the two witches to blacken the stone of the keep with their blessing. Instead, they ensured that each Dresh-Preda went mad and murdered his wife after she was too old to bear children. Dresh Boaral, who had his wife strangled and dumped in the bog, was the twenty-first of their victims. Yan Tovis ordered the witches to end the curse on the keep or face their own executions. To enforce her order, she revealed she was princess of the Shake. Too late to stop the rider to Rennis or cure Dresh Boaral's affliction, she reasoned that the man's summary execution would at least be something of a mercy.[2]
Shortly after the departure of Yan Tovis and her forces, Hellian and Urb's two Bonehunters squads found the keep deserted and Dresh Boaral's freshly dead corpse in the hallway. They dragged the body into the latrine pit before setting an ambush for the arriving Edur troop led by Preda Estav Kendar.[3]
Notes and references[]
- ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12, US TPB p.321-322
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12, US TPB p.321-325
- ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 14, US HC p.399-402/403/404