56: THE ARMY WITH EIGHT GATES

Atrine, Jorat Dominion, Quuros Empire. Three days since Jarith Milligreest found out that his father was an idiot

Morios turned his attention back to Atrine.

The crowd had never been exactly calm about evacuating, but now their panic redoubled. Thurvishar was sweating from the strain of keeping the portal open for so long. Presumably he’d have had a much easier time of it if they’d had a Gatestone, since that seemed to help the House D’Aramarin mages. Then a second gate opened next to the first, and Senera walked through, gingerly touching her head. “We need to leave.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Kihrin said. “Janel, it’s our turn! Let’s go.”

“There’s still people—” Janel started to protest.

Above their heads, Morios turned his head and looked right at the bridge.

Kihrin didn’t think it was his imagination Morios was looking down at them in particular. He was quite sure Morios hadn’t only seen him but that the dragon had recognized him. Dragons seemed to pay more attention to souls than people, and his would no doubt seem familiar.

“Arasgon, take Janel out of here!” Kihrin yelled. “Where’s Qown?” He spotted the little priest not far from Senera’s portal, which probably wasn’t a coincidence.

“I’m here, but there’s—”

“You’re next to a gate. Run!” Kihrin shouted.

Morios raised a wicked, spiked claw over their heads, and people surged for the open portals. Some, knowing they couldn’t possibly make it in time, began jumping off the bridge on the Lake Jorat side.

Suddenly, Scandal stood next to Kihrin, and he vaulted onto her back. Janel and Arasgon, knowing they’d also never make it to a gate, didn’t even try—they began galloping full out for the end of the bridge. Kihrin and Scandal followed. Or more accurately, Scandal followed, and Kihrin held on for dear life. He could only pray that the others had made it through the gate safely—which he did out loud, in case Taja could spare a second from fighting demons in the Afterlife.

He heard a loud whistling sound and looked back to see Morios’s bladed body slicing through the air. Then the dragon’s claw slammed into the bridge, making the entire length undulate. The section of bridge under Scandal’s feet jumped. He fell out of sync with her, slammed against her back as she recovered, and slid off her side, holding on by a single tuft of mane.

Kihrin screamed. He felt Scandal slowing, trying to give him time to recover.

“Keep running!”

He could hear the metal-on-stone screeching of Morios’s claws behind them. Right behind them.

Kihrin reached up, managed to find purchase with his other hand, and somehow pulled himself back up on Scandal’s back. She whinnied, and he desperately wished he understood the language of firebloods.

The metallic scream suddenly stopped. The air vibrated behind him, and he heard an enormous thud. He looked back to see Morios slam himself a second time against a diaphanous rainbow-hued wall of energy that had materialized behind Kihrin.

Kihrin had seen something very much like it before, and just as he blinked in recognition, the bridge ended and he was on solid ground again. Morios gave one last, half-hearted attempt to break the magical energy field before turning his attention back to the city. Clearly, it was more interesting.

“Introduce us to your friends, Thurvishar,” Janel was saying.

Kihrin turned around, his heartbeat still pounding. Several men in imperial military uniforms stood next to Thurvishar, Senera, and Qown. Another group of soldiers were busy leading away stragglers, those who’d made it through the portal before Morios had destroyed it. But Kihrin’s focus was drawn to the woman who stood in the middle of the bridge, lowering a silver wand. She was a handsome olive-skinned woman in her forties, lavender-gray cloud-curl hair supporting a plain silver circlet. She wore black, but that color would never be half as deep as the fathomless night of her eyes. The woman saw Kihrin and grinned.

“Hey, Scamp,” Tyentso said. “Miss me?”

Kihrin stared. He panicked for a moment, thinking this wasn’t Tyentso at all, but rather some monster—the mimic Talon, maybe Xaltorath—counterfeiting her. However, he dismissed the idea as too easy to check.

Kihrin slid off Scandal and swept her into an expansive hug. “Tyentso, you’re alive! By all the gods, you’re alive!”

She sputtered. “Easy now, Scamp. You can’t just go around hugging the emperor of Quur, you know.”

“The what?” He blinked and took a second look at the silver circlet on her head, the slender wand in her hand. No … it couldn’t be …

But the energy field that had held off Morios had matched the one surrounding the arena back in the Capital. The same arena where a new emperor was selected, whenever the last one died.

“Oh yes,” Tyentso said, “I’m emperor. Empress? We’re still figuring out the title. It’s, uh—” She grinned again. “Not going to lie; it’s good. Except having to deal with a damn dragon, two days into my reign, wasn’t how I thought this would go.”

Janel dismounted. “Go help with the evacuees,” Janel told Arasgon. “There isn’t anything you can do here.”

He started to argue, then tossed his head in a way Kihrin could only assume meant We’ll talk about this later and trotted away along with Scandal. She seemed perfectly fine with the idea of not staying around for any more fighting.

“Scamp?” Janel asked him carefully as she turned back to the group.

Kihrin held up a finger. “You don’t get to call me that. There are rules. Only the emperor of Quur can use that name.”¹

Tyentso grinned at Janel. “You have my permission to call him that.” Then she tilted her head toward Thurvishar. “Thank you for contacting me. As you can see, we moved as quickly as we could.” She motioned for them to follow as she moved off the bridge, heading toward a distant cluster of men gathered before a table. Soldiers were busy erecting a tent around them. “This way. We have maps and battle plans and wizards from the Academy to ignore—all the amenities.”

“I wondered how you’d arrived so fast,” Senera mused.

As Thurvishar gestured toward a portal, Kihrin saw what had missed his attention earlier: the D’Lorus wizard wore an intaglio-cut ruby ring on each hand. One of those had been worn by Thurvishar’s father, Emperor Sandus. Which meant the second had to be one of the enchanted rings Sandus had distributed to his secret agents, allowing them to report back directly to him. Directly to Tyentso, now.

“Where did you find a second ring—?” Kihrin started to ask.

“It’s yours,” Thurvishar said. “From the items Gadrith stripped from you. I suspected it would allow me to contact whoever held the Crown and Scepter of Quur, whether that person happened to be my father Sandus or not.”

“May I see one of those rings?” Qown asked.

“Not right now.”

“Thurvishar, why didn’t you tell me we could—” Janel began, then shook her head. “Never mind. Smart thinking. I admit I had assumed we’d never see the army in time. The normal protocols—”

“Sometimes you have to move faster than the normal protocols,” Tyentso said.

“Where’s Relos Var?” Senera asked.

“Excuse me?” Emperor Tyentso said. “Relos Var’s here?”

“Not exactly,” Kihrin said. “He went over the falls. Either dead or so injured it doesn’t matter.”

Senera stopped walking for a moment, grief plain on her face.

“He’ll heal, though,” Qown said to Senera. “Relos Var will be back.”

“Not in time to help,” Kihrin replied. “And he hadn’t yet told us where to find Morios’s Cornerstone. Apparently, we need to destroy that too, if we’re to have any chance of permanently killing that damn monster.”

“Then you’re lucky I have that information,” Senera said.

Thurvishar glanced over at Kihrin. “I told you we’d need her.”

Imperial forces were leading refugees down the road from Atrine, past the hill where the army was encamped. Kihrin counted no fewer than eight magical portals, each with their own green-clad D’Aramarin Gatekeeper attached. Kihrin started to protest that he knew most sorcerers powerful enough to open a random magical portal, and these weren’t them. Then he realized these weren’t random. Someone had burned a complex combination of geometric and magical symbols at the base of each gate. Kihrin grappled with a sudden desire to question the Gatekeepers about exactly how Gatestones worked, but quelled the urge. At least someone in the Quuros army knew how to set up temporary Gatestones, and they’d been used to bring in troops and equipment.

The equipment mostly consisted of the imperial war machines known as scorpions. He’d heard about the fabled Quuros siege weapons for most of his life, but he’d never actually seen one, let alone the dozens being marched through the imperial portals. The metal devices most closely resembled their namesakes, except each was the size of a rhinoceros and probably weighed more. The driver used a strange orb with handles to steer, while two more soldiers rode in the back. One by one the scorpions took up positions along the shoreline, turning so the stingers could flip back like catapults. The massive machines settled to the ground, legs digging into the soil and locking into place.

“Here we are,” said Tyentso as they arrived at her partially erected tent, a small swarm of imperial staff coming and going.

“Good, you’ve brought back—” High General Milligreest’s greeting came to a sudden halt.

Kihrin counted at least a dozen men, some clearly high-ranking military officers and others wearing the colors of various Royal Houses. And of course, the high general.

“General Milligreest,” Kihrin said.

The high general pursed his lips. “I should have known I’d find you anywhere someone’s destroying a city.” Dismissing Kihrin, he looked over the group. His gaze paused momentarily on Senera. He didn’t look at Janel at all.

“Play nice, Qoran,” Tyentso chided. She walked up to the table and pushed an Academy wizard out of the way. “Make a space, people. The adults have something to discuss.”² She waved her group forward. “Now what was that about destroying Morios?”

Senera stepped up. She eyed the Academy wizards warily, then shrugged. “This is theoretical. As no dragon has yet been permanently slain, we’re operating under conjecture—”

Tyentso made an annoyed noise. “Skip the caveats and get to the point.”

“Morios and his Cornerstone, Warmonger, must be destroyed within thirty seconds of each other. We think. So we’ll need to split up. Kihrin goes with Thurvishar to where the Cornerstone is hidden, and the rest of us kill Morios—which Khoreval should make easier.” She pulled two small twigs out of her misha. They were identical, except that one was a normal twig made from wood and the second looked like wrought iron. “These are keyed to each other. The moment Morios has been slain, I’ll snap the normal twig, breaking its metal twin, signaling it’s time to shatter Warmonger.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Kihrin said.

“No,” Senera corrected. “I made it sound simple. It will most definitely not be easy.”

“Why does Kihrin go with Thurvishar?” Janel asked.

“I assumed Kihrin would want to be with someone who could make a portal back.” Senera turned to Kihrin. “I could do it, but I also assumed you’d prefer someone you actually trust.”

“Preposterous!”

Everyone paused and looked over at the man who’d interrupted—an older Quuros wearing green robes.

“Havar D’Aramarin, right?” Tyentso said, eyes narrowed. “Just curious: Which part of that did you find preposterous?”

“I am High Lord Havar D’Aramarin,” he corrected. “And the idea that this woman could open a freestanding portal beggars all belief. She’s clearly lying and you’re too naïve to realize it.” He scowled. “As for you, don’t expect anyone to consider you the legitimate emperor, when you didn’t even win the right in the arena.”

The high general gave Tyentso a warning look. “Don’t.”

Tyentso smiled. “Right now, I don’t give a fuck who thinks I’m the legitimate emperor. I care about saving what’s left of Atrine and its population. So unless you’re here to help us, why don’t you go check on your Gatekeepers?”

The high lord started to say something else, but Qoran Milligreest stepped up next to Tyentso and gave the high lord a look. The wizard turned on his heel and strode away.

“That one’s going to cause trouble later,” Senera murmured. “There’s no way he won’t try to have us arrested as witches when this is over.”

Milligreest said, “You should be arrested—as a terrorist and a traitor.”

Senera smiled. “It’s nice to know my work is appreciated.”

“Worry about it later,” Janel said. “In the meantime, we’re missing an important piece of information: Where is Morios’s Cornerstone?”

“Oh,” Senera said as if she’d forgotten an insignificant detail. “In the god-king Khorsal’s throne room, under a thousand feet of water, at the bottom of Lake Jorat.”