The sun had set and the Imperial Highway was overflowing with the people who followed the Pilgrim.
He stood at the head of the massive entourage and nodded his head in satisfaction. The sky was already dark with perpetual clouds. The volcanic activity in the distance and the burning of Trecharch were enough to guarantee that the stars would soon be hidden behind a thick layer of clouds, but here, for the moment, the Great Star and a few others were still visible.
Sarmin and Lemblo stood on his left. Longrid and Powl on his right. There had been a time when all four of them had been soft. The walking had changed that. Their muscles had hardened as surely as their skin had grown dark with the sun’s treatment.
Sarmin smiled at him and he nodded back. His face was not designed for smiling and that was something they had come to understand about him.
“How much farther, do you think?” Powl looked his way as he spoke. Like so many of his followers the man seemed to believe that every word from his mouth came from the gods themselves. He had surrendered the notion that he could convince them otherwise. He spoke with experience, he spoke with the sure knowledge that they needed to reach Canhoon as quickly as possible, but he did not speak with the voice of the gods, not in this instance.
“We have several days’ hard walking ahead of us.”
“Will we make it to the city in time?”
The Pilgrim looked at Powl and frowned. “We must and so we will.”
Powl frowned, too. “There are some who say they cannot walk any further.”
“Then some will not make the journey. We must ensure that enough do.”
The Pilgrim grew tired of the doubt coming from his follower and looked away from him. He saw the expression on Powl’s face. The man wanted words to soothe him and comfort his doubts.
“Believe this, Powl. The gods wish us to succeed. They have given us all we need to prosper in this. We merely have to continue on the proper path. Ours is a sacred path and the way will be cleared of heavy obstacles as has been the case all along.”
It seemed enough for the man.
Later, after everyone had settled in for the night – as much as anyone could settle themselves comfortably on a road designed to be traveled by wagons and horses – the Pilgrim saw Sarmin staring at him in the darkness.
“What bothers you, Sarmin?”
“You know what we travel to. Does it concern you at all?” Her brow was knotted with tensions and doubt.
“I was born for this. I slept for a very long time waiting for this event. It was ordained. I am not bothered by what will happen, child. I look forward to it.”
“I am scared.” She looked away, her face still troubled.
“The weather has been kind to us. We have found the food we need and no one has come up lame, despite Powl’s worries. That is because the gods favor us in our mission. We do the will of the gods. We are the instruments of their desires. Do you understand this?”
She listened to his words and slowly the tension left her face. “You are kind to listen to my worries.”
“You follow me into the unknown, Sarmin. How can I do less than prepare you for what we know must happen?”
Sarmin closed her eyes and smiled and slowly drifted to sleep.
The Pilgrim did not join her; his mind was filled with the endless possibilities of what could go wrong and how to prevent disasters from stopping them.
The gods had need of the people who followed him. He would see this through. He had no choice in the matter.
His was a sacred mission.
Tarag Paedori looked upon the corpses of his enemies and nodded his satisfaction. The First Lancers had fought well and employed surprising strategies. The archers with them had done their jobs well and over a hundred of the Sa’ba Taalor were dead or maimed as a result. The dead were being taken care of. The injured were being tended to.
The small town that had been an outpost of the Fellein was now gone, crushed under the armies of the Sa’ba Taalor.
To the south and east he could see the smoke from Durhallem’s second home. The newly formed volcano roared and spit ashes and flame into the air. Almost directly east of where he and his forces were gathering, Canhoon waited.
There was no rage in his heart. He had offered his anger to the Empress of the Fellein only because the message he had to convey was made clear to him by Truska-Pren. He needed only look to the skies to know that he did well in the eyes of his god. The clouds that gathered were a sign of his success.
Ehnole stood nearby, her eyes scanning the whole of the eastern horizon. She offered no opinions. She made no statements. She followed orders and even now supervised the removal of the dead.
The Daxar Taalor said to place the dead within a pit and leave them behind. This had already been done. The last of the dead – both Sa’ba Taalor and Fellein alike – rested together now. In death they were no longer enemies. They were merely meat.
At home, in the Taalor Valley, the bodies would have been treated differently. They’d have been offered to the gods by those who killed them. Here they were offered as one in the names of all the gods.
Tarag looked upon the dead and nodded.
“You have done well, Ehnole.”
She offered a formal bow and nothing else. She was a proper soldier and that was why she moved up the ranks of the King in Iron with ease. There were no decorations upon her to denote rank. None were needed.
“We offer the dead to the Daxar Taalor.” Tarag spoke clearly and as he spoke, all of the people who followed him stomped one foot in unison. At a distance of one hundred feet, those he had appointed earlier repeated his words and again, the Sa’ba Taalor responded by stomping the ground. The ground fairly shook, as it should when the gods demanded.
“We offer our lives to the Daxar Taalor!” Ehnole and all of the others within range of his voice repeated his words and again the ground shook with the feet of the Sa’ba Taalor.
Tarag Paedori raised his arms to the heavens and roared his words for all to hear. “We offer our enemies to the Daxar Taalor!”
As one they raised their arms above their heads. As one they stomped one foot into the ground. As one they repeated his words. Tarag Paedori’s blood surged and he looked at his armies. They ranged in age from ten years into their fifties and higher. They served the gods of the Seven Forges as he served the same deities. They obeyed his words but only because the gods demanded it. There was no ego in his words. There was only praise for the gods they had all been raised to serve until their dying days and beyond.
Even Kallir Lundt, the Fellein who now followed their ways, raised his voice and his arms to the gods of war.
“The enemies of our gods will fall before us!”
Oh, how they roared their approval then.
“It is time! Now is the time of the Daxar Taalor!” Without another word he walked forward, heading for his mount and the call to war. A hundred horns sounded their ululations, though they were surely unnecessary. A hundred more responded.
Tarag Paedori knew that the Fellein thought they were great warriors. They also thought that the Sa’ba Taalor were small in numbers. They were wrong. Fifty thousand warriors rode or walked behind Tarag Paedori at that moment and they were but a portion of a much greater army.
“We offer the dead to the Daxar Taalor!” He gestured to the vast pit they had spent over a day digging and then filling with corpses. He marched on, and his forces followed.
And behind them, left to fester in their shallow grave, the dead began to move.
All must answer to the gods of war.
Cullen walked through the ruin of Trecharch and into the lands beyond, where trees did not rise toward the clouds and once upon a time, the open spaces would have terrified her. The road she followed was well traveled and the proof of that could be found in what had been left behind.
Many of the escapees from the Sa’ba Taalor had tried to take their possessions with them and a good number discarded those goods when the grayskins came after them. It was a simple lesson to learn: a favored vase is not worth dying for at the hands of a merciless enemy. The road and the areas around it were littered with the items thrown aside or dropped when the enemy came through on a killing rampage. There were no bodies, though there were many areas where it was obvious people had died. Blood painted the dry soil and the places where the dead had fallen still showed signs of the weight of those bodies.
“Where are you going now, Cullen?”
Deltrea continued her tirade of questions and complaints. Sometimes Cullen did not know if she should be grateful or if she should kill herself just to make the noise stop. Still, if Deltrea talked she did not have to think so much, and thinking hurt.
“I’m following the road. I have to get to Canhoon. I have to let them know that Trecharch is dead.”
“I should think they already know. They can probably see the smoke.” Deltrea’s voice sounded hurt. To be fair, she had died somewhere back there. She had every reason to feel hurt.
“That doesn’t matter. They need me. I have something for them.” Somewhere within her she felt it stir, the life she had snatched from the dead Mother-Vine. She needed to see it safely to the City of Wonders. There was a man there who needed to know about it. She could not see a face, she did not know a name, but she could sense him. He needed to know. It was of the utmost urgency.
The road ahead of her was different. There were people up there. Not a lot, but enough to make her aware of more than the life that burned inside of her.
For a moment she feared it was the grayskins, but no. These were people with flesh that resembled life instead of decay. They were active, and they were moving and speaking the same language that she did.
There were more than ten, but she couldn’t have given an exact number. They moved along the road and gathered the salvage that others had left for them to find.
They were destitute, the lot of them. They picked at anything that might have value and carefully placed their treasures in the wagon they brought with them, dragged by two of the saddest-looking horses she had ever seen. She had not seen many, true, but these were old and withered and swaybacked. Cullen wondered if they could have supported the weight of even a small man on a saddle without collapsing. She had her doubts.
Most of them saw her, decided she was harmless and nodded before moving on, but one of the men kept staring, his eyes focused on her arm with an unsettling intensity. It only took her a moment to understand he wasn't looking at her, but at the bow she carried.
She shook her head to warn him away and he frowned, likely trying to decide if it was worth the trouble to try to take from her.
Just to make sure he stayed dissuaded, she notched an arrow and tapped her finger along the fletching to make sure he got the point. Eventually he looked away, muttering under his breath. Cullen decided to keep an ear on the lot of them as she walked past. If he chose to try his luck she’d kill him for his troubles. They were little better than grave robbers in her estimation. Not that she and her stolen bow had any right to judge.
The skies were darker here. The winds stank of ash and worse. There was an aroma of death that came from the south and west, the direction of Jorhuan. She had never been to the town before and knew that she would not be going there now. The stench alone would have deterred her, but that roiling heat in her guts, the Mother-Vine’s mark inside of her, told her that it would be a bad choice and she chose to listen to it.
There were others on the road, but as a whole they were broken remnants. There were no soldiers here, only a scattering of scavengers. Of course, some scavengers still had teeth.
The five men who came at her were not overly large, nor were they dressed with any particular adornments that made them threatening. It was the way they walked, the way they looked around that let her know.
One of them nodded an acknowledgment of her. The others did not. All of them moved with too much bounce in their step and she could clearly see the way their hands twitched. It wasn't nerves. They were signaling each other. She didn’t know what the signals meant, but she doubted they were of benefit to her situation.
Deltrea agreed. “They mean you harm. I can smell it on them.”
Cullen didn’t answer. Instead she took the arrow she had already notched and fired it into the first of the men. Her aim was nearly perfect and he staggered back with a new hole punched clean through his throat.
The next arrow was out, drawn and airborne before the scavengers had a chance to react. The first man was painting the road with his blood, his hands trying to staunch the flow and failing. A second let out a long, warbling scream, the arrow sticking out of the side of his face. She could see that the arrowhead was embedded deep into bone. He would live, but there’d be no fight in him.
Two of the others froze, the third and the last of them took a few strides in her direction and finally stopped when she aimed at him and shook her head. “I lost to the grays. Doesn’t mean I’m not trained. Gather yours and back away, or you’ll all die right at this spot.”
The one she’d skewered in the face was still screaming. She couldn’t blame him. He was trying to speak but his words were lost in the gasping, wailing bellows that came from him. He could have been mistaken for a Pra-Moresh.
The cockiness they’d had before was gone. The brave one, the one that had got closer, was still considering his options, but she could see the other two had already grown wiser from the encounter.
“Keep looking at me, and I’ll split your eye open. You doubt me, you take one more step this way and test my skills.”
For several seconds she thought she might have to carry through but he finally backed down, looking at his fallen friends and letting common sense prevail. He had no weapons. She had a bow and enough arrows to whittle him down to half his size.
She waited several minutes for them to gather their wounded and dying and leave before she continued on.
“You should have killed him, Cullen.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you let him live?”
“There’s enough death here. I can smell it on the wind.”
“What if they come back for you?”
“I guess you’ll just have to warn me, Deltrea.”
“You know I’m dead, right?”
“And yet here you are, still talking to me.”
Because part of her saw the wisdom in Deltrea’s concerns, Cullen walked faster and, when the road took her past a collection of trees that hid where she had been and she was certain no one could take it as a weakness, she started to run.
She ran for a long while, moving at a pace that should have left her gasping for breath after only a few minutes but didn’t. She ran until the sun began to descend, and she did so effortlessly.
Cullen did not consider the impossibility of that any more than she considered the burning ache that the Mother-Vine left inside of her. Possibly she was slightly mad by that point, as those who suffer great loss can become if they think too much. Cullen did not think that was the case. She simply accepted that the fire the Mother-Vine had lit inside of her wanted to be in Canhoon and that she needed to get it there before it could burn her away completely and leave nothing but ashes.
She could not have said how far she would have to go to reach the city, but she knew she was heading in the right direction by the trail of discards cast along the sides of the road.
Inquisitor Darsken Murdro stood before the assembled members of the Imperial Family and smiled pleasantly. He had been doing exactly that for over an hour, not speaking but merely looking from one to the next while they fussed and straightened their immaculate clothes, very likely considering the best way to get out from under his gaze without being punished for their actions.
He was not in a hurry.
Silence can tell a great deal about a person. Most people fail to see that. They think that words are the end of all that a person can learn. Darsken knew better.
Darsken learned as much from what was not said as he did from what was.
He finally walked forward and looked at Brolley Krous. The Empress’s brother was a boy, but he was working toward being a man. It had taken remarkably little to find out about his misadventures with the Sa’ba Taalor. His actions since then had been exemplary.
“You are Brolley, yes?”
The young man looked up from his hands and nodded. He had deeply wounded eyes. It took no real effort to see that he tortured himself mercilessly over his past actions.
“I am sorry for your loss. Please, go now, and mourn properly.”
The young man rose, nodded once more and then looked at his kin before leaving the chamber.
Several of the family members had thought to leave the room when the earlier disruption had occurred. The guards took care of that very quickly. Darsken had handpicked them, because they had worked with him in the past. They knew what he expected and they were quick to follow his orders.
His knuckles creaked and cracked as he worked his thick fingers over his staff. Most of the Krous family looked at him, hoping that they, too, would be released from his presence.
He looked to Danieca Krous and frowned softly. “You as well, Milady. I am filled with sorrow for your loss.”
She smiled but did not move.
“I am fine here for now. I wish to know what you discover.”
He’d have bet coins on that being her answer.
Darsken lowered his head momentarily in a sign of respect. One by one he offered his condolences to a great number of the family. This was the town where the Krous clan held the most sway and that was saying a great deal. Even the lowliest of them had wealth and power. They were the ones he released first. He knew exactly who he wanted. He knew precisely who Losla Foster worked for and currently he was the only man who knew exactly where Laister Krous’s assistant was resting his head.
He also knew that Laister wanted that information himself.
The catch when dealing with powerful people is that they must never be allowed to see you grow nervous. That was one of the many things that was driven into the Inquisitors. Like patience, it was a very significant part of the examination process.
He smiled softly and looked at the remaining people. “I will leave you now. I will return soon. In the meantime, food and wine will be provided for you.”
It was Laister who stood and shook his head. “This is unacceptable! What if I need to relieve myself?”
Bluff and bluster. The man needed to show Darsken who was in charge. Unfortunately for him, the Inquisitor already knew the answer to that question.
“There is a chamber pot in the corner. I made that arrangement earlier.”
Laister Krous puffed out his chest and fairly swelled with righteous indignation.
Darsken smiled calmly in the face of the man’s outrage. He locked eyes with the man he knew had ambitions for the throne. Eventually Laister looked away, uncertain how to react to a man who stood up to him without even breaking a sweat.
Empathy, Observation and Patience. It would not take much longer.
The weather in Louron remained unchanged by the volcanic eruptions. The swampy region was hot, humid and still.
To hear the Roathians speak of Louron was to hear of a green hell. The land was half submerged; the waters stank; the people were savages, cowards and very likely guilty of sorcery. What land there was teemed with massive trees that dripped a heavy moss, and the insects in the area seemed to have a special love of human blood.
Whatever the people of Louron might think of the Roathians remained a mystery. Very few of the locals willingly left the area for long, and those that did tended to be the sort that wiser people actively avoided.
The stories of the sort of sorcery that the Louron performed were dredged up from the worst kind of nightmares. To hear a good number of the religious leaders speak, Louron dealt with demons (no one could say exactly what a demon was, but they all agreed the things had to be bad), raised the dead with great regularity, and could tear the soul out of a person with a single word and a drop of blood.
Desh Krohan would have been the first to admit that at least two of the rumors had a foundation in truth. As he had never in his long life encountered a demon he was willing to concede that there might be some exaggeration in that category.
The great black ships of the Sa’ba Taalor were allegedly peopled by demons. Grayskinned monstrosities with ferocious bloodlust and a penchant for death. Desh Krohan might have allowed a certain truth to that, too, but would have pointed out that “demon” was excessive.
When the three ships came for Louron they floundered in the shallow waters. The vast structures could move through rivers if the waters were deep enough, a fact that Fellein had recently learned, but the shallow depths of the coastal flats surrounding Louron were too much. After several aborted attempts, the Sa’ba Taalor were obligated to lower smaller boats to work their way toward the shore.
There was little consideration about whether or not leaving their ships abandoned was a wise thing to do. They were at war and the Sa’ba Taalor were warriors.
Fully three days later, when no communication had come from the followers of Wheklam that had made their way to the shore, five more ships were sent.
Understandably, they proceeded with much more caution.
After first examining the three abandoned ships, the captains consulted and decided to proceed together under the leadership of the most seasoned of their group.
The head of the second invading party was a woman named Truatha. She was an excellent tracker – having hunted a great deal of prey through the Blasted Lands over the span of her life, a task that few would willingly undertake – and noticed the signs long before she would have moved forward.
Truatha called a halt and those behind her obeyed. She summoned the other captains to her and they consulted together about what she saw.
“Look there.” She pointed to an area where the footsteps of the previous Sa’ba Taalor could clearly be seen. So, too, the tracks of their mounts. The area was a broad, sandy expanse and, after consideration, two of the Sa’ba Taalor walked slowly and carefully across that area, looking for any signs of struggle or traps. There was nothing. The land was solid under their feet and the tracks of their predecessors moved across the terrain in an orderly fashion before disappearing. There were no dropped weapons. There were no telltale signs of bloodshed or even attacks from the closest copse of trees.
The tracks of over a hundred Sa’ba Taalor and a dozen or more mounts simply vanished.
“How is this possible?” The speaker was Lor, who was sometimes Truatha’s lover and always a trusted ally. She crouched low to the ground and examined the tracks carefully. “The weather has been good. No rain. The wind has blown some of the sand but not much. They have either vanished from the world or someone has brushed the sand so perfectly that I cannot see a single trace.”
Truatha looked at her friend and walked closer, moving with the same caution. Curiosity was an excellent way to get killed if one did not apply the necessary observational skills.
They took their time and studied the area. There was no indication of what had happened to their predecessors.
Truatha asked for ten volunteers. She then picked from the hundred and seventy-three that offered themselves.
Ten hard, skilled warriors walked across that sandy plain and continued on unchallenged. They struck the ground with spears, they fired arrows into the closest copse of trees, but nothing happened beyond what one would expect in those situations.
The ten continued on until they reached the other side of the sandbar and the waters began to fill in the low areas again, all of them puzzled and ready for combat.
“What is this then? Where is the enemy we would fight?”
The only answer came in the form of one old man, stoop shouldered and carrying a small net filled with fish in one hand and a short staff in the other.
None of the Sa’ba Taalor with them spoke the language of the Fellein. They had not expected to encounter anyone. They had been waiting for a battle on the seas, not for an expedition across salt flats and marshlands. They would adapt, of course, but communication would be a challenge.
Still, one had to try.
“Old man!” Truatha called out to him and pointed to him, lest he be confused about the matter.
He looked her way with a puzzled expression and after a moment shrugged his shoulders and moved toward her.
Despite the heat and humidity he was dressed in a cloak over his baggy pants and open-toed shoes.
As he approached he tapped his stick against the sands occasionally. Finally he made his way past the ten, who watched him without acting, and stopped in front of Truatha. He was a short man, as seemed the case with many of the Fellein. He was also thin and older than any man she had ever met in her life. The Sa’ba Taalor who could no longer fight did not live for long.
When he smiled he bared a total of four teeth. His facial hair and the hair on the top of his head was a light gray with occasional darker hairs to remind anyone seeing him that the lighter colors were signs of age.
When he spoke it was in her tongue, though with an accent. “How may I help you this day?”
Truatha managed to hide her surprise. Several others did not.
“We seek some of our people who came here a few days ago. They have disappeared.”
“Oh, yes. They were here.” He nodded and continued to smile.
“Where are they now?”
The old man looked around and scratched at the scruff of beard on his chin. “They are not here any longer.”
“Yes, I see that. Where did they go? Do you know?”
“Ah. I believe they tried to attack some of the people here. That is forbidden.” He nodded his head, his smile continuing. Truatha wondered if she had come across a simpleton. There were a few among her people who were not very bright but could fight well enough to live through that flaw.
“What do you mean? Why is it forbidden?”
“The rulers here. The Council of the Wise, they do not permit invasion by force.”
“How do they stop it?”
“I am not a member of the council. I could not say.” He shook his head. “I must be on my way. My dinner will spoil if I don’t cook it soon.” He waved the fish to make his point.
He waved one hand and started on his way and Lor came closer, looking on as he resumed his trek.
“He is so old…”
“Yes.”
“Do you intend to let him go?”
“Yes.”
“What are we to do now, Truatha?”
“He says that fighting is forbidden.”
She gestured to one of the ten, a young boy she had never met before. He was eager to show his worth.
With a simple hand signal she sent him to kill the old man.
Either he would succeed, or she would know why.
As is often the case with the young the boy tried to prove his worth with as much flair as he could manage. The knife he threw cut the air flawlessly and passed through the old man as if he were made of shadows.
The old man turned back to look at his would-be attacker and smiled. “You see? Forbidden.”
Truatha had followed the blade’s progression. When she looked back to the young attacker he was gone.
“Where did he go?” She couldn’t have told you exactly who that question was directed at, but it was Lor who answered.
“He faded away.” Her voice was strained.
“What do you mean?”
“He was there. I saw him throw the knife and as it left his hand, he faded. Like mist.”
Truatha gestured to another of the ten. This one was older and possibly more cautious. She moved toward the old man and drew her sword, a long, sharp affair with a curved blade.
The old man looked at her as she came closer and shook his head. “I would not.”
The girl’s name was Hrua. She was a skilled fighter and moved in quickly, aiming a blow that should have severed the old man’s head. The blow never reached him. Truatha saw it this time: as Hrua attacked, her body blurred out of focus and then vanished completely.
“What did you do?” The words were roared at the old man, who continued on his way, a soft and sad smile on his wrinkled features.
“You cannot attack us. The Council of the Wise does not permit it.” He tapped his stick in the sand and water of a low spot. “There is no way around this law. If any of you attack, you will fade away.”
“Where have they gone?”
“There is a place.” His smiled slowly changed into a frown. “It is not a place you want to go. There is no way back from it.”
After only a few moments’ consideration, Truatha called back her forces and headed for the ships.
“Where are we going?” asked Lor.
“We cannot fight this.”
“We are surrendering?”
“No.” Truatha shook her head. “There is no one here to surrender to. We are simply not going to fight this.”
“I don’t understand.” Sometimes she wondered about how smart Lor was. She often overlooked the times when the woman had trouble with thinking things through because she was a brilliant fighter and fun in bed, but now and then it hurt her to admit her friend was not stubborn, merely stupid.
“There is no point in fighting someone we cannot hurt or attack without hurting ourselves. I will fight a warrior. I will not fight a rock. I will fight an army, but I cannot fight the winds of the Blasted Lands. I will fight a ship of enemies, but I will not fight a wave that will crush my crew.”
She paused a moment. “Should we attack these people, we become as smoke in a hard breeze. I saw this with my eyes and you did, too. And so we will no longer fight them.”
Lor nodded her head. There were plenty of sailors and warriors among the Sa’ba Taalor. Though the crews would be working longer hours they divided their forces and regained control of the other three ships.
Truatha was wise enough to know that she was not the king. Donaie Swarl would decide what happened next. Had Wheklam spoken to her at that moment she would have obeyed her god, of course, but barring that, she deferred to her king.
There are many reasons that people are afraid of the Louron. The Sa’ba Taalor learned one of them that day.
“We haven’t spoken much of late.” Nachia’s voice was soft and bordered on cautious. That meant she was worried about him, so Desh put on his brightest voice and smiled reassuringly.
“No, we haven’t. That pesky business with the Sa’ba Taalor keeps getting in the way.”
She smiled obligingly. The problem with people who are close to you is that they can often tell when you’re lying, whether or not that lie is made with words. She could tell. There was nothing he could do about that.
Rather than dwell on the obvious, Desh deflected the worry with a question. “Has your Inquisitor discovered the guilty party yet?”
“Oh, he knows. He’s known for quite some time. He just wants to give my dear cousin every chance to confess before turning him over to me.”
“And what do you intend to do about the situation?”
“Laister was planning to have me assassinated. I know that’s a traditional manner of handling the internal problems in my family, but I don’t particularly appreciate it in this case.” She walked around Desh’s private chambers as if she owned the place, which to be fair, was technically true.
Nachia plucked an apple from a bowl of fruit and commenced eating it. “I believe I’ll have him executed properly.”
“Really? What a novel idea.”
“Do you disagree?”
Desh smiled. It was the sort of smile that had made more than one person pale when dealing with him.
“You have an interesting quandary. On the one hand, you have every reason to have Laister executed. Doing so could, depending on who you talk to, even cement your position as a ruler who will tolerate no nonsense. On the other side of this debate, many would argue that solidarity within the Imperial Family is a must in times of war.”
The expression she fired his way was pure venom. “And what would you have me do, old man? Should I promote him to First Advisor?”
“Look carefully at my contract. You don’t have the right.” He smiled.
“I can’t very well let him go free.”
“Of course you can. He is guilty and you know it and I know it and he knows it – and more importantly he knows that we are very well aware of his actions. The likelihood is that he’ll be worrying over every little sound he hears for the next year. You already have his man in custody and can certainly make an example of him if you feel the need.”
“I don’t like it and I don’t trust Laister. He’ll try again.”
“Strip him of all that he owns and he’ll never do anything of the sort again. Remove him from the family by Imperial Decree. No name. No title. No property.”
Nachia chewed at the apple for a moment, obviously intrigued. She was not known for her kindness. She could be kind, she was ruling as well as he’d hoped she would, but she was not always the kindest of souls.
She shook her head. “He still has information and influence. Too much of both. Even if he is stripped of everything, he has enough knowledge to cripple half the family. Not me, of course. I never quite got the nerve to dabble the way that he did.”
Desh shook his head and grinned. She said that last as if it were a thing to regret.
“If you take everything from him he has nothing. More importantly he also has no name and no protection.”
“Who would he need protection from?”
“Without giving the matter much consideration there’s Brolley, Towdra, Endon and, of course, Danieca.”
“Danieca?”
“Windhar was her grandson, after all.”
Nachia looked at him for a moment, the juice from the apple glistening on her lips, the latest bite half-ruminated in her mouth. After a moment she spoke around the morsel, something she would have never considered in public. “Strip him of all he has and his name, you say?”
“I think that’s the best way to honor the wishes of all involved, really, and you also take back the holdings that he has owned and misused over the years.”
“How much of the Krous fortune rests in Laister’s hands?”
“Enough that he can afford to hire twenty cutthroats and attempt to assassinate the Empress without fearing the consequences.”
“And are there papers that have to be signed on this sort of situation? I have never actually written out an Imperial Decree before.”
Desh walked over to his desk and plucked a freshly written document making the appropriate proclamation from a small stack of papers he had been working on. Nachia read it carefully and nodded.
A moment later she had signed the copy and marked it with her seal.
“You know I used to mock Pathra for listening to your advice constantly.”
“You also used to mock me for offering my advice constantly.”
“You are an amazing man, Desh.”
“I’m an advisor. It’s what I’m supposed to do. I advise, nothing more.”
“You are a liar, sir.”
Desh moved across the room and poured a small glass of sweet wine for each of them.
“I am a liar in that I have not consulted the Sooth. Instead I have one of my associates handling that for me. The last time was... draining.”
Nachia suppressed a shudder at the way she’d seen him the last time, drenched in what seemed to be blood and exhausted.
“On matters sorcerous I leave the where and why to you, Desh.”
He nodded his head. “I have Jeron working on finding all that we need. He searches now for information regarding what is north of the Seven Forges, on the location of Tega and her escort, on where the different armies of the Sa’ba Taalor are gathering. The news is not all grim, but most of it leans in that direction.”
“You cannot reach Tega?”
“She might be too busy to communicate. Something might be stopping her.” He took a small sip of his wine. The potency of the stuff was not to be overlooked. “She might well be dead. It’s hard to say.”
Nachia took a small sip of her own wine and then consumed the last bite of her apple. “Goriah… I’m so very sorry about her death, Desh.”
He looked out the window toward the endless gray sky and the distant, seething column of smoke where Tyrne should have been. “Some things are inescapable, Nachia. Death is one of them. We will all achieve that state eventually, even me, and I have been alive for a very long time and have no plans of changing that status in the foreseeable future.”
“Your people exploring the world for us.” Nachia looked ready to flinch as she asked her next question. “How goes the war against the Sa’ba Taalor?”
“We are currently being attacked from four separate directions, my Empress, and they seem determined to meet here.” He walked to the map he had pasted to the wall with wax and pointed. First, far to the east. “Elda is suffering. Merros’s plans have worked so far. He let them take one small corner of Elda and has held them off from going any further, but there are doubts he can hold them there. They have machines that can hurl boulders through the air. Not much survives when those rocks land.” He poked another spot to the far south, closer to home. “The Louran are holding their own. Reports are that the invaders attacked and then decided to depart. I have no idea as to why, exactly, but they left quickly.”
“Can you find out why? It could be of benefit.”
“Yes, it could, and I suspect the answer is that Louron has its own sorcerers. Their sorcery is different from mine. Subtler a lot of times. Perhaps your Inquisitor can offer enlightenment.” He did his best to keep the edge out of his voice. The Louron were an unsettling people.
“The Sa’ba Taalor have moved to the east of Louron and are attacking along the shores of Corinta. The Brellar have been alerted and should be on their way to the area to work on our behalf.”
“Can the Brellar be trusted?”
“There’s gold involved. They can be trusted as long as we pay.” He looked toward Nachia and saw the sour expression on her face. “It’s not a perfect solution, Nachia, but it’s all we have. Pathra let the naval forces of Fellein waste away. He trusted the lies and I’m partially responsible for that. I didn’t think we would have troubles like this.”
“I don’t understand this.” She took back her wine in one gulp and then gasped. Having done the same a few times he could understand the reaction. When she had recovered from the drink she shook her head and looked at him again. “You have your Sooth or whatever it is and you never knew that this was coming?”
“I’ve told you before, Nachia, that magic has a cost. Dealing with the Sooth takes more than just a few hours of my life. It takes preparations that can span months. Years, no, decades of effort have gone into learning what I have in the last few months. That is why I have someone else looking right now. My resources have been severely limited. The preparations I had for dealing with the Sooth were in Tyrne. It will be months before I can properly contact them again without having to steal the power I would need from other people.”
She shook her head, frustrated. “I have seen a few of the powers you have, Desh. I know that they exist, but sometimes I swear I feel you are deliberately avoiding using them.”
“I absolutely am.” He looked at her hard then, as he had looked at her when she was younger and reckless and prone to mischief. “I absolutely am avoiding using my abilities.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Losing control.” He shrugged and settled back, while she looked him in the eyes, not the least concerned about his stern expression. That had not changed over the years.
“Explain that to me. Losing control of what?”
He held out his hand and spread his fingers wide. The opened hand was lowered until it was only a foot or so from Nachia’s face and he focused his will. “Look carefully, my Empress.”
It was a trick, really, the sort that apprentices used when they felt the need to show their powers. He created a small electrical charge and held it in the palm of his hand. The glowing bolt jumped from one finger to another, slithering around his hand like a hyperactive serpent. Even if she had touched it, the worst she’d have managed was a tingle and a few hairs standing on end.
“I have seen this trick before, Desh.”
“Yes, I remember, you wanted to study. You would have if I hadn’t caught you in the act.”
It was a bitter point between them from time to time, but the past was the past.
“This is an easy thing, Nachia. This is a sparkle in the air. I could hold this for a dozen days and never grow tired. But as you have already said, it’s a trick and little more. What you want, what everyone seems to want, is for me to end this war before it can get any larger.”
“Yes. That’s exactly it.”
He nodded. “Would you have me cast lightning from the sky and burn our enemies into ashes?”
“Could you do that?”
“Very likely. I could obliterate an entire army of them. I would be sore when it was finished, and I would surely be weak for some time, but I could do it.”
“Then why won’t you?”
“What happens if I miss?”
“I don’t understand.” She frowned, her lower lip jutting out in a specter of the child she was not that long ago.
“Let’s say I aim that lightning storm at Tuskandru. I understand he’s the one who destroyed Trecharch. If I aim at him and I make my preparations I have to be careful to aim at the right location. If he moves, if I miscalculate and he is one valley away from where I think he is, then the lightning I send will hit something else.”
“Then you send it again and again until you hit him.”
“It’s not a sword, or an arrow, Nachia. It’s lightning. A single stroke can destroy a forest. One blast can kill a dozen people. A dozen of your people. Understand me on this, if I cast lightning to kill a living being it will find a living being. I can no more control it after it has been cast than an archer can control an arrow after he has let it loose.”
She was weighing the possibilities. He hated that fact more than he could say.
The bolt that danced around his hand moved and grew as he willed it, and now it arched around his entire arm, crawling, hissing, releasing tiny tongues of electric outrage that burned the very air. That it was a deadly thing was undeniable.
“I can burn a man with what I hold now, Nachia. I can kill with one touch. But once released it is no longer mine. No more than that arrow I discussed. If I cast this away, it finds a target and destroys it. If I am lucky it only strikes that one target. Perhaps I cast it toward the window and aim for a bird, but the bird moves so my lightning moves on and reaches the river and strikes a boat and burns the cargo and the sailors and the boat and the very water.”
“Then you don’t miss, Desh.”
Desh shook his hand and the lightning grew bolder, writhing around his arm and moving to his other hand, a massive snake of electricity now.
Nachia stepped back a bit. He would have never let her be hurt by it, of course, but she did not know that.
“I could cast a lightning storm to destroy the Sa’ba Taalor in Elda. I can look on a map and see where it is. But there is a great deal of distance between here and Elda and there are mountains, there are birds and rivers and cities. And if the map is poorly drawn, instead of striking the Sa’ba Taalor I have just burned away a thousand people and leveled the town of Rethmar. Or, worse, I am off by a greater amount and Danaher burns.”
“You have made your point, Desh.”
He threw the lightning and let it strike his map. The paper crackled and burned in an instant. The wax that held it in place melted and the entire affair crumbled in a smoldering mass.
“I can kill one man from a thousand miles away. I have done so. I can create waves that will sink their ships, but I cannot stop those waves from destroying anything else that is nearby when that happens. I can call to the Sooth and ask them to tell me when and where to strike, but what have I said about the Sooth on countless occasions?”
She sighed. “The Sooth lie.”
“That is correct.”
“You could strike at the Seven Forges.”
“I cannot hit what I cannot see and the gods of those mountains, or whatever sorceries they use, have always made it impossible for me to see what lies beyond the Blasted Lands. You know this.”
Nachia Krous did not like being outargued. It went against her nature to concede defeat.
“Do you doubt that they have gods, Desh?”
“No. We have seen the things they can do. I couldn’t hope to mimic the hands they made for Andover Lashk…” He paused a moment there and swallowed. The boy was gone and it bothered him that he hadn’t even considered him for weeks on end. “…or any of the rest of their people. You saw what they did to Merros’s soldier, the one with the metal mask for a face. I cannot work that sort of sorcery and I have never heard of it being worked elsewhere, so no. I just don’t like the notion of gods being involved.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s always possible that gods can do what I cannot and properly aim. If that’s the case, what’s to stop them from dropping another of their damnable volcanoes right on top of this city?”
Nachia paled at that possibility.
“Remain calm. There are many reasons that Canhoon is called the City of Wonders, my Empress. We are safer here than in almost any other spot in the world.”
He hoped that was still true. He hated that he might be lying.