Fort Juñez | Manital Highlands, the Thellan Colonies
Fifth Thellan Mounted Division | Near the City of Cadobal, the Thellan Colonies
Throne Room | Ascalon Palace, the Gand Capital
War Council | Thellan High Command, the City of Al Adiz
Living Quarters | Gods’ Seat
Vision strands split his thoughts, spliced with Life—the Veil’s power—to move vessels in every corner of the world.
“Retreat,” he said from the mouth of a cavalry officer. “Sound the order to fall back and regroup south of the point.”
“Attack,” he said from another, a fort commander. “We sally the gates and ride them down. Keep them in the hills until our reinforcements arrive.”
The Gand Queen was in the middle of a speech; he listened with half an ear as he spun his next counterargument. “We speak of trust,” she was saying. “The loss of our colonies is intolerable, and no small part owed to the disastrous order to redeploy our navies. How could we trust this man to resume command, no matter the weapons held by our enemies?”
“We cannot count on the Gandsmen,” another of his voices said. “They will dither and wait until there is a clear advantage. The Dauphin will give us our opening, but we must be patient. To attack too soon is to risk the potential for a Gand alliance, to say nothing of our forces in the field.”
The final thread was the most crucial; he knew it by instinct, and so his senses focused there. A smoky, arid room, dimly lit in the waning hours of the evening, though it was full daylight through other vessels’ eyes. He inhabited the body of a woman, though a particularly tall one, predisposed to a proud, angular way of standing that made it seem as though he looked down on the men in the chamber. Those were generals and lords, dressed in full regalia, pomp and medals ringing a thick oak table at the center of their tiny space. Each man strove to seem as though they alone commanded the table. Only one managed the effect: the youngest man at the table, who also happened to be wearing a prince’s golden crown.
“Doña Bartoleme,” Prince Rodiro said. “Or … whomever it is I should address, when you speak this way. We have trusted you, these many months. We have marshaled our soldiers, depleted our granaries. We have had victories. My generals say the Sarresant Army is confused, ripe for an attack. Why should we wait, when there is glory to be won?”
Part of him began speaking to the Gand Queen, imploring her to consider the gains they’d made, his willingness to accept an advisory role, rather than the full command. The rest was needed here, and he gave it the greatest share of his attention.
“It is a matter of weighing risk, Your Majesty,” he said in the woman’s voice. “You have entrusted me with command of your armies. Have I not produced results? The Sardian alliance, the blockade. We risk all if we move too soon. The Gandsmen will reenter the war, if they believe our victory assured.”
“Say I have an appetite for risk,” Prince Rodiro said, leaning forward over the table. “And little concern for Gand’s hunger for our glory. Thellan soldiers are the best in the world. Use them, or I will entrust command to another who will.”
Had he been there in person he would have throttled the man. A simple thing, to tether Strength, to cut the bindings of the bodyguards who were no doubt masquerading as generals, hidden on the council. Soon enough he would descend from the Seat, after ascensions were assured. Every simpering fool, every nobleman who thought himself worthy to lead, would find themselves gravely mistaken, when the Divide fell. Loyalty in the face of the shadow would come easily, and he would unite them all, in time. For now, he played the games they required of him, storing his rage until he could lash out alone.
“Our strategy is a two-pronged pincer,” he said. “Your Majesty knows this. We threaten from the south; the Sardians from the east. So long as the blockade holds, it is the Dauphin, not us, who must act. When he is defeated, the Gandsmen will put their support behind us, and then it will be a matter for the diplomats, to divide the spoils.”
Prince Rodiro nodded along, flashing him a smile as though he thought Paendurion—or at least the woman whose skin he wore—was a fool, the sort who might bend to beauty. “Yes,” the prince said. “I have heard this. General Dinez tells me the Sarresant cavalry are running from us, into the lowlands in the east. He says they are blind. If we move now, we might triumph.”
“If we move now, we throw away the advantage of entrenched positions to stumble into an obvious trap. We allow the Dauphin to snare us into a campaign through his fortifications, freeing up the bulk of his levees to repel the Sardians while we struggle to maneuver for an open fight. We waste two months of preparations and gain nothing but delivering the initiative to our enemies. Do it, if you wish, but tell me now, to give me time to offer my services elsewhere, before your strength is ruined.”
The room fell quiet, the generals shifting in their seats as they eyed the prince for his reaction. Rodiro’s smile had faded, though he held Paendurion’s vessel’s eyes, unflinching.
Finally the smile returned. “You have some of Doña Bartoleme in you, after all, Commander,” Rodiro said. “Only, she would have cursed at me and called me a fool, for doubting her. Tell me more of what will happen, should the Dauphin commit his forces in the east. How will we attack, when the moment arrives?”
With that his attention was freed to move elsewhere, and the reply he composed occupied only a small corner of his mind. The greatest gift of the Veil’s power was time, the time to do by rote and reflex what would otherwise have demanded a far greater share of his days. The Thellans would be persuaded, for another month, perhaps, before they grew restless again. But by then his efforts with Axerian’s Codex—however crude—would trump any resistance offered along the Sarresant border. Coupled with his delaying tactics to keep the Order ascendant on the Vordu continent, it all but ensured he would control the plurality of territory on the Veil’s side of the Divide when the moment of ascension arrived.
He shifted his senses to the connection among the Thellan cavalrymen, retreating along the shore. A double column of horses and riders, within distance to sight one of their port cities—Cadobal, where their defense had broken against a surge of his enemy’s full strength. Academic, when his soldiers numbered fewer than ten thousand and hers greater than fifty, but retreat would save his numbers for harassing actions when she tried to board their ships. He slowed his vessel’s horse and withdrew a bronze spyglass to see it with his own eyes, panning past the city and into the harbor. A quick count made it thirty tall ships already under anchor, with more sure to be arriving on the evening winds.
Erris d’Arrent was coming, then. With luck it would make no difference, and soon the matter would be beyond even providence to decide. He lowered the spyglass. Too many demands on his attention; but it was always so, in the months before each cycle came to an end.
“Paendurion.”
Hearing his name pulled him back to his body, seated atop a cushioned long couch in the Gods’ Seat.
Reyne d’Agarre loomed over him, standing too close for propriety. The mad fool; a pale shadow of Axerian’s mastery. The sight of the man’s face almost made him clench his fingers.
“I’ve … found something,” d’Agarre said.
Part of him argued with the Gand Queen’s chancellor over threats to the fur trade coming in from the New World, while another gave orders to plan sabotage in the Cadobal harbor. But the words jerked the bulk of his attention back to the Gods’ Seat. If d’Agarre had discovered what he’d done with Axerian’s Codex, it could well lead to conflict, even violence. But Axerian had as good as vanished—no contact in weeks, missing every pre-arranged meeting with his vessels. With Ad-Shi in the throes of madness, he’d had to turn to desperate measures, ordering every kaas-mage on the Amaros continent to bolster his forces with the Thellan alliance. He’d hoped d’Agarre was ignorant enough to miss it, yet here he was.
“You’ve found something.” He repeated it back, his voice flat. Better to let d’Agarre voice his suspicions first.
“Yes,” d’Agarre said. “I was sitting at the Soul, pondering what you said, about visiting the kaas’ world, and renewing the bond.”
“That’s right,” he replied cautiously. “Axerian used it to strengthen his bond with his kaas, when it was time. Every third or fourth cycle.”
D’Agarre nodded. “You said Axerian described it as seeing through a mirror. I … found it. I did it. It wasn’t done by looking at anything. More a combination of all their colors, all the emotions together, at once, with the will to open a … a gateway of sorts. I saw shapes, patterns, a million points of light.”
“Good,” he said, relieved for the moment that his tampering had evaded d’Agarre’s notice. The man truly was a fool. “You’ll need strength, when the Divide comes down.”
“That’s what Xeraxet said. After I bonded him, he insisted there was a greater—”
Suddenly all his Vision threads dimmed to the back of his mind. “What did you say?”
“Xeraxet said there was a greater threat, among the kaas.”
“No, you bloody fool. You bonded Axerian’s kaas?”
He roared it, standing too quickly, knocking a sheaf of papers to the ground, and a crystalline serpent materialized in their place, perched atop his desk, gazing up at him with too-familiar onyx eyes.
Calm yourself, Knight of Order, Axerian’s last kaas thought to him. We have greater problems than one mortal’s passing.
“No,” he said. “Axerian can’t be dead. Surely you mean he severed your bond.”
Don’t be a fool. Axerian is dead, and the least of our worries.
Numbness washed through him. Sixteen cycles together. He’d known the day was coming; d’Agarre’s ascension had sealed Axerian’s fate. But he’d been sure they would stand together, one last time. Brother and brother. Knight and Sage, facing down the shadow once more, with time to train a proper replacement before the seventeenth turning of the world.
It’s my father, Xeraxet thought to him. He is tainted by madness. Already he has turned too many of my kind to his cause.
“Zi?” Paendurion said. The Veil’s kaas had been a companion, too, once, during their first ascensions. “What cause?” Then he remembered Axerian’s warning: The Veil had been reborn. Surely she meant to revenge herself on the champions who had imprisoned her.
No, Xeraxet thought. Not you. Zi has betrayed us all, champions old and new. He serves Death, and urges the chorus to do the same.
“Impossible,” he said. “The kaas are bound to the Goddess, the same as the leylines.”
Even so, Xeraxet thought. I am Zi’s child. I know his heart. In the moment of victory, he means to see the world remade in shadow.