I was not pleased to be sent from the council room so summarily, only to be summoned back early the next morning. When I arrived to see that the prince, herself, had clearly not left the audience chamber except possibly to visit the latrine, I decided that I would afford her a modicum of sympathy. At least they’d set out strong tea, and an assortment of dried meats and fresh cheeses, and an enormous supply of bread. I availed myself of some of all of it, sitting in the closest open seat I could find to the prince.
“In case you have not heard,” Elana said to me without preamble, “the worst of the rumors we heard are true. The Usurper is on his way here, even now, and his armies will reach us in a matter of days.”
My mouth stuffed full of cheese, I looked to where she gestured: a map of the region covered in tokens representing soldiers and terrain.
“The quest took too long,” she went on. “I had hoped to have the autumn and winter to parade you and the Blade in front of the rulers of Georg and Naal. Now I do not even have time to write them, begging for reinforcement.”
This had not been our plan, Aemillian and I. He should be waiting for me to return here and give him word of our progress. He had understood – hadn’t he? – that it would only be more difficult for me to communicate with him at the end of the quest than it had been at the beginning. I could not have slowed us down by stopping to scry, especially not after his … encounters with Veralar and Khanaarre.
The map and its tokens meant nothing to me, save that the two armies existed. I had never made more than a passing study of military history and tactics. The way the prince and her advisors looked at me, though, they clearly expected some answer.
“I will leave it to your generals and diviners to advise you on if and how this place can be defended,” I said after a moment. “But I am confident beyond words that the Usurper, himself, will not be anywhere near here. He will be watching through a scrying bowl, or the vision granted him by the Rorgoth Throne, and he will not leave the comfort and security of the palace.”
I bit off another chunk of bread and ran my hand through the ragged mop where my hair was supposed to be. I looked like a youth and a fool. I would continue to look like a fool for as many years as it took to grow back my mane. I would look like a youth until I figured out how to better balance the flow of power from the Holy Lands into my body.
“If you have no time to gather new armies,” I went on, “then your best bet is to make an end run around his. Storm the castle with a hand-picked band. Face him directly with the Blade of Xadaer and reclaim the Rorgoth Throne by the most direct force possible.”
Elana looked at me, at her court, and back.
“You mean me, personally,” she said. “Me, and Rennin, and – presumably – yourself and Khanaarre. To abandon the court, again, just days – mere hours – after returning from our first misguided quest.”
“Yes,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “And any other warriors you have of Rennin’s caliber, or – better yet – Veralar’s. And any wizards willing to brave such a venture that you think you can spare from the front lines, here.”
“You’re mad,” she said.
I sipped my tea and cocked my head, like I was considering the possibility.
“It is not the first time you’ve accused me of madness,” I said. “Nor are you the first to fling such accusations.”
Titters of surprise and dark laughter erupted in various corners of the room.
“I suppose you intend us to storm the castle gates,” said Elana, “just as the Usurper did?”
“Of course not,” I said. “We’ll enter the palace through the same passage by which you once escaped it.”
We argued the matter for another hour, but the inevitability of my plan was clear from the start. When the generals conceded they could see no better course, and the diviners proclaimed that it was our best chance that they could foresee, I was once again escorted back to my chambers.
This was the endgame, now. The Prince’s Fighters – what was left of them – and I would make haste to the capitol and sneak into the palace. Meanwhile, the Imperial army would do their best to hunt down and capture or kill everyone associated with the loyalist court. There would be fighting and there would be dying. Whoever I didn’t betray would be emperor. And, no matter how things played out, I would not end this in anyone’s good graces.
I unpacked and repacked my wizard’s chests. With that one task done there was nothing else that I could meaningfully do to prepare, save pray that things were going well between Khanaarre and her Sister of Amalai – well enough, I hoped, that there might still be room for me in her life when everything else was said and done. So I laid down and I forced myself to go back to sleep.
===
I still remembered the quest for the Rorgoth Throne beginning as one of academic curiosity, not naked political ambition. Aemillian and I were just coming down from the thrill of achieving our first great ambition: we had unlocked the secrets of Shiithaia’s failed gift, discovered how to reproduce Illustrian shadow magic, and had applied those arts to become the two most powerful wizards the world had yet seen. We had already used that power, once, to avert catastrophe: one of our own Cabal colleagues’ experiments gone terribly, horribly awry, consuming half a square mile of Vencar City before we were able to intervene. We were heroes, workers of great wonders. We were infamous. Our names were spoken in hushed whispers throughout the Compact. But it had always been the mystery of Illustria’s lost arts that had fascinated us more than the power, and we were in desperate need of a new mystery.
The choice to look south, to a’Rasyr, for our next investigation had been a conscious one. I had spent more than a decade buried in copies and fragments of Illustrian documents and artifacts; Aemillian had been at it even longer. We wanted to occupy our minds with new and different materials and texts. I, in fact, had proposed that we investigate the Arcmedan heresies and attempt to reproduce his divinations. Aemillian had felt that those were too politically charged, and that we had made enough enemies with our last fixation. His proposition was only better by inches: he wished to study relics of past ages, those magical artifacts that humans and elves and dwarves had dug up from the earth, whole and improbably misplaced. Sun cults said that they were artifacts from the divine ages before the first mortals, made or used by the gods and their enemies while they built the world in which we now live. Arcmedus and his followers, of course, claimed that some of them might be older still: vestiges of the Elder World that the gods made, nurtured, and destroyed before they made this, the Younger World.
I remembered our first trip together to Naal. Five beautiful summer days on a House Solirium pleasure barge, drinking fine wines and watching the sun dance on the waters of the Great Crystal Lake during the day. Four rare, perfect nights as the luxuriant subject of his undivided attention, lit by the pearlescent glow of the lake. Those five days, in retrospect, were among the very best we had together in all the years before and after.
The morning we began to approach the ports of Arthago, the great capitol of Naal, Aemillian presented me with a collection of gifts. The first was a fine wool chiton in deep earthy brown, its edges woven in endless key patterns; an extravagant himation the same deep blue as the Great Crystal Lake under the sun, detailed in abstract white geometries.
“Your eccentricities,” he said, and by which he meant my knife and my plain clothing, “rouse no comment in the Empire, where wizards come from every caste and serve themselves before even their Houses, but in Naal it is different. Here the rule of wizards is not merely common, but the law. We must not embarrass my House.”
I took his meaning, though it frustrated me that he could not present a gift without a jibe. Short, close tunics were a more practical choice for working a smithy, and when I had first joined the Cabal, I had not been able to afford the more popular, less tailored, fashions of Vencari wizards and the upper classes. By the time I could afford such, I was content in my self-image and my wardrobe.
Then he presented me with a wooden box, within which I found a wizard’s claw of heavy gold. It was ornately assembled: two layers of bracelet connected by golden chains, leading down to a three-part gauntlet ring, all set with pave diamonds and obsidian inlay and ending in a razor sharp, cleverly hidden, steel tip.
“I know you disdain the wizard’s claw,” he said, again in that tone, “favoring that silly knife. But the claw is a mark of station as much as a tool of the craft. For these formal occasions, at least, you should possess one.”
Infuriatingly, he saw little need to change his own mode of dress. His robes of elven spider-silk – the bloody crimson of a magnificent sunset, tight fitting about his lean chest and arms, and flaring at the waist just enough to preserve his modesty, a fashion so modern it lacked a proper name – needed little to preserve the vanity of a noble: a wide belt of bejeweled black leather, a black stole about his shoulders, and a sunburst medallion of gold and silver about his neck.
And so we came into Arthago: finely dressed wizard nobility, out to seduce every secret we could from the libraries and librarians of Naal.
“It is fascinating,” he said, “that in this moment you choose to remember me thus.”
The image of him shifted slightly. Red robes became black. A golden crown appeared on his brow. He was older, now: leaner, harder, sharper. The Rorgoth Throne loomed behind him in all its faceted obsidian glory.
It was then that I realized that I had been dreaming, and that the real Aemillian had now invaded that dream. He had begun to grow terrible, but he was still beautiful. Merciless gods, how I missed him.
“I see you have circumvented our wards,” I said. It was mind-numbingly obvious, but as good a place to start as any.
“Yes,” he said with a thin-lipped smile. “And your little earth-god. With the aid of the throne, there is no longer any place within my empire that I cannot see or reach, and the world beyond my borders grows more clear with each passing day.”
I looked around us, considering a change of venue. But the pleasure-barge was as good a place as any. I pulled up a deck chair and sat.
“So you have no further need of me, then,” I said, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice.
A complex series of emotions washed over his usually impassive face. That was nice.
“I could pluck you and your band of heroes up and bring you directly here, yes,” he said, with just a hint more theater than confidence. Could anyone but me have detected that in him? “But that would be a gratuitous waste of power. No, Derrek, the original plan is still best: bring them to me, here, in the palace.”
He paused.
“If you can?”
I sighed.
“We will be gone from here before your army arrives,” I said. “Even if I have to drag them with me by force.”
“Good,” he said firmly. “I look forward to your arrival.”
He paused, then, and an unfamiliar look flashed through his eyes.
“Of course I still need you, Derrek,” he said. “We are unique in all the world. We would be lost without each other.”
===
I slept most of that day, rousing myself only when I was summoned to meet with Elana, Rennin, and Khanaarre to hear the plan before it was presented to the whole of the court. It was to be just the four of us, in the end. I wouldn’t have minded having another wizard – another Black Mask, in particular, or some idiosyncratic madman – but I was unsurprised that none of the court wizards, for all the courage it took to serve in the resistance, were prepared to confront Aemillian personally, and I was confident that Khanaarre and I would be sufficient. I was no more surprised, but a bit more disappointed, that there were no warriors of the caliber we would need on this last leg of our great quest. I regretted constantly, keenly, the loss of Veralar Tann.
The court was divided. There was a romance to the two-front strategy, with the loyalist court and their forces fighting a defensive or guerilla war against the full army, trying to hold out long enough for Elana to seize the throne and save the day. But she had also been gone from court for an entire year, unable to maintain their full loyalty through the dance of courtesies and the force of her charisma. There were those who would rather have her here, fighting at their side, even if it meant losing the war. There was an undeniable romance to a noble death.
I suspected that Elana’s heart was divided, too. Many of these people had helped raise her, either as members of her father’s court or as advisers and courtiers here, in this one. Some had been with her as long as Orland, almost as long as Rennin, and no matter how swiftly we traveled or how well her forces fought, some of them would be dead by the time she reclaimed the throne. If she even did. I had never promised her certain victory: no one could promise that. But this was her best chance, her only chance.
And so she made her proclamation, and she made it stirring. A speech for the ages, win or lose. Rennin stood at her right hand, I at her left, and Khanaare at mine. Before us, in the great hall where we had feasted before we left on the last journey, the court stood in silence to hear the broad strokes of the plan that would, tomorrow, be rendered in excruciating detail as they made their final preparations for the coming of the enemy’s army – an army that they hoped to be folded back into, if their prince’s quest succeeded. And by the end of it, even those who wanted her to stay and die with them were cheering to see her go.
No feast was served. Who knew how long it would be before the court was besieged, or how long that inevitable siege would last? Food was already being rationed, and meals were modest and more private affairs. But there was wine to be had, vast casks long held in storage for occasions just such as this, and that flowed freely.
In many ways, that evening paralleled the feast that had announced my arrival to the cause. A constant trickle of nobles and courtiers and dignitaries made their way to the dais where we had stood to make the announcement. It was a somber procession. When Khanaarre – with a nod of permission from Elana – allowed herself to be pulled away by the elven delegation, I could not blame her. Not long after, the prince, herself, pulled Rennin away to discuss details with a tangle of nervous generals, and I was left to my own devices and the waning crowd.
And then Khanaarre reappeared, very much to my surprise. On her arm was a member of the elven delegation that I had not yet met: a woman, shorter than us, softer and more voluptuous than most elves I’d met, with curling red-brown hair, bright eyes, and a crooked smile. She was dressed in the red and white of the Sisters of Amalai, and I belatedly made the connection. I bowed low.
“You must be Rrii`aa,” I said, while Khanaarre struggled to muster the powers of speech.
“Yes,” she said. “And you are Derrek Rowan.”
“I am,” I admitted.
I had known a handful of Sisters of Amalai while I lived among the elves, and Rrii`aa was very much of the type. Her posture was immaculate, her movements graceful and deliberate. She radiated calm, serenity, and understanding, despite her constantly moving hands. Unlike the Sisters I had known, her eyes twinkled with mischief.
“Khanaarre spoke of you often while we traveled,” I said. “She was afraid you would forget her after such a long absence.”
“She is not forgettable.”
“No, she is not.”
Whatever Khanaarre had expected of this meeting, neither Rrii`aa nor I were playing to her script. Which was fair, one moment to the next I was torn by the desire to be heroically gracious on the one hand, and to play the part of petty jealousy on the other. In the year we’d travelled together, Khanaarre had stared at me with frustration, confusion, lust, admiration, deep hurt, and pure comradery. But the only word for the way she looked at Rrii`aa right now was besotted, and I was romantic enough that I could not bring myself to complicate that deliberately, no matter how hotly irrational jealousy bubbled in my spleen.
“I understand that you were also one of the first elves to join the prince?”
“Yes. Strictly speaking, we are here to tend to the needs of the elven volunteers, not the war itself, but I’m sure that you know we Sisters are readying ourselves to aid the medics.”
Her mastery of the language of the Compact was impressive. A different tone or two, and that would have been pedantic. But her casual air and dancing eyes made it casual.
We chatted briefly, even drawing a few words out of Khanaarre. I mentioned my time in Tanirinaal, and in the Wolfwood. Rrii`aa spoke of her first ventures into Vencar, following trading caravans in her adolescence. Too soon, Khanaarre interrupted us, hoping to introduce Rrii`aa to the prince.
She smiled at me warmly.
“I hope that I get the chance to know you, Derrek Rowan.”
I smiled back and bowed again, more deeply than I had for any mortal here in Vencar or back in the Holy Empire.
“Likewise.”
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