Leaving the inn, I followed the commotion of wedding preparations until I found a place from which I could watch both the inn, where the prince and her knights were still refreshing themselves, and the final preparations. I would not have recognized it as a wedding if Derrek had not told us. It seemed too sedate an affair, even with the dozens of humans dashing and milling about, some beginning to settle themselves in seats.
Not that I had been to that many weddings, I supposed. None of my mothers were their family’s favorite sister or daughter. But every time we had been invited, trekking from our home on the eastern banks of the River Venn, just on the elven side of the three-way border between Tanirinaal and the Holy Mount Kashrin and the Wolfwood, it had been to participate in feasting and festivities that had lasted for days, usually culminating in the announcement of at least one future wedding.
I watched and listened as the last of the preparations fell into place. I don’t know if humans underestimated the acuity of my hearing, or if they just didn’t care what I heard, but it was easy to track as word of our meeting spread through the community. As we had guessed, the people of So’renner had not known who Derrek Rowan truly was. They were hurt. They were scandalized. They were very, very excited to tell each other how hurt and scandalized they were that they had been unknowingly sheltering a Vencari wizard. What terrible experiments had he been performing right under their noses? Didn’t he know that practicing magic brought the shadowmen? Hadn’t he been keeping company with the widow Sara Kemm? What terrible things had he made that poor woman do?
I spied the wizard in question, watching me stand in the eddy of whisper and rumor even as I watched him. Even if he didn’t come with us, I doubted that he would want to stay here long now that people knew.
Not that he had gone to much effort to conceal his identity in the first place. He hadn’t changed his name. He’d made no effort to heal or conceal that lurid scar. I could conjure better glamours than that, so the world’s second greatest wizard certainly could. I could also hand silver coins to a Sister of Amalai or to a wonderworking priestess of Enhyl and be rid of it for real and forever. So why hadn’t he?
He’d just set up shop, slung horseshoes, wrought iron, and occasionally forged swords. At the edge of town. Just off the main road. In the first city north of the Vencari border. Like he was just … waiting for us.
My mother Khiilitir, frustrated with her sister Neriishai, had often complained that sorceresses did nothing for a clear reason. By example, my old master had taught me that wizards were no different. My time in Prince Elana’s court-in-exile had done nothing but confirm that truism.
I thought about how he had meticulously kept us all off our guard when we met with him at the Stallion, juggling rustic hospitality with Imperial courtesy so that Elana never really knew what her role was. Had that just been petty revenge for interrupting his hangover? For embarrassing him or his lover or both? For coming in such a way that, though he refused her, his life here was still destroyed in the process? Or was there some larger game at play?
Veralar Tann joined me after making brief check of the perimeter. She was a massive woman, compared to our prince or the people of Renner, with a diamond-shaped, olive-toned face and bright blond hair that she teased until it stuck straight up from her head. She dressed in what I understood to be the vestments of her order: a skintight sapphire bodysuit of elven spidersilk under a heavy square-cut coat of common silk held closed with wooden frogs, darker blue and trimmed in bright white. The hilt of a curved two-handed sword stuck up from inside the wide collar of the coat, and she wore her giant’s blade on her back with a bandoleer over the coat. A pair of lacquered rods were tucked into sheaths sewn into the almost knee-high black boots that she wore, and a strand of large jet beads hung around her neck. She smiled as she approached and gave me a short nod of her head. I smiled back.
The prince and her knights joined us some time later, freshly bathed and with improved composure, if perhaps not actually in better spirits. Elana Traiana had retained her travelling costume of minstrel’s finery, but Rennin and Orland had brought only Vencari traveler’s clothes to wear when their armor would not do. Rennin’s knee-length tunic was dark grey trimmed in gold at the neck and hem and around the ends of its short sleeves. His sword – bound with a false peace-knot – hung from a brass-studded belt around his waist. Orland preferred a chiton, a vast square of sea-blue linen that was draped and pinned about his body instead of tailored. It hung lower than Rennin’s tunic, almost to his sandaled feet, but left more of his massive arms bare. For today, both men seemed to have disdained to wear a toga or himation – probably to keep their sword arms free.
It was the middle of the afternoon by the time that the wedding finally commenced. Orland, ever the diplomat’s son, provided a quiet running commentary for Veralar and I, who had never attended such an event.
The bride and groom – it made me laugh that the human language had special words for man-about-to-be-married and woman-about-to-be-married, ritual roles that apparently lasted no more than a day or two – each emerged from their sequestering tents. A choir of children began to sing from their sheltered pavilion. Men – the youths’ guardians, Orland told us – led them through the waiting crowd to the gazebo, then stepped back. At the gazebo, the bride and groom were taken into the custody of priests – Dalthuu the Forgefather, for the boy, and Enhyl the Earth Mother for the girl, with Althaeruh the Sun King standing between them – who issued prayers in their names and anointed them with oils.
Now the young couple faced one another, and the priest of the Sun King led them in a series of vows. Orland explained to us that, though the Forgefather was the chief god of Georg, Althaeruh was the divine witness to oaths here, just as in Vencar, and so presided over the wedding and its attendant promises. Their vows complete, the youths embraced before the assembled crowd and shared what, to me, seemed like a sadly chaste kiss. A second choir, this of adults, broke into song, and the assembled witnesses cheered.
It all seemed very sedate, almost perfunctory. Why did everyone sit? Why did only a select few sing, not the whole community?
As subdued as the proceedings felt to me, however, there was a more significant difference between this wedding and an elven ceremony, clear and inescapable: the marriage was between a single man and a single woman. My own mothers, growing up in poverty at the edge of our people’s territory, had needed three co-wives to be able to afford a husband, even with Mama Khiilitir’s ancestral treesung house. Some families could afford a marriage circle of only two wives and a husband, and some wealthy trios could even afford a second husband, but circles of four or even five wives were not unheard of.
How fortunate are humans to have men and women in equal number! How fortunate are humans to have men who are equal in strength and health to their wives and who do not need constant care, who do not die young and leave their wives bereft for decades, sometimes centuries!
I did not want a such a small marriage circle for myself – my dream was of a husband and a wife, or two of each in a compound large enough for us to each have our own tree – but my sister Llaariiah had voiced such dreams from time to time. I wondered if she had finally added the allotted portion of my dowry to hers and gone to a matchmaker. She had been waiting, she said, for me to complete my apprenticeship. Would I find, at the end of my time with Elana, that she had waited, also, for me to return with my mastery proven and my fortune earned? I hoped not.
Their vows complete, the newlyweds endured a final set of prayers and blessings from each of the three priests present, before being presented to their community, the bride absorbed into the groom’s household, under the rule of his grandfather. That was a shocking difference to me. An elven marriage circle was its own unit, distinct from any of the families from which it had been composed.
“Not always the groom’s house,” Orland clarified for my benefit. “Though usually that way, in Georg. But the more important difference, especially in Vencar, is that the richer house always absorbs the child of the poorer.”
“Madness,” I told him. Now that he said it, though, I did recall some discussion of that as I was studying history with my old master.
My confusion and disdain were met with laughter. It was only fair. I had responded much the same to their confusion in the face of marriage circles, when I had been telling stories about my mothers over the winter. Some Vencari, it seemed, believed elven polygamy to be a salacious fiction invented by prurient northerners. I had laughingly corrected them.
The newlyweds were the first to the feast tables, which was right and proper to everyone’s mind. The rest of the community followed slowly. I believe that the prince was about to return to the inn when Derrek caught our eye from the other side of the pews, waving us to join. Now all five of us exchanged a set of glances, shrugging and nodding. Why refuse such a feast and festivities?
We had just begun to move in his direction when a sound like thunder split the air and a smell like but not quite lightning assailed my nose.
There, in the street, where I would have sworn there had been no one just a moment ago, stood twenty or more armed and armored humans in the blackened armor and red livery of Aemillian’s personal Heart’s Guard. Their swords were already drawn and they stood in formation with their shields up in a defensive ring.
“Fuck,” said Orland.
“Shit,” said Rennin.
“Ass goblins,” said Elana.
Veralar disdained such complaints. She simply unbuckled her giant’s sword from her back and brandished it in a two-handed grip.
I slipped my wizard’s claw onto my finger and stepped in front of the prince. Rennin and Orland drew their blades and set themselves in defensive positions in front of us. I could hear the prince curse, again, and draw her sword behind me.
The captain of the Heart’s Guard stepped forward. He was not the tallest or bulkiest of the company, but he was among the biggest, and easily identified by the crimson plume rising from the top of his helmet. His soldiers closed ranks behind him, shifting to face the prince and her fighters.
“I am Tannis Solirius,” the captain announced in a booming voice. He didn’t brandish his sword, like his companions did, but neither did he sheathe it. “In the name of the Emperor, I have come for the pretender prince Elana Traiana and the traitors Rennin Osh and Orland Borgon. If they surrender, or if you turn them over, no one else will be harmed.”
Elana answered in kind.
“The traitor is the usurping tyrant you serve,” she said, “and it is you who should surrender to us.”
“I think not,” was all the captain said, and his raised sword was all the signal that we or his men needed.
Veralar charged, closing the distance with near-immortal speed. She fell on the Heart’s Guard like whatever thunderous force had brought them here. Her first swing tore one man in half and sent a second, bleeding, into one of his companions. Neither Veralar nor her sword even slowed. Her next swing took a third man in the face, splitting his head and half his torso, hanging up in his ribs or his mail. Rather that abandon the monstrous blade or withdraw it in any sane or rational fashion, Veralar reversed her momentum, leaped over the dead soldier, extracting her blade in the process, and split a fourth man fully in half, this time entirely top to bottom, half-burying her sword in the ground. Only then did she abandon it in favor of the katana on her back, drawing it and deflecting yet another enemy’s blow in a single lightning-fast motion. My Queen’s own fire dancers would have been hard pressed to reproduce such feats of graceful murder. And yet humans said there was no sorcery to the Shan Khul.
I had no more time to watch Veralar, though, for the same few seconds that it took her to reduce four Heart’s Guard fighters to so much meat was all the time that it took those soldiers’ companions to reach us on the wedding field. Rennin and Orland each took one with their first swing. Elana stood behind me, her blade at the ready, but too precious to our cause engage the enemy while any other choice remained.
I drew the claw on my right hand across the palm of my left, speaking the words of power that drew fire from air: loud, sharp, and sudden. The wound healed and an explosive gout of flames erupted in front of me, engulfing and slaying two Heart’s Guard outright and pushing four back with a concussive blast of fire.
The Heart’s Guard were elite soldiers. It only took them a moment to regroup. We had repulsed their initial wave, but even with a wizard and a Shan Khul Master, five against twenty were not odds in our favor. Our only advantage was that they appeared to want us alive.
Five men circled Veralar, each trying to provoke an attack that would leave her open on some other front. It looked like there had been one more, a moment ago, but the next might be luckier. Rennin and Orland were back-to-back, now, facing their own circle of a half dozen soldiers. More were moving quickly to form a similar circle around Elana and myself. And a handful more were moving toward the wedding.
Another deft slice of my claw, another shouted word of power, and another fiery explosion. One of the men trying to encircle me and Elana was blown back, crashing into two of his companions and knocking one of them into Orland’s ready blade.
Another Heart’s Guard saw his moment and leapt for me, only to be impaled on Elana’s rapier. But now we were encircled, pushed into the opening I had inadvertently created around the knights.
“Surrender now,” called the Heart’s Guard captain from the wedding side of the field. “We have you surrounded, and we have hostages. As you value your lives and those of these villagers, lay down your arms.”
We didn’t surrender, of course. Veralar had cut her five opponents down to three, and would be able to join us soon. As long as none of us died before then, the battle was ours. I held my claw to my hand and waited for an opportunity. Rennin didn’t wait: he saw an opening and took it, though he missed by an inch, his blade ringing off the Heart’s Guard’s armor.
“Surrender now,” the captain repeated, shaking one of the hostages until they screamed.
“Stop,” another voice bellowed across the field. This one brought everyone to a halt. The Heart’s Guard stopped in their tracks. Even Veralar froze, her sword mere inches from another soldier’s throat.
Derrek had appeared at the edge of the field. Too far from anyone to interfere directly, he stood in his Georgi peasant’s finery with his hands on his hips. His hair had come loose, his eyes blazed, and his nimbus of power crackled in the air.
“Do you know who I am?” He asked the captain.
“I do, my lord,” the captain said, nodding his head.
“Then release your hostages and call off your men.”
“I cannot, my lord,” the captain said, drawing the young man he held close to his chest, a human shield. “Perhaps you can convince these traitors to surrender?”
Derrek turned his head and looked at us. I wish I could have seen what passed between him and the prince. All I knew was that when I turned back to the captain, I had no idea what he was about to do.
Derrek Rowan, second of the Great Wizards, spoke a single word of power. His hands were clasped where we could see them. He had no wizard’s claw or knife to spill blood to fuel that word. And yet, against all laws of nature and magic as I understood them, a dozen rays of light burst forth from around his head, each as thin as a hair and as bright as the sun. Each ray pierced the head of a Heart’s Guard, who fell dead where they had stood.
The Prince’s Fighters and I stood dumbfounded. The people of Renner, too, stood as still as statues. My stomach churned and my hands shook. Such power.
“Up the River Venn,” he said in formal tones, “north of the dwarven kingdom, there is a valley filled by hot springs, just below the headwaters. When you are Emperor, you will build for me a tower there, where I can live and study and experiment in peace.”
“When I am Emperor,” said Elana Traiana, “it shall be so.”
They held each other’s gaze, then nodded.
And then the moment was broken. Derrek went to try to pull the former hostages out from under the corpses of the Hearts’ Guard, but they fled from him as they should have fled the soldiers. He sighed and hung his head. And then he did what needed to be done.
He waited with us for the Servants of the Inevitable, the priests who handled the bodies of the dead. He helped the priests fell the trees for the pyres we would build, and helped the priests strip the dead soldiers of their arms and armor. When the pyres were built and the bodies of the dead were stacked like so many logs, and the priests had consecrated the bodies so that they could not rise as monstrous revenants, it was Derrek Rowan who conjured fire hot enough to burn green wood and flesh and bone to white ash – cutting his hand, this time, with the knife he wore at his hip, and speaking words of power that I knew but with an accent I did not recognize.
I helped with all these tasks, as well. As did the prince and the rest of our companions. The priests of Torh required no such aid, but neither did they disdain or resent it. Tending to the dead was a grim and sad necessity. I think that Elana, Veralar, and the knights helped in hopes that, should they die in this war, their enemies might show them the same courtesy. I helped because it was needful. It did little to ease my conscience for my part in the killing. Derrek’s reasons were, of course, his own.
When the pyre was lit, the priests of Torh turned their attention to us. We knelt while they chanted over each of us in turn, cleansing us of the miasma, the spiritual stains, that came from killing and from contact with the dead. This did not ease my conscience, either, but at least we knew that the ghosts of the men we had killed would not follow us home.
Their duties done, the priests of Torh departed. Elana, Rennin, and Orland stayed to watch the bodies burn. Derrek joined my companions in standing silent vigil over the pyre. Though it burned magically fast, it was still nearly nightfall before the pile of wood and flesh was reduced to mere embers. For my own part, I stood as far as I could without appearing to abandon my companions.
The pyre disturbed and offended me in ways no other human ritual did. My own people lay our dead to rest among the trees, planting seedings to mark graves so that new life always comes from death. Families with treesinging talents bury their loved ones at the foot of their own home trees, so that the saplings could be grown into the structure, filling the home with beloved ghosts.
My master had taught me, and my time with the prince and her court had confirmed, that the ghosts of Vencari dead did not stay with their bodies or even linger in the mortal world. Instead, they descended through the Shadow Realm and into the Underworld. Various mysteries and initiations promised safer passages, or kinder reception at the end, or both, but few shared the details of the path or the destination with the uninitiated. I did not know what became of Georgi dead, or those of the other human peoples of the Compact of Nations.
When they judged the sun and the death-fire sufficiently low, the prince and her retainers circled close together and I quickly rejoined them.
“How long, do you think,” Elana asked, “before reinforcements come?”
Her gaze travelled over each of us as she spoke, but it fell last and lingered on Derrek Rowan, our newest recruit. The unexpected coup. Our diviners had guided us well, it seemed, for all our fears that morning.
“A few days,” he said. “Our enemy may not know immediately that his soldiers have failed. Even if they had succeeded, they had no wizard with them and could not have immediately reported that victory.”
Rennin grimaced.
“I don’t know,” he said. “If they recognized us when we crossed the border, why didn’t they try to take us then?”
“I would suggest they wanted him,” Orland said, thrusting his chin and beard at Derrek, “if they hadn’t made it clear they didn’t. They must have been a day behind us, and just caught up with us here.”
“I don’t think so,” said Derrek. Then he looked pointedly at me.
A test, one wizard to another. Could I guess what he was thinking? How could the soldiers have gotten here if they had not followed us? I looked at the pyre again. Twenty-four corpses. It should have been enough to capture our small party. But the garrison would have sent more. And some of them would have been scouts and trackers, cooks and squires, not just Heart’s Guard. If I understood what my master had taught me, and what I had learned at the Prince’s council table over the winter, it was almost inconceivable for so many Heart’s Guard to be away from the palace and Aemillian, himself.
“Wizards have known how to move objects across vast distances for a hundred years,” I said. “Perhaps Amil—”
Derrek cut me off.
“I do not believe we should speak his name,” he said, then nodded at me to continue.
“Perhaps,” I repeated, my face carefully neutral. “Perhaps our enemy has found a way to move living things in the same manner.”
“That’s terrifying,” said Orland.
“Why shouldn’t we say his name,” asked Elana.
Once again Derrek looked to me to provide the explanation.
My mind raced. Why shouldn’t we speak his name?
“I had not believed it to be true,” I said, “but legends have always said that great wizards can hear their names spoken upon the air.”
My master, in repeating those legends, had believed such talent to be the exclusive purview of great diviners. I tried to think of the stories I had heard of Aemillian, what magics I had heard associated with him besides the aegis that rendered him invulnerable, and the battle-magics that he had used to seize the palace.
“By the Sun,” Elana swore.
“If that’s the case,” said Rennin, “why only here and now? Has he been listening to our secret councils all these years?”
Derrek shrugged.
“That’s harder to say,” he said. It seemed that I had passed his tests, for now. “Though I would guess that if he had been, he would have acted before now.”
I think Elana or her knights were about to pursue that line of inquiry further, but Derrek let out a great sigh and scrubbed his face with his hands.
“Is there anything else that you require of me tonight, your grace?” He asked. “I imagine that you will want to leave first thing in the morning, and there are … affairs that I must put in order.”
Elana’s eyes narrowed as she stared at his face, but then she relaxed.
“No, my lord,” she said. “Nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow. Meet us at the Stallion in the morning as you intended. We have a horse for you already.”
“Thank you, your grace,” he said. He bowed to her a little deeper than he had before, bringing his shoulders into the motion. He gave each of us a nod. Then he turned and left.
“Well,” said Elena when he was out of earshot. “Do we trust him?”
Rennin laughed.
“Do we have a choice?”
No, I thought. We did not have any choice at all.
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