In a very material sense, the hard part was done. We had traversed the Wolfwood and crossed the Eastern Veil into the Holy Lands – fighting and, impossibly, defeating a literal dragon to do so. We had navigated the alien rainforest and crossed a cursed wasteland of black rock to the Tomb of Xadaer. Rennin – our hero, my patsy – had entered the tomb and retrieved the Blade. We had made it back out of the grave-strewn desert alive, despite the failures of our preparations.
Challenges remained, of course. Time did not always pass equally in the Holy Land and the mortal world. We would have passed nearly a month when we returned to the Veil, but whether half that time had passed in the mortal world or twice it, Lynqxaemass would almost certainly be waiting for us, and we would be without our strongest fighter. Then we would need to re-cross the Wolfwood, this time without a guide. And then the Empire. And, somewhere between here and the Imperial Palace, I would need to decide who I intended to betray.
The plan that Aemillian and I had settled on, a little more a decade ago, had been a complex series of compromises. What I had told the Prince and her fighters in the Stallion had been true enough: I had drawn the line at killing the emperor’s entire family, and I had guided Elana and Rennin out of the palace so that the House Traianum would not be entirely destroyed. It was a symbolic gesture. I would have saved more if I could. But it had been a token sop to my conscience, and it had served Aemillian’s plans, as well.
I did not stay even to see the sun set on the day of Aemillian’s victory. I smuggled myself into a boatload of refugees and was halfway to Naal when full dark came. But I could not stay there: I was too well known. I spent a year and a half trying to make my way back to the temple where I had been raised, but found the mountain paths too difficult. I had spent three years among the elves, mastering their language and learning about their culture and their sorceries – as much as a wizard could learn – and their trade with the Wolfwood. And then I had spent a two winters and the summer between in the Wolfwood, making friends and trading secrets with Songlover and his apprentices.
But always I listened to rumor. Always I kept my eyes on my crystal ball, watching the future unfold into the present. And, when there was no other choice, I poured salt into the wound of my broken heart and reached out to Aemillian for guidance and confirmation.
A coup always inspired a counter-revolution – whether by loyalists or by opportunists. With the prince still alive, she provided a natural rallying point for the loyalist cause. She could have rejected them and lived in obscurity. She could have been incompetent or unlucky. In any of those cases, the problem would have resolved itself and I would never have come into play.
Elana had chosen to embrace the ambition of restoring her house and herself to the throne – granted, probably a bounded choice, constrained by the ambitions of others, but she had donned the mantle, nonetheless. She and her allies had been both competent and lucky. They had evaded Aemillian and his wizards and his armies. They had made friends in every nation of the Compact. Given those successes, only one major obstacle remained to her: the Great Wizard, Emperor Aemillian Solirius, himself. And in order to make the necessary next steps, she and her allies would need a Great Wizard of their own.
And so I left the Wolfwood and the Black Ears pack. I travelled south along the River Venn, just as I had told Khanaarre. I had set up shop in So’renner where it was unlikely that I would be recognized, but where enough trade passed through that I could hear every rumor that came north and west out of the empire. And I waited.
I made a life. I made friends. I found love and companionship in Sara Kemm and Alric del Matthews. I remastered and perfected the blacksmith’s arts. I learned something of forging magic into steel. And, as we had both known they always would, sooner rather than later the prince and her fighters came to recruit me.
I could have refused them. I did, in fact, when they failed to pose a convincing argument as to why I should join them. There was every chance that, having done so, the rebellion would have shriveled up on its own. Or that they might make a desperate bid and be summarily crushed.
But Aemillian had taken matters into his own hands. His attack on So’renner had not been in the plans that I had agreed to. But I could not stand idly by while the Heart’s Guard made hostages of my neighbors. Nor could I stay in So’renner after my identity had been revealed. Even if my neighbors eventually forgave me, the local lord would not. And others would come seeking me, my knowledge, and my power – in all likelihood, the King of Georg among them.
And so the next set of possibilities had come into play. Contingency after contingency after contingency. The plan remained on track almost in spite of itself.
We had never foreseen a prophet among the Children of Enhyl. It worried me that she approved of Elana as Emperor. I had always believed that the Court of the Sun had ruled in error, that their political allegiances to House Traianum had clouded their sight and that Aemillian’s coup was as legitimate as any other. The approval of the Prophet of Enhyl did not have any bearing on the Law of the Sun – Dapple had said so, herself – but I worried, nonetheless.
Nor had we foreseen the enmity of the guardian of the Eastern Veil. Signs had varied as to what sort of bargain we might need to strike with her to win passage to the Holy Lands, but there had never been any indication that she would oppose us.
What had Aemillian done to change the course of the future? He said that he had used the Rorgoth Throne to ferret out traitors in court, and that the consequences of his actions had disrupted both his immediate plans and the course of my quest.
I wished that I had asked more, over the years, about what he had learned from and of the throne. There would be time for that in the future, I supposed, if I survived the rest of the quest.
We had the Blade of Xadaer. Rennin carried it and its name. My old divinations had promised an easy path out of the Holy Lands. I wished that I could take some days to discern whether or not that future still existed, but I doubted that I could convince Elana and Rennin to wait so long.
I had fallen in their eyes since I had maimed Veralar. There were days that they seemed to forget their mistrust, when they spoke to me as a valued advisor and compatriot, but more often they looked at me like a necessary evil, a leashed monster which might slip its bonds at any moment. Even Khanaarre, who sometimes looked at me as though seeking my approval, or with a surprising degree of fondness and desire, also sometimes looked at me as though I might sprout poison fangs.
I could not blame them. I had not played the game as well as I would have liked. The Vencari had never really liked or trusted me, as far as I could tell. And then I had struck down Veralar Tann at a moment that should have been a peerless victory. I wished that I had had more than a fraction of a moment to think, but it was only Veralar’s own wounds and exhaustion that had given me the time it had taken to lay down the half-mythical curse that had saved me.
As with their coming to So’renner and my departure therefrom, I had always known it was a possibility. And I had never imagined that it would hurt so much.
I had never been supposed to like them. But I did. Even as suspicious of me as they were, they had been good travelling companions. Elana’s pious pride and nobility. Rennin’s serious, somber mien. Orland’s mercurial moods. The fierce love and loyalty they shared, not just the prince and her inner court, but found family. I had quite liked Veralar, as well: slow to speak but quick to act; proud of her accomplishments without ever bragging. And Khanaarre … ah, Khanaarre. A mystery and a wonder, who I wished I had more time and opportunity to explore.
And Aemillian, meanwhile … I had not liked the way he had spoken to me over the last months. Snide and condescending. Expectant. Secretive. Did he believe that, after all these years, I was returning to his court? To him? To serve? That I owed him, not the other way around?
This quest for the sword had been everything I had ever dreamed of and more. And now we just had to make our way home.
A decade ago, I promised my lover that, if it came to this, I would deliver him the prince, dead or alive. A season ago, I promised that same prince to deliver her a weapon that would give her rebellion a chance to succeed. I could fulfil both promises to the letter, but only one in spirit.
I was not a man of Vencar. Or even, in any meaningful sense, of the Compact. I cared nothing about the throne – not as a seat of political power nor as an object of magical power. But I did care how I would remember this year in the decades to come.
The fate of the Compact – of the whole world, if Lynqxaemass was to be believed – rested on the character of my conscience, and none of my options were good.
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