Blood of the Emperor Read online

  “I saw the wizard down on the left, toward the Governor’s old home.”

  Urulani nodded and started through the tents, leaving Bartolem in her wake. Creatures and humans stumbled over themselves to get out of the way and honor Urulani all at the same time. Ahead of her, to the west, she could see the subatria that had supported the Governor’s House. The avatria no longer pierced the sky, but lay in a heap at the far side of its foundation.

  Then, through the tents on her left, she saw it.

  It was a low stone platform of the same design which, according to Braun, commonly supported nearly every elven fold throughout the Rhonas Empire and well into its provinces. In this case, however, it was incomplete as there was no fold established above it for the platform to support.

  It was, however, supporting Braun and a rather agitated Jugar.

  Urulani frowned. Having the dwarf and human wizards in any kind of proximity had become increasingly volatile and even dangerous over the weeks since the two had met.

  Braun was still as insane as Drakis had described him but somehow knew more about Aether magic than even the mysterious dwarf Jugar. He had proved himself invaluable so far in the campaign and, if Belag were to be believed, had even proved adept at opening gateway folds more spectacularly than anyone—elf or human—of whom she had ever heard. Braun had even begun teaching some of the humans among the warriors the arts of drawing on the Aether and putting it to use in warfare. Yet despite these considerable skills to his credit, he still made Urulani uneasy.

  “Air Mistress!” shouted Braun, waving from atop the platform. Fortunately, no one began a chanting chorus at the sound of her title.

  Braun’s face broke into a wide smile. He was a short man with a stocky build and a large, hooked nose. Dark hair streaked with gray had emerged from his head, still raggedly short, as it had not been growing long. His original Sinque mark still showed through its bristles, reminding Urulani that this man had once been enslaved by the elves.

  Urulani climbed the stairs up the side of the fold platform and was immediately confronted by the dwarf.

  “Well, it’s about time someone came capable of talking sense!” exclaimed the gruff voice from farther back on the level stone stage. “Where’s Drakis?”

  Where indeed, Urulani thought, but she chose other words to speak aloud. “He is delayed. He asked me to come and find out why you called for him so urgently.”

  Jugar planted both his fists on his hips. “I’ve had to listen to this windbag bellow pointless noises for the last hour and, despite my most diplomatic efforts, I assure you, I’ve made no headway against his nonsense!”

  “It worked, didn’t it?” Braun countered.

  “That’s beside the point!” the dwarf sputtered.

  Urulani looked at the dwarf and sighed. Jugar appeared to be in rather high dudgeon. He wore a padded leather coat that he had cut off at the arms and to a length to better fit him. The canvas trousers and linen shirt were a far cry from the original garish clothing that Drakis had first found him wearing as he emerged from the hiding place beneath the king’s throne. Urulani had to admit that she missed the colorful costume although the dwarf had managed to retain his wide brimmed hat. “Jugar, what is the point?”

  “The point is that this human charlatan shouldn’t be practicing magic without a license!” the dwarf sputtered as the thumb of his left hand gestured toward Braun.

  “There’s no qualified authority to issue such a permit,” Braun shrugged.

  “Well, if there were such an authority, I would see to it that your license was revoked forthwith!” the dwarf spat back. “You’re reckless—playing with all our lives!”

  “We’ll never learn anything if we don’t experiment,” Braun replied. “We need to grow. See a bit farther over the horizon than we have…”

  “Are you casting aspersions upon my height?” Jugar grumbled, his fingers playing on the handle of his ubiquitous ax.

  “Jugar! Please!” Urulani said, trying to remain patient. She was tired and the bickering was not helping her disposition. “What did he do?”

  “What did he do?” Jugar exclaimed. “What didn’t he do, more like! Did you know that this human charlatan leaped down from the dragon ahead of me? A feat in itself considering how anxious I was to get off that fell beasty!”

  The titles that the Council of the Prophet had bestowed upon several of its members were supposed to help define the boundaries of authority between each but sometimes they were more of a nuisance than a help. Jugar was appointed “Master of Aer” while Braun was titled “Master of Aether” although he protested that Aether was what the elves called their magic and that “Anti-Aether” might be a better term. No one else understood the distinction and thus Braun became the “Master of Aether” anyway. All of this was of great distinction between the two of them but of little help to the rest of the army as the difference was completely lost upon the common warrior. It was all just “magic” to the army and whatever they called it was firmly in the province of the two “wizards” who were its masters. This left the two to bicker over the details between themselves with an animosity that had been building steadily ever since they were first introduced to one another. The War Council had decided it would be a good idea to have Jugar and Braun dropped into the subatria of the Governor’s home in Port Glorious ahead of the ground-bound army to remove the Aether Well before the garrison of elven warriors could counter their attack. This, apparently, had ignited yet another argument.

  “You were both assigned to assault the Aether Well,” Urulani shrugged. Her head was beginning to hurt again. “He was just doing his job…”

  “He was doing my job,” Jugar interrupted indignantly. “More than that, he did it wrong!”

  “Wrong?” Urulani chuckled. “It worked rather well for a mistake.”

  “No mistake that,” Jugar sputtered. “He deliberately reversed the Well!”

  Urulani shook her head, not understanding. “What?”

  “I reversed the Aether Well,” Braun said again with his cockeyed smile. “I listened carefully to the stories Jugar told upon your return. He is quite in love with the sound of his own voice and so wasted no time in regaling everyone with ears as to the details of your marvelous quest among the ruins of Drakosia. I was particularly interested in that part of the story where Drakis was in the Citadel of Light and how he opened the Aether Well.”

  I was there. I tried to help Mala—only Mala found her own way to die and I could not stop her. Mala said she was going home and then the dragon Pharis ended her life. I fled through the resurrecting ruins of the ancient city, walls suspended in midair as they tried to reassemble themselves into the city that had died so long ago. How could I explain to Drakis what had happened to her? How could he ever forgive me for allowing it to happen at all…?

  “Did you understand?” Braun concluded.

  “Sorry,” Urulani replied, returning to the present as she spoke. “Tell me again.”

  “As I was saying, that led me to believe that with the opening of the lost Wells of Drakosia, the drain on the Rhonas Wells has put a strain on them. I believed I could duplicate the opening of the Citadel Well with a Rhonas Well. It’s not so much reversing as it is, how would you say, tipping it over and figuratively turning it upside down. The draw from the ancient Wells across the sea destabilizes the Well here in Port Glorious…makes it easier to reverse the flow from gathering to transmission. That’s the essential difference between Rhonas Aether Magic and that of Human Anti-Aether Magic of old: elven Wells collect while human Wells disseminate. Of course, what I call the Anti-Aether magic was simply called Aether magic by the humans long ago, so perhaps it would be best if we actually called human magic Aether magic and elven magic—which was stolen from the humans by the elves—the anti-Aether magic even though they incorrectly call it Aether magic.”

  Urulani could feel her headache returning. “I still don’t get it.”

  Braun nodded. “Think o
f human Aether magic as ‘blue Aether magic’ and elven Aether magic as ‘red Aether magic.’ They’re both Aether but blue flows out of the Wells freely while red is drawn in and tightly controlled.”

  “Blue magic and red magic?” Urulani rubbed her forehead.

  “Yes…or sweet and sour magic if you prefer,” Braun grinned.

  “The point is that we were supposed to break the Well,” Jugar shouted, “and well he knows it! We were supposed to deny the enemy its greatest weapon…the magic of Aether…whatever color or flavor he wants to call it!”

  “And so I have,” Braun said breathing in deeply. “The Well here in Port Glorious is now flowing outward with the Aether—a fountain of mystical energy which we can tap but which is contrary to the understanding of the elves and will not function with any of their devices. We empower ourselves and deny the enemy at the same time. Take this fold platform, for example…”

  “I thought there were no folds to Port Glorious,” Urulani interrupted.

  “They never were installed, let alone functional,” Braun answered. “But the pride of the Imperial Will demands that there be two fold platforms created in every outpost whether they are utilized or not. Ah, the mind of the Emperor is ever forward thinking even when it is backward. There is another platform just like it on the other side of the town, is that not true, master dwarf?”

  “You know very well that there is!” Jugar snarled.

  “They exist here not only because some bureaucrat almost a thousand leagues removed from reality decreed that they must be built here but also because physical connection is at the heart of elven Aether magic. Staves, wands, rings, and platforms are the means by which elves store, focus, and conduct their magic. Without such physical objects they cannot work magic. That’s why Proxis always carry staves and why the Iblisi do the same, though the two groups have radically different abilities. A connection between physical objects like these platforms is required before the Aether can flow through them. The efficiency of this power diminishes over distance but can be replenished again from physical bases like this one or through the interconnection of the Aether Wells.”

  “What are you saying?” Urulani urged.

  “What if our ‘blue’ Aether magic didn’t require physical connection to the Wells?” Braun asked, a gleam in his eyes. “What if you could access the Aether without having to be physically connected with it in some way? That’s what reversing the flow of these Aether Wells makes possible! We can channel it outside the control of the Empire for our own use…and the more Wells we turn, the more powerful we become and the weaker the Empire becomes. We could command a trail of these reversed Wells in our wake…”

  “And leave ourselves vulnerable from the rear,” the dwarf added. “These Wells which he wants to keep intact could just as easily be turned back again. We already have an advantage with these dragon-beasties! We don’t need to have a bunch of amateurs dabbling in magic that they don’t understand.”

  “I understand it a good deal better than you,” Braun said with an imperious air. “I’ve already proven that it works. That’s what brought you up short.”

  “Short!” Jugar snatched up his ax.

  Braun raised his hands in front of him, making a sudden circular motion with each. To Urulani’s astonishment, a fold portal suddenly opened up in the stone beneath the dwarf. With a cry of rage, the dwarf fell through the portal.

  The fold collapsed.

  Braun lowered his arms and grinned.

  Urulani thought she could hear the distant sounds of a dwarf swearing from the other side of the town.

  Drakis needs to see this, she thought biting at her lip. Where is he?”

  Suddenly, looking westward across the tops of the commanders’ tents, she knew.

  CHAPTER 5

  Haunted

  DRAKIS STEPPED INTO THE GARDEN of the Governor-general’s home and shuddered.

  The wall of the surrounding subatria was still largely intact. The avatria that had floated overhead was nowhere to be seen. The floating structure had been hastily blown aside when Jugar dealt with the font. Now, instead of the perpetual shadow of the avatria, an unobstructed view of a brilliant blue sky took its place, with low-lying clouds drifting quickly overhead and a column of smoke rising from the still-smoldering ruins of the city.

  Where the avatria had fallen, Drakis had not asked.

  The garden itself had escaped with little damage. Paths ran between the carefully cultivated flower beds and trimmed lawns. In an arrangement Drakis had not seen before, there was a reflecting pool surrounding the Aether Well in the center of the garden. The crystal of the Aether Well shone with a bright column of light extending upward along its surfaces, pushing the clouds aside into a ring around its light as it reached into the sky. There was a purple tinge to the edges of the light that reminded Drakis somewhat of lilacs that had grown in another garden…

  “Drakis!”

  The voice was bright and carefree in his mind.

  Another garden…another time…

  She smiled at him, the Sinque mark tattoo clearly visible on her clean-shaven head as she approached. She moved with light steps quickly around the Aether Well, touching on the Altar of House Devotions that now lay cracked and broken next to the Aether Well. She wore her slave’s robe that was now unmarred, clean and whole as he remembered it. Her emerald eyes flashed at the sight of him.

  “Mala,” Drakis whispered as he smiled.

  “So you did return to me after all!” His beloved smiled back at him as she had that day so long ago—when they were innocent and without memory of pain. He could hear her voice as though she were there as she turned her face up to look into his eyes again. “I prayed to all the gods each day that they would bring you back to me.”

  Drakis closed his eyes against the memory. She was happy and content then. Both of them were without care except for each other, caught in a dream from which he hoped never to awaken. But awaken they did when the dwarf shattered the Aether Well, released them from the enchantment of their elven masters, and made them remember the truth of their enslavement and that they were living a false life.

  If only he could live that lie again…if he could go back to a time when his life made sense even if it was a dream from which he never awoke.

  If only…

  He opened his eyes again.

  Mala was still dead. She had died because of a different dream…a false dream.

  It had been her belief in him that killed her.

  Since that day, color and taste had left his experience. Night and day were all the same to him. The celebrations and rejoicing at their return by the rabble Belag had assembled in his name were like the annoying sounds of pieces of tin banging together to his ears. For a time he had endured their council meetings, giving his opinions with diffidence only to watch his idle and disinterested observations become words of law and prophecy by the following day. He was a warrior by training and had marched their army northward around the Mistral Peninsula as a matter of basic tactics. He wanted to insure that the elves of Port Glorious would not threaten the families and support in the rear of their column.

  Mostly, however, he had simply not cared what Belag did with the Army of the Prophet. The manticores were flush with their victory over the Legion of the Northern Fist and were itching for another fight. The elf Soen had also been insistent about taking control of an Aether Well and Ethis suggested Port Glorious as the most likely place to take one. It was Ethis who had negotiated with the dragons, bringing them south across the Desolation and ultimately across the Straits of Erebus. It was largely his doing that the dragons had joined them in defeating the Cohort in Port Glorious.

  All of this had been accomplished in Drakis’ name.

  He didn’t give a damn for any of it. None of it mattered because it did not change the fact that Mala was gone and he did not know how to fill the well of his grief.

  Drakis stepped down one of the paths. The blooms on either side
were fragrant, their clean, sweet scent taking him back to House Timuran and the garden that was now a ruin but had once been so beautiful. He stepped up to the reflecting pool around the Aether Well

  What have I done but destroy anything that I thought was worthwhile? Drakis mused.

  “If you’ve come for a bath, you’re too late,” Mala said, her shoulders just above the surface as she moved her arms back and forth through the water. Drakis could still smell the dense foliage and the dark earth mixed with the damp mists from the waterfall.

  Her short red hair was wet and pushed back from her high forehead. Her emerald eyes had a playful look.

  “I claimed this pool and it is mine by right. I will not share my private little paradise with anyone else—no matter how badly they need bathing—and you, most certainly, are desperately in need of a bath.”

  “It was all I wanted,” Drakis smiled at the memory, pain playing at the corners of his eyes. “A life of my own to share…”

  A cloud passed over the subatria, casting a shadow across the garden.

  Drakis closed his eyes again but the sound filled his mind. Mala’s voice again, now pleading in agony, not with him but with unseen demons. Her words scarred his soul. “You promised to keep me away from him most of all! The demons are nothing next to his pain! He loved me! He hurt me! I want him! I hate him!” Her voice dropped to a whimper. “Please take me home! I cannot live with what he feels. I cannot live with what I feel. I want to never know that pain again. I want to forget.”

  “Drakis?”

  He opened his eyes to the sound of another voice. He lacked the will to turn and face the intruder into the garden of his despair. “What is it?”

  “You are needed,” she said simply.

  Drakis turned and tried to focus his eyes on the figure that had addressed him. Urulani, daughter of the Sondau Clan and former captain of the Cydron appeared inside the main gates to the garden, the long fingers of her hands resting impatiently on her hips. Her tall, slender body stood casually, arms akimbo, as she looked back at him from large, brown eyes set above her pronounced cheekbones. Her skin was a deep black—as deep a black as the middle of the night and as smooth and unblemished as pure silk. Her thick, black hair was pulled back from the high forehead of her oval face and gathered into an explosion of curls at the back of her head. Her lips were thick and plump around her generous mouth—drawn slightly up at one corner as though being amused by some secret thought. She still wore the same buckskin breeches as when he had first met her but the vest had been replaced by a leather doublet more practical to her new status as a dragon-rider and now as Air Mistress.