He pushed his shako back on his head and ran a sleeve across his sweaty brow while undoing the top button of his uniform. You could poach an egg in this heat, he figured, then felt sick at the thought. There was a time when he'd scarf down a horse steak barely seared on the fire and ask for seconds, but the heat of this place robbed a man of appetite, and not just for food.
"Honor guard my arse," he grumbled to himself, pulling a small carved pipe and leather pouch of tobacco from a jacket pocket.
"So the last Viceroy was daft enough to get himself killed here, so what? What honor do they think we're guarding now?" he asked, knowing he would not get a satisfactory answer, even if he wasn't just talking to himself. It was like that in the army. Ask away, the sergeants said, but you'll never like the answer. Made a soldier think there was little future in thinking much at all.
"Shoulda had a better guard two years ago, might have done him some good then," he said, chuckling at his own joke. He tamped a thick wad of leaf into the bowl of the pipe with his thumb then with his left hand patted his uniform for his flint and tinder box. He stole another look back up at the fortress. He had ten minutes, fifteen at the most, before the sergeant would come down to check on him. Time enough for a good smoke, if only he could find the flint. His hand fell on something hard and square in a pocket and he smiled. Pulling out the tinder box, he quickly slipped the piece of flint from inside and was about to strike it when a glitter in the sky made him stop. He looked up into a fiery light that roared into being directly above the fort.
He screamed, dropping the flint and throwing an arm across his eyes. Pure, red light radiated in every direction and then just as quickly, was gone. Slowly, he let his arm drop, blinking to get his vision back.
Everything looked the same as before. The fort still stood, the lanterns marking its walls. Had it been a spell? He patted himself all over and found that he felt the same, too. He remembered the flint and bent over to look for it. Was that frost?
He leaned closer, reaching down with his hand. The air felt cool on his fingertips nearer to the ground.
The grass shriveled before his eyes as the earth cracked like a plate thrown to the floor. Something black burst through the earth and latched on to his wrist. He tried to fall backward, but he couldn't break free of the icy grip. A shout froze in his throat as a dark shape emerged from the ground in front of him. Its face was a jagged puzzle of shadow, but something about it looked familiar.
"…V-viceroy?" he managed, his breath a pale mist.
The thing that held him let go of his wrist and grabbed him by the throat, lifting him up until his boots no longer touched the ground. The small pipe and tinder box fell to the dirt and were immediately covered in a cold, black frost.
It began to hunt.
There were many places you didn't want to be in the middle of summer in the sweltering humidity of high noon on the southern coast of Elfkyna. The center of the bazaar of Port Ghamjal topped the list. Heat oozed through the streets like wet mortar, filling every crack and crevice and slowing the pace of life to a crawl.
Faltinald Elkhart Gwyn, recipient of the Order of the Amber Chalice, holder of the Blessed Garter of St. DiWynn, Member of the Royal Society of Thaumaturgy and Science, and Her Majesty's newly appointed Viceroy for the Protectorate of Greater Elfkyna of the Calahrian Empire, was not amused. He should have been in the viceroyal palace hours ago, but his carriage and procession were currently stopped dead.
"Malodorous cesspool," the Viceroy said, raising a scented handkerchief to his nose. Smells bubbled and oozed in the sweltering cauldron of five thousand merchant stalls jammed into an area originally intended to hold a fifth that number. Beasts of burden were as numerous as the flies that swarmed around them, buzzing black clouds surging several feet in the air with every swish of a dung-crusted tail. Cinnamon, raw meats, curdling milk, mustard, cardamom, and the bitterly sharp tungam nut assaulted the nose and watered the eyes and almost distracted the marketgoer from the underlying stench of sweat and raw sewage.
The carriage door swung open and a lieutenant in the green uniform of the Calahrian infantry saluted. The market smells washed into the cabin and the Viceroy fought the urge to gag.
"Sorry for the delay, your grace, but one of the outriders' horses knocked over an elfkynan's stall, and the merchant won't
let us past until we pay."
The Viceroy sighed behind his handkerchief. "Is that
all? Fine, shoot him."
The officer blinked and opened and closed his mouth.
"Sir?"
"To delay the Viceroy is to delay the work of the Empire, which is tantamount to revolt." Of course, shooting a merchant in the bazaar as one of his first acts as newly appointed Viceroy would cause no little unrest in the country, he realized, and he was not unhappy at the thought. It was time for the Empire to forge a new path in the world even if Her Majesty did not agree, and to do so he would set Elfkyna aflame.
The lieutenant coughed, clearly lost on the word "tantamount." The word
"revolt," however, registered with him like a cannon shot. "Your grace, I don't think it's as bad as all that!" The murmur of a growing crowd indicated that it wasn't yet, but could be if given the right provocation.
The Viceroy lowered his handkerchief and gave the officer a smile that showed teeth and not a hint of humanity.
"Really? Bring me that news parchment," he said, pointing to a tattered scroll of paper pinned to the wall across from the open door. The lieutenant yelled at a sergeant, who quickly retrieved the parchment, handing it to the officer who in turn handed it to the Viceroy.
"Can you read this?" the Viceroy asked, pointing to the large black letters at the top of the scroll.
"It's the
Imperial Weekly Herald,
your grace," the lieutenant said slowly.
"Of the Calahrian Empire, yes. And below that?"
The lieutenant squinted. "
NORTHERN TRIBES STAGE PEACEFUL PROTEST
, a story by Her Majesty's
Scribe Rallie Synjyn."
The first twinge of a headache blossomed behind the Viceroy's eyes. The very idea of a reporter of events struck the Viceroy as running counter to everything he believed in. Spies for those in power were one thing, but informing the governed was quite another. The masses did not need to know, only to obey. Clearly, Her Majesty's Scribe Rallie Synjyn was a thorn that needed plucking.
"The natives are growing restless. They have been without proper leadership for too long. Order must be restored." The state of affairs was indeed deplorable; things were not disorderly enough, a fact Synjyn and the
Imperial Weekly Herald
continued to convey.
Two years ago, in a sop to Imperial brotherhood, Her Majesty had appointed an elf from the Hyntaland to oversee Elfkyna. It did not turn out as Her Majesty wished. For one thing, the elfkynan weren't actually elves, and harbored a deep resentment of those that were. Three centuries before, an explorer looking for an eastern sea passage to the homeland of the real elves in the Hyntaland discovered a new land by mistake. Convinced he really had found the Hyntaland, the explorer insisted on proclaiming the natives elf-kind, despite the fact that the elfkynan were a somewhat short, stocky race that looked nothing like elves and far more like humans, though the Viceroy deplored the idea.
A second problem had been the previous Viceroy's capricious, brutal, and above all, bloody reign. An iron fist in an iron glove.
How…appropriate,
the new Viceroy thought, refusing to even entertain the punthat the last Viceroy was murdered by the elf commanding the Iron Elves regiment, Her Majesty's colonial troops from the Hyntaland.
The scandal had rocked the Empire. The elves of the Hyntaland, once viewed as the Queen's most loyal colonial subjects, were now seen as the duplicitous beings they were. The Iron Elves were disbanded, their soldiers placed aboard a galley and sent south across the ocean to the desert wastes, while their officer was court-martialed and cashiered from the service, but not, unfortunately, executed. Evidence apparently existed that suggested the previous Viceroy had in fact been working for someone else. While Calahr was mortified by it all, the elfkynan rejoiced in the Viceroy's demise, and much of their growing resentment was deflated. The urgency to appoint a new Viceroy diminished, and it took considerable maneuvering within the royal court for Gwyn to finally secure the posting. In the meantime, the work of the last Viceroy had simmered in the heat with no one to stir it up.
Well, that was all about to change.
"I expect to be in my palace within the hour, Lieutenant. Someone is going to be shot in the next ten seconds; I'll
leave it up to you who."
The lieutenant saluted and closed the door. Orders barked out and the sound of metal ramrods rattling in musket barrels sent up a cry among the crowd. The carriage swayed as people ran.
"Fire!"
The musket volley echoed off the mud brick walls, followed by screaming. The carriage began to move forward again, the squelch of things beneath its wheels adding to the din. The Viceroy closed his eyes and allowed himself another smile. Things had indeed changed.
Four hours later the Viceroy stood among the ruins of his palace, looking for someone to blame. He took a calming breath and surveyed his new home. The palace was little more than a collection of tumbled blocks of sun-dried mud. It reminded him of a potter's wheel left unattended, the wet clay slumping and fracturing as it dried into soft, meaningless bits.
Shattered pieces of statues representing deities once venerated now suffocated under sheets of lichen, slowly eating away at them until not even the memory of their godliness remained. Had the previous Viceroy actually lived among this squalor? He considered that. The man
had
been an elf, one of the races close to nature and all that rubbish.
The lieutenant followed the Viceroy's gaze. "The last Viceroy never took up residence here, your grace," the lieutenant said, his voice quavering slightly.
"Always off on some kind of expedition or other. Searching for buried treasure, no doubt," the Viceroy said. It was a poorly kept secret that the previous Viceroy had spent the bulk of his time, when not antagonizing the elfkynan, tearing up the country in search of magical artifacts. The elf's search had ended, badly, at the little garrison fort of Luuguth Jor.
"They say he was looking for signs of the Stars, your
grace, trying to find where they had once been. He had maps and wizards and
everything to try and find them."
The Viceroy looked closely at the lieutenant for the first time. He had the look of a wax toy left too long in the sun. Everything about him drooped, from his eyes to his stance. Middle-aged, only a lieutenant, and assigned to guard duty in a backwater like Elfkyna, he was the epitome of the Empire today: soft.
The lieutenant blushed under the Viceroy's stare and continued.
"You know, your grace, that old children's tale about how the Stars in the sky
are really from the ground, and that one day, when a red star fell, the world
would, well, end."
"The Eastern Star?" The Viceroy knew the legend, had heard the rumor about the elf's expeditions, and had thought it a case of too much sun and too little brain, but now…"The
Stars are myth, points of light of no more power than that elf-witch in her
forest across the sea."
The lieutenant shook his head, a not insignificant act of bravery for the man.
"Oh, no, your grace, the Shadow Monarch is real. In fact, there's some who
think, well, that the last Viceroy was working for Her, on account of him being
an elf from over there, like Her…"
The Viceroy's eyes stared daggers, perfected from practicing the look in the mirror.
"Are you suggesting Her Majesty's representative was a traitor to the Empire?" The first rule he'd learned in the diplomatic corps was to never reveal your true thoughts to anyone. Ever.
The lieutenant stammered, so far out of his depth the pressure was making it hard to breathe.
"I-I meant no disrespect, your grace! It's just that when Colonel Osveen killed
him"
"That will be all, Lieutenant," the Viceroy said, offering the man another tooth-filled smile.
"I suggest you put your imagination to better use by wondering what will happen
if this palace is not restored to a fitting state within two weeks."
"Two weeks?" the lieutenant managed to squeak, his face draining of all color.
"Sooner, if you prefer. Now, don't let me keep you from your work," he said, turning away as the man saluted and stumbled off into the dark.
The Viceroy walked toward what had been the throne room, or perhaps, he wondered, had they merely placed palm fronds on the floor and lounged there like so many dogs? Natives, he thought, they were the same the world over. The Empire was far too lenient in allowing them to keep their inferior cultures. It was long past time for the Empire to exert itself as it once had, bringing fire and steel and civilization to the unenlightened. Orcs, dwarves, elves, elfkynan, and the rest of the muddied races had been allowed to thrive in this age of peace, poisoning the Empire from within and without. The Queen's mercy would be the Empire's downfall if something wasn't done.
As he walked, he considered the rumors of the Red Star. He trusted rumors the way he trusted sharp knives, and sought a way to grasp the point without getting pricked. However, if the Stars were real…
Thoughts of the Stars were pushed aside as he entered his would-be throne room. Lanterns hung from iron poles in a circle. They cast a fluttering, yellow light, creating the impression of life where there was only crumbling mud and stone. The once ornate tile floor was spider-webbed with cracks and stained with splotches of fuzzy mold. Looking distinctly out of place in the center of the room was a long, oak conference table with two wicker chairs around it, the sum total of furnishings the palace had to offer. The chairs were of native design, far too rustic for his liking, but the table was unlike anything he had ever seen before. Its legs were carved to resemble those of a dragon, sinew and claw masterfully reproduced. It made the table look as if it were about to leap. The top gleamed with inlaid emerald leaves polished into the wood in the shape of a dragon's head, the mouth wide open and staring up at him with two black eyes. It made him feel he was being watched, a trick he suspected was created by more than a simple woodcarver's skill.
Viceroy Gwyn sat down in a chair in front of the table and ran his hands along the surface, marveling at the smooth, tingling sensation that ran up his arm. He deliberately placed his hand over the dragon's maw then chided himself for thinking anything might actually happen. It was a marvelous creation. He smiled. Well, well, it was the first positive thing the departed Viceroy had left him.
"Change is coming, wait and see," he said quietly. It might have been a breeze playing with the lantern flames, but for a moment, the table seemed to gleam a little brighter.
