Dreamwielder (6 page)

“Yes, Master.”

With a savage hiss, Wulfram grabbed the scent-hound's nearest foot and sent her spinning wildly on her axle. The hound screamed, a scream more human sounding than canine. Natarios wished there were a way to close his ears as well as his eyes.

“That's the same reading the hound in Col Sargoth came up with,” Wulfram snarled. “This dreamwielder could be anywhere between here and the East Islands. We need the reading from Sol Valaróz to triangulate her position.”

“It's a dreamwielder then?” Natarios said, a lump suddenly in his throat.

“What else, you fool?”

“She… she must be close, Master—the scent was strong. Probably right here in Kal Pyrthin, certainly no farther than Pyrvino.”

Wulfram swept his cloak free of his hunched shoulders and moved toward the balcony. “I think not here; it's too bold. Still, send your agents into the city to find word of any strange happenings. If they find nothing, take your men toward Pyrvino and search every farmstead and hovel along the way. I'll meet up with you after I go to Sol Valaróz and get the last set of coordinates.”

“Of course, Master,” Natarios said, but Wulfram had already leapt from the balcony.

It had been a wearying three-week journey from Kal Pyrthin, first along the River Kylep, then across the border from Pyrthinia into Sargoth and into the highlands past Lepig, and lastly through Forrest Weorcan, which loomed dark and foreboding even though the massive trees had been cleared for a half mile to either side of the high road. Caile's journey was near complete though, and exhausted as he was, he bristled with nervous energy as Col Sargoth came into view. He had heard stories about the city, of course, but nothing could have prepared him for what he now rode toward. The hair at the nape of his neck stood on end, and his left hand involuntarily gripped tighter at his horse's reins.

“It's a dreary looking cesspit, isn't it?” Lorentz remarked.

Caile could only nod. The city stretched outward before them for miles to the south and east of where the Sargothian River emptied into the Gothol Sea. It looked like some great malignant, black sore spreading over the land, Caile thought. Even the seawaters around the city had turned black, and the white sails of the ships entering and leaving the harbor stood out in stark contrast to the inky backdrop.

They had been watching two plumes of black smoke loom larger on the horizon for hours as they approached, but now they could see the actual source of the black smoke. Two sprawling smelting factories at the north and south edges of the city belched out sulfurous black fumes from chimneystacks that rose into the air nearly as high as the five towers of Lightbringer's Keep. The keep itself glimmered like obsidian, and from this distance it looked like a black claw reaching its taloned fingers skyward from the center of the city.

Caile realized that the horses had all stopped of their own accord, and he urged his mount forward toward the south gate of the city. “We best raise our banner and make this official,” he said, and Lorentz ordered the red and gold banner of Pyrthinia be raised.

By the time Caile and his honor guard reached the south gate, their banner had been noticed and a retinue of twelve Sargothian cavalry soldiers was waiting to receive them. The soldiers wore mail coifs over their heads and hauberks with articulated shoulder plates beneath black surcoats emblazoned with the symbol of Sargoth: a white sun radiating five shafts of light. Their riding pants were black leather with steel thigh plates sewn in and shynbalds to protect their lower legs. In addition, each soldier had a round shield and a flail strapped to his saddle. The flails were evil looking, crude weapons—huge spiked heads attached with chains to the long ash-wood handles.
Hardly ceremonial weapons,
Caile thought.

The captain of the guard, who wore an open-faced helm adorned with ram horns to signify his rank, rode forward to greet them, but the confusion on his face was obvious when he saw only Pyrthinian men before him.

“Where is the Princess Taera?” the captain asked, dispensing with any pleasantries.

“She is ill,” Caile said. “I have been sent in her place.”

“And you are?”

“Prince Caile Delios of Pyrthinia.”

The captain sniffed and turned away with a curt waving motion for them to follow. Caile shot Lorentz a glance and Lorentz merely shrugged in return. Caile urged his mount forward, and they followed the retinue through the south gate, which was only a gate in the loosest of terms. There were two columns of granite on either side of the road and an archway spanning the distance between them, but unlike most cities in the Five Kingdoms, Col Sargoth had no outer wall. Rather, the city boundary was wherever the ramshackle hovels and tents on the outskirts of the city stopped. The south gate merely marked where the high road joined the main thoroughfare leading north toward the center of the city.

Once past the outer buildings, the streets were lined on either side with lampposts that smoked and sputtered, their filaments burning a dull orange even though it was still hours before nightfall. The road itself was not paved with flagstones but rather with tar and gravel. Caile watched as it came up in black clumps beneath the horses' hooves only to fall again and get trampled back into the road. The buildings were all tall rectangular affairs—two or three stories high, constructed of soot-stained cedar timber or granite blocks—and they seemed to trap in the choking stench of smoke and naphtha. What really stood out to Caile, however, was the fact that there were very few animals in the streets. In Kal Pyrthin and Sol Valaróz, the streets leading toward the city center were filled with horsemen, horse-drawn wagons, mule-drawn carts, and farmers leading pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, and any number of other animals to market. Here though, there were only the Sargothian cavalrymen on their horses and Caile and his men on their own mounts. There were plenty of city folk hustling about, but all were on foot. The carts were drawn by hand, and the few wagons they passed were self-powered vehicles that were propelled by steam engines, wheezing like bellows and spewing black soot from their smokestacks. Caile had heard of such things but thought them a myth before now.

As they moved deeper into the city, the buildings gradually grew larger, but they remained drab and uniformly rectangular. The people themselves cleared a wide path before the cavalrymen, and no one said a word to Caile or his men. They hardly even said a word to each other, Caile realized. That was partly what unnerved him so much—there wasn't the cacophony of voices he had grown accustomed to in a city. The near silence was eerie.

They reached the outer wall of Lightbringer's Keep and the Sargothian captain quickly ushered them past the guards. Inside the outer walls, it was nearly a city in and of itself, but they soon reached the inner wall, which connected the five towers together.

“We will dismount here,” the captain said. “Your horses and belongings will be tended to. Please follow me.”

Caile and his men did as they were told and followed the captain on foot. Six of the cavalrymen proceeded in front of them and six followed behind. All of them carried their flails, Caile noted. They proceeded through the inner courtyard toward the central keep, which was connected to the five towers via long narrow wings like spokes on a giant wheel. At the entryway to the central keep courtiers bowed deeply to greet them, but Caile barely had time to pay them notice, for the captain led them on at a brisk pace into the entry hall and down a long central corridor. Caile glanced upward and saw the ceiling in the corridor was vaulted some fifty feet or more. To either side, the walls were decorated with expansive tapestries depicting Sargoth Lightbringer in various scenes from ancient lore.

The hall ended at a set of wide double-doors, and the captain halted to speak with a courtier. The courtier slipped inside, and a moment later the double-doors opened. Caile realized with a jolt that they were entering the throne room; he was being ushered in to see the Emperor himself. Decorum usually called for visiting dignitaries the chance to bathe and change into proper attire before meeting, but clearly the Emperor cared not for decorum. Caile hastily combed his hair back out of his face with one hand and unbuttoned the top of his cloak to reveal his Pyrthinian surcoat before stepping inside with his honor guard flanked to either side behind him.

Like the central corridor, the ceiling of the throne room was vaulted, and there was a high balcony lining the rear and side walls, but apart from that it was similar in size and layout to the throne room in Castle Pyrthin. The stark difference was the man sitting on the throne. Few people outside Lightbringer's Keep had ever seen Emperor Thedric Guderian. Wulfram was the one who traveled to the other four kingdoms when necessary, and popular sentiment throughout the Five Kingdoms was that Wulfram was the true power behind Guderian. Caile had always imagined the Emperor to be an old, frail weakling of a man. He couldn't have been further from the truth. Even sitting upon his throne, Guderian towered above Caile. He was tall, broad-shouldered, thickly muscled, and appeared to be in the physical prime of his life, though Caile knew he was more than fifty years old. His jet-black hair was close-cropped to his scalp and a well-trimmed line of a beard ran along his jawline to where it connected with the mustache that outlined his mouth. His disdain for decorum extended to his wardrobe. He didn't wear a robe or crown even, but rather a black leather jack with plate armor at the forearms and leather trousers stitched with thigh plates and shynbalds much like the ones the cavalrymen wore. Next to the throne stood the Emperor's man-at-arms with Guderian's claymore: a massive two-handed sword nearly five feet long. Caile found himself gawking back and forth between Emperor and weapon.

“Your Excellency, I present to you Prince Caile Delios of Pyrthinia,” said the courtier who had ushered them in.

The introduction snapped Caile to attention and he knelt down to bow before the Emperor. His men followed suit behind him.

“I was expecting a princess,” Guderian said in a low quiet voice that nonetheless filled the entire throne room.

Caile raised his head to address him but remained kneeling. “Your Excellency, my father King Casstian Delios regretfully informs you that Princess Taera suffers a malady which makes her unfit for travel. He has sent me in her stead.”

“A malady?”

“We bring a letter from the royal physician describing her illness,” Caile replied, motioning for Lorentz to retrieve the letter from his satchel.

Lorentz withdrew the letter, and a scribe whom Caile hadn't even noticed before stepped from the shadows behind the throne and snatched up the letter. The scribe cracked the wax seal, read it, and nodded wordlessly to the Emperor.

“Very well then,” Guderian said. “Tell me a bit about yourself, young Caile. You were ward to King Bricio, is that correct? How go matters in Valaróz?”

“Yes, Your Excellency, I was ward to King Bricio for five years and in charge of maritime relations with Pyrthinia and to a lesser extent the Old World. As of the time I left, two months ago, all was well. Pirates from the Old World raid some of the smaller villas near the Spine on occasion, but otherwise, everything is orderly.” Caile didn't deem it necessary to elaborate upon how Bricio kept the realm orderly; Bricio had been hand-picked by Guderian, and the secret agents, the rewards for turning in dissenters, the ever increasing standing army—all the deceptive and tyrannical methods Caile had observed in his five years in Valaróz—were quite clearly methods passed down by the Emperor himself.

Emperor Guderian was nodding. “It seems Valaróz is more orderly than Pyrthinia then. I received word of the sorceress.”

Caile's breath caught in his throat, and he felt himself on the verge of panic.
How could he possibly know about Taera?

“You did well in killing the firewielder,” Guderian continued.

“The firewielder, yes, thank you,” Caile said, realizing the Emperor wasn't talking about his sister at all. Caile was relieved yet still disconcerted. He'd ordered his men and the other Pyrthinian soldiers to remain silent about the firewielder, and he himself had only told his father. There were the scent-hounds of course, but still, the Emperor shouldn't have known any specifics. “I had hoped to apprehend her,” Caile admitted, “but she was mad with rage, she burned one man alive, nearly burned me, and my man Lorentz here was forced to kill her.”

“You'd do well to take better heed of your man Lorentz then. I sense that more trouble is afoot in Pyrthinia. Your fool father treads a thin line in resisting the mandates I send him, and your brother was the bigger fool.”

Anger welled up inside Caile, but he forced himself to respond in an even tone. “It was my understanding Cargan was killed by drunkards.”

“Indeed, drunkards and traitors. Your brother made the mistake of trying to befriend them.”

“I don't understand.”

The Emperor smiled and stood, though there was no humor in his smile. “Walk with me, Caile,” he said, then strode away to one side of the throne room, and Caile had to jump to his feet and nearly run to catch up. Guderian led him up the balcony staircase and stopped to gaze out of a lead glass window. Two of the massive towers obscured their view to the left and the right, but their vantage point was still high enough to see over the inner and outer walls of Lightbringer's Keep to the city beyond. “Tell me what you see,” the Emperor said.

Caile hesitated, unsure what the Emperor wanted of him. “I see Col Sargoth, Your Excellency.”

“You lack vision then, boy. When I look out this window I see the pinnacle of technology. I see man's triumph over nature and evil. I see a city where smelters are making the strongest steel mankind has ever known. I see a city where beasts of burden will soon be obsolete, where steam powers our carriages, where machines power our mills, tan hides, and pump ether to the lanterns that burn night and day. I see a city where the roofs and roads are sealed with tar—a city that is impervious to storm and rain. Most importantly, I see a city free of sorcery. Sorcery is a malady that breeds evil in the minds of men, Caile. It was the sorcerers who nearly brought the Five Kingdoms to ruin and started the Dreamwielder War. It was the sorcerers who tried to allow the armies of the Old World to cross the Spine like they did nearly 300 years ago. Fortunately, like my ancestor Sargoth Lightbringer then, I am here now to stay the hand of evil.”