Reap the East Wind (21 page)

“Any problems in that for us?”

“We won’t know till we jump in. His security has been superb.”

Mist chewed a thumbnail and studied the map. Her eyes kept drifting to the mystery war in the east. Her nephew Ethrian was there? Part of that? How? Why?... She forced her attention back to the main show.

The moment of decision came. Go or abort. Attack and risk shattering the hope of saving the empire from these southern barbarians? Stand fast and surrender all hope of ever recovering her throne? It would be never if she didn’t grab it now. If Lord Kuo pulled this out, he would become untouchable...

She decided, looked up. “The King,” she said. “Where is the King?”

Someone said, “He just left, ma’am.”

“Get him. I need him here. Now.”

Bragi clomped back into the room a few minutes later. Mist guided him to the map, indicated the pincers nipping the Matayangan arm. “We’re going to go. When the heads of these prongs are ten miles apart. Lord Kuo will be completely preoccupied. Lord Ch’ien estimates that will be four hours from now. We’re alerting my people. I’ll need three of your assault teams. My people will take over everywhere else while yours are hitting Lord Kuo’s headquarters and arresting him.” She indicated her people. “Most of my Tervola will go with you. They’ll sort out the confusion for you.”

The King’s eyes narrowed. A subtle something entered his face. She didn’t identify it until he replied. “You ain’t number one yet, Mist. You’re Chatelaine of Maisak till the dust settles.” He glanced at Varthlokkur. The wizard remained seated, watching blandly.

She stamped a foot irritably. These damned touchy barbarians. Had to remind you where the power lay... She forced an apologetic smile, softened her features. Just a few hours more. Then she would be dependent upon no one.

“I’ll start assembling them now.” The King turned away, gathered his captains.

Mist returned to Lord Ch’ien’s side. She glanced back once, found the wizard Varthlokkur gazing her way. His face was expressionless, yet she had the feeling he was amused. She shivered.

She hadn’t been paying him enough attention. He was the real threat here in the west. Without him Bragi could not have survived the Great Eastern Wars. Without him the Dual Principiate would never have fallen, and none of this would have come to pass... He seemed so inefficacious in person you forgot just how deadly he could be... Now, more than ever, she’d best remember. He hated the Dread Empire. This might be his moment to enter a silent dagger and accelerate the destabilization begun with the deaths of her father and uncle... It hardly seemed possible that less than two decades had passed since the fall of the Princes Thaumaturge. The empire had had more masters and mistresses since than during all the centuries that had gone before.

Is the empire dying? she wondered. Is it an empire embarking on an era of decadence?

“Three and a half hours,” Lord Ch’ien said. “The indications remain positive.”

“Thank you. What’re the reports from our people in Western Army? I have a feeling Hsung is going to be trouble.”

Nepanthe lay with the baby at her breast. Outside, fell witchlight tumbled around the mountaintops like a playful litter of kittens. “Maggie,” she called softly. “Maggie?”

“Yes, My Lady?” The servant girl rose from where she had been dozing over her knitting.

“Where is Varthlokkur? Has he sent a message?”

“I’m sorry, Mistress. There’s been no word at all. Even the Queen is upset, they say. She hasn’t heard from the King in days.”

Slowly, Nepanthe turned her head till she could see the witchfire again. A deep sorrow possessed her. “What is that? Does anyone know?”

“They do say it’s the Dread Empire at war, Mistress. But not with us. No. Not this time. This time darkness stalks one of those faraway kingdoms you only hear about in stories.”

Nepanthe did not reply. She was no longer listening.

She was alone and scared. The presence of the serving girl did nothing to comfort her. Maggie wasn’t someone she knew, someone she could open her heart to, someone who wouldn’t laugh at her fears... Varth had promised that the baby wouldn’t be born here... Be reasonable, she told herself. The child wasn’t due for weeks.

She looked down at the hairless, wrinkled, red, tiny head. As if sensing her scrutiny, the baby wriggled, began nursing again. Nepanthe watched the little cheeks move and smiled.

Then she realized that the maid was still talking. Her question was getting far more answer than she cared to hear. “Maggie? Would you see if Queen Inger can come in?” She needed someone, and didn’t know anyone... She would have called for Mist, but her brother’s wife would be in the thick of whatever the men were doing. That woman only pretended to her sex. Inside that gorgeous body she was just another man.

Queen Inger came in a few minutes later. “Thank you for coming,” Nepanthe gasped. “I didn’t really expect you to. You have your own things to do.”

“I’m probably as desperate to talk as you are, honey.” The Queen was cool and blonde, tall and elegant. Truly regal, Nepanthe thought. Always in command of herself and her surroundings. “I haven’t seen Bragi for days.”

“Varth has been gone since the baby was born. I know he has things to do, but he could at least stop and say hello.”

“What’re they up to? Do you have any idea?”

“I don’t even know where Varth is, let alone what he’s doing.”

“They’re at the Chatelaine Mist’s house. Them and their cohorts. I know that much. What they’re doing is anybody’s guess. They won’t talk to anyone. Won’t even answer my messages.”

“You can bet it has something to do withthat. “Nepanthe levered herself out of bed, went and leaned on her windowsill. The Queen watched over her shoulder. “It never ends, Inger. I wish... No offense to you, understand. I wish Bragi had never come to Kavelin. We had nice homes in Itaskia. We weren’t important and we weren’t wealthy, and life was hard, but our families were all together and we were mostly happy. That damned Haroun bin Yousif... I hope he’s burning in Hell. If he hadn’t gotten Bragi and Mocker involved... “

“You can’t change anything. I think it was fated. If it hadn’t been Haroun, something else would have driven you out.”

Nepanthe turned, her eyes suddenly narrow. “That’s right. Duke Greyfells was your uncle or something, wasn’t he?” The Duke of Greyfells had been a mortal enemy of her first husband and the King when Bragi was just a mercenary.

“Another branch of the family entirely, dear. Our side never got involved in politics. I wish Bragi wasn’t now.”

“You don’t like being Queen?”

“I love being Queen. I just hate all the trouble and pain and conspiring and responsibility that goes along with it.” Nepanthe turned and stared into the distance once more. The sorcery-storm had developed a bilious, lime-colored tint. Sorcery. That too had dogged her all her days. It had claimed Ethrian. It devoured the innocent.

“Does Bragi ever talk about what happened? With Mocker?”

“No. He doesn’t want to remember. And he can’t forget. He’s haunted by it. Sometimes he wakes up in the night crying. Or shouting. He can’t convince himself that he had no choice. And he didn’t, you know.”

“I know. I don’t hold it against him. I’m saving my hatred for the people who made Mocker try to murder his best friend. I wish they weren’t all dead. If they were alive, I could dream about torturing and killing them.”

“He’d do anything to make it up to you, Nepanthe. He still feels that badly.”

“I don’t want anything, Inger. I have Varth and the baby. The only thing would be... Ethrian. I wish I could know for sure. If he’s dead or alive.”

“I thought they killed him after Mocker failed. That’s what everyone says.”

“Everybody thinks they did. But nobody saw it happen. And I keep getting this feeling that he’s out there somewhere, and he needs help.” She stared into the violent sky, began shivering. She didn’t mention her dreams. Varth always laughed at them. Inger might too. “Sometimes... sometimes I think Bragi and Varth know and they just won’t tell me.”

“Bragi hasn’t ever said anything to me.”

“I just wish Iknew. If you hear anything... Tell me. Please?”

Inger patted her shoulder. “Of course. Of course. What are friends for?”

I don’t know, Nepanthe thought. I’ve never had enough to find out.

The sky raged and swirled.

11 Year 1016afe

The Stone Beast Speaks

ETHRIAN AND SAHMANAN stood atop a hill. The broad expanse of the Tusghus rolled away below them. Ethrian squeezed a dagger so hard his knuckles whitened. “Damn!” He hurled the blade at the ground. It skittered into the brush. He could not find it again.

“What’s the matter?”

“We’re winning the battles and losing the war,” he snarled. “They’re eating us up. How do we get across this? There’re as many of them as there are of us. There isn’t anybody left for me to recruit.”

“Take them alive. You did that with some of the natives.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“They won’t let me. Their armor has spells that stop me.”

The earth shook. A column of fire rose a few hundred yards behind them. Trees smouldered.

Ethrian muttered, “Another three hundred men gone. Why do they clump up? I can’t keep them spread out unless I think about it every minute.”

“They still have memories. They don’t like what they’ve become. They huddle because it comforts them. Reach across the river. Find people who aren’t soldiers.”

“I’ve tried. There aren’t any. They’ve emptied the whole damned countryside.”

Fighting broke out south of the hill. The uproar approached, then drifted away.

The enemy no longer needed his transfers to shuttle his legions. He was using them tactically, launching small surprise attacks. Ethrian hadn’t the skill to detect portals left hidden on this side of the river.

“We can’t sit here forever,” Sahmanan complained. “We have to break loose and start recruiting.”

Ethrian’s hatred flared. It had grown geometrically since his assumption of the beast’s power. He marveled at himself. Sometimes he thought he had become quite mad.

Maybe the stone beast did beat me, he thought. I’m becoming the beast, hungry for destruction, hungry for human fear, impatient when I’m balked.

The beast hadn’t surrendered everything. It had given him nothing but its power over the dead. Its Word it had retained. Ethrian now coveted that.

Sahmanan suggested, “We could use flyers to drop men in the woods behind them. Pick off soldiers one at a time. Send them back to their units... “

“They can tell the difference. Nor could we move enough men quickly enough. We’ve got to try something new. Anything in your bag of tricks?”

“Nothing I haven’t already used. I have to keep my head down anyway. They’re getting me figured. I won’t survive another battle like the one at their fort.”

“Go get the Great One, then.”

“What?”

“Get the Great One. Go pry him out of his rockpile.” He looked across the river. What would the Word do to those earthworks?

He grinned as wicked a grin as any a madman ever produced.

Darkness wears a thousand masks, evil a thousand shapes.

He did not think himself changed. Outwardly, he resembled every youth his age. But the dark rot was spreading within. The cancer had grown from the seed planted by the Pracchia and fertilized by the stone beast.

They called him Deliverer, those whom he drove to their deaths again and again and again. He was on the brink of becoming the thing they proclaimed. Deliverer of Darkness. Messiah of Evil. Prince of the Left Hand Trail.

But no, he would protest. I’m just Ethrian, requiting evils done me and mine.

Sahmanan sensed the cancer. She understood its depth. A mistress of wickedness herself, she was appalled by its potential. She knew his ancestry. His grandfather was the wizard who had destroyed Ilkazar. His mother was a woman of the Power. The same blood had run in his father’s veins. He might become the greatest disciple darkness had known.

“Go get the Great One,” he told her.

She looked round with furtive glances, as if expecting the beast to be peeping from the brush. “Don’t ask me to return to slavery.”

Ethrian studied the river’s far bank. “Do we have a choice? We’re dead if we stand still.”

“Take a different path. Send the dead over till they’re destroyed. Go with me somewhere. We can start over. Let the Great One rot. Let him slide back to the hell where Nahaman and I found him.” Her passion amazed them both. She meant what she said. Like her sister, she had rebelled.

“So. You’re turning on me.” Ethrian’s words were as chill as the corridors of time. “I thought it would be the Great One who betrayed me.”

“Ethrian... “

“Get him. Or we fight amongst ourselves.”

Sahmanan looked past him. Dead soldiers were coming out of the woods. He meant it.

“You idiot!” She flung herself forward. Her impetus smashed him against a prehistoric granite monolith. He kicked her...

She sang a spell.

The world went white. Heat blistered Ethrian’s skin. He felt a big vacant place in his mind. Hundreds of soldiers had ceased to exist... He bellowed in rage. He had come close to killing himself.

The boulder and Sahmanan’s spell shielded them. He cursed, said, “One of us was thinking. Thank you.” Then, “I’m blind!”

“Your sight will return. Ethrian, don’t let hatred control you like that.”

After a time, “Sahmanan?”

“Yes?”

He said, “All right. It won’t happen again. I’m sorry. You still have to bring the Great One.”

She sighed. “All right. When the ground cools and we can leave the protection of the spell.”

Ethrian stood on the hill alone. A scimitar of moon rose behind him. He leaned on a spear, staring at the fires on the distant shore. Soon now, Lord Ssu-ma, he thought. I’ll break your will, you stubborn pig. I’ll carve the heart out of your empire. I’ll make it my own. I’ll find my father’s murderer...

But first he had to use the stone beast without falling under its control. And Sahmanan. What of her? How strange she had been this afternoon. What was that natter about escaping slavery?