The Nemesis Blade (32 page)

He did not
understand how stones of Luvanor could do this, or why his blood
should hear, but it was pure, beautiful music to his ears, the
words dancing in his mind. He sat a long time, listening,
pretending to study the array before him.

Were he to
reveal the depth of his involvement, it would mean his death. The
royal line would cease.

His hand came
out and moved the flakes. His hand rested there, covering them.
Such was the sign to the watcher an image had come.

Khunrath
looked up. “A city. I see a city built with the stone under my
hand.”

Silence.
Frowns.

“Is there
more?” Xtin asked.

If he said
more they would know he had heard or ‘seen’ beyond his known
abilities. He shook his head. “I see a massive city, Brother Xtin,
that is all.”

Collective
sighs greeted his claim. Then, “Oldar said the same thing.” Oldar
was a magician sequestered in the mountains. His uncle mentioned
him several times years ago. Oldar had to be a very old man by
now.

“Oldar also
said it was to replace this city,” another man said. He had not
spoken before. “And he said …”

“Yes, yes,”
the thin one interrupted. “Khunrath, we thank you for your help.
You may go now.”

Dismissed
before he could hear more. He rose, bowed low and left as an
obedient priest of the Brotherhood should.

“What now?”
Xtin asked in the silence after his leaving.

“We need to
bind him to this task. We need his blood to know the whole
picture,” the old, reed-thin man whispered. “But how?”

They did not
have to find the how, for Khunrath gave it to them.

The morning
after the augury anxious priests burst into the sanctum with news
of Khunrath half alive on the border of the northern forest,
bleeding amid lichen and rocks saying strange things. The core of
the Brotherhood thought they understood. The stones called to the
blood and poor Khunrath had no clue what was happening to him.

They hastened
to the site and it was where the stones began to vibrate and then
make unearthly music four months ago.

Xtin bent to
him first. “Khunrath, can you hear me?” There were cuts and grazes
on the man and his robes were torn as if he had been running wild
in the forest.

Khunrath
gargled.

The older man
swore. His name, Khunrath would soon know, was Xavier. “They called
to him. Poor man, and he does not know why. Get him up and to the
healers.”

“No! The music
speaks!” Khunrath screamed.

Xavier glanced
around. Too many witnesses. The priests, and a host of curious from
the city. “Clear the area!”

Within minutes
a wide band of open space formed between the curious and the more
curious situation in the crumpled man on the ground.

Xavier
kneeled. “Khunrath, can you hear me? What does the music say?”

“Huge city,
must start build today … war, defence, new races, must build
forever … start today!” Khunrath mumbled as if unwilling and
afraid.

“War?” Xavier
repeated.

“New races?”
another whispered.

“They come and
we must be ready,” Khunrath gasped. “We must delve into the
mountain … escape routes, big city, big walls, big stairs …”

“Can you see
the city?” Xavier asked.

“Yes! Pictures
in my head, plans … and the Plateau must be empty!”

“Why?”

“To muster our
armies, do you not understand? Extinction without armies, without
city in the mountain … blood on the rocks, needs my blood …”

“Why does it
need your blood?”

“Sacrifice …
sacrifice for images, gives drawings, plans …”

Khunrath
passed out. It was genuine unconscious; for he bled a little more
than was generally safe.

Xavier looked.
“He is bound and what he says rings true. Get him to the healers
right away.”

Thus it was
that the Great Plateau was emptied of all signs of the first city,
other than the Brotherhood Temple and the buildings necessary to
house those contracted to build a new one.

Luvans were
angered by the onset of abrupt change and even more angered by the
lack of explanation. Grumbles over the tyrannical behaviour of the
Brotherhood were heard, but they were deaf to the growing
dissention.

Khunrath, for
his part, stoked those fires, even as he gave of himself to the
raising of a city. The stones continued to sing to him, yet he
never revealed more than what was necessary to see it come to
pass.

Block by
block, it began. Foundations at the foot of the steep slope of a
majestic mountain, the foundations for a massive stairway. Then
came the foundations for the first tier. A gargantuan hole grew in
the mountainside as rock was delved from within to build without.
It was a twofold strategy; the rock was necessary and so were the
growing spaces inside the mountain. As the outer city was raised,
thus the inner one was delved.

It took two
years to remove Luvans from the plateau; it took four to do the
stairway. It took another ten to level the first tier and close to
eighty to finish the tiers to the point where the outer city met
the inner. There a huge portico was erected, and enormous arches,
manifold, entered the mountain.

Khunrath
married a woman from Kantar’s desert region and had six sons, and
he taught them the ways of magic, the secrets of the bloodline, and
left the kind of wealth they could not spend in five hundred years
of trying.

They heard the
stones sing and never revealed their truth to the Brotherhood.

Khunrath died
before the outer city reach the inner, but died knowing the time
approached when the royal line would reassume the reins of
rulership.

It took a
further two hundred years to finish the city.

It took most
of the wealth of Luvanor to complete it. It cost many lives. It
cost the Brotherhood much in status and trust, and yet at no time
was building stopped. The stones continued singing and it sang of
danger, war, new races and extinction.

Khunrath’s six
sons had sons and daughters of their own, and they, too, continued
the line. The wealth of the secret royals grew apace, and a strange
fatalistic patience gripped every member of the blood.

They were
prepared to sacrifice the status of their blood for a future where
the blood would step forth to claim and tame the fairest of all
cities.

The day came
when the last door was hung, the final window latch screwed in, the
last tile grouted and the final shine given.

Three hundred
years later, the shell of a city was ready.

Every sign of
the builders was removed from the plateau and new grass was laid
into the scars left by three centuries of trampling. The Temple
remained, an edifice made minute by what it faced. A new Temple
awaited within the mighty walls; the symbolic move would commence
once the city was consecrated.

All that
remained to complete the long labour were trees, flowers, the flow
of water. And people, their furniture, their animals, their
laughter and their hearts.

Hundreds of
thousands crowded the Great Plateau in awe of a mighty city.

In the
forefront were the ordered ranks of ten thousand priests, and five
thousand magicians.

Dispersed
among the crowd there were the royals. Dispossessed in year 40,
they were now ready to stand forth. They were wealthy and they were
many. They had chosen their king, generation after generation,
mostly eldest son to eldest son.

They numbered
over five hundred and were no doubt secretly recorded in the
Brotherhood’s lists, which had to be a cause for concern for the
esteemed brothers. Concern over their number, at the least, if not
for what they potentially knew of the royal line. The Brotherhood
was about to be shocked out of their dusty frocks.

It was Year
420 and the fairest of cities was ready to live.

The stones
ceased singing, for it had achieved its goal, and a new way would
soon supersede it.

Chapter 22

Telepathy
; a distant feeling, and
not to be confused with mind communication

Clairvoyance
; a clear seeing - a
seer is expert in this art

~ Titania
Dictionary

G
abriel gazed upon the city that was
part of a mountain.

It was
beautiful, bathed in the gold of afternoon sunshine, appearing both
new and as ancient as time. That, he saw years ago, was due to the
inherent properties within the stone itself. He squinted and saw
trees towering from among homes, heard the fresh tinkling of
fountains, saw riotous colour vying for supremacy in window boxes
and upon roof gardens, heard the sound of laughter - and the far
off clash of swords - and smelled the varied aromas of dinners upon
stoves and hearths.

He smiled.
That vision lay around the corner of the day, and it was his to
do.

If it were
left to the Brotherhood to fill the city, it would stagnate in laws
and rules of misplaced morality. Colour would be overlooked, trees
would be the kind that bore fruit, not purely for the joy of
decoration and shade in the heat of summer, and laughter would go
underground. That was not right. That could never be right.

His gaze
lowered to Valentin, present leader of the order of priests and
magicians, and noticed a rolled scroll in the man’s hands. Valentin
was a powerful man with fifteen thousand under his direct command,
and he was powerful in his own right, being an accomplished
magician and a notable orator. He could stir people by the power of
his voice alone.

Valentin would
not be easy to cow, but he, Gabriel, had prepared for this moment
his entire life and had three hundred years of patient blood to aid
him. He also had the entire royal family, without exception, to
support him. They had prepared for this occasion, never
complaining. And - in this his greatest strength - he would have
the people of Luvanor behind him. Luvans had had enough and more of
the Brotherhood.

Valentin was
unrolling the parchment. It was time.

Gabriel
stepped through the throng and it parted as if folk saw something
wonderful in him.

Five hundred
other royals surged forward unobtrusively, men, women and children,
the youngest child two months old.

The crowd felt
the movement and breathless anticipation grew. There was no
apparent reason and yet they knew change was in the offing.

Valentin was a
tall man with full beard and red hair. He was pale of skin,
aesthetic almost, as if more of the spirit than the physical, but
all Luvans bore that resemblance. He was not set apart by the
colour of his skin, only by the power of his position and
talents.

Gabriel was as
tall, his hair black, straight and long. It shone as he moved
purposefully forward and trailed him as he vacated a space. Many a
woman threw him an admiring glance.

Valentin
lifted the scroll and opened his mouth …

“The
consecration of this wondrous city should be spoken by one of royal
blood,” Gabriel’s voice sang out over the heads of the priests
between him and their leader.

Valentin
jerked around.

“After all,
Valentin, it was royal blood that envisioned and planned the city
we behold before us. And it was royal blood that was sacrificed to
the stones.”

There was
silence.

Gabriel came
to rest before a dumbstruck Valentin and put his back to the city.
His blue eyes caught, held and challenged the amber ones flaring at
him.

“Who are you?”
Valentin demanded.

Gabriel smiled
and as he spoke again his extended family broke through the ordered
ranks to array behind him as an honour guard.

“You know who
I am, priest, for I am on your secret list. However, for the
benefit of the crowd …”

“No!” Valentin
hissed.

Gabriel raised
his voice and it carried on wings to every ear and into every
heart, “I am Gabriel, direct in descent from Tunian by virtue of
the male line! I am the rightful ruler of Luvanor!”

Again the
silence.

“Luvans! This
is your king speaking! Long has the royal line been subjugated and
long has it awaited this day to reclaim its true heritage, but I
tell you now we did not forget! We did not die out! We did not fade
into obscurity! We were not idle …”

The waves of
sound drowned him out. Wave upon wave of acclaim. Roars, shouts,
screams, questions, good tidings, relief and joy, and in that lay
understanding change had already begun.

“You cannot do
this!” Valentin whispered.

“I just have,”
Gabriel smiled. He reached out to snatch the scroll from the
priest’s hands and a moment later it disintegrated. He smiled at
the man’s astonishment and spoke into his ear. “Do not cross me,
Valentin, for I am no boy and I am not a mere man. I have the
secret remedies and until yesterday I heard the stones speak … oh,
did you not know? They are silent now, for the city is risen.”

Valentin took
a pace back. “This is not over, upstart.”

“No doubt you
and yours will attempt certain ploys. Do so at your peril, priest,
for in this moment, this singular moment, I shall extend the
brotherhood a hand in friendship. We could co-exist peaceably and
learn from each other, or we could part now in enmity and your kind
will become outcast.”

“You cannot
hold the rabble long, Gabriel!”

Gabriel
shrugged and gestured over his shoulder. “A new city, fair and
clean, a new beginning. I shall invite artists of every persuasion,
families that desire to raise their children in harmony and fill
the streets with love and joy. Travellers will be made welcome and
Luvans will know they are respected, needed, loved and cherished.
They are no rabble, and I do not seek to hold them. They are free
and they will come freely.”