Emperor of Shadows

by Mike Truk

  Pogo staggered, fell, and picked himself up. His broad mouth opened and closed several times as he sought something apropos to say, and failed at the sight of Yashara, still stone-clad and half destroyed.

  In the background I saw Havatier lurch to one side, find his balance, and turn in complete confusion to take in the scene.

  “Mithasa,” I said, bending over her stricken form, compelling her with my words. “Can you heal the half-orc?”

  The medusa’s myriad gaze cut to where Yashara stood, decapitated, shoulder and torso ruined. “No.”

  It was like being stabbed through the chest with a white-hot blade. A cry of rage tore itself from my lips, ripped out of my very being like a sapling from the earth, roots and all.

  Cerys was there, collected, focused, intent. “If we… if we reassemble her, put her pieces back together, use mortar to…?”

  “No,” said Mithasa again, blood painting her lips crimson. “The moment I bring her back she was fly apart in a welter of gore. She is gone. She is dead. Never will you see her again.”

  Was that joy in her voice? Some meager triumph over me in her last moments of pain and slavery?

  I stared into Mithasa’s golden gaze, knowing I was safe, and saw her victory. Or, perhaps more accurately, a basic pleasure in my being hurt, in her being the one to deliver the bad news to me.

  “Tell me the truth,” I rasped, and poured my will into her, seeking to obliterate any vestige of independence. “Can she be saved?”

  Mithasa stiffened, blood still pumping out of her wound, but in gentler ebbs now, not so insistent. “No,” she croaked. “She is dead.”

  “Get out of my sight,” I commanded. “Find healing for yourself, and then claim a room in Thorne Manor and await further orders there. Do not leave it. Am I clear? Go!”

  The medusa hissed in fury, but was unable to resist. With a cry, she fled through the door. I didn’t know if she’d survive. Knew somebody could help her with that grievous wound.

  Didn’t really care.

  I cast the blade aside as I turned to where Yashara yet stood.

  Standing frozen in her race forward to protect me from the enemy, her great scimitar in hand, every ounce of effort and power perfectly captured. Tall, powerful, regal - dead.

  Nobody spoke.

  I staggered to where her head lay, crashed down to my knees before her, and took it up. It was heavy, but I placed it in my lap, studying her features. The determination, the anger, the perilous will that had defied terrible odds over and over again.

  I brushed a dirty, blood-smeared finger down over the swell of her cheek. My vision doubled, then tripled, as tears scalded my eyes.

  Dead.

  “Master Kellik,” said Pogo from one side, his voice trembling with emotion, “is there… perchance… naught that can be done?”

  I shook my head, denying the reality of the situation, and looked up, searching for something that could make this situation right.

  To my horror, I saw Havatier’s remains, shattered and strewn across the floor, reduced to small chunks of rocks; only his feet and calves still stood where he’d been petrified.

  What little compassion I’d had compressed the coal stub of my heart into a gleaming diamond.

  “All of you,” I said, infusing my words with terrible power; for a second, every living being was caught up in the web of my control. “All of the guards who were in this room before I arrived.”

  The web of my power narrowed its focus, collected around the men who’d been busy rifling through Pogo’s papers and chiseling my friends apart.

  I rose to my feet, holding Yashara’s head with careful reverence in my arms. I turned to study them.

  There were sixteen of them. All dressed in the rough armor of the guard, none of them exceptional. Ages ranged from early twenties to late thirties, most bearded, all pale and terrified.

  Silence. Havatier had moved over to where Cerys and Netherys stood, all of them watching me with the startled fragility of surprised deer. Pony was moving slowly, step by hesitant step, to where Yashara stood. Pogo’s face was a study in abject misery.

  I thought of the light-hearted manner in which the guards had been destroying Yashara. The way they’d contentedly been going through our paperwork. The complete lack of concern, of humanity. All of this had just been a job to them. A meaningless job. Another set of lives ruined, but never mind. They’d get paid, get an ale, and forget all about it.

  “You’re scum,” I hissed. “You’re the reason Port Gloom is the shithole it is. The powerful give commands, but it’s people like you - amoral, unthinking - that make their power possible. You killed the woman I loved. So now I’ll kill you.”

  “Kellik,” began Cerys, stepping forward, hand outstretched.

  “Cut your own throats,” I rasped.

  The sixteen men startled, shivering, jaws clenched. As one they fought me, their screams silent but somehow echoing in my mind.

  A mind which I closed like a steel vice about their wills. Wills which I crushed and made mine.

  As one they drew their daggers.

  Cerys ran to my side. “Kellik, no!”

  I stared, eyes stony, feeling nothing, as the sixteen men slit their own throats with convulsive slashes of their blades. They fell to the ground, unable to follow my commands any longer.

  Pony dropped to his knees before Yashara and let out a mournful wail that grew steadily in volume until it seemed to echo within my head, a desolate cry of loss that perfectly encapsulated what I was feeling. My heart jerked painfully in my chest, and I couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything other than clench my fists and jaw and stare blindly at the stone head in my arms.

  When the sound died down and some measure of self-control returned to me, I turned my bleary gaze to Veserigard, who flinched as if I’d whipped him.

  “Arrange for Yashara’s remains to be gathered - every piece of stone - and transported to Aurelius’s manor. Do the same for Havatier’s.”

  “Yes, my lord,” whispered the older man.

  “The rest of you,” I rasped. “We’re returning to the manor. We’ve a war to plan.”

  Nobody spoke. The rich tang of spilled blood filled the air, and I knew it would take them some time to come to terms with what had happened - what would continue to happen. The reality of our new existence.

  And I wished more than anything at that moment that Iris was still by my side. Iris with her dark understanding of the world, her matter-of-fact pragmaticism. Iris, who would know why I had done what I’d done, and stand unflinchingly by my side as I set to what needed to be done next.

  Cradling Yashara’s stone head in my arms, I strode out of that charnel room, and back into the sewers.

  * * *

  I sent the others ahead in the carriage, choosing to walk through Port Gloom with only Pony by my side.

  Taking a stroll with a war troll, even during the pre-dawn hours, can cause a stir.

  But fuck it. I didn’t care. I pulled my cloak tight around myself, let the heavy hood hang low, and strode along down the center of the street, Pony looming by my side.

  It felt damn good to have him back. Like some vast primordial force was once again at my side, a deceptively simple force whose silence belied complexities I was only now beginning to appreciate. He didn’t make small talk. Didn’t ask me hard questions. Didn’t try to show sympathy or understanding.

  He simply walked alongside me; one fist hanging so low it near dragged along the cobbles, the other clenched around the haft of his ridiculously huge warhammer that he carried propped upon his bony shoulder.

  People startled in shock and then shrank back in fear. More than a few raced into their homes or down random alleys, determined to get away.

  I ignored them all, but as we drew close to the edge of the Noose, that morass of alleyways and disreputable homes, I began to realize what I was doing.

  The purpose behind this stroll.

  A phalanx of guards appeared ah
ead. A dozen armored men, pikes at the ready as if anticipating a charge, lined up behind their sergeant, who to his credit looked calm. He watched the pair of us approach, eyes narrowed, hands on his hips.

  But before he could get in a word, I raised my voice. “Clear out of our way, don’t follow us, and don’t cause us any trouble.”

  The guards stiffened, hesitated, then shuffled aside.

  We marched past them, not moving any faster, nor any slower. Merely strode on by, the guards watching us from the side of the street.

  We emerged into a broader avenue, the Noose behind us, and there I finally slowed and stopped. Up ahead, between the buildings, I could catch a glimpse of the Snake Head, roiling its way past countless wharves and docks to the Bay of Ruin far out of sight to the left. The Provost’s tower speared into the morning sky in the distance. Traffic was picking up, mostly donkey-pulled carts, the last of the dust men retreating to their yards. Crowds were sweeping back and forth, street urchins darting amongst them like minnows through schools of larger fish.

  Another dawn on the streets of Port Gloom.

  Our emergence from the narrow street caused some measure of consternation. But such were people’s shock and confusion that momentum swept them past us before they could really register what they were seeing.

  A few moments more, however, and the general crowd would catch on. The screams would start, the chaos would mount, and there’d be no going back.

  You could maybe get away with walking a war troll through the Noose. But getting through the Market District with one?

  I stood there, feeling obstinate, dour, sullen. I wanted to hear the screams. I wanted to cause chaos. I wanted to force my will upon the city, to break its laws, to reshape its rules.

  To walk a war troll all the way to the Palace District, and norms be damned.

  But no.

  While I knew I could do it - nobody could stop us - the consequences would be too complicated, too messy. No matter how blood-minded I felt right now, I knew I’d come to regret it.

  So I patted Pony on the knee and turned, stepping back into the Noose.

  Without a word, Pony turned and followed after.

  A covered wagon would get us to Aurelius’s estate. But that could wait. I wasn’t ready to face the others. To explain myself. To defend my actions. To begin formulating plans.

  No. First I could use a drink.

  We found the tavern off an alleyway so narrow Pony could barely squeeze down it, much less under the lintel and inside.

  It was more of a dark burrow than a room, the walls curving in above us, raftered and blackened by decades of foul lantern smoke. The bar was a rib scavenged from some ship’s carcass, its once fine wood now scarred and pocked and burned. Sodden shapes slumbered at low circular tables, with only a few doughty souls having made it through the night to greet the dawn, final tankards set before them.

  So gone were the clientele that nobody but the bartender cared that a war troll had just entered the premises.

  “Two of your strongest,” I said, sitting at the bar.

  The tender was a city troll, scrawny and scarred, one-eyed and lugubrious. His sole eye widened almost comically at the sight of Pony, and he bobbed his head obsequiously, recognizing a predator of a higher order before splashing two tankards full of some noxious, clear liquid.

  Pony simply squatted beside me, large enough to remain level with the bar, against which he propped his sledgehammer. His bat ears flicked, twisted about like those of a cat as he listened to the different sources of sound both within the bar and without; otherwise he stared ahead, expression stoic, settled, still.

  The liquor was as bad as it smelled, better suited to cleaning tar off jolly boats than drinking. My eyes watered, my throat burned, but I didn’t particularly care. I doubted alcohol could do much to my system these days. So I quaffed the lot of it down, gagging and tearing up, then pushed the tankard across to the city troll.

  “One more.”

  The tender didn’t argue. Simply poured.

  The wall across from me was covered in crude shelving, upon which mostly empty bottles stood, their bodies enshrouded with cobwebs. Nothing much to look at, but that suited me fine.

  Yashara’s head was a weight in the bag I wore slung over one shoulder. A weight I never wanted to let go of.

  Here, now, at last, I forced myself to think about what I’d do next. My bloodless plans from before seemed insufficient.

  Eddwick had changed things.

  He’d resisted my commands, which meant that the other Aunts and Uncles would be similarly immune – and created a whole host of questions. Where had Aurelius acquired these demons, and the ability to implant them in his most important lieutenants? Why had he done so, when his power over them had been supreme? And who was this Arasim?

  If the Aunties and Uncles were now immune to king troll powers due to having demons within them, that meant he couldn’t simply walk into their bases and command them to kneel before him.

  He’d have to kill them all.

  Would they choose to stay in Port Gloom or flee? No doubt they’d felt Aurelius’s commands lift from their souls. Would they seek to take advantage of his death by clawing for more power, or by escaping while they could?

  Chaos. Even without walking Pony across the breadth of the city, chaos would soon stalk the streets, bloody-handed and with a death’s head grin as former slaves explored their new freedoms.

  And not just the Aunts and Uncles. Not just the Family. But the politicians in the Star Chamber, the Provost himself. And who knew whom else? Just how many people had been under Aurelius’s sway? What would they all do now that they were free?

  Actually, somebody did know.

  Veserigard.

  The first order of the day then was to discover the extent of Aurelius’s empire and how he’d run it. The resources he’d availed himself of, the powers at his command.

  Then he’d visit the councilors of the Star Chamber. Svanis, Berachul. Magistrate Mellonis. Solidify his control over them, ensure that they were acting in the best interests of the city.

  He’d then turn his attention to crushing the Family. Rooting out the Aunts and Uncles, one by one. Tearing down the whole sordid organization, ripping it out without qualm or mercy.

  With the government under his control and the Family destroyed, Port Gloom would be his. Heart and soul. His to reshape and form as was best. His to heal, his to restore. To make good on the changes he’d sought to make as the Count of Manticora. To bring dignity and power to the poor and downtrodden.

  Yes.

  That felt right.

  That felt good.

  The door opened, and Pony swiveled his head around to stare at the new arrival.

  Something he’d not have done for just about anybody else.

  The man’s presence washed over me like dawn frost. Crackling and clear. I half expected ice crystals to spread out over my knuckles and the tankard of liquor, to form constellations across the ruinous surface of the bar.

  Where my arrival with Pony had caused little stir, this man’s caused even the drunkards to raise their heads blearily and blink, only to stagger to their feet with slurried curses as they shambled toward the back of the room.

  Silence but for the distant sounds of the city.

  Then the man approached, moving slowly, with dignity, to step up to the bar beside me.

  Only then did I glance up to take in his dour countenance. Skin as pale as bone, hair lank and the color of milk. His features were striking, powerful, with an air of faded glory, like the sun espied just above the horizon through thin cloud cover, shorn of its radiance. He wore a great wolf pelt over his shoulders, black as coal, and an iron breastplate beneath that, rimmed with gold.

  Baleric, Exemplar of the Hanged God.

  “How’d you find me?”

  “Word reached me that a man was walking the Noose with a war troll.” Baleric’s voice was smooth and rich like aged whisky, calm and
composed like the tomb. “Wasn’t hard to track you down.”

  “Fair enough.” I took up the tankard, drank a mouthful of fire, set it back. “You convene with your Sepulchros?”

  “I did. Though we lack understanding of what took place in the Star Chamber. You directed the Dream Eaters against your father. How?”

  “Old trick of mine. I could summon them now to take you if I wanted.”

  His gaze slid sidelong to transfix me where I sat. “I think not.”

  “No, probably not. That card’s been played. But it was played well. The king is dead. Long live the king.”

  “You mean to take Aurelius’s place?”

  “If I did, would you serve me?”

  The coldest of smiles. “I think not.”

  “Then why’d you serve my father?”

  “Your father reigned in Port Gloom for more centuries than I can guess at. This was his city, through and through. The Church of the Hanged God had reached an arrangement with him long before I was born. An agreement that was mutually beneficial.”

  “And you see no benefit in entering the same agreement with me?”

  “Why would I? You are young, foolish, and of uncertain temper. What are your goals, Kellik? Why should the remaining powers of Port Gloom not rise against you while you are yet unestablished?”

  “Because,” I said, slowly turning my tankard back and forth, “that would be very foolish of you all. My powers have grown, Baleric. Something about my father’s death. I wonder. If I were to give you a command right now, might you not obey?”

  That cold smile returned to his pale lips. “I am an Exemplar of the Hanged God, and favored amongst even his chosen. Aurelius never tried his might against that of my god. I would advise you to show the same restraint.”

  A pause as I considered it. To have Baleric dance to my tune. Something about that felt… off. Wrong. I wasn’t quite sure why. Perhaps it was the man’s inherent dignity. Or the fact that, if my commands failed, I’d surely be starting a fight I had no hope of winning.

  Even with Pony by my side.

  “My goals. You are aware of my stint as the Count of Manticora?” His silence was answer enough. “I aim to continue in the same line of pursuit. Change things around so that the people at the bottom of the ladder have a chance of climbing to the top.”