Rise of the Blood Royal

by Robert Newcomb

  Tristan thought for a moment as he tried to recall Miriam’s words.

  “Aeons ago, everyone here lived in a fragile and tense coexistence,” he said. “Then the Vagaries practitioners became fanatically devoted to the dark side of the craft. Eventually they split away and started the civil war. What followed was a miscalculation beyond description.”

  Wigg nodded. “Go on,” he said.

  “During the war’s early years the Vagaries rebels used especially dark magic to influence the forces of nature,” Tristan explained. “Spells were formulated that allowed them to employ natural phenomena as weapons of war. The destruction was unprecedented, and millions died. To survive, the Vigors practitioners had no choice but to do the same thing, even though it went against their principles.” Suddenly realizing something else, Tristan again glanced over at Mashiro.

  “These environmental spells are much like the forestallments, aren’t they?” he asked. “They represent a direction in which you would have preferred not to take the craft, but you had to follow the Pon Q’tar’s lead to ensure the survival of the Vigors.”

  Mashiro nodded. “Well done,” he said. “Please continue.”

  “Before the war started, what we now call Eutracia and Parthalon were part of this world,” Tristan added. “The Tolenkas didn’t exist, nor did the Sea of Whispers. The lands encompassing Eutracia and Parthalon were one and the same. Once loosed, the dark environmental magic produced devastating and unexpected side effects. The Tolenkas suddenly arose and the land mass separated, creating the Sea of Whispers. Since then these environmental and seismic arts have been abandoned by both sides because their far-reaching effects might kill their users as easily as the enemy. But the formulas were held in reserve by each side, in case the other should try such madness again.”

  Tristan looked at Mashiro. “The Pon Q’tar plans to resurrect these ancient arts, don’t they?” he asked. “The only reason why they abandoned them at all was because they knew that you could retaliate in kind. But with Vespasian among them, they know that if they imbue these gifts into his blood, Shashida will be defeated once and for all. Nothing could stand against the lethal combination of his blood quality and those dark arts.”

  “Well done,” Hoshi said. “But there remains much that you don’t know. Long ago, a treaty was signed between Rustannica and Shashida that outlawed environmental spells by both sides. Until now the Pon Q’tar has kept its word. Every Inkai you see here took part in the negotiations, and at first we had hoped for an outright end to the war. We were rebuffed on that score, but the Pon Q’tar did agree to ban the nature spells because they realized that more than anything else, those particularly powerful craft devices could mean their defeat. Gracchus and I were the treaty’s chief architects, and it was signed in the no-man’s land that is the Borderlands. Every Inkai and Pon Q’tar member signed the document. Many of those people are still alive. The Borderlands Treaty has survived the test of time, but we fear that the Pon Q’tar is about to violate it.”

  “How long ago was the treaty signed?” Tyranny asked.

  “One hundred and fifty-one centuries past,” Hoshi answered. “Each side agreed to never use this terrible kind of magic again. But two unique occurrences have intersected in time to tempt the Pon Q’tar into rethinking their position. One is the depletion of the Rustannican treasury, and the other is the birth and coming to manhood of Vespasian Augustus I. Had either of these events occurred separately, the Pon Q’tar mightn’t feel so emboldened yet also so deeply threatened at the same time. If the banned spells are used by Vespasian, he will summon unheard-of power. We have no wish to reply in kind, but if we are to survive, it seems we must fight back with a weapon of equal ferocity. Our use of such spells was stopped, but our research into their workings was not. Surely the Pon Q’tar has been doing similar, if not superior, study. In the entire world only the Jin’Sai’s blood and Vespasian’s are strong enough to accept these advanced but untried spells without dying. But the stakes might rise even higher than that. If Vespasian uses these gifts improperly, it could mean more than the destruction of Shashida. It could cause the vaporization of the entire planet.”

  Tristan sat quietly for a moment. “And you wish me to become a weapon like Vespasian, an ultimate destroyer of worlds,” he said. “I thought that my mission was to be one of peace.”

  “That was our wish as well,” Mashiro said, “and so we agreed to the Envoys’ plan. But as we have said, that prospect is dead. We asked for none of this, Jin’Sai. Now it seems that if we are to find a lasting peace, there is but one way. As I said, while the Pon Q’tar fights to destroy the Vigors, we fight to save both sides of the craft. Not to resist Vespasian and the Pon Q’tar would mean the end of Shashida. With our civilization gone, the Pon Q’tar could turn their full efforts toward finding a way across the Tolenkas to your side of the world. One day they will eventually succeed, or perhaps Vespasian might use his banned spells to do it for them. No matter how it happens, your sister and her meager forces will never stop them. Their next step would be to destroy the Vigors Orb, just as Wulfgar twice tried to do and failed. But the Pon Q’tar will not fail. With the Vigors destroyed, the world will plunge into a craftless, endless chaos from which it will never recover. The many gifts of peace, order, and balance that the craft provides will be no more, and barbarism will forever reign. The Pon Q’tar embrace a frame of mind in which madness is their only muse.”

  Tristan quietly looked around the table. The War of Attrition is indeed aeons old, he realized. And after all this time, things are about to change radically. Vespasian will be the catalyst of this seismic shift in the craft, and it falls to me to try to stop him.

  “There can be but one way that you are so well informed,” Wigg suggested. After taking another sip of umake he set the cup back on the table, then placed his hands into opposite robe sleeves.

  “You’ve placed a spy in their midst, haven’t you?” he asked. “Given the quality of your information, this must be a person of some importance in Rustannica. And brave, too, considering the heinous things we have heard about the place. You have my compliments. Inserting a spy into the upper reaches of the Rustannican power elite was surely no easy feat. I suspect that doing so took a very long time, and that this asset is of immense value to you.”

  “You are correct,” Haru replied. “Her name is Julia Idaeus. Not only is she the reigning Femiculi, she is also a member of the League of Whispers. The League is a secret society in Rustannica made up entirely of Shashidan mystics who feign loyalty to the empire and adopt Rustannican names. Unknown to the Pon Q’tar, two of the Priory’s many Sisters are League members. After gaining the post of Femiculi, Julia was able to influence the Pon Q’tar into unknowingly accepting another League woman into the sisterhood. Her name is Agrippina Sertorius.”

  “How did the League come about?” Tyranny asked.

  “During the early days of the war, the Borderlands did not exist, and it was far easier to enter Rustannica than now,” Midori answered. “We asked for volunteers of right-leaning endowed blood to go and live in Rustannica with the understanding that they could never return home. Tens of thousands of loyal Shashidan men and women offered to join the newly forming League. The selection process was rigorous. So as to constantly disguise his or her blood, each volunteer had to be an expert mystic. In the end, more than two thousand were chosen.” Renjiro took another sip of umake and looked around the table.

  “After being trained in certain specialized gifts, they were secretly inserted into Rustannica by way of azure portals,” he added. “To avoid being seen, they were sent to sparsely populated areas, then told to make their way to the cities and begin Rustannican lives. Because they had endowed blood and large sums of gold were transported with them, they soon became well-respected krithians. This part of the ruse was needed because only krithians can rise to positions of power in Rustannica. Most are acquainted with at least some of their fellow League members. If not, they
can identify one another by way of whispered code phrases that have remained largely unchanged for aeons. Despite their wealth and status, their lives are difficult, and they live in constant fear of being found out. Each member carries a death forestallment in his or her blood that allows for instantaneous suicide without need of a physical weapon. We could not grant them time enchantments for fear of drawing undue attention their way. To avoid the adulteration of their right-leaning blood and to maintain the survival of the League, they can only marry other League members. Finding a mate is often difficult, but they manage. To help in that regard, many marriages are secretly arranged at childhood.”

  “Do you mean to say that the League members now living in Rustannica were all born there?” Tristan asked. “They must have been, because so much time has passed. It would also follow that your spies are many generations removed from the people you first sent there, and that those first League members are long dead, and that your current spies have never seen home.”

  “That’s right,” Mashiro answered. “When children of right-leaning blood are born to two League members, they are raised by them. On reaching a responsible age they are secretly taught our customs and beliefs as well as those of Rustannica. In this way it was hoped that some of them might reach stations of prominence in the Rustannican hierarchy. Because League children are born there, their Rustannican heritage is not questioned, and there is no limit to how high they might rise. Long ago one League member rose to the rank of Heretic, but he was unknowingly killed in battle by our troops.”

  “But now there is Julia Idaeus, the Priory Femiculi,” Renjiro said. “Julia rose from humble beginnings and never took a husband or lover so that she might keep her virginity and apply for Priory membership. To our delight she was accepted, then worked hard and sacrificed much to become the reigning Femiculi. She is the first and only League member to become a voting member of the Suffragat, and her loyalty to Shashida is unshakable. Vespasian unwittingly made a great mistake when he ordered that Julia be a member of the committee responsible for devising the war plan. Julia is not only conversant with the entire scheme, but she also travels with the legions to perform the auspiciums. Because of her membership in the Suffragat, she must be informed of any changes to the battle plan. She communes with us when she can to supply us with vital information. She is also the lone Suffragat member to whom the citizens may come bearing their supplications. As such, she is well informed regarding the mood of the Rustannican citizenry. I daresay that she is more in touch with the common people than is Gracchus or Vespasian, which is yet another advantage to her position. We cannot overemphasize her importance to our cause.”

  “What are the ‘auspiciums’?” Wigg asked.

  “The auspiciums are yet another of the Pon Q’tar’s carefully crafted fabrications,” a male voice said from across the table.

  Tristan looked at the Inkai who had been introduced as Jomei of the House of Water Lilies. Like Mashiro, he wore a drooping white mustache, and battle scars crisscrossed his aged face like lines drawn on a wrinkled old war map. His long white hair was pulled behind his head and secured with the traditional gold ornament. Embroidered white lilies adorned his white silk robe. Like Faegan’s eyes, Jomei’s seemed to burrow straight into Tristan’s.

  “The auspicium is a ritual during which a host of white birds is released into the air by the reigning Femiculi,” Jomei added. “For propaganda purposes, this is usually done in full view of the populace, and always in view of the Suffragat. It is supposedly a sign of impending good or bad fortune and is performed before an important event. The direction in which the birds fly supposedly indicates whether the venture will succeed. As you might guess, Gracchus uses the craft to influence the birds’ direction of flight and thus help manipulate popular opinion.”

  “And Julia understands that the rituals of the azure flame and the auspiciums are clever frauds?” Tristan asked.

  “Yes,” Jomei answered, “but the Pon Q’tar doesn’t realize that she knows. In many ways Julia’s existence is a great contradiction. She spent her entire life trying to acquire and hold a position that she knows is meaningless, yet it is that same meaninglessness that allows her to serve the highest calling of her right-leaning blood.”

  “When will she next commune with you?” Wigg asked.

  “When she has important information and can safely do so,” Kaemon answered. “Because of her dangerous situation, the timing must always be hers. Her survival requires that she perform the most delicate of balancing acts—that is, deciding when her information is of enough value to risk performing a communion. It took aeons for a League of Whispers member to rise to such a lofty station as reigning Femiculi, and we can’t afford to lose her.”

  “You mentioned that Vespasian might not know that his blood holds the banned forestallments,” Tristan said to Mashiro. “What leads you to that theory?”

  “Julia informs us that the emperor has been behaving strangely,” Mashiro answered. “During a recent coliseum spectacle he was taken ill and had to leave. As far as we know, Vespasian has never been sick a day in his life. The banned gifts in his blood might be adversely affecting him. His recent episode is not proof of our theory, but Julia is watching him closely, and she will report any other aberrant behavior that she sees. The other reason is that he made no mention of the banned forestallments when he proposed this unprecedented campaign to the Suffragat. Had he known, he would likely have assured the Suffragat of his willingness to use every power at his disposal. Moreover, one of the Pon Q’tar—Gracchus, most likely—would surely have demanded it. This is not Vespasian’s first command. He has led other strikes into Shashida, some of them quite successful. Admittedly, not one of them was the size or scope of this latest one. But if he had known about his gifts during previous campaigns, he would have surely used them.”

  “Are you saying that the Pon Q’tar might have imbued these forestallments into his blood without telling him?” Tyranny asked. “Why would they do that?”

  “You must never underestimate the Pon Q’tar’s legendary paranoia,” Hoshi answered. “Their marked tendencies toward suspicion and distrust—even of others who share their blood lean—were one of the prime causes of the War of Attrition. Although Vespasian is the ultimate product of their depravity, that doesn’t mean that they trust him. Despite the emperor’s supreme command of the Vagaries, the banned spells are so powerful and tempting that if he knew about them, even he might be unable to resist their use. Doing so without the supervision of the Pon Q’tar could be disastrous, even to them. Or perhaps Vespasian’s blood or psyche wasn’t mature enough until now to survive the forestallments’ use and so the Pon Q’tar did not tell him. It stands to reason that the forestallments were granted to him while he was too young to remember, or while he was in a suppressed mental state induced by the Pon Q’tar, or both. With the maturation of his blood, these banned forestallments might be calling out to his mind, begging to be used. This could be the reason for his recent episode and why the empress seemed so eager to rush him away. Now that the Rustannican treasury is at the breaking point, had Vespasian not suggested this campaign, the Pon Q’tar would surely have proposed something very much like it. In a way, he played right into their hands. The Pon Q’tar’s ultimate weapon is ready for use, and his name is Vespasian Augustus.”

  “If that’s true, then why don’t they influence Vespasian to use his gifts straightaway?” Wigg asked.

  “For the Pon Q’tar, one need stands far above the rest,” Kaemon answered. “If Vespasian uses the banned spells first, our gold supplies might be scattered to oblivion. Remember, the research in banned spells that the Pon Q’tar has presumably carried out since the Borderlands Treaty likely remains untested. If so, even they cannot fully know what the results might be. Despite their other goals, the Pon Q’tar needs our gold to maintain order at home. The gold simply must be secured and sent back to Rustannica before Shashida is decimated. Even the Pon Q’tar can’t risk
national bankruptcy.”

  “But there is a more compelling reason why we believe that Vespasian’s blood carries these special gifts,” Hoshi said. “For research purposes, we once asked for a Shashidan volunteer of highly endowed blood into whom we might impart our own environmental spells. We had no intent to unleash them, but a host was needed to continue our studies. The results were much like what Julia sees in Vespasian, but far worse because of the volunteer’s less powerful blood.”

  “What happened to him?” Tristan asked.

  Hoshi’s face took on a sad look. “He succumbed to crippling mental terrors and died soon after,” she answered softly. “But he lived long enough for us to recognize the same signs in Vespasian, should Julia report them.”

  “There remains another reason why we must believe that Vespasian carries these banned spells in his blood and that the Pon Q’tar will soon unleash him on us,” Mashiro said quietly.

  “And what is that?” Wigg asked.

  “It’s too dangerous not to,” the worried elder answered softly.

  For several moments no one spoke. Tristan looked out through the colonnaded far wall into the lush gardens to see that night was approaching. There was still much to learn, he realized. But one supreme mystery still haunted him. It was the same one that had burned in his soul since first discovering the Caves of the Paragon and learning that his and Shailiha’s blood and destiny were special. He was the Jin’Sai, but even now he didn’t fully understand what that meant, or who he really was.

  “Miriam tried to tell me something just before she died,” he said to Mashiro, “but she never finished the sentence. She said: ‘Your parents weren’t…,’ and then she passed. Can you tell me what she meant?”

  “Perhaps,” Mashiro answered. “But it would only be an old man’s guess.”

  “Tell me,” Tristan asked.