“Since I passed out my stupid pamphlets and got my entire family arrested. An operative of the Mysterium, perhaps it was Hellsword himself, ordered my release if I agreed to serve as a spy. The propaganda I make is used to track the movements of traders and informants amongst those who would conspire against the empire.”
“And Gewain?”
“He was a special job. I was sent to infiltrate the Army of Free Peasants and help bring them low. Gewain’s tastes were well known and I never much minded who I lay with as long as they were comely.” Rose took another drink from his wine bottle. “I was ill suited for undercover duty, but knowing I’d be flayed alive if I revealed my allegiances, I managed to stay on the straight and crooked path of spying on them.”
I nodded. “Are there any actual noblemen in the inn?”
“Yes. Yes, there are. Quite a lot of them. Hellsword had the plan to gather all our enemies together and wipe them out in one go. I thought he was going to arrest them. Not…”
“Summon demons and start a purge?”
“That was Redhand’s doing,” Rose hissed, his speech slurred. He took another drink of his wine bottle. “He’s the monster.”
I didn’t feel like telling him that it was Hellsword’s magic that had summoned the Ice Demon. “Many Fir Bolg are dead.”
Rose looked down at his bottle, now almost empty. “Many I knew. I’ve been working out of here for months. Some of which I knew as friends, lovers, and compatriots. Gewain has always been open about our relationship.”
“A quality common in his family.” I stared at him. “Why continue to serve the empire, though? Is it because of your family being threatened?”
“No, they were released. They never shared my politics anyway. All a bunch of Codex-thumping empress-worshipers.” Rose snorted. “I served for my own reasons after the first few months—at least until Gewain.”
“For curiosity’s sake, would you tell me what you see in the Nine?”
“Or you’ll kill me?”
“That’s likely to happen either way.”
“I understand,” Rose said, taking one last drink before throwing the bottle against wall across from him. “To answer your question, the Isle of Gibborim. That’s the argument my superiors in the Mysterium gave me and it’s stuck with me to this day. Even now, having seen all the horrors there, I think the Nine probably have the right of it.”
I knew of the isle. “It was a useless lump of rock in my time.”
“It’s a useless hunk of rock in my time.” Rose sighed. “Ten years ago, three years before the Fifth Great Shadow War, was subject of a war that killed fifty-five thousand men and women. Soldiers and peasants both.”
“A terrible war.”
“One of seven fought that year and that was a normal year. There has never been a single time when the Southern Kingdoms have not been at conflict. For ten ages, war has been our favorite pastime, sport, and luxury.”
“I know better than most.”
“Do you?” Rose asked. “Then you should know that Empress Morwen is a tyrant. She murders men, women, and children by the thousands. Great structures have been torn down, libraries burned, and draconian punishments have been instituted continent-wide.”
“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”
“No, buts. However, many believe it is worth it to bring an end to the fighting. No matter how many are killed, it is a drop in the bucket to the sorrows brought about by the stupidity of previous rulers. The Old World is falling and I wish to see the New World rise—united, advanced, and peaceful. I believe Empress Morwen can do that.”
That I understood. “Did you have your lover arrested?”
“No,” Rose said, looking down. “Gewain was someone that I argued would be better to subdue the discontent. He was going to be offered a vast amount of wealth, land, title, and more if he would turn the rabble against itself.”
“Despite the fact they murdered his family.”
Rose looked down. “I could have persuaded him.”
“I doubt it. Not if he’s anything like Regina. You also betrayed his sister to death. If not for my arrival, Hellsword would have slaughtered Ketra and her dragon before they reached the shores of the North.”
Rose looked like he was going throw up. “Redhand made me talk. He was panicked about the fool’s errand to the North.” Rose snorted. “To be honest, I didn’t even think you really existed until you showed up at the docks. I’m glad Ketra survived, though, no matter how many she’s killed. Funny, that.”
“Not really.”
“I’m ready…or at least good and drunk.” Rose closed his eyes and waited for death.
I made a choice. “I’m not going to kill you.”
Rose opened his eyes. “Why?”
“Because I, too, know something about doing terrible things for the greater good. Leave this place and never return. Tell, also, that I am merciful to those who surrender.”
“And to those who don’t?”
“Sometimes I am merciful to those, too.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Serah was waiting for me at the top of the cellar stairs. She was soaked with sweat, her hair hanging down loosely over her shoulders, and leaning heavily on the Heart of Midnight. There was soot on her face and side of her robes was torn by an arrow, though the wound had been healed over with magic.
My wife had dropped the illusions around herself that rendered her inhumanly beautiful and now was slightly above plain, at least, to those who did not see her passionate determination to make the world better.
The sounds of people organizing underneath the barrier as well as the attacks against it were in the distance but most of the chaos and grief had died down. I could feel the anger and rage in the air, though.
It was palpable.
“Is Rose dead?” Serah asked.
“Yes,” I lied, my voice still sounding like an echo of hell. I should have told her the truth but Serah would have called it sentimentality and killed him. I wanted Rose to live, despite everything. Perhaps because every little bit of mercy I showed was another piece of my soul I could hang on to. “He admitted to being one of the empire’s agents.”
“Best to keep that a secret,” Serah said, taking a deep breath. “Morale would not be improved in this group to know Gewain’s second was setting all of the people up here to die.”
“I don’t think he knew the full lengths the local rulers were willing to go. I’m not quite sure I understand it myself. What is going on here?”
Serah held out her hand in front of me and waved it, creating an illusion of a human form around me. I suspected she knew my true form would do little but terrify the locals. Reformed or not, the Dark Lords had been figures of evil in the Southern Kingdom’s scare stories for millennia.
“That I can provide some answers for,” Serah said, pausing. “They bother me in their implications.”
“Your reaction to meeting me, the Lord of Despair, was to seduce me and join in my quest to gain godlike power. If something is bothering you, it must be terrible.” The illusion changed my voice as well, causing the raspy hiss of a wraith to translate into something a little less terrifying.
Serah gave a half-smile. “Your sense of wit is one of the only things that gets me out of bed some days, Jacob.”
“That and the prospect of ruling the world.”
“Don’t forget unlimited knowledge and power,” Serah added, now fully smiling. It quickly turned pained. “I’ve figured out what they’re doing here. When the battle was joined, almost all of the deaths diverted the energy somewhere else.”
“You’re saying they’re working blood magic here?” I shouldn’t have been surprised. Jassamine had been a master of it and passed it along to all of her apprentices. Forbidden Sorcery was now increasingly common.
Not that I was one to talk anymore.
Serah nodded. “I was originally of the mind they’d turned the Fire Districts into one gigantic sacrificial altar. Then I sen
t a sending out and I’ve found glyphs and runes carved into the stone throughout the city.”
There were few things that shocked but this did. “The entire city?”
Serah looked up at me. “Yes. They’re collecting the energies of the dead and funneling them to a geomancy point somewhere in the Palace District. It’s not as good as if it had been done with the proper rituals but quantity has a quality of its own. That’s why they’ve got all their troops prepared to attack the city. The rebels and Fir Bolg look like they’re summoning demons and are slaughtered along with all the people inside the Fire Districts before the soldiers clean up the mess. Thousands upon thousands of dead, their life-energy funneled to Hellsword and Redhand.”
The implications were staggering. “What could the want with that much power?”
Serah snorted. “You are a very poor God of Evil if you cannot think of possible uses.”
“I have never maintained otherwise.”
Blood magic wasn’t the most powerful form of magic, that was the manipulation of names, but it was the easiest and most plentiful in terms of results. Every human being contained mystical life-force that could be harvested at the moment of death for great power. It was a forbidden form of sorcery, everywhere but Natariss, but the Nine Heroes made ample use of it in outfitting both the Shadowguard as well as their proxies.
Jassamine, in particular, was considered the most powerful Blood Magus who ever lived. Serah dabbled in the art, despite my encouragement for her to abandon it, and I had no real leg to stand on since I often used the life force of my enemies to heal the wounded of my allies. Still, even the most ruthless kings and queens I’d known would have balked at murdering one of the oldest cities in the world for magical power.
It was madness.
“Stretch out with your feelings. You’ll sense the complicated wards and rituals throughout the city.”
“All right.”
Following her advice, I felt around the city to see if there truly was such a network of enchantments woven into the city’s stonework. What I found was a complex network of interlocking symbols that were designed to maximize the amount of energy collected in artificial ley-lines centered around the Palace District. The pool of mystical energy was a lake of magical energy, gathered in an amount that I had never seen outside of the supply underneath Everfrost. It put Ethinu’s astral mansion to shame and I couldn’t help but imagine several terrifying scenarios where they harvested such a collection of magical energy to lay waste to the North. “They could be planning to use it to destroy Everfrost with a volcano, tear open a rift to the World Above, summon the Lawgiver fully into this reality, devastate the Northern Wastelands with earthquakes, conjure a host of engel minions, bring forth the ancient Typhon war-beasts from the bottom of the ocean, re-animate the Guardians of Kerifas, become gods themselves—”
Serah raised a hand to silence me. “Yes. We can’t invade the city now. Any battle runs the risk of them turning that wellspring upon our forces and annihilating them outright.”
I processed this new bit of military information and thought of the old saying that described a situation fucked up beyond salvation. “We are fucked.”
“Yes, yes, we are,” Serah repeated.
I smirked. “At least until we kill Hellsword and Redhand then confiscate the wellspring for ourselves.”
Serah blinked. “That’s…a straightforward plan.”
“Imagine what we could do with such power.”
Serah beamed, the possibilities whirling behind her eyes. “We could bring an end to this war before it begins. Though, whatever they’re doing is going to require the death of the city and I doubt we’re going to let that happen.” She paused. “Unless—”
“No, Serah.”
“Thought not.”
“Can they use it to break down the barrier you’ve erected?”
Serah didn’t hesitate. “Yes. It would require sacrificing large amounts of power, though. The barrier I erected around the Fire District isn’t fueled by the sacrifices I made. I’m powering it directly from Everfrost’s link to the World Below.”
In laymen’s terms, she’d killed a bunch of people to open a link to Hell and it was going to take all of Hellsword’s blood magic to break it down.
“But they can break it down.”
Serah nodded. “Yes, if they want to sacrifice all the energy they’ve gathered so far. Which, strategically, they should. Killing us would prevent massive bloodshed. The fact they don’t means they’ve got something bigger planned than our deaths.”
That did not bode well. “We should rejoin Regina and see if we can salvage this whole Jarl thing as well as recruit the local resistance. None of that is going to matter in the short term, though, and we need to begin plotting taking Hellsword and Redhand out now.”
“Agreed.”
I started to walk past her when she grabbed my arm. A brief look of nausea passed over her and I wondered how gods felt when they physically touched a Wraith Knight. Taking her hand away, she said, “We need to discuss something first.”
“Oh?”
Serah looked over toward the center of the Fire District. “I cannot help but think Regina will never forgive me for my role in endangering her sister, especially given her injuries.”
“She will not hold Hellsword against you.”
“She does.” Serah sighed. “Not necessarily that I was lovers with one of the Usurpers, though that’s a slap in the face to her, but that I lied about it for so long. Regina didn’t know I was Hellsword’s lover before today. I told you about the Oghma and my membership before her too. This is a side of me I’ve never shown her and I managed to keep hidden from her for close to a decade. It is a side I’ve only ever been comfortable showing you.”
I wanted to point out she hadn’t been all that comfortable showing me that side of her either. I had already forgiven her for those past associations, though. One could not be the God of Evil and cast stones. “Regina is a woman capable of great forgiveness and mercy. Not to the Nine Usurpers or the Anessian Empire, this is true. She is a woman who will hold an everlasting loathing toward them for as long as the sun shines in the sky. Nor to the Lawgiver, for being the party responsible for them and Jassamine. Not for—”
“You’re not helping, Jacob.”
“But she forgave me,” I said, staring at her. “I was the Dark Lord of Despair. I was a Wraith Knight, a monster of immeasurable evil mothers told their children about to scare them into good behavior. I was the horror that lived in the bed and in the closet. Regina grew up with these stories the same as every other girl and boy in the empire. Yet, she looked past them to see the person beneath.”
Indeed, I believed Regina saw more good in me than I did myself.
“That is what I’m afraid of,” Serah said, sighing. “I fear forgiveness more than condemnation.”
“You are a good person, Serah.”
“I’m not. I gave up on being a good person long ago, Jacob. I embraced the evil in my heart when I decided to be the monster everyone thought I was. Regina reminded me I could be otherwise, so I pretended. It was always a lie, though, an illusion. You, you live with the darkness in your heart every day and deny it—or try to, at least. Now I’ve potentially led Regina to ruin and the rest of the continent with her.”
“Ruin?” I asked, looking up at the dome above our heads. “We’re trapped in a bubble and surrounded by enemies who can destroy us outright on a whim, but that’s not the worst situation we’ve ever found ourselves in.”
“I can’t stop thinking about Morrigan’s prophecy.”
“So that’s it.” I shook my head. “I do not believe in Morrigan’s prophecy. I believe the only reason it is relevant is because other people do.”
“Yet, you saw the destruction of the World Between in your visions.”
“I see a lot of things,” I said, placing my hand over my heart. “I believe victory is possible, though.”
“And if it’s n
ot?”
“I believe death is preferable to being the Lawgiver’s slaves. There are some things worse than death and countless generations brainwashed into believing nothing but his lies is worse than extinction.”
“Do you believe that, truly?”
I searched my heart. “Yes.”
It was a lie. Morrigan’s prophecy nagged at me and I couldn’t help but wonder if there was something to it. I had seen the destruction of the world if Regina and the Lawgiver fought but it was only one of many potential futures. Had Morrigan truly seen so clearly into the myriad possibilities? If so, was it possible to avert her predictions? If not, then why put them down in the first place? It made no sense.
Only the Trickster and the Lawgiver knew the truth.
Oh, how right you are, the Trickster said. The answer is in front of your face but invisible to those who cannot see past their own prejudices.
Could you be any less helpful?
Not for lack of trying.
Serah looked down. “I wish I shared your certainty.”
“Regina loves you and that is not easily broken. I believe in you. I believe in us. That is enough.”
“For you, maybe. For others? Not so much.”
In truth, I wasn’t sure how Regina would react. She did believe what we were doing was righteous and just, that there was no moral equivalence between us and the Nine Usurpers. At the end of the day, we were good and they were evil. I was, honestly, surprised that she was as comfortable with the Golden Arrow as she was.
Then again, perhaps Ketra was closer to her cousin than I’d given her credit for. Regina might well believe their search for a homeland was justified, no matter their vile measures. Regina believed in a good and an evil with the measures to destroy the latter broad and uncompromising. It was not the kind of worldview that contained much room for compromise and forgiveness, though.
Not even of one’s spouse.
“Blame Hellsword for everything,” I said, deciding on what to tell Serah. “He was the poison in your ear that turned you to the darkness. A darkness that you have now rejected. Say that it is his darkness which led you astray and you have rejected him. Beg for forgiveness and say that you merely feared her reaction. Let her know you were young, naïve, and easily manipulated by those above you.”
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