Wraith Lord

by Phipps, C. T.

  Now she was nothing.

  “Did you know her…well?” Regina asked, her implication clear. There was no reproach, but I resented the implications.

  “Not very well.” I got her implications and wondered at her jealousy. I had only loved two other women in my life and would never love another. “I did, however, like spending time with her. Friendship is a gold coin in a sea of bronze when everyone believes you to be a god king or a monster.”

  Nerissa had been distressingly normal in a sea of monsters and madman. Albeit, not so normal to run screaming from this place. Her loss was not so great amongst the hundreds I’d experienced in my lifetime.

  But it still stung.

  “I see.” Regina looked away. “They killed them both while I was here, silencing witnesses to their dirty work. Do you know the other one?”

  I looked down to the drowned man with white skin. “No.”

  “We’ll find out,” Regina said. “Make sure his family, if he has any, want for nothing.”

  “Of course.” I doubted he had any. Everfrost had become a home for those who had no other place to go. It was a kingdom for the lost, damned, and forgotten.

  Not so forgotten today, the Trickster said. Or did you really think you could hide at the Eyes of the World and no one would ever come looking for you?

  No, but I’d hoped.

  “Was it Morwen or Jassamine?” Regina asked.

  “House Rogers,” I said, surprised by that information itself. “Though, truth be told, there was no way it was done without the Nine’s approval. It did not take much to get the guards to talk. They always assume I’m going to torture them. They aren’t prepared for other methods. Each of them turned on the other when I indicated they’d already been betrayed by a compatriot.”

  Regina closed her eyes, looking close to tears. “I once admired House Rogers. They were everything a Great House of the Empire should be: stalwart, militant, honorable, and brave. Every one of their sons and daughters served in the Imperial Army or Shadowguard. Their piety was legendary, too, creating three saints in the entirety of its four-age history.”

  “They also purged all the Fir Bolg in their duchy.”

  “Yes.” Regina growled. “I don’t even remember the reason. I think they just needed the money. They used the Golden Arrow’s attacks to justify it, even though none had launched any assaults in their territory for a century.”

  “Perhaps they hoped to curry favor with the empress.”

  “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “No.”

  House Rogers had been one of the greats in my time, a collection of shining knights and mighty sorcerers just like Regina described them. The truth was, though, they had also been selfish egotistical bastards who treated their peasantry like fodder. Percivus Rogers had been dubbed by historians as the Shining Sword of Heaven for his role during the Fourth War, and I knew him to be a man who regularly took slave girls from conquered territories before giving them to his men after he was done with them. His sister had been worse. Monster and hero. How many figures of legend were both?

  Some? All? I couldn’t say.

  Regina stood up and stared at the wall of pornography then sighed. “I’ve been overlooking my duty.”

  I did not like the tone of her voice. There was resoluteness there that should not be made in this sort of situation. The kind of anger that led to poor decisions. I had made many under similar circumstances. “Your duty is to rule here.”

  “Our duty is to stop evil,” Regina said, looking back. “We’ve been lax here. Lazy and indulgent.”

  I shook my head. “I think the word you’re looking for is happy.”

  Regina squeezed her right hand into a fist. “I want to build an army, one capable of destroying the empire and liberating its territories from the empress’scontrol.”

  “We have an army.”

  “We have a good-sized one, yes, but there are countless holdouts and loyalists. People who don’t acknowledge you as the King Below or me as your equal. Or Serah, for that matter. We must crush them all, make examples of their false faith, and incorporate them as well as their territories into our domiciles.”

  “That seems an extreme reaction.”

  Regina’s eyes blazed with fire. “There have been attacks, banditry, and even killing of emissaries. Our reprisals have been soft. They are evil. We are good. We must destroy them.”

  “How will that impact the empire?”

  “The empire is mine.”

  I softened my voice, aware being confrontational now was foolhardy. “I understand but we still don’t know where Jassamine is or what her plots are. We’ve thwarted many of the lesser ones and her agents, but do not yet have the forces ready to defeat the empire.”

  “Then work on them, Great Engineer. Build us an infrastructure of war the likes the Lawgiver and Trickster have never seen.”

  I should have known reason would not work. “I will go back to my plans and see whether we have created enough new factories to start large-scale production of my modular designs.”

  “If that means making a host of weapons, armor, and ships, then do so.”

  “And House Rogers?”

  Regina’s eyes narrowed and the anger became something cold and unforgiving. In that moment, she’d never looked more like me. “They came to me in my baths and killed my attendants. I didn’t know their names, but they trusted us. They trusted us to keep them safe. They were ours, Jacob. Ours. It’s just like Whitehall. They took the people we were—”

  “Owners of?” I said, uncomfortable with her phraseology.

  She shot me a terrible glare.

  “Protectors of,” Regina corrected. “House Rogers cannot be allowed to get away with this, to believe they can strike at us with impunity. They are a pestilence on the people and a blight on the empire. The house will suffer and suffer well for thinking they can harm the divine.”

  “We will find out who ordered the attack and they will be killed.”

  “No,” Regina said.

  “No?”

  “They are a great house with hundreds of members. Cousins, uncles, aunts, brothers, and cadet branches of the house. Just killing a few will not send a message that this”—Regina gestured to Nerissa’s fallen form—”will not be tolerated.”

  I blinked. “You want me to exterminate them.”

  I would not do that.

  I was not a killer of children.

  Regina walked up and placed her hand on my chest and gave me a kiss on the lips. Her expression softened and became sympathetic, even sad. “No, Jacob, I would never ask you to do that. You are a gentle heart and I will not see you further drawn into my vengeance than you already are.”

  I looked at her, confused.

  “I will do it,” Regina said.

  She raised her hand to silence me before I could speak.

  “Trust me.”

  And I did.

  Arming herself with weapons, armor, and magical devices created in my forge, Regina mounted a winged unicorn and took it on a lone mission into the empire’s territory. I did not like leaving her alone to that business, but kept to my promise. She returned a week later, wounded and troubled. She was unwilling to say much more than a few words for a week. One night, though, she broke down crying in my arms and I held her for the rest of the night.

  House Rogers was destroyed. Most of the family perishing in one hellish night called the Conflagration where a terrible firestorm wiped out their palace during a great banquet along with dozens of servants. I did not know the details but I suspected Regina had confronted them with their crimes and they’d sought to destroy her. They were, however, a warrior house with many wizards, but a moth might have had a better chance of destroying the sun. Whatever the case, the collateral damage had been terrible, and where once had stood a castle was nothing more than a smoking ruin.

  Morwen retaliated by destroying several cults to the King Below I’d never even heard of and launching a
lightning raid on Everfrost. Regina sent its men’s heads back in pieces, except for two left unharmed because they’d surrendered. Those we returned.

  Morwen had them tortured to death.

  Was it any wonder they’d begun their twisted plot in Kerifas against us? Ethinu had said the Lawgiver and Jassamine would never be willing to tolerate us and would gleefully destroy the world to see us dead. However, had the Nine Usurpers always been so committed? Or had the death of Jon Bloodthorn and the destruction of House Rogers, one of Morwen’s greatest supporters, set them on the path to a strike against us? Had House Rogers acted alone? Hellsword’s words indicated this was the case, but the man lied like other people breathed. That didn’t mean there wasn’t a kernel of truth to his rebuttal, though, and the Nine were not quite the black-hearted rogues I’d taken them to be.

  Then I thought of the children put to the sword in Whitehall at Bloodthorn’s orders.

  Of Nerissa.

  Of Accadia.

  Of the dead children here in Kerifas.

  And decided I didn’t care. If every way was nebulous and black then there was no point in choosing any path but the one I wanted to.

  And I wanted to stop them. To make them pay.

  Gods help me.

  That was when Serah knocked on the door of my room. “Jacob, it’s time.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “You look like you’ve been raked over the coals,” Serah said, walking into my room. “Which is unfortunate since my illusion reflects your emotions.”

  I looked over at where Hellsword had been sitting. “I’ve trained for two hundred and fifty years in the arts of war, craftsmanship, engineering, tactics—”

  “And a thousand other arts,” Serah said, sighing. “You’re still a rotten card player, though.”

  I shot her a dirty look. “You cheat.”

  “Yes, and the fact you can’t catch me is disgraceful. What’s really going on?”

  There was no point in hiding it. “Hellsword decided to drop by for a visit.”

  Serah immediately walked back to the door and closed it. She then locked it and returned to stand in front of me. “Gods Above and Below. What did he say?”

  I thought back to our meeting, banishing all thoughts of House Rogers. “He wanted to offer us a peace treaty.”

  Serah sat down beside me on the bed. “What did you say?”

  “No.”

  Serah was silent for a long time. “All right then.”

  “Is that you have to say?”

  Serah took a deep breath. “Is there anything else you want me to say?”

  “No, I suppose not. He did reveal he didn’t believe in Morrigan’s prophecy any more than I did, however, and all the forced labor the empire is using is designed to do the same thing I’ve been doing in the empire—modernize the infrastructure. It’s not part of some secret plot against us or in preparation for the prophecy.”

  “Unfortunate.”

  “Unfortunate?” I asked.

  “Our centralized economy and industrialization of the North was our biggest advantage. We’ll never be able to keep up with a modernized South. The King Below was a genius at strategy but his grasp of logistics was abyssal.”

  “That’s actually the opposite of being a genius at strategy.”

  I never wanted to win, the Trickster said, just fight.

  I didn’t disagree with Serah’s assessment of the situation, though. I’d learned quite a bit of magic from Serah, sharpening my knowledge of the subject even though I had centuries on her in practice, while she’d learned a great deal about matters of war. Neither of us were as good as Regina, though, who was a master of the subject.

  All three of us knew we were badly outmatched in any war against the South. Time favored the Nine Uspurpers rather than us. Our advantage was never likely to be greater than now, with the infrastructure I’d erected, another reason why Serah had probably advised me to attack immediately. The discovery that the Nine had been prepping themselves removed one of our chief advantages.

  “It still means a conventional war will be unwinnable,” Serah said, shaking her head. “Even if we manage to take Winterholme.”

  “I’m not so sure it would be a conventional war.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I remembered my terrible vision and coupled it together with Hellsword’s allusions. “During the Fourth War, I used Tharadon and Co’Fannon’s notes to create the Terrible Weapons with the empire’s other best mages. They laid waste to much of the King Below’s forces, but also inflicted unimaginable collateral damage.”

  “Those were destroyed after the war.”

  “Good.”

  “But it may be they hope to repeat your triumph here.”

  I followed her meaning. “Using a mass human sacrifice to destroy our followers…”

  It made sense now what they were hoping to accomplish here in Kerifas. During the Fourth War, I had managed to bring the King Below’s forces to their knees with my devices. The aftermath of their use had been horrific—sickness, famine, devastation, and worse. They had been effective, though, and the King Below’s forces had never truly recovered.

  So much so that when the Fifth War was launched, the Nine Heroes had been able to rally the Southern Kingdoms to defeat the King Below within a single year. If they believed I had learned from the old god’s mistakes, it was understandable they might want to create their own Terrible Weapons.

  Or revive some of the lost ones of old.

  “It has a twisted sort of genius.”

  I didn’t disagree with either part of her statement. “Certainly it changes the nature of our conflict. Which is exactly what you do when you can’t win a conventional war. The empire could defeat us with a modernized army invading the North, even if the weather was against them, though it would cost them horribly. That would divide the empire, though, if they do not sufficient cause to attack us. If they lose too many soldiers, they’d lose their fragile peace and their empire quickly.”

  It was all starting to make sense now. There was no need for a prophecy or the hidden hand of the Lawgiver when common politics and economics were every bit the explanation for most of the the Nine’s actions.

  Serah nodded. “They need to defeat us quickly. If it can annihilate us in a suitably public manner, all the lands comprising the empire will be cowed and their position would be secured. The empress would have absolute dominion over all of the Southern Kingdoms and no one to challenge her reforms.”

  I now understood why Hellsword had come to visit me. Even he did not want to unleash the kind of power we were discussing. I had foolishly missed that implication. “We can’t let Hellsword finish whatever he’s doing here. We need to find out whatever project he’s working on and destroy it. We also need to make sure he and whoever he’s collaborated with can’t replicate it. Otherwise, a new and terrible age of warfare will begin.”

  “And if we have the opportunity to turn it against our enemies? To eradicate them outright?”

  I stared down at my hands. “I swore I would never use the Terrible Weapons again. Also, if we deploy such devices, we might win the war, but we’d be forced to fight the rest of the world until we either conquered them or were destroyed.”

  “The option to leave this world is still on the table.”

  “No it’s not.”

  Serah was silent.

  “Did I ever tell you the story of how I ended up with Warmaster Kalian?”

  “Some of it. You glossed over a lot of details.”

  I paused, thinking back to that time. It had been the springtime and I could still smell the fresh flowers growing on the side of the riverbank. My hometown of Joy had been built on the banks of the River Sandu like so many others of our kind, each home built upon stilts so they would not be flooded during high rain. Each and every man, woman, and even child wore only black in honor of the Great Mother. Each member of the Fisherfolk followed the Path in such a way as to abstain from viol
ence as well as personal gain.

  We worked together for the benefit of the group, owned no property, and made decisions without the benefit of a king through mutual acclaim. We were not a subdued people, the mouth of every Fisherfolk was as filthy as a pig sty, but we were peaceful and happy with rare exceptions. I could have lost myself in those memories but forced them down. “A conflict was brewing between a fort erected by an exiled Tyrash nobleman and the Indras, who were doing their best to build a colony nearby.”

  “Back then you were still part of the Borderlands, weren’t you?”

  “Do those still exist?”

  “A hundred and more petty kingdoms and principalities between G’Tay, the Southern Kingdoms, and Indras. Yes, not even the empire has decided to annex the entirety of the Easterlands yet.”

  I made a note of that. “Either way, the baron recruited a host of Rolant mercenaries to aid him in protecting his pitiful attempt at building his own demesne. He quartered them in our village rather than trying to feed them himself.”

  “A band of drunken murderous mercenaries in a village of pacifists? That…must have been unfortunate.”

  I thought back to that time. “Not as bad as it could have been, honestly. The Rolent are an honorable group of people. Everything the empire knows of chivalry comes from their influence. They were disciplined and it helped that while we didn’t have harlots or bedmen, we had plenty of alcohol and food that we shared eagerly. Incidents were few. They were more annoyed that no one wanted to join their band, I think.”

  I’d hated them despite it. I’d dreamed of finding a life outside the Riverfords, but I’d despised the soldiers who took everything while giving nothing in return.

  “You killed one of these soldiers didn’t you?” Serah asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “It wasn’t an act of self-defense or justice. He was a deserter because there was a battle coming up between the baron and a group of Indras mercenaries. A battle the perfumed scum thought was beneath a minor lord’s bastard. I found him in the barn stealing food and he said he wanted to ask my sister Chastity to run away with him in exchange for getting her out of the dunghole of our home.”