The room he led her to wasn’t what she had expected. Sephryn had anticipated an impeccably neat and austere chamber because of Illim’s fastidious nature, but she found a mess. The furniture and adornments were lavish, but clothes were scattered everywhere, and a plate of leftover lamb rested on a gold-inlaid chair. The steward invited her to sit, even though all the furniture was covered in dirty clothes.
“Thank you,” she replied but remained standing just the same.
“You were saying?” he prompted.
“I was?”
“Something about Tekchin?”
“Oh—ah, I was about to mention how much I enjoy his stories about your adventures.”
“Not mine,” Illim said. “I was never a Galantian, not part of that elite band of warriors, but I did know them all, even Nyphron’s father. In truth”—he leaned in—“Zephyron was twice the leader Nyphron is.”
“That sounds like . . . ah . . . a dangerous opinion.”
Illim laughed. “Not at all. I tell Nyphron that all the time, usually when I’m mad at him.”
The steward collapsed on a mound of clothes piled on a couch and threw his feet up. “Here’s a tale your father probably doesn’t know about. One spring, when Nyphron and I were stone-faced drunk on apple wine, his father caught us preparing to brave the Grandford rapids in a raft—at night, no less!” He smiled at the memory. “Zephyron didn’t stop us. We both nearly drowned that night. I broke my leg and shattered this little bone right here.” He pointed to his collar. “Nyphron banged his head and lost all sight out of one eye for a week.” He followed the statement with a laugh. “Dear Ferrol, I miss those days. I really do. Life was . . . well, it was life, wasn’t it?”
He looked at her as if expecting an answer, but she had no idea what to say.
“When I think of how much he wanted this”—he gestured at the chandeliers, cut-crystal decanters, and a floor layered in exquisite rugs—“I wonder why.”
Illim wagged a finger at her. “You’ve been seeing Nolyn, isn’t that right?”
The question surprised her, and she took a moment to answer, “Ah, yes, sir.” Then she quickly added, “But not recently, it’s been more than a year. He’s currently in southwestern Maranonia.”
“Still in his first millennium, right? Ah, those were the days.” He shook his head as if waking from a pleasant dream. “Nolyn will look back at his time in the legion fondly. Just like your father and Nyphron cherish their years as Galantians. Trust me. I’ve seen it all. When the fighting ends, blades grow rusty.”
He kicked his feet off the couch, righting himself, and gathered a pile of tunics, palliums, and braccae. “How have you been? Everything all right?”
She almost told him, nearly blurted everything out right then and there.
“If either of you speaks a word, all three of you die, starting with poor little Nurgya,” the Voice had said, and she assumed he would be watching her—now more closely than ever, listening to every sound she made.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You’re not,” he challenged and stared knowingly. “I know why you’re here.”
She held her breath.
“You’ve been trying to gain an audience with the emperor for years. Now, I know how frustrating that can be. Trust me, I’ve had to stand in the way of legion generals and provincial governors, including Sikar.” Illim smirked. “Oh, dear Ferrol, he can be a handful. When he served in the Rhist, none of us liked him. But can you imagine telling the governor of Merredydd that the emperor isn’t available? Especially after he’s traveled for days? Pitching a fit doesn’t describe it. So you see, I can’t intervene on your behalf. Protocols really must be followed. I suggest you submit a request to the minister’s office. I’ll try to put in a good word for you, and if it can be arranged, it will be. But you must be patient.”
He got up.
She couldn’t leave, not yet. As scared as she was, she had an opportunity that she couldn’t squander. “There is one thing,” she began slowly. “It’s regarding the Founder’s Day Festival, which will be here before we know it.”
“Yes?”
“I thought . . . that is, I was wondering if . . . well, you see, the Imperial Council is planning something special. A . . .” She was improvising, making everything up as she went, and that wasn’t a talent of hers. “A display, a historical one to commemorate the events leading to the founding of the empyre. We thought—that is, the Imperial Council determined—it would be far more impressive if we had a few things to bring the past to life.”
“Such as?”
“Well, like antiques and general memorabilia. Things like the flag that flew over Alon Rhist during the Battle of Grandford, for example. The emperor’s chariot from the war, perhaps. Maybe even the Horn of Gylindora.” She hoped she remembered the pronunciation correctly.
“The Horn of . . .” He was shaking his head. “How do you know about that?”
She smiled, trying to look innocent. “My parents.”
“Oh, right.” He nodded. “Well, they should have explained that the horn isn’t a toy. It’s a holy relic and not to be gawked at in public.” He chuckled at the thought. “It stays locked up.” His eyes shifted to what Sephryn had previously thought was a decoration in the wall, but she now wondered if it was a small door—one without a handle and made of stone.
But why would it be in Illim’s room?
“Oh, all right,” she told him while staring at a crumpled tunic, trying to puzzle out the mystery.
“I know what you are thinking,” he said.
“You do?”
“I’ve always been a stickler about keeping the palace neat and orderly, so why is my place such a disaster?”
“I didn’t mean to insinuate or insult. I suppose it’s like the old saying about the cobbler’s children having no shoes.”
“No, that’s not it at all. In this case, my children prefer to go barefoot.”
“Sorry. I’m not following.”
“Nyphron. He’s the problem. The truth is I live with a slob. I simply can’t keep up with the emperor’s commitment to chaos. This is all his mess.”
“So you and Nyphron are . . . you share . . .”
Illim shrugged. “We both sleep here, if that’s what you mean. Sharing is a whole other matter. One that Nyphron isn’t good at. But that’s my problem, not yours.”
That explains it; the horn is here! Locked up in some sort of vault.
“Oh, I see, but I really would like to present my request about displaying the horn directly to the emperor. Perhaps I could wait here for just a little while?”
He smiled but shook his head. “Protocols, remember? But I’m certain we can provide the other things you requested. Please say hello to your father for me the next time you see him.” He laughed again.
“Ah . . . yes. I will. Thank you,” she said and then retreated to the hallway. She moved quickly and didn’t slow down until she reached the empty courtyard.
“It’s sealed in stone!” she whispered aloud. “The horn is locked inside the emperor’s private quarters.” She hissed the last part, trying to keep her voice down but wanting to scream. “Are you hearing me?” She paused, listening. She wanted to have it out with the Voice there rather than on a public street. “I can’t get it. There’s no way I can do this!”
She waited.
Nothing.
“Say something, dammit!”
Silence.
Sephryn ran for the gate. She had to get out, wanted to get free of the palace before the tears came. They were there, lurking beneath the weight of fear, stress, and exhaustion.
“Did you get it?”
Sephryn looked sheepishly at Andrule. “No. It must be somewhere else.”
“Oh—that’s too bad,” the guard replied, appearing puzzled.
“Not the scarf, you idiot. The horn! Do you have it?”
Sephryn realized her mistake, and with an embarrassed smile, she quickly stepped bac
k onto the Grand Mar and headed for home.
Ducking into an alley, she said, “It’s locked inside a stone wall. I can’t get at it. You’ll need to find someone else. But if you give me back my son, I can tell them where to find it.”
“That’s not how this works. The deal was the horn for the child. If you can’t hold up your end, then I won’t, either. And if the child no longer has any value, I guess I’ll just have to kill him. Is that what you want?”
“No!”
“Then what do you propose?”
Sephryn stared at a puddle, seeing her reflection. What she saw was the face of desperation, and for the first time in her life, she thought she looked old.
“I’ll figure something out, but it will take a little while.”
“That’s better, but don’t take too long. I don’t think little Nurgya likes it here, and you wouldn’t want to scar him for life, would you? So do hurry, for his sake.”
Chapter Five
One of Them
Nolyn walked directly behind Jerel. Being taller and broader, DeMardefeld was forced into contortions to duck thick stalks of palmy vegetation that began purple at their bases and shifted to yellow-green as the leaves fanned out. As the larger man dipped and twisted, shafts of sun pierced the roof of the jungle and scintillated off his armor, which inexplicably managed to retain its luster.
“This morning, I had my doubts about finding you alive, sir. I shouldn’t have doubted the One,” Jerel said as he ducked under a large jungo leaf.
“The One? Who is that?” Nolyn inquired as they trudged along.
“Oh, don’t ask about that, sir.” Myth let out a moan. He was somewhere behind them, close enough that Nolyn could hear his heavy breathing. Azuriah Myth was one of those people who not only spoke loudly but even breathed with excessive volume.
“Why? Is it a secret?”
“What we wouldn’t give for that to be so,” Smirch muttered. He, too, was somewhere behind Nolyn.
Amicus had set the order, with Riley having the boar’s head, a position Nolyn guessed the First Spear often took because of his experience; then came Jerel, as the boar’s tusks. Amicus put himself at the boar’s tail. Nolyn suspected the little fortress of men was designed, fore and aft, to keep him insulated from harm. The prymus was considered the brain, the most valued component in the body, and so the men acted in his defense. Nolyn had never understood the reasoning, since a body without a heart or lungs would die just as certainly.
They walked in a ragged single file line as they descended from the start of the ravine to where the ground was less steep. There, the flora was larger and more abundant, and the once-thrashing turmoil of wild cascades calmed to a legitimate river. Because the water was too deep to walk in, the men were forced to hack their way along the bank.
“The One is the reason I’m here, sir,” Jerel declared in the dauntless tone with which he responded to everything.
“He’s your regiment officer?” Nolyn joked.
That drew a number of chuckles, more than expected, but then legion officers weren’t known to be well thought of.
“No, sir!” Jerel responded, clearly not getting the jest. “The One is God.”
“Yes, I gathered that much, but which one?”
Nolyn considered himself something of an expert on the gods, mostly because of his mother and her friends. While he had been entirely ignored by his father, Nolyn had found plenty of attention from his mother and those closest to her, whom she had called his aunts. Being from the same clan, they were all related but none of them were Persephone’s sisters. Women of the village commonly served as caregivers to young children, but these ladies were anything but common. If stories were to be believed—and some just couldn’t be—they had fought man-eating bears, huge magical monsters, and even passed through the underworld to save their entire race. As a child, he had loved the stories, especially the ones about the evil dwarf Gronbach. But as he grew older, he realized most of these tales were too tall to be true.
One of his aunts was a woman named Brin. She had died when Nolyn was still young, and he had only vague memories of her. According to his mother, Brin had invented writing and created an incredible book that chronicled not only the history of their people but also details about the gods, which she learned from reading ancient stone tablets in the dwarven city of Neith. Nolyn, Bran, and Sephryn were all tutored from The Book of Brin. According to it, there were five primary gods: Ferrol, the god of the Fhrey; Drome, the god of the dwarfs; Mari, the goddess of mankind; Muriel, who was nature itself; and Erebus, the father of them all. These were the ones Nolyn was the most familiar with, but he knew there were many others, such as Eton, the god of the sky; Arkum, god of the sun; and Fribble-Bibble, a favorite river spirit of Suri the mystic. Then there were the Mynogan—gods of battle, honor, and death—and Eraphus, the god of the sea. All of these were mentioned in The Book of Brin. There were also a slew of other gods or demigods that Nolyn discovered after leaving home. The Grenmorians worshiped the Typhons, and Uberlin was the god of the ghazel. But in all his travels and the combined teachings of his aunts, Nolyn had never heard of any god being referred to as the One.
“The only One, sir,” Jerel insisted. “The true God. All others are merely legends. Perhaps they were great people once, but they suffered the same fate—they died. Only the One is immortal. Only the One is God.”
“And how do you know all this?”
“He told me.”
“He speaks to you?”
“Just like you are now, sir. He said I must leave the comfort of my happy home in lush Maranonia and join the ranks of the legion.”
“Would take more than a request to get me to leave all that and come here,” Smirch grumbled. “No doubt about it—I can tell you that, bossy.”
“Jerel’s father is a wealthy landowner,” Myth explained in his deep, throaty voice, which reminded Nolyn of how a seasoned hound might sound if it spoke with a Calynian accent. “Has a sprawling villa outside Mehan, an army of servants, and herds of sheep and cattle. Jerel used to spend his days drinking wine with women in lush green glens. He gave all that up to come to this disease-infested muck hole.”
Smirch was shaking his head in disbelief. “Volunteered for the auxiliary, too. Bright as a blindfold, that one. If I was him, I’d be back home, drunk off my ass, having my nails done on the veranda by some beauty in a short, sheer palla. But no—he’s here, and happy for it, too. That’s the rub, right there. The whole thing goes beyond simply stupid and wanders off the Cliffs of Insanity.”
“When God tells you to do something, it’s the fool who turns a deaf ear,” Jerel replied.
“If that’s true, foolishness is highly underrated.”
“So what does this one true god look like?” Nolyn asked. “Is he a giant? Half man, half animal? A floating light? What?”
“To be honest, sir, he looked like a tailor.”
“A tailor?”
“That’s what I took him for, sir. He said he’d come to size me up, and I assumed my father had sent him to take measurements for a new set of clothes. I was quite wrong. He’d come to evaluate me, sir—not the dimensions of my body, but the magnitude of my character. He asked me a series of seemingly innocuous questions, and then he told me I must join the legion and seek out active duty in the Seventh Sikaria Auxiliary, which is always sent to the most hazardous areas.”
“And you just accepted this advice?”
“It wasn’t what I would call advice, sir. It’d be more accurate to describe it like he was telling me what already happened, even though it hadn’t yet, and no, sir, I regret to say that I didn’t believe a word he said—at first.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I would have to say it was the two-headed sheep.”
“Did you say, two-headed sh—”
“As wonderful as this story is,” Amicus cut in, “it’s getting late. We need to make some decisions. Should we set up some sort of defense on
the river? Or leave it and seek shelter elsewhere?”
“How far are we from Urlineus?”
“We won’t get there tonight, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Nolyn looked out into the dense jungle surrounding them. They’d left the narrow end of the ravine, and the cliff walls had retreated too far to be visible. “Odds of us finding shelter out there are slim, while the chance of getting lost, I suspect, are high, and the cost in effort and time isn’t worth it. We might as well set up here. At least we have the river on one side.”
Nolyn looked at Amicus for approval or doubt. They were in the First Spear’s neighborhood. Although Nolyn was nearly eight hundred and fifty-five, the one consistent thing all those years had taught him was that every individual had a lesson to impart.
Amicus, however, wasn’t in a teaching mood. He showed no sign of disagreement or approval and quickly said, “Then I suggest we get started on a fire.”
Nolyn knew that the ghazel, angered by their failure in the ravine, would retaliate by sending an even larger force, and unlike before, his troop wouldn’t have the protection of cliff walls. However, a fire and a river were better than nothing. After witnessing the incredible events of the night before, Nolyn wasn’t so quick to forecast defeat. He clung to the glimmer of hope that they might yet survive their ordeal.
Then it began to rain.
They heard the first telltale pitter-patter not long after dragging over some logs. A few minutes later, it grew to a roar that required shouting to be heard over. And while night hadn’t quite fallen, the increased darkness declared it was no longer quite day, either. Rivulets formed at their feet. Heavy droplets blasted through the canopy, soaking the ground. There would be no fire.
No one said anything. They just stopped gathering wood and came together on the riverbank where they had cleared away most of the leafy plants. The little troop of survivors took seats on the few logs they had already dragged over. Smirch and Myth ate from rations. Amicus and Jerel looked to their weapons and armor.
“So what are your plans once you become emperor, sir?” Riley asked. He, too, had pulled a strip of cured meat from his pack.
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