The Black Knife

by Christopher Nuttall

  The maid bowed and stepped back, allowing Hind to study herself in the mirror again. Her first impression of the dress hadn’t changed, but at least she wouldn’t have to wear it for the second part of the ceremony. She could change into something that suited her body a little better, or so she told herself. It seemed that the only people who had no say in the conduct of the wedding were the bride and groom.

  “I’m ready,” she said, finally. The butterflies in her stomach refused to fade. She was marrying Eric, a man she knew and liked, perhaps even loved, but she was still nervous. She would almost sooner have faced a rogue demon or a vampire. “You’d better take me to the chamber before I lose my nerve.”

  ***

  Herod braced himself as the small procession reached the outer edge of the wards surrounding the Golden Palace. They were the most formidable wards in the world, apart from the ones surrounding the Academy, and normally they would have provided all the defences that the palace could possibly require. Their presence had baffled his father and prevented him – and probably most of the other Lords – from scheming too openly against the Emperor, for no one knew how they were generated or controlled. It had taken years of research before Herod had figured out the truth and worked out how to counter the wards and eventually bring them down. If he hadn’t been so close to the Throne, it would have been impossible. The magicians who had built the Golden Palace – using magical tricks that had been forgotten over the years – had been very clever magicians. It was almost a shame to ruin their work.

  The wards seemed to drift over him, but nothing happened. No wave of magic blocked his path, or held him frozen until the Royal Guard could investigate. He kept walking, chafing slightly against the servant’s outfit he wore, smiling inwardly. Ahead of him, one of his most loyal servants walked in his form, cloaked in a spell that would make it impossible for anyone to tell that he wasn’t Herod. The wards might have picked up on the simple illusion spell surrounding the servant, who had his own role in the plot, but Herod had gambled that they wouldn’t. He would have been surprised if most of the Court didn’t use illusion spells to hide their true features. Even the Emperor wouldn’t be able to convince them to drop them for the ceremony.

  He smiled again as he saw the other Lords and Ladies as they entered the Golden Palace. Everyone who was anyone was going to be at the ceremony, where the Prince would finally wed his commoner bride. If anyone had any doubts about his choice, they wouldn’t risk saying it aloud, not in the Golden Palace. The wards that kept the palace and its inhabitants safe allowed the Emperor to see and hear everything that took place inside his walls and any dissenters would be noted for later attention. The line of brightly-dressed Lords and Ladies had no idea of what was about to happen. It was one ceremony that they would never forget.

  The gates seemed to close behind him as they stepped into the palace and allowed a servant to lead them up towards the reception areas. The servant didn’t see through Herod’s disguise and motioned him brusquely into a waiting area for the visiting servants, a room that was too small for its inhabitants. Every Lord and Lady had bought along at least seven servants in order to show off their status, from massive burly male servants to young female pleasure slaves. They all wore the badges of their owners…and jewels, set within their foreheads, to mark their status. They would all die for their owners, for the spells placed on them would give them no choice.

  Herod checked his timepiece and settled down to wait. The ceremony was due to begin in an hour and, if he knew the Emperor, it would begin right on time. No one would say anything aloud if the ceremony was delayed, but certain people would start wondering if the Emperor was going soft and then they would start hiring assassins. No, he reassured himself, the ceremony would begin on time.

  And then all hell was going to break loose.

  Chapter Eight

  “And now I present to you my son, Prince Eric,” the Emperor said. “Today, he comes into his inheritance…”

  Eric barely heard the rest of the speech. It was hard enough to step out of the chamber and face the gathered Lords and Ladies. His friends had given him a rousing party to celebrate his marriage and the first step towards becoming Emperor himself – and he’d taken enough potions to ensure that he was sober afterwards – but he still felt weak at the knees. The Lords and Ladies were the people he was supposed to rule, once his father had finished handing over the reins of power to him, yet all of them remembered him as a little child. Ruling them wasn't going to be easy.

  He felt Morningstar thrumming at his belt and relaxed slightly, but it still took everything he had to walk up to his father and kneel before him. The Lords and Ladies might be smiling at him now, promising to serve him faithfully until the end of his days, but such promises weren't worth anything. It wouldn’t be long until one of them decided to see what he could get away with, perhaps breaking one of the minor sections of the Compact…or attacking another Lord directly, just to force the Emperor to overreact. He knew that he would still have his father’s advice, just as his grandfather had advised his father though the early years of his reign, but the responsibility would be his. The sons of other noblemen had been allowed to relax and slack off, while their parents took care of everything, yet that wasn't an option for the son of the Emperor.

  His father smiled at him, his face showing no doubt or hesitation. By tradition, the Crown Prince – once he was formally acclaimed – would spend a year slowly taking over from his father, after which he would be declared Emperor in his own right and the former Emperor would go into retirement, leaving his son on the throne. It was different to the other nobility – their sons only inherited when the parents died – yet it had its advantages. It also had disadvantages, for everyone would be comparing him to his father. The weight of history seemed to be pressing down upon him.

  “In the name of Solaris, Patron of Our Rule, I swear to you now that he is my son,” the Emperor said. He nodded to a pair of Court Magicians wearing black robes. “The Emperor’s Bloodline always tells.”

  Eric had been carefully briefed on this part of the ceremony, but he still had to force himself to hold out his finger to allow one of the magicians to prick it and take a tiny drop of blood, which fell into a clear glass bowl. A chill ran down his spine as the magician placed it on a small white altar, before his companion added a second bowl, with a drop of blood he’d taken from the Emperor himself. The white altar seemed to glow as the magicians chanted a spell aloud, revealing that the two bloodlines were identical. The Lords and Ladies pushed forward to look, confirming it for themselves. No one would be able, after the ceremony, to suggest that Eric might be a bastard son.

  He found himself relaxing, even though he had never really doubted it. He’d asked his father, back when he’d been a child and still learning some of the basics, what would have happened if he hadn’t been his mother’s son. His father had clouted him on the head and pointed out, very dryly, that he was still his father’s son. It hadn’t been until much later that Eric had understood just how badly his innocent question had hurt his father, who had always been faithful to his wife.

  “He is my son,” the Emperor said. One of his hands was resting on the hilt of his sword, the sword that Eric now knew was the second Great Sword. “Does anyone here question his claim to the Throne?”

  There was no response. “I now proclaim my son as the Crown Prince,” the Emperor said. “As it has been written; so it has been done.”

  “As it has been written,” the Lords and Ladies echoed back, “so it has been done.”

  Eric suddenly felt very young and very insecure. He had thought he had known what it would be like, but now he felt terrified, as if the entire Empire was about to collapse the moment he became Emperor. He had spent years learning how to be Emperor, yet he realised now that he barely knew anything. He kept his eyes on his father, knowing that if he looked at the Lords and Ladies they would see his fear and self-doubt. They would take it as a sign of weakness.


  The Emperor reached out with a single armoured hand and helped Eric to his feet. It was another piece of symbolism, Eric knew, but one that was more important than most. It was recognition of formal equality, almost an acceptance of his son as a co-ruler of the Empire. One could stand in the Emperor’s presence, one could turn one’s back on him if it was required, but one could never treat him as an equal. He had no equals. The Empire was the supreme authority of Touched.

  “My son,” the Emperor said.

  By rights, the cheers should have brought down the roof.

  ***

  Herod found slipping out of the servant’s chamber easier than he had expected. He had thought that he would have to deal with one or more guards – and he had brought along a few surprises for dealing with any unwanted observers – but no one tried to block his path out of the chamber and into the bowels of the Golden Palace. It was easy, in hindsight, to understand why. The servants had all been ordered to remain where they were and, like all people under obedience spells, they had had no choice, but to obey. Placing a guard on them would have been unnecessary. It was an oversight that Herod had carefully not pointed out to anyone, although he knew that there would be other defences further into the Golden Palace.

  He pulled a basic spell around him to conceal him from prying eyes and started to walk. Unlike the Academy, the Golden Palace was a fixed building and corridors never changed their destinations at random. The old plans, stolen years ago by some long-dead Lord of Azimuth remained accurate; indeed, as far as he had been able to establish, the palace had never been renovated in the thousands of years since it had been built. No one had thought to alter a few of the rooms, or perhaps expand the palace…or, if they had thought of it, no Emperor had allowed it to take place. It was a mystery that had never been solved, until now. It had provided the final clue to the nature of the wards.

  A pair of maids walked past him chatting about nothing and he pressed himself into a side corridor, waiting until they were gone before he reached the stairwell. The maids might have been commoners, but they wouldn’t have hesitated to challenge another servant, or even the Lord of Azimuth. If someone raised the alarm now, the entire plan would come apart at the seams. He kept glancing from side to side as he found the stairwell and walked down it, deep into the bowels of the palace. The lower levels, carved into the mountain itself, were secured by darker wards. Carefully, relying on his blood connection to the Emperor, Herod slipped through them and into the chamber.

  It wasn't uncommon to build a magical building on top of a tapped and controlled wellspring. Indeed, Herod’s first thought was that the First Emperor had done just that, but it hadn’t taken long to realise that there was no wellspring under the palace. Other researchers had reached the same conclusion, leaving them to wonder uneasily just what the First Emperor had done to secure his castle. The unanswered question had kept them from plotting too openly against the Emperor, but once Herod had worked out the answer, he’d seen the underlying weakness.

  There were few defences around the inner chamber, a chamber that bore more than a passing resemblance to the Bloodstained Chamber he’d discovered in Azimuth. It was nothing more than a rocky room carved out of the mountain itself, lit by a faint glow that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, illuminating a red circle that someone – the First Emperor himself, perhaps – had drawn on the rocky floor with their own blood. Herod braced himself and opened his third eye, just a little. The roaring tide of power slammed into his head and forced him to shut his Sight down. So close to the source, it was almost blinding. His head hurt and he almost collapsed in pain. It explained, if nothing else, the surprisingly low level of security. No one, even someone under the strongest of loyalty spells, could have remained in the chamber for long.

  He took another step forward and was struck by an overwhelming sense of decay and corruption. The feeling almost made him step back, but somehow he forced himself to move on, pushing through the mental miasma until he was standing at the edge of the circle. It took all of his nerve to push forward and touch his bare fingers to the blood on the floor. A golden light flared into existence and he looked up, to find himself looking into a pair of golden eyes, hanging in the air. He froze, almost hypnotised by the sight, before he gathered himself. There was no longer any time to waste.

  “WHO ARE YOU THAT DISTURB MY SLUMBER?”

  The voice echoed in his head. The demon might have been bound within the circle, but it still had power, power enough to drive anyone away. Herod braced himself, remembering the words he’d learned, and pulled himself to his feet. The massive eyes followed him, boring deep into his soul. This close, the sense of overwhelming power and limitless evil were impossible to tolerate for long. It was no ordinary demon. The First Emperor had pulled one of the most powerful demons out of the abyss and bound it to his service.

  Herod felt his head spinning at the thought. The one form of magic that almost anyone could do – if they knew the words – was to summon creatures from the other planes. Some of them – the Sprites – were harmless, if playful, but demons were far too dangerous to trust. Give a demon an inch, his old tutor had warned, and the demon would use that inch to break free and wreck havoc. The old stories included thousands of tales about magicians who had made bargains with demons, only to discover that they’d been tricked and devoured by the monster they’d summoned. Even the darkest of magicians would hesitate before summoning a demon.

  The First Emperor, he saw now, had not only summoned the demon, but he’d bound it in such a way that it remained bound for eternity, using it as a power source for the wards surrounding his castle. Some of the older legends surrounding the Golden Palace made sense now. The story that claims that over a thousand magicians had died in building the Golden Palace suggested that binding and securing the demon hadn’t been easy…and, of course, no one would dare change anything in the castle. The demon might be able to use it to break out and escape…and such a demon, loose upon the world, would be a disaster beyond anything any of the necromancers had ever done. The old arts to contain and banish such a demon were long lost, probably on purpose.

  He looked into the golden eyes of the demon and smiled. “I am Herod, a descendent of the one who bound you here,” he said. “His blood runs in my veins.”

  The demon eyes seemed to sharpen. Herod smiled again. He might not have all of the gifts that were reputed to run in the direct bloodline, but even a much-diluted version of the Emperor’s Bloodline would be sufficient to claim descent. Blood Rites were regarded as dangerously close to necromancy for a reason. Used properly, they could be used to strike down an entire family, or inflict all manner of agonies upon their soul.

  “SPEAK,” the demon commanded, finally. The monster’s voice echoed in his head. “SPEAK TO ME, HUMAN FOOL.”

  Herod ignored the demon’s sardonic tone, took a deep breath and started to speak Words of Power. The Dark Tongue might have, at one point, been understood perfectly, but now it survived only as Words of Power. It was the primal language of Demons and Sprites, words that bound them to obey – within the limits of the order. There were human magicians who believed that not all of the Words were necessary to bind and control a demon, but research into what was necessary and what wasn't necessary rarely led to a long life. It had taken months to build up the Words he now spoke, banishing the demon back to the Darkness and forbidding it to return. If it went wrong…

  “BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR,” the demon said. Herod clutched his head as its voice echoed through his skull. There was a terrible bout of laughter, utterly inhuman. “YOU MAY DISCOVER THAT YOU DID’T WANT IT AFTER ALL!”

  There was another bout of laughter and Herod collapsed onto the floor, almost blacking out. The demonic eyes vanished. A moment later, he felt the wards surrounding the palace collapsing and fading out of existence. The defences were down. The palace was vulnerable.

  It took him everything he had to pull himself back to his feet, but once
he was standing the pain faded away rapidly. All traces of the demon, even the blood on the floor, were gone. And, now, all hell could break loose.

  ***

  Hind had never felt so uncomfortable in her life. The waiting had been agony for someone who preferred to be out and about, doing something, but stepping into the Great Hall had almost been worse. The Lords and Ladies watched her as she walked down the long aisle towards Eric and his father, their cold eyes seeming to promise nothing, but trouble. They knew – they had to have known – that Eric could hardly have married any of their daughters, but that didn’t keep them from staring at her. She was a commoner within their world and they would never let her forget it.

  Some of them she knew from the Academy, young nobles who had inherited their positions from their parents and taken their place in the House of Lords. Others were complete strangers. Oddly, the strangers seemed more inclined to be friendly than the ones who knew her personally, although perhaps that wasn't so much of a surprise. The nobles who had gone to the Academy had hated it when they had been outdone by the commoners they had barely tolerated, believing that a lifetime spent in a palace actually counted for more than a lifetime spent milking cows and raising chickens. They might have been right, if they had actually tried to learn something during their childhood, but in her experience the first actual learning any of them did was at the Academy.