Blood of the Gods

by David Mealing

  “Your Majesty,” de Tourvalle said in his crisp, aristocratic style. “A great regret, that the service kept me overseas for your investiture.”

  “Time for greetings later,” she said, coming to the middle of the long table they’d set up beneath the elongated tent. She turned toward their still-seated counterparts. “We’re here to discuss other, more important matters.”

  “Of course,” de Tourvalle said. “Your Majesty, allow me to present his most senior highness, Gau-Michel de l’Arraignon, Dauphin of the Kingdom of Sarresant, and his esteemed advisors, the Marquis-Generals Holliard and Beauchamp, of the Eighth and Second Royal Infantry Divisions, respectively.”

  Their titles seemed to grate on them; it took a moment to register that de Tourvalle introducing them first was the likely reason why. Few parties on either side of the ocean would outrank the heir to Sarresant’s throne.

  “And to Your Highness,” de Tourvalle continued, “I have the honor of presenting Her Majesty Erris d’Arrent, Empress of New Sarresant and Gand in the New World and High Commander of both armies, and her servant Guillaume Tuyard, High Admiral of the New Sarresant Navy and Hereditary Marquis of the Tetain Reach.”

  “When Lord de Tourvalle told us, I’d scarce believed it,” the Dauphin said. “Last reports of the colonies said they’d been overrun by rabble, but rabble with pretensions to égalité. And now he presents me with an Empress.”

  The bite in his words hung in the air. A predictable barb; she’d anticipated as much and worse, planning for how to make her landing. But then, if her scouts’ reports were good, there was a reason Gau-Michel had made the ride to meet her in person. And a reason their landing had gone unmolested, with damn near every Sarresant soldier stationed along the south and eastern borders, well away from the sea.

  “Your belief is of little concern to me, Your Highness,” Erris said. “What should concern us both are the two armies I am landing on your northern shores. I’d as soon not waste time conquering your cities before putting my soldiers in the field.”

  “Is that how this exchange is meant to go?” the Dauphin said. “You’re expecting a swift surrender? You, who rose from putting a knife in my brother’s back?”

  She glanced back at her side of the table. De Tourvalle was wide-eyed, Wexly calmly studying the exchange, and Marquand full of fire.

  “Enough,” she said. A curtness she’d always wanted to affect, for nobles, and now as Empress she bloody well could speak as she pleased. “Enough bluster. Neither of us has time for pride. You’d have met me with twenty thousand regulars if you had them to spare. Instead you come with a white flag, demanding parley. You know as well as I that my armies could seize your cities and buckle your supply lines. If I’d cast our lot with the Thellan commander, this war would be over, and your and your father’s heads would roll quicker than we could raise our flag above your palace.”

  The Dauphin sat straighter in his seat, while his generals were both already rigid. “If you know anything at all of what it means to be a child of Sarresant, you know we would resist you. Pride is a virtue of the Veil, in our scripture. You may well have snuck a landing on our shores, but setting foot on ground does not make it yours. This land belongs to the people who have bled for it, and will again, even if we must fight against our wayward sons and daughters come home.”

  “We have a common enemy, Your Highness,” Tuyard tried to say, for once replacing his usual sneering wit with deference. “You will recognize—”

  “We have nothing in common, Guillaume,” the Dauphin snapped. “I sent you to safeguard Louis-Sallet on his fool’s expedition across the sea, and you as good as sent back a courier with his head.”

  “I have reports already detailing your two fronts,” Erris said. “You’re facing a superior force, outnumbered two, perhaps three to one. That you’d stationed no more than token sentries along a coastline that could be threatened by Gand sea power suggests you either haven’t considered the possibility of their reentering the war, or you couldn’t spare the soldiers to hold against them. You are without allies. I’ve landed two full armies of fresh troops and provisions, and I am telling you plainly: Tuyard is right. We share an enemy here. You’re in no position to make demands, but I am, and I will speak them plainly. Give me full command of your military. Give me access to your granaries, your teams and wagons. Feed my soldiers, deliver my orders to yours, and you can retain whatever titles and power you want over the daily lives of your citizenry. Remain Kings, keep your palaces, but recognize that whoever has been in command of this campaign is a hopelessly incompetent fool. Join your strength to mine, and I will defeat our common enemy. I ask no more price than your loyalty in defending this country, and your faith that I can see it done.”

  The Dauphin met her eyes with a cold stare. No one else in the tent moved. Every assessment she’d given had been accurate; he had to know his position was beyond hope, defending against two—potentially three—hostile forces, if he opted to reject her terms. He seemed to be weighing her words, searching for some hidden meaning. She stared back with as much cool assurance as she could manage. If he was sane or rational he would see the right of her proposal, or at least that he was in a position to demand no better.

  “I never imagined,” the Dauphin said finally, “that you would support such a barbarous creature, Tuyard. This sort of conqueror’s bluster is beneath us. It is savage, and ignoble. I half expect her to violate the terms of truce, to have me imprisoned or tortured for daring to speak in person.”

  She slammed the table, recoiling the rest of them as she rattled its frame.

  “The Nameless take your fucking pride,” she said. “I’ll murder you and every nobleman in my way, if that’s what it takes. I’m here to save this country, you bloody fool. Propriety counts for nothing, with this enemy gathering on your borders. I’ve faced the man behind the Thellan armies, and their Sardian alliance. He won’t stop until he’s put down like a mad dog.”

  “With all due respect, Your Majesty,” the Dauphin said, putting enough venom in the honorific to leave little doubt how much of that he thought was due, “talk like that is rabid enough for my taste. I came here to treat with civilized men and women. There are plenty of those on all sides of this conflict. Whatever you think, the Thellan saw advantage in our weakness, in the aftermath of the Gand war. This move is little more than an attempt to redress grievances we exacted as victors in our last conflict. Trade concessions, and territory along the Capallains. I make no secret of our vulnerability, here and abroad. You would have done better talking terms—and no mistaking, with a man such as Guillaume Tuyard in your retinue, there are plenty among your councils who understand the politics, no matter your zeal. Whatever authority you imagine you have comes from your usefulness as a weapon to them, if you have any real authority at all.”

  Tuyard laughed, with a wry, sardonic bite.

  “Gau-Michel, my old friend,” Tuyard said. “If you wish to be the next in the line of men and women who have tried to control Erris d’Arrent, you are welcome to it. I gave up when I realized she was right. Her control of the leylines is second only to the man she calls her enemy—our enemy. This isn’t a war for land, or sheep, or the right to call a man your vassal. This is a war for magic itself. You have no weapon that can stand against d’Arrent’s Need. You’ve proven it, in losing two wars now to the man who wielded it, first for Gand, and now for Thellan.”

  Tuyard rose from the table, standing as he gestured toward de Tourvalle, Wexly, and Marquand. “Consider those who follow her. She’s accepted nobles, commoners, foreigners, and drunkards, and given each a position commensurate with their ability. It runs afoul of everything I used to think I knew, but I’ve seen the results. Her army moves like a serpent, and strikes like the Exarch’s own steel. Her terms are generous, Your Highness. Give her the command. She will even find a use for your talents. All she asks in return is your loyalty.”

  “She called me a hopelessly incompetent fool,”
the Dauphin said. “I hardly think—”

  “If you’ve been in command of this country’s defenses until now, then that’s what you are,” Erris said. “At least in military matters. But if you value your country, you’ll be wise enough to see it, and defer.”

  The Dauphin fell quiet, exchanging quick glances with the generals at his side.

  “Show me,” he said finally. “Show me what you would do, in full command of our armies.”

  “Colonel Marquand,” she said. “If you would have the aides fetch us some maps?”

  68

  SARINE

  Library

  Gods’ Seat

  Sarine closed the leather-bound tome, sending a thud ringing through the stacks of books and scrolls. Reyne hardly seemed to notice, if he noticed at all, engrossed in his own readings, seated on a cushioned couch at the center of the room. She’d been poring through the words half the morning, though time had a strange meaning here, with no windows to reveal the sun’s rising and setting, and only the map room for a connection with what might be happening in the real world. She’d spent time there, too, learning the intricacies of foreign coastlines and looking in on familiar sights and places. None of it had yet revealed answers. Even this book—finally, a copy of Axerian’s Codex—had proved little more than the gibberish Zi had promised her it was on their first reading. A set of instructions cloaked in riddles, when she needed more.

  She rose, stretching her legs, and walked to the nearest shelves of books. A row of tomes of philosophy and religion, though the names and subjects were strange. A treatise on thought and knowledge by a man called Fremont, another on the virtues by Moore. Then … hadn’t there been a book by Fantiere, before? She scanned the shelves, searching for one of the few names she’d recognized.

  “I’ve deciphered this section,” Reyne called from his couch. “A new passage. A call to arms, to join the Thellan forces across the sea.”

  “Did you take Fantiere’s Treatise from these shelves?” she asked.

  “What? No, only the Codex. But don’t you see? This means there is still a path to follow. Even if the Gods are gone from this place, they left a path to guide us.”

  She frowned, turning back to the shelves. Fantiere’s book was gone, and others, though she couldn’t remember what the names had been, before. There had been books on ethics, epistemology, and the natural sciences. Now there were tomes of what appeared to be history intermingled with the books on philosophy. Impossible for them to have been there from the start; she would have picked them first, if they had been.

  “This next section is written in the Skovan tongue,” d’Agarre said with rising excitement. “It must be more of the same.”

  She withdrew an unattributed tome labeled The Seventh Cycle, propping it against the shelf as she thumbed it open. A map greeted her at the book’s center, drawn across both pages in vivid color. She recognized the contours of the continents from the map room, but in place of Sarresant, the same country was labeled Renfars, spilling over to claim the eastern half of the Old World and most of northern Bhakal. Where the colonies of New Sarresant should have been, instead there was a bar of solid color enveloping all of the New World, labeled The Chorani Nation, even spilling over the sea to claim the islands of Gand and some of the Thellan coasts in the Old World. In the East, a hundred patches of color made a quiltwork of the countryside, each labeled as belonging to a Great and Noble House: Fox, Dragon, Lotus, Ox, Heron, Crane, Crab, and more.

  “Sarine?” Reyne said after she’d studied its pages for a while. “Have you found anything in your Codex?”

  “No,” she said absently. “And I don’t expect to. Zi was right; it’s just a tool Axerian used to control the kaas-mages.”

  “What?” Reyne said. “After all my searching this place, we finally find copies, and you dismiss it so readily? I’ve spent a lifetime studying its words. I assure you, it’s much more than you seem to think.”

  She paused, leaving a finger to mark her place. “How long did you search for it?”

  “Every day, since I came here,” he snapped back. “Don’t you understand? This book guided my every step toward ascension. Without it I’ve been blind. It can show us the way forward, if we study its secrets. I promise it will aid you, if you only consider it.”

  She glanced back at the shelf. Had it changed again, while she wasn’t looking at it? The empty space where she’d withdrawn the tome she carried was still there, but sure enough, alongside it were two more volumes with identical bindings: The Eleventh Cycle, and The First Cycle.

  She closed the Seventh and withdrew the First. Once again the center pages were a map, but whereas the last tome had been a colored illustration of the same continents and world she recognized from the map room, this one was all black and gray, a network of lines that suggested the shapes of the continents without etching their coasts, more akin to a maze of underground tunnels and passages than landmasses.

  Thumbing through its pages revealed much the same content as the prior volume: a history of strange peoples—the Amaros, Vordu, and Jukari—whose names echoed faintly in her memory. She flipped back to the beginning, finding the title page, and though the spine was unattributed, there was a signature beneath its words:

  The First Cycle

  A Chronicle of Events Transpired

  By Axerian ben Nassad, First Speaker of the Shamesh School of the Dhasalam Jukari

  She read it again to be sure, and had to blink to see the script without Anati translating it for her into the Sarresant tongue. In its original form it was lines, dots, and half squares—nothing she recognized as lettering. But through Anati she saw the name, plain and clear: Axerian. He’d written this. And somehow, some force had placed it here for her to find.

  “Sarine?” Reyne said. By now he’d closed his tome, though how long he’d been glaring at her she couldn’t have said.

  “How does this place work?” she asked. “Who stocks the shelves?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” Reyne said. “And that’s hardly our concern. You asked for my aid in uncovering the mysteries surrounding the nature of the Veil, and the Codex is the logical place to start.”

  Once more she ignored him, carrying The First Cycle to the table where she’d piled her other volumes. Whatever Axerian had done to poison d’Agarre’s mind, it seemed to center on his Codex. A dangerous reminder of what might be possible, with unknown magic. But something had wanted her to have this book. Or perhaps her own need, coupled with d’Agarre’s, had produced first the Codex, and then Axerian’s histories.

  She closed her eyes, centering her thoughts on her need for answers. The Veil’s emotions pulsed at the periphery of her awareness, and she centered there, forming the words into her questions: How do I do what she could do? How do I become the Veil?

  D’Agarre said something, posing a question she barely heard. All her focus poured itself into her need for answers. Blue sparks seemed to flicker at the edge of the darkness, suggesting a faint shimmer of the way she’d come to travel here, the infinite planes lined with vortices of pure energy. And suddenly a different shape. A human shape, moving toward the bookshelves.

  She shot her eyes open in time to see a shadow vanish from her sight.

  “What are you doing?” Reyne asked. She’d already all but leapt from her seat, darting toward the bookshelf.

  “Who are you?” she asked. “What are you?”

  “Who is what?” Reyne asked.

  “I saw it,” she said. “A creature—something here, reading our thoughts.”

  She left Reyne frowning and looking pensive while she approached the bookshelf. Sure enough, the volumes had changed again. The Cycles had been replaced by parchment and scrolls, and a small, leather book stuffed full of loose pages.

  “Paendurion said nothing about any creatures living here,” Reyne said.

  She picked up the leather book and opened it, cradling it to preserve the ordering of its contents. Handwritten notes decorated i
ts pages in what appeared to be a dozen different languages and styles of scripts. Anati translated it in bursts as she read, flipping through to make sense of what it contained. As many sketchings and hand-drawn scenes as sections of words. A drawing of a cave; another of what appeared to be a palace, with towering spires rising higher than the clouds. And a perfect depiction of the infinite planes and energy storms she’d navigated to reach this place, with a label: The Master’s Sanctum, and another: The Soul of the World.

  “This is a journal of some kind,” she said, continuing to read. “Chronicling someone’s travels to reach this place.”

  Reyne moved alongside her, pointing so suddenly she almost pulled the book away. “I recognize that script,” he said. “I’ve seen it used in the Codex. Saruk always said it was old—older than his father’s father.”

  “Whatever the creature is stocking these shelves, it’s trying to help us,” she said. She lowered the journal. “What are you?” she said, addressing the room. “I know you’re here. You don’t need to be afraid. Show yourself, please. Maybe we can help you, too.”

  For a moment the room was silent. Then the same shadow flickered at the corner of her sight, near the entryway to the hall. Again it had a human shape, only this time it beckoned to her, then vanished around the corner.

  She bounded after it, reaching the smooth stone exit in time to see the shadow once again beckoning to her as it disappeared down a bend in the corridor. Red and Body came in a rush, and she followed. It darted around corners, each time pausing to gesture to her, until she rounded the wide entryway into the massive stone chamber at the heart of the halls, where the column of pure light burned at its center.