The servant returned with another swift bow, bringing the words of Tyro: “Majesty. King Tyro wills it. He bids you enjoy the evening’s spectacle.” Lyrilan frowned and offered no response. He waved the servant away, and the boy was gone, lost in the flurry of attendants hefting full salvers and porcelain dishes to and from the table.
Lyrilan enjoyed the touch of Ramiyah’s fingers, the taste of her lips flavored with dark berries, the warmth of her smile, and her soft words slipped into his ear. He soon forgot about the feast, the courtiers, and even his brother’s presence. Ramiyah had this effect on him: hers was the ability to consume his attention as nothing but a Great Idea could ever do. It was those Great Ideas that were her only competition as Queen and wife. They were the only things that could break the spell of her charms and draw him away from her. Now he reveled in her presence. The music of the feast, the voices of the celebrants, all sank to a dull roar. The sparkling wine sang in his blood, swam between his ears like dancing motes of starlight, and he found himself smiling and content for a timeless moment. That contentment was shattered by the voice of Lord Mendices.
The gaunt Warlord rose from his place at the table and with a gesture caused the musicians to cease their playing. All eyes turned upon the lord, and his lean face smiled in the manner of a wolf or jackal contemplating easy prey. Such was Lyrilan’s imagination, yet he knew himself to be drunk, or close to it, so he ignored his fancies.
Lord Mendices raised his cup. “A toast to the Twin Kings of Uurz, Lords of the Sacred Waters. Long may they run!” Every man and woman in the hall joined him. “In his grace and wisdom,” said Mendices, “King Tyro has revived our ancestors’ tradition of blood justice. Tonight we bring before the Brother Kings not one but two known spies from the poisonous realm of the south. Two Khyreins, marked not only by their pale skin and dark eyes, but by their own words, spoken during a righteous interrogation. They have confessed to being agents of Gammir the Reborn, whom they have the gall to call Emperor. Yet no spy can stalk the streets of Uurz for long. Our legions are vigilant! Our swords are sharp! Our walls are strong!” Another round of cheering, unasked for but triggered by the traditional evocation of Uurz’s triple strength. Mendices paused to bask in the effect of his words, and calm returned to the hall.
“As our ancestors knew, a warrior’s worth can be proven in battle by strength of arm and swiftness of foot. So that ancient principle lives again. Rather than face the headsman bound in mortal unity, these Khyreins have chosen to fight to the death so that one may be granted the Kings’ mercy. A stain of wickedness pervades the entire Khyrein race, which knows nothing of brotherhood. You will see it on display this evening, as one man of Khyrei willingly strikes down another. Let this combat remind you of what separates us from these fiends of the crimson jungles.”
Mendices turned to signal a guard. “The prisoners.”
Lyrilan’s stomach sank, sobriety returning like a lead weight upon his chest as the guard walked off to retrieve the captive Khyreins. Ramiyah’s hand squeezed his own, a silent message of support. He took a deep slow breath. It reeked of brazier smoke and greasy bones.
The points of naked spears herded the two Khyreins into the hall and onto the circle of black sand. The eight spearmen arranged themselves in a ring about the makeshift arena. The courtiers at the Kings’ table stood to have a better view beyond the guards’ bronze shoulders. Only the two Kings and their Queens would have an unobstructed view of the combat, sitting safely atop their platforms.
The Khyreins were nude but for loincloths of crimson silk. Their skin was pale as marble, their narrow eyes and unwashed hair black as kohl. The half-healed marks of torture and bondage were visible as crimson welts upon their wrists and feet. One was barely a man, little more than shaving age, his arms thin and chest sunken. The other was a man of middle age, with beefy arms and squat legs, a warrior who had seen pain and taken men’s lives. It was obvious who would win this combat. Unless the younger man proved far quicker than his elder.
A guard removed first the young man’s shackles, then the elder’s. They stood at the far ends of the ring. Two shortblades were tossed into the middle of the arena, hitting the sand with dull thumps. They were common blades, wide and honed to deadly sharpness, but without any flourish of design or jeweled accent. These were tools made only for one purpose: killing at an arm’s length. Both of the prisoners eyed the blades, rubbing their wrists that had suffered so long under the shackles’ bite.
Perhaps they thought of taking up those blades and cutting their way through the spearmen, maybe even leaping upon one of the Twin Kings’ platforms and spilling royal blood across the steps. Yet the spearmen were chosen for their size and ferocity. Any step toward the outside of the ring would bring an immediate impaling. There was no choice now but to fight one another. Lyrilan wondered if he would make the same choice in a similar situation. What if he were forced to choose between killing his brother or sacrificing his own life? He chose to think he would not fight Tyro, no matter the consequences. Yet he did not truly know the answer.
No man truly knows himself until he faces death. The words of Pericles, greatest philosopher of Yaskatha. These two Khyreins were on the verge of an ultimate self-knowledge.
The younger man leaped toward the blades, followed a half-second later by his countryman. The younger had barely wrapped his hand about the sword’s grip when the elder’s bare heel slammed into his skull. The elder grabbed up his own weapon. He stabbed down with both hands wrapped about the grip. The blade sank into sand as the younger rolled to his side and jumped to his feet. They squared off like crouching panthers.
The elder waited patiently, and the younger lunged, stabbing forward. The elder brought his knee up and cracked a rib or two, then felled his opponent with a stabbing blow from his elbow. Again the younger went down to the sand. But he did not lose the grip on his shortblade. He sliced it casually across the back of the older’s calf, just missing the great tendon that would have crippled him. The elder howled and leaped away. The courtiers cheered at the sight of first blood. Lyrilan’s stomach churned. He must not vomit. Not in front of all these eyes.
Once again the two Khryeins faced each other, the one clutching his ribs, the other streaming crimson from the back of his lower leg. The moment lingered, and the pale panthers circled. Someone yelled a curse upon them both from the table. As if incensed by this verbal abuse, the elder swept forward with his blade, keeping his body well back from the younger’s thrusting motion. A red weal appeared across the younger’s chest from nipple to nipple. The elder wasted no time, sweeping a leg beneath the younger and bringing him to the ground once more.
The older thrust his blade deep into the younger’s side. The younger’s blade fell from his fingers as he howled. It was not a killing blow, but he would not rise again. Scarlet streamed from both chest and side wounds into the black sand, where it became invisible among the grains. Now the older raised his sword again in both hands, blade pointed down and aimed at the younger’s heart. This would be the death stroke, the final mercy. He would put the gasping, quivering youth out of his misery at last.
A bronze spear snaked forward and dashed the sword from the older’s hands before the killing blow fell. Guards surrounded him as he stood panting and bleeding from the calf, a desperate hope burning in his black eyes. The guards removed both shortblades, and their captain carried the bloodied sword across the hall toward Lyrilan’s dais. Wordlessly he held the killing tool in both hands, arms outstretched toward the Scholar King. Lyrilan swallowed the dryness in his throat. He did not know what to do. As much as he knew the intricacies of courtly protocol, this was a situation entirely new to him. It was a custom that died out long ago, and it should have been left dead.
The wounded man gasped for air on the sand, grasping at his punctured flesh.
Lyrilan became aware of all eyes focused on him now. Lord Mendices threw his voice across the hall again. “Majesty. It is customary for the Emperor�
� or King… to claim the right of final execution.” He paused, and when there came no reply from Lyrilan, he added, “The death blow is yours if you wish it, King Lyrilan.”
Lyrilan shook his head. He waved the sword away with distaste, as if it were a platter of overripe cheese. His eyes turned toward Tyro, who watched without expression from across the long table. Did his brother enjoy seeing him squirm like this? Or did he feel Lyrilan’s pain? Was it Tyro’s idea to offer Lyrilan the killing sword first?
The guard walked about the table and offered the red blade to Tyro. The Sword King wrapped his hand about the grip and stood before the audience gathered about him. All there knew he would do the deed. There was no question. Tyro had no qualms about killing his enemies, as no warrior should.
Lyrilan avoided his eyes, and the eyes of the nobles that flickered back and forth between the two Kings. He stared at his own hands, cursing the jeweled rings on his fingers. He could not even look at Ramiyah, though her presence beside him was hot as flame.
Tyro stepped down from his dais while Talondra stood to watch him go. He approached the ring of sand, stood over the dying man, and said something in a low voice. Only the bleeding Khyrein could hear him. As easily as slicing a melon, he drew the keen blade across the young Khyrein’s throat, pressing it deep to sever the great vein. A fresh gout of red spilled among the black sand, and in a few moments the prisoner was dead.
The older prisoner stood nearby, still the focus of an octet of spears. Tyro would grant him freedom according to the custom of blood justice.
“I beg the Great King’s mercy,” said the prisoner in perfect Uurzian. He fell upon his knees before Tyro. Tears glittered in his eyes, perhaps shed for the man he’d killed, perhaps for himself, perhaps only a show to secure the King’s pity.
Tyro kept his own dark eyes focused on the face of the victorious prisoner. Yet his voice spoke to the assembled courtiers and to his brother behind him. “This man has won the trial of blood justice. By slaying his own cousin he has proven his worth as a soldier. Yet the Kings of Uurz will allow no mercy for the devils of Khyrei.”
The Sword King’s fist moved quick as a shadow, a dance of silver in the smoky air. The blade sank deep into the older Khyrein’s heart, stopped only by the curve of the bronze hilt. Tyro released the blade and stood quiet as the prisoner keeled over. Now both captives lay dead on the sand.
Lyrilan blinked and realized he had forgotten to breathe. Ramiyah whimpered softly once beside him.
Tyro turned to address his shocked audience. “No mercy for the devils of Khyrei!”
Now the crowd fell from shock to applause, and Tyro’s cry was repeated from many drunken throats. Even the guards of the hall joined in the chant. “No mercy! No mercy! No mercy!”
During the cacophony of applause Tyro walked back to his dais, sat himself upon the throne, and met Talondra’s lips with his own.
Lyrilan, sitting silently as the two dead men were dragged away, saw the faces of a half-dozen nobles staring at him. These were the sensible ones, the ones who feared war and supported his talk of peace. They expected him to balance his brother’s martial sensibilities. They looked to him now, deafened by the cheers of their fellows. But he could do nothing to stop the rising tide of Tyro’s bloodlust. It spread through the court like a virus, a contagion that could not be stopped.
This had all been planned. Tyro had called him out.
The true spectacle this night was not the slaughter of two Khyrein spies.
It was the weakness of the Scholar King.
Lyrilan rose from his chair and descended the platform, drawing Ramiyah after him by her hand. A quartet of legionnaires followed as they left the Feasting Hall, where the reek of spilled blood overpowered now the scents of meat and smoke and spices. To his surprise a half-dozen noblemen followed him as he exited. He only wanted to be alone with Ramiyah, to think. To figure out this problem dropped into his life like a bead of poison into a cup of wine.
He was not the only Peace Speaker among the court. Yet he was their leader, their Scholar King, their only chance. They did not want a war any more than he did. They feared Tyro the Sword King and the voices who guided him toward savage glory.
This was the beginning of something new and terrible.
Factions. The Sword and the Scholar.
Before there was war with Khyrei, there would be war in Uurz.
O Father, what have you done to us?
3
Born Into Shadow
It began with a dream of blood.
Vireon sank into a red sea, rich and warm as the ocean that had drowned his father. His great arms, his mighty thews, the Giant strength of his body, all these things were worthless as he sank deeper into the crimson depths. His iron-hard skin that no blade or arrow could break… useless. His limbs flailed like a child as the bloody tide invaded his mouth and lungs. At times he broke the surface, where a black sky sparkled with icy stars. He pulled against the current, yet always it pulled him back under, until he lost the stars completely. All was red and molten and weighty as a mountain collapsed on his broad chest.
The red sea turned to burning flame, and he awoke. The bedchamber was warm with orange torchlight, and his sweat drenched the silken bedding. Alua lay peacefully next to him, her arms wrapped about tiny Maelthyn. Vireon breathed the night air into his lungs, pulling the covers back. He stalked to the open window where the breezes would cool his dreaming fever. The King’s Chamber lay at the top of the palace’s highest tower, and the window opened on a view of Udurum’s northern quarter. The City of Men and Giants slept quietly beneath a harvest moon, only a few pale fires and flickering street lamps alive at this late hour.
Beyond the encircling wall of black stone stretched the wild forests of Uduria, ancestral land of Giants. The great Uyga trees rivaled the height of the city wall, which stood higher than even the tallest Giant. Vireon gripped the window-sill, and his thoughts turned to the stones of the palace itself. His father and the Uduri had rebuilt the palace when they rebuilt the shattered city some thirty years ago. Vod the Man-Giant had slept in this very bedchamber with Vireon’s human mother for more than twenty years. At times he could still smell his father’s scent upon the very walls. Could the curse have taken root deep within these very stones? No, he must not consider such a thing. He knew where the curse came from, and it was not his father’s doing.
He thrust his shaggy head out the window, breathing in the scents of the distant forest: pine, leaf, bark, soil, night blossoms, animal scents. It called to him, a balm for his troubled mind. Such thoughts of doom never assailed him in the depths of the woodland. He must escape his own palace to find peace in the hunt. And he must do so now, before the sun came up to remind him he was a King, no longer a boy who could run away and lose himself in the forest. How long had it been since he ran the Long Hunt? Too many years.
He returned to the great bed, moving silently across the carpet on the balls of his feet. Alua’s face lay beneath a tangle of golden hair; he brushed the locks aside and put his lips lightly upon hers. She moaned but did not wake. He would not leave his wife a scrawled message. She would know where he had gone and why. She always knew.
He turned to the curled form of his daughter, a miniature version of Alua, yet with hair black as his own. When her eyes were open they gleamed a fierce blue, another mark of her father’s blood. She was seven now and had her own room in the King’s Tower, yet every night this month she had climbed into bed between her father and mother. Vireon did not mind this. He loved Maelthyn as deeply as he loved her mother. Perhaps even more. He placed a rough hand on her small cheek, kissed her pale forehead. Lost in some pleasant dream, she took no notice of these things.
He stepped away from the bed and gathered up his tall boots, his buckskin leggings, a wide belt hung with a broad-bladed hunting knife, and a shirt of black ringmail. As he dressed in the glow of the brazier’s fading embers, his eyes caught the gleam of his greatsword where it hung upon
the wall. Blue and silver hues danced across the length of steel, the metal of Giants. The blade was slightly longer than he was tall. He would not take it with him; it was a tool of war, not the hunt. It had taken the life of his own brother. Fangodrel leaped unwanted into his memory. Fangodrel with his sneering mouth, arrogant eyes, weak shoulders, and Khyrein-pale skin.
Vireon hesitated as he lifted the light crown of silver and onyx. It was little more than a tight-fitting circlet, a traveling crown, an alternative to the great crown he must wear when sitting on the throne. He placed the circlet upon his head, settling it snugly over his black locks. The charred face of Fangodrel floated before him in the gloom. Flesh curled back from a grinning skull, ruined lips flapping over yellow fangs, spitting words like poison: I curse you! Your children will be born into shadow…
Vireon had interrupted that curse with the sharp blade of the greatsword. So he had avenged his true brother, Tadarus, when he cut the head off his false one. His skin crawled as he recalled the crunch of the blackened skull beneath his boot.
He had rejected Fangodrel’s curse. It was no more than the raving of a dying man, a soul poisoned with obscene sorcery. Yet never could he forget the words hurled from those scorched lips. He looked once more at his sleeping daughter, admiring her small limbs, the rising and falling of her tiny stomach, the little pointed chin that so reminded him of his wife. Maelthyn had not been born into shadow, whatever that might mean. She was perfect and healthy and beautiful. Instead, it was Vireon who bore the curse. As his father had endured nightmares in this chamber that should offer a King his rest, so did Vireon. Was this dream of blood, this sense of unease, this constant worry for his daughter and his kingdom… was this the curse? Or was it simply the burden of being a King? He could not say.
In the heady embrace of the forest he would think more clearly. He could run and leap and climb until the earth itself gave him the answer to his question. The Long Hunt called to him as sweet water calls to a man dying of thirst. Stealing a last glance at his wife and child, he took a long spear from the wall and crept out of the chamber.
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