The captain sniffed and turned away with a curt waving motion for them to follow. Caile shot Lorentz a glance and Lorentz merely shrugged in return. Caile urged his mount forward, and they followed the retinue through the south gate, which was only a gate in the loosest of terms. There were two columns of granite on either side of the road and an archway spanning the distance between them, but unlike most cities in the Five Kingdoms, Col Sargoth had no outer wall. Rather, the city boundary was wherever the ramshackle hovels and tents on the outskirts of the city stopped. The south gate merely marked where the high road joined the main thoroughfare leading north toward the center of the city.
Once past the outer buildings, the streets were lined on either side with lampposts that smoked and sputtered, their filaments burning a dull orange even though it was still hours before nightfall. The road itself was not paved with flagstones but rather with tar and gravel. Caile watched as it came up in black clumps beneath the horses’ hooves only to fall again and get trampled back into the road. The buildings were all tall rectangular affairs—two or three stories high, constructed of soot-stained cedar timber or granite blocks—and they seemed to trap in the choking stench of smoke and naphtha. What really stood out to Caile, however, was the fact that there were very few animals in the streets. In Kal Pyrthin and Sol Valaróz, the streets leading toward the city center were filled with horsemen, horse-drawn wagons, mule-drawn carts, and farmers leading pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, and any number of other animals to market. Here though, there were only the Sargothian cavalrymen on their horses and Caile and his men on their own mounts. There were plenty of city folk hustling about, but all were on foot. The carts were drawn by hand, and the few wagons they passed were self-powered vehicles that were propelled by steam engines, wheezing like bellows and spewing black soot from their smokestacks. Caile had heard of such things but thought them a myth before now.
As they moved deeper into the city, the buildings gradually grew larger, but they remained drab and uniformly rectangular. The people themselves cleared a wide path before the cavalrymen, and no one said a word to Caile or his men. They hardly even said a word to each other, Caile realized. That was partly what unnerved him so much—there wasn’t the cacophony of voices he had grown accustomed to in a city. The near silence was eerie.
They reached the outer wall of Lightbringer’s Keep and the Sargothian captain quickly ushered them past the guards. Inside the outer walls, it was nearly a city in and of itself, but they soon reached the inner wall, which connected the five towers together.
“We will dismount here,” the captain said. “Your horses and belongings will be tended to. Please follow me.”
Caile and his men did as they were told and followed the captain on foot. Six of the cavalrymen proceeded in front of them and six followed behind. All of them carried their flails, Caile noted. They proceeded through the inner courtyard toward the central keep, which was connected to the five towers via long narrow wings like spokes on a giant wheel. At the entryway to the central keep courtiers bowed deeply to greet them, but Caile barely had time to pay them notice, for the captain led them on at a brisk pace into the entry hall and down a long central corridor. Caile glanced upward and saw the ceiling in the corridor was vaulted some fifty feet or more. To either side, the walls were decorated with expansive tapestries depicting Sargoth Lightbringer in various scenes from ancient lore.
The hall ended at a set of wide double-doors, and the captain halted to speak with a courtier. The courtier slipped inside, and a moment later the double-doors opened. Caile realized with a jolt that they were entering the throne room; he was being ushered in to see the Emperor himself. Decorum usually called for visiting dignitaries the chance to bathe and change into proper attire before meeting, but clearly the Emperor cared not for decorum. Caile hastily combed his hair back out of his face with one hand and unbuttoned the top of his cloak to reveal his Pyrthinian surcoat before stepping inside with his honor guard flanked to either side behind him.
Like the central corridor, the ceiling of the throne room was vaulted, and there was a high balcony lining the rear and side walls, but apart from that it was similar in size and layout to the throne room in Castle Pyrthin. The stark difference was the man sitting on the throne. Few people outside Lightbringer’s Keep had ever seen Emperor Thedric Guderian. Wulfram was the one who traveled to the other four kingdoms when necessary, and popular sentiment throughout the Five Kingdoms was that Wulfram was the true power behind Guderian. Caile had always imagined the Emperor to be an old, frail weakling of a man. He couldn’t have been further from the truth. Even sitting upon his throne, Guderian towered above Caile. He was tall, broad-shouldered, thickly muscled, and appeared to be in the physical prime of his life, though Caile knew he was more than fifty years old. His jet-black hair was close-cropped to his scalp and a well-trimmed line of a beard ran along his jawline to where it connected with the mustache that outlined his mouth. His disdain for decorum extended to his wardrobe. He didn’t wear a robe or crown even, but rather a black leather jack with plate armor at the forearms and leather trousers stitched with thigh plates and shynbalds much like the ones the cavalrymen wore. Next to the throne stood the Emperor’s man-at-arms with Guderian’s claymore: a massive two-handed sword nearly five feet long. Caile found himself gawking back and forth between Emperor and weapon.
“Your Excellency, I present to you Prince Caile Delios of Pyrthinia,” said the courtier who had ushered them in.
The introduction snapped Caile to attention and he knelt down to bow before the Emperor. His men followed suit behind him.
“I was expecting a princess,” Guderian said in a low quiet voice that nonetheless filled the entire throne room.
Caile raised his head to address him but remained kneeling. “Your Excellency, my father King Casstian Delios regretfully informs you that Princess Taera suffers a malady which makes her unfit for travel. He has sent me in her stead.”
“A malady?”
“We bring a letter from the royal physician describing her illness,” Caile replied, motioning for Lorentz to retrieve the letter from his satchel.
Lorentz withdrew the letter, and a scribe whom Caile hadn’t even noticed before stepped from the shadows behind the throne and snatched up the letter. The scribe cracked the wax seal, read it, and nodded wordlessly to the Emperor.
“Very well then,” Guderian said. “Tell me a bit about yourself, young Caile. You were ward to King Bricio, is that correct? How go matters in Valaróz?”
“Yes, Your Excellency, I was ward to King Bricio for five years and in charge of maritime relations with Pyrthinia and to a lesser extent the Old World. As of the time I left, two months ago, all was well. Pirates from the Old World raid some of the smaller villas near the Spine on occasion, but otherwise, everything is orderly.” Caile didn’t deem it necessary to elaborate upon how Bricio kept the realm orderly; Bricio had been hand-picked by Guderian, and the secret agents, the rewards for turning in dissenters, the ever increasing standing army—all the deceptive and tyrannical methods Caile had observed in his five years in Valaróz—were quite clearly methods passed down by the Emperor himself.
Emperor Guderian was nodding. “It seems Valaróz is more orderly than Pyrthinia then. I received word of the sorceress.”
Caile’s breath caught in his throat, and he felt himself on the verge of panic. How could he possibly know about Taera?
“You did well in killing the firewielder,” Guderian continued.
“The firewielder, yes, thank you,” Caile said, realizing the Emperor wasn’t talking about his sister at all. Caile was relieved yet still disconcerted. He’d ordered his men and the other Pyrthinian soldiers to remain silent about the firewielder, and he himself had only told his father. There were the scent-hounds of course, but still, the Emperor shouldn’t have known any specifics. “I had hoped to apprehend her,” Caile admitted, “but she was mad with rage, she burned one man alive, nearly burned me, and my
man Lorentz here was forced to kill her.”
“You’d do well to take better heed of your man Lorentz then. I sense that more trouble is afoot in Pyrthinia. Your fool father treads a thin line in resisting the mandates I send him, and your brother was the bigger fool.”
Anger welled up inside Caile, but he forced himself to respond in an even tone. “It was my understanding Cargan was killed by drunkards.”
“Indeed, drunkards and traitors. Your brother made the mistake of trying to befriend them.”
“I don’t understand.”
The Emperor smiled and stood, though there was no humor in his smile. “Walk with me, Caile,” he said, then strode away to one side of the throne room, and Caile had to jump to his feet and nearly run to catch up. Guderian led him up the balcony staircase and stopped to gaze out of a lead glass window. Two of the massive towers obscured their view to the left and the right, but their vantage point was still high enough to see over the inner and outer walls of Lightbringer’s Keep to the city beyond. “Tell me what you see,” the Emperor said.
Caile hesitated, unsure what the Emperor wanted of him. “I see Col Sargoth, Your Excellency.”
“You lack vision then, boy. When I look out this window I see the pinnacle of technology. I see man’s triumph over nature and evil. I see a city where smelters are making the strongest steel mankind has ever known. I see a city where beasts of burden will soon be obsolete, where steam powers our carriages, where machines power our mills, tan hides, and pump ether to the lanterns that burn night and day. I see a city where the roofs and roads are sealed with tar—a city that is impervious to storm and rain. Most importantly, I see a city free of sorcery. Sorcery is a malady that breeds evil in the minds of men, Caile. It was the sorcerers who nearly brought the Five Kingdoms to ruin and started the Dreamwielder War. It was the sorcerers who tried to allow the armies of the Old World to cross the Spine like they did nearly 300 years ago. Fortunately, like my ancestor Sargoth Lightbringer then, I am here now to stay the hand of evil.”
Caile couldn’t help but respond. “Sargoth Lightbringer himself was a sorcerer, though.”
“Indeed, as were Vala, Golier, Pyrthin, and Norg. But times have changed, young prince. Mankind has evolved. Civilization has evolved. The New World was a wild land then, populated by shiftless savages, and our forefathers were hardly more than savages themselves. They needed sorcery to conquer the New World and set us upon our path, but sorcery has outlived its usefulness. We needn’t the help of stormbringers now that we’ve mastered irrigation. There’s no use for beastcharmers when beasts themselves aren’t needed. Those who support the old ways—men like your father and brother—stand in the way of progress. During your stay here, Caile, I hope you’ll come to see things correctly. Men who share my vision stand to inherit much. The day of the Five Kingdoms is over. We’ve evolved. This is the Sargothian Empire now, an empire where all may live without fear of sorcery.”
“And what of your servant Wulfram?” Caile asked.
The Emperor turned from the window to face Caile. “He knows as well as I that when his job is done, I must kill him. Believe me, he longs for the day I will finally put him to rest.”
Storm clouds surround a lone farmstead, and a woman looks up from her garden where she pulls weeds. Soldiers approach, led by a dark, shrouded figure. The woman yells for her husband, but by time he steps out of the barn, the soldiers are there.
Where is she, the shrouded figure asks. Where is the dreamwielder?
The woman shakes her head, and her husband tries to step forward protectively, but one of the soldiers clubs him to the ground. The soldiers crowd around, kick him savagely.
Stop, please, I don’t know what you’re talking about, the woman cries.
Liar! She was here. Where has she gone?
I don’t know. Please, leave him be.
Kill them both, the dark figure says. They’re of no use.
One soldier steps toward the woman, knife in hand. The others beat the husband with their clubs. His head cracks open and everything turns red…
Taera woke with a gasp and scrambled to her feet expecting to find herself surrounded by soldiers. She was in her own room though, standing on her bed, wearing her own nightclothes, soaked in sweat. It took her several seconds to realize it had all been a dream, but even with the realization, her heart did not calm in her chest because she knew it was more than a dream. It was a vision, and somewhere soon, if not already, there would be soldiers approaching a lone farmstead.
8
A Storm on the Horizon
Makarria stared into the distance from the bow of the skiff. The view had been the same for five straight days—endless ocean as far as the eye could see and an occasional puffy cloud in the sky—but now dark clouds loomed on the horizon. She’d pointed them out to her grandfather when she first noticed them several hours before, but he’d merely told her not to worry about it. He’d been saying that a lot since they set voyage, but Makarria couldn’t help but worry. Parmo had told her what she was when the sun had risen on that first day: a dreamwielder. He hadn’t meant to tell her much, but she was relentless with her questions.
In the days before Emperor Guderian, dreamwielders were the most revered and powerful of all sorcerers, Parmo had told her, but she didn’t entirely believe him. She’d heard him mention the Dreamwielder War often enough in the stories he used to tell her. She knew how the dreamwielders had created horrible monsters by melding humans and beasts together. Parmo assured Makarria that she wasn’t capable of doing anything of the sort, that what she’d done to save him was entirely noble, but still, here they were running away. People would be scared of her if they knew what she was. Particularly the Emperor. No wonder her mother had continually told her to not have any dreams. A pang of guilt shot through her at the thought of her mother. I didn’t even say goodbye to her or Father.
“Grampy,” Makarria started to ask, but her grandfather interrupted and corrected her. “Parmo,” he said. “You need to call me Parmo from now on.”
“Right,” she complied, sitting up and turning to face him where he sat manning the rudder at the stern. “Parmo, won’t people in the East Islands be scared of me too when they find out what I can do?”
“Perhaps scared, yes, but they won’t try to harm you like back home. Besides, we’re going to work on learning to control your dreams, right?”
Makarria nodded. She didn’t have the foggiest notion how, nor did Parmo for that matter, but it seemed a reasonable notion. When Parmo had told her about her ability, she was not surprised. It was as if she’d somehow known all along she was a dreamwielder and that her grandfather had just put into words something she never knew how to say before. She could think of a half-dozen times when her dreams had seemed so real that she had awoken and thought them to be true, and in a way she had made them true because she really wanted them to be that way. The castle, the dresses, the ponies, the flowers. But what about the dreams she didn’t want to be true? What about nightmares? Did she have the ability to make them come to life?
“Makarria!”
“What?” Makarria asked, realizing Parmo had called out her name several times.
“You best secure the yard arm to the bow and tie yourself in,” he said, and she could see he had a look of concern on his face.
The wind was whipping her hair about, and she turned toward the bow to see that the storm was rapidly approaching. The sky was nearly black before them, and the first of the huge ocean swells swept the skiff up onto its crest, then back down into a trough so deep the clouds were blocked from sight for several seconds. Parmo lowered the sail, and as he furled it away, Makarria lashed the diagonally-angled yard arm to the bow of the skiff, so it wouldn’t swing about wildly on the mast and knock one of them overboard. Once Makarria had the yard arm secured, she turned her attention to the rope belt she wore and tied the loose ends at either hip to the extra oarlocks at the front of the skiff so that she was securely tied-dow
n in her seat, facing her grandfather at the stern of the skiff. Parmo had made herself tie-in every night while sleeping, but this was the first time she had to tie-in on account of bad weather.
“Alright,” Parmo said, grabbing up the oars, “You’re tied in now and you have the bucket. When water starts coming over the sides, you bail out water. If it gets really bad, you’ll have to wait until we’re in the troughs between waves. Don’t look behind you. I’ll steer us with the oars and make sure we crest the waves safely. You just bail water and keep your eyes on my back. Understood?”
Makarria nodded.
Seeing that she had the bucket in hand and seemed unperturbed, Parmo sat himself down facing the stern and tied himself in. He secured the oars in the oarlocks and made sure everything was in place. The rudder was fastened secure—he’d steer using the oars now—and he’d mounted his convex navigating mirror at the starboard corner of the stern so that he could see where they were going. It wasn’t a pretty sight in the mirror. The waves were big and the sky dark.
They rode up the steep incline of one of the first big waves, and from Makarria’s position in the bow it seemed the mainmast and Parmo were directly below her. Parmo leaned heavily into the oars to propel them over the crest of the wave, and suddenly the bottom dropped out beneath Makarria and Parmo was above her as they plummeted down the backside of the wave. Sea spray splashed up and around them, and rain started coming down, slowly at first but increasingly heavy as they started climbing the next wave.
“Have you ever sailed through a storm like this before, Grandpa Parmo?” Makarria yelled over the howling wind.
“Of course, don’t worry about it!” Parmo yelled back over his shoulder, but he neglected to mention that the last time he’d navigated a storm like this it had been in a much larger ship and the ship had nearly been torn to pieces in the process.
Natarios Rhodas shivered and tightened his black cloak around his shoulders as he strode through the streets of Kal Pyrthin toward the castle. A storm was fast approaching and he desperately hoped his business with King Casstian would be brief so he could return to his tower before the rains started. He knew such would not be the case though. King Casstian Delios always argued about the decrees the Emperor and Wulfram sent to him, and if the previous days’ events were any indication of how things would turn out, the business with the King would be unpleasant. Natarios grimaced inwardly at that memory of what had transpired at the small farmstead on the coast. Wulfram had sensed that the dreamwielder was there at one point, but the farmer and his wife hadn’t been cooperative. With Wulfram it was always best to be cooperative, and the farmers had learned that lesson the hard way. Not that it had helped Wulfram in the least bit; all they learned was that a skiff was missing from the farm. The dreamwielder was still out there somewhere, and she could have sailed anywhere along the coast: south toward the warmer waters of the Sol Sea, west toward Pyrvino, or to Kal Pyrthin. Natarios had left some of his men in Pyrvino to keep a look out for her, and Wulfram had flown south to skirt the coast all the way to Sol Valaróz in hope of tracking her down. That left only Kal Pyrthin to tend to, hence the unsavory task Natarios now had before him.
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