The Complete Empire Trilogy

by Raymond E. Feist

  Mara’s eyes snapped open. A thought occurred, and her heartbeat accelerated. These cho-ja might not be moved by a Tsurani, a sworn enemy – but would they turn their backs upon their fellows in captivity within the Empire? She must make them understand that she, as the only opponent of the Assembly with the rank and influence to threaten them, offered the cho-ja within Tsuranuanni their first hope of change.

  ‘We must find a way to be heard!’ Mara muttered, and she joined in step with Lujan’s pacing.

  More hours passed. Hunger began to trouble them, along with the urgency of bodily needs too long denied.

  To this last, Lujan remarked wryly, ‘Our captors might at least have equipped our cell with a latrine. If they leave me no better choice, I shall have to shame my upbringing and empty my bladder upon their floor.’

  Yet before that point of crisis could arise, a flash of intense white light smote the eyes of the Lady and her officer. Blinking against temporary blindness, Mara realised that the walls that held them appeared to have dissolved. She had discerned no moment of disorientation, nor heard any whisper of sound; and yet whatever spell of release had been keyed, she found herself no longer confined. Had their prison been an elaborate illusion, she wondered. Daylight fell through a high, transparent dome tinted soft purple. She and Lujan stood at the center of a patterned floor, the tiles fashioned of glass, or precious stones, and laid with a breathtaking artistry. The mosaics Mara had seen in the hall of Tsuranuanni’s Emperor seemed clumsy as a child’s scrawls by comparison. The beauty might have held her staring in wordless admiration, but a double-file escort of cho-ja warriors prodded her forward.

  Frantically, she glanced around for Lujan. He was not with her! She had been mesmerised by the floor, and if he had been led away, she had not seen where. Another prod from her escort sent her stumbling ahead. Leading the column of warriors, she saw a cho-ja with yellow markings on its thorax. By the tools hung in the satchel at its belt, it appeared to be a scribe; and it followed on the heels of another figure of towering height that trailed what Mara had at first presumed to be some sort of gossamer mantle. More careful inspection revealed wings, overlaid in elaborate folds as a lady’s train might be. They slid with the faintest of rustles over the polished floor, emitting sparkles of light that danced and died in the air. By the palpable sense of power that chased prickles over her skin, Mara understood she beheld a cho-ja magician up close.

  Awe held her tongue-tied. The creature was tall! Built with slender, stilt-like limbs, it moved with a grace that recalled to her Kevin’s long-ago description of the elves that inhabited his world of Midkemia. But this alien being owned more than beauty. Its sleek, wide head was crowned with antennae that at times gave off glow. Its foreclaws were ringed with precious metal, silver and copper and iron. What from a distance had looked like striped markings were actually more intricate, a maze of thread-fine lines that almost seemed to have meaning, like temple runes, or text beyond the ken of human perception. Curiosity warred with Mara’s fear, until only uncertainty for her fate held her silent. Upon her rested the future of the Empire and, as had those predecessors named Servant by past Emperors, she felt that responsibility weigh upon her.

  She was ushered down a passageway, and through an outer door that let onto a catwalk of dizzying height. It crossed in an arch between two spires, affording a dramatic view of the glass city, its surrounding jungle, and the teeth of the mountain ranges that hemmed the valley around. Mara saw more of the cho-ja magicians in flight over the city’s towers, before her escort of warriors hastened her ahead. She was urged across the catwalk, which had no railings but was surfaced with a strange, almost tacky substance for secure footing. The pillared entry at the far end opened into another wide, domed chamber.

  Here more cho-ja squatted in a semicircle, these marked similarly to the one she had guessed to be a scribe. Their colors were baffling, accustomed as she was to the unadorned black of the creatures in her own land. She was led into the center of their congress, and there the tall magician swept around and fixed ruby eyes upon her. ‘Tsurani-human, who are you?’

  Mara took a deep breath. ‘I am Mara, Lady of the Acoma and Servant of the Empire. I come to you to plead for –’

  ‘Tsurani-human,’ the magician interrupted in a sonorous boom. ‘These before you are the judges that have already convicted you. You are not brought here to plead, as your fate has already been determined.’

  Mara went rigid as if struck a blow. ‘Convicted! Of what crime?’

  ‘The crime of your nature. Of being what you are. The actions of your ancestors were your testimony.’

  ‘I am to die for what my ancestors did ages past?’

  The cho-ja magician ignored the question. ‘Before your sentence is read, and for the sake of Tsuranuanni, the human-hive-home that birthed you, our custom holds that you shall be granted the right of testament, that your kind not be deprived of such wisdom you choose to impart. You are granted the hours until nightfall to speak. Our scribes will record what you say, and their writings will be sent back to your hive-home in the hands of the Thuril traders.’

  Mara regarded the patterned features of the cho-ja magician, and rage took her. Like Lujan, she desperately needed to attend to the functions of her body. She could not think with a full bladder, and she could not accept what the magician’s short speech had implied, that she was just one member of a hive, and that her permanent absence held no more consequence than knowledge gained or lost.

  The ruby depths of the magician’s gaze showed no quarter. Argument would be futile, she knew. The bluster that had won her through to audience with the Thuril council would here gain her nothing. Humbled by feeling that this civilisation made her Empire’s achievements seem less than the efforts of a human babe to make order in a sandbox, she repressed her desire to shout in frustration at her fate. In the eyes of this race of beings, she was an infant: a dangerous, murderous infant, but a child nonetheless. Well then, she would indulge the curiosity that plagued her! Perhaps there would be inspiration to be gained. Pressed by a white heat of impulse, Mara put aside her concern for her family and country. She gave in to the instincts of a child.

  ‘I have no great legacy of wisdom,’ she announced in a bold voice. ‘Instead of giving knowledge, I would ask: in my birth-lands, there is a treaty that holds the cho-ja nation captive. In my land, to speak of it or to impart knowledge of the war that gave rise to its making is forbidden. If the memory of this great battle and the terms of its peacemaking are recalled in Chakaha, I wish to be told of these events. I would ask to know the truth of the past that has condemned me.’

  A buzzing murmur arose among the tribunal, a sibilance that grew into a cacophony that set Mara’s teeth on edge. The cho-ja guard squatted behind her, motionless as though they might hold their position until the end of time. The scribe that stood by the magician twitched once, then shifted its stance as though with uncertainty. The magician itself did not stir, until, suddenly, it raised its wings. Gossamer folds unfurled with a gusty hiss of air, and snapped taut with a crack that silenced the chamber immediately. Mara stared like a peasant shown wonders, noting that the wings connected somehow to the forelimbs and hind limbs of the creature, almost like webbing, but vast as sails. The forelimbs were many-jointed, and extended high overhead until they nearly touched the roof of the dome.

  The magician turned on its stilt-like legs. Its now heated gaze swept the stilled tribunal, and as it turned full around, it glared again down at Mara. ‘You are a curious being,’ it said.

  Mara bowed, though her knees threatened to give out on her. ‘Yes, Great One.’

  The cho-ja magician hissed a high-pitched breath of air. ‘Assign me not the title your kind awards to those perpetrators of treachery, your Assembly.’

  ‘Lord, then,’ Mara rang back. ‘I offer my humble respect, for the oppression of the Assembly has been mine to suffer also.’

  A twitter from those assembled arose at this, then stil
led. The magician’s glare seemed to sear through Mara’s skin and touch the core of her thoughts. Swept by a sense of violation, and a moment that rang like fever, or the pain of contact with flame, she cringed and choked back a scream. Then the sensation passed, leaving dizziness. She fought to keep her balance and stay upright.

  When her senses cleared, the cho-ja magician was speaking rapidly to the tribunal. ‘She speaks truth.’ Its tone had turned musical, perhaps resulting from surprise. ‘This Tsurani has no knowledge of the doings of her ancestors! How can this be?’

  Mara mustered the tatters of her dignity and answered for herself. ‘Because my kind have no hive mind, no collective memory. We know only that which we experience, or are taught by others, within the span of the days of our lives. Libraries preserve our past history, and these are mere records, subject to the ravages of time, and the limitations set upon them by those factions who set down their contents. Our memories are imperfect. We have no …’ Then she intoned the click-chuck that the Queen on her land had used to indicate the hive consciousness.

  ‘Silence, Tsurani!’ The magician furled its great wings, with a sigh of air currents and a sparkle of light that arose from no visible source. ‘We are not children. Humans have no hive mind, this we know. The concept is awkward, a thing that ill fits our thought processes. We understand you use libraries and teachers to convey your hive-nations’ wisdom through the generations.’

  Mara seized upon what appeared to be a moment of neutrality. ‘One of your kind once told me that the hive mind of the cho-ja resides with the Queens. What one Queen knows, all experience. But I ask, what happens if a Queen is to die with no successor? What becomes of her workers and her males, and all the individuals that make up hive society?’

  The magician clicked its mandibles. ‘Her subjects have no mind,’ it allowed. ‘Should mishap kill a Queen, her rirari, those of her chosen breeding attendants, will behead her survivors out of mercy, for, mindless, they would rove aimlessly and die.’ It stated this without guilt, the concept of murder being different than that for a human.

  ‘Then,’ Mara surmised boldly, ‘they would not forage for food, or sustain themselves to survive?’

  ‘They could not.’ Metal flashed as the magician made a curt gesture with its forelimb. ‘They have no purpose beyond the hive. I am no different. The Queen who bred me is all of my guiding directive. I am her eyes, her hands, if you will, and her ears. I am her instrument, even as this tribunal is her arm of judgment. Part of me is conscious, and I may act in independence if it is of benefit to the hive, but all that I am, all that I know, will remain with the hive when this body no longer functions.’

  ‘Well, I offer that we humans are not like cho-ja subjects. Even as do your Queens, we each have our own mind, our own purpose, our own directive for survival. Kill our rulers and Lords, and we will each go on with our affairs. Leave but one child alive, or one man, and he will live out his days according to his own wishes.’

  The cho-ja magician seemed bemused. ‘We have thought for generations that the Tsurani hive is insane; if it must answer to teeming millions of minds, we know why!’

  ‘That is individuality,’ Mara said. ‘I have little of importance to offer the Tsurani nation, as one person. Instead, I repeat my request to know the actions of the ancestors that have caused your tribunal to condemn me without hearing.’

  The scribe-like creature at the magician’s side peered at Mara and for the first time spoke. ‘The telling might take until nightfall, which is all of the time you are allotted.’

  ‘So it must be,’ Mara said, steadier now that she had been able at least to open conversation with these alien cho-ja. Of more immediate concern were the bodily needs that had been denied, and how much longer she must be forced to put them off.

  But the cho-ja, after all, were not entirely insensitive. The magician’s scribe spoke again. ‘Your will shall be granted, along with whatever comforts you may require to keep your ease through the hour of sundown.’

  Mara inclined her head in thanks, and then bowed. When she arose, the magician cho-ja had departed, without sound, without ceremony, as if it had melted away into air. The scribe-type cho-ja remained, directing a sudden influx of unmarked workers who were dispatched to attend Mara’s needs.

  Later, refreshed and fed from a lavish tray of fruits, breads, and cheeses, Mara reclined on fine cushions while, still before the tribunal, she was given the services of a cho-ja orator whose task was to fill in for her those gaps in Empire history that were forbidden within the borders of the Nations.

  Relieved of discomforts, Mara waved for the cho-ja orator to begin recitation. While the afternoon spilled purple shadows through the pillared windows, and the sky above the crystal dome deepened toward sundown, she shared a tale of great sorrow, of hives burned by hideous, crackling bolts of magic, and thousands upon thousands of cho-ja subjects mercilessly beheaded by the rirari of slaughtered Queens. She heard tell of atrocities, of eggs stolen, and cho-ja magicians put to useless torture.

  Cho-ja in those times had been ill prepared for the realities of an arcanely waged war. They had magic with which to build marvels, magic to adorn nature with the beauty of intelligent artifice, and magic to bring fortune and favorable weather. In such peaceful arts, the insectoid mages held the accumulated wisdom of centuries, and the oldest among them had carapaces whorled and stippled with the patterns of a million spells.

  Here Mara dared an interruption. ‘Do you mean that the markings on your mages are badges of experience?’

  The orator bobbed its head. ‘Indeed, Lady. Over time they become so. Each spell that they master becomes inscribed in colors upon their bodies, and the greater their powers, the more complex are their markings.’

  The orator went on to emphasise that the cho-ja mages from the era of the Golden Bridge held no spells for warlike violence. They could cast beneficial wards to protect, but these were no match for the aggressive magic of the Assembly. The wars involving magic were not battles but massacres. The treaty that bound the cho-ja of the Nations to subservience had been submitted and sworn into being entirely out of need to survive.

  ‘The terms are harsh,’ the orator finished on a note that might have been sorrow. ‘No mages are to be hatched within Tsuranuanni. Cho-ja there are forbidden to wear the markings that show age or rank, but must be colored black in adult life, even as your Tsurani slaves who are human are restricted to garments of grey. Commerce with cho-ja outside your borders is not allowed, exchange of information, news, or magical lore being specifically forbidden. It is our suspicion, if not the sad truth, that the Queens within your nations have been forced to excise from hive memory all record and means of cho-ja magic. Were you Tsurani all to perish, and the Assembly’s edict become obsolete, it is doubtful if an Empire-bred Queen could still create the egg to hatch out a mage. And so the sky-cities of our kind are forgotten, reduced by human decree to damp warrens beneath the earth. Our proud brethren are forced to become grubbers in soil, with their arts of spell-building forever lost.’

  By now the sky beyond the arch had darkened under twilight. The tribunal, who had heretofore sat in perfect stillness, arose, while the orator in obedience to some unspoken signal fell silent. A cho-ja sentinel at Mara’s back prodded her up from her cushions, and the magician’s scribe tilted its head her way in a manner that suggested regret. ‘Lady, your time of last testament is now ended, and the moment for your sentencing is come. If you have any last bequest, you are urged to state it now.’

  ‘Last bequest?’ Wine and sweet fruit had dulled the edges of Mara’s apprehension, and the familiarity shared with the orator throughout the afternoon made her bold. ‘What do you mean by this?’

  The magician’s scribe shifted its weight and became implacably still. The tallest of the tribunal cho-ja delivered her answer. ‘Your sentence, Lady Mara of Tsuranuanni. After your last testament is given, it will be formally read that you are to be executed at tomorrow’s dawn.’ />
  ‘Executed!’ A jolt of adrenaline and fear caused Mara to square her shoulders, and ire lit her eyes. She abandoned protocol. ‘What are your kind, if not barbarians, to condemn an envoy unheard?’ The tribunal members twitched, and the sentinel cho-ja angled forward aggressively, but Mara was already frightened witless and she did not take any note. ‘It was a Queen of your own kind who sent me here to treat with you. She held hope for those cho-ja who are a captive nation within our Empire’s borders, and she saw in me the chance to rectify the human misdeeds of the past. Would you execute me out of hand, when I am the opponent of the Assembly, come here to ask aid against their tyranny?’

  The tribunal regarded her with identical sets of gem-hard eyes, unmoved. ‘Lady,’ rang their spokesman, ‘state your last bequest if you have one.’

  Mara closed her eyes. Were all of her efforts to end here, with her life? Had she been Servant of the Empire, wife to a fine Lord, Ruling Lady of the Acoma, and adviser to the Emperor only to die in shame on foreign soil? She repressed a violent shiver, and stayed the hands that itched to scrub the sweat of outright terror from her brow. She had nothing left to her at this moment beyond the dignity of her people. Her honor she no longer believed in, after hearing of what her forebears had done on the battlefield against a peaceful civilisation. And so her voice rang oddly steady as she said, ‘Here is my last bequest: that you take this,’ She held up the magical token given her by Gittania, which should have been her testimony to these hostile aliens. She forced herself to press on. ‘That you take this record, and incorporate it into your hive memory along with the details of my “execution”, so that all of your kind to come will recall that humankind are not alone in the perpetration of atrocity. If my husband and my children – indeed, if my family that serves as my hive must lose me in retribution for the treaty of the Assembly, then at least my heart’s intentions must survive in the hive mind of my killers.’