From Across the Clouded Range

by H. Nathan Wilcox

Jaret’s mind spun. My men! These are my men. I created these traitors. This is my fault. Now that he knew the truth, it was obvious, but he could still barely bring himself to believe it.

  Though he knew better than any other man how much the Emperor and his corruption weighed on the Empire, Jaret also knew the power of tradition. Xionious Valatarian had created the position of Emperor, had elevated his most loyal general to the position and dictated that his family should rule for all time. As with everything done by Valatarian, it was the will of the Holy Order. The Emperor was the supreme enforcer of the Order, its ultimate guardian. The Book of Valatarian said that as long as an anointed emperor occupied the Palace of the Dawn, Order would reign. So extreme was that belief that the Emperor was never allowed to leave the palace, and when one Emperor died, the next was anointed the same day, within hours if possible.

  And now his men had decided that they knew better than Valatarian, that they could destroy the order he had created, that they could defy the word of their savior. Jaret would not allow it, would kill every one of them if he had to, would die trying if he had to.

  He closed on the throne room and looked at the massive doors that blocked his path. They were two of the largest and most magnificent in existence. They spanned to the ceiling some twenty feet above and filled the entire hall, another thirty feet from end to end. Across their surfaces, inlays of precious metals showed scenes from the height of the Empire. Those scenes were so elaborate and well-conceived that they seemed to be alive. The hall’s generous lamplight reflected off the metal from a thousand angles, making it shimmer and move. Captivated, Jaret almost lost his purpose as he closed on the door and reached for the mighty ring that acted as a handle. Solid gold, the handle was a hollow representation of the sun with spikes of flame rising out around his hand where he clasped it.

  He took a deep breath and tried to pull the door open. His arm did not respond. His heart was pounding beyond any physical exertion. It hurt, ached in his chest. His stomach churned. He felt light-headed. He knew what he had to do, but his every cell fought him. He knew that his death waited on the other side of that door. He would soon fight his own men, would kill them, and make them kill him. This is where it would all end. He took another deep breath, built his resolution, and pulled.

  This time, his mind won out over the objections of his body. His hand tightened around the ring, and the door eased open on massive, well-oiled, but entirely invisible, hinges. As soon as the opening was wide enough to allow his entry, he leapt into the room, blades ready.

  He was too late. Before him was the most magnificent single room in the world, but there was no beauty in it. He scrolled through the bodies scattered around the room and could almost trace every blow that had been dealt in the recently completed battle. The imperial bodyguards had clearly been the first to fall. They had managed two lines, one at the door and another around the throne. Their bodies formed short walls of tangled limbs and crumpled armor to show the position of their final stand. Scattered among those bodies were a handful of black shapes – the legionnaires had not been spared. Far more gruesome, however, were the bodies of the royal family. Men, women, children even had been mercilessly slaughtered. Their extravagantly clothed bodies scattered the room, arrows standing from their backs, heads removed, huddled in corners where no retreat or quarter had been available. The assassins wanted no legacy to remain. They had started here, but this slaughtered showed that they would not stop until the entire imperial family had been wiped away. It was murder, cold-blooded and cruel. It was not what Jaret had trained these men to do, and the sight of it made him sick.

  Holding his guts, he forced his eyes from the bodies to the wondrous room that their deaths had spoiled. The huge wall of perfectly clear glass that faced out over the crystal-blue waters of the Endless Sea was spattered with blood. The intricate mosaic of mystical tiles that covered the floor was littered with broken bodies. The magnificent blue-green marble columns carved into the forms of fanciful creatures stood somber and joyless. Huge ancient tapestries and paintings that had hung unfading in the room since the days of the first emperors were torn, smashed, or stained beyond repair.

  But most horrible of all was the scene at the center of the room. Jaret’s eyes were mercilessly drawn to the large dais that held the Emperor’s throne. On each step of that dais, man’s ascension to understanding was depicted by tiles in patterns that moved from chaos through each step until they finally aligned into a steady pattern on the last step. And above that sat the man whose presence elevated man from chaos to order. His throne was a huge raised chair made from a single block of an unknown black ivory. It had been polished until it shined even in sparse light and then highlighted with mother of pearl, gems, and precious metals. The throne started with four animals – a deer, a dolphin, a falcon, and a man – that formed the legs. From the legs, the chair flowed into a flawlessly ordered weaving of branches that symbolized the interconnectedness of nature above which only the Order reigned. Two lines of oak trees grew from the seat with their collective canopies forming the arms of the chair. The back was a solid wave rising over the head of the Emperor. On top of the wave was the rising sun, the perfect symbol of order, depicted as a gold-encrusted open circle through which the actual sun shone each morning as it rose above the ocean in the background.

  Jaret considered the throne to be the most glorious thing ever made by human hands. The first time he had seen it, he had been so stunned that he had barely been able to speak. It had nearly cost him his head as the Emperor had become impatient with his seemingly mute commander. Today, he could barely bring his eyes to the chair without reflexively diverting them. For there, surrounded by the bodies of his guards was the Emperor, Kristor az’ Pmalatir. He knelt before his throne. His head was bowed. Terror and disbelief defined his features. And above him stood Jaret’s best friend, his most loyal commander, the man he trusted above all others. Commander Traeger Hanar held his sword above the Emperor. Arrayed around him, surrounding the dais, backs to Jaret were at least fifty legionnaires – the only other living men in the room.

  “ . . . For crimes against the Empire and all its peoples, we condemn thee.” Jaret finally recovered enough to realize that Traeger was yelling. “For excesses and wastes that could have gone to save our home, we condemn thee. For willful disregard of the wellbeing of the Empire you were born to rule, we condemn thee. And for betraying the Holy Order you were anointed to serve and allowing us to fall to the storms of chaos, we condemn thee and damn thee to the Maelstrom. May it tear apart your soul the way you have torn apart this nation we love." The sword crashed down. Jaret prayed that it was a trick of the eyes, but beyond praying, he was powerless. He was frozen just inside the door too far away to do anything but watch as the steel whistled through the air to end the life of the last true Emperor of the San Chier Empire.

  Jaret closed his eyes, dropped to his knees, and screamed with all the power he could muster the only word that would come to mind, "No!"

  The sound echoed through the hall. When his lungs gave out, his eyes opened, and he saw the Emperor sprawled across the top of the dais. His blood ran down the five steps that led from order to where his head lay with terrible surprised look in the realm of chaos. Legionnaires spun. Their swords rattled as they brought them up. Every eye focused on Jaret.

  And they began to cheer.

  They rushed over him, lifted his limp body, and under Traeger’s direction, carried him to the throne. As they carried him, nearly tossing him in the air in their fervor, Traeger announced, "Commander Rammeriz, you alone have given us hope in these troubled times,” he used his command voice, projected it over the cheers of his men. His words were reverent to the point of fanaticism. “You alone have maintained order through the storms that have ravaged us. But even you could not heal our broken land as long as it was ruled by chaos and corruption. Thus it is tha
t, we, your most loyal servants, have bloodied our hands, have committed these terrible crimes. Not for you, Jaret Rammeriz. For our families, our countrymen, and for the Holy Order. The Emperor is dead. All hail the new Emperor, Jaret az’ Rammeriz."

  There was a tremendous roar from the men who held Jaret aloft. They threw him in the air and chanted, "All hail Emperor Rammeriz! All hail Emperor Rammeriz! All hail Emperor Rammeriz!" They carried him to the top of the dais and set him down next to Traeger, who quickly descended the steps and bowed. As one, fifty legionnaires fell to a knee, heads bowed. It was the first time anyone had ever knelt to Jaret Rammeriz, the vine boy who had grown far beyond his station.

  Jaret was in shock. He was unable to speak, unable to move. He had known in the back of his mind that this would be the result of the day’s events, but he had never wanted it to be true. Now, he could only look dumbfounded with tears streaming down his cheeks and his knees shaking so hard that he could barely stand above the crumpled body at his feet. He diverted his eyes and concentrated on not being sick. He had seen more death in his life than any man should, and he thought that he was hardened to it, but at that moment, he felt like he had as a boy after his first blood-soaked battle. He thought he was going to lose his stomach on the tiled floor just as he had done on the green grass of the field that day so long ago.

  His men did not seem to notice. They chanted his name and bowed before him like some pagan god. Kneeling before him, their faces were illuminated by the last rays of the sun as it reflected off the waves of the Endless Sea. To Jaret that light seemed not to illuminate the faces as much as it highlighted the shadows, and as he looked down on the men before him, he thought that they more closely resembled a swarm of unholy demons come to destroy the world than a legion of revolutionaries who had acted to save an empire.

  A crash at the back of the room jarred Jaret from his revulsion and self-admonishment. He looked up and saw the doors of the throne room swung wide and filled to bursting with armored men, the imperial guards. At the front of what must be every remaining guard stood a figure encased in the most excessively ornate armor Jaret had ever seen. It was gold plated with a great eagle embossed on the chest, talons carved into the greaves, and feathers etched across the plates and over the massive shoulder guards. Done as a great eagle’s head, the helm completed the theme with onyx eyes and an ivory beak. The man in that laughable armor, shifted his worthless golden sword to his off-hand and pushed the face guard up to reveal a round face with pinched nose, beady eyes, weak chin, and thick red lips. Jaret formed the rest of Commander Nabim’s flabby body, delicate hands, and long dark hair from memory.

  Behind the dull-witted stooge were nearly a hundred imperial guards. They wore their usual armor with a bronze sunburst emblazoned on the breastplate and another sun rising over the front of their faceless helms. They carried rectangular shields with yet another bronze sun in one hand and long spears with broad blades in the other. At their sides swung short-bladed swords.

  Thus armed, the imperial guards looked like a formidable force, especially given the lightly armored men they were preparing to face, but Jaret knew better. From what he had seen, the imperial guards were exceedingly lax in their training – being primarily the lazy bastards of the imperial family’s many concubines – and were only useful for standing at doors and mercilessly executing anyone who offended their masters. He had never seen the guards face armed opponents that fought back and did not expect them or their dim-witted leader to stand long against the most-skilled, best-trained soldiers the Empire had to offer.

  At least Jaret hoped that would be the case. He hoped that the guards would surrender as soon as they realized that their superior numbers could not buy them victory. He had little doubt which side would win this fight, he simply wanted to limit the amount of additional blood that would be shed – the Order was already trembling at the carnage this room had seen.

  Jaret looked through the men in the doorway, found their eyes, and searched for fear and doubt. He did not find any. He had spent years reading the eyes of men in battle to determine where the next blow would land. Over that time, he had learned to read a man’s thought just as he might a sword thrust. Commander Rastabi had always said, "Seeing where a man's eyes point will tell you where the next blow will land, but seeing what his eyes say will tell you where all his blows will land." It was a refrain that Jaret had never forgotten, but today he almost wished that he could not read the eyes of his enemies. The eyes of the imperial guards were filled with a fervent, lust-filled hatred the likes of which he could not ever remember seeing, and every bit of it was directed at him. The sight sent a shiver up his spine. There had been many men who had hated him, but none had ever looked at him the way these men did. Their eyes shot fury as if he had just murdered their children before their eyes.

  Jaret’s confidence dissipated. These men were raised from childhood to fill their positions. The importance of the man they protected was drilled into them daily. To these men, the Emperor was the very heart of the order that bound the world together and allowed the sun to rise each morning. In their minds, Jaret had not killed their children, he had killed their god. They would fight to the death and beyond to enact their revenge, would fight with the passion of those who had no hope, had no reason left to live.

  "I knew that you would be behind this, Warlord Rammeriz.” Commander Nabim broke the palpable silence. Both sides eyed each other warily, but no one moved except Nabim, who took a step forward. “You have always had your eye on what could never be yours, but this time your ambition has gone too far. To think that you, a commoner, a peasant, could displace the man that the Holy Order itself has anointed is not only vanity, it is blasphemy.”

  Nabim pounded his sword on the tiles at his feet and the guards behind him grumbled their collective agreement. The legionnaires fanned out around the door, preparing themselves to fight. “We, the protectors of this most holy empire and the order it was meant to rule, will not stand for this travesty. We will cast out you and your unholy minions and restore a member of the royal line to the throne.” Commander Nabim puffed himself up, denoting that he was that member. “You, Jaret Rammeriz, will regret the day that your ambition outgrew your place."

  The small man raised his hand to signal the men massed behind him. After a short, dead-silent pause that allowed the tension to grow, he brought his hand down and shouted, "For the glory of the Empire!"

  Traeger echoed him. “For Emperor Rammeriz,” he screamed as he led his men into battle.

  The imperial guards charged toward the ranks of legionnaires. Weighted down by their armor, they made it look like a wave splitting around a rock in slow motion as they flowed around Nabim. The charge was further slowed as the leading members of the wave fell with arrows neatly tucked into the gaps between their helmets and breastplates, but the legionnaires with bows, a handful by Jaret’s count, only managed one volley before the silver tide gained it stride and hit the wall of red and black defined by the legionnaires.

  The guards lowered their broad-bladed spears as they closed on the legionnaires. The sight of those long spears driving toward his lightly armored men made Jaret cringe despite himself. Under normal circumstances, the legionnaires would not have lasted past that charge, but his men knew how to adapt to their opponents, and they executed that training perfectly. They waited until the last conceivable moment, the moment when the guards’ eyes grew wide for certainty that their spears would strike home. Only when they saw that change did they dodge back and then roll forward beneath the spears. The maneuvers brought them into their opponents and ended with their dirks stabbing through gaps at the bottoms of the guards’ breastplates.

  The first wave of guards fell, almost universally, to the same attack. The legionnaires swung their swords up as they retrieved their dirks and drove them toward the next guard in line. Many of those men fell just as quickly as they strug
gled to drop their now worthless spears and draw their swords.

  By coming in close to their opponents, the legionnaires had made the reach of the guards’ spears worthless and eliminated one of their key advantages. That left the guards on their heels as the legionnaires pressed their advantage with quick swords and dirks that expertly exposed then exploited the gaps in the guards’ armor.

  Despite that initial success, the battle was far from won. The legionnaires were still outnumbered, and they had already seen one hard fight this day. Jaret could tell that their reflexes were not as sharp as they might be, and as the guards recovered from their initial shock, they began to push the legionnaires back. Several of the men in black fell or dropped back wounded. The problem, Jaret realized, was that the guards were doing exactly what a force of their type should do. They were working as a single unit rather than a set of individuals, using the weight of their numbers to strengthen the advantages of their armor. They had formed an anonymous wall, shields raised, sword slashing down over that barrier at whatever was in front of them. And the legionnaires had no way of breeching that wall. They could only block the blows raining from above and search for cracks that no longer existed. Slowly, the legionnaires began to give room, and Jaret saw potential disaster. The legionnaires were in danger of being split, of being forced back into the walls at their backs with nowhere to go and no way to use their advantages in speed and training.

  Jaret felt his heart tremor. Then his mind cleared. He was still Imperial Warlord, and he would not lose to Nabim an’ Pmalatir. If he could not stop the unspeakable horrors he had witnessed, if he was going to be remembered for all time as the traitor who brought down a two thousand year reign, he might as well make the most of it, might as well use this tragedy to repair his broken land. And the first step to doing that was to rid the world of men like Nabim.

  He examined the situation before him with clear eyes, thought through the required maneuvers in a heartbeat, and raised his hand in a fist above his head. “Legionnaires,” he yelled. His well-trained battle voice easily carried over the sounds of melee. "Formation! Squeeze and press, close quarters!"

  Before he drew the breath to repeat the order, the legionnaires reacted. Contrary to all apparent reason, they charged the guards, pressed shoulders to their shields, pushed them back. They came in face-to-face with their opponents, doing exactly what unarmored men should never do against armor. As Jaret expected, the change caught the guards by surprise, and they gave ground until they were crammed into a shoulder-to-shoulder cube. From where Jaret stood on the dais, it looked like the snake’s eye of a die with the silver men all packed around one spot of gold.

  The legionnaires strained to hold that cube in check, pressed on despite trembling legs and mounting injuries. Jaret knew that they could not hold the close quarters for long. Soon the guards would recover from their shock, untangle themselves, and cut the legionnaires to pieces, but he waited nonetheless.

  His hand went to a half-fist. "Legionnaires! Archers disengage. Position center!" Another yell and eight men broke from different positions in the outline of the cube. The archers, many of them bleeding from slashes across arms or legs, formed a single line in front of the throne with arrows notched.

  Jaret came down a step and spoke to his men in a voice for them alone. "Fire upon release. You will see the time. As many volleys as you can." He did not look to see if the men had heard but saw their bows rise to the ready.

  Jaret let another long moment pass. He waited to see the guards eyes narrow, waited to see their surprise turn into frustration and renewed determination. He waited for it. . . .

  His voice echoed over the sounds of battle; his hand came open. "Legionnaires! Release and spread! Run like hell!”

  The legionnaires flew back from the guards. The release and spread command was an instantaneous retreat with no commitment. The men were to turn tail and run, and that is exactly what they did. The cube that had been straining to expand suddenly burst. The guards gave into their instincts and followed whichever man had been in front of them. Their discipline was lost, and they scattered to every corner of the room in disarray.

  When the legionnaires had drawn their opponents from the door, they reengaged. This time they had room to maneuver, could get to the sides and backs of the guards, and they made the guards pay dearly for their zeal.

  At that same second of release, the archers fired into the exposed core of the guards. Thirty men waited in that core, shocked by the explosion of the human walls that had held them in check. In the time that it took those men to deploy themselves, they were feathered with two volleys of arrows that dropped a third of their number. When they finally did charge, it was into the archers and the throne, leaving a single golden shape behind to gawk as his plans unraveled.

  Jaret looked for Nabim’s eyes, expecting to see fear, but the fool was smiling, smiling as if the battle were all but won. The expression was so preposterous that Jaret surveyed the room again. The imperial guards were falling in droves. They were scattered about the room with no chance of reforming their lines, and the legionnaires were pressing their advantage, using the space they had been given to attack the sides and backs of the slow-moving guards. Still Commander Nabim wore an arrogant grin.

  Few things could disgust Jaret more than a commander who smiled at the deaths of his men, so he strode off of the dais, down the steps, and into the teeth of the battle. He would wipe that grin off of Nabim’s face himself and ensure that it never returned.

  His sword appeared without thought in his right hand. The dirk he held back-handed in his left. He gripped them hard as he moved with deadly malice toward the golden figure twenty yards away. A broad sword flashed at the corner of his vision. He blocked it with his own, forced its owner’s arm up, and planted his dirk in the gap at the pit of his arm. The guard screamed as he fell, just another lost in the roar of battle. Jaret pushed the man away, abandoned his dirk, and continued his advance without ever lowering his eyes.

  He closed slowly on the Commander of the Western Peace and saw fear bloom in his eyes for the first time. Seeing that fear, Jaret relished his advance all the more, relished watching Nabim’s confidence crumble.

  He dispatched another guard with a series of three easy strokes and bent in the same motion to pluck a second sword from the body of a fallen legionnaire. He did not expect to need the second weapon, but he was equally good with each hand and did not want to leave anything to chance.

  Nabim seemed to shrink in his armor as Jaret closed the gap between them. Even though his armor did everything possible to make its owner appear larger – with a vaulted helm, broadened shoulder guards, and platform boots – it just made the man inside seem smaller. Jaret was not much taller than Nabim or significantly broader, but he had always thought of Nabim as much smaller than himself. Perhaps it was because of his long nose, large ears, and weak chin, or maybe it was the delicate hands that trembled as they held the well-polished, but never-used, sword. Most likely, Jaret realized, it was because the man had such a small mind, a mind that could not see past himself to the people he hurt with his petty need for power. Now, that mind was learning a new emotion, one foreign to pampered royalty. Commander Nabim was learning the meaning of fear.

  Jaret cut down two more guards to remove Nabim’s final line of defense. Nabim brought the golden sword up to defend himself. It required all his strength just to raise it, and then it shook erratically. The sight made Jaret want to laugh. He considered how to kill the pathetic fool, wondered if he had the self-control to do it quickly. Then the unbelievable happened.

  A swirling black disk appeared out of nowhere. After a heartbeat of motion, a tiny man in a black robe stepped from the disk and positioned himself next to Nabim. The disk and man were there so suddenly that Jaret took a step back and looked around, wanting someone to confirm what he had just seen. No one els
e appeared to have seen the event, and when he turned back to his target, the hole in the air was gone, leaving only the small man at Nabim’s side.

  The new arrival was truly a small man, standing a few inches below five feet. His small size was accentuated by a curved spine and bent knees. His hands, which were the only part of him outside the black robe, were white but not wrinkled with age as Jaret had expected. They were young, delicate, and nimble, probably never having performed a day of work in their existence.

  Hoping to find the man’s eyes, Jaret looked deep into the shadows of his mighty cowl. What he saw there was not like anything he had ever seen. At first he mistook the man’s dark eyes for mad, but this man suffered from no madness. His eyes held something far more frightening. In his eyes was destruction, hatred, and an utter disdain for the order of the world. If ever he were forced to define evil, Jaret now knew its eyes.

  The entire appraisal took only a second, but Jaret felt like he was held by those eyes for an eternity. When he was released, he took a step back and stumbled to the floor. He felt as if he had been hit between the eyes, and he reeled for several seconds before he remembered his intent. He grabbed his swords from the floor where he had dropped them and formed a new resolve. More than any other task in the world, he had to kill that strange little man. If it cost him his life, he would do it, and although it did not look to be a difficult task – the man did not even appear to be armed – he somehow knew that it would be very nearly impossible.

  Jaret brought his eyes back up and found the hunched man looking away toward the far side of the room as if he did not exist. Nabim smiled broadly, inviting him to advance. It was an invitation that Jaret was all too happy to accept.

  He sprinted the remaining steps to his opponents with his swords ready to strike two different targets. The final steps closed quickly, but neither of his opponents offered the slightest resistance to the blows they must see coming. This fact unnerved him, but Jaret could not change his approach. He drove his left hand forward, prepared to feel it sink to the hilt into the chest of the black-robed man as his right swept around to catch the gap at the side of Nabim’s breastplate. Jaret’s eyes grew wide with anticipation. His attack was destined to succeed. There was nothing that either man could do to stop him.

  At that same moment, the little man acted. His hand came up like a snake, and an unseen force smashed into Jaret, blocking his thrust and hurling him back onto the tiled floor. He crashed hard, and the wind rushed from his lungs. He reeled, gasping from the blow, but struggled to his feet nonetheless and prepared for another charge.

  As he came to his knees, pain hit him with unspeakable intensity. It was like a bolt of lightning had struck him. Every nerve in his body wailed. The swords slipped from his hands, and he thrashed in agony. When the pain ended, what seemed like hours later, he convulsed on the floor. His body tingled as if it had fallen asleep from lack of blood. His arms and legs would not move. All he could do was watch Nabim and his henchman through hazy eyes as they walked the few steps to stand over his twitching form.

  The black-robed man looked down on him with his terrible eyes. Through the cowl, Jaret could see his delicate, almost feminine, features as they stretched into a joyless smile.

  “Kill them,” Nabim ordered from the other side, his nasal whine making Jaret’s skin crawl.

  The little man seemed to sigh as he turned to the side of the room that Jaret faced. “You agree to my masters’ terms?” the man asked with a soft, feminine voice.

  “Yes, yes,” Nabim waved his hand in annoyance. “I have already told you so. If you live up to your end, I will gladly do as you wish.”

  “Very well,” the man said. “I am at your command.” The man held out his hands. They appeared to twitch beneath the long sleeves of his robe. A wave of calm came over Jaret that he could not explain, and he watched the battle before him with sudden disregard.

  The legionnaires on that side of the room were finishing the last of the guards and concentrating on the effort. They never saw the sheet of fire that sprang from the tiny hands of the black-robed man. Jaret’s emotions returned, and he watched in horror as legionnaires and imperial guards alike were incinerated by the wall of flame until nothing but ash remained on that side of the room. The flames struck the far wall, and a wave of heat leapt back all the way to where Jaret lay at the feet of its source. Without any seeming regret, the man turned to the other side. Paralyzed, Jaret did not have to witness the deaths, but the roar of the flames, the screams, the wave of reflected heat told him everything he needed to know.

  “Now lift him. I want to look in his peasant eyes.” Nabim ordered. “Head over heels. Just like that fool servant who tried to keep you from my estate last week.”

  “As you wish.” Jaret found himself lifted by some unseen force. He was held upside-down a full five feet off the ground so that he was looking into Nabim’s eyes only a few feet away. His arms hung limply by his head though he begged them to strangle the sneering weasel before him and his ghastly little henchman.

  “So you see Warlord Rammeriz. You were a fool to think that you could ever be Emperor. The Order would never stand for it. Yuelle came to me a week ago and told me of this plan. He offered me the throne, offered me his power and all I have to do are a few simple things such as aid his masters when they invade Liandria. I would have done that anyway, but now I will have his power to aid me. With it, I will be unstoppable.

  “And I have you to thank,” he brought his face to within inches of Jaret’s and sneered. “Thank you for killing the Emperor. Who would have imagined that a peasant would be the one to help me fulfill my destiny?”

  Nabim turned around and marched toward the throne. As he wove around the bodies to ascend the dais, he waved to his new servant. “I am finished with him. You know what to do.”

  But the little man was not finished. Jaret slowly spun so that he looked into the man’s horrible eyes. He smiled sadly. “It is as it must be,” he said. “Nabim serves the interests of my masters. I wish I could spare you this, but my power is now his to command. And you will have no choice but to watch as everything you love is torn apart, as the very foundations of your world crumble.” The little man sighed again, looked with dismay at his master then cast his hand out and away.

  As the man had spoken, Jaret had realized that he was speaking a language that he had never heard, but he could understand it perfectly. He was just pondering the impossibility of that, piling it on top of the towering mountains of impossibilities he had witnessed, when he began hurtled through the air. He flew faster and faster until he struck the far wall. The air was smashed from his lungs, his bones cracked, and his head split. He fell to the floor in a heap but barely noticed as the world faded to black.

  Chapter 27