by Robert Brady
I didn’t remember that ‘once the war is lost’ part.
“You see, it’s not just a prophecy, it’s a riddle, but you don’t know it’s a riddle, unless you ask the right question.”
“And what question is that?” I asked him.
He looked away from me, and then he looked back.
“You have to ask yourself,” he said, “if this all comes after the fact, then why have a prophecy at all?”
That took a moment to digest.
You shall be the weapons
The tools of men and gods
Who come too late for victory
And win despite these odds
I’d beaten them. I’d killed some of them myself.
Why have a prophecy for something you’re going to do anyway? It’s like predicting the dawn.
So shall they come together
Heroes of the land
Together to oppose the One
While all apart, they stand
Weapons, coming together.
A sword that Arath found and gave to Vulpe when his Dwarfish blade was broken.
That sword Eric had, which was a match for mine.
That spear Shela found when she killed a Slee, which Dagi took from her, and Chesswaya’s staff. I’d heard that when Glynn Escaroth died, she’d left it, but I’d never seen her with it, and neither had anyone else.
A sword and shield that Nina found on a battlefield and sent back here, which were gone now.
Because Lee took them. What did Lee want with a sword and shield?
“You met my son, by Genna,” I asked him.
“Lupennen,” Hecatro affirmed. “He looks nothing like you. He’s small, black hair, and a club foot.”
We had our own theories about that.
“Did he have a distinctive weapon?” I asked.
Hectaro nodded. “A dagger with a strange hilt?” he said. “Like, the handle was made o bits and scraps bound together. The cross guard was two hands, shaking.”
“Did he say where he got it?” I asked.
Hectaro had to think about that. “You know,” he said, “he did. His mother found it on a battlefield, but as much as she admired it, she didn’t like it. She gave it to him. I know he killed a man with it – someone trying to take out Tartan Stowe.”
“Did he go to Volkhydro with Lee?”
“I’m certain he did,” he said. “On one of Blizzard’s tame foals – the chestnut mare.”
Six weapons all found on battle fields, six children, and now they were all moving north.
“You know, Tartan Stowe is riding one of the untamable ones now,” he added. “The stallion that killed his wife. Lupennen has some way with horses. He walked Tartan Stowe through breaking him, and then we took off across the plains, Bastard and the two of them.”
Too many factors, too many things coming together. I needed to talk to the rest of the Free Legion about this.
I needed a conference with my future son-in-law, as well.
***
It took Tartan Stowe a week to get here from Angador. The fact that we could use Central Communications cut the time in half, because no one had to go get him.
When I told him I needed him here, he could also see that this isn’t one of those times when something could come up. Tartan hauled ass up here on a horse nearly as fast as Blizzard.
There’s a difference between being invited and being summoned. Kind of like the difference meeting a man whose daughter you know, and meeting a man whose virgin daughter suddenly needs to marry you as soon as she can.
Tartan was another one who’d changed in the time I’d been away. He stood taller, he looked right at me as he walked down my throne room, announced by the squire of the court. A sword hung on his hip, he’d left his sleeves and greaves on, his helmet clipped to his belt.
Glennen had been hard on the boy growing up, and I’d taken a spot that a lot of people believed should have been his. The problem was that he’d never risen to it, and he knew it as well as I did.
Much as I’d tried to build Tartan up as a boy, memories of his father tore him back down. I could tell that the man was over that now. He’d run the Empire for me while I was away, without needing to be asked, and he’d done it well.
In light of Vulpe’s bailing in the middle of the conquest of Andoron, there were a lot of people saying that he deserved the Heir’s job now, and I wasn’t finding a lot of reasons to disagree with them, the one being that I still didn’t have Vulpe’s side of it.
I welcomed Duke Stowe, and I bid him sit and wait in the gallery to speak to me after court. Court took the usual several hours, with the usual nobles and commons begging for the usual monies and services and getting the usual answers.
Tartan had started a loan program which he backed through the state, that had turned out to be pretty profitable all around. Now cattlemen who were wanting to rebuild herds were asking for a year where they didn’t have to turn in one in seven of their calves when the local Earls brought the bulls around. With fifty thousand fewer mouths to feed now over last year, I went for it and, as they say, the peasants rejoiced.
After court I adjourned to a side room I had to the throne room, lit by a single torch, with a single table and a single chair. I sat in the chair, Shela lit the torch, and she, Hectaro and I squared off on Tartan Stowe.
“First,” I told him, “thank you for running the empire, and for doing it well. I might have had to come back early, were it not for you.”
He inclined his head. “I am a servant of the Empire,” he informed me.
“The reward for that,” I informed him, “was not supposed to be either a rare stallion, or my daughter.”
I was waiting for him to tell me I had more of both, but Tartan was smarter than that.
“The idea of our engagement came from Lee, not from myself,” he said, “though admittedly I don’t object to it.”
“Were you not happy with Yeral?” Shela asked him.
He looked into her eyes, then at me, then back at her. “She tried to have me killed,” he said, finally. “She was the one who arranged for Genna to kidnap you and your children. She worked with an offshoot of the Bounty Hunters called ‘the Roosters.’”
That was a lot to take in from one sitting, much less one sentence.
The Roosters had popped up when I struck a deal with the Bounty Hunters’ guild to stop trying to kill me. They were the ones who didn’t like it. Regular Bounty Hunters would kill Roosters on sight – Roosters were notoriously more willing to take high risk and more questionable assignments than were regular Bounty Hunters.
It made sense that Roosters, and not Bounty Hunters, had captured Shela. I still hadn’t decided what I was going to do with them, and now I didn’t have to.
“And you learned this how?” I asked him.
“From Genna,” he said, looking right at me, plain brown eyes showing no emotion. “She came here as ‘Jean,’ whom I’d hired before, not knowing she was Genna. D’gattis identified her, and I put her to death.”
There was another surprise. I didn’t think anyone was ever going to get over on Genna.
Shela looked to me for my reaction but I didn’t have one.
“Yeral never forgave you for what happened to her family,” Tartan said. “She bided her time and she waited for her opportunity, and this war was going to be it. I have no idea what she planned to do with your family, but I couldn’t give her another chance.”
“Yeral died in an accident,” Hectaro said. Tartan Stowe turned his hand to face him, his arms crossed before him.
“Yeral died because I contracted with the Bounty Hunter’s guild to kill her,” he said. “The stallion was just their convenience.”
“And so you couldn’t let the stallion be put down,” Shela said. “But how did you break him?”
He turned to Shela. “Lupennen can speak into the minds of animals,” he said. “He described it as a series of images with different meanings, of feelings like fea
r and pain and sunshine on your face. He told me that I would never break Forgotten Son, but instead I had to be like the Emperor with Blizzard – give myself over to the will of the horse, and let him choose me.”
That was the best description I’d heard of what went on at the Lake of Tears, over 16 years ago.
“And so, after all of this,” I said, “Lee returns to Galnesh Eldador, and she seeks you out, for marriage.”
Tartan took a long breath, held it and released it. “Your daughter was convinced that she had to go north, to Volkhydro,” he said.
“If she did that, then Eldador would be convinced that I’d refused to give up the throne, and we’d have civil war. You have earls now who are looking for any reason to revolt. While I have no proof of it, I believe that, given the opportunity, Ceberro would lead them. He is also no friend of yours, your Imperial Majesty. I believe he colluded with my wife, and I know that he’s been buying horses that you need for the war effort, to keep them from you.”
If anything I had too many horses now, but how would Ceberro guess that? I knew I couldn’t trust that guy.
Tartan smiled to himself. “That’s not going to work out for him, however,” he added.
“Why not?” Hectaro asked.
“Because his Imperial Majesty signed my edict that there be a tax on Angadorian horses held for private use outside of my breeding program,” he said. “The tax collectors are going to leave wealthy from Vreck this winter.”
I barely even read that edict when I signed it. If Ceberro was hoarding horses, not only was he going to get stuck with the tax, he wasn’t going to be able to unload them, either.
Good one, kid!
“So, in order to avoid civil war, you removed being a Stowe from the equation,” I said.
He looked at me quizzically.
“You’re a part of the royal family, if only betrothed,” I amended. “No civil war.”
“No one would believe that anyone would take Lee to wife without the Empreror’s approval,” Hectaro said.
I raised an eyebrow.
“You’d only kill them,” Shela said.
Ah.
Tartan had it all covered. He hadn’t done anything wrong, and he’d removed a few problems that I might not have been able to deal with.
And all it cost me is my first – no, my third born.
There was no getting used to this!
***
The day after Tartan Stowe arrived in the capitol, the Free Legion made their appearance.
Thorn arrived through the portal from the tower in Charancor. Arath and Nantar took a ship across the Straights of Deception, from Luparran. Dilvesh, Ancenon and D’gattis flashed in from wherever they were hanging out at the time, and Karel of Stone just showed up.
Eric didn’t make an appearance. I can’t say that I expected him to, but I can say that I wasn’t going to be surprised if he did.
“There’s no finding him,” D’gattis informed me, when I asked. “When Shela contacted me, I went where I expected him to be, and he wasn’t there.”
“Where was that?” I asked somewhat less than casually.
We were in my War Room in the palace in Galnesh Eldador. I’d actually thought that this might have been done in Outpost X, for security, but maybe that was being paranoid.
What I wanted to discuss with them, however, was on a par with the revelation of Uman City being Outpost V.
D’gattis may or may not have looked around the room for support – it was hard to tell with those silver-on-silver eyes. However his face turned straight to me when he conceded, “His estates in Myr. He was there with his two half sisters, his wife and Nantar’s daughters.
“But not anymore,” he continued. “He left with a big man on a big, black horse, for the center of Volkhydro, and there’s no locating him.”
Jack, I had to think, on Little Storm. They were going after my kids, and I think I knew why.
Nantar opened his mouth to ask about his daughters, I’m sure, but I cut him off.
“You all remember that prophecy of Glynn Escaroth’s,” I interjected.
They considered me.
“I don’t,” Karel of Stone said. “When someone speaks it, I can’t hear it. Nothing.”
“Which is strange,” D’gattis conceded.
“Yes, Black Lupus,” Ancenon said. “I remember it. I thought it for naught, now. Whatever was predicted has either come to pass with your conquest, or has failed.”
I shook my head. “I think it’s just begun,” I said. “I think that whole thing was painfully accurate, and I think it’s just beginning, not just ending.”
I had everyone’s attention now.
“What is it a prophecy of?” I asked. “Six heroes. Six weapons, to fight against the One.”
“The One who is of War,” Dilvesh said.
“Precisely,” I said. “And everyone thinks that’s me.”
“Well, isn’t it?” Thorn said.
“I believed it was,” I admitted. “I heard that prophecy, and it told me that if I attacked the other Fovean nations, right then, it was too late to stop me, and my victories – our victories – told me I was right.”
“So did we all,” Nantar said. The rest were nodding.
“Because, according to the prophecy,” Ancenon said, “The time of War is here.”
“The time of War is here,” I said. “But the day is near. That was the refrain, and no one gave it much thought.”
“In that vein,” D’gattis said, “the prophecy speaks of nine heroes, not six.”
“Nine?” Ancenon asked, turning to him.
Dilvesh nodded. “Yellow D’gattis and I have discussed this at length. There comes a noble, young and old, whom we all believed to be Glynn Escaroth. Then a foreigner among his kind, and a hero, fate foretold.”
“The Hero of Tamaran Glen, Karl Henekhson,” Nantar said, “who lead the Foveans, and then disappeared to the north of Volkhydro.”
“The foreigner among his kind was probably Xinto, whom we know traveled with Glynn until his death during the Battle of the Vice,” I said. “My daughter, who’s recently come from Conflu, verifies that there are Scitai living there, and actually Xinto admitted to me when I first met him that he didn’t come from the Silent Isle.”
I’d already told them that my daughter, Lee, was alive. Both of the Uman-Chi were duly impressed not just that she survived Angron Aurelias, but that she apparently defeated Avek Noir.
“One who fights as does the sun,” Dilvesh said.
“According to Angron Aurelias, the Druid Vedeen and Glynn Escaroth, a common dog – actually one of your canine corps,” D’gattis said. Thorn scoffed.
“A prophesy about a dog,” he said.
“We are all the same to the gods,” Dilvesh told him. “A dog coming to the aid of a champion is if anything less prophetic than one of the Herd that Cannot be Tamed coming to our friend Black Lupus here.”
That thinking had actually occurred to me.
“A guardian,” the Druid continued. “We assumed him to be Lupus’ countryman, this ‘Jack.’ Then a devil, born and raised – a Swamp Devil, which we know Lupus killed during the Battle of the Foveans.”
“Then one who eludes prying eyes, and one who can’t be touched,” Dilvesh continued.
“I fought a Toorian whom we knew was a leader among them,” Nantar said. “He was immune to the effects of weapons. My sword stopped at his skin. I had to strangle him to kill him.”
“Shela defended herself from a Slee amongst them,” I said. “When she fought it, it would disappear and reappear in the terrain around her. She barely survived it, and not before it wounded her. In fact, it was Vedeen who saved her and healed her after. That could be the one who eludes prying eyes.”
Dilvesh nodded. “There is also the champion, whom we assumed to be Lupus’ other countryman, Raven. In fact, she turned out to be a formidable sorceress.”
“I can confirm that, too,” Nantar said. “When we ha
d their troops caught in a gulley East of Thera, she invoked a single spell that turned one thousand of our warriors to ash. The heat parted the sky.”
“That’s nine,” D’gattis said.
“What’s also important,” I said, “is that they are called both ‘heroes’ and ‘weapons.’”
“The tools of men and gods,” Dilvesh said.
“Yes, and now we learn that Lupus has not three children, but seven,” Ancenon said, “and I believe what you have come to tell us is that each of these now has a weapon, with the exception of Chawnaluh Nanahee Nudageehay, your youngest.”
I nodded. “Eric, a sword that matched mine, and when the two swords met, he became the newest member of the Free Legion.
“When Shela killed the Slee,” I continued, “she found a spear. When she met my other daughters, Waya Dagonogeda and Chesswaya, that spear flew right into Dagi’s hand. Chesswaya already had a casting staff that gave her more power than Shela could handle.”
“That staff was attributed to Glynn Escaroth,” D’gattis said, “however I’ve never seen her with it and, if she actually forced a bole around a gem, there is no evidence of it, even from her mentor, whom I’ve spoken to about it.”
“When I killed the Toorian,” Nantar said, “I came back to the body and couldn’t find it, however Arath found a sword there.”
“I gave it to your son, Vulpe, to replace the one his brother broke,” Arath said. “I see where you’re going with this.”
“Yes – especially considering that Genna’s son, Lupennen, has a dagger that Genna found on the battle field where Xinto died, and Nina of the Aschire recovered a sword and shield in central Volkhydro when she was tracking Raven, Karl Henekhson and their dog. Where she found them, the tracks for Karl and the dog stopped, and she couldn’t pick them back up.”
“What you’re suggesting is unprecedented,” Ancenon said.
“But that it were,” Dilvesh said. “There are ancient magix that create weapons of power, which require the sacrifice of living things.”
“I know that Lee took up that sword and shield,” I said. “Lee isn’t a warrior.”
“My daughters are,” Nantar said. “And now they’re gone with your children.”
