Empress of the Fall

by David Hair

  ‘Is he the right one?’ the woman asked him.

  The tall man studied Valdyr coolly. ‘I see a man at war with himself. I see bitterness and hatred. I see open wounds on his soul. But the potential is there.’

  ‘But does he have the strength? I see brittleness,’ the shaman commented.

  The tall man peered at Valdyr, his eyes piercing. ‘Do you know my name, boy?’

  Valdyr shook his head, though a name occurred to him, one he wanted to deny.

  ‘I brought my people here, made peace with the Stonefolk in the valley and settled the lands. Made a new kingdom.’

  ‘Zlateyr?’ Valdyr whispered.

  ‘He does have a tongue after all,’ the smaller warrior noted.

  The big man smiled ironically. ‘Yes, I am Zlateyr. I brought my clan from the steppes to the icy peaks, seeking a new home, a place where we could be something more than nomads. Now your brother has brought more.’

  Valdyr looked around the circle. If this man was Zlateyr, then the woman must be his sister Luhti, the smaller man his son Eyrik, the shaman the legendary Sidorzi.

  ‘But you reject your brother’s actions,’ Luhti said. ‘You’re too proud to accept the truth. You consider yourself “pure” when purity doesn’t exist. All men are mongrels. You yourself are born of Stonefolk and Uffrykai. You know this in your heart.’

  Valdyr looked around the circle, and shook his head. ‘This is a dream.’

  ‘It’s no dream,’ Zlateyr replied. ‘You’re more awake now than you’ve ever been.’

  ‘Do you know what dwyma is?’ Sidorzi asked.

  Valdyr shook his head.

  ‘You crave the gnosis,’ Zlateyr said. ‘We hear your anguish that you cannot reach it. In time, left to your own devices, you would stumble upon it – but there’s another path open to you. All of life has energy and that energy has its own spirit: as a daemon harvests the souls of the dead, so does the Elétfa – the Tree of Life – draw life’s energies into itself. The Elétfa can sense and reason, but its goals are not those of man or daemon. A varazslo can speak to the Tree and gain succour from it – as we can.’ Zlateyr tapped Valdyr’s chest. ‘As you could.’

  ‘A varazslo?’ Valdyr didn’t know the word. The Mollach word for mage was vrajitoare.

  ‘One who can channel the forces of life. A dwymancer – a varazslo. The potential exists in all mage-born, but must be triggered before the gnosis is kindled.’

  Valdyr had never heard of such a thing. ‘Surely if this was real, then all of Urte would know?’

  Zlateyr touched a finger to Valdyr’s forehead. ‘There have been varazslo for as long as there have been magi, but magi do not like rivals. We varazslo were never many, and we were hunted, but we’ve never vanished. The Elétfa sustains us, and I have felt the stirrings of a reawakening.’

  ‘Even in Pallas,’ Sidorzi added, ‘at the heart of empire, we have lain concealed.’

  ‘And now you’ve come,’ Eyrik said. ‘An answer to our prayers.’

  Valdyr didn’t feel like a prayer’s answer. ‘A white stag led me here – I thought it might be a sign. But signs and omens aren’t real – the magi say so.’

  ‘Not for magi,’ Luhti answered, ‘but dwyma is not like the gnosis. It is life – it moves through us. The gnosis is the axe in the hand of a woodsman. Dwyma grows the forest. It is the forest.’

  ‘The gnosis is the surgeon’s scalpel,’ Eyrik added. ‘Dwyma is the body.’

  ‘The gnosis is a single word and the dwyma the voice of the world,’ said Sidorzi.

  Zlateyr leaned towards him. ‘A mage uses the gnosis, but dwyma uses us: we paint in giant brushstrokes and take our strength from the vastness of the natural world. We must persuade the dwyma to hear us. Our power is slow to rouse and impossible to turn aside. It is eternal, and sees with the eyes of aeons.’

  ‘Then you are alive still?’ Valdyr asked.

  ‘Alive? Dead? Ghost? The words are meaningless. We are leaves of the Elétfa. If you accept your powers, so too will you be.’

  Luhti touched his arm. ‘But first, you must accept what you are, because our power is not the gnosis, it is not a tool – it is a bargain. The Tree of Life will let you drink of its sap, but those so blessed belong to that power – it doesn’t belong to you. Misuse it, and it will leave you and strip you hollow in its passing.’

  ‘But if it’s not a tool, what’s it for?’

  Luhti laughed coolly. ‘It’s not for anything – it is. It allows us to touch it, so that we might ensure that it continues to be.’

  Valdyr swallowed. It all sounded so enticing when he’d been raging against his impotence . . . but it also felt like being offered a spoon when he needed a knife. ‘What will the Elétfa ask of me?’

  ‘For now?’ Zlateyr replied: ‘To accept what you are: rise above your illusions of tribe and clan. Your blood comes from everywhere, from the cold North to the warm South, the green West and even the arid East. The first Sydians migrated from Dhassa before the land-bridge fell into the sea, and before them, Yothic and Frandi. You are from everywhere, Valdyr. Let that knowledge guide you.’

  Valdyr swallowed. Then I’m the same as those people in the breeding-house . . . I’m just like Asiv.

  ‘No, not like him,’ Luhti said, as if he’d spoken aloud. ‘Nothing like him.’ Her hand on his cheek was warm, so tender, it made tears well up and run down his cheeks. ‘He hurt you but he didn’t conquer you.’

  ‘He did conquer me,’ Valdyr whispered. He hid his face, ashamed to face the heroes of Mollachia when he was nothing but the catamite of a mudskin rapist. I’m not worthy of being here . . .

  ‘We know what he did,’ Zlateyr said, his voice both angry and sympathetic.

  ‘How can you?’

  ‘Because it’s written all over your soul,’ Luhti whispered, putting her arms around him. He flinched, but didn’t pull away. ‘We can see what else he did too.’

  ‘We know about the daemons,’ Zlateyr added. ‘We know about his experiments on behalf of Naxius.’

  It was too much. Memories suppressed for so long flooded back, and all he could see was Asiv’s hateful face. He had been bad enough to start with, a cruel breeding-house master, but everything changed when Ervyn Naxius had arrived in Asiv Fariddan’s quarters one night. It became clear very quickly that the Yurosi was no rescuer, just another man possessed of inexhaustible curiosity and a moral void who found in Asiv a kindred spirit. From then on, Naxius mentored Asiv, and each visit took Valdyr into a new and fresh Hel.

  And when Asiv wasn’t experimenting on the limits of daemon-possession and soul-bindings, he was fulfilling his own ever-growing perverted lusts, fed by the creatures he summoned.

  ‘He’d chain me in a circle, then summon those things into my body,’ Valdyr whispered. ‘It was like drinking sewage. I couldn’t stand it – I begged to die. I prayed to Kore and Sol and Ahm – and no one heard! Kyrik never came – no one came!’

  Eventually Asiv had discarded him as too old, too used-up for his needs. No one had cared; Valdyr was reassigned to another house, back to the breeding programme.

  ‘Yet you were rescued,’ Luhti reminded him. ‘Prayers can be answered in strange ways. You are here, when and where Mollachia needs you.’

  ‘But I can’t stand the Vlpa. They’re like animals—’

  Luhti stroked his cheek. ‘There, is my hand so repulsive? Am I so ugly?’

  He shook his head. ‘You’re different.’

  ‘No, I’m not – none of us are. Zlateyr, me, Eyrik and Sidorzi: we’re Uffrykai, just as Clan Vlpa are. Imagine them clothed as you Mollachs are and see if you can spot a difference. See their souls. Look beyond the skin.’

  Valdyr closed his eyes, unable to think in such a way. But her body against his felt warm and comforting, like the mother he’d lost, and he found himself sinking into her side, cradled and safe. Somehow her presence banished his sickening memories of Asiv to somewhere in the deepest recesses of his mind.


  Zlateyr’s voice washed over him: ‘We’re all just flesh and blood, equal in all but the tiniest details. I saw this when I fought the Stonefolk – so we made peace. The Mollach people are the result of that peace; that peace is what begat you, Valdyr Sarkany. It’s not hate for the Keshi you feel. It’s hate for Asiv Fariddan and his ilk.’

  Luhti lifted his head and when he opened his eyes, her face was that of a girl he’d been forced to mate with many times: one he’d hated; he’d struck her and kicked her until they’d chained him up so she could mate with him. But suddenly he realised she’d been as scared, as abused as he was. Many of them were, he realised.

  I’m so sorry, he whispered to the memory. I lashed out at the wrong people – the only people I could reach, when they were the ones least deserving of hatred.

  Luhti kissed his forehead, then his mouth, and he kissed her back, his lips melting into hers, his soul bleeding into her eyes. ‘If your heart is changed, you will become the one we seek,’ she whispered, her voice fuzzy and fading. ‘If not, the dirt of the grave will choke you.’

  For aeons he floated in her gaze.

  Then he fell from her grasp into the bosom of sleep.

  35

  Loekryn’s Bridge

  The Celestium

  During his long reign, the power of Emperor Sertain lay in both the temporal and spiritual realm: he was emperor and head of the Kore Church. But when he died, his son and heir Gordian was persuaded to separate the two spheres of power, and so the title of prelate was born. This became arch-prelate and then grand prelate as time passed, and the power of the Church came to rival that of the Rondian Emperor himself. The Building of the Celestium, across the Bruin from the Imperial Bastion, was interpreted as a direct challenge to Imperial power.

  ORDO COSTRUO COLLEGIATE, PONTUS, 847

  The Bastion, Pallas-Nord

  Junesse 935

  Ril awoke pressed against his wife’s back, her pale hair teasing his nostrils. He inhaled the fragrance of her, the rosewater she washed with alleviating the earthier smells of their bodies. He kissed her bare shoulder, ran his hand down her side to her hip, wondering if she’d be amenable to . . .

  ‘Good morning,’ Geni chirruped, startling him.

  Rukking maids! Have they no respect for a man’s privacy? The girl scuttled away when he gestured in annoyance.

  Lyra was still sleeping, her face so peaceful it felt cruel to wake her, so he slid from the bed, threw on breeches and gathered the rest of his clothes. In the next room, Geni was setting breakfast; she blushed as she saw his bare chest and midriff, which made him smile.

  ‘Is Domara about?’ he asked, pulling his shirt on.

  ‘Not yet, sir,’ Geni answered, trying hard to look like she wasn’t watching him. ‘She’ll be another ten minutes.’

  ‘Best I get out then.’ He hurried to the door, then paused. ‘Do you disapprove of me being here too, Geni?’

  ‘Oh no, sir. My ma had eleven bairns: she and Da were at it right up ’til birthing, an’ she never lost a one.’

  ‘Good. Tell Domara, will you?’

  ‘Oh, I try, sir,’ Geni said enthusiastically. ‘My ma always said that her best “shudder-shakes” – that’s what she called ’em – was when she was near to birthing. A good ’un could bring the child on, she said.’

  ‘Er . . . thank you, Geni – that’s far more than I needed to know.’ He heard Domara’s voice approaching and fled, trying to remember what he needed to see Setallius about . . . That sigil, yes!

  He didn’t succeed in tracking the spymaster until after the midday meal, when he finally reappeared in his office. ‘There you are,’ Ril said, waving away an aide. ‘It’s the third time I’ve passed today. I tried a gnostic-call but couldn’t reach you.’

  ‘A certain amount of elusiveness is expected in my role,’ Setallius drawled. ‘How can I help?’

  Ril explained the stone he’d found in Lyra’s garden and the sigil that matched the bronze panel in front of the altar in Saint Chalfon’s church in Surrid. ‘I don’t know why, but it’s nagging at me. Do you know what it means?’

  If the spymaster was puzzled or impatient at the request, it didn’t show. He and his small circle of Volsai mages had been conducting the futile hunt for the royal children; it had been three weeks since the dead end in the Surrid quarantine zone. The riverreek epidemic was worsening – hundreds were now penned in and they’d had to open new quarantine areas in Fisheart and Esdale. The Treasury had some kind of coining crisis and Wurther was distracted by the upcoming Synod. The governance of Pallas and the empire was stumbling, rather than striding on.

  If this were a duel, Ril thought, now would be the time for our enemies to strike.

  Setallius went to his bookshelves and leafed through one, then another. At last he waved Ril over. ‘Here it is: the tree and cross of Loekryn.’

  Ril studied the hand-drawn illustration. ‘Yes, that’s it. Who or what was Loekryn?’

  ‘Do you remember I recently mentioned the Canonical Crisis of 818?’

  Ril cast his mind back. ‘The clergy wanted canon law to overrule secular law?’

  ‘Indeed, during the reign of Emperor Voscarus. He blockaded Southside to starve the prelates into submission. Loekryn was grand prelate, and he was defiant – he even boasted that he’d bridge the Aerflus to get supplies into Southside. They resisted for nine months, thanks to devotees smuggling in food and supplies, until Voscarus occupied Emtori, strangling the smuggling operation, and Loekryn capitulated.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He took his own life, the only grand prelate to do so.’ The spymaster grinned and added, ‘He was then found to have been a woman.’

  Ril burst out laughing. ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, maybe. The Church denied it, but the rumour persists.’ Setallius frowned, and his voice became serious again. ‘During the blockade, his seal was used in Emtori as a sign of a safe house for clergymen – and smugglers.’

  ‘That explains the plaque at Saint Chalfon’s I suppose,’ Ril said. ‘But why would there be a stone with that marking in Lyra’s private garden?’

  ‘It might just be a coincidence – building blocks do get re-used,’ Setallius said.

  Ril sat back in his chair, pondering. It was probably nothing – but he’d found the stone in Lyra’s garden, which had become an increasingly uncanny place. ‘Did your people ever search Saint Chalfon’s?’

  ‘It was outside the quarantine area, so no,’ the spymaster replied. ‘Although now it’s inside. We’ve had to extend the zone because of the increased number of sufferers. I could send someone, if you like?’

  ‘I think I’ll go myself. May I take Basia? I don’t think Lyra is planning on doing more than reading some papers and spending time with her ladies today.’

  ‘Be my guest. I’ll have someone trustworthy stay with her.’ With a twinkle in his one good eye, he added, ‘Well spotted – we’ll make a Volsai of you yet.’

  Ril snorted. ‘No wonder your career as a courtier never worked out, if that’s the best you can do for flattery.’

  It was mid-afternoon before he and Basia managed to extract themselves from other duties. Dressed in rough clothing so as not to attract attention, they walked down to Kenside docks, but the tides were against them so they wasted almost two hours in a tavern, waiting for the waters to settle before they could get a ferry to Aerside.

  ‘It’s a shame we’ve never asked the Ordo Costruo to build us a nice bridge,’ he observed as they disembarked.

  ‘We did, once,’ Basia replied. ‘Emperor Sertain II asked, a long time ago, but they refused – no idea why – and his people hadn’t mastered the solarus crystals, so every bridge he tried to build collapsed.’

  Ril pulled a face. That the Pallas magi couldn’t do everything was both comforting and disturbing.

  Ril thought the Aerside docks were bustling: several large river-barges had come down the Siber River with cargo from Canossi and Delph an
d dour Argundian traders were haggling with shrewd Pallacian buyers. But Basia was unimpressed. ‘It’s very quiet,’ she remarked. ‘The riverreek’s scaring off the traders.’

  Sure enough, as they walked south and inland, the streets began to empty – not just of the bustle of the docklands but soon of all life. They passed abandoned terraces, shutters flapping in the wind, doors smashed, looted furniture piled on the streets. The one patrol they saw didn’t even approach them.

  ‘That’s really strange,’ Basia muttered as the guardsmen backed off. ‘What the Hel is going on here?’

  Then they turned into a square and found their path barricaded with more furniture, piled into heaps and roped together, right across the street. At first they thought the place empty, then half a dozen men in Kirkegarde uniforms rose from the shadow of a stone wall. They all looked as sick as the people they were supposed to be penning in.

  ‘Stop. You can’t come this way,’ they said, and Ril could have sworn they’d all spoken in unison.

  Basia caught his sleeve. ‘Let’s try another way.’

  The air of menace radiating from the guardsmen quickly persuaded him and he let her lead him away. ‘Did you notice?’ he said quietly, ‘it’s cold here, but none of those Reekers went into the sun.’

  ‘We’re going to lose the sun soon ourselves,’ she said, pointing to where it was beginning to fall behind Emtori Heights. ‘This is even worse than our last visit.’

  Ril jabbed a finger at the grey-walled buildings topping the Heights. ‘What are those pricks up there doing about this?’

  ‘What’s the emperor doing?’ Basia added, in a complaining voice.

  ‘Exactly!’ Ril agreed, then he laughed. ‘Very droll: the “emperor” is investigating, with his good friend, Fantoche. Come on.’

  They skirted the extended quarantine zone, encountering barricade after barricade, some manned by Kirkegarde, some by the riverreek victims themselves, and all exuding a fug of sour malice. Ril and Basia didn’t try to gain admittance.