Samuel raised an eyebrow at the comment, for the old man was obviously in an unpleasant mood. His time in exile had certainly roughened him around the edges.
Anthem removed his blue travelling cloak, revealing a thin shirt and short pants. His pale, bony arms and legs poked out from his clothes, dispelling any guise of reverence he may have once possessed.
‘Looks like a beggars’ den,’ Anthem said, looking around at their room. ‘It’ll do…I guess.’ He then collapsed into a chair at the small table. ‘So what have you four been doing here all this time? I hear you have been causing all sorts of trouble and mischief, so I thought I had better come and lend you a hand before you mess everything up altogether. Can’t anyone do anything right without me?’
‘We have stolen back many books from the High Tower,’ Lomar said, gesturing to the books lying all over the room. ‘Dividian has been taking them from the Great Library and passing them to Lord Jarrod.’
‘Evidently,’ Anthem noted, picking up a small notebook from the table and flipping through its pages.
‘Ash has been researching and practising black magic,’ Samuel added.
‘Black magic?’ Anthem asked with disbelief. ‘Why, by the nine gods, would he deal with such a foul art? The man should know better. It will be his ruin to meddle with such things.’
‘Perhaps, that is exactly why Master Ash is the one using black magic,’ Goodfellow suggested. ‘Perhaps the Archmage or Lord Jarrod have goaded him into it.’
‘Possible,’ Anthem replied, nodding and raising one grey eyebrow in thought. ‘Master Ash would be only too keen to experiment with some power that could put him above other magicians, but it makes no real sense. The Archmage already has as many magicians as he requires at his command, and he has the Staff of Elders. Why would he want more power than that?’
‘For the Argum Stone,’ Samuel informed.
‘What’s that?’ Anthem asked.
Samuel was genuinely surprised that the old man had not heard of the relic. He was sure his old principal would have known everything. ‘It’s an artefact from the Age of the Ancients. It has been put inside the High Tower while they study it. We believe it is dormant now and that Ash is working to awaken it. They don’t seem to have discovered the final secrets on how to do so. We were hoping the secrets may be here in one of these books, but so far we’ve had little luck.’
‘And what do you think they’ll do with the thing if they do manage to awaken it? What can it do?’ Anthem asked with interest.
‘I’m not exactly sure anyone knows what it can do,’ Samuel informed the old man, ‘but the Archmage is certain it will help them to overthrow Garteny. In fact, he seems to think it will assure a sweeping victory.’
‘Can it be that powerful?’ the old man asked with a hint of disbelief.
‘He seemed to think so,’ Samuel replied.
‘Then what should we do?’ Goodfellow asked.
Anthem rubbed his whiskered chin with his bony, freckled hand. ‘The Gartens are already prepared for the war, but I fear it will be long and bloody. If the Emperor sends such an artefact into the fray, it will be nothing short of disastrous. Either way, if there is anything we can do to stop it, we should try.’
‘Is it true you are a Garten, Grand Master?’ Samuel asked.
The old man nodded solemnly. ‘I am, but I have not been back for a long, long time. It is not a place where I would be welcomed.’
‘How is it that Garten withstood the Emperor’s forces when every other nation of Amandia fell?’ Goodfellow asked. ‘No one seems to know the whole story of how the Great War ended. Was it because of something you did?’ At that, the old man pinned Goodfellow with blazing eyes. ‘I only ask because everyone has heard the tales and stories. It would be good to know first-hand what happened.’
‘That’s true enough—very few people know the whole truth of the Great War,’ the old man said. ‘I am one of them, so let me tell you what happened. As the nations of Amandia fell beneath the crushing might of the Empire, the Gartens, far away in the frigid north, became naturally wary. The Emperor’s diplomats had been pleading ignorance and spouting lies to King Otgart for years, but they were quickly removed from their heads after envoys from Pine Vale and Tudonnam came to see the King, begging for assistance and telling him of all the Empire had been plotting. The King sent his armies into battle without delay. When Garten and Turian forces first met on the battlefield, it looked as if the Gartens would last no longer than our neighbours, for the Emperor had five powerful magicians at his service who could tear through men like wet paper.’
‘The Lions?’ Goodfellow asked.
‘That’s right,’ Anthem confirmed with a nod. ‘They could not be defeated, and the battle looked set to be lost before it had hardly begun. It was then that the King sent my brother and me out to meet them.’
‘I didn’t know you had a brother,’ Samuel interrupted, full of surprise.
The old man gave Samuel a piercing look before continuing. ‘We faced them on Raven Fields—’
‘—and you beat them?’ Samuel said impatiently.
‘No, young fool. And stop interrupting me! If you want to hear the rest of this story hold your infernal tongue. My brother was greatest of the Garten magicians by far and I was but a distant second behind him. Together, we waged our spells against theirs and we fought long and hard. They were surprised at first that two men, especially barbaric Gartens, could stand against them for so long. I was quite strong at the time and my brother more so, and we held them back for as long as we could. As we tired, the Lions began to gain the upper hand. It was then, as fate would have it, that one of the Lions made a terrible mistake. He took a glancing blow from a savage spell sent by my brother and was befuddled momentarily, but long enough for him to inadvertently cast a spell against one of his own fellows—Levin Tudor was his name. The man was horribly wounded and would have died at once, had my brother not come to the man’s aid. At first, the others continued to attack my brother, pummelling him with spells that should have struck him dead, but his resolve was so great that he could not be felled. Finally, they realised what he was doing and stood dumbfounded by their own foolishness. There, amongst the blood and the bones and the corpses of the fallen on Raven Fields, the salvation of Garteny was founded in the pact we made.
‘So great was the relief of the Lions when they realised their friend had been saved, and so astounded were they by the compassion of my brother, that it was as if some dark veil was lifted from their eyes. They realised they had been fighting and conquering and ignorantly obeying the Emperor for so long that they had forgotten to use the greatest gift that any magician has—reason. Despite the fact that all five were the stoutest of Turian patriots, they finally gained the ability to actually think that, yes, perhaps the Emperor could be mistaken.
‘We forged a plan and an alliance right there, that the Empire’s rampant warring should cease and we would free all the nations that it had captured and plundered over the centuries—a plan that is being enacted right up to this very moment, but I shall tell you more of that later.
‘My brother and I joined the Lions, but we knew that even all seven together could not defeat the Archmage and his almighty Staff of Elders. We fabricated the guise that we had been mistreated in Garteny and that our lives were misery there and, when we started blasting our own defences to pieces, the Empire accepted us with open arms. The defeat of Garteny looked assured at that point, but then we began to execute our plan. Together with the Lions, we began to sap at the strength of the Emperor’s great army, sabotaging their efforts and crippling their assaults. We each began to feign exhaustion and the Turians thought that all their luck had disappeared at once.
‘The Emperor’s men lost their momentum and their progress into the north began to slow. The last few precious months passed and winter set in quickly, forcing both sides to dig in and wait it out. The men of the south were not ready for such hardships and their resolve dra
ined away with the blood in their cheeks. At last, the Emperor’s generals realised they could not go on and returned to Cintar, where they were promptly executed. The Gartens laboured hard all through the winter, fortifying their cities and bolstering their forces with conscripts from all over the great frozen north. By the time spring had next arrived, they had well readied their defences.
‘In the meantime, we Lions had begun searching for allies amongst the outer states, surreptitiously sowing general unrest throughout the Empire. Rioting and rebellions sprang up all over and the Emperor’s forces were kept busy quelling them that year and the next. It was then that the treaty was signed, for the Emperor feared his borders had been expanded too quickly. His new territories were still unstable and he needed time to consolidate his rulership. He was confident that he could bide his time and take Garteny at his later convenience, but each passing year only readied the north-men more for his assault. By the time the Emperor was once again ready to forge north, he found a very different picture. The Gartens had fortified their cities and bolstered their armies beyond what the Emperor could have believed. Every Turian spy and diplomat and assassin in the capital had been painstakingly rooted out and killed. The Emperor would need more than just sheer manpower to conquer these vast new walls and defences. Even we Lions would not be enough.
‘This is where he turned to the Order. I had been living and studying in Cintar for nearly eight years when it became known that the Emperor wanted our magical assistance in breaking the Garten defences. The only solution was to build a bigger and stronger force of magicians to aid the Imperial armies. Not every magician could be as powerful as the Lions, but they didn’t need to be, just as long they were great enough in number. We were charged with converting the School from little more than a halfway house for idle, old magicians into a genuine academy of magic. We began scouring the lands for talented young pupils. We promised the Emperor that, eventually, we would be able to find greater spells and produce more magicians, until we could achieve the goal set to us. Of course, we did not act entirely as we had suggested. We secretly forged an Order of Magicians that, rather than being another cog in the machine of war, was beneficial to all the peoples of Amandia. We did become powerful, but we purposefully avoided teaching those spells that could be used to maim and kill and instead focussed on healing and spells of a practical nature. Instead of touting the usual Imperial claptrap, we steered our pupils towards rational, philosophical consideration. We dared not teach anyone to defy the Empire, but we hoped to bring the students to a point where they would reach that conclusion for themselves—and, to a certain degree, we were successful in that. We continued to delay the Emperor year after year, hoping that some day he would finally give up his plans to continue with the war and allow himself to slip away peacefully. It’s been so long, we had actually started to believe we had won.’
‘But what made the Emperor so intent on suddenly invading Garteny again?’ Goodfellow asked. ‘It must be at least forty years since the battle of Raven Fields.’
‘At least,’ Anthem agreed. ‘I can’t say for sure what has made him suddenly so set on marching north once more. Perhaps it was Lord Jarrod promising him certain victory, or perhaps it was Master Celios foretelling he would finally have a son, or perhaps he thought it was just good timing. Who can know? But let me get back to my tale.
‘During my initial years in Turia, I had come to know Master Vim, who luckily enough was appointed as principal of this new School of Magic. He was a stout patriot, but also a very intelligent man and a pacifist at heart. We certainly saw eye to eye in many things. When old Master Vim finally passed away, I inherited his position, chiefly because I had become easily the most accomplished magician in the Empire, and also because of a single terrible thing that I did, which has kept me in favour with the Emperor all these years. I have spent every day of my life since that time endeavouring to keep magicians out of the Emperor’s armies, but now the accursed Lord Jarrod has gone and undone all our good work.’
‘I always thought the Empire won the last battle of the war,’ Eric stated. ‘From what you describe, the Empire ended up retreating?’
‘Do you think Garteny would still exist if Turia had won? It was a bitter defeat for the Empire and the truth of the matter cannot be told in these parts lest you risk losing your head. Many of the historical works that line the Emperor’s university are tainted with more than their fair share of such fiction.’
‘And what happened to your brother? Samuel asked. ‘Did he return to Cintar with you?’
The old man shook his head. ‘No. No, he did not.’
‘Where is he?’ Eric asked.
‘This is the tragedy of which I spoke. When my brother and I first joined with the five Lions, we needed to ensure our defection was believable. This meant we had to fight side by side with the Turians and we had to make it look like we really had a sound disliking for our Garten kin. We started by destroying a few fortifications and spooking the odd warhorse, but we quickly realised that this would not be enough. In order to save millions, we would have to be theatrical in killing a few hundred. But Salu refused to kill, no matter how many times I told him it would save more lives in the future. He refused my plan outright.
‘He was always the first into action when it came to saving any living thing, be it a man, a beast or a butterfly, but he could see no logic in our plan to save countless lives in the war, for Salu was a simpleton. He was a genius at certain things, such as the carving and crafting and casting spells, but every morning when we awoke I had to help him tie his shoelaces. He could never remember how, no matter how many times I tried to teach him.
‘Incensed by the Emperor’s bloodthirsty commands, my brother was driven into a sudden fit of rage. He went at the Emperor like a beast, tearing away the Emperor’s protections like a child tears through the layers of a gift-wrapped toy. He threw the Archmage and the Staff of Elders aside like playthings and went charging at the Emperor like a mad bull. The Emperor felt terror for perhaps the first time in his life and then I did the thing that has kept him in my debt all these years—the thing for which I have been damned ever since. I attacked my own brother before he could kill the Emperor; not because I didn’t want the man dead, because I verily did want that, but because I did not want Salu to live with the guilt of such an act, as I knew he would. I drove him back with my own power until his fury had passed and he fell sobbing to the floor. I slapped him in the face and scorned him for behaving like an animal. That slap hit him like no blast of power ever could—the look on his face was of absolute shock and dismay. He stood up and fled from the scene and that was the last I ever saw him.
‘Men were sent out to bring him back, of course. More men were sent out after that and more, but none were ever seen again. Eventually, they just stopped sending men. I have never seen my brother since then and I have never been back to Garteny. I don’t know what came over me at the time and countless souls would curse my name if they knew the truth, but I am the man who saved the Emperor’s life and I have been trying to undo that mistake ever since. This tale also explains why the Emperor has imprisoned himself in Cintar since that time, rarely leaving the palace walls without entire armies around him. He is terrified that one day Salu will return to finish the job.’
‘So what do we do now, Grand Master?’ Eric asked.
Anthem looked up from his melancholy thoughts. ‘It’s time to undo the wrongs of the past and make up for past mistakes.’ The two Erics looked to each other, confused. ‘We act,’ Anthem continued. ‘Our efforts to stop the Emperor’s lust for conquest have failed. Our strategies to unite the land peacefully through the Order have been exhausted. It’s time we acted swiftly and concisely. We must do what no one else has ever been able to do. We must do what we originally intended to do, what I failed do and what has been foretold we will do—we must finally kill the Emperor of Turia.’
‘You can’t be serious,’ Eric stated in total disbelief.
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br /> ‘I’m deadly serious. It is time for an end to his power-driven madness. It’s time to end his wars and let people be free of his shadow, once and for all.’
‘Grand Master,’ Lomar began, ‘such an idea is not new. Many people have tried to kill the Emperor, many times in fact, and none has even been nearly successful, except for your brother as you described—and he has not been seen since that day. The Archmage keeps the Emperor surrounded by the most powerful spells and he has elite guards by his side day and night. Even the Circle of Eyes has failed to kill him. I must say, it seems impossible!’
‘It’s not impossible, by any means,’ the wiry old Grand Master corrected. ‘While it’s true that such a task does present its difficulties, what do you think I have spent the greater part of my life considering? In truth, the Order has wasted countless years secretly searching for my brother, all without avail; but we now have an alternative means of getting to the Emperor. Still, we must strike decisively and without error, for if we fail it will be the end of all our hopes and almost certainly our lives.’
‘So you have a plan?’ Samuel asked.
‘Not exactly,’ the old man admitted, ‘but we must put one together quickly. I’m sorry to say that the introduction of this new relic—something no one could have foretold— has thrown all my existing plans to the wind. It they manage to awaken this Argum Stone and it proves even nearly as powerful as the Staff of Elders, the war will begin anew and more lives will be forfeited. The Emperor can stay safely in Cintar under the protection of the Staff of Elders, while the Argum Stone goes north to obliterate the Gartens. Who knows? Perhaps the Emperor would even like to see the battlefront himself this time? With two Ancient relics of power in his hands, who can say what the Emperor can and cannot achieve? Before this happens, we must kill him. It has never been done before, but we now have something that I believe will make all the difference.’
The Young Magician (The Legacy Trilogy) Page 54
