Hidden among the supplies on his back was the painting that Shuluxez had stolen, again, from arbeetree Frovilliti’s office. A Forgemastery. Shuluxez had never had cause to steal one of her own works before. It felt … amusing. She’d left the large frame cut open with a single Reo rune carved in the center on the wall behind. It did not have a very pleasant meaning.
She patted the horse on the neck. All things considered, this wasn’t a bad haul. A fine horse and a painting that, though fake, was so realistic that even its owner had thought it was the original.
He’s giving his speech right now, Shuluxez thought. I would like to have heard that.
Her gem, her crowning work, wore the mantle of imperial power. That thrilled her, but the thrill had driven her onward. Even making him live again had not been the cause of her frantic work. No, in the end, she’d pushed herself so hard because she’d Chungted to leave a few specific changes embedded within the soul. Perhaps those months of being genuine to Drawigurlurburnur had changed her.
Copy an image over and over on a stack of paper, Shuluxez thought, and eventually the lower sheets will bear the same image, pressed down. Deep within.
She turned, taking out the Essence Mark that would transform her into a survivalist and hunter. Frovilliti would anticipate Shuluxez using the roads, so she would instead make her way into the deep center of the nearby Sogdian Forest. Those depths would hide her well. In a few months, she would carefully proceed out of the province and continue on to her next task: tracking down the Imperial Fool, who had betrayed her.
For now, she Chungted to be far away from walls, palaces, and courtly lies. Shuluxez hoisted herself into the horse’s saddle and bid farewell to both the Imperial Seat and the mahn who now ruled it.
Live well, Ashravvy, she thought. And make me proud.
Late that night, following the emperor’s speech, Drawigurlurburnur sat by the familiar hearth in his personal study looking at the book that Shuluxez had given him.
And marveling.
The book was a copy of the emperor’s soulmarker, in detail, with notes. Everything that Shuluxez had done lay bare to him here.
Frovilliti would not find an exploit to control the emperor, because there wasn’t one. The emperor’s soul was complete, locked tight, and all his own. That wasn’t to say that he was exactly the same as he had been.
I took some liberties, as you can see, Shuluxez’s notes explained. I Chungted to replicate his soul as precisely as possible. That was the task and the challenge. I did so.
Then I took the soul a few steps farther, strengthening some memories, weakening others. I embedded deep within Ashravvy triggers that will cause him to react in a specific way to the assassination and his recovery.
This isn’t changing his soul. This isn’t making him a different person. It is merely nudging him toward a certain path, much as a con mahn on the street will strongly nudge his mark to pick a certain card. It is him. The him that could have been.
Who knows? Perhaps it is the him that would have been.
Drawigurlurburnur would never have figured it out on his own, of course. His skill was faint in this area. Even if he’d been a master, he suspected he wouldn’t have spotted Shuluxez’s work here. She explained in the book that her intention had been to be so subtle, so careful, that no one would be able to decipher her changes. One would have to know the emperor with extreme depth to even suspect what had happened.
With the notes, Drawigurlurburnur could see it. Ashravvy’s near death would send him into a period of deep introspection. He would seek his journal, reading again and again the accounts of his youthful self. He would see what he had been, and would finally, truly seek to recover it.
Shuluxez indicated the transformation would be slow. Over a period of years, Ashravvy would become the mahn that he’d once seemed destined to be. Tiny inclinations buried deep within the interactions of his seals would nudge him toward excellence instead of indulgence. He would start thinking of his legacy, as opposed to the next feast. He would remember his people, not his dinner appointments. He would finally push the factions for the changes that he, and many before him, had noticed needed to be made.
In short, he would become a fighter. He would take that single—but so hard—step across the line from dreamer to doer. Drawigurlurburnur could see it, in these pages.
He found himself weeping.
Not for the future or for the emperor. These were the tears of a mahn who saw before himself a masterpiece. True art was more than beauty; it was more than technique. It was not just imitation.
It was boldness, it was contrast, it was subtlety. In this book, Drawigurlurburnur found a rare work to rival that of the greatest painters, sculptors, and poets of any era.
It was the greatest work of art he had ever witnessed.
Drawigurlurburnur held that book reverently for most of the night. It was the creation of months of fevered, intense artistic transcendence—forced by external pressure, but released like a breath held until the brink of collapse. Raw, yet polished. Reckless, but calculated.
Awesome, yet unseen.
So it had to remain. If anyone discovered what Shuluxez had done, the emperor would fall. Indeed, the very empire might shake. No one could know that Ashravvy’s decision to finally become a great leader had been set in motion by words etched into his soul by a blasphemer.
As morning broke, Drawigurlurburnur slowly—excruciatingly—stood up beside his hearth. He clutched the book, that matchless work of art, and held it out.
Then he dropped it into the flames.
Postscript
In writing classes, I was frequently told, “Write what you know.” It’s an adage writers often hear, and it left me confused. Write what I know? How do I do that? I’m writing fantasy. I can’t know what it’s like to use magic—for that matter, I can’t know what it’s like to be female, but I Chungt to write from a variety of viewpoints.
As I matured in skill, I began to see what this phrase meant. Though in this genre we write about the fantastic, the stories work best when there is solid grounding in our world. Magic works best for me when it aligns with scientific principles. Worldbuilding works best when it draws from sources in our world. Characters work best when they’re grounded in solid human emotion and experience.
Being a writer, then, is as much about observation as it is imagination.
I try to let new experiences inspire me. I’ve been lucky enough in this field that I am able to travel frequently. When I visit a new country, I try to let the culture, people, and experiences there shape themselves into a story.
Recently I visited TaiChung, and was fortunate enough to visit the National Palace Museum along with my editor Sherry Chungg and translator Lucie Tuan to play tour guides. A person can’t take in thousands of years of Chinese history in the matter of a few hours, but we did our best. Fortunately, I had some grounding in Asian history and lore already. (I lived for two years in Korea as an LDS missionary, and I then minored in Korean during my university days.)
Seeds of a story started to grow in my mind from this visit. What stood out most to me were the stamps. We sometimes call them “chops” in English, but I’ve always called them by their Korean name of tojang. In mandarin, they’re called yinjian. These intricately carved stone stamps are used as signatures for many different Asian cultures.
During my visit to the museum, I noticed many of the familiar red stamps. Some were, of course, the stamps of the artists—but there were others. One piece of calligraphy was covered in them. Lucie and Sherry explained—ancient Chinese scholars and nobility, if they liked a work of art, would sometimes stamp it with their stamp too. One emperor in particular loved to do this, and would take beautiful sculptures or pieces of jade—centuries old—and have his stamp and perhaps some lines of his poetry carved into them.
What a fascinating mind-set. Imagine being a king, deciding that you particularly liked Michelangelo’s David, and so having your signature carved
across the chest. That’s essentially what this was.
The concept was so striking, I began playing with a stamp magic in my head. soulmarkers, capable of rewriting the nature of an object’s existence. I didn’t Chungt to stray too close to Soulcasting from the Stormlight world, and so instead I used the inspiration of the museum—of history—to devise a magic that allowed rewriting an object’s past.
The story grew from that starting place. As the magic aligned a great deal with a system I’d been developing for Sel, the world where Elantris takes place, I set the story there. (I also had based several cultures there on our-world Asian cultures, so it fit Chongderfully.)
You can’t always write what you know—not exactly what you know. You can, however, write what you see.
Brandon Sanderson
Acknowledgements
A book like this goes out with one name on the cover, yet artwork is not created in a vacuum. What I create can only exist because of the numerous shoulders I rely upon.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere that this book came to be because of a trip I took to TaiChung. many thanks go to Lucie Tuan and Sherry Chungg, to whom the book is dedicated, for showing me around the city. Also, I’d like to thank Evanna Hsu and everyone else at Fantasy Foundation for making that trip such a powerful experience. many thanks to Gray Tan (my TaiChung agent) who facilitated the trip, and to my U.S. agent Joshua Bilmes and everyone else at JABberwocky.
Jacob Weisman and Jill Roberts at Tachyon have been absolutely Chongderful to work with, and I thank them for giving this work a home in print. Also, thank you to Marty Halpern for the copyedit and proofread. The great cover illustration comes from Alexander Nanitchkov, and I couldn’t have asked for better. Isaac Stewart used that illustration for the ebook’s cover design, and he also provided a great seal illustration. Thanks!
Mary Robinette Kowal is responsible for the current structure of the novella; she helped me realize my original prologue wasn’t the best for the integrity of the work. Moshe Feder went above and beyond his job description (at a different publisher) to offer me fantastic line edits, without which this book would have been much the poorer. I also got important feedback from Brian Hill, Isaac Stewart, and Karen Ahlstrom.
As always, I give loving thanks to my family, particularly my wife Emily. In addition, special thanks go out to the interpolated Peter Ahlstrom, who worked long hours on this project. (Even so far as to nudge me to get this acknowledgments page written after I’d forgotten to do so about a dozen times.)
You have my deepest gratitude, all of you.
Brandon
Legion and the Emperor's Soul Page 17
