by Robert Brady
The disapproving look from the Uman guard spoke volumes. He said something in the Uman language, which Melissa had spent more time learning than Bill.
“What does he want?” Bill asked.
“For us to go with them,” she said, her head peeking up comically from a bird’s nest of her own hair. She clutched her bodice closed with her left hand, but Bill had done a good job ripping it and her ample bosom kept poking free.
“Where?” Bill asked.
She relayed the question, but they both hear the one-word answer.
“Lupus.”
Chapter Eight:
Messages from Home
Court at night might be rare for the Uman-Chi, but not unheard of. This became necessary because the Eldadorian Sea Wolf, The Bitch of Eldador, had just pulled into port.
She was the flagship of the Eldadorian fleet, and brought with her the Imperial Couple, Rancor and Shela Mordetur, as well as an honor guard of two hundred Wolf Soldiers. Her sister ships, She Runs Swiftly and The Pride of Eldador berthed next to her with equal compliments.
As an added insult, the notorious thief, Karel of Stone, perhaps the most hated man on the Silent Isle after the Emperor himself, had joined the Imperial train.
Glynn had been invited to the royal court. She stood apart from the other Casters who advised the King. The King himself attended, with a gallery full of nobility, as could be roused from their homes at such a late hour.
The last time Karel had come here, he had left with a portion of the treasury, and on that same occasion Lupus the Conqueror had sacked the city and destroyed the main gates. It counted as Karel’s third robbing of the treasury. Most suspected the Conqueror hadn’t planned the robbery as a part in his retribution.
Glynn had been responsible for watching the two visitors. She had clothed them, fed them, and tutored them in Uman and in the language of Men. Of course, the moment she turned her back on them, they thanked her by getting caught rutting by the Royal Guard. This made for an incredible embarrassment for her. The race of Men behaved barely better than animals.
And here came its favorite son to tell them what it would take not to be conquered by their kind.
Glynn’s Caster training couldn’t quell her anxiety. Angron Aurelias sat implacable in white on his throne, but even he drummed his ancient fingers. Avek chewed his lower lip, D’gattis looked almost bored, the Conqueror’s ally with no fear of him. Aniquen actually shifted from foot to foot—he had dueled with the Conqueror and lost, then visited him and been humiliated twice. Chaheff had been bested by Shela in the Sack of Outpost IX and now checked and rechecked with his fellow Casters to ensure they would be ready in the event of an attack.
Glynn owed this man a blood debt. Lupus the Conqueror, before becoming an Emperor, had personally cut her father’s head from his shoulders in the market outside of the gates. His lancers had run down her brother.
And here she stood, waiting politely to turn over his rutting kinsmen to him.
She disagreed with this plan, but her King had spoken. She would not sway him. For his centuries, he did not have her vision, had not seen the prophecy in song from the inside, as she had. Knowing he would become the ally of the Emperor, she could not tell the ancient Uman-Chi what she knew.
“Who comes?” Bill asked her, in the language of Men.
She sighed. She didn’t hide her disgust with them. They both dressed in blue, her in a dress and he in a robe, both in sandals. Blue for the eyes of the Conqueror, they being a gift to him.
Not in her riding apparel, of course, because he’d shredded that before trying to rut with her in the open arena.
“Lupus.”
“Not know Lupus.”
She turned her face up towards the old giant, his body thinner than it once had been, thanks to the superior medicine of the Uman-Chi, no doubt. Certainly he had the energy for his young wife now. She doubted he had the intellect to understand what he saw.
“Lupus is your friend.”
He looked confused.
“You are from Earth?” Glynn asked. They called their home ‘Earth,’ similar to the name of the god whose face all Foveans lived on. The coincidence across an entire reality boggled the mind.
He nodded.
“Lupus is from Earth.”
He looked very excited then, and growled something at his mate, who as well became very excited. She growled something and then both looked at her.
It was so tiresome.
The great doors opened and rescued her, admitting the Conqueror, this time by the invitation of Angron Aurelias.
* * *
“Are you sure?”
“That’s what she said.”
“How does she know?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well ask her,” Melissa insisted.
The doors to the throne room opened, just before Bill could ask Glynn his questions.
The Man who walked in wore armor, corrugated all over, a black question mark turned upside-down upon its breast. He stood tall, taller than Bill, his blond hair past his shoulders. Bill noticed his striking blue eyes first, the angry look of a determined man, accentuated by a scar down the left side of his face, under his eye. He had a wry grin on his lips—almost as if he laughed at his hosts.
Beside him walked a beauty in a red dress, tan and buxom with thick, black hair down to her butt. She came up to his forearm, as tall as an average woman but still shorter than this man or Bill, and taller than Melissa or Glynn.
He wore a long, red cape that dragged the floor behind him. The leather-wrapped handle of a sword showed over his left shoulder. He moved easily for wearing so much armor, he would have to be in good shape—a warrior of some kind.
As he approached, Bill picked out better details. The set of his jaw, the eyebrows made him Irish—Irish and something. New England Irish, that rare breed that made Kennedy’s. The way he walked, the way he moved, his heel coming down to strike the floor, identified him for Bill as an athlete or a military man.
Behind him walked a tiny man and a giant, one in leather and the other in a heavy breastplate, both with swords. Behind them in ranks of four marched rows of men in light and dark gray uniforms, with a Wolf’s head symbol on their breasts. No, he corrected himself—four, then three, then three, then the whole pattern again. As he walked down the center of the throne room on its red carpet, they fanned out and walked alongside, their cleats clacking on the marble floor in these groups of ten.
Angron had asked him about ‘Lupus’ and ‘Rancor’ and killing. They’d grilled him on chemistry and economics.
What could he be looking at now?
* * *
Angron Aurelias, an Uman-Chi with nearly 1,000 years behind him, sat on his throne and watched his palace violated by the marching army of an inferior Man and his inferior minions.
‘Come to me, Lupus,’ he thought to himself.
Men were barely more than animals, and yet here came one who had beaten him. Lupus had defied his assassins, his armies, his ships, and his mages. The King’s own heir had become this man’s puppet. In his entire lifetime, Angron Aurelias had not found one of the lost Outposts, and this one had found two. Angron Aurelias had taken over 100 years to design the laws of the Fovean High Council, and in three this one had made it irrelevant.
Uman trained for three years before they donned the tabard of the Trenboni High Guard, and Wolf Soldiers could train for eight weeks and defeat them in their own city. Outpost IX had been invincible for centuries before this one attacked and routed it.
This Lupus took impossible steps in logic with the inferior mind of Men. Avek alluded to the fact he knew the Ultimate Truth, and the nature of the universe—concepts Angron himself had taken centuries to grasp.
Lupus the Conqueror clanged down his throne room, insulting him by bringing forty squads of warriors with him. His wife who had humbled Uman-Chi Casters, and his ally Karel of Stone who had violated the royal treasury not once, not twice, but thr
ice, followed him.
She stopped at the Circle of Judgment, where a circle of thirteen interlocked circles had been burned into the white marble floor, and stepped fearlessly inside it, looking up at him as the first Cheyak must have looked up into Adriam’s eyes.
He marched through the circle, and put a foot on the first step of the dais, clearly and intentionally violating protocol.
He raised his chin and looked Angron in the eye, and placed a hand on his own knee.
“I have arrived!” he said.
* * *
“You are welcome here,” Angron said.
Glynn watched them, her charges quiet, enraptured by the Conqueror like the rest of them.
“I am glad I can come as a friend, your Majesty,” the Emperor said, in flawless Uman-Chi. “I had despaired that Eldador and Trenbon would find no peace.”
“And yet, you bring so many to protect you,” Angron noted.
Lupus grinned, and answered, “One for each assassination attempt by the Trenboni crown.”
His wife behind him grinned evilly.
Angron smiled, and Glynn did not feel honored. “Surely, not so many,” he said.
“It feels like more, when you target my friends and family.”
So be it. Angron moved on, and with a graceful turn of his withered hand indicated the two Men at the base of his throne, beside Glynn, fifteen feet to the Conqueror’s left.
“I present these, the two from the song,” he said.
Glynn’s heart skipped a beat.
* * *
This ‘Lupus’ spoke to the Uman-Chi in their own language, something Bill wouldn’t have thought possible. He must have been here a long time.
“Look at how afraid they all are,” Melissa said into his ear.
Bill had already noticed. In the gallery, the Uman-Chi fidgeted like crazy. Glynn kept unconsciously wetting her lips. Angron, who looked imperious and bold all the time, kept grinning and bowing his head. The one Uman-Chi who always stayed near him had a death grip on the top of Angron’s throne.
When Angron gestured toward the three of them, Glynn actually jumped. Lupus and the woman next to him took a few steps in their direction, and he said something in the fluty language.
“I don’t understand you,” Bill said.
Lupus’ face showed surprise. He recovered himself and smiled a wide, genuine smile. He extended his hand and Bill took it in his own, a firm grip with strong fingers.
“They call me Lupus here,” he said, in English. No mistaking that distinct Connecticut accent. “Before you answer, you don’t want to tell anyone your real name.”
“What?” Bill hadn’t expected that.
“If you already did, don’t worry about it, but in this place you don’t want to tell people your real name.”
Bill looked at Melissa, then looked at him. “We already told them our first names. Not our full names,” she said.
“That shouldn’t be too bad,” he said. He indicated the woman next to him. “This is my wife, Shela. She is from here, a nation called Andoran.”
“Bill,” Bill said, and they broke the handshake. “This is Melissa. We are from—”
“Let me guess,” Lupus said. He looked them up and down.
“Well, you’re a Mainer,” he said to Melissa, grinning. “No mistaking that accent.”
“You got me,” she said, smiling, and shook his hand.
“You’re harder, bet you live in Florida, they have that ‘I am from all over,’ accent. I think I hear some…Massachusetts?”
“Pennsylvania,” Bill said. “But I lived there for a few years.”
“That’s all it takes,” Lupus said. “I’m told they brought you here by accident, and they don’t know how or why.”
“That’s what they tell us,” Melissa said.
“Well, they’ll lie,” Lupus said. “Uman-Chi love their secrets.”
“Um—Angron can understand you,” Bill warned him.
Lupus looked up at the throne, then back at Bill. “You’re sure of that?” he asked.
“I have spoken to him in English,” he said. “He said he learned it as a boy. Later there was another who could speak it—some Aniquen.”
Lupus smiled, and said something to Shela, who looked up at Angron, then back at him and shrugged. She said something to him, and then he looked back at Bill and Melissa.
“If Angron learned our language as a boy, that was about a thousand years ago,” Lupus said. “Did they tell you that?”
“No,” Melissa gasped. “Really?”
“Yep,” he said. “Uman-Chi live a long time. That girl standing next to you is one hundred and sixty-seven.”
They looked at Glynn. Her face was turned to them.
“She is like a teenager to them,” he said. “She wouldn’t be here at all, except she sang the song that brought you here.”
“She did?” Bill asked.
“See what I mean?” he said. “Look, I want to have them make her sing her song again. Sometimes I can hear things they can’t. They won’t like it, but they’ll do what they’re told.”
“It seems like they do whatever they want here,” Melissa said.
Lupus grinned. “I’ll fill you in on that later.”
* * *
Angron followed the conversation as best he could. They spoke fast and softly, and his hearing was not what it once had been.
He heard Bill betray him to the Conqueror; another advantage compromised in this political game. He caught that Lupus would want Glynn to sing.
As Lupus informed them, he would cooperate. They summoned him because of it; of course Lupus would want to hear the song. As Lupus marched back to the Circle, Angron summoned Glynn up onto the steps without being asked.
“Sing for him,” he commanded her.
“Your Majesty?” she asked. For her Caster self-control, her surprise and her fear were clear on her face.
“Sing,” he said again. “Worry not, but have faith in Adriam.”
Adriam would hopefully be most attentive, because the last time she sang she had ripped the fabric of the universe.
She inhaled, she held her hands before her, and she sang.
The words sounded sweet, and once heard were not easily forgotten. This time he felt no swelling of power and saw no opening of vortices. She merely sang, and she finished.
He watched the listeners. As before, some heard the song, such as Lupus and Shela, and some heard nothing, such as Karel and Lupus’ Wolf Soldier guard. When the King’s attention was drawn to the two visitors, their eyes betrayed them. By whatever power or whatever design, they followed the song and they reacted to it.
They growled to each other and they commented excitedly. Any doubt that they were both involved in this was gone right then.
Angron had to suppress a smile. These events were fortuitous, if unexpected. He had laid his plans so well that even this unforeseen event expanded his power.
* * *
The beating of Glynn’s heart became so profound as to make her robes move. Beyond the terror of singing her song unprepared hovered the idea she would be turned over to the Emperor with her charges. Angron had not said, “I present the two from your homeland,” he had offered him “the two from the song.” That meant her and this female.
She waited, bold and patient, her head held high, a Caster.
Lupus looked up at her, then at Angron, then at his two countrymen, and back to her.
“Which god sends this to you,” he asked her.
“I cannot be sure.”
“Guess.”
She lowered her head, then raised it, and looked into his eyes.
“Adriam,” she said.
“She lies,” Shela scoffed. She heard a stirring in the gallery, and Glynn knew that the King moved behind her.
“Speak true, daughter,” Angron said.
She didn’t turn. “Eveave, I think,” she said.
Lupus nodded up at her. He looked back to his countrymen, then
back to her.
“Which do you think they are?” he asked.
“He identifies himself as her guardian protector,” Glynn said. “She, we believe, is the ‘champion.’ We believe I am the ‘noble young and old.’ The words bind me even as I sing them again.”
“The first time tore reality and brought them here?” he asked.
“Yes,” Glynn answered, and on her own initiative, asked, “was it thus for you?”
The entire throne room went quiet. The Conqueror never answered personal questions. Most considered it a coupe by D’gattis that he had tricked the Conqueror on the day of King Glennen’s burying to admit his people voted on their leaders.
Lupus smiled, clearly amused with her temerity. She knew his weakness: his pride. He had to take the challenge.
“Yes,” he said. “There was no singing, though. I was here one moment after I was there.”
He flickered on the edge of a lie. Glynn didn’t need a spell to know it. He told a truth, not the truth.
He looked up at King Angron and he said, “I will claim the three of them in the name of the Eldadorian Empire, if you will part with them.”
Again, Glynn’s heart skipped a beat.
“You intend to find those mentioned in the song?” Angron asked.
“I do.”
“You must guarantee the safety of this Uman-Chi daughter,” he said. “She will be treated as no less than a political hostage.”
Lupus looked at her, then at Angron. “What title does she hold here?” he asked.
“She would be the Lady Escaroth of the Southern Towers,” Angron said. “Her brother, your good friend and ally, Ancenon Escaroth, is Duke of the Southern Towers.”
“I know him as an Aurelias,” Lupus pressed the King, “so I will assume she will have no titles, except through marriage.”
“And so,” the King said.
“Then I shall grant her hereditary title of Baroness in Eldador, and make of her one of the court Barony in Galnesh Eldador. Let her have legal rights within the Empire.”
“What lands?” Angron leaned forward.
“Britt,” Lupus said, “on the Eldadorian peninsula. It is the closest part of Eldador to her homeland, and its Barons historically live in Eldador the Port.”
