“Fifteen years ago,” Chavoron said, his head down and focused on his plate. “It was … after your mother …”
“Of course.” Caraleen gave a short nod and stopped her fork before it reached her mouth. “I forgot. You plunged yourself into research after that.”
“Indeed,” Chavoron said, and his momentary quiet was replaced by pride again. “I was the first to discover the outside realms, you see. The others followed shortly thereafter, the cabinet members rushing to claim their own as I had this place.”
“I suppose it’s something of a luxury,” I said. “Some of the more powerful men in Enrant Monge have their own retreats outside the city, country homes they call—”
Chavoron chuckled. “This is not merely a retreat, though I can see based on what I told you, I see how you might interpret it that way.”
“Oh?” I watched him carefully again. There always seemed to be another purpose for Chavoron; nothing he did was simple or straightforward. He didn’t appear, based on my dealings with him, to be the deceitful sort. It was that he made his decisions on more levels than anyone I had ever met. If he went to take a meal, he wasn’t doing it simply because he was hungry, he was also using his time to talk with someone of importance whose help he needed or who could resolve a problem—and all the while he was building a list of steps to take for the next problem he needed to tackle.
That said, I had noticed that he could evade a question and keep a secret better than anyone I’d met to that point.
“These redoubts—retreats,” Chavoron said, “the ones the cabinet uses. They’re not just homes.” He wiped his mouth with a clean white linen, leaving nothing behind on cloth or face. “They are like … taps … into the essence of magic.”
I thought about what he’d said, imagining a syrup farm I’d once been to where hard spikes were driven into the trunks of the trees, biting into their gnarled flesh. Out would run a sticky, sweet sap that could be made into syrup. “Then these places are—”
“We call them places of power,” Caraleen said. “We’ve found many of them. Each of the cabinet members has one by now. Having one, basking in it, allows Father to soak up enough magic to do … astounding things.” She waved at the walls around us. “Like build this place.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Then … when you came here—”
“It was much more like an empty space,” Chavoron said, pausing in his eating. “Not totally empty, mind you. There was ground and sky, but it was dark, rocky, with no sun overhead …”
“That’s … that’s not the sun?” I asked, looking out the open doors, through the entry hall and into the dark night outside, as though somehow I could see this false sun below the horizon.
“That is a clever bit of magic I worked out in cooperation with the Nessalima,” he said. “It glows like one, hangs in the sky like our sun, but … no, there is no natural sun for these places. She has provided several for some of the others who could not work out how to do it on their own.” He stared off into the distance. “The Yartraak, in particular, seems to have great difficulty with this branch of magic.” He shrugged. “Not everyone is as proficient at these things as others. The Mortus, for instance …” His smile faded. “… Well, he pursues things I don’t even wish to contemplate if I can avoid it.”
I opened my mouth to ask a question, but Caraleen spoke first. “What branch of magic most interests you, Alaric?”
I paused. “I … don’t think I know enough beyond the basics to even settle on an answer. Everything I’ve seen here … well, it astounds me, frankly. It’s far beyond the little conjurings I’ve managed, fire and healing and whatnot.”
“Healing and growth are my specialties,” Caraleen said.
“Is that so?” I asked, looking briefly to Chavoron, who seemed to glow with pride.
“She has crafted the most amazing garden behind the sanctuary,” Chavoron said. “With nothing but her power as her aid. All the greenery you see upstairs, that is all hers as well—in addition to the green fields that stretch in every direction outside. I am terrible when it comes to creating life. Cold stone and dirt I can transfigure all day long, and my skill with enchantments … well, it is beyond anyone else’s. But life …” He chuckled. “I prefer to leave this to my daughter.” He smiled down the table at her. “You would make an excellent Vidara, should the crotchety old fool in the position now ever step down.”
“Thank you, Father,” she said, blushing deep blue in the firelight.
“But enough about us, Alaric,” Chavoron said, picking up his goblet and taking a long sip. “I know much of your homeland, but there are a few things that escape my understanding.” He set the goblet down and templed his fingers together. “For example … your belief system.”
“My … I’m sorry?” I frowned.
“What you believe in,” Chavoron said. “After death. What you pray to—it is your ancestors, isn’t it?”
“Ah, yes,” I said, nodding. “We believe that those who came before us watch us from beyond life, and that our honored dead will go on to join them and watch over the generations yet to come.”
“And do you pray to them?” Caraleen said, listening intently, plainly intrigued.
“I … typically do not,” I admitted, something I would never have said in Enrant Monge. I made my prayers loudly and obviously, as a future king should, but in private I gave little care for my ancestors as I had seen them do less still for me. “I have other concerns than worrying about people long dead.”
“Oh ho,” Chavoron chortled, “an unbeliever. I can’t imagine that’s a popular sentiment in your lands.”
“It would run against the grain of what the people think,” I said. “But I don’t find much solace in that religion, and I never have. For example, everything you do here … it stands in opposition to the tenets of what my people believe—that our ancestors granted us dominance over the lands, that we were the preeminent, that the kingdom of Luukessia is pre-ordained and that our right to rule is divined from them.” I cleared my throat. “None of which would conform very well with what would happen should your armies decide to cross that bridge you’re building.”
Chavoron had almost brought his goblet to his lips and now he set it down. “That will never happen so long as I am in charge of the empire.”
I smiled thinly and raised my own glass. “Then may you reign forever, for my people could not stand against your might.”
He raised his goblet but did not drink, his smile fading. “The others will see, given time, but … I will not reign forever. I have only so long, as you do.”
“Don’t say that, Father,” Caraleen said, now looking uncomfortable, her meal seemingly forgotten. “The elves—”
“I have made my arguments against immortality before,” Chavoron said. “Men have their time, and when that day passes, they should not linger beyond it like a guest who outstays his welcome at a party. To do so in this case is not merely to annoy those around you, it is to hold back the generations to come from their destiny.”
“But what if they choose war and conquest for their destiny?” Caraleen asked. “Our soldiers now carry batons that stun rather than kill.” She shifted her attention to me. “This was not always so. Our armies are now poised to fight any battle without killing a single person—”
“Because we make them our slaves,” Chavoron said.
“Better that they suffer for a while as servants than lose their whole lives to death on some battlefield,” she said. “For they will be free again. The day is coming.” She sounded sure. “But life, once lost … is gone forever, and every life is different, and precious, and—”
“Yes, I know,” Chavoron said. “I think you worry too much. This thing we have created, this prohibition against killing, it defines our people now. The generations that follow behind me—the ones that live now, these young up and comers like the Drettanden and the Terrgenden—they see it as our greatest accomplishment.” He smiled rueful
ly. “It’s everything else they want to tear down.” His smile lost its luster. “Though sometimes … I think perhaps it might be better to die in the cause of your own freedom than live your life subsuming yourself as a slave.” He shook his head. “The lack of freedom to pursue the desires of your heart …” He looked around, taking in the hall. “It’s not a life I’d care for.”
“Nor I,” Caraleen said with a shudder. “Perhaps … we should move on to a happier topic.”
“I have a question,” I said, carefully inserting myself back into the conversation. “You asked me about my beliefs … may I ask about yours?”
“Certainly,” Chavoron said. “We believe in ourselves.”
“Father,” Caraleen said, chastising him as she looked at me in apology. “Now our peoples’ beliefs do tend to run toward … I suppose ‘the optimism of our own ascent’ is the right way to describe it. But we have older beliefs as well, though they are barely adhered to any longer.”
“Like me with my peoples’ faith,” I said.
“Except this runs across most of our society,” Chavoron said. “But Caraleen is right. We once believed very strongly in two powerful deities that sit beyond our reach.” He picked up his goblet again. “Indeed, my original research that led me to discovering this place was based on a search I was conducting for those powers.”
“Powers?” I asked.
“Our myth holds,” Caraleen began, “that the primal world was created in alliance between two gods, each imbuing certain things with their own qualities. One chose the day, one the night. One chose the land, the other the sea. They divided between them all things and all virtues, and made them their own. But most important, they each chose one overriding characteristic to make their own—one chose good, the other … evil, for lack of a better word.”
I felt my brow furrow listening to her tale. “That sounds … simplistic.”
Her eyebrows rose and I could see I’d given some offense. “Perhaps to you. This divide defined our world, though, and—”
“I thought you said you didn’t believe in these deities?” I asked.
“She doesn’t, really,” Chavoron said, watching his daughter with his cup just before his lips. “But like an old thought one cannot get rid of, she would defend them against you nonetheless.”
Caraleen held her head up high, her expression pained. “I … don’t, I suppose. It’s not very en vogue to say you believe in these things, and truly I don’t. Not anymore. They are tales for children to reassure them of their place in the world until they can cope with the truth that we are on our own—and better than that, we have the power to navigate the currents of that world in a way that would have made previous generations think we were gods.” She snorted, a little haughtily. “Even the vast majority of our own people lack the power we hold.”
“Do not dismiss them so easily,” Chavoron said, looking up with a coy smile. “To sneer at others for not believing the same as you is the height of arrogance and elitism, the top failings of any leader who governs at the grace of the people.” He placed the goblet before him. “Also …” He looked up at me, light in his eyes, “I still believe in the Gods of Good and Evil.”
“Father,” Caraleen said, somewhere between exasperated and scandalized. “There is no proof in our studies to validate—”
“Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean there isn’t any proof,” Chavoron said, and here, again, I got the feeling he was hiding one of his secrets.
Caraleen sighed. “And just because you say it doesn’t mean there is.”
“True enough.” Chavoron put his cup down. “I …” His words drifted off, and he stiffened in his high-backed chair before getting to his feet. “Someone is here,” he said quietly, eyes fixed on the doors ahead.
I rose, as did Caraleen, all of us peering out into the night to see who was coming. I could faintly see a figure in the distance, just barely, but apparently Caraleen had a spell to aid her vision, for she cast something and promptly declared, “It’s Mathurin.”
“Of course it is,” Chavoron said, “I told him where we would be and how to get here.”
Caraleen tried to disguise her shock and failed, her voice falling to a whisper. “You gave him the spell to reach us here?”
“I did,” Chavoron said. “I cannot be unreachable.”
“But the Drettanden already knows—”
“Shhh,” Chavoron said as Mathurin stepped in through the double doors into the main hall at a jog, his breath coming in puffs. He was not winded, but he was certainly putting some effort into getting to us quickly. “What is it?” Chavoron called as the guardsman reached the doors to the dining hall.
“I apologize for coming to you like this,” Mathurin said, his usual icy calm gone. “But there is trouble in Zanbellish.” I had heard the name Zanbellish before; it was a city in the southeast, not terribly far from that bridge they were building to Luukessia. I wondered if it looked anything like Sennshann.
“What sort of trouble?” Caraleen asked, drawing her clothes tightly together at the front of her tunic, balling the fabric up in her fist as though she were trying to keep her worries contained.
“A slave revolt,” Mathurin said, speaking directly to her. “They have … it is … it is quite terrible.”
“Unfortunate,” Chavoron said, his face looking pale blue and near ashen. “We must send in the army, then, and restore order—”
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” Mathurin said, and here he looked pained, though I thought I caught a glimmer of something else in his eye—worry, perhaps. “The leader of this particular revolt …”
Chavoron paused, his head cocked as he waited for Mathurin to finish, but the guardsman seemed stuck. “Yes?” Chavoron prompted him.
“It’s the Eruditia,” Mathurin said, and I couldn’t tell whether he sounded defeated or … excited. “She’s raised the uprising herself.”
53.
Cyrus
“Was it my imagination, or was that the longest day and night of all time?” Terian asked as the war party dragged themselves up the Citadel’s last steps. A wary feeling came over Cyrus as they made the long climb to the upper floors. They’d been offered the space at the invitation of the mayor of Reikonos, the new putative head of the Human Confederation, an obsequious but helpful fellow who seemed dead set on doing everything he could to appease Cyrus in the few minutes in which he had bent his ear. The offer of the Citadel’s top floors had sounded to Cyrus more practical than dragging his war party back to the depths of Saekaj, and so he’d seized upon it swiftly.
What he had forgotten—or perhaps just put out of his mind until they were here—was exactly how like Sanctuary’s upper floors the Citadel was.
With every step past the meeting chamber in which the Council of Twelve had conducted the business of the Human Confederation, Cyrus felt his unease grow. The stairs spiraled up, and he knew upon the next landing, he would find his goal.
Double doors were thrown open wide, and inside was a council chamber strikingly similar to the one in Sanctuary’s halls. The table here was long instead of rounded, but then, they’d adopted one of these tables in the Sanctuary council as well, recently, before …
Before, Cyrus thought dully.
“Should we … just … sit anywhere?” Vaste asked as they eased into the room.
“It’s not as though these are our chairs,” Cyrus said, gravitating toward the head of the table, just inside the balcony doors. They layout was eerily similar, but at least the stone was a far, far different shade from that found in Sanctuary. Cyrus looked to his right as he started to take his seat and found that while the hearth was in the same place, there was no door to an archive—at least not one visible against the bare stretch of wall. “Take whichever you want.”
Vaste darted ahead, trying to sit in the seat Cyrus was heading toward before he could seat himself. The troll pushed against him, and Cyrus gripped Praelior before giving the troll a heart
y shove that sent him sprawling to the floor on his arse. “Except this chair,” Cyrus amended. “This one is mine.”
“You got territorial fast,” Vaste said, picking himself up and giving his black robes a good dusting.
“You just got slow is all,” Terian said, slipping into the seat directly opposite Cyrus. “Too much pie.”
“A worthy trade,” Vaste said, slipping into the seat to Cyrus’s left as Quinneria sat down opposite him. “And I wouldn’t say no to one right now, either.”
Quinneria rolled her eyes, but waved a hand and a pie appeared in front of Vaste, still steaming hot and filling the room with the aroma of fresh-baked apples with a hint of strawberry.
“You know,” J’anda said, “I wouldn’t say no to one of those, either … perhaps in blackberry?”
Cyrus opened his mouth to say something in protest, but stopped himself.
“What?” Vaste asked, syrupy pie filling dripping down his chin as he slurped a soft piece of apple between his lips.
“I was about to say that my mother is not a short-order cook, but …” he reddened, “… then I remembered that, in fact, she was.”
“I didn’t mind it,” she said, conjuring a pie for J’anda with a gentle smile. “You all would have starved if not for me.”
“You’re like a mother to us all,” Vaste said, mouth still full. “But less judgmental and more fully capable of speech.”
“You’re the last one who should be talking about speech capability at the moment,” Longwell said, frowning at the troll, whose food was once more trying to escape his green lips. The dragoon paused, then looked to Quinneria. “We had a type of berry in Luukessia called—” Quinneria waved a hand at him and a pie appeared before him, steaming. Longwell took a deep breath, eyes closed, and then they sprung open as a smile of pleasure spread over his face. “That’s it. How did you—”
“They were a favorite of Alaric’s as well,” she said. “He would go to Huern from time to time and buy fresh ones from the gnomes who crossed the sea of Carmas to trade with the Actaluereans.” She watched him dig into the crust with relish, a smile of satisfaction upon her lips. “Once I’d sampled them, it was an easy matter to reproduce them with magic—”
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