The Awakening (The Fempiror Chronicles Book 1)

by George Willson

  “Yes,” Vladimir said. “I was away, but I heard about your performance. I hope we’re not in for a repeat. No one will appreciate it.”

  “Why do you think no one told me you were on the council?” Zechariah asked, throwing a glance toward Tiberius.

  “I can only guess no one knew that you didn’t know,” Vladimir suggested.

  “I thought you knew,” Tiberius said.

  Zechariah nodded. “I understand Erim is not what it was,” he said warily.

  “Many new faces,” Vladimir said. “Some not to be trusted. If you are back with more Tepish 'evidence,' your voice will fall on deaf ears.”

  Zechariah shook his head. “I have to try,” he said desperately. “If I do nothing, how am I upholding the Rastem Code? He doesn't deserve to be like us.” Zechariah indicated David standing next to Tiberius as they waited for the fight to begin.

  Vladimir looked at David and smiled. “Ah yes, we’re showing off for the new one,” Vladimir said.

  “I believe that was the idea,” David piped up.

  Zechariah smirked. He and Vladimir looked at each other. They raised their swords vertically in a brief salute before dropping into a defensive stance. They circled carefully, deliberately. They stared into each other’s eyes, each one waiting for the other to open themselves up with some kind of attack.

  Tiberius leaned over to David. “They’re waiting for the other one to go first,” Tiberius said quietly. “It’s one of my rules: when possible, don't make the first move. It only leaves you open for an easy retaliation.”

  David nodded, never taking his eyes from the circling combatants.

  Vladimir smiled. “After you,” he said.

  “I don't think so,” Zechariah said, shaking his head.

  Vladimir finally made the first move, and the fight was on. To an outsider, the fight would appear impossibly fast. The two wooden swords slammed together over and over again with ferocity. Vladimir made several offensive swings, but Zechariah blocked each one skillfully, and one might even say easily.

  Zechariah blocked a blow and moved into the offensive, giving a swift stab. Vladimir successfully deflected Zechariah’s sword and tried to swing forward to regain his offensive position, but Zechariah quickly recovered and not only deflected the blow but forced Vladimir to continue defending himself.

  Zechariah’s blows continued so swiftly that Vladimir found himself backed against a wall defending himself against Zechariah’s building onslaught.

  Zechariah took a final swing missing Vladimir’s face by inches. The follow-through of the swing caught Vladimir’s sword and threw it out the front window, shattering it. Vladimir looked into Zechariah’s face. Zechariah looked amused as he held the practice sword in a kill position over Vladimir.

  Vladimir forced out a little smile. “All right,” he sighed, “you win.”

  Zechariah tossed the sword to Tiberius, who caught it easily with a look of amusement.

  “Sorry about the window, Tiberius,” Zechariah said.

  Tiberius shrugged. “Don’t worry about it, Zechariah,” he said. “It’s not the first time I’ve lost a window to a sword. I really should consider reinforcing it.”

  Vladimir regained the regal stance he entered with, smoothing out his robes and correcting his hat. “Well,” he said, “that was interesting.”

  Zechariah gave him a wry smile. “I win again,” he said.

  “Someday, I’ll beat you. You’re the only one I never have.”

  “If I ever get maimed, we’ll have another go.”

  “Zechariah,” Vladimir began with a more serious tone, “I’m not here for a friendly visit. I have come personally to talk you out of this meeting.”

  Zechariah looked at Vladimir suspiciously. “How did you know you’d find me here?” he asked.

  Vladimir smiled. “Your friends in Erim are limited, my old friend,” he said. “I knew when I heard of the order that only one person would have done it. I also knew that this one person would only go to one other person while here – especially having heard that he had a new Fempiror with him. Zechariah would follow the rules implicitly and take his new person to the one who trained him. It was the only logical conclusion.”

  “I haven’t found a reason to change my habits,” Zechariah said, nodding.

  “So again I have to ask you to not follow through with this meeting,” Vladimir pleaded.

  “Zechariah,” Tiberius said, stepping in, “I know many Rastem who would be willing to investigate this without the knowledge of the council; Vladimir is one of those.”

  “Really?” Zechariah asked. “It’s unusual and even frowned upon for a council member to act independently of the council’s knowledge. Especially for something like this.”

  “This is a dark time we live in,” Tiberius said.

  “Despite my political position,” Vladimir said, “I believe there is a threat.”

  “But once a code fifty-seven is issued,” Zechariah reminded him, “it cannot be retracted.”

  “You could leave town first,” Vladimir suggested.

  Zechariah looked surprised that Vladimir would even suggest such a course of action. “I will not damage my honor,” Zechariah said, shaking his head.

  “All the same,” Vladimir began, but Zechariah interrupted.

  “David was changed into a Fempiror by a Tepish,” Zechariah said. “A Tepish who said he was an acquisition ranked Redäl Kötz. He even used a nilrof to do it.”

  “Used a what?” David asked. He had been simply listening to the conversation and trying to keep up, but he was getting lost in the strange words, and he wanted to know what a nilrof was. The older Fempiror turned to him.

  “A nilrof,” Zechariah said.

  “And did you bring it with you?” Vladimir asked.

  “I did,” Zechariah said, “or rather, what’s left of it.”

  “Really?” Vladimir said. He sounded genuinely surprised. “Let’s see it.”

  Zechariah opened the satchel he had strapped to his waist. He removed a small metal object that had a pair of sharp points at one end and that appeared to have been thoroughly trampled. Vladimir raised his eyebrows and looked at Zechariah.

  “That’s it?” he said.

  Zechariah shrugged. “The rogue dropped it when I threw him off of David. When I fought him, this was on the ground and fared no better than he did.”

  Vladimir shook his head. “I know why you brought it, but I would suggest sparing yourself the embarrassment of showing that in front of the council. If it were still intact, you might have a chance of convincing them, but in its current state…”

  Zechariah nodded. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he sighed. “Still, better to have brought it for the second opinion than to leave it behind and wonder. Besides, I couldn’t risk someone pricking their finger for an accidental transmutation.”

  “I’m glad you sought a second opinion on at least one point,” Vladimir said with a smile.

  Zechariah chuckled. He replaced the nilrof, closed the satchel and looked at Tiberius. “Tiberius, do you still have that intact nilrof?”

  Tiberius nodded.

  “Why would he have one?” David asked aside to Zechariah.

  “I had come across one many years ago,” Tiberius answered. “Since I tend to see a lot of new Fempiror, I decided to hold on to it to clarify whether the person who was changed had ever seen one so we would know whether there was possible Tepish involvement. I’ll be right back.” Tiberius turned and walked into the back of the building.

  Vladimir shook his head. “The existence of a Tepish device doesn’t necessarily mean that the order is returning,” he challenged.

  “Whatever it means,” Zechariah returned, “the rogue referenced the Tepish, used Tepish equipment, carried out Tepish ideologies and claimed to be of the second rung of the Tepish Hierarchy. Whether we want to admit it or not, someone is reviving the Order of Tepish. It must be stopped.”

  Tiberius re-entered
the room carrying a small, unadorned, wooden box. He handed it to Zechariah.

  “I remember when you first produced this device,” Zechariah said to Tiberius. “I was surprised that one had been found so long after the decimation of the Tepish Order. The contents of this box actually started the obsession that led to my separation from the council and my rather voluntary exile to the Hauginstown area.”

  Zechariah opened the box to reveal the silver nilrof with the pair of needles manufactured by the Tepish specifically to look like sharp teeth. The glass tube stored in the device had long since been cleaned of the Fempiror blood that a Tepish would normally have inside it. David shuddered.

  “This was the first sign to me that the Tepish were researching their own ideas and finding ways to bring their philosophical vengeance to the world,” Zechariah said.

  “So they just used it to pull out their own blood and put it into others?” David asked. “And that changes someone?”

  The three elder Fempiror nodded.

  “Other than their own blood,” Tiberius said, “the Tepish also used what some captured Tepish called a dissipater fluid, which causes all the water in their intended victim’s blood to evaporate.

  “All we ever saw was the after effects, but it couldn’t have been a pleasant death. The victims of this death looked shriveled as if they’d been dead for days instead of hours. When we first discovered victims of the dissipater fluid, we didn't know what to make of the strangely shriveled corpses and were more surprised when, after cutting into the victim’s veins, that powder poured out instead of blood. It didn’t take us long to find that the powder was the victim’s blood, stripped of all the water.”

  David looked at the nilrof in the box and shivered not only at the memory of the burning sensation from that night but the idea that they not only used their own blood but other fluids they had created to kill people.

  David pointed to the fanged ends of the nilrof. “That’s why I have two marks where I got injected?” he asked. “Like a pair of fangs?”

  “The Tepish perpetuate the popular vampire myth,” Tiberius explained. “This device not only injects our blood as the serum to cause the change but reinforces the myth that the victims are bitten in order to do so. The dissipater fluid created the illusion that someone had drained, or drank, the victim's blood. We’re fortunate in that the dissipater fluid hasn’t been used in a couple hundred years.”

  “All this is beside the point. This meeting will not go well,” Vladimir said suddenly, returning to the reason he had come. “I fear for you, old friend.”

  “When the inevitable occurs,” Tiberius said, “meet me at the safe house in Cerebdim. We’ll work out what to do from there.”

  “I’ll try to keep the council from searching there,” Vladimir assured them, “but I won’t be able to hold them off for long. I’ll try to meet you there as well.” Vladimir took a step toward the door. “I’ll see you at the meeting. Until then, Zechariah.”

  Zechariah nodded. “Until then,” he said.

  Vladimir left the building and walked past the group of people looking at the broken window. Tiberius stood next to Zechariah as they watched him go.

  “Can we trust him?” Zechariah asked.

  “You would know better than I, Zechariah,” Tiberius replied. “You were friends from before you were Fempiror. Fought side by side as soldiers and were changed together.”

  “Yes, but after my removal, we lost touch,” Zechariah said with concern in his voice. “We always followed the same ideological path, so with him on the council, I feel like there’s someone there I can trust. But is he really, or was he selected as my replacement for reasons only the council knows?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t answer that for you,” Tiberius said.

  Zechariah nodded, and they spoke no more of it.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Council

  Zechariah and David entered the immaculate Council Body Hall and walked directly across the foyer to a room on the left labeled “Main Council Hall.” Zechariah maintained his fast pace, and David still had to run at times to keep up with him.

  David followed Zechariah into a large room that spanned the entire side of the building. Windows adorned three sides of the room, all of which had internal shutters that were currently open as the sun would not be up for a few hours yet. It looked similar to the design of the town hall in Hauginstown with a series of seats at the back of the room for spectators, some benches near the front for people involved in the proceedings, and then an elevated platform with a long table across the front of the room for those in charge. They entered into the space between the spectator seats and the benches, and Zechariah led David past the front row of seats, which spectators had already filled, to the center aisle.

  As they walked past the crowd, whispers fluttered through the rows. “It’s Zechariah!” “Stirring up trouble, I hear.” “Now I know what this is about.”

  Zechariah reached the front bench and sat down to wait. David saw that besides the door they had come in, there was one other entrance to the hall at the front of the room to the right of the raised platform. He also noted two Fempiror posted at each door. They were dressed in black, loose-fitting clothing and armed with swords strapped to their backs, much like Zechariah. David could not help but wonder if these guards (or warriors) were normal for a meeting such as this.

  At the front of the room, the long table had seven chairs behind it, accessible primarily from the front door. He presumed these chairs would soon hold the seven people he had seen in the portraits upstairs. Each seat had a nameplate before it. He found Vladimir at the far left side of the table, and Head Karian’s name was in front of a raised seat the middle. Between Vladimir and Karian, from left to right, were Jatarua and Tyronis, and from Karian to the right end of the table were Oligar, Vyrna, and Ghitish. None had any last name or label listed.

  “What’s going to happen?” David asked, worried.

  Zechariah appeared very calm as if he already had the situation well in hand. “This will be a simple, formal meeting,” he said. “A Fempiror will enter through that back door behind the table and announce the council. Everyone in the room will stand. Then, they will enter one at a time through that same door in the order or their names on the table. Head Karian will tell us all that the council convenes and will ask everyone to sit. From there, he’ll tell everyone why we’re here, while no doubt throwing in a disdainful word for me before he turns the meeting over to me for a moment to explain myself. After I’ve explained, they’ll question me, though they’ll more likely interrupt during my story to get the meeting over with quicker.

  “Now, I will introduce you, but you won’t have to say or do anything. You’re here primarily as evidence, and I will not bring you forward to speak. They also won’t question you like Tiberius did. You have nothing to worry about.”

  “What about you?” David asked him quickly.

  Zechariah glanced at him and smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said again. “I’m used to this. I was up there for a long time, so I can handle them.” Zechariah sighed. “But... Truth be told, this may not go well. You need to be ready to leave when I tell you to leave. Stay with every step I take. You may have to use some of that newfound strength you now possess.”

  David nodded and looked at the crowd behind them. Tiberius had just entered and taken a seat near the back. He gestured to David to look forward. David did and saw Zechariah’s description of the ceremony come to life. An older man entered from the chamber doors at the front. He was dressed all in white, right down to his shoes, with a white dress wig.

  “Välenh närdsta telnyatelpar cunliskelero Fempiror,” the man said. Zechariah quickly leaned over and translated, “All rise for the entry of the Fempiror Council.”

  Everyone in the room stood as seven Fempiror walked through the door at the front. David recognized Vladimir as coming in first. The Fempiror walked in a line in the order of the nameplates from left to right,
each going to one of the seven chairs at the head table. All of them were men who looked to be about the same age and each of them, with the exception of Karian, were dressed in the same blue and yellow that Vladimir had worn earlier. Karian wore a crushed velvet purple robe and hat with gold where Vladimir’s was yellow.

  “Cunliskel jyc ghortia. Erästa satz,” Karian said. Zechariah translated quietly for David again. “The council now convenes. Please sit.” And on queue, the entire room sat down.

  Head Karian leaned forward, his hands folded before him. Neither he nor any of the other five members of the council that David had not met appeared very happy to be here today. Vladimir’s expression was solely that of concern as he kept his eyes on Zechariah. Zechariah still appeared completely calm. This was his arena.

  “We are here for an emergency meeting called by Zechariah, Rastem and former member of the Council, removed for unfounded theories and disturbing the peace,” Head Karian began. He had no notes or information before him. He delivered this solely from memory. “Zechariah, I do hope you haven't called us all here in vain.”

  Zechariah stood up and stepped confidently before them. “I assure you, Head Karian, that I have not,” Zechariah said. “I have with me one David Taylor, a former resident of Hauginstown, which I currently protect. He was recently transmutated by a Fempiror named Rufus, who claimed allegiance to the Tepish Order.”

  The crowd reacted to the forbidden word. Zechariah waited a moment to allow his words to sink in. The council sat quietly and waited for Zechariah to continue, not reacting to either Zechariah or the audience.

  Zechariah continued. “The Tepish have existed for years in this capacity, but have not been a threat. However, this Tepish claimed to be a Redäl Kötz, the second rank of the Tepish Hierarchy, and in a capacity not of command, but of acquisition.”

  “And why is that significant?” Tyronis interrupted.

  Zechariah looked at him. He had prepared this answer since it would be the most obvious. “If you were an independent member of a dead order, why claim to be a middle rank? Why not say you are the Elrod Malnak instead? Or one of the other Malnak?”