Now the blackness was all around them, and the Dragon altered its flight, diving gently toward the fiery river of light nearby.
Feysal became alarmed, as the heat of the fire soon became apparent. He found the red glow of the fire slightly repulsive, like one of his tribe would regard rancid well water or spoiled meat crawling with flies and maggots.
“The Maker’s Fire is below. I must fly low to gather its currents. This will hurt us both.”
The Dragon dived and as they approached the river of flame, Feysal felt increasingly ill. He eventually threw up his lunch of bread and meat, which floated beside him oddly for a few moments before the Dragon began to increase speed.
Feysal held on with all of his might as the Dragon accelerated. The fire beneath him was now just a bright red streak as the Dragon’s wings beat faster and faster.
Finally the Dragon climbed and the painful heat and wretched sickness left him. He noticed other worlds flying by them at great speed now.
Looking ahead, he saw a great central ball of fire to which all of the fiery tendrils were linked. He could see a world moving swiftly around that great ball, but slowing down appreciably as they approached it. It turned about the great ball, coming in and out of view. As it touched the tendrils of fire that were connected to the fiery ball, those tendrils burned more brightly for a moment until the world lost contact.
“Is that where we go, beast?” cried Feysal. But his voice seemed feeble as he appreciated the great clamor of the burning fire around them for the first time. He felt sure the Dragon didn’t hear him.
“Yes,” replied the beast into his mind.
The world they approached looked like a blue semi-circle floating on a great rock that turned molten where it touched the great ball of fire that it sailed upon. The path of the world had slowed and Feysal could see that the Dragon was tracking it and that they would soon cross its path.
The blue became deeper and deeper as they got closer, and soon blue overtook black, and dominated his field of view. The blue was shimmering in a strange, insubstantial way. They got closer and closer to the blue, and Feysal realized that where his world had faded to black imperceptibly, this border was more absolute.
Before he could ponder this mystery further, Dragon and rider burst through into daylight. Again Feysal beheld a world beneath him, except this world seemed smaller than the one he had left. There was a lush region of green to Feysal’s left, and a region of huge mountains to his right. The Dragon soared toward the mountains.
“Let us go to the great oasis!” cried Feysal, his hair whipping in the cool air.
“Not yet. Soon enough,” came the rumbling but silent reply.
The approaching mountains looked desolate except for a few paths that wound amongst them. Feysal thought that he saw a great building straddling the nearby peaks of two adjacent mountains, but this disappeared from view too quickly for him to be sure.
The Dragon made for a mountain that was near the edge of the range. Soon they descended below the peaks, and the mountains surrounded them. Feysal became alarmed because he saw no destination below.
Suddenly the Dragon landed hard on a rocky outcropping that bordered a shelf of rock some feet above and beside it. This shelf proved to be at a height convenient for Feysal to climb off the Dragon's back, and the latter shuffled sideways toward it, as if offering non-verbal encouragement for Feysal to do just that.
Feysal was unsure whether he felt better on the back of the beast that some part of him hoped might yet bear him home, or safely on solid rock. At the urging of the Dragon, he opted for the latter. He climbed from the Dragon awkwardly, and took full note of his recent abrasions.
He took his eyes off the Dragon for a moment longer and discovered the shelf of rock he now stood on met a cliffside at a distance of some thirty yards, where it formed a narrow pathway that followed the cliff-face for another fifty, finally ending at a ledge which fronted a shadowy defile that seemed to give way to a small cave.
Returning his eyes to the Dragon, he waited for some cue from the beast.
It spoke into his mind again. "Beyond lies the room prepared for you. Your father left a message for you. And he left you an inheritance. But I think it is not as he intended. "
Feysal's pride returned. "What of my inheritance? Will I take my place as an Emir in this land?"
The Dragon seemed to chuckle. "Your future is yours. Remember my words. By delivering you, I have finished my service. The law is fulfilled. I shall return now to the great void."
"Wait!" cried Feysal, but he was knocked back by the air displaced by the thrum of strong black wings. He watched with a mixture of despair and relief as the Dragon climbed into the skies.
Soon the Dragon became a small dot in the sky, and finally was lost from his vision.
Feysal despaired anew and fear gripped him.
He scolded himself. “You are an Emir of the Powitat!” But this thought underscored the sense of powerlessness that he felt as he looked around him at the cold mountains, and below him at a fall of thousands of yards to the rocky pass below.
He had nothing but the robes he wore. He had no weapons and no gold.
He tried a new remonstration. “You are the son of a God!” It was unfamiliar, but it heartened him.
He began to walk along the rock toward the ledge and the shadowy opening.
When he reached the opening, he peered in cautiously.
The rough rock of the cave extended back about thirty feet, where it met a smooth stone wall covered with shadowy symbols. There was a stone extrusion in the middle of the wall.
Feysal walked slowly toward the wall. The square extrusion was featureless except for an imprint of an outstretched hand, which was centered on its face.
Feysal looked around him. There was nothing else there. It was him and the wind and the mountains and the clear air. And this wall.
He placed his hand into the impression on the rock.
The symbols glowed and there was a great rumbling and a sound of stone grating on stone. Seams that had been imperceptible appeared in the wall, and a door-sized opening appeared as the center of the wall receded away from the rest of it.
A beckoning, warm light shone from the opening.
Feysal felt emboldened by way the door had opened for him and the welcoming light within. He strode inside confidently.
There were torches burning on the walls of a large chamber. He saw more strange symbols on the walls, and pictures. There was a fine carved table upon which rested a glittering gold robe and the finest blade that he had ever seen.
He rushed for the weapon, and when he picked it up, it felt like an extension of his arm. It was a straight blade, unlike the curved blades that were used by the Powitat.
The robe looked like it had just been woven from the finest silk and was embroidered with golden accents. But when he handled it, it was both soft and unnaturally strong. He slipped off his well-worn desert robe and slipped into the new one, which fit him well.
The unusual door behind him closed abruptly with a great boom that momentarily caused a ringing in Feysal’s ears.
As the ringing subsided, Feysal heard a voice talking. It reverberated through the room, although there was no clear source. It was a voice of absolute authority: hard, calculating and unyielding. It spoke in a foreign tongue, but Feysal found that he understood every word.
“Welcome. Your name is Julius, and you are my son. All other facts are subordinate to this. You are my son. I was a God, but in this wretched place even a God may die—must die. I have been called by many names, but most commonly I was known as the Imperator. I ruled this land and the worlds around it for centuries, undoing much of its vile nature before it ultimately consumed me.
In order to extend my reach, I appointed seven Sub-Imperators, called Centurions. To each of these Centurions I bestowed a Wand. Each of these Wands was a great item, embodying my law and allowing its bearer to create law on my behalf. Our laws reigned in t
he chaos of these worlds.
But, as I felt myself waning, I started to doubt the loyalty of my Centurions. I started to fear that their origins might taint their ability to bear my legacy. So I decided to sire an heir. That heir is you. I placed you on a distant world where time moves slowly. This ensured that the Centurions would never discover you before you matured.
Now the time has come for you to claim your inheritance.”
The sound of grating rock returned, and Feysal saw something emerging from a hidden compartment on the stone table. It was a glittering crown of glass, which was filled with a burning liquid fire, not unlike what he had seen in the rivers of fire in that strange place between worlds.
“This is my Crown: the Crown that rules the Wands. You must don this Crown and then you will be immune from the power of the Wands. You will confront the Centurion who rules and demand his subservience. If he declines, then you will kill him. You will kill any who oppose you, for my word is law.
Don the crown now.”
Feysal wondered whether the Old God still lived, for he could not conceive of how this voice could be speaking to him so, otherwise.
“Don the crown now.”
“The voice carries no emotion. The Old God, my father, must be dead after all,” he thought to himself.
Feysal approached the crown. Something in its appearance made him fear it. It held the fire that had sickened and burned him. But he didn’t feel sick now.
“I am the son of a God,” he repeated to himself as he reached for the artifact.
When he placed the crown on his head, a terrible sense of power coursed through him. It started softly, like the chorus of an old desert tune that was sung softly and then rose to a furious crescendo. He beheld a great lattice of magic, and each strand was a law. Each law was logical and internally consistent, but he was able to discern the greater pattern—to see the sum of the component parts.
These laws, burning like a fiery net in his mind, were designed for the total dominance of a population. Some even enforced themselves without judge or jury, and the penalty for violating any of them was typically death—administered on the spot by the magic of the evil Old God known as the Imperator: his father.
He experienced a feeling of lust to be in control of this tremendous power—but it was a lust that he felt un-manned him. In the desert, lust—or any type of uncontrolled desire—made a man less likely to survive the cruelties of an uncaring environment. So this overpowering feeling of lust that he felt caused him to shriek and wrest the crown from his head and throw it, clattering, to the floor of the chamber.
The disembodied voice continued.
“Now you appreciate the power of my Law. You are the living incarnation of my power. You will add and extend my laws as changing circumstances dictate. Remember that though you are my Son, you will never be the measure of me. I am greater than you will ever be. You must remember never to deviate too far from my vision and the spirit of my laws.”
Feysal was scared again. This crown had not made him feel like an Emir. It had made him feel like a tent dweller or a debt collector. This was the crown of a soft man, a cruel man, not a great warrior of the desert. He could not bear the thought of ever donning that crown.
“Could this coward really be my father? If I defy him, will he know?”
The voice continued, unperturbed, as a great rumbling sounded from deeper in the room. A new door was opening as the voice spoke.
“You will be tested before you leave this place. In the next chamber are twenty wretches who broke my law. I sentenced them to many centuries of torment while they waited for you to come. Unfortunately, my means of forcing their survival robbed them of most of their consciousness. Still, I think it will be a valuable exercise for you, and a hint of the cruelty that will likely be required for you to displace the Centurion.
You will be trapped in this place until you draw the life force from these twenty. You have no choice in the matter. Now that you understand my law, I’m sure you will see the wisdom in this small lesson. Proceed now, and do your duty.”
Feysal heard desperate cries coming from the newly revealed room. A small throng of figures shuffled through the opening toward him. The years of waiting had not been kind to them. Their flesh was dark and mottled like old leather, but somehow they moved and breathed like the living.
Their cries were nightmarish, and conveyed the pain of centuries of waiting.
“I am Feysal of the Powitat! Stand back!” he shouted.
It was no use. The figures surrounded him, groping at him desperately. They did not attack, but they harassed him with seemingly limitless endurance.
Feysal pushed through them and into the adjacent chamber. It was smaller and featureless except for many more markings on the floor—markings which he now perceived as magical runes which he was astonished to realize he could read. There was a great stone door on its far wall, which was also laden with runic writings and bore no handle or other obvious means of opening it.
He again pushed through the figures that hounded him, and returned to the other room. He could now read the inscriptions on the walls, and he found that they repeated the speech that he had just heard spoken in his father’s voice.
The incessant hounding of the droning figures became unbearable. Feysal focused his thoughts inward for a moment, and focused on one of his Charifa magic spells. This particular spell was one of warding. Feysal muttered the triggering incantation and the figures around him were thrown back to the walls as if by an otherwise imperceptible wind.
Feysal weighed his options as the pathetic walking corpses struggled against his Charifa magic and tried to reach him. He disliked senseless killing, but these “things” scarcely seemed human any longer. The voice had mentioned drawing the life force from them. The only spell that he knew that resembled that was a dark spell of life leeching. It was often used with a willing donor to heal disease, but the dark version of the spell could be used without the permission of the victim. But Feysal didn’t know where to focus the life force once drawn. He returned to the other room and spotted a glass cylinder embedded in the wall above the impassable door. It seemed clear to him that this was the intended target of the drawn life energy.
Just as he was preparing to strike out at the first of them with his Charifa spell, he heard a murmur of speech from one of them.
“Help.”
This disturbed Feysal and delayed his attack. But after several more minutes, he grimly began the task of dispatching the twenty lost souls and directing their remaining life energy into the glass cylinder that he had found.
As he doubled over to catch his breath and heard the dull thump of the final body falling lifeless to the floor, he heard the other door opening in the far chamber.
He debated on what to do with the crown. He considered wrapping it in his old robes, which lessened the disturbing sensations he experienced when carrying it. But in the end he left it, trusting that his Father’s magic would prevent entry into the chamber by anyone other than him.
The voice of his long dead father rang out a final time. “I have prepared a diorama of the City in the next chamber. Study it well, and read the book that I have left you before leaving this place. It will describe the workings of the City in detail. Once you are ready, follow the path down to the foot of the mountain and journey toward the lake. The City borders the lake. Do not forget me or the duty that you must perform. Be sure to raise an heir and keep the bloodline intact. Do not forget your duty to me!”
Feysal did take the time to read the Imperator’s book. While distasteful to him, he realized that he had to study the book in order to be able to stand a chance of confronting the Centurion that awaited him. He also went to the next chamber and studied the diorama of the City, which was dominated by the imposing Tower of Law. He did not sleep or experience hunger or thirst while he was in the chamber, and while he was unsure how long he remained in there studying, he expected that it was many days.
He devised a plan to take up his birthright—but on his terms. He would conquer the City as his Father had intended, but he would rule as an Emir of the desert and not as a puppet of an Old God.
Finally, he deemed himself ready, and he left the chamber, walked down the long, winding path that descended down the mountain, and crossed the plain that separated the mountains from Hemisphere Lake and the surrounding City.
When the City finally came into view, Feysal, who had determined to call himself Julius in order to legitimize his claim to rule, was dumbstruck. In his single-minded determination to accept his birth-right, he had forgotten the Dragon’s words.
The City that he saw before him was nothing like the glorious one depicted in the diorama. The proud Tower of Law had been toppled, and partly rested in the lake beside it. Most of the fine buildings were burned out or in disrepair.
Julius bit down the despair he felt rising within him.
“So this is your legacy, father? So much for your law. Now it is time for my law.”
Julius strode proudly toward the ruined City.
Chapter Four
Hemlock visited Gwineval the next day in his chamber. She picked a time that was between his magic classes and which was convenient for her, given the many meetings that she was forced to attend in order to smooth the preparations amongst the wizards for her impending absence.
He admitted her gruffly, and she strode in and sat down. As she grew accustomed to the warm, salty air, she recalled how he had bound her to the very chair in which she now sat, when he had captured her during her incursion into the Tower. Though that had happened only months prior, it felt like years had passed since then.
Gwineval paced back and forth before turning toward her. “First, you rashly announce that you are leaving the Tower with Tored, and then you confront Jalis and humiliate him and the rest of his allies in the council? What has happened to you, Hemlock?”
“I’ve decided to take my life back.”
“When you agreed to lead the Wizard Guild, you committed yourself to us. You are leaving the guild just as fractured by internal strife as when Falignus was still alive. How is that fair and just?”
Hemlock And The Dead God's Legacy (Book 2) Page 5
