The Guns of Empire

by Django Wexler

  “It sounds—” Red began dubiously.

  “It sounds like the best chance we’ve got,” Winter said. “Let’s go.”

  —

  The rest of the day, they moved as fast as they dared, riding the exhausted mounts when the ground was clear and leading them when it wasn’t. They’d left almost everything behind. Either we make it or we die out here. Extra food isn’t going to help. The unconscious young woman, Ranker Ivers, was strapped to the back of one of the horses, and Red dribbled water down her throat.

  After a quiet, sunny morning, the clouds once again began to blot out the sun. Alex was leading them north and east, away from Elysium and the track they’d been following, but still veering into the mountains. They’d left the foothills behind, making their way along treacherous saddles between soaring peaks and down the spines of rock-strewn ridges. The farther they went, the more confident Alex looked, as though she’d come this way before. The path began to take on the faintest aspect of a trail, a route deliberately traced through the mountains, though Winter would never have noticed it if she hadn’t known exactly where to look.

  Once again it started to snow, and the wind rose to keen ominously among the canyons. Winter’s left hand hurt abominably—while the pain in the rest of her limbs had eventually subsided, her burned flesh was still agony. She kept it jammed against her side, teeth gritted. One of the horses collapsed, alive but unable to walk another step, and they left it behind.

  “Nearly there,” Alex said. “Nearly there.”

  It wasn’t going to be soon enough, Winter realized. The sunny day was a distant memory, and snow slashed at their faces and whirled and spun in every direction. It was getting darker, and up here bad footing would mean death instead of a rolled ankle. She closed her eyes for a moment and felt herself swaying. I’m sorry, Cyte. We tried.

  “Nearly there,” Alex shouted, the wind swallowing her voice. “Just a bit farther!”

  A huge rock face loomed out of the white blur. Alex dismounted and stood by the base, waving frantically. Winter slid off her horse and led it by the reins, with barely enough energy to put one foot after the other. Around her, other dark shadows did the same.

  “Through here,” Alex said, gesturing. “Go on, you first.”

  Winter didn’t bother to argue. She stumbled forward, mount behind her. The mountainside was a sheer cliff, but she could see now that a fold in the rock concealed a narrow passage, a gap whose walls stretched up and out of sight. It kept out the wind, at least, and Winter pressed a little farther. The gap twisted and turned, and then finally opened out again, into—

  Sunshine. She stopped, one hand coming up automatically to shade her eyes, and stared.

  She stood on the green grass of a summer meadow, stretching down from the rock into a narrow, crooked valley. It was freckled with purple and blue wildflowers, and a creek ran along the bottom, crystal clear and burbling merrily. Butterflies flitted about in the sun, and bees droned past. It was warm; the snow on Winter’s hat and coat was already melting.

  At the far end of the valley was a large stone structure, built against the wall of the cliff. Winter could see people moving about, a line of laundry drying as it flapped gently in the modest breeze. At the foot of the building, more people in colorful clothes worked in fields of dark earth. Two dogs helped a man escort a flock of sheep, reduced to tiny white balls by the distance.

  Alex pushed her way out of the gap in the rock and let out a long, satisfied sigh.

  “There,” she said. “Welcome to the Mountain.”

  PART THREE

  PONTIFEX OF THE BLACK

  It had been a long time since the Pontifex of the Black had been aboveground without his mask.

  After the Wars of Religion, the Priests of the Black had officially ceased to exist. What seemed like a defeat was, the acolytes were taught, in truth a victory. Magic and demons had been pushed back to the point where modern people hardly believed they were real, and the presence of an organization dedicated to hunting them could only be an unwelcome reminder. Also, the private histories admitted, the Priests of the Black of the time had grown distracted, paying too much attention to secular politics and the suppression of heresy that was outside their proper remit. Precise theological differences were irrelevant, as long as they did not bear on the supernatural.

  The organization had been reborn in secret. Among the Church, only the Pontifexes of the White and Red and a few of the very highest-ranking priests knew that the Priests of the Black still existed. Their activity in Elysium was surprisingly easy to conceal: the fortress-city was vast and mostly abandoned, with whole quarters that now served mostly as convenient sources of cut stone for new construction. The Black Priests slipped into the cracks and ancient underground tunnels and vanished. The priesthoods of the White and the Red were so large and complex after a thousand years that they were full of secretive, mutually antagonistic chapters, departments, and orders, so any clandestine activity that was spotted was easy to write off as one of these groups moving without knowledge of another.

  As an acolyte, the Pontifex of the Black had spent a fair amount of his time in disguise, masquerading as a common priest of one of the other branches. Since his elevation, however, he had lived exclusively within the domain of the Priests of the Black, and the dark robe and obsidian mask had become as natural to him as a second skin. Now, dressed in dusty red with a hood pulled up and a gray cloth stretched over his face, he nonetheless felt nearly naked.

  Below him was the Court of the First Obeisance, where Elleusis Ligamenti had knelt to thank God for leading him to this place of safety. The First, as it was commonly called, was the largest open space in the city, running from just inside the inner wall to the soaring front facade of the Cathedral of Karis, the largest center of Karisai worship in the world. To the left and right stretched long, low buildings fronted in red and white marble, respectively, later additions built to house the vast administrative apparatus needed by these two orders to oversee the operations of Karis’ church. As with much of Elysium, they were larger underground than above it, basements and subbasements carved out of the sturdy native rock over the course of the centuries.

  Now they seethed. It reminded the Black of nothing so much as a nest of bees some fool had kicked, vomiting forth a host of yellow and black warriors to defend their home. Except here the insects wore white and red, and instead of defending their home, they were preparing to abandon it.

  The Church, for the first time in a thousand years, was fleeing Elysium.

  The sky was still a solid gray, but the snow had finally stopped falling. Small wagons pulled by horses or mules were lined up in the center of the square, many ranks deep, and relays of priests were carrying bundles out of the buildings and loading them as fast as they could manage. Wrapped sheaves of paper, the records of centuries of tithes and ecclesiastical assignments, were tossed willy-nilly into piles. Some were so old they crumbled to dust as the priests lifted them; others, poorly secured, exploded into whirling blizzards of foolscap. There were books, scrolls, heavy bound chests that might have contained holy relics or tax receipts.

  Everything that could be moved was being moved. Vhalnich was coming, and no one doubted the sincerity of his pledge to burn Elysium to the ground.

  “This is your doing,” the Pontifex of the White said. The council was standing on a balcony of the cathedral, overlooking the frantic bustle below. “When you look on the ruin of the Church, brother, know that this is what you have wrought.”

  “It was not I who chose to abandon my post, brother,” the Black said.

  He’d brought them the news that Vhalnich’s agent, Ihernglass, was still coming, through the blizzards that made movement in the mountains all but impossible. It was unthinkable for a large force to move so quickly, he’d argued, and guessed that Ihernglass commanded at most a few thousand men. Vhalnich’s main arm
y still had to be distant, or perhaps even withdrawn in the face of the weather. He’d demanded that the Red Phalanx and the White Guards—the ceremonial soldiers of the two public orders—be mobilized to the walls, with every priest fit enough to carry a spear along with them.

  The Beast had warned him that it was pointless, that neither the Red nor the White had the spine for such a course. The Black had hoped the demon was lying, but as usual its advice had been perfectly accurate. The council, increasingly anxious since the Murnskai army’s defeat, had taken the report of Ihernglass’ advance for the final straw.

  “Elysium is stone walls and stained glass,” the Pontifex of the Red said. “The Church lives in its people. Vhalnich may seize this place, but he cannot hold it. When he is gone, we will return, and whatever has been destroyed can be rebuilt.”

  “You’d rather abandon a thousand years of progress against the darkness than risk your miserable life,” the Black said, no longer bothering to keep the contemptuous tone from his voice. “You save your piles of paper, but everything real the Church has accomplished is buried in my dungeons.” Demons and their names, locked away from the world. If Vhalnich destroyed all that, the things would be loose, free to spread themselves into newborn babes and bring about a return to the days of the Demon King.

  “You have no right to lecture us,” the White snapped. “We had the chance for peace, and you spoke against it. You were so certain your precious Penitent Damned could deal with Vhalnich. And what have they accomplished? The blizzard that blinds us apparently has no effect on our enemy! You and your assassins have failed, over and over again.” The old man glared at the Black. “Perhaps this is a judgment on us. When your predecessors cast out the Mages, perhaps they failed to look closely enough at their own ranks.”

  “This is not the time for splitting hairs,” said the Red. “Brother, it is not too late for you to join us. Your archives can be moved, even if your prisoners cannot. Is it not your sacred duty to keep the Beast in check and maintain God’s Grace for mankind?”

  “I will maintain the Grace by defending the stronghold of the Lord,” the Black snarled. “Even if you will not. I tell you that Vhalnich and Ihernglass will be destroyed. And when we are triumphant, perhaps it will be time for the Priests of the Black to resume their rightful place at the head of the Church. The other branches clearly lack the required mettle.”

  The Red and the White looked at each other, then back at him with a kind of pity. The Black wanted to spit in their faces, but too many in the square below might see the gesture. Instead he turned on his heel and stalked away, following dusty, seldom-used staircases into the bowels of the Cathedral.

  There, a hidden door let him back into his proper domain, the hidden tunnels and decaying buildings that were the sole province of the Priests of the Black. His subordinates waited with his thick, dark robe and the glittering, clicking mask of volcanic glass. Putting it on felt like tugging the skin of his face back into position.

  “Your Excellence,” the scribe said, hands rubbing each other as though he were washing. “The Old Witch is dead. His keeper says he expended too much of his power.”

  “I guessed as much when it stopped snowing,” the Black said. “Tell him to search for another host immediately. Use as many prisoners as it takes.”

  “Yes, Your Excellence.”

  “Has Viper recovered consciousness?”

  “Only briefly, Your Excellence. She did not make it clear if her mission was a success. One of our brothers is with her at all times, in case she speaks further.”

  The Black wished, as he often did, that one of the great healing demons were currently embodied. Unfortunately, they were second only to the Beast itself in the difficulty of finding suitable hosts, and until recently there had been more pressing concerns.

  No matter. Whether Vhalnich is dead or not, Ihernglass is still at the gates. A demon lord, more powerful than any of the Penitents that remained in the fortress, and he still had no idea of what form that power might take. “And our enemies?”

  The scribe cleared his throat. “Ihernglass has . . . vanished, Your Excellence. Along with his companion.”

  “Vanished? Died, perhaps?” Wouldn’t that be a laugh?

  “The sensitives think not, Your Excellence. There was none of the flaring that demons often exhibit on the death of a host. Instead they simply vanished. It reminded them of—”

  “—the Snowfox.” The Black’s face twisted in disgust. “I should have known that wretched creature would involve itself. It and Ihernglass are fellow servants of the Beast, after all.”

  “Yes, Your Excellence,” the scribe said.

  Snowfox was a demon that had been troubling the Priests of the Black for several hundred years. It was under the control of a splinter group of heretics, some of the last of the Mages that had never been quite exterminated. They had the gall to operate in the very shadow of Elysium, aided by Snowfox’s unique ability to hide its own power and that of others from a sensitive’s senses. Until recently they’d never been more than a nuisance. Perhaps they’ve been waiting all this time for this moment. The Mages had always favored deep, intricate schemes.

  “If they have allied,” the Black said, “then Ihernglass could be over the walls before we know it.” There’s no more time. “Put every man we have on alert, and summon the cell keepers. I’m going down.”

  The scribe swallowed. “Yes, Your Excellence.”

  —

  Iron chains clanked gently as the Beast stirred.

  “Come to pass the time?” it said. The host’s cracked lips stretched into a smile. “I would have thought you’d have duties to attend to.”

  The Pontifex of the Black glared at the thing without speaking. It tipped its head, smile widening.

  “You told them,” it said. “And they decided to flee rather than defend the city.”

  The Black gritted his teeth.

  “I told you they would,” the Beast said, still in a conversational tone. “I have never met either, of course, but I have heard many descriptions, and I’ve made something of a study of human nature. You are not as complicated as you believe yourselves to be, you know.”

  “Your servants seek to free you,” the Black said.

  “I have no servants, as I have told you and your predecessors. If anyone seeks to free me, they do it of their own accord.”

  “You lie. We cast out the Mages when we learned they worked for your release, and they seek it still. Now we know some of them fled as far as Khandar to escape us.”

  The Beast shrugged. “I know nothing of this. But I suppose I would lie if I did.”

  “I will not allow a cult of deranged fools to endanger the whole world.”

  “Oh? And how do you intend to prevent it?” The Beast leaned forward, as far as it could within the compass of its chains. “Or have you finally made up your mind to take the weapon your God has offered to you?”

  “It is not a weapon.” The Black licked his lips under the mask. “It is a curse.”

  “Only for the weak.”

  “If you think me strong, why goad me?”

  “Because it benefits me, of course. This is what your predecessors never understood. If you can do what Karis did, then it gets me somewhere more interesting than this dungeon.”

  “Under my control,” the Black said.

  “For a time,” the Beast agreed. “This is what you humans can’t comprehend. Whatever you do, in time this body will die, and then I will return.”

  “To be put in chains again.”

  “And die again. And again. However many times it takes.” The Beast shrugged with a rattle. “In the face of eternity, even mountains are ground to dust. Sooner or later you must fail. With that certainty, service for a mortal lifetime is preferable to . . . boredom.”

  To do as Karis did. Karis had looked the Beast o
f Judgment in the eye, and he had mastered it. Used its power to protect his tiny flock of followers while he taught them to keep this ultimate enemy of humanity bound. Only because God had granted him the strength to perform this miracle had mankind been extended the Grace.

  I cannot believe that God intends the Grace to fail now, at the hands of someone like Vhalnich. Not after we have come so close to cleansing the world of demons forever. If he took up the mantle . . . if I do as Karis did . . .

  The Priests of the Black would not merely rule the Church. The pontifex would claim the throne of Murnsk, and beyond. The Free Church nations would be returned to the fold. Distant Khandar and even the impenetrable southern highlands beyond would be cleansed of their pagan ways and their demons. For what could stand against the power of the Beast of Judgment?

  And those two fools who call themselves my brothers would spend their lives in the darkest cell under Elysium, for failing the Church in her hour of need.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and prayed.

  Lord, please show me the way. Is this Your wish?

  No choir of angels answered, no light descended from the heavens. Nonetheless, when he opened his eyes, the Pontifex of the Black knew what he needed to do.

  Of course, there was no harm in taking precautions. He turned on his heel and went outside, to where the two guardian priests waited.

  “Give me the keys to the chains,” he said.

  They obeyed unhesitatingly. The Black looked down at three small silver keys and felt his heart speed up in anticipation.

  “I am going to whisper a word in your ears,” he told them. “Lock the door after I enter. If I do not speak the word when I ask for it to be opened again, you are to leave it locked and kill me where I stand.” The doors had ironbound slots for exactly this purpose, wide enough that a pistol could be shoved through and fired at the prisoner or anyone else inside. “Is that clear?”