'And we hear their gratitude sounding from every window,' said Jhered. 'And we see it daubed on every wall.'
Yuran let his head drop. His mind raced. Curse the man. Always, his words sounded so simple, so plausible. Yet he had not been there. He had not tasted the terror of the people Yuran had sworn to protect. He felt Megan's hand raising his chin. Her face was very close, her eyes deep with regret.
'I dreamed for so long of our life together,' she said quietly.
'As did I.'
'Even after I knew Atreska had turned, I didn't want to believe it was you. But you never came back to me to prove it was not your doing. You gave me no choice but to pledge my allegiance to the Conquord above Atreska.'
Yuran smiled and reached out a hand, yearning to feel her skin one more time. But she leaned back from his touch and the first tear spilled on to her cheek.
'You remain my greatest triumph and proudest moment,' said Yuran. 'Don't make the mistakes I made.'
'Undoubtedly, she will listen more closely to her teachers,' said Jhered. He paused. 'Megan.'
Yuran frowned at the Exchequer's tone and looked questioningly at Megan. She stood up and stepped back.
'You must read the order,' she said, voice strained as if the words were hard to say. 'I'm sorry.'
Yuran shook his head. 'Don't be. You know in some ways, this even represents relief. I fear I am no longer secure in my own castle.'
He focused on the parchment and broke the Conquord seal. He unrolled it, reading the declaration of Conquord rule over Atreska and naming his country's new ruler and Marshal Defender. Further down, his own name was listed as deposed ruler to be dealt with under the law as prescribed by the Advocate. A half-smile crept across his lips. It was almost word for word the document he had handed to the then King of Atreska almost twenty years before.
'It is true then, that some things never change in the Conquord,' he said. He unrolled the parchment further and his next words withered on his lips.
'Not all things,' said Jhered.
Yuran shook his head and stared again at the lines he had just read. Chill cascaded through him and a pit opened in his stomach, leaving him feeling physically sick. His vision swam for a moment before he clutched hard to his fading hope.
'This is wrong,' he said. 'It has to be. This is not the Conquord way, please. I know how it works. We all know. The deposed ruler has choice. Exile, swearing of loyalty, not just ...'
'But you are not the deposed ruler of a once independent state,' said Jhered. 'You are a traitor of the Conquord and a self-imposed king of a Conquord territory. Those rules do not apply to'you.'
Yuran's heart beat so loud he barely heard Jhered's words. He was aware he was shaking but could do nothing to stop it. He looked down at the parchment once more then across to Megan who was staring back at him, her lips quivering.
'And you signed it?' he said showing her the proof beneath the execution order.
'I am fulfilling my destiny,' she said again. 'Guards, please escort King Yuran to the cells.'
Men moved in on him from left and right. He wanted to be dignified but the moment one of them touched his arm, his courage failed him completely. Fear swamped him and he searched for something, anything that might save him. And there was something. Something he had thought to use to buy his freedom. Now it might buy his life.
'You cannot do this to me. You need me alive. You don't understand why the Tsardon left.'
The guards were hustling him to the door. He could no longer see Megan and Jhered but knew they would be staring at his back.
'Only I can help you. They are coming back to finish the job and you won't be strong enough to defeat them. No power is. Even your precious Ascendants won't be able to stop what He will unleash. Please—'
Jhered barked a single word and the guards stopped and turned Yuran around. The Exchequer marched up to him and grabbed him by the jaw, strong fingers gripping him hard. Jhered made to speak but Yuran saw his chance.
'Guarantee commutation of my sentence or I'll tell you nothing. Let me live and I'll help you to do the same.'
Jhered considered for a heartbeat then nodded minutely.
'What do you mean, "he"?' he asked.
The room seethed with the dead.
Khuran took a pace backwards. None who saw this could fail to recoil. And this was the nucleus of his army. The forces that would march across the tatters of the Conquord and see its remaining defence run in terror. So it was said.
It was also said that these would herald the troops that would fly his banner and sing his name utterly without question. Unconditional loyalty. Belief submerged beneath blind subservience. It was a force given new voice. Small yet but he could see the potential. One would have to be simple to understand otherwise.
But the fact was that they were not
his.
Not truly. And the man who controlled them, who freed them to new directed life, was a power beyond his thinking. Yuran had brought him as a gift but had left Tsard relieved of a burden.
'Isn't it beautiful?' said Gorian.
'What? A dance of the dead?' asked Khuran.
Gorian stood by him, unafraid.
'Surely beauty can be seen in an irrepressible army. One without fear, which can feast off the earth beneath its feet and fight day and night. It is a perfection no Conquord legion will ever attain. Without thought to self. Without family. The perfect fighting force. And if there are enough of them, unstoppable.'
'But without love or honour too. Without drive and belief. Without a reason to die in service of their king. Without loyalty, an army is nothing.'
Gorian chuckled. 'You're confused by ancient values, my King.
There is nothing sweeter than the second chance. And there is nothing more terrible than the fear of losing that chance. We hold that power over each and every one of these dead people. There is nothing they would not do for us. Is that not loyalty?'
Khuran shuddered. The day outside was warm but deep in the heart of his castle the cold endured. He gazed at the dead, trying not to feel repulsed. The pervasive sense of wrongness threatened to overwhelm him. And his distaste was heightened by Gorian's obvious delight at what he had created.
The dead were confused. A dozen of them standing, walking and seeing in the pre-burial chamber. Thinking and understanding. But in a thrall that kept them silent. Bemused. These were young children dead of the pox the day before and a man whose heart had failed him. Another who had been hanged for stealing livestock, his head fallen forwards onto his chest, and a woman who had died in the act of childbirth.
Their last thoughts had been desperate, agonised and frightened. And now they had been reawakened. Khuran wondered if they thought of this as an afterlife. Because that is exactly what it was. But not the one laid down in the words of any god he had ever read about. There was no glory in this death and certainly no peace. Animated by Gorian and sustained by the rumbling power of the ground beneath their feet and by each other. A circuit, Gorian called it. Khuran didn't really understand. It hardly mattered. The proof was standing before him, dull-eyed people wearing the clothes in which they had died.
Still Khuran fought the idea that this was some trick though he had seen them all lying lifeless. He had felt for a pulse or for the warmth of blood below the skin. They had all been dead and now they all drew breath.
And in the next moment, they dropped silently to the ground and were still once more. Khuran looked at Gorian. A frown passed across the Ascendant's face.
'What happened?' asked Khuran, relieved of a dread he had tried not to show.
'It is a new ability,' said Gorian. 'Tried but sparingly and never on so many at one time. But it works. And I know how to make it better. But to make it overwhelming, I will need help.'
'Help? Where from?'
Gorian smiled. 'Just prepare your country for war, despatch your armies to where we agreed and leave it to me. I'll be back almost before you realise I'm gone.'
Khuran looked at Gorian. Just in his mid-twenties but so authoritative and confident in his power. His eyes shone from a face much coveted by the women of his court. The face of one of the Conquord's dramatic heroes, framed in glorious curled fair hair. He was tall, powerful and dressed in one of the togas Khuran found ridiculous but which he insisted were woven for him. Gorian liked his games and this was a particularly trivial one. And most people did not dare contradict Gorian Westfallen's wishes. But Khuran was not most people.
'Oh no, Gorian. You will not leave my sight. I will lead my people and you will follow me.' 'As you wish, my King.'
Chapter Two
859th cycle of God, 20th day of
Dusasfall
The energy map was sick. Grey flecks coursed through veins and infested vital organs. Ossacer could feel the strength of the infection like heat washing over his face. The boy he was tending was gripped by his fever and barely conscious. His body was soaked in sweat though the wind blew cold around the small house in which he lay. Ossacer moved his hands down to the boy's stomach and winced at the picture that his mind's eye read in the fine detail of the energy trails. The liver and kidneys were strained to the point of shutdown. The boy didn't have long to live.
He and Arducius had come to the Morasian port of Okiro on the back of strong rumours of Ascendancy potential there and in outlying villages. But they had arrived in the midst of an epidemic that was sweeping the poor quarter of the port adjacent to the harbour. Something in the water, so Arducius said. And while he tried to divine the source with a fledgling passive Land Warden they'd met the day before, Ossacer was assessing the impact on the local population. The strong could fight it. The old, the young and the weakened were being taken back to the embrace of God in their hundreds.
'Can you save him?'
Ossacer turned to the doorway. The boy's mother stood there. She was a young woman, beauty submerged by her distress. Her voice trembled and the map of her lifelines was riddled with her anxiety. It was almost palpable. Mixed with her fear for her son was her fear of Ossacer himself. Desperation had overcome her suspicion and she had been prepared to let him try. It was the history of the Ascendancy repeated yet again.
She shifted under his gaze. A reaction he was long used to. Eyes that saw nothing but sensed everything, that penetrated to the heart straight through skin and bone. 'If you will let me, I can.'
The colours of her life energy pulsed bright with hope and relief. 'Anything,' she said. 'Please.'
She reached out to touch Ossacer but stopped herself before making contact. He knew what she saw. So normal in most respects. Neat short hair, friendly face a little careworn before its time, and an easy smile. But the shifting colour of his blind eyes and the fact of who he was could not be denied. Ossacer nodded.
'It's all right,' he said. 'I understand. Trust me. Don't be scared by anything you see. I will not hurt him.'
He turned back to the boy and placed a hand on his brow, the heat and damp a shock.
'Stay with me,' he whispered. 'Don't let go.'
Ossacer focused on the sick and dying body before him. The frenzy of energy outside in the harbour and through the port softened and faded from his mind. He sought sources closer to him. He was fresh but knew he couldn't risk too much of himself. There was so much work to do elsewhere in the slums when this one child was saved. Outside the window grew an old olive tree, roots deep, branches twisted and gnarled. Inside, candles and lanterns were lit and a fire was going in the tiny kitchen next door. It would be enough.
Ossacer lifted one hand, palm up, above his head and crabbed his fingers as if holding a bowl. He opened his mind to the energies of tree and fire and let their maps coalesce before him. The tree, strong, slow-pulsing brown and deep green, shot with the pale shades of youth where new growth awaited the warmth of genastro. The fire a chaotic, vibrant mass of red and yellow, dark at its tips where energy escaped the circuit and bled into the air around.
He remembered how alien and difficult it had been when he was younger, when he and the others had first emerged and seen the true colours of life, the glory of this earth under God. Then, to link with another energy source had seemed all but impossible; to direct it a ludicrous notion and an effort that was instantly exhausting.
Now it was different, natural, though no less tiring in the long run. Ossacer pushed out with his own energy map to link with the sources he wanted. He teased breaks in their circuits to allow the energy to flow into him. He felt the quick jolt of fire and the lumbering power of the olive tree. Within his body, he contained and amplified what he took and reformed it to a map of his own design.
He projected this map on to the boy and drove its energies through his veins and organs. It was the map of health, a pure construct that overwhelmed the infection. The grey flashed to brightness and then was gone. Ossacer kept up the tide of health until no trace remained of the disease. Only then did he relax and release himself from the energies and let in the sounds of the day once again.