Empire of Dust (8 page)

“Lord Timaeus,” Jacob says, bowing as one would to a king.

“Lord Jacob. I am most honored.” Timaeus's monkeylike face breaks into a grin, showing his amusement at the false formality. They had first met as competitors in the Blood Tournament, ready to slice and cut into each other as the crowd cheered, but when King Philip chose both of them to join the Royal Guard, the new recruits quickly became best friends. Jacob isn't sure if he would have survived the rigorous training of both the palace and the Aesarian Lords without his friend's biting humor.

“I've been told to help you,” Jacob says, going to the old wooden table in the center of the room and eyeing the black iron objects spread across. “How is it?”

Tim wipes his sweaty brown hair from his brow. “I'll tell you how it is—it's hotter in here than an Egyptian shithole in mid-summer.”

“I mean, how is the torch?” Jacob asks. The black iron torch, almost three feet long, lies on the table, its pointed arms thrusting out jaggedly like cruel thorns. In the center is a basket of what looks like long, wicked nails. He sees thin iron medallions lying near the torch: a lightning bolt, a group of five flames, and a crescent moon, Aesarian symbols. “Looks almost finished.”

“Nearly,” Timaeus says. “There's just some decoration left. Want to hold it?”

“After what happened to the last man?” Jacobs asks, backing away. “I tripped over his charred skull in the odeon!”

Timaeus smiles and shovels more coal into the forge. “I admit, I was worried, too, when the High Lord first assigned me to help him forge the new one, but I'm not anymore. The torch is simply a detector of magic. If the torch burns white, there's no magic around. If it burns red, there is. And since I'm about as magical as the High Lord's dog, there's nothing to fear.”

“But when it burns black, sucks all the air out of an arena, extinguishes the torches, disintegrates the bearer...”

“Then there's some highly powerful magic in the palace and you're in deep trouble,” Tim says, leaning on his shovel and panting slightly. “But the High Lord has strengthened the torch. It should now be able to withstand even the powers of Zeus himself.”

Jacob reaches out a finger and taps it. Nothing happens.

“Stop acting like a little girl,” Tim says scornfully. “Really, you're making me embarrassed to be your friend.”

Jacob takes a breath and picks up the torch. It's heavy, which he expected, but ice-cold, which he did not expect in a room of such stifling heat. It's already decorated with twisting garlands of flame that remind him of a lopsided sneer. Of Lord Bastian's scarred and puckered sneer, come to think of it.

“Tim, I wanted to ask you,” Jacob says, turning the torch and examining it closely, “have you seen Bastian sneaking around? I noticed it even when we were still at the palace. Coming and going at all hours, not wearing his uniform. Very mysterious. He snuck out of here a few days ago in a hooded cloak and hasn't come back yet. I think he might be a spy for the enemy.”

“Isn't it more likely that the Elder Council is sending him to spy
on
the enemy?” Tim asks, poking the coals with a long iron rod.

Suddenly, a pure white flame flicks out of the top of the torch, and Jacob almost drops the heavy instrument.

“Your face!” Tim crows. “You'd think that you'd never seen fire be—” But suddenly, his mirth is cut short, and he grabs Jacob's arm, pushing it down. “Drop the torch,” he orders harshly.

Jacob is surprised at his friend's demeanor, and he looks at the torch, where the white flame has sunk into a deep red the color of sunset.

Shocked, Jacob stares dumbly at the torch in his hand. How could it be red? There are no magic wielders in the Aesarian Lords' ranks. Tim yanks the torch out of his hand and throws it into a bucket of water that is always kept near the forge. It is extinguished immediately, and the hissing sound of water-turned-hot fills the small space.

“It's still malfunctioning,” Tim says, looking straight into Jacob's eyes. “Progress has not been smooth. I shall let the High Lord know.”

“Know what?” Jacob hears the silky voice of the Aesarian Lord he despises the most. Turning, he sees that bastard, Bastian, slouching against one side of the doorway, his arms crossed. His dark eyes flicker as he studies first Jacob, then Tim.

“I was told High Lord Gideon would be here,” he says, his face unreadable.

Jacob's heart pounds. How much did Bastian hear? How much did he see? Did he see the torch flame red? Did he
cause
it to?

“The High Lord will return in a few minutes,” Tim says, turning away from Bastian and picking up an anvil.

“I need to speak with him now,” Bastian snaps, dark eyes smoldering.

“Well then, you'd best go out and find him,” Tim says. “Because no matter how much you bark at me, he's still not here.”

Bastian looks as if he's about to say something but must think better of it because he spits onto the dirt floor of the smithy and leaves. Jacob waits until he's sure that Bastian is gone before he asks the question that has been burning in his mind, “How long was he standing there?” he says in a low voice. “Did he hear me call him a spy?”

“I don't know,” Tim says, his face twisting into a mask of worry. “I don't think he saw anything either. You were blocking it.”

“You mean the torch?” Jacob says, and Tim nods his head silently. Jacob lets out a breath. It's all starting to make sense...

“Lord Bastian must be a sorcerer,” Jacob says, excitement rising in his voice. “Or maybe he possesses Blood Magic. Turshu just told me that there is a traitor in our ranks. That's why High Lord Gideon had to run off. Don't you see, Tim? The torch is proof that Bastian is a spy for our enemies! We need to figure out some way for the council to see the torch turn red around him.”

Tim begins to hit a sheet of metal rhythmically, smoothing out dents to make it workable. “I'm not sure that's the best idea, Lord Jacob. The torch obviously isn't fixed yet.”

“But you said it was working!”

“I did,” his friend replies, his watery blue eyes troubled. “But, well, just drop it, will you? Just be patient and wait.”

“I'm done with patience!” Jacob explodes. “Waiting only means missing out. I'm tired of sitting on the sidelines. I know I'm right. I know Lord Bastian is betraying us, and if you don't believe me, I'll find proof!”

Clang, clang, clang
, the hammer beats. “Are you going to help me with this?” the short man asks, ignoring Jacob's declaration. “I'm more sweat at this point than I am flesh and bone.”

Jacob looks at the door through narrowed eyes. If Bastian heard him call him a spy, good. He wants him to know he's watching him. That whatever he's up to, he won't get away with it.

“I will,” he says. “But...I have to do something first.”

“Fine.” Tim sighs. “But if you find a greasy puddle on the floor when you come back, that will be me.”

Bastian is gone from the stable yard, but Jacob hears his boots clattering on stone. He runs after him, through the large room where the men store their weapons. Thinking he lost him, he picks up his pace. He's so intent on catching up with the Lord that he almost clatters into the middle of the main fortress courtyard, and it's only at the last moment that Jacob realizes he has caught up with his prey. Two cloaked figures stand in the courtyard talking: the new High Lord Gideon and Lord Bastian.

Quickly, Jacob ducks behind one of the short, wide pillars and listens.

“...do not believe what you tell me is possible,” Gideon is saying. “No one has heard of him or his brother in years. They have, most likely, found a way to return to the surviving gods—” The new High Lord has the deepest, most melodic voice Jacob has ever heard. Whenever he talks, everyone stands riveted. Even now, hiding behind the pillar, Jacob feels himself slipping into the voice, ready to curl up and fall asleep.

An Ethiopian by birth with skin the color of rich, fertile soil, Gideon is admired for his unruffled composure even in the worst of circumstances. Tall and imposing, he was fearless in the battle of Pellan Fields, rallying the men, racing with raised sword into the thick of the fighting to skewer the enemy. It was Gideon who called the retreat and calmly shepherded the remainder of the army to the safety of this fortress. When the Lords learned that High Lord Mordecai was killed, it seemed natural that they would choose Gideon to replace him. Yet Jacob wonders if fierce passions boil just below this cool veneer. Sometimes—especially when Gideon supervises Cynane's torture sessions—he has seen something flash in Gideon's eyes that makes his blood run cold.

“...not waste time on investigating the silly fireside tales of old women,” Gideon concludes.

In a clipped voice, Bastian argues, “No one has heard of Riel for years because he has been hiding in the Pellan palace. That witch-queen, Olympias, was protecting him, perhaps in return for magical assistance in some way.”

Was?
Why the past tense for Queen Olympias? Jacob wonders. Wouldn't the queen still be protecting this Riel in the Pellan palace?

“Who knows what powers Riel granted her in return for his safety?” Bastian continues.

Jacob hears the crunch of gravel underfoot as one of them starts walking. “It would explain what happened to the Hemlock Torch,” Gideon says, as the crunch stops. “What kind of magic could have an effect like that on Socrates' torch? Perhaps only the magic of one of the primal gods.”

They are now very near the column Jacob is hiding behind. If he darts toward the door, they will surely see him. He holds his breath and keeps his arms tightly at his sides.

“But why do you believe Riel is in the Pellan palace?” Gideon asks. “And hidden by the queen? Where have you been? You asked for time to complete a secret mission and bring us back information. Now that I know the information, tell me, what was the mission? Where did you go?”

Jacob hears a boot kicking gravel. “I regret, High Lord, that I cannot say at the moment. But I swear I will find the last god, in whatever form he takes, and bring him to the Lords.”

“If you do, you will be the best of the Aesarians,” comes the resonant voice. “Rest assured, your name will be inscribed at Nekrana. Never before have we...” Gideon's voice fades as the two men leave the courtyard. Jacob peers around the column at their retreating forms and sees no way of following them without being seen.

Questions churn in his mind like a river in spring flood. What does it mean, the last god? The gods are asleep—they have not come in contact with men for hundreds of years now. Is Bastian trying to waken them? Why was he on a secret mission? But another thought grows larger and larger until it pushes all others from his mind: the best of the Aesarians. High Lord Gideon said find Riel and become the best.

Now Jacob knows what to do. Now he has a new star guiding him toward his new goal, the goal meant to replace the green-eyed girl in his heart.

Jacob will beat Bastian to the last god. Jacob will bring this Riel to the Elder Council. Jacob
will be the best of the Aesarians.

Chapter Seven

ABOVE THE CRUMBLING
stone courtyard of the ancient fortress, the sky spins wildly as the men turn the wheel to which Cynane, princess of Macedon, half sister to Alexander, is chained. The spinning alone makes her nauseated, but she knows that what's coming next will be worse.

The iron bars crash down on her arms and legs and ribs, smashing her bones. Her shrieks are so piercingly terrifying that the pounding stops for a moment as the men take a step back from the wheel and wait.

Sweat rolls off her face. Tears stream down her cheeks. She is no longer human. She is pain.

Then the smashing starts again.

By the time the wheel stops spinning, she feels the agony slip away like water running out of a drain, along with the dizziness as the bones and skin and muscle mend in a gentle warmth. When she feels thick, muscular hands examining her arms and legs and chest, she is too exhausted to open her eyes.

“And so, once again, within moments, all injuries are healed,” says a deep voice that is unthinkably beautiful to hear even in this horror. “Can you imagine, Ambiorix, if we had soldiers like this? We would be invincible on the battlefield. Within a few years, we would rule the world.”

“Through
magic
, High Lord?”

“It is no dishonor when warriors use the enemy's weapons to conquer them.”

She feels huge hands on her cheeks and opens her eyes. Above her looms the face as dark as night. The large eyes—glittering like faceted obsidian—study her as if she is an interesting object he found on the beach. Because that's all she is—jetsam coughed up from the sea of fate and spat in front of this man's feet. The humiliation is worse than any physical torture.

“Tell us what you are,” the man says, “and this torture can stop. We only wish to understand the type of magic you possess. It is neither Snake nor Earth...so what is it?” There is something so coaxing, so persuasive in the voice that she considers telling him that she's nothing as weak as Snake and Earth Blood, the kind of magic handed to people at birth. She is
Smoke
Blood, the only Blood Magic to be earned rather than inherited. The only magic so rare that none know of it except for the royal house of Illyria, her mother's line. She has never found any mention of it in scrolls, and she's heard about it only once, when she was eight. She stood in the hallway outside her mother's room listening to Audata arguing with someone, begging for help against mortal danger coming her way.

Sobbing in desperation, Audata wanted to know what act of true betrayal was vicious enough to reward her with Smoke Blood. When Cyn entered, she found her mother alone, and Audata angrily refused to talk about her solitary conversation.

The next day, Cyn found her mother dead in her bath, eyes and lips open, skin white as milk, black hair floating in bloodred water. She had been stabbed in the heart, the gaping wound like a ragged scarlet mouth.

Though Audata had not found the blood of true betrayal in time, Cyn vowed to earn it herself. She had plotted and schemed to have Alexander's best friend Hephaestion betray his master. When he had proved loyal, in desperation Cyn had killed a beggar thief and used his blood in the ancient ritual, hoping to seal his betrayal to her soul so that she might use its power.

At first, she didn't think it worked, but when the flames licked her body in the library fire, her wounds healed almost immediately—though the magic did nothing to stop the pain. She'd never had an injury so grave before—only scratches and bruises that were fleeting at most. Some did leave scars...but these burns should have killed her. At that moment, in the midst of her capture, she knew: she was Smoke Blood.

When she escapes the Aesarian Lords, she will be an invincible general leading armies, and she will chop off the Lords' heads, one by one, starting with this giant black man who speaks to her of betraying her secret inheritance.

“Tell me,” the High Lord coaxes again. “Tell me what you are.” Again, some part of her wants to tell him everything, to please the being behind the deep ringing richness of those words.

Then something inside her hardens, and Cyn feels a flicker of white-hot rage in a stagnant sea of limp exhaustion.

With the last of her strength, she spits at him. She's too weak and too dehydrated to call up any saliva, so she only succeeds in blowing air at the man. But it is enough. He gets the message. He slaps her across the face with an enormous paw, and her right cheek smarts in pain.

“Why don't we just prepare her for the ritual?” asks the huge Gaul with long blond braids and burning blue eyes. Lord Ambiorix, they call him. He's one of the Lords who breaks her bones with an iron rod. “Her blood might buy us some time.”

“Not until we know what she is,” High Lord Gideon replies, his voice carrying all the warning of a sword slowly scraping out of its hilt. “She is not Earth Blood, nor is she Snake Blood. Nor is she a witch or sorceress or oracle. She is nothing we have ever found before. And because of that, she is far more valuable than any of King Philip's treasures or even the most priceless artifact in King Artaxerxes's hoard.”

“I understand, my lord,” Lord Ambiorix replies.

The dark one crosses his powerful arms and says, “Very well. Phaedron, Gaius, unchain her and put her in the trough.”

Cynane's body is too tired to curl in horror. Once she would have screamed her fury, but now she can barely muster the strength to rail against them in her own mind. For the first time, she fears that she will actually give in. That she will betray Audata and her own future of leading a nation as the sole possessor of Smoke Blood.

The Lords place her in an old stone horse trough filled with water. She is too weak to struggle much, and when they set the huge stones across her flat abdomen, she sinks to the bottom. She holds her breath for as long as she can, her lungs burning, and then they explode, exhaling air and then inhaling water. The pain in her chest is unbearable. Her heart is hammering, her head splitting. And then she sinks into blackness.

She wakes to find herself folded in strong arms covered in thick blond hair. She glimpses mildewed gray walls curving around her. They are in the small spiral staircase that leads up to her room in the tower.

“Two hours,” the High Lord says. “This time she was under water for two hours.”

“High Lord, why don't you behead her and see if she can heal that?” asks the one called Gaius in his Roman-accented Greek. “Perhaps she will reach up with both hands and set her head back on her shoulders.”

“That is something I'd like to see,” one Lord sniggers over the clatter of boots on stairs. “Like how the cook cuts a chicken—a fowl princess.” Though the other men laugh, Cyn does not hear Gideon's dark laugh among them. She opens her eyes and sees him standing before the door to the tower room, staring at her, a bitter smile on his broad face. “I suspect that might be impossible for her,” the High Lord says. “Though we might use that as punishment if she fails to tell us what we want to know.” He kicks the door open with his black boot.

She is dropped on the table and chained, too helpless to move. She hears boots on stairs again, and then the sound fades. Outside the little window in Cyn's shabby room, a gentle afternoon rain begins to murmur a soothing lullaby. The window slats have long ago rotted and fallen off, and a steady patter hits the cracked stone floor. The breeze is fresh, clean, and she gulps it in. She is alone for once. She closes her eyes and tries to sleep.

Soon it seems that there are voices in the rain. Whispers, really, mixed with sighs.

Cy...na...ne
, they say.

Cy...na...ne.

A dream. Sometimes she thinks everything that has happened to her since her abduction has been a dream, and that she will wake in her soft palace bed, morning light streaming through her windows, and laugh out loud at the dream's intricacy.

Cynane!

She opens her eyes and sees a figure of smoke and mist bending over her. Tiny droplets of rain dance in the form.

She tries to rub her eyes, but remembers too late that her wrists are chained down on the table. The heavy metal clanks against rough wood. “Who are you?” she asks, her voice cracking from the screams that have scraped her throat.

The figure stands up straight. She believes it to be a man from its height and wide shoulders, but she can't be sure. The outline shifts, coming in and out of focus like someone emerging from thick fog.

“I am one who knows you well.” The voice is made of mist and smoke, like the figure itself, but this time, Cyn is sure that it is a male voice—though she could not have sworn it was entirely human.

“I am relieved to see my work has kept you safe from harm,” he says. The rain beats harder, almost drowning out the soft words.

“Work?” she whispers. “What work?”

“The spell of protection I placed on you the day your mother was killed. A very difficult spell, although I've had to put all my power into strengthening it against the Aesarians or you never would have survived this.” Cyn thinks she can hear something like ridicule in the wafting voice. “Still, you need all the help you can get, my girl,” the figure continues. “Beheading will indeed be the end of you. Even my incantations have their limits.”

Cyn shakes her head, wishing this dream of mist and rain would leave her in peace, but also scared of when it evaporates under the illuminating rays of the sun. Then she will be friendless again, and she is so, so tired.

“I don't need help,” she says, and pride gives her voice. Her defiance gives her strength. She needs no one. “I have Smoke Blood.”

Then the apparition begins to laugh in earnest, and as his humor travels through his body, his form begins to dispel. “You do
not
have Smoke Blood, my darling,” he says. “Nor should you desire it, ever
.
You have a glorious destiny to fulfill. But be wary of Smoke Blood. It is a greater curse than it is a gift.”

The flattering words give her strength, and Cynane lifts her head. “Tell me what I must do,” she says hoarsely.

“Escape, of course.”

“Can you not just release me?”

The being raises its wide-sleeved smoky arms in a gesture of helplessness. “No,” he says. “I cannot move matter, break shackles, or open doors.”

“Then it is impossible,” she says, her voice raw with frustration.

The smoke fluctuates now, scattering like light through a prism. “You are powerful,” he whispers with the subtlety of the softest breeze. “You are a princess of Illyria. You will think of something, blood of my blood...” And then his words melt into the rain, and she cannot hear them anymore.

The last trail of smoke floats out the window, and with it, the last of Cynane's strength. She slips into a sleep so deep that she can see death's doors.