Shadowdance 05 - A Dance of Ghosts (55 page)

After whispering a prayer for guidance, all while fully aware Varen impatiently watched, Muzien crossed his arms over his chest and met the stare of the priest. Varen was slender, even for an elf, his long hair so white it approached silver. He was young, though, nearly as young as Muzien. The two had risen in power together over the last century, but it had been Varen who won the position of high priest, the youngest ever to have done so. The wound to Muzien’s ego had taken years to heal, the bleeding only halting when he’d realized there were far better ways to protect his people than from within the isolated halls of their temples.

“I do Celestia’s work by protecting her people,” Muzien said.

“Are her people in danger?”

Muzien’s jaw clenched tight, grinding his teeth.

“You’re no fool, Varen,” he said. “The humans’ view of us has worsened drastically over the past twenty years. They fear us now, that fear bordering on the insane. In their cities, men and women preach hatred toward us, a hatred so primal and raw no peaceful solution will ever suffice.”

Varen’s eyes narrowed.

“Is that why you’ve pulled me down to this forgotten place?” he asked. “To insult my diplomats before they may even have the chance to speak a word?”

Muzien shook his head. Conflict between the races was growing; everyone could see that. Over the past year, as a way to counter this, Varen had championed an initiative to send dozens of trained diplomats to permanently live in Mordeina, the capital city of the human nation of Mordan. But Muzien had beaten them there by a decade, and he knew the futility of such an attempt. His voice went unheard during the debates, for he had no time for such things. He had a war to prevent.

“Your diplomats will be made to wait at the gates,” Muzien said, stepping closer to Varen. “After a week or so, they’ll be allowed in, only to be met with vicious crowds. They’ll be cursed at, spat at. Little boys and girls will hurl stones at their heads. Whatever home you think they’ll stay in will be burned to the ground. Should they go to speak with the king, they will be denied nine times out of ten, and whatever audience they find will be brief and spent listening to the king inform us of our failures and deviousness. This anger they feel, it is a sickness, without base or merit or reason. It’s founded on one thing, Varen: fear.”

“If all this is as you say,” asked Varen, “then how have you lived there so long?”

“Because I
want
them to fear me.”

Muzien could feel the conversation slipping away from him, so before the priest could respond, he pressed on, letting his anger fuel his words.

“Listen well, Varen,” he said. “You know war is coming, as sure as the rising sun. It is only a matter of time before the humans raise their banners and descend upon our forests. They’ll burn every tree to ash if they must to satisfy their bloodlust. If we don’t do something to prevent it, our people will suffer terribly.”

For once, that smug look faded, revealing a very tired, frustrated Varen.

“Of course I know it,” he said. “But too many consider the humans as curiosities to be ignored, not feared. They see the borders of our forests as impenetrable. To even convince them to permanently station diplomats in Mordeina took more effort than you can imagine. Damn it, Muzien, it is easier for me to find an elf
eager
for war than one who will accept mankind as a legitimate danger.”

Muzien reached out, put a hand on Varen’s shoulder. He tried to remember a time when he’d considered the elf a childhood friend. It felt like a different life and a gulf of blood and coin lay between them.

“There’s still hope,” Muzien said, and he felt his heart speeding up. This was it, the culmination of his plan. “In Mordeina, I have formed a guild of men and women loyal to my name. They’re bound by greed and ambition, and for that alone, they are both predictable and reliable. I’ve dipped my fingers into every bit of trade, particularly the vices their kings and queens have declared illegal. The price was dear, Varen, and I have spilled more blood than I wish to ever see again in my lifetime, but I would gladly pay it a hundred times over if it means the safety of our people.”

“I don’t understand,” said Varen. “How does a guild of humans spare us from a potential war?”

“By bringing the war to them. A minor noble from the southern nation of Ker has made repeated claims that he could conquer all of Mordan, usually under the guise of some bloated family history … a noble that is firmly in my pocket. I’ve secretly contacted mercenary bands from all across Mordeina and Ker, drawing them south to join him. Should he march upon Mordeina and place it under siege, my guild will sabotage the defenses, overthrowing that wretched Baedan family line that has ruled Mordan for far too long.”

As Varen listened, his pale face somehow steadily grew paler.

“You would incite a rebellion against their king?” he said when Muzien finished. “Even worse, you would have us explicitly responsible? Should the humans hear…”

“They won’t,” Muzien insisted. “I’ve used my guild’s connections for every step of the plan, protecting our people from blame. When the fighting begins, it will be sudden, chaotic. We’ll position the various mercenary groups all across Mordeina. At my word, they’ll begin burning villages to the ground. The combination of chaos and surprise will prevent the king from properly mustering his troops, and that’s when my puppet noble marches on Mordeina. The plan will succeed, Varen; I promise you.”

Varen looked away, to the statuette of the goddess. Putting a hand atop it, he closed his eyes, shook his head.

“What is it you want from me?” he asked. “If you didn’t need help, you’d have already put this plan into motion, consequences be damned.”

Muzien felt relief sweep through him. If Varen was ready to consider the cost, then the hardest part was over.

“My guild’s trade network is extensive, and it has grown rapidly over the past few years, but it is still not enough to pay for an entire army’s worth of mercenaries. I need the coffers of the priesthood opened to me. With it, I can establish a puppet king loyal to my desires. Even if we fail, we’ll plunge the human nations into chaos that will take years to recover from. All I ask is that you trust me.”

“Why come to me?”

“Because what we do must be kept between just us. The fewer who know, the safer we are. You control the coffers, and you alone. I bring before you a plan to save our people; now all you must do is give me the word to begin.”

Varen opened his eyes, and his hand fell from the statuette.

“That coin is tithed to us so we may build statues and temples to our goddess,” he said. “It is given to us so we may feed any who may go hungry and clothe those who would go naked otherwise. Come the midsummer festival, when we rejoice in the love of our maker, it is those tithes that pay for every instrument, every singer, every baker. And you would have me spend it on mercenaries to slaughter entire villages in the vain hope of replacing one human king for another?”

“I do what must be done,” Muzien said, his temper flaring.

“And I do what the goddess says is right! The humans are flawed, but they hold as much capacity for good as they do evil. We will reason with them, Muzien. We will find ways to make them listen to us, to show we are not their enemy, and we’ll do it without becoming the monsters they already think we are.”

Varen moved to walk past Muzien, and fighting off the beginnings of panic, Muzien stepped in his way and put a hand on his chest to halt him.

“This is a mistake,” he said. “Before us is a threat, and it must be met with force, not delusions of peace! I do the goddess’s work, restoring a balance so horribly broken that only the most desperate of paths will save us. How can you not see that?”

The high priest grabbed his wrist and pushed it aside.

“Those years in Mordeina have corrupted you,” Varen said. “And what I see is a sad shadow of my former friend. Conquest through coin? Death before peace? Celestia’s blessing is not on your hands, Muzien. You’re more human than elf now.”

The words were a knife directly to his heart, and he felt his whole body tremble with growing rage. Reaching back, he put his hand on the statuette of the goddess, felt the cold stone against his skin.

“Varen,” he said as the priest headed for the door.

“Yes?” asked Varen, turning about.

Muzien struck him across the head with the statuette, a corner of the square base crunching into his temple. Varen let out a single cry before dropping to the ground, his entire body limp. When he landed, he splayed awkwardly, the back of his head smacking the hard stone with an audible crack. Dropping the statuette, Muzien stood there in the middle of the shrine, feeling panic nipping at the corners of his mind.

“Her will,” he said to the body. “I did her will, always her will, yet you’d turn on me? You’d have my ten years of living among those wretched humans be for nothing?
Nothing!
”

He kicked Varen in the side, but there was no reaction. Blood continued to spill out across the emerald floor, taking on a purplish hue. Trying to fight down the panic, Muzien scrambled for ideas. There had to be a way to make his plan work. There had to be a way to salvage the situation. But everything involved coin he didn’t have, and with Varen dead, there was little chance for him to obtain any wealth from his brethren.

Turning, he let his eyes fall upon the statuette, which lay on its side, the bottom of it still stained with the priest’s blood.

“I did this for you,” Muzien said, voice dropping to a whisper as he fell to one knee and reached out to take it. “Tell me what to do, my goddess. My actions were just; I know it with all my heart. Please, tell me how to save our people.”

The fingers of his left hand closed about the goddess’s legs, and he bowed his head, eyes closed. He prayed for a voice, a sign, a whisper of wind in his ear confirming all he’d done … but instead, he only felt pain. It grew steadily, burning, charring, but he refused to relent. Varen was wrong. Celestia would not abandon him so. She would not betray him. But why did his hand burn? Why did the pain sear into him, and why must he now be screaming?

At last, he could stand no more. The statuette dropped to the ground, and when he opened his eyes, he saw the briefest of glow fading from the stone. As for his hand, he held it shaking before him, saw the blackened remains through the blur of his tears. His skin was charred, and with every twitch of his fingers, fresh pain shot up his arm.

“No,” Muzien whispered, tears falling. “No, damn it, no!”

Slowly, he stood, his chest suddenly feeling hollow as Varen’s words echoed in his mind.

You’re more human than elf now.

More human? Then so be it. Drawing a knife from his pocket, he walked to the altar where the statuette had first rested and then dropped to one knee.

“If you would deny me, then I deny you as well,” he said as he took the sharpened edge to the tip of his left ear. “If you would rebuke my attempts to save your people, then let them all burn.”

He cut into the ear, removing the curled tip that set him apart from the men and women he’d walked among throughout the city of Mordeina. As the blood ran down his neck, he took the knife to the other ear. After two quick breaths, he cut it as well. Rising back to his feet, he sheathed his knife and clutched the bloody stumps of cartilage tightly in his darkened hand.

“If I am more human than elf, then let me become the greatest at being human,” he swore to the heavens. “Their love of coin, their lust for power, their hearts ruled by pride and slave to ambition … everything they cherish shall now be my god, my only god. I need no other.”

With that, he kissed the burned flesh of his hand, felt the heat of it on his lips, and then exited the hidden shrine. The severed tips of his ears he left atop the altar, just beneath the four-pointed star.

His final sacrifice to Celestia.

His first to a new god of blood and coin.

look out for

by

He had many names. Although yet to reach his thirtieth year, history had seen fit to bestow upon him titles aplenty: Sword of the Realm to the mad king who sent him to plague us, the Young Hawk to the men who followed him through the trials of war, Darkblade to his Cumbraelin enemies and, as I was to learn much later, Beral Shak Ur to the enigmatic tribes of the Great Northern Forest – the Shadow of the Raven.

But my people knew him by only one name and it was this that sang in my head continually the morning they brought him to the docks:
Hope Killer. Soon you will die and I will see it. Hope Killer.

Although he was certainly taller than most men, I was surprised to find that, contrary to the tales I had heard, he was no giant, and whilst his features were strong they could hardly be called handsome. His frame was muscular but not possessed of the massive thews described so vividly by the storytellers. The only aspect of his appearance to match his legend was his eyes: black as jet and piercing as a hawk’s. They said his eyes could strip a man’s soul bare, that no secret could be hidden if he met your gaze. I had never believed it but seeing him now, I could see why others would.

The prisoner was accompanied by a full company of the Imperial Guard, riding in close escort, lances ready, hard eyes scanning the watching crowd for trouble. The crowd, however, were silent. They stopped to stare at him as he rode through, but there were no shouts, no insults or missiles hurled. I recalled that they knew this man, for a brief time he had ruled their city and commanded a foreign army within its walls, yet I saw no hate in their faces, no desire for ven geance. Mostly they seemed curious. Why was he here? Why was he alive at all?

The company reined in on the wharf, the prisoner dismounting to be led to the waiting vessel. I put my notes away and rose from my resting place atop a spice barrel, nodding at the captain. ‘Honour to you, sir.’