Authors: Michael A. Stackpole
Eiran tightened his grip on his sword. “I claim no sword school.”
“Then why do this?”
“Because I shall fight in his stead.” Tyressa moved forward. “I am Keru.”
“Keru? I am not afraid of you.” Ieral waved her forward. “If you wish a spear, I will provide you one.”
Eiran grabbed his aunt’s shoulder. “You’re not taking my place.”
Jasai spurred her horse past both of them. “And neither of you acts as my champion.” Her head held high, she reined up short of the ministers’ man. “What price safe conduct for my companions? They mean nothing to you. I am the prize.”
Ieral shrugged. “In exchange for you, the Desei can return home. The Anturasi, the Keru, they come with us. That is the only bargain that can be struck.”
“And my brother?”
Ieral shook his head. “The Council has ordered his death.”
“Why?”
The question caught Ieral off guard. “It is not my place to question their orders.”
“But you know the answer, don’t you?” Jasai shook her head. “Prince Pyrust pulls their strings, and they pull yours.” She reined her horse around, showing him her back. “I withdraw my offer. I surrender to no puppet.”
Eiran looked up at Ieral’s men. “You allow him to pull
your
strings?”
“I don’t pull strings, I cut them.” Ieral Scoan flowed forward through the shadows. His sword rose and flashed liquid lightning. It swept down, passing in an arc beneath Eiran’s parry. The blade came back up as Ieral spun. The leaping-dog crest on the back of his robe grew taut, then the blade fell again in a cut that trimmed a light brown lock of Eiran’s hair.
The cut would have taken the Prince’s head off, save that he’d stumbled forward with the momentum of his failed parry. His robe’s sash, neatly cut across the knot, fluttered to the ground. The Prince pitched face forward onto the road. His sword bounced once, then spun, tracing curved lines in the dirt.
A booted foot stopped it.
Ieral shifted his stance and leveled his sword at the newcomer. “Who are you?”
The interloper hooked a toe beneath the hilt and kicked the sword into the air. Firelight gleamed from the lazily spinning blade. A hand plucked the sword from the air. He whipped it around, then snapped it forward with such force that the blade quivered.
He smiled. “This will do.”
Keles’ jaw dropped.
It can’t be . . .
“
Xidantzu?
” Ieral raised his head. “Begone, wanderer. You want no part of this.”
“I am late of
Serrian
Foachin. I have apprenticed with Moraven Tolo.” Ciras Dejote stepped from the shadow of the mechanical horse at the woods’ edge and the Viruk standing beside it. “I have just seen a man claiming to be
serrcai
cut down a man who claimed no rank at all. This offends me.”
“Your presence offends me.” Ieral stepped back to allow Ciras onto the road. “Come, if you are so quick to embrace death.”
“Draw a circle.”
Even in the wan light of torches, there was no mistaking how the blood drained from Ieral’s face. “You are
jaecaiserr
?”
“Is the circle done yet?”
“But this is not fair.”
Ciras pointed the sword at Eiran. “You reap what you sow. The circle. Now.”
Ieral lowered his sword. “I will not.”
Keles dropped from his saddle and sank to one knee. He pressed his hand to the ground. The earth rippled. Pebbles danced. Stones erupted through the roadway and rolled into place. They formed a perfect circle, encompassing both swordsmen and the Prince.
Ieral pointed his sword at Keles. “There, swordsman, there is what you should kill.
Xingnadin. Jaecaixingna
.”
Ciras bowed his head. “Thank you, Keles.”
The Helosundian swordsman’s shoulders slumped for a moment, then he raised his blade again. “At least I shall die with honor.”
Ciras shook his head. “The time for that is well past.”
Chapter 21
P
rince Pyrust could not blame the people of the Illustrated City for lining the streets to jeer at him. The carnage surrounding the city, the ruin of the gates, and the hollow expressions on their faces marked them as defeated. While the Virine had never been particularly martial, they had not been useless either. Proud beyond reasoning, perhaps, but they claimed an Imperial legacy that every other of the Nine wished for itself.
Pyrust had never been favored in Erumvirine. Spies had reported that the Princes and populace feared him. He read that fear in their eyes now along with anger.
Had I come as a liberator, they would have welcomed me with flowers
.
He trudged along with others of his command. Count Vroan and his surviving Ixunites had entered the city triumphantly. Trampled flowers marked their passage. Vroan had pledged his fealty to the
kwajiin
quickly, and the Ixunites had even guarded the Desei fighters for Nelesquin’s troops.
It would appear, Cyron, that someone else will have to rid you of that traitor
.
The heavy chains linking Pyrust’s wrists and ankles clanked with each step. It was not their weight that slowed him, but the short length of chain from wrist to ankles forcing him to shuffle stooped and subservient.
I am forced to walk as if conquered
.
Pyrust felt anything but conquered. Exhausted, certainly, and bruised. Three horses had died beneath him in that battle. He’d gone down only after his sword had broken and the ax he’d appropriated got lodged so deeply in a
kwajiin
chest that he could not pull it free. He’d certainly been defeated, but conquered?
No
.
“Not so proud now, are you?” A madwoman, with one eye wide and the other squeezed shut, broke through the edge of the crowd. She grabbed his chains and yanked. Spittle flecked her lips as she screamed. “We’ve an emperor here! You’re a fool to defy him.”
Pyrust shoved her away. “Then your duty is to the Empire, isn’t it? Get out of my sight.”
More of the crowd cheered her and jeered him. Virine warriors—old men, mostly—wearing blue sashes on their robes, forced the woman back. Someone in the crowd threw a rotten piece of fruit. Handfuls of mud, stones, and night soil followed, pelting Pyrust and the eighty warriors who were being paraded through the streets.
They have no idea what they are doing
. Mud and feces missed the intended targets and instead splashed against the city’s walls. The beautiful murals that had given the city its name added new stains to the blood that had dripped over them. They destroyed out of fear, and from that fear there was no recovering.
Pyrust raised his head. Cyron had warned him against destroying too much. Pyrust had not thought that possible. Kelewan showed him that it was. Out of fear the people cursed those who would have freed them. Men collaborated with their conquerors. Pyrust did not doubt that any armies marching north to lay siege to Moriande would have units drawn from the Virine and the Five Princes. Fear would unman the greatest of heroes, and surrendering to fear, in some ways, was the greatest of sins.
The old woman had understood that. To all others she had been a madwoman, but Pyrust had recognized her. Delasonsa, the Desei Mother of Shadows, had come in disguise. Others had seen her yank his chains, but she’d managed to slip a small garnet-and-silver ring onto his smallest finger. The talons clasping the edge of the garnet were sharp and poisoned. A casual scratch at his throat, and he’d die inside a minute.
Painlessly, too. She would not have me die an ignominious death
.
She’d have rescued him, too, were that possible. Pyrust knew better than to think it was. Any effort to rescue him would doubtless kill loyal Desei agents. He would not reward their fidelity thus. With his comment to her, he’d turned Delasonsa over to Empress Cyrsa, to serve her as faithfully as the assassin had served him.
Prince Nelesquin might not have transported him to Kelewan to kill him, but it certainly wasn’t to let him go again. Having Pyrust brought to heel would make for a great show, and would sow doubt among the opposition. Only by escaping could Pyrust salvage any victory from his defeat.
Nelesquin could not let that happen.
By dying when he wants me to be kept as a pet, I defy him
.
Pyrust smiled grimly. His defeat hardly warranted a death sentence. In retrospect, Virisken Soshir’s strategy would have been more effective—and might yet be. Even with reinforcements from the south, Nelesquin’s army would be hard-pressed to lay siege to Moriande. Bleeding the army, hitting it where it was weak, these things could blunt the attack.
He’d fought on the plains because the Empress had ordered him to do so, but he could have easily overruled those orders. The fact was that he’d
wanted
to fight there. He had believed he could win. And he could have, save for a certain confluence of circumstances.
They did not defeat me, really, I defeated me
.
Up to that battle, his southern campaign had been conducted flawlessly. He had used the superior intelligence and training of his troops to outwit the enemy. He’d crushed the Helosundians. He’d tricked Vroan. He’d overwhelmed Cyron.
But while his flooding of the plains had mirrored the tactic he used against the Helosundian Council of Ministers, it had actually worked against him. It narrowed the battlefield, which gave the
kwajiin
an advantage by allowing them to concentrate their troops.
Marching through the city, he ignored the catcalls and curses. Instead, he once again envisioned the battle. He should have contested the enemy’s entry into the plains. His cavalry could have made countless grazing attacks, raking the
kwajiin
with arrows. It would have made the invaders fear the cavalry, and that fear would have slowly killed them.
Weakened, the
kwajiin
would have had to choose battle or withdrawal. Pyrust could have retreated before them, then hit their supply lines. The invaders would have fallen apart.
So the question is not
why
did I lie to Soshir, but why did I choose to
believe
the lie?
Pyrust hesitated for a moment, then stumbled forward when pushed from behind. He had his answer and for that answer he thought he might, in fact, deserve to die.
Doing what he
should have done
was not the work of a
warrior
. Cyron could have run
that
kind of a campaign. It would not have been a military victory, it would have been a victory of logistics. He would have been doing to the
kwajiin
what Cyron had tried to do to him. Pyrust would have controlled the invaders by denying them supplies—a shopkeeper’s war.
Victory was what they required of me, but I wanted a specific
type
of victory—a
military
victory. More the fool, I. Never buy with blood what can be won with words, time, or rice
.
The parade of soldiers stopped at the Imperial Palace.
Kwajiin
warriors pulled Pyrust from the midst of his companions and forced him up the stairs. At the top they allowed him to turn and look back. The crowd of Virine dwarfed the soldiers. As miserable as his men looked—Desei, Naleni, and Virine combined—they possessed more nobility than all the residents of Kelewan.
As the warriors marched Pyrust into the palace, he could not help but smile. He’d never seen the place before, but it lived up to even the most fanciful of descriptions. Nelesquin’s new statue glared down at him, but did not inspire fear. In fact, Pyrust took heart in seeing it.
He filled that niche very quickly. The man clearly suffers from vanity
.
The trek up the stairs and to the throne room confirmed Pyrust’s assumption. Already murals had been repainted, rewriting Virine history. Nelesquin’s face replaced those of legendary heroes—no matter that the events depicted occurred
after
the Cataclysm.
The guards stopped him at the throne room’s entrance. They unlocked his chains. They stripped off the soiled robe and replaced it with a plain red one. They looped a gold sash around his waist and even tucked a short dagger in a wooden scabbard at his right hip.
Then the doors opened. Along strip of red carpet edged with purple connected the entrance to the foot of the throne dais. Nelesquin sat in the Bear Throne, backed by a huge stone disk with all the signs of the Zodiac carved into the edge. It transformed the Bear Throne into an Imperial throne and its presence did not surprise Pyrust.
What
did
surprise him was the fact that the disk was taller than any door or window in the room. It had no seams.
How did he get it into this room?
Tales of his
vanyesh
and their power tightened Pyrust’s guts.
If his forces are backed by
xingna,
is there a strategy that will defeat them?
Pyrust lifted his chin and began the trek along the carpet. A side from Nelesquin and himself, only two others occupied the room. One, a slender man in an emerald-and-black cloak, stood to Nelesquin’s left. The other man knelt at his right, on the floor, with a golden chain connecting his collar to the foot of the throne.
Nelesquin stood. “Of you, Prince Pyrust, I have heard much. My field general praised you and your effort. As you can see with your brother, Prince Jekusmirwyn, I am not without mercy. A man of your skills and standing could be of use in my Empire.”
Nelesquin’s rich, warm tones filled the room. Jekusmirwyn twitched at the sound. The man’s eyes did not quite focus in the present. Pyrust had seen that look in the eyes of those Delasonsa had tortured. He understood the quality of Nelesquin’s mercy.
Pyrust stopped shy of the throne and chose not to bow. “It has not been my custom to subordinate myself to a prince.”
Nelesquin smiled slowly. “I am an emperor.”
“A pretender. Empress Cyrsa sits on the Dragon Throne in Moriande. Her claim predates yours and is stronger.”