Thousands and thousands of years ago, Anqar had been an insular world, relying on nothing and nobody. But then, for some reason, fewer and fewer females were born to the Warlord bloodlines. Commoners still bred easily, but their blood diluted and weakened the Warlord blood. Children often didn’t survive childhood and too many were born without talent.
Power was life in Anqar—and the Warlords had to pass their power on. Eventually, they realized that if they didn’t find a way to get more females, they would die off completely. According to the ancient texts that all Sirvani studied, even in those times long past, there had been those among them who could see through the Veil.
Char imagined it had been pure torture to stare upon Ishtan—the inhabitants would have seemed as primitive to Char’s ancestors as Ishtan seemed to him now. But, primitive or not, it would have been a ripe world. Char could remember his first raid and staring into that amazingly green world, so different from the arid climes of Anqar and so ripe with women—women of power. Unlike among the commoners of Anqar and within the Warlord bloodlines, power flowed freely in Ishtan. It didn’t mark every soul born in that world; it hit each generation in an equally random way, so that for every untalented child, there was also one born with talent.
Looking through the Veil and seeing that, Char wondered how the idea first came to be, the idea that perhaps they could pierce the Veil and take some of those gifted women for their own. The idea took root, and within a few generations, the Warlords of old had perfected the skills of raising a gate, and crossing the gate for the first time became a rite of passage.
But all things must come to an end. Char had tried bringing the idea up rationally to the Warlords after he’d learned that the women they had taken from offworld would be enough to sustain them indefinitely, provided they exercised thought and caution. They could bring female blood back into the Warlord bloodline, but none wanted to listen.
Time had taught Char that, eventually, they would have no choice. Each passing year, the gates became more unstable. But Char had long since learned to hold his peace. Several of the advisors that served Taise had attempted to tell the High Lord all of this, only to die before they’d uttered more than a few words on the subject.
The High Lord wouldn’t listen to reason. But Char didn’t need him to—all he needed was for the High Lord to die. As the High Lord’s second in command and his closest blood relative, the mantle of High Lord would be passed to Char upon Taise’s death and then he would begin anew. The old ways would change.
“Circumstances,” Taise spat, drawing Char’s attention back to the less than successful raid. “How many dead?”
“Sixty of our men, forty offworlders,” Char said, keeping his voice neutral. The loss of his men mattered little to Taise, Char knew. It was the loss of the slaves that had the High Lord so enraged. His mottled face had gone a bizarre reddish purple, and Char amused himself with images of the Lord having a brainstorm, collapsing to the floor dead. Or better yet, alive, but trapped in the prison of his own body. Char liked to think of that.
By the time he had finished explaining, it wasn’t a stretch to think Taise might have that stroke. His breath wheezed in and out of his lungs and spittle foamed around his mouth. His wrinkled face had gone from that mottled purplish red to true purple, as though the High Lord had forgotten how to breathe.
Disgusting old man.
“You lost my body slaves.” Taise’s hands clenched into fists and he glared at Char with black, angry eyes.
Not like you can get any use out of them,
Char mused. Of course, that didn’t stop Taise from trying. He killed a body slave on a regular basis, or had her beaten. Useless whores—can’t even ride a man right. That was Taise’s reasoning. Of course, Taise wasn’t much of a man anymore. Char could even feel pity for the girl put in front of that and expected to do anything useful with him. It was a waste. Taise always wanted the pretty, young ones, and more often than not, he killed them when they couldn’t arouse him.
“We lost a few, yes, High Lord.” Then his tone turned cajoling and he gave Taise a charming smile. “But you should see the young ones we did manage to bring through the Veil.”
For a moment, Taise’s rheumy eyes brightened, and then his face darkened once more. He tugged at his lip and started mumbling under his breath about the Veil. As delusional as Taise had become, the Veil was one thing he was right to distrust. The High Lord was in direct control of the Veil itself, but each subordinate Warlord had his own territory, a province he controlled. Stronger Warlords sometimes received a gated province.
There’d been a time when nearly all Warlords had a gate of their own, but the number of functioning gates had dwindled. The last generation saw a rapid decline in the gates, ending with the spectacular collapse of their second largest gate along the Surachi Province. Gorin, the Warlord who controlled that territory, as well as his protectorate were gone. Eighteen thousand lives, gone in an instant, and more injuries than their healers could handle. Another four thousand died in the days following as the healers and their workers struggled to keep up with the injured.
Twenty-two thousand gone and nearly double that displaced. The Surachi Province was a wasteland now. No crops grew, no wildlife would live there, and the few who tried to return to their homes either committed suicide, went mad or ran screaming back to the safety of the nearest province. It was as though the gate’s destruction had damaged something in the very earth, poisoned it, and it bled out into the land, affecting any that tried to live there.
It was unclear exactly what had happened, and Char suspected they’d never know the full story. What little they knew was scattered, and he wasn’t sure how reliable any of the information was. Reports came in slowly, but apparently there was a huge disruption in the Veil right about the time disaster hit the Surachi Province. There was a power surge in the Veil, but most of the gates were down and the only outlet for that power surge was the lone open gate.
The Surachi Gate.
The fall of that gate decimated all of the smaller gates for miles around, and now the Roinan Gate, located in the heart of High Keep, was the only gate strong enough to trigger the smaller gates that still remained.
For the time being, at least. Char knew they were on borrowed time with the Roinan Gate as well. Weaker Warlords had to settle for serving under another, stronger Warlord. On occasion, there were assassinations when a subordinate tried to overthrow his superior. If he was strong enough, he just might succeed. If he did, he had the province—and the gate.
All Warlords had the magick inside them that gave them control over a gate. The power took time to develop, and sometimes it never did. Until it developed, they were Sirvani,formally serving under a Warlord, earning their place in the hierarchy and completing their training.
For some, that would be their life. Not all Sirvani would become Warlords. The power passed through the blood, but with some, it would never fully manifest. While many high-level Sirvani would master the ability to maintain a gate, the ability to control a gate, to raise and lower it at will, was the mark of a Warlord. That power was what set the Warlords apart. The Warlords were the only ones in known history who could open the gates. It was also that power that gave them their physical strength and longevity.
Char didn’t know the why and the how of it, why the power manifested in one generation and then skipped the next two. Why twins were born and one would have the ability to raise the gate and another would never be able to do more than look through the Veil. No, he didn’t understand it; nor did he care to. All that mattered to him was that he was born into the bloodline and his powers manifested before he finished the rudimentary education all children received.
He was placed into the formal Sirvani training at twelve, and before he turned eighteen, he was placed into Warlord training. He was by far the youngest Warlord, and more important, he was a Warlord born into the royal bloodline.
Power was his due. When the old man finally returned to the earth, Char would rule this land, and the gates. And he’d damned well not make a fool of himself the way Taise had. Paranoid and obsessed with his lost youth, his waning power and the gates. The damned gates.
Char knew he only had a finite amount of time to finish the job he had set for himself all those years ago. Finding what was stolen from him. After he had obtained that objective, then the damned gates could close forever and he wouldn’t give a damn. Char would be the next High Lord and he was prepared to lead Anqar into a new age.
It baffled him to think that he was the only one in the royal bloodline to see how shortsighted it was to keep depending on the slave trade to keep his people flourishing. The offworld slaves could breed well. In recent generations their matches had produced offspring with the same powers common in their native land. More, they steadily produced female offspring, thereby securing future mates for his men.
It would take time to get his men accustomed to the new way of life, to the end of the raids. When making the transformation from Sirvani to Warlord, a Warlord’s first successful raid was cause for celebration. Weeklong celebrations where the wine and ale flowed like water and the female slaves were introduced to their new lives.
Yes, changing their old ways would take time. However, it was only a matter of time before it was forced on them by fate. Char wasn’t fond of fate’s surprises. For years, ever since he realized how unstable Taise had become and the strain the High Lord was putting on the gatemagicks, and the inevitable faltering of that magick, Char had been working on this solution, and he had been working in this direction for decades. He had already been putting his theories into practice in his personal household with much success. The slaves still produced talented female offspring—provided that at least one-half of each mated couple had psy or mage abilities.
Their world wouldn’t die when the gates could no longer sustain travel. Let Taise have his delusional dreams of dominating worlds. Char just wanted one. His mark in history would be laying the foundation for their new way of life, a life that didn’t rely on offworld raids just to ensure their survival.
The gates—they were the start of all his troubles, and when the last one fell, he would be satisfied.
Almost as if the High Lord could still sense thoughts, he felt Taise’s gaze focus on him. “How fare the gates this trip?”
With his hands linked behind his back, Char faced Taise and responded, “Secure. I did not notice any instabilities. I think the key to maintaining them is moderation, High Lord. Endless use, or forcing them to remain open, that seems to cause the fluctuation in the gate’s power.”
Even though Char delivered the words in a diplomatic, level tone, Taise erupted. “Damn those gates! Moderation—no. It’s raiding season. The nights are long and my men are ready to hunt.” He jabbed a gnarled finger in Char’s direction. “You will find a way to stabilize the Roinan Gate. It’s the key. If it is stable, the smaller gates will be as well.”
Char inclined his head. Stabilizing them was the last thing that Char would do, even if he knew how. But pacifying the High Lord suited him right now. “Of course, High Lord.”
Waking up was rarely a pleasant experience for Lee. Caught in the grip of dreams that she couldn’t remember— but that terrified her nonetheless. Terrified her so that when she lay in bed, she was covered with sweat and had to resist the urge to pull the blankets over her head and hide like a child.
But pulling the blankets over her head wouldn’t do a damn thing to ease her fear, and she knew it. Didn’t stop her from wanting to try again, but pride wouldn’t let her. Even without the dreams lingering in the back of her subconscious, waking up was a bitch.
Today, though, today wasn’t just a bitch. It was a colossal she-bitch from hell, and Lee wished she could just close her eyes and escape into unconsciousness. Lying there with her mouth as dry as cotton and an aching hole in the pit of her stomach, she was too nauseated to eat. No, waking wasn’t any fun in her experience, and the only thing that made it tolerable was coffee. Oh yeah, today was going to go down in the records as far as bad mornings went. Every last inch of her body ached, her heels were a blistered, screaming mess of pain, her soles were even worse than that, and her head hurt so bad, she figured a visit with a guillotine would be an improvement. All of that she could have handled, so long as she had some coffee.
No. Not some.
Lots
of coffee. Strong and sweet, with just a little milk and a hell of a lot of sugar. Anything could be faced, as long as there was enough coffee. Lee was pretty certain that was part of her problem. This damned place had no coffee. After the second night here, she knew that she wasn’t dreaming all of this. Even in her worst nightmares, she wouldn’t conjure up some dream world unless it had coffee in it.
So she was either in some bizarre, alternate reality thing—or she was dead and trapped in hell. Lee was pretty sure there wasn’t any coffee in hell. Of course, by that reasoning, maybe this really wasn’t an alternate reality, where she had to deal with no coffee and a sexy warrior that she didn’t know how to handle. Maybe she really was in hell and this world had been conjured up to serve as her punishment, with Kalen as her keeper.
With a pitiful whimper, she rolled over on the bed and pressed her face into the pillow. It was daylight out. She could see the light streaming in around the weird-looking curtains. They looked like they were made of some sort of organic material. They blended in perfectly with the walls and they felt weird to the touch. Rough, at first, like the wood that made up the bunker, and then softer—almost like flesh under her hands. They changed color under the contact as well, going from a weathered gray to a pale ivory nearly the same tone as her skin.
They blocked the sunlight so well, she never would have known it was morning except that the curtain was just a little too short and pale golden slivers of light fell through. They did something to muffle the sound as well, and she could just barely hear voices outside.