Blood of the Emperor (10 page)

“No, not at all.”

Drakis blinked, the tip of his sword dropping slightly. “What then?”

“I don’t think you are the Drakis of the Prophecy,” Soen said, shifting his Matei staff from the right to the left. “I don’t believe this prophecy has any power at all. From what I have learned along the way,
you
don’t believe it either.”

“Then why bother with me?”

“Because, as I think you already know, it doesn’t matter what you or I think,” Soen shrugged casually. “What matters is what that
army
outside this warehouse thinks. What matters is what all the pilgrims in Willow Vale think, as well as the thousands that even now are swelling their ranks each day. What matters is what the Keeper of the Iblisi thinks and, for that matter, what the Emperor and his Legions think. Most importantly, what matters is what Nordesia, Ephindria, Chaenandria and Aeria think.”

“Aeria?” Drakis shook his head. “The dwarves are gone—utterly destroyed. I was there.”

“Driven from their strongholds? Certainly,” Soen nodded. “But I believe they are still there, deep within the mountain, waiting…waiting for someone or something to unite them.”

“And you think that the dwarves will rise up again and the entire Rhonas Empire will collapse,” Drakis’ eyes remained fixed on the elf, “because of some bedtime story?”

Soen bowed slightly as he nodded. “The highest ranking among the Iblisi know that the prophecy will be fulfilled. The Rhonas Empire
will
fall.”

“Why?” Drakis shrugged. “You just said you didn’t believe in the prophecy!”

“I don’t believe the prophecy has any power of its own,” Soen corrected. “But I
do
believe that the more people who want the prophecy to be true, the greater the power they give it. The prophecy is nothing but if enough people believe it is true, then they will
make
it true. And
that
is where my obligation now lies…to the truth that all these people’s beliefs are forging into reality.”

“That makes you a believer,” Ethis chuckled.

Soen shook his head. “Let’s just say that I believe in the power of belief. I remain loyal to my race, my people, my nation. If my nation is to fall, then I want to insure that as few of its citizens are harmed as possible and that as much of what is good in the Empire—and there
is
good in the Empire—is saved from the chaos of the Empire’s fall.”

“So, you were first obligated to kill me, then you felt obligated to imprison me.” Drakis continued to stare at the elf. “So what do you feel is your obligation now?”

“The one constant obligation in all of this has been to the truth,”
Soen answered. “But I know that war is coming—real war with all the horror and violence that entails. My obligation is to my people.”

Drakis lowered his sword. “As is mine.”

“As is mine,” Ethis added.

“You wanted to speak to me,” Drakis said, sheathing his sword once more. “I am listening. What have you to say?”

“Come, look,” Soen said. He began moving his Matei staff, swinging the tip across the firmly packed dirt of the warehouse floor. The metal tip of the staff dug into the packed earth, inscribing lines in the dirt that quickly took the form of a great map at their feet. Complex coastlines emerged, rivers, and even symbols where mountain ranges were located.

Drakis and Ethis stepped closer, stopping just beyond the edge of the shorelines.

“Here is Rhonas,” Soen said, pointing at a region on the map farthest from him with the tip of his staff, then shifting to regions closer to where he stood. “Here Chaenandria, the Mountains of Aeria, and the Plains of Vestasia. Over here to the east are the lands of Ephindria and up here is Nordesia and our little Mistral Peninsula. Willow Vale is here. For the time being, we are vulnerable—easily contained with our backs to the Straits of Erebus, short on supplies, and with nowhere to retreat.”

“But the elven Legions were destroyed,” Drakis said as he gazed at the map.

“The Legion of the Northern Fist, yes,” Soen acknowledged, “but there are many, MANY more Legions available to enact the Imperial Will and, I can assure you that they are moving in our direction with every breath we draw. More importantly, they will come with Aether—pouring their magic into the northern frontier with enough strength to overcome this reversal of the Aether you caused in Drakosia. If you remain and wait for the Legions to come to you, you will lose your advantage.”

“You’re saying we must move,” Drakis nodded. “That we have to strike while we can.”

“Yes,” Ethis agreed. “But where?”

“The Legions will almost certainly move toward us along the Northmarch Folds,” Soen said, leaning on his Matei staff as he considered. “Part of their force they will deploy to guard the Shrouded Plain
since they know that your army escaped them once there and will want to guard against your reemergence from that place again. Then they will send out scouting parties to the south, east, and west to cover the rest of the frontier while the main force continues to the north. Once their scouts and their spies locate your main force and the pilgrim encampment they will know where to attack.”

“But they will keep marching north, won’t they?” Ethis asked. “If they don’t find the army they’ll assume that we just haven’t moved yet and keep coming north.”

Soen nodded. “Yes. And with the speed of their advance through the folds, they could be deployed in Char before we even managed to reach the Shadow Coast. Then we would have the Bay of Thetis on our right with Ephindria and the Shrouded Plain on our left. That is why we have to move the army and the encampment as soon as possible toward Vestasia. We have to beat the Legions to the Shadow Coast. Perhaps then we can come through Vestasia around the western end of Aeria—Queen Murialis permitting. From there we could use the army against the Western Provinces, reversing the Wells there and progressively weakening the Rhonas hold on Aether from the west.”

“That would be a long campaign,” Drakis said. “And once the Legions knew where we had gone they would just shift to the west to intercept us.”

“Yes, which is why you need to call for allies,” Soen stated. “You must send out emissaries—in your name and in the name of the prophecy—to rally them now while you still can claim victory against the Legions.”

“How?” Drakis asked. “There’s no time…”

“You have just enough time,” Soen smiled, his sharp teeth gleaming. “And you have the means that will not only bring your emissaries swiftly to the courts of all the subjugated nations of the north but in a manner that will insure that they will be suitably impressed.”

“What do you mean?” Drakis asked.

“Dragons,” Soen said simply. “Send them on your dragons.”

Ethis stepped from the warehouse door into the evening. He was already late for the council meeting but his thoughts were elsewhere.

Soen might be obligated to the truth and to his race, Drakis clung to his obligation to the pilgrims and army that followed him, but Ethis had his own obligations that he shared with no one.

Soen’s analysis was excellent and his advice good but Ethis had formulated a plan of his own as he gazed at the map—one that could spectacularly serve his own duty to his Queen and crumble the foundations of the Empire in a single stroke.

All he had to do was convince his Queen to permit the impermissible.

And keep Soen from finding out about it.

Drakis stood once more at the edge of the subatria garden. The stars now appeared overhead but it was the faint blue light of the Aether Well that gave the space its dim, ghostly glow.

Drakis tried to hear Mala’s voice, wishing for her council or some guidance but he was answered only by silence. If her spirit had been here it seemed to him now to have left and gone far away.

He was alone.

The entire world had robbed him. The elven Empire had robbed him of his dignity, his family, and his past. The faithful pilgrims had robbed him, too, of his freedom, his private hopes, and his future. The prophecy had even robbed him of his identity and remade him into a legend. Together they all had a hand in robbing him of Mala.

Yet standing here in the broken subatria, Drakis knew there was one thing the great, nebulous They had not taken from him in all their conspiracies of fate.

He owned his own soul.

It raged within him, screaming at the world that had so cruelly abused him. He held fast to his pain and his outrage. It burned with purifying fire and clarifying light.

And he believed that if he must endure it, then everyone else must endure it with him.

“Drakis, do you know who you are?”

The memory drifted up into his conscious mind unbidden from the place deep within him where it had lain dormant, buried beneath the House Devotions that had enslaved him seemingly a lifetime ago.

He looked up at her with large, tear-filled eyes. He was a boy, hurt and fragile. His mother—his true mother—knelt in front of him.

“It does not matter what they tell you, what they force you to believe.” She held him firmly by both shoulders, her eyes locked with his own in earnest instruction. “They can take everything from you but yourself.”

She laid her hand on his heart.

“Do you know who you are, my Drakis dear…here inside where they cannot touch you?”

Drakis caught his breath.

The memory faded behind his thoughts.

He realized that he did not know himself at all.

All his life, others had told him who he was supposed to be, which he suddenly realized was an entirely different thing. During the long nightmare of his Aether-enslaving Devotions to the Empire, it had been his elven masters who had told him and molded him into who they wanted him to be; an Impress Warrior fighting their battles for causes that were not his own. He had no coherent childhood that he could recall—even the memory of his parents and family were a confusion of different people at different times. Then the dwarf had broken the bonds of his Devotions and he knew his past was a fraud, an invention created to keep him docile and compliant to the will of his elven masters. Yet even when he was free, his identity lay with others—with the dwarf filling his mind with words of the ancient prophecy and with Belag, who so desperately wanted to find meaning in his brother’s death that he clung to his faith in Drakis as though he had been personally sent by the gods to save him. Their journey into the ancient lands of humanity he had intended as proof against his identity as the Man of Prophecy but it had ended in tragedy and with him even more firmly hailed as the fulfiller of prophecy than before. Now the Council of the Prophet and their followers all wanted him to be someone he was not.

But, he realized, he himself did not know who he was beyond his desperate desire to be anyone other than the one man everyone else wanted him to be.

“Do you know who you are, my Drakis dear…here inside where they cannot touch you?”

He closed his eyes for a moment and drew in a deep breath, then he turned his back on the subatria and strode out through the broken gates into the plaza beyond.

He turned up the side street before the astonished manticores in the plaza had time to react. Ahead of him, the warriors of his army could see him coming and pressed themselves against both sides of the shattered, narrow street to make way for him. He passed them without a word, his strides finding their own military tempo as he walked briskly between the warriors. Without thought on their part, they fell into step behind him, excited to be following in his wake.

The street opened onto the western end of the former Bazaar. A large congregation of warriors—manticores, chimerians, and humans—stood milling about the wide steps leading up to the closed doors of the temple. They were all listening to the loud proceedings of the War Council within. One glance at their faces confirmed for Drakis that there was doubt and concern among them. At the sight of him, however, the crowd parted, closing ranks behind him as he dashed two steps at a time up the stairs.

He gripped the handles of the double doors. He could hear the dwarf’s voice bellowing over a cascade of other voices in heated argument.