Blood of the Emperor (6 page)

“Sorry,” Urulani replied, returning to the present as she spoke. “Tell me again.”

“As I was saying, that led me to believe that with the opening of
the lost Wells of Drakosia, the drain on the Rhonas Wells has put a strain on them. I believed I could duplicate the opening of the Citadel Well with a Rhonas Well. It’s not so much reversing as it is, how would you say, tipping it over and figuratively turning it upside down. The draw from the ancient Wells across the sea destabilizes the Well here in Port Glorious…makes it easier to reverse the flow from gathering to transmission. That’s the essential difference between Rhonas Aether Magic and that of Human Anti-Aether Magic of old: elven Wells collect while human Wells disseminate. Of course, what I call the Anti-Aether magic was simply called Aether magic by the humans long ago, so perhaps it would be best if we actually called human magic Aether magic and elven magic—which was stolen from the humans by the elves—the anti-Aether magic even though they incorrectly call it Aether magic.”

Urulani could feel her headache returning. “I still don’t get it.”

Braun nodded. “Think of human Aether magic as ‘blue Aether magic’ and elven Aether magic as ‘red Aether magic.’ They’re both Aether but blue flows out of the Wells freely while red is drawn in and tightly controlled.”

“Blue magic and red magic?” Urulani rubbed her forehead.

“Yes…or sweet and sour magic if you prefer,” Braun grinned.

“The point is that we were supposed to break the Well,” Jugar shouted, “and well he knows it! We were supposed to deny the enemy its greatest weapon…the magic of Aether…whatever color or flavor he wants to call it!”

“And so I have,” Braun said breathing in deeply. “The Well here in Port Glorious is now flowing outward with the Aether—a fountain of mystical energy which
we
can tap but which is contrary to the understanding of the elves and will not function with any of their devices. We empower ourselves and deny the enemy at the same time. Take this fold platform, for example…”

“I thought there were no folds to Port Glorious,” Urulani interrupted.

“They never were installed, let alone functional,” Braun answered. “But the pride of the Imperial Will demands that there be two fold platforms created in every outpost whether they are utilized or not. Ah, the mind of the Emperor is ever forward thinking even when it is
backward. There is another platform just like it on the other side of the town, is that not true, master dwarf?”

“You know very well that there is!” Jugar snarled.

“They exist here not only because some bureaucrat almost a thousand leagues removed from reality decreed that they must be built here but also because physical connection is at the heart of elven Aether magic. Staves, wands, rings, and platforms are the means by which elves store, focus, and conduct their magic. Without such physical objects they cannot work magic. That’s why Proxis always carry staves and why the Iblisi do the same, though the two groups have radically different abilities. A connection between physical objects like these platforms is required before the Aether can flow through them. The efficiency of this power diminishes over distance but can be replenished again from physical bases like this one or through the interconnection of the Aether Wells.”

“What are you saying?” Urulani urged.

“What if our ‘blue’ Aether magic didn’t require physical connection to the Wells?” Braun asked, a gleam in his eyes. “What if you could access the Aether without having to be physically connected with it in some way? That’s what reversing the flow of these Aether Wells makes possible! We can channel it outside the control of the Empire for our own use…and the more Wells we turn, the more powerful we become and the weaker the Empire becomes. We could command a trail of these reversed Wells in our wake…”

“And leave ourselves vulnerable from the rear,” the dwarf added. “These Wells which he wants to keep intact could just as easily be turned back again. We already have an advantage with these dragon-beasties! We don’t need to have a bunch of amateurs dabbling in magic that they don’t understand.”

“I understand it a good deal better than you,” Braun said with an imperious air. “I’ve already proven that it works. That’s what brought you up short.”

“Short!” Jugar snatched up his ax.

Braun raised his hands in front of him, making a sudden circular motion with each. To Urulani’s astonishment, a fold portal suddenly opened up in the stone beneath the dwarf. With a cry of rage, the dwarf fell through the portal.

The fold collapsed.

Braun lowered his arms and grinned.

Urulani thought she could hear the distant sounds of a dwarf swearing from the other side of the town.

Drakis needs to see this,
she thought biting at her lip.
Where is he?”

Suddenly, looking westward across the tops of the commanders’ tents, she knew.

Haunted

D
RAKIS STEPPED INTO THE GARDEN of the Governor-general’s home and shuddered.

The wall of the surrounding subatria was still largely intact. The avatria that had floated overhead was nowhere to be seen. The floating structure had been hastily blown aside when Jugar dealt with the font. Now, instead of the perpetual shadow of the avatria, an unobstructed view of a brilliant blue sky took its place, with low-lying clouds drifting quickly overhead and a column of smoke rising from the still-smoldering ruins of the city.

Where the avatria had fallen, Drakis had not asked.

The garden itself had escaped with little damage. Paths ran between the carefully cultivated flower beds and trimmed lawns. In an arrangement Drakis had not seen before, there was a reflecting pool surrounding the Aether Well in the center of the garden. The crystal of the Aether Well shone with a bright column of light extending upward along its surfaces, pushing the clouds aside into a ring around its light as it reached into the sky. There was a purple tinge to the edges of the light that reminded Drakis somewhat of lilacs that had grown in another garden…

“Drakis!”

The voice was bright and carefree in his mind.

Another garden…another time…

She smiled at him, the Sinque mark tattoo clearly visible on her clean-shaven head as she approached. She moved with light steps quickly around the Aether Well, touching on the Altar of House Devotions that now lay cracked and broken next to the Aether Well. She wore her slave’s robe that was now unmarred, clean and whole as he remembered it. Her emerald eyes flashed at the sight of him.

“Mala,” Drakis whispered as he smiled.

“So you
did
return to me after all!” His beloved smiled back at him as she had that day so long ago—when they were innocent and without memory of pain. He could hear her voice as though she were there as she turned her face up to look into his eyes again. “I prayed to all the gods each day that they would bring you back to me.”

Drakis closed his eyes against the memory. She was happy and content then. Both of them were without care except for each other, caught in a dream from which he hoped never to awaken. But awaken they did when the dwarf shattered the Aether Well, released them from the enchantment of their elven masters, and made them
remember
the truth of their enslavement and that they were living a false life.

If only he could live that lie again…if he could go back to a time when his life made sense even if it was a dream from which he never awoke.

If only…

He opened his eyes again.

Mala was still dead. She had died because of a different dream…a false dream.

It had been her belief in him that killed her.

Since that day, color and taste had left his experience. Night and day were all the same to him. The celebrations and rejoicing at their return by the rabble Belag had assembled in his name were like the annoying sounds of pieces of tin banging together to his ears. For a time he had endured their council meetings, giving his opinions with diffidence only to watch his idle and disinterested observations become words of law and prophecy by the following day. He was a warrior by training and had marched their army northward around the Mistral Peninsula as a matter of basic tactics. He wanted to insure that the elves of Port Glorious would not threaten the families and support in the rear of their column.

Mostly, however, he had simply not cared what Belag did with the Army of the Prophet. The manticores were flush with their victory over the Legion of the Northern Fist and were itching for another fight. The elf Soen had also been insistent about taking control of an Aether Well and Ethis suggested Port Glorious as the most likely place to take one. It was Ethis who had negotiated with the dragons, bringing them south across the Desolation and ultimately across the Straits of Erebus. It was largely his doing that the dragons had joined them in defeating the Cohort in Port Glorious.

All of this had been accomplished in Drakis’ name.

He didn’t give a damn for any of it. None of it mattered because it did not change the fact that Mala was gone and he did not know how to fill the well of his grief.

Drakis stepped down one of the paths. The blooms on either side were fragrant, their clean, sweet scent taking him back to House Timuran and the garden that was now a ruin but had once been so beautiful. He stepped up to the reflecting pool around the Aether Well

What have I done but destroy anything that I thought was worthwhile?
Drakis mused.

“If you’ve come for a bath, you’re too late,” Mala said, her shoulders just above the surface as she moved her arms back and forth through the water. Drakis could still smell the dense foliage and the dark earth mixed with the damp mists from the waterfall.

Her short red hair was wet and pushed back from her high forehead. Her emerald eyes had a playful look.

“I claimed this pool and it is mine by right. I will not share my private little paradise with anyone else—no matter how badly they need bathing—and you, most certainly, are desperately in need of a bath.”

“It was all I wanted,” Drakis smiled at the memory, pain playing at the corners of his eyes. “A life of my own to share…”

A cloud passed over the subatria, casting a shadow across the garden.

Drakis closed his eyes again but the sound filled his mind. Mala’s voice again, now pleading in agony, not with him but with unseen demons. Her words scarred his soul. “You promised to keep me away
from him most of all! The demons are nothing next to his pain! He loved me! He hurt me! I want him! I hate him!” Her voice dropped to a whimper. “Please take me home! I cannot live with what he feels. I cannot live with what
I
feel. I want to never know that pain again. I want to forget.”

“Drakis?”

He opened his eyes to the sound of another voice. He lacked the will to turn and face the intruder into the garden of his despair. “What is it?”

“You are needed,” she said simply.

Drakis turned and tried to focus his eyes on the figure that had addressed him. Urulani, daughter of the Sondau Clan and former captain of the
Cydron
appeared inside the main gates to the garden, the long fingers of her hands resting impatiently on her hips. Her tall, slender body stood casually, arms akimbo, as she looked back at him from large, brown eyes set above her pronounced cheekbones. Her skin was a deep black—as deep a black as the middle of the night and as smooth and unblemished as pure silk. Her thick, black hair was pulled back from the high forehead of her oval face and gathered into an explosion of curls at the back of her head. Her lips were thick and plump around her generous mouth—drawn slightly up at one corner as though being amused by some secret thought. She still wore the same buckskin breeches as when he had first met her but the vest had been replaced by a leather doublet more practical to her new status as a dragon-rider and now as Air Mistress.

Drakis turned back to gaze into the still surface of the pool at his feet. “Who needs me?”

“Well,
everyone
it would seem,” Urulani replied. Drakis could hear her approaching footsteps in the gravel of the path. “The War Council wants to convene again this afternoon. There’s been another dire missive from Tsojai about the collapse of order in the pilgrim encampment. Jugar and Braun both have complaints for you about each other, and that elf Iblisi Soen keeps asking when you will have some time to hear him…”

Urulani’s voice faded from Drakis’ thoughts as he gazed into the pool. For a moment he saw himself with his head shaved, the Sinque mark clearly visible on his head and his patchwork armor strapped about his body. He saw the Impress Warrior once more who was confident
in his clearly defined orders and responsibility only to his House and his fellow warriors. But that image shifted in the water’s surface and he saw the splay-haired refugee with the rough beard fleeing from his own memories across the Vestasian Savanna.

Then his vision cleared and the reflection sharpened in his tear-blurred eyes.

He did not know the face staring back at him.

His image was clean-shaven once more as it had been as an Impress Warrior of House Timuran but the hair was long and full now, trimmed and combed by a group of manticorian females each morning into a dark mane. He wore his own leather doublet similar to Urulani’s but fitted with clasps at the shoulders and a rough, woven cape of bright crimson.