Victor, Vanquished, Son

CHAPTER FOUR

Irrien walked the fields of the dead, looking around at the slaughter his armies had wrought without any of the satisfaction that normally came from doing it. Around him, the men of the North lay dead or dying, crushed by his armies, slaughtered by his hunters. Irrien should have felt triumph in that moment. He should have felt joy in the scale of it, or power at seeing his enemies slain.

Instead, he felt as though he had been robbed of true victory.

A man in the shining armor of his foes groaned in the mud, trying to cling to life despite the wounds that had been torn in him. Irrien lifted a spear from another nearby corpse and thrust it through him. Even killing a weakling like that did nothing to lift his mood.

The truth was that it had been too easy. There had been too few enemies there to make this a fight worth having. They had raged across the North, cutting through the villages and the small castles, ripping through even Lord West’s former fortress. In each place, they’d found empty dwellings and emptier castles, rooms people had abandoned in time to escape from the horde that had been descending on them.

That wasn’t just frustrating because it meant that he couldn’t have the meaningful victories he’d planned on. It was frustrating because it meant that his enemies were still out there. Irrien knew where, too, because the coward who’d stayed behind in Lord West’s castle had told him: they were on Haylon, reinforcing the island he’d only sent part of his forces to conquer.

That made every moment Irrien spent here feel as though he was chafing at the bit. Yet there were things that needed to be done here. He looked around to watch as his men worked alongside gangs of freshly taken slaves to tear down one of the castles that seemed to spring up here like mushrooms after rain. Irrien wouldn’t leave such things unoccupied behind him, because that would mean giving his foes a place to gather.

More than that, his men seemed satisfied enough with the easy victory. Irrien could see the ones who hadn’t been assigned to work gangs lazing in the sun, gambling with looted coins or tormenting prisoners they’d snatched for their amusement.

The usual hangers-on were there, of course. Someone had set up a slavers’ camp at the edge of the army like its shadow, with its carts and its cages quickly filling up. There was a clear space in the middle where the slavers haggled over the best and the most beautiful, although the truth was that they took what the soldiers were prepared to sell them. The men there were scavengers, not warriors in their own right.

Then there were the death priests. They had set up their altar in the middle of the battlefield, as they so often did. Now, soldiers were bringing them the wounded enemies they found, dragging them over to the stone slab to have their throats cut or their hearts cut out. Their blood ran, and Irrien imagined that the priests’ gods were probably pleased by the whole thing. Certainly, the priests seemed to think so, exhorting the faithful to submit themselves completely to death, as it was the only way to earn its favor.

One man actually seemed to take them seriously. He’d obviously suffered wounds in the battle, ones serious enough that he needed his comrades’ help to get to the slab. Irrien watched as he clambered up on top of it, exposing his chest so that the priests could stab into it with a knife of dark obsidian.

Irrien spat at the weakness of a man who would not fight his way back from his injuries. After all, Irrien was not letting his old wounds slow him, was he? His shoulder hurt with every movement, but he was not offering himself as a sacrifice to keep death at bay for others. In his experience, the only thing that kept death at bay was being the stronger of two warriors. Strength meant that you got to live. Strength meant that you could take what you wanted, be it a man’s lands, or life, or women.

Briefly, Irrien wondered what the priests’ gods of death would think of him. He didn’t worship them except for the effect it had in bringing his men together. He wasn’t even sure if such things existed, except as a way for priests who couldn’t control men with their own strength to have power.

He imagined such things counted against him with any gods there were, yet hadn’t Irrien sent more men, women, and children to their graves than anyone? Hadn’t he given them their sacrifices, promoted their priesthood, and made this into a world they would approve of? Irrien might not have done it for them, but he had done it, nonetheless.

He stood and listened for a moment to the priest speaking.

“Brothers! Sisters! Today is a great victory. Today, we have sent many through the black door to the world beyond. Today, we have sated the gods, so that we are not chosen by them tomorrow. Today’s victory—”

“It was not a victory,” Irrien said, and his voice carried effortlessly over that of the priest. “For there to be a victory, there must be a fight worth having. Is taking empty homes a victory? Is slaughtering fools who stayed behind when others had the sense to run?” Irrien looked around at them. “We have killed today, and that is good, but there is far more to be done. Today, we will finish things here. We will tear down their castles and give their families to the slavers. Tomorrow, though, we will go to the place where there is a victory to be won. To the place all their warriors have gone ahead of us. We will go to Haylon!”

He heard his men cheer at that, their lust for battle reignited by the killing. He turned to the priest there.

“What do you say? Is it the will of the gods?”

The priest didn’t hesitate. He took his knife and sliced open the dead man on the altar, pulling out his entrails to read them.

“It is, Lord Irrien. Their will follows yours in this! Irrien! Ir-ri-en!”

“Ir-ri-en!” the soldiers chanted.

The man knew his place, then. Irrien smiled and set off into the crowd. He wasn’t surprised when a robed figure slipped into the space beside him, matching his step. Irrien drew a dagger, not knowing if he would need it.

“You have been quiet since we last talked, N’cho,” Irrien said. “I do not like to be kept waiting.”

The assassin bowed his head. “I have been researching what you required of me, First Stone, asking my fellow priests, reading forbidden scrolls, torturing those who would not speak.”

Irrien was sure that the leader of the Dozen Deaths had enjoyed himself immensely. Of all of them, N’cho had been the only one to survive attacking him. Irrien was starting to wonder if that had been the right choice to make.

“You heard what I told the men,” Irrien said. “We are going to Haylon. That means going up against the child of the Ancient Ones. Do you have a solution for me, or should I drag you back to be the next sacrifice?”

He saw the other man shake his head. “Alas, the gods are not so eager to meet me, First Stone.”

Irrien narrowed his eyes. “Meaning?”

N’cho stepped back. “I believe that I have found what you require.”

Irrien gestured for the other man to go with him, leading the way back to his tent. At a look from him, the guards and the slaves there left in a hurry, leaving the two of them alone.

“What have you found?” Irrien asked.

“There were… creatures employed in the war against the Ancient Ones,” N’cho said.

“Such things would be long dead,” Irrien pointed out.

N’cho shook his head. “They can still be summoned, and I believe I have found a spot to summon one. It will take many deaths, though.”

Irrien laughed at that. It was a small price to pay for Ceres’s life.

“Death,” he said, “is always the easiest thing to arrange.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Stephania watched Captain Kang sleep with a look of disgust that seeped deep down into her soul. The bulky form of the captain shifted as he snored, and Stephania had to shift back as he reached for her in his sleep. He’d done more than enough of that while waking.

Stephania had never had a problem with taking lovers to bend them to her will. It was what she was planning to do with the Second Stone, after all. Yet Kang had been far from a gentle man, and he’d seemed to take delight in finding new ways to humiliate Stephania on the way over. He’d treated her like the slave she’d briefly been with Irrien, and Stephania had sworn to herself that she would never be that again.

Then she’d heard the whispers among the crew: that perhaps she wouldn’t be arriving safe after all. That maybe the captain would take all she’d given and sell her into slavery anyway at the end of it. That at the very least, he would share the bounty by giving her to them.

Stephania wouldn’t allow that. She would rather die than that, but it was much easier to kill instead.

She slipped from the bed silently, looking out of one of the small windows of the captain’s cabin. Port Leeward lay just a little way away, dust falling over it from the cliffs above even in the half-light of dawn. It was an ugly city, worn and cramped, and even from here Stephania could tell that it would be a place of violence. Kang had said that he didn’t dare to go in at night.

Stephania had guessed that had just been an excuse to use her one more time, but maybe it was more than that. The slave markets wouldn’t be open in the dark, after all.

She made a decision and dressed quietly, wrapping herself up in her cloak and reaching into its folds. She drew out a bottle and some thread, moving with the care of someone who knew exactly what she was holding. If she made a mistake now, she was dead, either from the poison, or when Kang woke.

Stephania positioned herself over the bed, lining the thread up with Kang’s mouth as best she could. He shifted and turned in his sleep, and Stephania went with him, being careful not to touch him. If he woke now, she was well within striking distance.

She dripped the poison along the thread, keeping her concentration as Kang murmured something in his sleep. One drop trickled down toward his lips, then a second. Stephania prepared herself for the moment when he would gasp and die, the poison claiming him.

Instead, his eyes snapped open, staring up at Stephania for a moment in incomprehension, then anger.

“Whore! Slave! You’ll die for this.”

In an instant, he was up on top of Stephania, pressing her down against the bed. He struck her once, and then she felt the crushing pressure of his hands fastening on her throat. Stephania gasped as she felt her breath cut off, thrashing around as she tried to get him off her.

For his part, Kang bore down with all his great bulk, pinning Stephania beneath him. She fought and he just laughed, continuing to strangle her. He was still laughing when Stephania drew a knife from inside her cloak and stabbed him.

He gasped with the first thrust, but Stephania didn’t feel the pressure on her throat ease. Blackness started to come in at the edges of her vision, but she kept stabbing, thrusting mechanically on instinct, doing it blindly because now she couldn’t see anything beyond a faint haze.

The grip around her throat loosened, and Stephania felt Kang’s bulk collapse on her.

It took far too long to fight her way out from beneath him, gasping for breath and trying to push her way back to consciousness. She all but fell from the bed, then stood, looking down at the ruin of Kang’s body in disgust.

She had to be practical. She’d done what she intended, however difficult it had proved to be. Now for the rest.

She quickly rearranged the sheets to make it look more like he was sleeping at first glance. She went through the cabin quickly, finding the small chest where Kang kept gold. Stephania slipped out onto the deck, her hood up as she made her way to the ship’s small landing boat at the stern.

Stephania stepped in, starting to work the pulleys to lower it. They creaked like a rusted gate, and from somewhere above her, she heard the shouts of sailors wanting to know what the noise was. Stephania didn’t hesitate. She drew a knife and started to saw at the rope holding the boat. It gave way and she plummeted the rest of the short distance to the waves.

Grabbing the oars, she started to row, heading for the harbor while behind her, the sailors realized that they had no way to follow her. Stephania rowed until she came up against the docks, then clambered up, not even bothering to tie the boat off. She wouldn’t be going back that way.

Felldust’s capital city was everything it had promised to be from the water. Dust fell on it in waves, while around her, figures moved through it with ominous intent. One closed on her, and Stephania flashed a knife until he backed off.

She went deeper into the city. Stephania knew that Lucious had come here, and she wondered how he’d felt while he was doing it. Probably helpless, because Lucious didn’t know how to relate to people. He thought in terms of storming up to people and demanding, of threats and intimidation. He’d been a fool.

Stephania wasn’t a fool. She looked around until she found the people who would have real information: the beggars and the whores. She went to them with her stolen gold and she asked the same question, again and again.

“Tell me about Ulren.”

She asked it in alleys and she asked it in gambling houses where the stakes seemed to be blood as often as coin. She asked it in shops that sold layers of wraps against the dust and she asked it in the places where thieves gathered in the dark.

She picked an inn and settled herself there, sending word out into the city that there was gold for those who would talk to her. They came, telling her snippets of history and rumor, gossip and secrets in a mixture Stephania was more than used to sorting through.

She wasn’t surprised when they came for her, two men and a woman, all in the wrappings the city used to keep off the dust, all wearing the emblem of the former Second Stone. They had the hard look of people used to violence, but that could have applied to almost anyone in Felldust.

“You’ve been asking a lot of questions,” the woman said, leaning over the table. Close enough that Stephania could have put a knife in her easily. Close enough that they could have been confidantes sharing gossip at some courtly dance.

Stephania smiled. “I have.”

“Did you think that those questions wouldn’t attract attention? That the First Stone doesn’t have listeners in the shadows?”

Stephania laughed then. Did they think that she hadn’t considered the possibility of spies? She’d done more than that; she’d relied on it. She’d fished for answers in the city, but the truth of it was that she’d been fishing for attention as much as anything else. Any fool could walk up to a gate and be denied entry. A clever woman made it so that those within brought her inside.

After all, Stephania thought with more amusement, a woman should never be the one doing all the chasing in a romance.

“What’s so funny?” the woman demanded. “Are you mad, or just stupid? Who are you, anyway?”

Stephania pulled back her hood so that the other woman could see her features.

“I am Stephania,” she said. “Former bride of the heir to the Empire, former ruler of the Empire. I have survived the fall of Delos and Irrien’s best efforts to kill me. I think that your lord will want to talk to me, don’t you?”

She stood as the others looked at one another, obviously trying to decide what to do in the face of this. Finally, the woman made a decision.

“We bring her.”

They moved in on either side of Stephania, but she made a point of moving with them, so that it looked more like a noble escort than her being taken prisoner. She even reached out to rest her hand lightly on the woman’s arm, the way she might have with a companion walking around a garden.

They led the way across the city, and since it was one of the rare gaps in the dust storms off the cliffs, Stephania didn’t bother with the hood of her cloak. She let people see her, knowing that the rumors of who she was and where she was going would start.

Of course, in spite of what she made it look like, this was still a long way from a pleasant stroll. These were still killers beside her, who wouldn’t hesitate to murder her if Stephania gave them a reason. As they came toward a large compound in the heart of the city, Stephania could feel the fear knotting in her stomach, pushed down only by her determination to do all the things she had come to Felldust for. She would have revenge on Irrien. She would get her son back from the sorcerer.

They marched her through the compound, past the working slaves and the training warriors, past statues depicting Ulren in his youth, standing over the bodies of slain enemies. Stephania had no doubt that this was a dangerous man. To be second only to Irrien meant that he had fought his way to the top of one of the most dangerous places there was.

To lose here was to die, or worse than die, but Stephania didn’t intend to lose. She’d learned the lessons of the invasion, and even of her failure to control Irrien. This time, she had something to offer. Ulren wanted the same things that she did: power, and the death of the former First Stone.

Stephania had heard of people basing marriages on worse things.

CHAPTER SIX

Ceres stepped from the small boat onto the bank, in awe of the fact that a place like this could exist somewhere underground. She knew that the powers of the Ancient Ones were involved, but she couldn’t see why they would do this. Why make a garden in the middle of a nightmare?

Of course, from the little she’d seen of the Ancient Ones, the fact that there was a nightmare might be a sufficient reason for the garden.

Then there was the dome, which seemed to be composed of pure golden light. Ceres walked closer to it. If there was an answer to be found here, she was sure that it was somewhere inside that dome.

There was a faint haze to the light, and inside, Ceres thought she could see a pair of figures. She just hoped they weren’t more of the half-dead sorcerers. Ceres wasn’t sure she had the strength to fight any more of them.

She pressed into the light, and Ceres couldn’t help bracing herself for some kind of shock or force designed to fling her back. Instead, there was just a moment of pressure, and then she was through it, inside the dome and looking around.

Here, it looked like the interior of some opulent room, with rugs and divans, statues and ornaments that seemed to hang from the interior of the dome. There were other things too: glassware and books that pointed to a sorcerer’s art.

Two figures stood at the heart of it. The man had the same look of grace and peace that Ceres had seen in her mother, and he wore the pale robes that she had seen in the memories of the Ancient Ones. The woman wore the darker robes of a sorcerer, but unlike the ones above, she still seemed young, not desiccated by time.

Looking at them, Ceres realized that they also had the faintly translucent look she’d seen in other parts of the complex, in the memories there.