Emperor of Shadows

by Mike Truk

  “You are in pain?” asked Tamara, a sliver of hope entering her voice, as if, perhaps, she could heal Aurora, and in so doing -

  “Yes. But it is a spiritual malady. Imagine the grief you might feel the second after you lose your true love. Now extend that second toward eternity. I have spent days screaming. Tearing at my face, my eyes, cutting my throat over and over and over again.”

  There was no pathos in her voice, but instead a chilling hatred that made me want to step back.

  “I have tried everything I can think of and nothing has destroyed this mortal shell. I am trapped in this world, and with each passing second I loath it all the more. The woman who worshipped the White Sun is long gone. In her place stands one who would gladly destroy the world if it eased her torment.”

  “And does it?” asked Netherys.

  “No,” whispered Aurora. “But it might motivate you to bring me the one person who can. Where is Iris?”

  “It wasn’t her fault,” said Tamara, voice faltering. “She was but trying to heal the fallen. She used your connection to the White Sun to heal our friend Pony and myself…”

  Aurora narrowed her eyes as she stared at Tamara. “You. What power burns within your soul? You didn’t have it the last time we met.”

  Tamara looked down and away.

  Aurora took a step forward. “You stole the blessings of the White Sun from my corpse!?”

  Before anyone could answer, Pony cracked his fists together, and caused them to incandesce with white flame.

  Aurora’s expression paled as her eyes went wide. “A... A war troll, too?”

  Pony canted his head to one side and winked at her.

  “We can find Iris,” I said, raising both hands. “We can fix this. There’s no need for further bloodshed.”

  “Good.” Aurora stepped back and replaced her helm. Her voice grew muffled. “Because if you don’t, come dusk, every citizen of Port Gloom will pay for your crimes.”

  And with that she turned and marched back to her army, her carriage stiff and erect and radiating her fury.

  “That went well,” said Netherys.

  “She has all the right in the world to be upset,” whispered Tamara. “I’ve never felt like more of a fraud than I do now.”

  I took her hand. “Don’t. It doesn’t matter how you came to this gift. The White Sun had to have approved it, right? You couldn’t be an Exemplar without its blessing?”

  Tamara nodded weakly.

  “But damn,” I said, staring at Aurora’s retreating figure. “Talk about the pigeons coming home to roost.”

  “Gives us about six hours,” said Tamara softly. “Think you can do it, Kellik?”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  * * *

  I wanted to go it alone, to walk the streets of Port Gloom till inspiration hit me. To lose myself in the terror and chaos that had replaced the fevered celebrations of the prior nights.

  But the girls wouldn’t let me.

  Netherys walked into a corner home close to the Field Gate, ordered everyone out, and then Cerys and Tamara dragged me inside.

  Pony planted himself in the front door with a long-suffering sigh and almost immediately fell asleep.

  “I’ve got to find her,” I said, shrugging free of their hands, turning to confront them. “I need to get out there. Find a way to connect with her, bring her back.”

  Cerys drew herself up, hands on her hips, chin raised. “If you think we’re going to leave you to face this alone, you’re sorely mistaken.”

  “We need to face this together,” said Tamara, unclasping her white cloak and tossing it aside. “We all know Iris. Fought alongside her, traveled with her, got… creeped out by her. We can pool our insights and figure this out.”

  “I should -”

  “You should listen to the women who love you,” drawled Netherys, pacing back and forth. “Because nobody’s going to like my suggestion that we simply quit Port Gloom. Despite the fact that there’s a vast continent out there. Khansalon is full of delights. Why, we could entertain ourselves ceaselessly as we crossed even as far as Mendev, and - no? See? In which case, we have to find a way to destroy Aurora.”

  Cerys moved to a window, bit her lower lip as she studied the street outside, turned back to me. “Perhaps we can defeat her without Iris. Find a way to assassinate her. She met with us alone. Perhaps we set up a pretext to meet with her again - say we’re going to manifest Iris - and then hit her with everything we’ve got.”

  “No,” said Tamara, tone hollow. “I got a bit of a read on her. I’m clumsy at these things - nothing like how Iris could do. But even so. I sensed… the White Sun’s blessing, sure. But something more. She’s no longer alive. Nor dead. Her aura was pale. Flat. Gray. She spoke the truth. She’s denied the Ashen Garden. That must be what it means to be a hereshen. To be banned from life and death. Trapped in the shadows.”

  “Then why don’t the Paruko come for her?” demanded Cerys.

  Tamara shrugged.

  I licked my lower lip. “I think it’s because she’s not a threat to reality. That’s their whole thing. To lock up those who threaten to destabilize and destroy the world. And for all the lives Aurora is willing to take, she’s not attacking reality itself. Not like Iris was doing - I mean, did - or how Aschengraur might do if he escaped his crypt.”

  “They took your father,” said Cerys.

  “Because Iris tricked them into thinking he was her. The Paruko were fine with his ruling Port Gloom for centuries.”

  “Very well,” said Netherys, hiking herself up to sit on a windowsill, and crossing one long leg over the other. “No Paruko. No fleeing. Perhaps Mavernus can come up with some special Hanged God attack?”

  “What of Mother Magrathaar?” I asked. “Can she step in, take care of things?”

  Netherys’s smile was darkly amused. “I am not in the best standing with my patron. Something to do with my dallying with love and moonlighting as a high elf. But even if I were steeped in blood and darkness, I don’t think she would deprive Aurora of her power. She must be delighted with what the White Lioness is doing with her blessings. While Mother Magrathaar might grant me gifts with which to battle her, but if she cannot be banished to the Ashen Garden, then ultimately it would all be for naught.”

  “Then we should appeal to the Hanged God,” said Cerys. “Find a weapon, perhaps, that can banish her, or…?”

  “I mean, we can look into that,” I said. “Should look into it. But we can’t count on that working. Anybody that can blast Baleric apart is probably going to be able to defend herself from one of our attacks.”

  “I’ll follow up with the sepulchros,” said Cerys. “You never know.”

  “My lord?” Captain Rory appeared in one of the windows. “Excuse me. I’ve a report you should hear.”

  “Use the front -” I looked to where Pony was snoring. “Never mind. Go on.”

  “The city is in an uproar. Rioting across the Market, Dock, and Merchant Districts.”

  I grimaced. “Let them riot. We can’t spare the manpower.”

  “There’s worse. They’re rioting in the Temple District, too. White Sun adherents. I’ve received word that Revelator Mercult has been executed. They’re demanding the gates be opened to the White Lioness, and saying she’s a judgment on the sin of the city.”

  I dragged at my features with both hands, then turned to stare at Tamara. “Great. Fucking great. Thoughts?”

  Tamara had gone pale and sat down on a bench. “Mercult? Dead?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Captain Rory. “The revolt is growing. Local clergy and bishops have defected to their side. For now, they’re concentrated in the Temple District, but I’m afraid they’ll soon march on Field Gate.”

  “At which point they become enemy combatants,” I said. “We’ve several hundred soldiers in the yard inside the gate. Order them to prepare for an assault.”

  “Kellik,” w
hispered Tamara. “We can’t.”

  “Can’t what?” I asked, turning on her. “Defend ourselves from mindless fanatics? They’ve been infected by Aurora’s power. We have to stop them before they infect the whole city. And at the very least stop them from throwing open the gates and surrendering the city to Aurora?”

  “They’re not enemy combatants,” protested Tamara. “They’re Port Gloom citizens. They’re scared, they’re lost, and they’re probably under the influence of outside magic.”

  Cerys arched an eyebrow. “That excuses their killing Mercult?”

  Tamara forced herself to swallow. “If we kill our own, we’ll never be forgiven.”

  “We don’t need forgiveness, dear,” drawled Netherys. “We need to survive.”

  “I won’t let the city fall,” I said. “You heard Aurora. If we fail to produce Iris, she’ll kill everyone. You think I’ll let her inside?”

  Tamara bolted to her feet. “You can’t stop her! If she storms the walls, she’ll take them, either tonight or tomorrow. You know it as well as I do! We can’t withstand forces four times larger than our own!”

  “We’ll bloody well try!” I barked at her. “I’ve done everything - everything - for this city. I’ve bled, lost those I love, given years of my life, sacrificed everything to destroy Aurelius, to tear the Family out by its bloody roots, and if you think I’ll just give up now, surrender the city to that unliving monster -”

  “You’d destroy the city to keep it?” asked Tamara.

  “Me? No!” I pointed through the wall toward the front. “She’s the one who brought ten thousand fanatics. I was trying to rebuild the fucking waterfront and create an independent treasury, to reform taxation, to make everything better -”

  “And look how well that’s gone!” Tamara grabbed at her head, eyes flashing. “By the White Sun, Kellik, you can’t use intentions to justify reality. We’re hated. We’re loathed. The people only tolerate our rule because we’ve had a sword at their throats. And now they want us gone, and your solution is to save the city by killing its people?”

  I drew myself up. “I will not surrender. I will not give up this city. I will do whatever it takes to assure victory. And if religious fanatics decide they want to rebel? Then there’s a consequence to their actions. They think they can murder Mercult and storm the city gates with impunity?” My voice became a rasp. “If so, they are sorely mistaken.”

  Cerys took a half-step forward, drawing both our gazes. “What is your solution, Tamara? If we don’t stop them, they’ll open the gates. Aurora’s forces will pour into the city. Is that what you want?”

  Tamara’s expression crumpled and she sat back down. “I don’t know what I want. I just know we can’t slaughter our own. But who am I to speak? I’m a fraud. I’m no Exemplar of the White Sun. This is Aurora’s power, not my own. I was never chosen for this. I stole it. It was thrust upon me by Iris. And I never felt like such a fake as when Aurora stared at me. Oh god! How have we come to this?”

  I was shaking in fury, but the sight of Tamara burying her face in her hands quelled my anger. I strode stiffly over to her, gathered her to me, and caressed her hair.

  “We’ll figure this out,” I said. “We’ve been in tighter spots. We’ve come through before.”

  “We need Iris,” said Netherys quietly. “With her powers, we could destroy Aurora’s army. With her powers, we could quell any enemy.”

  It was true. An army of ten thousand would be no challenge for Iris. Where Blightwort had animated almost a hundred corpses to foil the assault, Iris could create thousands, and mold them into weapons of horrific destruction.

  “But that’s not why we need her,” said Tamara softly, pulling away from my embrace, face wet with tears. “We need her to account for her creation.”

  Cerys nodded. “We remove Aurora, we end this war.”

  “Then I need to find her,” I said.

  “Sorry to interrupt, my lord,” said Rory. “Your commands?”

  “Tell the men to rebuff the rebels if they storm the gate, but to treat them as rioters, not combatants,” I commanded.

  “And if they begin to overwhelm our position?”

  I stared stonily at the man, and in his plain brown eyes, I saw helpless confusion and anger.

  “Do not lose control of the gate,” I said.

  Rory straightened and gave a sharp salute. “Understood, my lord. Excuse me.” And he was gone.

  “How do we get Iris back?” asked Cerys. “That’s all that matters.”

  “What did she say to you?” asked Netherys. “After you fled the demon fight. What were her exact words?”

  I stalked over to a table, dragged out a chair, and sat. Propping my elbows on my knees, I closed my eyes, and pressed tightly on my temples.

  Focused.

  “She told me to be myself. Whether good or ill. That there was no morality, just integrity.”

  “Sounds like Iris,” said Netherys. “She’d have made a good dark elf. A bad dark elf. You know what I mean.”

  “You said last time that you asked for her to return, and she said no,” prompted Cerys. “How exactly did she explain it?”

  “That she’s dispersed her matrix over hundreds of people at once. And that she can gather her essence into one - like she did that guardsman. But doing so uses up her finite reserves of spirit energy. She didn’t know what would happen when she ran out, but wasn’t eager to find out.” I paused, trying to remember more. “And that she’d only come back when…”

  Netherys leaned forward. “When?”

  The words were on the tip of my tongue. How had she phrased it? “She said she would come back when I owned my future. When I became a whole being, not a half shadow. Only then would she come back to me.”

  “Great,” said Netherys, leaning back. “So we have to fix your first? We’d best tell Aurora we need a week.”

  “But what did she mean?” asked Cerys, crouching down before me. “To become a whole being? You are who you are. Kellik, the Count of Manticora, king troll, former Family aspirant. You want to help people, you care about the Lugin’s of the world, you hate injustice, you’ve given your all to make a difference. What else is there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’d hoped Iris would appear when I decided I did care. That I would fight for justice. But that wasn’t enough, I guess.”

  “Very judgmental of her,” said Netherys.

  “Perhaps we need to see this from her point of view,” said Tamara, wiping at her cheeks with her sleeve. “What would Iris mean, by your becoming a whole person?”

  I sighed deeply and stared at the floorboards, thinking over our conversations, twisted and dark and liberating as they’d been. “She fundamentally didn’t understand morality as imposed by society, or demanded by the gods. She thought the only guiding star was what was true for the individual, and that power was the ability to live according to that truth, no matter who was injured or helped by it.”

  “But you have that power,” said Cerys. “You rule Port Gloom. You make the rules here. You decide what the Star Chamber does. You crushed the Family. You already have that power.”

  “Something must be missing,” said Tamara. “Some facet of fulfillment. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that she came to you when you were in your true king troll form.”

  I shuddered, recalling how my body had changed. How massive I’d grown, my skin black as obsidian, my face demonic.

  “True,” said Cerys, sitting back on her heels. “She came when you fully manifested your power. Maybe that’s what she means? She wants you to truly manifest your abilities as a king troll?”

  “Perhaps she’ll come if you change into your king troll form now?” asked Netherys.

  “But she didn’t, ah, before,” I said. “I mean, the time I did, after that first.”

  “What time?” asked Netherys.

  Tamara blushed furiously.

  “I, ah, might have used that form when I brought Yashara back.
”

  “Oh,” said Netherys. “Oh!” Then her gaze became very speculative. “Oh.”

  “But I don’t know how to do it on purpose,” I protested. “It kind of just happened.”

  “What prompted the change in the first place?” Cerys’s voice had grown excited. “Seeing the ones you loved in danger. Right? When you thought we’d been killed within the caravan.”

  “You saying we should imperil ourselves again?” asked Netherys skeptically.

  “No, just that there’s something there.” Cerys rose to her feet and strode to the window, stared outside, turned back. “Kellik turned into his king troll form when he thought he was losing us.”

  “Not quite,” I said, trying to cast my mind back to that moment, that mind frame. “I thought I was in the process of losing you. Was willing to do whatever it took to save you. Needed to do whatever it took to save you. And with Yashara… I refused to be dominated.”

  Netherys snapped her fingers. “Perhaps that’s it, then. You unlocked your true form when you thought you were about to lose control. Be unable to save our lives, or be fucked in the rear by Yashara. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

  I nodded slowly. “But we’ve been in dire straits before. When I thought I would lose you. It never triggered then.”

  Tamara wiped her sleeve across her eyes tiredly. “But you said your powers changed once your father died. Maybe you couldn’t before, but now that he’s gone…?”

  I sat up, growing more enthused. “All right. So say my true king troll form is the key. The fact that I can’t trigger it when I want is the problem. Reflects… I don’t know, a block on my part. I need to figure out how to change.”

  “Which means you need to really understand what caused that change,” said Cerys. “You need to excavate that truth, embrace it, and then… change into your true form. Maybe once you do, Iris will come back.”

  I leaped to my feet, seized by energy. “All right. Good. So I changed because I feared I was going to lose you. Feared I was going to lose control. And embraced that form because it was my only way to save you. So I just have to realize that again. If Aurora wins, I’ll lose you all. I need to embrace my king troll form to save you.”