by C. T. Rwizi
“His power has grown since we were last here.”
“He must have taken another important town,” she posits.
River briefly glances at her before looking back up at the Seal with a sneer on his face. “I doubt he lifted a finger. We’re the ones who do all the work while he sits comfortably in there. Must be real nice for him.”
“Our lord rules over more territory than many kings of the Redlands,” the Maidservant says and then looks River in the eye. “Do not make the mistake of underestimating how powerful that makes him.” Assume you are being watched.
From the way his sneer loses its edge, he must note the true warning in her words. He clears his throat and motions for her to lead the way. “We should go in.”
She looks at the wooden gates, feeling another discomfiting tremor. “Yes. I suppose we should.”
Designed along southern Umadi traditions, the Dark Sun’s umusha is a stockaded village of rounded huts built entirely of straw, with arched portals so low people have to bend down to go through them. Ribbons of smoke spiral upward all across the umusha from outdoor cooking fires.
As the Dark Sun’s place of birth, the village was where he first laid his arcane roots, becoming the seat of his power—his umusha—upon his ascension to the rank of warlord. No other mystic draws strength from the land beneath it.
River and the Maidservant quietly make their way through dusty compounds toward the throne hall. This isn’t any ordinary village; anywhere else the residents would flee at the mere sight of them, but the people here—though they do give them a wide berth—are far more curious than afraid.
Children in hide loincloths follow them from a short distance away. Men and women come out of their huts to watch and gossip.
Like they believe themselves safe, like they know neither disciple would dare risk their lord’s ire by needlessly harming the residents of his umusha beneath the light of his Seal.
She isn’t proud of it, but the Maidservant finds their lack of fear rather vexing.
An old, spiteful voice rises at the back of her mind with an accusation: You think yourself above such petty desires, but you are not. You are the very thing you hate. You will lose yourself to it.
She clears her thoughts by focusing on the pain of her tattoos and thinks of nothing else until they arrive at the steps to the throne hall, a thatched structure whose convex roof curves into the ground on either of its longest sides. A pair of spearmen in darkly colored kikois stands guard by the hall’s entrance; they open the large wooden doors as soon as they spot the Maidservant approaching with River.
Past the threshold, River frowns. “I sense we’re the last of the summoned to arrive,” he says. “The big man isn’t here, though, so at least we’re not late.”
If River weren’t such an idiot, he’d know that his Axiom, inelegant though it is, has just enough affinity with the temporal aspect of the Void to give him a mild approximation of clairvoyance. But like almost every male mystic of Umadi stock, River used a cheap trick to build his Axiom. He wouldn’t understand its intricacies if they were laid out before him in clear ciphers.
Just as he predicted, the Dark Sun’s four other lieutenants have already arrived and are standing before the high wooden throne at the front of the smoky, torchlit hall, waiting for their warlord.
The Dark Sun holds sway over more than a hundred mystics scattered across his territory, men and women who draw from the land by his grace, but these four mystics, six including Black River and the Maidservant, are his lieutenants, his most trusted disciples, who command other mystics and their militias on his behalf. Each has roots spread across large tracts of his land—rewards for acts of outstanding loyalty.
The first of the four to notice the Maidservant approaching with River is the only other woman in the group, a crone in a gray caftan and a lofty headdress, leaning on a curved walking stick of knotted witchwood. Her face is painted ash white, crinkling as she gives the Maidservant a ghoulish smile. “Ah. What is that smell you two bring? It tickles my nose.”
“The smell of your own breath,” River says with a smirk.
“No, I think not. I think ’tis the smell of death.” She leans closer as the Maidservant and River join the group, watching them with manic eyes. “Much blood has been shed by your hands very recently, has it not? Yes, I can almost taste it.”
River folds his arms across his broad chest, his smirk turning to a scowl. “We were dealing with a free agent.”
“Oh, but I do not criticize you,” the old woman says. “Shedding blood is the right of any disciple. I only wish to know if you shed it well.”
At this River seems to relax. “Nice to see you, too, you old bat.”
She was named Seafarer after sailing the waters of the Dapiaro for many years on her own. The Maidservant doesn’t think the woman is quite sane—whatever counts as sane for a warlord’s disciple, in any case.
The other three lieutenants watch the exchange with quiet interest.
“Gentlemen,” the Maidservant says to them in greeting. “Seafarer. It’s been a while.”
They all nod back, and the one known as Sand Devil gives a sly, black-toothed grin. “Indeed it has. I’m surprised you even found the time to show up. What with how busy you’ve been lately.”
Sand Devil is a balding man two heads shorter than the other male disciples in the room, though what he lacks in height he more than makes up for in his capacity to annoy. Hailing from the same region as River, he wears only a nut-brown kikoi and holds an enchanted spear of tronic bone and witchwood in one hand.
He tilts his head now and squints at the Maidservant. “But I wonder: Is it still you in there? You seem . . . less of yourself somehow.”
Noting the silent chuckles from the other two men next to him, she bites off an emotional reaction. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m just saying. Playing with that kind of magic has a price, doesn’t it?” Sand Devil rakes her naked body with his eyes, and his grin widens. “Sooner or later the spirits will come calling.”
“Watch it,” River says, stepping forward dangerously. The Maidservant stops him with a gesture.
“I appreciate your concern, Sand Devil, but I feel just fine.”
“We know what you did in the Plains,” says Hunter, a proud man whose thick gray beard is an art form unto itself. An intricate network of scarification and red tattoos shows beneath his sleeveless crimson robe. He wears a wooden helmet crowned with the prominent sicklelike horns of an abada and holds a knotted staff with the tail of a tronic wildebok affixed to one end.
But it’s his eyes that are most striking, a reptilian medley of bright yellows, greens, and reds.
“Can you tell us what in the Blood Woman’s name you were thinking, provoking the ire of the Yerezi queen?” he says.
“Leave her alone.” Seafarer wags a moody finger. “What she gets up to is no one’s business but hers and the Dark Sun’s.”
Hunter glares at her. “Not if it will drag us all into a war we can’t afford to fight.”
“What’s the matter?” River says with an acid sneer. “Is the great Hunter afraid of war? Are you the coward I’ve always known you to be after all?”
Fury sparks in Hunter’s brilliant eyes, but before he can close the distance and attack, Northstar, the stolid, ax-wielding brute of a man next to him—wearing a grass skirt and armor pieces of tronic bone—puts a meaty hand on his shoulder and squeezes. “Behave. Our lord is near.”
Hunter shrugs off Northstar’s hand and glares at River. The Maidservant suffers a wave of hatred for having to tolerate any of them.
“I’d forgotten how much I love these meetings,” Sand Devil says with evident glee. “Like a big, happy, dysfunctional family reunion.”
“My trusted lieutenants. Welcome.” With the sound of that resonant voice comes a cold shadow that falls upon the throne hall, signifying the arrival of the man himself, the one to whom they all owe fealty.
Th
e shadow is quite literal, as the Dark Sun uses sorcery to bend light around himself so that his face is always veiled in darkness. All anyone ever sees of his features are a square-jawed outline and the unnatural red gleam of his tronic left eye, which is said to have come from a dingonek.
A patterned robe of crimson and gold hangs on his lean frame in loose folds. He is easily the tallest person the Maidservant has ever seen, a giant even next to Northstar. As he saunters barefoot from a side door to his throne, hands clasped behind him, Hunter bows, and the others follow his example. “Great Muchinda.”
“We are honored to be in your presence, Muchinda,” Sand Devil says.
The warlord’s tronic eye seems to flicker in what the Maidservant would guess is amusement. “Yes, I’m sure you are,” he says, and then he continues to his throne.
The Maidservant shudders with rage she can’t express. Her hatred of this man burns with the fires of a thousand suns, and yet it is imprisoned in her body, locked behind a curse that warps her will and binds it to his. She would sooner slit her own throat than see him come to harm.
But soon I will be free, she tells herself, and then I will laugh over your corpse.
The Dark Sun relaxes into his throne and brings his fingers together, his tronic eye glaring in the shadows that enshroud his face. When he speaks, his sonorous voice fills the hall like something that belongs in a deep subterranean cavern.
“The world,” he says, “the natural order of things, stands on a precipice of calamity, and a guiding hand moving in the shadows keeps pushing us closer to the edge. Why? I cannot say. Its intentions continue to elude me, but its workings are impossible to miss.”
The glare of his eye winks out, and he falls into a spell of introspective silence, as though he has forgotten he has an audience. The Maidservant briefly scans the other lieutenants and sees the same worry she feels on their faces. The Dark Sun is at his most ruthless when he’s in a thoughtful mood.
Abruptly the red eye pierces the veil of shadows, and the warlord returns to his speech. “By now I’m certain you’ve all heard of the massacre that recently struck King Mweneugo Saire from the face of the earth. He and his entire family were slaughtered. By his own men, if the rumors are to be believed.” His head lists to one side, and his red eye locks onto one of his lieutenants. “I see the news pleases you, Sand Devil. Tell me why.”
Sand Devil shows his blackened teeth, not bothering to hide his glee. “I say good riddance, Muchinda. Mweneugo was a menace to our people. His legions pressed well south of the Yontai, usurping land that belongs to the Umadi. May he forever rot in the underworld.”
“Good riddance indeed,” Seafarer crows.
Next to her, Hunter rolls his reptilian eyes. “Why do you care about land that isn’t ours? He took it from our northern enemies, and it only made them weaker.”
Sand Devil frowns. “I care because less land for them means less land for us when we begin our northward expansion. With Mweneugo’s removal, we’ll be in prime position to take our tribelands back from the Yontai.”
Huffing a mirthless laugh, Hunter says, “Your shortsightedness can be astounding at times.”
The Dark Sun raises a hand to intervene. “King Mweneugo was a menace to the northern warlords, true, but he was also conservative in his ways. He saw no need to expand his lands beyond the establishment of a buffer zone, even though he certainly had the means to do so. What he lacked was the will, and that made him tolerable at the least, perhaps even preferable to an alternative.”
The Dark Sun drops his hand and settles it onto his throne’s armrest. “But the so-called high mystics are now set to replace him with a new king, one who, according to the whispers, harbors great ambitions of empire. His wish is to bring all the Redlands under his dominion within his lifetime. Do you know what that means, Northstar?”
The big warrior mystic grunts. “It means he poses a direct threat to us, Muchinda.”
“A grave threat,” the warlord agrees. “Umadiland might belong to the Umadi, but we are not one people. We are a fluid collection of fiefdoms divided against ourselves. We stand no chance faced with the organized legions of the Yontai, especially not if the high mystics and their covens stand with them. Which leaves us with two choices.” The warlord ticks off one finger. “Sit and wait for the new king to gather his legions and pick us off one by one.” He ticks off another. “Or change the way we do things so that he finds that we are ready for him.”
“We must prepare ourselves, Muchinda,” Seafarer says, the heavy jowls on her face shaking in her vehemence. “I will die before I bow to foreign masters.”
“My sentiments exactly,” the Dark Sun says. “But how would we do this?” The warlord’s red gaze lands somewhere next to the Maidservant. “Black River?”
River almost scratches his head before he catches himself and lets his hand fall. He grimaces. “Er . . . perhaps we should . . . send assassins to deal with this new king, Muchinda.”
The Maidservant almost shakes her head. Idiot.
“Absurd,” Hunter scoffs. “Even if the assassins got to him, which is unlikely, the high mystics would trace them back to us, and then we’d have every legion and Jasiri guardian riding down the Artery—exactly what we’re trying to avoid.” He addresses the warlord. “Muchinda, I propose that we begin building alliances with the other fiefdoms. We must present a united front, or the legions will find us easy prey.”
Sand Devil snorts. “A sound plan in theory, but alliances would never work. Warlords have warred over Umadiland for centuries. Good luck undoing that kind of ingrained thinking overnight.”
Northstar gives a nod of his head. “War is indeed the Umadi way. It is written in our blood, the essence of our ancestral gift. Any alliance would break almost as soon as it was formed.”
“I am inclined to agree,” the Dark Sun says, and then he finally looks at the Maidservant. “What about you, my dear Maidservant? How would you solve this problem?”
She wants to roar and attack, but the curse holds fast, and the pain searing her skin is what keeps her from ripping her hair out in frustration. “Great Muchinda, I believe there is only one solution,” she says. “If you cannot ally yourself with your peers, then you must conquer them. Bring all of Umadiland under your Seal, and you will be powerful enough to repel any KiYonte invasion.”
A chilly silence engulfs the hall as everyone takes a second to envision what such a thing would look like. How powerful would a warlord be if his shards drank from all corners of Umadiland? Would he even be human?
Sand Devil breaks the silence, releasing a heavy breath as he shakes his head. “Impossible. That’s why no one’s done it before.”
“But if there’s someone who can,” the Maidservant says, “it is you, Muchinda.”
The worst thing is that she actually believes these words, because unlike most warlords, the Dark Sun is no simpleminded brute. He shows order and restraint in the way he deals death. He has a vision, plans that go beyond the mere holding of territory.
While most other warlords punish their disciples for breathing without their permission, the Dark Sun built a hierarchy that rewards disciples who show ambition and initiative, giving them a fair degree of autonomy to expand his territory on his behalf. Other warlords will attack and invade a weak enemy the first chance they get, but the Dark Sun will wait until he knows he can hold a territory before he moves to conquer. He expects the same of his disciples.
She despises him, but even she must acknowledge that he is a worthy foe.
“I want you all to think heavily on this matter,” the Dark Sun says at last. “We will convene in a week to discuss it at greater length. Come with ideas. We will avert this disaster before it comes, by all means necessary, even if it means taking all of Umadiland for ourselves.”
“We are your humble servants, Muchinda,” Sand Devil says with a bow, but he is wasting his breath. Flowery expressions of praise and adulation can never win the warlord over. That does
n’t stop Sand Devil from trying, though, much to his constant disappointment.
“I have one other matter I wished to discuss with you,” the warlord says. “Before you arrived, Hunter informed me of something interesting. Apparently a young mystic on his way to Yonte Saire saved a thief from execution in Seresa and escaped before either of them could be apprehended.”
“He did not escape, Muchinda,” Hunter says with an indignant timbre in his voice. “I let him go after exacting a heavy price for the trouble he caused. I did not see the need to take things further.”
“Either way, the result is functionally the same,” the Dark Sun says. “In any case, I am not interested in whatever laws he supposedly broke. What interests me is that this mystic is reportedly Yerezi, which is curious, considering the Yerezi do not allow their men to wield sorcery. Not as far as I know.” He lets this marinate. “It raises questions, does it not? Why now? And is it a coincidence that he is journeying thousands of miles to Yonte Saire so soon after Mweneugo’s death? I’d find that hard to believe.”
Hunter clears his throat. “Muchinda, they did just suffer an unprecedented and unprovoked attack on one of their kraals.” He glances at the Maidservant. “From one of our own, for that matter. This mystic might be an emissary under the guise of a Bloodway pilgrim, sent to broker an alliance with the new king.” Belatedly, Hunter adds, “An alliance against us, that is.”
The Dark Sun appears to consider this. “I sense we’re missing a vital piece of the puzzle,” he says at length. “Whatever the case, such an alliance must never come to pass. The Yerezi tribe may be small, but their sorcerers are very cunning and their cavalry exceedingly effective. If they allied with an expansionist KiYonte king, we would face pressure on two fronts. Divided as we are, this would be catastrophic. We cannot allow it.”
He falls into another thoughtful episode while his lieutenants wait in silence. The Maidservant feels River watching her, but she doesn’t look to him.
“Yes, I have many questions for this Yerezi mystic,” the warlord says, returning to the present as if he never left. “Send whoever you can spare after him, or go after him yourselves if you can. I want him brought to me alive if possible, and if not, my necromancer will extract whatever information she can from his corpse. You are dismissed. Except for you, Maidservant. And you as well, Black River. Stay. I wish to have a word with you.”