Seven Deaths of an Empire

by Matthews, G R

  “We have a great deal of experience of extracting confessions from those who would rather hide their sins from the light of the Flame,” Godewyn answered, beckoning the inquisitor forward into the room.

  She was smaller than the Princess, but it was not her height which drew Bordan’s attention. There was a livid scar covering the right side of her face. It looked as though the skin had melted into ripples which had slowly drooped down her face, pulling the skin of her forehead down and obscuring her eye with a fold of reddened flesh. Bordan shivered once more.

  “Sadly, Your Highness,” Godewyn continued, “her work and that of the Church is sacrosanct. Only I will remain in the room while she puts the assassin to the question.”

  “Unacceptable,” Aelia snapped. “I am the heir to the Empire and it was my brother they killed, and me they tried to kill. I will be here when he names the bastard behind it all.”

  “Your Highness,” Bordan spoke up, “forgive me, but perhaps it is better to let the Church keep its secrets and for us to learn those the assassin keeps hidden from my own Carnificina.”

  “Bordan,” the Princess accused, “you side with the High Priest over the heir?”

  “Your Highness, I side with a tradition which has kept the Empire safe for centuries,” Bordan explained, choosing his words with care. “The High Priest is a man I have placed my trust in for more years than I care to remember. He would not demand this of us were it not required.”

  Aelia looked between the assassin whose head was sagging on his chest as he heaved in great gasps of hot air and the newcomer whose expression did not change. For a moment, Bordan wondered if the inquisitor’s expression was fixed by the burn mark which disfigured her when she blinked both eyes and spoke.

  “Your Highness,” her voice was smooth, rich, deep and alluring, at odds with her appearance, “I can guarantee the assassin will tell me all he knows. He will suffer in doing so, more than you can imagine.”

  Bordan spotted the moment the woman’s words convinced the heir and shivered once more. The bronze plates of the Princess’s armour had turned as red as the blood which dribbled from the assassin’s many wounds.

  “Come, Bordan,” Aelia said, half a smile playing on her lips, “we will wait outside. I’ll have chilled wine brought down. You look positively exhausted.”

  XXXIV

  The Magician

  Seven years ago:

  The wooden pew made his bum numb and the back dug into his spine. He squirmed, trying to find some comfort.

  “Sit still,” the old man said in a harsh whisper.

  “I’m not comfortable,” he complained.

  “You’re not supposed to be comfortable, you are supposed to listen to the priest’s words.”

  He settled and strained his ears to pick out the words of the tall man, dressed in white, who stood near the altar at the front of the church.

  He slept fitfully. The cloud of smoke which rose from the pyres in the clearing joined with the low clouds and blocked the moon from view. Axes and saws wielded by soldiers had been busy all afternoon cutting down trees for the monstrous number of pyres, and the clearing had grown in size.

  “The trees will grow back,” Emlyn had said. “The ash of your soldiers will provide new nutrients to the soil.”

  “That’s a callous way to look at it,” Kyron had mumbled, his thoughts dwelling upon his master. He turned over the key and chain he had taken from Padarn’s body, the fire giving the iron key a subtle orange tint. Motes of magic, an enchantment, swirled slowly in the metal of chain and key, a last remnant of Padarn’s power.

  “You think so?” She turned her head to look at him. “I find it quite reassuring. Even from death there can come life. There is a cycle to things. Perhaps, in your cities, you have forgotten this?”

  “I know the science behind it,” Kyron snapped back, lifting the chain over his neck and tucking the key inside his tunic.

  “Science is cold,” she replied without anger. “This is a truth. We bury our dead so that their souls and body may become part of the forest, part of our future. You burn yours, yet here the outcome will be the same.”

  “Their souls will not lie in your forest, they will join with the Holy Flame,” Kyron answered, though his heart was not in the argument.

  “Their ash won’t, and that’s enough,” Emlyn said with a smile that sent a rush of blood through Kyron’s heart and made his fists clench in sudden fury.

  Ahead, in the light of the pyres, the Curate climbed the platform built by the soldiers to begin her speech, benediction, and prayers. All around, Astentius included, bowed their heads and made the sign of the Flame.

  “Come,” Emlyn said. “Let’s go see to your master.”

  With a last look at the conflagration, smoke, and curate with her arms raised to the sky, Kyron turned his back and slunk back into the shadows. The soldiers, at Borus’s direction, had made a pyre just off the track at the back of the column. Livillia had stamped her feet and called down all manner ills upon the Spear’s head if Padarn had been allowed to burn with the regular soldiers. Infection, curse, and unclean were some of the more moderate words she chose to employ.

  It was a low tower of wood. Freshly cut and unseasoned, Kyron knew it would take a strong fire to get it burning and the sap would spit and sizzle. The gesture, by Borus, had been a good one, a gentle one, and maintaining the fiction cost Kyron a sliver of guilt.

  “Normally,” he said into the dark, “there would be others to help. A magician’s passing is mourned by the Gymnasium and we gather to honour their deeds, to recite their teachings, in the courtyard.”

  “We can do that,” Emlyn said, “the two of us, here and now. Borus gave me a flask of oil to get the pyre started.”

  “In a moment,” Kyron said, taking a deep breath. “I need to tell you something and ask a favour.”

  “A favour? Of the tribes?” She sounded shocked, but he recognised the false drama she coated her words with. “What do you need? I’ve no love of the Empire, nor your priests, but Padarn treated me well, and it wasn’t the first time he had traversed the forests.”

  “We…” he began and stopped to re-evaluate his words. “That is, magicians do not cremate their dead.”

  “You would have had him on a pyre with the soldiers,” she pointed out.

  “I was angry. Upset and angry,” he admitted. “However, given the choice, magicians are not cremated, they are buried.”

  “For the same reason we bury our dead,” Emlyn said. “To rejoin with the forest, with the land of our ancestors and be part of it forever.”

  “Something like that,” Kyron said, caution entering his thoughts. Don’t tell her too much, one voice whispered in his ear. She already knows more than you know, another voice whispered in the other ear. Padarn had trusted her, and found her intriguing, though the conversation they were going to have had never happened.

  “You know I prefer burial, and I am sure the forest will accept your master into the forever,” Emlyn said, her voice soft and measured. “I will help you dig a grave.”

  “It isn’t that.” Kyron’s voices argued once more, but he silenced them with a shake of his head, decision made. “Magic comes from the little particles of life, the bits that make up our bodies, the air, the trees. If you burn it, you destroy it. Though, some believe they eventually return to us over thousands of years.” He paused, shaking off the desire to avoid the conversation by lecturing and explaining. “With burial, the body is decomposed naturally and all the motes, the particles, return more quickly to the world. It propagates the magic, sustains its presence in the world.”

  “Cremation destroys your magic?”

  “Something like that, yes,” he said. “I can dig the grave quickly enough, I spent some time creating a spell this afternoon. But I need help laying him in it and covering it.”

  “You tell me what you need, and I will do it, Kyron,” she said, and he wondered if that was the first time she had used his na
me. “We bury our dead near a favourite tree, or in a sacred grove.”

  “Padarn wouldn’t mind where he was buried,” Kyron said, thinking back over his years with his master. The first meeting after the testing, leaving the only home he had known, and putting his trust in a man he had barely met. “I spent years with him in the city, learning and practising. I never realised, I never stopped to think what he had given up to take me on as an apprentice.”

  “It is a big commitment, to teach another.”

  “In the Gymnasium there are classes taught to children who would be magicians. There are rooms to board in, to stay in, and timetables of lessons. You can see a different teacher every day, or even one before lunch and a different one after,” Kyron said, his gaze fixed on the body of his master. “He never subscribed to that process. Stifled learning and brought everyone to the same level whether they were gifted or not is what he used to say. Experience, practice and creativity. Read all you can. Learn what you can from others but be prepared to try something. If it works, practise and hone it. Advance your skills that way, he said, you can be greater than any magician who has attended a class.”

  “He sounds wise,” Emlyn said. “Our children learn by experience and from everyone as they grow. Each adult has skills different from the other. We encourage our children to take risks, but we watch them all the time, keep them safe.”

  Kyron nodded. “It wasn’t just magic he taught me.”

  “What else? Tell me,” Emlyn encouraged and for a moment he felt her hand grip his before it let go.

  “To think.” Kyron continued after a moment, hearing the words his master had spoken, in his voice, his cadence and manner. “He always said the skill to think was the most important one, and anyone could learn it. Take the evidence, he said, and inspect it from every angle. Test it, if you can. Form your own opinion but listen to others. Determine your own truth, but rely on the facts, not the bias of your elders.”

  “Not everyone learns that lesson,” Emlyn agreed.

  Kyron allowed himself a small, quiet chuckle. “I am still learning.”

  “The grave?” Emlyn prompted. “Let me pick the location. I know the forests, and it is the least I can do for him.”

  Kyron felt a lump swell in his throat and could only nod.

  “This way.” She stepped off the track, ducking under the boughs of a tree coming into bloom. The pines of a few days ago had begun to thin and more of the trees he was used to seeing were appearing. Also, the forest floor had gone from a carpet of sharp needles to an undergrowth of ferns and flowering bushes.

  The covering of cloud and lack of moon made following Emlyn difficult. She made little noise as she moved through the leaves, thorns, and vines which tangled his legs and trapped his feet.

  Fortunately, she did not travel far and stopped beneath a tree with silver-white bark which rose branchless to a crown which spread wide to encompass the sky above.

  “Here,” she said. “This tree flowers in the summer and is one you’ll find the furthest north and furthest south. It grows anywhere the soil is good enough and the climate fair enough. Its type has seen everything and been everywhere. We call it the First Tree because you can find it most anywhere, even amongst the pines of the north, though there it is shorter. We believe its like was here before all other trees. They grew from it and took over the earth before we arrived.”

  Kyron put his hand against the tree, feeling the smooth bark and the rough places where it was peeling, and where knots marked branches that had fallen off as it grew.

  “Padarn reminds me of this tree,” she said. “Not just the silver in his hair, but his view of the world, his love of travel, and finding new knowledge, new experiences.”

  Kyron smiled, a sad, wan smile. That she had come to know his master so well in such a short pace of time was, he thought, so like him. Anywhere they had been, Padarn had found a way to fit in, to make peace with people and to understand them. Always by his side, Kyron had felt awkward, ungainly, unsure, nervous, and lacking.

  “Its roots are deep and spread in all directions, but it does not fight with other trees as some do. No poison in its sap or near its roots,” she said pointing to a spot on the ground. “Here.”

  He nodded once more. “Stand back. I’ve never tried this before.”

  “You make him proud once more,” she said, stepping away and into the darkness.

  Kyron focused on the earth, noting the new growth, the old leaves, and the undulation of the dirt. Taking the marker he had spent some time that afternoon creating, the symbols clear and defined upon its surface, glowing slightly in the darkness, he drew the motes to him. They came from the earth and trees, from the sky, from Emlyn who he felt a few paces away and from himself.

  Binding them and shaping them, he linked the motes together with a whisper of words. The shape he held in his mind was simple, uncomplicated, but the release of the spell would change it, contort and twist it in just the right way, he hoped, to accomplish the task. Each mote had to be carefully placed, its connection to another balanced, and the construct held steady until its potential was released.

  For a seeming age he moved each mote into position, drew energy from one to another, held the power in check, however only a few heartbeats of time passed. The afternoon spent creating the marker, visualising the construct, and experimenting with aspects of its build had not been time wasted.

  He drew a last breath, held it, and pointed the marker at the earth. Speaking a single word, he released the power of the spell and dirt flew into the air. It was no explosion, no demonstration of raw power, no fire directed against the earth. The dark sod rose into the air and sank gently to either side of the dark hole his magic had created.

  When it was done, the grave was deep, and each face was sheer, pristine. The most accomplished, most practiced gravedigger could never have produced such a hole.

  Without speaking, Emlyn and Kyron recovered Padarn’s body from the pyre, laying him on a large square of cloth to be carried to the grave. Taking two corners each, they carefully lowered him until he rested at the bottom.

  Kyron stared down at his master and in the grainy vision of the night he would swear the man still breathed. An illusion built from desire, from grief, and one easily dismissed much as he wished it was the truth.

  Taking a clump of earth in his hand, he bound more motes to it, activating those that already resided there, commanding them to a purpose and sprinkled them the length of his master’s body.

  “It is done, Master,” he said. “I will try to live up to your teachings, but I am afraid.”

  “He would not want you to live up to him, but to be your own man,” Emlyn said, coming to stand beside him. She bent and picked up her own handful of soil, scattering it over his body. “Keep your wisdom, Padarn, the forest will learn from you and be stronger for it. Life is suffering and death the escape. The memories you leave with us will live forever in the heart of the forest.”

  Kyron sighed and released the last of the spell. Dirt began tumbling into the hole, covering his master’s body in a slowly rising tide of earth.

  Within twenty heartbeats it was done and all which remained was a raised area of earth in front of the tree. Kyron found his legs rooted to the dirt, unable to move.

  Emlyn however began to walk around the grave, kicking leaves and detritus over it. “To disguise it from others and return the forest to is natural state. He will become part of it.”

  “He will become part of the magic,” Kyron corrected.

  “One and the same perhaps,” she answered without rancour. “Now, we need to burn the pyre. They expect to see it go up in flames and the embers will answer any questions they might have.”

  XXXV

  The General

  Seven years ago:

  “What did you think?” he asked of the boy.

  “The priest, he spoke a lot about sin and holiness.”

  “The Holy Flame will cleanse our sins, lad,” he expl
ained.

  “It sounds painful,” the boy said, “and what if I haven’t sinned, and what is a sin, and why does the priest get to decide that?”

  “Questions are good,” he said. “I don’t have all the answers.”

  “You are not the only target,” Godewyn said, as he emerged from the cells two hours later.

  In the torch light, Aelia’s skin paled.

  “Who else?” Bordan asked, feeling the weight of the answer in the pit of his stomach.

  “The Empress,” Godewyn replied in a subdued tone.

  “Where is she now?” Bordan snapped at the two guards who had brought the chilled wine. Both looked at him with blank, uncomprehending expressions. “Don’t just stand there. You, go and warn her guards. You,” pointing to the other guard, “go and find the Spear of the Guard. I want the palace locked down and every door guarded within the hour.”

  Both men saluted, turned, and raced up the stairs.

  “Her rooms,” Aelia said into the sudden quiet. “She told me she was going for a rest. That is where she’ll be.”

  Before Bordan could respond, she had leapt from her chair, drawn her sword and clattered up the stairs, following the guards.

  Bordan heaved himself from the chair, the wound in his shoulder complaining at the movement, and with Godewyn following, climbed as fast as he could after the Princess.

  The first flight of stairs was simple, and Bordan felt younger by decades as he took the second in his stride. The cool air outside the cells had revitalised him, the wine had dulled the pain in his shoulder, and the thought of assassins stalking the Empress gifted him urgency.

  Echoes of frantic feet filtered down from above and Bordan pushed his newfound stamina to greater speed. Three, then four flights of stairs passed in a blur. One hand on the wall for balance, he leaned forward into the stairs, keeping one eye on his route and the other on his feet to ensure he did not trip.

  Sweat began to bead on his face and the cool air did little to evaporate the moisture which stuck his tunic once more to his back. The air, so refreshing a few flights ago, now burned in his lungs and his knees began to jolt on every step. The vibrations pounded his hips, shook their way up his spine, and made his lungs feel as if they were dangling by a single thread which would snap on the next step.