by K. J. Coble
“Aeydon save us—” One of the soldiers backed away to vomit.
Pinkish white appendages fluttered forth from the gash, tiny suckers latching and unlatching on dead flesh, scrawling trails of blood as something bulged under the skin. With a wet pop, a shiny thing enveloped in mucous slid free, bringing with it the oily whiff that had sickened Dargos before and nearly overwhelmed him now. The pulsing mass of tentacles and obscenely swollen abdomen slopped to the muck and flailed, seeming uncertain outside its host like an unholy afterbirth lacking the knowledge to walk on land.
“Aeydon...Father of Law...”
Dargos wasn’t certain that the prayer to the forsaken deity of his youth was his own. But the blade driven with white-hot hate and revulsion was. The point of his Imperial steel skewered the creature to the mud, pinkish meat mottling to red and black as ichor the electric color of a madman’s art spurted and multiple beaked mouths fluttered in voiceless pain.
On the wall of the fort above, soldiers of the Aurridian Empire heard what might have been the cawing of hundreds of crows stirred to flight on the far side of the Lyrdirian River.
Their racket could have been the laughter of something far older quickening back to life.
Book I
The Barbaricum
Chapter One
Anzo Severnus
The populace of Aurid—Cradle of Civilization and capitol of an Empire that had weathered a half a millennium—was rioting again.
Anzo Severnus stepped to the loading ramp of the galley that had carried him across a thousand sea miles with a humorless chuckle. They’d been rioting when he left, nearly two years ago, worked into a frenzy that the annual shipments across the Great World Sea were late and the wine was running low. The wolves of barbarism howled at the Empire’s boundaries and these idiots were busy tearing out the guts of the only power in the world that could keep them at bay.
Not that Anzo could blame them. He could use a drink, himself.
“Is that your god?” The captain of the galley put a boot up on the gunwale of the ship, nodding at the sigil scrawled across the inside of Anzo’s right forearm. “Better cover it up, if it is. I hear they’ve taken to stoning pagans, here in the glory of Old Aurridium.”
Anzo glanced at the tattoo—a twisting serpent faded to the color of varicose veins—and shrugged. “They’re probably too busy stoning each other.”
“I’m just saying it, if you need shelter for another night.” Behind the captain, oarsmen and the vessel’s passengers were stretching out on the deck, tying up canvas overhangs against the weather.
“Thanks.” Anzo shouldered his rucksack. “But it’s all right. I’ve seen worse.” He offered the man a lopsided grin and started down the ramp.
The capitol of the Aurridian Empire sprawled astride the semicircular crags of an ancient volcanic cone, its whitewashed spires, meandering walls, and stern-faced monuments glowering down into the crowded half-moon of the Bay of Dawn. Towering above it all, carved into the southernmost face of the caldera, loomed the Imperial Palace, fashioned into a monstrous likeness of the Divine Aurus, arms outspread, cradling a gilded scepter in the left and the Hammer of Empire in the right.
The founder of the Empire had, according to myth, ascended to the Gods on a fiery chariot in defiance of a mortal’s death. Blazes from the uprising far below under-lit the titanic face now, gave the weather-worn countenance a hint of that fury.
Not a lot for the old bastard to be happy about, these days, Anzo thought, adjusting the weight of his pack as he left the hazy gloom of the harbor district behind.
Merchant’s Way stretched ahead, was one of several paved arteries that made the switch-backing climb to the city proper. During the day, it would be thronged with carts plying grain, fish, wine and the imports of a dozen nations, hucksters boasting their wares from teardown kiosks, merchants in the crimson-lined finery of Patricians borne to warehouses atop palanquins, children warbling about the feet. By night—a normal night—seafarers would crowd taverns along the way, pickpockets weaving amongst the drunks, garishly-painted prostitutes whispering from shadows.
But this evening, with the red-yellow smear of fires in the city’s upper tiers, the Way was boarded-up shop fronts and hostile quiet.
Anzo let his gaze wander to the conflagration. Temple bells tolled the alarm and he could hear the whistles of the City Watch, nearly lost in the rolling drum cadence of the Capitol Guard being called out. The uprising appeared to have spread in a fiery wedge, not from the usually restless lower districts, but from the Gods’ Quarter, the sprawling neighborhood of shrines to the ever-shifting pantheon of Aurridian deities.
“Stoning pagans, right,” Anzo grumbled to himself. “Welcome home...”
His shoulders ached from helping at the galley’s oars after several of the crew had been dragged overboard by a small kraken that very nearly capsized the ship just north of Cerulius. His skin itched under a flaking sheen of dried saltwater crust, his leather tunic chafed at the neck, and he stank—gods, he stank—of fish, sweat, and urine. If he could just reach the Golden Horn tavern—home for all rights and purposes—he could get himself a bed, a wine, and maybe a girl.
And maybe start making plans to put a life as the Empire’s weasel behind him.
The incline of the Way steepened as he climbed higher, huddled buildings lit only in streamers of moonlight. The Horn crouched just below the First Wall, near the gates permitting entry into the more affluent districts.
He increased his pace, enthused despite himself. The air felt right, after so many months in the hard sun of Kharzul, with the desert simmering just beyond cultivated valleys of grain, vineyards, dates, and olives. Even with the pitch stink of fired buildings and the coppery bite of tension set loose as violence, the warm breeze held also the smell of incense, cooking smoke, and the bustling humanity of the world’s largest city. All of it combined to bring a smile to lips that had done little of such in nearly two years away.
Shouts echoed in the street behind him.
Anzo shrank against the buildings along the right side of the Way, strides slowing as he embraced the gloom and reached for his weapon. The short Kharzulan scimitar had long-since replaced his Imperial fabricae-issue saber after he’d found that it was better to have a blade one could hide in a crowded back alley. He chanced a look over his shoulder. A mob was spilling into the Way a block behind him, wreathed in the edgy flutter of torches and the glitter of naked weapons. The hoarse bawl of young men crested as a youth in the red robes of a cleric hoisted a banner emblazoned with the bull-headed likeness of Huxort, God of Strength.
Religious dispute, of course. Anzo moved to a trot. Wonderful. This could be days simmering down.
The climb eased, the Way beginning to flatten as Anzo neared the First Wall. He darted across an intersection, pulse beginning to hammer. The next intersection and a quick right would bring him to the Golden Horn. The hapless gods willing, he’d be recognized and admitted.
Cries pierced the rumble of the mob and foot falls echoed, the many-throated growl darkening as the throng spotted him and smelled blood. Wood shattered, canvass tore, and harsh laughter reveled in the destruction spreading along the periphery of the disturbance.
Shit. Anzo lurched into a sprint, rucksack pounding his spine, scimitar clapping against his hip. He thought he heard someone screaming, realized the noise came from ahead, but decided against veering off into a side alley. Only the headlong course would do now.
He reached the intersection, saw the Horn, its sagging two stories and badly-degraded faux columned facades. Then saw the second mob filling the street in front of it.
Oh, damn, of course...
Hobnailed boots scrawled tracks in dust layered thinly over the cobblestones of the street. Anzo pivoted as he fell back. Behind him, the first mob’s mad dash bumped and clamored to a halt as howls of outrage erupted. The cleric at their head shook his banner and the young men beat their chests in bravado they would not alon
e manage.
The second mob had a less-uniform composition, older men mixed in, middle-class, better armed, though not so numerous. They issued a deep-voiced challenge to the other crowd and clerics in white strode to the fore, brandishing staff-mounted idols, huge fists clutching thunderbolts crafted from ivory and gold: the Hand of Aeydon the Law Bringer.
Anzo shrank into the alcove of a store-front. Judging from the murderous zeal in their eyes, he figured they wouldn’t distinguish between him and their rivals—wouldn’t hear feigned protests that he shared their faith as they pummeled him into bloody paste. Catcalls and curses crisscrossed between the mobs as they filled opposite ends of the intersection. Thrown trash and dung joined the insults, spattering faces, dashing away any human sense.
Of all the damned, stupid luck... He reached for his weapon again. After sea monsters on the World Sea, nomad raiders from the desert, street fights, murder attempts, and the treacheries of inserting himself into an anti-Imperial conspiracy in Kharzul, he was going to get trampled to death in the streets of home because someone’s prophet insulted somebody else’s.
Anzo felt the subtle click of the locking bar being drawn from the shop door at his back. He began to turn, scimitar nearly clear of its sheath, when it swung away and hands were grabbing him, drawing backwards into gloom with a squall. He hit the floor, a boot striking the weapon from his grasp while the door slammed shut. A kick to the chest sent him sprawling before he could rise. Without light, his adversaries were only shapes in the shadow but he thrashed, anyway, wasn’t going to go quietly after all he’d been through. Something slammed against his skull and he flipped onto his belly. A boot ground against his shoulder.
“Did you really think you’d just sneak back into town, old Weasel?” Breath warmed his ear, stinking of wine.
Anzo froze, recognizing something about the voice. “I don’t know what you’re—”
Another blow to the temple dashed Anzo’s reality to a rapidly-shrinking pinprick of consciousness. He vaguely felt a bag begin thrown over his face.
***
Anzo awoke to the bag being yanked from his head. He tried to move, realized it was futile as he was tied to a chair. The fact that his whole body felt like one big bruise didn’t help. He sat in the middle of what appeared to be a guestroom, well-appointed, a huge bed to one side, gingery incense smoking in a stained copper bowl on a desk alongside writing implements, and a huge map of the Imperial lands spread on the wall above it.
A pair of servants in the livery of the Imperial Household Service was straightening up the chamber around him as if he wasn’t there. Cajoling or pleas would fall on deaf ears—literally, they were struck mute through means he didn’t pretend to understand before entering the staff. All the better to keep the secrets they spent their lives working around.
I’m somewhere in the Palace Complex. Not good...but at least it’s not a torture chamber. Anzo grimaced as one of the servants flung curtains back from a window and sunlight lanced in. Gah...well, there are a lot of forms of torture.
“We’ve had people watching the docks for weeks in anticipation of your arrival, Severnus,” a voice said at his back.
Its owner stepped around from behind him, a shaved-headed, tightly-built man in a black cloak clasped at the neck with a brass brooch. The likeness of an eye in a sun stared out at Anzo from the bauble—the crest of what was officially known as the Imperial Courier Service, unofficially the Emperor’s network of informants and assassins.
Blinking crust from his eyes, Anzo swallowed back a jolt as he recognized the jade stare. “Haurus...” Anzo’s voice cracked from lack of use but he managed a mocking smile. “I didn’t recognize you shaved. Did you decide that receding hairline was the gods’ will and embraced it openly?”
The lithe killer’s lips twitched at a smile but his hand drifted to one of the tiny throwing daggers lining his belt. “I see the Kharzulan climate did nothing for your disposition.”
“Why have you detained me?” Anzo tried to snarl but the throb of his battered temple made it more the cranky growl of a roused drunk.
Haurus folded his arms. Behind him the servants continued their preparations in maddening obliviousness. “We hadn’t heard from you in quite some time.”
“I was on a damned ship, idiot!” Anzo strained against his bonds. “I was recalled, in case you forgot!”
“Yes,” the assassin purred, caressing his knives, “and some of us have been wondering how taken with the conspiracy you were sent to investigate you had gotten.”
Anzo stilled, comprehension dawning now in an icy wave of fear. “I see...so I’m a traitor now? You made your mind up about that all by yourself, did you?”
“No one is saying anybody is a traitor!” a new voice boomed.
The bedroom door behind Haurus swung open to reveal a pudgy man in the purple and silver-traced robes of a highly-ranked bureaucrat. A pair of men in the same attire as Haurus followed as the newcomer strolled casually through, their expressionless eyes on Anzo, hands at sword grips. The fat man stopped to regard him with a smile, double-chins quivering with the hint of humor, heavy lidded eyes sparkling mischievously under a mop of meticulously dyed hair that still glistened with a touch of white.
“Perrenius.” Anzo didn’t have to force a broad smile. “I was just coming to see you when your dog—” he shot Haurus a glare “—decided to pound my head in.”
“And apparently I didn’t hit him hard enough,” Haurus snarled.
“Thank you, Haurus.” Perrenius put up a chiding hand. “That will be enough. Cut his bonds, please.”
“But I hadn’t even begun the—”
“I will handle Severnus’ debriefing, myself, thank you.” Perrenius settled into the chair at the desk with a poorly-hidden grimace. The official waved impatiently when Haurus hesitated.
A dagger appeared in the assassin’s hand, fluttered menacingly before Anzo’s eyes before lashing down to part the ropes about Anzo’s wrists. “Sometime,” he whispered, “I’ll have the opportunity to finish the job.”
“I like the new haircut.” Anzo smirked as he rubbed liberated wrists.
“Go.” The half-grin on Perrenius’ opulent lips slipped. He looked around the room. “All of you go.”
Haurus led the servants and Perrenius’ bodyguards from the chamber, drawing the door behind him with a last murderous glower. It shut with the clack of multiple locks, leaving the two men alone.
Magentius Perrenius, Magister Officiorium of Aurid and the second-most powerful man in the Northern Empire, had put on considerable weight since Anzo last saw him. And though the old fire of calculation and unquenchable energy still burned in his blue eyes, he looked to have aged decades.
“I’m surprised at how good it is to see you, Anzo.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.” Anzo stood from the chair with a wince and trudged to the open windows to work out a cramp from his confinement. He took a deep breath of sun-dappled air, noted the still-lingering smoke of last night’s riots. “Why was I recalled?”
“There are reasons,” the Magister began.
“By Aeydon, Magentius! I had their trust. I was almost into the inner-circle. It was as you suspected: the magistrates were delaying the grain shipments.” He whirled to face the man. “Why?”
“Because things have changed, Anzo.” Perrenius shifted in his chair and wiped a dyed curl from his forehead. “Half-baked plots of overambitious Procurators in Kharzul no longer top our list of concerns. I need men close that I can trust, now more than ever.”
“Trust...” Anzo snorted but a chill current of alarm tingled in his belly. “Is that why you had the thug battalion snatch me before I’d even gotten a chance at a meal?”
“Calm down.” Perrenius rose from his seat and hobbled across the room to join him at the window. “From what I understand, Haurus and his pack saved you the ignominy of a lynching.”
“Yes...” Anzo looked away, chastened. His gaze went out the window. They were in
the right arm of the giant Aurus/Palace, just above the weather-streaked gilding of the Imperial Hammer, and had a superb view of the whole sprawling curve of the city. Haze shot through with flickers of flame wreathed the Gods’ Quarter, tendrils of damage twining outwards to surrounding blocks, but a shocked quiet hung over most of Aurid like the moment after a husband has slapped his wife in public. “Rioting again...what is happening here?”
“It’s a symptom, lad.” Perrenius leaned against the window sill. “It’s a sign of other things, of pressures from without.”
Anzo met the official’s gaze. “What sort of pressures?”
“They’re the reason for your recall.” Perrenius glanced over his shoulder. “Isn’t that right, Master Ossys?”
“Indeed,” a deep voice murmured from behind them.
Anzo jumped back from the window, whipping about, hand seeking a sword that was not at his hip.
A man stood in the corner of the room beside the desk where moments before there had only been air. A skull cap of black leather gleamed above cadaverous features the color of faded mahogany and a snowy mustache draped from thin lips to his chest. Severe robes of deep red hung over a bony frame, traced at the borders with gold thread patterns that seemed to squirm as Anzo watched.
“Easy, lad.” Perrenius seemed to enjoy Anzo’s discomfiture. “You don’t remember the Master of the Order of Thoth?”
Anzo met the old man’s eyes, saw something behind the gray irises, a wasted spirit that had seen and known too much. “I remember. We met once.”
“We did.” Ossys stepped into the middle of the room. “You did great service for us.”
Anzo wrapped his arms about him to suppress shudders and memory. That service had ended with a dead wizard, a traitor among the order of mages tasked with protecting the Empire from threats outside the physical world. The things Anzo had seen—and not seen—hunting through the benighted labyrinths of the Temple of Thoth resurfaced occasionally in his nightmares.