Elegy for a Lost Star

by Elizabeth Haydon

  Talquist is a merchant in only the kindest usage of the word. He is a slave trader of the most brutal order, the secret scion of a fleet of pirate ships, which trade in human booty, selling the able-bodied into the mines, or worse, the arenas, using the rest as raw materials for other goods, like candles rendered from the flesh of the old, bone meal from the very young. Thousands have met their deaths in the arenas of Sorbold; I cannot even fathom how many more have found it in the mines, or the salt beds, or at the bottom of the sea. He is a monster with a gentleman’s smile and a common touch, but a monster all the same.

  And yet the Scales confirmed him, the Lord Cymrian insisted. I witnessed it myself.

  As he reached the top step, Constantin thought about the incredulous expression in the eyes of the Bolg king, a man whose previous life had no doubt held much of the same sort of experiences as his own. Why did you not say something before you left? King Achmed had demanded. If you knew this was a potential outcome of the selection process, why did you not intervene?

  The bands of platinum that edged the altar were gleaming brilliantly. His own reply reverberated in his head, nauseating him.

  Because it is not for me to decry the Scales. They are what confirmed me to my position in the first place. How could I decree their wisdom to be faulty without invoking a paradox? Besides, to acknowledge my past in the arena would be to open the realm of the Rowans to scrutiny that would not be welcome there. And finally, he was not the only man with blood on his hands who was in the running. If I were to decry everyone I thought unfit to be Emperor, Sorbold would be a leaderless state.

  And because I am a coward, he thought now. I did not want to imagine what I knew would happen.

  He bowed before the stone table, then knelt on the floor in front of it. The simplicity of the stone, the purity of the platinum, was designed to allow the prayers that were presented to him through this altar to flow freely into his mind through the Spire and onto the feet of the Creator. That simplicity, that purity, made his thoughts resonate in his head now.

  In the silence, he remembered the last words he had spoken to the Bolg king.

  I pray that, as I have undergone a change of heart in my time behind the Veil of Hoen, Talquist too will experience such a transformation. Perhaps the fact that he did not immediately demand coronation as Emperor is a sign of that.

  Achmed’s eyes had met his, full of common understanding.

  I doubt it. In my experience, men who had a thirst for blood and power only grow thirstier the more they are fed it. You may be the only exception I have ever met.

  Constantin’s hands trembled as they touched the altar.

  He struggled to keep from cursing himself, pushing back the thoughts that crowded into his mind. They refused to be banished, swelling forward into his consciousness relentlessly.

  You fool. If only you had stepped forward then, had recognized that the Scales had been tampered with, perhaps you could have averted the death of half the world that will come now. Now that blood joins the rest that is on your hands.

  He thought of Terreanfor, one of the last repositories of Living Stone in the known world, and the vast power that was extant there. Of all the elements, earth alone had the attributes to sustain such a power; the others were too fleeting, too evanescent to hold on to it in great concentrations. The winds were too transitory, the seas too churning, starlight too distant, fire too unpredictable and destructive. But the earth remained steadfast, unchanging, passing through its cycles in patient, almost reverent, consistency, which was why so much of the world’s power resided in earth, in land. And as he thought of the cool, dark cathedral hidden deep within Night Mountain, where the light would never touch it, he thought of the tale the priests had told him of the felling of the statue of the soldier of Living Stone.

  And of all the other such statues, man and beast, trees and the Living Stone altar itself, waiting to be harvested.

  And the power that was about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

  Concentrate, he willed himself.

  Softly he began to chant the rites by which he received the daily prayers of the faithful of the Patrician religion. His body began to vibrate gently as he did, the power of the ethereal light above him reverberating through him, allowing him to be the channel of those petitions directly to the Creator. It was always a humbling sensation, knowing that the prayers and dreams, fears and joy of millions of souls were passing through him, making his body shine, for a brief moment, with the same ethereal glow as the star on the minaret a thousand feet above him.

  From the corners of the continent, the southwestern realm of the Nonaligned States, from Bethe Corbair in the east, Navarne and Avonderre to the west, Canderre and Yarim in the north, and Bethany, the central province of Roland, and finally Sorbold in the south, one by one each of his benisons was transmitting the prayers of the faithful through the stone altar. The receipt of the praise rang like chimes, different tones in his head; he had no idea what was being asked or offered, or how many different people were entrusting him with their prayers, he only knew that together they made up one glorious symphony of praise and entreaty that gave glory and honor to the All-God while supplicating for his grace.

  He never knew how long the transfer of prayers would take; time lost its hold in the presence of great elemental power. When at last the tones from each of the benisons’ prayers began to fade, he caught hold of the last one, sustaining it with his own chant.

  The remaining four songs of praise came to an end; the benisons had completed their evening requirements of offering to the Chain of Prayer, unaware that the Patriarch was still listening. When only the single chant of the benison of Sorbold was present in the echoing basilica, the Patriarch spoke.

  Nielash Mousa, he whispered. Tarry.

  It was something he had never done before, had never gone backward down the Chain of Prayer to a supplicant on a lower level, but he was desperate. The altar beneath his hands reverberated. He waited for a long moment, then heard a very surprised voice resound throughout Lianta’ar.

  I hear you, Your Grace.

  A sickening sensation swelled through him, the glorious vibration of praise and supplication changing into the racheting discomfort of discord. Constantin gripped the altar, struggling not to collapse.

  It seemed as if the weight of the material world was now on his shoulders, dragging the breath from his lungs. All the lightness of being that he enjoyed in his daily offerings was reversed; now he struggled for air, struggled to bear up under the crushing pressure.

  Time expanded all around him. As his daily prayers seemed to take no time at all, now each heartbeat, each breath was labored, extended, drawn out to the ends of the earth.

  Concentrate, he thought again, sweat pouring from his brow.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but doing so caused him agony. The joint of his jaw popped loudly under the strain; all the water disappeared from his lips, leaving them cracked as he tried to form words. Constantin’s hands trembled; he closed his eyes and whispered two words, an undertaking of more pain than he ever remembered. Knowing the importance of the message he was delivering, he put the very last grain of his strength into it.

  Safeguard—Terreanfor.

  The words had just passed his lips when the world went dark. He was vaguely aware of hitting the altar, unconscious before his blood stained the floor of the basilica. Constantin lay, prone, in the silver light of the star atop the Spire of Sepulvarta, too far into the gray haze between waking and sleep to hear the benison’s reply.

  I understand.

  30

  THE INNER HARBOR OF GHANT, SORBOLD

  While not as massive as Avonderre’s Port Fallon, the largest harbor on the western seacoast, the inner harbor at Ghant was still one of the biggest in the world, the terminus for the daily off-loading of tons of goods. Hundreds of merchant ships sailed into the inner harbor with the rising of each tide, past the naval fleet of Sorbold moored in the outer
harbor. Each vessel was inspected, each manifest checked by the naval harbormaster, and either turned away or allowed to pass into the smooth water of the immense lagoon that formed the inner harbor.

  In his day Anborn had seen both harbors many times. Ghant was one of the first places he had annexed in the Cymrian War a thousand years before, a place from which his ground forces had been able to sustain and defend a land supply route, and from which his warships set sail for attacks on the Lirin port of Tallono to the northwest. Tallono was a sheltered harbor that had been built by the Gorllewinolo Lirin with the help of his grandmother, the dragon Elynsynos, but by the time Anborn had come to Ghant, there was no room in his heart for sentimentality, only murder and vengeance. With precision he had burned Tallono almost to the ground, much the same way he had sacked the smaller ports of Minsyth and Evermere, and had secured the seacoast all the way north to Port Fallon when the war finally ended. A millennium had not been long enough to blot out the memories that haunted him still, torturing his waking moments and plaguing his dreams.

  Now the ghosts of those battles were no longer hovering over the land, as they had been each time Anborn had returned to Ghant since then. The port was busier than he had ever seen it; he could tell even at a great distance as he and Gwydion Navarne came over the rocky hills above it, looking down at the inner harbor from the trans-Sorbold passage, the main thoroughfare over which the goods were carted to places north and east in Sorbold. He grimaced as he reined his mount to a halt, remembering that his own soldiers had once built this road.

  Gwydion Navarne, whose thoughts were not haunted by a history he knew little about, stared out at the harbor in amazement.

  “They’re doing a fair business, aren’t they?” he mused, watching the scores of ships that lined the piers of the inner harbor being systematically offloaded by tiny shapes that more resembled ants than longshoremen.

  The Lord Marshal nodded, his face grim.

  “But in what?” he asked. He looked farther out to sea, past the inner harbor’s sluice to the outer harbor, and took in a ragged breath.

  From one end of the outer harbor to the other docks had been constructed, each housing a score of warships. Anborn counted a dozen of those docks, with more beyond the rim of the point.

  “Dear All-God,” he muttered.

  Gwydion Navarne turned in his saddle. He had been enjoying the taste of the distant sea air, the bustle of the port below, after so many days’ ride in the wastelands of the southern steppes, and therefore was taken aback at the sight of the Cymrian hero’s face, which was now as hard as he had ever seen it.

  “What is wrong, Lord Marshal?” he asked, feeling a new chill in the wind coming off the sea.

  Anborn dragged the reins to his right, positioning himself for a better view. He stared down at the harbor, crawling with activity, for a long moment, then looked around him at the hillsides from which they had come.

  “At the time of the Cymrian War, this was a major military center, the central port of my sea forces’ offensive,” he said finally. “We had a fleet that, in its time, was responsible for the destruction of much of western Tyrian, and the decimation of the coastal areas of Avonderre north to Gwynwood. I led my father’s armies against my mother’s forces with great success on land because of the sheer advantage of numbers and superior weaponry; that is not surprising. But until Llauron abandoned Anwyn and fled to sea, he was a formidable naval foe that would have been insurmountable; he would have destroyed my fleet if it had not been for our control of Ghant, and the size of our armada stationed here.” The Lord Marshal shielded his eyes, stinging now from the glare of the sun.

  “And in those days, there were far fewer warships than stand in port now.”

  Gwydion swallowed, but said nothing. The taste of the desert air had gone suddenly drier, clogging in his throat and burning like fiery sand.

  Anborn shifted awkwardly in his saddle, straining to see behind him.

  “There was a sheltered point up a ways, if I recall,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at a convoy of horse-drawn wagons accompanied by soldiers in the articulated leather armor of the mountain columns, units of the Sorbold army that defended the mountain passes hundreds of miles away near the capital of Jierna’sid. The caravan was making its way up the incline toward them on the ancient thoroughfare. “I think we should take cover there now, lest we be seen. My guess is that our presence is unwelcome here.”

  The two spurred their horses into a loping trot over the rocky outcropping, climbing into the rough lands perched above the harbor, and took shelter behind the guardian rocks. When the horses were out of sight, Anborn gestured impatiently to Gwydion.

  “Help me from this bloody saddle,” he grunted, unstrapping the bindings.

  Gwydion dismounted quickly, then hurried to the General’s side, assisting him down from the horse. Once down, Anborn shoved him away, and lowered his body, with the strength of his arms and chest, onto the ground, then crawled to the edge of the outcropping. He signaled to Gwydion, who crouched down and lay on his belly beside him on the sandswept cliff.

  Silently they watched, heedless of the time that passed, transfixed by the sight below them.

  In a little less than an hour’s time they noted more than two dozen ships approaching the outer harbor, merchant vessels bound for the inner docks, running the gauntlet of warships. Those ships were boarded, checked, and sent onward with military precision; once in the harbor, their cargo was immediately off-loaded and packed into wagons, unlike the harbor at Port Fallon, in Avonderre, where goods were separated into merchant orders, then debarked by longshoremen from the individual merchants who had come to claim the cargo.

  “What does that tell you?” the Lord Marshal asked softly, in the tone of voice he used when instructing the young duke in matters of import.

  Gwydion stared down at the barrels and crates being systematically moved into a line of standing wagons.

  “All the cargo is either going to the same place, or owned by the same entity?” he guessed.

  Anborn nodded. “Undoubtedly the Crown. And to some extent that is not terribly surprising; the new regent emperor, Talquist, was the hierarch of the guilds that controlled these western shipping lanes prior to his ascension to the Sun Throne. But it’s not the destination of the cargo that concerns me.”

  “Then what does?”

  Anborn pointed down the road beyond the rocky outcroppings.

  “The cargo itself. Look.”

  Gwydion followed Anborn’s finger away from the starboard hold of the closest ship on the jetty, where the barrels and crates were being off-loaded into wagons, to the port side of the same ship. He could see two lines of people, so distant as to be almost indistinguishable from the mass of others working the docks, disembarking from the vessel. The first line emerged from a higher gangplank; they were few in number, and ambulated at their leisure off the ship, where they dispersed into the crowds lining the docks. Gwydion presumed these were passengers.

  The second line emerged from a lower gangplank, directly from the ship’s hold. At first he assumed it was the crew, but on closer examination saw that the line was herded forward to a column of wagons, much like the cargo wagons, into which the human figures were then loaded. Gwydion counted more than one hundred from a single ship, stumbling and shading their eyes from the brightness of the morning sun. He shook his head as if to clear it, or escape a buzzing hornet, as a terrible realization took an insistent hold. When he could not escape it, the word fell out of his mouth.

  “Slaves,” he murmured. “He’s trafficking in slaves.”

  Anborn nodded. He pointed slowly and deliberately to each of the two dozen ships that had docked within the time they had been watching, each of which was unloading human cargo from its starboard hold, packing the hostages into wagons, which were then disbursed in different directions along the trans-Sorbold passage.

  “Slavery is not new to Sorbold,” he said in a low voice. “Leitha
was empress for three-quarters of a century, an impressive longevity for someone not of Cymrian blood. In her time it was practiced quietly, with criminals and debtors, or war prisoners, mostly in the gladiatorial arenas. It was generational; a slave family remained captive until a male member of it could purchase freedom for his progeny, usually through prowess as a gladiator. But it was considered an ugly, if not particularly well disguised, secret. The number of arenas was fewer than one per city-state; that’s less than two dozen in total.” He cast a quick glance behind him at the horses, then returned his gaze to the port below.

  “In the past hour we’ve seen enough human cargo off-loaded to populate that entire gladiatorial structure. There are still a hundred merchants’ ships outside the inner harbor, awaiting passage. And that’s only today.”

  “Could arena fighting have increased that much in the months since Talquist took the throne?” Gwydion asked, nauseated.

  Anborn’s eyes narrowed, still focused on the sight below.

  “Possibly—Talquist has a reputation for fondness of that kind of blood-sport. But I would hazard a guess that only a very small part of this cargo is bound for the arena. These slaves are probably on their way to the salt mines of Nicosi, or the olive groves of Remaldfaer. But the more important question is not to where the poor wretches are bound, but from where did they come? If half of those ships contain as many captives as we’ve seen offloaded, that’s the equivalent of the population of an entire city.”

  “Sweet All-God,” Gwydion whispered.

  “Indeed,” Anborn assented. “Invoking Him may be the only thing that can help now; if this has been going on all the while that Talquist has been regent, your godfather is going to have a nightmare on his hands.”

  “Please elaborate,” Gwydion said, his hands going cold and beginning to shake.

  Anborn rolled slightly to his side and motioned the young duke into silence.

  From below them a rumble could be heard as another caravan of wagons crested the rocky rise of the passage. The two men watched as they rolled past, guarded by a cohort of Sorbold soldiers both in front and behind them. Gwydion winced at the sight of the captives, a host of ragged men, forlorn women, and thin, silent children packed into the carts like cattle on the way to the slaughtering houses. He counted eleven wagons, estimating that each contained more than two dozen slaves. Gwydion watched, a knot of increasing tightness choking his throat, until the dust of the thoroughfare had settled and the sound had died away. He leaned over the cliff edge slightly and saw similar caravans making their ways in other directions, into the mountains and along the seacoast, bearing similar cargo.