by Guy Antibes
These interested him. Daryaku now had an intricate plan to infiltrate Besseth. The Bloodstone still existed as the token of rule in the Red Kingdom and she would start with that. What else could she do? One strategy called for a Dakkoran invasion of Besseth, but Vishan knew that alternative would be rejected. She only had so many troops and most of them patrolled every town village and city on Zarron. Besides, she couldn’t waste her soldiers on Besseth when they’d be sorely tested fighting the Ropponi.
She had lost an astonishingly high number of soldiers in the attempted conquest of Cuminee. Even now, Vish would hardly call her tenuous hold on that Dukedom as control. Polymeer, the chieftain Vish had brought north, had fled back to his homeland to lead a resistance against the shamans.
Vish wished the man much success, but Daryaku didn’t want to lose her supply of heart and blood for the shadow warriors she intended to use, so she began to have her soldiers capture the shamans. They were given the choice to work at the Sorcerer’s Tower or die at the hand of the elusive Polymeer.
She now would begin a layered strategy of subterfuge in Besseth. It would start with Duke Histron, who was on his way to Baku. He would usurp King Billeas and capture the Bloodstone. Then he would act as the governor of Besseth, using the Red Kingdom as the ultimate capital of a united Besseth, entirely under her control. They could bribe the Oringians and continue to subvert all of the kingdoms, all at the same time. Daryaku wouldn’t rest until she recovered the Moonstone, convinced that it still existed in Besseth.
Vish had never seen such a plan before. Spies and Bribes, he called the strategy. Conquest from within. Topple the governments and transform the land into Daryaku’s model. She had devastated the entire continent of Zarron with her approach.
He had read the reports. Death by the hundreds, starvation, executions, forced labor. She took farms away and then expelled indigents from the city to work the farms. They can learn, he’d heard her shout enough. Harvests dropped. In fifteen years, she had devastated Dakkor. Baku became a vast slum. His father would have never let such a thing happen. Serytar and the other countries fared slightly better.
~
Vishan woke up. Daryaku was thrilled as she burrowed into his mind. The Moonstone has been activated! I can feel it! It lies in Besseth. Our plan to subjugate them is already in play. Vishan you still doubt me?
As always, Daryaku. There is still the lost Sunstone and you have yet to capture a single Warstone, Vish thought. She woke him up to give him bad news. He wanted to retreat into darkness, but she didn’t let him.
Daryaku dressed and wrote a message to Peleor, who had spent the last two years in Besseth as her agent.
His old friend had become an extension of Daryaku. Peleor’s family farm had been sold and he had moved into Vishan’s old quarters in the palace.
Even the sumptuous quarters that Daryaku reveled in had no effect on Vishan. He didn’t like her effeminate tastes in Imperial costumes. Sometimes he descended deep into depression, but a novel event would pique his interest and he would take some interest to monitor events, but always as an appalled observer.
~
They were sitting in an Imperial garden, when Daryaku received a bird from Roppon. Vishan read it as she did.
“So now all three are in play. Yushidon sends his love.” Daryaku kissed the air. “The Sunstone has appeared. A noble had suddenly possessed the same sword Yoshiaku held. A disgraced wizard killed the lord and stole the sword, but it exists, Vishan.”
You can’t feel the Sunstone?
“The nexus is close in so many places to the surface in Roppon, it interferes with my attempts to locate it, but Yushidon will continue to monitor. I can be patient. My plan is working in Valetan. I’ve taken over Prola and a northwestern lord now fights against the king of Valetan. Histron gathers his forces and is about ready to strike.”
You must have received many birds. Vishan said.
“Hundreds of birds, my little prince. Hundreds.” He detected her thoughts drifting to daydreams of world domination. By now, they only bored Vishan.
~
Vishan looked at Daryaku’s Besseth campaign as remote domination. She pulled a few strings here, but Peleor either bribed or used the persuasion spell to perfection. He didn’t like what had happened, what was happening and what would happen.
The Warstones had to be used for Daryaku to sense them. Daryaku had felt glimmers of the Sunstone somewhere in Besseth. Histron had usurped the Red Kingdom, but the princess, though not initially regarded as an enterprising sort, had slipped through the duke’s fingers and wandered somewhere in the Red Kingdom. The Moonstone was now carried by a talentless Valetan warrior princess. Daryaku couldn’t wait until Valetan fell. Peleor had set everything in place.
The plans laid so long ago were coming to fruition. There were minor problems, like the Red Kingdom princess and Peleor’s failed attempt to win over King Willom of Learsea. But those didn’t seem to faze Daryaku. She had settled into complacency, always dreaming of success when she would rule all of Goriath.
Daryaku subjugated Zarron to her satisfaction. The population had died off sufficiently to eke out a subsistence-level existence. At least she thought so. Vishan read the same reports, only to realize that the empire continued its death spiral. Vish tried to reason with the Emperor, but she denied the facts.
Fateem’s passing had been a blessing for the high-spirited girl. Twenty years ago. It seemed much shorter than that, but Vishan had retreated many times during that period, often for months at a time.
Vishan came out of his reverie after detecting that something that disturbed Daryaku. He read the message as Daryaku puzzled through the tiny writing on a bird message from Besseth. A young Valetan wizard, a boy who had been linked to the warrior-princess through the Moonstone, killed Peleor. The Duke of Happly, one who didn’t need Peleor’s spells to be persuaded, now lay dead and his domain had been taken over by Valetan and a band of Ropponi mercenaries. Peleor had suspected that the Sunstone was hidden among those mercenaries, but search after search had proven fruitless.
Peleor, dead. His old magic teacher was his link with the past. Even though he had become devoted to Daryaku, Peleor’s loss hit Vishan hard. What a useless enterprise! The Darkstone had consumed Peleor, no less than Fateem.
Daryaku’s defeat in Happly and Valetan brought a glimmer of happiness to Vishan’s miserable existence.
And yet, Daryaku hadn’t just been sitting on her throne reading dispatches. She presently looked down from the Throne of One Thousand Steps and viewed the demonstration below.
“Your Highness,” a sorcerer said, “we have followed your directions and have waited for the right moment to show you our deadliest weapon. Behold a shadow sorcerer.”
A man stood before the Emperor dressed in black silk. He chanted a spell and turned into what Vishan could only describe as a smoke creature.
“They are invincible and can materialize at will. Swords, arrows, weapons of any kind slip right through them. Sorcerers and untalented humans cannot grasp them.” The sorcerer beamed at Daryaku.
“Very impressive,” Daryaku said. “What if the enemy gains the spell?”
“Key officers in our forces now carry the enchanted swords that can be used against spells crafted with power, including the shadow warriors. We don’t expect that we will have to use them on our own men.”
“What is your strategy? I want to hear it again,” Daryaku said. Vishan knew that the emperor asked only to torment Vish.
“When our ships arrive on the western coast of Besseth, we will locate all of the holders of the stones. Our twenty mightiest sorcerers have volunteered for this sacred duty. They will follow the holders of the three stones and will attack them at the same time. The sorcerers will live long enough for them to return the stones back to the ships, which will immediately set sail for Dakkor, your Highness.”
Daryaku laughed. She made him aware just to show Vish how she would capture the stones and d
ominate the world. If Vish had control over his body, he would have been sick. “Impressive, as is the sword that kills them.”
She flicked her finger and one of her guards swung through the shadowy mist. Vish could hear a wail and then a sigh as the mist began to dissipate. The sword did its job. A powerful sorcerer had just been casually killed.
~
Vish noted that winter had come to Dakkor. With their harsher winters, the Bessethians stopped their military campaigns, which brought continual complaining from Daryaku. The Sunstone began to hop around Besseth. Daryaku still had no idea how, but the location of the stones moved quickly. The elusiveness of the stone’s whereabouts infuriated her and that brightened Vishan’s spirit.
Daryaku now felt an interaction between the stones. She thought the three stones were communicating, but she cursed that she couldn’t listen in. The Darkstone did not participate in the communications, but only indicated when Warstones communicated. The Purestone would have let her listen to their conversations, but the advantage she had once given her father, Wallyr, now became her liability. Vishan enjoyed the irony. The new Learsea leader, Lord Anchor, had thwarted the multi-pronged strategy of Duke Histron to invade King Willom’s country.
As her war ground on, Anchor had thwarted every major incursion. The Prolan general, Lessa, had bottled up one of the few Dakkoran forces they had been able to land, camping in the middle of the province of Histo and smashed them with the help of the Duke of Gensler and the Kingdom of Valetan. More than half of her battle sorcerers had been killed.
Daryaku was beside herself when she learned that, somehow, every one of her shadow warriors had been killed. The warriors had split up. Some had traveled to Oringia to capture the Moonstone from the Valetan princess. They had traced the Bloodstone to Valetan and the Sunstone was indeed in the possession of a Ropponi mercenary fighting in Histo. How could they have killed the sorcerers simultaneously? Daryaku fumed and overturned chairs and destroyed irreplaceable pieces of artwork as she vented her frustration. The Sorcerer’s Tower had used up all of the men or women with sufficient power to control the shadow spell. She had committed eight in ten of her sorcerers to the Bessethian forces and the majority of those were lost.
For Vishan, these were good days. Daryaku continued to rant and rave and became angrier and angrier as Vishan laid in the little corner that he called home and prayed to the gods for more.
One day, she pulled out yellowed copies of Lystan’s battle plans, the physical invasion through Ayrtan. That plan carried great risks in his mind, but it now seemed that Daryaku had little alternative if Histron’s forces continued their retreat towards Foxhome.
Fenakyr, of all people, now a white-haired man, arrived in her chambers. She had appointed him as governor of Serytar ten years previously. He had groveled his way into her good favor and served with the kind of mindless loyalty that Daryaku appreciated and Vishan abhorred.
“I need you to develop an invasion plan. We will go through Learsea as Lystan suggested. Straight to the Red Kingdom. Her path led northwest and down from the Happly border to Foxhome.”
Fenakyr scoffed at her suggestion. “Duke Histron rules Foxhome.”
“What if he loses?” Daryaku said. “I will not accept defeat. If the forces of Learsea aren’t destroyed by Duke Jawell’s Southern Alliance, Foxhome will be caught in the middle.” She clapped their hands and rubbed them together. “If I create another front, Foxhome will be saved. Even if Histron fails, I will take care of the recalcitrant Willom and crush him and take over the continent. The foolish Bessethians will bring all of the stones together in Foxhome, and then I’ll have my last shadow warriors waiting for their triumph.”
Fenakyr nodded his head. “Audacious, Your Eminence. Worthy of a man such as yourself.”
Vishan laughed at the fool. This was no time to dissemble, but it seemed that Fenakyr knew little else. He wasn’t the kind of person who would be useful crafting a battle plan, either.
“Make it happen. I want to be deep into Ayrtan by the spring.”
“You?”
“I will be accompanying my troops. I have my own role to play in this war, Governor. You may go.”
So you wish to join the stones in Besseth? Vishan said.
“Don’t say join!” Daryaku said. She sounded panicked. “We do not join the stones. To do that would have disastrous and highly unpredictable consequences. We use the power in all four stones in close proximity to restore the Purestone, but no touching. Once the Purestone is activated, I will remove the power from the other stones and not make new ones. I learned my lesson long ago.”
How could he tweak her anger? You could just let the holders of the Warstones alone. Emperor Daryaku has done quite enough to change the face of Zarron.
He could feel her lips pull back in a grimace. “You don’t understand power! The Warstones are loose ends and I want them gone. I’ve done everything including sending my secret shadow warriors into their ‘Alliance’ to retrieve the stones and have failed every time. If I fail to recapture the stones at Histron’s fall, I will lure all three stones to a final battle in Learsea and then I will align the stones once more and crush all opposition. I must have them to achieve my true potential.” She closed her fist and sneered, looking in a mirror as she did so.
Vishan felt a shiver run through Daryaku. Anything disastrous to Daryaku would be a looked-forward-to event for Vishan, even if it meant the end of him.
He detected a quiet panic in her mind. Her supreme confidence had begun to fray and Vishan couldn’t be happier.
~
Daryaku sat in judgment. One petty noble accused the other of stealing food from his storehouses. Food for the masses wasn’t her concern, but nobles stealing from each other would not be tolerated. It would only be a step or two before the remaining nobles would be after her.
“An urgent message, Your Eminence,” a messenger from the Imperial bird coops arrived.
She unrolled the message with their hands and screamed. She stood, fists clenched and stamped her feet with her eyes screwed tightly shut. The Emperor had lost control.
Is anything wrong? Vishan said. He knew any time that rage filled the woman’s mind; it was good news for him.
“Defeat in the South.” Daryaku said, her mind in violent turmoil. “Send for Fenakyr.” She breathed deeply. Vishan wondered what would happen to him if Daryaku’s stress caused a real heart attack. “NOW!”
People began to scurry from the throne room.
Fenakyr scuttled in. Vishan could easily read fear in his eyes. He wished that he could have caused that fear, but Vish would have to take what he could in his condition. Fenakyr extended the report with a shaking hand. Daryaku snatched it from him.
“Our forces have been routed in the Duchies. Anchor of Learsea suborned my forces. My forces! More of my sorcerers are dead on Besseth soil.” She beat at the air. “I will not let this happen! We move in two weeks. I give you two weeks to assemble one hundred thousand men. I will obliterate Learsea!”
Fenakyr shook. “We don’t have that many troops available, perhaps half of that, but it should be enough.”
“Should be. Could be. I want as many men as you can muster. We will need food and water to accompany us and in supply trains going back and forth while travel through Ayrtan. I want the Sorcerer’s Tower emptied!”
“It shall be as we have planned.” Fenakyr bowed and nearly ran from the now-empty throne room.
Are we going on a trip? Vishan said. Luckily for me, I don’t need to pack a thing. He laughed at his joke. What could Daryaku do to him other than blissful banishment?
~~~
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
~
VISHAN NEARLY FELT THE DUST IN THEIR NOSTRILS, even through the silk mask Daryaku wore. Ayrtan was such a desolate place. Fenakyr had managed to raise less than forty thousand trained troops even after he had scoured the entire continent. He would continue to reinforce the army while it traveled.
&nb
sp; The people who were left behind could successfully revolt if they had a mind to. Vish would have gladly fomented one, if he ever regained control of his body, but if he could do that he’d turn the massively long column around and change the entire continent of Zarron from the throne.
The carriage that moved them along the desolate landscape of Ayrtan suited Daryaku better than the barge that brought them from Dakkor to Ayrtan. Vishan had never thought of himself as getting sick at sea, but perhaps there were some mental aspect that he didn’t understand. Daryaku didn’t stop retching. Every bout of sickness brought a little light distraction in the misty spring seas to Vishan. Discomfort for him turned into severe stomach pains for her. At one time he wished she had been dumped overboard. She didn’t take to being out of control, at all. He had brightened at the thought.
“Savages ahead,” a messenger had rushed down the line of soldiers to give them the message.
General Bishyar, the captain from Peshakan, now ran the army. Cuminee barbarians had killed Horakon, the old general of the Red Army, years ago. Bishyar was always wary around Daryaku. Vishan knew the man well enough to know that he merely tolerated the Emperor. With iron-gray hair turning white, the man had aged well and still looked like he could run Daryaku through, if he desired. Bishyar wouldn’t demean his strong sense of honor and duty to do such a thing. Vishan felt bad for his former commander.
Columns of soldiers ran into place. Daryaku looked out at them while Vishan counted rows of at least twenty soldiers between the carriage and the outside edge of the now-thickened column. It brought to mind a snake that had swallowed a rat. He had seen such a thing at Peshakan over twenty years ago. Vishan wondered what his life would have been like without the Darkstone. Would he have gone back into the army once he married?
If his father had allowed him to live, what more he could have experienced? Now he sipped at life. If he looked at life through a hollow straw, he would see about as much of life as he did now. Everything to the sides shut out from his view. His musings were cut off by a ripple that Daryaku noticed in the lines.