Michael A. Stackpole

by A Hero Born

  Better she rejoices in my having won favor with the Emperor than she worries about what I must do for him.

  My retreat from the solar took me all the way down lo the kitchen. I grabbed three hot biscuits from Rose and gave her a peck on the cheek by way of a thank-you. 1 looked around for Marija to see how she had recovered from the ball but could not find her. Outside Nob told me she had gone off to the market, and that he had sent Carl along to watch after her. 1 thanked him and tossed the heel of one biscuit to Striapach, the taller of the two wolfhound bitches he had on lead.

  In the street I headed as straight as possible for the palace. 1 had been surprised at how my stomach hitched when Nob told me his grandson was escorting Marija to market. I knew I liked her, but this involuntary reaction suggested I liked her a lot more than 1 realized. As nearly as I could remember, I’d never actually felt jealous about anyone before—not that being jealous is something to brag about.

  Too much seemed to be happening too quickly. Any one of the things happening to me would have been enough to make the trip to the capital an adventure. I had met the Emperor. I had confronted Fialchar. i had found a girl I liked. I had been given an Imperial mission to travel into Chaos.

  In one short trip I’d done what others took a whole career to accomplish. For all the excitement, though, meeting Marija seemed somehow more important than all the other things. That realization certainly gave me something to think about, but the mission for which I had been chosen did not give me much time to do that thinking.

  At the palace I was immediately ushered to the map room. It came as no surprise to find Kit, the Warlord, the Emperor, and Warder Illtyd already present. A table over near the opening to the viewing room had a crust of bread on it, along with a wine pitcher, some fruit, cheese, and several half-filled goblets.

  “Good morning, Locke,” Kit greeted me. Kit looked as if he had not gotten that much sleep, yet he looked less haggard than Thetys or Garn Drustorn.

  “Morning, Kit. Grandmother seems fine after last night.” I lowered my voice. “Is there any news?”

  “Some.” Kit brushed some bread crumbs from his tunic. “We attempted to use spells to locate the Fistfire Sceptre, but they didn’t work.”

  “Why not?” I glanced at Warder Illtyd. “Wouldn’t that powerful an item be easy to pinpoint with magick?”

  “Under normal circumstances, yes, but it appears our thief is not wholly stupid.” The Warder wiped sleep-sand from the corner of his eye. “We believe the thief broke the sceptre down into its component parts. He can’t use it in that state, but if he is as powerful as you and your cousin indicate, he would not need it until he reaches the Ward Walls and wants to cross over to Chaos.”

  I frowned. “Forgive me for being so slow, but magick confuses me. Why would his having broken the sceptre down into various parts make it difficult to detect?”

  The sorcerer smiled. “Your question is a difficult one to answer. What is it that makes a chair a chair?”

  I hesitated for a moment, sensing a trick. “It has four legs, a seat, and a back.”

  “But if it only has three legs, in a triangle configuration so it still stood, would it still be a chair?”

  “1 guess so.”

  “But you could tell the difference between it and a three-legged stool?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Well…” My frown deepened. “It has an inherent chairness about it, I guess.”

  The Warder nodded. “Exactly. So it is with everything, from rocks to people and magickal items. That inherent quality of being whatever it is helps identify that person or item as far as magick is concerned. When the sceptre is dismantled, whatever that quality is, it undergoes reduction until we can’t identify it anymore. If and when the Chademon reassembles the sceptre, we’ll know it, but until then we have no chance of detecting it.”

  “I see, I think.” I shrugged and let the matter drop as another sorcerer called Illtyd aside to deal with some problem. A number of other individuals moved around the room, placing standards with color-coded flags on the miniature landscape to mark out zones. The vast majority of spaces were encompassed in a boundary of white flags.

  The Warlord nodded to me. “lust before you arrived, Warder Illtyd explained that the information about the various areas of Chaos correspond roughly to the color of the flags outlining them. The darker the flag, the more recent and solid the information.”

  “White means we know little or nothing?”

  “Not exactly, Locke.” Illtyd, who had returned, frowned and pointed to the miniature with his right hand. “All of the geographical features you see depicted here have been painstakingly reproduced from survey reports. The level of that information is very good, but noting the layout of stones on a plain tells us nothing about what might live beneath the stones. We know what the mountains look like, but we have little or no idea about what might be inside of them.”

  Kit leaned over and squinted at one detail of the map. “We can and should make some assumptions if we want to locate this Necroleum. The first, I think, is that it must be in territory held by the Bharasfiadi. i cannot imagine, if it is so important to them, they would not protect it very well.”

  Thetys nodded in agreement. “I doubt other Chademons would allow it to exist given what the presence of thousands of Bharashadi warriors would mean to the balance of power in Chaos. I think we can limit our search to Bharashadi territory.”

  That assumption, it struck me, still left a great deal of Chaos for its location. “I think we can also assume that it is in a very defensible area. I would doubt it is located in ruins or anything else that we might know about from books or maps written and drawn before the invasion.” I pointed to a white-flagged area of labyrinthine canyons and river valleys. “I would bet it is in there somewhere.”

  Illtyd pointed us toward the small room used the day before to explain the situation to the nobles. “That is as good a place as any to start, I suppose. I will have my aides bring us the survey reports, maps, and journals from any expeditions in that area. Let us hope we find some clue that will help you in your expedition.”

  We pored over volumes of material for the next six hours. The material we used was incredibly varied in reliability and presentation. A lot of it seemed based on talks with Chaos Riders after their return from expeditions. Hyperbole characterized many accounts, but they also contained a wealth of information. I pored over the ones I’d been given, drinking in details and facts that I hoped would help me in Chaos.

  Despite the hours we put in, we only covered a quarter of the area we had decided to explore. I discovered many things that astounded and amazed me, but 1 learned little I could consider useful to the task at hand. Reading about legendary creatures like the Emerald Stallion or of spotting Castel Payne aloft were interesting, but really had little bearing on our task. What might have been a promising trail in one set of documents was proved to be false by another. While gaining a very good feel for the area, the only thing that time did for me was clarify the enormity and impossibility of our mission.

  llltyd put several of his aides to work compiling a definitive gazetteer of the valleys and canyons we read about. One woman combined all of the maps and sketches we came across into a composite view of the region that included demarcations for variable time zones, safe watering holes, old ruins in which we might take shelter, and known ambush sites. Each site was given a number which corresponded to an entry in the gazetteer, and we were assured we would be given multiple copies of each to study and use during the mission.

  As the day wore on into midafternoon, I was granted leave to go and meet Roarke at the Temple of the Sunbird. The Emperor approved of his suggestion to get a member of the Church to go with us, so I took that as a good sign. I left the palace and made my way to the Temple district, finding Roarke rather easily on the broad steps of the Sunbird temple.

  “There you are, Locke.” The one-eyed man smiled and greeted m
e with a slap on the shoulder. “I spoke with one of the Priests earlier, and I think we will be given help.”

  “Good.” I looked around and frowned. “Where’s Cruach?”

  Roarke laughed lightly. “1 went to your grandmother’s home to bring you with me earlier. You were gone, so 1 left Cruach with Nob. 1 will get him later. Come on.”

  The mammoth granite temple reminded me more of a fortress than a place of worship. It had pillars holding up a frieze depicting the Sunbird in battle with the Demons of Night, but the austerity of the rest of the structure mocked the ostentation of the other temples on the street. The dark tunnel that led through the guarded gate had murderholes cut in the top of it, and when the iron doors were closed and barred at either end, an army could have been held captive. Nowhere in the tunnel did I see grand murals or tapestries giving glory to the Sunbird or the accomplishments of the Sunbird believers.

  “Rather a forbidding place, is it not?”

  Roarke shrugged. “The Sunbirders spend most of their gold on weapons and training, which will be money well spent given what we need on our expedition.”

  The far end of the tunnel opened onto a massive courtyard that was split down the middle by an elevated walkway linking front to back. All around the exterior a broad marble avenue a good ten feet above the central training ground allowed people to move from one part of the temple to another without disturbing the Novices, Brothers, and Sisters being put through their paces by Teachers and Priests.

  The walkway bridging the entrance to the Inner Sanctum arched up over the practice field and gave me a bird’s-eye view of how members of the Sunbird Church were trained. Cadres of a dozen put themselves through a host of physical-conditioning drills and weapon-skills exercises. All in all, what I saw reminded me of my grandfather’s training regime, though easier.

  Roarke pointed toward some of the rooms accessible from the exterior walkway. “The Church, in addition to being a training ground, has developed knowledge that is very good in helping to rehabilitate warriors who have been wounded. They also take care of old warriors and have a division of their brethren devoted to recording histories.”

  At the far end of the bridge a man waited for us. He smiled at Roarke and acknowledged me with a nod. “I am Valarius. 1 will conduct you to the Bishop.” I could tell from a rank badge with seven small, equilateral triangles in a circle on it that he was a Priest. “If you will follow me.”

  Valarius led us back into a much more grandly appointed area of the temple. Here I saw the murals and statuary I would have expected in a temple, though these were far more martial in nature than I had seen in other places of worship. Whereas another temple might have a dozen little alcove-shrines in the corridors, each one with a statue reflecting another aspect of the god or goddess being worshiped, the Sunbird temple had these filled with tributes to heroes. Some were beautifully executed statues, while others contained suits of armor and weapons. By that standard the antechamber of my suite could have been a Sunbird shrine, but here the weapons and armor seemed more suited to contemplation than actual use.

  Valarius brought us to a small, enclosed arenalike area built down into the floor. I recognized it as similar to the type of area used to judge duels or tests to determine if a student had sufficient knowledge to pass from one rank to another. 1 had never been in such a place before, but my grandfather had described it in exquisite detail on a number of occasions—generally using it as an illustration of where I did not want to be when I again made whatever stupid mistake he had previously corrected me for.

  “Gentlemen,” Valarius said as he pointed to the person on the arena floor, “this is Bishop Osane.”

  The Bishop to whom Valarius led us did not at all fit my idea of a holy man. That probably stemmed, initially, from his being a holy woman and her being relatively young. I had been expecting a man with a long beard and wrinkles deep enough to draft a ship, and instead 1 found a tall, powerfully built woman working her way through a series of fighting stances and parries with blinding speed. She had to be of Champion rank in skill with the hand-and-a-half sword she used.

  Clad in boots, a loincloth, and a padded leather tunic, Osane swung the blade through a cut that would have bisected anything less stout than an ox, then laid the sword on a stand. She wiped her forehead on the back of her right sleeve. She had tied her light brown hair with a cloth at the back of her neck, and the light from oil lamps flickered gold highlights into it. In her eyes I detected a hint of Chaosfire, but barely enough to mark her a veteran of more than one campaign beyond the wall.

  “Thank you, Valarius.” Osane slowly walked up the steps to the level on which we stood. She watched me closely, and I felt uneasy under her steady gaze. I felt as if I were being studied by a predator.

  She shifted her gaze from me to Roarke. “From what you related to Valarius, and what he has passed on to me, this expedition you are planning into Chaos is purest folly. A dozen individuals are to convince Lord Fialchar to hand over the Staff of Emeterio? I know there must be more to it than that, but I cannot imagine how the truth could be any better than the fiction.”

  “True enough, Holiness.” Roarke glanced at me. “I told Lachlan that the Church of the Sunbird would have no interest in this and would not participate. Still, he’s an optimistic youth …”

  My eyes grew wide with surprise, betraying Roarke’s deception. Somehow 1 got the feeling he had not fooled t he Bishop, who had expected me to be taken by surprise. I shook my head, and she smiled openly.

  “Oh, 1 know of you, Roarke, and I know this is all your doing.” Osane narrowed her silver eyes. “I know enough of you to know that anything that would have you going back into Chaos must be something special. This forced me to evaluate the unknown and decide if it would be in our best interest to aid you.”

  1 kept a smile from my face as the Bishop made her comment. The Church of the Sunbird had pushed the Ward Walls out to reclaim Tarris from Chaos nearly a century back, despite an Imperial prohibition against such action. That released many Chaos creatures into the Empire, and the Church of the Sunbird had been doing its best to make amends since that time. If she felt the Church’s participation in our mission would help rebuild the Church’s reputation, she would give us help.

  Our mission, if we succeeded, would certainly go a long way toward redeeming the Church’s reputation. It certainly would not hurt the career of the Church member who went along with us. The Church of the Sunbird considered fighting against Chaos a sacred duty, and a mission like this, if not divinely inspired, certainly could be seen as divinely mandated.

  Osane closed her eyes for a second and mumbled a prayer. “I have discussed this matter with my superiors.

  It is clear this enterprise is very important, and we should encourage its success.”

  Roarke nodded. “That was our reasoning behind approaching the Church to have someone to come along with us.”

  “I am glad you approve of our thoughts, Roarke.” Her eyes opened again. “It has been decided. I will join your group.”

  Roarke looked stunned. “You, Holiness?”

  “Is there something wrong with that?” Osane watched Roarke carefully. “Did you think we could entrust the mission to someone who has less training or ability?”

  “Ah, no, just, I, ah,” Roarke shrugged. “I would not have thought the Church would risk so valuable a member of the clergy on so chancy an expedition.”

  She smiled easily, clearly pleased she had confounded Roarke. “Suffice it to say, Roarke, I am more at home in Chaos than I am here. My restlessness disturbs some of my superiors. By mutual consent we have decided I would represent the Church in this matter.”

  “I see.” Roarke offered her his arm, and she grasped it firmly. “We are pleased to have you with us, Bishop Osane. Locke, give her the medallion.”

  I handed it to her, and she hefted it in her right hand. “I will see to it the Emperor gets more than he pays for.”

  Outside the t
emple, I stopped Roarke. “What did she mean when she said she was more at home in Chaos than she was here?”

  The Chaos Rider shrugged. “Many of us who have been out of the womb feel ill at ease here. Apparently she is one who does.”

  “But she has next to no Chaosfire in her eyes. How often could she have been there?”

  Roarke smiled. “Far more than I have, Locke. The l.ick of Ckaosfire has more to do with protection from her deity than it does any lack of experience in Chaos. Aside from Nagrendra, she probably has more time in chaos than anyone in our company.”

  “But if the Sunbird can prevent her from being w.irped by Chaos, 1 mean if he has that much power over Chaos, why doesn’t he sweep it away?”

  “Locke, have you ever captured a fly and tossed it into a spider’s web?”

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to see what would happen.” 1 folded my arms across my chest and looked down, embarrassed by the cruelty of that sort of thing. “It was something to do—1 was a child.”

  “Locke”—the one-eyed man patted me on top of the head—“the gods get bored, too, and who’s to say they’re all that grown-up anyway?”

  18

  R

  oarke and I parted company as he headed to the Umbra and I started back toward the palace. The addition of Bishop Osane to our group buoyed my feelings about the mission. I knew our chances for survival were still slim, and chances for success even more slender, but now I felt they were sufficient that magickal augmentation wasn’t necessary to see them.

  The fact that I wasn’t more terrified about the trip surprised me. I knew that my ignorance of the realities of Chaos was insulating me from fear. Likewise, the sheer urgency of the mission and the need for its success made acknowledging fear counterproductive. 1 couldn’t afford to be afraid, so 1 wasn’t. As much as that state of affairs seemed to work well at the moment, I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with what the future would bring.