The Godswar Saga (Omnibus)

by Jennifer Vale

  “Of course,” Adar said. “Thank you again.”

  Elade nodded and left, and Ria turned to face him. “She’s not what I expected. Not from a paladin…and definitely not from an elf.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” Ria admitted. “But I have a feeling we’ll know soon enough.”

  ***

  Tevek Dracian squinted down at Jason’s face as if doing so would suddenly make him understand what the young man was going through. His cheeks would periodically twitch, but otherwise he looked disturbingly like a corpse. Tevek wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly, but his hope was that Jason’s mind had figured out a way to cope with the flood of knowledge. The leading alternative theory was that his mind had already shut down and his body would soon follow. Tevek chose to believe the former, and he wondered idly if the young man would be the same person when he woke up.

  Taking a deep breath, the Highlord experimentally rotated his shoulder and stretched out his arm. His aging body had taken a beating in the last few days, and his muscles still ached if he didn’t stretch them regularly. Part of the pain might have been in his head, though; it was just a manifestation of the helplessness crushing his spirit. A few days ago, the Aether had made him a powerful and resilient warrior; now he was just a battered old man with a fancy sword and nice armor.

  Behind him, he heard a soft groan and turned. Two empty beds away, Selvhara’s eyes fluttered open. Tevek leapt across the room and was at her side within seconds.

  “Sel,” he whispered, placing a hand on her face, “can you hear me?”

  Her violet orbs fixed upon him, and her lips curled into a warm smile. “Elu Shala.”

  “Hello to you,” he replied, squeezing her arm. “How do you feel?”

  “Weak,” she breathed as she leaned upwards and winced in pain.

  “Just stay put. Elade did what she could, but she said it would take a few days before you were mobile.”

  “I see. I didn’t deserve your personal touch?”

  Tevek’s smile faded. “I’m afraid my bond was severed as well.”

  “Oh, goddess,” Selvhara breathed, her expression melting as if she had just remembered what happened to her. “How…?”

  “I have no idea how the Imperator managed it, but he didn’t even give me a chance to fight him,” he explained. “He went after Jason, but—”

  “Jason!” Selvhara tried to jolt upright again, but Tevek held her firmly in place.

  “Jason is fine. Elade stopped the man who did this to us.”

  Selvhara closed her eyes and whispered what he imagined was a soft prayer to her goddess. Her entire body seemed to relax, and he suddenly wished he didn’t have to tell her the rest.

  “He used the cube, Sel,” Tevek murmured. “Elade said he was trying to save Sarina, but instead the box opened and…well, the spark merged with him.”

  Her eyes remained closed, but he could feel her muscles tense. “Do you think he’ll survive?”

  “He should. It’s been almost two days now and he’s still all right. He must have found a way to cope somehow, but he might be unconscious for a while.”

  “He’ll need water,” Selvhara said, once again flinching upward. Tevek continued to hold her in place even after she shot him a withering glare.”

  “Elade can take care of him until you’re well,” Tevek soothed. “Just relax. When he wakes up, I’m sure you’ll be the first person he’ll want to talk to.” He smiled down at her. “I can’t think of anyone better than you to help him with what he’s about to go through.”

  She glanced away. “I can’t help anyone right now. I can’t feel anything….”

  He clasped his hand in hers. “I know, but he’s going to need someone, and I guarantee he’ll want it to be you.”

  Selvhara swallowed heavily as her eyes flicked about the room. “Everything is so…hollow. I feel like I’m looking at a painting rather than the real thing.”

  Tevek nodded solemnly. He had already fought this battle with himself over the last two days, but for her it was just beginning…and it wasn’t going to be pleasant. Elade had healed most of the physical damage from Selvhara’s actual sword wound, and in a few more days there probably wouldn’t even be a scar on her belly. But the mental wound would be far more severe. Stripped from heightened senses it had enjoyed for centuries, her body might have simply been shutting down. He felt like a man who had suddenly gone deaf—she would probably feel deaf and blind.

  More than anything, he wished he had the power to help her, but while he could theoretically return to the Dawn Citadel and reforge his bond with Maeleon, Selvhara had been banished from her homeland. Even if she could return to Sorthaal, there was no guarantee that the other druids would allow her to commune with their goddess, Anvira.

  He leaned down and kissed her gently. Aether no longer coursed through either of them, but he could still feel a tingle of energy between their bodies when their skin touched.

  “We’ll get through this,” Tevek told her. “I promise.”

  ***

  Garin Kroll flexed his muscles against his restraints. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness well enough that he could discern the shadowy outline of the metal shackles on his feet and arms. He could even make out the bracelet encircling his wrist and biting into his skin. He had used devices like it many times, mostly during training exercises at the Vortex Chamber. Aetheric suppression devices had existed for decades in one form or another, and Sovereign Damir insisted on teaching her servants how to deal with them. As far as he knew, no Bound had ever been able to successfully channel more than a small flicker of energy or brief telepathic message with one clasped to them.

  An Unbound, however, might not be so limited.

  Kroll focused on his restraints. The metal was small and thin; it would take only a relatively small burst of force to shatter them and free himself. Each time he tried, however, the cuff bit into his skin and the combination of the dampening crystals and raw pain thwarted his efforts. He had attempted to channel a dozen times over now, and his wrist was already coated in a layer of dried blood. But that was all right. If he had to try long enough that the bracelet severed his hand, then so be it. One way or another, he was going to get free.

  Closing his eyes, he summoned the Aether into his body once again. He forced himself to stay calm and measured, and he glared down at the metal band. The instant he felt the first tickle of his power, he tried to conjure a blast of energy—and then he shrieked as the cuff bit deeper into his skin.

  Kroll clenched his teeth. More than anything, he wanted to see that smug dark elf cunt shackled to the floor in front of him. The mere thought of her disgusting gray face and glowing blue eyes made him sick. To have so much power and willingly toss it aside…it almost made her worse than these pathetic vorhang she called allies. Kroll leaned back and tried to relax by imagining what he would do to her if she were here. He couldn’t break her with his powers, but he was more than willing to try other methods. He wondered how much pain it would take to make her come around, or if he would just have to fuck her until she understood his dominance. Both had their benefits.

  In the end, he would probably just have to kill her, but Sovereign Damir would want him to at least try to turn her to their side. They were going to need more allies before all of this was over, and Kroll knew there was something special about this elf. He had seen the truth in her eyes during their duel and again when she had spoken to him. She was a warrior touched by darkness…and even the pitiful platitudes of the Last Dawn couldn’t cleanse her completely.

  Smiling to himself, Kroll decided to alter his strategy. Perhaps a subtle push would be more effective than brute force. He drew the Aether back into him, but instead of conjuring a burst of energy he concentrated instead upon the faint tether of the mistress’s consciousness. The bracelet bit into him, but he clenched his jaw and ignored the pain. He only needed to press a few seconds more…

 
Mistress!

  Kroll cried out again as his concentration shattered, but he knew it had been enough. Sovereign Damir knew he was alive. Since the paladin refused to kill him, it meant he could live long enough to be rescued.

  And then he could watch as the Zarul burned this insignificant rebellion to ashes.

  Chapter Four

  “Whoever said that torture ultimately damages the torturer as much as the victim has clearly never had his eye gouged out with a hot poker.”

  —Unknown

  Vice Admiral Onar Tenel set down his pen and stretched out his sore muscles. A glance at his pocket watch revealed it was only mid-afternoon, but his back and eyes felt like it was well past midnight. He had been staring at field reports and drawing up invasion plans since before dawn, and his brain was just about ready to shut down. If not for the dozens of questions gnawing away at him, it probably would have already.

  The work itself wasn’t really bothering him; he was relieved to finally be doing something he was familiar with, albeit under extenuating circumstances. The problem was that he’d eventually realized that his plans served no real purpose. Everything revolved around Sovereign Damir’s coup. If her plan failed, their invasion forces would be slaughtered no matter how brilliant his strategy—ten thousand troops and a light aerial support unit wouldn’t scratch the surface on any Alliance border garrison, let alone the northern bastion of Garos. If her plan succeeded, on the other hand, then it still didn’t really matter what tactics they employed. The Solarians would be virtually defenseless without their Bound priests, and the Crell invasion force could probably push into Celenest before the first serious snowfall.

  Tenel had never been responsible for such a large force in his entire military career…and yet at the same time, he wasn’t sure he had ever felt this helpless. Sighing, he stood and groaned as his back muscles protested the quick movement. His coffee was cold and his lunch plate was empty, but there was a bottle of whiskey in the far cabinet with his name on it. He popped the cork and took a swig without even reaching for a glass. Drinking always made him yearn to look out a window or pace around or do something else suitably pensive, but being trapped inside a windowless, underground room severely limited his options. Instead he settled for glaring down at the pile of reports on the edge of his desk.

  In the last several days since the failed attack at Lyebel, he had been digging through some older Zarul records and trying to figure out more about his current superior. Asking questions about an Ascendant was always dangerous, of course, and doubly so when she happened to be the Sovereign of the most powerful covert agency in the world. Tenel was also working inside a building filled with dozens of telepaths, and presumably they could peek into his mind whenever they wanted and see his doubts for themselves. But if that were the case, then his desire to sift around through some old files surely wouldn’t surprise them, and in the long term it might even quell his doubts and help him become more productive.

  Unfortunately, that hadn’t happened. If anything, the more he read, the deeper his doubts became. At first, Tenel had tried to find information on High Sovereign Thelonius’s alleged directive about attacking Solaria before winter, but he hadn’t uncovered a single trace of any such order. Next, he had tried to learn about the buildup of Crell forces along the Solarian border—where they had come from, who had given the orders, and so on—but again he hadn’t found anything. Finally, he had tried to figure out other reasons why Damir might have chosen him for this job, and once more he had come up empty.

  Tenel took a deep swig from the bottle and winced as it burned his throat. There were reasonable, if incomplete, explanations for all of these things. While the Sovereigns weren’t telepathically bound to one another, rumor had it the High Sovereign could communicate with any of his subordinates at his leisure. If true, it cemented a fairly logical and organized hierarchy throughout the demesne: the High Sovereign communicated with the provincial lords, who then communicated with their troops and agents. That type of structure would also explain periodic gaps in communication as well as the lack of a tangible paper trail.

  As for the military buildup, the invasion regiments were small enough that it was at least possible he hadn’t heard about them while aboard the Perilous, especially if they had been drawn from local garrisons. Aside from numbers, though, the details he had been provided about their specific troop makeups remained sketchy. Damir had assured him they would have a direct line of communication to the field commanders during the battles, but he didn’t know which Sovereign controlled which Imperators within each battalion. If they had been taken piecemeal from other armies scattered throughout the Imperium, it would explain how it might have gone unnoticed, but it would also mean the troops would have split loyalties in the battle.

  He shook his head and paced behind his desk. His last question remained the most important and elusive: why was he, Onar Tenel, the one sitting here in the first place? The only answer he’d been able to come up with was the fact he didn’t have any strong personal connections to any of the other Sovereigns. Virtually everyone else in High Command was either directly Bound to one of the other Sovereigns or had served under them for many years. He, on the other hand, had flitted beneath different commanders his entire life.

  Tenel set the bottle down on his desk and rubbed at his sweaty forehead. The central theme in all of his theories was that the Sovereigns weren’t nearly as coordinated as he’d been led to believe. His mind couldn’t help but flash back to all the mess hall scuttlebutt he’d picked up over the years. Many within the military were terrified of the Zarul, and a number of his friends had liked to concoct elaborate conspiracy theories about how the Green Coats were secretly running the country. But what if they were right? What if Damir really was trying to take control of the Imperium? What if the other Sovereigns had no idea what she was doing? What if she had assembled these invasion forces herself as a plot to conquer Solaria on her own?

  Thankfully, that particular theory had plenty of its own problems. No matter how detached they might have been from the day-to-day activities in their realm, the Sovereigns wouldn’t just miss three separate armies of ten thousand soldiers spread out along the Solarian border. And even if Damir did throw the Imperium into war, it wasn’t as if the High Sovereign would let her get away with it. Eventually he would figure out what was going on, and even the Zarul couldn’t stand against the combined forces of four separate Ascendants.

  No, it didn’t make sense. The theory fit some facts but completely ignored others. Clearly there was something else going on here…the only real question was whether or not he would figure it out before he started what might be the bloodiest war in Torsia’s long history.

  A soft knock rapped at the door, and Tenel turned as a nondescript man in a drab green coat peered inside. “I have the information you requested, Admiral.”

  “Good,” Tenel replied, walking over and retrieving the satchel. He assumed it contained more reports from the southern forces. “Thank you.”

  “Of course, sir,” the man said, nodding curtly and then closing the door.

  Tenel allowed himself a tight smile. For all the questions he had about what was going on here, another part of him couldn’t help but think he needed to just stop fretting and enjoy what he’d been given. This office was all business here: there was no socializing, no bureaucracy, and no real politics. He had to explain his decisions to exactly one person, and she was all that mattered. It was such a refreshing change of pace he wondered if perhaps he was just looking a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe if he just shut his mind up and kept focusing on his work, everything would work itself out. They could usher in an era of peace and order Torsia had never seen. And then, perhaps, he could finally return home.

  Tenel took a deep breath, then swept up his whisky bottle and downed the remnants in a single, throat-burning chug.

  ***

  The day after Selvhara awakened, Tevek began preparing for his trip back to the D
awn Citadel. It wasn’t an easy decision for him to make, and Elade could tell it was weighing heavily on his mind. He wanted to stay here while his old friends recovered, and he especially wanted to stay and help monitor Jason. But he also knew that with his bond severed, he couldn’t function as the Highlord. Restoring his link to the others had to remain his top priority.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he whispered, probably just as much to himself as to her. “Once the reinforcements arrive—”

  “I know,” Elade soothed, placing her hand on his arm and smiling. “We’ve been over this a dozen times by now.”

  Tevek grunted and turned away. “It’s not that I don’t trust you to handle it—I wouldn’t want anyone else here in my place. It’s just…”

  “You prefer being on the front lines. I know. But if Alric gets his way, you’ll be spending a lot more time sitting behind your desk. Perhaps you should start getting used to it now.”

  His cheek flinched. Elade had meant it as a joke, but she should have known better than to prod him when he was in a sour mood. Everyone had been on edge these last few days, even the normally unflappable Highlord of the Last Dawn.

  “Sorry,” she murmured. “You know I wouldn’t let him do that to you.”

  Tevek smiled faintly. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

  Elade nodded. The two of them were waiting in the basement of the new compound for Adar’s promised escort. From here, Tevek could slip into the old sewers and safely leave the city. He was friends with a griffon breeder in a small village just up the river, and he planned to borrow a mount and fly across the border into Solaria. If he cut straight south along the mountains, he should have been able to reach the portal at Brackengarde in just a few days, and assuming the Conclave didn’t give him trouble and the Binding Ritual went as planned, he could be back here within a week. None of that was a sure thing, of course, and it was entirely feasible that he’d be gone for weeks or months.