The False Martyr

by H. Nathan Wilcox

  “My lord,” she said with a formality that only Ipid could tell was mock, “The Belab has sent us to assist you in the city. We are prepared to do anything you ask.” Ipid could only imagine her smirk as she said it.

  Ipid looked back down the road before them, wondering how it was supposed to help him that he was escorted not only by a cadre of invaders but also by two of the Exiles. He sighed. Have the courage to be hated, Eia had said. There was little doubt of that. “Thank you,” he said. “I am sure to find a use for your skills. Now, shall we be on our way?”

  “As you command, my lord. Arin has placed you in charge of this land. Your word is law.” Eia said the last without any hint of her usual sarcasm. A reminder, Ipid knew.

  He took a deep breath, steadied himself, and loosened his grip on the reins. The horse knew exactly what that meant. It obediently walked then trotted then galloped down the hill and across the field to the first buildings of Wildern on Orm.

  A cadre of riders in the blue tunics of the city watch met them at the first shanty buildings. Not another living creature was visible. No people lined the streets, no one leaned from the windows or peeked from behind walls, not even a stray dog could be found to meet the tyrant. It was not an auspicious beginning. Certainly, Ipid had not expected fanfare or celebrations, but he had, at least, expected curiosity. As it was, even the city watch nearly broke at the sight of the invaders bearing down on them. Their eyes shifted, bodies tensed, and hands clasped their reins as they watched the column come. Their leader, the same man who had accompanied the officials the previous day, turned in his saddle, quieted their nerves, and ensured that they held, but it was a precarious thing. These people had no will to fight. They had seen what the invaders could do and wanted no more part of it. Considering what lie before them, Ipid supposed that was as good a place as any to start.

  He pulled to a stop in front of the Burle Tyne. The captain’s horse whinnied and retreated a few steps at the approach of the huge Darthur steeds, but its master brought it under control and faced the invaders with a stiff spine. Ipid studied the man then the guards behind him. They wore the round, steel helms of the watch, which left their faces in full view. Though Captain Tyne put on a good show, Ipid found the same fear hidden in his eyes that was far more obvious on the faces of his fellows. It’s all a show, he realized as he looked at the captain. Behind that staunch exterior, he is trembling. And his men will bolt if a warrior so much as loosened his sword in its scabbard. Ipid sighed. As glad as he was that the men did not plan to fight, he still needed them to have some fight in them.

  “Captain Tyne,” he greeted. “I am pleased to see that you retain command of the watch. We will need you and your men in the days to come. We have much to accomplish, and it is my desperate hope that we can do it with as little bloodshed as possible, that we can meet the invaders’ demands and see them gone from our lands. Are you prepared to do your part?” In his life, Ipid had found that men were most loyal when they were asked directly for their loyalty, that a man would often stick with you for no other reason than he had said he would, and that was all he needed from Captain Tyne.

  “Sir,” the big man answered. “The watch is yours to command. We are . . . the entire city is at your mercy. We will do whatever is required to spare ourselves more destruction.”

  “Not mine, Captain. I am but a prisoner taken early and elevated beyond any desire.” Next to him, Eia cleared her throat. Distracted, Ipid looked to her. She glared at him. He considered his words and started again. “Then you will do exactly as I say.” Captain Tyne recoiled like a beaten dog. “You will not question. You will not consider. You will act. Do you understand, Captain?”

  “Sir,” the captain stammered. He licked his thick lips and looked at the warriors then the wizards. “Yes, my lord. I understand.”

  “Good. Now, we have much to do. I assume that First Advisor Bellon is still the acting Chancellor?”

  “He is, sir. But . . . .”

  “But nothing,” Ipid snapped. “You will take me to him immediately.”

  “As you command, my lord,” the captain answered, but his voice was uncertain.

  Ipid did not like it, but Captain Tyne turned his horse before he could make a point of it. The other members of the watch preceded him. Two rode off at a gallop to clear the road ahead. Others followed at ever slower paces to ensure the streets remained secure. The final four flanked their captain. Ipid fell in behind. His column of warriors followed, making their way through the untouched streets of the fallen capital.

  They rode through the city at a deliberate pace without seeing a single other soul. Ipid watched the windows, roofs, alleyways, expecting to find at least a few curious spectators, but every shutter was locked; the roofs, sparkling with evaporating dew, were barren; and the alleys held only garbage and rats. They passed the travelers’ inns and modest residences that defined the outskirts of the city on through the western market into the stoic financial district that had sprung up outside the city’s old wall. Each section was as lifeless as the last. The inns were silent. The stalls of the market were shuttered even as they should be coming to life. The stout, iron-bound doors of the banks were bolted, the barred windows closed. Ipid wondered if anyone still remained or if the entire city had been abandoned.

  Finally, they left the heavy block structures that served as banks, guildhalls, and counting houses and arrived at the great wall that encircled the city’s ancient heart. That heart and its walls were no more. Before them stood the enormous gates and flanking towers that provided one of the four access points to the inner city. The huge doors were open, but little remained of them beyond great iron-studded cinders. The southern tower had been toppled, leaving the gate looking lopsided. Beyond the gates, the devastation was even worse. In places spans of wall still stood, sections of grey blocks rising in fifty foot stacks to parapets or a lonely tower. Between those was shattered rubble. Thousand pound limestone bricks that had stood since before the founding of the Empire had been pounded to gravel. Towers had fallen and shattered. Great craters marked the devastation as if the finger of some mighty god had stabbed down on a wall of sand.

  When he recovered enough to act, Ipid spurred his horse through the gates. The walls that remained transformed from grey to soot-streaked black. The gatehouse to the side was a burnt-out husk. The portcullis no more than pieces of blackened, twisted steel was caught half-way up. They passed beneath it into the Maelstrom’s cold heart. The city inside was no more. Rubble had replaced it. The few structures that still stood were battered, leaning, cracked, and streaked black almost as if the shadows of the fires had been permanently imprinted upon their surfaces. Smoke rose in wisps all around as if the very ground burned. They combined together at the height of the few remaining towers and drifted in a cloud with the breeze to the south. The smell of smoke and ash was everywhere, permeating everything, caustic and burning.

  Holding his nose and wiping his eyes, Ipid examined the scene, felt his heart breaking, and fought to constrain his sorrow. His eyes went to all the Kingdoms’ greatest buildings: the Hall of Understanding, the Chancellor’s Palace, the Parliament, the University, the mighty Temple of the Order, the Monument to Unification. They were gone, but his eyes kept searching. Despite having watched their destruction only a matter of hours before, he could not accept that it was real. Surely, such great building, such powerful edifices, symbols of this great city, this great nation, could not just disappear. Surely, they must still be there, standing behind the shattered granite and marble or hidden beneath the rubble, needing only excavation to be restored.

  A single morning, Ipid reminded himself. That was all it had taken the te-am ‘eiruh to destroy an era of culture and history. It was as much as Arin thought about the things he destroyed. He had robbed a nation of its most important symbols, killed its most important men, brought it literally to its knees, and it had taken only hours, had required nothing more than a gesture. Ipid could barely make his mi
nd grasp all that had been lost, could only stare at the blackened heaps and try to understand how he had so completely failed.

  “You see, Traitor Ronigan,” a rasping voice rose as cracked as the buildings around it. “You see now what your friends have done.” Hector Bellon appeared from behind a jumble of stones. Coughs overtook him, leaving him hacking until he was doubled over. Still, his eyes did not leave Ipid and his sneer did not fade. He was alone, wearing the same soot-stained clothes and grey bandages as the previous day. His face was black so he more closely resembled the fire boy in a forge than the acting leader of a nation. “There is nothing left for you to rule,” he continued when he had recovered. He yelled but his voice had been stolen by the fire, leaving him with little more than a watery rasp. “They destroyed it all. Everyone is dead.” He swept his hand as if showing a house for sale. Another cough took him. He fought it off. “Good luck with your reign. There are no officials to carry out your will. There are no generals, no administrators, no advisors, no secretaries. Nothing. You rule over ash and rubble and death.” He coughed and spit the phlegm into the ashes at his feet. They rose in a puff.

  Hector Bellon growled, showing his teeth like a rabid dog. His hands clenched at his side, and he looked for a moment like he might charge, like he might try to take Ipid from his saddle and savage him like the animal he had so clearly become. At his side, Ipid heard warriors loosen their swords. Lord Bellon wouldn’t get within ten paces, but it didn’t matter. The acting chancellor turned, looked up at the devastation around him, and began to walk away.

  “Kill him,” Ipid commanded in Darthur. Lord Bellon must have had some sense of what the order meant, because he looked back, eyes wide, just as the arrow threw him to the ground. Ipid watched him fall, forced his eyes to remain as he twitched, tore at the shaft with red, wet fingers, and then slowly settled into his death. If he was going to do this, he could not be afraid of death. He forced down the bile that rose in his throat, forced his chest to stop shaking, forced his hands to unclench from the pommel of his saddle, and forced his eyes to turn casually away. He did not look at Eia, was certain to keep his eyes from her hood as he directed his horse around and rode back through his guards out of the blackened gate. The last thing he wanted now was her assurance, her sympathy, her support. He wanted to be alone with his crime. It would not be the first, and he needed to own it before it could own him.

  Hector Bellon was correct, of course. The Darthur had destroyed every tool he needed to rule. All governmental and administrative buildings had been contained inside those walls, and everything in those walls was gone. And he had finished it. He had desperately wanted to bring Hector Bellon to his side, to keep the man on as Chancellor so that he could hide behind that symbol and do his work out of the light, but Hector Bellon had been beyond control. His mind had cracked. Killing him had not only been a necessity, it had been a mercy. But it left Ipid in an even more difficult position, left him with only one choice.

  Riding back toward the gate, he found Captain Tyne. He had remained outside with his men. Ipid could not blame him in the least. “Captain, where is the di valati?” he asked.

  “Dead,” he answered, voice wavering. He sat to the side of the gate, but the way his eyes bounced past Ipid showed that he had seen Lord Bellon’s fate. He seemed to wonder if he would be the next man to wear an arrow where his scarf should be. “He . . . he passed in the night. His lungs had been badly burned. He . . .”

  Ipid had neither the time nor inclination to listen further. “Who’s left? Which of the valati survived? Who’s in charge of the Church?”

  “My lord, sir, I . . . I don’t know who’s in charge. The valati are probably just now hearing of Di Valati Rylan’s death. I . . . I don’t know the procedure to . . . .”

  “The Chancellor can choose,” Ipid answered more to himself than to the captain. “Until the Xi Valati appoints a permanent replacement, the Chancellor can select an acting di valati.” He thought about that. It created a bit of a knot, but the answer seemed obvious. “Have Valati Wallock brought to me.”

  “Sir, of . . . of course, sir, but . . . but where will you be?”

  Ipid looked back over his shoulder at the wasteland beyond the gates. Obviously, he could not rule from a field of ash-strewn rubble. His mind went immediately to his own house and offices on the other side of the river, but he had watched them explode and burn along with everything else in the East Bridge section of the city. Most of the largest residences were there, along with the primary commercial buildings. Now, it was gone, just like the Capital District. Beyond that, the east side of the river was mostly warehouses, docks, slaughter houses, workshops, and the homes of those who worked in such places. Unless he took over a warehouse, there was nothing that would meet his needs. That left the west side. His eyes rose to the answer, stared at the estate peeking out over the surrounding buildings, nearly clinging to the side of the smashed wall.

  The Stullys were the other power in Wildern. They owned the docks and warehouses that lined the north side of the river. When the Kingdoms unified, the resulting river trade had made them wealthy beyond anyone save the Chancellor. Seeing the value of their rights, that first Chancellor had tried to seize the docks, but the very protections he had put in place had stopped him. With much expense and effort, the Stully’s had secured enough votes in the newly created parliament to thwart the very man who had insisted on the body’s creation. Now, the Stullys controlled the second largest block of representatives and made it their life’s mission to oppose the Kavich line. To this point, they had never found enough votes to depose them, but that did not stop them from trying.

  Given that their supporters tended to be traders, industrialists, bankers, and craftsmen, they would have been an obvious coalition for Ipid, but the Stullys had tried to block him from building his first mill in Wildern. Chancellor Kavich had come to his rescue, and Ipid had been his man ever since.

  Now was likely the Stullys greatest moment. The Chancellor and his entire Bureau were dead – Ipid could only imagine his wife and children had died with him when the palace was destroyed. Parliament had been out of session, so many of its members likely lived, but they were scattered. It would be weeks until a quorum could be found to select a new Chancellor. Allard Stully was the obvious man to fill that gap, but he would want to rule, could never accept Ipid or give him the writ to do what had to be done.

  Ipid watched the towers of Stully Manor and nodded. All the more reason. The Stullys had defiantly built their manor outside the city’s walls a century before unification. In the nearly two hundred years since, it had become a sprawling palace in its own right. It had enough rooms to house an entire government, stables large enough for the Darthur horses, and its own walls to keep out those who would protest his undoubtedly riot-inducing decisions. And even more important, seizing it would force Allard Stully from the city.

  “I will be at Stully Manor,” Ipid declared. “Captain, send men to collect Valati Wallock. I want you and the remainder to ride ahead. Tell Lord Stully that he and his family are to leave the house immediately. See that they are escorted. . . .”

  “My lord,” Captain Tyne quietly interrupted, “the Stullys have already evacuated the city. Most of the west side was evacuated when the invaders arrived. We expected an attack . . . .”

  “Even Lord Allard?” Ipid asked. “I can’t believe he abandoned the city at such a time.”

  “That I do not know, my lord. I know that he commissioned barges to carry his household to Aylesford. They left in a rush a week ago. I have had no reports of Lord Allard since, so I assume he accompanied them.”

  “Maybe he was the smart one all along,” Ipid said to himself. He considered for a moment but decided it changed nothing. “Did the servants remain?”

  “I am not sure, my lord. I expect he would have kept a few people there.”

  “I suppose we will find out. Captain, you and your men ride ahead. Be sure the house is prepared to receiv
e us.”

  “It will be as you say, my lord,” Captain Tyne saluted, turned to his men, issued orders, and rode away at the lead. Two of the men turned south, looking for a way across the river to Valati Wallock.

  Thirty minutes later, Ipid and his host rode through the gates of Stully Manor. The great oaken doors were thrown back, but Ipid admired the heavy carvings, polish, and lacquer that made them seem more an extravagance than a barrier. They stood at the end of a private lane, the only visible break in the short wall that completely surrounded the sprawling estate, its gardens, stables, servants’ quarters, and out buildings. The wall stretched for blocks in either direction, topped with metal spikes and interrupted by three low towers on each side. It was a wall meant to keep out rabble, not armies. It stood only fifteen feet and was only as thick as it needed to be to remain standing. The towers were primarily for show. Even the doors were not reinforced, had no slot for a bar and no portcullis to back them.

  Inside the wall, Ipid admired the great house. In comparison, Ipid’s was a cottage. At its center was a block of a building that held the public sections of the house: foyer, galleries, dining room, sitting rooms, kitchen, and library. Stretching from that four story granite fortress to either side were the two wings. Spanning a hundred paces each, they rose three stories to the green tin roof where copper gutters were supported by a rushing river of moss-encrusted granite. The wings housed the family and guests. Ipid had heard that they collectively contained over thirty bedrooms. The wings were said to contain other wonders meant only for the Stullys and their guests: galleries of great art, libraries with ancient texts, hot pools for swimming and bathing, gaming rooms, even a second and third kitchen with tiny elevators to carry food between the floors – if the stories were to be believed. And behind the main building, lost from view was the Stully’s greatest pride, the largest ballroom in the Kingdoms. A great round room, it spanned fifty paces and was said to be modeled off of the Hall of Understanding in Sal Danar with its own glass ceiling. The floor was tiled to match the Palace of the Rising Sun as were the statues arrayed around the room. Having been there himself, Ipid could certainly attest to its extravagance, if not the accuracy of its mimicry.