The White Song (Chronicles of the Black Gate Book 5)

by Phil Tucker

  “That, I can live with.” Tiron clapped the woman’s broad shoulder. “I’ll be back soon. Thank you.”

  “Get some rest,” said Ernka. “It won’t help anybody if you fall asleep mid-battle.”

  “Ha!” barked Tiron. “That’d be a first. I’ll see what I can do.”

  With that, he walked away. His hand settled on the unfamiliar pommel of his new blade, and he felt a jolt of panic. Of course: Kethe still had his family sword. Ah, well.

  He marched into the palace, ignoring the looks and salutes, and paused only to ask a servant where the Grace was holding court. The youth nearly tripped in his eagerness to lead Tiron to the chamber, and after five minutes of traversing the most opulent labyrinth in the Empire, they reached the cherry-wood doors before which stood Captain Patash and a dozen Agerastian guards.

  “Patash,” said Tiron. “All well?”

  “No,” Patash said in his clipped common. “Nothing is good. You, Ser Tiron?”

  Tiron smiled sourly. “No, nothing good on my end, either. She inside?”

  Patash opened the door in response.

  Iskra was standing within. A dozen or so men were seated around a table, half of them scribbling notes on parchment, none of them looking pleased. Orishin was sitting at a side desk, intently perusing a document.

  Iskra glanced over at Tiron, gave him a nod, and continued speaking.

  “It’s to be conveyed to every lord from Sige down to Bythos, exactly as I said. Orishin has a master document for you to check your own copies against. The Minister of the Sun should be finished with compiling a list of exact titles and addresses for all relevant officials. Stop by his office once you have your scribes making copies. I want the couriers carrying the Ascendant’s message to leave before dusk. Any questions?”

  One man raked his fingers through his thick black hair and shook his head. “No, Your Grace. Or, more accurately, so many that I don’t even know where to begin. Shall we set a time to reconvene?”

  “No,” said Iskra. “Execute those commands and then wait for my summons.” She smiled wryly. “That will be all.”

  The men rose, their chair legs scraping on marble, and after deep bows filed past Tiron and out the door.

  Orishin also rose to his feet. “Given the nature of our visitor, there, I assume you wish to set the matter of the Agerastian rebellion aside for now?”

  “Yes,” sighed Iskra. “And what could I do even if I wished to act? Send soldiers back to quell the riots? It and its People’s Prince will have to wait.”

  “As you command,” said Orishin. He tidied up a stack of papers, closed a ledger, and corked his ink bottle. “Ser Tiron.” Then he, too, left the room.

  “By the White Gate and the Black,” Iskra said, sinking into a chair. “I feel like I’ve been tasked with building a house of cards during a storm.”

  “Why bother?” Tiron asked as he crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “None of it matters if we lose to the demons.”

  “But if we win? Life will go on, will it not? The Empire is in complete disarray, and the officials who were best positioned to deal with it have been revealed to be our greatest enemies. The sheer scope of the Minister of Perfection’s former authority is beyond belief.” Iskra shook her head. “The corruption. The abuse. His poison infiltrated down to every level. Trying to pick up and run with the remains is aggravating and — and –”

  “Iskra,” said Tiron. He pushed away from the wall and walked over to crouch in front of her. “Let it go. You can’t fix in one afternoon a problem that’s been centuries in the making.”

  Iskra bit her lip. “But there’s so much to be done. People are suffering across the breadth of the Empire. Do you know how much fish is rotting in the harbors of Zoe?” She took up a pile of reports from the table and began to sort through them. “And look at this. Refugees from Sige are flooding into the other cities and demanding to assume authority from the local leaders due to their elevated stations. Rumors and heresy are doing as much damage to the peace as the kragh ever did. Apparently, they’re saying in Nous that the Ascendant has died and the White Gate has fallen. Word has come that kragh are moving into Bythos instead of coming here – they’re fracturing into tribes following Tharok’s demand that they fight alongside us. Agerastos is up in arms, with some forgotten heir to the throne claiming that I am a puppet. And Ennoia! With the Solar Gate destroyed —”

  “Iskra,” said Tiron. He took the papers, set them aside, then grasped her hands in his own. Her bones felt so delicate, her skin so smooth. “Iskra. Let it go.”

  “I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t stop thinking about them. I never appreciated how finely balanced the Empire was, how much it depended on its connectivity. Starvation, riots, the need to post guards to keep people from flooding into Aletheia… If I can make even the smallest difference right now by sending out the right messenger to the right person, if I can ease the suffering of children and innocents —”

  “Shh,” Tiron said, moving forward onto his knees. “You need to take care of yourself. When did you last eat?”

  “Eat?” She laughed. “I don’t know. In Starkadr, perhaps? Before it fell?”

  “It’s the first rule of campaigning,” he said. “You have to pace yourself. If you want to win the war and not just the next battle, you need to keep an eye on your resources, conserve your strength, and not burn yourself out attempting to do everything at once. What good will you be to the Empire if you collapse tomorrow?”

  “If there’s a tomorrow,” Iskra said, looking down and away.

  “If there’s a tomorrow,” Tiron agreed.

  Finally, she looked back up and met his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s natural to want to help.”

  “No. I mean for what happened at your old home. Demanding that you help me, and then casting you out when you refused. I was wrong. I wish I’d listened.”

  Tiron stayed quiet, holding her hands.

  “I don’t know if you heard, but I killed the previous Grace, and Mertyn Laur the next night. Audsley was forced to burn countless soldiers so we could escape. It went horribly wrong. That wasn’t justice. It was base revenge.” Tears glimmered in her eyes. “And it didn’t change anything. It just made me feel worse about myself, less qualified to do any of this. It didn’t avenge Roddick. It soiled his memory.”

  Tiron squeezed her hands. He wanted to pull her into his arms, tell her it was all right, that he understood she had been acting from a place of grief and rage — but he could tell she wasn’t finished.

  “So much has happened in such a very short time,” said Iskra. “Empress. Invader. Now the Grace of the Empire. I feel like a cork being borne downstream. I’ve gone from acting on principle and seeking to enact change to simply trying to survive and help others. And I don’t even know if I’m doing that.”

  “You are,” Tiron said with absolute certainty. “You know you are.”

  “Yes,” said Iskra. “Perhaps. Or at least I’m trying. It’s just that I feel so much doubt now. When we were fleeing Castle Kyferin, when we were just trying to survive in Mythgræfen, everything was so simple. I felt righteous. I’d been obviously wronged. Now? I don’t know if I agree with Ascendancy – if I even believe in Ascension. I think of Asho and his dreams and feel nothing but guilt for helping the Empire. Doesn’t that make my being the Grace the rankest of hypocrisies? Not to mention my being the Agerastian Empress.”

  “I don’t know if I believe in Ascendancy anymore, either,” Tiron said softly. “I might have stopped believing it when my family died. But I don’t really care, either.”

  Iskra’s eyebrows shot up. “You don’t care?”

  “No. What happens after I die is of little interest to me these days. I swore a vow to uphold justice in this world, and when I joined Ramswold’s Order of the Star, I also decided to let go of my bitterness, my cynicism, my pain. I used to think it was my source of strength, my armor, born of decades of
experience, but I was lying to myself.”

  “What have you embraced instead?”

  Tiron reached up and brushed her cheek with the back of his finger. “It’s hard to put into words. Goodness, I suppose. Compassionate justice. I’m still figuring it out. Fighting my old habits. But I think it comes down to being willing to fully live. To risk pain. Risk loss. Risk disappointment.”

  Iskra laughed under her breath, trying to sound mocking but failing. “There’s too much pain to live that way.”

  “Aye,” he said. “And there will always be more.”

  “Life’s an ocean of pain. If I stop swimming, I’ll drown. Roddick. Kethe. My life wasted at my husband’s side. The hundreds of thousands who’ve died. Who are dying. Who are going to die.”

  “I never said it was pretty,” said Tiron. His heart was thudding in his chest. He was supremely aware of her body, of the warmth of her skin under his touch. “But you’ve got to live. You’ve got to drink deep.”

  “Oh, Tiron,” Iskra said, shaking her head. “I don’t know if I can. Not after —”

  He curled his fingers around the nape of her neck and pulled her into a fierce kiss. Her lips were soft but unresponsive, and her body was tense; for a moment, he thought she’d pull away, protest. Then she kissed him back, her own hands cupping his head, her body shifting forward in her chair so that her thighs were around him. He turned his face up to hers, kissing her with all the passion and ardor burning in his core.

  She moaned and he stood, lifting her off her chair. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he took three strides and pushed her up against the wall. She lifted her face and he kissed the length of her neck, then buried his face in her hair only to growl as she bit his ear.

  He pulled back, breathing heavily, and he saw fire in her eyes, an ardor that matched his own.

  “Are you sure?”

  She inhaled shakily and then nodded. Her smile grew tremulous for a moment before she kissed him again, squeezing her thighs around him.

  “Yes,” she whispered throatily into his ear, her fingers in his hair. “Yes.”

  They made love against the wall, Iskra with one leg hiked up over the crook of his elbow, her head thrown back, his face pressed against her neck. Tiron lost himself in the moment, everything reduced to this single act, yet even at the height of intensity he was aware of her: her hunger, her need, her whispered urgings in his ear.

  When they finished, he stood panting and shuddering, pinning her to the wall, and she lifted his chin and kissed him again: a gentle kiss, one that made him feel as if he were swimming up from some dark depths toward the glimmering light of the sun playing on the surface.

  Then she smiled, and he laughed and stepped back, releasing her leg. She smoothed down her dress as he laced himself up. He turned to gaze sidelong at her and found that his heart was racing again, not out of desire, but…

  “I love you, Iskra,” he said.

  “You’d better,” she replied, a roguish smile on her lips, then stepped back up to him to cup his cheeks and look into his eyes. For a while they simply gazed at each other, and then her smile slipped away and something sober and serious replaced her humor, causing him to still, to grow alert.

  “When I agreed to marry the Emperor, I was devastated,” she said. “Horrified. I felt like I had no choice. It was like mutilating my own flesh to drive you away. Audsley came to report back to me that night. I was in Mythgræfen Hold, sitting alone by the fire. He sat beside me and let me cry, then he told me he believed that you and I were tinsi turin, true lovers whose souls were bound to each other across the cycles, who were fated — or doomed — to follow each other through Ascension till our one last perfect life together.”

  “Do you believe that?” asked Tiron.

  “I don’t know.” Her voice was soft, full of wonder. “But when I look at you, I feel at home, like I’ve known you far longer than the few years you were part of Enderl’s retinue. Like I’ve known you all my life and more besides. I look at the madness that we’ve been plunged into and want to laugh at my own folly for thinking it’s all been a mere trial for our souls, a test to see if we can retain our love against all odds.”

  “But we have,” he said, placing his hand over her own. “We’re together now.”

  “Yes,” she said, and then stepped forward to rest her cheek on his chest. “But for how much longer? The demons are set to attack at any moment. It would be just like the old ballads if we were to finally unite now, only to lose each other a few hours later.”

  “Tinsi turin,” mused Tiron, stroking her auburn hair.

  They stood in silence, holding each other. He felt that heady lassitude that always came after making love, and wished he could lie down beside her, hold her close and sleep.

  There was a knock at the door. “Your Grace? Virtue Makaria has returned from Abythos and waits to make her report.”

  Iskra stepped away, reaching up to touch her hair. “She has? Very well. I’ll be with her shortly.” She turned to Tiron. “Will you come?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  She began to walk toward the door, smoothing her dress with her free hand, but he pulled her back into his arms, held her tight, and kissed her hard. Looking down at her, he felt something rough and raw and stubborn rise within him, a fierce desire that would brook no denial.

  “We’re going to have more than a few hours,” he said. “I swear it.”

  He saw doubt in her eyes, but then she nodded. “Yes,” she whispered. “All right. I believe you.”

  Tiron kissed her again, but as he did so, he felt a tearing pain in his heart. He wanted desperately to believe his own oath.

  Following her to the door, he glanced back at the closest window, half-expecting to see the flap of demonic wings, the hiss of their laughter.

  A sign that the end had come.

  CHAPTER 16

  Tharok

  Flamska drifted down in a tight spiral, wingtips almost brushing the inside of the vast shaft of Aletheia that descended down to its core. Tharok was sitting behind Maur, arms loosely linked around her waist, watching the great avenue carved in a spiral around them. There was an endless profusion of artwork: the sullen glimmer of gilt panels and mosaics set with precious stones, even trees growing within vast urns. Aletheia was a dream of avarice – a poor man’s dream, something conjured by the mind of one who knew not what was truly valuable in life.

  Reports had filtered back from kragh who had descended out of curiosity to the very bottom of the great spiral avenue, reports of a vast door too heavy to move, of dust and detritus knee-deep, of mysteries and a sense of dread.

  It was good to get away, to come and explore. To leave the chieftains and warlords to their bickering and arguing. He’d tried to sway his kragh, to command them to work with the humans, to accept their new enemy. It hadn’t gone well.

  Putting his irresolute speech out of his mind, Tharok leaned out to one side and gazed below. All was shrouded in gloom. The important humans of Aletheia had never seen fit to descend this far, it seemed; the avenue, having passed the last level of habitation, shrank into a narrow road, and the last of the magical lanterns came to an end, so that soon it felt as if they were descending through twilight, down into the depths of Aletheia’s sleeping heart.

  Flamska’s great muscles shifted beneath him, and then the dragon fanned its wings, beating them efficiently to arrest its gliding fall. The wind stirred up choking clouds of dust as the dragon’s talons crunched down on the ground. Tharok buried his face in the crook of his elbow, squeezed his eyes shut, and coughed sharply; then, slowly, he lowered his arm and looked around.

  The shaft had narrowed but was still prodigiously wide; the walls were gray and remarkably without adornment, with only a massive set of double doors standing out. The doors had to be at least ten yards tall, each with a ponderous marble knocker suitable for the hands of giants.

  Coughing still, Tharok slid down Flamska’s extended wing and t
hen stumbled over the trash that had accumulated down here over the centuries. The dust was thick and hung in a haze in the air, and Tharok cast around with narrowed eyes as he sought anything else of interest.

  Maur slid down and joined him, her arm also pressed over her mouth and nose. She pointed questioningly toward the doors, and when he nodded, they both waded over to them.

  Tharok reached out and pressed his palm against the left-hand door. It was made of solid stone and cold to the touch. The knocker was easily a yard above his head. Not wanting to waste time, he placed his shoulder against the stone and pushed.

  Nothing happened.

  Grunting in frustration, he drew World Breaker. Strength coursed through him, and, taking a deep breath, he pushed again.

  He was rewarded by the faintest of scrapes, a slight shiver in the massive door, but nothing else.

  STAND ASIDE, said Flamska, and when they did so, the dragon reached out and pressed one massive foot against the stone, claws splayed, and pushed. Muscles writhed beneath its scales, and the door screeched in protest as it swung inward. Then, suddenly, the screeching ceased, and the door opened all the way easily.

  “Must have freed itself of the junk,” said Maur, gazing into the darkness beyond. She unhooked the lantern from her belt, took a moment to light the wick, then raised it overhead. “They didn’t build small, did they?”

  The corridor beyond was huge, square in shape and constructed of the same pale stone as the rest of Aletheia. It extended into darkness. Tharok and Maur strode gratefully into it, leaving the dust behind, and then Maur turned, her lantern raised high.

  “Are you coming?”

  Tharok expected the dragon to shoulder the other door open so it could pass through, but instead, it simply disappeared. He turned and the dragon was there, filling the tunnel beyond him, peering down its length.

  “Convenient,” he said.

  LET US SEE WHAT LIES AHEAD, said Flamska. Then the dragon extended its neck and shot forth a plume of virulently bright flame, banishing the darkness and revealing perhaps fifty or sixty yards of empty hallway which terminated at a second great doorway.