Their meeting, as was customary, occurred in a long forgotten place where mortals no longer walked. There their avatars, bodies they borrowed from their adherents for the journey, met and considered many things. Of course, Backaran wanted payment in blood for the breach, forgetting as he often did of his poaching from Nalcet those who were interested in more esoteric magics and violent ends. Nalcet demurred, waving off the slight as best he could. Kendrick only served his purposes and he had done little other than appear. He had done no harm.
That led to the revelation of Leviana being Backaran's guest.
Entering the temple proper, he narrowed his focus to only those within the building blocking out the thousands who lived and breathed the rarefied air of his existence to survive. He did not seek anyone. If he saw fit to summon someone, they would come. For now, he wanted his silence. Within his temple, no one spoke. There he and his brother were alike. They enjoyed quiet, deep quiet unsullied by the presence of those who would break it. Pools of silence drifted around them and sought to drown out those who did not understand and offered nothing but cacophony.
Up each stair, his mind turned back to those old days.
Days when he had been surrounded by the knowledge of a world still too young to know its full potential. When he and those with him had sought strength from the world and it granted it to them at a price.
A price scribed in scarlet.
Nalcet paid it willingly and others thought they did.
Only Wrepta had been the one to flee. Guilt offered her no solace. She lived hundreds of years with it under balmy skies and calm seas before she released her essence into the ocean and left behind only the spire to mark her bed.
Foolish. She had always been foolish.
Then there was his brother, the idiot, the one who released back into the world the chance of their destruction.
Nalcet, through his avatar, had asked why he would do such a thing.
Backaran shrugged and spread his hands in a gesture of innocence, all the while hooding his luminescent green eyes.
If it would have mattered, Nalcet might have tried to strangle him.
It didn't matter. He kept his balled hands at his sides.
Now, alone and surrounded by the work of his time, Nalcet considered his next step.
The destroyers had already been released. Backaran saw to that and all Nalcet's attempts had done nothing to put the power back where it belonged. Though he had been able to kill one of them, they sprouted again after a time in spite of his efforts. First the woman, then the man. He did not know their faces, but he felt their souls. How they moved through the world as if to spite him. Their existence meant an end to his work.
His divan welcomed him as he laid upon it and pillowed his head on his arms.
Someone moved through the temple on slippered feet and he thought of sending them away, but did not. She approached with the proper fear and trembling he expected from his adherents, her eyes downcast. All of his servants kept the same demeanor, hiding their faces so much they almost seemed faceless creatures before him. He watched her scurry through then away on some errand of her own with barely a pause to genuflect in his direction before she was gone.
If she had not made something of his presence, he might have stopped her in place and reminded her of whose house she moved through. Yet she had and he allowed himself to be mollified by that.
His brother wanted the world to burn.
Nalcet would never allow that. He would protect what was his against every comer. Including the remains of those he had already killed.
With a wave, he summoned up the room his son stayed in. The boy wasn't there. He wouldn't be given the hour and his duties, but Nalcet grimaced before seeking him out. Wherever he was, Nalcet wanted him immediately and as his son, Kendrick knew better than to disobey.
Do Whatever You Must
For Kendrick, the awareness of Nalcet seeking him sprang out in a headache behind his eyes as he sat in the presence of his closest companions. Blinking, he shifted and resisted the urge to flee the room to answer.
"The Impostor was apparently last seen in Cross in the company of a known pirate."
One thing he would say about those who worked for him, they were diligent. Perhaps not the brightest, but diligent. Kendrick knew she had been in Cross. She had left the city of Arathum with a man of Xernian descent and they always ran back to the water. Of course, he didn't care to tell anyone that. Trapped as he was in the capital by his position, now that he no longer had Versa to cover for him, he resented knowing things he could do nothing about. It rankled his nerves like the smell of spoiling meat upset his nose.
"Has anyone been able to track her whereabouts since then?"
"No, Voice."
Several pairs of eyes looked at him with expectation.
The headache intensified until he forced his eyes shut and waved everyone off in a gesture of exhaustion.
"If we don't know where she is now, then there is nothing to be done." His words came out from between gritted teeth. Nalcet would not be ignored. "What of her companion?"
Warden's escape had not gone as planned. The intervention of an outside force kept Warden out of the hands of the Daughters as Kendrick anticipated. His mother claimed not to know where he had gotten off to, but Kendrick wondered if perhaps she played things close to the vest against him. They reached a stage in his work where she had every chance of ending up with a dragging rope around her neck and he knew she would insure her own survival even against his own. The touch of pleasure he felt at the idea of her death no longer surprised him. He'd felt it for years, but never acted on it.
"He has escaped the city, but no one is certain to where."
Warden would try to find Jalcina. Kendrick had insured that. If Jalcina was in the southern waters, he would go to her there.
"Search north. Rumor has it he's originally of Utican get. He'll scurry home to be safe."
Sage nods greeted Kendrick's words, but at least one had doubt written on their face.
"We should send out the army to bring them back."
"If we mobilize the army inside our borders, that will only add fuel to the fire of how much people look to these newcomers to take power."
"Without more eyes, we'll never find them before they begin their revolution."
"Always worried about a revolution that will never come, eh, Sherac? Perhaps because it would start in Sartol from your shoddy leadership."
Sherac's beard protested more than his mouth. Sherac was in the end a coward, but he had his uses. His constant prattling distracted from the issues Kendrick didn't want discussed. The beginnings of the revolution already existed and they had infiltrated Arathum. Skirmishes between the Daughter of Curcula and the Adherents of the Light left bodies lying in the streets, but few knew what it was. Seemingly only men and women who had been attacked. Kendrick's orders to his guard were simple: hide the evidence. They removed any markers to keep word from running the streets.
It worked somewhat, but the rumors existed.
If Jalcina returned, then he would have no choice but to publicly destroy.
The pain intensified lighting his skin with fire.
"Leave me." Kendrick waved the others out of the room. They did not go, but sat watching him like vultures contemplated their next meal in its death throes. "I need to think. I apologize. We will reconvene."
The group met, in quiet and secret, every other day to discuss plans.
Hidden in his rooms, Kendrick kept his replica of the Black King's seal and tried his best to enchant it to do as he requested. His powers did not equal the power which brought the seal into existence, but he didn't need to equal them only mimic them.
With the room emptied, he tried to relax.
Without a mirror or some surface onto which he could project the power, he had no choice but to release it behind his eyes and see his Father that way.
"Yes, Father?"
"Your failure has led to death."<
br />
Kendrick blinked. He expected anger, but he heard more than that in his Father's tone.
"Why do they still live?"
"They escaped, with help."
His Father's emotions burned their way through his brain, lighting every thought like a candle until Kendrick felt nothing but the heat of it. It made thinking impossible. His chest heaved as he tried to breath through the pain. At the edge of the room, he heard footsteps. Someone coming to see him about something. He doubled over to hide his pained grimace.
"You have the souls," Nalcet said. "How could they defeat you?"
"I cannot use them."
"Of course you can't. Their strength would overwhelm you and make you their puppet." A dark chuckle came from the living city and Kendrick shuddered as a hand landed on his hunched shoulder. He swept the hand away and grunted. The other withdrew, but not far. Kendrick raked his thoughts across the newcomer, feeling their concern and their strength.
"You must kill them and bring the souls to me. Find a way. With the souls taken, you should be able to overwhelm them."
Kendrick didn't say he had no way of knowing where they were or how to even find them. Admitting to more failure would not decrease the pain. He should have returned to his room and locked the door before allowing this to happen. Now he was vulnerable in a public space. With another grunt, he levered himself to his feet.
"Voice?" Concern colored the onlooker's tone.
"It is nothing. I return to my rooms. Please go on."
They did not hinder him.
The sudden release of Nalcet letting go of their connection brought Kendrick back to himself with a snap.
He had to do something. If Jalcina was in the southern seas, certainly Warden would chase her there. If he could catch them both and bring them back into his power, things would be fine. As Nalcet said, he had the souls. So long as he had the souls, he could overtake them with ease.
Doubt brushed its fingers across his heart.
Only then did he remember Nalcet spoke of death but had not told him who died. His failure led to death, but whose? Versa was no one in his eyes, so it could not be her he spoke of. Someone else? Nalcet cherished few.
Making his way back to his room, Kendrick turned the thoughts round and round. Someone his father cared about had been killed because of his failure.
The strike of inspiration brought him almost to his knees in front of his door.
Jalcina went into the southern sea. Wrepta lay in the southern sea, defenseless in her slumber.
Now Nalcet's anger made sense.
He pushed open his door and went inside. His ritual of locking it came next. Few doors in the palace locked, his was one of them. Once inside, he collapsed to his knees from the exertion of keeping strong through the halls. He did not need anyone to suspect his breakdown was near.
The power to run an empire stood in one's ability to appear strong even when weakness crammed every limb. Kendrick kept up appearances well.
In his bedroom, he pulled the vial with the souls from its hiding place and watched as they danced around each other. Their magic beckoned. It sought to seduce him, but his Father was right. If he dared, he would be overwhelmed and perhaps even destroyed.
Fate protected those to whom the souls belonged and ordained that those souls belonged only in those bodies.
The seduction of such power gripped him in spite. With such ability, he could become Nalcet's premier son. He would never have to share his place again and his beloved mother would have no choice but to acknowledge his greatness.
Such a dream.
He put the vial away unopened.
Dreams of power and love aside, he did not have the strength in his current self to do what needed to be done. He would have to employ other tactics.
His mother said there was a woman who could see the future in the city. Leviana had used her and she had been the palace during the Immortal's incarceration. Perhaps she could be found and made to tell him where those he sought would be that he could catch them.
His own ability to see the future saw nothing. Even the Morl Eye showing only one's destruction showed him nothing. As if when it opened, he had already been obliterated. The touch of fear such knowledge offered could not keep him from seeking to know more.
Kendrick would seek the wise woman and perhaps she would offer him what he sought.
Then he would consider if he should leave her alive. After all, if she knew him for what he was, she was dangerous to his plans.
He laid down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling as the throbbing in his head began to fully subside. Soon he would be better, then he could seek her out.
Sinda knew fear. It became a close companion in the early days of watching Nalcet rise to power and others flock to him. Now, with nearly a millenia between now and then, she had only herself to blame for the fact she had never moved beyond it. The soul of the Rose city offered those who drew close to her no explanation for her sudden departure as the shock of her sister's death hit her with its backlash. The urge to scream died in her throat, but the touch of it vibrated through her entire region. No one knew what had hurt her, but there was no hiding her pain.
In her innermost chamber, where few came without her invitation, she allowed herself to lose shape and touch her hidden well. It offered her some solace, but not much. Power did not comfort her the way it did her brothers.
Had they felt it the way she did? Of course not. They were aware undoubtedly but they felt nothing the way she did. Each of them had decided long ago power was their only true companion. Everyone around them served that purpose and only that purpose.
Then Backaran had released the destroyed ones.
Nalcet's anger at his brother's treachery knew few bounds and they spoke in fits and starts in these times. She felt some communication between them pass her by recently, but what it was about she had not investigated.
Sinda did not care for their squabbles, so she did not participate.
Wrepta chose to fall into the sea and allow everything to go on without her.
Sinda did much the same, except she did not let them believe her dead. Wrepta was now dead.
The knowledge caused another shock to move through her and disappear into the walls around her turning them transparent for a flicker. Her loves, her children, felt her anguish without knowledge and she could not put into words the feelings she had. Fear, of course, her mortality revisited her. Yet in the very base of it, elation peeked out.
Did she seek her own death?
With a wave of her hand, she returned to a moment long ago on the side of a mountain. The wind teased her hair into long strands of red the color of roses and blood and he stood there with it trying to shove him off the face of the mountain.
Ancel stood firm in his power. He always had. The beaten bands of gold around his arms denoted him a man of means and power. She wore similar ones inset with gems she had created with her magic. Nalcet never approved of her dalliance, as he called it, with Ancel though he never said anything of the kind when the man was around. When they gathered together, Nalcet was all smiles and compliments to the warrior and his family.
Sinda did not wonder if Ancel noticed how Nalcet treated him. He stood in his truth and protected his own.
She failed him by not standing in her own truth. Now she wore that guilt and its accompanying fear like a funeral shroud. In her early years, she entertained the idea Ancel would return and slaughter for her part in the deaths which elevated her to her current status. In her thoughts, she did not resist.
Her eyes filled with him standing on the side of the mountain and the way he turned from her to look at his companions coming up the slope. His son and daughter, they looked so much like him. Their strength could not be denied. Though they chose the sword, the staff was not barred from them for the power they exhibited.
Nalcet chose them to sacrifice for that, the duality of their powers.
With the same motion, she wiped the mem
ory from the room and sank to her knees. How their blood had run from their bodies after the fight. How they had fought for their lives. How they cursed as they were overwhelmed. Sinda drew into a ball on the floor.
Her truth tainted by their murders. Nalcet could not have done it without them.
Alone he had no chance against them together.
In her mind's eye, she saw Ancel's face as he beheld the bodies as their souls left. It left a hollow space inside her the way his eyes swept over her and her companions. She couldn't hold his gaze when it dropped on her and lingered.
The words she might have said died in her throat as the power they summoned took hold and flung them to the winds. His final gaze stayed with her, the smoldering hatred of a man who has lost all that mattered to him. Sinda rarely worried whether or not he considered her one of the things he lost. In the intervening years, they had not spoken though she sometimes felt him moving about. How had he been affected by what they did? Present when the power gathered, it must have touched him for him to still be around for her to feel.
Rising from the floor, she wiped away the freshet of tears at the edge of her eyes. After so long, what good were her tears? She lost too much to look back now and do anything but keep her lot. Even with Wrepta, her sister in power, gone.
With a thought, she walked out onto the highest balcony of her tower. Absolutely no one was allowed into this sanctum, but the balcony let her see the entire world she had created of glimmering rose-gold stone. Those few who ever stumbled upon her sanctuary were caught by the image of it, an entire city created of rock like one would use for jewelry.
Her decision. If she must have a prison, let it at least be pleasing to the eye.
From the balcony, she looked down at the plaza below. Children sprinted back and forth in some game. Others hung at the edges doing things she could easily see if she decided to look closely. For now, she just let the sight roll over her.
Her brothers were those who remained. Nalcet, Backaran, and Ernal. Ernal spoke to none of them, but unlike Wrepta he simply stayed silent and did nothing else. Whatever he had built or even where he was, none of them knew. Nalcet and Backaran bickered back and forth like fools. Sinda had neither the energy nor the interest necessary to step between them.
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