The Aether of Night

by Sanderson, Brandon

  Now, if only we can—

  Suddenly, he heard screams from beside him, and a small group of Forgotten burst through the Imperium soldiers.

  “Darro!” Raeth yelled toward his brother, who fought a short distance away.

  “Coming!” Darro bellowed, turning his bulky armor as Raeth dashed forward toward the hole, his honor guard following.

  Raeth jumped forward, swinging his Amberite sword for the lead Forgotten’s head. The creature exploded at his touch, and Raeth skidded in the slush right through its dissolving body to take two more of the creatures with a single swing. Smokey darkness exploded out before him as he attacked, Forgotten falling with barely a swipe of his blade. As he spun, one got in a lucky blow, slamming its dark blade directly into Raeth’s chest.

  It bounced directly off of Raeth’s dark Amberite breastplate. The creature actually looked surprised at its failure as Raeth destroyed it with a swipe of his blade. That isn’t regular Amberite, my friend, he thought with satisfaction.

  A few seconds later the gap was plugged. The ground thumped beside him as Darro arrived with a slightly belated rescue team. “Twins, Hern!” he cursed. “We barely even need those High Aedin—you could hold them all off by yourself!”

  Raeth snorted, breathing deeply and wiping splashes of slush from his cheek. “Until one of the tripped me and dropped a rock on me or something.”

  “The reserves are back in place, my lord!” a messenger informed, dashing up toward him.

  “Good,” Raeth said. “How’s the eastern flank?”

  “No problems, sir,” the messenger replied.

  “By the Ancestors,” Darro whispered hollowly from inside his armor. “We’re actually holding them. Our forces haven’t lost any ground in over an hour!”

  “Lord Hern,” a second messenger said, approaching from the direction of the main camp.

  “Yes,” Raeth said, turning.

  “Um, sir,” the messenger said uncomfortably, turning his horse. “General Gaedin has come to the battlefield. He wants to speak with you.”

  Raeth groaned very softly. You knew this was coming, he chastised himself. You might as well go deal with it.

  #

  General Gaedin stood on the very same hill from which Raeth had delivered his speech to the High Aedin. Raeth approached, his feet suddenly feeling frigid through his boots, the heat of battle no longer warming him. His muscles had begun to ache again, and he felt an exhaustion that made the previous day’s tiredness seem insignificant.

  Gaedin watched the battlefield with discerning eyes, standing quietly as Raeth walked up beside him.

  “They look so different, out here,” Gaedin said. “So different from the board—more confusing, but more alive.”

  Raeth nodded silently, studying the battlefield. Amazingly, it appeared that the Forgotten forces were actually pulling back, disengaging slowly to regroup.

  “I rejected the map at first,” Gaedin continued in an almost conversational voice. “I insisted on going to the border to watch the battles in person. Eventually, I saw enough that I could use the map for what it was intended—a clear picture of the field. A tool.”

  Gaedin fell silent. Raeth stood, slightly confused. Why was Gaedin telling him such things?

  “How did you make them fight, Emperor?” he finally asked.

  “They’re High Aedin, general,” Raeth responded quietly. “They know their duty. They just had to be convinced to see past their insecurity.”

  “Amberite and Verdant fighting together,” Gaedin said, still staring out at the battlefield. “Mixing with regular soldiers. Three separate parts that couldn’t stand alone, but somehow you made them succeed when you put them together. I’ve been looking at maps and pieces so long, I fear I made the very mistake I always feared I would. I stopped seeing people, and started seeing formations.”

  Finally, Gaedin turned to look at Raeth. “I was wrong about you.”

  “No you weren’t,” Raeth said with a shake of his head. “I earned your mistrust. You were probably right to ignore me.”

  Gaedin shook his head, then nodded out toward the battlefield. “That proves that I was wrong,” he said. “If you have another vote of autonomy, the War Counsel will support you.”

  Raeth smiled. “General, I never wanted autonomy. I don’t have your experience—I don’t know the fine details of organizing a battle. I just have good ideas, and I wanted you to listen to them.”

  Gaedin nodded slowly, his eyes unreadable. “You aren’t Hern, are you?”

  Raeth froze, his back growing stiff.

  “I’ve made a profession out of knowing what my enemies are going to do,” Gaedin explained, looking out over the field. “Of knowing their minds. Though he never knew it, I considered Hern my greatest adversary of all. There is a select group of us—some generals, some others—who realized what would happen to the Imperium if Hern ever took the throne. We knew the chance was slim, but we planned nonetheless. The Imperium has survived incompetent Emperors before, we knew we could help it do so again.”

  Raeth stood quietly. What did he do? Object? He knew that his own eyes had already betrayed him.

  “You cannot be him,” Gaedin finally said. “I spent too long studying Hern. You do a very good impersonation.”

  I lived with him for fourteen years, Raeth thought. Out loud, however, he could give no such confirmation. “You realize that, even if I weren’t Hern, for the good of the Imperium I would have to deny your claims.”

  Gaedin smiled. “Of course,” he agreed. “To do otherwise would be foolish. For now, all I know is that you’re my Emperor. As of this moment, the War Counsel’s wisdom is at your disposal.”

  Raeth nodded, still recovering from his discovery. What did you think? He wondered. That no one would figure it out? Especially after how little like Hern you’ve been acting these last few days.

  “Tell me then, general,” he asked, nodding out over the battlefield. “How long do you think we can hold them off?”

  Gaedin’s frown returned as he studied the troops below. The wounded were already being Sent away, and the sky was striped with their trails. There were too many, far too many.

  “It doesn’t look good, my lord,” he said. “It looks better than it did, but prospects are still poor. No matter how well our Aethers work, we can still be overwhelmed.”

  Raeth nodded. He wished he could disagree with Gaedin, but he had noticed the same thing. Their lines were too thin. The Forgotten had done too much damage to them over the past month—their force was even smaller than it had been at the beginning, despite the numerous reserves, recruitments, and additions they had made.

  “A week,” Gaedin guessed. “They’re a three-day march from Vae Annitor right now. I’ll bet we can slow that to a week, maybe a week and a half. After that, the numbers will be too much for us. Even if we take down three of them for every man of ours that falls, we’ll still end up losing.”

  Raeth’s disappointment grew as he heard the postulation. We can’t lose now, not after we’ve made so much progress.

  “Recommendations?” Raeth asked.

  “Retreat,” Gaedin said. “Evacuate Vae Annitor and move the Imperium government south, to En Mahall or even up to the Kavir Highlands. Both are much more defensible than these plains. You know about the Senate vote?”

  “No,” Raeth admitted. “I haven’t been paying as much attention to the Senate as I should.”

  “Today was supposed to be our last chance,” he explained. “They said that if the Counsel lost the battle this day, the Senate would order the evacuation. I don’t know what they’ll do now that we actually won.”

  “But you think we should proceed with the evacuation anyway?” Raeth asked.

  Gaedin nodded. Gesturing toward the Forgotten hoard. “There are just too many of them. Vae Annitor is lost. That is my recommendation, Emperor. We don’t even know why the creatures are travelling to the capitol. Perhaps the things will disappear as mysteriou
sly as they appeared once they arrive.”

  They won’t, Raeth thought. Somehow I know. They’ll hunt us down until every Amberite and Bestarin Bond is destroyed.

  “Are there no other options?” Raeth asked. “If we could just get more troops, we might be able to hold, or even turn the creatures back.”

  Gaedin shook his head. “We’ve drawn on every reserve we have, asked for every trained volunteer we could get. Even if the law didn’t forbid it, we don’t have enough time to gather an army from the peasant populations—we couldn’t train them in a week, not to fight these things. They’d be slaughtered.”

  “There are High Aedin who aren’t out here fighting,” Raeth noted.

  “A lot of them,” Gaedin said. “And they won’t be coming out here to fight. We’ve tried—a surprising number are still willing to ignore the threat, even when it’s only days away. I’ve begun to think that our complacency might be the end of us.”

  “The Senate could change the law,” Raeth noted. “Force them to fight.”

  Gaedin snorted. “With a hundred-percent Senate vote. No offence, Emperor, but I doubt you could get all thirty of them to agree on your hair color, let alone get them to change of such a significant law.”

  “But, the consequence is destruction,” Raeth said, frowning.

  “Yes, but the change of the conscription law could theoretically let you force the Senators into fighting as well.”

  Raeth frowned, but he knew Gaedin was probably right. But there has to be a solution! I need time.

  “What do you want the Counsel to do, Emperor?” Gaedin asked.

  “I want a week,” Raeth decided.

  Gaedin paused. “I really don’t think that’s wise, Emperor,” he said.

  Raeth smiled very slightly to himself. He could see a small measure of indignation in Gaedin’s eyes. Despite everything else, Gaedin was still a politician. Now that he had admitted he’d been wrong about Raeth, and that he’d seen through Raeth’s facade, he assumed that Raeth would do as he suggested. You shouldn’t have given me the power if you didn’t want me to use it, general, Raeth thought.

  “The capitol is the center of our nation, general,” Raeth said. “I fear abandoning it would break the people. They still believe in us. I don’t want to give them reason to abandon hope until we absolutely have to.”

  Gaedin frowned, but finally he sighed. “All right,” he said. “I told you we’d follow, so we shall.”

  “I’ve given you the tools, general,” Raeth said. “Use them. Buy me some time. If one week passes and we still haven’t turned them back, I’ll agree to abandon the city.”

  “As you say, Emperor,” Gaedin said, bowing slightly. “Though I warn you, the Senate probably still intents to make its vote. If they decide we should retreat… .”

  “Then we shall do as they say,” Raeth said with a nod. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to convince them to support me as well.”

  Gaedin nodded, then turned to walk down the hill toward the Sending platform. As he left, Raeth noted a familiar tall form watching a respectful distance away.

  “Taenen,” Raeth said, waving for the man to approach.

  “Did it go well, my lord?” the Bestarin man asked. As always, Taenen was proper in his speech, but Raeth could see the unasked question in the reserved man’s eyes. Was he humiliated?

  Raeth smiled. “I think he’ll listen to me now.”

  Taenen smiled. “That is a blessing from the Ancestors themselves. The Counsel can be a difficult group to get along with, my lord.”

  Raeth nodded, patting the taller man on the back. “Lets just say, all things considered, I’d still rather have you at my side, Taenen,” Raeth said, turning to walk down the hill. “We’re going to try and hold the creatures back for a little while longer.”

  “The men are very tired, sir,” Taenen noted.

  “Hopefully the day’s victory will give them strength,” Raeth replied. “I think we have a difficult week ahead of us.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Taenen agreed.

  “I’m going to return to the capitol, Taenen,” Raeth said. “See to things here. If anything happens, send a messenger to me immediately.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Raeth bid farewell then walked down through the slush toward the Sending square. Oddly enough, the day’s problems didn’t weigh on him as much as they might have. He knew that at the end of it—trials, wars, and difficulties aside—he could at least look forward to the evening.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “And where are you going?” Shaad asked. She needn’t have posed the question—it was quite obvious where D’Naa was going. The girl was wearing her black climbing clothing—though, Shaad noticed with interest, she hadn’t covered up her face.

  Of course not, Shaad realized, that would muss up her hair and her makeup. D’Naa usually took the time to make herself look pleasant—she was by no means a tomboy. However, she didn’t usually take the extra efforts she had obviously expended this night. She wore a small pair of wisdom braids, one hanging down over each cheek. D’Naa often shunned facepaint, but this night she had taken the time to apply it quite carefully. She even wore a pair of earrings, simple, after Kavir sensibilities.

  “Um, out to scout,” D’Naa said. “Like last night. Hopefully, the Emperor will be alone tonight, not with his counselors. Then I’ll be able to steal a Bud from him.”

  In facepaint and braids? Shaad thought to herself. How foolish do you think we are?

  Hlin waddled by, humming softly to himself, carrying several books he had borrowed from the palace library. “Well, don’t be too late then, dear,” he mumbled. “And don’t take any chances. The last thing we need is you getting captured and held somewhere. Who knows when we’ll need to leave the city.”

  “All right,” D’Naa said, climbing off the balcony. She showed a remarkable lack of fear regarding heights as she dangled from the railing, then swung out into the night and was gone.

  Hlin whistled to himself as he closed the balcony doors, then picked up one of his books and poured himself a cup of tea. “Well, I hope she gets it soon,” he said. “I just got a message from Ala’D. He wants us to leave as soon as possible and return to Kavir.”

  “I highly doubt D’Naa will be returning with the Emperor’s Bud tonight,” Shaad said with a sigh, turning back to her knitting.

  “Don’t be so pessimistic,” Hlin chastised. “How do you know she won’t find the Emperor alone, ready for the picking?”

  “Because she won’t be seeing the Emperor tonight,” Shaad replied.

  Hlin paused, standing with cup and book in front of his chair. “What?” he asked.

  Shaad rolled her eyes. “Oh, you old sheep, how can you be so politically astute and so naïve at the same time?”

  Hlin plopped down in his chair, eyebrows raised. “By ignoring women, my dear,” he said. “I find it leaves me with far fewer headaches. What sort of fancy have you concocted this time?”

  “It’s no fancy,” Shaad said, ignoring his challenge of her practicality. He always tried to imply that she wasn’t a proper Kavir woman. “At least, not one of mine. Our young granddaughter is in love.”

  Hlin paused, frowning slightly. Then he shrugged. “She’s supposed to be—she’s been offered as someone’s bride, after all.”

  “I doubt her infatuation is with the Emperor,” Shaad said with a shake of her head. “You know what she thinks of High Aedin.”

  “Who, then?” Hlin asked.

  Shaad shrugged. “Some guard, perhaps, or a dashing young palace official. We haven’t kept a very good eye on her during our time here, you know. She could be sneaking off to meet practically anyone.”

  Hlin opened his book. He obviously wasn’t as bothered by the turn of events as he should be. “Oh well,” he said. “Young love—it will be good for her.”

  “She’s supposed to be collecting us an Amberite Bud,” Shaad said firmly. “The entire world is falling down around us�
�this isn’t the time for foolishness.”

  “Well, that’s what we get for sending a girl her age to secure the fate of the nation,” Hlin said absently. “A little foolishness is to be expected, even from a Kavir woman. I’m sure things will work out.”

  Shaad rolled her eyes again, but eventually she realized she couldn’t do much but turn back to her sewing and wait.

  #

  “What’s all of this?” a surprised feminine voice asked.

  Raeth looked up from the serving plate. He hadn’t expected her so soon. He hurriedly scooped the contents of the dish—some baked Mahallen fruits—onto the other serving dish.

  “A gift,” he said, standing and gesturing awkwardly toward the impromptu table—his desk, moved from the other room.

  D’Naa climbed walked in through the open balcony doorway, closing it behind her. As usual, she wore a tight black clothing—suitable for climbing around on the outside of walls, he assumed. At one time, he would have blushed at the idea of a woman in such revealing clothing, but compared to Nahan, D’Naa was conservative.

  “A gift?” she asked.

  Raeth pulled his eyes off her with some difficulty, sweeping his hand over the table. “An apology,” he said. “For not believing you yesterday.”

  D’Naa stepped forward, inhaling deeply, obviously enjoying the scents. “That’s all right. I made some fairly outrageous claims.”

  “All of them true,” Raeth said solemnly.

  D’Naa turned with a questioning face.

  “Anyone can Bond Aethers,” Raeth said. “It doesn’t matter what race you are; the only determining factors is the strength of your Bud and your own personal talent.”

  D’Naa looked up. She didn’t seem surprised to hear the admission, but she was concerned. “I’m. . .sorry,” she said.

  Raeth shrugged. “The Aedin, and the Imperium, are strong enough to survive it, I think.”

  D’Naa paused. “You still intend to let the truth out?”

  “Once this war is over,” Raeth said with a nod. “We have no right to keep the Aethers for ourselves. It’s our duty, as Aedin, to serve the people of the Imperium. I don’t see how we could do that while we lie to them at the same time.” Of course, I am a lie too, Raeth thought guiltily to himself.