Path of Bones

by Steven Montano

  Be thankful, he told himself. Others would kill to be in your place. The Head of House Blue was an extraordinarily powerful individual, at least on the surface, but politics in Jlantria were an elaborate dance. Little could be done officially without the permission of the other Houses or The Thirteen, so Argus had to master the art of doing things unofficially. Calculated risks, knowing when to omit details from official record, deciding what to tell the Empress and what to leave out…it was all part of a game he was still learning to play, and there were few who wanted him to succeed. Most of the senior Veilwardens in House Blue resented his appointment and envied his position; everyone else just wanted his effectiveness minimized so House Blue wasn’t an obstacle to their own agendas.

  Argus made his way down the blanched halls. He had a copy of Leviathan’s Tears, a book of ancient stories by the epic poet Gordair, tucked under his cloak. Gordair had scribed tales based on various creation mythologies and legends gathered from around the world. Argus had stopped by the libraries earlier that morning, since Toran had borrowed his copy – only a scant handful of the books even existed – and he’d been forced to stop long enough to sign off on the new classes for the Academy’s history lessons, which House Blue had taken charge of for the new batch of students brought in on the last Turning Eve. It was the least of Argus’ tasks, and as such seemed just a nuisance.

  Argus stopped. A pain buzzed in his brain, a slow-building headache like someone was driving a nail between his eyes. He was suddenly dizzy, and for a moment felt like he was going to collapse.

  It was, of course, the Empress’s not-so-gentle summons.

  “Are you all right, Lord Saam’siir?” a serving girl asked, a young and attractive blonde who wore the red armband of a member of the cleaning staff over her pale robes. Argus recalled speaking to her before, but he couldn’t remember what about.

  “I’ll be fine,” Argus said with a shake of his head. “Thank you.”

  He caught himself shaking, stopped, and took a breath. His chest ached with worry.

  I should be fearless, he thought. I should bask in this power while I have it, do some good, and beat them all at their own game. It was hard to think positive with the demons of fear clawing their way out of his chest. He’d hoped he’d feel more like a wolf and less like a sheep after being in his position for a time, but he’d been wrong.

  Argus hastily carried on down the corridor, his headache gone. He flipped through the pages of Leviathan’s Tears as he went, looking for the story titled The Blight of Dreadrock. The news he had for the White Dragon was nothing she wanted to hear, and the last thing he wanted was to be on the receiving end of her anger. The best defense was to be decisive and strong…two things Argus had trouble with.

  Well, you’d better figure it out, he told himself. Because like it or not, this falls to you now.

  Argus started the lengthy trek across Kai-Ren Thoth towards the Empress’s inner sanctum.

  Two

  Empress Llandrix Azaean, the White Dragon of Jlantria, sat in a small chair in a small room. Her flesh was as white as sunlit snow and her raven hair was pulled up in an elaborate bun secured with silver clasps and pins. Her ruby lips shone with an almost unnatural sheen in the soft candlelight, their radiance matched only by the supple crimson coating on her dagger-sharp fingernails.

  Azaean sat with her bare legs folded as she wrote with ink and quill. She wasn’t adorned in any of her resplendent gowns of pewter, platinum or plum, nor her intricately snow-laced dress with a neckline like a pearl tide and tresses of lightning gold, or even the crimson battle armor and oversized onyx cape she wore when she’d appeared for her soldiers on the eve of the Battle of Thornmount – artists had captured her in all of those outfits in their stories and portraits, and the clothing had become as immortal as the Empress herself. That morning, Azaean simply wore a loose summer dress of golden silk, cut low with a slit up one side of the skirt to reveal her smooth legs. It was the sort of outfit her father would have told her belonged on a whore, not a noblewoman ordained by the One Goddess to rule the mightiest Empire on Malzaria.

  Comments like that were why I so enjoyed destroying you, Father.

  She sat in one of the only chambers in Kai-Ren Thoth not suffused with light. Azaean enjoyed the sun as much as anyone else, but she also needed her hovels, little places in her great castle where she could feel like a child again, out of sight and out of mind. Her private study was only one of several chambers she’d altered to resemble the villa she’d grown up in. The room was painted black and furnished with only a large gold rug, a pair of bookcases stuffed with ancient tomes and a desk topped with yellow candles which barely shed enough light for her to read by.

  Azaean never left Kai-Ren Thoth – it was her sanctuary as much as it was her great white cage. She enjoyed being waited on by flocks of servants and protected by endless waves of guards, just as she enjoyed her magic, her power and secrets. But the fact remained that she would never leave her castle again, and so she did everything she could to make it a place she wanted to be confined in, right down to the inclusion of her secluded hideaways. The Thirteen, of course, knew that she had her sanctuaries, and they fretted and frowned about them, insisting it was dangerous for her to be secreted away where no one could come to her aid if she was ever in danger.

  She dismissed their fears. She had many enemies both within and without her crumbling Empire – to show her face outside of Kai-Ren Thoth would be suicide, but she was safe in her own castle, even when alone. The White Dragon had spent too many years ensuring she’d live forever to allow herself to go unprotected for even a moment. The Thirteen’s concern – feigned or otherwise – amused her, as did the fact that they still acted like they thought her weak and frail even when they all knew how she’d single-handedly ripped the life from her father and his supposedly indestructible Hellknights.

  I hope you’re having fun in hell, Father. Save me some wine for when I get there.

  In all of her years as Empress of Jlantria, Llandrix Azaean had dealt with many threats to her realm, some mundane and some terrifying. She was a capable and often ruthless monarch, and she’d held the crown longer than most people had even lived.

  No one knew her true age. She’d held reign over the Empire for at least 100 years, and she’d been a woman grown when she’d seized the throne from her father. She’d had dozens of lovers but no husband, and since her affairs were kept secret her unmarried status helped reinforce the belief among the people that she was chaste and nearly divine; even the birth of her only child was declared by the Church to be an immaculate conception. Azaean looked like the One Goddess, and Jlantrians took the uncanny resemblance as a sure sign of her holy birthright. Naturally the Empress had manipulated her appearance to resemble that of Corvinia, just as she’d commissioned dozens of pieces of art which depicted the One Goddess’s likeness in such a way that she and Azaean might have been twins.

  She sat quietly in her study, feeling the tide of years. She’d lived so long her memories were hazy sometimes, blurred. More and more details slipped away. Her body stayed young, but things happened to the mind that couldn’t be fought, even with an ally as powerful as the Veil.

  The Empress was troubled that morning, and if she’d had any confidants she would have shared her concerns with them, but she didn’t. As much as she trusted and even admired some of her closest servants there was danger in revealing too much information to anyone.

  Azaean spilled her worries in the form of poems. Over her lengthy reign she’d written thousands of pieces, all safely hidden away in that tiny room in the drawer of the wide oak desk. The poems were simple and silly things with the literary quality of something scribed by an adolescent girl, but each one she wrote gave Llandrix a certain sense of peace, for every completed line represented a troublesome emotion she’d successfully torn away.

  It was better that way, she told herself. The Empress needed to be unburdened. There was too much at stake.

>   Kala was still out there, in hiding, angry and powerful. The young Bloodspeaker had grown more influential than ever before, and she, like all of those who shared her disease, had had her once promising mind corrupted by the taint of dark magic. The Veil soiled the souls of those born with it inside them, made them anathema to the world – only those who chose to yield the Veil willingly after years of disciplined training could ever hope to do so without succumbing to its vile lusts.

  Bloodspeakers were a disease, and Azaean would see to it they were purged. She had to destroy them before they destroyed themselves, for they would surely take the rest of the world with them. It wasn’t a new problem, but rather an unending battle. Llandrix had spent years trying to eradicate the Bloodspeaker plague, and the struggle had taken an enormous amount of time and resources. Not everyone understood the gravity of the conflict or why it was so important it be done quickly: the Bloodspeakers were organizing, and their leaders had enough guile and determination that they could do tremendous damage given enough time. Leaders like Malath, and Kala.

  Azaean had completely forgotten what she’d been writing about. She looked around the room, bewildered. Her head was pounding. Normally she would have called on the Veil to expel the headache, but she knew, perhaps better than anyone else alive, that the Veil couldn’t heal this hurt, because it was the cause. Not a Veilwarden or Bloodspeaker alive commanded the Veil as effectively as Llandrix – she had, after all, rebuilt the Veilwardens Academy after her narrow-minded brute of a father had torn it down, and in so doing had redefined the foundations for how to Touch the Veil. But what no one knew was that so many years spent exposed to magic’s corruptive influence was slowly killing her.

  Her hands fumbled nervously at the desk. She found the compartment which only she could locate. Her stomach lurched, and bile caught in the back of her throat.

  Llandrix was near passing out when she finally unstoppered the glass vial – one of several hidden in the desk compartment – and gulped down the crimson-colored contents. Her throat tightened and her body convulsed at the foul taste of the liquid she’d developed, an alchemical concoction made from the blood of Allaji slaves, who held a tighter connection to the Veil’s magic than anyone else.

  Her nerves calmed almost instantly. The room shifted from a nauseating cyclone to something stable and dark, and the throbbing in her head slowly faded. She knew the experience had lasted less than a minute, but the pulses of pain resonated deep, and she felt her body wilt in the aftermath. The Veil had tried to draw her in, and the struggle had left her eyes sore and her stomach twisted.

  Azaean calmly deposited the empty vial back in the drawer and sealed the desk shut. She sat still and quiet for a long time. The attacks were getting worse, and Llandrix felt the cold touch of fear run down her spine.

  It was the Veil’s wrath. The One Goddess did not take well to her blood being manipulated by the hands of mortals, and just as Azaean had reached for the Veil so many times, it was now reaching for her.

  She’d built an Empire. She’d never known her mother, so she’d had only her father to look up to, a cruel and lying bastard with dreams of rallying the petty-minded lords of the then-Duchies of Jlantria into a united struggle to overthrow Archduke Cassis. Once that was done he’d planned to kill his allies, as well, so he could seize total power for himself. His plan nearly succeeded, up until the point when Llandrix had finally had enough of his brutalizing her body the way he’d brutalized everything else.

  Emperor Kronos Azaean, Sovereign Emperor of Jlantria and First of his Name, was betrayed by a daughter who shared his penchant for vengeance. Llandrix defeated her father’s Hellknights and had him imprisoned, took control of his armies and resources and seized his Empire before he’d ruled it for even a fortnight. In the process she secured the unyielding loyalty of all the Generals and landed nobles he’d planned to betray, and after she let the rapist bastard suffer in a prison cell for a year she marched him onto the newly finished high tower of Kai-Ren Thoth and used the Veil to torture him while he begged for mercy. After a few days she grew bored and threw his grisly remains into the sea.

  Her devotion to her people was heralded, and songs were written about her. Her desire to punish her father for his injustices won her the hearts of the Empire, and exposing his intended treachery won her the support of Jlantria’s most powerful military leaders and families. Her mastery of the Veil earned her control of the Veilwardens, and her desire to burn out the evils of the world in Corvinia’s name ensured the loyalty of the One Goddess’s church. Within ten years no one assumed her rule was ordained by anything short of Corvinia herself.

  The Empress lashed out at any perceived threat to Jlantrian solidarity, and with each conquest she added new territories and vast sums of accumulated wealth. As time went by Azaean acquired magic and riches and knowledge, and her command of the Veil grew. She came to master a force which would allow her to live forever.

  If it doesn’t kill me first.

  Llandrix filed away her most recent attempt at poetry – unfinished, as so many of her projects had been as of late – and left the room. There were no doors to her private chambers, just a cutgate cast into the wall with red ink. The portal was attenuated so only she could use it. Ruby light bled across her vision, and for a moment she felt weightless as she passed through a storm of smoke and blood.

  She emerged from the light and stepped into a great pale room filled with moisture and light. The marbled chamber was kept warm by the constant spill of magically heated water from angelic stone mouths, and curtains of steam filled the space from floor to ceiling. A pair of servants stood waiting. They’d been blinded when they’d entered her service so they would never see her unclothed.

  Azaean disrobed and stepped into the water. She knew very well that Argus Saam’siir waited in the Sanctum – she’d sent her summons, after all – but she intended to make him wait, for such was her right.

  She unbound her hair and dipped backwards into the water. The pain she’d battled just minutes before was all but forgotten. Her mind and soul were awash with thoughts of the future. She stretched her arms out and bathed herself – she never allowed anyone to touch her except her lovers – and gazed out the open window, which afforded her a spectacular view of the labyrinthine streets of Ral Tanneth.

  It was her city, but it was just one of many, and several had been lost during the Rift War. Some had been devastated, while others had been allowed to go free because her armies no longer had the resources to hold them.

  No longer, she thought.

  Llandrix was slowly claiming back her Empire. Her control over the Veil grew stronger each day, and before long she’d take revenge on Kala and Malath and every disgusting creature like them. Losing the Bloodheart Stone had been disheartening, but she knew, given patience and time, that it would still be hers.

  She wouldn’t stop until she had everything she wanted. It didn’t matter what price had to be paid. There were plenty who she could sacrifice in order to secure her legacy.

  Three

  Argus paced the outer chamber of the Sanctum. The pale walls were jagged and uneven, as if the entire room had been carved from the heart of a glacier. A tall throne sat at one end of the room, while the other side was occupied by an enormous and irregularly shaped window which offered a breathtaking view of Ral Tanneth. A long table along one wall was covered with odds and ends the Empress had accumulated over the years: bits of jewelry, armor, a heap of silver coins, gold nuggets mined from the Grim Titans. Empress Azaean used the chamber for private meetings, or else when she needed to be available for a select few but chose not to grace the Throne Room with her presence. The air smelled of incense and beauty powders and was nearly silent.

  Knights of the Grail Order waited just outside the room, and even their proximity sent a chill down Argus’ spine. The Empress’s honor guards looked no different than any other soldiers of the White Dragon Army, but those with any knowledge of the Order knew better.
Most Grail Order knights were well-trained in the arts of assassination, and the senior members had been tempered with specially concocted elixirs which greatly enhanced their vitality and stamina. Of course, an unexplained side effect of that serum also rendered Grail Knights emotionless and excessively violent, but Empress Azaean seemed to prefer them that way, leading some to question whether the side effects had truly been unintentional after all. In any case, the Grail Knights were eerie and dangerous, just like most things altered and twisted by Veilcraft.

  The waiting, Argus decided, was the worst. The Empress had a powerful presence, not just because of her command of the Veil – the flow of magic around her was like a wave of volcanic heat – but also due to the very force of her personality, for even without the benefit of sorcery Empress Azaean filled a room like the glow of a star. Her every word radiated authority, and her gaze was enough to turn even the most confident men to ice. Anticipation of meeting with her that morning had kept him from sleeping much, though in all fairness his insomnia was nothing new.

  I need to do something about that. Some nightshade elixir might do the trick.