Indomitus Sum (The Fovean Chronicles Book 4)

by Robert Brady

  Hectar looked straight into Lee’s eyes. “You have to tell them not to go, but you have to make it their idea,” he said. “Can you think of a way to do that, or do you need one of

  us—?”

  Lee turned and painted on a smile.

  “Your Graces, once again, the Empire is well served by both of you,” Lee said, and saw them exchange a look.

  Meanwhile, a self-satisfied grin spread across Yeral’s face. Lee pressed on, watching her more than the two Men.

  “Can Angador’s Knights get between this army and Lupor?”

  Tartan turned his head to Ceberro, and the two spoke so low she couldn’t hear them. However, the other Wizard could, and Lee communicated with him, instead.

  Tartan: ‘I can’t get there in under two weeks.’

  Ceberro: ‘Even if she didn’t know that, J’her does.’

  Tartan: ‘So why is she asking?’

  Ceberro: ‘She wants you to tell her no, so she doesn’t have to refuse you instead.’

  Tartan turned his head. “My lady, I am afraid, no. We advise that you contact Lupor itself, to be ready.”

  “We will be guided by your tactical wisdom,” Lee said.

  They bowed and she cut the spell, the orb in the center of the room returning to its original colors. Lee sighed, feeling giddy from the use of her power. Her mother had taught her that her might would grow like muscles from exercise and, in fact, every time she used this conduit, she’d felt that.

  “That went unexpectedly well,” Hectaro commented. Lee flipped a hand in his direction.

  At her age, she didn’t want responsibilities like this. Less than three months ago, she’d been playing dolls with her brother and ‘mama’ with her younger sister. She’d used her power to steal plums from the larder and imagined herself kissing Hectaro.

  Now she found herself making decisions that could affect an empire, spying on girls she’d thought of as her friends, and wondering if her baby brother would be alive the next day. Now Dukes and generals looked to her for her opinion, and then insisted on using it.

  “I can’t imagine news any worse,” she said.

  * * *

  “You were wise to report this,” Emperor Rancor Mordetur informed his daughter, standing in the communications room at Thera.

  Vulpe’s mother, Shela, stood beside her husband, his left arm locked in both of hers, operating the conduit from this side. Vulpe had seen his mother run this magical orb before, but not from outside of Galnesh Eldador. He knew his sister could do it, but he had never seen her do it so confidently as this.

  A lot had changed for an eleven-year-old boy, and fast.

  “I’m bringing The Green One into this,” Shela announced. “We need to know—”

  “I’ll do it, mother,” Lee offered. Shela smiled.

  “Love, you’ve done enough already—”

  “No,” Vulpe’s father commanded, without looking at either of them. “Let Lee do it. You’re still recovering your strength.”

  He looked up. “This is all of the magic you’re doing, right?”

  Lee blushed. Nina said, “I know that look.”

  “No practicing new magix,” Shela warned her. “Stick with what you know.”

  Lee bowed her head. Vulpe knew that look, too. She’d make the promise, but she’d never keep it. She was dying to be like mama.

  Lee frowned to focus herself. It would take several minutes to get a response from Dilvesh, if he was even in Lupor.

  Father turned to grandfather, standing opposite his mother. Those two had come to an uneasy truce, and now father was consulting him more and more.

  “Your people have already been to Lupor once, haven’t they?”

  Grandfather nodded. “They were, but I wasn’t there.”

  Father looked into grandfather’s eyes. “But they know the city well enough to cause trouble?” he asked.

  Father did that. No one could hold anything back from him. Vulpe had looked into those blue, blue eyes and spilled his deepest secrets before realizing.

  Grandfather just shrugged. “I’d like to think they could,” he said. “Karl, Jahunga—they could raise an army.”

  Father looked at mama, then back at grandfather. “When they decided to go there, did they have any special reason?” he asked.

  “They needed a base of operations,” he said. “If we could start something in Kor, cause you trouble on your border, then you’d stay home.”

  “Black Lupus!” they heard from the orb. All heads turned to see the orb divided in two parts, one with Lee and the other with Dilvesh, the Green One.

  “Green Dilvesh,” father nodded. “We believe as many as ten thousand Confluni warriors are coming to your city.”

  Dilvesh’s pencil-thin eyebrows rose. “We’ve been following the battles,” he said. “The Confluni are moving farther north.”

  Father looked at mother, then at uncle Two Spears. “Dukes Stowe and Ceberro in Angador claim they’re for Lupor,” he said.

  “If Ceberro and Stowe are together in Angador,” Dilvesh said, “I would be more concerned about that.”

  “I told you,” Lee chimed in.

  * * *

  “Well, that didn’t go as predicted,” Ceberro commented to Tartan Stowe, sitting together in the Duke’s personal study, a carafe of red wine between them on a table.

  Ceberro had come here to Angador when he’d heard of the Battle of the Vice. He and the Emperor had made a very competent general out of Glennen’s son, not that this came as any surprise.

  Glennen had been magnificent on the battlefield, a match for the Emperor himself. Take that breeding with the training, and Tartan Stowe would end up the equal of anyone.

  He’d certainly torn apart the Confluni with their Uman-Chi support, and with little help from wizards of his own. Even Ceberro couldn’t be sure he’d have returned with so clean a victory.

  Stowe just nodded. Ceberro could see him basking in the glow of the Emperor’s praise, received through Lee. He still suffered from his father’s abuse in those last days, and it left his ego wounded. Ceberro had tried to be the one who healed the boy, but the Emperor had stepped in. No one could compete with those opportunities, but then Ceberro had known better than to try.

  He still woke up at night with bad dreams from the beating he’d taken at the Emperor’s hands, that day thirteen years ago, when he’d challenged him for the right to be heir. It wasn’t like him, Ceberro didn’t think it very manly to hold a grudge so long, but he’d never been so thoroughly beaten, so clearly defeated, especially when he’d meant so much to win. Lupus had destroyed him there on the sand and, before he could act on it, the King had gone and died.

  Ceberro had been left no alternative but to throw everything behind the Heir. Civil War, possibly gratifying, would never have succeeded, not when Lupus could call on the Daff Kanaar. Even without them, Lupus could clearly count on Rennin and the upstart from Uman City to support him, along with his Aschire and his invincible Wolf Soldier guard. Groff remained questionable, but then Groff would never act until victory was clear. No, he knew what Lupus did to his enemies, so he became a friend, and waited.

  When he’d declared himself an Emperor and his nation an empire, he’d waited for the Fovean High Council to step in, but they didn’t. Then they’d seen the Battle of the Deceptions and the use of Eldadorian Fire, and knew better than to challenge Eldador.

  He’d spoken to the other Dukes, which by then included Angador, Metz and the Aschire. Even Groff had liked the arrangement better, so Ceberro had applauded it.

  Then this mad scheme had come. An outright invasion of other Fovean nations, in defiance of the Fovean High Council, provoked by a song from an Uman-Chi who opposed them.

  Groff hadn’t liked it, and had been allowed to keep most of his troops home.

  Rennin fully supported it, and his troops went with the Emperor.

  Tartan and Ceberro had been left behind to ‘hold the home front,’ but Ceberro’s t
roops had gone with the Emperor. “Advise Tartan and expect blow back on this,” he’d been informed, and had had to ask the Empress in private what ‘blow back’ was.

  Expect the counter invasion of the Eldadorian nation. Well, they hadn’t had to wait long.

  “We’re all lucky you’re a genius,” Ceberro said, casually sipping his wine. “Or we’d be on a knee before Conflu right now.”

  Tartan smiled. “I think not,” he said.

  Ceberro frowned. “You can’t believe Vulpe won the day?” he countered.

  Tartan frowned back, and reached for the carafe. “Vulpe, if he actually commanded those troops, ran a textbook attack on the Confluni, and we both know who wrote the textbook,” he said. “If I hadn’t been there, then he’d have eventually withdrawn, but he would have contained the threat, and remember the Daff Kanaar were summoned. I made it less bloody; Ceberro, but I didn’t win the day.”

  “Lee was right about one thing,” Ceberro said. “You’re too humble.”

  Tartan smiled and drank.

  “If we aren’t to be in the battle for Lupor,” Ceberro pressed him, “then what are your plans?”

  Tartan shrugged. “Scout the plains,” he said. “You have the southern coast and the river, I have the plains. Nothing’s changed.”

  “You believe the Emperor will still invade then?”

  They’d both heard this new rumor, that the Emperor had been handed a defeat at sea by a fraction of his number in Tech Ships. Now the Emperor seemed to be shifting his attention to Volkhydro.

  “Such a claim cannot go unanswered,” Tartan said. “It’s clearly a trap, so the Emperor will prove he can’t be trapped.”

  “Or he’ll fail,” Ceberro said.

  “Or he’ll fail,” Tartan agreed.

  Better and better.

  “In that event, have you ever wondered what you would do?” Ceberro asked him.

  “Do?”

  Ceberro took another drink. “What would you do, in the event the Emperor failed?” he asked.

  Tartan frowned and put his drink down, leaning back in the comfortable chair.

  “I think I know what you’re asking me,” he said, “so I’ll tell you this, one time, and then we’ll never have this conversation again.”

  Ceberro opened his mouth but Tartan just kept speaking. “There was a time when I believed Stowes, not Mordeturs, should run this nation, and if it became possible, or even plausible, to make that happen, then it was my right and my duty to see to it.”

  Tartan wet his lips, took a look into his wine, but didn’t drink. “I have, since then, realized that a name doesn’t run a nation, or an Empire, but a man does, and if that man has earned that right, then every one of any name should follow him, or earn that right himself.

  “Earn it, Ceberro, not claim it for a name,” he looked Ceberro right in the eye, and the Duke could see nothing of the recalcitrant boy who’d stepped into the Ducal throne of Angador—a city he’d created and then turned over to the King.

  “I know you loved my father but, in the end, the things that made him strong, his passion and his love of Life, his willingness to commit everything and his inability to let go, destroyed him,” Tartan said. “Can I say I’d have done better? That’s not the question, Ceberro. The question is, ‘Have I earned the right to try?’, and the answer to that question is, ‘Not yet.’”

  “You know Lupus will never name you Heir,” Ceberro said, looking Tartan right back in the eye.

  “Who says I want it?” Tartan said.

  They were quiet for a moment, then Tartan stood.

  “Enjoy the wine,” he said. “I’ve matters to attend to. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, but not to continue with this.”

  Ceberro watched him leave, having gotten his answer. He doubted Tartan would bring this to the attention of the Emperor, but he couldn’t be sure. Instead, he might do well to sow some seeds of dissent between them, perhaps buying Angadorian steeds to keep them from the Emperor.

  “Your Grace?”

  He turned in his chair to see the Lady Yeral Stowe enter the study through a side door. Clearly she’d been listening at the eaves, spying on her own husband. He’d believed these two fully supported each other, however rumors could be unreliable and things changed.

  “My Lady Duchess,” Ceberro said, and stood to honor her.

  She extended the back of her hand for kissing, then seated herself where her husband had sat, and picked up his glass of wine.

  Ceberro sat, and picked up his own glass.

  She sipped, ran a tongue over her lips, then looked seriously at Ceberro. “I must admit, your conversation surprised me,” she said.

  Not even shy about the spying, Ceberro thought as he dipped his head to acknowledge her. At least his own wife was discreet.

  This woman’s father had been utterly disgraced, and later executed, by the Emperor. Her family name was nothing. Many believed that Stowe had been paired with her to neutralize him.

  “I think,” she informed him, drawing out her words, “we have much to discuss.”

  * * *

  Glynn sat sidesaddle on her Angadorian warhorse, one of the many they’d been able to collect after the battle ten days before. Vedeen rode beside her on her original roan, in her manly saddle, their dog keeping pace at her mount’s heels. Vedeen had said they weren’t asking the right questions. Now their Jack, in leaving them, had said the same. Finally their Raven, speaking to the goddess Eveave, whom she’d somehow had the manna to summon, had sent them on a new direction, and once again implied they didn’t understand the questions yet.

  She knew she had to listen to the goddess, if to no one else, even as they hurried to the northern tip of the Salt Wood.

  To her left, Avek Noir trotted his own mount, another Angadorian mare, keeping his own council. He’d asked to meet the two of them, but now took his time to choose his words.

  So refreshing after Men who blurted out their first feelings.

  “May we discourse of your protégé?” he asked them, finally.

  “We must,” Vedeen added. “I admit, the child concerns me.”

  Glynn found herself frowning, looking forward, considering. She finally said, “I concede concerns; however our needs are great—”

  “You are aware,” Avek interrupted her, a total surprise from one of her own kind, “of the first rule for an acolyte.”

  Glynn had learned the hundreds of rules for the acolyte as an exercise to progress in her training, so of course she knew the first.

  “One learns at the capacity of discipline, not ability,” she said.

  They were right—she had to admit it. Any student could learn enough, almost immediately, to wield unimaginable power. Without the discipline to control it, the power became a threat to the Caster and to those around her.

  “And yet,” she asked, “how does one restrict the abilities of an acolyte whose gifts include resistance to magic?”

  Avek nodded. “This is the problem,” he agreed. “Normally her master would strip her of her power. I would not want to be the one to try to cast that spell on her.”

  “Nor I,” Vedeen said. “We could ask her to abstain, however she’s already wielded the power. She’ll only crave more.”

  “The god does have an addictive nature,” Avek agreed. “And for every disciple like the Empress who drinks deep and survives, there are many more like Raven who go too far and too fast.”

  “These arguments may matter little,” Glynn said. “We have, unfortunately, lost one who was mentioned in the song.”

  Xinto’s death had come as a complete surprise to her. First that he should be out-drawn by an Aschire, second that the protection of the goddess didn’t extend to him. If the song was prophetic, then Xinto of the Wood should not have died.

  “I’d thought that was pre-ordained,” Vedeen said to her.

  The horses plodded on while she considered that.

  “For Fovea, for Fovea, then must they liv
e and die.

  Fight the battle from within

  With a Champion from outside.”

  “In fact, my Lady,” Avek said to her, “his death now that you believe you’ve collected the six weapons tends to verify your song.”

  Her heart constricted.

  “You—forgive me, your Highness,” she said, her voice incredulous in her own ears, “but you can’t mean to suggest that we, the weapons of the song, are all doomed to die.”

  Avek regarded her with eyes that appeared brown to her, which would be silver-on-silver to anyone else.

  “It isn’t my song,” he said, “and so I don’t pretend to interpret it, however I may not be wise enough to see another way.”

  An Uman-Chi’s way of saying this was exactly what he thought.

  Glynn couldn’t help but to find that conclusion very distressing.

  “I believe it was, in fact, Lupus the Conqueror who limited Shela, until she became more adept,” Vedeen said.

  “Your pardon, lady Druid?” Avek said.

  “Her slavery to him, willing though it was,” Vedeen said. She was trying to rescue Glynn from a very embarrassing and disturbing topic of conversation, apparently.

  “He encouraged her to some restraint. Without her ‘Jack,’ Raven is unrestrained.”

  “She has coupled with the Hero of Tamara,” Avek noted.

  “I personally find him a better match for her,” Vedeen said, throwing back her long, blonde hair. “I admit I encouraged him.”

  Glynn arched an eyebrow. “Did you?”

  Vedeen smiled her brilliant white smile. “They balance,” she said. “He is the sword edge, she the file.”

  Glynn didn’t see it that way, but kept her own council. She had other things to think of now. Avek, as well, remained silent.

  Vedeen sighed.

  Glynn watched Raven and Karl riding side-by-side, speaking to each other as lovers of the race of Men would. If she could encourage Karl to take a firm hand with her, then perhaps they could restrain their Raven.

  Of course, if they were both doomed to die, then what matter?