by Dragon Lance
The chancellor coughed discreetly into his old, bony hand. He continued his address to the others. “The emperor’s personal guard will secure the door on both sides. Should any of you make an exit such as that of Underchancellor Solamnus or Beadle Titus, you will be assumed assassins and slain without question.”
“Forgive us, Chancellor Dorias,” the underchancellor said. He and his mountainous partner in crime averted their eyes and bowed respectfully, trying to dissolve into the crowd.
“Perhaps I should request a more punctual assistant,” Chancellor Dorias idly wondered aloud.
Beneath his breath, the underchancellor said, “Perhaps I should request a more forgiving master.”
Chancellor Dorias did not hear this reply, though Beadle Titus did.
*
So did the two priests directly ahead of them. Neither of them turned, though the one with a deep, pink cleft in his forehead said, “Do, please, continue, Chancellor Dorias.”
The old cleric brought a hand to his forehead, as though wondering at that fleshy wound. He hid the motion by dragging a white skein of hair down from his own pate. “I’m sorry. Where was I?”
A young, doe-eyed woman beside the scarred priest said, “You were talking about priests being mistaken for assassins.”
Laughter rippled among the group as the chancellor nodded and gestured toward the prior’s open door. “Seeing as the underchancellor and the beadle so generously opened the door for us, let us make our way through.”
As the robed faithful of Paladine filed through the door, the hatchet-headed man and his comrade lingered near the rear of the pack. They spoke together in whispers.
“Will we kill him here, Hatch?” asked the woman. She had a wide-eyed look of innocence, and her voice was like the coo of a dove.
Hatch frowned. “No. Too out-of-the-way, and too well-guarded. My employer wants the emperor to faint on the altar, like a good virgin boy, and then wilt to the floor like a dead lily, right in front of his people,”
“Poisoned nuptial wine?” the woman asked.
“What’s the sport in that? Anyway, the emperor’s got an army of tasters, and nothing’s gotten past them yet.”
From the door, Chancellor Dorias called, “Come along, you stragglers. Wouldn’t want to leave you out of the festivities!”
“Wouldn’t want to be left out, Chancellor,” said Hatch.
The two assassins shuffled through the door.
Beyond lay one of the southern wings of the temple. An elevated causeway of gold-veined white marble led from the door past seats carved into the white granite bedrock on which the temple had been built. The seats were empty now. Waiting.
Dorias closed the door and moved to the head of the group. He walked backward, into the cavernous stone wing. As he went, the chancellor gestured to either side. “The emperor will walk down this aisle, accompanied by bodyguard and retinue, including your father, Underchancellor Solamnus – the emperor’s dear friend and best man.”
The underchancellor ducked as if hoping that comment would fly by overhead.
Hatch was a bit too cruel to let such a bowed neck go unchopped. “I guess that would make the underchancellor second-best man, wouldn’t it?”
In the muffled amusement that followed, the underchancellor glared murderously toward Hatch. Their eyes met for the first but certainly not the last time. In that moment, the accoutrements of priesthood dissolved. Young Solamnus was no priest, but a warrior. Hatch wondered if his true profession had been recognized by the underchancellor.
Then, the moment was past. The tide of priests dragged them along. At the head of the group, the chancellor droned onward. The aisles of white and gold converged inward to a stepped dais in the center of the sanctuary.
Above those twenty-one raised steps – “one for each true god,” commented Dorias – hung a gold-worked dragon. The huge metal statue shimmered in its stained-glass apse. The life-sized gold dragon hovered in the pose of Paladine’s celestial constellation. Its horned head was uppermost in the vault of the central tower; its resplendent neck arched down to half-tucked wings; and its long tail snaked out from underneath to end in a flipped curl. That auric vision had sent armies of worshippers to their knees.
The assassin named Hatch could think only of Vinas Solamnus. “That brat – he will be a big problem,” he muttered to the woman.
She responded softly, “What is he? He is nothing. He is underchancellor.”
“He is son of the best man.”
“So what?” she asked.
“The best man has the ring,” replied Hatch, “the ring that will have the enspelled spur inside it.”
“I see,” said the child-faced killer. “I see.”
*
“Enter,” called Adrënas Solamnus toward the door of the study.
The wood panel slid silently aside into a beveled and bossed wall. In the open doorway, flanked by overstuffed bookshelves, stood Caritas, a slave-turned-manservant.
Slavery is a beastly business, thought Adrenas. But Caritas’s clan was gone, and he had no home now other than the villa. “Yes, Caritas? What is it?”
“A priestess of Paladine is here, milord,” replied Caritas, bowing stiffly. He’d never quite learned the grace of servitude. Good for him. “She says she must bless the rings.”
Adrenas stared, blinking, at the young man. He had heard nothing of a ring blessing, though a blessed ring would be better than a cursed one.
“Shall I send her away?” asked Caritas.
Adrenas waved away his distraction. “Forgive me, Caritas. I’m hopelessly lost in thought today. Let her in.”
Caritas bowed out of the way. A young priestess stepped through the doorway.
She was slim and small. Though childlike, she seemed somehow utterly sturdy, unbreakable. Her face was taken up mostly by two great brown eyes, a sweet little nose, and a child’s mouth, turned as though she still nursed from her mother.
Adrenas had never seen so strange a combination of force and innocence. It made the old man feel dizzy, even slightly queasy.
“Come in,” he said, gesturing her into the book-filled room.
She entered, gliding quietly. She curtsied. Her tiny form was lost in the robes. She rose and stared, offering no introduction nor reason for her unexpected presence.
“You are here to bless the rings,” the old noble said.
“Please,” the priestess replied with a nod.
Adrenas studied her sharply. His eyes could not penetrate her blank gaze. He felt not just queasiness now, but uneasy premonition.
Even so, Adrenas found himself saying, “I’ll get them.”
“Please,” she urged.
He rose from his seat, giving his bones a moment to settle dryly against each other. A single step took him toward the wall vault that held the small, gold-gilded ring box. He paused. Feigning absentmindedness, Adrenas muttered, “Forgot to tell Caritas about the posies.” Instead of heading to the vault, he trudged to the door, called Caritas, and whispered to him, “Lock the doors and stand ready with your sword. Something feels wrong.”
As the plainsman moved swiftly and silently away, Adrenas slid the door shut and bolted it from within. He turned and studied the priestess, who remained in the center of the floor. He padded past her to the vault. Adrenas shoved a small painting aside and began working on the lock on the vault.
The lock opened. With an arcane gesture, Adrenas parted the glimmering blue shield of magic – a vault within a vault. He reached in, past deeds and documents, past a stack of platinum bars, to a small gilded chest, and withdrew it. Reactivating the magic, he closed the vault and turned around.
“They are in here,” he said, striding toward the priestess. He lifted the case toward her and opened it.
Only then did her eyes change. Into their wide placidity came a harsh focus and deep purple intensity.
“Beautiful,” she said.
They were. The ring for the emperor’s bride had a l
arge setting – one inch worth of the finest diamonds, rubies, and emeralds Ergoth could pry from the grip of dead dwarves. The central stone, a teardrop diamond, would likely weigh twenty carats by itself. The emperor’s ring was no less impressive, encrusted with shining jewels.
The priestess reached for the rings, but Adrenas reflexively drew the box back. She gazed at him, still wide-eyed but now accusingly so. “I must hold them to bless them.”
It was the most she had said so far.
“Of course,” Adrenas said, offering the box again.
Carefully, reverently, she drew the rings from the chest and held them overhead. She tilted her face toward the ceiling and began to chant a prayer in Old Ergothian, calling down the blessings of Paladine and his mate Mishakal, that the human union be a reflection of their divine marriage. All the while, her fingers moved in strange gestures, as though she were not merely blessing the rings, but somehow transforming them with her prayer.
The door to the room rattled loudly against its lock. The priestess started, almost dropping the rings.
Adrenas barked, “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Father. Why is the door bolted?”
Adrenas snorted. He set a hand on the priestess’s trembling arm. “My son,” he apologized. “I’ll tell him to wait.”
“No,” said the priestess petulantly. “The blessing is done. I must go.”
As the door rattled again, she carefully replaced the rings.
Adrenas closed the chest. “Just a moment, Vinas.” When the chest was again safely secreted in the vault, Adrenas crossed the room and slid back the bolt. The door was flung open and in strode Vinas. Somehow, the priestess flitted past him, and was gone in the hall.
“Who was that?” Vinas asked, astonished.
His father stared after the priestess, saying blankly, “Oh, someone from your order. She was sent to bless the rings. Adrenas shook away his unease. “What brings you here, son?” he asked.
Vinas blinked distractedly. “She was the one next to that brain-bashed priest. Something feels wrong here.”
“My thoughts, exactly.”
*
Titus climbed the ladder rungs four at a time. The shaft, as dark and narrow as a chimney stack, was meant to be traversed only in emergencies – like this one. The magical wards that guarded the temple’s central vault had been compromised.
Titus’s head struck the iron-barred trapdoor at the top of the shaft. A wedge of yellow light flashed for a moment in front of him, then closed again as he stooped down. Grimacing in the darkness and muttering things that should not be said by a priest, Titus clung miserably to the rungs and waited for his head to stop ringing.
With the thrust of one massive hand, he flung back the trapdoor. It boomed ominously against the floor of a narrow crawl space above. Dust undisturbed for centuries danced with mold spores in the dim air. Titus crawled into the space and wriggled his broad shoulders forward. He squeezed past a crumbled bulwark that had held aloft the former central tower, and stepped out onto a wooden catwalk.
Someone was moving out there. On the dark, swaying framework of poles and ropes and planks, someone knelt – a saboteur. Titus strode across the ancient boards, toward the stooped shoulders and the dim flutter of hands.
“Beadle Titus,” came an unfamiliar voice. “I’m glad you’re here. I spooked him away from this spot, here. He was working on it when I came up.”
Never enamored of heights, Titus slowed on the swaying catwalk. He took a moment to glance down warily at the dome of stone below them. Beneath that, he knew, hung the Paladine statue – and a two-hundred-foot drop to solid granite.
“Who was working there?” he called to the man.
“I didn’t get a good look. He was built about like your friend.”
“My friend?” Titus asked, edging toward the man.
“You know, the underchancellor.”
“Vinas.” Titus had almost reached the center of the vault. There the man was crouched, his hands moving in mothlike flutters.
“There, that should do it,” the man said. A blue glimmer dribbled down from his fingers onto the headstones of the dark vault. As Titus watched, the magic coursed down the stone ribs, sped along the circumference of the vault, and, with a faint whoosh!, swept over the whole area.
In the blue glow, Titus saw the outline of the man’s face, especially the hatchet-shaped wound in his forehead. It was the priest who had insulted Vinas that morning.
“I’m Hatch, missionary to the kender of Hylo,” he said, holding out a grimy hand in greeting. Titus didn’t take the hand. “You probably noticed my accent. Got it from the rabble – you know how it goes.”
“I do,” said Titus. “What did he do, this saboteur?”
Hatch withdrew his filthy hand and scratched his neck with it. “I suppose I don’t really know. I’ll get another priest up here to check on it. Somebody who knows about architectural magic, not just a rural priest like me.”
“I know just the man,” said Titus. “I’ll ask him to come have a look.”
“That’s a good idea. I’ll make sure he knows just what spot to check.”
*
One Day Hence, 3 Chislmont, 1188 Age of Light
Luccia had not come to Daltigoth for the imperial wedding. She had come for confrontation, not consummation.
The villagers around Solanthus had been especially desperate these past two years – ever since the intolerant reign of Scipio had been succeeded by the insufferable one of Hellas. The new colonel had twice the number of soldiers, and twice the will to use them to pillage the countryside. Each armed resistance by the villagers had brought only harsher reprisals. Skirmishes had become so constant as to be known in Daltigoth as the Solanthian Troubles.
News had reached Solanthus of the imperial wedding, and Luccia was inspired to trade in her devotion to a peasant rebellion for a personal mission.
Her plan involved a custom of the Quevalin emperors that carried through to the current Quisling line. On the day after the nuptial consummation, the new empress would receive requests from delegates of every imperial province. She then would grant, according to her wisdom, what aid she could.
Luccia had come to Daltigoth to demand bread.
And not just bread for right now, to save the skeletal villagers of Solanthus. She wanted bread forever. The right to remit reasonable taxes to the landed lord, and not to be pillaged into oblivion.
That was one phrase she had promised herself not to use. Pillaged into oblivion was, perhaps, too harsh for a new empress’s ears.
Cowled in the nondescript gray of peasants throughout Ergoth, Luccia shouldered her way through the throng that clustered at the base of the seemingly endless steps of Paladine’s temple. If she could push to the front of the crowd, she just might find a standing spot from which to see the spectacle. It was a royal wedding, after all... as well as being the chance to win bread and peace for the villages she called home.
Home. The word brought to mind thoughts of Vinas Solamnus. She wondered where he might be, what he might be doing, in the sprawling empire of Ergoth.
*
That afternoon, at the Gate of Eadamm, the wedding parade began. The gate stood on the spot where Eadamm, the legendary founder of the city, was said to have driven his slave shovel into the ground to begin building Daltigoth. In fact, three other sites in the city – including the Temple of Paladine – claimed to be the place where Eadamm first dug. Perhaps to be safe, the parade organizers had plotted a route that connected all the “shovel sites.” It was one of many signs that this wedding would be in the old tradition. It would be the sort of union not seen since the Quevalin line had ended, a century before.
First through the gate was the royal black watch. Its elite troops had served for three hundred years as bodyguards for every Ergothian emperor and his kin. Shiny boots clicked in absolute unison. The watch strode into the great arch. The echo of their steps would have terrified armies.
; The sound inspired the peasants who lined the parade route. They waved scarves in eager greeting. Their shouts were utterly drowned out by the boot steps.
Gaias marched among the black watch. He had always hoped for a post in this elite force, though his involvement in the Solanthian Troubles had jeopardized his appointment. Ironically, Colonel Hellas had made it all possible by speeding the malcontent’s reassignment from the Solanthian frontier to the heartland of Daltigoth. Underchancellor Solamnus had then-put in a good word with the emperor, and Gaias was in.
He had certainly earned this post. He’d spent a lifetime in soldier sandals and scale mail – a bearded peasant in a peasant army. Now clean-jowled and garbed in a black uniform, he scraped steel-tipped boots against the flagstones and scowled at the peasant mob.
Gaias felt lost. It had taken him many years to be appointed to the black watch. It had taken him only a few days to realize accepting this appointment was the gravest mistake of his life. At least in the imperial army, he often stuck his sword into people who deserved it. Among the royalty, though, the guilty survived and the feckless innocent died.
This is no time for such thoughts, he reminded himself. The sound of his own marching feet brought him back to the parade, to the solemn task of guarding the bride of Emperor Quisling.
The royal wedding. If Gaias were a grandfather, he would have told and retold the story of this march for the rest of his days. It was just as well he had no descendants. Despite moments of glory – like that blizzard night, decked out like a plainsman and giving food to starving peasants – the story of his life was proving to be a disappointment.
*
The roar of the boots made the emperor’s bride – a great-great grand niece of the last Quevalin king, and no more than a child – crouch in fear inside her white carriage. She plugged her ears and laughed in terror, hunched as though against a harsh rain.
*
Empresses and armies were not the only ones to tremble in the wake of that thunderous noise. So, too, did the robed priests of Paladine. They moved in a timid flock behind the bride’s carriage. At their chests, the priests clutched glass-ensconced candles. In the winds of dusk, the tiny fires pulsed like fearful hearts.