by Dragon Lance
“And what about you?” she asked, her scowl visible even in the darkness. “Who can order you to survive?”
“No one,” he responded evenly. Then he kissed her, a gentle farewell.
“Do not come looking for me,” he said, and he slipped away over the rooftop.
She stared after him, stunned and fearful. To the night, with its crashes and shouts and rolling wheels, she said, “I will always come looking for you.”
Treading lightly as a cat, she padded in his wake, up over the rooftop.
*
The empress lay abed when Vinas swung lightly through her open window.
Her apartments were, of course, opulent. Carved plaster adorned the ceilings. Tapestries covered the walls. Silks lined the windows and bed. The rooms were not shared by her philandering husband. In early days, this was at his insistence; now it was at her command.
Vinas landed softly on the thick carpet. He crouched, listening for her breathing. He needn’t have bothered.
Phrygia sat up in bed and let her legs drop over the side. Her feet slid into narrow slippers on the floor. With deliberate calm, she stood and drew a robe over her shoulders, as though she hadn’t noticed Vinas’s presence.
That possibility was dismissed moments later when she walked from her bedside and straight toward Vinas. A flick of her hand awoke magical fire atop a candle she had picked up. The red wax immediately flowed down the shaft to dribble on her small, pale fingers.
“Hello, Vinas,” she said in a low voice. “I have been waiting for you... all these years.”
Those years had not been kind to her. Instead of youthful, country-girl charm, she now had an icy, embittered mien. Her eyes were wide and humorless. Her mouth was a thin scar that had never quite healed.
“Hello, Phrygia.” He gestured toward the candle. “I see your warlock has taught you a few trifles of magic.”
“I hear,” she countered, “my husband has taught you a few trifles of warfare.” Her eyes narrowed to hateful slits. “It seems both roses have gone to thorns.”
“Oh, no, Your Majesty,” Vinas replied. “War has taught me many things: courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom – the foundation stones of honor. What has magic taught you: self-pity, betrayal, bitterness, spite?”
“I would gladly pit my trifles against yours,” Phrygia said, “in a duel unto death.”
“That’s precisely what I had in mind.” Vinas drew his sword. “Challenge gladly accepted.” He backed up, assuming a defensive posture.
Phrygia regally ran a hand up her form. A green, sparkling screen rose to envelope her. “There,” she said. “Until I attack you, I am protected by this magic. Do your damnedest with that sword of yours.”
Vinas watched her, waiting for whatever trick she had in mind. “I will not attack an unarmed woman.”
She spread her hands. “You make a grave mistake to think me unarmed. I am a pupil of magic – trained by a lich. That is what you have made me. I could kill you with a single thought, should I so desire. But there are better desires than murderous revenge.”
Phrygia strolled languidly toward him.
“Back, or I will strike,” warned Vinas.
She did not slow. “I learned this from you. Embrace your foe to death. Isn’t that what you did to Antonias, to Erghas? Isn’t that what you would do to Emann, to me?”
He brought his blade down. The sword bounced away, ringing.
She was almost upon him. “How about your bread wars? The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. You used bread to seduce Ergoth away from my husband. Very wise. You’re more lover than warrior, aren’t you?”
Vinas stepped back, and tried to strike again. His sword rebounded. He staggered against the wall. “How like a Quisling to think feeding the hungry is a seduction.”
Phrygia lunged. Vinas jammed the sword into the scintillating field of energy. The magic repelled the blade, flinging his arm violently to one side.
She pressed him to the wall. Her hands grappled his face. Her lips vengefully sought his....
*
Luccia crept to the window where Vinas had disappeared. There was noise from within. She looked past the sill.
Heart catching in her throat, Luccia drew back.
“A personal matter... don’t seek me out....”
It all made sense.
Her tears caused the world to blur as she staggered back from the window and across the treacherous rooftop.
*
With one hand, Vinas managed to thrust her away. Phrygia’s fingernails traced scratches across his jaw as she fell back. With the other, he brought his sword up against the magic shield.
Only it wasn’t there. The blade sank through Phrygia as though through water, and tore its way out the back of her robes. She slumped to the floor, the look on her face not one of pain or dread, but of triumph. “You said... you would not strike... an unarmed woman.”
Vinas was white as he fell to his knees before her. “But the shield. What of the shield?”
“I told you... it would remain... until I attacked.”
He tried to pull the sword out of her, but she clutched the hilt, her hands bloodying his.
“Let me draw out the sword,” he said.
“No,” she said. “I wanted you.... Now I have you.
We are united...
“But I can heal you.”
“No,” she replied. Blood rimmed her lips. “Only paladins can heal. You are no such thing... anymore.”
“Why?” he asked. “Why have you done this?”
“I go before you to prepare a place.... I will bring you... to be with me... at my right hand. If you think me powerful now... wait until I rise... until we rise. The deathless rulers... of a deathless empire!”
Stunned, Vinas sat back on his heels. For a moment, he could see only the lacings of blood across his fingers. Then, in the comer of his eye, he saw motion.
An figure stood in the doorway, guards flanking him. “You have murdered her. You have murdered my wife!”
*
Six Months Hence, 1 Aelmont, 1207 Age of Light
With the “aid” of the court mage, Caitiff, Emperor Emann Quisling personally handled the prosecution of Commander Vinas Solamnus.
The emperor was acting according to the detailed instructions left by his wife. Emann followed her instructions to the letter, orchestrating a public trial of the traitor, six months of ritualistic torture, and a brutal execution.
The public trial had occupied the first month. With Emperor Emann as judge and Caitiff as prosecuting counsel, the trial was a regular festival. In addition to treason and murder, Vinas Solamnus was charged with three hundred and thirteen other crimes, including disturbing the peace, cruelty to animals, vandalism, populism, landing without permit, and blasphemy. On his head, too, were heaped false accusations against his father and the house of Solamnus.
The black-robed and prune-fingered Caitiff provided plenty of witnesses, of course. Many were inspired by cold, hard silver. A few others were reanimated from the dead and coached through their roles in the proceedings. The most damning witness was Adrenas Solamnus, dredged up from the crypt of Paladine’s temple. Though the old noble tried to resist, Caitiff did elicit one phrase, which he made Adrenas repeat over and over:
“You would be dead. You would be hanged....
“You would be dead. You would be hanged....
“You would be dead. You would be hanged....”
Ever clever, Caitiff impelled Adrenas Solamnus to deliver his own son’s sentence.
Vinas was found guilty on all counts. He was condemned to be executed on the first of the year. He would run the gauntlet to the gibbet and there would be hanged. According to Phrygia’s directions, Judge Emann ordered that until that time, the traitor should undergo five months of “purifications.”
Among the cleansing rites prescribed by the late empress were conventional methods such as the scourge, the brand, the salt bath, the rack, an
d the bone maul. Her instructions referred to such tortures as “preparing the body.” As to what Phrygia was preparing the body for, she did not say – and Emann feared to dispute. Phrygia also had left explicit directions for preparing the traitor’s soul. He was to be burned alive while wearing a collar of regeneration, to be eaten from the inside by his kidneys magically transformed into rats, and to be slowly solidified by sorcery that changed his blood into stone. Whenever these tortures threatened to kill the traitor – and that happened at least twice a day – he was brought back from the brink of death by the sorceries of Caitiff.
Never did Vinas cry for mercy Never did he renounce the cause of revolution or betray secrets of the rebellion.
Nor did his army betray him. During those six terrible months, they had made a number of rescue attempts, none of which could win past the vast protections Caitiff had placed around the dungeon. The armies had also stormed the walls five times. Beneath rains of arrows and boiling water, they died in their thousands. Their dead, then, were scavenged by Emann’s “recruiters” – necromancers in search of fresh meat. With each failed attack, the rebels grew weaker and Daltigoth stronger. In time, the attacks ceased. All the world held its breath for the first of the year.
*
On 1 Aelmont, 1207 Age of Light, a living skeleton stumbled from the dungeon into that bright winter day. He bore little resemblance to the man who had once been commander of the armies of Ergoth. He wore only a loincloth, despite the ice-choked streets and snow-clogged windows. His flesh was covered with wounds and scars, and it was grayer than that of the dead.
A comparison was close at hand. The dead lined both sides of the King’s Way. They swayed stupidly on their decaying legs and goggled at him with dull, staring sockets. Each scabrous hand bore a maul or club or flail. Each throat let out a putrid bellow of excitement.
Behind the dead crowded the living, the red-chafed faces that had been fed by Vinas’s bread war, six months back. They were peasants, mostly, the people he had always championed. They stood now in mute witness behind the lines of the dead.
At the end of the street stood the gallows. There, he would die. And what had Phrygia planned for him afterward?
Vinas staggered in the brightness and dropped to his knees. He could barely feel the pebbly ground under him. Perhaps he would barely feel the clubs and mauls and flails.
With that realization, fear sloughed from him like a cape. Emann and his brutal empire might kill Vinas’s flesh, but they would not destroy his honor. They would not end his rebellion and the hope he had given the world.
Hot, fleshy fingers took hold of Vinas’s atrophied arms and lifted him back to his feet.
“Get going!” one of the guards growled.
Cold, withered, and naked, Vinas was thrust out between the lines of dead. He took a step, a second, a third.
The nearest deadman reached a hoary claw out toward him and swiped clumsily at the air. Vinas instinctually shied away. A sound like laughter came from the throats of the dead. The lumbering clumsiness of their own kind amused even them. Vinas took the moment to plod forward, his own legs feeling as dry and brittle as sticks.
Ducking more artless blows, he proceeded toward the gibbet.
Perhaps when I am hanged, Luccia will descend from the sky and whisk me away....
A great block of wood smashed his chest and sent him sprawling back – back the five steps he had managed. He landed on shoulder blades and elbows, and for a moment the bright sky was dark.
When his sight returned, one of the dead loomed over him. Half its skull had been sheared away. The rest of the face drew up in a graveyard grin. A bloodied block hung from a chain in its skeletal hand, and a long, punctured wheeze came from its dry lungs. It waited, waited with the others for its frail quarry to rise again and walk.
Vinas breathed once, twice. He would rise. He would be slain today, yes, but not in such a manner.
The block whirled and came down again. Ribs snapped beneath its weight and flesh tore free. They were not Vinas’s ribs or his flesh, for the block whirled in a different hand.
Luccia swung the maul again. The rest of the dead man’s head snapped sideways and hung limply from a tom neck.
She had sneaked in among the peasants. She had come to die with him.
Vinas tried to grab an axe held by a dead man. The axe clattered to the ground before he could grasp it, and it was soon buried beneath the unmade form of its bearer.
Vinas looked up to see Gaias draw back a sword from the pile of bone and flesh. The commander was about to say something when a giant erupted from a nearby curtain, his brazen voice quelling the cries of the crowd.
In the name of Paladine, begone to your graves, dead ones!
The dead could not fall fast enough. Bones and flesh became ashy soot and crumbled to the cobbles. Where moments before had stood two rows of dead there now lay twin trails of ash.
But living soldiers quickly took their places, surrounding Luccia, Gaias, Titus, and Vinas. The commander’s three friends held their weapons out, keeping at bay the growing crowd of soldiers. There would be no escaping this.
Then, the mob of soldiers began to thin....
With inexpressible joy, Vinas saw the peasants converging. Their canes and rolling pins brought down the soldiers. The people of Daltigoth were climbing the city walls, too, and tearing to pieces the black tangle of dead. Ergoth was breaking through the unholy armies that had kept it captive these hundred years.
Red peasant faces. They had been red with more than cold. They had been red with hope and excitement.
The war was ending. The forces of the emperor were falling. The dead were dispersing, in the mouths of the victorious people rose a chant that, like a word of unprecedented power, drove back the armies of darkness.
“Solamnus... Solamnus... Solamnus!”
*
Two Months Hence, 1 Mishamont, 1207 Age of Light
In the two months following the peasant uprising, an exhausted Vinas Solamnus did his best to bring about a calm and beneficial close to the tumultuous events that had nearly destroyed the city.
The emperor (as always, fearing for his life) had temporarily fled Daltigoth, and Vinas negotiated for Emann’s surrender. Many felt such arbitration was unnecessary, given that Vinas was now residing in Castle Daltigoth. It was indeed a comfortable position from which to make demands, but Vinas knew that Ergoth would remain a sovereign entity and that there would be many more emperors to come. He intended to use his advantage to secure the right of self-determination for each province (in order that each could choose to assert their independence or remain loyal to the empire) and wanted to do so in the most honorable and civil manner possible.
Of course, Vinas couldn’t help but make a few “improvements” during the emperor’s conspicuous absence.
First, the dead were buried again, with proper rites that would keep them from rising. Caitiff was singled out for special disposal, his shattered soul-gems, bones, and ashes ground to a fine dust that was stirred into holy water. With his dissolution, Phrygia, too, would not rise. Just to be certain, though, Titus and his platoon of priests made the rounds of the castle and the city, casting out any additional evil spirits that lingered in the place. The harsh and haunted air of the city was dispersed with that housecleaning, and Vinas sent out a proclamation of sorts that asked that such a priestly sweep be made again each year.
Having laid the dead to rest, Vinas also took compassionate measures. The commander dispatched a corps to burn the gibbets in the city and eventually, those across the land. Bread wagons began to depart regularly from the castle. Luccia, Titus and Gaias combed the streets and the nearby countryside to ensure that inhabitants’ basic needs were being met and when, inevitably, they were not, Vinas received a written report. Though the stacks of vellum grew in size and number, the commander insisted on reading each one. He often had to be creative when it came to requests for provisions – more than one shivering farm lad f
ound himself suddenly swathed in an opulent yet functional used Ergothian Empire soldier’s uniform.
Commander Vinas Solamnus had done much, and he was justifiably tired.
Sitting at a window in the tower where Caitiff had once kept his evil laboratory, Vinas gazed out at Daltigoth. He had worked ceaselessly for years for the good of all folk in the empire. Now, he needed to work for his own good. There were certain matters he wished to attend to....
The knock at the door was brief – small knuckles on hard wood.
“Come in, my love,” Vinas said without turning.
Luccia entered, gliding quietly up behind him. She waited, sensing his thoughtful mood. She knew him so well.
He turned to face her. She wore a look of concern. “This came,” she said softly, handing him a folded dispatch.
Vinas looked at it darkly. The seal, whatever it had been, was broken. “You opened it?”
“It was the seal of Emperor Emann,” she said. “I didn’t want to bother you with it if it was some ruse.”
“It is not a ruse?” Vinas asked, turning the letter over.
“Read it,” Luccia replied.
He did:
To the Usurper, Vinas Solamnus,
Greetings,
I send you this missive in order to hasten your departure from my empire. I sue for peace, that my head no longer be hunted for bounty, and I surrender, that my land be returned to me. The other provinces can have their independence, but I assure you that many of those close to Daltigoth will remain loyal to the empire. The northeastern nations and blasted Hylo are free to destroy themselves.
The fact that you and your rabble have ensconced yourselves in my castle is of no import. You, sir, know nothing of being an emperor and are ill-equipped to handle the political machinations of the job, to say nothing of the breeding required. When you depart Daltigoth, take the formerly royal linens with you. Anything you have touched will be burned, and I suspect you will be in need of charity soon.
Emann Quisling Emperor of Ergoth
“Our countryfolk will be sleeping on the emperor’s sheets,” said Vinas, smiling. His face suddenly grew grave. “Is this his signature?” he asked Luccia.