So she waited.
The magic built and built. It was like standing under an oppressive blanket of soupy, dense air. The magic pressed on her sides. Clogged her nose. Invaded her thoughts. And just when she felt that she was going to start hyperventilating from being closed in on all sides, the sensation relaxed. Instead she felt what had been a confining presence all around her whip by so fast that her hair fluttered. All with a central goal in mind. Each shrouded body suddenly had a glowing point of focus above them. The magic had been called into place.
As she watched the glowing balls grow into fist-sized lumps and then into perfect spheres the size of melons; it was like staring into the sun. They were so bright with the yellow-white light of a glaring summer’s day.
Several of the chosen minders brought up their forearms to shield their eyes from the bright glare. Ciardis squinted and ducked her head a bit, but refused to look away. She didn’t want to miss a thing. So she was one of the first to see movement. Movement that she first dismissed as magical sunspots playing tricks on her eyes.
Great, I’ve blinded myself, Ciardis thought with no little irony.
But she had the feeling that wasn’t it, and then without warning the glowing spheres, now each the size of a human’s head, took a dive. Straight into the mid-section of the corpse it hovered over.
They all watched with bated breath, waiting for a reaction, for anything.
When nothing happened for a moment, Ciardis heard Sebastian say, “Is that it?”
The scholar didn’t speak. Looking over at him, Ciardis wasn’t even sure he heard the request, because his focus was on the shrouded bodies so close that he might as well as have been a hawk preparing to dive down on its prey below.
Irritation crossed Sebastian’s face out of the corner of Ciardis’s eye as he waited for an answer. Before anyone could step forward, like a certain master of ceremonies, the bodies started moving.
Startled, she took several unsteady steps back.
She wasn’t the only one.
But the scholar kept chanting. And she soon noticed that the movements were uncoordinated. More twitches than actual stances. So she waited longer still, realizing as time passed just what it was that they’d done.
And as the moonlight grew brighter and magic swirled into the room, Ciardis felt tears start to escape from the corners of her eyes.
Tears of joy. Tears of pain.
Both because no matter what the outcome of this ceremony was, she knew that she would regret it for the rest of her life.
Suddenly the scholar stopped chanting and gestured for a silver-chalice-bearing attendant to step forward.
“My liege, if you please,” he said, gesturing at the chalice.
As Sebastian walked forward, his face still as stone, Ciardis watched the flat bodies lower back onto the cold stone of the sarcophagi, shrouds still in place.
Thanar was to Sebastian’s left at the head of one of the forms, Ciardis to Sebastian’s right.
When the emperor stilled, Thanar reached down and flipped a knife casually up and out of his waistband.
Handing it to Sebastian silently, he never once indicated why.
The scholar, however, didn’t miss a beat.
Raising the chalice solemnly, he proclaimed, “The blood of the line of Algardis shall initiate this ceremony. The blood of the line of Algardis shall complete this ceremony.”
With the gazes of all four minders plus Ciardis standing at the heads of each of their respective shrouded bodies on him and the rest of the conclave milling behind them, Sebastian took Thanar’s razor-sharp knife and sliced a perfect cut length-wise on his forearm.
Squeezing a fist, his red blood pumped strong into the silver chalice held below by a slightly green attendant.
Ciardis waited for the burial attendant to say the blood sacrifice was enough.
But he didn’t. Instead, the flow stopped and a wisp of magic, lit by moonlight, floated softly on the air to cover the large wound on Sebastian’s arm.
Like a thin membrane of cobweb, it settled on the skin and dissolved into his blood. Leaving no scar behind and the emperor’s initiation rites done.
The scholar cleared his throat and said, “And with this gift of blood, I pass it to the loyalists to do the will of the emperor, to protect this empire.”
He went from head to head then, pouring the blood over the small indentation in the cloth that seemed perfectly placed for a mouth below.
The blood, bright with magic and fresh from its source, flowed through the shrouds as if they weren’t there. When he finished, anticipatory silence lit the air.
But nothing happened, as far as she could see.
And nothing will, Sebastian told her. Not yet. It’ll take a few hours.
Aloud, the Emperor of Algardis said, “It’s done.”
His tone seemed to regret everything he’d witnessed over the last hour.
With a heavy sigh, breaking up the tense quiet in the room, the scholar spoke in a relieved voice. “The emperor has acknowledged the link between the loyalists and the initiator. Now we must only pass a few hours until they rise.”
Ciardis blinked several times in quick succession, as if waking from a dream.
She looked down at her body with a mixture of hope and unease, then away in shame.
Thanar sensed her anguish as Sebastian had her hesitance from before.
“Not here, we won’t,” said Thanar flatly as he stepped back. “They’ll wake when they wake. I’m hungry.”
Several nobles murmured at that, what sounded like grunts of agreement.
“Yes, it’s done,” Sebastian said impatiently. “There’s no need for us to wait. They will come to us, and imperial guards will escort them when that happens.”
Just before they could all file out, Ciardis asked something which had occurred to her earlier in the day. As they stood over the bottoms, she looked over at Sebastian with a frown. “What’s to stop Maradian from rising again?”
Sebastian frowned and didn’t answer her.
“Emperor—the lady companion’s question is a valid one,” someone said.
Ciardis blinked in surprise and turned to see that her supporter was none other than Lady Danforth.
“Will wonders never cease to amaze?” she muttered under her breath.
Sebastian for his part shifted uneasily as he asked, “You mean politically?”
Ciardis shook her head in frustration. “I mean everything. Politically and mentally. It all comes down to a single twitch. We’ve started something that we can’t stop. He could just start walking and talking and slowly—”
Sebastian shook his head pragmatically. “You heard Thanar. They’ll be sleepwalkers with no mental capacity beyond recognizing the guide they’re intended to follow. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“But we don’t know that. He could be different, if anyone would balk at this sleepwalking he would. What if it takes it again? Power, I mean,” she said impatiently. “Magically. Politically. He’s barely been dead a week. To his supporters, I doubt they even see his body as cold yet. He’ll be the same person. He could just as easily take his place on the throne once more as if nothing happened.”
Sebastian said dryly, “Well, I’d contest that.”
She shook her head and stared at him broodily. “Don’t joke. You understand just how serious this is.”
He shook his head. “He can’t, Ciardis. The transfer of power is complete.”
“How do you know that?” Ciardis prodded stubbornly.
Sebastian stared at her silently and then it was as if he made a decision.
To her, quietly he said, “We should discuss this privately.”
To the larger group, Sebastian said, “We shall disperse now.”
Ciardis looked over at him with bleak pain in her eyes, but she couldn’t force herself to speak up on the subject. Not yet. She was silently afraid that if she spoke, a small sob might echo in the room and disturb Terris’s sl
umber. Shrouded as they all were, they looked so peaceful, so innocent. But when they all woke, when Terris woke and saw what Ciardis Weathervane, her friend, her confidante, had done to her, she wouldn’t be so tranquil.
Straightening her shoulders, Ciardis thought, Come what may, I’ll face my part in this. I won’t shy away from the blame. I was wrong and I own that.
We were wrong, came a silently comforting thought from Sebastian.
To shake herself out of her stupor and determined at least to move forward, Ciardis turned to the scholar and asked, “Will you have them escorted to the salon upon rising?”
“Yes, my lady,” he muttered in an absent-minded voice as he kept his gaze focused on the shrouded forms.
Ciardis bit her lip. “Fine, then we’ll wait for them there.”
“I will keep you informed personally,” said the scholar. His words were directed at Sebastian, but his gaze was locked on the bodies they surrounded with eager anticipation.
Ciardis swallowed swiftly as she said, “Then let us all take our leave and not forget what was sacrificed here, especially as we go out into the world to do good.”
There were nods around the room, although a few shifty nobles, finally understanding just what kind of dark magic they’d gotten themselves into, refused to meet anyone else’s eyes. Then people started to shuffle out.
Ciardis, Sebastian, and Thanar were able to walk about a quarter of a mile away before the daemoni prince halted their progress.
“Wait,” said Thanar in an irritated voice.
They both looked to him.
Frowning Thanar said while throwing a thumb at the corridor behind them, “There’s shouting going on back there.”
Sebastian’s brow furrowed. In a normal imperial court, they would have thought it was merely a duel gone wrong. Courtiers might have even been watching for sport. But in tonight’s court…there was no such thing as a coincidental shouting match.
“What are they saying?” Ciardis asked in a worried tone as she tensed for an ambush, or worse…a battle.
The daemoni prince listened intently. “Something about sleeping…or not sleeping.”
Before they could interpret that cryptic content, a servant came running for them. Ciardis noted that Sebastian and his guards all drew their swords.
She gave them an approving look as she thought, Well trained.
Sebastian thought back, They’ve had to be.
Then the servant got close enough for them to actually decipher the content of his shouts. “My Emperor!” the boy said.
“What?” snapped three different voices.
Ciardis wasn’t surprised. After what they had just went through, no one was feeling very patient tonight.
“He’s awake,” the boy said with a quaver in his voice.
The triumvirate members all turned to look at each other and then back at the boy. Ciardis actually thought she saw the new emperor’s eye twitching in irritation, but he was too well-bred to yell at the boy. Which was just as well, the servant looked close to fainting and they’d never have the answers they sought then.
“Who?” said Sebastian.
“The emperor,” the servant boy said.
Thanar and Ciardis turned to Sebastian with confusion in their eyes.
“Not that emperor,” the servant boy whined.
“There’s only one emperor, fool,” snapped the daemoni prince while ruffling his wings.
The boy paled but didn’t back down.
In a quavering voice, he said, “The dead one.”
There was silence throughout the hall at that.
“Is he supposed to be sleepwalking this soon?” Sebastian choked out.
At the same time Ciardis said, “Already?”
“I don’t know,” Thanar said with a helpless shrug.
“It’s your spell,” Ciardis snapped.
“But engineered of human providence,” the daemoni prince said in retort, “which means it is—by its very nature—shoddily made.”
Ciardis moaned and said, “Tell me this is not happening.”
Icily, Sebastian replied, “Well, it is what we wanted…just a little earlier than expected.”
Ciardis gave him a pained look.
Thanar said, a smile of glee in his voice, “Let’s go say hello to our dead emperor.”
Ciardis gave him a disturbed look. She was quite sure that Thanar was imagining ways to kill Maradian again...which she didn’t necessarily object to. But in this form it wasn’t really Maradian. He was a sleepwalker. Helpless. It’d be like kicking a kitten.
An evil, mangy, blood-sucking kitten, she thought to herself with a shudder.
“So let’s go then,” Sebastian said as he looked at Ciardis while holding out a restraining hand to Thanar before he continued, “You don’t have to come.”
The daemoni prince gave him a look that could have frozen water as he said, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Sebastian gave him a strained smile back. “I’m glad—I wouldn’t want to take you away from your festivities so soon.”
Ciardis rolled her eyes at the level of male aggression in the hallway and proceeded to walk out. At this moment she’d rather be with the dead person.
10
Ciardis walked back into the dry mausoleum room with her heart in her throat and dread in her step.
Were they awake?
Were they standing?
Whom would she see first?
All those thoughts ran through her head at lightning speed as she tried to compose her thoughts and told herself that their sacrifices were for the good of the empire.
The good of the empire, she forcefully reiterated in her mind. As if that made her feel any better. She had to wonder, was the sacrifice of anyone, including that no-good rat Maradian, supposed to make her feel good? Even he had already given up his life—even involuntarily—for the good of them all. To see it rise again, only so they could cull him was cruel. And she wasn’t the type to enjoy blanket cruelty. She just wasn’t. Though sometimes she wished that she could.
So when Ciardis looked around, expecting to meet recriminating gazes with empty visions or worse…soul-dead eyes, she almost let out a sigh of relief when that didn’t happen. In fact, the first thing she noticed was that all of the resting places for the bodies were empty.
Looking swiftly to the scholar she questioned before Sebastian had even stepped into the room, she said, “Where are they?”
The man gulped. “They’ve been taken away, milady.”
He was sweating so much in her presence that she had to wonder why he was so nervous.
So she asked him what was wrong.
When he didn’t answer, his gaze flittering from empty resting stone to empty resting stone like a bird looking for a branch to alight on, she repeated her query.
“Scholar,” Ciardis said in a voice that could be construed as gentle even, “what happened?”
Thanar, however, wasn’t feeling near as gentle. “Did you mess this thing up? Tell me you did not mess this up.”
The rising ire in Thanar’s voice was unmistakable and the scholar would quickly find himself amongst the aforementioned bodies if he didn’t speak up and soon, Ciardis thought.
“N-nothing. Nothing happened,” the scholar stammered. “It’s just best to keep the keys to the nexus points away from each other at the moment.”
“And why is that?” Sebastian asked in a vaguely distasteful tone as he walked over to a resting place and leaned nonchalantly on the cold marble. For all the world as if they sat in his salon and were presenting an audience.
“Well,” said the scholar with a visible gulp, “we have no idea what we could accidentally trigger, being so new to the rituals of the spell.”
“That is not precisely true, I know exactly what it would trigger,” Thanar purred as he walked farther into the room. “And as for spatial distance between the awoken, you have nothing to fear.”
“Oh well, that’s a relief,�
�� the scholar said while dotting his forehead.
Frustrated, Ciardis asked in a pointed tone, “Did you call us back for a reason then?”
She was beginning to wonder if the servant had gotten his missive wrong.
“Oh, oh yes!” the scholar said and pointed a shaky finger to the eastern corner of the room where a door lay open to the outside world. “The past sovereign is outside. Waiting for you.”
The scholar was clearly very grateful to be getting rid of his severely questioning patrons. Ciardis, however, felt the butterflies in her bellies rise once more in nervousness. Now that they had to face their past, that is.
Sebastian and Ciardis looked at the door. Thanar studied the practically trembling scholar.
“Well,” said the new emperor, “the least we can do to honor his legacy is to guide him on this journey. It would only be right, after all.”
Ciardis wasn’t concerned with what was right. Maradian hadn’t served his duty yet and right now it didn’t really matter that he was a shell of his former self. Even seeing him now, standing, reclining, or sitting, was going to take all of her strength. She had an instinctive reaction whenever she had seen the former emperor before—fight or flight—and just because he was dead now didn’t mean either of those concepts had gone away. In fact, they’d only grown stronger. However, neither was proper at this time. He would need an impartial guide.
Well, as impartial a guide as he could possibly have, Ciardis thought ruefully. Quite frankly everyone in the empire had an opinion on the former emperor. Whether they worshipped the ground he walked on or reviled his very existence just depended on how close they had been to him.
Whether they were his subject or family, she heard Sebastian say in her head.
“Just so,” Ciardis whispered to herself aloud.
Snapping out of her reverie with exasperation, she asked, “And how will we know which one of us is his guide?”
This time Thanar spoke up. “His glow will match your aura.”
“His glow?” echoed Sebastian.
“Did I stutter?” Thanar asked.
Before they could get into another fight Ciardis swept forward and out of the room. She couldn’t wait any longer. She wanted to see this glow.
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