by Morgan Rice
Stephania might even be able to lay claim to them herself.
She smiled at that thought, continuing to give orders. One by one, the people around her went off about the duties Stephania had set them, and she enjoyed that too. The world ran much more smoothly when people did what she commanded them to. Soon, people would realize that, and the Empire would be a stronger, more stable place for it.
“And somebody find me an architect!” Stephania called as the last of them hurried out. “I want to start plans for the rebuilding of the city at once!”
She stood there in the silence of the empty room, enjoying the wiping clean of the city below again. She would make it greater than it had been again, but that could only be done once it had been reduced to rubble. There was a different kind of silence that came when she was alone, and Stephania was surprised to find that she liked it. She couldn’t remember when she’d last had the opportunity to be truly alone.
Maybe that was why anger rose up in her so quickly when she heard the door opening without so much as a knock to announce the newcomer’s presence. If this was anyone other than the architect she wanted…
Stephania froze as she saw Athena standing there, resplendent in a dress that looked as though it had been stored for just this occasion, and wearing a crown Stephania recognized.
“You,” Stephania said. “Take that off at once!”
“Take off what was always mine?” Athena countered. Even so, she lifted the crown, setting it down. “Surprised to see me, Stephania?”
Stephania reached down to her belt, checking that she still had her knives and her poisons. Athena would die for this, and slowly.
“I’m just surprised that you were stupid enough to come back here,” Stephania said. “I told you what would happen if you returned.”
She saw Athena nod.
“Yes,” the former queen said. “You said that you would have me killed. Well, go ahead, Stephania. Call for your guards. I saw on my way in that you’ve already started sending people to your torturers.”
“As if you did any less,” Stephania countered. How dare Athena of all people argue about that? “I’ve never done anything that wasn’t necessary.”
“We’ve both done what we thought was necessary,” Athena said. Stephania saw her gesture to the city. “And this is the result. A ruined city. A world with nothing left in it but pain.”
There would be plenty of pain for the Empire’s former queen before the end. Stephania would see to that.
“So, is that it?” Stephania demanded. “Are you here to be the voice of my conscience?”
She saw the former queen shake her head.
“No, Stephania. I’m here to be the voice of your death, calling for you.”
Stephania wasn’t going to let that pass.
“Guards!” she called. “Guards!”
She would have them drag Athena to a torture chamber. She would have the skin flayed from her bones. She would make the old hag beg for death. In the seconds that followed, Stephania imagined all the things that she would do to Athena before she finally allowed her foe to slide into oblivion.
As the seconds stretched out, though, and Athena kept smiling, Stephania started to feel an edge of worry eating into her confidence.
“Waiting for something?” Athena asked.
Stephania knew that there had to be some trick involved. “What did you do?”
“What you did to me. I took away your power.”
No, she couldn’t have. Athena didn’t know enough about manipulating people to get them onto her side. She had nothing. She was nothing.
“You have nothing to offer them,” Stephania said.
Athena’s smile just widened. “I can offer them your death.”
“You first,” Stephania said, drawing a dagger.
Athena was already moving to the door, though, and as she opened it, people started to rush in. There were more than Stephania could have believed, men and women, some she recognized, and others who seemed to be strangers.
They grabbed at her, and Stephania stabbed out blindly. She felt hands on her, and she twisted, breaking free in a pure explosion of terror. If she held still, even for a moment, they would tear her apart, limb from limb. She was certain of it, and that certainty brought fear with it.
“Wait!” she insisted. “I can make things better for you! The Empire… don’t you see what it could be?”
They dragged her to the ground, and now some of them hit at her. In some ways, the sheer numbers of those there made it safer for Stephania, because they got in each other’s way. At the same time, there was the awful, crushing pressure of so many people in such a small space.
Stephania stabbed again with her dagger, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. The blade was knocked from her hand, and a booted foot struck her as she tried to crawl. She reached down to her belt again, grabbing for whatever she could, and flinging it.
Acrid smoke rose in a flash, and some of those there reeled back. Stephania took her chance, because she knew that if she didn’t, there wouldn’t be another opportunity. She forced herself to her feet, running for the spot where she knew a secret passage lay.
Hands still grabbed for her, but now, they didn’t know what they were grabbing for. Stephania shoved would-be murderers aside, tore free of their grip even though it meant ripping her dress. She didn’t care then. The only thing that mattered was getting away.
She reached the spot where the door lay, and shoved it open. She slammed it closed behind her, bolting it and hoping that the bolt would be enough to hold those following her for a while. Even so, Stephania knew it wouldn’t hold forever.
She’d had so many dreams for the Empire, so many hopes. She’d thought that she could make it into something more than it had been. She’d thought that she could make it beautiful. Instead, the ungrateful people around her had betrayed her. Stephania wouldn’t forget that.
For now, though, there was only the need to survive. Stephania ran as she’d run so many times before: blindly, with no idea of what she might do next.
Stephania ran blindly in the near dark of the tunnels, trying to find her way to safety. Trying just to find her way out. Every other consideration gave way to that one need then. She had to get out of the castle, out of Delos, maybe even out of the Empire. With so many people chasing her, it was hard to think of any place she might be safe.
At the moment, the hardest part seemed to be getting out of the castle. Stephania knew the tunnels and the passages of the city as well as anyone else living, but that had been before she, and Irrien, and who knew who else had started filling in tunnels to prevent attacks. Again and again, Stephania found herself coming up against passages blocked with rubble, collapsed roofs making it impossible to get through.
Stephania turned down another side passage, going deeper into the shadows of the tunnels as she sought to get past the blockages. She kept up her forward movement though, relentless as an underground stream in seeking the surface.
She would find her way out eventually, and when she did, Stephania would find a way to start again. Didn’t she always? Perhaps she would go to a new land and build her strength there. She’d never been to the Southlands or the Kingdoms of the Dead Valleys, but however far off the place, she suspected that people would be essentially the same wherever they went.
She would find a way to play on her strangeness there. She would find men or women who gave more influence than they should to the beautiful, and she would collect secrets until she could parlay them into power. Maybe she would acquire another husband, although Stephania would be careful to ensure that the next one treated her better than the first two. Eventually, she might even come back, although that wouldn’t be for a while now.
Perhaps she would find her son, too. Stephania wanted that more than any of it.
Finally, she stopped.
Before her was daylight.
She had made it.
She was free.
***
Stephania slipped onto the small, abandoned vessel, raised its sail, and shoved off shore, her heart pounding in her chest, praying she was not detected.
Somehow, she had made it down to the docks, undetected in the chaos.
And as she shoved off, she caught a strong wind, and she watched with gratitude as the small boat moved quickly through the crowded harbor. She was just small enough that no one paid attention to her.
She had time to reflect, and she knew now exactly where she was going.
Daskalos.
Her son.
She had to rescue him.
And avenge herself on this magician.
No sooner had she had the thought, than a sudden current opened up in the sea, catching her in it, bringing her in the direction she sought.
She marveled at her luck. Soon, she was out of the harbor, in the open sea.
And yet still the current quickened.
It was surreal, a faster thing than was possible. At this speed, a trip that had taken her weeks would take her but a day, if less.
Soon she realized it could only, indeed, be magic. Something was bringing her to the isle.
She smiled wide.
Her son.
He was bringing her in, helping her save him.
My son, she thought. Wait for me. I am coming.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
Thanos fought this man who claimed to be his son, and the more Thanos saw of him, the more he felt the resemblance. It was hard to stand and look at him when blows were raining down, but Stephania was written in every line of his face, and his frame… well, that was one Thanos saw every time he looked in a mirror.
It didn’t make sense though. His child wouldn’t even be weeks old yet, let alone able to swing a sword with a speed and skill that meant Thanos had to give ground with every step.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Telum said, thrusting so fast that Thanos barely parried it. “You think I’m too old to be your son. You think a sorcerer couldn’t stretch out time? Couldn’t take a boy and turn him into a man? Into a weapon?”
There was something about his tone that said it was no story. More than that, the fact that the men around them were standing in a daze spoke of the influence of some kind of strangeness; if not magic, then something. If it was true though… this was his son. This was really his son.
“I don’t want to fight you,” Thanos said. “Please, just stop this.”
In answer, Telum cut low at his legs, then shifted the attack so it went for Thanos’s throat. Thanos barely swayed back out of the way in time.
“Why?” Thanos said, still not understanding. Telum rushed at him and Thanos shoved him away. He didn’t want to risk a killing stroke. He’d already killed his brother. He couldn’t kill his son.
“You dare to ask that?” Telum shot back, with a note of rage that caught Thanos by surprise. “After all you’ve done? The sorcerer showed me! He showed me what you are!”
“He lied to you,” Thanos said. “Whatever he said, we can work this out.”
He threw aside a sword, diving for the spot where a soldier had dropped a spear in death. Thanos came up holding it like a quarterstaff, sweeping the haft around to keep his man, his son, at bay.
“He told me you were a traitor to your country,” Telum said. “He showed me the men who died because of you!”
He cut in a quick sequence that gave Thanos no chance to answer at first, because he was so preoccupied with trying to parry and deflect the blows. A spear could be a useful weapon against a sword, but without the ability to thrust with the sharpened point, it was hard, especially since Telum was as fast as anyone he’d met except Ceres.
“The Empire was an evil thing,” Thanos argued. “I couldn’t stand by and let it hurt people.”
“You murdered your own brother,” Telum went on. He feinted with his sword, then kicked out Thanos’s feet from under him. Thanos barely rolled out of the way of the attack that followed in time, striking out at Telum with the butt of the spear and gaining enough room to scramble back to his feet.
“Lucious was everything that was wrong with the Empire,” Thanos said. “He tormented and killed people because it amused him. He had to be stopped.”
Again, Thanos could see the anger building in his son, and now he started to suspect that there was nothing natural about it. Why should there be, when the very fact that he was standing there was the product of sorcery?
“You left my mother to be a slave!” Telum roared. “You abandoned me!”
Now he came at Thanos with all the fury of a storm, and even if Thanos had possessed an answer, he wasn’t sure that there would have been enough time to give it. He had to fight now, and truly fight, because it was the only way to keep Telum off him, even for an instant.
He struck out with the wooden haft of the spear, sweeping it toward his son’s legs, thrusting with it at his stomach and head. Each time, Telum parried or jumped aside, his speed and strength enhanced by the sorcerer’s power.
It was silent around them as they fought. Further off, Thanos could hear the sounds of the battle grinding to its inevitable finish, but here, the men around them stood in silence, held by whatever power Telum had used to confuse them. If Thanos died there, would they even know what had happened?
No, he couldn’t think like that. He would find a way to come through this alive, and with his son unharmed. He would see off this attack, find a way to control Telum, and persuade him of the truth.
“You’re being used,” Thanos said. “Can’t you see that this is all some scheme by this sorcerer?”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” Telum replied. He brought his sword around at head height, so hard that it smashed the stones of a wall as Thanos ducked. “He told me what he wants. You die, and Ceres’s powers are there for him to take.”
No. Thanos couldn’t allow that. He couldn’t let anyone, even his son, harm Ceres.
“I won’t let that happen,” he said. “He’s controlling you. Fight that, Telum. Don’t you want to be free?”
“Don’t you?” his son countered. “I could free you from flesh. I could let you go from the chains of the world. I’ve done it for so many people now. Let me do it for you, Father.”
He attacked then with a furious sequence of cuts that Thanos barely parried. His spear haft split in half under the weight of the assault, so that Thanos found himself holding the two halves of it. He ducked a blow, and again, stone gave way beneath the rune-encrusted blade his son wielded. It didn’t do it cleanly though. Just for a moment, Telum’s blade stuck.
Thanos struck out then, sweeping his son’s feet from under him with one half of the spear. He stood with the other poised, raised high in a position where he could have plunged it down through the young man’s throat if he wanted to.
He didn’t want to, though. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t slaughter his own son. He couldn’t kill someone who was only being driven on by the power of another’s magic. He couldn’t hurt him like this.
“Telum is a foolish name,” he said. “You’re more than just a weapon. You can choose to be more. Stop this. Come with me, and we’ll work this out. You don’t want to do this.”
Telum smiled. “It isn’t about what I want.”
So fast that Thanos barely saw it, Telum pulled back his own blade and thrust up, punching through Thanos’s armor as if it wasn’t there. Thanos felt the impact of it, but for an instant, there was no pain. He was simply falling, collapsing onto the cobbles and staring up at his son as Telum looked down at him.
“You should have killed me when you had the chance,” Telum said. “You should have freed me. But now… it’s almost done. She’ll be here soon. I can feel her.”
He spun away, moving to strike at the other men there. They seemed to snap out of their trance as he attacked them, but by then, it was already too late. Telum killed and dodged, struck and parried with the ease of a master swordsman.
Thanos watched him
with a mixture of horror and a kind of misplaced pride. All the time, he clutched his hand to his chest, the pain blooming from it in a kind of icy cold. He knew the truth then.
He was dying.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Stephania walked along an underground path, deep inside Daskalos’s mountain, feeling momentum carry her close. There were crystals set into the walls here, glowing with a strange inner light. There were flickers of illusion running through them, showing scenes of a life she didn’t recognize.
She felt her son get closer with each step.
She turned a corner and came to an open room that she knew far too well. It had plush furnishings and magical paraphernalia spread around it in a chaotic wash of oddly shaped glass and twisted metal. She’d been here once before, asking for a way to kill an Ancient One.
A chair sat in the middle of the floor, obviously set there where its occupant could survey the room.
And on it sat the sorcerer, Daskalos.
He looked older than he had seemed when Stephania had last met him, his features haggard now and lined. Yet Stephania couldn’t fail to spot the man who had taken her son. She knew those eyes, burning with knowledge and cruelty in equal measure.
She was surprised to see him staring calmly at her. As if he had expected her.
She was stunned she had not surprised him.
She glanced around the room, looking for her son, alarmed.
“Where is my son?” she demanded, taking a step toward him.
Stephania drew a dagger, even though it had done her no good the last time they had met here. She might not be able to kill him, but she could still try to hurt him for all he’d done.
He stood, although he did it slowly, the ungainliness of the movement suggesting that something had changed from the days when he had been able to look young or old, male or female, as he wished. A man who could choose to be anything would not choose to be this.
“You will tell me that,” he said. His voice held an edge of pain to it, the way some men’s did whose backs or joints ached with every movement. “I brought you here to tell me. Where is Telum?”