Embers of a Broken Throne

by Terry C. Simpson

  “Do you think any of them belong to the Nine?” Ancel asked.

  Ryne squinted, eyes shifting to take in the same hundred and fifty standouts. He’d been forced to leave an opening for Charra before completely sealing the Vallum against netherlings. “Possibly. But the ones that worry me the most are those able can maintain an aura.”

  “Agreed,” Ancel admitted. After discovering a Skadwaz had imitated Mensa for years, that Charra was a netherling, albeit a seemingly good one, and worse yet, that the Nine had infiltrated the Exalted, he feared trusting anyone but his closest friends. Even Galiana, his lifelong mentor, had been revealed as someone else. His father also. And Jerem. He shook his head in disbelief.

  “Foes hidden among friends and us none the wiser,” Ryne declared.

  “Can’t we force them to show themselves?”

  “The only way to do so would be to attack them. We’re not ready for that. Not without the others.”

  Ancel grunted his frustration. “How long until we reach Benez?” He shifted his focus to the huddled masses, the cold they felt a foreign thing to him. They’d managed to make decent time by having the Matii use minimal power to clear paths or lift wagons and horses as necessary since entering the mountains. A good thing too. The children and the elderly would have died otherwise.

  “Three days at this pace.”

  With a shake of his head, Ancel said, “Although we’ve been left with little choice I can’t help my doubts lately. We’re going to a place many of us have never been before, a place we once considered an abomination. I’ve tried not to think on it but is this really the correct decision?” He’d harbored the thoughts for some time, particularly when he lost friends or people he knew to disease or shadelings or some other unfortunate occurrence. It often felt as if the world itself fought against them.

  “After all you’ve been through the answer seems obvious.”

  “I don’t mean to doubt you or my father, but at times it feels as if I should be doing something else, something more.”

  “The most straightforward and obvious approach is often the solution to a complex problem,” Ryne quoted from the Disciplines.

  Ancel exhaled long and slow, recalling all they’d lost in so short a time. His mother still in some creature’s grasp; his father almost dead by Edwin’s treachery; Jillian’s betrayal that led to thousands of Eldanhill folk dead by Mensa’s hands. And Kachien. He pushed her from his mind before it set him to brooding even more.

  Added to it all was Galiana’s sacrifice to see them safely through the Vallum of Light. Galiana. He sighed. To discover his old teacher was actually Jenoah Amelie, one of the first Exalted, had been a shock, a pleasure, and pain rolled into one lump. Her absence haunted him. An age’s worth of knowledge had died with her. Although Jerem had provided him with her notes on the Chronicles many of his questions remained unanswered.

  He could think of no one else besides her or Ryne who might have known what being a part of the Aegis meant. And Ryne’s knowledge on the subject proved limited. What had the gods intended? Supposedly they created the Eztezians to defend the world, each one bearing the power of the god who made them. In turn, from the Eztezians came the individual Matii to assume the same charge. But what was it that they were defending the world from? Was it only Amuni and the shade? Galiana had believed in the Chronicles, had chased them, but for all the possibilities within those dreams and visions, that’s all they were: possibilities.

  He craved definitive answers.

  As much as he wished for things to be different, to be normal, he knew he was looking for some type of reassurance, encouraging words to convince him all would be well. He might as well wish for a sense of direction amid a gale fueled by the thirty-two winds.

  “How’s your father holding up?” Ryne nodded toward the head of the caravan where Stefan rode with the remainder of the Eldanhill Council.

  “Physically, he’s almost as strong as he once was. I know you don’t approve of his choice to fight ten men, but I think it helps him.” Ancel inadvertently touched his second weapon. “And he needs all the help he can find because he’s not the same person up here.” He tapped his head. “Talking to himself, constantly mumbling of what Galiana meant to him, how she gave the ultimate sacrifice and someone has to pay. Don’t bother to mention my mother. The rage in his eyes then.” He paused. “You’ve seen his outbursts. Although they’ve been willing to let him plan our moves, the remaining council members whisper that he’s going mad. They don’t say it where I can hear, but word gets back to me regardless. All it will take is for him to fail once. And then there’s his aura … you must have noticed it already. Ever since the Iluminus it hasn’t been the same.” He couldn’t quite place it, but the effect was as if it was twisted, in the same fashion as Stefan’s mood swings.

  “If you’d ever lost as much as he did you might understand.” A melancholy edge colored Ryne’s tone. “Darkness changes a man.”

  Ancel gave him a sidelong glance. “There’s been a few times you sound as if you know him. When do you plan on telling me?”

  “When you’re ready.”

  The way Ryne clung to the secret Ancel wasn’t certain he wanted to know. And at the same time, he did. “So many secrets. I grow weary of them.”

  “Really?” Ryne arched an eyebrow. “Is that why you haven’t told Irmina you killed her aunt?”

  Ancel cringed. Memories flooded him of that day in Randane: the terror on the Eldanhill refugees’ faces as Mensa sacrificed them to feed the shade, their transformation into shadelings, Jillian’s part in luring them to the city. She deserved to die. Setting fire to the city, burning everything left, was the only way to be certain none of the creatures survived to plague the land. And yet he couldn’t bring himself to tell Irmina.

  His gaze drifted to the location from which he could sense her through his link. Before she gained her zyphyl in Aldazhar, the link had been much like the bonds that belonged to Ryne and the remaining ancient Eztezian Guardians, distinct, a pull he felt in his core. Ever since the pet, the connection had become more subdued both to her and to Ryne. He no longer felt the other Eztezians at all. Oddly, he still received a faint throb through his mother’s pendant around his neck. Ryne had tried to assure him the absence was for the best. However, the missing links still worried him. If the Eztezians were dead, then only three more wards remained to keep the Kassite intact. If they were destroyed completely … He didn’t want to think of the repercussions.

  “Secrets are a necessary protection,” Ryne said. “They can save people from themselves.”

  “Or they can destroy us, create rifts and distrust where clarity would have been better,” Ancel countered.

  “There’s good and bad in most things, Ancel. In the end it’s how a person uses or disabuses a situation. Keeping secrets allowed your people to see this day, gave them a future, a purpose. Sometimes it’s best to cast aside the negative and embrace the positive. In this case, you still live and breathe. I would say it was for more than a worthy cause.”

  He couldn’t argue the point. Still, they were heading into a city whose stories were whispered around campfires, tales told in taverns by soldiers bragging of great deeds or sang about by minstrels. A place reviled for centuries, a city where atrocities of the worst kind were committed against his ancestors. The tales spoke of it as a broken place, one of cursed ruins, tainted by the shade, stalked by monsters that fed on flesh and blood. If not for Jerem’s assurances and his father’s insistence, he might have attempted a different path. But every time he tried to convince himself differently he arrived at this decision.

  “What was Benez like before the war?” Many times he’d pictured a magnificent city with spires and towers and castles.

  Ryne’s brow creased for a moment. “It was a place of great beauty, set into a mountain, boasting a castle that was a marvel of Svenzar engineering. It had a great amphitheater where games were held, and men played Senjin in honor of the king and
the gods. The Setian people thrived. Benez was a model of prosperity and freedom.”

  “And my father? What kind of man was he then?”

  “A great one. A dedicated soldier, a supreme tactician, and a peerless swordsman. He still is.”

  Ancel found it easy to picture his father’s ability with the sword. He’d witnessed Stefan’s skill firsthand. From it, and due to his father’s and Ryne’s constant drills, he’d learned how to fight with either hand and with two weapons at once. Stefan would boast that the greatest of their ancestors had perfected the use of dual blades.

  “In those days he was known as Knight Commander Stefan Dorn, leader of the Unvanquished,” Ryne said.

  “The Unvanquished?”

  “Yes,” a wistful smile flitted across Ryne’s bronzed features. “An army that went undefeated for a hundred years or more. Feared and revered all across Ostania. Their first loss came at the hands of the Erastonians.”

  Eyes narrowed, Ancel regarded the flag that depicted a wall with a shield set in the middle carried by one of the many soldiers who made the exodus from Torandil. “The same Erastonians from whom the Dosteri descended?”

  “And the Nema and the Seifer clansmen,” Ryne added. “In those days, their sigil was hand carrying a bolt of lightning, the Searing Fist.”

  Accompanied by daggerpaws or wolves, the members from the two mountain clans made up the vanguard. The Dosteri soldiers, many of them Dagodin, flanked the refugees.

  “And now they have come to his aid,” Ancel said.

  “Stefan always had a way with men. Still does. They listen when he speaks. I doubt there was ever a better leader.”

  “Let me guess,” Ancel said in disgust, “all histories of my father’s accomplishments were wiped clean by the Tribunal.”

  Ryne nodded. “But it wasn’t because of any heinous act. They did so to protect him.”

  “From Nerian the Shadowbearer.” With the name came a sense of loathing so strong Ancel almost spat. Some might have found his hatred for a dead man somewhat irrational, but the way his father had become of late made Ancel grimace.

  Stefan often muttered the Shadowbearer’s name in some of his rants, detailing the tragedies Nerian wrought, including the Setian being driven into exile, hiding like rats instead of people. Thania’s fate and the armies chasing them now was a part of those old machinations. If Nerian wasn’t already centuries dead, Ancel knew he would have sought the man out and killed him, regardless of Ryne’s claim that the ancient Setian King had been under the shade’s influence.

  “Yes,” Ryne’s deep voice was a hair above a whisper, his gaze distant, “from Nerian, a man so twisted by power, by the belief he could make the world better, that he allowed too much darkness into his heart. And with it, a place for the shade to cling.”

  As much as the thought of the suffering caused by Nerian’s past actions gnawed at Ancel, it paled in comparison to what he felt toward Amuni’s Children and the Nine. An aversion for both of them lived deep in his soul. He nursed it as a mother did a suckling babe.

  “Nerian’s fate is what can happen to you if you’re blind to the fact that the shade is everywhere,” Ryne said as if reading his thoughts. “Its presence isn’t always obvious, but it’s there, most of all within our hearts, hidden behind veils of hate, rage, and sorrow. You must embrace those emotions and their opposites to create a balance. That is how you defeat the shade. Not by light, but by teetering on the precipice’s edge, in a shroud of gray. For there you will find the heart of every man, struggling to do what he sees as right. Even in your enemies. Give in completely to any one side, and you lose. We all lose.”

  “I can’t see myself accepting the shade.” He couldn’t fathom the idea, not with the corruption he’d seen.

  “Then you will fail, and the Streams will never be yours to fully command.”

  “It’s as if you’re saying the gods don’t matter in this,” Ancel argued. “Isn’t relying on Ilumni’s light to defeat Amuni and his shade the way to ensure victory?”

  “They play a part, a large part, but it begins with you and your conviction,” Ryne said. “People often seem to overlook that Ilumni and Amuni are brothers. The essences they preside over were intertwined, balanced. Now, they aren’t. Somehow we must return that balance, and I believe it begins with Prima, begins with what the power that belongs to the gods.”

  The idea of Forging a power akin to the gods gave Ancel a chill. He shivered now at the very thought of the force inhabiting his Etchings.

  “Within Prima, there is no malice, no good, no evil.” Ryne rested his hand atop his sword’s pommel. “A sword is just a sword until a man kills another with it. If he does so in defending a life or in time of war, he might be seen as a hero. When he uses the same weapon for a simple act of murder, or to rob and rape, he becomes a monster. Circumstances are the canvas upon which you paint the actions that dictate your life.” He turned to face Ancel. “Remember, one day the shade I command will be yours. Without finding that balance you will be as lost as I once was.”

  For the first time Ancel noted a degree of pain in Ryne’s eyes that went deep. It was like looking at the suffering of a fatally wounded man who knew his life was expiring. “Does that have anything to do with why Irmina still wishes to kill you?”

  Ryne nodded.

  “What is it that you’re both hiding from me?” Ancel asked. No matter how many times he tried to pry away the reason, they both would say it wasn’t theirs to tell. Their refusal grated at him.

  “The time is almost here for you to know. I promise to tell you when you’re ready, regardless of the repercussions.” Ryne had that distant look again. “First comes this return to Benez and then your trip to the Broken Lands.”

  Ancel gazed toward the east, wondering when he’d be able to see past the mountains to where Ryne said the Rotted Forest and the cities of the Broken Lands waited. According to Galiana’s notes, the ordeal he currently suffered through began with the corrupted Setian and Alzari driven into the forest during the War of Remnants, a byproduct of the Shadowbearer War. How could one dead man continue to turn the world on its head?

  After a moment he sighed and brought his attention back to the refugees. At least this part of the journey was over. He could take some solace in the fact that not everyone had perished.

  Chapter 12

  Irmina checked the precipice where the two men perched, their forms mired in a mix of setting sun and shadow, watchful gazes centered on the refugees. She let out a relieved sigh at the sight of Ancel, cloak billowing out behind him, one sword on his hip, the other in its scabbard across his back. Making certain of his wellbeing had become habit. Every time she sensed a tiny change in the essences through her new pet, a hint of an attack, her attention immediately snapped to Ancel. If he left, she held her breath, praying to Ilumni he returned unharmed. On more than one occasion he had needed mending from several wounds. Yet the danger didn’t deter him. It spurred him on.

  Watching him now made her long for the quiet nights they shared at the onset of this journey. She’d lie next to him while he read from one of the books Quintess had brought. Or he’d have her tell him of the ones she’d studied. He devoured knowledge then, eyes bright, a hundred questions on his tongue as he learned of races and territories she encountered in her travels as a Tribunal agent. With another sigh, she released the memory.

  She waited a moment to ensure her pet sensed no other threats before pulling her hood down against a swirling gust that whipped white flakes before it and carried the scent of pack animals and men. The biting wind made her wish she knew whatever secret the two men possessed to make them oblivious to the cold. Her one good thought concerning the weather was the lack of violent thunderstorms that plagued them in the early part of the journey. Her zyphyl had seen to those. Even now she could sense the gargantuan, sinuous form as it spread itself and its power within the clouds to disperse the essences that caused the storms. In the distance, beyond the zyphyl
’s cover, lightning seared the sky through festering mounds of gray and black while thunder growled.

  The creature’s presence was a comfort. More so after it had saved them from the vasumbral. Had they been taken, they would have suffered the same fate as the people in the Wraithwood. She shuddered.

  Stories from folk who’d survived Randane surfaced, and with them came images of Jillian and Edwin. Their betrayals were unforgivable. To think her own aunt had manipulated her, had made her almost lose Ancel, had taken away the love she’d gained from the Dorns when everything else in her life had been going so wrong. And Edwin. She’d respected the man for his willingness to stand up to Stefan Dorn, for his advice, but in the end the old Headspeaker had turned out to be the Nine’s agent.

  “If I had a gold hawk for every time I see you lost in thought, I’d be a rich man.”

  She started at the sound of Mirza’s soft-spoken voice. “You know I hate that.”

  He grinned, a wisp of flame-colored hair falling across his face. “And it’s exactly why I do it. So, who is it that you wish to kill today? Oh, don’t look at me like that. When you start stroking that sword of yours, someone’s in trouble. What has Ancel done now?”

  “He acts as if I’m too soft for the news he bears.” She smirked. “So do you.”

  Mirza eyed her, brows drawn together in an almost believable expression of confusion.

  “What happened with Jillian? Is she dead?” she asked, not for a moment buying his apparent ignorance.

  “Oh that, well—”

  “I wish you two would stop treating me as if I’m porcelain. I’ve done and seen things to give you both nightmares.”

  “I’m sure you have, but I’m not lying when I tell you one moment we were fighting her, and the next the city was aflame and we were at the Iluminus.”

  Irmina sighed.

  “You know, an easy way to find out would be when you’re in bed together. You women have a way of making things come out of a man then.”