The Empire's Ghost

by Isabelle Steiger

  “After we finish your errand.”

  “You mean, so we can’t back out of it?”

  “No, because I am properly cautious.” She sighed. “I’ve heard Valyanrenders think their concerns are the world’s concerns, but I never knew how true it was until now.”

  Deinol scowled. “What does that mean?”

  She gave him a long look. “I’ve already told you I’m not a Hallern, but you don’t seem to understand what that means. I have no loyalty to Elgar, conflicted or otherwise. None of you seem especially fond of him, but it’s not as if you actually want him to lose the war, do you? Your city would be overrun, your way of life disrupted. I, on the other hand, would not care in the slightest if your precious Valyanrend fell into the sea, but I would care if Elgar conquered this continent. That means, as I keep saying, that while our present goal is the same, our larger goals are very different. Why is it such a surprise that I want you to know as little about me and my affairs as possible?”

  There was a long silence, in which Seth was fairly certain Lucius and Deinol were thinking the same thing he was. It was … uncomfortable, to have their predicament pointed out to them so clearly. Seth didn’t like Elgar, and he knew Lucius and Deinol didn’t either—Lucius especially seemed to despise him, but that was understandable, given what Elgar had done to Aurnis. None of them wanted to think of themselves as on Elgar’s side in this conflict, but in a way they were, weren’t they? Seren was right—they’d never want to see a foreign power conquer Hallarnon. So didn’t that mean they didn’t care whether Elgar won, as long as he didn’t lose?

  Deinol recovered himself first, which was hardly surprising. “So, what, you’re saying … that we’re natural enemies, then? We’ve got to support Hallarnon, and you’ve got to support Esthrades, and it’s as simple as that?”

  Seren shook her head, and when she spoke, there was a sharper edge in her voice Seth hadn’t heard before. “I don’t have to support Esthrades—it isn’t about Esthrades. I told you, I hardly even consider myself Esthradian. I don’t feel any sense of loyalty to a place, whether I happened to be born there or not. If things had been just a little different, I might not even have gone back.”

  “What are you loyal to, then?” Lucius asked.

  She scowled. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “No?”

  “No.” She poked at the grass with the toe of one boot. “What about you, then? Didn’t you choose Hallarnon over Aurnis, if protecting Valyanrend is more important? Wouldn’t a loyal Aurnian seek revenge?”

  Lucius put a hand to his heart in mock injury, but the pain in his eyes could not be dismissed so easily. “You’ve hit upon it, I’m afraid. I am, all things considered, a rather embarrassing excuse for an Aurnian. But it comes down to loyalty, as you said—loyalty to people, not places. There are people I love in Valyanrend. But all those I loved in Aurnis are dead. Even if I could defeat Elgar, it wouldn’t restore our prince to his throne, or reunite me with … with any of the people I have lost. Why should I give my life for a country that no longer exists?” He clenched his fist; Seth had never heard him speak so passionately before. “It doesn’t mean I don’t feel the injustice of it! Elgar destroyed the only world I had ever known, out of nothing more than a lust for conquest, and for that I will hate him forever. But I … I have no right to speak as a loyal Aurnian. I have gone a different way.”

  “You could help bring Aurnis back,” Seren said quietly.

  “That isn’t possible.”

  “Why isn’t it? Elgar conquered the Aurnian people; he didn’t exterminate them. Most Aurnians still live in their old lands—how loyal do you think they are to their new administrators? Do you think they would all agree that Aurnis is dead, just because of what the maps say?” When he didn’t answer, she continued, “If Elgar were defeated, and Hallarnon thrown into chaos, the lands Elgar conquered could break free. They could—”

  “Yes,” Lucius said, squeezing his eyes shut. “Yes, I know. I have thought all these things.”

  “And yet you’re still content to help tip the balance in Elgar’s favor?” She shook her head. “You have more power than you know. Helping Elgar, or not helping him, could make a difference in—”

  “Helping him how?” Lucius asked. “Do you truly believe those things you said about bringing magic back—that this thing we’re looking for could help Elgar do it? Do you really think that’s possible?”

  The question struck some subtle change in Seren; she grew more subdued, more distant, and only then did Seth realize how unusual it was for her to talk so much. “About magic … about magic I would assume nothing. It holds no allure for me, and never has. But in the course of my life I have seen things I could never explain—things I still can’t explain, even now. I would not presume to know the truth behind them.”

  Lucius frowned. “What is it that you saw?”

  “I do not wish to speak of it.” The way she said it made plain that there was no use protesting. “I will only say … that it was something impossible, something I knew to be impossible, but it seemed so wondrous, so beautiful, that I could not bring myself to question it. I wonder if I will ever know the truth behind it.” She curled the fingers of one hand around the other, almost as if she were unaware she was doing it. “And so I will not venture to say what may or may not exist in this world, when even I, who consider myself a traveler, can be so surprised by it. But perhaps magic is closer to us than we know, and restoring it a simpler matter than we could ever have imagined.”

  Though she said nothing more about it, Seth couldn’t forget her words, and he turned them over and over in his mind as the sun sank lower in the sky. But there was something else he wanted to know even more, that nagged at him long after nightfall. So when it was time for Seren to take her watch, and he was sure they were the only ones awake, he whispered, “Seren?”

  “Can’t sleep again?” she asked, but she didn’t seem cross.

  “Guess not. I was … thinking.”

  “About what?” She paused. “I mean, if you care to tell me.”

  The hesitation seemed so unfamiliar on her that Seth smiled. “Just that I’ve seen a fair amount of fighting—even though Lucius and Deinol like to pretend I haven’t. And I’ve seen you fight, and … you’re strong.”

  Seren seemed to consider it. “I suppose it’s fair to agree to that. What of it?”

  Seth scuffed his feet in the grass. “I was just wondering about it, because you seem just like anybody. So looking at you, I almost feel like anybody could fight like you. But I know that’s not true. I’ve never been able to fight—I’ve never been strong at all. But you—”

  “Where do you think strength comes from?” Seren asked.

  Seth hesitated. “What do you mean? Either a thing is strong, or it isn’t. A bad sword’ll shatter under a blow, but a fine one will hold good. A strong man can fend another off, but weak ones like me just crumple.”

  “I did not ask you what strength is, I asked you where it comes from.”

  “Well, it’s … it’s in the way things are made, isn’t it? If you don’t know how to make swords, they’ll come out weak.”

  “But people aren’t swords.” She spread her hands and stared at the gaps between her fingers. “Were you always this way? Weak like this?”

  “Always,” Seth said. “I was small since I was born.”

  “So was I,” Seren said. “A small infant, and a small, weak child. Do I seem weak to you now?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Yet I was once as weak as you. Probably weaker.”

  Seth felt his face growing hot. “Well, good for you.”

  “Yes,” Seren said sharply, “very good for me. I was made weak, but I decided not to be. You were made weak, and you choose to complain about it.”

  Seth kept silent for a few moments. “All right,” he said at last, “where did your strength come from?”

  “I created it,” Seren said. “Bit by bit by bit. I
earned it.”

  “How?” he asked. “Why?”

  “By struggling. By practicing. By testing myself.” She paused, curling her fingers again. “And because I know what happens to weak people, and I refused to let it happen to me.”

  “What happens to weak people?” Seth asked, but he thought he already knew.

  “They die, more often than not,” Seren said. “But even when they live, their will is not their own. They can’t make choices for themselves. They have no say in the shape of the world.” She looked at him fiercely. “I decided long ago that that would never be my fate. I do only what I wish to do—no less, and no more.”

  Seth picked up a stray stick, twirling it between his thumb and forefinger. “What do you wish to do, then?”

  She smiled—it was still wry, but he was growing used to that by now. “Never run short on questions, do you?”

  “Does that mean you’re not going to answer it?”

  “It means I don’t know an easy way to answer it.” She threaded her fingers together, rubbing her palms absently. “For a long time I wasn’t sure—I had been so focused on becoming strong that I hadn’t thought about what I would do afterward. Then I thought I wanted to settle things—to make my peace with the person I had been. But that wasn’t enough either. And now I want … It’s complicated. I want to prove myself, I suppose—though that means something far different to me now than it did when I was younger.”

  “In what way?” Seth asked.

  She sighed. “That’s a difficult question.” When he kept looking at her, waiting for her response, she shook her head. “That means I’m not going to answer it. Not today, anyway.”

  Seth wanted to press her, but the way she’d said it didn’t invite further argument. But then she asked, “What is it you want?”

  “I want to save Morgan and Braddock,” he said immediately. “None of this would have happened if I hadn’t stolen that stupid necklace.”

  “I always thought that was odd,” Seren said. “Was it very valuable, do you think?”

  “Hardly. It wasn’t even worth the trouble to take it, and taking it was easy enough—it’s what happened after I took it that brought the trouble, I suppose.”

  “Hmm.” She turned her hands over and back again. “Elgar seems to be a man who has a fervent desire for worthless things. And yet I doubt it’s folly; you don’t seize control of Hallarnon and win two wars by being an idiot. There must be some value to that trinket, whether or not it’s apparent.”

  Seth had a sudden uneasy feeling about leaving the pendant with Roger. But if anyone could hide something, Roger could. And it wasn’t like anyone would know Elgar was looking for it, would they?

  “I’ll make it right,” he said, as firmly as he could. “Even if I can’t help you and Lucius and Deinol—even if I can’t fight—I’ll do whatever I can. I’ll make sure we put things right again.”

  Seren looked away from him, stroking her fingers through the grass. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she said.

  * * *

  It took far longer than she was proud of, and long enough for Braddock to start insisting she was crazy, but Morgan finally discovered the trick behind the stones, though by then she was far too exhausted to rub his nose in it. If she felt anything at all, it was a sort of awe: whoever built this passage had been a genius. How were they ever able to build it in the first place? she wondered.

  She was right about the cracks: they did show how the stones were supposed to come out of the wall. The trick was getting them to move. The key, as it turned out, was the first stone she’d managed to work loose—it was in the center, almost all the way down. She’d no idea how she was supposed to find it, as the strange scratch marks on the wall weren’t pointing to it in any way she could figure out. But she had found it, and it had helped her realize what they were supposed to do.

  She and Braddock had waited as long as they could, done everything they could think of to make sure the guards were out of earshot, but there was no helping the risk. The first stone was very low to the ground, but if she was right, and there was a passage behind the wall, it would still make a noise as it hit the floor on the other side. How loud the noise would be depended on what that floor was made of, and there was no way to know that. Morgan tried her best to ease the block over the edge, but when it finally fell beyond her grasp, she winced, already closing her eyes. But the sound was surprisingly muted—dirt, then, most likely—and when she looked over at Braddock, he nodded.

  It made more sense to let him do the next part—he hadn’t studied the wall as she had, but he was far stronger, and it was easy enough to show him what to do. He crouched down and stuck one hand through the hole, shoving it in as far as the chains allowed. Then he clutched the wall from the far side, and pulled.

  It was just as she’d thought—the lower section of the wall moved as a single piece, coming out from the back of the cell along the lines of the large crack she’d found. And behind the wall, on the other side of a space just large enough for Braddock to crawl through, was empty blackness.

  Braddock sat back heavily, panting just a bit. “That looks like the passage to hell.”

  “Does it look like a prison cell?” Morgan asked. “Because that’s where we are right now, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  He shook his head, but he was smiling. “Didn’t say I wasn’t coming. Let me just do one last thing.”

  Morgan regarded him curiously, but he didn’t say anything more, just reached into his coat and pulled out a single coin. He stuck his hand through the bars to the other side, then pitched the coin as far as he could down the hall.

  “Oh, clever,” Morgan said, and he grinned at her.

  “It’s only clever if the noise doesn’t alert them,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Morgan crawled through first, making her way around the fallen block and into the tunnel. She couldn’t have gone more than ten feet before she noticed two things: the dirt floor had given way to stone, and the passage was tall enough to stand up in. As Braddock crawled in after her, she whispered, “You can stand if you get this far.”

  He nodded. “Let me fix the wall.”

  As he began to pull the larger section back into place behind him, he frowned. “Well, that was well done.”

  “What was?”

  He pointed to a lip of rock hanging down from their side. “This blocks the loose part of the wall, see? So if you’re in the cell, you have to pull it out, like I did—you can’t push it, because it’s stuck. So if any guards tried to push on the wall to see if it was loose, it wouldn’t work—not unless they hit that one block you found.”

  “Gods, I wonder who made this thing.”

  “I’d like to know that myself.” Braddock grunted as he tugged the wall the last few inches. “Don’t suppose you’ve any idea how we can see our way down the corridor?”

  Morgan bit her lip. “You wouldn’t happen to still have that torch you were carrying on our way in, would you?”

  “No such luck. They snatched it from me after the lot of us got caught in the hall. Along with my ax,” he added pointedly.

  “I’ve got a spare flint,” Morgan said, ignoring that last bit. “Course, I got it from Roger, so it might not work. And I know you’ve got at least one striker somewhere in that coat. Isn’t there anything here we can light?”

  Braddock rested one hand on the last loose block, unwilling to close off their only source of light just yet. “Seems like these fellows thought of everything—they had to figure they’d need some light. Is there anything lying about?”

  Morgan peered down the passage, waiting for her eyes to grow accustomed to an even deeper darkness than had filled the dungeons. “There’s nothing set into the walls … no braziers or anything like that.” She crouched down on the floor, following the shadowy edges where it met the wall, and finally her fingers brushed against something that wasn’t stone. “They really did think of everything,” Morgan said, and pulled
a decently sized torch from an impressive pile of them.

  Braddock passed her his striker, then glanced regretfully behind him. “Now if they could just have devised a way to help me get my ax back.”

  Morgan rolled her eyes. “Are you still going on about that?”

  “I liked that ax. It was a good ax!”

  “If we get out of here alive, I’ll buy you a new ax.”

  “I don’t want a new ax, I want…” He paused as the torch finally caught, then hurried to replace the last stone so the light wouldn’t flicker into the hall. Then he finally got up, moving to stand at her side.

  The corridor was hardly cramped; they could walk comfortably side by side, and the floor was remarkably smooth and even beneath their feet. The chains still hampered them—if the mysterious builders had really thought of everything, they would’ve left a file, but unfortunately the torch turned out to be the extent of their generosity. But even though it was admittedly slow going, the corridor was unmistakably long, sloping up and down and up once more, turning again and again. Before long Morgan had no idea in which direction they were headed, or where under the city they might be. At least they hardly worried about getting lost, because there was nowhere else to go.

  When they finally did come to a split, Morgan held the torch close to the wall where the paths diverged, squinting at the scratches on the stone. “There’s something etched here, but it’s different from what we found in the cell.”

  The first mark they’d seen had been light, but deliberate and sure, the circle and diamonds carefully inscribed. This one was haphazard and lopsided, as if the etcher had been drunk or didn’t know what he was doing. It looked like a straight double line, with smaller, curved lines extending from the sides. Whatever it was supposed to be, it was decidedly on the right side of the split, so Morgan nodded in that direction. “Maybe it means we should head this way?”

  “Or maybe it means there’s something incredibly dangerous down that way,” Braddock said. Then, when she looked at him: “What? It’s just as likely.”

  “Well, we have to pick one,” Morgan said. “I’ll go left instead if you like, just as long as we go.”