“The diary of Seften,” the professor said. “Sadly, little of it survived.” He thumbed through brittle pages, then paused for some time, his eyes darting across the lines. “Here’s what I want. Seften writes: . . . after so many months of striving for victory, the king led a final charge onto the field, splendidly arrayed as always in his armor and the regalia of Sacoridia. We cheered as he led his elite Weapons and the reserve forces behind him. The enemy quailed and . . . and . . .” The professor muttered and squinted. “Much of this is muddled, I fear. Oh, I see. He says, and the troops on the field rallied, forcing the enemy’s host back, verging on retreat.” The professor flipped through some torn pages as Karigan dug her nails into her chair’s leather armrests.
“I lose it until this,” the professor said. “Then the enemy unleashed its great weapons, and it was like all five hells bared as one and all its mightiest demons came unleashed. We hadn’t a chance . . . So terrible they could not be of this Earth.” He paused, scanning the page for more legible parts, then cleared his throat. “When the clouds and rage and fire settled, I espied the king as he fell to the bloodied field, his Weapons slain in a black circle around him, his standards limp on the ground.”
Karigan squeezed her eyes shut. “No . . . ,” she murmured. But what had she expected? She’d seen the ruin of Sacor City, saw how an empire had risen up. And the king, she knew, would have laid his life down for his realm. He would not let the enemy overcome it while he still lived. He would not have hidden in the castle. I should have been there. Her presence wouldn’t have changed the tide of battle, but she ought to have been there with her people, even if it meant dying with them.
When she opened her eyes, she found the professor kneeling before her, the diary in one hand and a handkerchief extended in the other. “I seem to be causing you quite a bit of distress today.”
Only then did Karigan feel the hot stream of tears on her cheeks. She accepted the handkerchief.
“It’s clear you believe King Zachary was a good leader,” the professor said.
“He is a good leader,” Karigan said. And more than that. Much more.
The professor lifted his chin as if she’d only confirmed his own thoughts on the matter. He patted her knee, his expression compassionate. “I have found nothing in my research to dispute it,” he said. “And it is grand to hear one of his own servants corroborate it. Now, there is just a little left in Seften’s diary that is legible. Can you bear it?”
She nodded.
The professor solemnly returned her nod and remained on his knees. It appeared to Karigan that he skipped paragraphs. Perhaps he was trying to spare her from some further unpleasantness. It did not take much imagination to guess what an enemy would do to a fallen monarch’s corpse, especially with no bodyguards left to defend it.
“Here it is,” the professor said. “Seften writes: The king’s death stole the courage of our soldiers. We were lost after that. The demon beasts descended on us, crushing the city walls and all within as if they were nothing, destroying, destroying . . . No one was safe. There was nowhere to go. We were lost, Sacoridia was lost.”
After a long pause, Karigan asked, “That’s all?”
“I’m afraid so.” Professor Josston rose, closing the diary. “The rest is illegible or destroyed. Elsewhere, we find tantalizing mentions of the weapon or weapons that destroyed the city, often referred to as demons or hell beasts. In some accounts it is said that Second Empire raised the beasts from its one hell. In others, it is said that the Sacoridians drew the beasts out of their five, but the beasts turned on them.”
Beasts, weapons . . . Karigan shook her head. “What of Rhovanny? The Eletians?” she demanded, thinking of Sacoridia’s allies of old. “Did no one come to our aid?”
“Rhovanny sent help, but they were also under attack. Of Eletia?” He shrugged. “It appears the Eletians did not come. It did not prevent the empire from seeking out Eletia, however, and capturing it along with every other country on this continent. But Eletia, it seems to me, suffered the most.”
“How so?” she asked, thinking everything she had done, everything the king and her fellow Riders had tried to do, was worthless. If this was the outcome despite everything they tried, what had been the point of their effort? She clenched her hands as despair darkened her thoughts.
“Any Eletians that were taken captive were hauled off to the Capital,” the professor replied. “You see, my dear, long ago, in their own land, the Arcosians learned to draw etherea out of the air, the earth, the water, and . . . out of those with inherent magic, all for the pleasure and use of the emperor of Arcosia and those he favored. It is why the Arcosians first came here—they depleted their own sources of etherea. By all accounts, Eletia and its inhabitants have been sucked dry.”
That would explain why her special ability and her moonstone had not worked.
“Our emperor is always seeking new sources, for one day even the Preserve will run dry.”
“The Preserve?”
“You know it as the Blackveil Forest.”
“But it’s tainted.”
“Those who harvest it, the emperor’s artificers, claim they purify it through a filtration system. They process it somehow. Turn it into forms they can use it in—liquids, solids. As we use rivers and canals to power the machines of Mill City, so the emperor uses etherea to mold the Capital into whatever form he desires. It is said he uses it to make himself and his most special servants immortal.”
“Like Eletians.”
“Yes, like Eletians.”
One of Karigan’s ancestors, Hadriax el Fex, had been Mornhavon the Black’s closest companion, and she’d read his journal, which had survived the centuries hidden in the archives of Selium. She gathered from his writings that Mornhavon had been obsessed with the Eletians. He was both in awe of them and resented them. Hadriax had written of grotesque experiments Mornhavon performed on them to learn the source of their immortality and magical nature. It sounded as if he had achieved that goal.
“The world is much poorer for its lack of etherea,” the professor said. “Ever since your arrival, I have wondered how things might have been different.”
“Even in my time,” Karigan replied, “magic was scarce, or at least the magic users were. Very few survived the Long War and the Scourge that followed.” She believed that Green Riders survived simply because their abilities were so minor and only worked if amplified by devices like their Rider brooches. During the Scourge, the brooches were supposed to be destroyed, but the Riders of the distant past hid them by placing a spell of invisibility on them. She touched the empty place where her brooch should have been pinned, feeling only the warmth of her own flesh through her nightgown. The Riders continued to keep the secret, and it was so ingrained in Karigan to do so that she did not speak of Rider abilities to the professor. He obviously knew something of the brooches, because he had recognized what hers was, if nothing more than a symbol of the messenger service.
“Still,” the professor said, “you lived in a time and place where there were still Eletians and some magic. Magic that was not used to subjugate the populace. Wonders still existed—it wasn’t all machines. There were forests and clear lakes, fresh air to breathe.”
It was not perfect in her own world, and she thought some of Mill City’s machines a vast improvement compared to what she had in her time—the accoutrements of the privy and bathing room coming immediately to mind—but she agreed that this bleak future lacked all the richness and beauty of her time. It was drab, hard. Depressing.
“Believe me when I say,” the professor continued, “that Mill City is a paradise compared to other parts of the empire. The city magistrate does not tender abuse upon his populace to the degree it is done in other places, and the lands about us are not torn asunder and stripped for coal or silver or other minerals. Of course, the true paradise is the Capital, as artific
ially contrived as it is.”
“Where is the Capital?” She kept hearing about it, but if it wasn’t Sacor City, where was it?
“Let me show you.” The professor returned to his library shelves, gently sliding the diary of Seften into its slot and humming again as he gazed along the bottom shelves. Eventually he tugged out a large volume with red leather covers. In contrast to the others, it did not show damage. He laid it on his desk with a thump and beckoned Karigan to his side. They leaned over the volume shoulder to shoulder, he smelling faintly, though not unpleasantly, of earth.
“This is an atlas of the empire,” he said. “I have one in the library at the house, too, for reference.” He opened it near the beginning, and there, displayed in vibrant color, lay the Serpentine Empire occupying the continent that had once been home to several countries. She saw that those countries had become subject territories, or protectorates, of the empire. Borders were, in some cases, altered. Hura-desh, for instance, had been combined with the Under Kingdoms to form the Under Territories. Eletia was gone completely from the map, and the empire claimed even the Northern Wastes and the harsh, dry lands to the southwest of Durnesia that Karigan had known as the Unclaimed Territories, inhabited only by non-aligned tribes, and visited only by the hardiest of travelers. They were now simply labeled, “Imperial lands.”
As for Sacoridia, it was renamed “Imperial Seat.” Sacoridia’s neighbor to the west was no longer Rhovanny, but the Rhove Protectorate.
Though Karigan saw it all laid out there before her, she still couldn’t quite believe it. It was like a map drawn from some tale of fantasy, not real life.
The professor seemed to pick up on her disbelief. “It is said,” he told her, “the empire’s forces were an irresistible tide that swept the continent, all enemies falling before it. Durnesia and Bince capitulated before they could be crushed. Tallitre has never been fully subjugated and most slaves now come from those periodic uprisings as the bounty of war.”
He turned pages that showed detailed maps of each of the protectorates and opened up to the Imperial Seat. Sacoridia’s borders remained very much the same, but gone were the twelve provinces and their names, their boundaries redrawn in straight lines, and the areas numbered. Karigan’s home province of L’Petrie, or what was roughly L’Petrie, was now squared off and labeled “Section 1, the Capital,” and painted in gold leaf. She glanced at the Blackveil Peninsula, colored a bright blue, and simply labeled, “Imperial Preserve.” A city had grown about where the breach was, called, “Etherium Plantation.”
“Etherium Plantation?” she asked, glancing at the professor.
“A huge industrial complex where they acquire and process etherea from the Preserve. Er, Blackveil.”
Karigan shuddered, thinking about what effect tainted etherea from Blackveil had on those exposed to it, filtered or not. She did not believe it could be purified.
“Mornhavon must revel in it,” she muttered.
The professor gave her a sideways look. “Eh? Who?”
“Mornhavon—the emperor.”
The professor gazed at her aghast. “My dear girl, Mornhavon the Black is long gone. He is not our emperor.”
It was Karigan’s turn to be taken aback. “He’s . . . I’ve believed . . . If he is not the emperor, then who is?”
The professor flipped the pages of the atlas to the very front of the book where the portrait of a man, framed by the sigil of the dragon with its tail wrapped around its neck, occupied a full page. It looked as if a child had scribbled on the picture, adding a large curling mustache to the man’s upper lip and giving him a pointy beard and very shaggy eyebrows.
“Arhys,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You can see why I can’t have this copy in the house’s library. If the wrong person saw this image of the emperor defaced, if even by an innocent child, there could be unspeakable consequences.”
A sick feeling bubbled in Karigan’s belly as she gazed at the picture, for even with the childish scribbles partially obscuring the man’s image, he looked familiar, his well-chiseled cheeks and chin, his dark hair swept away from his face, and the gray eyes staring out from the page. When she realized who the picture depicted, she gasped.
THE SEA KING REBORN
“It was not the Arcosians who conquered all the lands,” the professor said, “but the return of the sea kings. I apologize if I misled you.”
This had to be some dream, or even a joke, but to Karigan, the professor looked all too serious as he regarded her with a twitch of his mustache.
She glanced back at the portrait, and there it was in fine script beneath his picture, his name: His Excellency Xandis I, Supreme Emperor.
Unable to contain herself, she blurted, “What in five hells is he doing here?”
Her voice echoed across the expanse of the mill floor, and the professor glanced around fearfully as if expecting someone or something to leap out of the shadows.
“You . . . you know the emperor?”
“I know him not as an emperor, but as a minor aristocrat distantly related to the king. A very irritating man.”
“I—I beg your pardon?” Clearly the professor had never heard anyone speak about his all-powerful emperor in such a way before.
“Xandis Pierce Amberhill,” she muttered.
“Yes, that is his name in full,” the professor replied with a puzzled expression.
“But is it really him?” Karigan mused. “He’d have died by now.” And then a mad laugh burbled out—she shouldn’t be here either, so why not him, too? But how? He had been nowhere near the looking mask when it broke, nowhere near Blackveil for all she knew.
“He is, er, undying,” the professor said.
“Undying?”
“The etherea. One would assume that the rumors about him learning how to prolong his life are correct.”
“Could it be a descendent?” Karigan murmured.
The professor shook his head. “Any offspring he’s begotten has been slain to prevent competition for his throne.”
It had to be the same Amberhill. She would know his face anywhere. She’d also seen stranger things during her time as a Green Rider, so why not an eternally lived Amberhill who was emperor of all the lands? She took one last look at the portrait, at Amberhill’s expression of smug self-confidence, even with the childish scribbles on his face, and she stumbled back to her chair, falling heavily into it and pressing her hand against her forehead. And she laughed some more. She could not help laughing. The professor watched her aghast.
Lord Amberhill, the annoying, arrogant aristocrat . . . But really, how much had she known about him? She knew he’d attempted to rescue Lady Estora when she was abducted by Mirwellian thugs working on behalf of Second Empire. He’d ended up helping Karigan, allowing her to escape from those very same thugs. He had seemed to know something about her special ability and had always taunted her about being the “vanishing lady.” Before she had left on the Blackveil expedition, she’d heard something about him leaving Sacor City, but not why or where he was going. She didn’t really care at the time. The last she’d seen of him was at the king’s masquerade ball, and he’d been full of his usual swagger.
How had he come to dominate Sacoridia and build an empire? Why had he chosen to oppress his own people and revive slavery? If he were the conqueror, that meant he was responsible for the death of King Zachary and probably most of her friends, as well. Her laughter ended abruptly and was replaced by a burning anger.
“How?” she demanded. “How did he become emperor?”
The professor, who had been gazing at her in incredulity, clasped his hands once more behind his back.
“He is the Sea King Reborn. He commanded the weapons that destroyed the Old City and caused the fall of all these nations.”
“Sea King Reborn? Amberhill? The sea kings are old history, gone a long time. Why would he
think himself one?”
The professor shrugged. “I dedicated the first decade of my archeological research to the sea kings, trying to discover the answers to this and many other mysteries, and found almost nothing. Very few artifacts remain. Why the emperor should fancy himself the Sea King Reborn, I never discovered, but he had the power behind him. I was hoping by redirecting my research to more recent times in the ruins of the Old City that I could learn more, especially about these weapons he commanded and how they might be counteracted. With that power in our hands, we might be able to reclaim our sovereignty, our heritage.”
“I could ask him about it,” Karigan said on inspiration. “He knows me.”
The professor gripped the back of his chair to steady himself. “My dear, that would be suicide! Whatever you once knew of the man he was, he is not as he was. He does not negotiate, and past acquaintances are little safer in his presence than opponents. His temper is mercurial. Besides, he is not due to awaken for another three years.”
“Awaken?”
“Every ten years. I am not sure he actually sleeps, mind you, but he is at least sequestered during that time.”
“Then who is ruling the empire?”
“His inner circle of Adherents, at his sufferance. They take care of the day-to-day running of the empire. When the emperor rises, that’s when they receive his instructions, and he reviews what has happened during his sleep.” The professor shuddered. “We never look forward to the emperor’s rising.”
“Why?”
“That is when he makes a point of reminding his subjects of his authority. Examples are made to the populace—the streets run with blood. Criminals, dissidents, and innocents alike are purged.”
Mirror Sight Page 18