Highlords of Phaer (Empire of Masks Book 1)

by Brock Deskins

  “Keep vacillating, and your son will be the third.”

  Jareen hurled the knife and buried a quarter of its length into the doorframe near Aiden’s head.

  Aiden glanced at the quivering handle. “Reckon I’m done with my coffee now. I’ll show myself out, unless of course it pains you not to open the door for me. I wouldn’t want to break your training. No? All right then. Take care of yourself, Claire, since you ain’t got a man to do it for you.”

  Jareen glared his hatred at Aiden’s back until he heard the front door close. He turned to face Claire, his shoulders slumped and his face showing the exhaustion he felt. “I am doing everything I can, Claire.”

  She patted his arm and nodded. “I know you are. Aiden speaks of the way things should be, not as they are. He hates how the highborn treat us, and when their abuse threatens his own family, he says foolish and reckless things.”

  “Do you truly think I hate them any less? I do what I must to protect my family and give them the best life I can.”

  “That’s all Aiden and his friends want as well.”

  “What they are doing will not improve anyone’s station. It will only result in more suffering. Their actions are those of an angry child. It is tantrums and petty vandalism and it will eventually cost them and those close to them their lives. That is why I do not want him anywhere near us. You have no idea the lengths to which the overlord or highlords will go to punish those who oppose them.”

  “We just had coffee, Jareen.”

  Jareen clenched his jaw. “Sometimes, that is justification enough.”

  ***

  Jareen retrieved his spare mask and checked on his son. Tyler’s condition was much the same as when he left him earlier in the morning. His skin was flushed, sweating, and hot to the touch. He was moaning and writhing now, the disease obviously getting worse instead of better.

  Sickness was not uncommon, particularly amongst the lower castes, but Tyler’s illness was one of the more severe maladies and could afflict anyone. Although rare, even the highborn were not immune to its ravaging effects. The room stank of sweat, sickness, and vinegar, the latter Claire used to soak linen towels wrapped around his upper arms and draped across his forehead.

  Jareen squeezed Claire’s hand. “I will cure him, I promise.”

  Claire looked to her son before dropping her eyes to the floor. “I just pray it is in time.”

  “Aiden is wrong, Claire. You have to know that. He and his friends will only bring ruin to themselves and everyone around them. You have to keep away from him. I know he is your brother, but that is only more reason to distance yourself.”

  “I know, but is what he says entirely wrong? If Sah Auberon gave a damn about you or our family, would you not be working on a treatment instead of whatever project currently consumes his attention?”

  “If I did not serve Sah Auberon, then Tyler would have no chance at all. Without his laboratory, equipment, and resources beyond Velaroth, we would be preparing for the inevitable instead of clinging to this one hope. Tyler will survive this. He is a fighter.”

  Claire turned away and whispered, “At least someone in this family is.”

  Jareen heard and accepted the verbal blow without rebuttal. He was accustomed to all manner of abuse, but it did not make him immune to its effects. He left his wife in the room, his back erect and chin held high, but his soul fractured and bent.

  ***

  “You finally manage to arrive. I thought I told you not to dawdle,” Auberon said as his slave entered the laboratory.

  “My apologies, sah. I thought it prudent to stop by the mask maker so he could begin work on another spare.”

  “Prudence would dictate that you be more careful and not damage the one you have. No matter; the extraction is just now dry enough for mixing. Pulverize the charcoal to a coarseness of grade four while I ready the sulfur and nitrate.”

  Jareen selected a chunk of charcoal from one of several bins and weighed it. “Thirty-five grams, sah.”

  “That will do.”

  He crushed the charcoal in a large mortar until achieving the desired granule size. Auberon weighed the sulfur and nitrate and added it to the charcoal.

  “Write this down, Jareen. Thirty-five grams charcoal, one hundred-twenty grams nitrate, thirty-five grams sulfur. I will now pulverize it to a coarseness of grade two.”

  Jareen inscribed the notes while his master blended the concoction. Satisfied with the resulting mix, Auberon led the way outside and dumped the powder in a raised stone basin similar to a birdbath. Auberon hated testing his invention outside where it could be viewed by prying eyes, but previous trials had resulted in the lab being unusable until the acrid smoke had been cleared out. A high wall surrounded the laboratory, providing them a measure of secrecy.

  Jareen handed the journal to Auberon, lit a stick in a nearby brazier, and touched it to the black powder. The powder burst into flame and gushed thick, acrid smoke into the air for several seconds before consuming itself and leaving nothing but a blackened scorch mark and a bit of unburned charcoal in the basin.

  “Your conclusion, Jareen?” Auberon asked as the fire winked out.

  “Marginally better than previous tests. A bit more flame, smoke, and a slightly faster burn rate.”

  “That is my observation as well. Let us try increasing the nitrate and reducing the sulfur content by ten percent each.”

  “Yes, sah.”

  ***

  Auberon put away his journal and quill with a yawn. “I think I have made what progress I can today, Jareen, however insignificant it may be.”

  “I like to think all progress is significant as even the slightest bit may be the final step to a major discovery,” Jareen replied.

  “Faithful Jareen, always the optimist. Clean up here. I will see you in the morning. Punctuality will not be an issue.”

  “As you say, sah. Sah, may I request a boon?”

  Auberon paused at the door and turned back. “What is it?”

  “As you may know, my son is gravely ill. I have recently acquired the ingredients to what I pray is a cure or at least treatment for his ailment. May I use the laboratory to effect its creation?”

  Auberon’s lips quirked into a wry smile. “Concocting some peasant elixir like a street-corner mountebank hawking cures for baldness and waning libido now, are we? Have at it, but be sure not to contaminate or disrupt my work.”

  Jareen bowed. “Of course, sah.”

  He waited for his master to leave before retrieving a small wooden box. It contained several components that he had acquired with considerable research and expense. He boiled the constituents in a glass flask to extract their oils and continued to heat them until the water had evaporated, leaving only a powdery residue behind.

  Jareen scraped the leavings into a mortar along with other components until the mix was uniformly blended. The process had taken hours, and the sun had set by the time he finished his work. He returned to his home, alternating between a brisk walk and a jog, slowing only when he met another person along the way as decorum required that he do so. He fervently prayed that he was not too late.

  He burst through the door of his home and met Claire as she stormed from her son’s room with identical haste.

  “Jareen, do you have it?” she begged.

  “I do. What is the matter?”

  Claire’s hands were clenched into fists and the tendons stood out on her neck. “The fever is worse, and he has been having seizures!”

  Jareen gripped her by the shoulders, fighting to stay calm for the both of them—the three of them. “Do you have a kettle brewing?”

  Claire’s eyes flicked toward the kitchen. “Yes.”

  “Pour a cup and bring it and some cold water to me.”

  She cast one last look back to Tyler’s room. “Okay.”

  Jareen went into his son’s room and sat on the edge of the bed. He laid a hand on Tyler’s forehead and gasped at the heat radiating off it. Jareen
jerked his hand away as his son began to spasm before going into a full seizure. He held the boy down and prayed it would pass so that he could get the elixir he had made into him.

  Claire burst into the room bearing two cups, one giving off a tendril of steam. Tyler’s thrashing finally relented. Jareen took the cup of hot water, poured out half its contents, dumped the medicine into it, and swirled it with his finger until it was mixed thoroughly, heedless of the burn caused by the scalding water. He then used the cold water to refill the cup and cool it down to a drinkable temperature.

  He pondered a moment on how he was going to get his son to drink it. “I need a clean cloth.”

  Claire bolted from the room and returned a moment later with a linen strip she had washed and hung out to dry. Jareen took it from her, dipped it in the cup, and forced the soaked end of it into Tyler’s mouth. The liquid dribbled down the ailing boy’s throat, some of it going down his windpipe, causing an involuntary coughing fit.

  Jareen continued to absorb the medicine into the linen and trickle it into Tyler’s mouth until the cup was dry. With nothing more to do, he set the cup and rag aside.

  “What happens now?” Claire asked.

  “We wait.”

  “How long?”

  Jareen shook his head. “I cannot say. It seems that his convulsing is already lessening. An hour, perhaps two, for the fever to break.”

  Claire and Jareen sat beside their son, holding his hands, and praying that the restorative would ease his suffering. Claire compulsively touched Tyler’s forehead every few minutes to gauge his temperature.

  “I think the fever is breaking!” Claire said after nearly an hour of restless waiting.

  Jareen touched the back of his hand to Tyler’s cheek and forehead and nodded. “It does seem to be abating.”

  Another half hour passed and Tyler shifted on the bed, not the spastic twitching of a seizure but the soft motion of a person waking from a deep sleep. His eyes fluttered open and he rolled his head from side to side.

  “Momma, Poppa?” Tyler called out in a soft but raspy voice.

  “We’re here, Son. We’re both here,” Jareen replied, squeezing his hand.

  He looked past his father’s shoulder and seemed to stare behind him where the wall met the ceiling. Tyler’s lower lip trembled and his voice quavered. “Poppa? I can’t see you. Why can’t I see, Poppa?”

  Claire slipped from her stool with a plaintive cry, fell to her knees beside the bed, and buried her face in Tyler’s chest.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Do you see?” Amaia asked her consort as she stood on the sandy coast gazing out across the sea at the raging storm just a few miles offshore.

  “See what?” Dante asked.

  “The tempest.”

  Dante turned and looked into Amaia’s pale blue eyes, her gaunt visage and alabaster skin shadowed by the black cloaks they all wore. “Are you attempting humor? Of course I see it. Our people have been looking at it ever since those accursed sorcerers cast our forefathers from our homes and banished us to this desolate land.”

  “It lessens.”

  “You are mad. The tempest has raged for a thousand years. It has been there since the first of us, and it shall remain until the last of us.”

  Amaia shook her head. “You are wrong. I have been studying the storm for decades, and for the past three years I have felt a stirring in the storm. It grows weaker by the day and draws farther from our shores.”

  She reached out and pointed, her pale hand as smooth and white as sun-bleached, polished bone, her veins a network of blue spiderwebs beneath the skin. “See there, there are breaks in the storm. Enough so that light is able to pierce through the barrier on occasion.”

  Even as she spoke, a ray of sunlight fought through the roiling clouds, flashing lightning, and pounding rain and tried to stab at the turbulent ocean below. It winked out as quickly as it had appeared, losing the epic battle that had been raging for a millennium.

  “I saw it!” Dante cried. “What can it mean?”

  “It means the highlords’ power wanes. The time of our return, of our vengeance, approaches.”

  “We must inform the harbinger.”

  Amaia’s head worked up and down slowly. “I suppose we do.”

  Dante noted her tone. “You do not think we should?”

  “I feel it will do little good. The harbinger is old even by our standards. I fear he lacks the conviction and fortitude required to do what must be done.”

  “If he refuses to unleash the scourge?”

  Amaia turned her back to her consort and the roiling sea and began walking away. “Then perhaps it is time for a new harbinger.”

  ***

  Thousands of miles away, Emperor Arikhan stood upon his tower’s parapet overlooking the magnificent city of Phaer. His unblinking gaze traveled across Eidolan’s arid and often hostile land to the faraway tempest created by his great, great-grandfather a thousand years ago when he and his sorcerer brethren cleansed the kingdom of the Necrophages’ foul existence.

  The purging was supposed to give rise to a free and prosperous Eidolan, but the lowborn who inherited it became nearly as necrotic and cannibalistic as the plague-bearing Necrophages had been within a few generations, figuratively speaking. They did not literally consume each other bodily, like the Necrophages did, but corruption and self-destruction drew them like moths to a flame.

  That was when his grandfather had freed them from the burden of self-rule and taken the mantle of the first emperor. It was a painful transition, but a necessary one. The people who once viewed the sorcerers as saviors now considered them their oppressors. Arikhan thought them children rebelling against the wisdom of their parents.

  A woman’s voice intruded upon his reverie. “Emperor.”

  “Yes, Nahuza, what is it?”

  Nahuza Dreth glided up beside him. Tall, stern, and confident in her power, Velaroth’s highlord took in the view. The central tower upon which they stood was an enormous structure with a domed top and twelve large archways opening to a wide parapet encircling it. Despite the pinnacle’s lack of walls, no dust, wind, or rare rainfall ever intruded into its interior thanks to the powerful wards surrounding it.

  Even though the day was bright and cloudless, the sorcerer-made arcanstones capping the twelve spires surrounding the city like points on a colossal clock visibly glowed with power. Although she could not see it, an even larger arcanstone atop the grand tower thrummed in time with its smaller brethren. It was the beating heart of the kingdom, the thing that kept them free and safe from another Necrophage incursion.

  Nahuza turned her thoughts away from the city and got to the matter at hand. “I have received more reports of insurrection. While there is the usual complaining in the villages and townships, some elements within the city-states have taken to vandalism and even assault against the highborn, most notably in Velaroth and Nibbenar.”

  Arikhan nodded but did not shift his gaze from the horizon. “It’s failing, you know.”

  “The tempest? I have sensed it. Perhaps it is for the best. Let the monsters return from across the sea to remind the rabble that we are the only thing that stands between them and a fate worse than death.”

  The aging emperor scoffed and shook his head. “We have fallen into such disfavor that many of the fools would seek to ally with those that would destroy them, stupidly believing that we are the enemy even as the Necrophages corrupt and murder their friends and family. It does not matter. The barrier will fail and we must prepare for it. Our forefathers made a grave error not pursuing them across the sea and eradicating them, accepting banishment instead.”

  “They were supposed to die, to starve to death in that hellish land. Who knew that they would find people living there to consume?”

  “There was a great failure in their wisdom.”

  “And yet they had the acumen to craft the barrier. With all our power and knowledge, we still have not unraveled the tempest’s secrets.
”

  “We have not; that is why we must stick to the contingency plan. It is nearly complete. Should the Necrophages discover that they can travel across the Tempest Sea and have the power to do us great harm, we will be able to rise again and cast them out. This time, there will be no quarter for them or any who would be their ally.”

  “Do you truly think the lowborn are so stupid as to side with the Necrophages? Had we not done such a good job of purging their existence from our history and instead continued to remind them of their evil, could we not have avoided this very threat?”

  “As I said, they lack such wisdom. Of those who remember the Necrophages, few realize how close we came to losing that war. Had the necromancers been prepared, it might be us on the far side of the sea. If the lowborn knew of their existence, some would stop at nothing to contact them and hasten their return in exchange for wealth and power. It is in the nature of lesser men to want more than they are capable of handling. No, the plague shall return, and when it does, the dead will greatly outnumber the living. Even as the Necrophages annihilate the populace, some will side with them in hopes of gaining enough favor so that it is their neighbors who are consumed and not themselves. The rest shall look upon us as their saviors, as they rightly should, and once they shake off their myopic view of the world and us and see themselves with clear eyes, they will understand with certainty why it is we rule them.”

  Nahuza flashed her emperor a wry grin. “This is all predicated on us being victorious.”

  Arikhan brushed the air with his hand. “There are more sorcerers just within Phaer than there were in my great, great-grandfather’s time. Many of the other cities’ highborn are able to wield power as well. Do you truly think we could fail?”

  “Unchallenged assertions are often doomed to fail.”

  “You certainly do an admirable job in challenging me, Nahuza.”

  “Only so that we are successful, Emperor.”

  “Then we have nothing to fear.”

  Nahuza turned away. “I depart for Velaroth to oversee the tribute preparations and to view this spate of lowborn discord. It is time to stamp it out in its infancy. It would be foolish to let it grow large enough to bear teeth.”