Highlords of Phaer (Empire of Masks Book 1)

by Brock Deskins

  It was mostly silent on the ship’s deck except for the sound of the wind whipping through the rigging and rustling the sails until Lorbash spoke. “I see the towers just over the horizon. We shall reach Phaer in approximately two hours.”

  Atin inclined his head. “Two hours before we seal not just our fate but that of most everyone in Eidolan. Should we fail, I sincerely doubt Arikhan and his ilk will be satisfied with just our deaths. They will inflict great retribution on our people regardless of their involvement in our attempted usurpation.”

  “None are more aware of that than me and my fellow pilots. Should they take us alive, our punishment shall be legendary. I for one have taken measures to ensure that they will not be able to torture me.”

  Atin arched his eyebrows. “Measures?”

  “I ingested a powerful poison the moment I saw the spires. I shall be dead within the next twelve hours unless I take the antidote hidden on my person, and I won’t do that until Arikhan is dead and we are well away from here.”

  “Do you ever question your choice siding against your brethren? You were a prisoner, but the others are free. As sorcerers, they are practically royalty. They are tossing away lives vastly better than any of us lesser folk could ever imagine. For what?”

  Lorbash stared ahead at the twelve spires surrounding the magnificent yet terrifying city of Phaer. “Most of us are the first of our line born with the ability to wield magic. As such, we have watched our families and friends beaten, tortured, and killed for perceived slights or simply on the whims of the sorcerer hierarchy. We would have our family know the freedom we so enjoy.”

  “Even if it means sacrificing that same freedom for yourself? The people will not look kindly upon any sorcerer, and I imagine life is going to be very different, even unpleasant, for them if we are triumphant.”

  Lorbash smiled. “Someone has to fly these ships. I pray the people are not so foolish as to kill all horses simply because they had been kicked by one at some point in their lives.”

  “I would tell you that I share your optimism, but I like to think myself an honest man and shall remain silent.”

  “Pessimism and honesty oft walk hand in hand in this world.”

  Atin looked off to his left and caught sight of the Voulge. She looked like a toy given the distance separating them. He imagined Jareen gazing out at the city just as he did.

  Looking to his right he found the Celestial almost an equal distance away. Peering through his spyglass, he saw Rayna Dushane of Nibbenar, the one who was able to find enough loyal pilots to launch their tiny fleet, standing at the prow of her ship as if to ensure that she was the first one to step into battle.

  Sailing in from the opposite direction, Brelon Vanos and Venetia Lennain approached the city from the south and east aboard the Drake and Deliverer respectively. At least so he prayed. They had sailed their ships beyond Phaer and returned so as to appear to be coming from their cities of Thuul and Glisteran as the highlords expected.

  The day marking the annual tribute required by each major city to appease Arikhan and his sorcerer lords had arrived. He and his rebels planned to make this Tribute Day truly spectacular.

  ***

  “Emperor Arikhan.”

  The emperor turned at the sound of Highlord Nahuza Dreth’s voice. “Yes, what is it?”

  Arikhan was showing the age of a man who appeared to be in his waning years, but at two hundred and fifteen years old, he did not appear the slightest bit feeble. He stood at the top of the city’s Grand Tower, the hub to the outer spires stabbing up like points on a massive clock or compass.

  “The tribute ships are arriving,” Nahuza announced.

  Arikhan turned, strode through the open arch to the parapet circling the top of the tower, and searched the sky for the approaching ships. “They are hours early.”

  “Maybe they are eager to please you, Emperor.”

  “One appears to be a warship.”

  “I heard that Auberon acquired his brother Driscoll’s flagship. Maybe he found the strength to accompany them.”

  “Perhaps. It appears to have suffered some recent damage.” He craned his head over his shoulder. “Send out the honor guard to meet them.”

  “You suspect treachery?”

  “I always suspect treachery. It is why I have ruled for so long.”

  “As you wish, Emperor.”

  Nahuza turned away and disappeared down the stairs cut into the floor. The entire top level of the tower was open with a dozen arches supporting a domed roof and leading out to the parapet overlooking the plaza. Despite the open design, not a speck of dust from the frequent sandstorms nor drop of rain from the much rarer rainstorms found its way inside thanks to the barrier magic enveloping it like an invisible dome.

  While Emperor Arikhan suspected treachery, he was far from concerned. Even if a large enough group of infiltrators stormed the tower and managed to cut their way through his honor guard, which they couldn’t, they could never breach the spire’s defenses. If they managed to gain the tower, they would then face the most powerful sorcerers in the known world.

  Leaning out between the merlons, Arikhan watched two honor guard companies stream out of the columned barracks at opposite sides of the plaza. They formed up and marched in perfect order to the center of the square near the base of the tower. Three ranks of spearmen stood twenty abreast, leveled their weapons, and set their shields. Their job was not to engage the enemy but simply to hold them back and protect the war sorcerers, with their bodies if needs be, standing two ranks deep behind them.

  Nahuza returned with the other four highlords who comprised the rulership over the five primary cities. While essentially kings and queens in their own right, none deigned to actually live in the cities over which they ruled. No self-respecting sorcerer of rank lived in the dreadful cities full of filthy, talentless commoners. That was the job of the overlords and lesser highborn.

  The highlords resided in grand palaces within the capital where the only non-sorcerers allowed to live within the city were the decadently dressed and masked slaves they owned and the soldiers who defended them.

  The highlords gathered on the parapet and watched the ships approach. Below, hundreds of citizens began gathering in the plaza to observe Emperor Arikhan accept the cities’ tributes he and the rest of Phaer’s elite citizens deserved.

  “Note the black vessel in the center of the three approaching from the northwest, Emperor,” Highlord Vagar Merrick pointed out. “That is a special tribute to you from myself, Overlord Caelen, and Auberon. Auberon’s powder allowed us to create such a large stockpile of void steel that I permitted them to build it. I hope you like it.”

  Arikhan touched the tips of his thumbs together then drew them apart and down. To his eyes, the ship seemed to leap forward as the spell magnified the image fiftyfold. “An airship built of void steel?”

  “Such a flagship is surely a worthy gift.”

  “It certainly is,” Arikhan agreed while his face remained rigid and lacked his fellows’ curiosity or bemusement. “Although, you have defied my very explicit orders. All void steel should have come to the city straight away. None should have been held in reserve and certainly not in such a quantity to create an entire airship with it.”

  Vagar blanched, the emperor’s quiet but stern rebuke wiping the smile from his face. “I had thought it a grand idea, but only after I was certain that we had more void steel than we could use. The vessels for ascension are ahead of schedule and even now our stockpile continues to grow faster than the artisans can build them.”

  “Such is the only reason I have not hurled you from the spire. That and being pleased with your gift.”

  Highlord Vagar breathed a sigh of relief and turned his eyes back toward the procession. All five ships converged near the far end of the plaza, but instead of landing near the center as they should, they hovered perhaps a hundred feet over the city and began to turn broadside. Small shutters dropped open to reveal p
ortholes set in the ships’ sides.

  “Are those tubes poking out?” Highlord Idesa asked. “What in the world could be their purpose?”

  Highlord Nahuza rolled her eyes. “It is probably another one of Sah Auberon’s ghastly pyrotechnic displays. It might impress the lowborn, but why he would think the citizens of Phaer would appreciate it is beyond me. It is another example of why I think he is not ready to join our ranks.”

  “I heard he is dreadfully ill,” Highlord Donas said. “Perhaps nature will decide for us.”

  Great gouts of smoke, flame, and thunder testified to the cannons’ purpose. For the briefest of instances, the highlords and spectators thought the ships had exploded. It was not until the cannonballs tore into the crowd and hammered against the tower wards that the reality of the situation asserted itself.

  The wards rippled like water and fractured like glass with each concussive blow, but they held…for now. The unprotected citizens below fared far worse. The bulk of the initial volleys decimated the honor guard ranks. Iron balls the size of a man’s fist and smaller shot ripped through armor, shields, flesh, and bone. Battle sorcerers, those who survived the first fusillade, raised individual wards around themselves, but their protection was meager at best. The strongest amongst them were able to withstand some of the musket and canister shot, briefly, but even those shattered beneath the awesome force of a cannonball hurtling at fifteen hundred feet per second.

  The emperor and his highlords staggered back when the cannonballs struck the tower wards. Highlords Huet and Idesa stumbled over their own feet and fell onto their backsides. Emperor Arikhan was the first to recover from his initial surprise and strode back to the parapet, confident that the tower wards would protect them for at least a while longer.

  The void-steel airship and one other had dropped into the courtyard and disgorged men carrying strange spears with heavy hafts and long, thin blades. They formed up in ranks similar to his own shattered honor guard and leveled their weapons. It seemed an odd thing to do as there was no one currently charging them, but their purpose became apparent when the short pikes blew gouts of fire and smoke.

  Men and women fell beneath the barrage. The first two rows of men stood and reloaded their odd but deadly weapons as the two ranks behind them stepped forward, knelt, and fired. The two airships lifted back off the ground, and only then did the other three drop down, lower the massive ramps comprising most of the ships’ stern, and unloaded their contingent of soldiers before returning to the air once more.

  Battle sorcerers, fighting to maintain their wits and return the assault, struck back with fire, lightning, and arcane energy. While devastating, the sorcerers’ counterattack was sporadic and uncoordinated, and the rebels, with their new weapons, cut them down almost as quickly as they dared to appear.

  Within a handful of minutes, Phaer’s resistance crumbled and the rout began in earnest. The defenders simply did not know what to make of these new weapons, and the fear they inspired was as catastrophic as the damage they caused and the lives they extinguished.

  The highlords returned to their leader’s side just as Arikhan sent a powerful fireball exploding into the rebels’ midst. The blast slaughtered dozens of men, scorched scores more, and shattered the ranks of an advancing company.

  “Miserable vermin!” Arikhan spat as he unleashed his fury on the men below.

  With the populace largely scattered and the primary threat to their victory coming from the highlords, the airships redirected the bulk of the fire back at the tower. The thunderous assault shook the spire and its occupants to their core and sent them staggering and reeling from the assault.

  Arikhan strode toward the center of the expansive room, weaving to catch his footing with every quake. “On your feet! It is time to swat these pests from the sky like the insects they are.”

  The highlords regained their composure and joined Arikhan at the round dais. Looking like a sundial, twelve gems gripped in gold facets surrounded the outer edge, a miniature representation of the twelve spires encircling the city. A pointed obelisk capped by another arcanstone stood in the center representing the tower.

  The sorcerers directed their will and power into the miniature structure. Although the tiny arcanstones glowed brightly, it was not into these that the highlords channeled their power. Around the city, the arcanstones capping the spires mimicked the eldritch light suffusing their smaller counterparts.

  “Hold the energy and channel it to me,” Arikhan commanded as he strode back to the parapet.

  Selecting the nearest airship, the emperor reached out to his fellow sorcerers and directed the massive amount of magical power they held. The arcanstone atop the tower unleashed its pent-up arcane energy in a brilliant ray of pure, unimaginable power and struck Glisteran’s airship amidships.

  The ray set fire to the wooden construction as it seared through the sides and lower decks, but it was the powder store in its hull that ultimately sealed its fate. The ship exploded in a spectacular fashion, sending burning bits of wood and bodies flying through the air for hundreds of yards in all directions.

  Arikhan smiled. “This is what happens when moths fly too close to the flames.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Small battles raged throughout the city. Fear drove the highborn back as much as the musket fire. The sorcerers had never known real battle in their lives, and few of them could even claim to be soldiers. Like airship pilots and innervators, most battle sorcerers came from the lower ranks of their caste while the true highborn focused on creating wealth and political power. Retreats became routs as the sorcerers leading Phaer’s standing army broke ranks, either due to fear or simply no longer being willing to die for the sake of those who looked down upon them.

  Jareen led the charge toward the tower along with his fellow leaders. None had stayed aboard the relative safety of the airships. Being the principal architects of the rebellion, each of them had the desire to personally end the highlords’ lives.

  The day, as it often was when there was not a dust storm, was bright and cloudless, but the ray of light that streaked out from the tower’s pinnacle increased the brilliance to near blinding. Jareen and his fighters clamped their eyes shut and threw hands and forearms across their faces to shield themselves from the luminous assault. Their hasty attempt at protecting their vision did nothing to ward off the powerful concussive force of the Deliverer’s violent destruction.

  Jareen looked back at the smoke and fireball that seemed to hover in the air where Glisteran’s airship once floated and found Venetia not far away to his left. “I am sorry. We shall avenge them and everyone else who has died and suffered at the hands of these sorcerers.”

  Venetia fought back the tears threatening to leak from her eyes. “Then let us get to it before that number grows higher.”

  Sweat streamed from beneath the porcelain masks or simple cloth wraps the rebellion leaders wore and muffled their words but no one removed them. They were a powerful symbol of their defiance and they displayed them with pride. Jareen nodded, raised his sword over his head while gripping his flintlock pistol in his off hand, and led the charge to the tower.

  The tower was a massive structure whose curvature was barely discernible when viewed from an arm’s length away. Jareen lowered his shoulder and ran it into the tall ornate doors, but they did not budge. He knew with certainty that they were not merely locked. Magic fused the doors with the stone around them and made the barrier as sturdy as if they were part of the wall.

  “Sappers!” Jareen shouted.

  Several men wearing laden rucksacks rushed forward. They unshouldered their burdens and placed them against the door. Jareen could not estimate how much powder it would take. He had no idea how powerful the wards were protecting the tower. The walls had withstood the constant barrage of cannon fire despite the impacts shaking the entire plaza but had done little noticeable harm.

  Beyond figuring out how much of the stuff it took to launch a cannon or musket
ball or blast holes through a mountain, there was next to no scientific exploration of the stuff, particularly when it came to combating magic.

  Jareen pulled the match fuse from one of the satchels and lit it. He and his infiltration team ran to the distant side of the plaza and took shelter in one of the empty stone barracks buildings.

  The explosion was deafening and so great that he and the others thought that the stout building they were hiding in might collapse atop them. Smoke and dust choked the plaza in a haze so thick no one could see what kind of damage, if any, they had wrought on the tower. Not sparing the time to allow the air to clear, they charged back to the tower once again.

  Jareen scrambled to a stop before falling into the crater carved out before the base of the tower. A gaping hole wide enough to accommodate a small airship now adorned the front where the doors once stood. Jareen led his troops inside the belly of the beast, taking great care to navigate the thick trusses and beams so as not to fall into the sublevels where the blast had destroyed sections of the floor.

  ***

  Arikhan allowed a rare smile to crease his deeply wrinkled visage as he gazed upon the airship’s destruction. Extracting information regarding these new weapons from the miserable wretches who dared think they could attack him in the heart of his domain would be worth the lives of a few of his citizens. He would have to think long and hard on how to make their suffering legendary. With these new weapons, he could expand his empire to the lands across the sea and conquer the entire world.

  He could feel the power his highlords gathered from the great arcanstones surrounding the city as it reached its crescendo once more. The emperor selected another target, this time choosing the massive black beast that appeared so formidable. It was the heart of their assault, and it was time to rip it from their chest.

  Arikhan took only cursory notice of the two dozen or so fools scrambling away from the base of his tower. They must have realized the futility of trying to breach his fortress home and sensed what was about to become of their precious void-steel juggernaut and the impending destruction of their failed rebellion.