Then he gestured the basalt door open and strode into the cold laboratory, and Geraad could only follow.
Chapter 20 – In the Court of the Risen Phoenix
Crimson General Kelturin Aradysson noticed the runes on the portal frame glowing again and stepped aside just in time to avoid a collision with Enkhaelen. The short Archmagus smoothed his robes, raised a scarred brow, then strode from the portal array.
“He’s called you too?” Kelturin said.
The Archmagus glanced back. “Naturally. Are you coming?”
Kelturin grimaced. Even with the welcoming aura this place beamed at him, he hated being here. If it had been possible to ignore the summons, he would have. “Yes, I suppose,” he said, and reluctantly crossed the concentric circles that guarded the array.
The room they had entered was the sole portal-destination in the entire Imperial Palace complex, a tiny circular chamber with no apparent exit. As Archmagus Enkhaelen approached the smooth white wall, a dimple formed, then punctured into the white corridor beyond. Kelturin followed, trying not to bristle under his formal armor, trying to remember that he was a general summoned by his commander. Not a little boy being called to the carpet before his father.
“Any idea what this is about?” he said.
Enkhaelen sighed, slowing his brisk pace to let Kelturin fall in beside him. “I have many ideas. You’ve done as we discussed, yes?”
“The project has been removed from camp as you requested, though I still don’t understand why. Blaze Company—“
“Don’t say more than you must. Remember where we are.”
As if I could forget. “No, listen. I promised them orders, but you need to tell me what you want first. If it's just training maneuvers, that's fine, but I need to be included. You know what it means to me.”
“Apparently it means you won’t shut up.”
Kelturin scowled, used to Enkhaelen's snide brush-offs but still stung. He hated the cold shoulder Enkhaelen had shown him since his appointment as Crimson General even more than he hated being the low man in the Emperor’s hierarchy.
Things had been different once. Back when he was young, when his mother’s handmaidens were still at court and he was still in training, he thought he had been happy. Coddled maybe, but no more than any noble child, and his teachers had done their best to whip the spoiled brat out of him. Enkhaelen his arcane tutor and personal physician, Vedaceirra his weapons trainer, Anniavela his court liaison and eventual lover, and all of his practical tutors—the tactician and historian and orator and the others—had known better than to let him laze around, and he had excelled in his studies with their guidance.
He had also slept his way through the female side of the court, but that had been less satisfying. He was the Crown Prince, after all. They came after him more often than he pursued them.
Since the Emperor had sent him out into the world, the glittering court he remembered had been disbanded. His mother’s handmaidens were gone, all but Annia dead from their duties. Enkhaelen was always occupied, his old tutors had vanished and even Vedaceirra—who had been his closest friend since he could remember—was gone. He had sent her out at Enkhaelen’s bidding and she had never returned.
He had no one to trust. No inner circle that had not been assigned to him.
Some days, he felt he would like to see the Palace burn down around his father’s ears.
But he had his army to worry about now. His men. They had been given to him nine years ago, after the previous Crimson General had been executed for botching the greater Kerrindrixi campaign, and though he tried to do his best by them, it was difficult. The other Generals did not support his policies, his father had barred the Circle from filling his requisitions, and most of his professional troops were rejects from the other Armies. He had pioneered the use of slave troops not because he liked it but because he desperately needed to fill his ranks—and because he detested sending his prisoners to the Palace for conversion. The choice had bitten him in the ass already, but he clung to it. He knew he was being set up for failure, but he refused to abandon his ethics.
Still, his campaign was on the rocks. The deadlock at Kanrodi had killed his momentum and sapped his supplies, and it was slowly annihilating his mage squad. If he withdrew and let the teleport-blocks on the city fall, the Padrastans and their serpent-mages would be on his camp within marks. He did not have enough troops to circumvent Kanrodi yet keep it under guard; he was already strung too thin trying to contain the unrest in the Illanic city-states.
There seemed no option but truce, and his father had repeatedly refused that.
He had racked his brain for a new plan, but beside the spark of possibility that was Blaze Company, every suggestion he forwarded had been smacked down. He owed his troops and the conquered people more than to let his territory fall into chaos, but his hands were fast becoming tied.
Perhaps this meeting would change things, but he had given up hope of convincing his father to see things his way.
“I’m surprised you didn’t bring your lover along,” said Enkhaelen abruptly. “The little one, the Riddish scryer. What was her name?”
Kelturin glanced sidelong at him, surprised by the personal question. “Makoura. We’re not together anymore. She could read my tattoos.”
“I see. And your new lover?”
The jibe hit home. His habits were no secret but he did not bed-hop out of restlessness. The problem was trust.
“Lilinya,” he said grudgingly. “Couldn’t contact her. Anyway, this seems too official.”
Enkhaelen made a noise of agreement, then lapsed into silence. Kelturin stared at the walls. Some part of him had missed this aesthetic: the organic flow of the endless corridors, the softly luminous ivory material with its faint pale network of veins. Nacreous, meandering, changeable, alive in its own strange way, it had been his home for decades and still seemed to recognize his presence.
He supposed that others might consider it miraculous—those gawking pilgrims, the visiting nobles and worshipful Sapphire and White Flame soldiers—but they could not feel it the way he did. For them, it radiated reverence, even rapture, but for him it was like being trapped in a womb again. Smothered in nostalgia.
It irked him, too, that for all his father’s mastery over this place, he could not create a simple, clear path from portal-chamber to throne-room.
But then it was always like that with Aradys.
The Archmagus did not speak again, having fallen into his own thoughts. Though the path wandered and split around them, neither hesitated at the forks; the way changed at the Emperor’s whim, but when Kelturin concentrated he could feel the new route like a map drawn behind his eyes, and he supposed Enkhaelen had a similar connection. The man had certainly dwelt here long enough.
Beyond the shifting tunnels, though, Kelturin sensed that much of the Palace had not changed since his last visit. That boded ill. It meant that the Emperor was bored.
It took some time, but they found the door. Today it stood double: two massive panels of ivory covered in bas reliefs of flowers and trees and birds, with twin lion-heads gripping pull-rings in their massive jaws. A pair of petitioners waited before it, dwarfed by its bulk, and as the golden-haired female of the pair turned, Kelturin smiled involuntarily in recognition.
Her face lit up. “Kel!” she squealed, and rushed over to fling her arms around his neck. His hands went automatically to her green-gowned hips, neither pushing her away as he knew he should nor embracing her as he wished.
“Annia,” he said roughly.
Anniavela te’Couran, former lagalaina mistress of the Wyndish king, pulled back to kiss him warmly on the cheek, then beamed. Her pretty face was flushed from the usual effect of the Palace. “Oh, you look so handsome in that armor. Your mother would be proud.”
That decided for him. Firmly, he detached her and pushed her to arm’s-length. She pouted but straightened her shoulders in a way that brought attention directly to her ample, vel
vet-bordered cleavage and the teardrop pendant that hung in the center. He fixed his gaze on her face sternly.
“How’s your back?” said Enkhaelen, inserting himself as a conversational rescuer.
“Oh, fine,” said Annia, pulling away reluctantly to flutter at the Archmagus. “Doesn’t hurt at all, but it’s fortunate you were so quick to the scene. That body-swapping bitch used something poisonous. I could hardly breathe! The Queen wrote me to say they’d had to replace me with some fourth-generation whore.”
“Did she.”
“Oh, not in those words, but the sentiment was there. I quite like her.”
“Well, Vedaceirra was always volatile,” Enkhaelen said, nodding methodically. “Still, such outright treachery was surprising. Don’t you think, General?”
Kelturin eyed the Archmagus. He knew that Vedaceirra had served her maker more than she had ever served him, and was certain that Enkhaelen was behind her decision to ignore her orders and keep chasing the Guardian vessel. He would not forgive Enkhaelen for it.
“Very surprising,” he said tightly. “I had always relied upon her loyalty.”
“That one, loyal?” Annia interjected with a sniff. “She was always a viper. I’m glad she’s dead.”
Kelturin’s hands fisted automatically. Seeing his expression, Annia recoiled, her smirk vanishing, and he managed to master the urge to strike her to the floor. Tightly, he said, “She was a good friend, a good soldier, and a great asset to me. I am not glad. Save the venom for your gossip circle, Annia.”
For a moment Annia’s face fell, her youthful illusion belied by a flash of envy and an unexpected touch of grief. Then she composed herself and lifted her chin haughtily. “Yes, of course. Because you only have use for soldiers.”
He stared her down and was not surprised to feel nothing. That flash of old fire when she had embraced him was gone, leaving him as hollow as before.
“I will not discuss this further,” he said sternly. “I have been summoned and have no time for…this.”
“Oh, I think you do.” Annia waved a hand at her silent partner. “We were set as your escorts, don’t ask me why. This is… Oh, I forget your name.”
“Specialist Erevard, my lady,” said the man in a low, hoarse voice. Kelturin glanced to him and frowned. He looked familiar, the pocked scars that riddled his face quite distinctive, but his expression was unusual; no reverence, no rapture, just the cold stillness of a sealed-up well. The black-hilted sword at his side explained it—a new akarriden wielder, influenced by the blade—but did not tell him why the man was plain-clothed, or…
“You,” Kelturin said as the association clicked. “I sent you for conversion, didn’t I.”
The soldier met his gaze impassively. Eyes that had once been human were now caustic yellow even through the illusion cast by his pendant. “Yes, sir, you did. Almost a month ago.”
“You’ve risen swiftly in the world. Which army?”
“None yet assigned, sir.”
“And what are your orders now?”
“To escort you and the Inquisitor Archmagus before the Emperor, sir, and to restate my last report.”
“Which would be?”
“I am to report it only at the Emperor’s command, sir. My apologies.”
“That’s fine,” Kelturin said, though the implications made him uneasy. To set this soldier out here—someone he had sent to the Palace personally, and recently—was a direct jab from his father. He looked down to Enkhaelen, who seemed just as intrigued as him, then sighed.
“Let’s see what my father wants,” he said, and gestured the doors open.
They swung wide to reveal the vast audience chamber beyond. Pearlescent as the rest of the Palace, its relentless pale-on-pale architecture troubled even Kelturin’s acclimated eyes; with not a single shadow present, the glow suffused all surfaces equally, annihilating the easy perception of depth and position and allowing no refuge for the gaze. Only the presence of petitioners and pilgrims lent it any sense of space, any scale, their white-shrouded yet undeniably physical forms providing perspective on the attenuated columns, the great rib-like arches, the staggered steps and insets, the intaglios and bas reliefs that seemed specifically shaped to confuse the eye.
As Kelturin stepped out, he noted filigreed panels extending from either side of the doorway, with more panels beyond them to create a constant blur of shapes and figures in his peripheral vision. It made his skin crawl, and knowing that not all of those figures were optical illusions did not help. His father had always stationed his White Flame soldiers in the strangest places, their matte armor and face-plates blending in with the Palace. Without turning to look, it was impossible to say which shapes were filigree and which were men with swords.
This convoluted creativity at least reassured Kelturin that his father had not gone stir-crazy again. A constant threat, since he could not leave.
Through the shifting field of pillars and screens Kelturin saw the throne on its high dais, a thick wedge of wall backing it, the pilgrims clustered dozens deep around the lowest step. Their keening song echoed from every cupola and nook, reflecting back in disjointed fragments, and the columns and tiles seemed to breathe in time with them—a constant faint heave that Kelturin sometimes doubted anyone else could feel.
He hated being here during the pilgrims’ audiences. It felt like living in a flytrap.
The only two points of stronger light in the chamber came from the dais: one a broad circle in the wall above the throne, like a captured sun, and the other the Emperor himself. Kelturin did not look at him, wanting to avoid that for as long as possible. Instead he focused on the lesser chair stationed to the side of the throne, and the woman who occupied it.
She was still beautiful, his mother, sitting primly in her white dress, with her sun-streaked hair braided in an elaborate net and her hands laced in her lap. Perfect as a doll, the same way she had looked nine years ago when he left—the same she had looked when she arrived here, it was said, before she had borne Kelturin and screamed her mind away. Now her face radiated the same reflexive rapture as the pilgrims’, and he dared not meet her vacant eyes for more than a moment.
Beneath the Imperial couple stood several men, one to each step, their uniforms and robes standing out like jewels on white silk. Kelturin recognized them easily as he approached. General Tamorant Lynned of the Golden Wing Army held the second step from the bottom, his fair hair nearly matching his heavily gilded armor, and the teardrop pendant gleamed at his throat as he flashed a grin that Kelturin did not reciprocate.
One step above stood General Senvayl Demathry in the dark blue Trivestean-style uniform he preferred to his Sapphire Eye armor. He was a lean man, made leaner in comparison with Lynned’s bulk, with short hair greyed significantly since Kelturin had last seen him. He inclined his head to Kelturin, and that gesture Kelturin returned.
Higher still stood the man Kelturin least liked to see: his own commander, Field Marshal Argus Rackmar, High Templar of the White Flame and only two steps below the Emperor. If Enkhaelen was the Emperor’s left-hand man, Rackmar was his right. Big, bearlike and bearded, he disdained armor, preferring to dress like a high-court noble in velvet and gilt. His only concession to his own military rank was the steel pectoral around his throat, etched with the signs of the three Armies and the Emperor’s White Flame guard.
At the step just below the Emperor stood Lord Chancellor Jashel Caernahon, a drab man in drab finery, but with keen eyes that watched all from his aged, aristocratic face. His attention set only a moment upon Kelturin before sweeping over his shoulder to the hilt of his greatsword, as if the prince was merely its bearer.
None of them bore the marks of the Palace’s reverential aura, hardened either by mentalist shields or their own long exposure. The Emperor enjoyed his worshipers, but seemed to realize that vacuous obedience was a bad trait in his advisors.
The Lord Chancellor hissed something to the White Flame guards at the base of the dais as Ke
lturin and his escorts approached, and immediately the White Flames moved to disperse the pilgrims. Their keening song fragmented into adoring cries as they were pulled up, pushed away, herded by pike and shield from the throne, and Kelturin saw with distaste that many of them left bloody tracks in their wake. Penitents, he guessed—the fanatics who came to the Palace to be cleansed for crimes both real and imaginary, who lashed themselves and lamented in the streets and who cut or burned their own feet to allow the Palace’s influence further entry into their flesh.
Their frenzied ecstasy sickened him, directed as it was toward his father, who watched with detached amusement as if they were puppets in some mildly interesting play. If not for his own limited immunity, he knew he would be groveling before the throne himself, but could not understand why someone would do so willingly—would come here to be debased and invaded by the proxy of an unknowable god. He had lived with the Emperor so closely, for so long, that even the mention of the Light made him want to scream.
One by one, the bloody footprints disappeared into the pristine Palace tiles as if absorbed.
As the pilgrims dispersed, five more figures approached the dais from the other side of the chamber: a Gold soldier, two women in mages’ robes and two masked, hooded haelhene. Kelturin looked the women over with automatic interest, then stopped short as he recognized the one without the Archmagus mantle. The last time he had seen that shapely form, those loose dark curls and distinct Amandic profile, had been last night. In his bed.
Right after he had locked away the scroll-case she now carried.
“Lilinya, you thief,” he hissed, a phantom fist clenching in his chest, yet it did not surprise him. She was an accomplished Warder and could easily have opened the warded locker he kept his missives in, but more than that, she had accepted his odd habits without question. He should have known better than to trust her. The enthralled look she gave his father only made the betrayal hurt worse.
The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) Page 59