The Emperor's Mage

by Clark Bolton

  “You mean if WE find him!” Master Gang proclaimed without looking up at her. “He will not be harmed, but I can’t say his fate other than that. Neither Master Sey-Laht or myself plan to suffer the Emperor’s wrath should he discover another dragon-mage in his domain.”

  “Yes, master,” she said thankfully before admitting to him that she didn’t trust Master Dtu-Ru.

  “Owesek-mages are not murderers, Yi-La!” he replied with a stern look at her. “The same can’t be said for all dracomons. So think about that fact before questioning Dtu-Ru’s aid.”

  Narween was admiring the three massive volumes that Yi-La had just plopped down on the writing table in her small room. The girl was back to wearing the Seechen hood and veil again – they had decided it was just easier this way. Since Yi-La had trained the Seechen to avoid her room it seemed for now Narween’s expulsion from their order was going unnoticed.

  “They’re the complete set of Owesek-runes,” Yi-La said proudly. “I levitated them here.”

  Motivated partially by necessity, and more so by professional jealousy, Yi-La had tracked down a levitation spell to help her carry the three tomes. The spell-scroll was in her master’s collection, and she knew for a fact was also to be found in a set of three small books belonging to him. The books were precious to her master, she knew, and he had been hesitant to allow her to peruse the first one, and had warned the other two contained spells beyond her skill to safely read.

  Her plan had been to cast from the scroll, as she could later replace it with a new copy made from the tiny arcane-script in the spell-book. She couldn’t bring herself to consume a scroll by casting from it, so had instead taken nearly an hour to commit the spell to memory. It made her feel somehow worthier of bearing the title dragon-mage, particularly with respect to the two brothers in the lower-library.

  Watching the two brothers cast spells without hesitation had reminded her of how silly it was to hold on to the notion pounded relentless into the heads of all students of Key-Tar-Om: that magic was a forbidden luxury. Her master clearly held no such notion, and now neither was she going to, she promised herself.

  “Let’s take these down,” she said to Narween as she placed the first volume in the girl’s arms, then the second, and finally the third. “Last chance, Narween. Once you start studying these it won’t be safe for you.”

  Narween nodded her head in understanding then gave Yi-La a shy smile. “It is what I want, Fu-Sa.”

  They were both slight girls and would have found even one volume uncomfortably heavy to carry all the way to the library but for the spell. The complete set was going to change Narween’s view of Key-Tar-Om School forever, Yi-La was sure. Six-path runes were peppered with shadowy imitations of Owesek-runes, and that was going to be a shock for Narween, even though she had been told this fact by Yi-La shortly after her arrival in the inner-city.

  “They are so light,” Narween said gleefully, giving Yi-La the impression it was time they put the decision behind them.

  “Yes, I was going to use runes,” Yi-La said, “but I couldn’t bring myself to write on them, so I found the spell.”

  Figuring it was best to make it look like Narween was doing all the heavy lifting, Yi-La had her carry all three volumes across the mage-quarter. When they got to the library, they found a very cooperative Master Librarian more than willing to ring the silent bell. It did, however, irk Yi-La to have to wait so long for the door to open. She didn’t care to admit it, but being waited upon by others had corrupted her.

  “We need to figure out how to open it from out here,” Yi-La said quietly to Narween as the door swung open to reveal Bua-Nap, “in case no one hears the bell, or someone takes it.”

  Door closed, Yi-La wasted no time in casting a light spell, flooding the whole area with a bright white light, causing Bua-Nap to blink painfully. She smiled at him, then turned to closely examine this side of the door.

  “Can this be opened from the other side?”

  “Yes, Fu-Sa,” Bua-Nap admitted grudgingly.

  “How?”

  He set his torch aside and came up a couple steps to show her an engraving on the huge stone bolt that secured the door. “A trigger spell followed by this word will cause the bolt to release.”

  She nodded her head in understanding. “Who knows this?”

  “The Chancellor, Fu-Sa,” he replied as he began descending the stairs.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Yi-La activated the light sources along the length of the rounded tunnel before Bua-Nap had barely stepped into the tunnel with his torch. She gave Narween a knowing smile before motioning for her to wait. Pulling out a small sliver of iron from her pocket, she placed it carefully in her palm then cast a cantrip. The sliver immediately orientated itself crossways to the tunnel.

  “That’s east,” Yi-La said with a slight wince as she nodded down the tunnel.

  “Yes, Fu-Sa,” Narween whispered in reply. “The way to the Forbidden-Gardens.”

  They hid their little test from Bua-Nap, who was waiting impatiently further down the tunnel. The long winding stairs had made them unsure which direction the tunnel ran, but now that they knew for sure, it made this place even more foreboding.

  “I’ll do it,” Yi-La announced to Bua-Nap before he could cast the spell that would open the stone portal, which apparently not even Scarm could put a scratch on.

  She had memorized what she knew to be the spell that would prepare the door to open; now she just needed the ward name. She had heard it previously, but wasn’t confident she could recall it exactly. Bua-Nap reluctantly whispered it to her after she made it clear with her body language that she would accept no less from him.

  Within, they found an expectant Rua-Nap, who Yi-La politely acknowledged. Then, even before they could invite her to sit, she asked, “What lays further east?” She pointed toward what she knew to be the east wall of the room as she said this. Not wanting them to have a chance to deny her access, she opened the small door that she had been allowed to peek through on her last visit. Beyond was a room crammed with supplies that looked also to serve as their sleeping quarters. An entire corner was devoted to storage of what the brothers referred to as the “notes”.

  The notes were stacks of ledgers and scrolls, of which many looked heavily water-damaged and on the verge of rotting away. She would save these for later, Yi-La told herself as she looked for another way out of the room. Finding what looked possibly to be a wooden door, she motioned questioningly at it.

  Both men looked unwilling at first to assist, but then Bua-Nap relented and so began tearing at the planks of the door with his fingers. Eventually he revealed an opening wide enough for someone to slip through.

  “Careful, Fu-Sa,” Rau-Nap warned. “It is not safe.”

  The fact frightened her, but not enough to prevent her from putting her face up to the hole. It was too dark to see anything, so she cast a light spell in it to fix that problem. Expecting a tunnel, she was surprised to see a brick-walled chamber with a floor submerged in water. On various piles of what she took to be rubble, she could make out the glint of white bone.

  “Ughh!” Narween exclaimed when she got her first look inside.

  The water was surprisingly crystal-clear, and so they could see now whole submerged skeletons in what looked to be waist-deep water. Several large ornamental fish added to the macabre scene as they swam above the bones in a leisurely fashion.

  “What is this?” Yi-La asked as she stepped back to escape the odd smell seeping in.

  “Our future resting place, Fu-Sa,” Rau-Nap said humorlessly.

  “Nooo!” Bua-Nap objected before stepping up to look in. “There is a ledge around to the left, Fu-Sa, but there are wards further on. The notes warn of death that way.”

  “So you’ve never been down there?” she asked with concern.

  “We have looked many times,” Rau-Nap informed her.

  “Could be something there,” Yi-La muttered. “You could use more space.
” As she said this she smiled guiltily to Narween, who nodded her head in agreement. Pulling back from the hole, she then looked around for other avenues to explore but couldn’t find any, least none the brothers weren’t concealing. When she saw they were salivating over the tomes she had brought, she relented, and so joined them back in the cluttered common room.

  “Will these be missed, Fu-Sa?” Rau-Nap asked as he gazed in wonderment at the first few pages of one of the volumes.

  “Not for some time…perhaps never,” she admitted. “If Master Gang does, I’ll have time to retrieve them.”

  “The dragon-mages are ancient, and distant,” Rau-Nap said as he gave her a look that she took to be sympathetic. “They waited too long to find one as you, Fu-Sa.”

  She shrugged as she thought about her elderly master. Compared to Sey-Laht, Master Gang appeared young yet still old, and Dtu-Ru looked beyond death to her. They all seemed unaware of Pesnu-Jok’s hold on the mage-quarter, though she had caught hints it was simple apathy on their part as opposed to failing minds.

  “They are sharp, Rau-Nap,” she warned. “They just don’t think about…us.”

  “Is this a complete set?” Bua-Nap interjected excitedly as he peered over his brother’s shoulder.

  “Yes, every Owesek rune is there, along with their applications in sample rune-sets.” She knew this for a fact. All second-year students at Key-Tar-Om studied such, but only those few on the prime path saw what they were looking at now. It had taken over six years of study for her to learn and be able to inscribe on demand every rune within those volumes. Narween and the two brothers would have been taught only a select few of them, as well as a great number of imitations.

  Yi-La watched the brothers and Narween page through the tomes for a while; then, while glancing through the open doorway at the piles of notes, an idea came to her. The two brothers had arcane-knowledge she was sure she didn’t have; the problem was separating out the pure and accurate knowledge from the chaff that Key-Tar-Om and other sources had thrown in to obscure things.

  “Tell me about dracomons, then I want to know how this can be in the Forbidden-Gardens,” she requested loud enough to get everyone’s attention.

  Rua-Nap looked very concerned about at least one of the subjects. “You have researched dracomon in the library, Fu-Sa?”

  “Narween has,” Yi-La replied with a glance her student’s way.

  “There are no scrolls, the librarians told me,” Narween interjected.

  Rua-Nap nodded his head knowingly. “Any writings that mention dracomon can be construed as insulting to the Emperor, which can result in serious penalties. Death, even!”

  “Is there anything in those notes about them?” Yi-La asked.

  Both brothers snorted, and even laughed, before Rua-Nap admitted, “There is, including some very creative insults. But no anthologies, if that’s what’s your looking for, Fu-Sa.”

  “I’m looking for anything that can tell me why they are so interested in dragon-mages.”

  Rua-Nap seemed to be sizing her up again before he replied, a bit irreverently, “We know bits and pieces about the Emperor’s ilk.”

  The brothers told of how the dracomon were rumored to originate from the wild province of Yuu, and how today it is believed all are still born there. Those who dared called the birthing castle The Rookery. Others called it Yuu-Tessk; there, consorts of the Emperor, or those other women unfortunately in need of the birthing-stone, prayed their child would be one of the noble dracomons. Laying on the stone under the open sky, they suffered one of two fates: either they would spend the rest of their life under the thumb of a dracomon, or they would be consumed from within by a skut.

  “They are different?” Yi-La asked with disgust at the thought of such a death. Her master had joked about skuts, and Pesnu-Jok had labeled the Imperial-Chancellor one.

  “The difference is in title only, Fu-Sa,” Rua-Nap assured her. “Noble, or even imperial, if the Mother survives, and dishonorable bastards if she does not.”

  The other brother let this sink in before adding, “It gets worse, Fu-Sa. All noble dracomons are eventually driven, by the Emperor, into the dragon-cloud, and never seen again.”

  “Else they are slain,” Rua-Nap assured her. “Emperors don’t much like princes who might someday threaten their throne.”

  Yi-La stared down at the table, unable to stop thinking about beautiful Lady Me-Ta, and her possible fate. Despite all that had resulted from her stay in the Forbidden-Gardens, Yi-La still thought fondly of the woman. Then a troubling thought came to her.

  Looking up at the ceiling she asked in a panic, “Could any of the consorts above us be dracomons?” Such would have heightened senses, making her fear for Narween in this place.

  “No,” Rau-Nap told her, as he too looked up at the ceiling. “None ever in the gardens.”

  “There are no female dracomons!” Bua-Nap added with confidence, which earned him a shrug from his brother.

  “But we are in the Forbidden-Gardens?” Yi-La asserted with a stern look at the brothers.

  “Yes, Fu-Sa,” Bua-Nap admitted shamefully. “But we never had contact with anyone!”

  “There is no way…to have contact!” Rau-Nap explained. “Even here it would be noticed.” He eyed Narween as he said this, reminding Yi-La that two middle-aged men were about to be joined by an eighteen-year-old girl.

  “Still, you would be executed if the yellow-guards found you,” Narween scolded them.

  Both men laughed, before explaining that they were under penalty of death already for practicing forbidden magecraft. The fact made Narween slump in her chair.

  “Not too late, Narween,” Yi-La let slip.

  “Yes! Too late, Fu-Sa,” Narween said forcefully as she looked once again at the three volumes on the table.

  Wishing to change the subject, Yi-La asked again why the dracomons were so tied to the dragon-mages. “What use do dragons have for Owesek-rings?”

  “The dragon-cloud, I would guess,” said Rau-Nap. “The rings and the nine tripod-cauldrons are both the creations of ancient Owesek-mages. Losing control of the cloud to a rival – or perhaps worse, to an enemy kingdom – could bring down an emperor.”

  “Master Gang says I will soon be introduced to the cauldrons,” Yi-La admitted, then felt guilty for saying so.

  The brothers nodded their heads, telling her that the dragon-cloud had to be maintained to protect against foreign enemies and to keep the peace. This required dragon-mages to visit each province periodically, which they knew both Master Gang and Master Sey-Laht were tasked with by the Emperor himself.

  She was beginning to understand now why Ich-Mek was of such concern to her masters. The Emperor would think them remiss in their duties, or even part of a conspiracy against him. The eunuchs, Rooch and Chusey, had told stories of beheadings for seemingly lesser offenses than this.

  “You must help me find Ich-Mek,” she declared as she slowly stood, “before the dracomons or the dragon-mages!”

  All three looked at her in shock, before the brothers asked in unison, “Who is Ich-Mek?”

  Chapter 26

  “Those are spirit towers up there,” Tass reiterated as he prepared his climbing equipment. “They lead nowhere.”

  “Yes…you keep saying that!” Ich-Mek replied as he looked up at the high towers.

  “There are three cats up there,” As-Cheen then warned.

  “Just two,” he told her with a grin. “We found one, remember?”

  “It will be there before you can climb,” she replied cynically. “Do you remember the names?”

  Ich-Mek felt a bit insulted at the question. Was he not the dragon-mage; the best of his class at Key-Tar-Om? “Yes!” he snapped. “Carguar…Sybarn…and ummm…Tybran.”

  “You must say them right,” she told him, skeptically.

  He shook his ring finger at her before turning to Neeq. “You have no idea where this dragon-door is?” He had asked the monk this question three o
r four times now.

  “I am sorry, Fu-Si. The term is known to me, but was assumed to refer to this door alone.”

  “What about the cats?” Ich-Mek then asked.

  Neeq looked over at the several small cats sunning themselves and apologized again for knowing little of the large cats within. Shadowy spirits that kept their distance when the door was open was all he knew about them. The stone-monk had told them there were cats when asked about the one whose eyes As-Cheen had seen. They were apparently guardians of the temple, and calling their names would keep them back.

  “Give me your hands, Tass,” Ich-Mek then said. He started drawing the same rune-set he had used before, during their climb above the temple. When As-Cheen stuck out her hands to receive the same, he scowled at her for a moment, but then relented. He had hoped he had talked her out of climbing with them, as she was obviously very uncomfortable about doing it.

  “Coming, Puc?” he asked.

  The young monk turned and bowed to Neeq, and seemed to be waiting for permission. Neeq granted it with a nod, saying, “It is best, should you gain entrance, that a monk be present.”

  Ich-Mek wanted to ask why, but then thought better of it. He had enough things to think about now, and figured the lamas were just feeling left out.

  With runes on everyone, he then cast levitations spells, and as his heart raced from the casting they began to climb. The first tower they reached was as Tass had said – a spirit tower, which meant it was just for aesthetics; for those of this world, anyway. They could crawl in through the small windows, but there was no door or passage leading out.

  Others higher up turned out to be the same, and all windows were but shallow indentations. When they were finally able to walk upon the roof of the temple, they found the landscape easy to traverse for the most part. The temple merged with the rock of the butte in most places only thirty or forty steps from the edge. Nowhere did they find any signs of an entrance.

  “Up there!” Tass called out as he pointed higher up the cliff. “It would be large enough for a dragon to land.”