by Mike Shel
Wyskings – Mountain range north of the Duchy of Kelse and west of the Barrowlands
Yellow Hells – A series of Netherworld planes believed to be the destination after death for sinners, according to Hanifaxan theology. Sorcerers may conjure creatures from the Yellow Hells through necromancy, though they do not come willingly and are very difficult to control.
Zoteby – Town between the capital of Boudun and the port city of Falmuthe, on the main island of Hanifax.
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2. Note: Locations and geographical features found on the map, but not mentioned in the novel do not have entries in this appendix.
APPENDIX C3
Titles
Imperator/Imperatrix4 – Title of the ruler of the Hanifaxan Empire.
King/Queen - Title of the ruler of the Isles of Hanifax.
Duke/Duchess – Title of the ruler of a duchy directly responsible to the Imperator/Imperatrix.
Earl – Title of the ruler over an island of the Hanifaxan chain or a separate Earldom, generally a city-state and surrounding land granted a measure of autonomy by the crown. Directly responsible to the Imperator/Imperatrix.
Archbishop – Supreme pontiff of a cult, alternately referred to as “High Priest.”
Count/Countess – Title of a ruler of a major city within a duchy or major city on the main island of Hanifax. Directly responsible to the duchy’s ruler, or the King/Queen.
Bishop – Highest priest of a cult in a settlement or region under the authority of a duke, earl, or count/countess.
Viscount/Viscountess – Title of a ruler of a sizable town within a duchy. Directly responsible to the Duke/Duchess or a nearby Count/Countess
Baron/Baroness – Title of a ruler of a small town. Fealty is generally to the nearest higher noble.
Grand Chamberlain – Sorcerer appointed with managing the King’s/Queen’s Court and presiding over the Sorcerers Council. While ostensibly beneath all titles of nobility, the holder of this title can wield enormous power. Many sorcerers with the rank of chamberlain work under the grand chamberlain.
Abbot/Abbess – Leader of a major religious cloister, such as a monastery.
Prior/Prioress – Leader of a minor religious cloister, such as a priory.
Lictor – An office of authority within the Syraeic League. This post is apparently held by a number of individuals, both within the Citadel and elsewhere across the empire.
Knight – Prestigious rank granted to a commoner by a noble of Earl’s rank or above. Both men and women who have been knighted are addressed with the title of “Sir.”
Chamberlain – Sorcerer in service to the Grand Chamberlain.
Father/Mother – Senior priest of a cult parish.
Alderman/woman – Elected or appointed representative of a settlement, tasked with advising the settlement’s ruler.
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3. Note: Titles are listed in order of prestige and authority
4. The title of Imperator/Imperatrix came into being when the united Isles of Hanifax began adding continental territory to their holdings (i.e., the duchies and later earldoms); since that time, the Imperator/Imperatrix and King/Queen have been one and the same person
A SPECIAL PREVIEW OF
ICONOCLASTS - BOOK II:
SIN
EATER
1
The Old Man
There was only one inland point of entry to the sprawling city of Boudun, capital of the Empire of Hanifax and home to over a quarter of a million: three broad gates, set next to one another, save for the guard towers between them. The gates were made of dark, weathered hardwood, bound with heavy black iron. The two halves of each gate were decorated by the symbol of the empire: a rearing griffon wielding a sword in one of its claws. The paint was fading, each of them long overdue for restoration. The entryway was known as the Mouth of Boudun, perhaps because the open arched gateways looked like the incisors of some gap-toothed behemoth, happily ingesting the steady stream of merchants, migrants, entertainers, artisans, fortune-seekers, farmers, and diplomats entering the largest city in the empire. The defensive towers between the gates were forty feet high and topped with crenelated parapets. Manning the parapets were a number of severed heads, mounted there in varying states of decomposition, along with a few bored city guards, armed with heavy crossbows they hadn’t fired from their perches in ages.
An old man wrapped in lily white robes looked up at one of those towers, scanning the faces of both watchmen and decapitated. He found little difference between them. Yes, their features and skin tones varied, the circumstances of their lives, whether they were now living or dead; but these were trifling details to the old man. He knew that the living would join the dead in a short while, whether the tumbling chaos he envisioned came to pass or no. At their passing, some would be buried or cremated, their ashes ensconced in funerary urns or bodies entombed in family crypts or public cemeteries, accompanied by elaborate ritual. Some would be left to rot where they lay. The old man regarded them in the same way: pitiable human beings, fumbling through this world, in possession of nothing but vague hopes and minds burgeoning with half-true philosophies and outright falsehoods.
Traffic into the city was heavy today, but the old man waited with perfect patience. He was aware of the many looks of fear, suspicion, even naked hate from the crowd of humanity around him. Many things set him apart. First and foremost, his skin was a deep, rich brown in color, his white hair kinky, his nose broad and flat, his lips full and sensuous. They marked him as a foreigner, a native of the mystery-shrouded southern continent of Aericum. Foreigners were distrusted at the best of times, and these were not the best of times. He also appeared immensely old, his face a web of wrinkles, the skin on his bare arms sagging. Yet he did not stoop over, nor did he use a cane or staff to steady himself; his bearing was upright, and he walked with unexpected vigor and the grace of a dancer. But perhaps most striking were his eyes, so dark as to almost be black; penetrating, wise, ineffably ancient.
A blond, barrel-chested man with a whip in one hand and the stink of a drover about him brushed by him with rough disregard, marring the unnatural whiteness of the old man’s fine cotton robes with the dust of the road. The drover, a bull of a man, stopped and turned to face the old man, his expression one of indignation and affronted privilege.
“Watch yourself, stinking old wogget!” he growled, nostrils flaring, an ape making a showy go at dominance. “Bump into me again and I’ll beat you bloody!”
Wogget. By the old man’s count this was the twentieth time someone had employed that epithet since he set foot again on the Island of Hanifax, either using it to address him directly or in whispered conversation nearby. He doubted the brutish man knew the now-derisive word’s complex etymology. He decided to enlighten him.
“The word you use, ‘wogget,’” he began, with an ivory-toothed smile and melodious baritone. “It is a poor approximation of a Mendekoh term, uag-athe. It means ‘star watcher.’ You see, the ancient Mendekoh people were astronomers, long before your pale-skinned ancestors crawled from the dark of their caves. Do you mean to call me ‘star watcher,’ sir? Because that is a fine and noble thing. If not, you must mean to demonstrate your contempt for this frail old man, perhaps for all of his proud Mendekoh forebears.”
The drover’s furrowed brow read as both angry and confused. The old man heard the man’s grip tighten on his leather whip, watched his lips working, as though readying a venomous retort; all of it a prelude to violence. Then the old man locked eyes with the drover and the big man’s pale face went slack, his posture relaxed.
“You thought you would bully this old, feeble foreigner, this uag-athe,” the old man continued, his smile a beatific thing. “That was an error, you are thinking now. Yes, a grave one. When walking down the road, a wise man does not kick over every stone he comes upon. One never knows u
nder which lurks a nasty spider, squirting poison.”
The old man touched the drover’s chest with pinky, thumb, and forefinger, and muttered a few words in a strange tongue, and the big man broke out in a sweat. Soon with trembling lips he was weeping like a frightened little boy. Others nearby, already watching the encounter, shifted uncomfortably, dropping their conversations, pretending other activities, trying to watch now without being seen. The old man put a brown hand on the drover’s unshaven cheek and patted it; a gentle, grandfatherly gesture. “Be at peace, Calvas, son of Corvas. Pester no more people this day.” The drover, snot running from his nose now and his eyes puffy and reddened, walked dutifully over to his nearby ox cart and collapsed against the rough hide of the beast of burden yoked to it, crying softly, hugging the animal for comfort.
The crush of humanity waiting to enter the city gave the old man a wider berth now, whispering to one another, making signs against the Evil Eye. That was poorly done, he thought to himself. You might have simply bowed in deference to that stupid man, not uttered a word. He would have walked on.
But I’m weary, he thought, answering himself.
The truth was, compulsion magic always exhausted him, and he had driven those poor souls over a thousand miles: from the teeming port of Yobabis, across the Sea of Sacred Splendor, skirting the islands of the savages, and finally past the Wall of Serpents. At last traveling on the Sea of Azkaya, there was the trial of soothing the nerves of those sailors, coaxing their cooperation so that they might dodge the patrols of the Royal Navy. Finally, they deposited him on Hanifax’s southwestern shore and fled back for their distant homeland. It was a simpler thing, the bending of wills, if you cared not what happened to the psyches of your instruments. The old man strove to do no more harm than was necessary for his purposes. But their minds were such fragile things. The nudge he had given the arrogant drover’s mind, well, the foolish man would have nightmares for weeks.
Fragile. He looked at the back of his hand, the creased skin, thin as parchment. He turned it over to stare into the palm, a softer shade of brown, a new collection of lines, like any other human, save for the scar, deep and angled like an arrow’s head. It was the only remnant of the ritual by which the original occupant of this body had relinquished it to him. How much time had passed? A great deal, by human reckoning. This vessel had served him well. With it he had wandered the whole of the Theocracy, the Republic of Tembao, the frontier satrapies of the wily Azkayans, even the foreboding—and aptly named—Godless Wilderness. He had gathered much wisdom, unknown in the north. It had nourished him, fortified him for the great task that lay ahead.
He had walked nearly a hundred miles; from the southern shore where the Yobabis sloop had left him, he avoided the port city of Falmuthe, then trekked through a rocky stretch of the Tona Hills and their long abandoned, overworked quarries. He walked through the towns of Menkirk, Baedkirk, Zoteby, and half a dozen smaller villages. Those were insular places, whose innkeepers and merchants closed their doors to him, or provided surly, grudging service, accepting his gold coins as though it was beneath them, as though the coins were stained with dung. Strange, but he couldn’t remember the names of those unwelcoming hamlets. His memory rarely failed him. It must be the strain of occupying this aged body past its endurance. Even with the sorcery at his disposal, there were limits to flesh. His time in this vessel was nearing its end.
A child tugged at the hem of his robe. It was a young girl with hair that reminded him of the burnt orange of a sunrise on the Tears of Bakhu, freckles on her cheeks and nose, skin fair and unblemished. Her eyes were a vibrant blue, and they projected intelligence and curiosity. “Why is your skin brown?” asked the girl, a sparkle of wonder in those blue eyes.
The old man squatted down with the ease of a far younger man, so that his dark eyes met with hers. He smiled broadly. “There is a story, little Dagna of Zoteby, of how the god Bebe made the men of the south. He formed them out of clay and cooked them in fiery coals he found nestled in the bosom of the earth. But while he waited for them to bake, the god called Amalan the Trickster came to that place, taking the form of a colorful bird with wings so large they blotted out the sun. Amalan flapped his great wings, so that the coals burned too hot, and the heat scorched the men who were cooking in Bebe’s fire.”
She looked at him, wide-eyed, returning his smile. “Is that story true?” Dagna asked, so young in her skepticism.
“No, little Dagna, it is not. The truth is, the sun strikes the world much more fiercely in the southern lands, harder than a blacksmith’s hammer strikes his anvil. So, over many, many years—more years than you can count—the skin of the people who lived there changed, so that the sun would not trouble them so. They adapted. This is what people must do, if they are to survive. Were you to sail to that far land, the sun would bake you brown, too. Though not so brown as me.”
The old man touched the tip of the young girl’s nose with a gentle finger as her mother, from whom she had wandered, yanked her away. The woman chastised the child as they walked off, sparing a worried look back at the dark-skinned foreigner who seemed to have charmed her daughter as sure as he had made the hulking drover weep.
The old man saw that the little girl favored her mother. She had hair like a roaring fire and intense blue eyes, too. Both of them, mother and daughter alike, would return to the dust soon enough, like the rest of those standing at the Mouth of Boudun. But the man had passed on to the girl a spark of fortune with his playful touch. She would have more than her share of happiness, and she would bring it to those touched by her life as well.
The girl, he realized as she and her mother disappeared into the crowd, reminded him of Telsa, the widowed midwife he came upon in the Kingdom of East Marcien. But when he had met Telsa, she had lost her own spark and was so weary of living that she surrendered her body to him with little persuasion. He walked in her shoes for many years. Being a woman in this world had presented its own challenges, back in the days of what they now called the Age of the Busker Kings. East Marcien had fallen to dust and ruin, just like the vessel of Telsa had, at last. Just as all those within the sound of his voice would return to the dust one day, very soon. He smiled as other memories flooded his mind. He allowed himself to luxuriate in those bright remembrances for a time, to bask in their warmth.
Telsa, Wajid, Socono, Kella, countless others.
I thank you again for allowing me the use of your bodies, after you yourselves had tired of them. Your souls are all gone past the Final Veil, long ago by human assessment. Thank you for the honor of your bodies, for acting as vessels necessary for my purposes. With them I have wandered the earth, waiting for the right time, the day when I finally fulfill my ultimate purpose. Let me live up to the name they once gave me, O Universal Spirit of Creation. Let me finally end my wanderings.
“What is your business in Boudun?” asked an obese, hairy-chested man, shirtless against the heat, sitting in an overtaxed chair beside the guard tower. While the old man let himself reminisce, time had passed out here amongst the others queued to enter the great city. Now he stood at the head of that queue, facing the inquiry of this officious, sweaty man. A great book was opened before him, held by another man, toothless and wiry and clad only in a loincloth. The fat clerk clasped a jar of ink in one hand, a ragged feathered quill in the other. “Your business?” he repeated, impatient.
“The queen,” answered the old man. “I intend to speak with your Queen Geneviva. I come bearing a message from the very heart of god.”
The clerk stared back, his lower lip dangling, pausing for a beat. Then he let out a long, raucous laugh, exposing the foreigner to a stink of onions and sourness and teeth blackened by rot. “The queen?” he echoed, expelling more of his noxious breath and grinning his corrupted grin. He began jotting down the old man’s words in the book the fellow in the loincloth held for him as he shook his head. “I would summon a carriage to take you s
traight away to the palace, my grand wogget dignitary, but alas, the Fairy Queen of Summer and Lord Jack Nightingale arrived just before you and spirited it away. What name should I enter next to the stated purpose of your visit?”
My name? the old man wondered. What is my name? Is it Wajid, the name of the one who gifted this body to me? Or one of those whose bodies I possessed before? Is it the name of my birth, the one with which I was crowned when I first emerged howling from my mother’s womb? Benesh-Enoah, I once was. Oh, that name I had nearly forgotten.
But at last the old man settled on yet another name, one by which he hadn’t been addressed in ten thousand years. It seemed the correct moniker to use now. He would claim it once more, here at the Mouth of Boudun and beyond. To the end of his days. The true end.
“My name,” he told the sweating clerk, “is Ush’oul.”
2
A Hanging by Law
Agnes Manteo cleaned the blood from her sword with a cloth she carried for the purpose. She looked down again at the corpse of the would-be bandit who bore wounds she had inflicted, at least two of them fatal. It took effort to master the trembling urge within her to kick him in the ribs. The highwayman’s blade, with which he had shown minimal skill, lay next to him. It was a poorly maintained thing, with rust where blade met cross guard. She picked it up and vented her fury by swinging it against a stout oak, sinking the steel deep into the wood, then putting all her weight on the hilt. The blade snapped with a metallic ting.
She walked over to the other body, that of her Syraeic brother. He might have been sleeping, were it not for the raggedly-fletched arrow protruding from his left eye. His name was Ruben, and Agnes hadn’t known him well, but he had been an affable fellow on their journey. Better company than her other companion, Kennah, a stern swordsman who stood beneath another great oak tree with the second brigand.