Legend

by Robert J. Crane

  “Emperor, then,” I said, letting out a slow breath. I was in a room, helpless, with the man in charge of the empire that had enslaved me. As far as predicaments went, I was certainly finding myself in no shortage of strange ones. Why, I was probably the most misbegotten prince Luukessia had ever had.

  “We don’t have those, either,” he said. “My name is Chavoron, and I am the First Citizen of the Protanian Empire.”

  “I am Ulric Garrick,” I said, through the pain, “and I’m the prince of Luukessia.”

  “I’d heard that about you,” he said, still as a statue. He hadn’t moved since he’d arrived at my bedside. “You’re a hereditary ruler, yes?”

  I cracked my eye open to see him regarding me with interest. “Yes.” I realized something else. “You speak my language.”

  “Scholarship is a virtue among my people,” Chavoron said. “I know several languages.”

  “I only know the one.” I dropped my head back on the pillow. It was light and fluffy and very different from the utter lack of one I’d come to expect over these last weeks. I tried to pierce into the darkness with my gaze again. “Where am I?” I asked finally, after trying long enough to make my headache worse. “Your palace?”

  “I live atop the government building in the center of Sennshann, but no, we’re not there. I have a small compound in the city that I use for … various purposes.”

  “And you’ve come to visit me,” I said, laying on a trace of sarcasm. “I suppose I should feel honored.”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But not surprised, I would think.”

  “Admittedly, I haven’t had any meetings with heads of state since your empire enslaved me,” I said, “but I was quite used to receiving important visitors before that.”

  Chavoron let out a loud, rumbling laugh. “I suppose you would be … but your title as hereditary prince of a primitive kingdom on the lands to our east is hardly the reason I am visiting you now—and I think you know that.”

  As I listened to him, my mind ran through all that he’d just said and came up with a few very interesting facts. If Luukessia was to the east of his land, then it had to be across the Sea of Carmas, which was our name for the body of water that ran the western coast of my homeland.

  And it meant that my home was out there … somewhere … across that sea. Not to the south, as I’d originally thought, but east.

  “It would be a long swim home for you, I am afraid,” Chavoron said, as though reading my thoughts. “At least, until the bridge is completed.”

  That was another little detail that set me aback. “You’re … building a bridge?”

  “Indeed,” Chavoron said. “There is an appetite among some of my citizens for trade with your people, but no desire to reveal the secrets of our magics or portals to them. Building a bridge is perhaps a less … uncomfortable way of introducing ourselves than revealing we’ve hidden a portal in your northern lands.”

  “And that you’re using it to kidnap our people.” I said it as neutrally as I could; I understood well that I was speaking to a man who ran an empire, whose concerns were different than an ordinary person’s. He needed labor—slave labor, apparently—and also men to fight in his Coliseum. I kept the anger out of my voice out of pure fear. I was at his mercy, after all, and it seemed prudent not to go out of my way to offend him.

  He didn’t seem to take it as an insult, but he did glance away abruptly. “I have questions for you.”

  I felt an icy tingle of fear. “Of course.” Naturally, he wouldn’t have come to visit me in my ailing state if he didn’t have a reason. I had a nasty suspicion torture could come to bear, and I was resolved to avoid the pain if I could. In truth, I couldn’t think of any knowledge I had to offer that would be worth pain or death to me.

  In short, I was a coward, and I knew it, though I would have been extremely reluctant to say so.

  “How did you learn to cast that spell?” Chavoron asked. His quiet, composed manner reminded me, strangely, of my father in his more disappointed moments.

  “I hear your children can learn,” I said, not sure whether I should resist too hard to answer. I suspected that if he resorted to torture, I would fold like a wet doublet. “Surely that doesn’t put it out of reach, even for a Coliseum warrior such as myself.”

  Chavoron chuckled. “You missed the crowd’s reaction to your little stunt, I suppose?”

  “Yes, the pain claimed me. All I heard was a great hush fall.”

  “It didn’t stay hushed for long,” Chavoron said. “It is considered a fact among my people that humans are low creatures, much like the savage greens of the western swamps. The thought of you doing magic was quite unsettling.”

  “I imagine it’s harder to picture someone as an animal once they sit at your table and eat with your utensils,” I said.

  “I think so,” Chavoron said. “I have long warned my people, since the days when I was a—well, a cabinet minister, you would call it—that our humans slaves were not so backward and primitive as we might hope. I have had much contact with your people, have seen your lands in the north, and in the broad scope of history would say that you are on par with our ancestors of a thousand years ago.” He straightened. “Our peoples have roughly the same lifespan, the same shape and anatomy, can breed—as demonstrated by the small houses at the back of the camp where you were staying.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “I believe you visited those rooms with Jena of House Varsonne.”

  I didn’t bother to deny it. “Yes.”

  “Hm,” he said, though whether he had gleaned anything from my acknowledgment, I couldn’t say. “Was she the one who taught you?”

  “Why does anyone have to have taught me?” I asked, my voice shaking just a little. I feared what would happen when he switched from amiable to angry, which I was sure would happen eventually if I proved stubborn. I had already glimpsed the loving charity of the Protanians, after all.

  “Because the mental discipline required to unlock magic is something my people have developed over the last two hundred years.” He stared at me flatly. “From us it made its way to the elves, and at that time, it was quite the scandal. We thought ourselves special and unique, you see, as one of our philosophers discovered this peculiarity of the natural world quite by accident. It is a branch of study, however, that has accelerated our civilization, rocketing us past what our ancestors could have imagined possible. We lived, not unlike you, in our towns and keeps. We fought amongst ourselves and with some of the other races scattered about this land. But after this discovery was made … soon we were ruling from the sea to the river that marks the territory of the elves, and we only stop there because they have magic enough to keep us out of their lands. All the other races—the short primitives on the eastern coast, the goblin cave-dwellers of the southeast mountains, even the bearded dwarves of the north … all of them are subject to us, to our empire. They—along with a growing number of humans we are bringing over from Luukessia—are the labor that tills what fields we still have, that mines the ores we need, that builds our cities. Because of magic. Because we have it and they do not.” He placed a hand on the bed, then another, and leaned over me. “Magic is power. So perhaps you can understand … why my people might be alarmed that a human—a slave—can now cast a spell.”

  “You see in my spell the loss of your ability to dominate us any longer,” I said quietly. I contemplated the idea of the entirety of Luukessia with the power I’d been given, or even more. I had wanted to bring my swordsmanship, and a newly trained army back so that I could rule from Enrant Monge, preferably with a Protanian suit of armor to make me invincible. Now I had even more than that—I had magic of the sort that even our dead ancestors could probably not imagine in their afterlife.

  Then I imagined every single farmer, every cobbler, every tradesman and field worker able to cast the same spells as I. My vision of Luukessia united under my strength, my order, disappeared in nightmares of farm hands hurling spells at soldiers and d
riving them back. The idea that instead of rising up with plowshares and pitchforks against sword and shield, that they’d have an even greater weapon, fire from the fingertips that could scourge flesh from bone …

  It caused my stomach to churn, my heart to worry. I stared up at Chavoron, and he looked back at me, the corner of his mouth quirked up. “You see my conundrum, yes?”

  “Your empire rests on your advantage,” I said quietly.

  “Yes.”

  “And the thought that others … your servants … could possess that power …”

  “It would be the end of us,” he said, nodding. “The slaves would rise if they had but the power. The politicians who say otherwise are fools. We keep our slaves in line with the strength of our spells. Even the batons our guards use are imbued with a spell magic to cause pain beyond reckoning. If our slaves could suddenly use them—why, they might decide to pursue their own will instead of bending to ours. If I am not much mistaken, you have just envisioned the consequences in your own land to such a … spillage of power.”

  “What are you going to do to me?” I felt sudden dread creep in. I lay very still in the bed, like a field mouse hiding from the hawk soaring overhead, hoping to go unnoticed.

  “I am not going to do anything to you,” he said, as placid as ever. “There have been many calls for your death, to be certain, but I am not disposed to kill a man in his bed, even a human, in spite of what others among my people might say.” He kept his hands clasped behind his back. “But you will tell me—was it Jena Varsonne who taught you the spell? Or was it the guard from House Gronvey?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not sure who that second person is,” I said. I had a suspicion it was Rin, but I’d never heard him called by his house name before.

  “Your fighting instructor,” he said.

  “What will happen to the person who taught me?” I asked.

  He looked at me shrewdly. “If it was the Gronvey, I imagine the flesh will be peeled from his bones over and over. If it was Jena … likely nothing, since her father is a man of great power in our empire.”

  “You already know who taught me,” I said, looking away. “You know full well that Rin had his teaching sessions in the middle of the yard where the guards could see.”

  “I do,” he said, “but it is good to see that you can be cooperative.” He nodded once. “Did you fear what I would do to you if you tried to resist?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Shouldn’t I?”

  “I never once raised my hand to you, raised my voice or threatened you,” he said. “I merely told you that you would answer, and whatever you inferred from that is your responsibility. I lead an empire, and I hardly have time to be a torturer, even if I did approve of the practice—which I don’t.” He pursed his navy lips. “You responded to my query because … even with your newfound spell ability … you could feel the imbalance of power in this room. Weeks of living as a slave have broken you down, Prince All-aric,” he said, mangling my name but getting closer than Jena had. “Though I expect you were, like many hereditary rulers I’ve met, somewhat soft to begin with.” He gave me a cursory glance. “Yes, I suppose were I you, and in your place, I would fear me, too. But I don’t mean you any harm. If harm comes, it will be from outside these walls, from the clamor of the mob thirsting for the security of your blood, hoping it will put the stopper back in this bottle of wine that seems to have spilled.”

  “But if you killed me …” I said, my heart churning at the possible consequence of an idea that had occurred to me, “if you exhibited that strength … your problem would be over for now.”

  He laughed softly. “But now that you know a spell, and that truth has escaped the Coliseum, it won’t be terribly long before another of your people learns, and another, and another. Jena is hardly the only of our people to have taken advantage of you humans, become attached to or bedded you.” I didn’t bother to correct his perception of her. He raised a hand and clenched it tight. “No, that word has gone forth, and it would have even if we had killed every one of your people in the Coliseum, for mine would have carried it forward to their human bedfellows. This is the truth that tyrants and authoritarians fail to learn—squeeze too tightly and you kill that which you try to cling to, or else breed enough fury in those who survive that you are eventually overthrown. Relentless, merciless strength has its downfall in the enemies it eventually raises up against you.”

  “But then the alternative is … what?” I asked. “Holding loosely? Letting rebels and usurpers and malcontents rise up against you?”

  “There is a middle ground, thin as a knife’s blade, and upon it is where I strive to walk, young All-aric.” He nodded once, apparently satisfied. “It is from there that I sit as First Citizen, the first among equals. My people have to choose to follow me or not … and if they decide not, I am replaced and leave Sennshann to live a quiet life on my estate—my sanctuary. Lately, every day I think it would be easier there, as my life becomes overwhelming trying to deal with an empire’s problems. You understand.” He snorted. “Or you would have, had you taken the throne before we met.”

  “What’s to become of me now?” I asked, a vision of Enrant Monge flashing before my eyes. The possibilities played before me in that instant—if I wasn’t to die, perhaps I’d be sent home.

  Or perhaps I’d be sent back to the slave camp.

  “For now you will remain here, and mend,” Chavoron said. “I will contemplate your fate, and your time here will give the mob churning for your blood some time to settle. I think that best.”

  “Very well,” I said, as though I had any say in the matter at all.

  He chuckled lightly, and then turned to walk away. He stopped at the far end of the room. “You know … you didn’t once ask me about your men from the Coliseum.”

  “How … how are they?” I asked, feeling a measure of shame that I hadn’t even considered them. “Do they yet live?”

  “They yet live,” he said with a nod. “They are in the camp still, but isolated for now. There was a call for them to be culled, but I stopped that—at least for now. Their fate is still tied to yours, it seems.” He bowed his head in salute. “Let us hope for their sake that you come through this, eh?”

  And with that he left, exiting out a door I hadn’t seen in the shadows, and leaving me alone. The torches began to fade around me, snuffing out, as though I was unworthy of their continued light.

  29.

  Cyrus

  They appeared before the portal below the Citadel, the flash of the spell fading. Cyrus turned to see the stone ovoid already lit up, twisting and coruscating with energy contained in the hollow space between the rims. It crackled quietly, shedding a golden glow.

  “Where are we going first?” Quinneria asked. Cyrus started to answer, but she cut him off before he could. “Consider your choice carefully; fighting Tempestus before Aurous might be preferable.”

  “Do you know anything about their respective realms?” Cyrus asked, watching her carefully. “Something that might tip my decision one way or another?”

  Quinneria flushed slightly. “I know only what I’ve read of them; I’ve never been to the Realms of Winter or Storms.”

  “I expect one to be very damned cold, the other … rainy?” Terian asked.

  “Ace deduction, boss,” Aisling drawled.

  “You never called me boss,” Cyrus said, and then flushed and looked away, noting a sudden, similar darkness in Aisling’s cheeks as she turned her head, studiously ignoring him. She called me much, much more intimate things than that.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know firsthand what we’re dealing with—” Quinneria said.

  “If only you knew someone who had been to the upper realms,” came a voice out of the shadows near the entrance to the catacombs. Cyrus spun, peering into the dark, and wordlessly cast the Eagle Eye spell upon himself, allowing him to see through the gloomy shadows.

  “Isabelle,” Cyrus said as his sister-in-law came toward him,
her white robes swishing behind her. “How did you—”

  “Word reached my ears of the attack on Pharesia and its conclusion,” she said, her eyes narrowed as she stalked up to him. “I assumed you would act in fury, looking to quench your thirst for vengeance, and here I find you, stalking off with—” She looked past him. “Fifteen people? Truly?” She looked quite nonplussed. “Have you any idea how many Endeavor takes into the Realms of Storm and Winter when we go?”

  “More?” Cyrus offered.

  “Thousands,” she said, voice rising. “And we have at our disposal some of the finest—not to mention, the gods themselves are not there when we raid their places of—”

  “Wait, you said fifteen.” Cyrus turned around, looking at the small party behind him, scanning through until he found a blue-cloaked figure hiding between J’anda and Mendicant. “What the hells? Cora?”

  Cora slipped her aqua blue cowl back to reveal her auburn hair. Playful hazel eyes greeted him as she stepped forward, smiling slyly at Quinneria, who smiled back. “You didn’t notice me slip into the group at Pharesia, did you?”

  “I wasn’t paying much attention to the spellcasters, since you weren’t in the battle,” Cyrus said, looking at her with suspicion. “Why are you here?”

  The playfulness faded as the enchanter turned serious. “I came with Martaina. I heard about Sanctuary, and when the gods came for Pharesia, well …” She stood stiffly. “It’s not as though I can just stand aside and let them destroy all the world, especially not two of the places I’ve lived and cared for in my life.”

  “Ahem,” Isabelle said, drawing Cyrus’s attention back to her.

  “You godsdamned elves,” Cyrus said. “Isabelle—”

  “You mean to storm the keeps of gods, Cyrus,” she said. “Their places of power, you understand? And I don’t say that as some sort of idle comment, or poetic description of their homes, I mean it as—”

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “I know. Intersections of magical currents that they squat on, like a fat kinsman who hogs the outhouse at the wrong moment.”