The Unwilling Warlord

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Ordinarily, the Council went about its business, and Vond went about his business, and the two had as little to do with each other as possible, communicating with each other only through Sterren. For Vond to meet with the entire Council was unheard of.

  Sterren hurried down the stairs, the wide sleeves of his velvet tunic flapping at his sides, and marched across the broad hallway at the bottom. The great red doors at the inner end of the hallway led into the audience chamber; the black doors at the outer end led out to the plaza. He ignored them both, and headed directly for the small rosewood door that nestled unobtrusively in one corner.

  His hand on the latch, he hesitated. He rapped lightly, then opened the door and walked in.

  The seven councillors were seated at the table where they carried out most of their deliberations, three to a side. Their chairwoman, Lady Kalira, usually sat at the head of the table; today she was at the foot, and the Great Vond floated cross-legged at the head. He was only slightly higher than if he had been using a chair; his knees were below the polished wood of the table-top.

  “Ah, there you are!” Vond said when he saw Sterren step into the room.

  “Here I am,” Sterren agreed. “What’s happening?” He looked about for somewhere to sit, or even somewhere better to stand, and spotted an unused chair. He turned it to face the warlock emperor, and asked, “May I sit?”

  Vond waved permission. As he did, he caught sight of Ildirin peering in the doorway.

  “I see you found him,” the warlock said. “Now go see if you can find us something appropriate to drink; I expect we’ll be doing a lot of talking, and talking is thirsty work.”

  Ildirin bowed and vanished, closing the door behind him.

  “Now,” Vond said, “I suppose you all want to know why we’re here, so I’ll get right to the point, which is that am I not at all sure I like this ‘Imperial Council’ of yours.”

  Sterren did not like the sound of that, and decided that perhaps Vond was not in a mood to hear bad news today.

  He wondered whether he could somehow convey an anonymous message to the warlock.

  The councillors glanced at one another, and some at Sterren, but after a second or two all eyes came to rest on Lady Kalira.

  She accepted her silent appointment as spokeswoman, and rose.

  “Your Imperial Majesty,” she said in her accented Ethsharitic, “we serve at your pleasure. If you wish us to stop, we will stop, we will be glad to stop.”

  Two or three heads bobbed in agreement; nobody indicated by even the slightest gesture or sound that he might think otherwise.

  “Don’t be so quick to resign, either,” Vond snapped. “I know I need somebody to run things; I’m just not sure I want you, and I’m not sure you’ve been running things the way I want them run.”

  “We serve at your Imperial Majesty’s pleasure,” Lady Kalira repeated, bowing her head.

  Her Ethsharitic had improved greatly over the past several months, Sterren noticed. Recognizing that it was the new language of government had driven her to study it far more seriously than mere curiosity had before.

  “That’s what you say here,” Vond said, “but I hear otherwise elsewhere. I hear whispers that you’re plotting to overthrow me, to restore the old monarchies. After all, you’re all aristocrats yourselves; why should you accept a commoner like me as your emperor?”

  Lady Kalira started to say something, but Vond held up his hand to stop her.

  Sterren wondered suddenly just what sort of whispers Vond had actually been hearing. Was it whispered rumors that had upset him, or was there another sort of whisper entirely that was getting on his nerves?

  Then he forgot about that, as Vond turned and addressed him directly.

  “So, my lord chancellor, why is it you chose only the old nobility for your council?”

  The question itself was easy to answer, so easy that Sterren wondered what Vond was really after.

  “Because, your Majesty,” Sterren said, “no one else in your empire has had any training or experience in governing.”

  “And you did not see fit to train them?”

  “No, your Majesty, I didn’t; I was trying to set up something to handle governing now, not at some indefinite future time. Besides, I don’t know any more about governing or training peasants to govern than you do.”

  “It wouldn’t have to be peasants; couldn’t you find merchants or tradesmen? Running a country can’t be that different from running a business.”

  Sterren had some serious doubts about Vond’s statement, but he ignored it and answered the question. “I didn’t try to find tradesmen, because I didn’t see anything wrong with using nobles who already know the job. Besides, there aren’t that many tradesmen around here; it’s not exactly Ethshar. I mean, in Semma, they had a Lord Trader—how much of a merchant class could there be, in a case like that?”

  “You didn’t see anything wrong with using the nobles I threw out of power?”

  “No, I didn’t!” Sterren answered. “What are they going to do? You’d kill anyone who got out of line, and they know it.” He gestured at the councillors, reminding Vond that they were listening.

  “They could stir up discontent,” the warlock suggested.

  “Why should they? Listen, Vond, I don’t think you appreciate what these people have done here. I picked the most competent people I could, without worrying about where they came from. Each of them agreed to help run the empire because they could see that it was here to stay, and each one of them was labeled a traitor by his friends and family because of that! They put up with that because they want to see their people—nobles, peasants, merchants, everybody—ruled fairly and well. If your empire ever did fall, and the old kingdoms were restored, they’d probably all be hanged for treason for having helped you!”

  “You think so?” Vond said, his expression unreadable.

  “Yes, I think so!” Sterren snapped.

  At that point Ildirin entered quietly, bearing a tray that held a full decanter and a dozen wineglasses. He proceeded around the edge of the room to the emperor, who court etiquette required be served first.

  “And I don’t suppose,” Vond said, “that you might be trying to put the nobility back in power, leaving me just a figurehead!”

  “Why would I want to do that?” Sterren asked, genuinely puzzled.

  Vond accepted a glass of wine. “Because you’re a noble yourself, of course, Sterren, Ninth Warlord!” He drank.

  Sterren’s mouth fell open in astonishment. One of the councillors giggled, then quickly suppressed it. Ildirin silently poured wine.

  “Me?” Sterren said at last. “I’m an Ethsharitic merchant’s brat! I’m no noble; my grandmother ran away from home, and I don’t give a damn who her father and brother were. I’m no more a part of the old nobility here than you are!”

  Vond’s expression stopped him, and he corrected himself, “Well, not much more. I didn’t know I had any noble blood.” He glanced at the councillors, and said, “Besides, if I were trying to restore the old nobility, wouldn’t I have put kings and princes on the council, instead of these people?”

  “Kings would be a little obvious,” Vond pointed out, “and you did put a few princes in here, didn’t you?”

  “I did?” Sterren looked at the councillors again, and recognized Prince Ferral of Enmurinon.

  “Oh,” he said. Defensively, he added, “Only one. Out of seven.”

  “So far,” Vond said.

  Ildirin had served all the councillors now, and approached Sterren with a filled glass. He waved it away; it appeared he needed his head clear if he was going to keep it.

  “So far,” Sterren said, “and forever. I don’t choose new councillors; I don’t know who can handle the job and who can’t. I let each councillor choose his own successor.”

  Ildirin, still holding the glass he had intended for Sterren, looked around the room and noticed that the emperor’s glass was empty. He stepped back and started glidi
ng silently along the wall, back toward Vond’s place at the head of the table.

  “Oh, I see!” the warlock said, sneering. “You won’t put any kings on the council, but if these seven name kings as their heirs, and then retire, there’s nothing you can do to stop it!”

  “Don’t be silly,” Sterren said, and he heard someone gasp quietly at his audacity in addressing the warlock emperor thus. “The Imperial Council serves at my pleasure, as well as yours, your Majesty. I can dismiss any councillor any time I please. So can you, just as you can dismiss me as your chancellor. And I assure you, I’d dismiss any king or queen, and probably whatever fool named him as heir.”

  “Ah, you would? Why?”

  “Because we don’t want the old royalty back in power. We don’t want one councillor, by virtue of his former station, to perhaps sway the rest of the council unduly. We don’t want to confuse the peasants by restoring a king to any semblance of authority.”

  “That’s right,” Vond said, accepting the full wineglass from Ildirin. “We don’t want any of that. I’m sure the peasants resent me, consider me a usurper...”

  Algarven, once royal steward of Semma, coughed suddenly, choking on a sip of wine. Vond turned to glare at him between sips from his own fresh glass.

  “Excuse me, your Majesty,” Algarven said, as soon as he could breathe and talk again, “but the peasants ... why would you think the peasants resent you?”

  A flicker of uncertainty crossed Vond’s face.

  “I’ve overthrown their kings,” he said.

  “Forgive me, your Majesty,” said Berakon Gerath’s son, once royal treasurer of Akalla of the Diamond, “but so what? What did the old kings ever do for the peasantry? You’ve built roads and houses, put an end to wars, and even done what seemed impossible and regulated the weather. With all this, your taxes are no higher than the old. Believe me, your Majesty, the peasants don’t mind at all that you’ve replaced the old kings, though they do worry a bit about the inevitable price for this bounty.”

  Vond handed his empty glass to Ildirin, who struggled a moment to balance everything on the tray before he could accept it. Vond threw him an annoyed glance.

  “All right,” Vond said, “forget the peasants. You say nobody here wants the old kings restored, but you have a prince on the council; what happens when his father dies?”

  “Your Majesty,” Prince Ferral said quietly, “my father has been dead for five years now. You deposed my elder brother, not my father.”

  “All right, then,” Vond said, as Ildirin fumbled with the decanter, “what happens when your brother dies?”

  “Nothing much, your Majesty. He has children, and other brothers older than myself. I am eighth in the line of succession.”

  Vond glared, and reached for a glass of wine just as Ildirin started to hand him one. Their arms collided, and the wine spilled down the emperor’s chest, staining the golden embroidery on his black robe an ugly shade of red.

  The warlock stared down at the spill for an instant, then shrieked, “You idiot!” He waved an arm, and Ildirin was flung back against the marble wall.

  The crack as his spine broke was clearly audible to everyone in the room.

  Vond waved again, and the servant’s head was crushed, the bones shattered, leaving the skin a limp sack. Blood gushed from his nose and mouth as he died.

  The corpse fell heavily to the floor and lay in a pool of gore.

  Sterren and the councillors stared in shocked silence. The tray that held the decanter still stood on the table. Vond smoothed his robe, but did not seem overly disturbed.

  Sterren knew, as he stared at the corpse, that he would not be warning Vond of anything.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Little was accomplished in the remainder of the meeting. The presence of Ildirin’s body cast a pall over the conversation, and Vond seemed to have spent his anger. In the end, he agreed to let the Imperial Council continue as it had been, with the understanding that it existed entirely by his sufferance, and that he had the right to dismiss any member at any time, and to overrule any decision.

  None of this had ever been in any question, as far as Sterren and the councillors were concerned, but nobody was foolish enough to point this out.

  Afterward, Sterren took a long walk.

  It was obvious that Vond was losing control. The magnificent buildings, the prosperous empire, the thriving crops had all served to hide this; Ildirin’s gruesome death had dragged it out into plain sight. Not only was any thought of a warning gone, Sterren was now convinced that he had to do all he could to destroy Vond quickly.

  That night Vond ate dinner in the Great Hall, with Sterren at his right hand. As often as not he ate in his private apartments, if he bothered to eat meals at all, but on this particular occasion he held a formal dinner, with himself, Sterren, and the Imperial Council at the high table and the rest of the imperial household arrayed along three lower tables.

  “You know, your Majesty,” Sterren remarked as he chewed a bite of apple, “you haven’t done any really spectacular magic lately.”

  Vond looked at him. “Oh?”

  “I mean, early on, you conjured up that storm to rout the armies of Ophkar and Ksinallion, and you quarried and assembled the stone for this palace in a few days, and so forth, and lately, you haven’t done anything much more impressive than laying pavement stones. Oh, that’s certainly useful, and so is regulating the weather, and all the rest, but you haven’t done anything really showy in months.”

  “You don’t consider lighting the night sky showy?”

  Sterren pretended to consider that. “Well, I suppose,” he admitted, “but it’s not new. Everybody’s used to it now.”

  “And why should I want to be showy?” Vond asked.

  “To impress people, to remind everybody what their emperor is capable of. If you got the awe you’re due, you wouldn’t need to worry about disloyalty, and we could avoid unpleasantness like that meeting this morning.”

  Vond nodded.

  “Besides,” Sterren added, “I thought you liked using your magic as much as you could.”

  “I do,” he said. “In fact, I’ve been getting irritable lately, and nervous, and I wonder if it might be because I haven’t been doing enough. The power’s there to be used, after all. It’s always there in the back of my head, and I feel it so very clearly now...” His voice trailed off.

  Sterren nodded encouragingly.

  “What would you suggest?” Vond asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know—move a mountain, maybe?”

  Vond snorted. “I’d need to build one, first; there are no mountains in the empire. Besides, where would I put it?”

  Sterren waved that away. “Not a mountain, then. Well, the edge of the World lies a few leagues to the south of here; could you do something with that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, peel it back and see what’s underneath, maybe. I’ve heard theorists argue about what holds the World up and keeps it from falling into the Nethervoid. Or maybe just go see what lies beyond the edge, and bring back a piece.”

  “There isn’t anything beyond the edge, is there?” Vond asked.

  Sterren shrugged. “Nobody knows,” he said.

  Vond considered that, clearly intrigued.

  Nothing more came of it that night, but the following morning, the tenth of Harvest, Sterren awoke not in his own bed, but hanging in mid-air, just outside the open window of his room.

  “Good morning!” Vond called from above him. “I thought you’d like to come along to the edge of the World and see what it’s like!”

  Sterren looked up nervously. This was not really what he’d had in mind. “Good morning!” he called in reply. “I hope you slept well!”

  Vond frowned.

  “Actually,” he said, “I didn’t. I dreamt ... well, I don’t know exactly what I dreamt, but it wasn’t pleasant, whatever it was.” The frown faded. “Never mind that, though,” he said. “We’re off to
the edge!”

  Sterren concealed his lack of enthusiasm for the venture, and rolled over in mid-air so that he could see where he was flying.

  They sailed quickly past Semma Castle, and across the few leagues of farmland beyond, into the empty southern desert.

  Sterren would have watched the scenery, but there wasn’t any; below and to either side he could see nothing but mile after mile of sand spattered with tough, patchy grass. Behind him he could see the towers of Semma Castle and the Imperial Palace gradually shrinking.

  And ahead he could see nothing. The edge of the World was wrapped in yellow haze.

  Sterren had seen that haze from the tower, but had assumed it was just windblown sand, or glare from sunlight reflecting off the edge itself. To his surprise, he could now see that it was neither, but a sort of very thin golden mist. It would have been almost invisible in any imaginable confined area, but here it seemed to go on forever. He could look through the golden mist, but all he saw beyond it was more golden mist, and still more golden mist, until eventually it added up to opacity. If there were anything beyond the mist, he could not see it.

  And of course, nobody had ever suggested that anything existed beyond the edge of the World, except perhaps Heaven, where the gods lived, and that was more usually thought to lie somewhere above the sky.

  He had nothing to provide him with any scale, but Sterren thought he must be seeing literally hundreds of miles of nothing but that yellow haze.

  Vond called down to him, “What is that stuff?”

  “How should I know?” Sterren called back.

  “Do you think we can get above it?”

  “I have no idea!”

  “I’m going to try.” With that, Vond began to rise, pulling Sterren up with him.

  They ascended for what seemed like hours, and eventually, the golden mist thinned still further—but so did the air about them. The blue sky above turned darker and darker, and grew steadily colder, until Sterren was shivering so badly that he could scarcely shout his protests to the warlock.