by Cindy Dees
Maren’s Belt was a great waestone highway being built all the way around the thousand-mile-long inland sea controlled by the underwater Merr nation. The Belt had a troubled history. Merr, bandits, and local peoples all opposed and hindered its construction. Nonetheless, Maximillian’s will was inexorably prevailing, and Maren’s Belt was nearly three-quarters completed.
Even the partially completed project was significantly reducing the economic and maritime power of the Merr who lived in the Estarran Sea’s murky depths and controlled all shipping on its surface. The sea was isolated from the wider Abyssmal Sea by a great underwater obstacle across its narrow mouth called the Bone Reef. The Imperial Navy had tried—and failed—to find a safe route through the Bone Reef for large naval vessels, and hence, the Merr ruled their underwater kingdom of Estarra unimpeded.
Ammertus turned to Maximillian and murmured quietly enough so his words would not be picked up by the throne room’s excellent acoustics, “Is there not some way that Anton Constantine can be brought back into the fold? After all, it is not as if he is guilty of treason. He merely engaged in some extracurricular commerce. At the end of the day, we all know such black-market activity to be necessary to the smooth working of the larger economy. Better that a loyal subject of yours capture that market than someone who would use it against you.”
Maximillian considered Ammertus thoughtfully. Personally, Endellian thought her father indulged Ammertus far too much. The man was a spoiled, uncontrolled child. No matter that his first scion and only daughter, Vesper, had died tragically. That happened over a century ago. And it was Ammertus’s son Tyviden Starfire’s own fault that he’d been banished from court by her father. Tyviden had inherited his sire’s unfortunate temper and had crossed swords with one of Maximillian’s most powerful kings a few decades back. Tyviden and Ammertus had come out on the losing end of that little peccadillo with Regalo and Gabrielle of Haraland. Maximillian didn’t owe Ammertus anything.
“What did you have in mind for Anton, my friend?” Maximillian asked.
Endellian mentally lurched. That last bit, calling Ammertus friend, had the feel of a barb aimed at her. She must guard her thoughts more carefully.
Ammertus answered obsequiously, “Surely there is something Anton can do to make amends. Payment of a fine. Renewal of his fealty vows to Empire and Throne. Perhaps a letter of censure. After all, Anton has proven himself over and over to be a capable administrator, and he did grow a fledgling colony into a thriving trade center.”
“Indeed,” Maximillian replied dryly. “And he used that thriving trade to line his pockets richly.”
“But if those pockets serve you, where is the problem? All the gold ultimately advances the greater glory of Koth.”
“You make a good point,” Max allowed. “Still. He needs to understand his limits and learn not to overstep them.”
“And if he provides you with proof that he has learned his lesson?”
“Some punishment will still be necessary as an example to all my governors to keep their fingers out of my treasure chests.”
Ammertus bowed deeply. “Of course, my liege. But after that? Is redemption possible? Is there hope for Anton?”
“There is always hope, Ammertus.”
A sentiment Endellian found highly ironic falling from her father’s lips. His main goal had been forever, and would remain, to crush all hope from the spirits of his subjects. Where there was hope, there was anger, and in anger lay rebellion. Oh no. His Resplendent Majesty, Maximillian the Third, was having no part of tolerating hope among the subjects in his Eternal Empire.
* * *
Something big and dark moved slightly beside Will, waking him abruptly. He jerked away from it, heart pounding. Out of long habit, he reached behind his neck for his staff, but it was not slung across his back. The black shape resolved itself into Rynn, rolling over sluggishly, groaning a little. Thank the Lady. He let out a long sigh of relief. Until he remembered where he was and why. His pulse spiked up once more.
“Rynn,” Will whispered urgently. “Wake up!”
To Will’s immense relief, the paxan’s three eyes blinked up at him, gaining awareness with admirable speed.
“We were drugged,” Rynn said low.
“And kidnapped,” Will added sourly. “Are you shackled as well?” He rattled his chains lightly.
“Aye. And stop doing that. We do not want to let our captors know we stir.”
“Is that Eben behind you? We should wake him—”
Rynn answered equally quietly. “Nay. Let him sleep until he wakes on his own. He has important business on the dream plane.”
“More important than being kidnapped and hauled off into the wilds by rakasha slavers?”
“Rakasha slavers?”
“Aye,” Will answered. “I woke earlier, and one of them came in to brag to me that he killed Leland Hyland.”
Rynn growled in the back of his throat. “Which one?”
“White tiger changeling. Called Gorath. But I’ve got dibs on him.”
Rynn scowled. “See to it you finish him off, or else I will.”
He and Rynn traded grim nods of understanding. Gorath was a dead man.
“Have you attempted an escape, by any chance?” Rynn asked.
“Not yet. Until we’re all awake, there’s no sense trying anything.”
“Where are we?”
“Good question. While you slept, I’ve been picking at the stitching that holds the canvas roof together. I think the rip in the seam is big enough to look out now.”
Will pushed carefully to his knees, annoyed at the lingering weakness in his limbs from whatever drug had been slipped into their ale. The wagon swayed a bit, and he steadied himself against the sideboard.
The small tear he’d made in a roof seam admitted no light, but it did let in a bitter cold draft bearing tiny crystals of snow. A thin drift of it had formed on the wagon bed beside him. He peered cautiously through it.
Will reported in a whisper, “We’re in light forest—mixed hardwoods, mostly. Dirt wagon path. I’d place us not far from Dupree. South and west, if I had to guess, into Hyland.” He added, “Why would our captors take us into our greatest friends’ lands?”
Rynn answered practically, “If they wish to take us across the Estarran Sea or put us on a ship bound for foreign lands, it’s the fastest route to a deepwater port that’s not Dupree.”
Given that they were not resurrecting at the Heart this very minute, death was obviously not the plan for them. Will scowled. He would not go down easily into slavery or whatever else their captors had planned for them.
“Did they take your boots, too?” Will asked.
“Yes, but I have trained for many years barefoot. My feet are well toughened against injury or cold.”
“Remind me to do the same once we are free of this mess,” Will retorted grimly.
Rynn studied his chains. “If we can work our chains free of the wagon frame, we can use them as weapons.”
Will examined his shackles and the bolt that attached them to the wagon. The bolt was the weak point. Using the chain for leverage, he began turning the bolt back and forth, attempting to strip the wood and pull it free. Rynn did the same beside him.
“Any idea how long Eben will be asleep?” Will asked as they worked.
Rynn glanced down at their friend. “None. No matter the import of Eben’s dreams this night, we’ll need to wake him soon, though, so he can get to work on his shackles, too.”
As if uttering his name aloud summoned him, Eben blinked awake mere seconds later. He jerked against his chains in surprise and dismay.
“Easy, friend,” Will muttered low. “We’re trying not to make too much noise in here. We don’t want to alert our captors that we are awake.”
Eben nodded in understanding and joined in working at the bolt securing his chains.
“Did you find your sister?” Rynn whispered.
“No, but I did speak with that littl
e girl we saw on the dream plane last fall.”
“Vesper?” Will asked in surprise. They’d thought the being trapped in a child’s body might have been behind the incursion into the Dominion lands from the dream plane. What was she doing talking with Eben?
“Yes. And her bodyguard, the Gaged Man, was there, along with a bunch of powerful elemental beings.”
“Phantasms of elemental beings,” Rynn corrected.
“Same difference,” Eben muttered.
Rynn pulled a face. “Not many actual elementals could or would venture to the dream plane. It is not their native home and not their native source of power. A dream creature posing as an elemental would be vastly more powerful than an actual elemental on the dream plane.”
“Fine,” Will groused. “The difference is duly noted.” He turned back to Eben. “What did Vesper want?”
“Nothing. She offered to help us fix Kendrick, and she also said she would help us escape our current predicament.”
“Why would she do that?” Will asked suspiciously.
“Does it matter?” Eben retorted.
Rynn answered, “Yes. It matters a great deal. She is an extremely powerful being and could make our lives, even here, very difficult if we cross her.”
“Well, she offered to help us,” Eben replied defensively.
Will snorted. “Is she going to send someone to rescue us?”
“She did not say. She just said she would do what she could and that we would know when the moment had come to make our move.”
Rynn grunted under his breath as he worked to free himself. “Fortune favors those who help themselves.”
Eben caught up with them in their bolt-pulling efforts quickly. The jann was very strong and able to exert a lot of force upon the wood his shackles were attached to. His chains popped free first, followed quickly by Rynn’s. Will was chagrined to be last to break free, but with the help of the other two men, his bolt pulled free in a few minutes.
“Now what?” Eben whispered.
“Now we wait for a bump in the road and sneak out the back of the wagon when they won’t notice the shift from our weight leaving. I’ll go first.”
Will gathered his staff, which the rakasha had conveniently stowed in the front of the wagon bed, along with Eben’s mace and sword, and Rynn’s crystal gauntlets and greaves. He found their cloaks, as well, and passed those out, but there was no sign of their boots.
“Any sign of my headband?” Rynn breathed.
Will shook his head, and Rynn grimaced.
Holding his chains close against his chest, Will curled up close to the back of the wagon. Although it had high sides, it had no tailgate. The wagon jolted through a big rut, and Will rolled off the vehicle. He landed in a crouch that sent daggers of pain shooting through his chilled feet, then rolled again, this time off the rough path, into clumps of snow-covered dead grass.
Wet and muddy, he gained his feet in time to see Rynn roll off the back of the wagon and then Eben. Will danced on half-frozen feet as they ran back toward him. The pain in his feet was growing unbearable as the snow froze his flesh.
They moved away from the path into dark shadows, and Rynn tore long strips of cloth off the bottom of his cloak that Will and Eben wrapped around their feet and tied around their ankles.
They crept through the forest for close to an hour, with Rynn countertracking and Will using his Bloodroot-endowed ability to push leaves, vines, and branches out of their way and then closing the foliage back in behind them to cover their tracks. Finally, they stopped in the lee of a great black pine to confer.
“Where are we?” Eben whispered.
Will answered quickly, “Hyland. We can’t be more than a few hours outside of Dupree. No poison works on me for very long.”
“Where do we go now?” Rynn asked.
“Back to Dupree?” Will suggested. “My guildmaster will not be amused to hear of this.” Not to mention said guildmaster, Aurelius Lightstar, was also his grandfather.
Eben added grimly, “Aurelius will want to hear what I saw of Vesper’s army, too.”
“As will I,” Rynn added a shade sharply. The paxan continued, “If I am not mistaken, that is the first hint of dawn lightening the sky in that direction. And Dupree lies east of Hyland.”
“Into the light, then,” Will muttered. “With all due haste. Our captors will figure out soon enough that they’ve lost us. And apparently, there’s a hefty bounty on our heads, compliments of Anton Constantine.”
CHAPTER
4
Kadir studied the travel-weary man who took a seat at the table of proctors. He had come from the northeast reaches of Haelos, a journey of many weeks that had obviously taken its toll. The fellow’s wrinkles looked permanently grouted with dust, and the insignia of rank on his navy blue cloak was stained nearly beyond recognition.
The windowless room in which they met was dim and damp, buried in its secret location for countless centuries. Oil torches guttered in their iron brackets at intervals along the walls between ancient tapestries of forgotten kings and queens, nameless even unto the Mages of Alchizzadon themselves.
High Proctor Albinus sat at the head of the table, little more than a collapsed pile of robes with a desiccated face peering out of them. Kadir spoke for the high proctor at whose right hand he sat. “Greetings, Claviger Angelico. I trust your journey from the Dominion lands was not too arduous.”
“Greetings, Proctor Kadir, High Proctor Albinus, gentlemen. My journey was long but made less so by Maren’s Belt. We were able to use a completed portion of the Imperial highway, and as promised by the Empire, the magic of its waestones sped our travel and increased our stamina greatly.”
“Did you encounter bandits or brigands upon the Belt?”
“Nay. It was heavily patrolled by Imperial troops and workers making their way to the terminus of the Belt where construction continues.”
Kadir nodded.
“And you had no trouble getting Lord Goldeneye to release you from your duties to come here?”
“He was well pleased to be rid of me. After I was possessed and caused such havoc among his people, he has no great love for me. In fact, one of my recommendations will be to replace me with a new claviger to tend the gate in his capital.”
Proctor Elfonse, an arrogant turd of a man by Kadir’s reckoning, spoke up. “Replacement clavigers are not easy to come by, Angelico.”
Kadir reluctantly had to agree with Elfonse. Still, their relationship with the Dominion’s leader was an important one to safeguard. If Goldeneye wanted a new claviger, he would get one.
The high proctor whispered in his direction, and Kadir’s sharp ears picked up the command, which he repeated for all to hear. “Tell us everything, Angelico. From the beginning.”
The claviger relayed how the gate had spontaneously opened, activated from the far side. The announcement caused a stir in the room, and Albinus assigned several proctors and their people to research how a gate had been opened without a key in both of the gate’s matching tympans—the navigation and locking mechanisms that controlled a gate between the planes.
Kadir listened in dismay as Angelico described being mind-controlled by a powerful dream creature who had taken the form of a little girl. She had ordered huge phantasms in the guise of elementals to guard him. Angelico described advance scouts passing stealthily through the gate, and then an army of elementally based phantasms that had poured through the gate and attacked the Dominion. Kadir was particularly interested in how everyone who approached the open gate found themselves uncontrollably enraged and attacked every living being around them, including their own friends and allies.
He would hate to meet the being who could generate such a powerful mind effect over an entire area. Stars below, the danger of someone able to drive huge military forces mad. It sounded like something a Kothite might do, but then again, Kothites were not known to inhabit or even transit the dream plane. Creatures in that realm had defenses against th
e Kothites’ mental powers that made the place particularly unappealing to the Emperor and his cronies.
The Council of Proctors agreed unanimously that word must be sent immediately to all the other clavigers who guarded and operated the various gates around Haelos to beware of incursions from the dream plane. For thousands of years, the mages had successfully protected the ancient gates, and they were not about to fail in their duty now.
While the others wrangled over instructions to the clavigers to stand guard over the gates in pairs and beware of spontaneous activations, Kadir considered why a being of such power as the little girl would build an army and then reach through to this plane.
The answer, when it hit him, brought him half out of his seat in alarm.
“What is it, Kadir?” Albinus asked.
“This child. Did she say anything of why she attempts to pass through to this plane from her own?” Kadir asked Angelico urgently.
“No. Why?”
Kadir looked grimly around the table at his fellow mages. “Why else would a powerful dream being come through to this plane if not to find and take over a material body?”
Blank looks met his declaration. They did not see the threat. He continued, “If you were a powerful dream creature and wanted to come to the material plane, what kind of body would you look for? Dream creatures are immortal, but fragile. If I were this child, I would want an immortal body of great strength and fortitude. One without a conscious spirit to fight my possessing it.”
Mages rose out of their seats all around the table, making sounds of dismay.
Kadir pounded the point home mercilessly. “Our lord king and leader, Hadrian, is in grave danger. His physical body is exactly what this child needs.”