Blood of the Emperor

by Tracy Hickman

  “The same way you find an anthill, Legate…you follow the ants.”

  “You want me to follow ants?” Xhu’chan puzzled.

  “The dragon knows where this rebel army is located,” said K’yeran, her gaze falling onto the map in front of her. Her long finger reached out from her robe, pointing at Shellsea on the map then drawing northward along the coast toward Nordesia. “The caravan follows the dragon. All we have to do is follow the caravan. You should continue to move your army northward. In the meanwhile, you should be relieved to know that I and my Quorum will be leaving you for the time being on a little expedition of our own. If we find your rebel army…we’ll let you know.”

  Urulani felt a chill run through her that was deeper than the cold of the thin air around her. She was struggling to remain awake. The last six days had been exhausting as she had moved from village to town along the shoreline of the Bay of Thetis. Everywhere she had gone, the people in the villages had rallied to her tales of Drakis and the great army’s victories in the northland. Some had remained in their homes, many had balked at her call but many more had listened to her message. It was with satisfaction that she saw the lines of new believers heading eastward along the roads and sometimes by ship, all yearning to become a part of the Drakis Uprising, as they had called it. All were eager to do their part and entire caravans had moved along the coast toward Shellsea and the coastal road north toward Gorganta Bay. They sang songs as they traveled about the “Drakis Dawn” and the “War of the Prophet,” their words unclear to her as she flew above them but the intent of their hearts evident. Urulani was exhausted and desperately in need of sleep but the sight below had brought her back to wakefulness.

  She leaned out from the back of the dragon, gazing down. They were flying amid towering clouds that rose around them. Kyranish rode the currents that raged between the canyons of white in the sky, drifting with his wings extended from updraft to updraft. It was a violent, rough ride for Urulani but the dragon appeared to be enjoying the respite from having to beat his wings constantly against the air. It was making Urulani uneasy, a sensation which was completely foreign to her on the deck of a ship regardless of the hostility of the sea.

  It was not the sky but the sight below that sent a sudden shiver up her spine.

  Urulani had gotten good at recognizing landmarks on the ground far below. She had little concept of how high she was above the ground. In her mind, each time the dragon rose into the sky, it was not so much that she was getting higher as the ground was shrinking beneath her. The landscape below became an incredibly detailed map. It was fascinating to her and she enjoyed keeping track of their progress as they flew, picking up more details of each place along the way.

  It was the details she had just noticed around Port Dog, now ten thousand feet below her that had caught her attention. There were over a hundred patches of tents in rows and columns that were too neat and too square. Flashes from a fold portal winked at her again and again as columns of warriors—antlike in their movements—wound out from its maw.

  “It’s already more than a Legion in size,” Urulani murmured. “They’re coming for us.”

  Urulani reached down with her hand, placing it against the neck of Kyranish.

  “Yes, Urulani, I see them, too,’ the dragon responded as the clouds vanished from the sky which had suddenly changed from midday to dusk. The warriors below them were changed, too, appearing as a dark blight spreading across the land. “The elves make war on us once more.”

  “They have already reached the coast,” Urulani said, weariness and despair washing over her. “We’ve got to warn the pilgrims. We’ve got to stop them before…before…”

  Urulani slumped forward in her harness, shock and exhaustion overtaking her.

  Kyranish obeyed, pressing northward along the coast. Day passed into night as the dragon continued north, but Kyranish did not feel the need to awaken his exhausted companion. The dragon spotted the streams of refugees moving northward along the coast.

  Kyranish had nearly reached Watchman Cove at the northern end of Gorganta Bay when, quite abruptly, he raised his head. Then, silently, he banked sharply eastward, changing his course.

  He turned so smoothly that the sleeping Urulani never noticed that they were no longer heading toward the encampment.

  CHAPTER 19

  The Gift

  K’YERAN TSI-M’HARUL STOOD on the open and vacant plain. Dust and thin smoke drifted past her in the evening breeze as she surveyed the great expanse around her. For as far as she could see, the prairie grasses were trampled flat, in many places no longer there at all. There were stone rings for campfires laid practically to the horizon. There were a number of wagons with broken wheels abandoned here and there as well as pieces of discarded items everywhere she looked. Broken pots, cracked skillets, empty baskets, and tracks everywhere representing every kind of creature from manticores to gnomes, and more humans than she thought still existed.

  It was not the enormity of the abandoned encampment or its implications that held her attention. Rather, it was a single tent that remained standing in the southeastern area of the field of debris. Its canvas rustled in the breeze but it remained otherwise placid amidst the abandonment stretching to the north and west. K’yeran stood considering this single fragile dwelling from more than three hundred feet away. She fingered her Matei staff in absentminded rhythms with her elongated head tilted to one side. It was dangerous in its innocuous appearance and she was trying to decide how to approach it.

  “Inquisitor K’yeran!” An Iblisi Assesia approached the Inquisitor, running toward her from the north.

  “Yes, Jak’ra,” K’yeran acknowledged without turning her attention from the tent surface shifting slightly in the wind. “Why do you disturb my musings?”

  The Assesia came to a stop a few feet away from the Inquisitor. Jak’ra was a part of K’yeran’s Quorum, dispatched northward on a mission for their Order. His respect for her included maintaining a reasonably safe distance. “The Indexia sent me back to report.”

  K’yeran smiled. Wheton and Chik’dai had followed the tracks northward on her instructions. Both represented the Indexia of their Quorum but it was telling that they would send one of the lower-ranking Assesia to give their report. They must have feared their truth would not be to K’yeran’s liking. “By all means, then, report.”

  “The cart and foot tracks lead generally toward the north,” Jak’ra said, planting the metal tip of his own Matei staff into the packed dirt at his side. “There they all converge into fifteen locations in a fixed line and then suddenly vanish with no trace of them beyond.”

  “They are using folds then,” K’yeran observed out loud. She always felt that she reasoned more clearly when she spoke her thoughts.

  “No, Inquisitor,” the Assesia responded.

  K’yeran turned her head slowly to face the young Iblisi. “What do you mean…no?”

  “I mean, Inquisitor, that there were no fold markings to be found.”

  “No runes? No inscriptions?”

  “No, Inquisitor.”

  “Fold platforms then?”

  “No, Inquisitor.”

  K’yeran turned her attention back to the sole remaining tent. “Where did they go, then? And now we don’t even know how they got there…wherever there is. What about the rest of the Assesia?”

  “Assesia Phagana is investigating large, strange tracks of two—perhaps three—creatures of monstrous size,” Jak’ra continued, seemingly relieved that he had survived what he considered to be the most volatile part of his report. “These appear to end abruptly as well.”

  “Dragons,” K’yeran mused aloud.

  “Dragons?” Jak’ra blinked, startled.

  “Yes, they must have taken flight,” K’yeran nodded. “That’s why they don’t go anywhere but into thin air…however I have great doubts that this entire encampment followed suit, flapped their wings and vanished into the sky.”

  “Perhaps
the dragons…ate them?” Assesia Jak’ra suggested.

  “Ate them?” K’yeran barked in disbelief. “Over a hundred thousand manticores, chimerians, and the gods know what all else—many of them armed and seasoned warriors—and the dragons ate them?”

  “Well,” Jak’ra offered hesitantly. “Maybe they were hungry dragons?”

  K’yeran bared her teeth. “Wouldn’t that be a wonderful gift for the Emperor! All his problems solved by a ravenous group of dragons now bloated on the carcasses of his enemies.”

  “I suppose it would be an incredible gift…”

  “Only I don’t believe in gifts,” K’yeran snarled. “Too convenient is only pretty wrapping that hides the real danger waiting to bite you with poisonous fangs. Don’t make up stories, boy, you’re no good at it. And speaking of dangerous gifts—I think it’s time I unwrapped this one.”

  K’yeran strode suddenly toward the tent. The Matei staff spun in her hands, the head suddenly aglow and alive. Jak’ra, caught off guard, followed quickly, trying to catch up with the head of the Quorum as she quickly closed the distance to the tent. She reached out with the metal tip of her staff, flipping the door flap to one side.

  Jak’ra nearly ran into the back of the Inquisitor as she stopped suddenly at the entrance to the tent.

  “I hate this,” she muttered. “I really hate this.”

  “What?” Jak’ra breathed, trying to look around her.

  “This!” K’yeran seethed, pointing the tip of her Matei staff at the center of the tent’s interior.

  There, lying on a cot, was the sleeping form of Soen Tjen-rei. He was in his weathered and faded robes, his Matei staff—devoid of all Aether—held in his folded arms, rising and falling slowly with every breath.

  “He’s…asleep?” Jak’ra whispered.

  “It’s an enchantment,” K’yeran wrinkled her nose in disgust. “A simple charm placed on a rogue Inquisitor of the Iblisi. It’s embarrassing is what it is! Any barely trained initiate into the Iblisi Orders could have defended against it.”

  “But that’s…that’s Soen Tjen-rei!” the Assesia gaped. “He’s the renegade we were sent to kill!”

  “Yes, isn’t he,” K’yeran observed dryly. “But we aren’t going to do that, are we, Assesia Jak’ra?”

  “We aren’t?” The young Quorum follower responded with doubt.

  “No, I have overriding orders,” K’yeran asserted. “We are to bring him back to the Keeper for special interrogation. The Keeper demands to know why this renegade is here.”

  “Inquisitor K’yeran,” Jak’ra said in haste, “if he is still under the effects of this magic, we could enfold him in a suspension field, then gently transport him so as not to awaken him, using each of our staves in series…”

  “Or,” K’yeran huffed. “We could just ask him what he’s doing here. Oblige me by holding perfectly still for the next few seconds.”

  K’yeran stepped forward into the tent, placed one booted foot against the cot and kicked it over.

  Soen fell against the hard ground, jolting awake. He at once leaped to his feet, his Matei staff in his hands as though prepared to deal death.

  “Hello, Soen,” K’yeran said casually.

  Soen blinked. “Hello, K’yeran.”

  “Been a long time,” K’yeran smiled.

  “Not long enough,” Soen answered in a calm, flat voice.

  “You mind putting down your stick,” K’yeran said, pointing at Soen’s still-poised Matei staff. “We both know that’s as dead as last week’s fish.”

  “And you also know, I can still do a lot of damage with a dead stick,” Soen observed.

  “And I can do whole worlds of damage more with my live one,” K’yeran pointed to the bright glow from the head of her staff, cradled casually in the crook of her left arm. “It would be such a shame if I had to demonstrate the difference to you.”

  “It’s never stopped you before,” Soen observed.

  “Nor you, as I recall,” K’yeran smiled, raising her thin eyebrow over her featureless left eye. “The price of fame, I suppose…or is that infamy? I’m always getting those two mixed up.”

  “Are we talking about you or me?” Soen asked.

  “Why, you, of course,” K’yeran laughed with a sound like a knife’s edge on slate. “Indeed, one hears a great deal about Soen everywhere one goes these days. Soen, the mysterious traitor of the Iblisi, who has joined up with the army of the Drakis Rebellion. Soen the dangerous man who sold his birthright among the elven castes for the lies of a human charlatan…or something along those lines. The details of the official story are still being worked out.”

  “And how does this story end?” Soen asked, straightening up.

  “You know, that’s the most astonishing part of all,” K’yeran said, reaching up with her right hand and rubbing the back of her elongated head. “Ch’drei hasn’t told me the end of the story yet.”

  “Which is why you didn’t kill me while I slept,” Soen observed. “The Keeper does not yet know how she wants the story to end.”

  “I believe that’s why she wants to talk to you,” K’yeran nodded. “She wants a very private chat with you. I believe she says she’ll even provide the tea.”

  “And you’ve come not only to deliver the invitation,” Soen folded his arms around his useless Matei staff, “but to make sure that I accept.”

  “More than just accept,” K’yeran said. “I’m to escort you personally to the party.”

  “Which is why you managed with this inept adept at your side to infiltrate the pilgrim encampment and find me,” Soen smiled sadly as he shook his head. “You disappoint me, K’yeran. You should have known that slipping into a camp of a hundred thousand rebels is one thing; managing to escape it is another altogether. We are surrounded by an army who now has access to power that I am only beginning to understand. Power which…”

  Soen stopped, his black eyes widening.

  “It’s gone!” he murmured.

  K’yeran flashed a broad, sharp-toothed smile. “Lose something?”

  “The Human Aether,” Soen stammered. “I used to feel it in my bones. It’s…no longer there.”

  Jak’ra, still standing just behind K’yeran, somehow managed to find his voice. “Soen Tjen-rei! You are charged by the Keeper of the Imperial Order of the Iblisi to yield your person to the will of the Quorum…”

  Soen stepped past K’yeran toward the tent opening, pushing the young Assesia out of the way without a second glance.

  “Relax, Jak’ra,” K’yeran said as she turned and followed Soen out of the tent. “I promise to let you deal with the formalities later.”

  She found Soen standing outside the tent, his shoulders and back stiff. He gazed out over the horizon, searching. “What day is it, K’yeran?”

  “The fourteenth day of Kholas,” the Inquisitor answered, fingering her Matei staff. The glowing color in the staff’s head intensified, shifting to a deeper purple. “Is it important?”

  “I lay down on that cot on the night of the eleventh,” Soen sighed, pointing back to the tent. “I’ve been asleep all that time which means they left me here three days ago. We’ve got to find them, K’yeran. Where are they?”

  “I was hoping you could tell us,” the female Inquisitor sighed. “But it doesn’t matter.”

  “You don’t get it, do you, K’yeran?” Soen said, the anger building in his voice. “None of you get it! It matters a great deal—more than you can possibly know!”

  “The Army of the Prophet?” K’yeran laughed. “Bolters and frontier rabble?”

  “These ‘rabble’ present a significant threat to the future of the Empire,” Soen responded. “They have the means and the will to rob the Empire of its Aether—its very lifeblood. And they are very quickly reclaiming their magic. They already are capable of creating their own folds without the need of platforms or staves or conduits. If they are allowed to go unchecked…”

  K’yeran swung her Matei staff i
n a blazing arc. The purple flash from the head of the staff erupted around Soen. He stopped moving in the moment, his mouth frozen in the act of forming another word. The brilliant purple glow surrounded him.

  “That,” grumbled Jak’ra as he emerged from the tent, “is what I thought we should have done in the first place.”

  “Fortunately, what you think does not matter,” K’yeran said as she walked up to where the frozen Soen stood, inspecting him to make certain the spell had completely engulfed him. Satisfied, she turned to the Assesia as she pointed to the top of a nearby rise. “Inscribe a fold rune up there then propagate thirty or so more down either side of the slope. When that’s done recall the rest of the Quorum. We’ll be taking our friend Soen here back with us.”

  “But what if these rebels do have access to their own Aether?” Jak’ra asked.

  “The problem is already taken care of, Soen,” K’yeran responded. “The Army of Imperial Vengeance is marching this way as we speak. With your rune inscriptions we shall have graciously provided them the means to bring their warriors even farther northward. Let them deal with the battles. Keeper Ch’drei wants Soen brought back to the Imperial City and that is all that matters to us.”

  K’yeran turned again to face Soen’s immobilized form. “Well, Soen, I think you’ll be attending Ch’drei’s party after all…though I don’t recommend drinking the tea.”

  “I wonder what he was about to say?” Jak’ra moved next to K’yeran, also looking closely at Soen’s face. “Still, he’ll make a most excellent gift for the Keeper.”

  K’yeran frowned.

  She never trusted gifts.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Mournful Road

  URULANI JUMPED DOWN from the harness fixed around the base of Kyranish’s neck before he had fully stopped near the crest of the grass-covered knoll. Her feet caught slightly in the soft ground and she fell, skidding across the grass and moist earth. A few peals of hearty laughter came at her expense but for the most part, the refugees at the base of the slope appeared too tired to take any notice of the ignominious conclusion of her arrival. She picked herself up, scraping the mud from her arms and the front of her padded leather doublet. She did not even look back at her dragon as she strode purposefully across the knoll. Her legs were shaky but she plunged onward, too determined to allow her body to stop.