D&D - Birthright 01

by The Iron Throne # Simon Hawke

  The Iron Throne

  by

  Simon Hawk

  prologue

  The Eve of the Dead. The winter solstice. The longest night of the year. It was a fitting night to mourn. Aedan Dosiere, Lord High Chamberlain of the Cerilian Empire of Anuire, stood at the arched window of his tower study in the Imperial Cairn, looking out across the bay at the flickering lights of the city. The palace stood upon a rocky island in the center of the bay, at the mouth of the River Maesil.

  The city of Anuire lay spread out before him on either bank and spilling over into the bay itself, across dozens of small islands connected by a web of causeways and bridges.

  Tonight, every window in the city was illuminated with the glow of candles that would burn until dawn.

  It was like looking at the dying embers of a gigantic campfire, spread out across the bay and rising on the hillsides of the banks. A dying flame. An appropriate if rather maudlin metaphor, thought Aedan. He sighed. The weight of his years rested heavily upon him. He was weary and wanted very much to sleep.

  But not tonight. Only the dead slept on this night.

  Each year on the Eve of the Dead, the people of Anuire would lock their doors and light their altar candles, fasting and keeping vigil until dawn, for the constellation of their god had vanished from the sky.

  On this cold, forsaken night, when the Crown of Glory slipped beneath the southern horizon and Haelyn’s Star lay hidden, the Shadow World drew ominously near. And this year, for the first time since the old gods died, the Iron Throne stood empty. The empire crumbles, Aedan thought.

  The dream has died. And so he mourned, for what was, and what might have been.

  Why is it, he wondered, that we never think of growing old? When we are young, we feel immortal.

  Death is merely something to be challenged, never feared. But one can only challenge death so many times. Depending on his moods, of course.

  Death was an indifferent gambler. Sometimes, he allowed but one throw of the dice. And sometimes many He was content to let the dice fall as they may, because no matter how the game progressed, in the end, he would always be the only one left standing at the table.

  Tonight, Aedan Dosiere felt very mortal. He had seen many others die, more than his share, their lives snuffed out in battle or by disease or age or bloodtheft, and now he felt the spark of his own life gut a tering like the candles on his altar and his writing desk. Death stood across the table, smiling with anticipation. Not tonight, thought Aedan. And probably not tomorrow, or next month, and perhaps not even this year. But soon. The Reaper was a patient player, and Aedan was growing weary of the game.

  At the next autumnal equinox, celebrated in the Anuirean Book of Days as the Veneration of the Sleeping, he would be sixty-nine years old.

  It was appropriate that he should have been born on such a day, though he had never truly understood that until now. There was much that he had never fully understood until now, for all the good it did him. If youth was wasted on the young, he thought, then wisdom was squandered on the aged, for they could no longer profit by it. They could but lecture youth in their frustration, who, being young, would never hsten. Michael was like that. He had been born on the Night of Fire, during the summer solstice, which was always marked by a shower of falling stars. And that, too, was appropriate.

  A shooting star, thought Aedan. Yes, that was Michael Roele. He had burned brightly from the very start, with an incandescence that was blinding.

  Everything that Michael was, Aedan had longed to be. Except the royal scion. No, he had never wanted that. His own fate had carried responsibility enough.

  He was the firstborn of the House of Dosiere, standard bearers to the royal line of the Roeles, and his path in life was set from the moment he first drew breath. It had been his destiny to become the lord high chamberlain to the next Emperor of Anuire, who had yet to be born when Aedan came into the world.

  His Imperial Majesty Hadrian Roele IV had married late in LIFE and, up to that point, had sired only daughters. He was in the twilight of his years, and there was a certain amount of urgency to the production of a male heir. The beleaguered Empress Raesa, who was younger than her husband by four decades, had spent most of her married life in almost constant pregnancy. Finally, after gifting him with seven daughters, the emperor’s young wife bore him a son.

  Doubtless, much to her relief. It had been an occasion of great rejoicing and no small amount of trepidation as the empire held its collective breath to see if the child would thrive. However, it had little reason for concern. From the first angry cry that had erupted from his tiny lungs when the midwife slapped his bottom, Michael Roele had stormed into the world with an aggressive energy that would not be denied.

  Aedan could still recall that day with vivid clarity.

  That was another peculiarity that came with age, he thought. His memories of long ago were easily accessible, and yet, for some strange reason, he often struggled to remember something that had taken place just a week before. But that day had been a memorable one. On the day that Michael had been born, Aedan’s father brought him in to see the infant prince, lying cradled in his mother’s arms.

  “This is your lord, my son,” his father told him.

  “Kneel and pay him homage.”

  Aedan was only six years old then, but he already knew his duty. He had understood that the tiny, wrinkled creature lying nestled in its mother’s arms would become the most important person in his life.

  He had bowed his head and gone down to one knee before the empress, who was lying propped up

  by pillows in the large, canopied gilt bed. He could still recall how radiant and beautiful she looked, with her long, golden hair hanging loose around her shoulders.

  “What is my lord’s name, Your highness?” he had asked.

  The empress had smiled and said, “Michael.”

  “Michael,” Aedan murmured softly to himself, repeating the name now as he had then. Almost as if in answer, a sudden gust of wind blew in through the window and the candles flickered.

  Sensing a presence in the room behind him, Aedan turned from the window.

  In the dim glow of the flickering candlelight, he saw a tall, dark, and slender figure appear in the center of the chamber.

  His full-length, hooded cloak billowed in the dissipating wind of his arrival, then settled down around him, giving the brief impression of wings being folded back.

  “Am I intruding on your vigil, Lord Aedan?”

  The voice was unmistakable. It was deep, musical, and resonant, with the old, familiar, lilting elvish accent.

  “Gylvain!” said Aedan. “By Haelyn, is it really you, or am I dreaming?”

  The elven mage pulled back the hood of his dark green, velvet cloak, revealing handsome, ageless features. His thick, silver-streaked black hair fell almost to his waist and framed a striking face. His forehead was high and his eyebrows thin and delicately arched. His nose was fine and blade straight; his cheekbones high and sharply pronounced, typical of elven physiognomy. The long hair partially concealed large, gracefully curved and pointed ears; the

  mouth was wide and thin-lipped; the strong jawline tapered sharply to a narrow, well-shaped chin. His eyes, however, were his strongest features, large and almond-shaped, so light a blue that they were almost gray, like arctic ice. With his dark coloring, they stood out sharply, and the effect was magnetic.

  Aedan stared at him, and the years seemed to fall away.

  “The world of dreams is no less real than the waking one,” Gylvain replied. “However, I take it your question was rhetorical.”

  “You have not changed,” said Aedan with a smile.

  “How long has
it been? Twenty years? No, by Haelyn, more like thirty.

  Yet you are still as I remember you, even after all this time, while I

  … I have grown old and gray.”

  Aedan turned and glanced into the full-length gilt-framed mirror mounted on the wall. Behind him, Gylvain Aurealis stood reflected, looking just the same as he remembered him. By contrast, Aedan had changed enormously. His hair, cropped short as he had worn it since his midthirties, when he began to lose it, was a grizzled, iron-gray stubble. His thick, full beard was streaked in shades of gray and white. His face was lined with age and scarred from battle. The stress of his responsibilities had given him dark bags below his eyes, and years of squinting through a helm into glaring sunlight had placed crow’s-feet at their corners. There was a weary melancholy in his gaze that had not been there only a few short years before. Once shin and muscular, he was thicker in the waist and chest now, and in the perpetual dampness of the castle on the bay, his old wounds pained him.

  Gylvain’s reflection smiled. “You will never seem old to me. I shall always see you as you were when we first met: a shy, ungainly, coltish youth, with the most earnest and serious expression I have ever seen on one so young.”

  “Your elven vision is far more acute than mine,” said Aedan wistfully.

  “I have looked for that young boy in my reflection many times, but I no longer see him.” He turned to face the mage. “Is it too late to ask for your forgiveness?”

  Gylvain cocked his head and stared at him with a faintly puzzled expression. “What was there to for give?”

  “Is it possible you have forgotten?”

  “I must confess, I have,” Cylvain replied. “What cause had I to take offense?”

  “Sylvanna,” Aedan said.

  “Oh, that,” said Gylvain with a sudden look of comprehension. “I never took offense. I merely disapproved.”

  “Of me,” said Aedan.

  Gylvain shook his head. “No, of the situation, not of YOU.”

  Aedan turned, biting his lower lip, and stared pensively out the window.

  “How is she?”

  “Well.”

  “As beautiful as ever?”

  “She has changed but little.”

  Aedan stood silent for a moment. “Does she ever speak of me?”

  “Yes, often.”

  “Truly?”

  “Have I ever lied to you?”

  Aedan turned. “No, you never have. You were always a true friend. But I had thought I crossed the boundaries of our friendship with Sylvanna.”

  “True friendship knows no boundaries,” Gylvain replied. “The only boundaries you had crossed were those of reason. I tried to make you see that, but you were thinking with your heart and not your mind. It was the only time I ever knew you to be just like Michael.”

  “Had you told me that back then, I would have considered it the greatest compliment,” said Aedan.

  “I wanted so to be like him.”

  “Be grateful you were not.”

  Aedan snorted. “There was a time I would have bridled at a remark like that,” he said, “but now I understand. Michael and I were like two sides of the same coin. Each stamped differently, but meant to complement the other. I feel my worth diminished by his …

  absence.” He shook his head. “But I am being a poor host.

  May I offer you a drink?”

  “Anuirean brandy?”

  “But of course.” He poured them each a gobletful from a decanter on his writing table, then handed one to Gylvain. “What shall we drink to?”

  “Why not absent friends?” said Gylvain.

  Aedan nodded. “To absent friends,” he toasted.

  They drank, and as the brandy flowed, the two old friends sat vigil and remembered.

  **chapter one**

  “I’m going to be Haelyn; Aedan will be my brother, Roele; and you, Derwyn, will be the Black Prince, Raesene,” announced Michael in a tone that brooked no argument. But he got one anyway.

  ‘I don’t want to be Raesene! Why can’t I be Roele?”

  Lord Derwyn whined petulantly.

  “Because you are not of the royal house,” said Michael in a tone of lofty disdain.

  “Well, neither is Aedan,” Derwyn protested, unconvinced by this argument. “Besides, my father is an archduke, while his is just a viscount, so I outrank him.”

  “Nevertheless, Aedan is my standardbearer and his father is the lord high chamberlain,” said Michael.

  “As such, despite his rank, he is closest to the royal house.”

  “Well, if I cannot be Roele, then I cannot be Raesene, either,” Derwyn insisted. “Raesene was Roele’s halfbrother, so he was also of the royal house.”

  Michael neatly sidestepped this piece of logic.

  “When Raesene gave his allegiance to Azrai, he betrayed the royal house and was thereby disinherited. Besides, I am heir to the imperial throne,” he added, the color rising to his cheeks, “so I can make anyone anything I want them to be!”

  Aedan stepped in to play the diplomat before a minor court scandal erupted. “Why not let me take the part of the Black Prince, Your Highness? I always play Roele, and this would give me the opportunity to do something different for a change. I would enjoy that.”

  Michael did not want to give in too easily. He tossed his thick, dark hair and frowned, making a great show of considering the matter, then finally relented. “Oh, very well then, since you request it, Aedan, you can be Raesene. Derwyn can be my brother, Roele, and Caelan can be Traederic, the standardbearer.”

  He quickly assigned roles to all the other boys, and they made ready to begin the battle. For Aedan, this was sheer torture. At eighteen, armed with a wooden sword and shield, he felt absolutely ridiculous playing with a group of children aged from six to thirteen. However, his duty was to serve his prince, and if his prince wanted to play war, then war it was.

  They were playing the Battle of Mount Deismaar, yet again. It was Michael’s favorite game, and he

  stuck to it with a dogged persistence only a twelve year-old could maintain. He never seemed to tire of it. As usual, Michael took the part of Haelyn, champion of Anduiras. It was just like him to pick Haelyn, Aedan thought. It gave him the chance to die spectacularly and become a god.

  Every child in the empire knew the story by heart.

  Those of noble blood had learned it from their tutors, while commoners heard it from the bards, who sang it as an epic ballad called “The Legacy of Kings.”

  There were several slightly different versions of the ballad, each divided into four main parts, but in all of them, the story was essentially the same. It was the history of the formation of the empire, and like most children of the nobility, Aedan had been taught it early, when he was only six years old.

  It began with “The Six Tribes,” the ancestors of the humans now settled in Cerilia. The story told how five of the tribes came on a mass exodus from the embattled southern continent of Aduria. The Andu, from whom the modern Anuireans were descended, took their name from their god Anduiras, the deity of nobility and war. The Rjuven had venerated Reynir, the god of woods and streams. The Brechts had worshiped Brenna, the goddess of commerce and fortune, while the Vos had followed Vorynn, the moon lord, who was the god of magic. The last of the five Adurian tribes, the Masetians, had been devoted to Masela, the goddess of the seas. These seagoing traders, whose swift, triangular-sailed sloops had once plied the Adurian coasts, had not survived as a discrete culture in the modern empire, though remnants of Masetian influence could still be found in the Khinasi lands.

  The sixth tribe were the Basai, the ancestors of the people now known as the Khinasi, whose temples were dedicated to Basaia, the goddess of the sun.

  They were a dark-skinned, exotic-looking people who had crossed the storm-tossed Sea of Dragons from their homeland of Djapar to settle in the southeastern region of Cerilia. Their origins were shrouded in the occult mysteries of their folklore, but it was believ
ed that they had come from the same stock as the Masetians, as there were many similarities between their cultures and, like the Adurians, they had worshiped the old gods, though each tribe had its favored deity among the pantheon.

  The Adurian tribes had fled from their war-torn ancestral lands to escape subjugation by their neighbors, who were followers of Azrai, lord of darkness.

  Their flight took them to Cerilia, across the land bridge that once existed where the Straits of Aerele now flowed.

  Before the Six Tribes came, there had been no human presence in Cerilia.

  However, there were other races who had claimed the land for their own.

  Chief among them were the elves, who called themselves the Sidhelien.

  Their civilization was ancient and advanced, but they were also capable of fearsome savagery from centuries of competing with the feral humanoids who shared their land. They had carved out their kingdom from territories overrun by goblins, gnolls, and ogres, and in its days of glory, the Elven Court was said to have surpassed in power and pageantry even the Imperial Court of Anuire.

  Of the remaining two races living in Cerilia, the dwarves were the most insular. A strong, taciturn,

  enduring people, they organized their kingdoms around clans, with each clan leader swearing fealty to the dwarven king. Expert miners and skilled fighters, they seldom ventured from their mountain strongholds and lived in peaceful coexistence with the elves. Their only natural enemies were the brutish ogres, who lived deep in the vast caverns that honeycombed the mountains.

  Cerilia was also home to a growing population of halflings, though less was known about their history and culture than that of any other race inhabiting the land. Unlike the clannish dwarves, who rarely strayed from their domains, halflings were wanderers by inclination, tending to adapt to customs and conditions prevailing in the territories where they lived. The only permanent halfling settlement in Cerilia, the Burrows, was in the southern region of the Coulladaraight, the sprawling, trackless forest that was home to the reclusive elven kingdom of Coullabhie. The tiny halflings were tolerated by their elven neighbors, but any humans rash enough to venture into those dark woods often did not emerge again.