An Emperor's Gamble (Legend of Tal: Book 3)

by J. D. L. Rosell

  Moments later, the disguise had returned, and Tal hissed out a breath. This was the Pim he could trust.

  An illusion? part of him mocked. That is what you trust?

  He spoke aloud partly in defiance of that voice. "Thank you. For… this." Tal gestured vaguely around them.

  Pim raised an eyebrow. Tal wondered how that expression might look on his actual face.

  "Not killing me will be thanks enough." The Extinguished climbed to his feet. "But I imagine you will need to rebuild your strength. Perhaps a bite to eat?"

  Now that it was mentioned, Tal did feel ravenous. His stomach clawed at him for sustenance, but his bladder pressed with another need.

  "That would be welcome," he admitted. "If you'll excuse me for a moment, though…"

  Pim watched Tal labor to stand upright. Beneath the Soulstealer's gaze, his pride would not allow him to falter. No more than I already have. He stumbled on clumsy legs, but managed to find his way to the periphery of their camp.

  As he relieved himself, Tal's thoughts wandered back to the recent incident. Skirting about the pain that had ravaged him, he remembered again the glimpse of the bright glow at the end of the channel. The feelings that had overcome him then were but a whisper now. Even still, he yearned for them.

  Comfort — when was the last time I felt comfortable? He thought of Ashelia, and wished, not for the first time, it was her with whom he traveled.

  But, as his old commander had often told him, When hoping for rain, wishing's no better than pissing. And as he concluded his business, the urine steaming in the frigid air, and secured himself from the unflinching touch of the mountain cold, he could not help but appreciate his timing in that remembrance.

  Returning to camp, he found Pim had been true to his word, for their sparse fare was open and waiting. Without wading through the pleasantries his mother had once instilled in him, Tal sat before the food and at once began to devour it. Pim stood over him and watched, a smile playing on his lips, his charcoal-kissed eyes swirling like a dead fire that a freezing man hopelessly tried to stir back to flame. But not even that fell gaze could interfere with the primal pleasure of the poor fare.

  When Tal had gorged himself, the Extinguished approached with a familiar reeking bag. "Better than the gryphons' claws," Pim said at Tal's expression as he reached in and emerged with a slather of the green-brown mixture.

  Tal's nose wrinkled, and he shrugged. "Might prefer to take my chances."

  But prudence won out over disgust. Minutes later, he was covered in the smelly stuff, as was Pim. Tal scooted back to a tree and leaned up against it with a sigh. His back ached, and his neck hurt even worse. He tilted back his head and rested his eyes. But his mind kept spinning behind them.

  He cracked an eye open to peer at Pim. "You said we must go to the Nightelves. For my cure."

  The Extinguished had sat as well, cross-legged rather than leaning, and with his back unnaturally erect. Tal wondered if his body was more stone than flesh now and could not bend in certain ways any longer. Pim glanced at him, but turned his head to face the lake.

  "Ah, there they soar again," the fell sorcerer said, blatantly ignoring Tal's words. "Savage beasts they may be, but they make for a beautiful sight."

  Relenting, Tal opened both eyes and followed Pim's gaze to the sky. Between the reaching fingers of the leafless trees, three shadows flew across the gray clouds. One was larger than the other two and flew surer. The mother and her fledglings, Tal realized.

  "They're only just learning to fly," he guessed.

  The Extinguished nodded. "Such would be my assumption. A year-and-a-half old twins, perhaps. It will not be long before they can fend for themselves, only a few months now."

  Tal did not answer, but only watched the gryphons wheel through the sky. The two younglings seemed to be chasing each other as they practiced the aerobatics that made them deadly predators later in life. Yet as he looked at them, he was reminded of the children of Hunt's Hollow at their chasing games, carried out in the town's muddy thoroughfares and sometimes in his own farmyard. The memories brought out a smile.

  Yet he did not forget his question. Before he could ask it again, Pim spoke.

  "Have you ever wondered how creatures such as this came into the World?"

  Tal shrugged. He had, and often, when studying the Nightkin under the tutelage of Magister Elis. He frequently left off his reading to pester the aged master with questions that the tomes could not answer. What does a chimera smell like? Did dragons ever exist — and if they did, do they still? And, of course, he had asked where the Nightkin came from in the first place. But most often, he was met with the same answer he supplied now.

  "The Night made the first devils; Yuldor brought to life more," Tal replied. "Any other creatures were the doing of the Whispering Gods."

  The Extinguished turned a mocking smile on him. "Is that what you believe?"

  "I've never found a better explanation," Tal said truthfully. He left unsaid that he had never swallowed the standard answer, either.

  Pim turned his gaze back over the lake. "Long ago, I heard a more compelling story. The legend of Father World." His eyes slid back to Tal. "Shall I tell it?"

  Tal gestured around them. "I don't see a troubadour here to entertain. So why not?"

  If he was honest, the fell sorcerer had already piqued his curiosity. Once an elf himself, it was odd that Pim would refer to the World as "Father" rather than the "Mother" Gladelysh elves in the current epoch called it. He wondered if it had been different centuries ago.

  Or maybe he's lying to you.

  But Tal had always had a keen ear for lies, having told countless ones himself. He trusted he could separate the wheat from the chaff.

  Pim nodded. "If you insist… Before the monsters came, Father World first populated the surface with his children. These were the natural beasts we know today — birds and fish, wolves and snakes, and, of course, the Origins, those beings who preceded the present Bloodlines and the Severing that split them. In the Origins, Father World invested more of himself than in the other creatures, for in each person sprouted a seed of divinity."

  "Divinity?"

  Pim shrugged. "Sorcery, we might think of it now."

  Tal mulled over that as he watched the light sparkle over the lake's blue-green ice. Divine. That sorcery would come from the gods made a certain sense. But that those who wielded it could be god-like themselves… it was a heretical idea in the eyes of the Creed, and one that might align the priesthood against Jalduaen's Circle and other sorcerers across the World, were it commonly held.

  Pim continued, heedless of Tal's inner musings. "For a time, the Origins ruled the World more or less benevolently, and all animals served them. The wonders they created with their sorcery were marvelous to behold, and though they lived thousands of years ago, some of them linger on even today. But with their supremacy came arrogance. As year after year of service to Father World continued, his restrictions and responsibilities for the care of the World became too humbling of work. So the Origins rebelled, rising against the patriarch who created them and seeking to overthrow his supreme reign.

  "Father World became angry — and with all of the World's resources at his behest and a divine heart inside him, there was little he could not do. But the Father still loved his children, even those Origins who spat on everything he had given them. Instead of scouring the surface and starting anew, he sought to put his children back in their place through punishment. And so he created beings stronger and deadlier than the Origins, infused with their own strains of divinity. But though Father World saw even these killers as his children, the Origins had a different name for them — kael'dros, or monsters, as we would think of them.

  "Devils and demons would have been more than enough to contend with. Yet against the mightiest of these monsters, even the Origins' power could not prevail. They were the ava'duala — dragons, as we name them now. Dragons were not mere beasts, not like these gryphons so
aring above us. They possessed intelligence and more divinity than any mortal could comprehend.

  "With dragons acting as the Father's generals, the monsters waged war against the Origins. Under this assault, even the wonders and creations of the cleverest of Father World's children could not prevail. And for a time, the ambition of the Origins was curbed."

  "And yet, something changed," Tal interjected. "Something upset the balance, for dragons no longer reign."

  Pim smiled at him, a mocking edge to it. He had the feeling it was for a private joke the Extinguished did not share with him.

  "Indeed, dragons are… diminished these days. And this was the fault of Father World. For though he punished the Origins, he still beheld his children with pained love, and thought they must perceive him in the same way. But he had underestimated their capacity for despising their creator. While his feelings remained the same, theirs turned to hate. And with the birth of that hatred came a crumbling of all restrictions on the lengths they would go to win their war.

  "The war endured for countless generations, the tide turning back and forth, but Father World never allowed either side to gain too much traction. At last, however, three of the Origins discovered a rent in the World, a place where the Father's divinity poured through onto the surface. In their desperation, they threw themselves onto the power. It should have destroyed them — yet somehow, it did not. Perhaps the seeds of the Father within them blossomed before his might. Perhaps it was his lingering love that preserved them.

  "Whatever allowed it, the Three — as they came to be known — were destroyed in body, but became far more than they had been before, almost deities themselves. With their newfound power, they raised new monsters to challenge the Father's, but these without limits or care for the destruction they caused. These devils smote the old and drove them back, and the Origins pushed their advantage, confining Father World's punishers to a craggy area uninhabitable by themselves. In their impending victory, they began to worship the Three as their new gods, supplanting the Father, even as they only leeched off the Old One's power.

  "This finally broke Father World's heart. He had endured when his children turned from him. He had tolerated their cursing and spitting at his name. But he could not turn away from their establishing themselves as gods over him! So he sent the ava'duala against the Three with the command to kill them at any cost. The dragons, always strong in their filial duty, did as the Father bade. But with divinity at the fingertips of the Three, even the dragons' mighty powers were eclipsed. The dragons assaulted in droves, cutting through the ranks of monsters and closing in on the rift where the Three reigned. But despite all their attempts, the most they could gain through their deaths was, corpse by corpse, to close the power that poured through, and thus reduce the potency of the Three.

  "But still, it was not enough. When only a few of the ava'duala remained, they sought a new strategy: one to challenge the Three directly. By this time, even some of the Origins had begun to understand the dangers the Three posed to all of Father World's children, and they started to unite against them. Foremost among these was a general of uncommon skill and sorcery, known then as the One. When the dragons approached her, she was reluctant to agree to their request. She knew to consent would likely lead to her death and the undoing of all she had worked to make. Yet she knew, too, that the Three must be challenged and overthrown. And so, at last, she agreed with the ava'duala, and in allying with them, she brought her armies to the rift and waged one final assault.

  "The battles there were unlike any the World had seen before or since. Origins died by the tens of thousands on both sides. Father World's punishers and the Three's devils clashed and rent the World's surface apart. The Father cried for the deaths of all his children, and the rains from his tears nearly drowned the rest of life. The last of the noble dragons fought and died. But through their sacrifice, they gained the One passage to the Three. There, she threw herself into the rift of divinity, as the Three had done before, and attempted to wrest its power from their grip. For nine days and nine nights, the One contended with the Three. Even with all their strength pitted against her, the Three could not defeat her, for the One was skilled and strong beyond any other mortal. As their efforts mounted, a mountain grew below them, and they ascended toward the heavens.

  "Finally, the One took the only path left to her: she sealed the divinity off from all. Even as she succeeded in this desperate act, the Three struck her down. But though they had slain their foe, the Father's divinity had been cut away from them. They were left there atop the mountain, formless and powerless creatures, surrounded by the remaining devils they had unleashed upon the World. Not recognizing their masters, or perhaps sensing their sudden weakness, the monsters fell upon their creators, and so ended their reign."

  Pim sighed heavily. But just as Tal thought he was done speaking, the Extinguished rounded out his tale. "And so, following the deaths of the Three, all the monsters spread from the sealed rift and populated the World — all except the dragons, who might have been our protectors, had the Origins not slain them."

  Tal waited a few moments before speaking. "Is that it?"

  His companion glanced sidelong at him. "Was it not enough?"

  "If you intended it as a fable to scare children, perhaps. But it answers few of my questions."

  Pim smiled wide. "We wondered where gryphons came from, did we not? Well, there is the answer I sought to explain."

  Tal shook his head and watched as the fledgling gryphons landed at their nest on the cliff opposite them. The mother, meanwhile, flew off, perhaps to hunt down food for her young, perhaps to retrieve their father from wherever he was. Almost, he could picture them as the dragons Pim spoke of.

  Not that he believed any single word of the myth was true. Echoes of other stories threaded through, most heavily the struggle of the Whispering Gods against the Night, though the Creed's deities appeared the villains in Pim's account. Probably, the Extinguished had simply made it all up; he certainly seemed inclined toward mischievousness.

  But there was something to learn in the tale, a sliver of the answer to the question that had been hounding him. If only I could discover what it was.

  "And you intended no other meaning by it?" he pressed.

  Pim's dark eyes met his, and in a rare instance, he appeared serious. "Perhaps only this. The present Bloodlines are mere shadows of the Origins in terms of their potential and power. But in them — in us — still reign all their flaws. And if one of us had attained power such as they — well, they might finally bring about the World's ruin, might they not?"

  Tal took his meaning at once. Yuldor. The spark, the hope that he might not be entirely foolish in traveling with a Soulstealer, reignited in his chest.

  He means to help me challenge Yuldor.

  And, despite everything else about his strange companion, Tal began to trust Pim ever so slightly more.

  As if he read his mind, Pim smiled and looked back toward the nest. "We'll leave tomorrow as soon as you are able. We can wait no longer, or my handy concoction will be depleted. For now, rest and regain your strength."

  Tal nodded, and was glad to be left to his thoughts as Pim rose and walked away.

  Fount of Song

  No sooner had the news of Tal's fate settled than the companions began to plot their course.

  Ashelia, who had before been little more animated than a doll, came alive again. She spurred Garin and the others into action with all the pity of a greedy merchant toward his beasts of burden. First, she approached the dwarf who managed Vathda in the wake of their chieftain's death, a silver-bearded elder by the name of Hazul, to request supplies and, most importantly, a map. Elder Hazul was, to their good fortune, grateful for the assistance they'd provided Vathda during the raid and gave as much aid as the beleaguered clan was able — which amounted to a map alone. The East was caught in the throes of winter, and with the damages done to their town, Vathda could ill afford to surrender any food or
clothes. Ashelia seemed far from deterred by the news; if anything, she pressed forward all the more eagerly.

  Garin shared her uplift in spirit, if not quite the burst of energy. Tal is alive. The thought still made his head spin and brought a smile to his lips. He's alive.

  Never had he been more glad to have a devil take up space in his head.

  Once it was clear no more assistance would be forthcoming, Ashelia gathered them all again in the room she shared with Wren and Rolan. With sorcerous light provided by Aelyn, who had grown strangely subdued after Garin's revelation, they pored over the chart. Garin balked at the paltry distance they'd traveled thus far; the Empire of the Rising Sun was a far vaster dominion than he'd ever guessed. Adding to his surprise was how much of it appeared not to be mountains. Along the northern coast, flatter forests seemed to dominate the land. The eastern shores appeared to be bluffs and deserts, while further inland the landscape shifted to hills and plains. Everything immediately surrounding them, however, showed mountains spreading for miles on end.

  A ways to go still, he thought morosely.

  While Aelyn muttered complaints about the cartographer's tendency for florid illustrations, Helnor and Ashelia debated the best course forward. Garin remained silent next to Falcon and Wren, trying to decide which of their possible paths made the most sense. Rolan softly strummed his lute on the bed, playing a song Falcon had taught him. Garin wondered if the bard had also imparted the knowledge that the tune was derived from the raunchiest tavern song Garin had ever heard, played for him during his time among the Dancing Feathers. Kaleras stood by the fire, his back to the others, though Garin guessed he still listened.

  "He will head for the Named — here, if Kaleras is correct." Ashelia pointed to a point just east of the center, where a mountain was shown to be looming above the rest.

  "Ikvaldar," Helnor read. "It seems the largest peak, at least from this mapmaker's interpretation. But how do we know he'll go there?"