Seven Princes (44 page)

“They are of the Old Breed,” Sharadza said. “I knew it.”

“More fearsome than their considerable legions is their sorcery,” he said. “Men cannot stand against such dark powers. They have traveled the Outer Worlds… breached the realms of Living and Dead… and the elements are their playthings. The Dwellers in Shadow serve them – ghosts, demons, wraiths… and
worse
things.”

“You made my father into the Giant-King,” she said. “You shaped his life so that he would be both Man and Giant. You tried to stop Ianthe, didn’t you? You tried to balance the world by giving it Vod of the Storms. And for a while it worked…”

He stared into her face, grinning without pleasure. “Nothing lasts, child. Not in this world.”

“What about you? You have lasted. You wanted Vod to do what you feared to. Now you have a second chance.
Come with me
. Help me destroy her. And him… both of them. Before it’s too late.”

His face soured. “It is already too late,” he said. “You have seen the patterns. The patterns never change. Though I tried and tried… they never change.”

“What do you mean? You have re-shaped the world again and again. You
have
changed the patterns.”

“No,” he said. “I’ve only complicated them. Added a tiny flourish here or there. The river flows on. I stand on the shore making ripples with stones.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Give me that wine,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

Reluctantly she handed him the full goblet. He poured half its contents onto the oaken table. It spread into a dark puddle, the color of half-dried blood. He stirred it with his forefinger.

“Look…” he said, his eyes growing large.

She stared at the puddle. The light of the table’s candle flickered there, danced, and begain to swirl. The reflected flame broke into a tiny flood of colors, and visions danced on the surface of the wine.

An ancient plain, dotted with the raging fires of war. Shaggy men rush upon each other with stone axes, clubs, and their own gnashing fangs. Blood spills like rain across the blackened earth. Women flee from savage oppressors, brought down like forest deer. Children perish like blossoms trampled beneath the feet of red-handed primitives. Along the horizon, strange piles of stone rise toward the moon, the early temples of some dark God.

The scene shifts to another plain, outside a walled city. Men with spears, swords, and axes, armored in leather and bone, tear each other to bits. Torn standards droop from poles driven deep into the ground. The gates of the city collapse inward and the blood-mad conquerors rush inside, spilling the guts of defenders, pulling women and children from stone huts and setting fire to gardens. The red sky mirrors the flames devouring the streets, and piles of severed heads rise in the central plaza.

The colors diverge, cascade, and blend into a new dream. Two armies clash along a river; it runs red with their blood. The men ride horses now, and wrap their bodies in plates of bronze, fantastic helms perched on their heads. They impale one another, hack off limbs, open bellies and split skulls like melons. Their flags whip furiously in the wind, and their generals watch from distant hills, ordering more men to their deaths. A village burns nearby, scattered with blackened corpses. Some are tiny.

Flames consume the vision, giving birth to a new one. A tall proud city built of marble, jade, and crystal. Along the perfection of its streets, red war flows like a tide of disease, invaders cutting down the white-robed citizens and once more bringing the scourge of fire. Groves of divine beauty become the killing grounds of a wizened people; children twitch on the end of lances; warriors toss women between them like blood-soaked trophies of silk and skin; a vast library holding the knowledge and histories of eons goes up in flames while the gauntlets of men rip the living hearts from their enemies.

“Enough!” Sharadza cried out. “Stop it!”

Iardu wiped away the wine with the edge of his sleeve, and the vision with it.

Tears ran along her numb cheeks, and she looked at him stunned and wordless.

“You see?” he said.

“Why did you show me those horrors?” She wiped at her eyes. She was tired of weeping.

“Sharadza, dear girl… I have spent thousands of years trying to cure men of this disease that afflicts them. This thing they call war. They worship it even above their own gods. It dwells within them, girl. It is part of their inherent nature. I have educated them… inspired them… terrified them. I have re-shaped their kingdoms and their religions. I have even re-shaped their bodies into a multitude of diverse forms. Still this pattern emerges. It is
who they are
.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said.

“Even the blue-skinned Udvorg in their isolated kingdom engage in bloody tribal feuds. War is a part of human nature – they are made to slaughter themselves periodically. I no longer have any hope that I can prevent it. Or that I even should.”

“When did you give up, Iardu? When did you stop trying to
re-shape the world? You made Vod. You shaped him so he could build the City of Men and Giants.”

“I
made
giants… out of men long, long ago.”

“And later you re-united them. You are still shaping the world. You re-shaped me.”

He grunted. “You are not the world, Sharadza. You are only one lovely girl.”

“
The part is the whole
,” she reminded him. “
There can be no separation
.”

Now he smiled at her, his eyes red and swollen. His head fell back against the booth wall.

“How can you be so blind to your own teachings?” she said. “When you change one person… one being… one life, you change everything.”

“And nothing.”

“
All is One… There can be no distinctions
. Success and failure are illusions. You taught me to reject duality. Whatever victories or defeats you have endured in the past do not matter. The only question before you now is, will you help me?”

He stared at her, a new expression in his old man’s face. Or maybe one she had simply never noticed before. Was it… love?

He sighed and drank the last of his wine in three large gulps.

Now Fellow was gone and Iardu sat across the table. His face looked far younger than Fellow’s, and his eyes were flares of prismatic light, unable to settle on a single color. His pointed beard was short and silver-gray, as was his mustache. A robe of orange-red silk hung upon his narrow frame, and on his chest a living blue flame danced without heat, strung like a burning sapphire from a silver neck-chain. He was handsome in an ageless way, his gold-brown skin inhumanly smooth. Rings of ruby and emerald lined his fingers; his nails shined white as pearls. His teeth, as he smiled, gleamed with that same whiteness.

“Because it is
you
who ask me, Sharadza, I will go south with you. Though it will make no difference in the end. You cannot cure this sickness in the souls of men.”

“Perhaps not,” she said, taking his hand. His skin thrummed faintly, as if lightning surged in his veins. “But if there is no Empress to lead them, the Khyreins may not fight at all. If Elhathym should lose his stolen throne, none will have to die in his name. Bring down these sorcerers and we avoid war altogether.”

Iardu shook his somber head. A circlet of gold held back his hair, which fell to his shoulders. His chromatic eyes gleamed. “And if we die at the hands of these tyrants?”

“Then we’ll have done no harm but to ourselves. Besides, you told me the Living World and the World of the Dead are merely twin illusions.”

“Yes,” said Iardu. “But there are much worse fates than death.”

She leaned across the table, surprising even herself, and kissed his cheek.

He stared at her with his glimmering eyes. “I believe…” he said, “that it is
you
who are re-shaping
me
.”

They left the tavern, which had emptied while they spoke behind the curtain. The owner had fallen asleep on one of his own stools. Sharadza left a single emerald from the sunken chest lying at his elbow. She fastened the door as they stepped into the street.

They walked toward the palace, and she sensed that everyone around her saw the old man Fellow. She saw ageless Iardu in all his splendor. Unless… unless Iardu’s true form was only another lie. Could she trust him? But this was a question she must ask of any man, sorcerer or not.

He has agreed to face death with me
.

“Is there no other sorcerer in all the world that we might win to our cause?” she asked.

The blue flame flickered on his chest. He walked in silence until the palace walls rose into the street ahead.

“There is
one
… who might be… persuaded,” he said. “But he dwells far from here.”

“Where?” she asked.

“Mumbaza.”

Her green eyes twinkled. “Then we will fly.”

“Yes.” He smiled. “We will fly.”

D
airon’s Spear
sat upon the water like a colossal swan feathered with gold and emerald. Its triple-masted bulk dwarfed all other ships moored along the docks of Murala. The yellow sun emblem of Uurz sat upon the green field of its mainsail, and its prow bore the sculpture of a gilded hawk tall as a man. The hawk’s wings were spread to catch the same winds that would fill the great sails. Uurz itself was not a sea power, but Murala was its official territory, so the Emperor’s ship kept a permanent berth here. Its lean yet hulking presence reminded visiting merchant vessels that the port was an outpost of the Stormlands. Piracy was rare on the Cryptic Sea, but when it did plague the shipping lanes,
Dairon’s Spear
delivered the justice of Uurz.

Lyrilan had ridden on the ship when he was a boy, along with Tyro and their parents. Dairon had brought his family to Murala to celebrate the finish of the galleon’s construction. What Lyrilan remembered most from that trip was his mother’s nervous smile and the pressure of her hand on his own. Neither of them had sailed before, and they looked to one another for courage. Tyro had stood bravely near Dairon, either fearless or pretending to be. She had died a year later. Some southern-born fever had infested the
city and struck indiscriminately at commoner and noble alike. Lyrilan and Tyro were eleven when she passed; Lyrilan and Dairon cried at the opulent funeral, while Tyro did not. Later, in the shadow of the palace gardens, Lyrilan caught Tyro weeping alone. He never told Tyro what he had seen that day.

Dairon had defied the custom of the previous Emperors of Uurz by taking Jarinha as his one and only wife. His chancellors pestered him to take two or three more wives and produce more heirs, but always he refused them. “Jarinha has given me two strong sons,” the Emperor told the court. “That is enough.” When she died, they expected Dairon to change his mind, but even then he would claim no one to replace her. Lyrilan hoped one day to know a love like that shared by his mother and father. It was the stuff of legends… and tragedies. But these two things went hand in hand. Anyone who studied the lessons of history knew that.

Today, standing in the forecastle of the great ship, Lyrilan could not help but remember his mother standing on the same deck. How her black hair danced in the sea wind, the dress of azure and carmel she wore that day, the white pearls of her smile. A mass of white clouds rolled across a sapphire sky. The blue bay glittered with refracted sunlight, scattered diamonds floating atop the brine. The masts and sails of a hundred or more ships lined the wharves, many flying the colors of distant lands. Not surprisingly, the only kingdoms not represented here were Khyrei and Yaskatha. Those ships, according to the
Spear
’s Captain Lonneus, had stopped coming earlier this year. First the Khyrein trade ceased, then the Yaskathan. There were sleek caravels from Mumbaza, the Feathered Serpent writhing on their sails, and a few exotic galleys from the Jade Isles, along with traders from Shar Dni and the Southern Isles. Above them all, like a Giant among Men, rose the shining hull and olive sails of
Dairon’s Spear
.

Tyro had used the authority of his father’s word to commandeer the ship for the mission to Mumbaza. Lyrilan would not have had the presence to make such a demand upon Lonneus and his crew. But Tyro was well-known as Dairon’s Right Arm. Who better to grasp the Emperor’s
Spear
?

Tyro and Vireon hired two Muralan merchant galleons, the
Cloud
and the
Sharkstooth
, as troop transports. Tyro and a hundred Uurzian warriors would ride the
Cloud
, while Andoses and a hundred Sharrians sailed on the
Sharkstooth
. Lyrilan and D’zan accompanied Vireon and his sorcerer-woman Alua on the
Spear
with two hundred soldiers from Uurz and Udurum. Each ship carried in its hold cavalry horses and enough food and grain for men and animals. The
Spear
carried extra provisions in the belly of its massive hull. It was a sign of respect that Tyro gave Vireon mastery of Dairon’s behemoth. Lyrilan knew his brother was a strategist, and this war would hinge on the rising legends of D’zan and Vireon. Their names would stir soldier’s hearts to battle and make them laugh at death. Tyro would command from Vireon’s shoulder, but he would not stand in Vireon’s shadow.

The second passing over the mountains had not been difficult after all. The weather was balmy those two weeks, with only light dustings of snow along the heights. However, on the southern half of the pass snowdrifts lingered. Lyrilan watched as Vireon took Alua aside and spoke with her encouragingly. She amazed the Princes by calling up a wall of flame to rush over and melt the deep drifts. So their small army rode through mud instead of snow, and came down into the Stormlands without injury. Along the way they picked up a few of the wounded men left at the Giants’ cave. Some had mended and were able to ride, so Tyro accepted them back into the ranks with great praise.