The Cold Commands (30 page)

So Humanity fought, hopelessly, generation after generation, endured unimaginable horrors, changed at levels once believed intrinsic, splintered apart and became a dozen disparate races in itself—as if only in dissolution could the race once called human hide sufficiently well from the carnivorous glare of alien eyes
.

And then—finally, for reasons no longer well understood—the wars ended, the Earth spun on along its customary course in relative peace
.

And those who were left squabbled over what remained
.

“NO CHANGE THERE THEN,” JHIRAL MUTTERED, AND ARCHETH GLANCED
at him in mute surprise.

A brief and pointed silence, and then Anasharal’s voice resumed, with biting schoolmasterly emphasis:

“Into, this, void …”

INTO THIS VOID, THEN, BURST THE DWENDA, THE ALDRAIN, THE WITCH
folk, glittering dark and beautiful, human at least in base form, and claiming a prior heritage, an ownership of Earth predating the conflict—though there were those who argued their memories were faulty, hopelessly distorted by their custom of dwelling for long periods in the realm of the Unrealized Possible; and others who believed that Time itself had been somehow collapsed, folded, or maybe just shredded in the wars, so that the past the dwenda claimed did not even belong, correctly speaking, to this version of the world
.

But such arguments were at best academic—the wars had weakened the walls that held such places apart from the unshadowed world, and the Aldrain were not disposed to debate with the existing populations in lands they considered their own by ancestral right
.

They took the Earth by storm and built there, summarily, an Empire
that lasted seven thousand years. Many, including the humans they dominated, called it glorious
.

They brought magic as a way of life, they sprinkled it across the planet like seed
.

They stalked the night as absolute monarchs—and created a harsh human oligarchy to serve them wherever and whenever the light of the Realized sun struck too harshly for them to endure. A dynasty of kings, endowed with dark powers, a bloodline of human sorcerers with whom they mated and shared their heritage—to the extent that such heritage could ever
be
shared with ordinary human stock
.

Most of the Dark Kings were insane
.

It took the enemies of the dwenda all of those seven thousand years to learn the new rules—to master the new magic, to bend it to their will as the dwenda so long ago already had
.

Seven thousand years to bring the Kiriath through the hidden gates in the bowels of the Earth, to summon a science and a people equal to the eldritch folk, to meet them in battle, to throw down their cities into marsh and ruin, to scatter their armies and their human adherents. To bring back a measure of sanity to the world
.

To defeat the Last of the Dark Kings
.

THE HELMSMAN FELL SILENT.

“I thought—” Archeth began, then shook her head. “Doesn’t matter.”

But the pinched wick of suspicion still smoked in her head. There were a lot of stories about how and why her people had arrived in the world, most of them told by humans ignorant of anything resembling actual facts. Come to that, even the legends the Kiriath themselves told about the Advent were erratic and hard to credit. But Angfal, who hung on her study wall like so much alien iron viscera and bulbous-limbed swelling, had always been scornful.

The Kiriath barely survived the voyage through the quick paths on their way here
, he told her one fractious night as she tried to crowbar some useful answers out of him.
They did not choose to come here, Archeth, despite anything the Chronicles might claim to the contrary. They were
shipwrecked here, and if they stayed it wasn’t because they liked the scenery. It was because they were afraid that the return would break them
.

Some of this she put down to bitterness—the resentment Angfal felt at being left behind. But still, she thought Anasharal’s version rang slightly overwrought.

The Emperor had taken a seat on one of the granite benches near the balcony, back to the glare of the sun. His face was in shadow, richly oiled hair hanging forward to screen his features, but she read the impatience in how he was sprawled, the sideways tilt of his head. She wondered if she’d gotten in the way of a visit to the harem—if commanding the executions had left him with the itching need to fuck something.

He brushed invisible dust from his lap.

“You, uh, plan to actually
tell
us something about this Last Dark King? His name, for instance? Who he was, what he did? How any of this has anything to do with the here-and-now?”

“It is better not to name him,” said the Helmsman somberly. “Better not to utter those syllables here.”

Archeth rolled her eyes.

“Yes—we’re not easily shocked around here,” said Jhiral. “Feel free.”

“Let us call him simply the Ilwrack Changeling, since it was that Aldrain clan who raised him in the Gray Places. Taken from a humble home on the marsh for the dark glimmer the dwenda prize so much in humans, brought up an Aldrain warrior, and ultimately given command of a dwenda legion, he rose to—”

“You know—” Jhiral was showing signs of real irritation now. “I’ve heard this humble-beginnings crap a few times before, Helmsman. Funny how no one can ever actually point to a living example, isn’t it? Funny how in the end they’re all legendary and dead.”

Anasharal paused, delicately. “Oh, the Ilwrack Changeling is not dead, Your Imperial Radiance. Far from it.”

Silence. Maybe it was the slow afternoon cooldown and the breeze blowing in from the river, but Archeth felt a tiny shiver creep across her shoulder blades. She glanced at Jhiral, who sighed heavily and examined his manicure. She read the little display as false. Emperor or not, Jhiral had grown up on this kind of tale like any other kid. His voice, when he spoke, could not quite shroud a tiny, chained tension.

“And … what is that supposed to mean, exactly?”

“Exactly what it says,” the Helmsman said blandly. “When the Kiriath destroyed Hannais M’hen in the last stages of the Twilight war, the Ilwrack Changeling was at the head of the Aldrain forces and their human allies. But he was betrayed—some say by a lover, others claim it was a diplomatic deceit of the Kiriath. Perhaps, in the end, it was both. At any rate, when he discovered the betrayal, it’s said he fell into a paroxysm of rage and grief, and was taken for dead. The dwenda forces fell back without his body, and vanished into the Gray Places.”

“But he wasn’t dead.” Jhiral said, leaning forward a little despite himself.

“No. The dwenda were in disarray, they apparently misunderstood the situation. But a small group of his human supporters carried the body away and entombed him on an islet in the northern ocean.”

“The Hironish isles?”

“Farther west and north than the Hironish. But in any case, the island does not appear on your maps.”

Jhiral grunted. “Convenient.”

“The story goes that the Changeling’s Aldrain lover came later, in secret, to the tomb, but could not wake him. So he—”

“He?” The Emperor’s lip curled.
“He?”

“Or she,” Anasharal amended. “The story is not clear on exact identity, only that it was a member of the Ilwrack clan. In any case, this lover cast an enchantment around the whole island, sweeping it up into the margin of the Aldrain marches. But the magic was hurried and incomplete, and it’s said the island emerges from time to time and stands solid again in the ocean, though lit with witch-light and sometimes for only moments at a time.”

“I’ve read about this,” Archeth said slowly. “The Ghost Isle, the Chain’s Last Link.”

Jhiral looked at her. “You have?”

“Yes, it’s a legend of the Hironish peoples, but there are some versions in Trelayne as well. Mariner tales—an uncharted island beyond the last in the Hironish Chain; ships sight it in the midst of storms, witch-lit in blue, there one moment, gone the next.” She gestured helplessly. “It’s a legend, you know. I always assumed … ”

“Quite.” The Emperor turned his gaze back to the Helmsman. “Are you trying to tell me we should be expecting a visit from this undead Changeling?”

“You’ve had some trouble with the Aldrain recently, have you not?”

Archeth and the Emperor swapped a look. The dwenda incursion at Ennishmin was a closely guarded secret. Outside of those who’d actually been there, only Jhiral and a tiny cabal of trusted court advisers and men-at-arms had been informed of the events. Two full legions of imperial levy now sat on the borders of the marshland between Pranderghast and Beksanara, ostensibly as a bar to raiding parties from the League territories to the north and west. The commander of the garrison at Khartaghnal had been apprised of what they were really watching for, but beyond that …

Of course, the creep of rumor was unavoidable. Faileh Rakan might have died in the skirmish at Beksanara, but a number of his men did not. The local population was decimated, but not wiped out. And among the survivors, some, even paid off and sworn to secrecy, even threatened with dire penalties—even Throne Eternal veterans—would drink and yarn and recall, and let loose dark hints and drunken fragments of truth.

“The dwenda were driven back,” Archeth said carefully.

“Indeed. But, you see, the legend says that the Ilwrack Changeling will return when his adoptive people’s need is greatest; more exactly,
when they have been thrown back in battle from their heart’s ancestral desire, and are once more in disarray
. That’s a more or less direct quote from the original Naom legend. See the corollary?”

Jhiral nodded. “Yes. What you think we should do about it is a little less clear, though. A preemptive assault on this sporadically manifesting island, perhaps?”

“That’s clearly not possible.” The Helmsman’s tone was almost prim. “I am charged with offering
pragmatic
solutions to your difficulties.”

“Not so far.” Archeth found some of her Emperor’s impatience seeping into her own mood. “If the Ghost Isle is inaccessible then—”

“You did not let me finish the tale, daughter of Flaradnam.”

“Well, she’s not stopping you now. Can we get on with this?”

“The Kiriath,” said Anasharal smoothly, “had no way to counter the sorceries of the Ilwrack clan, or at least none that they could bring
themselves to deploy. Instead, they built for safety. A city was constructed, standing above the waves south and east of the Ghost Isle. A watch was set.”

“A city in the sea?”

There was a sudden, odd strain in Archeth’s voice. Jhiral glanced at her in mild surprise.

“That is correct, daughter of Flaradnam. Commissioned and built by the clan Halkanirinakral, manned, initially at least, by its scions. The city was named An-Kirilnar—that’s City of Phantom Hunters to you, your majesty—it was designed to shadow the Ghost Isle in and out of the Gray Places. But recently it seems to have returned to the world permanently—”

“It’s still there?”

“Yes, it’s still there, daughter of Flaradnam. Currently it stands in the ocean beyond the Hironish isles, as it has now stood for some weeks.”

“Then we have to go there!”

“Archeth—”

“Yes, I would say that’s an appropriate conclusion to draw.”

“Archeth—”

“Can you … communicate with—”

“Archeth!”
The Emperor’s voice cracked like a whip. He got up from the bench and moved toward the balcony. His tone softened to a honeyed irony. “Would you be so good as to attend me within?”

“My lord.” She hurried after him. “My lord, this is an opportunity to—”

“This is an opportunity to calm the fuck down, my lady kir-Archeth.” Jhiral leaned in closer to her. In her tumbled state, she could not read it—menace or a plea for intimate confidence, the Emperor or the boy she’d watched grow up. The words came spaced. “Now walk with me if you will.”

SO SHE WENT WITH HIM.

Out of earshot—though she wasn’t convinced that was meaningful where the Helmsmen were concerned. Angfal never spoke to her outside of the study where he was hung across the walls like a nightmare in iron;
Manathan would speak to you anywhere within the An-Monal keep. She didn’t know if ripping Angfal out of the fireship he had once commanded had in some way truncated a broader sense of awareness, or if the Helmsman was hiding its true reach. But she was tolerably sure that Anasharal, a being who could pluck personal details from the heads of the men it spoke to apparently at random, would not have a problem listening to a conversation maintained a few hundred paces away in the shade of the inner garden.

“If there really is a Kiriath city up there, my lord—”

“A city standing in the ocean?”

“An-Naranash in Lake Shaktan stands above the water in exactly the same way.”

“Yes, so they tell me. And is abandoned.”

Their voices were growing heated again. Archeth backed off, seated herself on a tall, arching tree root just off the path. Her pulse was up, her vision dizzied dim. Her thoughts skittered back and forth on the shiny jagged edges of krinzanz lack.

She forced calm.

“My lord, whether the city is abandoned or not is hardly the issue.”

“Is it not, Archeth? Is it not?”

He had her—however hard she tried to crush the knowledge out. “My concern, my lord—”

“Is that you may yet find some of your father’s race who have not abandoned the world.” Jhiral sighed and sat down beside her on the root. His shoulder jolted her. He stared across the path into the foliage opposite. “I don’t blame you, Archeth. Really, I don’t. Who wouldn’t like to call back their parents sometimes? But your need is transparent. Be honest. With me, even if you cannot with yourself. You are supposed to be my most trusted adviser. Can you—honestly—tell me this is about a threat to the Empire?”