The Sleeping King (5 page)

Laernan had described the effect of the sands to her once. He said it was as if invisible beams of light were suddenly revealed as they struck the tiny particles of sand. And each beam was a snippet of Time released from behind the Veil. In the presence of the sands, he could see the crisscrossing patterns of the beams and decipher the lightning-fast snatches of visions that leaked through the fractures in Time.

“Ahh,” Laernan sighed in satisfaction, staring fixedly at his invisible beams of prophecy.

Within moments the boy oracle began trembling almost too violently to stand and breathing too hard to sob as the unwilling vision was dragged through a crack in Time and forced into his mind.

Endellian felt her father mentally brace himself to hold off whatever force might try to claim the boy before Laernan captured the youth's vision.

“Now then,” Maximillian said, his voice growing in power with every word he uttered. “Tell me true what you see, and tell me all.”

As the oracle continued to resist the vision flooding his mind, Laernan murmured gently, “Do as he says, boy. Work with us and your life and death do not have to be in vain. Otherwise, I cannot guarantee what will happen to you and every one of your blood … until the end of them all. Either way, we will have the vision. Such is the will of Koth.”

The Emperor was blasting the seer with such compulsion to reveal the prophecy that Endellian wondered how the boy still lived. The youth's knees buckled before the Emperor's power, and impassively the guards leaped forward, snagged him under the arms, and dragged him, whimpering, to his feet.

She felt Laernan insinuate himself into the young prophet's mind, forcing the tear full open, flooding the boy's head with vision upon vision upon vision, far too fast for her to register or process. How Laernan managed to unscramble that mess she had no idea.

“The end,” the boy gasped. “I see the end.”

“Of what?” Maximillian demanded.

The young oracle spoke in sobbing bursts torn from his throat. “No name … walks out of the wilderness … broken chains—” His voice broke on a hoarse cry and he sagged, dead in the guards' grips.

“You shall not have him!” her father snarled. Maximillian willed life back into the seer, driving the boy's spirit back into him in spite of the force attempting to rip it out. Perhaps the boy's stronger constitution allowed him to overcome the lethal effect of the prophecy more readily than the previous seer. Or perhaps Maximillian's preparedness for this attack and his speed of reaction made the difference. But whatever the cause, her father was able to drag the boy back from the precipice of oblivion.

Of a sudden the oracle tore free of the guards and stood trembling, actual sparks flying from his hair and clothing. His eyes appeared covered by a milky film, as if the vision had blinded him to this realm and trapped him entirely in the grip of some unseen future. Endellian reeled mentally.
Never
had she seen a prophecy act upon its seer thus. She spared a glance for Laernan, who dealt with the oracles constantly, and even he looked rattled.

Laernan spoke, describing the vision the boy would not—or could not—give voice to.

“From the Dragon's Cradle the heroes came,

Who break the hold upon the Black Flame.

Without a name or history stands bold

Heir to a blood both wondrous and old.

A true child of the roses will be born,

With flames of the first city to mourn.”

Along with his words, Laernan projected a series of images into Maximillian's mind and hers. Even sorted and clarified by Laernan's talents, the images still came so fast she barely had time to process them. Rebellion. Armies. Destruction. And blood. So much blood. Annihilation on a breathtaking scale and, finally, Maximillian himself's destruction scrolled through her mind's eye.

Profound silence enveloped the room. Endellian stared at the oracle standing defiantly before them all, a slender reed defying a mighty storm, his head held high, the magic of the Seeing casting a halo of light around him. Now that the Veil of Time was not only ripped but also temporarily demolished by the sands, images and visions crowded forward one on top of another through the conduit of Laernan's talent.

“Erase him,” her father ordered flatly.

It was no simple order to kill the boy. A spirit could be contacted within the Void or even brought back from the Void, and her father wanted no record whatsoever of what the four of them had just seen to remain … anywhere.

Laernan bowed his head, looked over at the oracle, and projected a mental command to forget … everything. When the inquisitor was certain that the boy's mind was completely emptied of everything he'd ever heard, seen, or known, Laernan nodded at her father.

“Bring Beltane and an amphere of the Black Flame,” Maximillian ordered dismissively.

A gypsy woman came in soon carrying what looked like a clay jar with a pointed bottom, covered in ancient symbols. A ghostly wisp of black flickered for perhaps a hand's width above the mouth of the jar. Endellian recoiled at the sight of the Void itself burning in the gypsy's amphere.

Laernan signaled toward the boy oracle and the woman nodded wordlessly, her eyes completely devoid of expression.

The gypsy woman held the jar high over the boy's head and tipped its contents out upon the child.

The flame poured down over the boy's entire body, hungrily consuming the oracle's spirit. The boy screamed and hugged himself as if the flame were too cold to bear. But then, as the flame went to work on the flesh, the oracle clawed at his own skin in the agony of his flesh burning and charring.

And when the flame had finished its dreadful work, the boy's blackened and burned-out husk collapsed to the floor in a pitifully small pile of ash.

The gypsy woman knelt in silence and swept up the ashes into her amphere. When the last evidence of the boy was removed, the woman left.

“An alarming prophecy,” Endellian commented cautiously, unable to gauge her father's reaction.

“More alarming than usual, I suppose,” Maximillian replied with a shrug. “But I shall head off this doom as I have before. Our future is written by me, not some meddling being or unwashed mortal. Knowing in advance what Fate has in mind makes it easy enough to foil.”

True enough. She'd seen him rewrite both past and future to his own ends more times than she could count. Still, the nature of this prophecy's arrival must surely give even her father serious pause.

Laernan spoke up hesitantly. “We have no more Children of Fate in custody, Your Majesty, and they have become exceedingly difficult to locate of late. Their sect is small and adept at hiding from our hounds.”

“Call in the High Lord Hunter and his hounds to find these mortals. Whatever resources you require to acquire more of them are yours, High Lord Inquisitor. I may have need of more of these Children in the days to come.”

“So shall it be, Your Resplendent Majesty.”

A diffident knock on the door just then turned out to be the Emperor's chamberlain reporting a disturbance between two nobles that required Maximillian's personal attention.

Her father muttered in disgust, “I leave the matter to you, Laernan. Meanwhile, I must go deal with the other children.”

Maximillian ordered the chamberlain, “Take these bickering nobles to my library. Now.”

She did not envy him having to referee the petty squabbles among his nobles. They never seemed to grasp that he had more important matters to deal with than their jealous arguments and transparent maneuvering.

Maximillian paused, thinking, and then murmured more to himself than her, “There is a prisoner in Dupree. I was planning to have Constantine's wife, who is one of the Amber Mages, encase him in amber and send him back to me. But in light of this prophecy, it might be prudent to keep him in play. He must stay confined in the northern wilds, however, dead to all who knew him. A change in plans, then…”

His voice trailed off as his formidable mind examined the problem. Then, decision apparently made, he said briskly, “Have the astral rose brought to me from my garden. Now.” He also rattled off a list of magical components that indicated he planned to fashion a physical item of some kind. A weapon, perhaps.

Maximillian turned to her and asked, “Who is the greatest pyromancer at court among my lesser nobles?”

“Aurelius Lightstar, I should think.”

“Have him brought to me immediately.”

A pyromancer? Why a fire mage?
A whiff of her father's thoughts passed through her mind. Balance. He sought to balance an opposing magic. Ice. Winter.
Hand of Winter
—she reeled as the identity of the prisoner flashed briefly across her father's mind.
General Tarses lived?
He had led the spectacularly successful invasion and conquest of Pan Orda, the great elemental continent across the Western Abyssmal Sea. He also had been tainted by the Hand of Winter—a powerful fae ice lord—while he fought in that elementally based land.

Tarses had been as close to a friend as it was possible for a man of Maximillian's power and station to have, highly favored by her father, and for good reason. Tarses was a brilliant strategist, charismatic, and beloved by his troops.

However, Tarses had been changed by his only partially successful union with the Hand of Winter. How he'd been changed was anybody's guess. Which meant he was no longer reliable or even predictable to her father. And that could not be tolerated anywhere near the Golden Throne.

The story had been put out that Tarses died in glorious battle, soon after delivering Pan Orda to the Empire. She recalled well his triumphant return to court, in an airship of all things, laden with wondrous gifts for her father—a bottled water elemental and close to a hundred diviners and dousers of things magical.

No doubt General Tarses languished in the deepest, darkest hole Haelos had to offer.

The components, the bright green magical rose from Maximillian's garden, and the golden-skinned solinari fire caster were delivered to the Emperor within minutes. She recalled vaguely that Aurelius was the last of his line. She suspected the only reason he yet lived was his potential usefulness to her father. And lo, that day had come.

“A weapon,” her father mused, his gaze lighting upon the staff Aurelius carried. “A staff will do.”

Maximillian passed his hands over the magical components and rose laid out on a table before him. The perfect bloom's petals trembled slightly, and then everything disappeared, replaced by a stunningly beautiful staff. Unlike lesser beings who must incant magics, and perhaps accessed the innate magic contained within certain components, her father had but to
think
a thing into existence. Such was the unity of his body, mind, and spirit in the production of magical energy.

Vines and leaves spiraled up the newly made staff's wooden length. At the top of it was an exact replica of the rose, but fashioned from wood as well. Only a green gem nestled within its delicate petals gave any hint of the living, astral rose it had been moments before. The only one of its kind, to her knowledge, her father had been known to spend long hours gazing at it in his garden. What was so important that he had given up a prized possession thus?

Her father spoke. “You are now the Guildmaster of the Imperial Mage's Guild of Dupree. Take this staff with you, Lightstar. Go to Haelos. There you will remain in service to me, awaiting my command to use this staff.”

Curiosity emanated from the solinari mage, but the golden-skinned elf did not dare to speak aloud as he accepted the weapon from her father.

Maximillian murmured, “Balance, Lightstar. You shall restore it to one who has lost his.”

Of course. Tarses
. In light of the prophecy, her father must deem it time to recover his lost general. Maximillian must have imbued the staff with some sort of magic for restoring the general's true nature to him and removing the taint of the fae lord's magic upon him.

“Kane. Bring me Kane,” her father ordered abruptly.

Kane? Miralana's son? The assassin?
She did not have long to contain her curiosity over what Maximillian wanted from him.

Kane glided out of the shadows in a matter of seconds and bowed deeply before her father.

“You shall accompany this elf to Haelos. I charge you with his safety until further notice.”

Kane blinked in consternation. “That is not what assassins do, Your Most Resplendent Majesty—”

“It is what a son does for his mother.”

Her father's snapped observation silenced Kane, who bowed again before moving to stand behind the stunned solinari mage.

Endellian also bowed her head respectfully as her father prepared to take his leave. Maximillian might not be worried by what Laernan had just shown them, but she had never seen the like.
A prophecy with the power to kill? The end of the Eternal Empire? Or of the Emperor himself?
Such a future might take considerable planning to avoid. Her intuition said the seed of powerful events had been planted tonight. It would take a skilled gardener to eradicate this weed.

Her father turned back to his chamberlain, who had been waiting patiently all this time. The servitor quickly filled in her father regarding a request by the King of Haraland for an immediate audience regarding a matter of treason. Treason? At the court itself, under her father's very nose? Who would be so foolish?

While Maximillian was mentally distracted, she turned furtively to Lord Laernan for a quick word about the meaning of the rest of those visions she'd glimpsed.

*   *   *

“How do I look?” Gabrielle fretted. This would be her first-ever private appearance before the Emperor. It was imperative that she strike exactly the right note, not only for Darius's sake but also for the reputation of all of Haraland.

“As lovely as always,” her husband replied soothingly. “You are the pride of Haraland. You could wear sackcloth and Maximillian would know a true lady stands before him. The only question in his mind will be why a young beauty like you married an old fossil like me.”