Aedan nodded, struggling to compose himself. He glanced at Michael, reached out, and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. “You realize what this means?” he said. “Lord Arwyn does not hold the empress hostage and cannot enforce his claim upon the regency. He has failed. The moment he learns you are alive and well, he must either give up his bid for power or brand himself a traitor.”
“He has already done that,” said Michael firmly. “And what is more, he knows it. He cannot simply be brought to heel. He must be brought to justice.”
Aedan gazed at him, and for the first time, he saw not Prince Michael, but Emperor Michael. “Yes, you’re right, of course,” he said. “One way or another, there will be war, and there is no avoiding it.”
Michael nodded. “The empire is my birthright,” he said, “and if I must fight to keep it together, I shall fight to my last breath.”
“We both shall… Sire,” Aedan said. They clasped hands. “Come, Sylvanna,” he said. “Let us go and find Gylvain and see how soon the emperor and I may start for home.”
Book II
BIRTHRIGHT
1
The Southern Coast, with its vast, rolling, grassy plains, gradually gave way to the patchwork farmlands of the Heartlands, roughly one hundred miles inland from the Straits of Aerele. The two regions encompassed all the territory from the province of Osoerde to the east, on the shores of the Gulf of Coeranys, to the tangled woodlands of the Erebannien and its coastal marshes to the southeast, to the forests and lush meadows of Mhoried and Markazor in the north, and west to the provinces of Taeghas and Brosengae, on the shores of the Sea of Storms. Located at the southern end of this whole region, which covered the lower half of the western portion of the Cerilian continent, was the capital city of Imperial Anuire.
When the land bridge connecting the continents had still existed and the first humans had crossed over from Aduria, it was in Anuire that they had established their first settlement. Over the succeeding years, that settlement eventually grew into a thriving town, and the town into a teeming city, and the city, as the people spread throughout the land, into the seat of government of the Anuirean Empire. As the oldest and most populous human city in Cerilia, Anuire was a vibrant center of trade, learning, and entertainment, a bastion of the arts and of political intrigue. Each time Aedan left the city, he always felt as if he were leaving civilization behind to venture out into the wilds of the outlying provinces, and he could not wait to return. This time, in particular, he was eager to get back … not only to Anuire, but back into the world of daylight.
As they rode through the cold and misty woods, he knew that they would soon be approaching the lands of Diemed, roughly sixty miles from the city of Anuire, which lay just across the River Maesil. The river marked the boundary between the provinces of Diemed and Avanil, where the capital was located, and Aedan was extremely anxious to see it once again. He knew they would be there soon, and he kept trying to reassure himself with that knowledge, while at the same time forcing himself to remain constantly on the alert. He could not afford to become preoccupied. Not here.
They had journeyed this way several times before, and Aedan had learned, over his last few reluctant and uneasy expeditions to this foreboding, chilling land, to recognize some of the natural features of this most unnatural place. Even though some of it had begun to look familiar here and there, other parts of it kept changing, and he knew he would never, as long as he lived, truly grow accustomed to the Shadow World.
As they rode their horses slowly through the thick, dark woods, past grotesquely twisted and misshapen trees choked with hanging moss that resembled the gray hair of old women, Aedan thought about the first time he had traveled through the Shadow World, eight years earlier. He hadn’t liked it then, and his tolerance for the world between the worlds had not increased with time. It was, after all, the world of his worst childhood nightmares and, unlike most things in dreams, in this case, the reality was worse.
Eight years ago, he and Michael had set off from Tuarhievel together with the elven mage Gylvain Aurealis and his sister, the elf warrior Sylvanna, on their return journey to Anuire. They had traveled with an escort of elven fighters and a halfling guide named Futhark. From the elven city, they had traveled on foot for two days through the Aelvinnwode until they reached the foothills of the Stonecrown Mountains to the south, near the lands of Markazor.
Even back then, Aedan had known that they were venturing into dangerous territory. Markazor had goblins living in its forest highlands, and the Stone-crown Mountains sheltered gnolls and ogres and desperate human renegades who had fled from persecution by the law in their own lands. Yet, this was where Futhark had brought them, because for some unknown reason, as the halfling had explained, the veil between the worlds was thinnest in those regions where chaos reigned over order.
Futhark was unable to explain why this was so. Perhaps, he had said, it had something to do with the energies generated by negativity and evil. Perhaps those places where people had descended into depravity were brought closer to the Shadow World, which became more and more permeated with evil with each passing year. Or perhaps, he theorized, the awnsheghlien rendered their domains temporally unstable by their massive expenditures of dark power and the profligate bloodtheft required to support it. The halfling didn’t know for certain, and Aedan found it difficult to follow even his theoretical explanations. All the halflings really knew, said Futhark, was that it was easier to cross over in certain areas than in others. And those “certain areas” were definitely not places Aedan would have visited by choice.
This time, as in the previous few journeys they had made through the foreboding Shadow World, the place where they had crossed over was the Spiderfell, but that first time, returning from Tuarhievel, it was a little-known mountain pass in the Stonecrowns, near the border of Markazor. Aedan thought back to how it was then, and the memory seemed as sharp as ever. Even though it had occurred eight years ago, when he was just eighteen, it seemed as if it had been only yesterday.
Aedan had always wondered about the reputed ability of halflings to create dimension doors so they could shadow-walk. While he had dreaded actually crossing over into the world of his childhood nightmares, at the same time, he had been perversely curious to see how it was done. As they had moved up the path leading to the mountain pass, Futhark had gone into the lead, a bit out in front of all the others, but not so far that they lost visual contact.
As he walked, the halfling seemed to sense the air, almost as if he were an animal, stopping on the trail every now and then and sniffing the wind to detect the presence of any predators. There were halflings in Anuire, but Aedan had never really spent any time with one before, so he watched Futhark closely, with fascination.
The halfling looked like a more-or-less normal adult human male, except for the fact that he was about three-and-a-half feet tall. Everything about his proportions was in proper scale, unlike dwarves, whose legs and arms were smaller and out of proportion to their heads and torsos.
Futhark’s hair was thick and black, rising in a crest on top and descending to the middle of his back almost like a horse’s mane. His features were angular and sharp, similar to those of elves except that his eyebrows were thick and lacked the pronounced, delicate arch that elves had, and his ears were not as sharply pointed. In fact, one had to look closely to notice that they were pointed at all. City halflings, Aedan had heard, tended to adopt the dress styles of whatever locality they lived in. Futhark, however, dressed in leather hides. His arms and chest were bare beneath a dark brown leather doublet laced together with rawhide thongs, and his breeches were made of soft, natural buckskin with the rough side out. On his feet, the halfling wore leather moccasins that came up to just above his ankles and were likewise fastened with rawhide thongs. Perhaps, thought Aedan, he dressed this way because most elves in Tuarhievel wore similar attire.