“Not many dogs would engage Soshir at Tsatol Deraelkun.”
Have you forgotten I did just that and lost to him? Nelesquin watched his companion for a moment, then shook his head. “You will see Keerana engage him there and take the fortress.”
“That is a bold claim.”
“He would sooner die than disappoint, and with what I have brought, he will prevail.” Nelesquin sighed and glanced at Gachin again. “Their loyalty does complicate things. Imagine, allowing this one to rot here in the palace.”
The Prince gestured, and violet energy trailed from his fingers. It swelled to a billowing cloud that engulfed the corpse and bier both. Lightning flashed argent within the cloud. The heat of high summer pulsed heavily enough to send Kaerinus’ cloak rolling across the floor. It wrapped itself around the base of the column within the empty alcove.
A wan smile twisted Nelesquin’s lips. He waved his hand toward the alcove. The cloud filled it, then fell away like Kaerinus’ cloak, unveiling a statue of Nelesquin.
Kaerinus smiled. “Very well done, my lord. Your return makes things right again.”
Nelesquin opened his arms, intending to rise on magical wings, but weakness washed over him. He staggered, yet before he could fall, Kaerinus caught him. He lowered the Prince to the ground, but Nelesquin refused to be prostrated before his own statue.
Nelesquin shoved him away, surprised at his own weakness. “Speeding my ship, making that statue…I have overtired myself.”
“There is some truth to that, but it is not the whole of the matter.”
“I have not felt this weakness before.”
“Yes, you have. You have just forgotten.”
Nelesquin shook his head, but dizziness sapped his strength. He sank back onto his elbows. “It was not like this, the time we perfected the magic. I felt some weakness, but it was transitory.”
“As this will be, my lord; but you will tire.”
“I don’t understand.”
Kaerinus crouched beside him. “When we perfected the means to sever your spirit and soul, then draw your soul from your body, we guaranteed you could not die. When your body ceased to function, Grija drew off your spirit and thought your soul had come with it. Your spirit languished in his realm until your return. Body, soul, and spirit form the eternal triangle-your spirit anchoring your soul in whichever realm it inhabits. Your spirit drew to it the materials to create a body as you emerged from the underworld, but this creation was not perfect. You feel the lack of your soul. Once we return it to you, you shall be greater than you ever were.”
“As we planned.” Nelesquin smiled. “I have not forgotten the bargain, Kaerinus. When I am world emperor, you shall rule many nations. Ours will be the whole of the earth. You, me, and my consort.”
“Consort?”
“Nirati Anturasi. She is the one who granted me escape from the Nine Hells.”
Kaerinus’ eyes narrowed. “Nirati Anturasi. I know her. I have touched her with magic. I had not thought she was that powerful.”
“No matter.” Nelesquin sat up again, clutching his knees to his chest. “I shall husband my strength until we can undo what was done at my death.”
“Do you sense where your soul lies?”
Nelesquin concentrated for a moment, then nodded. “North, distantly north. If I could feel more, I would command it to appear.”
“And the effort would likely kill you.”
“Ironic, no?” Nelesquin slowly rose to his feet. “I felt something else. The Empress. She stands between me and my destiny.”
Kaerinus shook his head. “That is not a place I should like to be.”
Nelesquin smiled. “That is an opinion I am sure she will quickly come to share.”
Chapter Six
8th day, Month of the Hawk, Year of the Rat
Last Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court
163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty
737th Year since the Cataclysm
Tsatol Deraelkun, County of Faeut
Erumvirine
I leaned on the battlements of Tsatol Deraelkun and stared down at the battlefield. Green fields had been churned into bogs of grasses, matted with blood. The kwajiin had recovered their dead companions and withdrawn. My scouts had trailed them, and reported they were returning to Kelewan.
It didn’t matter. We knew they would appear again, soon.
The blue-skinned warriors had abandoned the bodies of their vhangxi. I really couldn’t blame them, as the batrachian creatures had smelled none too pleasant in life, and even less so after they had been slaughtered. The web-footed, leaping beasts were good in an open-field battle-that much I’d seen when they destroyed the Iron Bears. Laying siege to a mountain fortress, however, requires more brains than bravery. The vhangxi had neither.
The mud had begun to dry, freezing footprints as if they were tiny fluctuations on a calm brown sea. If I looked closely, I could have picked out tracks of scavengers, including a few of the vhangxi survivors hiding in the nearby woods. They would venture out to feed, and House Derael’s archers placed bets, then killed them.
A small island lay at the center of the battlefield, with a stone circle upon it. I’d come close to dying there. Gachin had died there, and his assault with him. Had he killed me and left anyone alive to remember the fight, I might have had a small shrine erected in my memory.
Instead I just had a story destined to become legend.
As with other Mystics, though, I was healing quite nicely, and far more quickly than a man of my years should. My right ear still itched from where the Soth Gloon, Urardsa, had sewed it back on. The wound in my chest had closed, but it still hurt when I coughed. One more scar in a lifetime of them. But the good thing about scars is they mean you survived.
“Master Tolo, are you going to die?”
Smiling, I turned toward the boy who had climbed up to share the tower with me. I’d met him when he was only nine, on the road with his father and grandfather, bound for Moriande and the Harvest Festival. Barely six months later, it was hard to recognize him. Dunos had been small for his nine years, but bright-eyed and happy. He weathered his withered left arm welclass="underline" his greatest desire at the time had been to become a swordsman, though he would have been happy to help in the family mill.
Even now, despite the horrors he’d witnessed, he still possessed a touch of innocence. His lower lip trembled and his green eyes glistened. “They said you were going to die.”
I slowly shook my head. “They misunderstood.”
“They said the Gloon saw it. They can see the future.”
“Not always, Dunos.” I removed the twin swords from my robe’s sash and sat at the base of the wall. Dunos sat at my feet, his withered arm looking close to normal sheathed in ring mail. He’d been given a red robe once worn by Pasuram Derael, resplendent with the family’s wounded-bear crest embroidered in yellow. In spirit, he was one of them.
I made sure my voice was warm. “Do you remember when we were in Moriande and went to the healing Kaerinus performed?”
“We were there with that lady, Nirati.”
“Yes, we were. You saw that big scar on my chest, remember?”
He nodded. “It looked like someone tried to cut you in half.”
“They did a better job of it than the kwajiin. I went to the healing in hopes that it would be healed. It wasn’t.” I tapped a finger against my temple. “There was something else I needed healed and, over time, it has been. The scar…well, I remember little about it. It’s much like you and your arm.”
“I was out playing and found a glowing stone in a riverbank. I grabbed it and don’t remember anything until my father fished me out of the mill stream.” Dunos lifted his left arm and let it drop. “When I woke up, my arm was like this.”
“I remember you telling me. You were a mile or more downstream, but you survived. I survived, too, and woke up in my master’s home. They took care of me. They nursed me back to health. My master trained me to be a great swordsman. He passed on all the lessons he’d learned from his swordmaster, Virisken Soshir.”