Then the Unborn made its public debut.
It followed the road from Vorgreberg, floating twenty feet high. Beneath, three men marched with jerky steps, frequently stumbling.
The people didn’t like what they saw.
Neither did Ragnarson.
The thing in the milky globe was a malformed fetus thrice normal birth-size, and it radiated something that drove people from its path. Its captives, strutting like the living dead, wore faces ripped by silent screams.
Straight to Ragnarson they came. Haaken’s Guards interposed themselves. They had seen the Gosik of Aubochon at Baxendala, had seen fell sorceries, but they were frightened. Yet they stood, as they had stood at Baxendala, while facing the terrible might of the Dread Empire.
“Easy,” Ragnarson said. “It’s on our side.”
Unhappy faces turned his way. Men muttered. It wasn’t right to form alliances like this.
The automaton-men halted five paces away. Ragnarson saw no life in their eyes.
One’s mouth moved. A sepulchral voice said, “These are your enemies. Ask. They will answer.”
Ragnarson shuddered. This
thing
of Varthlokkur’s… Powerful. And terrifying.
The crowd began evaporating. Fiana had been popular, especially with the majority Wessons, but folks weren’t going to bury her if it meant suffering a constant barrage of unpleasant surprises. All they wanted was to run their homes and shops and pretend, to hide from tomorrow.
“What’s your name?” Ragnarson demanded.
“Ain Hamaki.”
“Why are you here?”
“To slay our enemies.”
“Who sent you?”
No response. Ragnarson glanced at the Unborn.
Another captive replied, “He doesn’t know. None do. Their leader brought them from Throyes.”
“Find the leader.”
“He lies behind you.”
Ragnarson glanced at the withered bodies.
One husk twitched. Its limbs moved randomly. Slowly, grotesquely, it rose.
The more bold and curious of the crowd, who had waited to see what would happen, also left for town. Even a few soldiers decided they had seen enough.
“Ask,” said the dead man.
Ragnarson repeated his questions. He received similar answers. This one had had orders. He had tried to carry them out.
He collapsed into the pile.
Another spoke. He was a leader of Nine. He believed there were eight more Nines preparing Kavelin.
“Preparing Kavelin for what?”
“What is to come.”
“Shinsan?”
The Unborn replied, “Perhaps. He didn’t know.”
“Uhm. Scour the kingdom for the rest of these… Whatever they are.”
The three collapsed.
The Unborn whipped away so rapidly the air shrieked.
“Grab them,” Ragnarson ordered. “Throw them in the dungeons.”
He worried. Their organization had the earmarks of a cult like the Harish, or Merthregul, being used politically. He didn’t recognize it, though he had traveled the east in his youth.
“Derel. Gjerdrum. You’re educated. That tell you anything?”
Both shook their heads.
“We keep getting information, but we’re not learning anything. Nothing fits together.”
“If that thing really is going to help,” Valther said, “I’d say we’ve taken the initiative. It should free us of assassins.”
Ragnarson smiled thinly. “And save you some work, eh?”
“That too. It dredges up all those people, I’ll have time to concentrate on my real job. Keeping tabs on home-grown troublemakers.”
“How’s Mist?”
“Be like new in a week.” Softly, “I’d hoped she wouldn’t get involved. Guess our enemies don’t see it my way.”
“O Shing owes her.”
“I know. Nobody ever believes a wizard has retired. We’d better be careful,” he added. “When they realize they’re doomed, they might try to do as much damage as they can.”
He was right. Before week’s end Ragnarson had lost Thom Altenkirk, who commanded the Royal Damhorsters, the regiment garrisoning Kavelin’s six westernmost provinces, plus three of his strongest supporters in the Thing, his Minister of Finance, the Chairman of Council in Sedlmayr, and a dozen lesser officials and officers who would be missed. There were unsuccessful attacks on most of his major followers. His friend Kildragon, who commanded the Midlands Light in the military zone immediately behind Altenkirk’s, established a record by surviving four attacks. The bright side was that the enemy wasn’t overly selective. They went for Ragnarson’s opponents too. For anyone important.
Many of the assassins taken were native Kaveliner hirelings.
Terrorism declined as the Unborn marched foreigner after foreigner into imprisonment. He captured sixty-three. A handful escaped to neighboring states. Radeachar followed. When its actions couldn’t be traced, it amused itself by tormenting them as a cat might.
Kavelin soon became more peaceful than at any time in living memory. When Radeachar patrolled the nights, even the most blackhearted men behaved. A half-dozen swift bringings-to-justice of notorious criminals convinced their lesser brethren that retribution was absolute, inevitable, and final.
It was a peaceful time, a quiet time, but not satisfying. Beneath the surface lay the knowledge that it was just a respite. Ragnarson strove valiantly to order his shaken hierarchy and prepare for the next round. He trained troops relentlessly, ordered the state for war, yet pressed the people to extend themselves in the pursuits of peacetime, trying by sheer will to make Kavelin strong militarily and economically.
Then Michael Trebilcock came home.
T
WENTY:
T
HE
Y
EARS 1004-1011 AFE
T
HE
D
RAGON
E
MPEROR
Shinsan had no recognized capital. Hadn’t had since the murder of Tuan Hoa. The Princes Thaumaturge had refused to rest their heads on the same pillows twice. Life itself had depended on baffling the brother’s assassins and night-sendings.
The mind of Shinsan’s empire rested wherever the Imperial banner flew.
Venerable Huang Tain constituted its intellectual center. The primary temples and universities clustered there.
Chin favored Huang Tain. “There’s plenty of space,” he argued. “Half the temples are abandoned.”
They had been in the city a month, recuperating from the flight homeward. “I’m not comfortable here,” O Shing replied. “I grew up on the border.” He couldn’t define it precisely. Too refined and domesticated? Close. He was a barbarian prince amongst natty, slick priests and professors. And Huang Tain was much too far west…
Lang, Wu, Tran, Feng, and others shared his discomfort. These westerners weren’t their kind of people.
While touring Tuan Hoa’s palace and gardens—now a museum and park—O Shing paused near one of the numerous orators orbiting the goldfish ponds.
“Chin, I can’t follow the dialect. Did he call the Tervola ‘bastard offspring of a mating of the dark side of humanity and Truth perverted’?”
“Yes, Lord.”
“But…”
“He’s harmless.” Chin whispered to a city official accompanying them. “Let him rave, Lord. We control the Power.”
“They dare not challenge that,” said Feng. A sardonic laugh haunted his mask momentarily.
“They call themselves slaves—and enjoy more freedom than scholars anywhere else,” Chin observed. “Even in Hellin Daimiel thinkers are more restrained.”
“Complete freedom,” said Wu. “Except to change anything.”
Both O Shing and Chin wondered at his tone.
The official whispered to Chin, who then announced, “This’s Kin Kuo-Lin. A history teacher.”
The historian raved on, opposing the wind, drawing on his expertise to abominate the Tervola and prove them foredoomed. His mad eyes met O Shing’s. He found sympathy there.
I’m incomplete, O Shing thought. As lame in soul as in body. And I’ll never heal. Like my leg, it’s immutable. But none of us are whole, nor ever will be. Chin. Wu. Feng. They’ve rejected their chance for wholeness to pursue obsessions. Tran, Lang, and I spent too much time staying alive. Our perspectives are inalterably narrowed to the survival-reactive. In this land, in these alum-flavored times, nobody will have the chance to grow, to find completeness.
Some lives have to be lived in small cages. Tam was sure the walls of his weren’t all of others’ making.
He chose to show the Imperial banner at Liaontung. He was comfortable with that old sentinel of the east. And Liaontung was a long, long way from the focus of the Tervola’s west-glaring obsession.
“I swear. Wu rubbed his hands in glee when Tran told him.” Lang giggled. “Chin like to had a stroke. Feng sided with Wu. Watch Wu, Tam. I don’t think he’s your friend anymore.”
“Never was,” Tran growled. He still resented Tam’s having trusted Tervola expertise before his own.
“That’s not fair, Tran. Wu is a paradox. Several men. One
is
my friend. But he isn’t in control. Like me, Wu was cut from the wrong bolt. He’s damned by his ancestry, too. He has the Power. He yields to it. But he’d rather be Wu the Compassionate.”
Tran eyed him uncertainly. The changed, more philosophical, more empathetic Tam, tempered in the crucible of the flight from Baxendala, baffled him. Tran’s image of himself as a man of action, immune to serious thought, became a separating gulf in these moments.
To defend his self-image Tran invariably introduced military business.
“The spring classes will graduate twenty thousand,” he said, offering a thick report. He still hadn’t learned to read well, but had recruited a trustworthy scribe. “Those are Feng’s assignment recommendations. Weighted toward the eastern legions, but I can’t find real fault. I’d say initial it.”
No one could fault O Shing and his Tervola for reinforcing the most reliable legions first.
“Boring,” Tam declared five pages in. “These reports can be handled at subordinate levels, Tran. Sometimes I think I’m being swamped just to distract me.”
“You want to rule these wolves, you’d better know everything about them,” Lang remarked.
“I know. Still, there’s got to be a way to get time for things I
want
to do. Tran. Extract me a list of Tervola and Aspirants linked with legions being shorted. And one of Candidates I don’t know personally. Lang, arrange for them to visit Liaontung. Maybe I can pick the men who get promoted.”
“I like that,” said Tran. “We can move the Chins out.”
About Chin, Tran had developed an obsession. He
knew
their former hunter remained a secret foe. He went to absurd lengths to make his case. Yet he could prove nothing.
O Shing already pursued a policy of favoritism in promotions. He was popular with the Aspirants. He became more so when he pushed the policy harder. The machinery of army and empire drifted to his control. His hidden enemies recognized the shift, could do little to halt it.
One thing Tam couldn’t accomplish. He couldn’t convince one Tervola to repudiate the need to avenge Baxendala.
It was a matter of the honor and reputation of an army unaccustomed to defeat.
Feng, in a rare, expansive mood, explained, “The legions had never been defeated. Invincibility was their most potent weapon. It won a hundred bloodless victories.
“They weren’t defeated at Baxendala, either. We were. Their commanders. To our everlasting shame. Your Tran understood better than we did, not having had the shock of losing the Power to impair his reason. Our confusion, our panic, our irrational response—hell, our cowardice—killed thousands and stigmatized the survivors.”
A moment of raw emotion burned through when Feng declared, “We sacrificed the Imperial Standard, Lord!
“While Baxendala remains unredeemed, while this Ragnarson creature constitutes living proof that the tide of destiny can be stemmed, our enemies will resist when, otherwise, they’d yield. We’re paying in blood.
“Lord, the legions are the bones of Shinsan. If we allow even one to be broken, we subject the remainder, and the flesh itself, to a magnified hazard. In the long run, we risk less by pursuing revenge.”
“I follow you,” O Shing replied. Feng spoke for Feng, privately, but his was the opinion of his class. “In fact, I can’t refute you.”
Tran, who disagreed with the Tervola by reflex, supported them in this. Every Tervola who managed an audience had a scheme for requiting Baxendala. Stemming the tide devoured Tam’s time, making his days processions of boring sameness only infrequently relieved by change or intrigue.
Yet he built.
Five years and six days after the ignominy of Baxendala, Select Fu Piao-Chuong knelt and swore fealty to O Shing. Not to Shinsan, the Throne, or Council, but to an individual. His emperor assigned him an obscure post with a western legion. He bore, under seal, orders to other Aspirants in posts equally obscure.
The night-terrorist Hounds of Shadow struck within the week.
After a second week, Lord Wu, maskless, agitated, appealed, “Lord, what’s happening?” He seemed baffled and hurt. “Great men are dying. Commanders of legions have been murdered. Manors and properties have been destroyed. Priests and civil servants have been beaten or killed. Our old followers from the days of hiding are inciting rebellion around the Mienming and Mahai. When we question a captured terrorist he invariably names an Aspirant as his commander. The Aspirant cites you as his authority.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Lord! Why have you done this? It’s suicide.”
“I doubt it.”
“Lord! You’ve truly attacked your Tervola?”
Lang and Tran were surprised, too. They weren’t privy to all of O Shing’s secrets either. He was developing the byzantine thought-set an emperor of Shinsan needed to survive.
“I deny attacking
my
Tervola, Lord Wu. You’ll find no loyal names among those of the dead. The evidence against each was overwhelming. It’s been accumulating for years. Years, Lord Wu. And I reserved judgment on a lot of names. I indicted no one because he had been an enemy in the past. Lord Chin lives. His sins are forgiven. The Hounds will pull down only those who stand against me now.”
“Yes, Lord.” Wu had grown pale.
“It’ll continue, Lord Wu. Until it’s finished. Those who remain faithful have nothing to fear.
“My days of patience, of gentleness, of caution, have ended. I
will
be emperor. Unquestioned, unchallenged, unbeholden, the way my grandfather was. If the Council objects, let it prove one dead man wasn’t my enemy. Till then the baying of the Hounds of Shadow will keep winding on the back trails of treachery. Let those with cause fear the sound of swift hooves.”
Wu carefully bowed himself out.
“There goes a frightened man,” Tran remarked. His smile was malicious.
“He has cause,” Lang observed. “He’s afraid his name will come up.”
“It won’t,” said Tam. “If he’s dirty, he’s hidden it perfectly.”
“Chin’s your ringleader,” Tran declared.
“Prove it.”
“He’s right,” Lang agreed.
“Is he? Can I face the Council with that? Bring me evidence, Tran. Prove it’s not just bitterness talking. Wait! Hear me out. I agree with you. I’m not asleep. But he
looks
as clean as Wu. He doesn’t leave tracks. Intuition isn’t proof.”
Tran bowed slightly, angrily. “Then I’ll get proof.” He stalked out.
Tam
did
agree. Chin was
a viper. But he was the second most powerful man in Shinsan, and logical successor to the empire. His purge would have to be sustained by iron-bound evidence presented at a perfectly timed moment.
Chin would resist. Potential allies had to be politically disarmed beforehand.
The Council, increasingly impatient with O Shing’s delay in moving west, were growing cool. Some members would support any move to topple him.
It was a changed Shinsan. A polarized, politicized Shinsan. Even Wu admitted his suspicion that the empire had been better off under the Dual Principate. It had, at least, been stable, if static.
While Tran obsessively rooted for evidence damning Chin, Tam healed old wounds and opened new ones. He studied, and quietly aimed his Hounds at their midnight targets. And futilely persisted in trying to draw the venom of the Tervola’s western obsession.
Then, without Tran there to advise them otherwise, he and Lang began riding with the Hounds.
Select Hsien Luen-Chuoung was a Wu favorite, a Commander-of-a-Thousand in the Seventeenth. Such a post usually rated a full Tervola. The evidence was irrefutable. O Shing had, for the sake of peace with Wu, avoided acting earlier.
The unsigned, intercepted note sealed Chuoung’s doom.
“Go ahead. Deliver it,” Tam told a post rider who was one of his agents. “We’ll see who his accomplices are. Lang, start tracing it back.” The note had come to his man from another post rider, who in turn had received it at a way station in the west.
The message?
Prepare Nine for Dragon Kill.
O Shing was the Dragon. It was his symbol, inherited from his father. The sign in the message was his, not the common glyph for dragon, nor even the thaumaturgic symbol.
So, Tam thought. Tran was right, after all, in mistrusting learning. His advice about suborning the post riders had paid off.
“Lang, I want to go on this one myself. Let me know when the wolves are in the trap.”
Chuoung, unsuspicious, gathered his co-conspirators immediately.
“It looks bad for Lord Wu,” Lang averred as he helped Tam with his armor. The conspirators were all officers of the Seventeenth or important civilians from Wu’s staff.
“Maybe. But nobody contacted him. He hasn’t shown a sign of moving. And the message came from the west. I think somebody subverted his legion.”