Brishen rose to stand in front of her. He wore riding leathers instead of his heavier armor, and there were tears in the vest and water stains splashed across his front from chest to knees. A cold draft sneaked in under the door to rifle her skirts, revealing damp spots from where she’d sat in his lap earlier. He’d been at least waist-high in the river at some point and was still drying off.
“You haven’t considered something, wife. If my scouts return with news of my family’s fate that confirms the messenger’s, then our roles will change. The Kai won’t allow their new queen to leave the kingdom.”
The despair that had earlier nailed her to her seat in the library returned in a conquering tide. “I think they will” she said softly, remembering the list of noble houses related to the royal Khaskem and those that weren’t but with daughters of acceptable bloodlines and the ability to bear heirs.
She was saved from explaining her answer by a sharp rap at the door. At Brishen’s call to enter, Mesumenes opened the door. “Your Highness, you have visitors.”
Ildiko groaned. “More? We’ve had them all evening. Your devoted steward is being run to death trying to find accommodations for everyone.” Mesumenes touched his forehead and bowed in her direction.
“Who are they?” Brishen asked in a dull voice. Ildiko patted his arm.
Mesumenes’s own voice was a study in contrasts to Brishen’s, filled with wonder and surprise. “Kapu kezets from Emlek. Three of them. An Elsod and her masods.”
Ildiko’s eyes widened at Brishen’s reaction. His back snapped straight, losing its exhausted slump, and his voice now echoed Mesumenes’s in its amazement. “Are you sure?” The steward nodded and threw the door wide as Brishen strode towards him. “Where?”
“Great Hall, my liege.”
Brishen practically bolted from the room, Ildiko and Mesumenes hurrying behind him. She pummeled the steward with questions as she chased after her husband. “Explain,” she commanded. “What is a kapzetet, a elsie person and their masods?”
Mesumenes jogged beside her. “Kapu kezets are the memory wardens of Emlek, guardians of the mortem lights housed there. The principal kezet is the Elsod. Her apprentices are masods. An Elsod always has two.”
He got no further with his explanations. They both almost cannoned into Brishen when he abruptly halted at the doorway leading from the corridor to the great hall. Ildiko settled next to him, her jaw dropping in disbelief at the sight before her.
The hall was full of people, crammed together like bundled cordwood. They might have held each other up with ease except for the fact every last one of them had fallen to their knees. Their expressions were as slack-jawed as hers as they stared at the three people in the hall’s center. Ildiko rubbed her eyes to assure herself she wasn’t delusional, but no, there was sha-Anhuset, almost prostrate herself next to an equally humbled Mertok.
A space had opened up around them, a near perfect circle of what had seemingly become sacred ground. Right in the middle of Brishen’s fortress.
An ancient Kai woman, her silver hair woven into complicated braids, faced Brishen in regal silence. She wore robes of green and indigo, and her face and arms were heavily tattooed. Two younger Kai, a man and woman wearing similar robes and skin markings stood behind her, as silent and almost as regal as their elder.
Brishen’s stride was far more measured than the earlier headlong flight down the hall. Like everyone else, he fell to his knees before the old kezet. Ildiko did the same, even though she had no idea why this woman, despite her commanding presence, earned the willing supplication of every Kai in the building.
Brishen raised his hands, palms cupped upward as if to present some invisible gift. “Elsod, it is an honor. I extend all of Saggara’s hospitality to you.”
The Elsod placed her knobby hands in his, her black claws caging his fingers to curve around his wrists. “Rise, Interrex. King between kings.” A collective gasp went up at her words. “We humbly accept.”
He rose to stand once more. Ildiko hesitated, at a loss as to what protocol demanded in this situation. She stood more slowly and only when the rest of the hall’s occupants gained their feet.
Brishen reached for Ildiko’s hand. His fingers were warm against her icy ones. “Forgive my lapse of decorum. This is Ildiko, once of Gaur. My wife and hercegesé.”
Ildiko bowed briefly, still marching blind through a nest of unknown rules of etiquette. “It is an honor...Elsod.” She mimicked Brishen. The gods only knew if she addressed the memory warden correctly.
She must have done something right or else not terribly wrong, because the Elsod nodded in return. “The pleasure is mine, Your Highness.”
The gravid silence in the hall grew more pronounced when the Elsod turned her gaze back to Brishen. “We’ve come to speak with you regarding the galla.”
The proclamation carried all the harsh dissonance of a widow mourning at a grave. She might as well have said “We’ve come to tell you it’s time to die.” Ildiko was certain she heard more than one person choke back a despondent cry.
Brishen had grown pale, but his voice remained even. “Of course, Elsod.” He caught Anhuset’s and Mertok’s gazes. “Clear the hall.”
The two leapt to do his bidding and soon the hall was empty except for the kapu kezets, Ildiko, Brishen and Anhuset.
The Elsod stared at Anhuset standing guard at the door. “Do you want her here?”
Brishen waved Anhuset over to them. “Sha-Anhuset is my cousin and my second. Nothing happens in Saggara that she isn’t aware of it.”
The warden acquiesced. “So be it.” She raised her hands and sketched invisible patterns in the air. Ildiko sucked in a breath as her ears popped. Brishen and Anhuset shook their heads and tugged on their ears. The Elsod dusted her palms together. “That should do it. Now I will tell you how you might rob your people but save your kingdom in the doing.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Brishen tried not to reveal his shock at having Emlek’s Elsod standing in his house. The memory wardens, as sacred to the Kai as Emlek itself, had not left the holy island since Brishen’s grandfather had married. Even then, it had been a party of masods, the second-tier wardens, and not the Elsod, who attended that wedding. Only circumstances of the gravest nature would coax the oldest kapu kezet out of Emlek. He supposed a galla horde overrunning the land qualified. The ringing in his ears had nothing to do with the Elsod’s silencing spell and everything to do with the realization for why she was here.
“My family is dead,” he said abruptly. Ildiko gasped, and Anhuset scowled.
The Elsod eyed him for a moment. “And what makes you so certain?”
“Because my mother always coveted one of you as a captive. To plunder the mind and memory of a kapu kezet would be like drinking wine made by the gods. You would never have left Emlek’s shores were Secmis still alive.”
Her eyes, faded to a pale yellow, flickered for a moment. “You knew your mother well.” He flinched at her remark. “The Scrying Wheel revealed the fate of Haradis. None survived such a plague. The galla engulfed the palace and devoured all inside.” Her voice softened. “We of Emlek offer our sympathies. The king is dead. Long live the king.”
She didn’t kneel before him, but his wife and his cousin did, as did the masods. Brishen’s heart kicked hard beneath his ribs. Her news didn’t surprise him. He had waited for the scout’s return to tell him what he’d known at gut-level. He was the last of his line. No longer the spare, the prince of no value.
He bent to grasp Ildiko’s hand and coaxed her up beside him. Her icy fingers entwined with his. “Rise, all of you.” He tried not to think of his brother’s lost children or their dispirited mother. He had never coveted the throne, happy to relinquish it to Harkuf and the offspring Tiye bore him. To gain it through such tragedy filled him with guilt. He happily laid the blame for their deaths at his mother’s feet, yet he too shouldered a sense of responsibility.
Every gaze in the room remained fixe
d on him, waiting for him to speak. “Why did you address me as Interrex if you knew my line was dead?”
Ildiko, not the Elsod, answered him, and he swore her hand grew even colder in his. “Because now is the worst time for a permanent transference of power. Those alliances in place will stay in place because many believe at the moment that Djedor or Harkuf, or both, may yet still live. None want to jeopardize positions hard-fought for and earned. If it’s confirmed you’re king, those old alignments mean nothing and new ones must be forged, whether through secretive bargaining, threats and extortion or outright warfare. Not only will you have all of Haradis camped on Saggara’s lands and galla on our doorstep, but factions of the surviving nobility clawing at each other for power and influence.”
Brishen blinked at her, stunned, as did Anhuset whose eyebrows had climbed up her forehead during Ildiko’s speech.
“You understand the machinations of court and power very well, Your Majesty.” The Elsod’s voice hinted at her amusement.
Ildiko paled at the address. She glanced at Anhuset before settling a long stare on Brishen. “Warfare isn’t always played out on battlefields or fought by soldiers with sword and shield. It’s court where rulers truly rise and fall.”
His fragile, human wife. Any Kai older than a decade could break her in half with little effort. But behind those strange, sometimes disturbing eyes lay a mind sharp as a blade with an innate sense of strategy honed by years of surviving in the Gauri court. In his lifetime, he often depended on his cousin’s sword arm and battle worthiness. Now, he’d lean hard on Ildiko, as skilled in her way as Anhuset was in hers.
He executed a short bow. “I will need your counsel in such things, Ildiko. Now more than ever.” He turned his attention back to the Elsod. “You didn’t come all the way from Emlek to tell me what the Wheel revealed. What did you mean when you said I’d rob my people but save my kingdom?”
They dragged chairs from the high table and set them in a makeshift circle. Ildiko brought the memory wardens goblets of water and wine. Brishen leaned toward her after she took the seat next to him and whispered in her ear. “Thank you, Ildiko.” She nodded and squeezed his arm.
The Elsod settled into her seat and began a rhythmic tapping on her cup with her nail that set Brishen’s teeth on edge. “The Wheel showed us the destruction of Haradis as it happened. Emlek holds the memories of Kai nearly as ancient as the Gullperi. We left for Saggara while the Haradis Kai still clung to the Absu’s safe shores. We believe there’s a way to defeat the galla and banish them back to the void from which Secmis summoned them.”
Rage surged inside him to do battle with a burgeoning hope. “Then my mother was responsible for this mess we’re in.”
“Yes.”
Anhuset gave a low whistle and shot him a revealing look as if to say “This is bad.”
It was bad. If it was made known. “You possess powerful information, knowledge that could plunge Bast-Haradis into civil war and collapse the kingdom faster than any demon horde on a rampage,” he told the Elsod.
Her stern features, wizened and tattooed, softened a fraction. “That is something we want to avoid at all cost. We’re history keepers, Sire, not kingmakers. With Djedor’s death and the deaths of your brother and his children, the line of succession belongs to you. We wish only to help you save our country so you may rule more wisely than your parents before you.”
That was some relief. Ildiko’s statement regarding the machinations of ambitious nobles weighed heavily on him as it was. All he needed was the newly elevated peerage planning an impromptu regicide because of Secmis’s colossal mistake. “What is this plan you have?”
“Every necromancer who has summoned galla paid the price of their foolishness with their lives. No one can control those creatures. Your mother was no exception.”
One of the masods spoke then. “When the queen died, there was no one to stitch close the barrier she tore open. The galla first freed are joined by more spilling through the breach. The horde is growing as we speak.”
“Like a disturbed hive of hornets.” The fear in Ildiko’s voice made Brishen’s stomach turn. He was as frightened as she was, but it seemed somehow worse to hear the proof it in her words.
The Elsod’s expression turned even grimmer. “If only galla were as gentle and pleasant as angry hornets.”
He was growing impatient. If there was a way to kill galla, then he wanted to get on with it. “We have very little time then. How do we close the breach?”
Ildiko fetched more wine when the Elsod raised her cup for a refill. Brishen tried not to tap his foot too obviously while she drank. When she finished, she set the cup aside and gave him a knowing look, as if completely aware of, and amused by, his fretfulness. He wasn’t in the least amused.
“Have any of you heard of the Wraith King?” She continued when they all replied they hadn’t. “Because we’ve never before seen a hul galla emerge, I brought forth Emlek’s oldest mortem lights and drew out their memories.”
The oldest mortem lights were ancient, from when the Kai were barely civilized and the Gullperi held sway over the lands. Brishen wondered how strange it must have been to reach that far back and see the memories of a time long forgotten.
“The Wraith King was a Gullperi turned necromancer,” the Elsod said. “Immensely powerful with the ability to raise and control the newly dead—those spirits who had not yet moved beyond this world’s tethers. To do it, he split himself into distinct entities. An earthly body that slept and a mirror image made of spirit and magic. An eidolon with physical presence who couldn’t be harmed or killed by normal means and who could force the dead to do his bidding.”
“Why do I get the feeling this plan is going to reek worse than the back end of a breezy mule?” Anhuset’s sour expression reflected Brishen’s own growing concern.
Where in the gods’ names was he going to dig up a necromancer? And one not so warped and malevolent that he would actually help instead of harm?
Despite his misgivings matching his cousin’s, he couldn’t have her flaunting disrespect to the Elsod. He gave her a warning frown. “Sha-Anhuset.” She returned the expression but fell silent.
Instead of taking offense at Anhuset’s remarks, the Elsod cackled. “She’s right. We searched for something else, an alternative that might work. This is the only one with a chance of success.”
Beside him, Ildiko stiffened in her seat. That thread of fear in her voice was no longer as distinct as earlier, but still undiminished. “What terrible thing about this plan would make you seek another alternative?”
“Galla can’t be killed, but they can be contained, herded and banished. By the dead and their king.”
Brishen exhaled a frustrated sigh. “Elsod, it all sounds reasonable when you say it, except for the part where I have to find one of these Wraith Kings. I’m not a necromancer, and even if I were, we’re speaking of a hul galla, a horde. We don’t just need a few dead. We need an army of them. Thousands. And they’ll be as bad as the galla. Angry, vengeful, outraged at being summoned back. The living can’t control the dead any more than they can control demons, and I don’t think I want to ever cross a necromancer who can, if such a one existed.”
The Elsod stood, and suddenly she seemed almost twice her height. Her faded eyes burned bright and hot, as if a fire had suddenly ignited inside her and cast its glow throughout her body. Even the markings etched into her skin shimmered. “No such necromancer lives in these times that we know of, Your Majesty. You must become one. A Wraith King.”
“Oh gods, no.” Ildiko looked as if she would faint.
Anhuset joined her, far more strident. She jerked from her chair and kicked it out of the way. It slid across the floor and toppled. “No! This is madness, Brishen!”
Brishen cut a hand at her in a silencing motion, never taking his gaze off the memory keeper. “How does one become a Wraith King?”
“You must be killed, then remade as eidolon.”
&nb
sp; Ildiko shuddered beside him, trying her best to swallow back the horrified cries he could hear trapped in her throat. He wanted to comfort her, but his own shock kept him frozen in his seat and his eyes locked on the Elsod. A small part of him congratulated himself on the calm timbre of his voice when he spoke.
“There’s always a high cost to these things, isn’t there? And it’s usually a life.”
The Elsod tilted her head as if to puzzle out his character and the iron control he maintained in the face of such bleak news. “I said you’d have to be killed. You won’t have to die, at least not fully.”
Brishen scowled. He wasn’t in the mood to appreciate clever plays on words. “I’ve always been under the assumption that death is a one-time, encompassing event.”
“Why would you ever think that?” she said. He growled low in his throat. “The ritual I mentioned—if we read the memories and the attendant texts correctly—offers a way to turn you eidolon for a short time before returning your spirit to your physical body, neither one permanently damaged by the ordeal.”
“How?” Ildiko stood now, pale as milk and her hands curled into fists as if daring the Elsod to lie.
The old woman returned to her seat. “The ritual calls for separating the person into three entities: a weapon, the physical body and the eidolon. To do so, the weapon must be infused with the power of a particular spell. It must then taste the lifeblood of its wielder with a killing stroke. The spell then works to split the spirit from the body. All three are separated but still tethered together. The eidolon bears his weapon into battle while the body remains behind, protected until it can be reunited with the spirit.”