Seven Sorcerers(133)

Lyrilan sighed. “I gave you a choice, Mendices,” he said. “You could have taken the gold and fled my city. Yet instead you took the blade.”

Mendices shook his head, spitting blood instead of questions. Yet the questions leaped from his eyes, bright as needles.

A tapestry behind the throne rippled, and Thaxus the Wizard stepped from behind it. He walked to the throne and stood silent at Lyrilan’s side. The victorious guards were helping Volomses and the Khyrein ambassador to their feet. The minstrels had ceased playing when the fighting began, but now they started up again as a crowd of relieved courtiers streamed back into the hall.

Lyrilan observed the figure of Thaxus shifting and swirling like a pillar of gray smokes at his elbow, until it coalesced into its true form. Vaazhia leaned against the arm of the throne, her scaled skin bright as the scattered jewels of Khyrei. She lowered her horned head to kiss Lyrilan’s lips. The eyes of Mendices rolled backward in their sockets, and he writhed like a dying viper.

“I would have liked to ask what part you played in the murder of Ramiyah,” Lyrilan said to him. “Yet upon further reflection I decided that it was not important. You were only doing the work of my brother and his Sharrian witch. Both of them have paid for their crimes. So I gave you the choice to live in peace or die in hate. The enchanted blade, like Thaxus himself, was never real. And if it had been, it still would not have protected you.”

Mendices tried to raise a hand, but the shattered bones of his arm would not allow it. His tongue bulged black and swollen from red-stained lips.

“I suppose I owe you my thanks,” said Lyrilan. “For here now lie fifteen more traitors who would have lurked among my court until they saw a chance to betray me. I will no longer have to worry about them. Or you. Know that your death has served the Emperor of Uurz in this way.”

Lyrilan apologized to the Khyreins, who were unharmed yet shaken. He led them into the garden for a discussion of the great treaty to be signed the following day. Later that evening he walked with Vaazhia across a high terrace, and there he saw the heads of Mendices and the fifteen rebels spiked along the palace wall. Their slack faces were turned toward the streets beyond, where all who entered the royal precinct could witness the fate of traitors.

In the weeks that followed, the people of Uurz stopped referring to Lyrilan as the Scholar King. A new sobriquet had grown to fit him: Lyrilan the Ruthless. Yet at the same time they called him also the Peace Bringer. He had gladly signed the first treaty with Khyrei in all of Uurzian history. During the celebration of that agreement, which fell upon same day as the annual Festival of Ascension, he finally unveiled his new consort to the masses. Vaazhia rode beside him through the roaring streets, her limbs bright with jewels, her horns and hair thick with garlands. A shower of white blossoms cascaded from the walls and towers.

When the festivities ended, Lyrilan returned to working on his new book. Vaazhia told him many spectacular truths long forgotten by mankind. Many of these he recorded in Chronicles of the Old Breed, but many of them he did not.

Sorcerers, like Emperors, must keep some secrets.





22


The Truth


Above the rolling swells of the Cryptic Sea the sky was blue and cloudless. There had been no inclement weather or large waves, nothing to make the journey taxing. Yet D’zan stood at the railing of the Cointosser and wished he were back on solid ground. Visions of his fleet’s destruction plagued him when he tried to sleep, and ever since he had begun this voyage the dreams invaded his waking hours as well.

The many wounds he had endured were entirely healed and had left no scars. Examining his healthy physique in a mirror reminded him that he was no longer fully human. His unblemished flesh was a construction born of sorcery, and after eight years of ignorance he finally understood what that meant. Only his mind and spirit remained unchanged, both of them trapped inside a body that would not age or die. This should have brought him comfort, as most men fear death above all other enemies. Yet so many things which should have made him content failed to do so these days.

D’zan stared at the sunlight broken into flashing diamonds atop the water. The Cointosser was a fat-hulled merchant trader with a single sail, less than half the size of a Yaskathan warship. Yet there were no more Yaskathan warships to carry him northward. His own folly had lost every last one of them, along with every member of his royal navy. Yaskatha’s treasury would not support the building of another fleet, not without several years of robust trading and exports to fill the coffers with tax revenues. So his closest advisors had informed D’zan on his return from the siege of Uurz. The great harbor of Yaskatha was filled now with merchant ships like this one, the only vessels remaining to serve the realm’s interests.