“I am sorry, Majesty,” whispered the soldier. “By the Four Gods, I am so sorry…”
Tyro dropped the man to the carpet. His own legs failed, but he found the seat in time to catch him. He drained the full cup of wine, spilling it on either side of his mouth.
“How?” he asked. There was no strength left in his voice. His eyes welled.
“No one knows,” said the herald. “Her flesh and bones were… crushed… as if by a heavy stone, or a constricting Serpent.”
Tyro grabbed the flagon and turned it to his lips. Wine poured bitter into his mouth while hot tears poured from his eyes. He tossed the empty bottle across the tent where it clanged off a round shield bearing the sun standard of Uurz. His head swam and his fists clenched. His body quivered with a sickening blend of rage and despair.
His wife and unborn son were dead. It seemed unreal. A nightmare. Was he lying on the cushions awaiting the return of Mendices and dreaming this tragedy?
Talondra. Crushed to death?
Sorcery. It must be. One of his many enemies. Could Zyung’s magic have raced ahead of his armada to slaughter Tyro’s family? If so, why not slaughter the Sword King himself? Ianthe and Gammir had been destroyed by Iardu and Sharadza. Or so they told him.
My son will never be born.
He remembered Talondra’s sweet face, her eyes bright as sapphires, her touch hot as flame. His tigress. His Empress. She had survived the Doom of Shar Dni only to perish behind the mighty walls of Uurz. Madness rose like bile from the core of his stomach and thundered into his skull. He must not go mad with grief. He must be strong. Still it rose, like the ocean tide rising in the evening to drown the sand. It could not be stopped. No more than rushing blood could be stopped spilling from sliced flesh.
The Emperor of Uurz fell to his knees and screamed like a wounded animal. The herald rushed from the tent, terror on his face, tears in his eyes. The silks and fabrics of the tent became a blur of colors as Tyro ripped and tore them to ribbons. The clanging of metal implements and the splintering of wooden furniture were drowned by his wailing. A ring of soldiers rushed into the pavilion, standing about him like gilded pillars. He hurled himself against their raised shields, banging at the embossed metal with his fists until his knuckles were torn and bloody. He knocked men down, but others replaced them. They did not touch him, or offer him comfort–what comfort could they offer a raging Emperor?–but simply allowed him to bellow his pain and batter at their metal until he fell spent upon the carpets and cried like an infant.
Mendices found him like that. The Warlord quickly dismissed the soldiers. “Any man who speaks of this will be executed!” spat the Warlord. These were the cruel words that penetrated the fog of madness and brought Tyro back to his senses.
Mendices righted the overturned cot and laid Tyro upon it. Like a father tending a sick son, he leaned over Tyro and poured cold water between his lips.
“She’s dead,” Tyro whispered. “She’s dead.”
Mendices held him fast as fresh sobs brought fresh convulsions.
Tyro did not recall passing from grief into slumber, but at some point exhaustion and the weight of loss pulled him under. He welcomed the blackness, but not the dreams of flowing blood, pulped flesh, and cracked bone that replaced the waking world.
He tossed and turned, and finally opened his eyes to the gloom of the reordered tent. Mendices lay snoring nearby on a pile of pillows. A single brazier lighted the interior, sending a trail of black smoke to curl about the hole in its roof. The great camp was oddly quiet beyond the walls of mud-stained canvas.
At first Tyro thought the herald had returned to stand at attention in the corner of the pavilion. He raised his head, blinking blood-rimmed eyes, and saw that it was not the herald at all who stood watching him sleep. It was none of his soldiers either.
The figure wore a robe of sable with runes stitched in green thread about the sleeves and neck. Emeralds glittered somewhere among the dark folds. A mane of black wavy hair framed the head like a hood. The face that stared at Tyro was his own.
The scale is balanced, said the apparition.
Lyrilan’s voice.
Your wife and child have joined mine.
Tyro whimpered. He could not move arms or legs. To cry out was impossible. His broadsword lay upon the cushions ten handspans away. It might as well be ten thousand leagues from him.
Do not despair, brother, said Lyrilan. You will see them again when you enter the valley of death.
Tyro leaped up suddenly, as if a great stone had rolled off his chest.
Lyrilan was gone, if he had ever been there at all. The brazier’s flame was dead.
The Emperor of Uurz sat on the edge of his cot and wept in the darkness.