Chapter 73
73
K ANTHE WATCHED THE last of the misty forest of the Myre Drysh vanish under the arrowsprite. He remembered longing to vanish under its dark canopy, to set aside his responsibilities and live the simple life of a tracker. It was not to be. Those woodlands and hopes faded behind him.
As the ship sped onward, a vast patchwork of green fields, pastures, farms, vineyards, and orchards spread before him. The open lands ran to all the horizons, looking endless. Canals crisscrossed and sectioned off vast tracts. Their waters reflected the low light of dawn, turning them into runs of silver.
“The M’venlands,” Rami said. He was seated across from Kanthe, sharing the window. His voice was sullen. “Its bounty fills the troughs of the Eternal City’s boundless hunger.”
Kanthe’s somber mood matched the prince’s. “This is not exactly how you wished to show me these lands.”
What seemed like ages ago, atop Rami’s balcony, his friend had expressed a desire to take Kanthe into the M’venlands, to share with him the blooming fields of tabak.
Now everything has changed.
He glanced over to Aalia. She lounged next to Tazar, leaning her head against his shoulder. He held an arm around her, as if trying to protect her from the storm of events.
“Aalia would make a great empress,” Rami said. “If allowed.”
“Still, she did not look happy at Tykhan’s offer of the crown. As I recall, she and Tazar had ambitions to end the hardfisted tyranny of emperors—only now she must take on that role herself.”
“The circlet may chafe, but she’ll be able to make changes, to break chains, to try to stem the decline of a stagnant empire.”
Kanthe nodded. “I don’t doubt her good intentions. But it is easier to wish for such a goal, even to fight for it, but once the reins are handed to you, lofty dreams become weighted by stony reality.”
“Like facing my brothers and the imperial council.”
Kanthe read the worry in Rami’s face. “How will your brothers take such a claim?”
“I cannot truly say. The Augury’s ploy may end up getting us all killed. That’s if we can even trust him? He is weighted down by secrets as much as all that bronze.”
Kanthe slowly nodded and stared toward the wheelhouse door. Tykhan had vanished inside after Aalia finished her long missive. It had required multiple strips of parchment to lay out her case. But Kanthe doubted all the parchment in the world could truly accomplish that. Any success depended on the addled emperor and the puppeteer who pulled his strings.
Tykhan had taken Aalia’s curled and sealed message into the wheelhouse, where he had affixed it to a skrycrow and sent it winging out a window toward Kysalimri. Afterward, Tykhan had remained inside there, leaving many questions on this side of the door.
Behind Kanthe, Frell and Pratik debated and pondered a hundred subjects concerning the Sleeper of Malgard. For Kanthe, their chatter had faded into a drone. At one point, they had tried to pull him into their discussions, but he had waved them off. To him, it was all spent breaths and suppositions. Any true answers were locked in bronze up front.
He preferred the patient attitude of Llyra, who picked at a fingernail with a tip of a dagger. Jester and Mead drowsed nearby. Elsewhere, the Rhysians had also given up their game of daggers and sat quietly, looking meditative.
“How is your father doing?” Kanthe asked Rami, wincing a bit, knowing this was a sore matter for the prince.
Rami craned back to look at the stern cabin. “When I left him, he had fallen asleep. But I should—”
The door back there banged open. Emperor Makar burst out, wild-eyed and disheveled. From the dampness at his crotch, he had soiled himself. He rushed out with a shout of fury. He tripped over a table in his haste and sprawled headlong to a crash.
Rami rushed toward him. “Father!”
Makar rolled away, lifting his arms. “Who are you all? Where am I?”
He clearly remained confused, but his words were ripe with command, firm with the authority he once wielded.
“It’s Rami… your son.”
His sister hurried over, drawing Tazar, too. “Father, it’s Aalia. I’m here, too.”
Makar shook his head, breathing hard, struggling to recognize them.
The wheelhouse door slammed open behind Kanthe. Before he could turn, Tykhan blurred across the space, demonstrating the speed of a ta’wyn. He brushed through the others.
“Let me,” he said as he drew to a stop, dropping to a knee next to Makar.
Bronze fingers brushed across the emperor’s brow. Upon their touch, Makar slumped to the deck, accompanied by a small sigh of relief.
“I’m sorry,” Tykhan said as he stood and faced them, lifting an arm. “I’ve been distracted.”
They all backed away, fearing that same touch.
Tykhan lowered his arm. “I had needed a quiet moment to ruminate on the variables that lay ahead of us. So much has changed of late, and I wanted to ensure my calculations and suppositions hadn’t been skewed off course.”
Rami remained at his father’s side. “What did you do to him?”
Aalia nodded. “You owe us some explanation.”
Kanthe agreed, focusing on a more immediate concern. “Can you do that to any of us?”
Tykhan shook his head. “No. It has taken me five decades of slow manipulation to achieve this with the emperor. Closing a pathway in his mind. Opening another. Moving a few others. A million tiny changes to be able to enthrall him.”
“Like bridling?” Frell asked.
Tykhan lifted his bronze fingers. “Such gifts are weak in a Root. They’re stronger in an Axis. And in a Krysh, they’re frightening. Each caste is imbued with unique gifts, to suit our needs in the collective. While Shiya is stronger in bridle-song, she cannot melt her form like I can.”
“‘Each to his own place, each to his own honor,’” Aalia said, quoting an old Klashean adage about their strict caste system. “The ta’wyn are not unalike in this manner.”
“I suppose we are,” Tykhan admitted. “While my communication skills are robust, my synmeld —my bridle-song, as you call it—is weak. I can barely cast a glow past my fingertips. As such, it has taken me these fifty years to be able to achieve a weak form of bridling over Makar.”
“But why do this?” Kanthe asked.
“I foresaw a future where to wield an emperor would serve my cause.”
“So you truly are prophetic, ” Aalia said, her brows pinched.
“Not at all.”
“Then I don’t understand.” Aalia folded her arms, clearly not happy to be in the dark, not in this matter, and likely not any other.
Tykhan stated matter-of-factly, “I don’t believe in prophecy.”
Such words from an augury stunned everyone, especially as they all were placing their faith in his guidance.
Tykhan continued, “The fumes I pretended to inhale are mildly hallucinogenic—not that they have any effect on me. But I’ve learned that the fumes make others swoon with a thrill of exaltation, as if the very gods were smiling upon them. It was not hard to suggest that such feelings were indeed visitations by the deities, who sought to share their divine wisdom. Time and belief took care of the rest. I built a temple, then a village, and now a town around such claims.”
Frell stepped forward. “But I reviewed centuries of Qazen’s prophetic statements— your words—and they’ve shown to be uncannily accurate.”
Kanthe nodded, remembering Frell claiming as much before.
Tykhan sighed. “It was not hard. I’ve lived in the Crown long before I took up the shawl of an oracle. I’ve watched history write itself. I’ve observed the lives of untold millions. I retain it all. While I might not be able to predict the outcome of the fall of a single coin, I know after thousands of tosses that the two sides must eventually fall an equal number of times. Time is like that on a grander scale. There are tides that flow, where the accumulation of past trends points to future events. I merely have to recite what history seems to forecast.”
“But some details of your prophecies are so exacting,” Frell challenged him. “About personal lives, about what’s in another’s heart.”
“Ah, that’s even easier. I have eyes and ears everywhere who help me. Oftentimes, my revelations are just recitations of what’s been told to me. Plus, after so many millennia, I can read the subtlest of expressions and interpret the responses that are secretly desired. A wife who suspects a husband of adultery and seeks a reason to poison him. Someone who believes a rival is corrupt and looks to me to justify discrediting and ruining them.”
He shrugged. “More often than not, prophecy is just me telling someone what they want to hear. And other predictions are simple obfuscation, couching my words in such vague ways that they fit nearly any situation.”
Pratik looked crestfallen, barely able to speak. “So nothing you’ve said was gifted by the gods. It’s all trickery or extrapolation.”
Tykhan didn’t bother to answer.
“Then why are we following you?” Rami exclaimed. “We’re risking everything on the words of a charlatan.”
Tykhan showed no offense. “A very ancient charlatan. I’ve been following variables and trends, going back millennia, pointing to the certainty of a war to come. With enough knowledge, I can predict likely outcomes. It’s allowed me to rule empires and bring down kingdoms, all leading to this moment. To ready the Crown as best I can for the tumult to come. If you follow history in all its telling detail, prophecy is simply inevitability.”
Kanthe remembered Tykhan using similar words in describing Nyx’s vision.
“It is a dangerous game you’re playing,” Rami said darkly as he collected his father under an arm. “With all our lives.”
A FTER HELPING R AMI carry Emperor Makar back into the cabin, Kanthe stayed there. He needed time to ponder all that had been shared. He also helped Rami gently clean his father, a difficult task for any son. Rami said little as they worked, but he gave Kanthe a brief and sincere hug of gratitude afterward.
Once done, Kanthe left Rami with his father and returned to the arrowsprite’s main hold. He now felt more settled, especially as he had dug out the thorn that had been troubling him about Tykhan’s story. A detail had been brushed over, one that still nagged at him.
Steps away, Frell and Pratik had cornered Tykhan, likely trying to pry more information out of that bronze lockbox, but from their looks of frustration, they were making no headway. Aalia had also returned to her couch with Tazar and Althea, their heads bowed together.
Kanthe crossed to Tykhan, interrupting some inquiry from Frell about the arkada, the crystal books found shattered in the storehouse beneath the Northern Henge.
“A question,” Kanthe interjected without any preamble, confronting Tykhan. “You stated earlier that your bridle-song was weak, but your communication skills were robust. That was the word you used. What did you mean by that?”
Tykhan looked mildly peeved, as if this were a line of inquiry that he’d rather not talk about. Still, he relented. “The ta’wyn, even a Root like myself, have the ability to speak to one another from afar. A necessary skill to coordinate and facilitate our work.”
Frell quickly understood the goal of this line of questioning. “Does that mean you can communicate to Shiya?”
“I can,” Tykhan admitted.
Frell, Pratik, and Kanthe shared hopeful glances.
Tykhan dashed them. “But I won’t.”
“Why?” Kanthe pleaded.
“As I said, we can communicate, but if I do, it will expose my location to all ta’wyn. They might not be able to discern the content of such a discourse, but they will know where it came from.”
“So, it would expose you to the enemy,” Pratik said.
Tykhan nodded. “They’re still out there, hidden and in unknown numbers. I survived their first attack, but I would not likely do so again. Since leaving my eyran, I’ve stifled any emanations of mine to remain concealed. Even my synmeld is too weak for anyone to register unless they were in the same room.”
Kanthe’s stomach clenched with a frightening realization. He pictured Shiya and Nyx casting forth with bridle-song.
Frell realized the danger, too. “Shiya… she’s not been silent.”
“She has not. After emerging from her eyran, she was basically a newborn. And it’s not just her synmeld that can be detected. A part of her is constantly calling out. She moves through the Crown like a leaking sieve. I’ve listened to her cross the Crown and out into the Wastes. She leaves a glowing trail in her wake. It’s how the Hálendii forces are tracking your friends.” His bronze brows wrinkled. “Though I don’t know precisely how they’re accomplishing such a feat. It’s worrisome and centers on something I’ve feared for centuries.”
Kanthe sensed Tykhan was skirting off the subject, but Kanthe was not ready to let it go.
“If Shiya is leaking and you’ve been tracking her, where is she? Did she and the others reach the site in the Wastes?”
Tykhan paused as if questioning whether to reveal something.
“What is it?” Frell asked.
“Where they’re headed,” he eventually said, “I know what’s out there.”
“What?” Kanthe asked.
“One of our creators’ great machines, what the ta’wyn built for them.”
Frell nodded, as if this made sense to him. “But what exactly is it?”
Tykhan shook his head. “I don’t know. That knowledge was either taken from me, or as a Root, I wasn’t high enough in status to be privy to it.”
Kanthe returned to his earlier question. “Did Shiya and the others reach there?”
“They are close—but where they’ve settled at the moment is confusing. There’s much interference. Something strange is happening there.”
“If so, then that’s all the more reason to reach out to them.” Kanthe looked to Frell and Pratik for support. They both nodded in agreement. “If Shiya has been leaking all this time and drawn no enemies, then surely a brief message to her is a small risk for a great reward.”
“I have to concur,” Frell said.
Tykhan shrugged. “I won’t do it.”
Kanthe formed a fist, but he knew if he punched that mass of bronze, he’d only bruise his knuckles. “I don’t understand why—”
“There is too much at stake in the days ahead,” Tykhan snapped. “Not only can’t I risk alerting any of Eligor’s cohorts, but I told you about how Hálendii has discovered a way to track a ta’wyn. If I attempted even a brief communication, the kingdom would know another Sleeper is awake. Such a new variable would take a hammer to all my plans. All the trends and forecasts that led to this one moment could be dashed. Nothing would be predictable afterward.”
Frell nodded. “He’s right. If Shrive Wryth suspects there is another Sleeper here, he’ll direct all of Hálendii’s forces toward us.”
Tykhan nodded. “For now, the situation remains too fragile. We’ve cast our lot. There’s no taking it back.”
Kanthe growled his frustration.
Tykhan tried to soothe him. “Once we’ve secured the imperium and if the others successfully reach the great machine, then I will break my silence.” He stared hard at Kanthe. “But only briefly.”
Kanthe frowned.
That’s a lot of ifs.
But he would have to settle for it.
Frell used the lull in the conversation to broach a concern that had been troubling him since he was dragged into the librarie of the Abyssal Codex. “You stated that you don’t believe in prophecy, but what of the Vyk dyre Rha ? The foretold rise of such a dark figure seems tied to the ta’wyn. ”
“Certainly, I recognize such a name. Over the millennia, I’ve heard whispers and rumors. But I don’t know if such stories are myths, legends, prophecies, or simply a daemon created out of necessity. Another inevitability.”
“What do you mean?” Pratik asked.
“Every culture has a dark corner of their pantheon. Hálendii has Hadyss. The Iflelen have ? reyk. The Southern Klashe—never one to limit their gods—have four of their own. Maybe it speaks to a frailty in all of us, a need to put a name to the darkness in our natures, a way to cast blame for our worst aspects, rather than accepting and addressing it.”
Kanthe swallowed.
“And maybe we ta’wyn are no better. Perhaps we, too, needed a dark god to blame.”
Kanthe shared a worried look with Frell and Pratik.
Tykhan finally shrugged. “Again, as a Root, I can’t offer more on this subject. Perhaps there was once a ta’wyn —someone far more skilled than I—who foresaw the rise of such a creature. Only time will reveal the truth.”
Kanthe had his fill of such mysteries. They made his head throb. With an exasperated sigh, he headed to his seat and fell heavily into it.
Out the window, the arrowsprite had finally crossed the vast breadth of the M’venlands and reached the southern shore of the Bay of the Blessed. To the east, the sprawl of Kysalimri rose in blazing white tiers, climbing in stacks of walls, each more ancient than the last, leading to the towering citadel, the crown of the Eternal City.
The arrowsprite angled away from it.
That was not their destination.
Not yet.
Tykhan believed it would be too sudden to dive upon Kysalimri with a new empress aboard. Change came slowly to the Eternal City, and they needed to take that into account. To that end, the Augury had settled on the town of X’or along the bay’s northern coast. It was a sanctuary of healing, renowned across the Crown for its hundreds of cascading baths, all bubbling with elixirs, oils, and tonic.
There, the fate of an empire would be decided.
Kanthe sighed, picturing a long, hot soak.
If nothing else, at least our bodies will be clean when they kill us.