Chapter Thirteen
Duty And Doubt
???
Dracyg Dominion, Zarynth.
Gedeon.
Outside the doors to the throne room, Gedeon stood waiting with Sekun, trying and failing not to eavesdrop on the private conversation happening within.
The voices echoed and shimmied through the cracks in the doors, and try as he might to block them out, to respect his mother’s privacy, Gedeon still heard the tail end of their conversation.
‘Then, I will have to wait,’ the Empress said calmly, though Gedeon did not miss the irritation beneath. ‘You must pray to the Gods that this all plays out the way you intend. Or I will have little use for you going forward.’
He barely heard the subject’s mumbled reply, but the reverence with which she spoke was too prominent to miss.
Gedeon glanced at Sekun, wondering if he too was intrigued by the stranger on the other side of the door, but his brother merely looked bored, picking at his nails.
‘Do not bother me again until it is done,’ the Empress warned. ‘Go.’ There was a whooshing sound, swiftly followed by a command Gedeon knew was meant for them, ‘You may now enter.’
The throne room was empty, save for his mother and the flames wrapped around her body.
The Black Throne was an ancient commodity of Zarynth’s royalty, imbued with immovable magic from Fire Warden’s past. That it still burned with his mother’s rule had never quite sat right with Gedeon, for she outwardly despised the Fire Mother.
A blatant mockery of Eraura’s power.
Not that he would ever voice that particular opinion.
Only when her sons stood directly before her, did the Empress speak. ‘Have the preparations been made?’ she asked Sekun directly.
‘They have,’ he replied. ‘The ship awaits us in the harbour.’
‘Good. Good,’ she said softly. Wisps of smoky shadows began at the Empress’ hand. She lifted it to her eye level, watching as it snaked through her fingers. Her hand curled into a fist, and the shadows disappeared.
An awakened vitality shone through her turquoise eyes, and as she stood, the throne’s flames guttered.
‘The Gods favour us. And the Gods are good. The time is now, my sons. Let us finally restore order in this unbalanced realm. Let us finally sow what was undone. And let all who do not submit bleed.’
The fire within Gedeon sizzled, recoiling, as though disturbed by her words.
But the darkness bristled with elation.
‘The war is yours, my queen,’ Sekun crooned proudly. ‘And this first battle is already as good as won.’
Battle… could it be called a battle? It was to be a slaughtering of innocents, of women and children, and men who had likely never even wielded a sword. They were not warriors with a destiny to die with honour, defending their territory. They were just people.
There could be no honour in this task. None at all.
What sort of Fire Warden would he be, if he used Eraura’s power in this manner?
But what sort of prince, the Empress’ greatest ally, opposed his queen’s wishes?
‘Gedeon?’
He looked up to find his mother’s cutting gaze on him. ‘Your silence disturbs me. If there is doubt in your heart, speak it.’
Perhaps he was not as unreadable as he imagined he was.
Never in his life had Gedeon doubted her. Never once had he thought twice on an order before executing it. But never before had an order had the potential to create such universal chaos and devastation.
‘I have to wonder…’ said Gedeon slowly, suddenly finding it difficult to keep her gaze, ‘If this is truly the best way to commence this war? Would it not be more… more prudent to invade the lands of those who oppose you? A clashing of armies, of soldiers and warriors, whose purpose is to bleed on a battlefield, rather than the decimation of a city full of harmless civilians?’
To his left, Sekun let out a disdainful snicker.
The Empress continued to glower at Gedeon. The silence grew ever thicker with each second that ticked by. ‘You doubt me,’ she said quietly. Her voice held such cold fury.
Not a question. A statement.
Gedeon chose his next words very carefully. ‘I am advising you, as any good son should.’
She moved to him then, slowly, carefully, like a predator stalking its prey.
She was shorter than him in stature, yet her mere presence towered over him, shrinking him where he stood.
Gedeon was sure if he were anyone else but her son, the wisps now swirling at her hands would have claimed its next victim already.
She whispered, ‘You disappoint me, Gedeon.’
‘I only meant to-’
‘You will be silent!’
Gedeon immediately closed his mouth and bowed his head. Even Sekun stopped smiling.
‘Do not believe for a moment that I have not carefully planned every element of this coming war. Long before you were even born, these plans were in motion. You will commit to this task and you will not question me again.’
Both Gedeon and Sekun kept their silence.
After a few long breaths, she placed a long finger beneath Gedeon’s chin, lifting his head.
Her features were soft now, imbued with fiery love.
‘Everything I have ever done is for you, my sons. This world will one day be yours to rule. And every life lost, every sacrifice made, every drop of blood spilt is a necessary cleanse for the new world to arise. We are one. One mind. One vision.’ Her eyes flickered between them. ‘Are we not?’
‘Always,’ Sekun murmured.
She looked to Gedeon, eyebrows raised expectantly, innocently hopeful.
He was duty-bound to his position. Love-bound to his family. The prince stepped into the light as he smiled at her, bowed his head and said, ‘Of course.’
Returning the smile with a relieved exhale, she clasped her hands together, her forefinger subconsciously sliding over the inscribed flat golden ring on her left middle finger. ‘Then, go, my sons. Gods be with you. I await your return.’
Gedeon bowed low, his brother doing the same at his side, then they both turned toward the Throne Room doors, heading for Little Ash Harbour where a ship was waiting to carry them across the world.
To the icy harshness of the northern continent.
To Nythanor.
???
The Birlissus Ocean belonged to no realm, not even the seven isles of Loros, Mother Corla’s dominion of water.
Pirates and raiders, lawbreakers and outlaws roamed its unpredictable surface, welcome nowhere but the one place in Droria that had no rules or regulations, the one place governed by no land.
A place where anarchy could not be condemned.
It was for that reason that their ship had been protected with impervious wards, should Droria’s rebels draw too close, curious to see what and who else sailed across the vast body of water.
It was also for that reason that the ship was a brown, rickety bucket of rust, rather than the royal ships of grandeur that Gedeon and his brother were used to.
The crew were a quiet group of human sailors who did not want to talk to them any more than look at them. He couldn’t tell if their silence was borne from fear or apathy. He did not care enough to find out which.
The relentless noise in his mind was louder than the wind in the sails and the crashing waves beneath.
But he refused to listen to it.
He had chosen his side, his loyalty laid to rest with the prince.
In Dracyg, where the sun was nothing more than a hazy orb desperately trying to penetrate its rays through the thick blanket of smoke and ashy clouds, there was little to no heat to be felt.
But here, out on the open water where the sun beamed down from a clear blue sky, the warmth of it seeped into his skin.
It soothed his soul.
In those moments, the thoughts quietened and he was not a prince or a Fire Warden. He just was. When night inevitably came again, he found himself longing for the dawn, longing to feel the sun on his face once more.
After a week of uninterrupted travel, the white plains of Nythanor’s shores finally came into view. Gedeon had never ventured to the icy north before, and the climate was harsh on his heat-adapted body. Both he and Sekun were wrapped in thick layers of leather and furs, and still Gedeon shivered.
He raked his gaze upward, taking in the vastness of The Floating Mountains before them.
On foot, the chance for survival on such a treacherous journey scaling the glacial towers was slim.
But Sekun was a salir. It was a rare gift, where a person possesses the ability to leap through time and space to reach a specific destination.
Saliring long distances could be dangerous, if not fatal to the wielder, not to mention whilst carrying another through the chasm, and so their journey was split into shorter leaps to allow Sekun time to rest and recuperate and savour his magic before going further.
Gedeon did not like it one bit. Not because saliring was uncomfortable, but because it meant having to be in close proximity to Sekun.
It may have been the closest he and his brother had ever been to a hug.
Even with Sekun’s gift, it took them days to climb the mountain.
On a fairly flat snowy landing, about a quarter mile from Phaenon City, they stopped to breathe one last time.
The effects of repeatedly squeezing through the chasms of nothing, married with the altitude, made Gedeon’s body heavy with exhaustion.
Sekun was disgruntled to say the least, and dropped his hold on Gedeon as soon as they touched ground.
Freshly fallen snow compacted beneath their feet.
It was night, and yet the moon’s brightness shone upon the white canvas, reflecting its light into their surroundings with surprising illumination.
He could see the city from here. Countless buildings of snow covered stone that stretched for miles along the mountainside, each one as differently built as the next, as though each dwelling had been constructed by a different person, a different mind with a different vision of what a home should look like.