Elegy for a Lost Star (38 page)

The light of the star shone down through the windows in the ceiling of the basilica, bathing the altar and most of the inner sanctuary in a silver light. As he ascended the stairs in that light, Constantin had the dreamy sensation of following a shaft of moonlight into the heavens.

This holy place, this citadel of a dead star that had fallen in another time, was one of the few places in the world he had ever felt peace. Something in the ethereal glow reminded him of another place, a realm between worlds, life and death, where his old life had ended and his new one began.

Born of an unknown Cymrian mother whose face he still remembered, even though they had shared life for only the space of one breath, fathered by a demon, his early existence had been one of cherished violence and artful
bloodshed. Constantin had been, a few short years before in the counted time of the material world, a gladiator in the arenas of Sorbold, a merciless killing machine himself, until he had been rescued and taken to the realm that he was now recalling, a place of dreams known as the domain of the Lord and Lady Rowan, a place beyond the Veil of Hoen, the Old Cymrian word for joy. Those entities, the manifestation of healing dreams and peaceful death, had taught him much; time in their world passed in the blink of an eye as it was counted in the material world. Gone from sight only a few short months, he had aged a lifetime, had studied, been steeped in wisdom, and come to realize that the ignominy of his birth was not a stain but a badge of honor. He had set about being worthy of it when the Scales chose him and elevated him to the Patriarchy.

The sickening irony of his life's story twisted his viscera now. He thought back to the words he had spoken to the Lord Cymrian and the king of the Firbolg upon hearing of Talquist's elevation to Emperor.

You could not have brought me worse news
.

Why?
the king of the Bolg had demanded.
Tell us why
.

His answer echoed in the darkest recesses of his mind.

Talquist is a merchant in only the kindest usage of the word. He is a slave trader of the most brutal order, the secret scion of a fleet of pirate ships, which trade in human booty, selling the able-bodied into the mines, or worse, the arenas, using the rest as raw materials for other goods, like candles rendered from the flesh of the old, bone meal from the very young. Thousands have met their deaths in the arenas of Sorbold; I cannot even fathom how many more have found it in the mines, or the salt beds, or at the bottom of the sea. He is a monster with a gentleman's smile and a common touch, but a monster all the same
.

And yet the Scales confirmed him
, the Lord Cymrian insisted.
I witnessed it myself
.

As he reached the top step, Constantin thought about the incredulous expression in the eyes of the Bolg king, a man whose previous life had no doubt held much of the same sort of experiences as his own.
Why did you not say something before you left?
King Achmed had demanded.
If you knew this was a potential outcome of the selection process, why did you not intervene?

The bands of platinum that edged the altar were gleaming brilliantly. His own reply reverberated in his head, nauseating him.

Because it is not for me to decry the Scales. They are what confirmed me to my position in the first place. How could I decree their wisdom to be faulty without invoking a paradox? Besides, to acknowledge my past in the arena would be to open the realm of the Rowans to scrutiny that would not be welcome there. And finally, he was not the only man with blood on his hands who was in the running. If I were to decry everyone I thought unfit to be Emperor, Sorbold would be a leaderless state
.

And because I am a coward
, he thought now.
I did not want to imagine what I knew would happen
.

He bowed before the stone table, then knelt on the floor in front of it. The simplicity of the stone, the purity of the platinum, was designed to allow the prayers that were presented to him through this altar to flow freely into his mind through the Spire and onto the feet of the Creator. That simplicity, that purity, made his thoughts resonate in his head now.

In the silence, he remembered the last words he had spoken to the Bolg king.

I pray that, as I have undergone a change of heart in my time behind the Veil of Hoen, Talquist too will experience such a transformation. Perhaps the fact that he did not immediately demand coronation as Emperor is a sign of that
.

Achmed's eyes had met his, full of common understanding.

I doubt it. In my experience, men who had a thirst for blood and power only grow thirstier the more they are fed it. You may be the only exception I have ever met
.

Constantin's hands trembled as they touched the altar.

He struggled to keep from cursing himself, pushing back the thoughts that crowded into his mind. They refused to be banished, swelling forward into his consciousness relentlessly.

You fool. If only you had stepped forward then, had recognized that the Scales had been tampered with, perhaps you could have averted the death of half the world that will come now. Now that blood joins the rest that is on your hands
.

He thought of Terreanfor, one of the last repositories of Living Stone in the known world, and the vast power that was extant there. Of all the elements, earth alone had the attributes to sustain such a power; the others were too fleeting, too evanescent to hold on to it in great concentrations. The winds were too transitory, the seas too churning, starlight too distant, fire too unpredictable and destructive. But the earth remained steadfast, unchanging, passing through its cycles in patient, almost reverent, consistency, which was why so much of the world's power resided in earth, in land. And as he thought of the cool, dark cathedral hidden deep within Night Mountain, where the light would never touch it, he thought of the tale the priests had told him of the felling of the statue of the soldier of Living Stone.

And of all the other such statues, man and beast, trees and the Living Stone altar itself, waiting to be harvested.

And the power that was about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

Concentrate
, he willed himself.

Softly he began to chant the rites by which he received the daily prayers of the faithful of the Patrician religion. His body began to vibrate gently as he did, the power of the ethereal light above him reverberating through him, allowing him to be the channel of those petitions directly to the Creator. It was always a humbling sensation, knowing that the prayers and dreams, fears and joy of millions of souls were passing through him, making
his body shine, for a brief moment, with the same ethereal glow as the star on the minaret a thousand feet above him.

From the corners of the continent, the southwestern realm of the Nonaligned States, from Bethe Corbair in the east, Navarne and Avonderre to the west, Canderre and Yarim in the north, and Bethany, the central province of Roland, and finally Sorbold in the south, one by one each of his benisons was transmitting the prayers of the faithful through the stone altar. The receipt of the praise rang like chimes, different tones in his head; he had no idea what was being asked or offered, or how many different people were entrusting him with their prayers, he only knew that together they made up one glorious symphony of praise and entreaty that gave glory and honor to the All-God while supplicating for his grace.

He never knew how long the transfer of prayers would take; time lost its hold in the presence of great elemental power. When at last the tones from each of the benisons' prayers began to fade, he caught hold of the last one, sustaining it with his own chant.

The remaining four songs of praise came to an end; the benisons had completed their evening requirements of offering to the Chain of Prayer, unaware that the Patriarch was still listening. When only the single chant of the benison of Sorbold was present in the echoing basilica, the Patriarch spoke.

Nielash Mousa
, he whispered.
Tarry
.

It was something he had never done before, had never gone backward down the Chain of Prayer to a supplicant on a lower level, but he was desperate. The altar beneath his hands reverberated. He waited for a long moment, then heard a very surprised voice resound throughout Lianta'ar.

I hear you, Your Grace
.

A sickening sensation swelled through him, the glorious vibration of praise and supplication changing into the racheting discomfort of discord. Constantin gripped the altar, struggling not to collapse.

It seemed as if the weight of the material world was now on his shoulders, dragging the breath from his lungs. All the lightness of being that he enjoyed in his daily offerings was reversed; now he struggled for air, struggled to bear up under the crushing pressure.

Time expanded all around him. As his daily prayers seemed to take no time at all, now each heartbeat, each breath was labored, extended, drawn out to the ends of the earth.

Concentrate
, he thought again, sweat pouring from his brow.

He opened his mouth to speak, but doing so caused him agony. The joint of his jaw popped loudly under the strain; all the water disappeared from his lips, leaving them cracked as he tried to form words. Constantin's hands trembled; he closed his eyes and whispered two words, an undertaking
of more pain than he ever remembered. Knowing the importance of the message he was delivering, he put the very last grain of his strength into it.

Safeguard—Terreanfor
.

The words had just passed his lips when the world went dark. He was vaguely aware of hitting the altar, unconscious before his blood stained the floor of the basilica. Constantin lay, prone, in the silver light of the star atop the Spire of Sepulvarta, too far into the gray haze between waking and sleep to hear the benison's reply.

I understand
.

W
hile not as massive as Avonderre's Port Fallon, the largest harbor on the western seacoast, the inner harbor at Ghant was still one of the biggest in the world, the terminus for the daily off-loading of tons of goods. Hundreds of merchant ships sailed into the inner harbor with the rising of each tide, past the naval fleet of Sorbold moored in the outer harbor. Each vessel was inspected, each manifest checked by the naval harbormaster, and either turned away or allowed to pass into the smooth water of the immense lagoon that formed the inner harbor.

In his day Anborn had seen both harbors many times. Ghant was one of the first places he had annexed in the Cymrian War a thousand years before, a place from which his ground forces had been able to sustain and defend a land supply route, and from which his warships set sail for attacks on the Lirin port of Tallono to the northwest. Tallono was a sheltered harbor that had been built by the Gorllewinolo Lirin with the help of his grandmother, the dragon Elynsynos, but by the time Anborn had come to Ghant, there was no room in his heart for sentimentality, only murder and vengeance. With precision he had burned Tallono almost to the ground, much the same way he had sacked the smaller ports of Minsyth and Evermere, and had secured the seacoast all the way north to Port Fallon when the war finally ended. A millennium had not been long enough to blot out the memories that haunted him still, torturing his waking moments and plaguing his dreams.

Now the ghosts of those battles were no longer hovering over the land, as they had been each time Anborn had returned to Ghant since then. The port was busier than he had ever seen it; he could tell even at a great distance as he and Gwydion Navarne came over the rocky hills above it, looking down at the inner harbor from the trans-Sorbold passage, the main thoroughfare
over which the goods were carted to places north and east in Sorbold. He grimaced as he reined his mount to a halt, remembering that his own soldiers had once built this road.

Gwydion Navarne, whose thoughts were not haunted by a history he knew little about, stared out at the harbor in amazement.

“They're doing a fair business, aren't they?” he mused, watching the scores of ships that lined the piers of the inner harbor being systematically offloaded by tiny shapes that more resembled ants than longshoremen.

The Lord Marshal nodded, his face grim.

“But in what?” he asked. He looked farther out to sea, past the inner harbor's sluice to the outer harbor, and took in a ragged breath.

From one end of the outer harbor to the other docks had been constructed, each housing a score of warships. Anborn counted a dozen of those docks, with more beyond the rim of the point.

“Dear All-God,” he muttered.

Gwydion Navarne turned in his saddle. He had been enjoying the taste of the distant sea air, the bustle of the port below, after so many days' ride in the wastelands of the southern steppes, and therefore was taken aback at the sight of the Cymrian hero's face, which was now as hard as he had ever seen it.

“What is wrong, Lord Marshal?” he asked, feeling a new chill in the wind coming off the sea.

Anborn dragged the reins to his right, positioning himself for a better view. He stared down at the harbor, crawling with activity, for a long moment, then looked around him at the hillsides from which they had come.

“At the time of the Cymrian War, this was a major military center, the central port of my sea forces' offensive,” he said finally. “We had a fleet that, in its time, was responsible for the destruction of much of western Tyrian, and the decimation of the coastal areas of Avonderre north to Gwynwood. I led my father's armies against my mother's forces with great success on land because of the sheer advantage of numbers and superior weaponry; that is not surprising. But until Llauron abandoned Anwyn and fled to sea, he was a formidable naval foe that would have been insurmountable; he would have destroyed my fleet if it had not been for our control of Ghant, and the size of our armada stationed here.” The Lord Marshal shielded his eyes, stinging now from the glare of the sun.