Legacy of Kings (2 page)

Silently, Colivar walked among the corpses. The battle had not brought him as much pleasure as it should have. The heady intoxication he had once experienced when he caused men to turn against their brothers, back when the sport was still new to him, was now dulled by familiarity.

All these men had died at his call or at the call of some other Magister. Oh, they’d thought they were dying to serve their kings—giving up their lives for a cause that was worthy of sacrifice—but the sorcerers knew better. By now the leaders who had ordered this conflict were dead, along with all their counselors. Perhaps their heirs as well. It might not even have been Colivar’s opponent who had killed them all. Human conflict on this scale drew Magisters like flies. What greater exercise of power was there, than to cast an entire nation into chaos? Few could resist such temptation.

While Colivar’s blood still became heated at the thought of such a contest—that perverse spark within him would probably never die—his human soul, a distant and wounded thing, remained cold. The kind of events that had once moved him to ecstasy no longer had that power. Did that mean that the ancient wounds were healing at last? Was it a sign that his humanity, rent to pieces by madness so many years ago, was slowly pulling itself back together? Or were the final fragments of his battered soul simply expiring from sheer exhaustion, starved to death by this cold, callous existence? If so, what would he become when they were finally gone? Uncomfortable questions, to be sure.

“This has to end.” The voice came from behind him, shattering his reverie. “You know that.”

The sudden awareness of another man so close to him triggered Colivar’s most primitive territorial instincts. Whipping about, he called forth enough soulfire to defend himself from any manner of assault—or to launch an attack himself—and held it at the ready while he took stock of his visitor. That the man was a Magister himself was immediately apparent, from his bearing if not his dress. Hatred keened inside Colivar’s brain, primitive impulses surging through his veins with undeniable force.
Drive the invader away! Tear him to pieces if he will not flee!
If Colivar had been a weaker Magister he might have lost the connection to his human self entirely at that moment and launched himself at the intruder like an animal. The sensation of what it was like to tear open an enemy’s neck with razor-sharp teeth was not so distant in his past that he had forgotten it. Even as he struggled to fight back the tide of bestial instinct, part of him longed to surrender to it.

But finally, with effort, he recovered enough self-control to shape human words again. “Why are you here?” he demanded. His voice sounded strange in his ears, hoarse and halting. He did not talk much to anyone these days. “What do you want?”

“To speak with you,” the stranger said calmly. If he felt the same territorial passions coursing through his veins he showed no sign of it. “Nothing more.”

Magisters rarely socialized with one another. Once they were no longer students, but had fully established their independent identities, the territorial instinct in them became too strong to allow for it. Each sorcerer went his own way in life, and if the paths of two should happen to cross, thousands of morati might die as they competed for supremacy. Whole kingdoms had been swallowed up by such rivalries, knights and princes waging war for causes they believed to be their own, when in fact their hearts were manifesting the territorial rage of the sorcerers who controlled them. Not that it mattered what morati believed. Even if such men had known the truth, they could not have resisted.

But . . . a strange Magister was here now, in his domain, and Colivar had managed to resist the immediate impulse to destroy him. Perhaps the recent battle had drained his inner beast of strength, at least enough to make civilized discourse possible. It was an interesting concept. Perhaps worth exploring further.

He absorbed back into himself the power that he had conjured. No doubt the stranger knew how quickly he could summon it again if need be. “Speak,” he said hoarsely.

The stranger was a tall man, solidly built, with fine wrinkles about his eyes and a hint of gray at his temples. Which might mean that he had undergone First Transition while in his 30s or 40s and ceased to age physically at that point. Or it might mean that he had been a gangly youth, or even an elderly cripple, who was now using his power to provide himself with more attractive flesh. There was no way to know. Using one’s power to find out a Magister’s true appearance—or true age, or true anything—was considered a mortal offense.

“You heard my words.” The man’s voice was quiet but compelling, in the manner of one who knows he does not need volume to make his point. “This has to end.” A sharp, sweeping gesture encompassed the battlefield, as well as Colivar and the whole world beyond him. “All this.”

“You mean . . . the war?”

“I mean what we bring to it. Our excesses. Our internecine violence. The price that the morati world pays for our boundless self-indulgence.”

The corner of Colivar’s mouth twitched. “So we should be more . . . considerate?”

“No. Simply more practical.”

“For the sake of the morati?”

The stranger’s eyes narrowed. “Once there were great kingdoms scattered across the earth. What is there now? Chaos. Barbarism. Barely a memory of great things and no energy left to restore them. Is that the world we wish to live in?”

“We were not the ones who caused the First Kingdoms to fall,” Colivar pointed out.

“No. But we keep them from being rebuilt.” The stranger’s eyes were clear and bright, the pale blue color of arctic ice. It awakened shadows of memories in Colivar that he would rather forget. “Do you not wish to see the great towers rise up once more? To live in the kind of world that the First Kings once enjoyed? We, who feed upon death, will never create such things ourselves. We are too obsessed with destruction, too blinded by our instinctive hatred for one another. And in our madness we are dragging the morati down with us. Soon there will be nothing left in them that is capable of greatness. And that will be a loss for us all.”

How arrogant this man was, Colivar thought, to lecture another Magister as if he were a schoolchild! In another time and place he might have been infuriated by such behavior. It might even have caused him forget his self-control and end this interview in bloodshed, as the beast inside cried out for him to do. But there were other emotions stirring inside him also, strange and disturbing emotions, that spoke to his more human side. And so he denied the beast sovereignty. For now.

The stranger was right about the future of civilization, of course. No Magister knew that better than Colivar. He alone understood the full measure of what mankind had lost. He yearned for that ancient world in a way none of the others could possibly comprehend. He also understood enough of the Magisters’ true nature to know that mankind would never reach those heights of greatness again. The Souleaters had simply destroyed too much. And now the Magisters were here. Mankind might recover from the first plague, but the second was far more dangerous.

“We are predators,” he said harshly. “Not caretakers.”

“And what good will that distinction do us when the world is swallowed up by chaos? For that is where it’s headed right now; you know that. It may bleed but slowly from the wounds we have dealt it thus far, but it bleeds nonetheless. We must stanch the wound while healing is still possible. Else our very world will slip through our fingers, and not all the sorcery in existence will be able to restore it.”

“You care about the morati,” Colivar challenged. Not because he believed the stranger really did, but to stir up his inner beast and put him off his guard. Accusing any Magister of human compassion was a powerful insult. He was curious to see how this one would respond.

But the stranger did not flinch. “And you were once willing to die for them, Colivar. Or so the legends suggest. Is that true? Did the welfare of the common man once mean that much to you?”

Memories—true memories!—came welling up from the darkness where he had buried them long ago. They had been rent to pieces by the madness and suffocated by years of neglect, but even in their damaged and disjointed state they still had the power to shake him to the depths of his soul.

He looked away from the stranger, not wanting to meet his eyes, and gazed out over the battlefield. Ravens had come down to earth and begun to pick at the flesh of the fallen. Some of the solders were not quite dead yet, but they were too wounded to fight the birds off. Colivar was closer kin to those ravens, he knew, than to the morati. He accepted that. The beast that was within him would have it no other way. Once, long ago, he had tried to deny it, to pretend that he was still human. But the beast was a part of his soul now, wedded to him by his own willing submission, and was not so easily banished.

If you understood the true source of our power,
he thought,
you would not question me thus.

“There may once have been a morati named Colivar, who cared about this world.” He kept his voice carefully neutral, so that this stranger would not guess at the maelstrom of emotion that his words had inspired. “Perhaps he would even have been willing to offer up his life for it. But that man is dead now.” He turned back to the intruder. “We are what we are. Not all the sorcery in the world can change that.”

“No,” the visitor agreed. It was maddening to Colivar how calm he was. Was this man’s inner beast weaker than his own, or was it just better disciplined? He had always wondered what the others of his kind experienced. Were their internal battles less fierce than his, because they were farther removed from the source? Or did they just hide them better? “Sorcery cannot change it.”

“What, then?”

“Something more powerful than sorcery. Something that the morati, ironically enough, understand the value of . . . though we have forgotten it.” He let Colivar consider that for a moment, then said, very quietly, “Law.”

Colivar drew in a sharp breath. “You mean . . . what? Rules of engagement?”

“No. Those are for wartime. This must be something more basic. More primal. Something to help us curb our darker instincts when they arise, so that open warfare will no longer be necessary. Or at least . . . .” A dry smile flickered across his lips. “Not quite so often.”

“We are not morati,” he said harshly.

“No . . . but that does not mean we cannot learn from their accomplishments. Rule of law is what separates the morati from the beasts. Perhaps it can do the same for us.”

But a Magister’s beast is part of his soul
, Colivar thought darkly.
Divide the two, and you destroy both halves.
This stranger did not understand that, of course. None of the other Magisters did. And he was not about to explain it to them. “How do you propose to enforce these laws?” he demanded. Trying to focus upon the stranger’s words, rather than the memories they conjured. “What manner of authority do you think that Magisters will accept?”

“Common accord would be required.”

For a moment Colivar was speechless. Finally he managed, “An agreement by . . .
all
of us?”

The stranger bowed his head.

“Even the morati could not manage such unanimity.”

“We are greater than the morati, are we not?”

Colivar shook his head in amazement. “There are some who would call you mad for even suggesting such a thing.”

“Whereas I prefer to think of myself as practical.”

We are incapable even of talking face-to-face with our own kind without bestial instincts taking control of us. What kind of law do you envision for us? How do you propose to punish transgressors?

But those words died on his lips, unvoiced. Because the suggestion, mad as it was, struck a chord deep within him. A
human
chord. And for a moment—just a moment—the beast within him was quiet, and he could think with unexpected clarity.

“This was your idea?” he managed at last.

The stranger shook his head. “Not mine alone. But few are capable of spreading the word as effectively as I, so I volunteered. The task requires . . . .” A faint smile quirked his lips. “. . . . unusual self-control.”

What if all the others join together in this project,
Colivar thought suddenly,
and I alone cannot
? He was suddenly acutely aware of the chasm that separated him from all the others of his kind. If this stranger knew the truth about him, would he have come here with the same offer? Would he even want Colivar to be part of this project?

“It will take a very long time,” he challenged.

“Perhaps. But time is the one thing we have in abundance, is it not?”

“And the ultimate goal is . . . what? To bring us all together in one great assembly, so that we can collaborate on a set of rules?” He laughed harshly. “We would tear each other to pieces before the first word was set on paper.”

“Ah.” A smile flickered across the stranger’s face; it was a cold and humorless expression. “But you see, that is the difference between you and me. I believe that Magisters can rise above their bloodier instincts, if they are convinced of the need to do so. Maybe someday, if we are determined enough, it may even be possible for a number of us to come together like civilized men and discuss matters of common interest without our darker instincts interfering. That would be a thing to marvel at, wouldn’t it?”

“You really believe that establishing a set of rules can all make this possible?”

The stranger said solemnly, “It is not the law itself that will have power, Colivar. It is what we must become in order to establish it.”

Ravens cawed in the distance. Somewhere amidst the bodies, unseen, a dying man groaned. Colivar shut his eyes and focused upon the sounds, trying to sort out the storm of emotions in his soul. He felt as if he were at a crossroads, peering into the darkness, trying to make out any hint of the terrain up ahead, to choose his way. But both paths were shrouded in fog, their features indiscernible. One must step forward in blind faith or not go forward at all.