The Sleeping King (2 page)

“The end,” she gasped. “I see the end.”

“Of what?” The archduke was breathing heavily, something repulsive throbbing in his thick voice.

She spoke in bursts torn from her throat. “A nameless one … wakes in the wilds … shackles break—” Her voice broke on a hoarse cry and she sagged in Ammertus's grip, clawing ineffectually at his hands on either side of her head.

“What?” he shouted, shaking her violently. “Show me.”

The force of that mindquake drove Anton to his knees, buffeting him nearly unconscious. His thoughts scattered, ripped asunder by that awful voice. Struggling to hang on to his fragmenting sanity, Anton stared up at the Emperor sitting at ease on his throne, completely unaffected by the massive mental energy flying through the air. His ageless face was devoid of expression, his eyes reflecting only bland disinterest.

Even Starfire seemed to be experiencing mental distress, and a look of concentration wreathed his features as he shielded himself from his father's psychic assault. Iolanthe and Korovo did not appear mentally overly distressed by Ammertus's outburst, but they did look mildly annoyed by it.

Of a sudden Oretia straightened in Ammertus's grasp and, to Anton's amazement, tore free entirely. She paced the width of the golden room, sparks flying from her hair as she whirled to stalk back. She paused before the throne, staring at it and the man on it, nodding to herself. The guards on either side of the Emperor tensed as she stalked up the stairs to stand directly in front of Maximillian, who might have been carved from the same obsidian as his throne for all that he reacted.

Her voice, preternaturally deep, resonated off the walls like a terrible storm. “Hear this, for I speak true. A nameless one comes. From the depths of the untamed lands to destroy us all. Olde magicks returned, change born of earth and stars. Greater than thee, Maximillian, Last Emperor of Koth. When Imperial gold is bathed in blood, your fate is written and cannot be undone. The end of Eternal Koth is anon.”

Profound silence enveloped the room. Everyone stared at the oracle standing defiantly before them, her head held high, the tips of her hair glowing in a bright nimbus around her.

The building fury upon Ammertus's thunderous features made Anton cringe in spite of himself. He knew that look. The archduke was dangerously close to snapping. Ammertus had never been known as a reasonable or particularly stable man when crossed.

Anton was stunned as the oracle raised an accusing finger and pointed it at the enraged Kothite noble. “And as for you, Ammertus, Archduke of the Colonies. Your line shall end in the Cradle of Dragons.”

Ammertus and Starfire both jolted at this. Anton noticed Ammertus's hand drifting to the long red braid tucked in his belt. It was said to be the hair of his permanently deceased—and favorite—daughter, Avilla. But it was Ammertus who drew in a long breath of outrage and fury, all the more frightening for how long it took him to fill his lungs. And then he screamed. “You
lie
!”

The mind blast accompanying the accusation knocked Oretia off her feet, flinging her backward violently. She must have hit her head, for she collapsed in a rag doll heap, spilling blood over the golden dais. She rolled bonelessly down the steps and came to a halt at Anton's feet, a disheveled tangle of limbs and hair.

Terror for his own fate exploded within Anton. It was a cowardly impulse to think of himself first before the broken oracle dying before him, but he'd never claimed to be a hero. And he had seen just how insane Ammertus could be in the midst of one of his rages. Anton dived to the floor beside Oretia, not to aid her, but to hide behind her.

“She
lies
!”

This mind blast rippled through the air in visible waves, spreading outward faster than the eye could track to slam into everyone else in the room. From his vantage point on the floor, Anton watched the worst of the wave pass overhead. He grabbed Oretia's elbows and yanked her body across him. Just in time, too, for the mind blast ricocheted like a living thing, now bouncing crazily throughout the space, smashing into any and all soft living thing, sundering flesh and blood more easily than the sharpest sword. Even Starfire hit the floor, arms thrown over his head and face buried against the steps.

Blood erupted throughout the hall as the servants fell like ninepins, sliced neatly—and not so neatly—into ribbons of meat and bone. Oretia took the brunt of the blast above him, bathing him in hot blood.

Her head turned slightly and he nearly gagged at the sight of her eyeball dangling out of its socket by slimy strands of nerve and vein. Her remaining eye locked on his, unfocused, glazing over with encroaching Death. She moved feebly, struggling to gather herself for one last effort.

Her flayed facial muscles twitched uselessly. Whether she managed to speak it aloud or merely projected it into his brain, Anton registered only a single croaked word.

“Awaken.”

And then her bloody and broken body went limp across his.

Ammertus ranted and raved for several minutes, storming around the room, destroying anything and anyone who dared cross his path. Finally, he devolved into mad, childlike laughter. Anton lay frozen on the floor, unashamedly pretending to be dead.

“Enough, Ammertus,” Maximillian said with quiet authority, all the more sinister for its lack of emphasis. “I know your grief is great, but do not let it get the best of you. “Steel your resolve, Ammertus. You lost much in Haelos, but we are in Koth now.” And henceforth, please refrain from slaughtering Children of Fate. Prophets of their power do not grow on vines, and I have use for them.”

Anton risked peeking up. The Emperor had not moved from his casually seated position. Starfire pushed cautiously to his feet, looking around at the carnage with disdain.

Anton stared at the destruction. The entire room was covered in blood. Floors, walls, ceiling—where there once was gold, now there was only obscenely red blood, flowing, dripping, clinging to every surface.
When Imperial gold is bathed in blood …

Had the prophecy already begun to come true?
What was the last bit? Oh yes.
When Imperial gold is bathed in blood, your fate is written and cannot be undone—

“Get up.”

Anton lurched as Ammertus snarled from directly above him. The archduke's fury had transformed to something bitterly cold and a hundred times more vicious than the screaming rage of the past few minutes.

“I have a job for you, Constantine.…”

*   *   *

Anton shook out his black court robe, sending the embroidered golden serpents on the sleeves dancing, their emerald eyes glinting malevolently. A mask of confidence was frozen upon his face as a matter of habit. But for once, it was truly a mask. He'd been meditating frantically since the earlier incident, and since he'd received the summons to present himself in open court to the Emperor.

Anton shivered in involuntary terror at the prospect of coming under Maximillian's direct and public scrutiny. It marked the pinnacle of a courtier's life … or its end.

Two stone-faced Imperial guards opened the massive amber doors before the milling crowd waiting to enter the golden hall. The air crackled with great events afoot this night.

The magnificence of the Grand Receiving Chamber of the Flaming Throne, as this room was formally known, stole his breath away as it always did when he first entered. The floor was solid gold, which accounted for its less formal nickname. Frescoes thickly encrusted with gold and rare jewels adorned the soaring ceilings. The chandeliers dripped with thousands of thumb-sized diamonds.

The scale of the golden hall was enormous, befitting the epicenter of the mighty Kothite Empire. From this space the Emperor's power emanated outward across the massive southern continent of Koth and thence across the entire planet Urth.

The people crowding the hall were no less splendid. Garbed in their Imperial finery, blazons declaring their houses, affiliations, and accomplishments covered their robes in the form of badges, sashes, enameled and jeweled brooches, rings, and in a few instances, like him, in actual tattoos upon their flesh.

But for all of the grandeur, it was the gigantic throne at the far end that utterly dominated the massive space. A long flight of golden steps led up to it, but the throne itself was black obsidian taken from the heart of Moten's Furnace. It rose ten times the height of a man in the irregular shape of a rising flame—the Eternal Flame of Koth. The actual flame burned black in its great cauldron outside the Imperial palace, never waning, never weakening. The throne's sinister curves and inscrutable surface were apt expressions of the massively powerful being who sat upon the seat carved into the base of the flames.

Anton had machinated so long positioning himself for this moment he could barely believe it had finally arrived. Rumors were already circulating at court that tonight he would be named governor of the newly formed colony of Dupree on the northern continent. For the past fifty years, Henrik Volen, Dupree's longtime warden, had been in charge of taming the penal settlement. But tonight Volen was here, recalled home at long last by Maximillian.

The wealth, the power, the prestige of a full governorship … greed for all of it throbbed through Anton's veins. An entire new continent his for the conquering, the possibilities were limitless—

Trumpets blasted demanding silence, and Warden Volen was called to the throne. An aging human, he looked and moved like a tired man as he laboriously climbed the golden steps using his weapon of office as a cane. Volen's shepard's axe had a narrow, pick-like head that doubled as a cane handle for the elderly man. Life on Haelos was dreadful, and the fellow showed every year of his long service in the hinterlands in his stooped frame and haggard face. Volen would have been young and brash, full of big plans, when he last left this place. How odd it must be for the warden to walk among people who appeared not one day older now, while he stood on death's doorstep, overtaken by old age.

Anton did not listen as the Emperor thanked Volen for his faithful service and relieved him of his duty as warden. Instead, he made a mental list of luxuries he would build into the new governor's palace that he planned to make his first priority when he arrived in Dupree.

“Anton Horatio Constantine. Present yourself to His Most Resplendent Majesty.” The voice of the Emperor's chamberlain emanated from the vicinity of the throne, its clever acoustics amplifying and broadcasting his voice across the hall.

It was generally believed that the Emperor could pluck thoughts right out of a man's head; hence Anton performed one last quick thought check.
It is a great honor to be here. Humbling. I am overjoyed to serve the Empire
.

The Emperor spoke formally. “You have served me well, Anton Constantine, and have demonstrated initiative and leadership.”

And those were not just empty words, he thought with pride. Few in the Empire could have captured a Heart of Kentogen and brought it back to Koth or rescued the entire Kithmar clan of rakasha from Pantera and made them faithful servants of the Empire. The cat changelings were notoriously stingy with their loyalty to authority figures. But he, Anton Constantine, had converted them.

Even though he knew what was coming next from the Emperor, exultation leaped in Anton's breast. He knelt and received a silken banner of the newly created Constantine heraldry and listened while the High Herald read it into the record—a palewise inverted golden sword entwined in a vert palewise serpent in an argent bend sinister on a sable field—with all the pomp and ceremony Anton could have hoped for. The coiled green serpent was identical to the one tattooed upon his forehead at birth. The heraldry had been granted to the line of Constantines by the Emperor himself in return for the family's faithful service to Archduke Ammertus.

The Emperor spoke once more. “Rise and be known as Lord Anton Constantine henceforth.”

He'd done it! He'd become a Lord of the Imperial Court! He had raised his family's fortunes like no other member of his house had ever managed. All the years serving in the Assassin's, Slaver's, and Merchant's Guilds … all his work leading the Coil … all the drudgery of military service … it had finally paid off. He would put seamstresses, jewelers and armorers to work day and night to plaster everything and everyone in his house with blazons proclaiming their fealty to House Constantine.

The Emperor gestured indolently, and a servant held out a long, tasseled pillow. From it the Emperor lifted one of a pair of magnificent golden short swords exactly matching the one on the banner. “These are infused weapons.”

Anton's jaw literally dropped open.
Infused? Not plated, or even made of regular gold, but
infused
?
The magical forging process imbued the essence of the sword's base material—high-quality steel most likely—with another material, in this case gold, at the most fundamental level of its existence. Maximillian turned the blade in his hands, examining the craftsmanship. The gold winked far too brightly in the light of the thousands of candles, as if it actually glowed from within.

Can it be? Is that Solinar gold?
The substance, found only on the Sunset Isles, home of the solinari—sun elves—not only glowed at night, but also held the power to capture magic, and, furthermore, to cast that magic again at a later time. Solinar gold was among the rarest and most prized metals on Urth.

The Emperor planned to gift him with such a magnificent weapon of office? It shouted of just how high in Maximillian's esteem he stood. The envy pouring off the other courtiers in the hall was palpable. Anton did not even try to contain his swelling pride.

A chamberlain turned to the retired Warden of Dupree, who still stood slightly to one side of the throne, and said formally, “The key to the warden's residence if you will, Volen.”