Seven Kings

2

Drought had come to the Stormlands. It lay dusty in the gutters like a dying beggar, parched and cackling. It crouched in the waves of heat rising from the stones of Uurz, while the green-gold city baked in the sun’s glory. The few clouds that dared the blue sky were wisps of memory, impotent ghosts gliding toward oblivion. After thirty-three years of daily rains, the earth had remembered its barren legacy.

In the roof gardens beneath the cool shade of palms the city’s noble elders spoke of the desert’s return. “The season of Vod’s magic is done,” they whispered, sipping at their gilded cups. “Eight years now the Giant-King has been dead. Vod of the Storms is gone and so is his power.” Even the meanest of wines was terribly expensive in those days.

The youngest of these privileged folk, confident in their robes of silk and silver, rolled their eyes and laughed at such talk. “The Desert of Many Thunders is little more than fable,” they said wrongly. “The old ones fear changing times. No season can last forever. We will learn to live in these dry times, as our ancestors did before us.” These young ones had never known the great expanse of black sand or the terrible heat and dust storms of the great wasteland.

In the marketplace at the city’s center, merchants grew rich on casks of water hauled up from the Sacred River still running strong beneath Uurz’s golden palace. The subterranean stream was the source of Uurz’s founding, and it had sustained the city for twelve hundred years. Uurz was a legend unto itself, a thriving paradise in the heart of the black wastes, until Vod cracked open land and sky with his power.

Vod, who slew the Father of Serpents three decades ago and changed the mighty desert into a verdant plain between two rivers. Vod, who was both Giant and Man, made the Stormlands an agricultural empire, with the City of Sacred Waters rising bright and proud at its heart. Then he turned his attentions across the Grim Mountains and rebuilt New Udurum, the City of Men and Giants, leaving Uurz to reap the profits of his world-altering sorcery.

Minstrels in the wine shops and brothels of Uurz still sang of colossal Vod’s journey south. Yet now they also sang of his madness, his death, and the fading of his magic. None sang of his return. Generous Vod was long dead, his mad bones swallowed by the Cryptic Sea.

The Giant-King had not truly destroyed the Desert of Many Thunders. It only slumbered beneath the emerald leagues of long grass and the twisting courses of new-made rivers. Like the Serpent-Father had done a millennium ago, the desert slept, dreaming of the heaps of dried bones it would one day rise to reclaim.

Uurz would suffer, but it would not perish. In this, the young dilettantes were correct. The Sacred River would sustain the City of Wine and Song as it always had. It was the newer settlements, the farming communities, the outlying hamlets and vineyards, the riverside villages, and the lone plains dwellers who would lose everything as the rivers sank low and the tall grass went from yellow to brown to blackened husks. Vod’s Lake sank in its immense crater until it stood no deeper than a stagnant pond, and the great waterfall that fed it with melting mountain snows diminished to a trickle.

From far and wide came the thirsty, the ruined, and the doomed to seek refuge behind the gates of Uurz. In the catacombs beneath the great palace, the Sacred River flowed steadily as ever, hidden from the sun’s burning vengeance. Far above the city’s burnished pinnacles and fortified walls, dry thunder rolled on hot winds.

Yes, the Desert of Many Thunders was returning.

And the Twin Kings of Uurz could do nothing to prevent it.

In the warm shade of his study Lyrilan awaited the sage’s arrival. His watery eyes stared past the rim of his goblet toward the final page of the manuscript. His right hand ached between thumb and forefinger, and the stains of ink marred his fingers like bruises. It was finished. His most important work and certainly the closest to his heart. For ten months he had lovingly crafted every word, every phrase, turning the threads of memory and the flavor of language into official history. Now it lay complete before him, a testament of love for his dead father.

A single window he kept uncurtained, and from the heights of his balcony the gardens and orchards of Uurz sparkled with evening light. A hot wind fell at times through the portal, raking his bare chest like the touch of a desperate woman. He had no time for such passions. Not yet. He missed the rain, the coolness of its breath, yet these dry days reminded him of the manuscript’s early chapters, which chronicled the desert years before his father had gained the title of Emperor. Long before Lyrilan or his brother were born.

In those days the Great Desert lay just beyond the city gates. Dairon was a soldier who survived two wars, a dozen battles, the Whelming of the Giants, and still he rose to sit upon the throne by public acclaim. He was the inaugural Emperor of a new bloodline, the old one having been destroyed to the last man by the enraged Giants before Vod calmed their savagery. There would never be another Man like Dairon the Liberator, Friend to Giants, Savior of Uurz.

All this and more lay within the scrawled pages Lyrilan had labored over for so long. The book had taken possession of his life while he was writing it, excluding practically everything else. Even sweet Ramiyah he had ignored, but he would soon make up for that. Now that the manuscript was finished, it was time to start a family. She had waited for him, and she would be pleased.

To compose the biography Lyrilan had interviewed every man still living who had known his father: grizzled soldiers who’d shared Dairon’s early years in the legions, brawny captains who had served beneath him in latter years, diplomats and legislators, merchants and chefs, sages and stable hands, dignitaries and dilettantes, venerable priests and powdered courtesans, even a pair of solemn magicians. The result was a thousand diverse views of the humble soldier who eventually became Lord of the Sacred Waters, Emperor of Uurz. To these accounts were added the intimate blessings of Dairon’s personal journals, the keystones of Lyrilan’s inheritance. These were the raw tools he used to sculpt a monument to his father’s existence, a memorial of ink and paper built on the foundation of a son’s most poignant memories.

He hoped the truth of his father’s life lay revealed among these scrawled pages.

The Life of Dairon, First Emperor of the New Blood was complete. Yet was it worthy?

Volomses entered the study in the company of Lyrilan’s personal servant. The purple of the sage’s robe matched the tapestries that rippled along the walls. The old man’s head was bald but for a few wisps of white hair, and his white beard was triple-braided with bands of bronze, like a trio of silent asps grown from his chin. His black eyes were keen in their wrinkled sockets, and his gnarled fingers anxious upon his walking staff. From his kneeling position, he greeted Lyrilan in the formal courtly manner. During the past year Lyrilan had grown accustomed to such enforced formality. The very air had grown thick with it.

“Rise, Volomses,” said Lyrilan. “The book is done.” The breath went out of his lungs as he said this, and he slipped down onto a cushioned divan. The sage’s eyes turned toward the writing table of ebony wood with its racks of ink and quills, and the thick pile of vellum pages stacked neatly at its center. Like a priest approaching a holy relic, he walked forward. His fingers extended to touch the papers, as if to verify their physical existence. He read the title aloud, and it sounded like a holy benediction.

“Majesty,” whispered the sage. “This is… outstanding.”

Lyrilan frowned, rubbing his sore quill hand. “How can you say this to me, old friend?” he asked. “You haven’t read a word of it yet.”

Volomses turned to stare at him, and his face swiveled into the look of a tutor addressing a student. It was a look he would never dare cast upon Lyrilan’s brother. Yet Tyro had not spent the better part of his youth lost in the lessons and riddles of Volomses’ scholarship. To Lyrilan the old sage was practically a second father. Even more so since the passing of Dairon thirteen months ago. For the first time Lyrilan wondered if Tyro had anyone who served this role for him. Someone who could ease the pain of losing a father simply by his presence. The thought troubled Lyrilan deeply. He did not know his twin brother. Not really. They shared the throne and a vast kingdom, yet they barely spoke these days.

Only in the midst of court duties, each on his high seat responding to civil cases and foreign diplomats, did they converse at all. Lyrilan had made the rift greater by cloistering himself in this lofty tower for the better part of a year to work on this book. Yet surely Tyro understood that this was Lyrilan’s tribute to the life of their father. Tyro had ordered a golden statue of Dairon erected in the palace courtyard, and another of bronze in the Great Marketplace. Yet Tyro did not create these works himself. Lyrilan’s ode to Dairon’s greatness was something he had created out of raw love, stubborn dedication, and blood-dark ink. Both of Tyro’s sculptures had been completed months before Lyrilan’s manuscript.

“One does not need to stare at the sun to understand its brightness, Majesty,” said the sage, tugging at a single braid of his white beard. “Have I not read your previous tomes, and every line of your inconstant poetry? I have no reason to believe that this volume will not be a masterwork. Your father would be very proud of you.”

Lyrilan shrugged his shoulders and poured wine into a crystal goblet for his guest. He refilled his own cup with more of the Uurzian vintage. Now that his head need no longer be clear, he could afford to get good and drunk. Then would come sleep, long and deep. After that, he would take his wife in the way he had so long denied himself.

Ramiyah, he prayed, please be able to forgive my long absence. Now I will give you children, as many as you desire. He knew there would come a day when another unwritten book would call out to him, possess his body and spirit, and demand that he write it into existence. Someday he would creep from his bed and find himself chained to the writing desk again, obsessed with some new work. Yet now he put the thought from his head. He must find a balance between this solitary work and his duties as husband, as King, and eventually as a father.

“Stay here,” he told Volomses. “The chamber is yours. Read it. It needs your eyes. Only when I have gained your studied endorsement will I have it bound and passed to the scribes for duplication.” Lyrilan waved to his servant, who opened a wall closet and brought fine new robes for the King as he shed his sweat-stained tunic.

Volomses gave a solemn half-bow. “I will not leave this chamber until I have done so,” he swore. Servants would bring the sage meals and wine, and even courtesans if he wished, while he inhabited the study and perused Lyrilan’s pages. This was a ritual Lyrilan had enacted with every book he had written for the past seven years. His first volume, The Perilous Quest of Prince D’zan, Scion of Yaskatha, was one of five such tomes to grace the shelves of the Royal Library of Uurz. Each of those volumes had benefited from the editorship of Volomses. This book of Dairon’s life would be the sixth. Lyrilan wondered if, someday when the old sage had passed away, he could ever write another book or have the courage to put it on public display. He put the thought from his mind.

“Thank you,” he said, embracing the sage as an uncle or cousin. “They are never finished until you read them.”

Volomses nodded. His gaze wandered to the manuscript as he drank from the goblet, then his head turned back to Lyrilan, who had donned a robe of green and gold, a cape of liquid-blue silk, and hose of black velvet. His wiry legs were far too thin for going bare, even in the long heat of the drought.

“Your brother expects you at the feasting,” said the sage, as if he muttered a warning.

Lyrilan nodded. “I will not disappoint him. In fact, I may drink more wine than he does this night.” The servant handed him a thin coronet of gold with a single emerald set at the center of the forehead. Lyrilan slipped it on to fit tightly about his brow and arranged the long, oiled curls of his black hair. “Tell my wife I await her in the Grand Hall,” he said. The page rushed off to summon his mistress.

Volomses still had not looked away from his King. “You know there will be gladiators? Khyrein spies in a duel of death.”

Lyrilan nodded, took a deep breath, and drained his cup of its red refreshment. Already he felt the pleasant sting of the wine between his temples. He sighed.

“I did not,” he admitted. “My brother’s command?”

Volomses stared out the window at the falling gloom of evening. Stars winked in the deep twilight. The sun was nearly lost beneath the flat horizon, and golden towers stood purple as wounds. “More than likely the idea came from Lord Mendices,” spat Volomses. “That one has a hunger for blood that is never quenched. Would that he were not so close in your brother’s affections.”

Lyrilan pulled on tall boots of black oxen leather. He felt as stiff and formal as he looked. The sundown had brought little relief from the day’s heat, and he looked forward to the great fan bearers at the feast, if not the blood sport.

“Or perhaps it was Talondra?” he asked. His brother’s wife was an olive-skinned Sharrian. Her vicious beauty was exceeded only by her absolute hatred of Khyrei, the nation that had reduced Shar Dni to rubble in a single day of sorcery and slaughter. Her presence fueled Tyro’s lust for war as oil fed a brazier’s flames. Perhaps it was that dark passion, that very eagerness to spill Khyrein blood, that so attracted Tyro to her above all other courtesans. Perhaps it was her keen ambition to revenge the dead of Shar Dni that had impressed Tyro enough to make her his Queen. Dairon would not have approved, but Lyrilan had never said this to his brother. It was not his place.

Lyrilan must be the Peace Speaker. He must provide the balance to his brother’s glory-seeking war lust. Dairon had refused to initiate or participate in a war of vengeance. Lyrilan understood why. At one time he had thought that Tyro also understood. Perhaps it did not matter anymore now that Dairon was gone. His influence over Tyro was no more.

Would Tyro deign to read the book his brother had written? Would he rediscover the principles and philosophies that had made their father a great soldier and a great ruler?

That is why you really wrote this book, a voice inside him whispered. You wrote it for Tyro. You hope it will reach him.

Lyrilan shook his head. The wine was strong.

He strapped a jeweled dagger to his belt, strictly for the sake of formality. Now he descended the spiral stairs toward the opulent heart of the Palace of Sacred Waters. A pair of wing-helmed guards accompanied him, mute but for the clatter of their boots and the jangling of scabbards.

He braced himself for the sight of tonight’s bloodshed, a gaudy entertainment staged in the guise of justice. Normally he would never attend such an event, and would even argue its legitimacy with his brother. But he had learned one thing above all others in his thirteen months of being a King. He had learned to choose his battles carefully.

Though he must endure watching a man die during the feast, at least he would know the comfort of Ramiyah’s presence. They might even finish the dining and depart before the combat began. This would no doubt irk Tyro, but Lyrilan enjoyed sending such subtle signals of disapproval. Where Tyro was blunt, Lyrilan was understated.

The Scholar King and the Sword King, they were called. While two Kings ruled Uurz, there could be no Emperor, for that was a single title, meant for only one man to bear.

Always in the back of his mind, Lyrilan knew what this meant.

One of them must eventually die before Uurz would again have an Emperor.

It was a sobering fact that he had taught himself to utterly ignore.

The Feasting Hall was a hive of activity. A hundred barefoot servants rushed about in white togas serving platters of roasted meat, towers of sliced fruits, brown loaves and steaming broth. The royal board lay heavy with delicacies contrived by a squad of clever cooks, and vintages dark as ruby from the palace cellars sat along the table in crystal decanters. Already a few dozen noble couples and lacy courtesans had arranged themselves along the board, sipping at sparkling goblets, toying with powdered curls, whispering heresies into bejeweled ears, and chewing the flesh of plump black grapes plucked from jade bowls.

Squat pillars of white marble veined with violet lined the sides of the hall, and high windows admitted the evening breezes. The flames of torches dances in their sconces. The smells of steaming provender and wafting perfumes filled the high chamber. The walls lay hidden behind tapestries of ancient weave set with scenes of past Emperors leading their armies to victory or battling fiery Serpents in apocalyptic scenes that probably never happened. Yet the jewel eyes of the tapestry heroes gleamed bright as stars in the hall.

The floor was inlaid with a mosaic representing all the great ages of the world, from the Time of Walking Gods to the Age of Serpents, on to the Scattering of Tribes, the Age of Heroes, and many others, ending with the Age of the Five Cities. Four of those great cities still stood in this the Modern Age, yet there were no depictions of New Udurum. That titanic capital of black stone lay north of the Grim Mountains and was not founded by the Tribes of Man, but by the fickle northern Giants. It was Vod of the Storms who had opened Udurum’s gates to Men, and the thousands of refugees from fallen Shar Dni. One city was annihilated by darkest sorcery; another was transformed by similar powers.

The people of Uurz were close allies with Vireon, Son of the Giant-King, who now ruled Udurum. Yet in their hearts they did not fully trust the Tall Ones; many living still in Uurz remembered the day when Giants conquered their city and crushed the bloodline of their aged Emperor. Those survivors of Shar Dni’s destruction who had not fled to the City of Men and Giants fled instead to Uurz.

In recent years, rumors of the Giants’ departure from Udurum had spread to the green-gold city. Merchants from Udurum said the Uduru went farther north to find a new home in the Icelands. Still, there were many in Uurz who never forgot the sight of a Giant host thundering against the city walls, and they half expected the Uduru to return one day and take back the city they had conquered then abandoned.

At the far end of the great table, on a raised dais of glassy marble, Tyro the Sword King sat staring into the eyes of his wife and lover, Talondra. She lounged at his side in her own gilded chair of velvet and silk, her ring-heavy hands caressing Tyro’s chest. Tyro was everything his scholarly twin was not: broad of shoulder, dusky of skin, heavily muscled, and radiant with royal power. His long black hair hung wild about his shoulders, but his heavy beard was tied into a single braid with hoops of golden wire. His scarred chest was bare in the heat, glimmering with a necklace of topaz and opals. He wore a plaited bronze kilt in the manner of a legionnaire, underscoring his status as the realm’s chief soldier, his strapping legs bare, jeweled sandals resting on a lush carpet. Bracers of silver and onyx sheathed the Sword King’s forearms, and a slim crown of gold and emerald (identical to Lyrilan’s own) sat upon his brow.

Tyro did not need the crown to evoke a majestic aura, yet he wore it as custom dictated. Against the right arm of his high seat leaned a broadsword in a scabbard crusted with emerald and jade, the Emperor’s final gift to his warrior son. Dairon had left his journals to Lyrilan, his sword to Tyro. The man knew his sons well.

The eastern wing of the hall was covered with black sand, forming a small arena where tonight’s combatants would shed one another’s blood. Four flaming braziers sat about the sandy area, each of them fronting two spearmen in polished breastplates. These eight guards would ensure the gladiators did not flee. It would be a fight to the death, the winner gifted with the Kings’ mercy. An ancient rite of justice, one that Tyro had revived only recently. Lyrilan’s protests had been powerless to prevent it. Now he must endure the blood spectacle.

Ramiyah waited between two pillars, standing apart from the mass of courtesans and revelers who streamed into the hall in their best satins and gemstones. A trio of serving girls stood at her back, having dressed her in a slim gown of crimson trimmed with amber thread. Her golden hair fell like a mantle of silk to the middle of her back, and her neck bore a collar of emerald and jet, a gift from Lyrilan on their wedding night two years ago. Diamonds hung from her seashell ears, and the nails of her fingers were perfect as red almonds.

She was Yaskathan, born and bred in that southern kingdom of tall ships, vast orchards, and year-long heat. The closeness of the drought did not bother her, only the dry spell of her husband’s attention. Yet that long season was over. Her eyes fell upon Lyrilan, blue as northern ice, yet warm as sunrays. She rushed toward him as he entered through the grand arch. The guards slowed their pace so as not to intrude upon the happy reunion.

Lyrilan wrapped his arms about Ramiyah with a sigh of relief. Her first look had said, I waited for you in perfect faith. Twice now he had abandoned her for his scrolls and inks and quills. Two books written and two periods of loneliness that his wife had borne with the patience of a Goddess. He inhaled the lilac scent of her hair, the jasmine sweetness of her neck. He kissed pink lips, caressed warm brown skin.

“Gods of Earth and Sky-how I’ve missed you,” Lyrilan told her.

“Is it finished?” she asked.

He nodded. “Volomses is reading it now. I am returned to the land of the living.” He smiled, and she caught his joy in her own face, sending it back to him like a reflection in silvered glass.

He looked beyond the bobbing heads and bared shoulders of the assembled courtiers. His brother had noticed his arrival. Tyro raised his right hand in greeting, while his left lay firmly in the grip of the Lady Talondra. The Brother Kings sent their smiles across the hall like messengers’ arrows aimed at one another.

“Let us dine,” said Lyrilan, leading Ramiyah toward the board. The horde of courtesans and fools spread apart like rainbow-hued water, and the royal couple walked between two aisles of bowing and kneeling nobles. Servants stopped in their tracks, food steaming on great oval trays, wine sloshing in fresh decanters, until Lyrilan approached his seat.

At the opposite end of the table, much farther from his brother than he would have liked, a second dais rose to support Lyrilan’s throne and its companion seat. He assisted his wife as she ascended the three steps to her chair. When she was safely nestled on a velvet cushion there, he sat himself unceremoniously upon the throne. Now he stared across the heaped board and the two hundred guests directly at Tyro. The Twin Kings sat above their courtiers on platforms of equal height. Like the identical crowns, the twin thrones showed the equality of the two monarchs. Pairs of servants cooled both of the royal couples by wafting great feathered fans made from the feathers of Mumbazan ostriches.

Talondra stared with tigerish eyes at Ramiyah. The two women were nothing alike. Talondra’s raven-black hair set her apart, as did her unrestrained curls. Her eyes, like Ramiyah’s, were blue, yet Talondra’s eyes were cold. They reminded Lyrilan of the glistening snowdrifts between the Grim Mountains, and the perilous crossing he and Tyro had made eight years ago.

Talondra was a child of Shar Dni, yet her family had sent her here a year before that city fell to horror and war. Her loathing of Khyrei and its pale peoples was already a legend among the court. Rumors said that she had tortured to death with her own hands a Khyrein spy found in the palace three years ago. Her constant influence had utterly ruined any Uurzian merchant families who claimed a trace of Khyrein blood. No matter that most of those hapless fools had never set foot in Khyrei themselves. Talondra would never be satisfied until Tyro led the Legions of Uurz south to conquer the jungle kingdom.

Tyro wanted war with Khyrei as a matter of honor; Talondra wanted vengeance, raw and bloody and bitter on the tongue. This made her far more dangerous than he. Lyrilan was not the only member of the court to recognize this uncomfortable truth.

The Brother Kings were seated just far enough apart that conversation would be impossible. If they wished to discuss some matter, they must send servants to carry their words around the table like honeyed pastries. Lyrilan noted the presence of Lord Mendices without surprise. The tall hawk-nosed warrior with the shaven skull and oiled beard was not dressed in his customary bronze mail and plate, but wore instead a nobleman’s green-gold toga, a wreath of grape leaves twined about his narrow skull. His dark eyes scanned the board, making mental note of all those present, assessing each personality for its usefulness in his palace schemes. Rubies glimmered on his fingers like drops of blood. Of all the courtiers at table, Mendices sat closest to Tyro, as he loomed large in the Sword King’s private councils.

A trio of musicians began to play on harp, pipe, and lute, signifying the start of the festivities. The assembled People of the Court fell to feasting with hearty abandon, staining their lips with red wine and greasy gooseflesh. Only the unmarried women held back, nibbling at dainty bits of food, filling their slim bellies with drink that made them lightheaded and prone to bouts of giggling. Servants brought Lyrilan and Ramiyah platters of food and goblets of wine, holding them steady as living tables while the Scholar King and his wife dined. Across the mass of feasters, Talondra fed Tyro strips of pink meat with her own supple fingers.

Ramiyah spoke of a trip to Murala, possibly a sea cruise to Mumbaza. Like Lyrilan’s mother, she loved to sail on the great Uurzian galleys. Lyrilan made no promises, but nodded. Perhaps it was time for a few days away from this court with its stifling formalities and increasingly barbaric entertainments. A page boy approached and brought him word from the table’s far end.

“Majesty,” the page bowed, “your brother bids you welcome. King Tyro rejoices to see you come down from your lonesome tower. His love for you has turned to worry over your well-being.”

Lyrilan smiled. “Tell my brother that I missed him too. But this night belongs to my Ramiyah. I will speak with him tomorrow, if he will, in the Garden of Memory.”

The servant bowed again and carried his message around the teeming table to the seat of Tyro. Tyro nodded and turned to share his thoughts with Talondra. The dark-haired Queen looked not in Lyrilan’s direction, but focused only on Tyro. She could exert an iron influence over his deeds. Lyrilan had learned this the hard way, as she pulled his brother further and further away from him during the last four years.

In some way the brotherly bond had been shattered on the day of Tyro’s wedding. Was this only natural for brothers? As twins, the two boys had shared a special intimacy while growing, one that endured despite their separate natures. Each supplied strength where the other displayed weakness. Lyrilan often prayed to the Four Gods that the bond of twins was not broken, only muted. Yet he, too, had often pulled away from his brother. When he was consumed in the research and composition of a new book, he turned away from all companions. Even his wife. He squeezed Ramiyah’s hand and silently swore to find a greater balance between his writing, his relationships, and his Kingship.

The servant returned with another swift bow, bringing the words of Tyro: “Majesty. King Tyro wills it. He bids you enjoy the evening’s spectacle.” Lyrilan frowned and offered no response. He waved the servant away, and the boy was gone, lost in the flurry of attendants hefting full salvers and porcelain dishes to and from the table.

Lyrilan enjoyed the touch of Ramiyah’s fingers, the taste of her lips flavored with dark berries, the warmth of her smile, and her soft words slipped into his ear. He soon forgot about the feast, the courtiers, and even his brother’s presence. Ramiyah had this effect on him: hers was the ability to consume his attention as nothing but a Great Idea could ever do. It was those Great Ideas that were her only competition as Queen and wife. They were the only things that could break the spell of her charms and draw him away from her. Now he reveled in her presence. The music of the feast, the voices of the celebrants, all sank to a dull roar. The sparkling wine sang in his blood, swam between his ears like dancing motes of starlight, and he found himself smiling and content for a timeless moment. That contentment was shattered by the voice of Lord Mendices.

The gaunt Warlord rose from his place at the table and with a gesture caused the musicians to cease their playing. All eyes turned upon the lord, and his lean face smiled in the manner of a wolf or jackal contemplating easy prey. Such was Lyrilan’s imagination, yet he knew himself to be drunk, or close to it, so he ignored his fancies.

Lord Mendices raised his cup. “A toast to the Twin Kings of Uurz, Lords of the Sacred Waters. Long may they run!” Every man and woman in the hall joined him. “In his grace and wisdom,” said Mendices, “King Tyro has revived our ancestors’ tradition of blood justice. Tonight we bring before the Brother Kings not one but two known spies from the poisonous realm of the south. Two Khyreins, marked not only by their pale skin and dark eyes, but by their own words, spoken during a righteous interrogation. They have confessed to being agents of Gammir the Reborn, whom they have the gall to call Emperor. Yet no spy can stalk the streets of Uurz for long. Our legions are vigilant! Our swords are sharp! Our walls are strong!” Another round of cheering, unasked for but triggered by the traditional evocation of Uurz’s triple strength. Mendices paused to bask in the effect of his words, and calm returned to the hall.

“As our ancestors knew, a warrior’s worth can be proven in battle by strength of arm and swiftness of foot. So that ancient principle lives again. Rather than face the headsman bound in mortal unity, these Khyreins have chosen to fight to the death so that one may be granted the Kings’ mercy. A stain of wickedness pervades the entire Khyrein race, which knows nothing of brotherhood. You will see it on display this evening, as one man of Khyrei willingly strikes down another. Let this combat remind you of what separates us from these fiends of the crimson jungles.”

Mendices turned to signal a guard. “The prisoners.”

Lyrilan’s stomach sank, sobriety returning like a lead weight upon his chest as the guard walked off to retrieve the captive Khyreins. Ramiyah’s hand squeezed his own, a silent message of support. He took a deep slow breath. It reeked of brazier smoke and greasy bones.

The points of naked spears herded the two Khyreins into the hall and onto the circle of black sand. The eight spearmen arranged themselves in a ring about the makeshift arena. The courtiers at the Kings’ table stood to have a better view beyond the guards’ bronze shoulders. Only the two Kings and their Queens would have an unobstructed view of the combat, sitting safely atop their platforms.

The Khyreins were nude but for loincloths of crimson silk. Their skin was pale as marble, their narrow eyes and unwashed hair black as kohl. The half-healed marks of torture and bondage were visible as crimson welts upon their wrists and feet. One was barely a man, little more than shaving age, his arms thin and chest sunken. The other was a man of middle age, with beefy arms and squat legs, a warrior who had seen pain and taken men’s lives. It was obvious who would win this combat. Unless the younger man proved far quicker than his elder.

A guard removed first the young man’s shackles, then the elder’s. They stood at the far ends of the ring. Two shortblades were tossed into the middle of the arena, hitting the sand with dull thumps. They were common blades, wide and honed to deadly sharpness, but without any flourish of design or jeweled accent. These were tools made only for one purpose: killing at an arm’s length. Both of the prisoners eyed the blades, rubbing their wrists that had suffered so long under the shackles’ bite.

Perhaps they thought of taking up those blades and cutting their way through the spearmen, maybe even leaping upon one of the Twin Kings’ platforms and spilling royal blood across the steps. Yet the spearmen were chosen for their size and ferocity. Any step toward the outside of the ring would bring an immediate impaling. There was no choice now but to fight one another. Lyrilan wondered if he would make the same choice in a similar situation. What if he were forced to choose between killing his brother or sacrificing his own life? He chose to think he would not fight Tyro, no matter the consequences. Yet he did not truly know the answer.

No man truly knows himself until he faces death. The words of Pericles, greatest philosopher of Yaskatha. These two Khyreins were on the verge of an ultimate self-knowledge.

The younger man leaped toward the blades, followed a half-second later by his countryman. The younger had barely wrapped his hand about the sword’s grip when the elder’s bare heel slammed into his skull. The elder grabbed up his own weapon. He stabbed down with both hands wrapped about the grip. The blade sank into sand as the younger rolled to his side and jumped to his feet. They squared off like crouching panthers.

The elder waited patiently, and the younger lunged, stabbing forward. The elder brought his knee up and cracked a rib or two, then felled his opponent with a stabbing blow from his elbow. Again the younger went down to the sand. But he did not lose the grip on his shortblade. He sliced it casually across the back of the older’s calf, just missing the great tendon that would have crippled him. The elder howled and leaped away. The courtiers cheered at the sight of first blood. Lyrilan’s stomach churned. He must not vomit. Not in front of all these eyes.

Once again the two Khryeins faced each other, the one clutching his ribs, the other streaming crimson from the back of his lower leg. The moment lingered, and the pale panthers circled. Someone yelled a curse upon them both from the table. As if incensed by this verbal abuse, the elder swept forward with his blade, keeping his body well back from the younger’s thrusting motion. A red weal appeared across the younger’s chest from nipple to nipple. The elder wasted no time, sweeping a leg beneath the younger and bringing him to the ground once more.

The older thrust his blade deep into the younger’s side. The younger’s blade fell from his fingers as he howled. It was not a killing blow, but he would not rise again. Scarlet streamed from both chest and side wounds into the black sand, where it became invisible among the grains. Now the older raised his sword again in both hands, blade pointed down and aimed at the younger’s heart. This would be the death stroke, the final mercy. He would put the gasping, quivering youth out of his misery at last.

A bronze spear snaked forward and dashed the sword from the older’s hands before the killing blow fell. Guards surrounded him as he stood panting and bleeding from the calf, a desperate hope burning in his black eyes. The guards removed both shortblades, and their captain carried the bloodied sword across the hall toward Lyrilan’s dais. Wordlessly he held the killing tool in both hands, arms outstretched toward the Scholar King. Lyrilan swallowed the dryness in his throat. He did not know what to do. As much as he knew the intricacies of courtly protocol, this was a situation entirely new to him. It was a custom that died out long ago, and it should have been left dead.

The wounded man gasped for air on the sand, grasping at his punctured flesh.

Lyrilan became aware of all eyes focused on him now. Lord Mendices threw his voice across the hall again. “Majesty. It is customary for the Emperor… or King… to claim the right of final execution.” He paused, and when there came no reply from Lyrilan, he added, “The death blow is yours if you wish it, King Lyrilan.”

Lyrilan shook his head. He waved the sword away with distaste, as if it were a platter of overripe cheese. His eyes turned toward Tyro, who watched without expression from across the long table. Did his brother enjoy seeing him squirm like this? Or did he feel Lyrilan’s pain? Was it Tyro’s idea to offer Lyrilan the killing sword first?

The guard walked about the table and offered the red blade to Tyro. The Sword King wrapped his hand about the grip and stood before the audience gathered about him. All there knew he would do the deed. There was no question. Tyro had no qualms about killing his enemies, as no warrior should.

Lyrilan avoided his eyes, and the eyes of the nobles that flickered back and forth between the two Kings. He stared at his own hands, cursing the jeweled rings on his fingers. He could not even look at Ramiyah, though her presence beside him was hot as flame.

Tyro stepped down from his dais while Talondra stood to watch him go. He approached the ring of sand, stood over the dying man, and said something in a low voice. Only the bleeding Khyrein could hear him. As easily as slicing a melon, he drew the keen blade across the young Khyrein’s throat, pressing it deep to sever the great vein. A fresh gout of red spilled among the black sand, and in a few moments the prisoner was dead.

The older prisoner stood nearby, still the focus of an octet of spears. Tyro would grant him freedom according to the custom of blood justice.

“I beg the Great King’s mercy,” said the prisoner in perfect Uurzian. He fell upon his knees before Tyro. Tears glittered in his eyes, perhaps shed for the man he’d killed, perhaps for himself, perhaps only a show to secure the King’s pity.

Tyro kept his own dark eyes focused on the face of the victorious prisoner. Yet his voice spoke to the assembled courtiers and to his brother behind him. “This man has won the trial of blood justice. By slaying his own cousin he has proven his worth as a soldier. Yet the Kings of Uurz will allow no mercy for the devils of Khyrei.”

The Sword King’s fist moved quick as a shadow, a dance of silver in the smoky air. The blade sank deep into the older Khyrein’s heart, stopped only by the curve of the bronze hilt. Tyro released the blade and stood quiet as the prisoner keeled over. Now both captives lay dead on the sand.

Lyrilan blinked and realized he had forgotten to breathe. Ramiyah whimpered softly once beside him.

Tyro turned to address his shocked audience. “No mercy for the devils of Khyrei!”

Now the crowd fell from shock to applause, and Tyro’s cry was repeated from many drunken throats. Even the guards of the hall joined in the chant. “No mercy! No mercy! No mercy!”

During the cacophony of applause Tyro walked back to his dais, sat himself upon the throne, and met Talondra’s lips with his own.

Lyrilan, sitting silently as the two dead men were dragged away, saw the faces of a half-dozen nobles staring at him. These were the sensible ones, the ones who feared war and supported his talk of peace. They expected him to balance his brother’s martial sensibilities. They looked to him now, deafened by the cheers of their fellows. But he could do nothing to stop the rising tide of Tyro’s bloodlust. It spread through the court like a virus, a contagion that could not be stopped.

This had all been planned. Tyro had called him out.

The true spectacle this night was not the slaughter of two Khyrein spies.

It was the weakness of the Scholar King.

Lyrilan rose from his chair and descended the platform, drawing Ramiyah after him by her hand. A quartet of legionnaires followed as they left the Feasting Hall, where the reek of spilled blood overpowered now the scents of meat and smoke and spices. To his surprise a half-dozen noblemen followed him as he exited. He only wanted to be alone with Ramiyah, to think. To figure out this problem dropped into his life like a bead of poison into a cup of wine.

He was not the only Peace Speaker among the court. Yet he was their leader, their Scholar King, their only chance. They did not want a war any more than he did. They feared Tyro the Sword King and the voices who guided him toward savage glory.

This was the beginning of something new and terrible.

Factions. The Sword and the Scholar.

Before there was war with Khyrei, there would be war in Uurz.

O Father, what have you done to us?