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CHAPTER FOUR

Sybelle stood over the rack of broken vials littering the floor. The tinkle of breaking glass did nothing to soothe her nerves. For three days she’d been attempting to contact her agent in the south, but the oily scrying pool remained blank. It could only mean one thing.

Her sanctum sanctorum was a wide chamber in the heart of her temple. It pleased her to think of it as her temple. Although she had not laid the stones for the vast basilica, she was responsible for its reconsecration. The shadowed recesses of the vaulted ceiling comforted her.

Calmer, she crossed the stone floor to a shelf on the wall. She took what she required, then went to a tall object standing in a corner, covered in a pale sheet. She swept away the cover from the lidless sarcophagus carved from a single piece of volcanic stone. Nestled within were the mummified remains of a three-thousand-year-old warrior who had lived in an empire that had once spanned the known boundaries of this world.

Sybelle sat cross-legged upon the floor before the withered cadaver. First, she opened a vein in her wrist and spilled a portion of blood into a pan. After sealing the cut with a Word, she cracked open three stone jars and sifted their gritty contents through her fingers, one by one.

Adulai nocet e’sulphruka,” she whispered. “By heart and lungs and soul, appear before mine eyes. Het Xenai, I conjure thee!”

Shadows flickered as a combination of odors met her nose, of dust and sand and endless night. The blood in the pan disappeared as if sucked into an invisible mouth, and a draining sensation came over Sybelle. A sigh, as coarse and dry as mummified bones, filled the chamber.

“Speak, Witch.”

“Great warrior, I seek to reach into the land of the dead and contact a departed soul.”

“Ask.”

“Bring me the shade of my servant Levictus.”

Though there were no windows in the sacred chamber, a wisp of a breeze tickled the back of her neck. A pallid light glimmered in the air. It flickered several times before coalescing into a shape roughly the size and manner of a man. Sybelle recognized the scarred face.

“Levictus.”

After a pair of slow heartbeats, he answered in a hollow tone. “Sybelle.”

“Tell me how you came to die. When was the hour? Where the place?”

“Dead?”

“Yes.” She resisted the urge to curse him. It would do no good in the land of shades. “Tell me how you died.”

“I was killed…not long ago.”

She frowned. Before his disappearance, Levictus had contacted her to ask for additional strength, which she had provided at great cost to herself. Levictus had been her most important tool in the southern lands. Not the most reliable—the sorcerer was as unstable as any Brightlander—but his role was crucial to her plans. For him to be killed at the apex of his power was no small matter.

“Who was it?”

“The night was so dark. No moon. So beautiful…We fight.”

She dug her fingernails into her palms, marshalling her self-control.

“Who? Who did you fight, Levictus?”

The shade paused for a few heartbeats. Then his rasping voice warbled across the void.

“The scion.”

Her bosom heaved as the words echoed across the ethers between life and death. Upon granting his boon, she had required one task of her servant. That he kill one man. A very dangerous man.

“Did you slay him as well?” she asked.

Mumbled words whispered from the portal.

“Levictus! Did you slay the scion?”

“He was defeated.”

Sybelle released the breath she had been holding. Thanks be to the Mother Dark—

“But something…interfered. I die. Shinae…”

Sybelle hissed between parted lips. Shinae was a dark metal native to the Shadowlands. She had gifted the sorcerer with a pair of shinae knives during his visit to Eregoth, years ago, but what was he talking about? She needed more answers. Yet he was fading before her eyes. She reached out to take hold of the spirit directly and wring the truth from its spectral voice, but it slipped through her psychic grasp. She lunged after him, but the withered shade of Het Xenai reappeared, gazing at her with vacant holes.

“Bring him back!” she demanded. “I was not finished.”

The ancient warrior’s sigh was a gust of wind over a cold desert plain. “The shade has passed beyond my sight.”

Invectives flew from her lips. The warrior’s spirit wavered and departed, back to its eternal sleep. She brushed the charnel dust from her hands and arose.

This was unforeseen. For almost two decades she had been assembling her power. Levictus was supposed to blaze the trail. Now her plans were unraveled, and her Master was unforgiving. She threw the sheet back over the sarcophagus, its paleness reminding her of the snowfields on the day she emerged from the gateway to step onto these cursed lands. Her father—her liege—had stood before her under the alien blue sky that burned her eyes, and lifted up his hand.

“From this land,” he said, “we shall forge a new empire.”

Despair had welled up inside Sybelle as she gazed out upon the blankness of the bare ice and stone and the foul light rising in the east. They were exiles, outcasts in a world that was but a hollow reflection of the one they had left behind.

She reached out to catch her father’s arm. “We should go back. We could make peace—”

He struck her, and she fell upon the icy ground. She lay there, feeling the sting of his hand, which she knew and hated.

“No,” he said. “We must make our destiny in this world now, or be crushed by it.”

His fist closed, and there was a terrible crash. Sybelle looked back to see the path behind them swallowed into an icy crevasse. The gateway was gone. They were marooned here.

Sybelle pulled her gaze away from the covered sarcophagus. That had been a long time ago, but the pain was still fresh. She had left behind a life of luxury and privilege, and in return been given only hardship and an endless litany of demands. Nothing in this world had been able to assuage the betrayal, not even the birth of her son, Soloroth, who had never seen the onyx skies of Shadow, nor walked upon the pallid shores of its midnight seas.

Steadying herself against a stone pillar, Sybelle went to an alcove in the wall. She took down an elaborate orichalcum box and opened the lid. A bed of fine golden powder lay inside. She took a pinch between her fingers and held it up to her nose. Inhaling the sweet powder, she was instantly rejuvenated. She took another pinch before putting the container back.

Sweeping a curtain aside, she traveled down a narrow passage of dressed stone to a doorway. The beat of pounding drums echoed from beyond the portal. Splinters of ruddy light throbbed in time with the rhythm.

She emerged into a vast hall filled with a throng of sweating, writhing, groaning bodies. The sweet heat of their passion seeped into her flesh and warmed her chilled bones. The smells of blood and sex swept the dusty attar from her lungs. Sybelle closed her eyes and let the energy of the ritual fill her. Since coming to these lands, she had tried to civilize its savage inhabitants. For four years she had worked to eradicate all traces of the True Church. She was shocked to find so many men—and even women, who should have known better—willing to die for their idols. Yet once she and Erric took the city and exterminated the Light-worshipping cult, Sybelle had had a change of heart. Why deny the people an outlet for their baser natures? So she’d devised a new sect to venerate the Dark, with herself as the earthly incarnation of Mother Night. Those who came to worship here gave of their blood and their bodies, infusing the temple with a power that lapped at her soul like an ocean of ambrosia.

Glowing braziers sat along the walls. A company of men and women in various stages of undress cavorted under the lurid light. A haze of blue smoke from a forest of water-pipes clouded the air. Golden bowls filled with ruby wine were placed about the chamber, from which the people dipped their cups and drank or poured the contents over their lovers. Grunts and sighs echoed from the vaulted ceiling while blind musicians played. Near to her entrance, a black basalt throne sat upon a raised platform. Two smaller thrones were placed before the platform. In one of them, the Duke of Liovard slouched, puffing on the end of a water-pipe while a lithe slip of a girl hunched over his lap. Her golden locks rose and fell in time with the music.

Sybelle took her place beside the duke and shooed away the vixen servicing him. The pipe slipped from Erric’s lips. Then he relaxed as she took his manhood in hand. While coaxing him onward, Sybelle observed a knot of glistening bodies on the floor. Amid the tangle of graceful limbs, two rugged men lay upon their backs, drinking from silver cups as they enjoyed the comforts provided by a flock of young beauties.

“How fare our guests from Warmond?” she asked.

The duke made a final groan and slumped in his chair. Sybelle pressed herself against him as she wiped her hands on his pant leg.

He took a deep breath and let it out, deflated. “They seem satisfied. Although they mentioned a need for assurances about the firmness of my control over the clans. Something about rumors that have reached the ears of their liege.”

“Just as I told you.” She traced a tiny scar running down the cleft of his chin. “The death of the thanes was not enough. You must move quickly to consolidate your gains.”

He caught her hand and nipped at her fingertips. “We agreed to wait for Arion’s return. His report will tell us how go the activities along the border.”

Sybelle pulled away. “I grow tired of waiting.”

“Your distaste for my son does not sit well with me, Sybelle.”

She bit her tongue before she said what she really thought of his son. Antagonizing her paramour would only make him less biddable.

“I think only of your future. I helped you secure the greatest city of the north. Will you not trust me to guide you to your rightful place?”

He grunted and reached for a cup beside his chair. Sloshing the wine on his stain-riddled shirt, he took a sip.

“My soldiers are overextended as it stands now, love. It will take months to raise a new levy and train them, and weeks more to relocate them.”

“Then use the mercenaries I have secured for you.”

“I don’t trust them. Their commanders show me no respect.”

“They respect only strength, my lord. Show it to them—send them out to do your bidding—and they will give you the honor you deserve. The honor due to a king.”

He eyed her with a peculiar expression, like a man woken from a disturbing dream. He blinked and the look faded, replaced by his usual jaded gleam.

“Still, I would rather wait for Arion. When I know all is well in the south, I will feel more agreeable to do as you suggest.”

Sybelle stared at the duke, debating how hard to press him, but the sweet ecstasy of the temple chamber made her unable to sustain any true ire toward him. Against her better judgment, she let the matter pass.

She stood up. “As you will, my lord.”

“Where are you going?”

The sorrowfulness in his voice was like a knife down her spine.

“Stay and enjoy the fete.” She bent down to kiss him. “I shall join you later.”

Sybelle turned away as Erric reached for his pipe and signaled a servant to fire up another cube of kafir resin. She wasn’t thinking of the duke, or even the emissaries she had invited to forge a pact that would eventually unite the Northlands under Erric’s banner. Her thoughts were focused on a man who had thwarted her designs in another direction, a man who should be dead, and the plans intended to remedy the situation.


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