Of Kings and Killers Read online

  In his flat tone, Jerri read Calder’s death.

  Unless Goss was a Champion in disguise, they wouldn’t be able to fight Urzaia, so they would have to kill him in his sleep. The hordes of Othaghor were infamous for their variety of poisons, and a Champion would bleed out from a severed artery just like an ordinary human. Only more slowly.

  So Urzaia would go first, and then the rest of them in their sleep. Possibly including Jerri herself; Tommison wouldn’t trust her any more than she trusted him.

  The captain must have realized he’d slipped, because he gave her a fatherly smile. “Don’t worry. The head office won’t give up a prize like this so easily. They’ll tell us what to do.”

  For this, he burns, Jerri’s Vessel whispered.

  She smiled back. “I know they will. You should get some sleep; one way or another, we have a long day tomorrow.”

  He yawned widely, covering his mouth with a fist. “Now that’s a mission I can accept, but I have to finish these bundles first. Lots to do before dawn breaks.”

  “I’ll see you then,” Jerri said, walking away.

  The hallway back to the main room, where the others slept, was a straight line. Sight would have been broken by three different doors in the tower’s heyday, but now it was just a long stretch of shadows interrupted by the occasional shaft of moonlight that shone in through a crack. Only in the room at the far end, where Tommison bottled up their alchemy, was there a pool of dim orange light from a tiny quicklamp.

  She returned to the main room, checking to make sure that Andel, Calder, and Urzaia were still asleep.

  Then she walked back and glanced down the hall.

  Tommison’s bulk blocked part of the quicklamp. He, too, was standing in a doorway and watching her.

  There came a long, frozen moment in which she saw realization dawn in his eyes. He started to yell at the same instant that she pitched a ball of green fire.

  As soon as it left her hand, she dashed over to the crates next to the wall, taking up her position on watch as though she’d never left.

  “Traitor!” Tommison managed to shout.

  Then a stronger roar swallowed him up. Noise slammed into Jerri’s ears as the alchemical munitions exploded, the entire tower shaking. She was tossed to the ground from her seat, and the barricade rattled against the walls, sending planks raining to the ground.

  Calder and Andel rolled to their knees, groping for weapons, but Urzaia was already up and running down the hallway. She hadn’t even seen him move from the floor.

  Smoke billowed down the hall and Jerri’s ears rang, so she couldn’t hear Calder calling her name. Only see his lips move.

  But as he shook her and looked into her eyes, she returned his look of concern with convincing panic.

  Chapter Ten

  Who are those who watch from beyond the borders of our world?

  And why do they not save us?

  —The Emperor

  present day

  The void swallowed Calder like a frog taking a fly.

  His consciousness was projected through the Optasia, so he had no physical form here, but he felt like he was falling a hundred stories. The vast swath of darkness in the sky consumed him, pulling him in with irresistible gravity until he had left the world behind.

  When he drifted with darkness all around him, points of bright color shivering in the distance, only then did he stop.

  Adrift in nothingness, he simply floated.

  He couldn’t adjust the direction of his Intent anymore; even his most focused thoughts couldn’t pull him away. He could break the trance entirely and wake up, if he wanted to, but he was afraid to lose his connection to the Optasia.

  The Emperor’s throne had fed him far too many details before, so this sudden absence of everything was jarring. It would have been peaceful if the Great Elders couldn’t hunt him down at any second.

  He tried to reorient himself and look back at his world. He managed to turn, seeing a slash of detail behind him as though someone had painted it into being with a single swipe of a paintbrush.

  It was only the Capital below, the view taken up mostly by the red-tiled mass of roofs that made up the Imperial Palace, so Calder knew he was looking down on the place where his physical body was located.

  A man drifted between Calder and his reality.

  From the neck down, the stranger wore armor of unrelieved black that would have blended into the void if not for the nimbus of blue light that surrounded his entire body.

  The armor he wore was smooth as polished obsidian, almost liquid, and Calder could see no seams at the joints or even around the neck. It was as though the plates had fused to the man’s skin.

  That skin was pale, paler even than Calder’s own. He had a handsome face, if a bit long, with eyes of such an intense blue that they didn’t seem human. His hair was long and flowing white, though age had not marked him at all. He seemed timeless, perfect, like an impossibly detailed sculpture or the ideal form of a human brought to life.

  The man watched Calder for a moment, though only Calder’s awareness had traveled through the Optasia. Somehow, he met Calder’s eyes.

  Then he beckoned with one hand.

  Calder instantly found himself in a room. Each of the four walls, floor, and ceiling were made up of stained glass depicting the same figure—a featureless man with black armor and white hair—in various scenes.

  In one, he stood atop a rock in a sea of wheat, hauling back a huge scythe for a great swing. On the ceiling, the same figure held a ruby planet in his right hand and an emerald planet in his left while behind him a great sapphire river flowed like a ribbon.

  Whoever this was, he was very taken with his own deeds.

  That man lounged on a luxurious couch, basking in the multicolored light. “I am he of the name Ozriel, which is my identity and my purpose and that which you can call me.” His accent was all wrong, like nothing Calder had ever heard.

  Calder tried to sort through that sentence and realized the man was introducing himself, but he obviously didn’t have much of a grasp on the language, so Calder spoke slowly and clearly. “My name is Calder. Where am I? Do you understand me? Where?”

  Ozriel quickly rolled his eyes. “Sorry and apologies, the fault is not held in your hands. Speak more, if your will aligns with mine.”

  “All right…ah, I am Calder Marten, Steward of the Aurelian Empire. I have come here as a representative of my people in order to discover the cause of the…crack…that the Great Elders left in the sky. I am communicating with you now through a device that amplifies Reading.”

  It was strange, talking this way, because he couldn’t feel the words in his throat or his lips move. He supposed he was communicating entirely through Intent, which might have explained the translation difficulties.

  “Can you understand me?”

  Ozriel waited for a moment with the concentrated expression of a man doing calculations in his head. After a moment, he said, “Ah, there we are. Is that better?”

  His accent was now almost entirely gone. He might have grown up in the Capital.

  Legend had it that the first generation of Readers, including the Emperor and Estyr Six, could speak with those of other languages by Reading the Intent behind the other person’s words. They had used those skills to unite the language of the Empire.

  Had this man drifting beyond the sky done the same thing?

  “Did you learn the language by Reading my Intent?”

  “Something like that. We had the language of your world stored away, but such things change over time. Hearing you speak helped me connect with you and your knowledge, since your world is usually cut off from me.”

  That opened a library’s worth of questions for Calder, but he couldn’t ask them. “I might have only moments, but I must know. Who are you?”

  “I am Ozriel, the Destroyer.” He sounded a little too lighthearted for a man calling himself ‘the Destroyer.’ “Eighth Judge of the Court of Seven, and
the end of all that was, all that is, and all that shall be. Please don’t call me Oz.”

  Calder couldn’t go on pulling answers out of this man one question at a time, so he focused on the one that mattered: “The Great Elders cracked open the sky. Do you know how to fix it?”

  Ozriel sat up on the couch, his face becoming serious. “Yes your consciousness has a tenuous connection to this place. I will restrict myself only to the most important details.”

  He held one hand out to the left, where a massive apparatus appeared out of nowhere. It was a complex network of glass flasks, tubes, whistling steam vents, and whirring parts that Calder could scarcely comprehend.

  The machine took up an entire quarter of the room, stretching from the floor to the ceiling, and liquids of multiple colors flowed through the transparent tubing.

  Calder watched the liquid spiral through a hundred twists and turns, changing color along the way as it was compressed, combined, extracted, and refined. Finally, it reached a faucet over Ozriel’s hand to fall into…a teacup, which had appeared perched on Ozriel’s fingers.

  The liquid was now golden, and it filled the room with an aroma that almost convinced Calder he was standing in a flower garden.

  Ozriel took a sip and shuddered. “This is the most delicious tea in all existence: the Leaf-blend of Tanashai. Would you like a taste? I’m kidding, of course. You’re a tethered consciousness, whereas I have a real body.” He took another sip. “Thank you, physical human tongue. I have never been so grateful for your tangibility.”

  Perhaps this man was a being beyond comprehension with the power to kill Calder with a thought, but Calder had bargained with Kelarac. He couldn’t allow Ozriel to tease him and treat him like an ignorant child, or Calder would never get what he wanted.

  Calder focused his attention. “Listen to me. I don’t know if you get your thrills by flaunting your knowledge, but my life is at stake. And the existence of the entire world. Kill me or help me, but stop wasting my time.”

  Ozriel took another taste of his tea. He didn’t seem offended, but nor did he seem rushed. A small smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “I act this way for two reasons. First, it amuses me, and I like to find the little joys where I can. Second, I want to demonstrate to you that while you’re with me, you can relax. You are under my protection.”

  A shiver went through Calder’s awareness as something pressed in on him from outside this room. He suddenly experienced the sense of icy cold, of depthless hunger, of a shadow that wanted nothing greater than the consumption of all that lived. It was as though the void itself had locked its eye on Calder.

  The room of stained glass darkened as a shadow passed over them, and Calder’s terror peaked. He almost shot back to his body in the Emperor’s throne, but he was afraid that the darkness would catch him on the journey back.

  “It’s here,” Calder whispered. “Urg’naut. He’s found me.”

  Ozriel’s pleasant expression slowly peeled away like a mask melting. He set his teacup aside, where a table manifested to catch it.

  Then he stood, his vivid eyes piercing through space. When he spoke, Calder was certain that he only voiced the words out loud for Calder’s benefit. “I’ve never seen trash so eager to be burned.”

  And Ozriel released his Intent.

  Existing as he did only as awareness of his own, Calder was especially sensitive to Intent. He had felt the force of will projected by the Emperor, Estyr Six, Kelarac, and Ach’magut.

  Unlike those others, Calder wasn’t overwhelmed by this man’s Intent. It was almost gentle in the way that Calder could feel it, let it pass over him, and immerse himself in it without harm. The force of the Emperor’s presence could bowl Calder over like a raging river, but this man’s will was like the sea, and Calder merely floated in its center.

  Something else was taking the brunt of his attention.

  There came the feeling of a distant scream, and suddenly the shadow retreated. Urg’naut, the Creeping Shadow, drew back like a whipped dog.

  When the light through the stained glass shone as brightly as before, Ozriel flopped back down on the couch and picked up his tea. “I didn’t arrange that, but I couldn’t have asked for better timing. Perfect demonstration.”

  For a moment, Calder was speechless. “…is the Great Elder afraid of you?”

  “If it’s wise.” He sipped the tea again. “Pay attention, because while I can do that any number of times, you have more important things to do. Your world is a prison, and I am one of the jailers.”

  Calder didn’t interrupt despite his mouthful of questions.

  “What you call Great Elders are what we call Class One Fiends. I like your name better, incidentally.” He shrugged. “They were named before my time. Anyway, they are the inmates in this prison. And they want to escape.”

  “The crack in the sky. That’s like a…break in their prison?”

  “It is, but it’s not enough.”

  Ozriel held up three black-armored fingers. “There are three fates awaiting a Fiend. If there are too few humans remaining on your world, then it’s fate number one: the world itself begins to crumble until I come along to erase it. That will destroy the current form of the Fiends, but not kill them outright, so they will eventually re-form. But doing so will cost them so much time and energy that it is the fate they wish to avoid at all costs.”

  He folded a finger. “That brings me to fate number two: they escape through this crack in your sky. Those with enough strength could do so already, if they wished. But if they do…” He smiled theatrically. “…they meet me. Now, they could fight me or run from me, but eventually I would hunt them down and it would be the same as fate number one.”

  He folded a second finger, leaving only one. “Fate number three is the one they’re seeking, and the one we are trying to avoid. They want to escape your world, their prison, into another world. Fiends are like parasites. Perhaps plague-bearers would be a better analogy. If they escape in the right way, they can spread to a perfectly healthy world, one that I would hesitate to destroy. Or one that I couldn’t destroy, either because it is too valuable or because it is so old and strong.”

  Ozriel dropped the last finger and returned to his tea.

  “How do they escape in the right way?”

  “That’s a much better question than the others you could have asked. Well chosen. They require human…what you would call human Intent…in order to cross the Way Between Worlds with intention. So they will prepare human vessels for themselves, possess them, and leave their prison behind.”

  Calder thought back to the behavior of the Elderspawn and Elder cults that they had found over the last few months. Preparing a vessel had to be more complex than just choosing a person to possess or they would have done it already.

  “How do we stop them?”

  Ozriel poured himself another cup of tea from the whistling machine. “Preparing a vessel is not a simple process. It’s very subjective and personal, much like…are you familiar with the Soulbound Vessels from your world? Good, I see you are. It’s a related process. The Elders need a personal connection with their subject, the deeper the better, and that takes time.

  “They will be more powerful in a human form as well. As powerful as they would be if they had finished restoring their original physical forms. But they will not take over their human bodies until they are ready to leave the world behind.”

  “Why not?” If their powers would increase, why hadn’t they taken human form already?

  For the first time since driving off Urg’naut, Ozriel spoke seriously. “Because when they do, I’ll erase your world.”

  He faced Calder with all humor gone, and only ancient sadness on his face. “I am sorry, but it is the least harm for the greatest number of people. If it looks like any Class One Fiends will escape in human form, I will remove your entire world from existence.”

  It didn’t even occur to Calder that the man could be lying. He had felt Ozriel’s
Intent, and his resolve was unshakeable.

  Ozriel looked back to his tea. “In fact, I was sent to destroy you already.”

  Back home, Calder was sure that his palms were sweating and his heart beating faster. But here in the world of Intent, he felt only a great pressure.

  On the one hand, the Great Elders.

  On the other, the looming threat of destruction.

  “Why tell me this?” he asked. His Intent had weakened, so his voice came out softly.

  “You think I like erasing billions—or in your case, millions—of lives if I don’t have to?”

  The stained glass room shattered, each shard of glass evaporating. The teacup and massive refining machine vanished as well, as though it had all been a dream.

  Now Calder and Ozriel drifted together in the void, looking down through a rift into the Capital.

  “I can’t reach into your world without making the breach worse,” Ozriel said. “This is a problem for your people to solve. This crack in your sky is not a wound that was made once; it is being maintained by the combined efforts of your Great Elders. If you can seal or weaken their powers enough, your world will heal itself in moments.

  “Alternatively, there is a way to rid yourself of the Great Elders forever.”

  He drifted over the world, looking down into it like a father looking into his child’s crib. “Taking human form is risky for them because it binds them to the rules of humanity. Rules like death. If they inhabit a human body, they can die like humans do. But if they escape…”

  He held out a hand, and Calder found his focus drawn to it like iron to a magnet.

  A moment later, a scythe as large as Ozriel’s body appeared, grasped in his hand. Through Calder’s eyes of Intent, the edge of the weapon gleamed like black moonlight.

  “…I’ll have to do my job.” He gave Calder a wink. “I try to avoid that whenever possible. Do what you can to keep me unemployed, Calder Marten.”

  Calder woke to himself panting and sweating, the Spear of Tharlos at his throat.