Two Empires (Original Post)

When the last of the servants had left, bearing empty plates and bowls to the kitchens eight levels above, Orrenkhendis scanned the room for any remaining people and unrolled the parchment. It covered most of the table, brightly coloured, highly detailed. He placed an iron triangle on the map, and sat back. “We’re ready for the Don Ampheti,” he said, pursing his lips. “You concur, I think.”

The woman to his right, the only other person in the room, nodded. Her face was hidden by an intricately carved red mask, its eyes and mouth slanted in a perpetual frown, her voice muted from behind the polished wood. “Only one more city, and a few nomadic tribes, Orren. Not difficult.”

“But which path?” he asked. “The army will be vulnerable in the mountain ranges, the plains are no more than a pleasantly-named desert, and we have no ships to send by sea.” He motioned to the body of water that lay beside the city, the sea into which the river Amphet emptied, after which the city and its surrounding fertile areas were named. “At least not in the time frame we’re looking at.”

“No,” the woman replied. “Though we could hire Don Khellev mercenaries to ferry the Twelfth, if we could trust those butchers with anything more than wheat and glass beads.”

Orren grunted, and was about to say something.

When the iron doors split open in a burst of sorcery, and figures began to spill in, scimitars drawn. Behind them a mage, Theriar perhaps, hands reaching out, fire extending from them and into the throne room. The table splintered and the map burst into flame before Orrenkhendis threw a ward up around himself and the Mask. Fire began to lick at the sides of the ward, rising against it as if climbing an invisible wall.

A strong mage, then, drawing on the Canton of Fire. Almost enough to overwhelm Orrenkhendis, who felt a flicker of fear, unease at the power displayed in the room. No mage he knew had such sorcery at his command. None except himself, and even he disliked the Canton of Fire, for what it did to those who used it. What it took out of its practitioners. No, Orrenkhendis was a practical mage, drawing even now on Elnomia Serrc, Realm of Dreams.

But fire can only be tricked for so long. The wall that was not a wall began to collapse. The sorcerous fire began to seep though, as the figures beyond held back, scimitars still drawn. Orreen could sense the fear in them, and the terror in the heart of the Mask. Something new. He had never known the Mask to afraid of anything. So, he would have to be unpredictable. Do something different. Redoubling his call on Serrc, Orrenkhendis prepared to call also upon Elnomia Jekkhyr.

The ice would probably kill everyone in the royal house, saving only himself and the Mask from being trapped in the glacier this building would become. Perhaps an entire section of the city.

He prepared to draw upon the Canton of Ice as the fire consumed ever greater portions of the room. He prepared, but never had the chance. Orrenkhendis and the Mask disappeared, the ward vanishing with them, flame engulfing where they had just been.

Just outside the double doors, the mage blinked and lowered his hands. In a moment the fire snuffed out, smoke disappeared, embers glowed brightly and turned to ash. The mage swiped the sweat from his brow, at the same time feeling where his ritual tattoos had grown, where the scars had deepened, where his skin had become more like leather than before. He felt old, but even at his age had not seen anything like Orrenkendis’ disappearance. This is ever so slightly odd, he thought.

* * *

The fire had disappeared, the throne room had disappeared, everything had disappeared. The Mask looked around shakily; they were somewhere… else. Somewhere she had never seen, a place out of a nightmare. Above, the sky roiled in slow, ceaseless movement, different shades of grey moving in and around eachother, hiding whatever sun provided the seemingly sourceless light. Warm and moist, the air seemed to move in concert with the clouds as if driven by some unseen force, a push that could not rightly be called a wind.

As she scanned the area, the Mask saw countless ruins, packed together. They were standing in what had once been a city, and a fairly large one by the look of it. A city so old that what was left of it was little more than stone and rubble. Pillars rose from the ground, supporting nothing. Flagstones tilted at strange angles, fissured strangely.

An intake of breath to her left. Orrenkhendis, staring wide-eyed at their surrounding, and then almost smiling, as if he recognised the place. “You know where we are?” he asked.

The Mask shrugged. “A dead place.”

Orren rubbed his hands together in obvious delight. “No, much better than that,” he said. “Much, much better than that. This is the Canton Elnomia Serrc.”

“Even I know that Canton isn’t a realm proper,” the Mask said, frowning. “There’s no way to get there because there is no there.”

“An impressive elocution, dear Mask,” Orrenkhendis replied, “and entirely correct. But it appears that the Canton of Dreams has been deceiving us, after all this time. This place is thick with the scent of it.”

“And things decaying,” she said. “But enough talk. We have a situation to attend to.”

“In the palace? I’m sure they’ve figured out we’re not quite there anymore. And no one’s going to launch a coup if the emperor can’t be found. I could poke my head out — or in — any minute.”

“So what, we explore?”

“We explore. Come.”

Orren took off briskly, the Mask following him, their shoes kicking up dust that, as far as they could tell, hadn’t been disturbed for hundreds of years, dust that mixed with an oddly cold low-lying mist that came and went. Only a few feet, and the Mask laid a hand on her companion’s shoulder. “Look,” she said, pointing past a pillar, to a dead tree rising from a pile of rubble.

“Most strange,” Orrenkhendis said. He stroked his beard, contemplating the tree. “Now who would have the sheer strength to do that?”

A massive demon had been nailed, four limbs stretched out above and below its head, to the tree. It had six eyes, a gaping maw lined with crooked though deadly-looking teeth, and fingers tapering to almost delicate points.

The Mask stepped forward, examining the demon more closely. “I wouldn’t want to meet this thing in a dark alley.”

“Indeed, you would not,” it said, or rather, hissed. Orrenkhendis and the Mask both gasped and stepped back. Two of the six eyes opened, staring at the emperor and his consult. Pupils like a cat’s set in blood-red eyes. An off-putting look.

Orren recollected himself quickly, and addressed the creature. “Demon, you are a resilient sort of beast, aren’t you. Nailed to a tree for how long and yet still alive?”

The demon closed its eyes again. “Ah yes. You two. I was set here seven years ago to watch for you, Orrenkhendis and Doth Leane. Or as I believe you call yourself, the Mask. Appropriate for the Realm of Dreams.”

“Ah, so it’s as I thought,” Orren said, grinning. “Very much a Canton in its own right, is it not, demon?”

The demon approximated as much of a shrug as he could manage. “More no than yes. Depends. Look at it right and yes. Or no. But hold, Anachronist approaches.”

They turned to see a cart drawn by five lumbering oxen, a broad throne mounted on top. A dessicated figure sat atop the throne, wrapped in a grey cloak and hood. The fabric seemed to swirl and twist with the clouds above and mist below, though the Mask couldn’t tell whether it was moving itself or simply reflecting its surroundings.

“You may leave,” the figure spoke, low, coughing, as if the effort of the sentence was almost too much. The oxen scampered off — not quite oxen then, the Mask thought, noticing the way their limbs bent the wrong way — though whatever had bound them to the cart had vanished. Or had simply never existed.

Orrenkhendis regarded the figure on the throne with a smirk. “You are the god of this place,” he said. “A broken god by the look of it.”

“Brave, mortal,” the figure replied between hacking coughs. “Not so long ago… I would have made you regret it. When the name Anachronist was a curse on the tongues of men… and gods.”

The Mask surprised herself by speaking. “Then you either can’t, or don’t want to. Why?”

A shrug. “I am dying.”

“Then you should seek the Canton of Life, not mere mortals,” she replied.

“Mortals… are almost never mere,” the god replied. “And immortality almost never as immortal as one might imagine.”

“You seem to have garnered an impressive talent for alliteration,” Orren said. “Tell us why you brought us here. Your purpose in this.”

“It is a long story. I would… tell it you. But I am afraid my time is almost… gone. My worshippers disappear from the earth, mage. They… are few. And only in my weakness… only in my weakness have I sundered the seal on this Canton. And… only then to save you, Orrenkhendis.”

“Me,” Orren said, scowling. “But not the Mask.”

“Room for everyone. The mage and the Mask… yes this is good.” The god laughed a rasping laugh that sounded rather like a series of gasps. “How would you like this… this place?”

Orrenkhendis no longer smiled. An entirely different expression worked itself across his face, a look of realisation. And cunning. “It seems like a bad place to die.” The Mask glanced at him. He had begun to lose her.

“All this… for one task.” Ah, that was it, then. A commission from a dying god, and a reward to go with it. “A small thing.”

“We’ll take it,” the Mask said, suddenly. It dawned on her what this meant, then, what all this was for. “Depending on the condition. You agree, Orren?” The emperor nodded.

“A wise choice of… words,” the god hacked out. “And more than you realise, I imagine. One task… to carry me to the Taken Hold.”

Both caught off guard. The Taken hold — suicide. “So we must die with you, is that is?” Orrenkhendis demanded. “Not much of a bargain by any measure I know, Anachronist.”

“Take does not always take,” the figure said, shifting on his throne. “Besides… he is my brother.”

“A revelation,” the Mask said. “How are we to do it?”

* * *

A tear in the fabric of Elnomia Khyrkhul, a red-lined rent, a sound like thunder, and they were through. If the Canton of Dreams had been a place out of a nightmare, the Canton of Death was a place out a nightmare’s worst nightmare. At once pitch black and suffused with a dull, sourceless light, there was nothing in every direction. Nothing at all. If there was a sky, it wasn’t visible; if there had ever been topsoil, it had blown away long ago, replaced with a smooth slate. In the gloom, everything seemed grey, or black. Or a deeper dark than black itself.

Orrenkhendis, himself wearing a duplicate of the Mask’s disguise, stepped through the fissure, followed by the mask. In his arms the surprisingly light form of the god Anachronist.

Glancing around, Orren shook his head. “Take isn’t much for decoration, is he.”

Tags: fiction