32

  Earlier, beneath the Grand Council’s chambers in Valinor Palace:

  Lord Rawn Kalistiel was injured but recovering; having defeated a wyvern in furious aerial combat, then returned to seize control of the city. The supposed elf was a skin-changer, though; the eldest born of his dead mother’s brood, long in Kalistiel’s guise.

  He was also far from the only mirror-kin lurking in Valinor Palace, but with mother gone, ‘One’ was the strongest. Their leader… for as long he managed to keep that position. Establishing order, capturing the imperial family, that was what mattered now, if the skin-changer meant to remain on top and alive.

  There were fires to douse, witnesses to collect and then slay. Karellon had to be pacified, before too many questions were asked by its worried elvish populace. Lord Kalistiel saw to all that and got himself healed before striding down to his private stronghold. As Minister of the Fleet, he had a luxurious public office, much wealth and great privilege. A family and mansion, as well, out on the Street of Bright Flowers.

  As “Rawn Kalistiel”, One was tall and well-muscled, with obvious sea-elven traits. His hair was long and quite dark, his eyes a fierce, stormy bronze. Faint gill slits crossed both sides of his neck, beneath a high velvet collar. They didn’t function well, so the skin-changer kept them covered, lest their odd stillness betray him.

  Reaching a rock-walled chamber, he sat down to think at a massive, night-sulfur desk. Alexion Valinor had just escaped with his allies after helping to slay mother, then stealing the crown. Intolerable. Not at all part of the Plan.

  The weary skin-changer settled borrowed elbows on the desk’s rugged surface, resting his chin on his fists. Mother was dead, One was ascendant, and their Plan was in serious trouble. The fugitive emperor had to be recaptured for swift consumption and breeding, while Karellon stayed oblivious, safely under control. That was the will of Those Underneath. Question was, how best to achieve it?

  His mother had not shared her strategy. Not even with him. He’d been a useful tool and he knew it; had no other name than Rawn Kalistiel, for mother had simply called him the demonic version of “One” or “First-dropped”. Shortly after his birth, she’d set him to hunt the palace for someone to capture, drain and replace. Find a drunk, she suggested, or someone too busy plotting to notice a stalker.

  The skin-changer had stumbled upon Lord Kalistiel planting evidence against a political rival, down in the treasury. Easy enough to waylay and drain the shocked elf, then drag him off for the first of many long, intense “sessions”.

  One was now a much better version of Rawn Kalistiel than the withered husk who lay curled on the floor of a cell, down below. The captured elf-lord was barely able to answer questions, almost ready for the ritual meal that would turn One into Rawn, forever.

  Almost. There were still some deep time-line memories to absorb, last vestiges of personality to wring out of that pitiful, whimpering ghost. The skin-changer needed it all, having no other self but that stolen persona. No other goal than his dead mother’s Plan.

  Therefore, to business. The Imperial family had evaded capture by fleeing to the mainland’s interior. Troublesome, but there was a way to track at least two of them. The ones that Kalistiel’s mimic especially wanted to find.

  Pulling a spell-globe out of a hidden drawer, he used it to contact a certain drow officer. Female, of course, for the dark-elves were ruled by their blood-thirsty women. This one had deep-blue skin, seething red eyes and tattoos that crept all over her muscular, lightly-clad body. Her ebony hair was cropped short, and she’d filed her teeth into points. Nevertheless, she was stunningly attractive.

  “Day-lord,” sneered the drow, leaning away from the spell-globe on her end. Kalistiel could see barbed cages and a stained, sandy floor behind her, lit up by soul gems and guttering torches.

  “Kenda,” he replied, nodding slightly. She wasn’t aware that he was a skin-changer. Just that they met for occasional, lucrative business.

  “Two of your former slaves have left Karandun. All of the Wolf Pack, actually. They’ve absconded back to the mainland, away from their guards, mages and sheltering walls.”

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  Kenda cocked a dark eyebrow. Her red eyes and gold earrings shone in the torchlight as she stared at Kalistiel’s grim, handsome face.

  “Intriguing to learn, but old news,” she told him. “My audience craves sensation, splendor and novelty. Why should a few wrung-out fighters matter to me?”

  “Because you have the means to track them down, and I am willing to pay in fresh slaves and gold for their recapture. One of them… Galadin… you may slaughter like a hog and take your time doing it. Alexion Valinor, I want back alive and unharmed. The rest are yours, as are any half-elves or mortals found in their company. Seize them, contact me, and I shall arrange the false emperor’s transport to Karellon.”

  Kenda snorted.

  “Nobody schemes like a high-elf,” she mocked tossing her head. “I take it the line of succession’s about to get suddenly shorter?”

  The skin-changer’s expression hardened. In a low, icy voice, he said,

  “The Council and people of Karellon have decreed an end to the withered Valinor dynasty, Night-stalker. You may profit by recapturing the fugitives or stand by and watch as somebody else does. Your choice and possible fortune.”

  Behind Kenda, a pair of young dwarves tried to battle a pain-maddened centaur filly, losing badly. The she-drow laughed at Kalistiel’s mimic, backed by the noise of iron-shod hooves snapping bone.

  “Haul the poker out of your fundament, Day-lord,” she smirked. “I’ll see to the matter, myself. Even without Bone-setter and White Hair, the Wolf Pack should draw quite a crowd… and their brands will lead me right to them, for twelve-thousand gold apiece.”

  Kalistiel grimaced, clenching his hands on the night-sulfur desktop. That was another expense he’d have to cook through the books, but he nodded anyhow.

  “Twelve thousand, each, after the emperor’s return and proof that Lord Galadin has perished as slowly as you can drag out an end. Understood?”

  The drow smiled at him.

  “It’s personal, huh?” she guessed. “No fear, Sunshine. It’ll take White Hair a looong time to die, and then you’ll get Bone-setter back in one piece." Then, changing the subject, "He was a Valinor princeling, huh? Drek. Wish I’d know that when we had him. Would’ve doubled the entry fees.”

  “Just see to your mission,” snapped the skin-changer, battling Kalistiel’s obsession with dark-elves. “Payment on delivery.”

  Then, breathing hard, he broke contact, getting himself under control with genuine effort.

  “Mother is dead, but the Plan continues, in the name of Those Underneath,” he grated. “She will have blood in torrents, once Karandun falls to My Lord of the Endless Night.”

  XXXXXXXXXXX

  At around the same time, in distant Okuni, the Land below Heaven:

  Constant, droning hymns to his praise extolled his every thought, deed and quality. Incense billowed, filling his circular chamber with eye-stinging clouds of rank mist. Golden bells chimed sweetly, keeping back any loathsome influence.

  …and he hated it all.

  The Blessed A’Kann hovered cross-legged over an intersection of three mighty ley-lines, not permitted to touch the soft cushions piled up below. He wasn’t supposed to set foot on the ground or glimpse an unworthy face, either. In fact, most sights were forbidden that bored and lonely god-king.

  There was no other light but his own divine radiance. Nothing to look at but long silken curtains, dense carpets and an oval screen of pierced jade, all of them bleached a smooth, icy white. His dishes and cups were smashed as soon as he’d finished using them. Clothing, as well. As for his masked, silent concubines, they survived contact with the Blessed A’Kann, Son of Heaven, until after bearing his child. Then, they were killed.

  He’d risen to this suffocating height as the eldest son of the divine A’Kanna before him. Just like his oldest daughter, Alita, would someday rise up to follow. Once, long before, he’d been Summer Prince Joshi, who’d loved to ride over the moorland, hunting with a bow that they’d broken and burned on the Heaven-stone, along with his horse, his three dogs and his hawk.

  A god had no need of such things, and the Blessed A’Kann was a god given flesh: His Divine Holiness of the thrice unspeakable Name. God of thirty square feet, some curtains, cushions, incense and noise.

  Once, bored out of his deific mind, the A’Kann had played a small prank. He’d wriggled off the ley-lines, landed atop that mountain of cushions, then slipped out through the curtains that screened his small chamber.

  “Boo!” he’d called out, in a voice that he’d almost forgotten he owned. It was only a joke, but no one had laughed.

  Instead, the musicians burst from their seats with a booming and squeal of dropped instruments, wide-eyed with shock. Then everyone present… from the guards and priests to the youngest singer… had silently gouged out their eyes, blinding themselves until regeneration brought orbs that hadn’t glimpsed the Blessed A’Kann.

  His fallen retainers did not even whimper, just lay there face down, bleeding tears from their empty sockets. Joshi hadn’t dared speak to them further, lest they cut off their ears or pierce them with needles to block the sound of his words. He’d stumbled back to his chamber, instead. Back to imprisonment wrapped up in worship and luxury.

  Nobody ever reproved him. Just killed all who’d seen him that day, then went back to the way things were. His court whisperer spoke through the screen as usual, detailing events in a rapid, sing-song cadence that wouldn’t permit interruption. Food and water appeared as it always did. Was ignored for three days, while Okuni plodded on all around the weeping Son of Heaven. A trapped and miserable god, who began to dream of escape.