Beyond the Shadows

Julus Rotans was in his late forties, his figure still trim and military and his features pure Alitaeran. He wore a white tabard emblazoned with a sun and a white cloak with twelve gold chevrons. Sister Ariel couldn’t make out any other details: the man emanated such a deep aura of ill health she almost gagged. He didn’t remove his gauntlets as he sat, and mercifully there were no open sores on his face, but Julus Rotans was a leper. Worse, his strain of leprosy was the simplest kind to Heal. Even Sister Ariel could do it—but it would take magic.

“So, everyone’s here already,” Julus Rotans said. “I see. No need to include the Lae’knaught in the planning, huh? Just throw us at the thickest part of the enemy, and whether we live or die, you win.”

Logan Gyre didn’t look perturbed. “Overlord, I have wronged you,” he said. “Your representatives told me it was unfair and unwise—actually, I think the word was ‘stupid’—for me to assume direct control over your men. Forgive me. I was worried they would betray me. That was unworthy of me, and it was indeed stupid.”

The overlord’s eyes narrowed, wary. Everyone else watched carefully.

“Today, due to the terrain, your men didn’t fight, but tomorrow, we will rely on you. Your losses may be significant. You have our only heavy cavalry, and you will indeed hold the center. There have been . . .  ugly rumors that your men wish to withdraw and let ‘all these wytches’ kill each other.” Logan sighed. “I know you feel compelled to be here, Overlord Rotans, so I wish to drop the compulsion now. And I do so hereby: Overlord, I freely grant you the fifteen-year lease to the Cenarian lands for your use. I hereby release you from fielding an army and putting them at my service.”

“What?” the overlord asked. He wasn’t the only one incredulous at the table. Without the Lae’knaught’s five thousand, the armies would be seriously weakened.

Logan held up one finger, and the overlord sat up, sure this was the teeth of the trap. “I only ask that if you wish to withdraw from this fight, that you declare your intentions immediately so that we may know how much of an army we will have.”

Overlord Rotans licked his lips. “That’s all?” It was too fair a request for him to protest. Logan didn’t want the Lae’knaught fielding the army and then melting away at the first Khalidoran charge. He still looked puzzled, so he hadn’t seen the teeth of Logan’s offer yet, and the damn fool was about to speak. He was going to accept the offer if Ariel didn’t do something.

“I’m only a woman,” Sister Ariel said, “but it seems to me that such cowardice will make recruitment a challenge in a few countries. Let’s see. Cenaria, of course, will feel betrayed. Ceura too. Oh, and I doubt the praetor would be impressed, so definitely Alitaera—that’s a tough one to lose. Waeddryn and Modai may still send recruits; pity they’re so small.”

“And their people so historically reluctant to die for the light of reason,” Praetor Marcus said with some satisfaction.

“And this is such a bad time to have trouble with recruitment,” Sister Ariel said.

“Why’s that?” Marcus asked, playing along.

“Some superstition in Ezra’s Wood recently slew five thousand Lae’knaught.”

Marcus whistled. “That’s some superstition.”

“You’re vile, all of you. You’re the friends of darkness,” Overlord Rotans said.

“There’s the crux,” King Solonariwan Tofusin said. “You see, friends, the Lae’knaught have no country; they have only ideas. If they abandon us, they can survive the allegations of betrayal and cowardice; what will cut them is hypocrisy. They can betray us, what they can’t betray is their principles. Today we faced perhaps a hundred meisters, but this Godking Wanhope brought two thousand. Where were the rest?”

“Do you actually know the answer to that question?” Lantano Garuwashi asked.

“We passed a town called Reigukhas on our way up the river,” Solon said. “It was dead. From the magic still in the air, hundreds—perhaps thousands—of meisters worked for at least twelve hours raising krul. Those krul then devoured the city’s inhabitants. Tomorrow we will face actual, real creatures of darkness, Overlord. I’d estimate their numbers to be in excess of twenty thousand.”

“Shit, there goes our twenty thousand sa’ceurai advantage,” Vi said.

“One sa’ceurai is not offset by one krul,” Hideo Mitsurugi said, offended.

“Do you even know what a krul is?” Vi asked.

“The point is,” Sister Ariel broke in, “when they have a chance to fight the spawn of darkness, the world will see that the Lae’knaught are hypocrites who prefer to turn tail.”

Julus Rotans was actually shaking with rage. “Go to hell, wytch. Go to hell, all of you. Tomorrow you will see how the Laetunariverissiknaught fight. We will take the center of any charge. I will lead it myself.”

“A generous offer. We accept,” Logan Gyre said immediately, “with the caveat that I ask that you not lead any charge yourself. I’m afraid, Overlord Rotans, that there are simply too many who would wish to see you fall in this battle.”

The obvious target of the comment was the magae, but Sister Ariel saw that what Logan feared was the Lae’knaught’s own men, who were doubtless chafing at having to fight beside wytches. If Julus Rotans fell, the Lae’knaught would retreat. In offering an honorable exit from rash words—or had the Overlord actually hoped to die and thereby allow his men to retreat and the Cenarians and everyone else to be betrayed and slaughtered?—Logan Gyre not only kept the Overlord alive and his army at Logan’s disposal, he also might have gained some goodwill from the man, who if nothing else had shown that he was willing to talk. Sometimes the devil you knew was better than the one you didn’t.

Sister Ariel looked at Logan Gyre with newfound respect. In this meeting of kings and magi, praetors and overlords, he had taken command without the least effort. He must have had some intelligence of a Lae’knaught betrayal or he wouldn’t have brought the matter up. Now he had effectively defanged the threat, and managed to look magnanimous doing it.

“Now, before we discuss specifics of our disposition on the battlefield, does anyone else have anything to add? Sister Viridiana?” Logan asked. He looked at Vi, who looked like she’d been on the verge of offering something for a while.

Vi bit her lip. “There was an explosion of magic earlier this afternoon on the other side of Black Barrow. Our source said there was a fight between the Godking’s meisters and a bunch following one of his rivals, a man named Moburu Ursuul.”

“May the God see fit to send that traitor’s soul to hell on the edge of my sword,” the praetor whispered.

“Moburu is claiming to be some prophesied High King,” Vi said. “Apparently, he seems to fulfill the conditions. I didn’t think anything of it until the Regent said that making Lantano a king would clear the way for a High King.”

Sister Ariel wondered if her own face was as pale as everyone else’s around the table. She probably knew more about the High King than any of them, but it had never occurred to her that it might be a Khalidoran who fulfilled the prophecy.