Darkstone - An Evil Reborn (Book 4) (10 page)

Vishan couldn’t resist lifting his eyes towards the ceiling. He’d rather train outside than spend all of his afternoons with his brothers.

At mess, he learned that he was five years younger than any of the other brothers. One of them would be likely crowned Emperor. His father wouldn’t have thrown them all together like this unless he had a reason. He put his own inclusion with the group due to coincidence more than anything else since he was already serving at Peshakan. Another test? For whom? To Vishan, their presence only meant personal danger.

Daryan seemed to be the only one who would talk to him. “How long have you been here?”

“One year and one month,” Vishan said. “I thought it would be worse than it’s been. You have to take the bad along with the good.”

“What’s the good, for you?”

“I like Ballistics. I’m better with thrown weapons.”

Daryan nodded and smiled. “Do they still withhold any letters?”

“Yes, I’ve heard a bit of news from the troopers, but I don’t know what’s going on in the Compound.”

“Ah, your mother is Princess Yalla? Nothing has changed for her, but your little brothers died half a year ago. If I remember right, bad reactions to a swarm of insects in your gardens. It happens to princes. There are only sixteen of us left, you know.  There probably won’t be any more.”

Sixteen heirs!  A year ago there had been twenty. Had his father been winnowing out the weaker ones? He barely made it though his twelfth year despite his father’s test. Half of the remaining princes sat at this table.

“I’m shocked.” He truly was appalled to hear about his little brothers. He nearly choked on the news. They didn’t deserve to die at such early ages. He remembered his last evening in Baku, telling them stories. His eyes watered a bit, but he shook it off. Sentiment wasn’t an acceptable emotion to show in the army.

His mother must have been crushed. She would take action against the killers, for Vish had no doubt the boys had been assassinated. What if it was the Emperor himself? Two heirs at once? Vish didn’t want to accept that. He felt helpless to assist Princess Yalla, so far from Baku. The knowledge only made him more wary of these seven princes.

Daryan had given him a moment of reflection and then spoke again. “In a way, we all are. Most of the casualties are the result of some kind of test or other that the Emperor has ordered. But your brothers’ deaths aren’t Father’s style. I heard that you were attacked by Astyran.”

Vishan sighed. “Long ago.” He waved away the incident casually in front of his brothers, but he remembered every detail. “It can’t be safe for any of us in the Imperial City. I’ve survived a few assassination attempts.”

“Haven’t we all? I doubt if it will be any safer for us here. Stay aware of your surroundings. Any of us could take advantage of our isolation, even me.” Daryan got up and joined three of his brethren.

Alone again. Perhaps he was safer that way. Regardless of the heat, Vishan would become constant friends with his mail shirt once more. He spent the rest of his meal pulling up as many memories of his little brothers as he could. Suntar and Leshyr. Suntar had just barely gotten his tutor.

The string of deaths that went along with succession persisted with every Emperor and every dynasty that Vishan had studied. If an Emperor successfully stopped it, his successor might succumb. The struggle to rule Dakkor continued. It was no less savage than the reports of the Cuminee barbarians’ fights for tribal dominance.

Not for the first time, did Vishan wish his father had been a common merchant or a farmer, like Peleor’s. How was Peleor? It sometimes seemed like he had lived a different life back in the city, but as he observed his brothers defensive demeanor, the objectionable intrigue of Baku had come to Peshakan.

~

Most of the day, Daryan’s duties consisted of reminding where the brothers needed to be. Vishan’s life became a bit easier. Less of Sergeant Vaka and more of the four lecturers that arrived the day after his brothers did on a significantly more comfortable carriage than the military wagon. These men stayed in the Captain’s quarters and obviously ate at the Captain’s table. Vishan had never seen them in the mess.

He doubted if they would be spending a year educating all of them, but Vishan never underestimated his father’s unpredictability.

A week later, Vishan sat at his usual spot at the front of the room by himself. His other brothers paired up at the two-person tables and the first day, they made clear to Vishan that he was on his own. He held no illusions about what his brothers thought of him, but Vish’s only wish was that he sat at the back instead of the front.

“We will be talking about the Great Emperor and his strategy for ruling the world from Ayrtan.”

Astyran laughed. “Who would want to rule from there? The savages are congenital idiots and the land barely supports what few of them exist.”

“Does anyone have an inkling of what happened so long ago?” Master Noryton said. His specialty was history and culture. He scanned the silent room.

Vishan raised his hand. “Ayrtan wasn’t what it is like today. Something happened to the Purestone that the Great Emperor used to communicate to his rulers in the other three continents, the Moonstone on Zarron, Bloodstone on Besseth and Sunstone on Roppon. The collapsing of the nexus underneath Ayrtan was the result of a disaster that turned the Purestone into the Darkstone. The Great Emperor died and his Empire fragmented with no nexuses available on Ayrtan. Without the power of the nexus, all of Ayrtan withered.”

“Well, the youngest of you is the scholar,” Noryton said.

Vishan heard a few grunts. He didn’t know if the others knew the answer and didn’t say anything or if they were all so truly ignorant of history.

“What do you learn from this, Vishan?”

“There are a number of lessons. The stifling of the nexus ruined an entire continent, so the power that runs through our world is necessary to sustain vigorous life. A great deal of knowledge was lost as the continent sunk into savagery. There was no succession plan for the Great Emperor, so the continental rulers were left to their own devices and the Empire that spanned the world crumbled. Hubris is often noted as the cause of imperial downfalls. We don’t know what the Great Emperor did to ruin his stone. The actual event is lost to history.”

Noryton smiled like the scholar he was. “Not all is lost to history. You know quite a bit about it. We know some of the stones exist. The Moonstone is held by the Duke Mistad in Bomai and has been in his family for hundreds of years. The King of the Red Kingdom holds the Bloodstone. The Sunstone and Darkstone are truly lost.”

“Why do we have to learn this sorcerous offal?” another brother said, slouching in his chair.

“Simply because the Emperor wants you to know it. He thinks it’s important if one of you ever decides to expand the Empire of Dakkor.”

“None of us are sorcerers. We’ve all been tested.” Daryan said.

Noryton looked at Vishan. “Have you?”

Vishan had to be careful in his response. “The Tower rejected me, although I know a spell or two and have made a friend of the sorcerer who helped me long ago,” Vishan said. As soon as he did, he felt very exposed.

One of his brothers chimed in. “We don’t need to be sorcerers ourselves to use the power of the nexus. The Emperor has a modest amount of power, but uses sorcerers.”

His brothers snickered behind him. Vishan turned around. “He does?”

“He does,” Noryton said. “But as I understand things at the Palace, he uses sorcerers rather than exercise his own power.”

Vishan sat back in shock. Of all of the brothers at the Outpost, he alone had power. All the more reason not to use it. Vishan tried to keep from volunteering information as the week ended, but the scholars began to ask him more questions that he couldn’t refuse to answer. Sulm, may his soul rot in the many hells, had done an excellent job of cramming so much information into his head.

Fortunately, the training turned to political matters. Sulm’s knowledge didn’t match his new instructors, and then his brothers’ knowledge easily eclipsed his own. The mechanisms of rule were laid open and analyzed. Vishan kept his mouth shut, but let his mind absorb all of this new information. He understood that there were undercurrents in his father’s rule, but he never knew that his father actually followed a set of understood political strategies.

The complexity of politics was greater than the battle strategies that Sulm and he argued over years ago. Scholar Lystan discussed the elements of decision and action. The man didn’t dispute any of the startling replies from his brothers. The lecture became a discussion of actual actions and reactions.

Vishan began to see patterns in the anecdotes his brothers brought up. Astyran brought up an episode that Vishan knew all too well.

“My father wanted to test the resolve of a subject. He enlisted a baron to make friends with the subject. The baron led the subject along until physically isolated from assistance. Then the baron disabled the subject, who subsequently had to find his way to safety at personal peril.”

Lystan held his chin while listening and shrugged. “What makes this significant?”

Astyran smiled. “The baron had a helper who decided on his own to kill the subject. The instructions were for the injury to be severe, but not life threatening. Both the baron and helper failed to kill the subject and their efforts to deprive the subject of a way to escape failed. They were punished by the Emperor.”

Vishan turned back from looking at Astyran at the beginning and gritted his teeth throughout the story.

“So the subject survived? Why?” Lystan asked.

“The assassination attempt did not count on two factors. The subject wore a chain mail shirt underneath his clothes which prevented the injuries from being life threatening and his borrowed horse could be guided by the subject’s knees. The bridle had been removed, you see and the subject had been stranded in the middle of a vast forest.”

Lystan looked directly at Vishan. “What do you take away from this situation, Vishan?”

Vish took a moment to collect his wits. He hated Astyran’s casual description of attempted murder.

“On the part of the subject, be prepared and be aware of what you know and explore all of the options that you have to survive. On the part of the perpetrators, understand that every plan may fail due to unforeseen circumstances. I suppose you could apply this personal failure to be applied to any operation. The subject’s mail shirt kept the operation from succeeding and he used his newly discovered ability to guide a horse to escape to safety.”

“Who won?” Lystan said, still looking at Vishan.

“Neither, the perpetrators know that the subject knows what happened. The issue did not settle, so there is no victory. Perhaps a battle won by the subject since he survived, but the war continues until one of the two, in this case the subject or the pair who tried to kill him, die.” Vishan grit his teeth.

“Perceptive, Vishan.” Lystan looked up at the group. “Your younger brother is right. He was the subject and Astyran, the perpetrator. Neither was victorious and perhaps settlement lies in the future. However, and this is important, situations like these may never be satisfactorily ended. An Emperor may have ten, twenty, thousands of loose ends that never resolve. An arrow in the night? A poisoned cup of wine? The Emperor could be the focus and his life ended in a moment.” Lystan snapped his fingers.

“The art to all of this is that no one should know who performs the action or who performs the reaction. We’ve gone through the principles. They are never applied in the same way. Circumstances are always different and unpredictable, the subject’s mail shirt, for example. To be successful, the perpetrator’s use of spears should have gone for an unprotected part of the subject’s body.

“In this case the true perpetrator was the Emperor. Vishan may already know this. Astyran and his partner were merely tools. The Emperor’s interest was a test of Vishan. A potentially deadly test which Vishan passed. In the Emperor’s eyes, Vishan succeeded. He was the victor. But on another level, and remember, we have discussed levels, Vishan is correct. Astyran and he still have an unresolved conflict and it’s not the only one that exists in this room. That is all for today.”

Vishan sat alone in the mess, eating flatbread dipped in savory sauces. He grabbed his shirt, feeling the chain mail beneath. How did Lystan know about the story? The Emperor had to have thoroughly briefed the scholars. Now his brothers would suspect Vishan of wearing armor underneath his clothes.

He smiled. If he had learned anything in the class, he would bet that his brothers would soon seek out the armorer for similar protection. This training was as much a test for each of them as was his test so long ago in the forest. Vishan expected some further twists from his father. The Emperor clearly knew that Dakkor’s pool of heirs would, in all probability, dwindle.

~

Seven weeks into their training, Captain Bishyar walked in as Scholar Noryton droned on about recent events in the city of Gamor on Zarron’s southeastern tip.

“I’m putting all of you in the field. We’ve had reports of Cuminee raids a week to the West. You will be under the command of Sergeant Vaka and observe the investigation. These happen all of the time, as those of you who have served with us know. Tomorrow at dawn. Sergeant Vaka will assist in your preparations.” Bishyar left and Vaka stood in the doorway.