Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones Read online

  Theuderic helped Lithriel to her feet and was relieved to see that at least the old man’s death hadn’t struck her as amusing. And he doubted that her previous amusement would be held against her, not now that her astute perceptions had saved them all from Gabrien’s fate.

  “Are you well?” he asked.

  She nodded, but her eyes went quickly to the motionless body of the burned man, and she inhaled sharply. It appeared that even to the elvish sense of humor, death by dragonfire, when seen up close, was more hideous than hilarious.

  Theuderic looked at Josce-Robinet, one of the three surviving immortels, and shook his head. The old sorcerer nodded, sighed, and kneeled down next to his unconscious colleague and placed a hand to his chest. “De la cendre a la cendre,” he said with a distinct note of irony in his voice. “The peace of L’Immacule upon you, Gabrien de la Poterrie.” He rose and brushed the charred ash from his hands.

  Theuderic sighed too. He hadn’t much liked the cranky old immortel, but he mourned for the loss of arcane knowledge the man’s death represented. He had been one of the most respected immortels in the academy, and combined with the death of Narcisse, who had arguably been its foremost experimentalist, it was clear that L’Academie had suffered a grievous blow today.

  And that was before taking into account His Royal Majesty’s fury at the loss of five of his precious battlemages. The King’s Own had not suffered such losses in a single day since the Duc d’Carouge had lost most of his army to a rampaging orc horde nearly fifty years ago. But although the duc’s defeat had cost the king nine battlemages, today’s debacle had added two immortels to the account.

  And even though the mad idea of taming dragons had not been Theuderic’s, but rather had been the brainchild of the late Narcisse de Segrais and the Red Prince, it was not outside the realm of possibility that he might be held responsible. He was the one who had obtained the failed elvish spell that had been attempted today, after all. Such disastrous failure demanded a scapegoat, and since de Segrais was no longer in the running, and since the Red Prince was above all such recriminations, who else did that leave to face the wrath of the high council? Perhaps it was time to see about returning the Lady Everbright to her people.

  He felt like laughing, felt like imitating Lithriel’s behavior. What an utter disaster! And yet, could it truly have ended any other way? How arrogant, how foolish they had been, to think that their learning and their art would suffice to bend the most powerful, most ancient, most magical beings in all Selenoth to their will!

  He looked up and saw that Laurent was staring at him. The young mage looked as dazed as if he, and not the dragon, had been the one struck by lightning. It was a good thing the lad had scholarly instincts, because it was readily apparent that he wasn’t cut out for the violent vagaries of warfare. Laurent was destined for the academy, not the battlefield, if only he could survive long enough to claim a seat there.

  “Remember,” Theuderic said to his younger colleague, “there is a gold coin in every coffin.” He clapped the young academicien on the shoulder and pointed to the smoking wreck of the cracked crystal. “Now that Narcisse and Gabrien are gone, that’s two more chairs L’Academie must fill. At this rate, I daresay you’ll find yourself an immortel by summer.”

  THE SACRED COLLEGE

  The princes of the Church gathered. Some wore black, their reddened eyes and somber miens indicating their depth of grief over the loss of the Sanctified Father. They knew their loss was Heaven’s gain, of course, for if ever a soul had labored long and hard for the Kingdom of God, if ever a man had run the good race and fought the good fight, it was the Sanctiff Charity IV.

  Others were clad in their most elaborate vestments. And though they kept their expressions carefully guarded and appropriate to the solemn occasion, there was no mistaking the meaningful glances that were exchanged between one celestine and another in response to a greeting, a word, or even a simple nod.

  The naming of the next Sanctiff was the holy burden of the Sacred College, but few would be so innocent as to deny that worldly ambition lurked in some of the hearts of the thirty-three men sworn to the service of God and Holy Mother Church. Some of them had been waiting a lifetime for this moment, had devoted their entire lives to ensuring that they would one day be here, in this humble wooden chapel that had been erected overnight by an army of priestly laborers, on such a day.

  Here they would meet in conclave, thrice daily, until all were unanimously agreed upon a new Sanctified Father, who, by tradition, would be chosen from one in their midst. The process could take months. Once, following the untimely death of Righteous III, the bitter rivalry between Valerius Deprecatus and Severus Exigo had prevented anyone from being elevated to the Throne of the Apostles for eighteen months—until Exigo finally died of old age and Deprecatus triumphantly claimed his place as the 37th Sanctiff of Amorr. He was a man of great energy, as befitted a Valerian, and many historians considered it a pity that the conclave that preceded his reign had outlasted it by nearly a year.

  The cerulengus rose wearily from his unpainted wooden throne at the right hand of the empty one painted white to symbolize the sacred bones of the Sedes Ossus. Of the thirty-three men present, only he could not be the man chosen to succeed Charity IV. As cerulengus, it was his role to secure the transition, not play the central role in it.

  “We meet in sadness, but also in joy, my brothers,” he said. “Let us put aside all thoughts of ourselves, of our individual concerns, and our personal allegiances, and praise God that the Sanctified Father is safe in the bosom of the Immaculate, beyond every pain and every sorrow, encompassed in light and glory.”

  “Heavenly Father, we praise You,” the celestines murmured.

  “Let us thank the Immaculate, who intercedes for fallen Man, who died the death of a sinner though He himself was sinless, and who even now stands advocate for the Sanctified Father before the throne of the Almighty God.”

  “Immaculate Son, we thank You.”

  The cerulengus cleared his throat, which had started to crack a bit upon the word advocate. He looked around the room, from one celestine to the next, before proceeding.

  “And let us beseech the Sacred Fire to descend upon us and grant us prudence, that we may choose wisely and well.”

  “Sacred Fire, we beseech You.”

  The cerulengus stood there for a moment longer, unmoving, his head bowed and his hands uplifted in silent prayer. But what more he asked of God, only he and the Almighty knew. Then he looked closely at a nondescript man of middling height, who was seated slouched upon his throne in a manner that bordered on insouciance given the solemnity of the occasion, before returning to his own chair.

  He knew, as nearly everyone of any import in Amorr knew, that His Eminence Gnaus Attilius Bulbus expected to succeed to the Ivory Throne, as he had spent ten years and a considerable fortune amassing the support of many of the celestines present in the chapel.

  The cerulengus also knew that this conclave was as much a political event as a religious one. Bulbus’s expectations were not due to any exceptional piousness or scholastic brilliance but to his support among the majority of the Houses Martial. His chief supporters in the conclave were Severus Furius and Falconius Tigradae, behind whom stood all the weight of House Severus and House Falconius. One of the two would most likely become the next cerulengus. Tigradae, he assumed. Furius was an adept politician, but his heart wasn’t truly in it the way the Falconian’s was.

  But Bulbus would not be anointed unopposed. The cerulengus amused himself by watching the expression on Bulbus’s rosy-cheeked face and seeing how it flushed as His Eminence Sextus AEmilianus Damasus stood and delivered a speech of no little length in copious praise of the virtues of another candidate, Carvilius Noctua, who was the author of a popular text on virtue and was known to have considerable support among the plebian classes, being one of the few non-patricians to currently wear the sky blue robes.

  Bulbus’s face grew darker as t
wo more celestines, and then a third, rose to speak in favor of Noctua’s considerable personal virtues. Finally, he could take no more, and he glanced briefly at Furius, who was sitting almost opposite to him on the other side of the little chapel.

  Furius coughed delicately, which act inspired His Eminence Giovannus Falconius Valens, one of the younger celestines, to stand up and speak eloquently of the need for a Sacred Father who would command the respect of the great men of the Senate as well as that of the virtuous and humble.

  Valens was a young man of surprising substance, the cerulengus thought approvingly, even as he was amused by the transparency of the Falconian’s support for Bulbus.

  The cerulengus smiled. It was ever thus. One might be tempted to despair at the sight of the princes of the Church all but pawing the ground and bellowing bullish challenges, even if they did so in a refined and discreet manner, but was this not Man as God had created him?

  It had been no different forty-four years ago, when the youngest celestine in the conclave had stood to speak in favor of the worthy Quintus Flavius Ahenobarbus, an ambitious cleric with a temper as fiery as his beard.

  Man proposes, but God disposes. Only now that Ahenobarbus was in his sarcophagus, and he himself was stumbling toward the end of his own race, did he understand the extraordinary depths of that humble truth.

  Whether it was petty ambition, kingly lusts, or towering self-righteousness, God always found a way to make use of even the most unlikely tool. That, the cerulengus thought as Valens took his seat and was replaced by another of Bulbus’s known supporters, Gennarus Vestinae, was what so few of the men sitting here in this conclave understood.

  They were under the impression they were elevating a man to a mighty office, but in truth, they were only offering up, as a sacrifice to the ineffable will of the Almighty, a broken vessel.

  SEVERA

  She waited as long as she could after the day’s end, lying on her side feigning sleep in the unlikely event her mother came to check on her. Severilla had fallen asleep long before, and Severa lay in the darkness, listening to her little sister breathe slowly and evenly, wondering that she had ever been so young and innocent. Finally, when the sounds of loud reverie died down and the last of her father’s clients departed, she leaned over, kissed Severilla on the cheek, and slipped silently from the bed.

  She spent hora after hora agonizing over which dress to wear, finally settling on a dark blue one that not only made her breasts look a little larger, but would also help conceal her in the darkness. She drew it over her head, then kneeled down and fumbled about for her new sandals but did not put them on yet.

  It sounded as if her brothers and a few of their friends were still drinking in the triclinium maius, but by now, they would be so drunk that she could probably walk right past them without any of them realizing it was her. It was the household slaves she had to fear. She’d already arranged for Verapora, her personal slave, to bribe the four night guards who would be at the gate. It had cost her a necklace and two earrings, but it was well worth it, and she was sure her mother would never notice their absence since she never wore them anyway.

  She knocked once, softly, at her door, and the answering knock from outside came instantly in return. Taking a deep breath, she opened it and, in the very dim light from the candles downstairs, saw Verapora, already cloaked in dark grey. Verapora handed her a similar cloak, which Severa put on. She carefully closed the door without making any sound. She ran her hands through her hair and pulled it sideways, tucking the curly mass of it underneath the neckline so the hood would cover her face and stay comfortably on her head.

  “No, don’t put up your hood yet, my lady,” Verapora whispered. “Not until we’re past the gate.”

  She was right, Severa realized as they walked hand-in-hand down the hallway that led to the stairs. If they were caught bare-faced, her father would punish her tomorrow, and Verapora would likely be whipped. But if they were spotted while their faces were covered, they could be easily mistaken for thieves or assassins, and one or both of them could end up on the wrong end of a spear or crossbow bolt. She closed her eyes. With her free hand she clutched the icon she wore around her neck, and called upon Saint Raphaelus, the patron saint of lovers, to intercede for her.

  The saint must have heard her, for they encountered no one in the halls or on the stairs, and Verapora was able to slip the bolt from the front door without the least bit of trouble. Her slave had arranged with one of the kitchen slaves to check it at the prima hora, and to reopen it in the event it was bolted again during their absence. But since few of the slaves and none of the guards were permitted to use the front door, she was confident it would remain unbolted in the interim. They stepped through and into the night.

  The air was cool, and Severa found it almost intoxicating, so excited was she at the prospect of meeting her lover at last. God had been kind, and Clusius had survived his bout with Caladas with little more than deep scratch across the outside of his left arm. More than a few gamblers, including her brother, had been disgusted that the much-anticipated match had ended in a draw.

  But for Severa, the sight of that red token had meant more to her than a hundred victories, because it meant that tonight, the beautiful young gladiator would be waiting for her at the statue of Andronicus Geminus, as she had instructed in her letter. The thought of seeing him, up close and in person, of feeling his mouth against hers, made her shiver right down to the base of her spine.

  “Put your hood up now,” Verapora instructed as they approached the gate, a tall geometric construction of thick iron bars lit by a pair of torches that flickered in the fittings fixed in the stuccoed wall. Verapora left her own hood down, however, so that, as far as the guards would know, the two of them were simply young slaves of the household, slipping off into the city at night to meet their lovers.

  Severa wondered how many times her slave had done that very thing before, as Verapora was only four years older than her and yet Severa knew the young woman had taken at least two lovers, one of whom was not a Severan slave. The guards certainly didn’t seem surprised to see Verapora in the middle of the night, and one of them even offered a wry invitation to Verapora that made Severa blush under her hood.

  The well-oiled gate opened, and the two girls walked through it without hesitation. Severa felt a moment’s pang of fear as it clanged softly shut behind them, but the sight of the hundreds of flames lighting the city night below her restored her courage. She felt no fear of the dark— tonight, the darkness was her shield and her friend. Even counting the long walk down the Quinctiline, she would still have at least three, maybe four, candles worth of time with the beautiful warrior before she had to return again. There would be time enough for love.

  They had just begun walking down the brick path that led to the city when two lamps suddenly flared, first to her left, then to her right. The sudden burst of light blinded her for a moment, so it seemed almost that the four men who now stood in her way had risen out of the earth itself.

  The two lampbearers were young and strong, and wearing undrawn swords at their belts. But the figures who put the sudden fear of God into her were the unarmed pair of bald men standing between them—one short and stout, the other tall and slender. The shorter man was Delmatipor, the majordomus of House Severus. And the taller one was Aulus Severus Patronus.

  Her father.

  “It’s late for an evening stroll into the city, daughter. Take off that hood and let me see your face.”

  Silently, she complied, and somehow she found the strength to meet his eyes. But as he stared at her in the lamplight, his face expressionless, she saw neither anger nor disappointment. His eyes were too opaque to read.

  In the sparse light of the torch, she saw that they had very nearly reached the point where the bricked path began to slope sharply down toward the city. There were wooden benches on either side. It sent chills through her blood to imagine her father waiting there in the darkness for her, st
eeped in his anger and disappointment in her.

  Severa started to say something, but her father raised his hand in warning, and she was quick to subside.

  “Now is not the time, Severa. Master Delmatipor, you will escort my daughter to her room and place a guard at her door. We shall depart for Samnia in the morning. Himcrius, Apidamus, take the slave and have her flogged. Nine strokes. And tomorrow, Delmatipor, you will sell her to a whorehouse and donate whatever pittance you happen to get for her to Saint Stridonius and the orphans.”

  Verapora gasped.

  Delmatipor saluted. “As you say, my lord.”

  Severa clutched at her father’s hands in disbelief. “Father, no! You can’t do that to her!”

  He looked at her as if she was nothing more than street filth in his path. But his hands were gentle, even when he forcibly removed hers from his own. “Count yourself fortunate that I love you so dearly, daughter. Were matters otherwise, you’d find yourself standing on the block alongside her in the morning.”

  FJOTRA

  Who could build such a city?

  Fjotra was in a half-dreaming state somewhere between awe and wonder. She followed her brother up the hard stone road gawking about her.

  Her father and older brothers, red-handed reavers all, had told her about the great stone cities across the Small Sea to the south, but she’d never imagined anything so astonishing as what she now saw on every side.

  The royal city of Lutece was filled with massive buildings, many of which were larger than some villages she knew. The inhabitants lived in strange rectangular castles made of white stone. Yet the dwellings bore inexplicable holes in the sides that rendered them entirely useless for defense. And she saw more wealth in the time it took to walk from the entry gate to the great fountain in the center of the city than she had previously believed existed in all the world.