55
With the groan of grinding rusted gears, the outer portcullis was lifted and Tasia, head held high, stepped through the open doors. Brother Rennus waited for her, apparently alone, in the center of the stone bridge.
“Draw!” a voice commanded from above, and Joslyn heard the sound of hundreds of bows creaking at once with the effort of pulling back the string. Without looking up, she knew that the battlements were crammed with as many archers as could fit, all of them with an arrow trained upon Brother Rennus. No amount of shadow art healing would save a man who became a pincushion for two or three hundred arrows.
Beyond the bridge, hundreds of mountain men lined the far lip of the dry moat. As soon as the gates opened, they’d begun taunting the Imperial soldiers with animalistic noises and shouts in their own language. After years in the army and recent months pushing the tribesmen out of the towns and villages they’d been occupying, Joslyn felt she knew the mountain men as well as she knew her own Imperial troops. They wanted one anxious archer to fire. They’d be happy if an arrow landed in the no-man’s land of the dry moat; they’d probably be even happier if one of their comrades took an arrow to the chest. Either way, it would be an excuse to charge, to begin the second assault on Castle Pellon. And this time, the mountain men knew, there would be no way the depleted Imperial Army would be able to push them back.
Before they left Tasia’s chambers, Joslyn had found an excuse to leave Tasia alone for a moment, and pulled Linna aside.
“You said you have a way out of this castle, an escape route?”
The girl nodded and told Joslyn about the sewer tunnels.
“Alright,” Joslyn said, speaking in hushed Terintan. “I need you to use those tunnels, get out of Pellon, and go back to Port Lorsin as fast you can.”
The girl’s face fell. “I understand. After the mistake I made, I don’t deserve to be in the East anymore. I don’t deserve to ever be a palace –”
“Be quiet and listen to me,” said Joslyn. “You were a fool, yes, but we were all taken in by Rennus, so you are no more fool than me or Alric, who took a third of the Imperial Army from the castle exactly when Rennus wanted us to. That’s not why I’m sending you. Linna, you must get back to Port Lorsin to tell the Emperor that Pellon is about to be overrun, and we need reinforcements as soon as he can send them. Can you do that? Can you make it back without getting caught?”
Linna lifted her chin. “Yes, Commander. I can.”
“Good. Tell no one where you are going. Leave the moment you see the Empress and me leave these chambers.”
“Yes, Commander.”
Now, as Joslyn stepped onto the bridge on Tasia’s right flank, she wondered how far Linna had gotten. Was she already outside the castle? Was she somewhere beneath Pellon’s streets this very moment?
Mother Eirenna go with you, kuna-shi, daughter,Joslyn thought, and swallowed down a lump in her throat.
Gileon walked on Tasia’s left flank, and just inside the outer keep, Wise Man Jesker and Brother Anthon waited on standby. If an attack came, Gileon would rush the Empress to safety, while Joslyn would cover their retreat.
Joslyn had to give credit to Tasia. When she stepped out of the shadows of the gatehouse and Brother Rennus saw who it was who had come to parley with him, his eyes widened momentarily in surprise. But a second later, he composed his features once more and began to chuckle.
“My, my, Empress,” he said once Tasia was close enough to hear. “I really must admit that you are a challenging woman to kill. How many times is it that you have escaped assassination at this point? Three times?”
“Five,” Tasia said calmly.
Rennus stroked his chin, appearing to think. “Let’s see… I skinwalked into Ammanta earlier today, but that didn’t quite work out… I tried poisoning you on the journey to Pellon, but your loyal servant Linna went to a Wise Man for help instead of me…”
“I didn’t know that was you,” said Tasia, her tone fond and warm as though she’d learned an unexpected fact about a friend. “So make it six times I’ve escaped.”
Rennus’s grin only grew. “There was also the soldier I skinwalked into in Castle Tergos. I really should have succeeded that time, but again, your lucky Terintan – the smaller of the two, I mean – wasn’t where she was supposed to be.”
Tasia smiled and shrugged. “I’ve found she often isn’t. It’s endearing, mostly.”
“Those were my three failed attempts – oh!” Rennus snapped his fingers. “I nearly forgot about what set me upon my changed course: That brilliant member of the Order of Targhan that the idiot nomad lord delivered to your doorstep. She really was something. But that only makes four failed assassinations. Which two am I missing?”
“Well, Norix and my grandfather hired mercenaries to kill me on my first journey East, but they only managed to kill my father’s military advisor, General Remington. Did you know him?”
“I never had the pleasure,” said Rennus, shaking his head as though saddened.
“And before that, the Brotherhood conspired with the same traitors to kill me well over a year ago.” Tasia cocked her head. “Did you not know about that attempt? I assumed, with you being so high up within the Brotherhood, that you would have been involved in that particular event.”
“Ah, yes. I was. But it’s been so long and it was such an ugly moment for the Brotherhood that I must have blocked it from my memory.” He paused. “At the time, it had seemed a necessary evil, killing the eldest child of the Emperor. But of course, the Brotherhood’s mission has always been to maintain the separation of the mortal realm and the Shadowlands, ‘by any means necessary.’”
Tasia swept an arm in the direction of the mountain men. “And this? Working with the mountain men, who in turn have been working with the one Kingdom in the known world that has allied itself with the Shadowlands? How does that protect the mortal realm, Brother Rennus?”
Rennus held up a finger, wagging it. “Funny thing about that, Empress. You see, I was devoted to the Brotherhood’s mission, up until the moment I skinwalked into that Order of Targhan assassin we were just discussing. The deathless king… my gracious, the control over the shadow arts that noble being has… The deathless king came to me while I was inside the mind of his loyal servant, and he showed me the Kingdom of Persopos, the kingdom he has so carefully built over the course of centuries. He proved to me that the Brotherhood’s fight has been wrong, that it is possible to join mortal soul to shadow soul as we all once were and live together in deathless, peaceful harmony. After all, Empress, isn’t that mankind’s real foe? Death?”
“You couldn’t have met the deathless king and visited his Kingdom. The skinwalking inside the assassin only lasted a minute or two – I was there, remember? Peddle your lies to someone else.”
“Time is malleable, Empress. You’ve been inside the Shadowlands; you know that from your own experience. So for you, my pilgrimage to the Kingdom of Persopos, my melding of minds with the deathless king, may have seemed like no time at all. For myself, I was gone for months – long enough to glean from his Majesty all manner of knowledge. Such as, for example, that you are not actually the true progeny of the House of Dorsa, and that it is in fact the deathless king who is the last living blood descendant of the great warrior Dorsan, founder of our powerful Empire.” Rennus waved his hand. “But that little fact is inconsequential compared to what I saw inside the Kingdom of Persopos.” He paused, likely for dramatic effect. “Utopia, Empress. The Kingdom of Persopos is nothing short of true, deathless utopia. A land without fear, without suffering, a way for every man, woman, and child to become the great being they were always meant to be. That is what I learned from the deathless king, and that is what I have been teaching open-minded Brothers about ever since. The only question that remains is if you will join us without putting up a fight or if we must use force to persuade you.”
Tasia snorted. “Instead of calling him the ‘deathless king,’ you should call him ‘king of lies,’ because that is all he told you.” She straightened. “I am the Empress Natasia the First of the House of Dorsa, daughter of Emperor Andreth the Just, granddaughter of Emperor Balus the Tenth, direct blood descendant of the great warrior Dorsan. My royal House defeated the monsters of the Unknown Lands a thousand years ago, and since then we have unified the continent under our double-eagle banner. We have never fallen to a foreign force and we shall not begin now.”
“So your answer is that we must use force?” Brother Rennus shrugged. “So be it. It really is all the same to me, Empress.”
Two more Brothers materialized from thin air on either side of Rennus.
Gileon stepped protectively in front of the Empress, and Joslyn’s sword was out of her scabbard in the time it took to draw half a breath. “Your god may be deathless, but I doubt you are,” she said through clenched teeth. “Lay a single hand on the Empress and the archers behind me will fill you with so many arrows your body will become a sieve.”
“His Majesty wants the Empress alive. He wants you alive, too, actually,” Brother Rennus said, just as calmly as before. “So no need to turn me into a sieve quite yet. These Brothers are here to cover my retreat to my forces, not to interfere with yours.” With that, Brother Rennus spun on his heel and walked towards the waiting, jeering mountain men. “Are you as superstitious as most Terintans, Commander?” he called over his shoulder without turning around. “If you are, I suggest you make a prayer to Mother Eirenna to intervene with Father Mezzu regarding your fate, because otherwise, I think you should prepare to meet your new king in chains. And although he wants you whole,” Rennus added, his voice nearly out of range now, “he did not give me any orders to suggest I am not allowed to cause you pain during the long voyage to the Kingdom.”
The two Brother-illusionists kept their eyes on Joslyn and Tasia until Brother Rennus had made it to the far side of the stone bridge, out of range of the archers. Then one of them tossed a burlap sack at Joslyn’s feet, and in unison, the two walked backwards, never taking their eyes off Joslyn and Tasia.
Joslyn waited until they, too, had reached the end of the bridge before nodding to Gileon. The guard bent and picked up the sack while Joslyn kept a watchful eye on the assembly at the end of the bridge.
Gileon half-opened the sack to look inside. His face immediately turned an ashen grey.
“What?” Joslyn asked.
“I think you should see for yourself, Commander.” He extended the sack towards Joslyn, but Tasia took it from his outstretched hand before Joslyn had a chance to reach across her.
Tasia opened the sack, let out a yelp, and dropped it back onto the bridge. The burlap sack fell open with a thud, and from it rolled the severed head of General Alric.