Empress of Dorsa (The Chronicles of Dorsa)

58

~ JOSLYN ~

It didn’t feel like a dream, but Joslyn knew it for one because it started the same way the others had. She was inside a throne room, a throne room whose dimensions and ornate columns matched the old, rarely used throne room inside Port Lorsin’s palace precisely. Except this throne room felt more like a crypt than a place where nobles, ambassadors, and commoners came to seek the favor of an Emperor and Empress. Cobwebs linked pillars together, strands shining silver in the dim light. Dust coated every surface, so thick that it swirled around her boots in little eddies with each step she took towards the high-backed throne at the front of the room.

Joslyn didn’t want to approach the throne, but something compelled her forward. Or pulled her forward.

A man sat waiting for her there. He was beyond elderly; he was nearly a corpse animated by foul sorcery. Paper-thin skin hung upon his face, withered like desiccated leaves in midwinter. Brittle white hair flowed down to his shoulders beneath a heavy golden crown inlaid with jewels, and gnarled, claw-like hands gripped both arms of the chair. As foreboding as she found him, he looked as though he would topple over should his grip on the chair arms loosen.

“Welcome, daughter,” the old man rasped as Joslyn came closer.

A few feet from his throne, she fell to one knee and bowed her head. She didn’t want to do so any more than she wanted to approach the crowned corpse in the first place, yet once again she had no choice.

“Rise,” he said, flicking two fingers in Joslyn’s direction.

She rose but kept her head bowed deferentially.

“I am sorry you have to see us like this, in this depleted state,” he said, and something in his tone imitated actual regret. “But your destruction of us within the Shadowlands was … unexpected. It destroyed our ability, temporarily, to extract the payment you owed us. Though I suspect you already knew that.”

Joslyn felt her head nodding.

“And yet it did not destroy the special connection we have to you, did it, child?” The king’s words were coated in something repulsive, a poison hidden within honey. “We still feel you. We feel you more every day, as our strength grows. And we know you feel us, too, though you hide it from others and deny it even to yourself. But fear not. We will be united yet.”

“I…will never…unite…with you,” Joslyn managed. Defying this creature before her was nearly impossible. A war raged inside her, drawing her closer to that alluring poison even as she fought against it, fought to maintain an identity distinct from the creature before her.

He clucked his tongue. “Ah, that strength of yours. The smell of it is so fresh, so clean. We cannot wait to add it to ourselves. It has been such a long time since we have inhabited two bodies instead of just this one, and as you can see, this body is in need of… repair.”

The war inside Joslyn intensified. Vertigo-inducing waves of dizziness threatened to swallow her completely; her vision darkened as though what little sun had been streaming in from the skylights above was blotted out by clouds. But just when it seemed she would lose the war entirely, Joslyn reasserted control.

“You will never touch my body again.” The words came out all at once, in a single breath.

Joslyn forced herself awake, and the throne room with its ancient king disappeared, giving way to the low-ceilinged and narrow cabin.

The cabin was ice-cold, but Joslyn embraced it, using the frigid air to sever the last tentacles of the dream. She glanced around. Tasia was gone, her edge of the small bed they shared still rumpled and indented with her shape.

Joslyn slid her feet into her boots and made her way above decks. Grey mist hung above everything, turning the small sailboat’s mast and railings into dark shadows that wavered indistinctly in the gloom. It took a moment to locate Tasia, who stood beside Akella at the ship’s wheel. The two of them spoke together in low tones as though they feared the sea might overhear them if they spoke too loud.

Or that Joslyn would overhear them.

Tasia stopped whatever she was saying mid-sentence when Joslyn approached, wrapping a hand around Joslyn’s bicep as though to steady herself. She turned her face up towards Joslyn and smiled a soft good morning, and the flash of resentment Joslyn had felt when her gaze had first landed upon Tasia and Akella talking together disappeared.

Joslyn kissed Tasia on the top of her head, and although her lips met a rough woolen blanket instead of Tasia’s golden hair, it still smelled like Tasia, and Joslyn felt something inside herself relax, if only a little.

Things between them had gotten better since they sailed south and west from Reit, the tension of their disagreement back at the riverbank in Pellon not quite gone, but no longer present, either.

She sat down beside Tasia, shivering against the damp cold and pulling her cloak tighter around her.

Akella glanced over her shoulder, taking in Joslyn’s face before she turned back to the wheel. “More bad dreams, Commander?”

Joslyn grunted by way of an answer.

In a certain way, it had been a relief when Akella woke Joslyn and Tasia with her screams in the middle of the night a fortnight earlier. When Akella admitted she’d been having a nightmare of what she called the white city and the ancient king who inhabited it, Tasia had stared at her incredulously for a moment and confessed that she had been dreaming of an ancient king inside an ancient palace, too.

Joslyn had felt both relieved to know she wasn’t the only one dreaming of the deathless king but also horrified. Evrart had said the undatai’s strength had been significantly reduced when they’d destroyed it in the Shadowlands, yet it was still strong enough to invade Joslyn, Tasia, and Akella’s dreams.

Or were the dreams a sign that it was recovering from its loss faster than expected?

“We both dreamed last night, too,” Tasia said softly.

“Is that what you two were talking about?” There was more edge to Joslyn’s voice than she meant for there to be.

Tasia glanced at Joslyn, studying her face with a slight frown. “Amongst other things.”

“He showed me my crew.” Akella’s tone was flat, her gaze fixed on the horizon ahead of her. “Shadow-infected slaves, down to a man. Said they looked forward to having me join them.”

Joslyn turned to Tasia. “And you dreamed of him, too?”

She nodded. “He said he was glad Rennus hadn’t managed to kill me, said there was no need to look for me because he knew we would come to him anyway. Then he said he’ll let me keep my crown, and he will make me his queen.”

Joslyn shuddered. She felt as though maggots crawled inside her stomach.

“What about you?” Tasia asked. “What did you dream?”

We know you feel us, too, though you hide it from others and deny it to yourself.

Joslyn couldn’t allow Tasia to know that destroying the undatai in the Shadowlands had ended her bargain with it yet had not severed her connection to the creature. She’d never told Tasia because she didn’t want Tasia to know what she had known all along: part of her soul was irredeemably monstrous.

“I was in his throne room again,” Joslyn said. “It’s just like the one in Port Lorsin’s palace, only … wrong, somehow. Diseased.”

Akella glanced sharply back at Joslyn. “It’s not just the throne room,” she said. “The whole palace is a replica of the one in Port Lorsin – at least based on what I saw from the outside. I didn’t stick around long enough to take a thorough look at the inside.” She looked from Tasia to Joslyn. “Your deathless king wants to be something rather more than King of Persopos; sounds like the madman believes himself the Emperor of your whole bloody Empire.”

“That’s been his goal all along,” Tasia said, voice distant. “The Empire, though, is only the first step. After he takes the Empire, he’ll come for the Adessian Islands, then the lands across the Western Sea, until the entire world is ruled by shadows.”

There was a long silence, broken only by the lapping of waves against the bobbing sailboat.

Then Akella said, “So why hasn’t he done it yet?”

Tasia and Joslyn both stared at her blankly.

“Why hasn’t he done it yet?” Akella repeated. “He’s supposed to be so powerful, so ancient, why bother with us three at all? Why is he glad Rennus didn’t kill you,” she asked, nodding at Tasia, “and why is he so determined to keep taunting you?” she finished, turning to Joslyn. She sucked her teeth. “I’m telling you. There’s something we’re missing. Something he still wants or still needs from one of us – or all three of us – and that’s why he’s so determined to get us to come to him, because he already tried going to you and apparently it didn’t work.”

“Or because he’s too weak,” Tasia put in thoughtfully. “Because the undatai can only inhabit the king right now, no one new.”

“You’re both overthinking it,” Joslyn said, still moody after her nightmare and finding Tasia and Akella talking together in private whispers. “He haunts our dreams because he’s sadistic. That’s all. Because he enjoys making us frightened and uneasy.”

Akella seemed to consider it, but then she shook her head. “No. No, that’s not it. There’s more to it. He recruited Rennus so he could get close to the Empress, but Rennus failed to kill you when he had a chance. So now he’s bringing you to him. He plans to turn you if he can, kill you if he can’t.”

“That might explain Tasia’s dreams,” Joslyn said. “But it doesn’t explain why you have been dreaming of Persopos ever since you left your crew.”

“What the dreams used to be and what they are now is different,” Akella responded. “They used to be Adriel haunting me, telling me I left him, abandoned him, and those bloody witches staring me down. I never started dreaming of the king until…” She glanced up from her place at the wheel. “Well, until I met the two of you.” She paused. “You know what I think –”

“No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me whether I want to know or not,” Joslyn said irritably. Tasia shot her a glare, but Akella either hadn’t heard the comment or chose to ignore it, because she kept talking as though never interrupted.

“I think this king of yours is a man of contingencies,” said Akella. “I think he would have preferred that the slimy sorcerer had managed to kill the Empress, but I think he’s also been taunting all of us, drawing us to him, just in case the sorcerer failed. Which he did. He uses my crew as leverage with me because he knows I’m the only one who can bring the two of you, and he wants to make sure you arrive.”

“If you’re right, we’re playing right into his hands by sailing into his kingdom,” Joslyn pointed out.

“Personally, I think bluster is underrated,” Akella went on, once again speaking as though she hadn’t heard Joslyn’s words. “A little bluster before a fight intimidates your enemies, makes them doubt themselves. But besides that, it also covers up your own fear and doubt, transforms battle nerves into energy. It’s why soldiers use war cries when they charge. Turns all that anxiety into something they can use.”

“So are you saying the deathless king is taunting us to cover up his own fears?” Tasia asked.

Annoyingly, the pirate didn’t ignore Tasia the way she’d been ignoring Joslyn. She turned around, looked Tasia right in the eye, and said, “That’s exactly what I’m saying, Empress. I think all that pre-battle bluster is there to cover up the fact that he’s afraid of the two of you. What is it the seer told the Commander? That your crown and her sword together would be what protected all mankind?”

“You told the pirate that?” Joslyn asked Tasia.

And now it was Tasia who responded as though Joslyn hadn’t spoken. “Yes, but I always assumed that prophecy was about the Battle of Port Lorsin. The way the two of us defeated the undatai in the Shadowlands, thanks to her ku-sai’s shaman’s blade.”

Akella faced the sea again, frowning in thought.

“Why would you tell her that?” Joslyn repeated, hurt.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Tasia asked.