Empress of Dorsa (The Chronicles of Dorsa)

63

Snow dusting the treetops in the forest north of the town of Harthing.Joslyn was six, perhaps, and having spent most of her short life within Terinto and the Capital Lands, she’d never seen snow before. Cautiously, she reached down, touched the white stuff at her feet with the tip of a finger. Cold – but soft. She let out a gleeful laugh.

Was this moment insignificant enough to hide a sword inside it?

Joslyn extended her senses, searching for some hint of the sword’s presence. Insignificant though the memory might be, there was no suggestion that the sword was here.

The Adessian Sea, rolling beneath the ship like a restless god.Clouds formed on the horizon, dark and foreboding. Grudgingly, Joslyn admitted to herself that the pirate had been right – a storm was coming. Probably a bad one.

But the sword was not on The Balus, either.

Then she stood on the streets of Paratheen – dusty, hot, bursting with color.

The next moment, she was ankle-deep within the stream a quarter mile down the mountain from Ku-sai’s hut, its water cold and clear regardless of the season.

The crowded barracks outside Port Lorsin, a week or so before her battalion began their long march to the East.

Craggy mountains, rolling hills, undulating plains of gold-brown wheat. Muck-filled streets, the haze of cook fires, hamlets and villages so small no one had bothered to name them.

Joslyn sifted through insignificant memory after insignificant memory, the scenery around her shifting with a dizzying, disorienting speed, but no place she traveled to held Ku-sai’s sword.

As frustration mounted, control over her dreamwalking began to slip. The Shadowlands strobed through Joslyn’s memories in brief flashes, like a second world seen through a keyhole. She needed to hurry. She needed to find it. Yet the more urgently she searched, the weaker Joslyn’s hold over the dreamwalk became. She must calm herself – now. If she didn’t, then Mistress’s words would become prophetic: Tasia would wake up, restarting the fantasy in the gardens, but Joslyn would not. And then the deathless king would immediately realize that something was wrong.

Without meaning to, Joslyn found herself back in the place where she started – the antechamber of Tasia’s apartments. Except she wasn’t sitting on the cot behind the rice paper screen this time, she was standing on its other side. Waiting for something.

Wood creaked; the door to the bedchamber opened.

“Ready?” the Princess asked.

She wore a turquoise dress of Adessian silk today, one of her simpler wardrobe items yet rich by the standards of anyone who was not royal. The dress had a high neck, clasped just higher than her clavicle with a large pearl, its circumference embroidered with small white flowers. She’d probably chosen this one because it was sleeveless, because Wise Man Norix’s tower was always so stuffy and hot. But it would have been distasteful for a daughter of the House of Dorsa to traipse around the palace in a sleeveless dress, so Princess Natasia had draped a fringed shawl over her bare shoulders. For the briefest of moments, Joslyn found her eyes flitting to those fringes, noticing the way they tickled lightly her bare, cream-colored arms.

Joslyn yanked her gaze away.

No. It was inappropriate to think such things. Inappropriate even to look. After all, this was the Princess, the eldest child of the Emperor of the House of Dorsa. And Joslyn had been tasked with the girl’s protection, not with ogling at her bare shoulders.

“Guard?”

“Yes, Princess. After you.”

Joslyn waved an arm towards the antechamber’s outer door and followed the Princess out.

They did not speak as they traversed the palace. Most of the palace’s Wise Men had their quarters on the palace’s eastern side, overlooking the relatively narrow courtyards filled with workshops and kennels inside the Eastern Gate. But Wise Man Norix, perhaps because of his special status, occupied a private tower room on the northern periphery of the palace, the window of which gazed down over the expansive northern gardens.

“I wonder if it’s Imperial history today,” the Princess said as they mounted the spiral staircase. The comment didn’t seem to require a response, so Joslyn said nothing. “None of Norix’s lectures put me to sleep faster than history. Emperor So-and-so did this, Empress Such-and-such did this, blah, blah, blah.”

Joslyn didn’t particularly blame the Princess for her distaste for Norix’s lectures. As shadow to the Emperor’s eldest, Joslyn was forced to endure the same lectures the Princess did. She’d inadvertently learned an interesting fact or two from the Wise Man’s lessons, such as the day-to-day costs associated with maintaining the Imperial Army, and how the combination of seasonal ocean currents and Adessian pirates made it less expensive to move troops overland along the Emperor’s Road than through the comparatively faster sea route. But mostly, not unlike the Princess, the Wise Man’s droning simply made Joslyn yearn for a soft bed.

“There you are,” said the Wise Man with faux cheer when Princess Natasia and Joslyn entered his quarters. “I was beginning to wonder if you had either overslept again or had fallen down a construction shaft in the southern wing.”

“Apologies.” The Princess sounded anything but contrite. She glanced over her shoulder at Joslyn, who stepped forward hastily to pull out a chair across from the Wise Man. Joslyn hadn’t yet grown used to all the extra requirements of guarding a royal. “We were … delayed.”

Wise Man Norix gave a response Joslyn didn’t hear, because she suddenly spotted what she had come for: Ku-sai’s sword lay on a dusty shelf behind the Wise Man, its presence seemingly as insignificant and forgotten as the clutter of other baubles, animal skulls, and stacks of books.

Joslyn stepped around the end of the long table, reaching for the sword.

“Excuse you, guard! Do not approach my belongings without my express permission!” Norix barked, but she ignored him. He was not really Norix, after all, just a dream version constructed from Joslyn’s own memory.

Strange that her mind would create antagonists as she dreamwalked. Why could she not conjure a Norix who was kind and polite, or a Mistress who wasn’t condescending?

Behind her, the feet of his chair scraped against the floorboards. Probably standing to chastise her some more. But the sword was already in Joslyn’s hands. She turned it over once, inspecting for any damage or dullness, but it was exactly as she had last seen it.

“Ah, so there it is,” said a silky, masculine voice. “I knew you would take me to it if I followed you long enough.”

Joslyn whirled around. Where Norix had been, there was now a much younger man, a man wearing the grey robes of a Wise Man but sporting a neatly trimmed beard.

One of his arms wrapped tightly around the Princess’s throat; with his other hand, he pressed a black iron knife to her carotid artery.

“Rennus,” Joslyn snarled. She took a lunging step forward, sword point reaching for the traitor Brother.

Rennus took an unhurried step backwards, pulling Tasia with him. “I don’t think you really want to attack me right now, nomad.”

Tasia clawed at the arm around her throat, but the Brother was unmoved.

“Joslyn?” Tasia said, panic edging her tone. “Why are we here? What happened to the palace gardens?”

“See what I mean?” said Rennus. “Dreamwalking is still a new art to me, but I still managed to bring someone with me.” He grinned. “This isn’t the Natasia of your memory anymore. This is the one imprisoned beside you in the palace of the King and the Prince of Shadows.”

Joslyn hesitated. “Or she could be an imitation you constructed from your own memories.”

Rennus’s eyes darted towards Tasia. He tightened the arm around her throat, and Tasia made a strangled gasp.

“Perhaps,” he said. “But perhaps not. Do you really want to take that risk?”

Joslyn shifted her weight into her back foot, the movement subtle enough that no one but a swordsman trained in the dance would have noticed it. “You bluff,” she said. “You cannot harm either one of us. The undatai keeps us alive because it wants both our bodies.”

Rennus gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I believe the Prince of Shadows will be satisfied with just one, if I regain the shaman blade in the process. Paying for the sword with one of your lives is actually something of a bargain.”

Joslyn needed to buy time. And distract him.

“Why are you here, Rennus?” she asked. “The Brotherhood was created specifically to protect the mortal realm from the Shadowlands. Why betray that oath?”

One thing Joslyn knew about arrogant men who double-crossed their one-time allies was that they could rarely resist the urge to reveal how and why they’d managed their betrayal once they’d accomplished it. If she could get him talking…

As Joslyn spoke, she also inched forward, keeping her weight in her back foot, mind racing through various options and the likely outcome of each.

Rennus gave a light, good-natured laugh. “Commander, that is a common misperception about the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood wasn’t founded to protect the mortal realm; the Brotherhood was originally founded to further understanding of the shadow arts. Yes, over time, some Brothers mistakenly came to see their duty as one of protection, but others of us always remained true to our original purpose. And when the Prince of Shadows approached me with his proposal, a proposal which would not only make me as deathless as the King but also the most powerful practitioner of the shadow arts who ever lived, well, of course I accept–”

Viper strikingto boar’s roll. Joslyn feigned a low forward thrust, then tucked her shoulder and rolled, crashing into the legs of both Rennus and Tasia. Both toppled over her to the ground, Tasia striking her forehead on the edge of Norix’s table on the way down. Joslyn didn’t have time to check to see if she was all right; if Tasia was unconscious from the blow, that might actually be a good thing. Keeping one hand tight on the sword hilt, Joslyn snatched a fistful of grey robes and yanked Rennus towards her with the other.

But suddenly the man dissipated like mist. Joslyn stared at her empty hand, astonished.

How had he – ?

“Tsk, tsk, Commander,” Rennus admonished, voice coming from behind her. “For such an accomplished dreamwalker, you fight as though bound by the rules of the material world. Here I am, mere months into this particular art, and yet already I understand it better than you. But I suppose that’s what happens when you deny your natural gifts.”

Joslyn jumped up, planting one foot on either side of Tasia, who hadn’t moved since she’d fallen.

“You’re a fool,” Joslyn hissed. “Whatever it promised you, it will betray you in the end, just as you betrayed the Empire.”

“I doubt that. The Prince of Shadows is just, and always rewards loyalty.” As Rennus spoke, he grew. Shoulders broadened, limbs lengthened, his height increased until his head brushed against the support beams at the ceiling. “Look no further than the King himself. Did you know he’s nearing eight hundred and twenty years of life? Eight hundred years, Commander! Imagine what a person could accomplish with so much time!”

He held out both hands, splaying his fingers as he stared at them. In the next moment, each finger was a replica of Ku-sai’s sword, long and deadly.

How was he doing this – disappearing, re-forming, growing, changing?