The Trials of Empire, page 10
“What happened?” I asked, picking up a hunk of yellow sweetbread.
“What always happens. Things change. Relationships are neglected and sour.” Sir Anzo popped a grape into his mouth. “Sova has always been complacent when it comes to the Kasar. It has let the Frontier fray under the Templars. The Emperor is too tied up along the Kova to pay proper attention to what is happening down here.” He poked a finger into the table. “They should never have built Zetland. Nema knows what that castle is supposed to be protecting; at least Südenburg and Keraq guard the pilgrim path. I can think of no earthly excuse for Zetland except as a base of operations for expansion.” He ate another grape. “Certainly that’s what Qareshians think. And I do not think they are wrong.”
It was a strange, isolating sensation, being here in the Kyarai, where Sova was merely a part of the overall picture instead of its focus. I could not hope to begin to understand the complex tangle of allegiances to which the country was subject – a country easily as big as Haunersheim and home to millions of Kasar and Southern Plainsmen. I had barely got to grips with the complexities of political life in Sova. I felt like there was no room in my brain to learn the ways and customs of an entirely new nation.
“I am still not sure I understand the nature of the relationship between the Empire and the Kasar. For example, I know that the Imperial Warden is a Kasar—”
“Kimathi! How is that old dog?’ Sir Anzo erupted. “He used to be one of the best.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
Sir Anzo paused. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Kimathi is the Warden, the Emperor’s bodyguard,” I said.
Sir Anzo chuckled, and shook his head.
“What?” I asked, annoyed.
“Kimathi is that,” Sir Anzo said. “He also used to be one of the very best spies the Kasar implanted into the Imperial court.”
I did not know what to make of this information.
“Why do the Kasar spy on the Imperial court?” I asked.
Sir Anzo shrugged. “Why not? Would you not?”
I stuck out my lower lip and shook my head. “It would not even cross my mind to.”
Sir Anzo chuckled again, genuinely amused by my naïveté. “The Kasar are big, violent brutes, be under no illusion; but they are at least half human, and have all the conniving guile of humans. Nobody underestimates their physical strength, but those in the Kasaraad are as slippery as any Sovan senator you would care to name. Kimathi, however – well, he hasn’t yielded up much in the way of information these past few years. At least not that I am aware of.”
“Why?”
Sir Anzo shrugged. “Who knows? It might be any number of reasons. Perhaps he is too old and tired for courtly intrigues?”
“I know that feeling,” I muttered.
Sir Anzo scoffed. “Such world weariness! You cannot have more than a brace of decades under your belt?”
Our conversation was cut short as Vonvalt entered the dining hall. He wore a fresh tunic like the one Sir Anzo was wearing, and his hair was wet and brushed back. He took in the spread in front of him, and then picked up a plate and began to pick at the fruit.
“What is your role here, Sir Anzo?” he asked without preamble.
“Oh, I am no ambassador, if that is what you are driving at. Just an old Sovan knight who has outstayed his welcome,” Sir Anzo said breezily, unfazed by Vonvalt’s abruptness.
“A wealthy old Sovan knight,” Vonvalt observed pointedly.
“I have benefited from my time here, I make no bones about that.”
Vonvalt made a show of looking round the hall. “Benefited greatly.”
The corner of Sir Anzo’s mouth quirked upwards as though tugged by a fishing line. “Indeed.”
Vonvalt snorted softly and busied himself with the food again. It was clear Sir Anzo was not going to be drawn on the nature of his business dealings or how they had generated such extraordinary wealth, but I assumed it was because his dealings lay somewhere at the nexus of the mercantile and political. A “grey man”, Vonvalt referred to them as – spies, facilitators, traders in illicit goods and information. An army of such men and women existed within and without the Sovan Empire, greasing the wheels of industry.
“Senator Jansen believes you can assist us,” Vonvalt said.
“Tymoteusz has probably oversold my abilities,” Sir Anzo said immediately. “I would not… trust him overmuch. He has a habit these days of being friends with everyone. Playing out the rope, if you take my meaning.”
But before his meaning could be properly taken, the three of us turned as von Osterlen entered. She, too, had changed, wearing a light kirtle which hugged her muscular body – the effect of which was rather pleasing on the eye.
Vonvalt turned back to Sir Anzo. “I will speak plainly with you. I need an audience with whoever here can get me an army. An army of wolfmen.”
Sir Anzo shook his head. “They will not give you an army,” he said. “They do not have an army to give.”
“What do you mean?” Vonvalt asked sharply. He was acting the way he usually did when he was not the most informed man in the room: defensive to the point of rudeness.
“The Kasar are not like Sovans. They do not spend time, money and effort maintaining large standing armies like the Legions. They are barely a unitary body. The Kyarai is home to fifty dynasties that can be traced to the Cataclysm, and they each have a seat at the Kasaraad by right.”
“Nonsense,” Vonvalt said, to Sir Anzo’s surprise and amusement. “Who defends their borders, then?”
“Each dynasty has armed retainers, naturally, and Port Talaka has a group responsible for the city’s security – which I would compare more to a constabulary than an army. But the only moderately cohesive force is the Grasvlaktekraag, and they are engaged.”
“And where are they?”
“The northern border of the Kyarai, a stone’s throw from Randshut. The only thing approaching what you need. The Kasaraad ordered its formation when the Templars began to stray into Kasari territory.”
Vonvalt massaged his temples. “What of their fighting qualities?” he asked, failing to keep the disappointment from his voice. This whole trip south was beginning to feel like a fool’s errand.
“You have seen Kimathi fight?”
“I have seen Kimathi cut a man in half,” Vonvalt remarked.
Sir Anzo sat back. “Well, that at least is the good news – and the reason I expect Tymoteusz sent you to me. A single Kasar is worth a half-dozen Sovan knights in plate, ten men at arms – shit, a hundred conscripted peasants. They are beasts of war, Sir Konrad, devastating killers. It is as well they are concerned only with the Kyarai; as an expeditionary army, they would be the better of any Legion.”
Vonvalt rubbed his chin. “Nema, that is what I need,” he said wistfully. Vonvalt slapped a fist into his open palm. “You must help me, Sir Anzo. A force of Kasar, this ‘Grasvlaktekraag’, could mean the difference between success and annihilation.”
Sir Anzo shook his head. “The Kasaraad will not allow it.”
“If I explain the situation, explain that the Templars are our common enemy—”
“It matters not how silver your tongue, you have no authority, Sir Konrad. You are no longer a Justice. You have been declared persona non grata by the Imperial Court.”
“The Kasar do not know that.”
“I shouldn’t count on it.”
Vonvalt considered this for a moment. “There must be someone who isn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Persona non grata. There must be a Sovan representative here. Someone who can argue in my stead as a proxy. Give the whole thing legitimacy.”
“The appearance of legitimacy,” Sir Anzo corrected, still unhappy.
Vonvalt waved him off irritably. “You are thinking about this much too rigidly.”
“That is not something I am often accused of.”
“Sir Anzo—”
“Just – I take the point,” the old knight interrupted, sensibly cutting off Vonvalt before he received an earful. “I am not saying it is impossible; but you will need a way to verify your story. They will not just go along with you. If you can convince them that this is not some ruse, that the Empire is in danger from malevolent extradimensional forces, that the Grasvlaktekraag isn’t going to goad the Legions into storming down here on some pretext of self-defence—”
“Evidence. They require evidence. I understand the point you are making.”
Von Osterlen and I exchanged a glance. She rolled her eyes subtly.
Sir Anzo sighed. He clacked his tongue as he thought for a moment. “I have in mind a way you might bolster your case in a way the Kasaraad is likely to respond to.” He thought again for a few moments. “I am not sure in the circumstances it is wise—”
“What is it?” Vonvalt demanded.
“Kimathi. If they can speak with him, infiltrate his dreams using the arcana—”
“Who is ‘they’? Be specific.”
Sir Anzo, who clearly had not been spoken to in this way for many years, shot Vonvalt a look of profound irritation. Nonetheless, he said, “The Kasar are not religious in the same way as the Sovans. But they have something akin to the Neman Church – or rather, specifically, the College of Prognosticators. It is a… spiritual body, a group of Kasar who have taken it upon themselves to keep the practice of pagan magicks alive within the Kyarai. It is called the Spiritsraad. Much like the College, it is an organisation shrouded in secrecy.”
“And you think they can commune with Kimathi? By infiltrating his dreams? How precisely can they do that?”
“Precisely? I do not know. And I am not sure anyone truly knows. Not even the Magistratum,” he added pointedly, and continued on quickly before Vonvalt could argue. “But I understand that in Saekan, sleep is known as the klyada; the—”
“—Minor death,” Vonvalt murmured. He paused. “You are speaking of the City of Sleep.”
Sir Anzo cocked his head. “You have heard of it?”
“Only in a vague and academic sense.”
“Justice August has contacted me through my dreams before,” I said. “Speaking across dimensions. Using the afterlife as a means of communication.”
Sir Anzo gestured to me. “There you have it.”
“What is the City of Sleep?” von Osterlen asked.
Vonvalt looked at Sir Anzo, but the latter shrugged. “I know it only by name.”
“It is a liminal dimension,” Vonvalt said. “Limbo. It sits somewhere between the afterlife and the mortal plane, in the same way the Tree of Death did.”
“You have not been there?” von Osterlen asked.
“Not with any lucidity. I am given to understand we all go there when we sleep. But it has never formed part of my practice. There are those within the Order who consider its existence apocryphal.” He gestured to Sir Anzo. “Evidently not.”
“I can only go on what the shamans tell me,” he said elusively.
Vonvalt stroked his beard in thought. He did not look pleased. “How is it you intend to bend this ‘Spiritsraad’ to your will? Why would they listen to you? What are you to them?”
Sir Anzo considered his next words carefully. “I happen to have a very unique and direct link to the heart of it. Recently I have spoken to several of its members about an increase in activity in the afterlife. The practitioners here in Port Talaka are convinced something… how did they express it? Consequential is taking place.”
Vonvalt, von Osterlen and I all traded uneasy looks. Had the ripples from our recent misadventures in the Northmark of Haunersheim been felt all the way down here in the Kyarai?
“Does this spiritual council have any sway with the Kasaraad?” Vonvalt asked eventually.
“They are not supposed to, but they do. The Spiritsraad is not without its adherents. But here in the Kyarai, the use of magicks is seen as dangerous, a practice that has outstayed its welcome. The Kasar are keen to distance themselves from the accident of their birth. They wish to modernise. The temples remain, but they are secular buildings now. They integrate with other cultures. You will find many a Southern Plainsman and Zyrahn and Qareshian here. Hell, there used to be plenty of Sovans too, though they have dwindled in number.”
“Yet you persist. Indeed, not only do you persist, but you occupy a place of great prestige and confidence,” Vonvalt remarked.
“By virtue of my contact within the Spiritsraad, yes,” Sir Anzo allowed.
“And how did that come about? You are not a sanctioned practitioner of the arcana,” Vonvalt said, leaning a little on the word ‘sanctioned’.
Sir Anzo spent another long moment considering his words. “I am a facilitator, of sorts. I deal in matters which the Kasar themselves would prefer not to. Matters that they consider themselves above.”
Vonvalt scoffed at the man’s continued obfuscation. By this point it was irritating all of us. “Blood of Gods, man, out with it!”
But still Sir Anzo would not be drawn. “It is probably easier if I show you. But I warn you, Sir Konrad. It is not for the faint of heart.”
Vonvalt smiled thinly. “Sir Anzo, there is nothing left on this mortal plane that can faze me.”
“We shall see. Come.”
Sir Anzo took us out of the city. We boarded a luxurious wagon with an awning to protect us from the early afternoon heat, which was drawn by several huge, horned, horse-like creatures I had never seen before. A Plainsman drove the wagon, whilst Sir Anzo, acclimated to the same level of luxury a Sovan senator would be, relaxed behind him.
We exited through the red stone fortifications, a high and thick gatehouse guarded by Kasari bowmen, and out into a grass plain that was heavily irrigated and turned over to agriculture. I watched as Kasar and Plainsmen worked in the fields; they turned to observe this collection of pale-skinned foreigners with interest and suspicion. Whatever Sir Anzo was to these people, it was not a figure of trust and confidence.
We travelled for about an hour. The Kyarai baked in the afternoon sun, a country of vast, hot grassland filled with huge herds of roaming beasts. I could see small walled settlements on the horizon, squat houses of clay and timber and the occasional stepped pyramid, but those were lesser cousins of the gigantic mordplaak we had seen in Port Talaka, more akin to shrines than temples. I wondered what use the Kasar had for these relics – if they truly had forsaken their ancestral religion.
Eventually we came to a place of fractured earth, where the grassland gave way to a sudden ravine of dusty red rock. It lay at the nadir of a natural defilade, concealing it from much of the rest of the plains. At the end closest to us was a pair of Kasar, playing a game that looked a bit like Sovan schach with intricately carved ivory pieces. They looked up to see our cart, and quickly retrieved their weapons, but Sir Anzo placated them with an outstretched hand. He dismounted and spoke to them in Kasari as we approached, and they responded in kind, their lupine eyes fixed on Vonvalt, von Osterlen and I the entire time.
I saw then that an access had been cut into the closest part of the ravine, a narrow and treacherous staircase. Sir Anzo exchanged further words with the guards, and then led us down into that shaded scar in the earth. It filled me with a sense of foreboding.
“What is this place?” Vonvalt asked.
“You shall see for yourself in a moment,” Sir Anzo said.
The ravine reminded me of quarantine colonies one could find on the coastal islands in the Grall Sea, places where men and women who had contracted foreign poxes were corralled into miniature societies and left to rot. But it would shortly turn out to be much worse than that.
As we descended I began to hear noises. At first I thought I was hearing the barking of plains wolves, and then I thought I could hear the crying of babes. Neither was right; but neither was entirely wrong, either.
As we reached the bottom, and my eyes adjusted to the gloom, the truth was laid bare.
“In the name of holy Nema,” von Osterlen breathed behind me.
In that pit lay dozens of human-wolf hybrids. The permutations were random and grotesque; an immobile human baby with canine legs; a child of five or six years with a hairless human head horribly deformed into the shape of a wolf’s; dozens of other combinations, some crying out pitifully, others sitting or lying catatonically.
“Blood of gods,” I whispered.
“The Cataclysm created the Kasar, of course, but it was not nearly so neat with all its other creations. Most of the runts died quickly, but tainted bloodlines persist,” Sir Anzo said, as though leading us amongst a collection of curios in a great hall.
Sir Konrad followed him between the hybrids, his face a mask of distaste. “And you husband them here,” he said, conspicuously avoiding a pile of excrement.
“I do.” Sir Anzo gestured further down the ravine, where the red rock turned a corner. “There is more that way – breeding pens, fodder stores, and the like. I leave instructions for them to be allowed to take the air, such as it is, for as much of the day as possible.”
I felt like crying as I moved amongst the pathetic creatures. Few things had filled me with such profound melancholy as these cast-offs.
“To what end?” von Osterlen demanded, appalled.
“You must know that the only way to access the afterlife is via séance,” Sir Anzo said. He seemed untroubled by this criminal enterprise; perhaps not criminal in the sense of the laws of the Kyarai, but a crime against nature, by any measure.
“You use them as anchors for the Nyrsanar Navi,” Vonvalt remarked. He looked displeased in a general sense, but did not seem to share the shock and outrage that both von Osterlen and I felt.
“Indeed,” Sir Anzo said. He knelt down and picked up one of the runts with the same careless expertise a farmer might handle a calf.
“But performing a séance only works after the destruction of a human consciousness,” Vonvalt said. He could not keep the interest from his voice. I should not have been surprised; Vonvalt had murdered a prisoner in Rekaburg for no other reason than to teach me about the Nyrsanar Navi. But that man had been a coward and a deserter. This… this was something else. As someone who had spent the early years of my own life at the mercy of others, his callousness towards these creatures angered me.
