Chapter 7
Yalet
The Empire of Nejim
The Noble District of Tijar
Anoth stepped out of his conveyance pattern and into the familiar surroundings of his personal suite, high up in the towers of the palace of Tijar. He took a deep breath, taking the time to brush bits of ash from his sleeves. He had traveled to Mount Thayl by slow, mortal means, but his return trip was made nearly instantly using the fiery portal. Such conveyance patterns were difficult to create, and going through one would be fatal to any mortal, but the effort and resulting exhaustion were worth it. Now that he was home, his only concern was for his master.
Anoth strode swiftly to the other side of his bedroom. He held the Orb above the basin stand, examining it. His master’s vessel was filthy—caked in earth so thick and hard that he could only see glints of the blue-gray labradorite hidden beneath. He filled the washbasin with water from a nearby ewer and dipped the Orb beneath its surface. He dug his nails into the softening grime, breaking off bits here and there and turning the water into a slurry of filth.
One by one, glyphs began to appear on the stone, revealing a surface that was polished and smooth to the touch. Only when every grain of grit was removed did Anoth finally smile, satisfied.
He dried the Orb with a towel and brought it to the center of the room, where he knelt reverently on the floor. It had been nine hundred years since he had lost the Orb, and his master, Verahi, within it. Before that, Verahi had been his only confidant and friend for several centuries. They were both exiles from their original home, considered oath-breakers and criminals of the worst kind. But they knew better, and Anoth had long wished for the day when he and Verahi would be reunited.
“Master, can you hear me?” Anoth raised the Orb a little, allowing the sunlight shining through the windows to bathe its surface. The Orb, however, remained lifeless.
Anoth shook his head. The Orb had gone too long without refined matter to energize it. He turned the shining ball around in his hands. Unlike mortal bodies, his body was composed of refined matter, and it emanated from him perpetually. Because the Orb served as a prison, Verahi had relied on close contact with Anoth to maintain consciousness, but now, nothing stirred.
Anoth grimaced. Usually it only took a touch to energize the Orb. Had it been dormant for so long that Verahi couldn’t be revived? Anoth brought the Orb up to his face, shifting into the third degree of focus and squinting until he could finally make out a dull but impossibly dense cluster of thought matter at the center of the Orb. Perhaps it needed a catalyst to wake.
Anoth lowered the Orb and shifted to the first degree of focus. He began gathering shadow primal matter in his free hand and forced loose particles of light matter into close proximity until the mixture crackled audibly. He pressed the tight pattern into the Orb, which caused it to glow intensely and emit waves of heat that swept back his hair and charred his sleeves. When the glow stopped increasing in intensity, he ceased his injection and held his breath.
The Orb flickered for a moment, but then its brightness faded slowly until it went completely dark and lifeless.
Anoth exhaled and hung his head. He had found the Orb, but had time eroded the delicate mechanisms that made it work? Had Naltena sabotaged it as her final act?
Just as Anoth was ready to give up and place the Orb onto his mantle, it suddenly brightened of its own accord, causing him to fall back on his heels.
Verahi’s voice reverberated softly from the Orb. “Anoth?”
Anoth laughed joyously. “Master!” He lifted the Orb up once again, but faltered as his arms suddenly weakened, numbness beginning to creep through his entire body. Verahi was leeching energy from him through his hands. He resisted the urge to drop the Orb; he would allow Verahi to take whatever he wished.
Verahi spoke again from the Orb, a little louder this time. “The last thing I recall is Naltena’s voice. But I cannot sense her here.” The light within the Orb swirled and buzzed, shifting the stone’s color from gray to green.
“Naltena hid you from me. She claimed to be protecting me from you. She said your influence would lead to—”
“Lies!” The Orb became hot in response. “You were wise not to have listened to her. Our enemies rely on such fabrications to separate us from our goals, and from each other. They know that they cannot defeat us when we are united in purpose.”
“Yes,” Anoth agreed.
“You say I was hidden from you. How long was I hidden?”
“Nine hundred years,” Anoth answered hesitantly.
The Orb darkened a little, its temperature rapidly decreasing. “How is it that I was lost for nine hundred years? Where was I hidden that you could not find me?”
“Naltena wrested you away from me and conveyed you directly into Mount Thayl, burying you deep in the mountain,” Anoth responded. “By the time I reached the mountain, I was no longer able to sense your psyche, nor could I see it or the orb itself in any degree of focus. I couldn’t use ormé to level the mountain, risking damage to the Orb that would leave you trapped forever. So I used Yalet’s native beshtats and Naltite slaves we stole from Zaidna to excavate the mountain inch by inch in order to find you. That is why it took so long.”
Verahi was quiet for a moment, the light shining through the labradorite fading to a flicker. “Your diligence is appreciated,” Verahi finally acknowledged. The stone grew slightly warm again, and Anoth felt the blood rush back into his forearms. “What was done to punish Naltena? Surely, she is not unscathed.”
“She was punished, enough to satisfy even you, Master. I beat and stabbed her until she finally confessed to where she conveyed you, and then I left her body to be torn apart by the hadirs until her psyche was left naked and helpless. They could not consume her psyche, of course, but I allowed them to taste it.” Anoth smiled sadistically at the memory.
“Well,” Verahi murmured with some satisfaction. “Then you’ve as good as killed her.”
Anoth smirked. “Yes. If a shred of her psyche somehow remains after all this time, it is blind and utterly lost.”
The Orb vibrated uncertainly. “This is a dangerous victory. Are the others aware of Naltena’s fate? This act would certainly justify intervention.”
Anoth frowned. Nine hundred years was not a particularly long time to his people, but the retaliation he expected had never come, except that the old forest on the other side of the parting was all of a sudden completely refined. It could have been done as an acknowledgment of his victory, but more than likely it was a warning or threat. “I don’t know how much they know of it. I have generally kept the oaths of this world since we arrived.”
Verahi hissed. “You delude yourself. Of course they know every detail. They don’t want to admit to such a loss, so they do nothing. They are simply waiting for you to further overstep your bounds before taking greater action of their own. We will be fine if we remain careful.” Verahi paused, the Orb thrumming softly. “Tell me, now that the whole of Zaidna is under your control, do you have a single emperor ruling over it or do you reign from here in Yalet?”
Any pride Anoth felt for his victory over Naltena was snuffed out in an instant. For the first six hundred years after Verahi’s loss, Anoth had single-mindedly searched for the Orb at the expense of all other responsibilities. The beshtats he had enslaved proved to be inefficient and accident-prone while excavating for the Orb, and the hadirs had refused to stoop to manual labor. It was only when the hadirs’ numbers grew to the point that they became restless and difficult to feed that Anoth decided to send them beyond the parting to pillage Zaidna for fresh psyches to consume and suitable slaves to help chisel at the mountain. He had hoped that they would have found the Orb quickly after that, and that he and Verahi could conquer Zaidna together. But nine hundred years had passed, and he had little to show for it.
“You hesitate,” Verahi observed as the Orb flashed white. “Surely, without Naltena’s protection, all of Zaidna has fallen into your hands.”
Anoth averted his gaze, even though he knew Verahi could not see him. “No, Master, not exactly. Even with Naltena dead, there is always opposition, as you know.”
Verahi was silent for a moment. “Then surely at least one of the Naltite empires is under your control. Judath, where the parting lies, perhaps? This would have greatly increased our numbers.”
Anoth shut his eyes, ashamed. “Judath is still under the control of a Naltite emperor, as are the others.”
“Even with a host of hadirs and beshtat thralls at your command?”
“. . . We have also not yet gained control over all of the beshtat lands. As always, they are—protected.”
“You don’t even have Yalet fully under control? But how can this be? You have hadirs, you have slaves, and yet the Naltites and beshtats remain free? What have you been doing these nine hundred years?”
Anoth thinned his lips, choosing silence over self-incrimination.
“You’re hiding something from me.” Verahi’s tone was rigidly stern. “Show me.”
Anoth knew all too well what “showing” would involve. “Please, Master, that isn’t necessary! Let me explain. The hadirs—they go beyond the parting and—”
The Orb, however, was uninterested in any explanation, becoming red hot in Anoth’s palm. “Show me. Now!”
Anoth swallowed and slowly held the Orb up to his face. He shifted into the third degree of focus. Where there had been an inert mass at its center just minutes before, there was now an overflowing ball of thought matter, with long tendrils spilling from his master’s psyche. He reluctantly willed his own thoughts forward, weaving the threads into Verahi’s, intentionally knotting and tangling them together into a rough silver rope.
“Good,” Verahi muttered, and Anoth’s vision was immediately obliterated into chaos. Verahi began digging into Anoth’s memories, uprooting and discarding them with abandon. Flashes of Anoth’s past came into view, not as living, moving scenes, but rather as fragments of images, where there was only an instant to process each of them.
Anoth tried feebly to direct Verahi away from more sensitive memories. An old image of Naltena flared up, in which she was weaving the pattern that ultimately tore the Orb from his hands, before she conveyed it into the depths of Mount Thayl. He then saw his own hands strike Naltena down as the hadirs rallied all around him.
Verahi discarded this memory for another, and Anoth found himself on Mount Thayl for the first time out of thousands as he hunted for the Orb. He watched as he used ormé to pull giant mounds of earth from the surface of the mountain, then frantically searching through the rubble, terrified that he might have damaged the Orb in his zeal. He had quickly realized that he would not be able to locate it on his own and would need to enlist his followers to excavate using more primitive methods.
Silent moments passed, but Anoth knew they represented years. Newly transformed hadirs dotted the face of Mount Thayl, with Anoth barking orders. But the hadirs were lazy and disobedient, surreptitiously using ormé as a shortcut to lay waste to the mountainside whenever Anoth wasn’t looking.
“I see you’ve made even more of your abominations,” Verahi hissed with disapproval.
“They bring unique challenges,” Anoth acknowledged, “but they are loyal and eternally indebted to me. They may have failed as excavators, but they managed to subjugate many beshtat slaves as replacements.” He gently drew out memories of his hadirs as they gathered and crossed over the borders of Nejim to conquer the beshtats’ capital city.
Verahi grunted, pushing past those memories and into images of scores of beshtat slaves wilting and dying on Mount Thayl as they toiled in the hot sun. Their slave master hadirs circled in the periphery, waiting for their chance to feast on the psyches of the near-dead, then burning beshtat bodies by the heapful at the base of the mountain. “What was the point of collecting these vermin? Would their deaths at the hands of the hadirs not bring frequent interference?”
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Anoth swallowed nervously, shifting to memories of the remaining beshtats largely being put to work serving the Anotites in the capital, and the hadirs being gathered once again, this time to pass through the parting into Zaidna. Anoth had traveled with the hadirs during the early decades of these raids, watching as they blitzed unsuspecting coastal towns, feasting on the weak and bringing back worthy Naltite slaves. The hadirs took great pleasure in carving ormé-blocking glyphs directly into the slaves’ flesh, after which all the males were taken directly to Mount Thayl.
The Orb hummed in contemplation. “Using Naltite slaves to excavate the mountain may have been the correct plan in the end,” Verahi conceded. “Very little risk to our people, proper use of glyphs to suppress the Naltites’ ormé, and no oath-breaking in Yalet that would warrant retaliation.”
Anoth nodded eagerly, hoping that Verahi wouldn’t look any further into the more sordid details of how the Orb was found.
“What is to be done with the hadirs now that their task is complete?” Verahi asked, sifting through more memories of the hadirs. “I see that their numbers lessened with every raid. None of the Naltite villagers would be able to cause any harm to a hadir in combat, so it is curious that they would simply disappear. And yet their numbers are still too high here to have them idle for long. I assume you have no plans to create more?”
“I admit I may have been less selective when choosing subjects at first. But I intend on converting only the most faithful and qualified in the future.”
“I question your judgment,” Verahi admonished, drawing up a mosaic of related images. “Look at the fruits of your work. These hadirs served you well as protectors, but you have allowed them to influence your courts. They disregard my laws and cause our people to follow their bad examples with impunity.”
“But Master, I allow them to participate in the government so that they can enforce your laws. There certainly have been some hadirs who have taken advantage of those privileges, but I have dealt with them in—”
“I am not a fool,” Verahi interrupted, pulling up a torrent of memories as if from a cascading scroll. “How do your enforcers justify the nightly indulgence of orgies in their bathhouses? And beyond these whoredoms, they flout my teachings by despoiling the purity of the mortals, especially that of the innocent.”
Anoth remained silent, his mind frozen in fear.
“Indulgence and permissiveness. They waste good psyches for pleasure’s sake.” Verahi focused in on a particular set of memories. “And an emperor lying dead in the audience hall, with no one held responsible?” Verahi reviewed the gory scene, which was framed by a circle of hadirs looking on innocently, while a young Zalas knelt crying in a far corner. Verahi brought up another image of Tovam bisecting a dissenting hadir in a wave of blood amidst throaty cheers. “And how do you have no memories of these events until after they’ve occurred? Where is your oversight? Why create hadirs if you have no intention of controlling them?”
“My attention has been wholly on finding you,” Anoth replied.
Verahi thrust away the pile of images and pulled up another sequence of memories, even as Anoth resisted. “You spend your time in Zaidna,” Verahi observed quizzically.
Anoth winced as he tried in vain to push Verahi’s focus onto memories of him gallantly leading raids.
“I have seen those memories already, and they are centuries old,” Verahi dismissed. “What business do you have in Zaidna now?” Brushing Anoth’s feeble interference aside, he delved into a kaleidoscope of fresh images, comprised of numerous trips through the parting, conveyance patterns, the sapphire bay of Sayora, a ring of green mountains, and finally resting on a single image of Anoth’s hand petting a sazi’s furry head. His hand moved to rub the sazi’s belly, then materialized a fish to feed the creature’s ravenous appetite. “What—what is this?” Verahi sputtered.
Anoth found himself barely able to remain upright from the continuous incursions into his psyche. “I . . . have an affinity for sazis,” he explained weakly.
Verahi’s wrath consumed the Orb, and he immediately tore into Anoth’s memories in Zaidna. One by one, he extracted images of Sorai, first as a young maiden, then several during her pregnancy. In each memory, Anoth viewed her from a distance, always careful to hide himself behind bushes or other obstructions.
“Who is this harlot?” Verahi demanded. Anoth provided no response, and Verahi pried even further, uncovering years of Sorai’s grief at the loss of her first son. “Why would you abandon your duties to chase after this mortal woman?”
“She is my beloved,” Anoth stammered. “We were to wed, but I wouldn’t do so without your blessing. I promised I would find the Orb and we would marry according to the higher law, but in that time—”
“Feh. Pathetic lies,” Verahi scoffed. “You wish to wed a mortal.” He flipped through a dozen more images in disgust. “This mortal who you have never even spoken one word to. You want this long-tailed, dalanai mortal who is already wed to another, an emperor no less.”
“Who do I have to wed other than a mortal?” Anoth lamented. “And Sorai would not be a mortal for long. I would make her a hadir, so that she could be my wife for eternity.”
Verahi stopped on a sequence of Anoth watching a crowded imperial procession pass by on Sorai’s wedding day. “You could have stopped this if you had desired,” Verahi mused.
Anoth blanched at the memory. In it, his eyes were firmly planted on the large palanquin that carried the ill-fitted couple, but while he strayed to gaze at his beloved from time to time, he spent much more time fixated on the staff-like kada that was held erect in its base on the palanquin floor. Atop the kada was set the brilliant ovoid sapphire he had spent years refining, only to have it despoiled by unworthy mortal hands.
“You claim your non-interference was in deference to me,” Verahi continued. “But your mind reveals cowardice. You fear the kada and what it can do to you.”
“I admit I was tempted to interfere,” Anoth conceded. “But I know the power of the kadas and that I would have a far better chance of overcoming one with your aid. Most of all, however, I would not wed my beloved unless it could be performed according to the higher law.”
The Orb hummed in contemplation. “Your motives are suspect. But you have been alone for centuries without my guidance, so I cannot fault you for all your diversions. And you did locate and extract me. However, I cannot allow you to be distracted from your original task. I will allow you to wed this mortal according to the higher law, but you must meet my conditions before I will perform the rites.”
“Anything,” Anoth readily agreed.
“My conditions are these: your people will learn to obey my laws with exactness. This includes your hadirs. Then, you will complete the task you started nine hundred years ago by finally freeing me from this prison and restoring my body to me. Only when these have been accomplished can you have your bride.”
“Thank you, Master,” Anoth groveled, knowing full well that the simplicity of Verahi’s demands belied the difficulty of achieving them. The hadirs were not easily tamed and would not take well to Verahi’s laws of forbearance and restraint. And yet helping Verahi escape from the Orb with his original form intact would be a far more daunting task, with much higher risks.
“Do you still have the keys required to bypass the glyphs and initiate the pardoning?” Verahi asked.
“Yes, they are safely kept in the temple vaults.”
“And are there suitable witnesses among the slaves you have acquired?”
Anoth frowned. “The Naltite slaves were mostly taken from small villages. Their houses of ormé are somewhat—inferior. While their psyches would conduct an adequate amount of light matter for the task, they are also too damaged to be of any use without risk of rejection. We would need to get fresh witnesses from Zaidna. The Orb will confirm, but unspoiled females among the noble caste would likely be best. However, if we take nobles, there are the kadas to worry about.”
“The presence of a kada did not deter you from peeping after your whore. They are a necessary risk. The Orb is still configured to seek out suitable witnesses, yes? You will need to take a minimum of followers as your support.”
“Tovam and his captains would make excellent—”
“Your hadirs cannot be trusted as they are. Their presence alone would certainly bruise the witnesses’ psyches. And surely you know the risk of what they might do to the witnesses should you ever turn your back.”
Anoth nodded slowly. “I will need to assemble men willing to die for me.”
“Take the time you need, but recognize that this dalanai woman will never be yours until these tasks are complete.”
Anoth suppressed a visceral swell of frustration.
Seemingly satisfied, Verahi withdrew the tendrils of his thought matter and the Orb immediately went dormant, leaving Anoth to his own thoughts for the first time in what felt like eons.
***
“Awaken yourself, Zalas.”
Zalas groaned, still half-asleep. Whatever voice had roused him from his slumber must have just been imagined. He rolled over to face the window, wrapping himself up in his gold and green bedsheets. He quickly began to drift back to sleep.
“Fool, wake up!”
Zalas’s eyes popped open. He sat upright, all grogginess immediately gone from his body. He found Kailei, Davim’s bed slave, already awake at his side, her bruised body tense with terror. He turned from the whimpering slave to see Anoth standing at the foot of the bed.
Anoth’s silhouette was framed by the fire burning in the hearth behind him. Something about his blue eyes made him look entirely mad. “Startled?” he asked with a sneer.
Zalas didn’t have a chance to answer.
Anoth leaned forward menacingly. “I see this is the same dalanai whore from earlier! Where is your wife?”
Kailei pressed herself up against the stone headboard of the bed and sobbed silently.
Zalas balled his hands into fists. “Why are you here? What do you care of who’s in my bed? You didn’t want her.”
Anoth slowly shook his head, a muscle in his jaw visibly hardening. There was something strangely weary in his expression. “This behavior is no longer acceptable.”
“No longer acceptable?” Zalas tensed. “Is that why you’re here in the middle of the night? To chide me about my choice of bed slaves? Don’t you have better things to do? Or is it that you’ve suddenly grown tired of the Orb? Did it turn out to be just a rock after all?”
Anoth’s face reddened as he rounded the bed to stare Zalas down, ignoring Kailei's quivering body. “Nothing less than strict adherence to Verahi’s laws will be acceptable from this time forward. And obedience must start with the emperor.”
“Hypocrite!” Zalas spat. “If you care so much about obedience, shouldn’t it start with you? You have done everything possible to make me impotent as emperor. You forced me to marry a fat ass cow, you’ve taken all my power and given it to your hadirs, and you’ve left me to rule pointless courts over senile old men! Look at yourself. I know what you get up to when you—”
Before Zalas could complete his accusation, Anoth pulled back his fist and plunged it through Kailei’s throat.
Zalas blinked in confusion as he was splattered by a mist of gore. Kailei’s lifeless body slumped off the mattress and fell to the floor with a wet thud.
Anoth nonchalantly wiped his hands on the tangled bedsheets.
“You killed her!” Zalas sputtered as he leapt off the bed and into a position that would leave him less likely to be murdered. “Now I will have to pay my brother-in-law for the loss of her!”
Anoth stalked forward and took hold of Zalas’s neck in a fierce but shaking grip, pulling him close so that Zalas could feel his breath on his face. “You will know your place!”
After a few moments, Anoth released his grip, and Zalas gasped for air, rubbing at his throat.
“Dress yourself.”
Zalas hastily moved to wrap himself with a bloodied sheet while Anoth stood by the bed, reaching into his coat to withdraw a round object. Zalas’s eyes widened. This stone was no longer the crusty clod of dirt he had seen earlier that afternoon. Instead, it shone with a prismatic sheen. “Is that truly Verahi?” he asked, half in awe and half in disbelief. This was the first time in almost a millennium that an emperor of Nejim gazed upon the Orb.
An emanating buzzing from the Orb grew from a whisper into a piercing hum. Anoth muttered back to it in sporadic bursts, only to wince as the Orb sprung to life, evincing a deep, angry voice. “Do you see what your neglect has wrought?”
“Forgive me, Master!” Anoth stammered, his hand visibly smoking with the increasing heat of the Orb. Zalas backed away slowly. He might have found Anoth’s groveling amusing if he weren’t still in mortal danger.
“I set you up to be an example to these people, and your emperor, this worm, is supposed to be your representative. His blatant flouting of my laws is just more proof of how lax your discipline has become.” The Orb visibly cooled. “However, despite your failure in your duties, there is no reason to delay atonement. According to my laws, the punishment for adultery is death, even for an emperor. You may slay this one, now.”
“What?” Zalas choked, looking to Anoth in panic.
Anoth raised his injured hand to do the Orb’s bidding, but hesitated a moment. “Master, are you certain? As of this afternoon his wife was still in childbed, and an heir has not been secured.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Verahi dismissed from the Orb. “His entire bloodline is condemned because of his sins. Destroy the offspring and its mother, as well as any kin who might have any claim to his station.”
“As you wish,” Anoth replied uncertainly.
“Wait!” Zalas cried out. “Let’s not be drastic!” He thought fleetingly of his wretched unborn child, then of his sister, Roet, who was a slut but didn’t deserve to die. “How can I fully obey your laws if I never knew them? I helped look for the Orb. I helped find it! I would certainly follow your laws now that you are here to give them!”
The Orb darkened in contemplation.
“I swear I will do anything that you ask. Let me prove my worth!”
Anoth lowered his hand and looked to the Orb. “What will you have me do, Master?”
“He will live for now,” the Orb finally said. “Ignorance of my laws is also a sin, but I offer forgiveness in this case based on my absence and your poor example to these people.”
Zalas expelled a sigh of relief and fell to his knees. “Thank you! My gratitude pours out to—”
“Silence!” Verahi snapped. “As the first step in your atonement, you will join Anoth in his. Prepare yourself to retrieve three witnesses from Zaidna.”
“Witnesses? I don’t—”
“Master, this mortal is useless,” Anoth protested. “He is a spoiled, pampered whelp who would just get in my way. He would only be useful in enlisting worthier—”
“And yet he would follow my laws, which is more than you could claim for any of your other followers,” Verahi interrupted.
“I don’t understand!” Zalas murmured fearfully. What was happening? He hated his life, but what was being suggested here was insane and confusing. What were these witnesses? Why would he need to travel through the parting? Why did he have to be involved in any of this at all? “I’m not going anywhere!”
“Your alternative is death,” Anoth replied coldly. “I suggest you consider your options carefully.” With that, he placed the Orb back into his coat and swiftly left Zalas’s chambers.