The creaking was deep in the sinews around his bones. It felt as if the weariness sunk so deep it would liquify everything inside his papery, thin skin. He’d endured, he had that for his conflicted self-image to self soothe. Certainly, from any perspective that could be given, he had done as was demanded of him. He had set aside all the ingrained patriotism that yanked at his conscience, attempting to drive his actions with its indoctrinated reasoning. The needs of all people of all corners of this empire had driven his actions. He had acted in accordance of the collective conscience of all those people of all those races in order to serve her people. He had followed the hallowed tenants of this Empire’s requirements of its Sovereign. Yet it gave him little comfort in the twilight of his years. He could feel it now, grasping at his movements. Not only physically robbing him of his bodies confidence but taking from him the enthusiasm for any days to come. Put simply, the Sovereign was dying. His reign was coming to an end and he knew his duty. It was time to secure his throne for the next generation. It was time to send out the Call. And then there it was, the old rage building.

Chapter 1

Dean Leranda’s head whipped up in an uncharacteristically reckless motion. The Dean of the Empire’s college was rarely surprised and it was even more unlikely to express that emotion outwardly. Leranda’s steward craned his head up to look into his Dean’s eyes, steel grey and usually flat. The Dean stood six and a half feet tall. Unusual enough to turn heads even if he wasn’t whip thin, pale skinned and severe to the point of being birdlike. The man expressed into the world the distinct impression that he was utterly capable and entirely unflappable. Hence the Stewards concern. “Dean Leranda? Is there something wrong?”. The Stewards voice reflected his obvious confusion. The Dean’s eyes flicked down from the horizon where he stared up towards the royal keep to look at his Steward. “Tom, it’s the Call.” The silence that met this statement was uncanny and pregnant with unspoken alarm. “He’s already sent it,” continued Leranda, “and of course he’s done so without informing anyone!”

Tom closed his mouth. He wasn’t merely surprised, he was shocked. There hadn’t been a Call in the fifty years he’d been alive. Not even in the sixty five that the Dean had been breathing. The Call had last gone out some eight one year’s ago. It was common knowledge throughout the Empire and probably in surrounding kingdoms. The Call brought all the Potentials to the capital. Drew them out of their lives to answer its undeniable demand. The Dean had begun to pace. “That…man…sends out the call without informing me. The gall of it! I have to prepare…everything…” Leranda muttered as he expressed his obvious consternation. Tom had some small understanding of the preparations that would now be required but he still felt the confusion clinging onto him. Tom was not a foolish man. He was an academic that served as Steward in an honourable profession of note. Still, he only had a basic understanding of the Call and what the college’s role in it was. Clearly, the Dean knew what was required and would dearly have appreciated more time to prepare. Typical of the current Sovereign’s impulsive reputation, there had been no word of the impending Call. Tom watched as the small sparks of electricity escaped the fingertips of the Dean. He coughed, pointedly looking at Leranda’s hands. The Dean visibly stiffened and then like a way, a calmness travelled down his body. “Tom, prepare the carriage. We must see him”.

The hiss coming from underneath he carriage gave Leranda’s racing mind a calm sound to embrace as his formidable intellect. There was a time when the marvel of a carriage flying an arm’s length over the ground being propelled by a mage’s will would have impressed the Dean but unfortunately, like all other childish things, the weight of years of experience had crushed that simple joy from the man. Half made plans were altered, discarded and embellished upon inside his silver haired head. He half raised a hand to run through that hair in frustration before recapturing his composure. The Call had gone out. The college must stand ready to accept the Potentials. The Sovereign (be damned!) had once been one of those potentials, not that it stopped the man from sending it out without so much as a word. ‘Enough of this.’ Leranda chided himself. ‘You are the Dean of the Empire College. Take control of yourself. He’d enjoy your irritation too much anyway.’

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The Sovereign at that very moment, was considering the Dean’s irritation as he surveyed the carriage coming into the keep, standing on the highest balcony. He smirked quietly to himself as he considered willing the air under the carriage to continue to speed its path through the keep and out the other side, continuing until it reached another kingdom than his own. Sadly, he thought, he really couldn’t. Instead the Sovereign watched as the birdlike, tall man stooped his way out of the carriage, a dismount made somehow more difficult by a sudden buoyancy in the height of the transport. Annoyingly, he recovered his grace easily enough and his face flashed upwards towards the Sovereign accusingly. He allowed another smirk to grace his lips, unseen by Leranda far below but well suspected. Sighing, the Sovereign sat in the armchair and awaited his Dean’s arrival. It wasn’t that he disliked the man, or that Leranda was a difficult man, it’s that he couldn’t help himself. At the age of 101, he still clung to an impish sense of humour that was rare now but still caught by an old friend like Leranda.

The Secretary’s ridiculously overdone cloak in the red and gold of the Empire swept grandly onto the ballroom sized balcony overlooking the capital in front of the Dean and Steward. Tom, Leranda and the Secretary bowed deeply to the Sovereign, who’s eyes still sparkled with mirth despite the obvious age in him. The Secretary left and a quick flick of his lords hand and Tom stopped a respectable distance, but within earshot of the old man. Leranda approached attempting valiantly to smooth off any indignation with the very recent events. He succeeded. The Sovereigns face screwed up with irritation as he threw a grape off a plate beside him at the Dean. Unsatisfactorily, Leranda caught the grape and returned it to the plate has he arrived at the chair. “Bah. Sit Lerry!” The Dean did so, suppressing a shudder at the Sovereigns clownish nickname for him. This time he did not succeed, eliciting a feral grin from the old man in front of him. The Sovererign considered allowing the tension to build but felt it was perhaps time to start acting like the lord of the Empire again. “I have made the Call, Lord Dean”.

The old man’s blue eyes surveyed the horizon after his pronouncement, the sky lightening those still clear orbs. The keep overlooked a city nestled in a natural valley that swept down to the ocean. The better part of a million people, going about their lives beneath this building. Their homes flecked earthen colours of brown, yellow, red and orange. At the extreme distance the city halted at the ocean, open in a horseshoe shaped bay that cradled the city on its eastern border. The capital of the Empire, Perseverance, gleamed from the vantagepoint of the balcony in a way it never could up close. Even so, she stood hard and strong and noble against what was a savage world. The flame at the tip of the torch that was the Empire. His eyes swept lower, taking in the patterned, mosaic tile at their feet and settling on Leranda’s face again. His Dean’s grey eyes were flat but evidently hiding their concern. Leranda had come to his notice some forty something years earlier as a college scribe. He had befriended the man as best as a Sovereign could. He had few friends and cherished each of them. Even if he couldn’t help giving them a wind up for his own pleasure. He face had no mirth or frivolity left as he spoke. “Leranda, I know you upset with me but I had been contemplating this for a while. I’ll admit, there was some perverse joy in sending out the call without discussing it with you first but despite that, there is little more that you could have done with an hour or two’s notice before I sent it. My time is almost over. The Call’s time has begun.” Dean Leranda sighed internally and said, “My Sovereign. Are you certain that your…time…is upon us.” The old man raised a brow slowly to his Dean. “Yes. Of course sire, I apologise. You would never have…” Leranda trailed off uncharacteristically. “Sire will you be informing the Council?” the Sovereign nodded. “The more talented among them will have felt the Call Wake as you did. However as matter of course, I sent them word. The First will be attending us shortly where we will discuss next steps and the preparation of all things.”