“My mother, in the dream, she said something.”
“What?”
“That I was a traitor.”
Karinia laughed softly. “To whom? Yourself, your country?”
He nodded.
“Rather, it is your Republic that would betray you. We understand a thousand centuries of history, Sean. This world is the old world of the Kazan, of their barbarian cousins who once rode the northern continent. From here they leapt to the stars, subjugated a hundred worlds, and then came the Great Falling, the casting down and twenty thousand years of darkness.
“The Portals are the key to everything. All were dead here, annihilated, and then the Portals somehow opened, the gate between worlds. A few came from one world, and then another. Their descendants multiplied, but understood nothing of before.
“Our race. Our race somehow was on more than one world as well.”
He looked at her in surprise.
“Didn’t he tell you that?”
He shook his head.
“The-world your father came from, the world that those who lived under the northern hordes came from, it is the same place. Perhaps the ancients of the Kazan made a gate there, perhaps several, and took ancestors of yours from long ago. There was another Portal here, in the realm of the Kazan, that is where my blood comes from. It was this order, then, who decided to make the blood pure, to recreate us.”
“I understand how,” Sean said softly, almost fearfully, as if someone was listening. “I do not understand why.”
“You will, when Hazin decides it. Sufficient to know that what he offers is the only alternative. Both races united, both races pure. Your Republic could never achieve that, and you know it. We are the future of this world, not the Republic.”
He nodded. That he knew was true. Man against man there was no question. The Kazan, all the Hordes, were bigger and far more powerful physically, but in battle that size had its drawbacks. They moved slower, and the northern hordes lacked the technical skills. The Kazan had those skills, but when it came to lightning speed and sustained physical endurance, humans had the edge. The Shiv combined a physical presence and power that was terrifying. A power that could unite the two races to one purpose was indeed unstoppable.
“And if you could control it,” she replied, again her fingertips tracing his arm and then his shoulders, “would you turn it against Hazin?”
He looked at her, wide-eyed.
“The truth.”
“I am nothing to the Shiv. In battle,” he paused, still shocked by what she had told him only the evening before, “in the arena that you told me about, any one of them could crush me.”
“That’s not what Hazin wants of you. He has a hundred thousand who can crush. They, almost all of us, are trained to nothing else. To think like your opponent, to understand them, that is what he wants from you. You can be the face that those of the Republic will see, will rally to.
“There is nothing but power. All else is meaningless. And when life ends, it ends. Thus morality is a charade to dupe the foolish.”
“The god of the Shiv?” he asked.
She laughed. “A legend for the initiates, for those who need such things. Those of the inner circles know that nothing exists beyond this life. Therefore it is power, my lover, power and nothing else that matters and that drives the game of our lives.” She smiled. “And that power then gives us the pleasures we desire.”
He wanted to pull back from her, but even as she spoke, the look in her eyes drew him in, her touch feeling like fire. “Do you know why your father was as he was?”
“No, I wondered that often as a child. My mother was beautiful, educated, and she loved him. He threw all that away.”
“It’s because he was drunk not with liquor, but with the memory of power. He commanded armies. He crushed his enemies and saw them driven before him. He knew triumph like few have ever known. And then it ended and he had nothing but memories.
“Could such a man ever settle down, sit in the corner of a room and watch the days drift into a blur, to lie with but one woman until they grew old and died? Believe me, Sean, once the elixir of power has been drunk, it will haunt you.
Forever after your life is divided between all that happened when you held it, and then all that came afterward, when each day is spent remembering rather than gazing toward what still lies ahead.
“That is what Hazin offers you. What I offer you.”
“And if I turned away, would you turn away from me?” She smiled softly. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I love you,” he whispered. “And fear you. Fear that you would leave me.”
“Ah, so I would haunt you forever afterward. Sean O’Donald, you know how to compliment.”
“And my power, what of it? Would it haunt you?”
“What you could be if you but allowed it. Hazin saw that in you and in your foolish friend.”
“You are not answering the question I asked.”
“Nor will I, lover. I must keep at least one secret from you.” She smiled. “It is, after all, part of the game that all lovers play with each other.”
He slowly nodded.
“Today you will see the Shiv in a new way. When you watch them, consider what it would mean to lead them in battle. Your father’s successes will pale to insignificance when compared to what you could do.”
She gently pulled him back down by her side and drew him close.
“Do you love me?” Sean asked, and he was ashamed that his voice betrayed his fears.
She kissed him gently.
“Here, at this moment when it is just the two of us alone. Yes, I do,” she whispered.
The blaring of the trumpets was an annoyance Hazin was forced to accept. He just wished that they didn’t have to stand directly behind the imperial box.
The fanfare echoed around the great amphitheater, the brazen call of the nargas, the war trumpets joining in. A hundred thousand came to their feet, clenched fists raised to the emperor as he came out of the shadows of the entry corridor and stepped into the light.
A thunderous cheer erupted and redoubled as he raised his hand in salute.
Hazin stood at the back of the imperial box, just behind those of the inner blood, the eunuch chamberlains, the royal attendants of the chamber, and the chosen concubines of the moment. He preferred this spot. It allowed him to watch without being watched.
While the emperor stood, accepting the adulation of the mob, his guards stood warily to either side. One of them examined the royal chair, expert hands running across the cushions to check one last time for a hidden needle or pressure detonator. He stepped back, gave a subtle nod of approval, and the emperor sat down.
It was the day of celebration of the ascension to the throne, and since dawn the city had been a madhouse. Free food, from ten thousand human sacrifices butchered since midnight, had been distributed to the mob, and the feasting had gone on for hours. A thousand barrels of drink laced with mild doses of gava had been set up at nearly every street comer, thus inflaming the passions of all.
The crowd in the arena, the lucky hundred thousand who could cram their way in, were wild in anticipation for what was to come. The all-night revelry and now the promise of the show had stilled the few voices that had questioned the surprise announcement of a new war to be fought in the North.
Those who were to entertain stepped out from the archway beneath the emperor’s box, and the cheering redoubled as they paraded around the perimeter of the arena. All of them were of the Shiv, armed with swords and a variety of exotic weapons: throwing daggers, curved scimitars, poisoned spokes, bows, even modern rifles.