“Come, Olin, do not look so offended!” the autarch said. “I told you long ago that I would regret ending our association—I truly have enjoyed our conversations—but that I needed you dead more than I needed you alive.”
“If you think to hear me beg ...” Olin began quietly.
“Not at all! I would be disappointed, to tell you the truth.” The autarch reached out his cup and a slave kneeling at his feet instantly filled it from a golden ewer. “Have some wine. You will not die today, so you might as well enjoy this fine afternoon. See, the sun is bright and strong!”
Olin shook his head. “You will pardon me if I do not drink with you.”
The autarch rolled his eyes. “As you wish. But if you change your mind do not hesitate to ask. I still have much of my story to tell you. Now, what was I saying… ?” He frowned, pretending to think, a playful gesture that made Vash feel ill in the pit of his stomach. Could it be true? Could the might of the heavenly gods really come to Sulepis—a madman who was already the greatest power on the earth?
“Ah, yes,” the autarch said. “I was speaking of your gift.”
Olin made a quiet sound, almost like a little sigh of pain.
“You know, of course, how your gift comes to you—the Qar woman Sanasu captured by your ancestor Kellick Eddon, the children that he fathered on her who became your ancestors. Oh, I have studied your family, Olin. The gift is strongest in those who show the sign of the Fireflower, the flame-colored hair sometimes called ‘Crooked’s Red’—or ‘Habbili’s Mark’ as it is called in my tongue. I suspect the gift runs in the blood of all of Kellick’s descendants, even those who do not bear the outward signs....”
“That is not so,” said Olin angrily. “My eldest son and my daughter have never been troubled by the curse.”
The autarch smiled with childlike pleasure. “What of your grandfather, the third Anglin? Everybody knows he had strange fits, prescient dreams, and that he once almost killed two of his servants with his bare hands although he was considered a very gentle man.”
“You truly have learned… a great deal about my family.”
“Your family has attracted much attention in certain circles, Olin Eddon.” The autarch leaned toward him. “You must know that even though your grandfather Anglin showed every sign of this… tincture of the blood… he was not one of the red Eddons, was he? He had the pale yellow hair of your ancient northern forebears, just as your daughter and eldest son.”
“You mock me. My daughter bears no taint,” Olin said tightly.
“It matters not—she is of little interest to me,” the autarch told him. “I have what I need, thanks to Ludis, and that is you… or rather, that is your blood. The one thing on which the oldest and most trustworthy of tale-tellers on both continents agree, as well as those alchemists and thaumaturges of my own land who performed secret experiments and lived to describe them, is that only the blood of Habbili—your people’s Kupilas—can open a path to the sleeping gods. Why is that important? Because if the path can be opened, the sleeping gods that Habbili banished so long ago can be reawakened and released.”
“You are mad,” Olin said. “And even if such madness were true, why would you do it? If we have lived so long without them, why would you let them walk the earth again? Do you think even with all your armies that you could stand up to them? By the Three Brothers, man, even the tiniest drop of their diluted blood in my veins has turned my life topsy-turvy! In their day they threw down mountains and dug oceans with their bare hands! Why would you, loving power as you do, free such dreadful rivals?”
“Ah, so you are not entirely naïve,” said the autarch approvingly. “You at least ask, but if it were true, what next? Yes, of course, I would be a fool to let all the gods go free. But what if it were only one god? And more important, what if I had a way to rule over and command that god? Would that power not become mine? It would be like having mastery over one of the ancient shanni—but a thousand times greater! Anything within the god’s power would be mine.”
“And this is what you plan to do? ” Olin stared. “Such hunger for more power and wealth in one who already has so much is ludicrous… sickening.”
“No, it is so much more. It is why I am who I am while other men, even other kings like yourself, are merely… cattle. Because I, Sulepis, will not surrender what I have when Xergal the master of the dead comes with his cowardly hook to take me away. What point conquering the earth if the bite of an asp or a piece of stone fallen from a column can end it in an eyeblink?”
“Everybody dies,” said Olin. There was contempt in his voice now. “Are you so frightened of that?”
The autarch shook his head. “I feared you might not understand, Olin, but I hoped the magic in your own blood might make a difference. What is a man who settles for what he is given? No man at all, but only a brute beast. You ask what a man who already rules the world can possibly desire? The time to enjoy what he owns, and then, when he ceases to enjoy it, to tear it down and build something else.” Sulepis leaned so far that Vash was terrified he might topple from the litter. “Little northern king, I did not kill twenty brothers, several sisters, and Nushash knows how many others to seize the throne, only to hand it to someone else in a few short years.”
Somebody was shouting outside and the platform began to slow.
“So, we near your old home, Olin. It is true, you do not look well—it seems you were right about being close making you ill.” The autarch laughed a little. “Still, that is another reason for you to be grateful to me. I shall make certain you do not suffer such unpleasantness for too much longer.”
“Golden One, why have we stopped?” Vash asked. He had visions of some of Olin’s people springing out of the woods in ambush.
“Because we are only a short distance away from the place where this coastal road comes out of the forest,” the autarch said. “We have sent scouts ahead to determine where we should make our camp. It is likely we will have to dislodge the Qar, who have been besieging our friend Olin’s castle for some months. Their army is small but they are full of tricks. However, Sulepis has some tricks of his own!” He laughed as gleefully as a young boy riding on a fast horse.
“But why are we even here?”Olin asked. “If you believe you must kill me to pursue your mad ideas, why come all this way? Simply to punish those of my family and subjects who still care for me? To taunt them in their helplessness?”
“Taunt them?”The autarch was enjoying this playacting. At the moment, he pretended to be insulted. “We have come to save them! And when the Qar are driven off and I am done here, your heirs may do what they please with this place.”
“You came here to save my people? That is a lie.”
Again the autarch refused to take offense. “It is not the whole truth, I admit. We are here because once this was the very place the gods were banished. Here, now buried beneath the buildings your kind made, lies the gate to the palace of Xergal—Kernios, as you northerners call him. And here Habbili fought him and defeated him, then pushed him out of the world forever. Here is where the ritual must take place.”
“Ah,” said Olin. “So as I suspected, it has nothing at all to do with anything but your own mad schemes.”
The autarch looked at him almost sadly. “I am not greedy, Olin, whatever you think. When I have the power of the gods at my service I will not need to quibble over this castle or that castle. I will rebuild the heavenly palaces of Mount Xandos itself!”