“I …fear to speak his name,” Aristarchos said, ashamed of his fear and yet frightened to silence nonetheless. He began drumming his fingers.
“The Godking?”
He nodded. “The cycle just kept going until they didn’t have to force the seeds on me anymore. I begged for them. The second time he came, he used magic on me…. He’s fascinated with compulsion. Magical, chemical, and blends of the two, he said. I was just another experiment. After a while, I …I gave them your name, Kylar. He laid a compulsion on me to kill you. I had a box with my seeds in it that would only open once I obeyed.” A tremor passed through him. “You see? I tried riot weed to get me by. I tried poppy wine. Nothing works. I thought if I could get here fast enough, I could warn you. I did hold some things back. They don’t know you come back from death. They don’t know about the Society or your incarnations.”
It was all going too fast for Kylar. The implications were exploding in a hundred different directions. “What society?” Kylar said.
Aristarchos looked incredulous, his fingers even stopped their drumming. “Durzo never told you?”
“Not a word.”
“ ‘The Society of the Second Dawn.’ ”
“Never heard of it.”
“ ‘The Society of the Second Dawn is devoted to the study of reputed immortals, the delineations of their abilities, and the confinement of said powers to those who would not abuse them.’ We’re a secret society, spread over all the world. It’s how I was able to find you. We were founded centuries ago. Back then we thought there were dozens of immortals. Over the years, we concluded that there were at most seven, and maybe just one. The man you knew as Durzo Blint was also Ferric Fireheart, Vin Craysin, Tal Drakkan, Yric the Black, Hrothan Steelbender, Zak Eurthkin, Rebus Nimble, Qos Delanoesh, X!rutic Ur, Mir Graggor, Pips McClawski, Garric Shadowbane, Dav Slinker, and probably a dozen others we don’t know.”
“That’s half the stories of Midcryu.”
Aristarchos was starting to shiver and sweat, but he continued in a level voice, “He successfully masqueraded as a native of at least a dozen different cultures, probably twice that. He spoke more languages than I’ve even heard of—at least thirty, not counting dialects—and all of them so fluently natives couldn’t detect an accent. There were times when he would disappear for twenty or even fifty years—we don’t know if he lived in solitude or married and settled down in remote regions. But he appeared in every major conflict for six centuries, and not always on the side you would expect. Two hundred years ago, as Hrothan Steelbender, he fought with the Alitaeran expansion campaigns for the first thirty years of the Hundred Years’ War, and then ‘died’ and fought with the Ceurans against them as the sword-saint Oturo Kenji.”
Now it was Kylar who was shivering. He remembered when his guild had tried to mug Durzo. When they saw who he was, they shrank back from the legendary wetboy. Legendary wetboy! How little they knew. How little Kylar had known. He felt an unreasoning stab of resentment.
How could Durzo not tell him? He’d been like a son to the man. He’d been closer to him than anyone—and he hadn’t told Kylar anything. Kylar had only seen a bitter, superstitious shell of a man, and thought himself somehow superior to him.
Kylar hadn’t known Durzo Blint at all. And now the hero out of legends—dozens of legends—was dead. Dead at Kylar’s hands. Kylar had destroyed something without knowing its worth. He hadn’t known the man he’d called his master and now he never would. It felt like a hole in his stomach. He felt numb and distant and angry and near tears all at once. Durzo was dead, and Kylar missed him more than he could have imagined.
The beads of sweat were sticking out on Aristarchos’s face now. He had wadded the bed sheets in his fists. “If you have any questions you need to ask me about his incarnations or yours or anything at all, please ask quickly. I’m not …feeling well.”
“Why do you keep saying incarnations like I’m some kind of god?” It wasn’t a great question, but the real questions were so big that Kylar didn’t even know how ask them.
“You are worshipped in a few remote areas where your master wasn’t very careful about showing the full extent of his powers.”
“What?!”
“The Society says incarnations because ‘lives’ is too confusing, and we aren’t sure if you have as many lives as you want, or a finite number, or just one life that never ends. None of us have ever actually seen you die. ‘Incarnations’ has its critics, too, but that’s mainly among the Modaini separatists who believe in reincarnation. Let me tell you, your existence really throws them for a theological loop.” Aristarchos’s legs were twitching, almost convulsing. “I’m sorry,” he said, “there’s so much I wish I could tell you. So much I wish I could ask.”
Suddenly, among all the big questions about Durzo, about Kylar’s powers, about the Godking and what he knew or thought he knew, Kylar just saw a man sweating on table, a man who’d lost his teeth and his good looks for Kylar, a man who’d been tortured and made an addict, who’d been compelled to try to kill Kylar and had fought against it with everything he had. He’d done all that for a man he didn’t even know.
So Kylar didn’t ask about the Society, or magic, or what Aristarchos could do for him. That could come later, if they both lived until later. “Aristarchos,” he said, “what is a shalakroi?”
The man was taken off guard. “I—it’s a little below a Midcyri duke, but it’s not an inherited position. I scored better than ten thousand other students on the Civil Service examinations. Only a hundred scored higher in all Ladesh. I ruled an area roughly the size of Cenaria.”
“The city?”
Aristarchos smiled through his sweat and clenched muscles. “The country.”
“It’s an honor to meet you, Aristarchos ban Ebron, shalakroi of Benyurien.”
“The honor is mine, Kylar ban Durzo. Please, will you kill me?”
Kylar turned his back on the man.
Pride and hope whooshed out of Aristarchos with his breath. He slumped in the bed, suddenly small. “This is no kindness, my lord.” He convulsed again, and strained against the leather bonds. His veins bulged on his forehead and his emaciated arms. “Please!” he said as the convulsion passed. “Please, if you won’t kill me, will you give me my box? Just one seed? Please?”
Kylar left. He took the box and burned it. Aside from a poisoned-needle trap, it was empty.
20
Your Holiness, our assassin is dead,” Neph Dada said as he stepped onto the Godking’s balcony. “I apologize to report this failure, though I do wish to point out that I recommended—”
“He didn’t fail,” Garoth Ursuul said, not turning from his view of the city.
Neph opened his mouth, remembered to whom he was speaking, and closed it. He hunched a little lower.
“I gave him a task he could thwart so that he might accomplish the one I desired,” the Godking said. Still staring over the city, he massaged his temples. “He found Kylar Stern. Our ka’karifer is in Caernarvon.”
He picked a note from his pocket. “Transmit this message to our agent there to give to Vi Sovari. She should be arriving any day.”