And in the end, they would triumph, because of their unchanging nature. Because in all the millennia of their existence, they had never forgotten that they had one goal, and one goal only.
The utter destruction of all who walked in the Light.
—«♦«♦»♦»—
UPON her Rising—for though adult Endarkened did not sleep, they regularly entered a sort of deep trance— Queen Savilla summoned her slaves, and as they groomed her, she heard, as was her custom, the Petitions of the Grooming Chamber. These were usually—though not always—trivial matters of a personal nature, suited to the surroundings.
But today, though she was careful to give no sign of it to her courtiers and attendants, her thoughts were not upon the endless details of her Court, but elsewhere, for the news from the Bright World was good.
Things were going especially well in Armethalieh. Conditions were deteriorating in the City, even as her human agent moved upward in influence and position, and soon—very soon, as the Endarkened reckoned things—he would be in a position to influence, if not dictate, policy on the High Council itself. Then she could move on to the next step in her plans: to bring the Golden City over to the Endarkened side, its resources intact, its people ripe to feed the Endarkened need for ever more power.
Savilla smiled inwardly. In a thousand generations of the Endarkened, such an audacious coup had never been attempted. The single largest enclave of humans in the land; an inexhaustible supply of power, slaves, and food—allying itself with the Endarkened willingly because they would have convinced themselves that all the rest of the Brightworlders were their implacable foes and only the Endarkened—the poor, misunderstood, Endarkened!— could save them.
With Armethalieh as their vassal, the Endarkened would be invincible. And all it would require would be the subjugation of the High Council—a handful of foolish humans. The High Council had turned everyone else in the Golden City into witless sheep long ago. The Armethaliehans would do whatever their Mage-masters told them to, and ask no questions.
Once the business of the Grooming Chamber had been dealt with, Savilla dismissed her attendants and headed for her Stone Garden, a lovely private monument to her past triumphs in the Endarkened’s greatest art, that of torture. The Stone Garden belonged to her alone, and her subjects knew that she was never to be disturbed there.
But today was different.
Prince Zyperis stood at the gateway to the garden, obviously waiting for her.
“I wondered if I might walk with you today,” he said deferentially, furling his great scarlet wings tight to his body submissively.
“Of course,” Savilla said graciously. So her son and lover wanted something, did he? She was not entirely displeased. It was the way of their kind. He was a promising youngster. But the greater the promise, the greater the threat.
She offered him her arm. He took it, and the two of them passed into the garden. For a while Zyperis made idle conversation, speaking with knowledgeable pleasure about the history of her trophies, for he had been present at the collection of some of them.
Within each colored crystal, Savilla had trapped some moment of agony of one of her special victims, so that she could treasure it forever. As she and Zyperis strolled along the paths where nothing grew, she would stop occasionally to waken a stone into life with a touch of her power.
—Here, the death of the last of the bearwards. They had been formidable enemies to many of Uralesse’s slave-races; strong as giants, and utterly committed to the Light. Their inroads had weakened Uralesse to the point where it had been possible for her to destroy him and take the Shadow Throne. Yet flay them of their bearskins, strip them of their magic, and they were as weak and vulnerable as any human. She had killed his mate and his cubs before his eyes, savoring their blended agony…
—There, the death of a nest of firesprites. They were difficult to torture; it had required all her creativity. But water, or better yet
The minds and souls represented here were long expended, gone to fuel her magic. But the trophies of her past triumphs remained.
Zyperis was silent for some time, conscious of the honor of being invited into Savilla’s private garden. But at last, as she had known he would, he raised the true reason for his visit.
“How goes the war, my sweet Crown of Pain? I know the destruction of the Barrier was only the merest and most minor of setbacks, but since the moment when it fell, you have told me nothing,” he said, pouting prettily. “I languish in ignorance that only you can remove.”
“You will be pleased,” Savilla said, allowing her long ivory fangs to gleam in a smile of pleasure. “Our agent in Armethalieh rises higher in the confidence of the Arch-Mage, and will soon gain a seat on the High Council itself. From there it should be a simple task for him to convince Lycaelon and the rest that we are not the true enemy, and that someone else—it hardly matters who!—has misled them all these centuries for his own fell purposes. I suspect
