**chapter one**
“I’m going to be Haelyn; Aedan will be my brother, Roele; and you, Derwyn, will be the Black Prince, Raesene,” announced Michael in a tone that brooked no argument. But he got one anyway.
‘I don’t want to be Raesene! Why can’t I be Roele?”
Lord Derwyn whined petulantly.
“Because you are not of the royal house,” said Michael in a tone of lofty disdain.
“Well, neither is Aedan,” Derwyn protested, unconvinced by this argument. “Besides, my father is an archduke, while his is just a viscount, so I outrank him.”
“Nevertheless, Aedan is my standardbearer and his father is the lord high chamberlain,” said Michael.
“As such, despite his rank, he is closest to the royal house.”
“Well, if I cannot be Roele, then I cannot be Raesene, either,” Derwyn insisted. “Raesene was Roele’s halfbrother, so he was also of the royal house.”
Michael neatly sidestepped this piece of logic.
“When Raesene gave his allegiance to Azrai, he betrayed the royal house and was thereby disinherited. Besides, I am heir to the imperial throne,” he added, the color rising to his cheeks, “so I can make anyone anything I want them to be!”
Aedan stepped in to play the diplomat before a minor court scandal erupted. “Why not let me take the part of the Black Prince, Your Highness? I always play Roele, and this would give me the opportunity to do something different for a change. I would enjoy that.”
Michael did not want to give in too easily. He tossed his thick, dark hair and frowned, making a great show of considering the matter, then finally relented. “Oh, very well then, since you request it, Aedan, you can be Raesene. Derwyn can be my brother, Roele, and Caelan can be Traederic, the standardbearer.”
He quickly assigned roles to all the other boys, and they made ready to begin the battle. For Aedan, this was sheer torture. At eighteen, armed with a wooden sword and shield, he felt absolutely ridiculous playing with a group of children aged from six to thirteen. However, his duty was to serve his prince, and if his prince wanted to play war, then war it was.
They were playing the Battle of Mount Deismaar, yet again. It was Michael’s favorite game, and he
stuck to it with a dogged persistence only a twelve year-old could maintain. He never seemed to tire of it. As usual, Michael took the part of Haelyn, champion of Anduiras. It was just like him to pick Haelyn, Aedan thought. It gave him the chance to die spectacularly and become a god.
Every child in the empire knew the story by heart.
Those of noble blood had learned it from their tutors, while commoners heard it from the bards, who sang it as an epic ballad called “The Legacy of Kings.”
There were several slightly different versions of the ballad, each divided into four main parts, but in all of them, the story was essentially the same. It was the history of the formation of the empire, and like most children of the nobility, Aedan had been taught it early, when he was only six years old.
It began with “The Six Tribes,” the ancestors of the humans now settled in Cerilia. The story told how five of the tribes came on a mass exodus from the embattled southern continent of Aduria. The Andu, from whom the modern Anuireans were descended, took their name from their god Anduiras, the deity of nobility and war. The Rjuven had venerated Reynir, the god of woods and streams. The Brechts had worshiped Brenna, the goddess of commerce and fortune, while the Vos had followed Vorynn, the moon lord, who was the god of magic. The last of the five Adurian tribes, the Masetians, had been devoted to Masela, the goddess of the seas. These seagoing traders, whose swift, triangular-sailed sloops had once plied the Adurian coasts, had not survived as a discrete culture in the modern empire, though remnants of Masetian influence could still be found in the Khinasi lands.
The sixth tribe were the Basai, the ancestors of the people now known as the Khinasi, whose temples were dedicated to Basaia, the goddess of the sun.
They were a dark-skinned, exotic-looking people who had crossed the storm-tossed Sea of Dragons from their homeland of Djapar to settle in the southeastern region of Cerilia. Their origins were shrouded in the occult mysteries of their folklore, but it was believed that they had come from the same stock as the Masetians, as there were many similarities between their cultures and, like the Adurians, they had worshiped the old gods, though each tribe had its favored deity among the pantheon.
The Adurian tribes had fled from their war-torn ancestral lands to escape subjugation by their neighbors, who were followers of Azrai, lord of darkness.
Their flight took them to Cerilia, across the land bridge that once existed where the Straits of Aerele now flowed.
Before the Six Tribes came, there had been no human presence in Cerilia.
However, there were other races who had claimed the land for their own.
Chief among them were the elves, who called themselves the Sidhelien.
Their civilization was ancient and advanced, but they were also capable of fearsome savagery from centuries of competing with the feral humanoids who shared their land. They had carved out their kingdom from territories overrun by goblins, gnolls, and ogres, and in its days of glory, the Elven Court was said to have surpassed in power and pageantry even the Imperial Court of Anuire.
Of the remaining two races living in Cerilia, the dwarves were the most insular. A strong, taciturn,
enduring people, they organized their kingdoms around clans, with each clan leader swearing fealty to the dwarven king. Expert miners and skilled fighters, they seldom ventured from their mountain strongholds and lived in peaceful coexistence with
