“I have made my decision,” he said.
He paused, staring hard at Gebrem and Tiyana in turn. He allowed the silence to stretch uncomfortably before he continued.
“The Fidi have come from afar to be among us. We will grant them that wish. They will abide here as our honored guests.”
That was what Gebrem wanted to hear, although he allowed none of his gratification to show. However, the Emperor’s next words soured that moment of satisfaction.
“You, Leba, saved the life of the Fidis’ sorcerer, this Kyroun. What Kyroun does – or does not do – is your responsibility.”
Again, Gebrem concealed his true reaction. He did not yet know the true extent of the Seer’s sorcerous power. And he did not know what he would – or could – do once he did learn.
“As you wish, Mesfin,” was all Gebrem could say.
CHAPTER TEN
Sehaye’s Message
1
Like pieces of a broken necklace, the Uloan Islands lay strewn across the sea west of Abengoni. In the time before the Storm Wars, the Uloans’ homeland had been a magnificent archipelago, a gem of the ocean that matched the splendors of Khambawe, the Jewel City of the mainland. There were islands large and small, bordered with beaches of white and gold sand, clothed in verdant mantles of semi-animate vegetation called mwiti, and crowned with cratered hills – remnants of volcanoes that had long been dormant, but never dead. Flowers grew in rampant profusion throughout the archipelago and the animal life, which was different from that of the mainland, was as docile as though it had been domesticated long before the first humans had set foot on the islands. Birds of brilliant plumage flew like jewels through forest and sky, singing songs of welcome.
The descendants of the original settlers from the mainland had built beautiful towns and cities of coral, tamed the islands’ animals and moving plants, and cultivated soil that was so fertile that farmers’ crops could grow almost unattended. One crop, sweetcane, grew only in the Uloas, and traders from the islands carried it to the mainland and eventually to other parts of the world, including Fiadol, even as the mainlanders traded crafts and kef.
For centuries, peace and prosperity had reigned in the Uloas, so much so that they became known far and wide as the “Happy Isles.” But the Uloans were not satisfied with their contentment for long, even though others who visited their islands always went away envious of the way of life the Uloans had developed.
Yet the Uloans, in turn, coveted the continent-spanning influence of the Matile Mala Empire. Embers of ambition for greater dominance eventually flared into flames of jealousy and hatred against the mainland, which continued to consider the islands part of the Empire and demanded tribute along with the trade between them. And those flames eventually grew into a conflagration that would consume not only the islands, but also the mainland, which had long since ceased to be the Motherland in the minds of the islanders.
The land from which their ancestors had come was now seen as an impediment to the Uloans’ overweening aspirations, an obstacle that needed to be removed. The Uloans’ dreams of a destiny of dominance over the mainland had been planted and patiently nurtured by the renegade god Legaba, who was using the Uloans as tools in his schemes against his fellow Jagasti, who had made him an outcast after an altercation that had shaken their Realms. The Uloans were willing accomplices of the Spider God, and the disastrous results of their subsequent course of action were as much their responsibility as Legaba’s.
The Storm Wars were the culmination of combined human and divine arrogance, and in the end arcane forces were unleashed that went beyond even the Jagastis’ control. And when the cataclysmic conflict called the Storm Wars finally ended, the Uloas were no longer idyllic dreamlands. Smaller islands, and parts of the larger ones, had been swallowed by the sea. The sleeping volcanoes had awakened, burying cities in mounds of lava and ash. The sands of the white and gold beaches turned red as the blood that had been spilled during the Storm Wars. And the island’s unique, semi-animate plant life, the mwiti, had become ... restless.
Few Uloans had survived the appalling carnage the Storm Wars had wrought. Those who still lived continued to maintain their loyalty to Legaba, even though the Spider God’s promises of empire had failed disastrously. For Legaba was all they had left, because they had long since abandoned the worship of the other Jagasti who had been revered by the Matile and Uloans alike. And as the decades after the Storm Wars became centuries, the Uloans had grown farther apart from their Mainland kin. Their customs changed, as did their speech and even their appearance, until the blood and cultural ties that once bound them disappeared almost completely.
And as the Uloans gradually rebuilt what they could of their broken realm, a singular purpose drove them onward as the centuries crawled forward. That goal was Retribution Time. One day, a day the Uloans believed would soon come even as the years dragged by, the mainlanders would pay for the destruction they wrought upon the islanders. Retribution Time ...
And now, Sehaye’s gede was on its way to the Shattered Isles.
2
On a dark, overcast morning, the gede washed up on the crimson beach of Jayaya, the largest remaining island of the Uloas. After the wave that carried it onto the shore retreated, the gede continued to slide across the incarnadine sand, hitching its gelatinous body forward like an inchworm and leaving a glistening, foul-smelling track of ooze behind it.
When it had travelled far enough away from the water to prevent another wave from taking it back to sea, the sorcerous construct stopped moving. And it waited to be picked up: its task completed,
