including the humans they dominated, called it glorious.
They brought magic as a way of life, they sprinkled it across the planet like seed.
They stalked the night as absolute monarchs and created a harsh human oligarchy to serve them wherever and whenever the light of the Realized sun struck too harshly for them to endure. A dynasty of kings, endowed with dark powers, a bloodline of human sorcerers with whom they mated and shared their heritage to the extent that such heritage could ever be shared with ordinary human stock.
Most of the Dark Kings were insane.
It took the enemies of the dwenda all of those seven thousand years to learn the new rules to master the new magic, to bend it to their will as the dwenda so long ago already had.
Seven thousand years to bring the Kiriath through the hidden gates in the bowels of the Earth, to summon a science and a people equal to the eldritch folk, to meet them in battle, to throw down their cities into marsh and ruin, to scatter their armies and their human adherents. To bring back a measure of sanity to the world.
To defeat the Last of the Dark Kings.
The helmsman fell silent.
I thought Archeth began, then shook her head. Doesn t matter.
But the pinched wick of suspicion still smoked in her head. There were a lot of stories about how and why her people had arrived in the world, most of them told by humans ignorant of anything resembling actual facts. Come to that, even the legends the Kiriath themselves told about the Advent were erratic and hard to credit. But Angfal, who hung on her study wall like so much alien iron viscera and bulbous-limbed swelling, had always been scornful.
The Kiriath barely survived the voyage through the quick paths on their way here, he told her one fractious night as she tried to crowbar some useful answers out of him. They did not choose to come here, Archeth, despite anything the Chronicles might claim to the contrary. They were shipwrecked here, and if they stayed it wasn t because they liked the scenery. It was because they were afraid that the return would break them.
Some of this she put down to bitterness the resentment Angfal felt at being left behind. But still, she thought Anasharal s version rang slightly overwrought.
The Emperor had taken a seat on one of the granite benches near the balcony, back to the glare of the sun. His face was in shadow, richly oiled hair hanging forward to screen his features, but she read the impatience in how he was sprawled, the sideways tilt of his head. She wondered if she d gotten in the way of a visit to the harem if commanding the executions had left him with the itching need to fuck something.
He brushed invisible dust from his lap.
You, uh, plan to actually tell us something about this Last Dark King? His name, for instance? Who he was, what he did? How any of this has anything to do with the here-and-now?
It is better not to name him, said the Helmsman somberly. Better not to utter those syllables here.
Archeth rolled her eyes.
Yes we re not easily shocked around here, said Jhiral. Feel free.
Let us call him simply the Ilwrack Changeling, since it was that Aldrain clan who raised him in the Gray Places. Taken from a humble home on the marsh for the dark glimmer the dwenda prize so much in humans, brought up an Aldrain warrior, and ultimately given command of a dwenda legion, he rose to
You know Jhiral was showing signs of real irritation now. I ve heard this humble-beginnings crap a few times before, Helmsman. Funny how no one can ever actually point to a living example, isn t it? Funny how in the end they re all legendary and dead.
Anasharal paused, delicately. Oh, the Ilwrack Changeling is not dead, Your Imperial Radiance. Far from it.
Silence. Maybe it was the slow afternoon cooldown and the breeze blowing in from the river, but Archeth felt a tiny shiver creep across her shoulder blades. She glanced at Jhiral, who sighed heavily and examined his manicure. She read the little display as false. Emperor or not, Jhiral had grown up on this kind of tale like any other kid. His voice, when he spoke, could not quite shroud a tiny, chained tension.
And what is that supposed to mean, exactly?
Exactly what it says, the Helmsman said blandly.
When the Kiriath destroyed Hannais M hen in the last stages of the Twilight war, the Ilwrack Changeling was at the head of the Aldrain forces and their human allies. But he was betrayed some say by a lover, others claim it was a diplomatic deceit of the Kiriath. Perhaps, in the end, it was both. At any rate, when he discovered the betrayal, it s said he fell into a paroxysm of rage and grief, and was taken for dead. The dwenda forces fell back without his body, and vanished into the Gray Places.
But he wasn't dead. Jhiral said, leaning forward a little despite himself.
No. The dwenda were in disarray, they apparently misunderstood the situation. But a small group of his human supporters carried the body away and entombed him on an islet in the northern ocean.
The Hironish isles?
Farther west and north than the Hironish. But in any case, the island does not appear on your maps.
Jhiral grunted. Convenient.
The story goes that the Changeling s Aldrain lover came later, in secret, to the tomb, but could not wake him. So he
He? The Emperor s lip curled. He?
Or she, Anasharal amended. The story is not clear on exact identity, only that it was a member of the Ilwrack clan. In any case, this lover cast an enchantment around the whole island, sweeping it up into the margin of the Aldrain marches. But the magic was hurried and incomplete, and it s said the island emerges from time to time and stands solid again in the ocean, though lit with witch-light and sometimes for only moments at a time.
I've read about this, Archeth said slowly. The Ghost Isle, the Chain s Last Link.
Jhiral looked at her. You have?
Yes, it s a legend of the Hironish peoples, but there are some versions in Trelayne as well. Mariner tales an uncharted island beyond the last in the Hironish Chain; ships sight it in the midst of storms, witch-lit in blue, there one moment, gone the next. She gestured helplessly. It s a legend, you know. I always assumed
Quite. The Emperor turned his gaze back to the Helmsman. Are you trying to tell me we should be expecting a visit from this undead Changeling?
You ve had some trouble with the Aldrain recently, have you not?
Archeth and the Emperor swapped a look. The dwenda incursion at Ennishmin was a closely guarded secret. Outside of those who d actually been there, only Jhiral and a tiny cabal of trusted court advisers and men- at-arms had been informed of the events. Two full legions of imperial levy now sat on the borders of the marshland between Pranderghast and Beksanara, ostensibly as a bar to raiding parties from the League territories to the north and west. The commander of the garrison at Khartaghnal had been apprised of what they were really watching for, but beyond that
Of course, the creep of rumor was unavoidable. Faileh Rakan might have died in the skirmish at Beksanara, but a number of his men did not. The local population was decimated, but not wiped out. And among the survivors, some, even paid off and sworn to secrecy, even threatened with dire penalties even Throne Eternal veterans would drink and yarn and recall, and let loose dark hints and drunken fragments of truth.
The dwenda were driven back, Archeth said carefully.
Indeed. But, you see, the legend says that the Ilwrack Changeling will return when his adoptive people s need is greatest; more exactly, when they have been thrown back in battle from their heart s ancestral desire, and are once more in disarray . That s a more or less direct quote from the original Naom legend. See the corollary?
Jhiral nodded. Yes. What you think we should do about it is a little less clear, though. A preemptive assault on this sporadically manifesting island, perhaps?
That s clearly not possible. The Helmsman s tone was almost prim. I am charged with offering pragmatic solutions to your difficulties.
Not so far. Archeth found some of her Emperor s impatience seeping into her own mood. If the Ghost Isle is inaccessible then
You did not let me finish the tale, daughter of Flaradnam.
