feeds them, fills their heads with lies. He promises riches and glory to the legions and the governors are afraid of him.'
'They should be afraid of the king!' Lakhyri seized the acolyte's throat in his skeletal fingers, pinning him to the stone table, his face a hair's-breadth away. 'You should have dealt with this Ullsaard long before now. Your dithering puts everything at risk. I warned you of the consequences.'
The acolyte-Udaan squirmed in Lakhyri's grip, hands flapping uselessly at the slab.
'We have tried to get people close to Ullsaard, but it is difficult, his followers are remarkably loyal. I feel there is some truth that he is one of the Blood.'
Lakhyri released his hold and stepped back as if struck.
'That is not possible,' said the high priest. His expression creased into a deep scowl. 'If a child of the Blood has fallen through your fingers, it is just another example of your failure.'
'I cannot see how it is possible.' There was an edge of pleading in Udaan's voice. 'All of the bastards are accounted for. There are no loose ends.'
'Either this usurper is lying, or you have made a mistake. Which is it?'
Udaan's answer was a mute look of helplessness.
'You are clearly incapable of addressing this matter properly,' said Lakhyri. 'You leave me no choice but to intervene directly.'
'I… I thought you could not leave the temple?'
'That may be what you wish to believe, but you are wrong.'
Lakhyri leaned over the supine form of the acolyte and placed a hand on each side of the youth's head. The high priest chanted deep and slow, his incantation little more than an exhalation. Closing his eyes, Lakhyri spread his fingers across Udaan's puppet-face. Tissue stirred, turning into sinew and blood and fat and skin, the priest's bony fingertips sinking into the writhing flesh.
The carvings in Lakhyri's skin moved, altering their shapes and orientation, darkening, turning his skin into a web of white and black. The necromantic sigils swirled across Udaan's ravaged features, twisting muscle and nerve into their likeness. Darker and deeper the runes burned into Lakhyri's withered flesh, etching into bone and organ, cutting through every part of him.
With a hoarse cry, Lakhyri slumped, the light in his eyes gone.
Askh
Summer, 209th Year of Askh
I
The inner chambers of the Grand Precincts of the Brotherhood rang with a drawn-out scream. The wretched sound seemed to come from the rooms of Brother Udaan, and a crowd of concerned brethren converged quickly to investigate.
Upon opening the door, they found the silver-masked head of their order twitching upon the floor, the parchments from his desk scattered around him. Thinking he was having a fit, as sometimes Udaan was known to, one of the Brothers bent over his spasming form and attempted to lift off his mask to help him breathe.
Udaan's gloved hands snapped around the Brother's wrists and pushed them away. With an eerie strength, Udaan placed his feet flat on the tiled floor and pushed himself slowly upward, gracefully rising to his feet. The Brethren shuffled away nervously as Udaan straightened, releasing his grip on the Brother who had tried to help. The head of the Brotherhood flexed his neck and shoulders as if waking stiffened from sleep. He straightened his dishevelled robes and looked at his surroundings with eyes that glittered gold in the depths of his hood.
'Are you all right, Brother?' one of the attending Brethren asked.
'I am well,' Udaan replied. His voice was distorted by the mask, but to those who knew their master well, it seemed stretched and thin. 'Go back to your duties. I must visit the king.'
II
Udaan's body was comfortable. It was old and by no means athletic, but it was not laden with the weight of centuries. Lakhyri walked briskly through the corridors of the Grand Precincts, drawing on the memories of the body's former master to find the shortest route to the palace. He passed the long vaults where shelf upon shelf of the archives stretched into lamplit gloom; the closest records written on vellum and parchments; older testimonies scribed into wax and clay; right the way back through the ages to the darkest recesses where crude symbols were carved into bone.
The archives of the Brotherhood: hidden from all, containing the forgotten reigns of kings who ruled over lands swallowed by the seas; the names of priest-gods who had built shrines of solid gold; the wars of nations whose names had faded even from myth. Back through the centuries, the millennia, to the time when the eulanui had been corporeal and ruled the world, before the waning of their power, when the true Brotherhood had been founded as their immortal servants.
In these dim vaults could be found the ancient mysteries of men and the wisdom of the eulanui, for those who knew where to look. Lakhyri had no need of such reference. He was the embodiment of the Brotherhood, the undying foundation of its purpose. Not for more than two hundred years, as measured by the fleeting lives of normal men, had he stepped foot from outside the Temple.
That he was forced to do so now was a source of deep vexation.
His course took him down flights of stairs lit by flickering oil lamps, whose steps descended beneath the precincts to caves where the ailurs were created and the flaming fuel normal men called lava was concocted. And it was in those deep caverns that the Brotherhood toiled at its other duties, which none save the king and the highest members of the Brotherhood knew.
Striding along a colonnade, Lakhyri came out into the sun. He stopped as the light and warmth hit him. Even through the mask and the robes and the hood, he could feel the summer seeping into him. He looked up with golden eyes and saw a bright blue sky, spotted with wraiths of cloud, and almost directly overhead the gleaming orb of the sun itself.
A doubt entered his thoughts as he walked down the wide flight of steps at the front of the Grand Precints. Maybe he had waited too long to make his presence felt; not just a matter of days or weeks or years, but perhaps he would have been better intervening a generation ago.
Udaan's memories guided him to a small, unadorned side door in the duskward wing of the palaces. Lakhyri could feel the Brother's presence like a tiny niggling itch at the back of his mind, for Udaan was not gone, merely placed to one side. Spirit and life were one; to remove the spirit entirely was to bring the death of the body. Essence and vitality were entwined throughout the world, from the smallest insect to the mighty eulanui. It was this secret, the knowledge of spirit and life, which the eulanui had bestowed upon Lakhyri and others like him. All life was energy, moving or trapped, active or inert, but always there, never gone.
A rap on the door brought quick attention. Two Brothers opened the small portal and bowed their shaven heads to Lakhyri as he passed into the palace. The corridor within was narrow and straight, leading directly to the throne room of the king. Two hundred paces later, Lakhyri pushed through the curtains at the far end and stepped into the main hall.
The king sat on his throne with Nemtun, Erlaan, Adral of Nalanor and several other self-important officials. Unseen, Lakhyri stopped and listened to their deliberations.
'Ullsaard still does not have Maasra,' Adral was saying. 'If we perhaps took ship and defended there, we could force him to a negotiation.'
