rescued Innarlith and her people from the vile clutches of the inhuman Pristoleph.”
Another thunderous ovation, but when Marek scanned the faces of the senators, he saw no few scowls among the dead-eyed grins.
“I come here today to deliver a message of a personal nature,” Meykhati went on, speaking the words Marek had recited to him that morning. If any of the senators, many of whom had known Meykhati for decades, detected any wavering in his sincerity, none would question it. “With a heavy heart, but a firm dedication to a greater purpose, I formally withdraw my name from your consideration to serve as the next Ransar of Innarlith.”
What followed was a dead-pan murmuring no more sincere than Meykhati’s statement. The murmurs were replaced by applause when Meykhati bowed to the room and took a largely ceremonial step backwardbut he didn’t leave the dais.
Aikiko stepped forward even as Meykhati stepped back, and raised her hand, silencing the assembly.
“My fellow senators, hear me,” she said. “I stand before you, like Meykhati, reluctant to set myself above any of you. I call for a new way. Let us set aside the post of ransar and let the senate itself hold executive power. Let us lead by consensus, and by the communal will of the aristocracy!”
That was met with applause as well, though many of the senators appeared confused. That made Marek smile. They were afraid of the reality of the power they told each other they already had.
“An idea worth debating further,” Asheru called out as the din once more died down. “But I offer another. There is one among us whothough compared with those of us born and raised within her walls is something of a newcomer to Innarlithhas time and again proven not only his worth but his loyalty. His steadfast determination and progressive ideas have brought a new economy to Innarlith and cowed the rise of a worker’s armyor have we forgotten those dark days when foreign agitators appealed to the baser instincts of the Third Quarter?”
Shouts of “No! No!” and hisses followed, and Marek hid a chuckle with a hand to his mouth. After all, he was the foreign aggitator they so feared.
“There is one man who, I believe, should be granted the post of Ransar of Innarlith, with all the duties and privileges so implied,” Asheru went on, “and that man is Marek Rymiit.”
Marek didn’t flinch at the heartbeat of silence that weighed so heavily over the room before the senators broke into another round of applause. Maybe they knew what was happening to them after all, even if they couldn’t voice it or give it a name. They certainly couldn’t stop it.
Marek shook his head and waved his hands and said, “Alas, my dear, dear friends, I must of course decline that most singular of honors. My duties as khazark of the enclave, and the diplomatic status that post confers, would of course make it impossible for me to serve as your ransar. I do, however, offer my services to the next ransar, to the senate, and to the people of the fine city-state of Innarlith, so that I might advise and help in any way.”
A less enthusiastic round of applause followed, and Marek, ever taking the pulse of those around him, knew that the senators were tiring of speeches. Though more was said, Marek pressured in ways both magical and mundane to move the proceedings along, once more without a vote, and when the congress was finally drawn to a close, he took a deep breath and tried not to feel as though he’d made a narrow escape.
The junior senators made their way out of the chamber first, and Marek was held back by a veritable mob of well-wishers and sycophants, led by Asheru. They made their way slowly along the aisle, Marek telling them all what they wanted to hear, and the mob returning the favor threefold. Only when they passed through the outer doors did the senators disperse, wandering off in groups of half a dozen or less.
When he’d entered there had been a pair of black firedrakes guarding the doorsfully a third of the remaining creatures after Pristoleph’s wemics, and so long without a ransar to follow, had killed or scattered the bulk of them. But they were gone.
Marek took a deep breath of fresh air and fought back a nettling feelingthe inescapable sensation that he was being watched. His attention was drawn to one of the many reflecting pools that dotted the gardens surrounding the Chamber of Law and Civility.
A bird unlike any he’d ever seen stood ankle-deep in the thin layer of water. A sort of crane, Marek guessed. It stood on legs like twigs, a foot and a half tall. Its long, sinuous neck was twice that length, and its red-accented head was tipped by a needle-like beak. The bird’s eyes found Marek’s and the Thayan detected a sparkle of intelligence that should not have been there.
He looked behind him, then to one side, and began to cast a spell that would spirit him away to the safety of the enclave. A wemic burst from a concealing hedgerow and leveled a spear at Aikiko, who let rip a shrill, girlish scream unbefitting of a senator.
Marek opened his mouth and uttered only the first syllable of his spell when a kick to his head shook him, blew the spell from his mind and left the casting ruined, and staggered him.
He turned as quickly as his considerable girth would allow and had just barely enough time to take in the creature that stood behind him. It was as though the crane had somehow melded with a man. Its head was the same red-marked, beaked head of a bird, the eyes sparkling with more than intelligence. Marek saw a fierce humor there, and a sort of gloating that made his face flush. The rest of the creature’s body was humanwings replaced with long, graceful arms, the sticklike legs fuller and too long for a normal man. One of those legs seemed to twitch, the bird-man leaped a foot into the air, and the leg swept around. The creature’s foot smashed into Marek’s right temple and darkness enveloped him as he thought, The Shou…?
76
17 Eleasias, the Year ofLightning Storms (1374 DR) The Palace of Many Spires, Innarlith
Though Pristoleph disliked the Palace of Many Spires, he understood the significance of conducting the audience to follow in the ransar’s traditional seat. He’d also had the conspirators housed in the dungeons below the palace, so it was convenient for all present to meet there, and it didn’t hurt to show the various foreign dignitaries that he was the palace’sand hence the city’srightful lord.
He’d hand-picked the dungeon guards himself, pulling the chief jailer from the upper ranks of the city watch. The watch commander had lost his entire familya wife and three adult daughterswhen the black firedrakes tore indiscriminately through his Third Quarter neighborhood in search of Pristoleph. Though the man might have at least partially blamed the ransar for that turn of events, when he found that his wife and daughters had been animated and enslaved as zombie workers in a tannery, his outrage brought him to Pristoleph’s side.
It was that man who opened the side door to the audience chamber and scowled at each of the seven conspirators as they were escorted into the room in shackles. Rymiit, Kurtsson, and Asheru were gagged to prevent them from casting spells. Nyla, Sitre, Aikiko, and Meykhati looked thin, pale, and utterly beaten from their short stay in the dungeon. All seven wore the drab, tattered shifts of prisoners, and they reeked of their own filth. They looked at Pristoleph with varying degrees of hatred, anger, fear, and desperation. He ignored them all, save the Thayan.
If Marek Rymiit had been able to move his hands or speak, he would surely have burned the palace down, taking even his co-conspirators into the inferno. The anger that smoldered in the rotund, haggard foreigner came off him in waves not unlike the heat that Pristoleph’s genasi blood produced when he was in a similar state. Pristoleph gave the Thayan a smug curl of his lipsthe only honor he’d offer the Red Wizard that day or ever again. The Thayan’s eyes only smoldered more.
Behind the line of prisoners, sitting in orderly rows and dressed in their very finest, were the remaining senators, all cowed and quiet, all studiously examining the floor tiles or ceiling beams rather than catch the eyes of their former leaders.
“Before we begin, I would like to introduce to the gathered senators our noble visitors from abroad, here to observe Innarlith in the twilight of its lowest point and the dawn of its rebirth,” Pristoleph said from the raised dais. He stood next to an ornamental throne, but never felt right sitting in it. He gestured to the people who sat in the front row, behind the prisoners. “May I present Miss Ran Ai Yu and Master Lau Cheung Fen of Shou Lung” the two celestials, the male Pristoleph had come to know as a hengeyokai, stood and bowed”Warden of the Port Ayesunder Truesilver of Cormyr” who nodded but didn’t stand”and Hrothgar Deepcarver of the Great Rift.”
