polished and carved. The flickering weirstone lights were also now few and far between. It didn’t matter; he needed no lights to see by. He had both animal and geist-vision to guide him.
The Fensena stopped at the place where all pretense at building ended, and the Ancient caverns began. The roots of the palace were down here. His ears flattened on his head as he looked up at an image carved above the entrance. That it stood open was yet another sign that the Emperor was losing his grip. This place had always been sealed as long as Vermillion had an Emperor to sit on the red throne high above. Now Kaleva had gone mad, the locks were all sprung—just as the Rossin had told the Fensena they would be.
The image above the passage, however, would have been enough to scare away any curious adventurers who came down this deep. The Murashev, the bright deadly female-shaped geistlord danced around a terrible figure, one that was very far from human. It towered over the entrance, clasping the edges of it with muscular tentacles. The Maker of Ways had been depicted in the very moment of tearing open the world to the Otherside. It was a cataclysmic event that the first Emperor had warned against. Many thought this was a depiction of the Break, but the Fensena knew that the damage this powerful geist would do was so great that that earlier event would seem but a bruise to this realm.
With his head lowered and his ears pinned flat, the coyote slunk under the terrifying arch and into the Ancient belly of Vermillion. It was a small circular room with a wide sandy floor, unmarked and unpaved by anything made by humans. Yet it smelled old and felt warm. The coyote slunk forward and sat down at the center of the room. In the human realm there were sacred places; some were venerated by the gods and their worshippers, some were home to Ancient legends, and still others were marked because of terrible things that had happened there.
This place was known to very few—but those few were very powerful. Where the Fensena now sat was the very spot where the Rossin had come into the human world. Here was where the first Emperor—who had also been the very first Deacon—had sealed the pact with the terrible geistlord and given him a toehold into this realm.
The Fensena looked up at the ceiling. He marveled at how the rock above was as smooth and polished as glass. Great heat had bloomed once in this room, and the rock still spoke of that.
The sand beneath the coyote was special too, and definitely not from Arkaym . . . it was from his home. A deep chill settled into the great coyote’s bones as he recalled the Otherside. It was either all burning or all freezing, and there was no rest to be found there. It was why all geists wanted to be on this side; in the human realm where there was choice and hope. He had no desire to return there—nor to see the geists of hunger and revenge come to the human realm. They would lay waste to it as they mindlessly had the Otherside. They feasted on the human souls that passed through that place, because that was all they had. The Fensena, and the mighty Rossin, had other plans.
The coyote smelled the arrival of the human and heard the racing of his heart in his ears long before he appeared. His golden eyes gleamed as he turned and looked over his brindle-furred shoulder at the coming of the Emperor of Arkaym.
In his own way, he was a handsome man, fresh skin and firm jaw, but the geistlord easily saw beyond that. Kaleva, the Prince that the leaders of Arkaym had called from far Delmaire to crown their Emperor, was a broken vase of a man. All the spirit had been snatched from him—but then he had never really been strong enough to hold so much. The coyote ran his tongue over his lip and swept it against his nose. He firmly believed that all the strength of that family had been placed in one female vessel. The Princes of Arkaym had not chosen well.
The Emperor was making a show of striding through the Ancient cavern, but the truth of the matter was, he had been summoned by the same geistlord that had caused the Fensena to be here.
However, he understood nothing—that was immediately apparent. He looked at the melted stonework and did not blink. When the Rossin had spared this puny human’s life at the breaking of the Mother Abbey, the Emperor had promised the great pard something from his palace . . . and he could not leave to continue his personal war until that pact was satisfied.
Kaleva in his smart white uniform reached the part of the tunnel where he could see the interior, and he visibly flinched when he saw the huge coyote crouched at the center of the room—after all he had not had good experiences with the geistlords in animal form. The Fensena’s mouth split open into a canine pant that was his best approximation of a human smile.
“You are tardy for a leader of men.” He couldn’t resist the jibe—nor the chance to make the Emperor jump with his ability to speak.
The Emperor took a step back, and glanced over his shoulder as if he expected some kind of puppet master to leap out of the darkness. The man really was a fool, and Derodak had left him barely holding on to sanity.
“You sent the dream?” Finally the Emperor found his own voice.
“No, it was not I,” the coyote yipped, getting to his feet and stretching. He was trying to convey his best impression of not caring. “It was he that we both call master.”
“I do not—”
The Fensena growled. He preferred to play the trickster, but when it was called for he could be as vicious as any geistlord in this realm or the Otherside. “He is the Rossin, the scion of the Imperial family. From him all strength comes. I believe when he stood before you in fire and dust you understood that . . .”
The Emperor swallowed hard and turned the color of parchment. The Fensena was completely sure that the image was flashing in his fractured mind. The Rossin did many things well, but chief among them was make an impression.
The coyote paced forward a step, lowering his head and fixing his golden eyes on Kaleva. “Enough of this posturing. You are here to fulfill your word and give my lord what he desires.”
The Emperor looked around at the blasted and empty room. “There are many things in my palace I could have given him, but there is nothing here that—”
The Fensena cut him off again in mid-stupidity. “You really do not see a thing do you? It is as if no story was ever read to you as a child.” He whiffed a breath out of his long snout, shaking himself as if foolishness were water and he could somehow dislodge it. He could not believe that this man had come to Arkaym to rule it yet had never taken the time to listen to the old tales and myths. Delmaire was a beautiful land, but it was not
Still, he had neither the time nor the compunction to waste his breath on telling it now. If the human was as blind as he appeared, then he would have to be shown. Instead, the coyote turned on his own tail and went to the center of the room. He could feel it humming through his bones, and setting his fur on end; the most Ancient of places and also a hiding spot.
Unlike the Rossin, the Fensena could at least come to this place, but even he could not do what the Emperor was required to do. To give him the hint the coyote began digging. His blunt but effective claws made the sand fly, and though the digging set his teeth on edge, he did not cease for many a minute.
Eventually, the Emperor became curious and drew nearer to observe what the geistlord was up to. The Fensena was panting, and his head was ringing, but he had done all he could. Together geistlord and Emperor stared down at what he had uncovered.
It was a doorway—or perhaps more accurately a hatch. The palace of Vermillion had more than its fair share of such hidey-holes, but this one was far more than that. Kaleva dropped to his knees and stared at the perfectly round silver hatch. “What do the words say?” he choked out.
That he could not read them was no surprise; they were in the language of the Ehtia, which had long been wiped from human memory. “Cursed be he that takes this up,” was a fairly decent translation, but one that the broken Emperor did not need to know.
“I do not have to answer your questions, boy,” he replied, a growl darkening his tone. “It is for you to do as you are told.”
To his credit the Emperor hesitated a moment. He stared at the coyote for a long time, his eyes darting this way and that as if he were having a conversation with himself. Maybe he was.
The Fensena’s hackles went up, and his lip pulled back from his teeth. “Do as you are bid—as you promised the Rossin when he spared your life—or feel the consequences!”
A line of sweat broke out on the Emperor’s forehead, but he leaned down and grabbed a tight hold of the handle. This was the moment where it could all go wrong. The Rossin’s blood did not flow in this Emperor, and the powerful cantrips Derodak had placed on the door could turn and grind Kaleva to dust. However, he was the
