The Grand Crusade

The crisp winter cold penetrated the walls of the villa that King Scrainwood of Oriosa had taken in Narriz. A chill radiated through the varied stones used in the building’s construction. But he felt no draft and, indeed, no winter winds howled outside. Darkness had come with preternatural silence, and Scrainwood could feel portent and power gathering.

Something had happened out there, something at once terrible and yet wonderful. The possibilities raced through his mind, each to be sorted, weighed, then used as a lever to move other bits and pieces of what was the world. All would be to his advantage. Eventually. Although, he ruefully admitted to himself, he and his nation were in a difficult position.

The leaders of the world’s key nations had been summoned to Narriz, the capital of Saporicia, to deal with the threat of conquest by Chytrine’s Aurolani hordes. While the Northern Empress’ troops had been thoroughly routed in far Okrannel, their assault south through Sebcia and Muroso had been relentless and powerful. Sebcia had fallen quickly, Muroso was in the process of falling. Sarengul, the urZrethi stronghold north of Oriosa, had likewise been invaded.

His nation looked to be the next in line for conquest, and King Augustus of Alcida had threatened to invade Oriosa from the south, so any battle against Chytrine would be fought well away from his own lands. He’d done that to force Scrainwood’s hand, and Oriosa’s king hated it.

But he had acquiesced for two reasons. The first was that he had long danced on the edge of a knife. Oriosa had been covertly neutral, providing a haven to Aurolani troops to stage raids in the south. Scrainwood could justify his actions a dozen different ways and never let himself think about the underlying one: he was terrified that Chytrine would have him murdered as she did his mother.

As bad as some might find me on the throne, my death would be worse.

Scrainwood reached up and adjusted the green leather half mask he wore. At one time he’d had high hopes for his eldest son, Erlestoke. He’d been strong— far stronger than his father, Scrainwood openly acknowledged—and a brilliant military tactician. If he were going to allow Oriosan troops to oppose Chytrine, he would have wanted Erlestoke to lead them.

Erlestoke, however, had long since had a falling-out with his father and had instead traveled north to Fortress Draconis. There he had risen to be the second-in-command. Fortress Draconis, unfortunately, had been the first victim of Chytrine’s renewed assault on the south, and Erlestoke had been slain in the fortress’ defense.

That left Scrainwood with his other son, Linchmere. His younger heir had been fat, soft, weak-willed, and infantile when it came to dealing with the realities of the world. Linchmere wanted to lead Oriosa’s troops against Chytrine— his first and last display of spine. When his father had denied that request, the prince had run off. Rumors abounded as to his whereabouts. Scrainwood hoped the most common was true: that his son had run off to fight in Muroso.There he will die and another problem will be solved.

His cold-blooded dismissal of his son surprised him, but only for a moment. He toyed with the signet ring on his right hand and with the merest of whispers invoked the magick on it. After his mother’s death he’d had it made to warn him of hostile intent in anyone near him, and in Yslin some of the sorcerers from Vilwan had refined and strengthened the magick.

He felt something akin to the prick of a pin as the spell sparked to life. He braced himself for the first hint of anger, for he had felt it often, especially in the councils of his peers. They hated him because they knew his nation would be the last to fall to Chytrine and yet, if they gave vent to their hatred, he would go over to Chytrine fully. And if he did that, then the might of Oriosa would just make their nations fall the faster.

But this time no warning of animosity came, and its absence pleased him. He knew his peers saw him as crafty and treacherous—they fully expected him to betray them to Chytrine because they did not think he could possibly oppose her. He was not strong enough to do so. They were not aware, however, that he could defy her and she could do nothing about it.

The second reason he had given in to King Augustus in the matter of Tarrant Hawkins—an ancient enemy now calling himself Kedyn’s Crow—was that Augustus had ceded to him the possession of a fragment of the DragonCrown. He’d quickly secreted it away, then had those who had done the hiding killed, so only he knew where it could be found. Without that portion of the Crown, Chytrine could never complete its reconstruction, denying her ultimate power.

His ring began to burn. Scrainwood’s gaze flicked left and right, then settled on the room’s far corner. Shadows had thickened there, and something moved within them. The movement frightened him more than the mild hostility he sensed through the ring because it was wholly unnatural.

“Who are you?” Scrainwood kept his voice even and tried to infuse it with a commanding tone. But he failed and knew it. The only thing that pleased him was that he and his visitor were the sole witnesses to that failure. “Show yourself.” A smallish humanoid shambled from the shadow, and that it could move at all surprised Scrainwood. The amount of damage that had been done to it fascinated him. Despite the cold, the man wore no shirt, allowing an easy study of the ghastly wounds on chest and hip, as if something had stabbed clean through him. The left arm hung limply and the shoulder, which had been mangled, showed signs of a hideous bite wound. Lastly the creature’s head lolled as if its neck had been broken.

But there should be no way it could move with those wounds. Fire ignited in dark eye sockets and revealed to Scrainwood a face he’d known from decades before. That face grinned, then the voice—the unmistakable voice—filled the room with scorn. “Scrainwood, Scrainwood, king on high, Oriosa’s liege, yet afraid to die.”

Gelid tendrilssqueezedthe king’s bowels, but he did not allow himself to double over. “Bosleigh Norrington.”

“Once, but now no more.” Thesullancirisketched a bow. His head flopped forward with a wet click of bone fragments. “ ‘Tis now Nefrai-laysh at yourdoor.“

Scrainwood let his nostrils flare. “Is your mistress so bold that she sends her

herald here to the Council of Kings?“

Nefrai-laysh grabbed a handful of his own blond hair and pulled his head up so he could look at Scrainwood. “Bolder is she, as you shall see.” He whirled and his limp left hand swept past the corner from where he had appeared. “She desires to be presented to thee.”

A golden light started as a spark in that dark corner, then expanded into an oval that grew as if fire had been applied to a parchment sheet. Scrainwood raised a hand to shade his eyes from the brightness, but a heartbeat later the

light had died.

Striding from the corner came a striking woman, tall and strong, with a cascade of golden hair that fell in ringlets well past her shoulders. She wore white clothes and furred boots—very much the sort of attire Scrainwood would have supposed to be utilitarian in her realm, up to and including the cloak, furred hat, and soft white scarf covering the lower half of her face.

It occurred to Scrainwood that Chytrine was powerful enough, and possessed of such charisma, that she might be what Princess Alexia of Okrannel would become in her later years. But he knew, almost instantly, that this judgment was wrong because the swirls of blue-green color in Chytrine’s eyes bespoke a malevolence that he did not think Alexia could contain.

Alexia could hate hotly, but never coldly and inhumanly like this.

Chytrine paused a half-dozen paces before him and the ring spiked pain up his arm. Scrainwood staggered at the sensation. His knees buckled and a quick

kick in the ass by Nefrai-laysh drove him onto the floor. Scrainwood snarled, but refused to cry out.

Chytrine glanced past him at her herald. “Do not treat so valuable an ally thus.” She gestured casually and something behind Scrainwood crashed to the floor. Given the clatter that followed, he assumed thesullancirihad been cast into the small side table that held a silver platter with bread and cheese—a late repast Scrainwood had not touched.

The Northern Empress smiled down at him as she drew off kid gloves as white as the delicate flesh they had sheathed. “Finally we meet, King Scrainwood. You have been a valuable ally, though your continued worth is in question.”

Her words came coolly, but with an edge, and Scrainwood would have been moved to terror, save that his ring did not convey a corresponding sense of hostility. “I do not know what I have done to anger you.”

A rustle and clatter behind him suggested that Nefrai-laysh had crawled to his feet. “I have come from Vael, on a mission I did fail. But there, I did hear, a Crown fragment you have near.”

“Lies.”

Before his denial echoed from the walls, Chytrine lashed him with her gloves. The blow stung a bit, but not as much as it could have, for his mask took the brunt of it. “There is no need for you to lie, King Scrainwood. I am not a stupid woman. You sought the stone, you have it safe, and I am grateful you managed to wrest it from the thieves who removed it from Fortress Draconis. You have saved me much time in this endeavor. Moreover, you can and will claim that you had no way to let me know you had it, since I have always communicated with you and have never given you a means to reach me. You would hold yourself blameless, and I cannot easily refute that claim.”

Scrainwood’s left hand rose to his cheek. “Why did you strike me?” She peeled the scarf back to grace him with a frigid smile. “Because I can. Because you are powerless to stop me, and because you need to acknowledge the hopelessness of your situation. Though my aide is broken, it would be nothing for him to pop your head from your body as if it were a grape from a stem.”

The king started to protest, but Nefrai-laysh’s right hand grabbed him by the back of the neck and squeezed. Not too hard, but none too gently, either—and it was enough to choke Scrainwood’s words into a squawk. He began to shake and his bladder let loose, flooding warmth down his thighs.

Chytrine watched him for a moment, then wrinkled her nose. “Despite your treachery, Scrainwood, I have chosen not to punish you. I shall instead reward you beyond your wildest dreams.”

He glanced up at her. “And how will you do that?”

“Very simply, Highness. I shall make you one of mysullanciri” The shiver that shook him almost let him slip from Nefrai-laysh’s grasp. “You would do that in exchange for the fragment?”

“No, no, you mistake me. I said I am going to reward you. Iamgoing to make

you into asullanciri. If you desire the change, you will be rewarded handsomely. If you do not, the process and results will be more painful.“

“You can change me against my will?”

She laughed, and he did not find the sound completely without warmth. “I am able to control dragons against their will. The Vilwanese and other mages may make much of needing a person’s consent to perform magick, but this is a matter of convenience. Overcoming the will is not simple, but less complex than reanimating and motivating something which is dead. I could deal with you that way as well, but you would not be nearly as useful.”

Chytrine’s smile grew as she returned to his side and squatted. “Besides, you have known all along I want only one thing: domination. And since you did not oppose me, I have been able to get this far. In my world, you shall be even greater than you are now. Indeed, the king of mysullanciriis from your nation. I am grateful to you, so the power I give you will be incredible.”

Something rang false to Scrainwood. “The Norrington of prophecy is also of my nation. He who will be your doom.”

Chytrine snorted a laugh, then stood again. “The vaunted Norrington is no longer a problem. Now, you do wish to be on the winning side, don’t you? You wish to see those who hold you in contempt brought low? As my agent, you will be crucial in making that happen, King Scrainwood. The power I will give you— the information I will give you—will turn them all on each other and shatter their alliance. My victory will be your victory.”

The Oriosan monarch thought for a heartbeat, then another. He had no heirs. He had a realm that would always be hated whether Chytrine won or lost. Without the Norrington, she would not lose, and power would flow to him, power that would allow him to punish all those who hated him.

Scrainwood shifted his shoulders, slipping his neck from Nefrai-laysh’s grip. He sat upright. “I am, as always I have been, your creature, Most High Empress. Work your will on me, so I may best serve our cause.”

“Very well, Scrainwood of Oriosa.” The Aurolani Empress nodded solemnly and reached out to caress his cheek with cold fingers. “It shall be done.”

At the touch of her flesh to his, Scrainwood knew again every agony he had forgotten and those he would suffer in the future. He burned and froze, felt the devouring nibbles of maggots, the razored stabs of swords and withering glances, and the soul-wrenching torsion of knowing that, in the end, he would be betrayed and everything would be for naught.

But even as all that swirled through him, he did feel a pleasure. The fear that had balanced him, that had kept him playing Chytrine off against the rest of the world—the fear of the fate that had taken his mother—slipped through his fingers as fluidly as her blood had. And, in its absence, he was reborn a Dark Lancer.