Talion Revenant Read online

  I lifted the boxes down from atop a cask of tarnished silver coins and, despite the gold latticework caging the boxes themselves, their relative lightness surprised me. I plucked a gold spoon from a nearby pile of loot and carefully sprang the latch on one box with it. As I forced the lock a needle shot out and would have skewered my hand had I not taken my precaution. From the look of the needle, it once had been covered with poison.

  The first box held a crown. The cloth part of it long ago fell to dust, but the jewels still sparkled and the intricate designs worked on the golden ribs and spires were still distinct. The other box, also with a poison needle in the lock, held another crown. I studied both crowns and did my best to memorize every detail I could.

  I walked to as far back in the room as I could get and saw a doorway in the southernmost wall. I knew it stood well beyond the Star's foundation and guessed it extended below the Archers' quarters in the Citadel. I searched behind two piles of gold coins and located another set of runes and a door wheel in the floor. I doused the lights and opened the stone door.

  The door opened into a narrow passage, which I followed blindly south for a considerable distance. It sloped down, heading toward the Tal River. At its terminus the air was quite moist and I found a trapdoor leading up. I could not open it but I felt fairly certain it opened into the grove of apple trees overlooking the Talions' burial field.

  I retraced my steps and thought about what I would do with the information I had learned. It seemed obvious to me that no one knew of this treasure trove and what it contained. I saw nothing to indicate it had ever been visited since the collapse of the Shattered Empire, but I still had a hard time believing the Masters since they did not at least know about it.

  But, I asked myself, if they didn't know anything about it, was it up to me to tell them about it? There might have been a reason the treasure was buried, and if I let the fact slip that I knew of it, I might ruin some careful plan laid down by a Master a thousand years ago.

  I decided, as I stalked past barrels of treasure, to study the problem and try to learn where all the treasure had come from. I would start by learning anything and everything I could about the Darkmaze, and the collapse of the Shattered Empire. If the Master at that time wanted knowledge of this treasure hidden, I'd certainly see the signs when my study became difficult. And if I learned something different, I could tell the Master about this store.

  I climbed up the rope ladder hanging down from the staging room I'd entered through. I smiled at the assembled, dour-faced Sixteens. My smile died when I met the reproving gaze of Lord Hansur.

  "They thought you were dead. They could not seem to find you."

  I smiled. "I'm sorry. I thought I wasn't supposed to be found."

  Lord Hansur stared at the Sixteen from Hamis. "That is something they, apparently, forgot."

  The library at Talianna sat in the middle floor of the Star, right below the observatory level. Small rooms, often used for instruction, were located along the north and south walls. The center of the Star contained the stacks of bound and unbound manuscripts that made up the library. The west wall had desks for studying and several Services librarians scurried about between them and the stacks to find books and shelve them.

  The books in the library were mostly histories, both national and personal. There was a vast section of journals kept by Talions through the ages, but they were written in High Tal and my command of that tongue, even after three years, was not very good. The national histories were written in the common dialect, and allowing for the age of the text, were nearly understandable. I found a history of Talianna itself, begun after the Empire was shattered, written in common, and used that history for my starting point.

  I visited the library in the free hour after the midday meal. I read as much as I could but made no notes because I did not want my work discovered. I trusted my memory enough to carry important details around, and I found the research exciting enough to make memorization easy.

  The Talianna history hinted at things that took place during the fall of the Empire, and gave me a fair idea what the treasure was, but did nothing to explain how it got where it now lay. Relatively swift, in comparison to the life span of nations, and very bloody, the Shattering touched the lives of every man, woman, and child in the Empire. The very existence of ulbands pointed out that many people refused to acknowledge the new order, and many leaders lost their positions and lives amid savage civil wars, but nowhere was the collapse as savage, or as shrouded in mystery, as in the fall of the Emperor himself.

  The Empire's central problem developed well before Kiritan assumed the throne. The provinces had long sought independence, but the Emperors had countered this desire by granting more privileges and powers to the individual provincial rulers, dropping their tax rates and still providing protection in the form of Talions. These concessions decentralized the government and reduced the Emperor into a figure to be respected, and a force that could be called upon in an emergency, but little else. This worked well to preserve the Empire's integrity, but caused trouble in the provinces. By wielding power in a tyrannical manner, some provincial rulers created unrest in their own provinces and sowed the seeds that would make their families ul during the Shattering.

  Kiritan the Mad ascended to the throne upon the death of his father. He hated the idea of an Empire where he was nothing more than a figurehead. He tightened his grip on the reins of power and the provincial nobles, in turn, were forced to tighten their control of the provinces. This heightened the strife in the provinces, so the minor nobles and other mistreated people quickly rebelled. The Mountain Warlords declared independence first and, in their shadow, Azealtia, Hanrith, and the Free States of Aziz revolted.

  Kiritan acted immediately. He sent Imperial troops east from what was then the capital—the present-day Imperiana—through Jania, toward the mountains. The Janians protested and fought the Imperial troops. The eastern lords of Jania revolted and formed Ealla. Instantly Hamis and the other nations around the Runt Sea broke with the Empire.

  This open eastern revolt pulled troops from the west, so Temur and Boucan wasted no time declaring themselves independent. Zandria and Juchar, knowing troops would march over them to get to the rebels, allied with the rebels so the battles would be fought in Daar or Venz.

  The Empire broke apart like a ship in a raging sea. Any warrior with a gang of men would take land and declare himself a noble. He would ally with the strongest leader he could find and they would forge a nation. The nations secured their own borders, looked at neighbors with envy, and watched for any signs of weakness. If they saw an opening, they struck.

  Imperiana was born when a number of ulLords fled toward the capital. Kiritan promised them their old holdings if they could keep the core of the Empire alive. All of them realized the Empire was a dream that had faded, and they divided the central province into their own domain. More a figurehead than he had ever been before, Kiritan quickly found himself trapped in his own palace.

  Kiritan decided the time had come to use the Talions. No one had been foolish enough, even with war in the air, to try to take Tal. The Talions pushed their borders out, established No Lords' Land, and sent a message to all the warlords within striking distance: "Leave us alone and your army will not be destroyed."

  Simple and succinct, the message worked.

  Kiritan got word to Master Vaughan demanding Talions be sent to rescue him. The task should have been easy. A half-dozen Elites, at that time the Emperor's bodyguard company, could have flown him and his family to Talianna. Kiritan, though, wanted his treasure moved with him.

  From that point things got a bit hazy, but the general outline, as nearly as I could make out, followed something like this: the Rebel Lords sacked the Imperial Palace and carried Kiritan's treasure away from it. Kiritan and his family escaped the palace and fled west. The exact manner and location of Kiritan's death is still unknown, but the accepted finish to his story is that he was captured by a Xn
e'kal party in Woodholm and his head graces one of their altars. The treasure, which the lords who took the palace carted off, just vanished into thin air, and many dreams of conquest—meant to be financed with the booty—just evaporated.

  In several Talion diaries dating from that time I found gaps in reporting that covered roughly the dates of the sacking. From other references in the various journals—obscure and obtuse allusions to a most exciting incident—I pieced together what probably happened to the Emperor's treasure, and how it ended up below the Citadel.

  Master Vaughan knew the conquering lords would never rest until they had sacked the Imperial Palace and taken the treasure. Each of them wanted a piece of the treasure to pay for his war and to build up his portion of the province. The one who got away with the most, one could assume, would be able to gather an army and possibly carve out a new empire.

  The Master sent Talions disguised as normal fighting men into Imperiana and directed them to assist in sacking the castle. They helped carry the treasure free of the Imperial capital. Where Talions made up the masters and men of a detail hauling treasure back for their lord, they rerouted the treasure to Talianna. If a lord had his house troops carry the treasure home, very nasty and highly skilled "bandits" struck and looted the caravan.

  All the histories spoke of Vaughan as a wise man despite his relative youth. All during the civil wars he kept the Talions neutral, except when a group of men went renegade and sacked at will, killing innocents and destroying defenseless villages. He had those bands hunted down and slaughtered—reiterating the Talions' right to dispense justice anywhere while keeping them clear of politics.

  As the wars ended he also extended invitations to the most promising of generals and other fighters to join the Talions—skimming off the best leadership from the nations and reinforcing the Talions at the same time. He then made a practice of assigning these new Talions back to the emerging nations to train their old troops.

  Very quickly the Talions became the seat of all military science in the Shattered Empire. If a king wanted his troops to be the equal of his neighbor's he had to hire a Talion to train them. And that meant he had to agree to allow Justices to travel through his country to hunt down and destroy criminals.

  Vaughan made the best out of a very chaotic situation. He took away from the lords, in leadership and money, the ability to wage a sustained war. By assigning individuals to the lords to train their armies he could keep the armies at even strengths and thereby make decisive victory highly improbable. In one generation he changed the tasks asked of Talions; created the Warriors, Lancers, and Archers; and insured the stability of the new nations. As a testament to his vision, the stability he established, though weakened somewhat by time and ambition, had largely survived to the present.

  Getting the treasure into Talianna without notice might have been a bit trickier, but Vaughn managed it. He stationed most troops out in No Lords' Land and issued orders sending everyone off on a carefully planned series of patrols. He told the unit leaders that with the palace's fall he feared the new lord would come after Tal—their journals show they agreed with him—and ordered the total evacuation of Taltown. In a remarkably short time Talianna lay virtually empty.

  I had to guess at the next step because I found no mention of it at all. The Talions returning with the treasure must have been given specific traveling orders to weave them through the network of patrols without being seen. They brought their loot into Talianna, hid it in a room that probably once served to store food in case of siege, and then the Master used the Call to insure secrecy concerning their action.

  The one thing I did have a solid piece of evidence about was the origin of the Darkmaze. I had nothing as good as the journal of a Services mason putting it together, but I noticed almost immediately that none of the Talions' journals mentioned Darkmaze training at all until after the Shattering. The Darkmaze had not been built until after Kiritan's death and, though Vaughan ordered it built, it saw completion only after his premature death.

  Trying to guess what Vaughan would have done with the money had he lived was impossible. He died from food poisoning, which was not really suspicious, though he did refuse magical attention and insisted he was fine the night before they found him. It was possible, I thought, that he'd killed himself so the treasure never would be discovered.

  I decided he wanted knowledge of the treasure hidden because there would always be those Talions—around then as well as now—who would want to use the money to reestablish the Empire. That philosophical split, born during the Shattering, still existed in Talion thinking today. I paled at the thought of the Talions starting out to put the Empire back together again. I felt sure Master Vaughan had shared my feelings.

  His simple plan insured peace. I decided I would not jeopardize it.

  I closed my last book and started to get up when Marana seated herself across from me.

  "You aren't leaving on my account, are you?"

  I smiled. "No."

  She pointed to my chair. "Then sit." Half an order and half a plea, she gave me no option but to obey.

  I sat. "Where's Lothar?" I looked around the library. "I don't see him anywhere."

  Marana frowned. "Why should he be here?" Her unbound black hair slid forward to hood her face.

  I blushed and stammered defensively, "Well, you know, the two of you are, um, have been together for a while and, ah..."

  Marana rocked back, laughed, and covered her mouth to kill the sound. I glared at her and a deeper shade of scarlet burned onto my face. She reached out and laid her right hand on my left wrist so I'd not flee. "I'm sorry, Nolan, but the sight of you nervous is so alien."

  My head sunk, and I stared at the table for a moment, then raised my head and nodded resignedly. "I know, it's like seeing Jevin excited about eating oatmeal." My blush faded and Marana squeezed my arm. "You and Lothar always spend a lot of time together so I just expected to see him here with you."

  Marana smiled and nodded her understanding. For the first time I really saw how much she'd changed over the past two years. She'd gone from being a pretty girl toward becoming a beautiful woman. Her brown eyes were full of life and her smile was enough to melt even the most committed misogynist's heart. Part of the reason discussing her relationship with Lothar so embarrassed me was because I envied him very much.

  "It's a fair question, Nolan." She grinned and rolled her eyes to heaven. "He got another letter from Jania and he's composing a 'suitable' reply. He gets more communications from home than anyone else. If all of us got as many letters, we'd get no training done in ... Oh, Nolan, I'm sorry!"

  I'd stiffened at the mention of family and clenched my jaw to choke the lump back down in my throat. I knew if I said anything my voice would crack so I just looked over at Marana and forced a smile on my lips.

  Marana took both my hands in hers and leaned forward. "I should have thought, Nolan, I didn't mean to hurt you."

  I squeezed her hands and swallowed. "It's fine, I know you didn't mean anything by it. It's just me, I should be over it by now...."

  Marana frowned. "Hush, don't ever say that. Your family meant and still means a lot to you. They loved you, and if you forget that you'll be worse off than you are now. After a time the pain will fade, but you don't ever want it to be gone."

  I forced a chuckle and nodded. "Thank you. During Festival, when Lothar's kin descend on Tal as if it's a province of Jania, I feel so lonely. I know Jevin does too. At least you have Lothar...."

  Marana smiled and shook her head. Her hair rippled like a curtain in a gentle breeze. "When Lothar's relatives are here they have him. Just like you and Jevin, I'm an orphan as well. So, while Lothar writes his relatives, I come up here and try and learn everything I can about Temur, my homeland."

  I nodded slowly, and reluctantly let Marana draw her hands away. Her search for information about Temur was as important to her as my solving the mystery of the secret treasure was to me. Rumor had it, fairly well
substantiated, that Marana had been brought to Tal by merchants who found her left out on a hillside in Temur. Female infanticide was not all that common a practice in the Shattered Empire, and normally such a child would have been refused to prevent others from dumping unwanted children on the Talions, but His Excellency agreed to take Marana for reasons known only to him.

  "So, what have your studies told you? Have you figured out who your parents were?"

  A second of displeasure flashed over her face; then Marana sighed and opened a small journal. "It's dreary stuff, really. Temur is a flat grassland nation. We herd cattle and live in migratory tribes. There are nine major tribes, each named for a point on the compass, and countless clans within the tribes. It's a great mess, with vendettas and blood alliances back and forth in a complex web of relations."

  I paused for a second and organized the information in my own mind. "So, have you figured out what tribe you came from?"

  She shook her head. "It's too tangled a web to unravel from the outside. His Excellency won't tell me where I was found, which would make the search simple, so I can only go by general clues and make assumptions. By my coloration I should be a member of the Amar clan, and my name, Marana, is common in the clan. But right now the Amar are not one of the major clans in the South tribe, so it is unlikely they would have sent me away because they could use daughters to marry off and make alliances with stronger clans."

  I frowned. "If the tribes take their names from the compass points, doesn't it get complicated? I would think a war against a neighboring tribe would create confusion, turning the South tribe into the South-southeast tribe."

  Marana smiled and shook her head. "If you can believe it, the system is odd enough to handle all that so such problems do not arise." Marana turned to a map she had drawn. "The city here in the center is Betil. It is home to the ninth tribe—the Betil tribe—and the Emir of all Temur. The Betil once conquered the whole nation, then split it up among the defeated tribes. All the tribes send representatives to Betil to adjudicate any disagreements between tribes."