PART ONENIGHT OF THE WITCH-KING
IN ARGENTIUM, CAPITAL OF ARGON
CAPITAL CITY OF THE SILVER EMPIRE
The Silver Empire lasted for one thousand years. Every bard and teller of stories predicted that it would endure for three thousand more. Their optimism is admirable, but their understanding of hatred and greed, of jealousy and avarice cannot be commended. They saw a beautiful thing and believed, perhaps in naïveté or a fundamental misunderstanding of political reality, that beauty is a durable thing. They believed that the justice of the Silver Courts, the unquestioned integrity of the line of empresses, the wisdom of the great thinkers, and the steadfast devotion of the Imperial Guard, were unbreakable. A rose, however magnificent, must ultimately wither and die, for that is the way of life. A waterfall may run dry, and a green forest may turn to dust and sand; a healthy baby will grow and age and pass away. An argument can be made that the Silver Empire lasted longer than was likely. But, like a perfect spring morning, with all of its promise of new life, new growth, endless potential, the season never lasts. Those green grasses and wildflowers wither under the summer heat, grow old and sere in the autumn, and are dead at winter’s first frosty caress. So it is with trees, with rivers, with children, and with love, with faiths and kingdoms. Each has its time, but each is doomed to fade. The question then is this: When that which is beautiful has faded and fallen, what will replace it? And what, in time, will replace that?
FROM LESSONS IN A GREEN GARDEN BY SORON AL-HAMPTIR, GARDENER OF THE ARGONIAN TEMPLE OF MOTHER SAH
CHAPTER ONE
Kagen Vale woke to the sound of his own damnation.
CHAPTER TWO
All he knew at first was that he was naked, very drunk, not in his own room, and had a head filled with angry hornets and clashing cymbals.
Kagen opened his eyes, saw smoke crawling along the ceiling, realized dimly that this should not be happening. Considered going back to sleep. Then he smelled the smoke and fought to stay awake. After a few moments of bleary consideration, he figured this was all wrong and that he should probably be worried about it.
Then he rolled onto his side, leaned over the edge of the bed, and vomited onto the floor. There was a bucket by the nightstand, but he missed it. He did spatter the side of it, the nightstand, the tangled edges of sheet hanging down, and his own discarded sandals. But not one drop of old wine, half-digested beef, or green bile made it into the bucket.
He threw up a lot, and it took a very long time.
By the eighth or tenth heave of his guts, Kagen wondered if he was going to throw up his own colon.
The dizziness hit then, and it seemed to smack the lights from his eyes and knock him back against the pillow.
“Gods of the Garden,” he moaned, “take me now.”
His gut churned again and he leaned over the edge once more, but there was nothing left inside of him except—he was certain—broken glass and bad life decisions. His stomach twisted and knotted, and all he accomplished was to retch his throat raw before flopping back onto the sweaty mattress.
“Seriously,” he begged the gods, “now would be good.”
He did not, however, die. Neither Father Ar nor Mother Sah came to bear him to the Garden of Paradise. And even their son, Geth, the Prince of Pestilence and Famine, could not be bothered to drag him down to the land of shadows. He became aware of the taste inside his mouth and was reasonably sure a very sick lizard had pissed on his tongue.
“Woman,” he growled wretchedly, reaching over with one hand to try to blindly find the tavern wench’s shoulder. “Wake up. I need the sailor’s cure.”
There had been many a morning rescued by that old concoction. The cure was a specialty of the crotchety old apothecary near the palace, and it was guaranteed to sober a man up or kill him on the spot. It was made from pickled sheep’s eyeballs, tree sap, cayenne pepper, hot mustard, ipecac, asafetida, and croton oil. It was as noxious as the wrong end of a warthog, but it always worked to shake him out of another hangover.
“Do you hear me, woman?” he growled, trying to find her arm or hip. His hand, however, slapped only the mattress.
Kagen summoned every ounce of physical strength he possessed to turn his head three inches and peer out of the corner of his eye.
There was no tavern wench. There was nobody at all in the bed with him. He winced, because the clashing of cymbals in his head persisted even this long into the process of waking up. The smoke on the ceiling was getting thicker and it smelled wrong to be something cooking in the fireplace. Not even an overlooked and burning pot smelled like that. It was more like the stench from a—
And then reality grabbed Kagen by the throat and struck him across the face with a cold fist of understanding.
It was not cymbals.
The smoke on the ceiling was not from a scorched pot.
Kagen froze as the truth blossomed in his mind.
That metallic clatter and clang was nothing at all musical or domestic, nor was it the noise of the tavern’s kitchen. This noise came from outside, from the streets, and he suddenly knew it for the unmistakable sound of metal on metal.
It was the sound of ringing swords.
The sound of battle.
He sat up sharply and flung aside the sheet. Or tried to—it was knotted around his loins and thighs like a stubborn snake. Kagen struggled with it, cursing and snarling until he fought free of the cloth, then he swung his legs over the bed and shot to his feet.
The room spun around him in a sickening reel and then he was falling. He shot out his hands and just managed to keep from slamming face-forward onto the uneven floorboards. His knees and groin hit hard, though, and for a moment all that he was aware of was black poppies blooming in the air around his head. Nausea rose up inside of him once more, but it had nothing left to do and he ignored it. Kagen pushed against the floor, forcing himself up onto his bruised knees. He closed his eyes to try to coax the dizziness to abate.
In that moment of calm darkness, the part of him that was not a drunken fool made sense of what was happening. The swordplay outside was not a duel or even a mugging—it was combat. He could hear yells now too, near and far. This was a big fight, and it seemed to be all up and down the street. Kagen crawled toward the window, gripped the sill, and through sheer force—more moral courage than physical—pulled himself up. Even leaning on the windowsill he was unsteady, his legs wobbling and threatening to collapse. The room still spun, but—he thought—less so than a moment ago.
Kagen tore aside the dirty orange curtains and used the heel of his hand to bash the shutters open.
Everything he saw was beyond understanding. It was so much worse than anything he could have imagined. This was no brawl, not even a battle between rival gangs. The street was choked with people. Hundreds of them. Half of the combatants were dressed in nightclothes and were armed with whatever they could grab—brooms, staves, a wooden chair, a horsewhip, personal knives—while the other half were in armor, and they attacked with spears, axes, and bright swords.
What Kagen saw was a true battle.
Somehow, impossibly, out of all sense, war had come to Argentium, the capital city of the Silver Empire.
CHAPTER THREE
The battle was dreadful and it was not going well.
Already the street was littered with the dead, and there were so many corpses of men and women that the combatants had to step over them in order to do more killing.
“Gods of the Garden!” Kagen snarled, and he shoved himself back from the window, turning as he lunged for his clothing. He fell again, but caught himself on the bedpost, fought for control, found some, and went searching for his clothes.
His clothes and his weapons were nowhere to be found.
Apart from the bed, a small table and two chairs, the chamber pot, and the fire in the hearth, there was nothing in that small room. The woman had clearly robbed him and taken everything. The realization that she’d taken his weapons was like a stab through the heart. Some of those knives were centuries old, and his thigh dagger had been given him on Harvest Eve by Empress Gessalyn herself. It was no decorative showpiece, either, but a true warrior’s weapon, forged of Bulconian steel and engraved with sacred prayers. That blade had been passed down from generation to generation since his father’s kin had left Bercless two hundred years ago and come across the width of the continent to serve the Silver Empire.
Now it was gone.
Gone.
Along with everything else.
Kagen cast around, looking for some unnoticed closet or hamper, but there was nothing to find. Snarling in fury, fear, and grief, he tore the sheet from the bed and wound it quickly around his loins, ripping strips of it to use as a sash. He knew he looked like a fool, like a child in diapers, but rather that than charge into the fray with his cock swinging.
He remembered the person outside fighting with the chair and grabbed the closest one here, wheeled, and smashed it against the wall. The flimsy wood exploded and Kagen bent to scoop up the two strongest-looking legs. The action made him dizzy again, but now his rage was flooding through him, shoving the sickness back.
Copyright © 2022 by Jonathan Maberry
