Shadows of Destiny. Rachel Lee

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      Ras Lutte, formerly overmark of the Bozandari army, approached his ruler slowly, as if hoping to avoid notice. He had news to bring, and bring it he must, for such was his duty. But he knew the meaning of the dour visage upon the throne, a face that seemed to bear the weight of the gods themselves upon its features. Lutte was all too familiar with that expression. It had been months, it seemed, since his ruler had borne any other.

      Yet the ruler was still an astonishingly beautiful man, fair of complexion, golden of hair, blue of eye. To Lutte and others, it seemed he might even be the spawn of the gods, for never had a man so handsome and charismatic ever been seen before.

      Until this brooding had begun.

      But at least no one died from these silent broodings.

      “My lord,” Lutte finally said, after placing his right fist to his heart and bowing at the waist. “I pray that I disturb thee not, yet the woman has spoken.”

      The man on the throne looked up slowly, as if all of his strength were required simply to lift his head. Lutte could not be certain, but he thought he saw tears in his ruler’s eyes. Immediately, Lutte lowered his gaze to the floor. Such things were not to be seen.

      “What is it, Overmark?” the ruler asked, each word seeming to wend its way from the bottom of a deep cavern.

      “The Weaver summons the wolves, my lord. Soon, the woman says, the Enemy host will march.”

      The man’s eyes closed for a moment, then he nodded. “Just as it was foretold.”

      Lutte knew little of prophecy and trusted less than he knew. He was loathe even to trust the woman who sat in her room like the shell of a human being, hardly taking even food or drink, her body nearly as desiccated in life as any Lutte had seen in death.

      He was a man of science and mathematics, the science and mathematics of war. Born into the Bozandari peerage, trained in the Academy of War, tested in battle, proved in a half-dozen campaigns. His exile after an affair with a topmark’s wife had not changed his nature. It was possible to take the soldier out of the army, but never to take the army out of the soldier. Now he had found another army, and he had taken to the task of training the ragged band of outlaws and exiles into a smoothly functioning fist to be wielded at his will.

      But not his will. The will of his ruler. And the will of his ruler was guided by prophecy and the mumblings of the woman. It was, Lutte thought, a shaky foundation upon which to base a campaign. But he had learned loyalty in the academy, and his personal dalliances aside, his professional loyalty was a matter of pride.

      He relayed the woman’s words as if they were those of the most accomplished spy, not because he trusted her or her ramblings, but because it was his duty to do so.

      “If this is so,” Lutte said, “then our agents in Bozandar must be at their task. Surely Bozandar can crush the slave people and end this rebellion.”

      “Bozandar will not be our ally,” the ruler said. “In the end, it will come to us and us alone. It will come to me. For only I can slay my brother.”

      Again he is on about his brother, Lutte thought. As if the rest of the world were mere pawns in this sibling rivalry. Lutte had heard the whispers, that his ruler was in fact the second son of the Firstborn King, but he did not believe them. The children of the Firstborn were long dead, if ever they had existed. Lutte needed no ancient good or evil to empower him. The evil of the human heart more than sufficed to afflict the world. And only the good of the human heart could bring it comfort. The rest were tales, legends, myths told to fortify the sheep against the hardness of life, and make the sheep compliant within it.

      “Is there anything else?” the ruler asked.

      “No, my lord.”

      “Then go,” the ruler said. “Tend to your numbers and your geometries. And pray that you never stand on a field where straight lines bend and twice two is not four.”

      He did not read my mind, Lutte thought as he bowed and turned to leave. His face had betrayed his skepticism, and his ruler knew of his reputation. It was nothing more.