Despite the dim lighting, the ostentation of the huge bed chamber was undeniable. Exotic scents filled the air from multiple incense pots set judiciously around the room, and everything visible was precious metals, silks and rare woods.
Everything except the ancient, wizened figure in the bed. It let out a cough and reached a long, almost skeletal arm towards a bell on the table beside the bed, but clearly was not up to the effort. The figure had wispy strands of pale hair that seemed an orangish white and contrasted sharply with his dark, wrinkled skin. His watery eyes were a deep, dark green.
A few seconds passed and then a dim green aura appeared in the room as Elgarin the Betrayer stepped out. “Ah, not too te today, uncle?”
The figure in the bed spoke with a weak voice that sounded more like rustling leaves than words: “Nephew Elgarin. It is time. Call my child, please.”
Elgarin smiled, genuine warmth lighting up his pale features, and picked up the bell the old man had been reaching for. He rang it three times deliberately, then set it down on the table.
Almost instantly one of the four doors to the chamber opened and a man of indeterminate age with long greasy brown hair and an unkempt beard, dressed in crimson robes glided in. In an oily voice, the newcomer asked: “Is it time?” A foul stench that the multiple incense burners in the room could not quite overcome emanated from his form.
“The Emperor is ready to move on,” Elgarin replied.
The man in red gave him a smile that carried more malice than joy.
As this exchange concluded, another door opened, and two figures hurried to the side of the bed. One was a pleasant-faced woman with a ruddy complexion and long, straight bck hair and shining, dark eyes, a woman who may have seen forty years at most, and who wore an eborate gown of gold, white and violet hues; she promptly knelt at the side of the bed and asked: “Is it time, husband?”
The younger man at her side seemed very uncomfortable, perhaps even frightened. Elgarin walked over to his side. “Jaryd,” the pale man said reassuringly, “we are all gd you could be here. Now it is vital that you take your father’s hand, my cousin. I will be right here if you need me.” Jaryd simply nodded. He wore a violet shirt with matching loose trousers, and a metal breastpte covered his torso. At his side was an empty sword scabbard.
The man in the crimson robes had silently crossed to where they stood. His oily voice said, “Please, child, you must honor your father’s wishes.”
Reluctantly, Jaryd, who shared the man’s olive complexion and red hair, but also bore the woman’s dark eyes, took the closest of his father’s hands into his own.
The man in crimson reached out, grabbed their linked hands with each of his and began chanting in a nguage alien to all in the room save the dying figure on the bed, who feebly repeated every word.
Elgarin moved behind the young man, and when he cried out in sudden pain, pced a hand to each side of Jaryd’s neck and hissed: “Do. Not. Move.”
Jaryd’s eyes filled with terror as a gray mist appeared and engulfed the linked hands. The whites of his eyes suddenly turned as dark as the irises, and then turned a ft gray. A weak scream escaped the figure on the bed, as Jaryd's lips turned to a smile. He pulled his hand away and bent down to kiss the cheek of the man in the bed. “I thank you, my child, for your sacrifice this day,” he said reverently.
The figure on the bed shuddered as the man in crimson shifted his grip around; one hand held the back of the old man’s hand, palm upright, The other grasped his wrist above the veins. After a few seconds, he released the hand, which flopped down on the bed lifelessly, and bent over to listen first at the old man’s chest, and then his mouth. That done, he stood and announced: “His heart and breath have ceased. Emperor D’Gar is dead. Long live the new Emperor D’Gar.”
The young man turned to the woman at his side. “Well, that is done, my wife, er, my mother. Have you had much luck in finding me a fitting spouse?”
The woman nodded and then expined: “I have found three eager to be the next Empress and perhaps worthy of the title, and another who would be ideal except my sources cim she is highly contested. I can have two of them here by tomorrow morning, and the third will require at least another full day of travel to get here. The st one we would have to go to ourselves, as she is one of the Battle Sisters at the Temple at Rhyvven.”
“Ah, my dear, I trust your choices will be as pleasant as your predecessor’s were that led me to you. Do these worthies have names?”
“The one who will take a day and a half to reach here is Duchess Rhyll Bireen, fourteenth in line to the throne of Damar, who just celebrated her nineteenth birthday and has parents eager to form any alliances they can. The youngest, almost seventeen years old, is the only child of your loyal vassal Erik Townsyer, her name is Kylenn. Natira Kholess you should remember well, as you, or Jaryd when he was still himself, spent much time flirting with her when we visited her father, Duke Kholess; this union would shore up his rebellious nature, but she is of an age with this body, twenty-four. The st is twenty-two, a woman cimed to be of exceptional beauty, though she brings no political assets, and even seems to be contested, but she is the most likely to breed exceptional offspring, and is named Thellissandra.”
“Arrange to have the first two brought here together. I will meet with them on the same day, and then, unless I decide one of them to be perfect, I will pn a trip to Rhyvven, with a half day detour to visit your third choice at her home, to meet the fourth.”
“It shall be as you wish, My Lord, My son,” she said, bowing low and backing out of the room to prepare messengers.
As soon Jaryd's mother left the room, he turned to the man in crimson. “Take the corpse and prepare it for a state burial. I must have some words with my cousin.”
The man in crimson bowed, and like Jaryd’s mother, backed out of the room, to gather the aides and supplies he would need to transport and prepare the corpse.
As soon as he was gone, the younger figure said: “it is fortuitous that you arrived when you did, or the Lord of Contracts might have taken his due early.”
“You were promised at least thirteen, unless you chose to not continue; I suspect He interfered with my timing to guarantee a st second save.”
“Quite likely. Has there been any luck in breaking the prophecy or locating the Lost Arch Mage?”
“Possibly, though I recently sensed the advent of a new World Walker and have dedicated much of my resources to investigating that.”
“Possibly?”
“Yes, I have found some likely candidates, but have been unable to verify anything yet. There are two who may have the proper bloodline, and one is working with us. There is another possibility, who may prove a fitting bride for you if the top four fail, but that is a long shot and she is probably not the Lost Arch Mage. If I am correct, though, I believe the true Lost Arch Mage is one of the men contesting over Thellissandra, which may make her either your absolute best or undeniably worst option, depending on how things py out."
“Hmm. It seems I will have to meet her, then, even if one of the others seems ideal. Continue your researches, as the presence of a new World Walker is troubling, to say the least.”
Elgarin grinned. “Hail Emperor D’Gar,” he replied, but his tone was more sarcastic than reverent, and he only tilted his head slightly instead of bowing.
A slight smile quirked the new Emperor’s face as he replied: “Be careful, cousin, your attitude may yet nd you in trouble.”
Elgarin ughed, “it would not be the first time.” Then, with a burst of green radiance, he was gone.
The new Emperor walked over to a table nearby and grabbed a mirror. After examining his reflection for a while, he mused “not my best one but this will do quite nicely. At least I had a son to take over this time around. Time to see to the staff,” and walked out of the room through the one door that had not yet been used, just as the man in the crimson robes returned with three assistants to begin preparing the body in the bed for funereal rites.
In a finely appointed townhouse less than a mile from the offices where David and Malcolm both worked, a green glow announced the arrival of Elgarin. He snapped his fingers and immediately assumed the appearance of financier Lenard Guerin, and then went into his kitchen and prepared a light snack. As he did so, an excited chittering sound was heard at his window. Opening it, he saw a small blue creature, drenched from a heavy rainstorm outside clinging to the wall. Except for its color, it looked more like the red creature that David and Thellissandra had faced several days ago than like the blue creatures he usually employed. “Report!” He commanded.
The creature let loose with a long string of sounds that would have been total gibberish to most listeners but mostly made sense to Elgarin. When it finished, he said “very good. So, either David’s roommate or the long-haired woman that he is seeing is the World Walker. You did not see the travel happen and most human females look alike to you. Still, this does give me a starting point: return to your observation post.”
As the creature scrabbled back out the window he noticed the clock on the wall: “Ah, look at the time - I have a game in an hour. Wonder if Malcolm will turn up?”
He unlocked and opened one door in the townhouse and walked into a room with several computers and even more monitors. Sitting down at one he quickly typed several lines of code and smiled to himself. “They really do not know the power of their own code. Though if one of the coders truly is the Lost Arch Mage, he likely put a portion of his power into it, perhaps unknowingly.” He got up from the console, walked out of the room, closed and locked the door, and then began setting up the table in his main room for a more rexing kind of game.
He was almost finished when he felt a sharp pain in his head.
A transparent skeletal face appeared in the air before him and shouted directly into his mind: “There you are! You are responsible - over one hundred of my children have been murdered!”
