Ethis cocked his head to one side, his face once more the blank that was common to his kind. “Each in turn after we entered the woods. Murialis was long acquainted with me but did not trust the rest. It was the only way I could convince her-the only way she would spare your lives.”
“Who are you?” Drakis asked. “Part of me remembers you as a faithful and long-standing comrade, but that I know is a lie placed in my mind by the Devotions. What is true is that I have no memory of you prior to three weeks ago. So, tell me: Who are you?”
“No one that need concern you. .”
“But I am concerned,” Drakis stood his ground. “How does a creature who has such incredible abilities-who could be anyone-allow himself to be enslaved? You could have taken the form of an elf and. .”
“I did!” Ethis chuckled.
“Then how. .”
“My own mistake,” Ethis said then shrugged his four shoulders. “It matters little now. My mission was to find Thuri.”
“Thuri?”
“Yes, the same Thuri you know from your Octian,” Ethis continued. “He had been a rather prominent leader of a rebellion that threatened the security of the chimerian High Council in Exile. I had been hunting him for over a year when I found him as an Impress Warrior in House Timuran. He had forgotten his past, of course, but I knew if I could get him away from Devotions long enough, he would remember what I needed to know. I came in the guise of a Fourth Estate Elven Guardian and applied to the Tribune for an appointment as a House Guardian.”
“Tribune Se’Djinka,” Drakis urged.
“Yes,” Ethis admitted. “I knew he had been a general some years back and hoped to use the story that I had served under him as means to gain his trust. He seemed to me, on our first meeting, to be ancient and feebleminded-and that was my mistake. It was all a game on his part. He laid a trap for me-literally a metal cage. The last thing he said to me before forcing Devotions on me was that he could remember the name of every warrior who had ever served with him. It seems he had never believed my story from the very beginning.”
“And now you have told me a story, too,” Drakis said. “And I still don’t know you.”
“How is that possible when each of us has barely had time enough to know ourselves?” Ethis replied. “Let’s find the others. Murialis always puts a good meal on the table for her guests, and as we are apparently bound for Vestasia, we should avail ourselves of her hospitality as much as possible. Vestasia is a wild land, and that part of our journey will be difficult.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“And you shouldn’t,” the chimerian went on, “but then I think that’s sound advice in general-don’t trust anybody.”
Ch’drei settled once more on her throne in the heart of the Iblisi Keep and permitted herself a grateful sigh.
It was an entirely familiar place, and she was thankful to enjoy it again. In her younger days she, too, had been numbered among the Inquisitors who ranged across the wide lands and seas wherever the influence of the Rhonas was extended and often far beyond. But age and the politics of the Imperial City had eroded her enthusiasm for distant horizons and new vistas. She preferred that the reports of such places came to her here in the center of political life. Better to hear of the open sky than to experience it; rather the world be brought to her than she leave her lair to see it herself.
There were, however, those rare occasions when a journey beyond Tsujen’s Wall was required. . as when the truth to be learned needed to be kept to herself and as few others as possible. This business with Soen on the Western Frontier was one such time. Yet whenever she was required to travel, she was comforted along the road by thoughts of this place. . that all her journeys would end back here in the quiet darkness of her court deep beneath the ancient stones of the Old Keep. The darkness better suited her purposes and the decisions that she was required to make for the good of the Empire.
It felt much like a tomb, she mused, and where better to bury the truth than with the dead?
Truth, after all, was the province of the Iblisi. The Imperial Will had from its inception altered the public perception of its past. Lie upon lie was told in the interest of the greater good and the Will of the Emperor until any concept of the actual truth was becoming lost. Even the Imperial Family of the Rhonas had begun to lose track of which lies it had told on top of other lies, and too often real truth would surface to the detriment of the state.
It was during the Age of Mists, Ch’drei recalled, that the Scrolls of Xathos came to the elves. The legends every elf knew by heart told of the great Rhonas, father of their Empire, wresting the scrolls from the gods in a challenge of wits and physical strength and founding the magic on which the Empire would be forged. Its epic tale made Rhonas the undisputed leader of the elves trying to conquer a land that was then called Palandria.
But the truth was that the Scrolls of Xathos were bartered from a group of manticores who had no concept of their worth as they were capable neither of reading the scrolls nor of reproducing the magic even if they could read. They had stolen those scrolls centuries before from the chimera in Ephindria who themselves had stolen them from the humans of Drakosia beyond the Erebus Straits to the north.