Soen had long ago set aside the privileges associated with being a descendant of a noble House. . but at times like this, he reflected, it had its convenient uses. He quickly crossed the bridge with its crystal lattice railings and ornate renderings of the crests of those Houses that had donated to its construction. Then he passed through the archway into the tower itself.
Soen stood on a wide platform opening onto one of two shafts that plunged down the full height of the towers. This one was the descending shaft and was filled with a blue swirling light. He stepped out over the precipice without hesitation and began his slow drift downward through the air.
It was a fine defensive mechanism, he thought, as he drifted down past the occasional window cut into the curved wall. You had to have access to the Aether to use the shaft-and the only ones who had access to the Aether were the elves.
Soen frowned. The elves had not always been the only ones to command the power of Aether, he knew, but that fact was only one grain of sand in the mountain of secrets that he and all of the Iblisi kept.
Keeping the truth safe was the essence of their work.
The Iblisi’s feet touched softly on the fitted stones at the base of the Third Tower, and he stepped quickly through the arch opening into the evening air. The Garden of Kuchen spread before him, teaming with elves as was common at this time late in the day. The setting sun cast a warm glow across the wide garden. It was a beautiful place, carefully manicured and maintained in honor of the Emperor’s wife, for whom it was currently named, and shaded over all by the titanic bulk of the Cloud Palace directly overhead. It smelled green and alive and called to the souls of the elves who came to it each day that they might forget the walls they had built to enclose themselves and the desperation of their spirits that longed for open space but had compromised themselves into servitude to the Will of the Emperor in all its incarnations.
Soen hated it, for it reminded him of the true fields and green spaces that were far from this place. Having tasted of its truth, it was hard for him to endure the lie. So he walked around the edge of the garden as quickly as he could on the south side, following the fitted cobblestones of the Vira Rhonas past where they intersected with the Vira Condemnis to the south. He barely glanced in the direction of the Forums of the Estates, which stood behind rows of standing columns down the arcade to his left. Both the Circus and the Coliseum could be found in that direction, but he had little use for the games and no time for them in any event. Beyond the forums the Vira Rhonas widened, cutting a broad curving path through the heart of the Imperial City that was nearly as old as the Empire itself.
The Vira was just beginning to come to life with the evening revels. Litters supported by teams of manticorian slaves quickly jogged up and down the street, bearing their masters to and fro at their whim. A number of Fifth Estate hawkers served their guild Orders by calling out their wares to the growing crowd. As he walked down the street, Soen saw a dwarf-a rare enough sight even in the Imperial City-dancing nervously before a group of jeering elven youth. They prodded the stumpy creature with their ornamental swords.
Soen shook his head. Poor dwarf. The youth today had taken to wearing these next-to-useless engraved blades as a fashion. Now, with the news of the victory over the Last Kingdom, that dwarf was almost certain not to live through the night of celebrations.
Next his eye was caught by a string of Muserian slaves-orange-hewed barbarian elves from the southern Aergus Coast-being pulled wide-eyed behind a manticorian overseer. He walked beside them, eyeing them with mild curiosity before the overseer turned southward down the Vira Coliseum. They were destined for one of the newer noble Houses that had sprung up on the west side of the River Jolnar against the Mnerian Hills, Soen thought idly. Poor fools.
But poor fools aren’t we all, he reflected as he continued between the buildings on either side of the paved stones. The structures on his right were known collectively as The Ministries. There were no fewer than thirteen separate main ministries and more than an equal number of subministries making up each of those. The mandates of the various ministries overlapped each other in the most confusing of ways, and yet it was the Emperor’s Will not only that this mess not be straightened out but that it reflected a wonderful redundancy in the government-that should one ministry fail to work toward the Imperial Will, then another would surely do so. The jurisdictional battles among the separate ministries of Health, Nutrition and-for reasons beyond Soen’s understanding-Caravans were perennial. The Ministry of War and the Ministry of Security, it was said, fought more battles between them as allies in the Emperor’s Will than in the field against any enemy.
This was further complicated by the strict caste system of the Estates, which dated back to the founding of the Empire by Rhonas and which had since those ancient days been so carefully codified that progression between the estates was, by Imperial decree, to rest only in the hands of the Emperor personally.
Then there were the Orders of the Empire: guilds, elite military Orders, wizardry unions, and other specialized clans that vied to force their own agendas and ascendancy in power on the Emperor’s Will. Each had its own combination of gods they worshiped and unique pacts with other Orders, allegiances and enmities. Membership in the orders transcended castes, at least in theory. Any caste could be a member of any Order by application, but the vagaries and secrecy in the selection process were such that each Order had effective control over the makeup of its membership. The Orders were diverse-but only so far as their strength and power were supported.
None of which accounted for the rather public and often bloody conflicts of the vaunted Forums-one for the Estate Lords and the other the “voice of the common elf”-whatever that was supposed to mean.
Soen shook his head and smiled. By the Emperor’s Will, it all works perfectly.
The Inquisitor came to the end of the Vira Rhonas and stepped onto the Gods’ Bridge. It was one of the oldest bridges of the nine crossing the Jolnar and led to the oldest part of the city, the Isle of the Gods. It was not a terribly impressive island, as such; it sat as a rocky spit of ground between two branches of the River Jolnar that obligingly flowed around it. Still, as legend would have it, it was the place where Rhonas drove his spear into the ground and declared this spot to be where he would found his Empire. The first temples were built here. There were newer and more spacious temples in the districts beyond Tsujen’s Wall, but the temples on this sliver of land were still the most revered by the Rhonasians. Soen crossed the bridge and passed among the ancient buildings. The Occuran made their home here, a privilege granted them by the Emperor just short of one hundred years ago, but now their favor was waning, and Soen wondered just how long it would be before the Imperial Will got around to evicting the Occuran as neighbors to the gods and just what the Occuran would do about it.
Soen crossed the small island and came to the North Bridge. On the other side of the river rose the squat, angular walls of the Old Keep. They were designed in a time before the Aether, when war was waged as it should be: with hand on steel. It was the oldest structure in the city and the home of his own Order.
Soen took in a deep breath. Ministries, Orders, Estates. . by the Emperor’s Will, all worked perfectly because it was the Emperor’s will that it be so. To say otherwise was treason. To think otherwise was disloyal. To be otherwise was unacceptable.
So the perfection was maintained not in practice but in perception. The knowledge that the current Emperor ascended to the throne by murdering the previous Emperor as he was distracted by his lust for the wife of a recently assassinated Guild Master was not “working toward the Imperial Will.” Indeed, that the entire history of the Rhonas Empire was filled with such unpleasant, vicious, horrifying events was also seen as “not working toward the Imperial Will.” This concern for the solidarity, security, and loyalty of the greatest elven nation in all history extended itself down through every ministry, Order, and Estate as well. Anything unpleasant need not be true if it is not known. So their own histories were constantly rewritten for the sake of “working toward the Imperial Will.”
Each part of the body politic played a vital role but, to Soen, none so important as the role his own Order played nor so dangerous.
The Iblisi alone existed to know the truth. . and it was their task to make sure that no one discovered it.
The old keep was a misnomer; it was more of a fortress than a keep proper. The angular path of its massive outer walls combined with those of matching trenches designed to both stop the enemy and inflict as much damage on them as possible. It was the oldest remaining structure in the city, said by many to have been built by the hand of the first emperor, Rhon Sah-Tseu himself. The Keep’s antiquity was apparent at a single glance, for it lacked the grace and fine, curving lines of the more recent structures of the Empire. To the critical elven eye it was vaguely offensive as a brutish, massive, and graceless pile of carefully fitted stones that was an unpleasant reminder of dark origins best forgotten.