Chapter 21: Lion

They had misheard. It was as simple as that. Misheard, misremembered, or misunderstood.

Themur stood in the middle of the Court of the Realm, the opulent waiting room just outside the Grand Audience Chamber in the Lion Palace. The floor was inlaid with intricate mosaics depicting various scenes from the Unification War, fought by the first Lion two centuries prior. There was the Crossing of the River Talar, the Surrender of the Archdukes, the War of Lightning in the East, the Long March Toward the Sea in the West, and, of course, the Day of Fealty.

If the floor told the story, the rest of the room made it grand. The walls, painted in amber and gold, were decorated with ornate bands made from rolled copper and the purest of red paints, and in the ceiling hung an oversized brass candelabra, bathing the room in the flickering light of a hundred individual flames.

And this, he knew, was just the waiting room, where arriving hopefuls were screened, and occasionally sacrificed, before being allowed into the presence of the Emperor. Despite having been here many times before, he was always struck with awe. This was Terynia, capital of the Agerian Empire, the chosen vassal of Mardocar. This was the city of his god.

His god, who six days ago had made a prophecy that had seemingly been a little bit off—the keyword being seemingly. Because the Dark Flame was here, after all, just as Mardocar had said she would be, and Themur and Relaila had simply misheard or misunderstood what day she was meant to arrive. The fact that she had still shown up, just as Mardocar had said, despite the mix-up of the date, was proof enough that his god had been right all along and they had merely misinterpreted the prophecy.

To his right, Relaila and the Dark Flame—Dina, her name was, apparently—sat on a long wooden bench, meticulously sculpted from imported cedar and covered in artful roses made from intricately shaped sheets of blade gold. For both of them, this would be the first time they met the Emperor. Despite their best efforts to hide it, Themur could see the anticipation glimmering in their eyes.

A loud booming sound, like that of a heavy rock falling onto a wooden deck, echoed through the room, followed by a scraping noise as the heavy marble doors slowly opened, revealing the breathtaking beauty of the Grand Audience Chamber beyond. The two palace guards flanking the entrance stood at attention, their bright red-and-white uniforms contrasting beautifully with the golden colors of the throne room.

This was a chamber created for one purpose, and one purpose only, Themur knew. It was built to imprint upon the mind of anyone entering it the supreme might and power of the Lion Emperor, and the gods he served. In this, it succeeded more than well.

In every direction they looked, demonstrations of the supremacy of the Agerian race were evident. Lining the walls to their right and left, close to the ceiling, the mummified heads of dukes and counts from the old city-states stared with dead eyes at anyone seeking an audience with the Lion. Hanging in rows beneath the higher heads were countless smaller skulls, gleaming like jewels. These were the remains of their children or grandchildren, methodically cleansed of flesh and dipped into molten gold.

The three of them walked along the thick red carpet, rolled out on the floor like a river of blood, leading from the Court of the Realm all the way to the Lion Throne. On either side of the carpet stood the Candlebearers, young boys and girls clad in white dresses with red sashes tied around their waists. Children whose hands had been dipped in wax while holding a wick, forced to endure the slow burn of the flame until the audience ended and the Emperor’s guests departed.

And on the throne itself, made from the gemstone-infused bones of his enemies, sat Beratam IV, servant of Mardocar and the eleventh Lion of the Agerian Empire, clad in garments woven from spun silk and knit gold, and wearing a heavy crown glittering with a thousand jewels.

Lining the wall to their right, heavy, round stone pillars stretched from the marble floor all the way to the painted ceiling high above. Among their shadows stood the Herald of the Lion, thumping his ornamented staff hard against the polished floor. Crafted from green jade and decorated with intricate figures of gleaming silver, the staff made a sound that echoed throughout the vast chamber, reminding everyone who heard it of the immense authority wielded by the man sitting on the throne, and allowing no one present to doubt that his power was granted him by the almighty Mardocar.

“Hear, hear,” the herald announced, “the words from the mouth of the Lion.”

The Emperor lifted his eyes to gaze upon the three representatives of the gods now standing before him. As was the custom, they dipped their heads in deference to the Lion Emperor, but did not bow. After all, their primary allegiance was to the gods, not to the throne.

Beratam IV nodded in response.

“Sir Themur Mauran. Relaila Litarian. Dina Nauretian,” he said, identifying them by name, one after the other. “You have been called before the Lion Throne by Mardocar, the omniscient, patron of the Agerian Empire, son of heaven, and lord of the world.”

The three looked up to face the Emperor, and the Lion stared at them with a cold gaze, as if measuring their worth. Yet the small tick in the muscles above his left eye betrayed that he was nervous.

As he should be, Themur thought. It was true that the Knights Eternal were an Agerian denomination, formed by the Empire to be Mardocar’s fist in the world of man. They faithfully served the Lion Throne as long as the orders from it were in line with Mardocar’s will. But should their patron god ask him to, Themur would not hesitate for a moment to kill his Emperor. The half dozen bodyguards standing in the shadows behind the throne would be powerless to stop him in time. The man sitting on it knew this very well.

“In this room, on the eighth day of the sixth month of the fourteenth year in the reign of the eleventh Lion, Mardocar handed us his divine prophecy, foretelling of things to come,” the Emperor formally declared, his voice ringing loud between the stone walls.

“Thus says Mardocar, god of strength and genocide: In those days, a star will fall from the heavens and the three will enter the Lion’s Gate. They will break the Empire and bring grief to its defenders.

“Working tirelessly with the spirits of the air, the water, and the ground, and with the gods of the world, we have conclusively identified two of the individuals from the prophecy: one Pelam Gathór of our own divine Empire, and one Soria Tolmar of the Derimar tribes. In the aftermath of the star we saw fall from the heavens three weeks ago, both were overheard pledging to enter the Lion’s Gate with intentions to attack the very foundations of our Empire.

“In addition to these two individuals, a peripheral associate of theirs, one Larean Onyx of the Nimean Compact, has been identified by proxy as the third person to fulfill Mardocar’s prophecy.

“By imperial decree and by divine command, you are hereby ordered to intercept these three individuals before they reach the Lion’s Gate, eliminate them, and orchestrate events—at your discretion—in such a way that the prophecy is fulfilled to the benefit of the Empire rather than to its detriment.”

* * *

“Shouldn’t we talk about the big mammoth in the room?” she asked, tossing the object she’d swiped from a guard’s pocket into the air and catching it again.

“More like a herd of them,” Dina muttered beside her. Sir Themur just glared at the Dark Flame.

“The gods have spoken. What is there to talk about?” the Knight Eternal countered, clearly unwilling to let his patron be questioned.

Relaila sighed, then tossed the object into the air again. They had left the Lion Palace and were walking across the tall stone bridge over the natural moat that separated the Imperial quarters from the rest of Terynia. Out here, the sun shone with the warmth of high summer. It was a nice contrast to the cold chambers of stone and marble inside the palace.

“Isn’t it obvious?” she asked, hoping for some support from Dina, though she doubted she’d get any. The girl didn’t seem very enthusiastic about their mission. But she was good at her job, and the Emperor—advised by Mardocar, of course—wouldn’t have picked her for this task unless the gods knew she was up to it. Being gods, they did know the final outcome, after all.

“Is it just me,” she continued, “or wouldn’t this be a whole lot easier if the gods simply snapped their fingers and struck those teenagers down?”

She could see Sir Themur’s displeasure with her choice of words. Relaila did so enjoy riling him up.

“Onyx was born in the fourth year of the tenth Lion. That makes him twenty-three,” he corrected her.

“Right. The kids, then.”

This time, the object almost hit the cobblestones on the bridge when she tossed it, but she caught it at the last moment.

“That would break the prophecy,” Sir Themur stated calmly and matter-of-factly, as if talking about the price of milk.

“Mardocar has spoken. The three will break the Empire. But there are thousands of ways to interpret those words, and all of them are valid until the prophecy actually comes true. When that happens, these possibilities will collapse into one single truth, and on that day we’ll know the full meaning of his words. That provides us with some leeway. It’s our job to ensure that truth includes an Empire broken only metaphorically, not physically, and that what comes after the break is stronger than what came before.”

Dina looked at the black Knight. “You mean like a broken bone that’s stronger after mending? Or scarred skin, thicker and more resilient after healing a cut?”

“Exactly. Words of prophecy are important. Break isn’t the same as destroy. We just need to shape the events so they fulfill his words to our advantage.”

Relaila didn’t quite see his point. “Alright. But again, why us? Why don’t the gods do it themselves?”

She had a sneaking suspicion the Knight Eternal actually didn’t know, at least not beyond “because the gods said so.” Though, to be honest, that was still of course a perfectly valid answer.

“How can they break the Empire if they’re already dead? They can’t,” he said, trying to tie the threads of his argument together. Relaila wasn’t quite sure she followed them all. Dina seemed to understand what he was trying to say, though. She just didn’t appear to fully agree with his interpretation.

“No,” he continued, “if the gods killed them now, that would shatter the prophecy. But the gods know the future. We will kill them, but only after they’ve fulfilled the prophecy and broken the Empire. And we need to be the ones doing it, not the gods, or Mardocar wouldn’t have gathered us for this task.”

“Aren’t they supposed to enter the city first?” Dina chimed in, almost too cheerfully.

Sir Themur just glared at her. “There are different ways of interpreting prophecy.”

She tossed the object into the air once more, and caught it with her left hand. The Knight Eternal’s line of reasoning did kind of make sense, though just barely. Somewhere at the back of her head, a nagging thought begged for her attention, a notion that, if she managed to grasp it, she felt would overturn his entire argument. But no matter how hard she tried to grab it, the thought always slipped away, never surfacing from her subconscious.

The truth was that while Relaila enjoyed arguing with the humorless man, he was actually right. The gods had spoken, and nothing else really mattered now, anyway. While such things were amusing to speculate on, the only things of importance were that they had been given their orders, the gods of the world were with them, and they had a job to do.

“Stop that,” Sir Themur barked, the irritation evident in his voice as his iron-clad fist caught the object while she was trying to juggle it between her hands. “What is that thing anyway?”

He returned it to her, as if she had already agreed to his demand.

Relaila shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, and turned to lean on the granite guardrails of the bridge, overlooking the moat.

“Just something I picked up from one of the palace guards. Probably an heirloom of some sort. Or maybe a memento of a loved one.”

Casually, she tossed it into the water, whatever it was. It made a plopping sound as it broke the still surface. With a final glint, as its golden cover caught the light of the afternoon sun, it descended into the dark depths below.

Author's Note

Thank you for reading Echoes of Fallen Gods! If you enjoyed this chapter, please consider giving it a like.

Now also available as a free audiobook: https://www.youtube.com/@LordsOfTheStars