CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Volusia stood on the balcony, atop the immense golden dome that rose from the center of the capital, and watched the horizon with growing interest. There, rising up in a cloud of dust, was an entourage of seven black chariots, born by the largest black horses she’d ever seen, bursting through the desert day. What surprised her most was not the size of the carriages, or the horses—or even their speed—but the fact that the legions of Empire soldiers camped outside her city parted ways for them immediately. A sea of bodies opened up, deferred to these oncoming carriages, and Volusia realized that clearly, this entourage of people, whoever they were, were given a great deal of respect.

The carriages continued charging, right for the capital gates, and Volusia wondered who could be so insolent as to think they could approach.

“Who heads for our gates?” she asked Koolian, one of her sorcerers, who stood beside her with a dozen other advisors, studying the horizon.

He cleared his throat, a grave look on his face.

“Goddess,” he replied. “Those before you are the Knights of the Seven. They represent the four horns and two spikes of the Empire, and are the direct representatives of the Great Council. They represent the collective force and negotiating power of all the Empire.”

“There is little that all Horns and Spikes agree on, Goddess,” Aksan, her assassin, said, stepping forward on her other side, “but if there is one thing they share in common, it is the Great Council. A word from the Great Council is a word from all the Empire. One dare not defy them. One cannot defy them.”

“You would be wise to host them graciously, Goddess,” her commander, Gibvin said.

Volusia watched as the gleaming black carriages tore through the desert, right for her gates, so proud, so regal—and so arrogant—clearly not expecting anyone or anything to get in their way.

“And what, do you suppose, they want with me?” she asked.

“They only come for one reason,” said Gibvin, “to dictate terms. They will make you an offer, and they will only make it once. Whatever it is, you would be wise to accept it, Goddess.”

She turned to him defiantly.

“This is not just the capital’s council,” he said. “This is the Great Council, of all the men. They represent not just one city, but tens of thousands. They do not just have armies—they have sorcerers, too, as powerful as yours—and an infinite number of men to lose. I implore you—do not provoke the beast.”

Volusia studied him, calm, expressionless, then turned back and watched the entourage approach the golden doors of her capital.

Her soldiers, down below, looked up at her, waiting for a response.

A thick silence hung in the air, as Volusia stared down, debating.

“Goddess, I beg you,” Gibvin said. “Do not keep them waiting. Open those doors at once.”

Volusia waited some more, the entire city so silent one could hear a pin drop, then finally, when she felt ready, she slowly nodded.

The gates were opened at once, and the chariots raced in, right for the golden dome, for her, as if they knew, without a doubt, that she would let them in.

* * *

Volusia sat around the Grand Council table, opposite the representative of the Knights of the Seven, and studied him with curiosity. He was not at all been what she had been expecting. She had expected a great warrior of the Empire race, a hardened man, large, strong, donning armor, bearing weaponry.

Yet she saw before her a simple man—a human being, no less—with intelligent eyes, wearing a brown robe, hands folded neatly inside them. He sat there calmly, looking back at her expressionless, perhaps a slight smile on his face, as if he had no fears in the world. And yet somehow, Volusia found his calm demeanor even more fearful than all the great warriors of the Empire. She sensed he was a man with unlimited powers at his disposal, who meant every word he said.

“You are very brave to come here with no guards,” she said, breaking the silence.

He laughed.

“I am a delegate of the Knights of the Seven,” he replied. “I don’t need guards. No one would be foolish enough to attack me.”

Keeping his smile, he cleared his throat and nodded gently.

“Goddess,” he said, “I have not come for threats. I don’t believe them. Nor have I come to bargain. I come only to utter the truth as we see it. You have started a great war here. You’ve taken by force several divisions of the Empire army, and the Empire capital. You have killed the Grand Council of the capital city, and along with them, thousands of men. You rule the capital now,” he said, and sighed. “And yet even you must realize, you rule it by force. Not by the choice of the Empire.”

“By force,” she repeated. “The same way Romulus and Andronicus before him ruled it.”

He nodded, smiling.

“True,” he countered. “And neither of those men are standing here today.”

She nodded back, conceding his point.

“What you don’t know,” he continued, “what no one knows, is that even the greatest, the most powerful, Empire leader answers to someone. And that someone is us.”

She examined him coolly, this man, so soft-spoken, yet with something about him that sent a chill up her spine.

“Out with it,” she snapped, impatient. “Are you threatening, then, to take power from me?” she asked, her voice hardened steel.

He smiled.

“As I mentioned, I don’t threaten. Besides, in you, we, the Knights of the Seven, see something much more interesting.”

She looked back, curious.

“As fate would have it,” he said, “you represent a chance to finally unite the Empire. Romulus and Andronicus were savages, ill-tempered generals who seized the throne by brute force. You, of course, are no princess, either—and are, in fact, from what I’ve heard, quite savage, too.”

He examined her.

“Yet you are young and beautiful,” he added, “you ruled Volusia, as your mother did before you, and the masses, at least, can be deluded by your appearance, by your pedigree, into thinking you are a pure and rightful leader. Leadership, after all, is all about perception, is it not?”

He smiled as he studied her, and Volusia narrowed her eyes, wondering where he was going with this.

“Then you have not come here with a threat?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“I have come to offer you rulership—bonafide rulership—of the Empire,” he said. “On behalf of the four Horns and two Spikes. A rulership spanning half the Empire. From here all the way to the Espian River shall be yours. The Espian and beyond, the Knights of the Seven shall rule. Our offer gives you more lands than you could ever dream. You will also have a life of peace, and rest assured our armies—all of our armies—shall be yours.”

He got up and walked to the window, looking out.

“Look outside,” he said. “Outside these city walls, hundreds of thousands of men remain of the Empire’s armies. They camp out there, waiting to avenge their commander, and they shall never forget.

“Behind them are millions more. Agree to my terms, and those men you see will lay down their arms and answer to you. Romulus’s million men, too, on the way home as we speak from the Ring, will defer to your command. As will the millions more men spread out amongst the Horns and Spikes. You will have no more worries, no more fears, and everything you’d ever wanted will be yours.”

He turned and faced her, his eyes aglow.

“Agree now,” he said, “and become Supreme Ruler.”

He removed a long papyrus scroll from inside his shirt, unrolled it, and placed it on the table before her. He held out a seal, for her to stamp it, dripping with hot wax.

Volusia, dozens of her councilors watching, walked slowly over to him, the room thick with silence.

Volusia took the stamp and examined it.

“You offer me half the Empire,” she said, staring at the seal. “But a Goddess does not rule half the world. A Goddess rules all of it.”

She looked down at him, her eyes piercing, and he met her stare.

“I will have all of the Empire,” she commanded. “Even if they are lands, as you say, that I will never reach, never see, never feel, never touch—I shall know that all is mine. You may return to your Seven and give them this message: they have one chance to lay down their arms.”

He laughed aloud, then shook his head slowly as he rolled up his seal.

“I had expected you to be wiser,” he said. “You realize, of course,” he added, “that you and all your men will die.”

Now it was her turn to smile.

“Everybody dies,” she says. “But not everybody lives.”

Volusia took the wax and, still smiling, suddenly stepped forward and crammed the burning hot seal into his forehead.

He shrieked and tried to resist, as the insignia of the Empire was burned into his forehead, but she grabbed the back of his head and held it, pushing deeper and deeper. When she was done, the emblem engraved, she reached up with both arms and in one clean motion, twisted his neck, snapping it.

He dropped, lifeless, down to her feet.

The entire room was silent, shocked, unable to believe what they had just witnessed.

She looked up at her men.

“Cut his body into six parts,” she ordered, her voice dark and commanding, “and send them to the four Horns and two Spikes of the Empire. The head—send to the Seven.”

She smiled wide.

“I want them to receive my response personally.”

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