The Heretic Kings

“The dark, tall people who inhabit your city.”

“Yes. When first I came upon them, in the year of the Saint one hundred and nine, they were savages and only legends and ruins remained of the noble culture they had once possessed. They called themselves Zantu, which in their tongue signifies the Remnant, and their ancestors they called Undwa-Zantu, the Elder Remnant. Their mages—for they had been a mighty folk of magic—had degenerated into tribal shamans, but they preserved much that was worth knowing. They were a unique people, that elder race, possessed of singular gifts.”

But Bardolin was gaping. “You’ve been here . . . how long? Four and a half centuries?”

Aruan gri

“But how—?”

“I told you: the shamans of the Zantu preserved some of the lore of their ancestors, theurgy of a potency to make what we called Dweomer in the Old World look like the pranks of a child. There is power in this country, Bardolin; you will have noticed it yourself. The mountains of fire spewed out raw theurgy as well as molten rock in their eruptions. And Undabane is the fountainhead, the source. The place is virtually alive. And the power can be tapped. It is why I am still here, when my poor frame should be dust and dry bone long since.”

Bardolin could not speak. His mind was busy taking in the enormity of what Aruan was saying.

“I came here fleeing the purges of the High Pontiff Willardius—may he rot in a Ramusian hell for ever. With some of my comrades, I took ship with a desperate man, Albayero of Abrusio. He was nothing more or less than a common pirate, and he needed to quit the shore of Norma

“Every century or so,” he went on, “there is a convulsion in the Faith of the Ramusians, and they must renew their beliefs. They do so with a festival of slaughter. And always their victims are the same.

“We fled one such bloodbath, my colleagues and I. Most of the Thaumaturgists’ Guilds of Garmidalan and Cartigella became fugitives, for as I am sure you know, brother, the more prominent you are in our order, the less chance you have of being overlooked when the Ravens are wetting their beaks.

“So we took ship, some score of us with our families, those who had them, in the cranky little vessel of Pinarro Albayero.

“Albayero had intended to make landfall in the Bre

“But we did not. We had hoped to find an uninhabited island among the archipelago of the Bre

“I know better now. God was at hand, watching over us, guiding our ship on the one true road to our salvation. We made landfall seventy-eight days after rounding North Cape, ninety-four after our departure from Cartigella.

“We landed on a continent which was utterly alien to anything we had experienced before. A place which was to become our home.”

Aruan paused, chin sunk on breast. Bardolin could imagine the amazement, the joy and the fear which those first exiles must have felt upon walking up the blazing beach to see the impenetrable dark of the jungle beyond. For them there had never been any question of turning back.

“Half of us were dead within six months,” Aruan went on, his voice flat, mechanical. “Albayero abandoned us, weighed anchor one night and was across the horizon before we had realized he was gone. He sold his knowledge to the nobility of Astarac, I afterwards found, enabling others to attempt the voyage in times of desperation. A good thing, as it turned out, for it meant that once or twice in the long, long years and decades and centuries following we had injections of new blood.

“We tamed the Zantu with feats of sorcery, and they came to serve and worship us. We lifted them out of savagery, made them into the more refined people you see today. But it was a long time before we truly appreciated their wisdom and learned to leave behind the prejudices of our Ramusian upbringing. We cleared Undi, which was an overgrown ruin lost in the belly of Undabane, and made it our capital. We made a life, a kingdom of sorts if you like, here in the wilderness. And we were not persecuted. You will never smell a pyre’s stink in this country, Bardolin.”

“But you did something, didn’t you? I have seen man-beasts here, monstrosities of Dweomer and warped flesh.”

“Experiments,” Aruan retorted quickly. “The new power we discovered had to be explored and contained. A new set of rules had to be written. Before they were, there were some regrettable . . . accidents. Some of us went too far, it is true.”

“And this no longer goes on?”

“Not if I do not wish it,” Aruan said without looking at him.

Bardolin frowned. “A society glued together by the Dweomer. Part of me rejoices, but part of me recoils also. There is such scope for abuse, for—”

“For evil. Yes, I know. We have had our internal struggles over the years, our petty civil wars, if I can dignify them with that title. Why else do you think that out of all the founders of our country I alone remain?”

“Because you are the strongest,” Bardolin said.

Aruan laughed his full, boisterous laugh again. “True enough! Yes, I was strongest. But I was also wisest, I think. I had a vision which the others lacked.”

“And what do you see with this vision of yours? What is it you want out of the world?”

Aruan turned and looked Bardolin in the eye, the moonlight cra

“I want to see your people and mine take their rightful place in the world, Bardolin. I want the Dweomer-folk to rise up and cast away their fears, their habits of servitude. I want them to claim their birthright.”

“Not all the Dweomer-folk are men of education and power,” Bardolin said warily. “Would you have the herbalists and hedge-witches, the cantrimers and crazed soothsayers have their say in some kind of sorcerous hegemony? Is that your aim, Aruan?”

“Listen to me for a moment, Bardolin. Listen to me without that dogged conservatism which marks you. Is the social order which permeates Norma

“Would the social order which you would erect in its place be any more just or fair?” Bardolin asked. “You would substitute one tyra

“I would liberate an abused people, and remove the cancer of the religious orders from our lives.”

“For someone who has spent the centuries here in the wilderness you seem tolerably well informed,” Bardolin told him.

“I have my sources, as every mage must. I keep a watch on the Old World, Bardolin; I always have. It is the home of my birth and childhood and young manhood. I have not given up on it yet.”