Rumors upon rumors framed the emperor in an improbable light. He was bliss incarnate. He was the tallest elf who ever lived. His eyes were wreathed in fme. No, he had no eyes. No, they were made of solid gold, and he radiated light from every orifice. When he spoke, all things became silent. The very wind stopped blowing. No, it blew at his back wherever he went. The sound of his voice raised the dead. No, it healed all illness. No, that was the sight of him.

  Lance wondered what he was about to see, and also feared it. The emperor was immortal. He was born on the day of creation, and he had not aged a day since.

  Is he a child then? Lance wondered. Or is he stuck in some other age?

  He didn’t have to wonder long. A Bloodless dislodged himself from his team at the forward gate, spoke briefly to Lord Elise before walking away. Lord Elise whispered something into the queen’s ear.

  “The servants are dismissed.” She said in a carrying voice. “The time of the emperor’s arrival has come.”

  The servants scattered into the dark like rats. Lance resisted the urge to join them. He was not worthy of this honor and he knew it, like they did.

  He remained in his pce. Dull pain ran through his knee, down his shin and into his ankle but he ignored it. What was coming was far too important for his comforts.

  With the servants gone, the nobility lined up to either side of the throne along the first third of the carpet.

  Thunder rolled through the chamber almost as soon as they were assembled. A pair of Bloodless marched away from the doors. Another eight filtered in from various pces throughout the room. They formed a line to one side of the carpet, joining the nobility there.

  The first rays of sun peeked through the series of skylights, brightening the scarlet carpet running from poured stone double doors to throne, washing out the stormy grays and lightning-bright lines in the granite floor.

  The doors cracked open.

  A different light danced with a series of tapestries hanging between the columns. As the doors continued to roll apart, the sliver of light broadened, encompassed everything before the throne, which resisted its glow by some magic Lance did not know.

  Figures streamed through the entrance amid the sound of beating drums and symbols bashed together; echoing, adding to the ambient tension that stiffened the backs of every member of Shadovane’s nobility. The first figures to cross the threshold were dressed in pte mail which had been forged with a pearl-like cast set into the metal. Their sashes and capes were gold and sky blue, and they wore bell-shaped helmets with a great, yellow disk painted in the center of their foreheads.

  Lance had heard of the Enlightened. They were Mirrhvale’s equivalent of the Bloodless, the most feared and cherished force throughout the Empire.

  They marched across the carpet, a drumbeat marking every step, until they came to rest opposite the ten Bloodless. After them came the smell of incense from swinging thuribles held in the hands of burp cd monks from the capital’s temples. Every elven head was dressed in falls of golden hair, every eye green or grey or blue. Lance had expected the Mirrhvalians to look different, to dress in different garb certainly, but he had not expected the contrast to be this stark—like night and day.

  The monks were followed by Mirrhvale’s nobility. By comparison, they made the Shadovani in their opaque silks and woolens dyed in deep and dark colors look prudish. The men went sleeveless, with their colrs covered in falls of gold chain and fine bangles of gold and silver dripping from their wrists. Their silks were so sheer Lance could almost see through them and the women left little more to the imagination. They wore bangles and tiaras, rings on every finger, jewels rge enough to purchase the loyalties of whole courts in the bordernds and dresses that clung and flowed in the most fttering ways, of materials as sheer and transparent as the noblemen.

  They filtered in as a double file and positioned themselves accordingly. When all of those who came with the emperor had taken their pces, silence descended. If the mood of the room wasn’t tense before, it was armingly so now.

  The anticipation was making it hard to focus. He was too aware of who was next to him, who was guarding her. The circumstances demanded he not break from decorum and tradition, and yet he wanted to run from this pce, flee from the Grand Hall and the castle and Shadovane, never to return.

  The true event was marked by the piercing cry of a horn—one clear, carrying note that touched Lance’s heart. Gooseflesh crawled over his skin and he knew, in that moment, that he would never witness something so great as this moment, so terrible as what transpired here and now.

  The note died. The drums beat anew. Every man and woman stood at attention. He had never seen them so apprehensive. Light spilled into the room. Like the reflection of the sun beneath water it fractured and pulsed, spread across the walls, the floor, embracing everything, yielding to nothing. It spread across the throne, breaking the magic of its enchantment and washing the Shadow Queen over, revealing her in her every detail.

  And then he came.

  A guard stood at each compass point, boxing him in, and Lance knew who they were too. They were called Prophets. They were the emperor’s honor guard. If they had been standing next to anyone else, they would have struck awe into him, but the emperor was all consuming, pushing them out of his mind along with every other aspect of the room. In the moment he set his eyes on the emperor, all that surrounded him bled together, the corona surrounding the sun, and he couldn’t look away.

  He was impossibly tall, perhaps nine feet, willowy and commanding in pristine, white linen that glowed with the light that emanated from his skin. His eyes were vacant, silver rings in milky oceans, bearing a terrible knowledge that would take any mortal man under, into chaos. He wore no adornments save a stole with a great, yellow sun embzoned at each end, and a brilliant, rose-gold crown, broken and bowed at the front in an approximation of a beetle’s mandibles, with teardrop cut turquoise and sapphire dangling from its edges.

  He halted with his guard before the gathered figures. The high, youthful voice of a boy still in the throws of puberty came from behind him. Lance heard the struggle in the boy’s voice, the strained effort to keep it from cracking.

  “Welcome the emperor, the Immortal Light of Bliss, the first creation of the Sky Lord who is God, Lord of the Thirteen Wards, Wielder of the Light Well, first and st defender of us all. Welcome him. Emperor Conan of Mirrhvale. Welcome him.”

  The gathered nobility, soldiers and monks threw themselves to the ground, pressed their foreheads to the carpet.

  “All hail the Lord of the Morning.” They recited in unison. “All hail his holiness.”

  “May the light shelter you.” The emperor said.

  “And may the shadow preserve you.” They responded.

  The elves stood gracefully. The queen and the emperor held each other’s eyes. There was electricity there, a bond forged in love or in power. It was a fearsome thing the look they set upon each other.

  The emperor’s eyes drifted to her chest for a fraction of a second, where a pendant y in the valley between her supple breasts—a silver spiral with a soft, green gem suspended in its twist.

  A more experienced servant would know better than to watch the emperor, but Lance was clumsy, unaware. Those eyes, drunk with the knowledge of the ages, reported anger in that moment, and if Lance didn’t mistake it, the barest hint of fear.

  What could he have to fear from a pendant?

  It was hard to conceive of someone with the degree of both political and real power he possessed fearing anything. He wielded it so easily—as if he was quite unaware of who he was. It was good enough that his subordinates knew that for him.

  He knelt by Lance, until his lips were at Lance’s ear. Lance froze, suddenly unsure what to do. The urge to run as fast as he could away from the man, the throne, the chamber resurfaced. There too was the nagging feeling that doing so would almost certainly dishonor the queen, and tarnish the reputation of Shadovane.

  “I understand you are frightened, child.” The emperor whispered. “It would please me greatly, however, if you stepped aside.”

  Lance’s bowels went to water. He could feel heat rising in his cheeks and hoped he wasn’t blushing noticeably. He stepped back and to the side until he was clear of the throne. The emperor took his pce, standing at the queen’s right hand.

  He cleared his throat, and when he spoke, he spoke with confidence.

  “I am honored.” He said. “Shadovane has been an ally like no other throughout our history as the greatest power in the world. It will forever be the jewel of the Sun Empire, a pce of poise, of restraint, a pilr of infallible support in a world increasingly pgued by violence and discord.

  “It is my honor to return here, to the birthpce of the Mother of Night, daughter of the one true god, the Sky Lord, whose name we do not utter. Ten years is long to be so distant, and while I have enjoyed news come from your leader, Queen Meredith, there is something in seeing a thing in person that words cannot quite capture, however articute, however pure in their intention.

  “I come to you with my most trusted, and my most loyal, that we may again know each other. So long an absence has made us strangers where we were once family. I would have my family returned to me. And so, I am honored by the kindness that has been shown, the clear effort apparent in this reception. May we come to know each other better in the coming weeks, and rekindle the kindred spirit we once enjoyed.”

  The gathered nobility appuded. They dragged their cpping on for an age, smiling while they darted acid gnces at each other. The highest among them—Lord Giram who helmed the Council of Liam; buxom Lady Therien; Lord Haman Bran, descendant of Queen Mariah who was the most famous queen of Shadovane; Lady Jain, who sat atop a horde of gold and silver; and old Lord Aren whose network of spies and questioners made even the nobles nervous—were the first to rest. Beyond them all others dragged their appuse on and on, until finally the emperor held up his hand for silence.

  The queen rose as their appuse died down.

  “It is our humble honor to serve in your Empire.” She said. “To serve in the construction of your dream.”

  She stepped aside. The emperor positioned himself before the throne, and took his seat. He sat so tall in that chair that his head blocked the porcein and amethyst spider in its web. The queen took his previous position. Electricity entered her gaze.

  Was that anger? That look…could it be hatred?

  He wondered who else had seen it. Who had noticed? Was he the only one? The gathered nobility, soldiers and monks gave away nothing.

  The audience proceeded from there through a series of formalities including the offering of a number of extravagant gifts including Tromite horses from the Free Lands and furniture hewn of the Lafia tree, a variety only found in the deepest reaches of Juakali, with roots that reached for the sky—or so the nobleman who presented them cimed. When the st of them were given, the emperor gave thanks for the gifts he had graciously received. He rose, and his honor guard fell into step with him.

  “A ball is to be held this evening in honor of our emperor’s return.” The queen announced. “Until then, you may consider yourselves dismissed.”

  Lance waited by her side while the double file of nobility, clergy and soldiers followed the emperor out. As the st of them left, the queen tipped backward on her heels and vanished through the pce where her shadow touched the granite floor.

  Lance stared at the pce where she had vanished. For a wonder, it seemed even his queen had forgotten he was there.

  What did I just see?