“Borosan, get out of here. Take Nesrearck with you.”

“I don’t understand.”

Ciras began to move back slowly, easily. “Dragright is dead, but his body is linked to this place. You know the stories of corpse dust. Imagine how powerful it would be if the corpse had lain here since the Cataclysm.”

“Oh, oh, I see.” The inventor began to trek back up the hill. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to kill it.” He set himself and nodded to the corpse. “If I don’t, remember to mark this place as very deadly on your map.”

The corpse laughed. “I’ll hunt him down, too.”

“No, you won’t.” Ciras pointed toward the hole in the tomb entrance. “Leave here, and someone else will despoil your comrades. You can’t allow them to be dishonored.”

“No, I can’t.” The thing launched itself at him. The Dragon form shifted into Tiger, but Ciras kept his sword where it was. He cut to his left, working back against its right. The slash meant to decapitate him whistled just past his face. The blow opened the creature to a counterattack, but even as Ciras feinted with his right shoulder, the sword cut back to parry a low slash.

Again, Ciras danced away, working always to the right. The creature might no longer be Dragright, but whatever had caused him to drag his leg still affected it. Ciras moved with calculation, slowing to draw it into attacks, then cutting to the right. The creature darted around to head him off and trap him, but he just ran in the other direction.

The corpse, backlit by the fire, hunched its shoulders. “So this is what the Empire has come to? Unskilled cowards who run rather than fight?”

Ciras nodded. “The Empire you died to save is dead. The Nine Principalities have risen in their place. You and yours are all but forgotten.

“In fact,” Ciras added as he began to spin to the right, exposing his back to the creature, “you’re beneath contempt. Nesrearck, shoot it again!”

The creature had already begun a forehand slash at his spine, but glanced off up the hillside. Its blade rose with the distraction, and Ciras’ spin brought him down onto his left knee. As he spun, he shifted the sword around into a double-hand grip, directed by his left hand. As the corpse’s slash whipped past an inch above his skull, Ciras’ sword bit into the back of its right knee and continued out through the front.

The corpse continued its spin and began to fall. Shifting his blade to his right hand, Ciras rose and cut down. As the corpse hit the ground, his sword clove its skull in two.

It thrashed on the ground, then reached out and clawed the stone. It slowly began dragging itself back toward the white stain of corpse dust. Ciras could imagine it trying to pack its shattered head and come at him again.

He would have hacked it into pieces, but he had no desire to dishonor the warrior. He just let the corpse keep crawling, because between it and the corpse dust lay the fire.

He moved downwind so he’d not breathe any of the smoke rising from the body. Borosan appeared at the edge of the basin and smiled. “I’m glad to see you won.”

Ciras frowned. “You should have been a long way from here by now.”

“I couldn’t have left you behind.” Nesrearck strode up beside him. “I was refitting the thanaton. We would have gotten it.”

Before Ciras could ask, a panel slid up on the machine revealing the crossbow mechanism. Instead of a bolt, one of the mousers was set to be launched.

The swordsman nodded. “It would have taken him apart from inside?”

“That was the idea.”

“Better than what I had, which was just a lot of hope.” Ciras smiled. “It showed me a move I didn’t know, so I showed it no fighting style at all. That confused it.”

Borosan frowned. “But that left you vulnerable and could have gotten you killed.”

“True, but it did not. Not this time.” Ciras returned his sword to its scabbard. “Next time I hope I have a better plan.”

Chapter Sixteen

34th day, Month of the Wolf, Year of the Rat

9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

737th year since the Cataclysm

Thyrenkun, Felarati

Deseirion

Keles Anturasi rubbed his eyes, then looked out from the tower library’s balcony at the Black River’s southern shore. In less than a week, the transformation of Felarati had begun, and had begun in a way Keles would have thought impossible. The day after he’d spoken with the Prince, he rode south to the hills. It took him a full two days to do a preliminary survey-largely because he had a cadre of eighteen people following him. They hung on his every word, aped his every move, and generally got in his way.

The Desei surprised him. Living in Nalenyr, he had grown up with stories of bloody-minded savages who slaughtered innocent Helosundians for sport. Many Naleni thought the Desei were slope-headed dullards who labored happily in a nation devoid of color because they were all inbred. While it was true that the two images could not easily be reconciled, Keles acknowledged that people seldom had trouble maintaining the veracity of multiple stereotypes as long as they were all derogatory.

But the Desei he worked with were hardly homicidal or stupid. While they did not benefit from some of the formal training people obtained in Nalenyr, they were clever and quite resourceful. And as Prince Pyrust had suggested, they had long done much with nothing, so when they had something to work with, they adapted to it quickly and used it well.

Sooner than he thought possible, his students were able to work with minimal supervision. He set them to the more simple tasks of laying out roads and aligning buildings. Some of his students were water-witches-one of them approaching near Mystic status. He had them locate sites for wells and lay out the sewer lines. By the second day, a whole new district for Felarati had been laid out. It would be able to house twice the number of people as the section of the city it was replacing.

On the third day, Pyrust gave the order for the construction to begin. Keles had argued against it, pointing out that they had none of the building material they needed. But Pyrust had simply said, “It is Deseirion, Keles. We have what we need.”

Soon people began to stream through the southern city gate, bringing with them the stones and wood that had once been their home. Every man, woman, and child carried something to the new site. A third of them stayed to work, and the others headed back for more.

Even now, almost a week into the project, the lines of people stretched north to south and back again. They looked almost like ants, and they certainly worked with a similar single-mindedness. And, from off to the west, another stream of farmers arrived to make the vacated city land productive again.

It was so unlike his home that he could not feel homesick. There was not enough of Moriande there to remind him of the south. While Deseirion was hardly as colorful or fecund as his home, it all seemed new and amazing.

Very clearly, had Prince Cyron attempted what Pyrust was doing, Moriande’s streets would have been flooded with people protesting his actions. The whole of the city would have been in an uproar. The inland lords-ever resisting any directive from the capital-would be threatening open revolt. And yet, if put to the question, every citizen would say they loved Cyron as much as the Desei loved Pyrust. If called to it-with the possible exception of the inland lords-they would willingly fight to protect Cyron and his nation.

Keles clearly had misjudged the Desei, and found his reeducation rather harsh and chilling. The Desei were content to move their homes, brick by brick, a couple miles south. He had no doubt they would have moved them as far south as Moriande if so commanded. While many Naleni feared invasion from the north, he doubted any of them understood how complete an invasion that could be.