Chương 29: Chapter-29

With the death of everyone at the congress save the Lord Marshal Corven Ilsen, who survived by cowardly hiding in an office and barricading the door while the rest of the representatives were fighting for their lives, international organization opposing Tel-sha-shenk fell apart. Individual countries and city-states rallied around the incident, calling the act a declaration of war. Half of the nations and city-states of the Weqlan continent declared war on Tel-sha-shenk in retaliation. Then the assassinations began.

Every leader who had declared war was murdered. Most of them publicly by Inalten, undead shock-troopers who were nigh-unstoppable with conventional warfare. The corpses of the leaders then reanimated and attacked the guards who were attempting to avenge them. In one case, an entire royal family was slaughtered by its own servants, with the king killing his own queen with his undead hands. The leaders who did not declare war were not targeted. The message was clear.

Tal had already infiltrated Weqlan, and the war was already underway. But who dare openly speak it? When the dead can rise and walk at night and come to your door if you speak against the warlock-king, when his reach seemed to be everywhere, when his queen walked in public displaying magics of great power and assuring the commoners that life under Tal-sha-shenk was not so frightening as they had been led to believe?

When the Ilsandese army went to arrest Empress Regina du Tal, she raised her hand to the sky and called down lightning that struck the armed and armored guards dead. When the armies began forming despite this, that was when the ships landed on the Weqlanese shores. And the former King Huberlin the Third, Maker of Orphans, landed upon the shores of Wessa with five thousand men and five hundred horse.

Thinking that the invaders would be easily defeated, the Wessian generals took to the field with an equal number of men. The archers of Huberlin's armies rained arrows down on the Wessians from afar, and the men who were struck did not fall. They turned on their fellow soldiers, and the formation fell apart from within as the undead among them tore it apart. Then Huberlin had ten thousand men. Five thousand living, five thousand dead. And when he fought again, he had twelve.

And when he fought again, he had fifteen. With the undead at the vanguard and the archers to slay the formations of the locals, Huberlin conquered Wessa in six months. The royal family refused to surrender. The Maker of Orphans took in the royal prince of Wessia, three years old at the time, as his own son. Wessa became part of Tal-sha-shenk. Many Wessians fled the country, fearing that they would be murdered by the invading army and turned into undead. But those who remained behind were not killed.

Instead, Huberlin simply audited the land, performed a census, and began ruling as any conquering monarch might, albeit in the name of Tal the Risen. He did enforce The Lottery, and every six months one hundred and thirteen young men and women were sent by ship back to Elup. The rumors that they would be murdered when they arrived were countered with rumors that they would meet any number of other fates. But otherwise, he mostly ruled fairly.

He observed local customs when appropriate and enforced the laws of Tal-sha-shenk when they contradicted custom. Five years passed, and still the feared slaughter of the peasants did not occur. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. Slowly, the refugees began to return.

* Prince Janes was eight years old when he first dared to put the crown on when his adoptive father—the murderer of his mother and father, although Janes barely remembered that—was asleep. The man had worn it for two days, working constantly, before taking it off and setting it in the map room. The man had rubbed his head with a weary hand and announced that he needed sleep. Janes had seen that. He'd been working as a page. Huberlin said it was good experience. And Janes might not be a prince anymore.

It was all a little murky. The undead god-king across the sea had said that Janes could live and would show him mercy, but not that he was still a prince. His people wanted him to be prince, though, and nobody said they couldn't call him one. So he liked to think he was a prince. Janes had waited until all of the officers had left for the night, then sneaked into the room and stolen the crown. He put it on, and to his surprise, lights had shown in his eyes.

He thought they were runes, but he couldn't recognize them. Did they use different runes across the sea? He spent half an hour trying to make his adoptive father's magick work for him, but other than the flashing lights in his eyes he couldn't do a thing. He couldn't make the light appear from everywhere, nor could he make it darker. He couldn't make the room hotter or colder.

He couldn't clean the dirt off the floor, or make himself smell clean, or make the water clean, or anything he'd seen his adoptive father do. Frustrated, Janes had wanted to throw the stupid thing in the privy. But one of the servants had seen him before he'd gotten there and chased him down for the crown. He was locked in a pantry, waiting for Huberlin to wake up and pronounce his fate, for the entire night. And then left there for most of the morning too.

Finally, he was marched out into the courtyard, and he was caned on his bare backside in front of half the castle. He'd tried not to cry. He'd cried. Two days later, while his bottom was still stinging from the caning, his adoptive father had called him into one of the parlors and ordered the servants out. Janes thought he was in for a lecture. But as the old man who had spared his life had looked at him, he hadn't seen anger in his eyes.

"What were you hoping to accomplish by stealing my crown, Janes?" Huberlin asked after a few moments of silence. Janes was silent.

"Answer the question," the king said with a bit more force to his voice.

"M-magick," the boy admitted.

"I wanted it to give me magick." The king nodded.

"That's what I thought it might be."

"Are you mad?"

"I would have been if you'd thrown it in the privy. But no, I'm not mad. I'm not sorry for your punishment, you deserved that. But I'm not angry." Janes felt relieved. His adoptive father was scary enough on a normal day, and having him angry was the last thing Janes wanted. They called his adoptive father "the Maker of Orphans," and who knows what he'd done to earn that title, because he'd already had it when he'd made Janes an orphan.

"Well then," the king said.

"What sort of magick do you want to have?"

"All of it."

"You can't have all of it. But I can teach you some magick. Would you like to know how to make the light of the room brighter or dimmer?"

"Yes! But when I tried it with the crown nothing happened, I just had lights flashing in my eyes."

"I see those lights too. But I can read them. And they say something different for me than they do for you. Anyway, you don't need the crown to work magick. You just need faith."

"Faith?"

"Yes. If you put your faith in Tal, then you can work some magick. A little. Nothing dangerous. But you can, oh, I don't know, heat your water for your bath, for example. You just have to pray 'Blessed be Tal,' at the start, then say what you want to happen by magick, and then say 'in Tal's name, may it be.'""You don't pray to Tal," Janes objected.

"I don't have to. I've proved my devotion. Time and time and time again," Huberlin said, and he had a grim expression in his eyes.

"Try it. Just remember the words of the prayer and try making something happen by magick."

"Blessed be Tal start the fire in the fire place In Tal's name may it be!" the boy shouted in one breath. He'd seen Huberlin start the fire many times with his magick crown, so he was surprised when it didn't work.

"Looks like Tal doesn't trust you with fire," Huberlin said sadly.

"Try something else. Something smaller. Maybe try making it turn the juice in that cup into something else." Janes looked at the cup, but that was stupid. Instead he thought for a minute.

"Blessed be Tal, I wish I was wearing green, In Tal's Name may it be!" the boy shouted. To his shock, his clothes changed color from an undyed beige with plenty of stains to a pure green.

"It worked!" he shouted.

"I told you it would," his adoptive father said.

"But like I said, it won't do anything dangerous. You can't throw lightning, you can't make fire, you can't hurt people. But you can play with magick. You just have to pray to Tal to do it." Then Huberlin had stood, looked uncomfortable for a moment, patted the boy on his shoulder, and walked out of the room. Janes spent the rest of the day experimenting with his new powers. He was incredibly proud of the fact that Tal wouldn't listen to any of the other boys or girls who tried praying to him. Just Janes.

Tal and Huberlin had taken Janes's parents from him. But they'd given him magick. And Janes was eight years old, so a part of him was foolish enough to think that maybe that was a fair trade.