Book 1 - The Tyranny of the Night Read Online Free Page B

gathered his men. "The Lion has ordered me to report to him immediately,
with the mummies and their accoutrements. He has another job for me. Already.
Bone, that leaves you to take the company home. The galley only has space for
maybe ten more men. One has to be Hagid. Bone, pick the others. There're other
patrol ships out. I'll send them to cover you."
    Bone named nine names immediately. Each belonged to an injured or sick soldier.
    Else nodded. Those men were likely to be more burden than asset. He said, "It
should be under a hundred miles to the Shidaun naval fortress. Abandon the
carts. You'll make better time."
    Else hoped he was not whistling in the dark. The fortified harbor at Shidaun was
at least a hundred twenty miles away. Probably more. And while the Kaif's
enemies might not be fast enough to catch the Sha-lug from behind, their
sorcerers had ways of reaching out to potential allies between here and Shidaun.
Once the night returned.
    Al-Azer looked grim. He would be the last man in the band allowed to board a
ship and scurry away to safety. The Master of Ghosts was the company's most
important protector.
    Else made the ship's master put in at Shidaun. There he used his authority to
compel the garrison commander to send marines north to meet Bone.
    That was all that he could do for his men.
    3. St. Jeules ande Neuis, in the End of Connec
    Brother Candle reached St. Jeules ande Neuis after noon prayers, on the third day
of Mantans, in the third year of the Patriarchy of Sublime V in Brothe. Man and
boy, adult and child, the villagers should have been getting ready for the
bitter long hours of spring planting.
    They had been preparing, naturally. But with little enthusiasm. Word had come
that a Perfect Master was headed their way. The peasants were eager to see a
famous holy man, even
    if few of them were believers themselves. The people were eager to hear and
debate the message the Perfect Master would bring.
    Even poor farmers in the Connec enjoyed an active intellectual life. Many minds
still could not understand the Maysalean divergences from Episcopal creed—but
most Connectens were willing to argue.
    The Maysalean Heresy had been around for decades but only lately had it begun to
catch on. Though there was as much nationalistic fervor in that as philosophical
conviction. The Heresy's growth was a response to the incessant outrages
practiced by the illegitimate Patriarchs of Brothe.

    ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX YEARS HAD PASSED SINCE THE election of the Connecten
Ornis of Cedelete to the Patriarchal throne. Within hours the unheroic Ornis
fled the Holy City, harried by a mob whipped into a frenzy by agents of the
Brothen Five Families. Who considered the western religious Patriarchy a part of
their birthright.
    Legitimate Patriarch Ornis, taking the reign name Worthy VI, established himself
in the Palace of Kings at Viscesment. Though legitimate in canon law, Worthy's
Patriarchy in exile was impotent His own countrymen in the End of Connec did not
take him seriously. His successors made up a parade of ineffective, craven, and
often quickly murdered Patriarchs. Meanwhile, the illegitimate line of Usurper
Patriarchs in Brothe came to be recognized by most of the Episcopal bishops,
archbishops, and Principatés. The Five Families of Brothe could pay much bigger
bribes. Only lukewarm support from the Grail Emperors kept the Viscesment
anti-Patriarchy breathing.
    Barely, now known as the Pretender Patriarchy.
    The current Pretender Patriarch, Guy ande Scars, styling himself Immaculate II,
sputtered and fussed at the Episcopal world from his family estate outside
Viscesment. His entire Patriarchal establishment, horizontally and vertically,
consisted of fewer than a hundred persons, the majority of them extremely
competent Braunsknechts Guards from the Grail Emperor Johannes' own Kretien Electorate. Their presence assured Immaculate a
definite, though modest, level of