head. He understood her obsession for her Destiny of Glory. Now, that it was so close, she could not accept any other. There could be no other. For Yuzumi, only one was real.
The Empress came back to herself.
“Now” she said coldly, “I must avoid the Destiny of Death, and in this the Skull of Destiny will help me. It took me many years to find it, after dragging its existence out of the Oracle, but the Skull is the key to avoiding the Premonition. It showed us the Marked, and he is the one I must find and kill. How I rue the fact that he escaped alive when he was just a baby! That was a unique chance to kill him and end this nightmare which has haunted me day and night since then.”
“We sent the three best Dark Assassins. They’d never failed, ever. Even today I can find no explanation of how they were defeated by that meddler. I can only assume it was someone with enormous power.”
The Dark Lady’s glacial face tensed.
“I wrested the region where the baby was born from that senile oracle: Rogdon. I ordered you to locate him, in the land of the men in blue and silver, and kill him. How could you have failed me? How did he manage to survive?”
“That is the shame which consumes my soul every day, my Lady, having failed you and not having freed you from the Destiny of Death. There are not enough excuses, nor greater shame than what I have suffered since then. I shall never be able to forgive myself, my lady. Never.”
“You told me, and I remember as vividly as if it were today, you told me you had the spell for locating him.”
“And so I had, my Lady. Three silver bracelets were forged with the purest silver from the mines of Toyomi, by an unrivalled craftsman. On the first full moon I enchanted the three of them with an ancient and powerful spell of location. The bracelets would shine with the strength of the moon when they were within five leagues of someone with great power, my Lady, a power like yours. They would pulsate faster when they were pointed in his direction. The assassins simply had to follow the bracelets, and I know they did. They found the trail of the baby… on three occasions…”
“And on all three, the intruder defeated them. And tell me, Counselor, who can defeat a Dark Assassin on three occasions? Who?”
“Only you, my Lady.”
“That’s not altogether true, Isuzeni. You might do so as well; your power is great, High Priest, it always has been. And this suggests that whoever the intruder may be, it’s not just someone with the Gift, but someone extraordinarily powerful.”
“Yes, my Lady.”
“Long have I meditated upon this, Isuzeni, all these years, and I have been unable to find an answer to this mystery. Who stole the Marked from between my fingers when I already had him? Who killed the Assassins we sent to find and kill him? This mystery has tortured my soul since then. I must find an answer to it, and I will.”
Isuzeni closed his eyes for a moment and recalled a painful past, a past of unforgivable failure which shamed him and which his Lady was on the point of not forgiving. After the first failed attempt by the Dark Assassins, five new talismans of location had been forged with the power to recognize great power in infants and so locate the Marked. He had sent five of his most powerful acolytes to Tremia, expert Necromancers of the Cult of Imork, with the mission to comb not only Rogdon but the whole continent, leaving no stone unturned, and find the Marked wherever he might be hiding. Isuzeni specifically ordered them not to kill the baby but to bring it back to the Dark Lady, as the Empress wished to kill him with her own hands and so ensure the end of the Premonition. And his Lady’s wishes must be fulfilled. What the Dark Assassins had not been able to accomplish, his powerful Death Sorcerers certainly would.
A long year went by. And only one of the five came back.
What his acolyte told him left Isuzeni perplexed in the extreme. He had not been
The Empress came back to herself.
“Now” she said coldly, “I must avoid the Destiny of Death, and in this the Skull of Destiny will help me. It took me many years to find it, after dragging its existence out of the Oracle, but the Skull is the key to avoiding the Premonition. It showed us the Marked, and he is the one I must find and kill. How I rue the fact that he escaped alive when he was just a baby! That was a unique chance to kill him and end this nightmare which has haunted me day and night since then.”
“We sent the three best Dark Assassins. They’d never failed, ever. Even today I can find no explanation of how they were defeated by that meddler. I can only assume it was someone with enormous power.”
The Dark Lady’s glacial face tensed.
“I wrested the region where the baby was born from that senile oracle: Rogdon. I ordered you to locate him, in the land of the men in blue and silver, and kill him. How could you have failed me? How did he manage to survive?”
“That is the shame which consumes my soul every day, my Lady, having failed you and not having freed you from the Destiny of Death. There are not enough excuses, nor greater shame than what I have suffered since then. I shall never be able to forgive myself, my lady. Never.”
“You told me, and I remember as vividly as if it were today, you told me you had the spell for locating him.”
“And so I had, my Lady. Three silver bracelets were forged with the purest silver from the mines of Toyomi, by an unrivalled craftsman. On the first full moon I enchanted the three of them with an ancient and powerful spell of location. The bracelets would shine with the strength of the moon when they were within five leagues of someone with great power, my Lady, a power like yours. They would pulsate faster when they were pointed in his direction. The assassins simply had to follow the bracelets, and I know they did. They found the trail of the baby… on three occasions…”
“And on all three, the intruder defeated them. And tell me, Counselor, who can defeat a Dark Assassin on three occasions? Who?”
“Only you, my Lady.”
“That’s not altogether true, Isuzeni. You might do so as well; your power is great, High Priest, it always has been. And this suggests that whoever the intruder may be, it’s not just someone with the Gift, but someone extraordinarily powerful.”
“Yes, my Lady.”
“Long have I meditated upon this, Isuzeni, all these years, and I have been unable to find an answer to this mystery. Who stole the Marked from between my fingers when I already had him? Who killed the Assassins we sent to find and kill him? This mystery has tortured my soul since then. I must find an answer to it, and I will.”
Isuzeni closed his eyes for a moment and recalled a painful past, a past of unforgivable failure which shamed him and which his Lady was on the point of not forgiving. After the first failed attempt by the Dark Assassins, five new talismans of location had been forged with the power to recognize great power in infants and so locate the Marked. He had sent five of his most powerful acolytes to Tremia, expert Necromancers of the Cult of Imork, with the mission to comb not only Rogdon but the whole continent, leaving no stone unturned, and find the Marked wherever he might be hiding. Isuzeni specifically ordered them not to kill the baby but to bring it back to the Dark Lady, as the Empress wished to kill him with her own hands and so ensure the end of the Premonition. And his Lady’s wishes must be fulfilled. What the Dark Assassins had not been able to accomplish, his powerful Death Sorcerers certainly would.
A long year went by. And only one of the five came back.
What his acolyte told him left Isuzeni perplexed in the extreme. He had not been
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