Chance and Fate

{{Fiction
 * author=Andrew Getting;
 * hasSetting=Larisnar
 * storyBody====One year ago===

The winds in the northlands were not simply cold in winter. They chilled him throughout his being. Bundled as he was, his head pounded horribly, and his feet and hands were numb. Twice already this morning, he had nearly slipped from unstable footing. Had not his guide caught him both times, he would have surely died in the frozen wastes of the nameless chasms far below.

Of course, he reminded himself, that was why he had hired her.

She stood at least fifteen feet ahead of him, her breath fogging out from between the thick furs covering her. She held up her unstrung bow, tapped the overhang for snowfall. She fumed silently as the flakes fell into her quiver, then nodded to him to join her.

As he did, she tugged her pale face free of protection. "Art thou certain this is the proper path?" she asked, her voice as cold as the air around them. "Our maps show nothing beyond these mountains. 'Twould be a great shame an thou returnest not."

He nodded once, not deigning to remove his own furs. "Quite certain, thank you."

"Why art thou here?" she asked him, her voice almost inaudible against a sudden gust of wind.

"'Tis a poor time you hast chosen for philosophy," he replied.

"Why art thou here?" she asked again, her ruby lip curdling into a snarl. "This region hath claimed many a man half thy age in warmer months, and thou venturest forth in deadliest winter."

"'Twas no indulgence in humor, your excellency. I assure you, your answer ist most pressing to your own question." He sat against the hard earth, thankful that he could still feel it. "Humor me an you must."

She snorted, then leaned on her bow. "The Church asked us a favor, and we had little recourse but to comply. My mistress employed me to journey with thee."

He shook his head as he rubbed his mittened hands together. "Not here in this place and on this day. What dost you think is your purpose in existence?"

"We have no time for this. E'en now, the sun melteth the snow. We move anon, to safer ground, or we risk an icy tomb where we stand." With that, she covered her face again, and stepped out from the outcropping.

The ground cracked wetly under her. ""Athanae," she whispered. Her back hit the precipice, and she slid. Her arms spun as she fell, seeking stable purchase, but finding only crumbling snow.

Her body jerked suddenly, cutting short her descent. She spun slowly, suspended in air. Glancing down, her bow ricocheted off the chasm walls, shattering.

"This...," he said through gritted teeth, his grip solid on the quiver's strap. "This is why you are here. 'Tis where you die, your excellency. You wert always doomed to a frigid grave, forgotten and unmourned. An e'en all the world wisheth 'gainst it, fate careth not, and you perish.

"Or I save you. Perhaps that, too, is fate." He heaved back, pulling her to safety. She lay on the ground, her chest heaving as she felt the solid earth at her back. Her breath slowed, and at length she sat upright. He squatted nearby, his rheumy eyes peering at her.

"How dost you feel, your excellency?" he asked, his voice breathy and hoarse.

"Like thou hast played me the fool," she spat. "Why makest thy point so, an thou savest me after? Thinkest thyself the soul of wit, dost thou?" As she stood, her hand crept beneath her parka, retrieving a wicked curved dagger. "Sharp as thy tongue is, I know something still sharper."

"You thinkest your destiny so grandiose?" he asked as she approached, the dagger low and ready between them. "An every child born of Deverenus' blood died in greatness, all the world's souls fall to obscurity."

"A pox upon thy riddles and babble." She turned her blade over in her hand, raising it to strike. "If fate hath decreed my death, no mortal could deny it."

"I am here, your excellency, because it ist fate's decree," he grumbled, "just as you art."

"Why should I listen to thee?" she asked. "Thou needest me to survivest in these reaches. Thou sav'st my life only to spit upon my honor. Thou'rt nothing more than a charlatan, and I lose no honor in the taking of thy life."

"I die in an avalanche, and my great secrets and knowledge with me." He reached to his chest, spreading his coat wide to reveal wizened flesh to the mountain air. "Strike as you will; I am impervious to your blade."

"But not to mine." Beyond the collapsed ground, the snowy scape gave way to onyx eyes and polished steel armor and sword. With an impossibly casual leap, he stood between the two Deverenians.

"Seek'st thou death?" she asked the pale man, swiftly setting the dagger at the newcomer's throat.

"I am his dutiful servant," the pale man answered. He brought his head down on the woman's forearm, shattering the bones beneath before she could draw blood. "You are trespassers. Tell me why you have come here."

"Forgive her, milord," the priest spoke. "She is willful, but ignorant. She seeth the path, but not the journey, its end, or what lays beyond."

"My masters forgive or condemn. I enact their wishes." A twisted patch of scar glowed a faint red on his forehead. "They have rendered their judgment - only one of you will return to the outside world this day." He swung his blade, battering the woman's skull with its hilt, and she crumpled once more to the stone floor. In a flash, the edge of the blade cut the other man free of his outer garments, leaving only rich violet robes too thin to keep their wearer warm. "They chose her."

Virtually naked to the elements, the priest shuddered. Pale wisps of hair would not warm his liver-spotted head, and the muscles that had tired of strain would not carry his bones down the mountainside.

"You art wrong, warrior," the cleric replied, standing proud in his judgment. "I know the words to forceth you to do as I bid."

The pale man snorted. "I smell magic. I could kill you before you try it."

"Nevertheless," the old Deverenian answered, "you cannot disobey them.

"Takest me to the Black Mountain. Takest me to the seat of the invisible empire."

"In my younger days," the voice echoed throughout the dining hall, "I cultivated a taste for bloodwine. I offered the elven High King a measure of peace in exchange for greasing its trade, and when his wagons began rolling east, I sent my finest hunters to track their paths back to the vineyards." A bone-tipped gauntlet held a goblet aloft, swirling its dark contents slowly. "Neither he, nor his son, nor any of his line lived to their fifteenth year, the wars were so great. They dared a ruse to appease me, their true lord, with what was by all rights mine by birth.

"And now centuries later, one of my own line repeats the mistake of mere elven flesh. How unworthy my people have become without me." The goblet returned to its place at the table, its wine untouched. A masked, crowned head nodded to the man beyond the conspicuous feast of rare beasts spiced with herbs from the Lands of Light and Shadow. "Indulge your master, apostate disciple. Prove me wrong. I may no longer sup on food and drink, but stir my spirit. The true emperor commands it."

The cleric frowned deeply, an image reflected off the black glass walls carved directly from the floor and ceiling. Somehow, the lands outside the Black Mountain were still warmer.

"I am Látnok, a tardy servant, but yours nonetheless." He stared at his own reflection in the wall. "I was the personal steward of the pretender, Vyacheslav Drac, when we were boys and older. He valued me for my vision uncommon, and lent him my powers when he sought to claim Luthlarius as his. My advice kept him from the machinations of the Storm's church, and from the shifting tides of the knightly Orders."

The cleric paused here, sipping at his own wine. It was ancient, on the verge of souring into vinegar. "When he realized that his enemies, both within his empire and outside it, would not allow him further conquests, he grew bitter and jealous of his power. Even still, I was his only ally left from his childhood. We were both ancient before he turned on me."

The regal figure at the head of the table brushed out an imaginary wrinkle from his immaculate robes, then leaned closer to Látnok. The cleric continued, "Since the First War, the sight hath held grave dangers for the sighted. Through the favor of the gods, a seer spieth what the dusk hath hidden, what e'en the noonday cannot reveal, and what dawn ushereth in. We seeth truth, and not what others wisheth for us to see."

"Find your point," the robed man cautioned darkly, "or one will find you."

"Of course, master," the priest said, nodding. "Drac foolishly asked me to lay bare his destiny. More the fool I, I did. I told him that he wouldst war with the Hierophant over the final fate of their empire, and 'neath a black sun, all the world wouldst shudder for fear with the coronation of the Eternal Emperor, his crown still wet with his predecessor's blood."

The robed man chuckled, a sound like the gentle and inevitable rustle of a shroud. "'Man may his own fate see, but not prevent.' Your Signon stole that from Deima's sacred texts, though who knows who she thieved for it?"

"E'en as you sayest my master. Drac knew that he had once more made Deverenia fearsome, but that his name would pale before his successor's. He badeth me to scour the annales for clues to assume that lofty position himself, and I found passages long lost to Church censors. The Eternal Emperor wilt save Deverenia from herself, her forgotten sons and daughters, from gods righteous and deceitful, and from the heretic that would bleed history and prophecy for his own ends; that the Eternal Emperor's direst foe wilt be the one who crowneth him; and that his ascendance wilt accompany the moons moving in the sky as one of the Dragon's true children return.

"Nothing sated Drac. Though he demanded more prophecy, each new verse served but to tighten the noose about his neck. Desperate, he schemes to bring Signon's foretellings to pass, in the blind hope that the conjunction favoreth him. He exiled me to the northern reaches of Myerdeth, whose duke hath taken no small delight of late in telling me of Drac's newest forays into insanity."

The priest emptied his cup of wine in one gulp, his hands shaking. "I knew Drac wouldst not suffer my knowledge, not an the Church couldst turn it again' him. Each day brought me closer to the one when Drac wouldst dispose of me, and each day, I grew ever more tempted to see how and when my old friend would end me.

"A fortnight ago, I found my will broken by a final droplet of consecrated wine. An emissary from the Church would tasketh me with a journey into a harsh land, and there die a death unworthy of a man who had only ever sought to be a good friend and servant." Látnok directed his gaze to the figure opposite him. "Fate is a wheel that turneth on an unsteady center, but it careth not whose hand sets it in motion. I consulted the stars, asked them whence I might find the power I sought, and then myself ordered my own excursion into these lands."

"You want me to help you deny your fate," the robed man declared. "You offer me your services as an oracle into the days to come, but warn me that I must first free you from your own doom."

"As my master sayest," Látnok said, nodding. "As thy usurper hath denied me, I denieth him."

"You know, Látnok, the dangers of what you ask. The denial of your own end could alter the visions you have already seen, with consequences even you cannot anticipate... Such as if you intend on making Drac Emperor and you his direst foe. You know that I could not allow that, whether you were willfully attempting to betray me or were simply someone else's puppet." The banquet table and its bounty withered to dust before the priest's very eyes.

"I understand, milord. I know all too well the burdens of fate, and I would fain chance them an I earn my proper place that it would deny me." Látnok stood. "Better to dare my own future, than for the wheel to grind me into dust."

"Excellent, my good and faithful servant," the robed figure said as it smoothly slid across the obsidian floor. "I will do this for you, but remember... Whatever you have unleashed with this act, will be your responsibility. I favor dutiful servants, not ones who wish for me to be their keepers."

"Of course, Emperor," Látnok said, bowing.

Elsewhere
"I failed you. Your destiny is my responsibility now." }}