The Belromanticum

Chapter 59

When the histories list my crimes, the Burning of Sabbatium is always accorded a place of ignominy. I will not offer an excuse in these pages, for that is not the purpose of this volume. Nor is there an excuse to offer. I sought to wipe a civilization from the face of Thür. I would not keep my hands clean in such an endeavor.

The reason I list this battle and not the many others I fought was because of an encounter I had among the flames.

First, I should discuss the disposition of the war. The Heacharid Empire was in the process of falling apart. Rebellion had spread, encouraged by the success of the Theva and others. The Turquoise Coast swarmed with pirates, only some of whom held marque from me. The Mairese laid siege to Kontratum, blockading its harbor for the best part of three years. Perhaps this is the poetic mind of reminiscence but I believe the destruction of Victory marked the true turning point in the war. Though fighting lasted for another half-century, only the most deluded Heacharid thought he could prevail.

I campaigned through spring and summer. My host had become infamous, as much for its idiosyncratic composition as for our success on the field of battle. The bulk of my army was my Deadwall, the stormwights no longer needed to guard Zuunkhorun. To them I added Zuunese footmen and archers, knights from the Orders of the Black Rose and Bashamerax, battle-exorcists from both Zuunkhorun and Qel Rylah, doughty Khaltóg engineers, a company of Theva outriders, Jaggur freeblade companies in their bright motley, and the living siege engine that was Belzuun-Hegal. We were an eclectic force but no less effective for it.

I knew that Sabbatium would have to be taken, and here we come to a second place where clarification is needed. Any history of my time as Tyrant from theZuunkhoruniatoThe Mad Tyrantto even the penultimate volume of theHistoriae Heachariaewill have a description of this battle. They are all, to varying degrees, accurate. What does get confused more often than not is which Sabbatium I am speaking of. I sacked more than one, though none this brutally or completely.

Sabbatius the Pure was the king who originally started the conquest that birthed the great cancer that was the Heacharid Empire. In typical Heacharid modesty, he named some twenty cities after himself, though I am given to understand that there is a chance that his son of the same name labeled a handful of them. To remove ambiguity, I am speaking of the Sabbatium that lay on the great fork of the Karassos River.

This was an important hub of the empire. Its location allowed it to control the traffic on the single greatest artery through the interior of the continent. Ships could make their way from the Turquoise almost to the capital, thanks to the defenses on the walls of Sabbatium. The river was wide, but not wide enough to send a fleet numerous enough to crack the city from the north. Thus, the only way to attack was from the land to the south.

Bridges spanned both the Greater and Lesser Karassos forks. These would be needed to cross before going north to take the high walls of the city. There was simply no way to take the city without carnage and leaving it would expose my armies to unspeakable danger. Thus the eye of the Dreadstorm was fixed. And here I must use the sobriquet the Heacharids branded upon me, for that was what I became.

Some histories claim that I had Hound or Huntress by my side. I did not. Lysethe was in Ironmotte, recovering from a wound suffered at the siege of Vartortum. Ten Ghosts was campaigning in the south with the rest of her host, now armed with dragonflame steel from Bashamailon. I had no one to rein me in.

I had no intent of sacking Sabbatium, let alone burning it to the ground. The siege began as a pitched battle on the Feltum Fields. I had been jousting with one of their better generals for the past several years, a man named Haniakes. I had him cornered and I believed I could finally break his army in this place. Haniakes likely thought the same for, after only a perfunctory opening, he retreated.

Retreat was Haniakes's true genius. I do not mean that as an insult. Quite the contrary. The man could pin an enemy army in place and then retreat, losing a minimum of his own men and robbing an attacker of precious momentum. I found him infuriating at the time, but I must respect his skill. After our brief initial engagement, his army fled across the river and we followed. Before long, it was obvious he sought shelter behind the Karassite Walls.

He delayed us for as long as he could, but eventually my army found its way to the city. When we came into sight of the great walls of Sabbatium, I thought that I must feel as the Heacharids did when they sat outside the Arkohnum Gate. The fundamental difference was the Heacharids only looked upon defenses as the quote of price. An unspoken question,Did we bring enough men to die in this place?The question posed, they would answer and feel nothing else. I mourned for all of those I would send to their deaths.

Do not praise me for this. I would still send my army to die.

My general, Choragana, was next to me as we beheld the Karassite Walls. She was a heavyset woman in her fifth decade with slanted Jegu eyes and a hawkish Besh nose. She had come from humble origins, rising to her lofty position thanks to her skill with sieges. If anyone could crack this city, it would be she.

It was late summer and the weather was hot. Autumn was cold in this part of the world, and I knew it would come without warning. I had little doubt that Sabbatium could wait us out, especially if we did nothing about the Karassos. If we left it until the following spring it would be reinforced and we'd spend ten times the lives cracking it.

Choragana stared at the city with narrowed eyes like a hawk assessing its prey and said, "How would His Majesty like to take his prize?"

"Can we send a sortie to the north end, through the water?"

"It would take far too long. We would have to send them back to the bridge, up the Karassos. No, I think our only choice is an attack from the south." Her weary tone told me everything I needed to know about how much the plan appealed to her.

Still, we went about our work. Engineers began to dig ditches. Once dug past the height of a man, the soil turned muddy and water bubbled into the bottom. I noted it, though did not think much on it until later.

We waited until nightfall, when the night was lit with the sweaty torchlight. My archers gave them a wooden rain while Belzuun-Hegal smashed into the front gate. This was when I learned that Sabbatium was guarded by a trio of witchthralls. As I previously chronicled with Lysethe, in my youth, one would have been more than enough to handle me. No longer. Though I slew none of the three, I battled them to stalemate through the night.

Each of the three witchthralls had different ways of attacking. One summoned fleshy tentacles from the river. She was not the dangerous one, though she drowned many of my soldiers. No, it was the one who commanded flame and the other who commanded wind that represented true peril.

The storm I summoned was cruel, the rain hot that night, turning to muddy vapor as soon after it touched the earth. I exhausted myself against the three witchthralls. Belzuun-Hegal was driven back with fire and stone. We hurt those on the wall, but far from enough.

As dawn crept over the horizon, I collapsed in a chair in Choragana's tent. My command staff filed in, wet and filthy from the battle.

"I do not believe we have the resources to take the city," Choragana said, "but if we can be reinforced soon enough, the siege will still succeed."

"I will send birds," I said. "As soon as I recover my breath."

"Your Majesty, if I may?" said Kizzakir Barrelbreaker, the leader of my engineers. I gave him a nod. "The southern wall spans the landward side of the city, from river to river, aye? Sunk stones and so on."

"You want to undermine the wall," Choragana said.

"Aye, Lord General. I believe if we carve a trench from one side to the other, we can let the river do the work for us. Only one concern. We do this, we undermine the earth they put the wall on. We'll be destroying a piece of the city itself. Could ruin His Majesty's prize."

"I have no wish to take their city," I said. "I want to grind it to dust along with the rest of them. What do you need from us?"

I brought a hard rain to the southern end of the city while soldiers defended the working engineers. Belzuun-Hegal did what she could to distract the defenders. Most of the histories ignore this opening gambit of the siege, though without it, it is unlikely that what followed could even have occurred.

It was grim work. I would hope that any who thought of war as a glorious enterprise would experience such an awful morass. We bled in the hideous mire that was Sabbatium, the constant punishing rain sapping our strength almost as much as it hurt the defenders. Thanks to the constant assaults of the witchthralls, I was unable to make more than one or two stormwights at any single time, and they were swiftly cut down.

Two weeks into the siege, reinforcements arrived. Dioscoro rode at the head of his army, his daughter Diotai at his side. The two of them rejoiced in war and as uneasy as they made me, I knew they were the two who would help me break this city. Overhead flapped the banner of the bright hound, Dioscoro's standard.

Historians will wonder if I knew the rot at the soul of my son and granddaughter. Yes, though I was willfully blind to the extent of it. I did Dioscoro an ill turn when I allowed him into the war when he was young, and I did Diotai another ill turn when I trusted her father to raise her without my counsel. Mistakes have a way of compounding themselves over time.

I knew he was cruel, but one often needs cruel leaders in war. Or at least that is what we tell ourselves when the blood boils. Yet I tried to curb his worst impulses. Look no further than my son's general, a man I selected for his calm demeanor and relatively compassionate treatment of enemies. But when I stood outside the walls of Sabbatium, I did not want kind and measured support. I wanted the twin scourges of Dioscoro and Diotai.

His bright hound charged over to Quiyahui, who regarded the smaller creature with reptilian contempt. Diotai's night eft was as pale as she, its lights blood red like her eyes. I went to them and embraced the lad. "Good to see you, boy."

"I was pleased to get your summons, father." There were moments, not many, where I thought that his cruelty was at least partly to please me. If only I could have sired Dioscoro during my time in Bashamailon or even Castellandria, he might have been a better man, an improvement that would have echoed to his daughter.

I hugged Diotai. Her white hair was like straw and her arms were weak around me. "You too, little one. Your power is sorely needed."

"A siege," Dioscoro said. "What could be a better way for three generations of wizards to enjoy one another's company?"

"When this is over, you and I are going to take up fishing."

"Something still dies," he said with a smirk. I laughed, though I felt no mirth.

With the addition of Dioscoro's army, the defenders had no hope. It wasn't merely the reinforcements; it was the fact that Dioscoro loathed witchthralls like none other. I did not understand his enmity then, and now I can only surmise. For all of his faults, Dioscoro loved his mother and I believe he hated the witchthralls for what Lysethe had been forced to become. I did not understand his connection to his history, but when he finally died, I found books in his possession about the way the Heacharids abused their wizards.

Thus, the stage was set for the Burning. The day the histories speak of happened some ten days after Dioscoro's arrival. Even in those days when wizards were far thicker upon the ground, a half dozen of us in a single battle was unheard of. That Sabbatium would suffer was inevitable.

Something in the air of that hot summer's day told me this would be the end. I had summoned a great storm, pounding the mire with a hot rain while my lightning turned defenders into shambling creatures. Fire and wind, darkness and beasts filled the air as wizards battled for the better part of the day.

Late in the afternoon, to my eyes, the wall suddenly collapsed. That was not the truth. My engineers had carved a trench from the river itself and I had fed the floodwaters chewing away the mud for weeks. Lightning had speared the ramparts while Dioscoro summoned winged creatures that wielded blades of sickly light. What stability the wall once had was gone and our spells hammered it. One moment, the wall was intact and the next it crumbled. A great wedge now opened in the middle of it, a clear path into the city itself.

My stormwights formed the vanguard, boiling into the city. The attack had thinned their numbers, but this was the Deadwall. Diotenah was deafening in my mind. Through what remained of her, she whispered joy as the fruits of my fell magics butchered Heacharid defenders.

I followed the stormwights. I am a fool, yes, but I wanted to slay these wizards before they sunk their claws into my army. I had already spent too many lives on this endeavor. Atop the rubble of the wall, I reached to the sky. A bolt delivered Ur-Anu into my hand. Wielding the Blackspear, I stalked into the city after my prey.

That day I was more boldisar than wizard. I fought with my spear, rarely resorting to my magic. At times, I felt as though I was back in far Kharsoom, surviving the Red Wastes by my wits and my skill. Is there something more honorable about slaying a man in combat? I don't know. He is dead either way.

The fire had started sometime while I fought street to street. I did not set it, nor did I nurture it. I do not know truly how it began, though I have my suspicions. I know only that what I initially took to be the usual burning any sacked city suffered became a raging inferno while I fought. One moment, the late afternoon sky was held aloft by a few pillars of smoke, and the next the sun was erased by greasy gray-black. I was distracted, as my mind was a maze of threads of brief possible futures, Ur-Anu guiding me through the vicious melee.

The irony was that I only slew one wizard that day. Dioscoro and Diotai defeated the others. I spent most of that fiery day fighting as I had in my exile. This day made me a hero to the Zuunese, for I went into battle as one of them. I displayed the courage that no other Tyrant had ever had. The Heacharids would grudgingly praise my valor, though even they would call what I did more bloodlust than true courage. In this, I side with the Heacharid interpretation of my actions.

The inferno blazed hotter than a forge, the winds spreading the flames like a fiery plague. The fire was hungry that day, eating everything in its path. Perhaps I could have stopped it in its early stages, summoned my clouds to douse the flames with sheets of rain, but I did not even notice until it was well out of control. It would devour thatch and wood, and crack brick and stone. In due time it would erase Sabbatium from the face of Thür.

The streets were muddy, choked with soot. Bodies lay in gutters like garbage, covered in slimy soot. I would later learn that most of the inhabitants fled into the river to escape the flames. Some survived, but most were swept away by the raging floodwaters. Add them to my butcher's bill.

I did not see the city be sacked, though I cannot plead ignorance. There is no glory to this, no beauty. My army perpetrated the same crimes every conquering army did. I might have confined my violence to those I judged merited it, but I did not make the same commandment of my men.

I had long since outpaced them in my search for meaning in the carnage. I heard them in screams and clashes of metal or else in the sibilant joy of Diotenah. The Blackspear hummed in my hand, the obsidian blade shining with its veins of pure light. My goal was obscure even from me. Perhaps I hunted for a magistrate or cleric I could hold to account. Someone I could put on trial for the crimes of the Heacharid Empire and in dispensing justice find some righteousness in my own actions. Perhaps I merely hunted for soldiers to slay.

I found myself somewhere deep in the streets of Sabbatium. All around me buildings blazed, embers rising in vain attempts to become stars in the thick blanket of smoke. I found myself in a great plaza, a statue of Sabbatius the Pure overseeing the destruction of his city, the stoic expression on his face a cruel joke in the face of the devastation I had unleashed.

Sloping hills of green had once given this place a pastoral air, but now the trees blazed like torches and the grass guttered in embers. I stopped on the border between flagstone and nature and stared down at the black shape in the grass dotted with glowing orange specks.

It was a footprint.

I stared at it, certain that the carnage had truly driven me mad. I could not be seeing such a thing, but the more I looked, the more the shape of the foot was clear. The dainty arch, the petite toes, could have come from Zhahllaia.

There was another ahead of it, and I pictured the mincing step that would have given it. A little skip of a happy outing among nature. Then another, and another, disappearing into a copse of trees.

As my gaze went to the trees, a sudden fireball boomed from them, and the flames that had been dying now raked the low sky with talons of orange and yellow. A moment later, a feminine figure emerged, prancing over the grass and leaving her burning footprints behind her. Rain fell only sporadically here, her flames consuming the drops as easily as wood and straw.

She was of middling height with a dancer's lithe figure. Her flesh danced with the colors of flame, white, yellow, and orange. Her hair was a halo of fire, and another blazed between her legs, peeking with every stride she took. Her features Her features were sharp, every plane ready to cut, with wide, slanted eyes of bright blue-white, and a hawkish nose. As I watched her, she turned to a building and conducted the pyre she found there to new heights.

I knew what she was immediately. She was an ifrit. As a nereid was to water, an ifrit was to fire. They were rare, and even harder to find, as fire is temporary unlike the eternity of the sea. They appeared in infernos and vanished like smoke with only the addled tales of survivors to attest to their presence. They were as mercurial and mysterious as their element. And as beautiful.

As I reached out with my mundane senses, so too did my magical ones behold her. She felt like a living spell, carrying the scent of bright fire, the smell not of smoke but of the first spark that consumes dry and cracked wood. It was a hot smell, only identifiable in the moment, vanished and erased from memory by what came after. Not so here, for she was a spark, but an eternal one.

I stepped onto the green, not far from where one of her footprints had turned black, a few coals threading smoke into the air. She turned and regarded me. Her eyes were the color of the hottest flame, the blue-white of a forge at its infernal height, when metal itself runs like water.

I could not say what I saw in her eyes. Perhaps a shade of curiosity, an edge of wrath, a spark of desire. All around us, the city burned.

I took another step to her. A snarl rippled over her lovely features. Behind her, the fires blazed hotter. I knew then that she would come for me. I did not sense malice. She was a fire, and she could not fight her nature. I was here, and thus she would consume me. We faced each other in the moments before violence, my blood burning for conquest.