The Ghost's Crusade

Epilogue: Drystan

Erenmyr started awake and immediately began looking around for any signs of life on the tavern's floor. His eyes locked with Drystan's and seemed to become slightly irritated at having a witness to his having sprouted a wyvern head from his chest.

"Is that the illegitimate sire of you and your scaly lover?" asked Drystan, keeping his voice quiet so as not to wake the innkeeper in his room on the opposite side of the fire.

The Oratio returned his mocking grin with a sneer of his own. "You could make a good case for it, yes." Lifting up his coat a pale gray wyvern the size of a two-year-old child detached itself from his back and stretched out its webbed arms, then immediately curled up in Erenmyr's lap like a cat and uttered a birdlike chip before tucking its nose beneath its tail and going back to sleep. "His name is Heriot. My son insisted I take him. Aschen wyverns are good luck, so talontrader superstition goes."

Drystan had to fight the urge to shout in surprise. "Your son?"

Settling one hand over the wyvern's head Erenmyr nodded. "Technically he's a bastard, seeing as how his mother is pagan. Not that anyone would make the mistake of presuming I give a piss about what a clutch of poncey men in petticoats dictate is right and wrong." An amused smile crossed the man's face. "Some advice for you, though, Inferi: never fall in love with a talontrader. Each and every one is as stubborn as a small mountain."

"Is that why you came all this way, then? To protect your son and your lover?"

"I could protect them far better were I to stay with them," replied the man. "Even though he is a bastard my son will inherit my fortunes when I die, being my only male heir. My sister would be positively delighted to have his head in a bag but thankfully the boy is his mother's son. She took him somewhere I have never heard of and I shall be lucky to ever find either of them again." He watched the logs burn in silence for a time before continuing, attempting to hide the sorrowful look on his face in the deep shadows cast by the waning fire. "No. I am here because I helped my brother create those abominations."

Carefully checking his anger Drystan asked, "What abominations?"

"Galenfyr's little pet Enkiri." Erenmyr sighed and rubbed his eyes tiredly, evidently knowing what he said would start an argument but lacking the energy to carry through with the fight. "Teren and Akkali. What was done to them was my fault. I gave him the book that inspired the entire thing."

Crossing his arms against his chest he lifted his legs off the ground and propped his heels up on a second chair. "Is that so."

"I found it sealed in a blackwood box on one of my excursions in the south, gave it to him as a birthday present." Shaking his head the man scowled at the floorboards with a mix of disgust and regret. "He used to be such a cute little boy before his own wanting for power overcame him. It's all rather irrelevant now, though, isn't it."

"I'll say," muttered Drystan.

The Oratio smiled ruefully. "Must be a grand thing, Inferi, to have never known the pain of betrayal by those whom you trusted with your life."

"I have no pity for you, Erenmyr. There is no way you were utterly ignorant of your brother's experiments."

"I have only ever seen his conclusions, but I can assume how he arrived at them, yes." The man leaned over his wyvern and yawned. "You must realize by now that the powers she uses are not of Eral. Only twice has magic like that ever been seen in this world. Once was just a century and some ago, during the Year of Mourning. A mere handful of medei rose up and overwhelmed the entire Imperial Legion, wiping out all but Emperor Jurian's whore-sired bastard and a lowly census clerk hiding in the floorboards of the Chapels of Haren."