Free Blood of the Emperor by Tracy Hickman Page A

the Keeper. “I serve the truth, the Emperor’s Will and that of the Keeper.”
    “As do we all,” Ch’drei said wearily. “You have noticed your fellow Iblisi gathered with you to the Keep?”
    “I have, Ch’drei,” Tsugai answered as he strode across the hall toward the throne, his boots echoing loudly against the stone floor. “It seems all the Empire is bereft of Inquisitors today by your will.”
    “I have summoned all these Iblisi as I summoned you. Each one is being given an assignment which they believe is important and secret—but each of those assignments are a lie, a cover for the true mission which I have reserved for you.”
    “My Keeper, I am flattered,” Tsugai said, baring his sharp teeth.
    Ch’drei thought of the rain as she spoke. “What do you know about an Inquisitor by the name of Soen?”

    Ch’drei descended the ancient stairs alone. The corridors she traversed were unmarked and shifted through a maze of deception. Some of the more surface levels of the labyrinth utilized Aether-driven illusions to prevent anyone from gaining access but from the beginning this deepest region beneath the Old Keep had been designed to survive the end of Aether and the very fall of magic itself. Those who had hewn it out of the bedrock beneath the Old Keep were now centuries dead. Even in their day, no single group knew how they had arrived at the section that they were tasked to construct and their Devotions were such that they had no memory of doing so. In the end, only one person—the Keeper of the Iblisi—even knew of its existence or how to arrive at the final chamber of its twisting passageways and occasionally deadly turns.
    It was the most secure place in all the Rhonas Imperium. It was known only to the Keeper and three other Iblisi. Those others werescattered across the Empire and had no memory of the place and would not unless the unthinkable happened.
    Ch’drei turned the final corner. There she was confronted by three walls covered with intricate and ornate carvings. Death was imbedded in all three walls but in the right-hand wall there were a series of catches. She pressed them in sequence and the stone carving slid away with a deep grinding sound, its ancient mechanism groaning under the centuries.
    Ch’drei entered the enormous chamber beyond, the glowing globe of light hovering above her upheld hand.
    The illumination revealed a mountainous treasure piled in the center of a vaulted room nearly thirty feet tall. The light from the globe glinted off the facets of gems and the polished surfaces of gold and silver crowns, bracers, swords, and scepters. A cascade of Imperial coins, enough to buy entire provinces, lay here at the center of the labyrinth.
    Ch’drei smiled and shook her head. This, too, was part of her defenses. The treasure was real and would distract anyone who managed somehow to access this place from the thing which it was intended to guard.
    Around the treasure room were several alcoves. In the fourth alcove around the right side, Ch’drei found the compartment and pried it open. Beyond was a three-foot-square hole in the wall.
    Within lay three scrolls.
    Ch’drei selected one particular scroll from among them and held it in her hands. It was comforting to her to touch it, to know that it was here and safe from the eyes of the world so far above her.
    She thought of the rain.
    She thought of Soen.
    “This is the one truth you don’t know, Soen,” she murmured to the scroll. “This is the one truth no one may ever know.”
    She placed it back in its secure place, closed it up behind the stone and, leaving the treasure untouched, retraced her steps.
    And she thought again of the rain.

C HAPTER 8

    Obligations
    I T HAD BEEN A SMALL WAREHOUSE attached to a goblin shop just inside the walls of Port Glorious. What few items that remained in the warehouse had been liberated earlier in the day. The original owner—a goblin by the name of Xakzaz according to a few