Once they were gone, the Emperor laid his scepter down next to his throne and said, “Please relax, we are equals now. No need for such formality.”
Jerran took that as a cue to telekinetically lift some chairs and bring them to us. We all sat in them, and I lowered my hood. It seemed the Emperor wanted to talk about something but was worried about how we would take it.
“I owe you all an apology, it seems,” he started. He seemed really distraught. “You see, many years ago I ordered the Black Adders to be formed and all who showed promise to be sent to Arken IV. The official reason, as you know, was to discover and perfect a defense against their powers, but that rapidly changed.”
He paused there, and I could feel the surprise ripple through everyone. What could he mean? I did not dare interrupt him. I just sat in silence.
“I was warned almost half a century ago about this threat, and I was told their first move would be on Arken IV. At the time my plan was simple. By packing that planet with people who had what I thought to be great power, it would make our Empire look much stronger than it was, and hopefully deter any attack. If that failed, I believed the Black Adders would be able to defeat the invasion. To that end I expanded our search for anyone with power and made the base a permanent residence for them. It seems I grossly underestimated the power of our new enemy, and a lot of good people died because of it.”
He stopped there and seemed to be waiting for a reaction. I could barely think for my surprise, but I managed to say, “Who warned you?”
He smiled. “Mantis, of course.”
That sneaky old fool! He could have told us that, but no; he probably enjoyed how worried we were over all this. In fact, I would not have been surprised if he was watching us at that moment and laughing.
“Mantis is also the one behind you, Vydor,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“While the situation on Arken IV was developing, Mantis contacted me again. It was the first I had heard from him since his original contact, and he insisted that I assign you to the Dragon Claw and send the fleet in.”
“So he has been behind all the odd coincidences, then,” I said. “That ties up so many loose ends.” I realized then that I had inadvertently stopped using the Emperor’s formal title. I was truly speaking to him as if he was one of my shipmates, not my god. Then a crushing thought rocked my world. If the Emperor was not a god, who was? I did my best to put that thought away for later. I had more important business to attend to in the present.
“I take it that he also told you of his plan to make us the Council of Wizards for this realm?” I asked.
“No, that much I guessed by your show of power,” he said with a grin. “I must say you did very well. You had High Command ready to follow you to war. Though I have to ask, why would a wizard hit someone on the head with his staff instead of using a more civilized blast?”
It was my turn to grin. “Easy. He knew how to fight against bolts of energy, but had no clue about hand-to-hand, or in this case, staff-to-head combat,” I said proudly.
The Emperor laughed and said, “Mantis made a wise choice.”
“Vydor, while he is in a good mood, now would be the time to ask for the Dark Talon,” silently prompted Jerran.
“We have a favor to ask of the Empire. We need a vessel to operate as a mobile base,” I started. “Since we are already familiar with her, we would like to keep the Dark Talon.”
The Emperor thought about it for a moment then said, “I appreciate the humility of your request, but that ship is far too small to support your operations across interstellar space. I do see your need for a ship though, and I happen to have a Raven Mark II here ready for its maiden voyage. I think it would serve you much better.”
The Raven was a cruiser class vessel, much larger than the Dark Talon, and was designed to run solo missions across interstellar space. It was a far more powerful vessel than I had any right to expect, and I was thinking of humbly refusing the offer, but then an image came to my mind. I pictured how we could redesign the Raven to have sections dedicated to meeting our need to study and grow, and since it was equipped to grow food for its crew we could travel great distances without support.
“A Mark II? I never heard of such a model,” I said. I was stalling; I needed more time to think about this. There was the problem, of course, that none of us had a clue how to operate a Raven, but we had solved that before with the Dark Talon.
“Yes, this prototype is a new version of the Raven. The old design is to be retired soon, and this will replace it throughout the fleet,” was his answer.
Over our connection I asked, “Okay, how did you learn to fly the Dark Talon so fast? We may need that skill again very soon.”
“I found a spell in Mantis’ library that allows me to copy the knowledge of another. It does not copy any personal information or experience, just raw knowledge,” was Darnath’s reply.
Well, that explained how the other Magi knew our technology so well. “So then all we would need is to get some of his experts to allow us to cast that spell on them?” I asked.
“We do not need them to be willing, but yes,” was his reply.
“No, I think Vydor is right. We really should ask for permission before doing such a thing,” commented Kellyn.
I needed to say something soon before the Emperor thought we had fallen asleep. “We graciously and humbly thank you for the Raven, but we are not trained on such a craft. If you can find us the top ten people who are trained on it, especially all the key positions and changes, we can use our powers to learn directly from them. They must be willing to let us do it, but it is painless and noninvasive.”
The Emperor thought about that for a bit and said, “I think that can be arranged.”
“Thank you. Once the Raven is ready we will park the Dark Talon in one of its bays and return it to the Dragon Claw,” I said.
“What is your next move in this war?” he asked.
“Well, for the moment we are still far too weak to take them on directly, so we will study and work on building up an army to support us. While doing that we plan to hunt down the remaining four spies we know about and execute them. The hope is that we can build up our forces before the sorcerers recover from the blow that was dealt to them at Arken IV.”
“I would much prefer if you let us handle the spies. Just give me the list and I will see to it that it is done. Meanwhile there is still the issue of this weapon they are looking for, I assume?”
“Yes. Mantis’ people and we ourselves will be looking for it too, but I suspect that it will be either Mantis and his wizards or the sorcerers who find it since we know nothing about it.”
“It is in our best interests if we find it first. I will give you whatever you need to hunt it down.”
After that we wrapped up the meeting and headed back to the Dark Talon. Once on board Kellyn had to point out that, since we did the right thing by not forcing the Emperor to do our will, we got a much better ship and more information than we could have guessed possible.
I knew she was right. It was just hard to get used to doing the right thing because it is the right thing, and not just blindly following orders. It was going to be a hard transition to make, from just another soldier to grandmaster wizard. My rulings and decisions in this war would determine the fate of the entire realm. What standard does one use to judge decisions by? It is easy to say just do the right thing, but who determines what is right? I used to think that was the responsibility of the Emperor, since he was god.
Again I was hit with the question: if the Emperor was a fallible human just like the rest of us, who was god? What did it mean to be god? Was it just the most powerful person around? I hoped not with all my heart, because I realized that that might very well be me. All through school and even in the Academy we were taught from the point of view that the Emperor was god. In fact, a lot of what we understood about how the universe worked did not make sense if there was not a god. That would mean all of our science and understanding was wrong. But how could that be since everything worked the way it should? Then again, this was the same science that said magic did not exist.