one day of the year when Lord Salazar presented himself before his people.
Barandas recalled the pride he had felt marching alongside his comrades at the front of the procession. He had been a member of the Crimson Watch then, barely a year into his service with the army. The parade had taken them down from the Obelisk to the lush, leafy boughs of Verdisa Park, which occupied a wide space near the south-east corner of the Noble Quarter. They had proceeded to the centre of the park. There Salazar would stand silent vigil before the great oak.
The Eternal Tree, it had been called. No one knew what significance it held to their Magelord, but the tree itself was a thing of beauty, its golden leaves untouched by the turning of the seasons. The Eternal Tree had occupied the centre of the park for as long as any in the city could recall.
It was a sight to behold. A reminder of the wonders the world once held before the fall of the gods.
He remembered how he would sit beneath its gilded canopy and pray for his mother after she got sick. The malignance in her chest had killed her eventually, but he had found peace in the comforting embrace of the great tree’s shadow.
Barandas closed his eyes. He remembered sensing something was amiss, glancing up to see the branches overhead rustle in a way that had struck him as strange. On an instinct that to this day he had never fully understood, he had rushed past the Magelord’s Augmentors and knocked the invisible assassin to the ground before he had buried his dagger in Salazar’s back. Their cover blown, the other assassins had dropped down from where they had been hiding in the boughs of the great tree. For those few seconds when everything was pure chaos Barandas had fought off the unseen assailants, taking wound after wound before the knife had plunged into his heart.
I was on my knees, coughing up blood. Salazar uttered a word and suddenly the assassins were there for all to see, their cloak of invisibility stripped from them. The Augmentors waded in, and everything from that point on was a blur.
The Festival of the Red Sun attempt on Salazar’s life had ultimately proved the catalyst for the Culling. A cabal of Dorminia’s most powerful wizards were found guilty of hiring assassins from foreign lands and plotting to murder the Magelord. Something seemed to break in Salazar that day, for later that year he ordered the Eternal Tree burned to the ground and every mage in the Grey City and its dependent territories killed without mercy.
As for Barandas, he had awakened with a new heart of enchanted iron – and the most rapid promotion from Watchman to Augmentor in the city’s history. He sometimes wondered if Salazar had intended the irony. A heart of iron, to bear the burden of duty and not burst with the weight of what must be done.
He reached the front of the manor house. A dog barked at him and then ran off around the back of the estate. He placed a hand on the pommel of his sword and cleared his throat. ‘By order of Lord Salazar, Magelord of Dorminia and rightful sovereign of Malbrec, open this door.’
He waited for a minute or two. Eventually the door opened to reveal a sour-faced old man in a deerskin jacket clutching a pipe in one hand. ‘I already told that armoured juggernaut of yours,’ he said irritably. ‘There’s no one here but me. I’m far too old to be fighting in your damned war.’
There was a cough from somewhere inside, which was quickly cut off as whoever made the noise desperately tried to stifle it. ‘I think I’ll see for myself,’ said Barandas. He pushed past into the entrance hall and through into a plush sitting room.
‘This… this is scandalous,’ the man protested, giving his pipe a furious tug. ‘Do you know who I am?’
‘That’s of no consequence,’ Barandas replied. He looked around at the leather armchairs and the fine rosewood cabinets. ‘You’ve done well for yourself.’
The old man frowned. ‘The mining business has been good to me. I ship a lot of stone to the city. I always pay my taxes. Every copper,’ he added.
‘Who’s that?’ Barandas pointed at a canvas hanging over the fireplace. It depicted a slightly younger version of the scowling merchant. Next to him was a woman of similar age with an equine face. Between them, a