Page 59 of The Laws of Nature (Heirs of the Empire #3)

TOBI

T obi looks at Harok. He has no words. Every part of him wants only to tell Harok that he will not do this. But if he does not…

Harok is doomed. Tobi cannot save him. Tobi’s only choice is whether he allows this demon to take control of Harok or whether he stops it.

A demon who is Zai himself. The God revered by the Azurian Empire. By the Rose Court. The God who Emperor Selim has devoted his life to.

Tobi remembers those days in the Rose Palace when he would be charged to act as Selim’s page.

Sitting on a stool in the private shrine, watching as Selim chanted before his altar of Zai and those two black statues, watching him flagellate himself and starve himself and wash the feet of his visitors all to exalt the glory of his God.

He had told his mother about it at night, lying in her bed in the Tower of the Heir, where she would let him sleep if Rafus wasn’t visiting, and she would laugh. Gods weren’t real. Demons weren’t real. Selim was debasing himself for nothing. To an empty sky and the cold earth .

But she was wrong. Zai was real. Zai was a demon who grew stronger the more he was worshipped. That was the reason Harok had worked so hard to wipe out the Exceli. Their existence, their numbers made the thing inside him stronger and more able to take control of him.

And the Exceli are stronger than they have ever been. What must that do to Harok. Harok who had lived all of his adult life fighting a demon. A battle that could never end except with his death.

All Zai wanted was to be worshipped. And it didn’t matter to Zai, Yaelin had said, what men did to worship him, they could select sacrifices they wanted rid of and put them through trials before slitting their throats and throwing their bodies into a pit.

They could make offerings in clay pots. They could make laws to control the lives of men and kill them if they committed sins of the body.

Tobi’s mother had been right about one thing. The rules of Gods were always the rules of the men in power. But so long as worship was done in his name, it fed Zai.

The great Azurian Empire was like a well of power for this demon. The only way to stop it was for Tobi to kill Harok now, before that demon wrests control from him completely. He must kill Harok.

The man he loves and the cruel God of the Empire.

Although, Tobi wonders what his mother would say about that.

Is Diazuul truly Zai? Would it make any difference to the great faith of Azuria if Tobi killed the demon that inspired their God.

Is Diazuul truly Zai, really? Or is Zai the men who worship him?

Doroth Zain and the Faith. The Brides of Zai who care for his mother.

The Immurite who lives in her sealed room in the heart of the Sarelik temple.

The enforcers, the Book of the Rules. Irgo Lal and Emperor Erond could not cement their alliance because of religious differences even though they unknowingly worshipped the same God.

If Tobi kills Diazuul what difference would that make to any of them?

It made no difference to the faith in Azuria when Harok claimed Diazuul was dead and that demon was inside his body.

What would his mother tell him? He wishes she was here now. Here and with her mind unbroken, to tell him what to do.

She would tell him he didn’t have a choice. He doesn’t have a choice. Tears prick Tobi’s eyes.

“Suskara?” Harok says. “Please.”

Tobi picks up the sword from the bed. He curls his fingers around the hilt. Despite its impossible size and weight and the fact Tobi has never had any skill with a blade, it feels good in his hand somehow. Like he is meant to hold it.

Tears are falling now. His vision is blurred. This cannot be the right choice. It cannot. “Irgorye, I can’t do this.”

Harok puts his hand on Tobi’s cheek. His voice is deep and low, “Must I command you, Suskara?”

“Yes,” Tobi says, broken.

“I am your Irgo and your Irgorye,” Harok says, soft and deep and low. “You are my kushir. You are bound by the laws of the Solwen to obey me. Take my life with Demonica. Plunge that blade into my heart. I command it.”

Tobi makes a gasping, sobbing sound. His hand is shaking. He raises the sword up and places the point against Harok’s chest.

And he forces it down. He plunges the blade into Harok, tears streaming so hard down his face he can barely see what he is doing.

Harok cries out in pain. A great roar. A bestial sound.

Tobi uses his free hand to wipe away the tears that blur his eyes.

He pulls the blade from Harok’s chest. It’s hard, like Harok’s body holds onto it.

It takes more effort to pull it out than it did to push it in.

Blood wells up in the bloody maw it leaves behind.

Tobi cries out in pain and presses his hand down onto the wound. Warm red blood covers his fingers..

“No,” he sobs out, “no, no.”

This cannot be right, it cannot. “Irgorye,” he says. Voice choked. And then the same word in Artemian. “Master.”

Harok’s eyes flutter open. “Suskara,” he says weakly.

“Ai oliki,” Tobi says. “Ai oliki, ai oliki.”

I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

“Suskara,” Harok says again. His voice sounds stronger.

Tobi lifts his hand from Harok’s chest. It's sticky with Harok’s blood but beneath it…

Beneath it the flesh is torn by the blade, but the wound is…is coming back together. Healing itself. Tobi’s heart leaps.

“Irgorye,” he says sniffing. “It hasn’t worked. It hasn’t. You’re healing. It’s healing. I cannot kill you. You are Unkillable Irgo. It didn’t work.”

Harok lifts an arm and curls his hand around Tobi’s wrist. Tobi looks at him. Harok looks solemn and serious.

“No. Not my heart,” he says. “You miss my heart. Strike too low.” Tobi watches Harok’s throat move as he swallows. “You must do it again, Suskara.” Harok grasps the blade and places its point on his own chest a little higher than the bloody wound. “Here,” he says. “You must do it here.”

Tobi feels a deep wrenching pain within him. The worst pain he has ever felt. Like there is a hook lodged deep in his guts and someone is slowly drawing it out. It took everything he had to plunge that blade into Harok.

And if he has to do it again?

Now he knows how much it hurts to look down and see the blood. To hear the sound Harok made.

“No.” He shakes his head. “No. I cannot.”

“Suskara,” Harok growls, “you must. You must.”

Tobi’s hand is shaking. He wants to throw the sword across the room. He cares nothing for the consequences. He cannot do this. He’s never had the skills for this.

He looks at Harok again. And as he does so, the door to the bedchamber bursts open.

Tobi startles. He drops the sword onto Harok’s chest.

The room is full of men. Guards racing in through the door. Some of them he recognises, including Olladin. But many others he does not. They surround the bed. Over a dozen of them.

In the centre of the crowd of guards stands Lymok.

Tobi is still naked. He darts off Harok’s chest and pulls a sheet around himself.

“Lymok,” Harok snarls, sitting up. His chest is still smeared with blood. He points at Lymok. “How did he get free of the dungeons? Seize him.”

Lymok curls his lip. “Oh, dear cousin, whatever is happening in here? Have we saved you from a kushir with murder on his mind or are you simply playing some bedchamber game?”

Harok ignores this, snarling again, “I said, seize him.”

But Tobi is certain, these guards will not be obeying Harok’s commands. “You had friends in Urynwud,” Tobi says. Hadn’t Lymok always said many in Urynwud agreed with him. Many would support his notion that they ought to make peace with the Exceli.

“Very good, kushessa,” Lymok says to Tobi. “Yes. I have many supporters, including,” — he looks at Harok — “among the warriors you send out to die fighting the Exceli for no good reason except your own pride.”

“This won’t work, Lymok,” Harok snaps. “I am Irgo. Stand down, now.” He says it in a tone so fearsome, Tobi is sure he sees Lymok whiten.

Lymok breathes in through his nose. He nods at Tobi and says, “Remove him.”

Tobi screams as two guards step forward and snatch him from the bed.

As he is pulled from it he feels Harok move beneath him.

Harok snatches up the sword and springs up to standing.

With a sudden blur of movement, Harok slays both the men holding Tobi, one of them almost cut in half by the flying blade.

Harok throws Tobi backwards, onto the floor behind the bed.

Harok is breathing hard. His naked body shielding Tobi’s, blood smeared all over his chest from the wound Tobi gave him and more from the two men he has just slain. Tobi thinks he sees it then. The demon inside Harok. The dark flash in Harok’s eyes. The demon that makes him the Unkillable Irgo.

The guards in the room yell and scream, cowering away as Harok takes up a defensive stance with the blade and roars, “Get out. All of you. Now. Get out of my bedchamber. I am your Irgo.”

But Lymok shouts, “Take him. He is one injured man. ”

Several guards rush around the bed to retake Harok. Demonica takes five of them down, before Harok is disarmed by a huge Exceli warrior. Using a double handed grip to smash his own sword into Harok’s and sending it flying from his hand across the floor of the chamber.

A moment later, two guards drag Tobi away. Harok is being held by half a dozen men, squirming and snarling. “You will suffer for this, Lymok. Let my kushir go.”

Lymok turns to Harok. “Let’s not have any more of that. Chain him,” he snaps.

More guards come forward holding heavy chains. Harok’s wrists are pulled behind him and locked into cuffs. He is chained at his ankles and an iron collar is locked around his neck. All through it he glares at Lymok.

Tobi is pulled over to a corner, by guards who hold his arms bruisingly tight. He struggles, but he cannot get free of their grip on him.

Lymok strolls around the bed, stopping to pick up Demonica. Tobi feels nausea rise to see Lymok touch it. That blade should be in Tobi’s hand and no one else’s.

Lymok approaches Harok. He places the tip of the sword to Harok’s throat. “I should scar you with this thing as you scarred me,” he says in a low voice.

Harok spits in his face.

Lymok laughs. “Irgo Harok,” he says, “you are unfit to rule the Forests of Amber. As the son of Irgo Vahul, I take Urynwud in the name of the true Solwen and the Exceli.”

Mereli steps forward from a position hidden behind three of the larger guards. “Harok,” Mereli says in his rich quavering voice. “I would advise you to surrender. Lymok and his allies in Urynwud have opened our gates to the Exceli. Urynwud is fallen.”

“His supporters!” Harok snarls. “Who set him free of the dungeons? Who has done this?”

Mereli says, “There has long been talk among your council that you must be removed,” he says.

“You ejected your own cousin from his seat when he suggested we form a pact with the Exceli. The Exceli are our brothers and sisters. Many in Urynwud detest your insistence on Solwen fighting Solwen. Your war with the Exceli has garnered us nothing but bloodshed. During Surrus moon, Lymok told me he planned to ride out and make a pact with the Exceli himself. Lymok sealed that pact and found a way back into Urynwud to inform me of it. He sent warriors to tell me that he was in the dungeons, I dismissed the rest of his guards and gave orders in your absence for him to be freed. It has been endorsed by the Rose Court of the Azurian Empire. And the terms he has agreed include your removal. You are weak, Harok. And you are a heretic. You have been declared unfit to rule the Solwen by the Great Council of Urynwud and the Leaders of the Exceli.”

“No,” Harok says, his throat moving against Lymok’s sword point. “And you have turned traitor, Mereli? My advisor? My father’s advisor?”

Mereli shakes his head. “I was also Irgo Vahul’s advisor. I serve whoever rules Urynwud. And that is no longer you.”

“I should have killed you like I killed the rest of Vahul’s vile court.,” Harok snarls. “I spared you only because of your bond with my father.”

“Your father was a weak Irgo,” Mereli says in his soft, sorrowful tones. “But you are worse. You combine Lal’s weakness with Vahul’s cruelty.”

Harok says nothing. Mereli’s words seem to slice right to his heart.

“Your savage reign is over Harok,” Lymok says. “You should never have sat the throne. You were chosen as a blood sacrifice and only escaped that fate due to your mother’s foul magicks. Take the ring.”

“No,” Harok bellows. But his chained right hand is taken by two guards. He fights but there are too many of them and the irons hold him fast. The ring with the purple stone is forced from his finger by a guard who walks around the bed to give it to Lymok .

With a small smile, Lymok lowers the sword and puts the ring on the middle finger of his own right hand. “Give him a hip cloth and a cloak and bring him down to the Sacred Hall.”

“And the kushessa?” says one of the guards holding Tobi.

“Bring him too,” Lymok says. “Give him an alit to wear. I am sure there are still many in his chamber.”

The guards obey quickly, as if keen to get as far from Harok as possible. Tobi is taken into his own chamber. An alit is pulled out of a chest by a guard and thrown to him. He has never been more grateful to be given one. He pulls it on quickly and smooths it down.

He is taken from his room along the corridor and down the stairs to the Sacred Hall, shoved roughly by the guards if he does not move fast enough.

The hall is full of Solwen. Some are Exceli, but many are not.

It seems Mereli was right that many of the Solwen of Urynwud want Harok removed.

But along one side of the room are Solwen who are clearly prisoners.

Kneeling. Solwen who refused to accept this pact with the Exceli.

Tobi can see the Verilissia amongst them, including Yaelin.

And Cel and Ador. Lok however stands free, clearly ready to accept Lymok as Irgo.

Harok is marched in a moment later. The Solwen part for him. He wears a small hip cloth and his cloak. He is still chained.

Lymok follows. He walks up onto the dais. Harok’s ring flashing on his finger. Harok’s wooden crown is on his head. He sits on the throne and Harok’s guards stop on the floor before the dais and force Harok to his knees.