Mystic Empire

by Tracy Hickman, Laura Hickman

Genres: Epic Fantasy; Sagas; Science Fiction

Synopsis

Eighty years have passed since the adventures of Mystic Quest, and the story continues with a new generation of seekers.

Theres Theona is the daughter of a magic-rich family, but devoid of any known magical ability herself. Arryk is the rebellious son of the long-lost Aislynn, whose belief in a centaur slave of the Kyree may be the faery kingdom’s undoing. And from the goblin realm there is Lunid, a hobgoblin academic whose obsession with the vision of a handsome faery prince is driving her to perilous limits.

As these three heroes seek to breach the barriers between their realms, they will risk bringing titans, dragons, and a warrior tribe into world-altering conflict.

A Blackstone Audio production.

Release date: May 30, 2009

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 416

Sample

The 591st year of the Dragonkings was to mark the centennial of the Election Fields Rebellion—a celebration of the moment
that put the spark of life into the embryonic ambitions of the mystics. The hundred-year anniversary was to be a cause of
tremendous celebration everywhere the mystics called home. All prepared to commemorate the Election Centenary with whatever
revelry they could manage. Most of those who claimed allegiance to the mystic guilds could boastfully trace at least one of
their own ancestral lines back to the founding mystic clans and thereby laid their special claim to the festival as well.
The tales of their ancestors who made the arduous journey to the heart of the lost and fallen Rhamasian Empire and claimed
its ancient capital as their own had moved beyond pride to political necessity; power and social status had become a question
of heritage.


The mystics had expanded their influence from the security of their mountain citadels high in the Forsaken Mountains to the
distant settlements in the Eastern Marches and the Provinces—places whose names sounded more solid than the tentative huts
that clutched at those wild lands. There was the sense in every mystic community that the promise of a magical empire was
within their collective grasp, especially evidenced by the widely anticipated union of two of the most powerful guild houses
in that same year—the House of Conlan and the House of Rennes-Arvad.


Yet, even as the eyes of all the mystics were fixed on their own triumphs and glory down the hundred years of their history,
one alteration went unnoticed: the Deep Magic had been changing, too, like a sealed jar of water left on coals long thought
cold.


Quiet and forgotten, it was about to explode.

BRONZE CANTICLES, TOME VI, FOLIO 1, LEAF 25

The slats of the wide closed door rattled under the banging fist.

“Hold on! Hold on!” yelled the cooper. He stood stooped over, fitting the staves of the large barrel together carefully inside
the temporary upper metal hoop, the bottom ends of the staves gouging into the dirt floor of the shop. Fitting the “rose”—the
setting of each stave inside the metal hoop at the base of the barrel—required his concentration; it was certainly no time
for him to be disturbed. “Mera! Could you see to the door?”


“I’m gettin’ the supper on!”

The fist slammed several times into the door in quick succession.

“Hold on there!” cried the cooper once again toward the door. The banging stopped. “Mera—just leave it to the girl and give
us a hand, will you?”


“I’ll not be leavin’ this stew, Hengus, were it for the Dragon-Talker hisself calling,” the woman’s voice called back from
the open doorway into what passed as their home. “Last time the girl burned the stew, and you gave us the what for!”


“Damn, woman! It’s the door!”

“Then answer it! I’m trying to make us a home in this forsaken place!”

Hengus shook with frustration, his hands slipping. The carefully crafted barrel rose collapsed, the ring falling and rolling
loudly into a corner of the shop as the staves splayed outward, clattering against the packed-dirt floor. The cooper would
have liked to swear more but knew that he would call more of his wife’s ire down on him if he did. This frustrated him all
the more, so he raised his wide stained face toward the roof of the shop and roared incoherently toward the ceiling.


The door rattled again, the blows from the outside sounding more insistent than before.

“Coming! I’m coming,” Hengus rumbled. He was a large man—largest in the village—and stronger than any two of the local farmers
put together. He was naturally large of frame, but bending staves from dawn to dusk had accentuated his already broad shoulders.
Sweat glistened from his black curly hair, which he preferred kept short, though lately, it had become more difficult to find
anyone who could cut it properly. He also preferred to be clean-shaven, but, as evidenced by the thick stubble on his face,
that, too, was becoming a rare extravagance in his life.


He straightened up, turned, and started for the door, then hesitated. Reaching down, Hengus picked up his cooper’s hammer,
hefted its weight, and then reached for the door latch with his left hand, the hammer cocked back over his head in his right.


“Who’s there?”

“Please let us in,” came the high-pitched voice.

“It’s late—we keep decent hours here. Come back when it’s light.”

“Please!” The voice was muffled but urgent through the slats of the door. “We need help!”

Hengus set his jaw. They all needed help, he thought, but he reached forward with his hand and pulled back the heavy wooden
bolt that held the door closed.


Two men tumbled into his shop through the door, each seeming to support the other as they fell to the dirty floor. They were
young, Hengus could see, having barely seen two decades by the look of them. They were coated in dust from the road and smelled
as though they had not had a reasonable cleaning in over a month. Still, both wore sandals of remarkable, if somewhat worn,
craftsmanship and carried packs on their backs beneath their drab cloaks of sturdy, dull green cloth, but it was their tunics
that drew the eye of the cooper at once; even through the coating of powder over them he could see that they were white and
that the cloth itself shined in places.


Hengus raised his hammer menacingly. “What do you want?”

One of the young men rolled over, his slender chest working hard as he gasped for breath. His face was pinched and hawkish
with small, narrow eyes. The youth’s beard had once been carefully trimmed but was now showing itself as having had neglect
for some time. It was his high voice Hengus had heard through the door. “Where—where are we?”


“You come banging down my door in the dark of night and don’t even know where you be?” Hengus’s voice rumbled menacingly as
he spoke.


The narrow-faced youth held up his open hands, whether in surrender or defense, Hengus couldn’t judge. “Please—we just need
to rest for a while—and find out the name of this place.”


“This be Wellstead,” the cooper answered cautiously, gripping his hammer tighter, his muscles drawing taut in anticipation.
“And I be Hengus—and that’s all you’ll be asking until I get some answers of my own!”


The second youth, drawing himself up on all fours, spoke haltingly in a richer, baritone voice. “Wellstead, eh? We’re still
in the Eastern Marches, Gaius. Somewhere around a hundred miles south of Traggathia, I think.”


“Taking me to places I’ve never heard of again, Treijan?” Gaius asked through a gulping breath.

“It’s a place a good deal further beyond ‘never heard of,’” Treijan replied. “‘Never heard of’ would be relatively close comparatively.”

“That’s enough out of both of you,” Hengus growled. He reached down with his free hand, gathered up the back of Gaius’s tunic,
and dragged him to his feet. “Out with you both—back to wherever you came from.”


“Hengus Denthal, you put him down at once!” His wife stood framed in the doorway to the kitchen. She was a good foot shorter
than he was and moved like a bird. She had every appearance of being frail, but Hengus knew better through long experience.


“Mera! Strangers and trouble are one and the same,” Hengus whined. “We’ve enough problems on our own without taking on theirs.”

“And whose fault is that?” Mera replied, her dark hair stuck out at odd angles from her thin face, quivering as she spoke.
“Come out to the frontier, you said; let’s get us a new start, you said; leave our troubles behind, you said. So we listened
to that Pir Aboth talk about how wonderful it would be to serve Satinka in the Marches and came on those stinking colony ships
and dragged what little we had out here—and for what?”


“We’re the only cooper in this village!” Hengus shouted.

“We’re the only anything in this village!” Mera shot back. Her dark eyes were blazing but softened suddenly as she turned toward Gaius, still hanging
from Hengus’s grip. She smiled slightly, self-conscious of her two missing teeth. “Please pardon my husband—he don’t know
no better. Ain’t seen as much of the world as I have in my time.”


“That’s quite all right, madam,” Gaius said as Hengus slowly lowered him to the ground. “We don’t mean to bring you any trouble.”

“Oh, ain’t that nice,” Mera cooed, patting down her rebellious hair. “No need to worry about the trouble; we’ve got a surplus
of it—could make a living off of it, if there were a market, you might say.”


“Perhaps we can help with that,” said the second young man as he stood. He was slightly shorter than the first, with close-cropped
dark hair that seemed to bristle from his head. The man’s beard showed signs of careful crafting, its edge extending from
in front of the ears in a graceful sweep down a strong jawline before it turned abruptly upward and joined at his mustache.
A single tuft of hair nestled in the cleft of his chin, an island beneath lips that seemed to naturally smile. His cheeks
were apple-rosy, matching his warm, shining eyes. He extended his hand to the slack-jawed and obviously entranced woman. “Please
call me Treijan. This is my companion, Gaius. We are—”


“Bards.” Mera giggled suddenly as though she were a girl half her age. “I recognized the tunics.”

Hengus frowned deeply. “Bards? Then you’re mystic heretics come to plague us in our misery.”

“No, Master… Hengus, isn’t it?” Treijan said in his smoothest voice. “We come to sing the songs of the ancients; tell
tales of forgotten heroes and search for those who long for a better life.”


“Which we would gladly do for you another time,” Gaius interjected quickly as he extracted his tunic from the cooper’s slackening
grip. “Treijan, say good-bye to the nice family. We don’t know how long it will be before—”


“But this good man is a cooper,” Treijan replied at once, gesturing with a warm smile toward Hengus. “Coopers are esteemed
highly in the councils of Calsandria; in fact, as I recall, there is a desperate need for coopers. It would be disrespectful
not to return his hospitality and that of his family.”


“It would be disrespectful to wait until our problems caught up with all of us, Your High—”

Treijan shot a warning glance at his traveling companion as he abruptly held up a warning finger.

“-and-mighty fellow bard-singer,” Gaius finished lamely. “We must be going at once.”

“We’ve seen no sign of our friends for a while,” Treijan said in a voice smooth as oil on still water. “I think we might afford
the courtesy of answering these good people’s questions regarding the doings in the world beyond Wellstead. And who might
this be?”


Hengus turned toward the kitchen door once more. His daughter’s dirty face was peering wide-eyed around her mother’s skirts.

“I’ve something to show you,” Treijan said to the little girl, crouching down as he reached into his pack.

“We’ll have none of your tricks, mystic,” Hengus said quickly, though he suddenly realized that the hammer in his raised hand
was getting a bit heavy. “If the priest were to find you here, he’d as soon burn down my shop as see you breathing.”


“No tricks, Master Hengus.” Treijan nodded, still smiling at the little girl. “And believe me, your local priest would rather
not know that I was anywhere near him.”


The young man pulled out a small folded tapestry cloth which measured barely the length of both his arms. From where he stood
Hengus could not see what image the threads made, but he saw the eyes of both his wife and his daughter go wide in wonder.


“Please, Master Hengus, come around and see.”

Hengus lowered the hammer and carefully stepped around to where he could see the tapestry. Light from the fires cooking the
bound barrel staves he had made earlier in the day illuminated the glittering threads, but he was astonished to see that the
threads seemed to be in constant motion, weaving and reweaving themselves in a blur of speed.


“Satinka protect us!” Hengus muttered in awe.

Treijan smiled at the comment but continued to look at the wide-eyed little girl. “Would you like me to tell you a story?”

The girl hid her face in her mother’s skirt.

“Go on, now,” Mera urged insistently. “Listen to the nice bard.”

The girl peeked one eye out of the folds in the cloth and managed to nod just once.

“Well, a long, long time ago, there was a great kingdom where all the towers were sparkling white; where the days were never
too hot and the nights were never too cold. There was always fruit on the trees and vegetables in the gardens. The torusks
were tame and well behaved, and everyone was happy.”


The threads on the tapestry suddenly came alive, forming a breathtaking image of narrow, achingly beautiful towers against
a brilliant blue sky. Mountains appeared in the distance, and the lake beyond the towers shimmered.


The girl looked out from the folds in amazement.

“This was Calsandria—the greatest city in the world and the jewel of the entire Rhamasian Empire,” Treijan continued quietly.
“It was a place where every man could make a difference and every woman find peace. It was a place where children played with
the most marvelous toys ever dreamed of. Now, how old are you, uh—”


“Edis,” the mother prompted.

“How old are you, Edis?”

The girl remained silent but held up both hands, all fingers and thumbs.

“Ten? My, you are getting older, aren’t you?” Treijan smiled. “Well, I’m very sad to tell you that even more than ten years
ago—even more than tens of ten years—this wonderful place was lost and vanished.”


The image on the tapestry faded away, the threads merging into the same light tan of the rest of the cloth.

“It vanished, all right,” Hengus snorted in derision. “The Dragonkings burned its Mad Emperors right off the face of Aerbon,
that’s what vanished ’em.”


“As though they’ve done us any good,” Mera snapped. “Shut up and listen!”

“But this story has a happy ending,” Treijan continued to the child. “A long time ago, though not nearly so long ago as Calsandria,
there was a man named Galen…”


The threads on the tapestry suddenly reappeared, weaving themselves into the image of a handsome man whose features were strong,
his chin held confidently up in a look of strength and defiance.


“Galen was also of the Pir—just like you—but he discovered that he had a special gift from the ancient gods—gods who were
older even than the Dragonkings—a gift for the magic of the ancient Rhamasian kings.” The tapestry wove and rewove itself
to the words that Treijan spoke. “He found that there were many who had this same gift, so he gathered them together out of
all the human lands. He sent his son, Caelith, into the terrible peaks of the Forsaken Mountains, and there, led by the ancient
gods, he found the long-lost Calsandria left in ruins.”


Hengus nodded. “I told you the Dragonkings—”

“Hush!” Mera commanded in no uncertain terms.

“If you live seven times as old as you are now”—Treijan smiled to the girl—“it still would not be as long as the mystics have
been in the mountains, rebuilding the majesty of Calsandria. Now its towers shine again, and its name calls to all those who
wish to partake in its glory.”


Gaius stood at the door, listening. “It’s gone quiet, Treijan. We’ve got to go.”

“A city of mystics.” Hengus sniffed as he spoke. “A nation of heretics.”

“No, not at all,” Treijan said, folding up the tapestry quickly and stuffing it back into his pack. “Everyone is welcome there—mystic
and commoner both have a place in the glory of Calsandria. Besides, I would think that a concerned husband and parent like
yourself would consider not only his own situation but that of his wife and child.”


Hengus’s eyes narrowed. “You be threatening me?”

“Not at all,” the bard said easily as he stood. “There is a place for everyone in Calsandria—especially a talented cooper
like yourself—where a fine living might be had.”


“And about which we shall tell you another time,” Gaius said hurriedly. “Treijan, we’ve got to go now.”

“Besides,” Treijan continued, ignoring his companion as he smiled and gently stroked his hand down the child’s hair, “one
never knows when one of your own might suddenly be found to be one of the Elect. Here among the Pir it is a tragedy. In Calsandria
it blesses the entire—”


“By Hrea!” Gaius suddenly shouted, stepping back from the door. He held his hands up in front of his face, both hands splayed wide.


Treijan’s eyes widened as he put his arms quickly around the woman and child, pulling them down close behind his friend. Hengus
angrily stepped forward, reaching his meaty hand down toward the insolent bard.


The shop exploded around them. Planks, fittings, nails, timbers, iron hoops, slates, staves, wedges, planes—all that made
up his trade—suddenly whirled away as though hit by a terrible gust of wind. Hengus fell backward, carried with the avalanche
of debris. Terrified, the huge man tumbled painfully across the ground, desperate to reach his wife and child. His large left
hand somehow found one of the foundation stones of their home, and he pulled himself behind it, eyes closed, waiting for death.
But his heart continued to beat, and his bones remained intact. The sounds rushed away behind him, but still Hengus dared
not look up.


A voice rang out in the sudden darkness. “Kneel before the power of Satinka!”

For a moment Hengus thought that the Dragonqueen herself might have been there, blowing destruction across his cooperage.

“Nice spell, Meklos,” Gaius rejoined, though he was panting slightly with exertion.

Hengus pulled himself up. His home—or what had been his home—was gone along with the shop, its debris blasted well into the
tree line behind its foundations. In its place remained the still-glowing arc of Gaius’s magic shielding his friend and Hengus’s
wife and child. The cooper had been standing too far away from them to be included in the magical shelter; he had been swept
away with the rest of the house and saved only by the remaining foundation. Gazing now past the bards to the roadway beyond,
Hengus saw a lone, familiar figure standing with a tall staff, the crackling flow of lightning constantly erupting against
the bard’s shield. Hengus knew the robes instantly.


“Aboth Jefard!” Hengus cried out. He could feel the blood running down the side of his face but tried to ignore it as he staggered
to his feet. “Praise Satinka you have come!”


The Aboth took no notice of the cooper, his eyes fixed on the bards even as the lightning continued to flow against the shield.
“Hello, old friends. It’s been a long and tiresome journey tracking you here.”


Treijan looked up from where he was huddled protectively around the woman and child. Mera’s face was a mask, her mouth gaping
open, the scream lodged silently somewhere in her throat. She crouched, holding her daughter too close to her, muffling her
constant sobs. A wicked grin split Treijan’s face. “Well, hello to you, too, Meklos! Where’s your dragon?”


Gaius winced.

“Insult me all you like, Treijan,” the Aboth sneered in return. “I never listen to dead men.”

Mera found her voice, her scream erupting from deep inside.

“We might have saved you the trouble,” Gaius rejoined, shouting to be heard over Mera’s hysteria. “We’ve a right to be here.
According to the Second Eastgate Accords…”


“The Eastgate is a long way from here,” Aboth Jefard said, pressing closer, the blue arcs rising in intensity. “You know,
I hear bards vanish all the time. The road can be so treacherous—especially in these new eastern colonies.”


Hengus’s stare shifted from the Aboth to the bards, his wife and little girl, and back again.

“I think you’ll agree,” Gaius said through gritting teeth, “that this is a little different. We aren’t just two more bards
who would go missing.”


“Oh, I quite agree,” Aboth Jefard replied. “The Ost Batar Council will publicly mourn and regret your disappearance along
with all of Calsandria. Privately, I suspect, I’ll be richly rewarded.”


“I see.” Gaius nodded and then grunted. “Treijan, I could use a little help here.”

His companion stood at once, raising his own hands. The shield glowed brighter as it absorbed the crackling bolts. Hengus
could see his wife huddled between the two bards, wide-eyed with terror, her shrill shrieks piercing the night.


“Your Greatness,” Hengus said, tears streaming down his cheeks as he staggered toward the Aboth, keeping well clear of the
strange blue sweep of electric fire bombarding the mystics. “Please! My family…”


“Ah, hello, Hengus,” the Aboth replied casually, his eyes never departing from his prey. “Sorry about your shop, but this
will all be over soon. Four of my companions will be arriving shortly, and then we’ll be able to deal with this properly.”


“But, Aboth, what of my wife and child?”

“He has a point,” Treijan called out. “If this shield falls, you’ll kill all of us. Let the woman and child free, Meklos.”

“Really?” the Aboth said drolly with his eyebrow arched. “And what of you?”

“Hey.” Gaius shrugged. “You can always chase us again tomorrow.”

“And we promise not to kill you until then,” Treijan added.


The Aboth smiled, shaking his head. “Tempting, but I don’t think so. I’ve chased you through your own Songstone gates from
Port Stellan all the way to Traggathia just for this moment.”


“Sorry to hear that.” Treijan’s grin dimmed ever so slightly. “A shame we’ll have to close those gates—they were quite useful.
Still, we can’t abide poachers.”


“Ah, Treijan; droll to the last.” The Aboth turned to the cooper. “Hengus, go and get your local priest. He’s not much, but
he’ll do until my companions arrive.”


“But my family!”

“Don’t question me!” the Aboth snapped, then drew a quick breath. “They’ll be fine. You have my word on it.”

Hengus turned, stepping away reluctantly. He glanced down at his right hand, where the hammer, somehow, still remained firmly
in his grip. He had the Aboth’s word, he told himself.


“So you couldn’t wait for the rest of your group, eh, Meklos?” Treijan called out from behind the shield.

“You aren’t going anywhere.” Aboth Jefard smirked. “Your death will ensure my ascension to the Ost Batar Council.”

“Not likely,” Treijan scoffed. “I mean, anyone who loses an entire dragon…”

“Shut up, Trei!” Gaius growled, and then called out to the Aboth, his voice heavy with the strain, “And what of Mera here
and little Edis—why murder them, too?”


“A few sacrifices must be made in so great a cause.” The Aboth smiled. “Even by backwater colonists such as…”

The lightning suddenly vanished. The Aboth’s face contorted in a look of pain and surprise, then he pitched forward. The robes
crumpled around him as the Aboth fell senseless to the ground.


Behind him stood Hengus, the hammer now stained, still in his hand.

Gaius and Treijan dropped their hands. The blue shield vanished as Hengus staggered numbly toward them. The bards both ran
past the cooper toward the still form of the Aboth.


“Is he dead?” Treijan asked Gaius.

“No,” his friend answered quickly as he knelt next to the still form in the dirt, examining it critically. “Why? Do you want
him to be?”


“I—I tried not to hit him too hard,” Hengus stammered from behind the bards, his unfocused eyes staring toward the ground.
“I mean, it was my family…”


The cooper dropped his bloody hammer to the ground.

Mera stood up and threw her arms around the wide girth of her husband, shaking as she wept. “Hengus! It’s gone—our lives are
all gone! My mother’s pottery—your tools—what are we to do?”


Hengus folded his wife into his thick arms. Edis was clinging to them both. The cooper turned his gaze toward the bards, however,
as he answered his wife. “Mera, I think we should try our luck in this Calsandria.”


Treijan stepped forward and held out his hand to the cooper. Hengus kept one arm still around his unsteady wife, and he reached
out, his grip nearly covering the young bard’s hand entirely.


“We don’t have much time,” Gaius said urgently. “Is there anything you need to take with you?”

The big cooper considered the shattered remains of his home for a moment, then reached down and picked up both his tiny wife
and his little girl, lifting them easily from the ground.


“All that’s left is right here,” he said. “Which way do we go?”

“Oddly enough,” Treijan said with a smile, “the first step is largely up to you.”

Hengus led them deep into the woods south of town. He realized that it was one of the few places that he thought of as his
own: a copse of trees so thick that it was difficult to pass between the tall, straight trunks without turning sideways. It
was not only the place where he came to find the best wood for his barrels but also his own private maze—a place where he
could hide among the tall trees from all the world’s troubles and have no fear of being found.


The woods abruptly gave way to a small clearing surrounding a craggy stone thrusting upward in its center. Many was the day,
Hengus thought, that he had spent a blissful afternoon sleeping on the slope of that outcropping, absorbing whatever sun penetrated
the surrounding curtain of trees.


This was his sanctuary.

It was the first place he thought of when the bards asked him for the most secret place he knew.

“Friend Hengus,” Treijan said with quiet approval as his gaze passed over the little clearing, “not even the Hreatic masters
themselves could have chosen a better place.”


“The foundation’s good,” Gaius agreed.

Treijan reached down and opened the leather purse attached to his belt. From it he drew a small polished stone shot through
with crystal.


Hengus had never seen its like before. “What be that?”

Treijan turned to the cooper and winked. “That, friend Hengus, is a Songstone.”

“Does it sing?” the young girl asked hesitantly, her eyes peeking from behind her mother’s skirts as she spoke her first words
since leaving town.


“Sometimes it does,” Treijan answered her directly, “but only if we sing to it first—and in its music is something special.
You see, this stone in my hand is only half of the stone; its identical mate is far away from here—hundreds and hundreds of
miles—near a place called Styla. That stone—the mate of this one in my hand—sits in a great magical gate hidden at the back
of a beautiful canyon. It sits in that gate just waiting to hear the song of this stone in my hand—and this stone is just waiting for me to sing to it before it will sing to its mate.”


“What happens when you sing to it?” Hengus asked with suspicion in his voice.

“Let’s find out,” Treijan replied.

The young bard stepped quickly to the outcropping of rock at the center of the clearing and carefully set the stone down in
a notch in its surface. He then stood back and began to sing a tune toward the rock. His voice was resonant and the tones
clear, yet Hengus could not understand any words in the song.


The stone began to sing back to him.

Gaius, his companion, stepped back, a strange, distant look coming over his face.

The rocks of the outcropping began to move