Songs of the Dark: Short Fiction from the World of Raven’s Shadow

A Duel of Evils-1

A Duel of Evils

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The Fall of Kethia

Being a true and unbiased account of the destruction of that city compiled at the order of Emperor Aluran Maxtor Selsus (blessed by the Gods for all the ages) by Lord Verniers Alishe Someren, Imperial Chronicler and First of the Learned.

In preparing this history I have been honoured to follow My Emperor’s wise instruction to compose an account free from the vagaries of myth and legend, those cursed twins destined to forever obstruct the path of the rational scholar in his quest for truth. However, as you will see, all surviving sources relating to the events described below are riven, one might say sullied, by references to the bizarre and outright impossible. It is a singular mystery why an event of such import to the Volarian Empire, a culture renowned for promoting rationality with a vigour bordering on mania, should produce witnesses so lacking in that very quality. It is, of course, probable that these witnesses were delusional, the extremes of war having been known to strip reason from even the most stable mind. However, I have chosen not to exclude their more outlandish reportage, as it has ever been my contention that the perception of an event is at least as important as its true substance.

In considering how and why the once mighty city-state of Kethia came to its dreadful end, we must first understand its origins. The bulk of early Volarian history exists as a melange of legend and folklore, largely revolving around the deeds of various improbably mighty heroes, their myriad battles and betrayals performed in service to the now extinct Volarian pantheon. Much of the physical evidence to emerge from this period is limited to indecipherable tablet inscriptions and somewhat lurid illustrations from the few artifacts to survive, mostly pottery fragments and incomplete mosaics. The one unifying theme to these disparate images is that of destruction; cities burn, hordes of people are put to the sword by inhuman armies clad in blood-red armour, and beasts of unlikely configuration spring from the bowels of the earth to wreak all manner of havoc. Whilst these images are most certainly exaggerations or complete inventions, taken as a whole they do indicate that the landmass which now comprises the bulk of the Volarian Empire was once witness to a struggle of near genocidal proportions, a struggle that can only be said to have abated when recognisable settlements begin to reappear, generating trade and correspondence in the process.

The earliest reference to employ the modern name for Kethia dates back some sixteen hundred years, a full century in fact before the birth of our own (glorious and surely eternal) Empire. My prolonged sojourn through the imperial archives unearthed several ancient cargo manifests relating to the purchase and exchange of goods with a settlement situated on the western coast of what is now the Volarian province of Eskethia. The record of trade with this settlement increases in volume over successive centuries to the point where they attain sufficient wealth and sophistication to secure a formal treaty with Emperor Rahlun, the tenth chosen to sit on the Alpiran throne. The details of the treaty are fairly standard; an agreement to maintain existing tariffs and mutual protection of vessels from piracy. But it is clear from the preamble that by this point the Kethians were already engaged in a bitter rivalry with the port of Volar, situated over three hundred miles to the northeast.

A brief glance at any map of the north Volarian coast provides ample explanation as to why these two cities might come into conflict. Volar sits at the end of a long, narrow estuary known as the Cut of Lokar. A relatively easy waterway to navigate according to my seafaring sources, but providing markedly less ease of access to the Boraelin trade routes than that offered by Kethia, which also benefited from rich surrounding farmlands producing wine and cotton in substantial quantities. The decades preceding the Kethian treaty with Alpira had seen numerous border skirmishes and at least one major battle as the two ports competed for trade and prestige. However, events were to take a decidedly more serious turn with the advent of Volarian hegemony over much of the continent, a period known to history as The Forging Age. Aided by a sophisticated military doctrine, and a ruthlessly practical approach to both diplomacy and warfare, the nascent Volarian Empire had become a recognisable entity some eight centuries ago, at which point our tale begins in earnest.

To understand the subsequent course of events requires a certain appreciation of both the differences and similarities between Kethian and Volarian culture. It is not my intention to laud one as superior to the other, as it will become clear to My Emperor that both peoples appear somewhat bestial in comparison to the unmatched excellence of Alpiran society. For example, each culture employed a code of justice that can only be described as barbaric; every crime, regardless of pettiness, was (and remains so in modern Volaria) punishable by execution, more serious criminals being required to undergo a series of prescribed tortures before receiving the, no doubt, blessed release of death. However, similar brutality between the two adversaries was not matched by similar governance. I will spare you, Sire, a recounting of the long and ugly history of the peculiar Volarian institution of slavery, except to relate that by the dawn of its ascendancy, slavery sat at the heart of all aspects of Volarian society.

Volaria, as My Emperor knows, is ruled by a council drawn from the wealthiest citizens in the empire. In modern times the path to Council-man status is a mysterious one, wreathed in labyrinthine intrigue and a complex system of patronage. In fact, it is never clear to outsiders who sits on the council, as it appears some families have occupied their seats for generations without troubling themselves to change the name to match the current occupant. But, in its earlier incarnation entry to the council was simply a matter of amassing wealth equivalent to the value of one hundred thousand slaves. The number of council seats throughout the ages is therefore a useful indicator of the overall size of the empire, or at least its slave population. By the advent of unrestricted war against Kethia, the council consisted of ten members and its control over the growing Volarian dominions was near absolute.

Kethia, by contrast, had no need of councils. For, like the savages inhabiting the damp land to the north, Kethia had a king. However, unlike the north-men, the king of Kethia did not ascend by virtue of birth but at the whim of his people. Every four years all men over the age of thirty, owning house or livestock, would gather at an impressive structure in the city’s centre. The name of this building has been lost but, if the illustrations of Kethia’s ruins are to be believed, it would have been a remarkable sight, standing thirty feet tall and ringed by marble columns some five feet in diameter. Every man would be given a single black stone and a vase would be placed before each of the candidates aspiring to kingship. Each man would come forward and reach his hand into every vase, keeping his fist closed when he drew it out, so none would know into which vase he had dropped his stone. Once all the gathered men had cast their stones, each vase would be emptied and the stones counted in full view of the assembly. The candidate whose vase contained the most stones would ascend to the throne.

Any man of suitable age and property could present himself for kingship, though the Kethian scholar and diplomat Karvalev provides an insight into the kind of individual who stood the best chance of success:

No farmer ever won the throne. Nor a drover, nor a smith, nor a wheelwright. Our kings have ever been merchants, or the sons of merchants. Or warriors of great renown, or the sons of warriors of great renown. And none have ever known poverty. Kethian mothers wishing to shame indolent sons will often resort to an old saying, ‘Keep on like this and there’ll never be a stone in your vase.’

Karvalev was fated, or cursed, to witness much of what follows, so naturally his account forms a principal source for this history. Many of his works have been lost to the ages but he appears to have been widely read in his lifetime, ensuring a considerable portion of his writings were copied and distributed, apparently to his great annoyance: ‘The whole world benefits from the art of this poor scholar who must bargain for ink.’

Volarian sources for this period are sparse and those that survive often biased to the point of uselessness, except to illustrate the depth of hatred many felt towards Kethia. They are thieves, one Volarian merchant wrote to a trading partner in far off Verehl. Every chance for profit is stolen by guile and graft. A Kethian will sell at a loss if it means denying profit to a Volarian.

However, it is Karvalev who provides the clearest illustration of Volarian antipathy to their wealthy neighbours at this time. The author of several fruitless missions to Volar in search of some form of peaceful accommodation, his final attempt produced this enlightening account of a brief meeting with an unnamed Council-man:

He stood regarding me with eyes of ice and face of stone, clad in robes of red silk and flanked on either side by guards with drawn swords. His every aspect seemed to convey the sense of a man suffering the worst indignity. Intent on my mission, I began to relate my message whereupon he spoke: ‘The dagger-tooth does not bargain with the goat.’

Karvalev goes on to describe being seized by the Council-man’s guards and marched back to his ship, his every step assailed by a baying mob crammed into the streets to spit their bile at the hated Kethian. Clearly, war with Volaria was becoming inevitable.

It should not be surmised, however, that trade was the only cause for antagonism between these rivals. Whilst they spoke much the same language and shared the same pantheon of gods, they pursued wildly differing modes of worship. As My Emperor will no doubt recall from my earlier treatise, The Land of Nightmares—A Portrait of Pre-Imperial Volaria, the long-vanished Volarian pantheon remains one of the most aggravating points of inquiry for the modern scholar, for only the priesthood were permitted to know the names of the gods. The common worshipper would look to the heroes of legend, quasi-godlike figures themselves, for inspiration and guidance, but direct appeals for divine intervention required the assistance of the priesthood, on payment of an offering of suitable value. Kethia, however, stood alone among the cultures to share this pantheon in having divested itself of a priesthood a century before its destruction. The Kethians, it is said, had committed the ultimate blasphemy in actually naming the gods and allowing any citizen, even women, to appeal to them directly. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the loudest Volarian voices to call for war came from the priesthood.

One of the few Volarian sources to offer a remotely unbiased account of the war comes from one Sevarik Entril, a junior officer at the war’s commencement, set to rise to battalion commander by its end. Entril wrote a series of letters to his wife throughout the conflict, unwittingly providing a valuable narrative of the campaign. It seems he entrusted these missives to a neutral sea captain who was in fact a spy in Alpiran service, hence the presence of copies in the Imperial Archives. Entril records his entire division being paraded at the base of one of the tall towers common to the long since destroyed Volarian temple complexes:

A priest stood atop the tower, calling out in the language of the gods, his words translated by one of his brothers who stood before us. His brother had been blessed, he told us, by a vision from not one, but every god in the heavens: ‘Kethia will tumble in flame and Volaria rise on its ashes!’ As was custom the priest then cast himself from the tower, his life’s work being complete and the gods sure to catch his soul as he fell. We raised our swords and cheered ourselves hoarse as his empty body shattered on the ground in bloody homage.