Андрей Кочетков
The Heavenly Lord’s Ambassador. A Kingdom Like No Other. Book 1

Illustrations by Yulia Shcherbina

© Andrew Kochett, текст, 2023

© Юлия Щербина, иллюстрации, 2023

© ООО «Издательство «Эксмо», 2023

Prologue

“Man only exists when he is capable of changing his world. Destruction is the highest form of change. Truth is only born of struggle, and only by killing can a man show who he really is. Show us who you are!” he finished writing and looked out of the window. Evening descended, warm and soft. Weary from the day, the celestial body spread its gold-embroidered vestments across the horizon and prepared for its nightly ablutions in the Infinite Ocean. A thin ray of sun fought its way through the thick branches of the trees and landed on the face of a young man bent over a piece of parchment, but the celestial messenger’s efforts were in vain. It had prepared for this meeting, and it would gladly have told the young man of the wide meadows where the sun’s followers capered until it was completely dark, of a pair of dolphins that frolicked in the warm, milky waters of the Misty Sea, far to the south, as they chased after a Capotian merchant ship bearing west. But it was thwarted in its quest, for the young man turned in annoyance, squinted, and bowed his head lower over his writing table, which was made of wood that was as black as coal. The work that had engrossed him for the past several months left him no time to enjoy the beauty of life around him. He was writing in traditional Herandian script, but without the carelessness and indifference that marked the official style of the imperial bureaucracy. Quite the opposite: each letter was set on the parchment with neat attention, and the author often set aside his quill pen and, resting his unshaven cheek on his fist, closely read over what he had written…

I want this book to tell the story of my father, Unizel Virando. He is a famous man, but does anyone know him as a human being?

The first thing we know about a person is his or her name, but everyone reads that name differently, giving it their own meaning, gazing at it like a mirror in hopes of seeing their own familiar feelings and desires. That being the case, I will write about the things that are important to me. How and why did my father become the man he is today? How does he live, and what thoughts come to him when he looks at the world we see around us? What people has he met on his path, and how have they changed his understanding of the world?

My father and I are very different people, but when I listen to his stories, it always seems to me that I would do exactly as he did if faced with similar circumstances. I suppose this gives me the right to add my own elaboration to those events about which, for various reasons, I cannot know the full truth.

My book describes people in this empire, but it also touches on people from wondrous, far-off countries. Much of what happened to those people did not concern my father directly, taking place without his immediate involvement. Still, just as droplets of spilled mercury finally come together, the fates of all the people who ever saw, knew, or fought with my father will come together as something whole and unbroken – something that could be called Destiny. Each character in this story of his life has added a grain of knowledge, love, hate, or suffering, and all of it has now come down to me.

When I took up my pen, I knew that my father’s stories and memories alone would not be enough to bring his world to life. If I hope to relive his life – from my own point of view – I must have deep knowledge of Dashtornis, the Known World. The archives in our capital’s library are still being put together, but they are always open to me, and I am glad of the opportunity to access the wisdom contained therein.

To avoid confusion, I will do my best to present proper names and certain other concepts in the classical Herandian transcription. The original text would certainly be more interesting to the serious researcher, but my book is not a scholarly work, despite the fact that it concerns knowledge of the world and of oneself. I must warn the reader not to expect scientific precision in the names of people and places. Virilan names, for example, are not pronounced exactly as I give them here. And while it is natural for residents of the empire to have a first name and a last name, Virilans have no last name at all. Instead, they have two first names, one of which is given by the parents at birth and the other is chosen by the Virilan when he or she reaches adulthood. Another difficulty is the fact that many sounds (such as the soft k and g) are absent in the Virilan language. Virilans are simply incapable of making these sounds, just as we risk breaking our tongues when we try to pronounce even the simplest phrase in Arincil. The fact that my father speaks these and many other languages fluently – most of them learned from books alone – is proof of his linguistic talents which, unfortunately, were not passed down to me.

And finally, the most important question: who is this book being written for? My father is a shrewd man. He has studied so many people over the course of his life that understanding his own son gives him no trouble at all. For this reason, Unizel Virando did not bother asking me what I was writing about. Instead, like snow falling from a clear sky, he paid an unexpected visit to my small estate, leaving me no chance to avoid him. Casually taking his seat right on the table where I do my work, my father stared at my parchment with a vague, secretive smile in his sky-blue eyes. I must admit that my heart began to beat faster than usual, and my guts were gripped by cold. I expected him to criticize me, to point out mistakes I had made, to demand that I rewrite or remove certain parts, but he did none of these. No, my father seemed to enjoy taunting me. The sun slipped past its noonday peak, and still he said nothing. He seemed to draw out all the life force I had put into my scrolls, giving nothing in return. All torment eventually comes to an end, though, and this time was no different. My father suddenly looked up from the parchment and turned to me. His eyes were full of understanding.

“I hope you realize that it would not be a good idea to publish this?” As always, his manner was sleek and perfectly polite.

I let my breath out with a tremendous sense of relief. I had prepared myself for this question long ago. “Of course, Father. I…”

“Then can you explain to me why you have wasted so much time on this? You are no longer a boy wondering who he will become when he grows up. You bear the weight of an incredible responsibility, a mission that passes to you as my only son. When I see what you have been doing instead of learning the things you will need to know…”

“I think of that constantly! But Father, isn’t your own destiny perfect proof of the fact that, by following the dictates of his own heart, each man eventually arrives at his own Hour of Truth? I am writing this book for my children, so that they may know the story of the head of our family. These seeds of knowledge, when thrown into the future, will bear the fruit of wisdom and provide a strong foundation for our family and our empire!

“Are you saying that this will be a book to be read at home?”

“Exactly. It is a book and a textbook and a memory aid all in one. I swear that everything set out in these scrolls will remain our family’s secret forever!”

My father snorted skeptically and shrugged. He looked out the open window, where the cool breeze from the river was shaking the arms of the trees and the nimble squirrels were stealing delicacies from the altar honoring our ancestors, which stood under a large oak.

I could tell my father did not have much faith in me. Or perhaps he did have faith, but secretly wanted to change his own mind. I would have to think quickly to save the situation.

“Father, I am like you in everything. Think back to how it all started. Thirty years ago. An evening just like this one. Enteveria, the capital of the great Herandian Empire. The archives of His Heavenly Majesty, master of everything under the sky…”

Part I. From Shadows into Light

Chapter 1. Burdened by Hope

The young falcon had been gliding masterfully for over an hour in the wind’s soft embrace on that evening in May. Ash-colored wings spread wide, he cast a knowing eye over the city that lay beneath him. If the residents of the boundless Herandian Empire had worshipped a more mundane deity instead of the Sun, they would have paid less attention to birds, who were on familiar terms with the bright face of the sky. It was a grave sacrilege to kill birds, and yet something had to be done to protect the Emperor’s palace and the heads of the statues (and those of regular citizens) from the power-drunk pigeons. Only the falcon – that holy guardian of the Heavenly Throne – had the lawful right to reduce the population of blue-winged bandits, and for this he was doubly revered by the residents of Enteveria.

The imperial archives suffered frequently from the pigeons’ excesses. The squat, somewhat ominous building was reliably protected from non-avian troublemakers by its position inside the first circle of the Great Imperial Chambers, but attacks from the air posed a continual threat to the appearance of the largest storehouse of knowledge in all of Dashtornis. The situation was made worse by the fact that the archive was built two hundred years ago under Emperor Nazalio, who was a great lover of constructivist experimentations and essentially rebuilt the city’s historical center. His Heavenly Majesty was careful to draw the attention of his architects – mundane thinkers all of them – to the obvious fact that the storehouse for such valuable manuscripts chronicling the great deeds of his heavenly ancestors simply could not take the form of a rough, rectangular prism of Seregad marble “that would seize even the most marginally refined person with despair at the mere sight of it.”

It cost the architects a great deal of effort to convince His Majesty not to tear down the almost completed building, which would have destroyed an extensive network of basements that provided the perfect conditions for storing especially valuable manuscripts, with expensive mechanisms for dousing fires and a special system of mirrors that allowed weak but natural sunlight to reach even the farthest corners of the unshakeable citadel of the wisdom of past ages. The chief architect, Cordius Palio, saw the imperial archives primarily as a fortress, a carefully guarded treasure house that could withstand direct assault, flood, fire, and riots.

He often intoned on the subject: “This structure will stand for a thousand years, and our descendants will be surprised and delighted to find a path into the world of those who laid the foundations of our great empire!”

It would have been uncomfortable to argue with the Emperor, however, so Palio agreed to a bit of architectural slight-of-hand and added an ornate but false colonnade to the front of the building and a gallery of statues of Herandia’s most learned men to its roof.

These statues earned Palio a place among the most frequent subjects of estevels brought by the archive’s contemporary workers (estevels were scraps of paper bearing curses against one’s enemies; for a small fee, supplicants could use a primitive lens to ceremoniously feed the paper to the sun’s rays, thereby subjecting the target of the curse to the power of the heavenly deity). Pigeons dropped piles of excrement on the statues’ heads and the roof of the archive with such ferocity that the Emperor, observing the building from a vantage point on his main balcony, became indignant at this flagrant insult to the imperial gaze.

“There are rumors that the Sun is sending his servants to show his wrath with our Lord,” said a handful of the Emperor’s helpful advisors.

“Let us call on the falcon, the protector of the Heavenly Throne! That will show everyone that the Lord of the Sky is on your side!” said others.

As a result, specially trained falcons had guarded the sky above the archive and the palace for almost two centuries, ruthlessly tearing to pieces any winged violators and putting a stop to dangerous unrest in the minds of the Heavenly Emperor’s subjects. City residents loved to watch the handsome bird soaring through the sky, and the young man on the front steps of the archive was no different. To get a clear picture of what this connoisseur of free flight looked like, imagine an old man, shriveled and decrepit from years of working in the archives, lungs corroded by the ever-present dust, eyes weakened by the half-light, back bent as a sign of membership in the gloomy caste that is called “bookworms”. If you have enough imagination, suppose for a moment that even this pitiful specimen was once a blooming youth. Taken together, those two images provide a fairly precise rendering of how other people saw Unizel Virando. Very few people actually knew his name. At the archive, where he was employed as assistant to the senior master in the foreign manuscripts section, everyone simply called him Uni. His close friends called him Little Uni – not because of his short stature, but because of the naïve, scattered look in his blue eyes, which he inherited from his mother, and his excessively polite, even timid, manners.

Tossing the golden curls away from his forehead, Uni kept his eyes on the proud hunter. He felt a melancholy envy of the bird’s unchained freedom and graceful flight. For a young man who spent most of his time in the archive’s musty vaults, the falcon was a visible symbol of something bigger and more important. It called to him, but what it seemed to offer was fatally unachievable.

A man stepped out of the archive’s front door. “Uni, stop gaping at the birds. Barko is waiting for you. Get moving!” The man filled his lungs with the fresh air of late spring, saying his final goodbyes of the day to the dusty spirits of imperial wisdom.

“Coming, Master Gergius!” Uni said with an inadvertent sigh. He hurried up the rest of the steps and, once again, surrendered his body to torture at the hands of the dismal spirits of the painfully familiar underground vaults. The most dangerous of these fearsome creatures was his superior, senior master Barko. He was fearsome in his stubborn refusal to forget about the existence of his young assistant for long periods of time, thereby preventing Uni from studying the archive’s contents to his heart’s content.

It would be untrue to say that Uni hated the archive’s old (and sometimes gloomy) walls. Quite the opposite, when he first entered that narrow world four years prior, he realized with delight that fate had given him an incredible gift. The labyrinthine halls of the archive held his body like a prison, but his spirit, fed by the contents of a mountain of secret scrolls and codices, found a path to an entirely new and unknown world of knowledge. The archive contained books on every subject. Anything published anywhere in Dashtornis – whether by the timid hand of a scribe or by the lifeless block of a wood press – eventually found its way here, to the main archives of the Heavenly Empire. The Arincilian jungles, the deserts of Mustobrim, the deep forests of Torgendam, and the teeming cities of Capotia – the whole world, more than one could see in a lifetime, revealed itself in wonders, dangers, and the strange customs of foreign people. With access to so many books, Uni taught himself the languages of many of these strange, yet fascinating people and spent hours imagining the conversations he could have with them, pretending to be a fierce warrior from Arincil’s House of the Eagle, or a brave captain working on a merchant fleet from Capotia, or even a shaman from a wild barbarian tribe roaming the plains of the Great Expanse.

His work did not take up much of his time. It was a necessary duty that he had to carry out so that he could spend the rest of his time doing what he loved, but he came to resent it as a petty encroachment on the graceful and intelligent world where he existed on an entirely different plane. How could anyone think it fair to ask a man who had already spanned the Known World with his ravenous mind to catalog new scrolls or copy out an excerpt from a dusty old tract on the art of cookery? His superiors at the archive seemed intent on finding ever more primitive tasks for Uni, blatantly exploiting his kind, compliant nature.

On this particular day, for example, he wondered wistfully why they had to send him to carry a copy of some pointless romantic ballad to the client who ordered it. He knew the answer: Gergius and his elderly accomplices at the archive contrived to save on couriers because they hoped to put some of those savings in their own pockets. The only exception to this rule was Barko, with whom Uni shared a love of foreign languages and an utterly impractical outlook on life (both highly unusual qualities for subjects of the empire). If Barko was looking for him that late in the day, it was probably not for a minor task. Uni hoped it wasn’t an errand that would take him all the way across the city. He had an important event scheduled for the evening, perhaps the most important event in his life.

At the thought of Siana, the young archivist seemed to grow falcon’s wings and flew down the labyrinth of hallways, making turn after turn from memory, up and down stairs and through doors with heavy, ornate metal locks. Siana was the one and only girl for him. It was the kind of infatuation that can start with a glance and conquer forever the heart of a sensitive young man. Mystically unattainable, it was a vision of love that thrilled the mind and fired the blood. It was love unexplored, unearthly, and all-consuming.

Uni was proud of himself because, unlike the abstract multitude of young men who sat around sighing about their obsessions, he had finally found the strength to progress along the fragile path toward intimacy with the object of his dreams. And now, after almost two years of playing at sidelong glances, formal greetings (during which his chest nearly burst from the wild beating of his heart), and tactful hints concerning matters of great subtlety, he had taken a deep breath (now or never!) and asked the girl of his dreams to meet him in the gardens of Archomena at the changing of the seventh watch.

City dwellers loved the gardens of Archomena because they seemed to have been designed to give young people sufficient privacy to conduct their social lives while actually remaining in clear view of anyone who walked by. This allowed young women to maintain their reputations and relieved young men of the trouble of finding a place to sit in peace with a girl one had just met.

The customs of the capital, which ought to have been very strict because of the proximity of the most holy sites for worshiping the Heavenly Deity, were, in fact, much more tolerant of natural human weakness than those touted by the patriarchal style of the Herandian provinces. In the first decades of the Empire’s existence, the priests of the Sun had attempted to control morals and relations between the sexes, but as Enteveria became a large, cosmopolitan city, the priests had encountered resistance in the form of deceit, sabotage, and open protest. In the end, the city’s religious leaders decided it was pointless to bail water from a sinking boat and revised their strictures to something simple: “Anything is permitted that does not offend the Lord of the Sky.” In simple terms, that meant once the sun went down, the city became unrecognizable. Some of the livelier citizens also decided that well-drawn curtains were the moral equivalent of nightfall.

As a typical romantic, Uni saw such goings-on as a crude attack on his pure dream world, and he rejected them utterly. He felt that intimacy with his beloved would be entirely different, something holy, something that strived toward the light.

With these thoughts in mind – his eyes focused on the world outside the dusty archive – he ran smack into an unexpected guest who had been peaceably conversing with senior master Barko.

“You’re a strange one, Uni,” his superior commented in a voice that was both kindly and patronizing. “You either disappear for who knows how long, or you knock a man off his feet.”

The words tripped over Uni’s tongue as he apologized. He awkwardly put his fists to his chest and then held out his right arm as he bowed low, making the traditional Herandian display of respect look somewhat comic and depriving it of the elegance that any courtier would have displayed in a similar situation. Blushing deeply, he raised his eyes to see who had fallen victim to his detachment from the real world and let out a sigh of relief. The late-comer was Manelius Ronko, an advisor to the Heavenly Throne and a great lover of ancient manuscripts. His handsome, almond-shaped eyes gazed at Uni with humor and not the slightest sign of annoyance.

“Enel Ronko, this is our best and most gifted employee, Unizel Virando.” Barko cleared his throat. “I believe you are already acquainted.”

Ronko bowed his head. “Barko, my friend, I will be doubly grateful if you will show us to a quiet corner where we can talk in private,” he said, looking around as if he had just noticed they were standing in a hallway.

Ronko followed the young archivist to a small alcove that was used for copying lists and cataloging books. The imperial advisor carried himself with great dignity, and his lips were set in a condescending smile. He wore a richly colored robe that fell to his heels, with wide sleeves that engulfed his arms and required him to move with solemnity. As he walked, Ronko swept his bent arms forward and to the side, as if drawing his companion’s attention to the shelves and boxes of scrolls containing ancient wisdom. Ronko was entirely unaware that he was posing, and it did not bother Uni at all. He had first met Ronko three years prior, and he was continually amazed by the man’s desire for individual enlightenment, an unusual trait for a courtier of his stature.

Courtiers and wealthy men of an intellectual bend often visited the archive to collect crumbs of knowledge they could use to show off in their next report, or snatches of poetry they could recite to impress their lovers. On occasion, they ordered copies of ancient tracts with titles like “Strategies for Skirmishing with Barbarians and other Enemies,” which were an obligatory element in the personal libraries of educated men throughout the empire. However, they rarely visited the archive in person. Instead, they had couriers who dropped off notes, picked up orders, and delivered them to the clients’ homes.

Uni had often delivered such orders. He disliked running errands, but he found a bit of enjoyment in visiting the homes of wealthy clients and collecting even the tiniest bit of information about the secrets that motivated their reading choices. This was one of his few strong points in conversations with friends. Who would have guessed that Loe Vinyaki, the war minister’s melancholy and unapproachable senior assistant, was a secret fan of the poems of Ulinian poetess Levia Sui, and that he owned a complete collection of her lyrics on unrequited love? Or that the successful merchant Kramath Segnoe, a handsome ladies’ man, had read everything the archive contained on remedies for better virility? On the other hand, no one was surprised to learn that Licisium Dorgoe, one of the Emperor’s closest and most beloved advisors, filled his reports with quotes Uni had taken for him from ancient works on the art of governance.

Manelius Ronko stood out from the rest of the courtiers. For one thing, he always came to the archive in person. He also declined the services of the archive’s scribes, instead sequestering himself with whatever scrolls he had requested. Uni was the only archive employee who was fortunate enough to find his favor. Having read much more than his job required, he could immediately direct Ronko to the information he needed in almost any section of the archive.

Once a manuscript was found, Ronko had a strange manner of reading it: he seemed to suck out the information without paying any attention to the order of the chapters or pages. Ronko gave the impression that he was displeased with how the authors presented the information he wanted, and he seemed to be building a virtual archive of his own where everything was organized in what he took to be the most natural order. His curiosity ranged from travelers’ descriptions of far-off countries to recipes for making poisons, and from the finer points of administration in pre-imperial Herandia to the latest tracts on architecture. At one point, it occurred to Uni that Ronko reminded him of himself (or of the man he could become in thirty years, given the right circumstances). Could he become that man? He had no idea. While the archive might be just another extravagant hobby or a pleasant waste of time for Ronko, for Uni it was the only work he was capable of getting after graduating from the academy without any other prospects.

When they were finally alone, Ronko turned to him and spoke, his voice smooth and sophisticated. “My dear friend, I know we have spoken of this before, but please remind me: do you truly have a strong interest in Virilan? Your gray-haired master has indicated that you do. Barko left me speechless when he told me that he and yourself are the only two people in the empire who know the Virilan language.”

Ronko ignored the only chair in the alcove and stared down at Uni from his much greater height. His expression was obliging and yet sharp, perhaps due to the unusual shape of his handsome eyes, which slanted down toward the bridge of his nose, especially when his cheek muscles tensed in a smile. At such moments, his face took on the aspect of a theatrical mask, both kind and frightening at the same time.

Uni clasped his hands on his stomach, took a deep breath, and gathered his thoughts in order to answer as clearly and concisely as possible.

“Yes, you are correct. I should say,” he hastened to add, “that my knowledge of the language is very limited and cannot be compared to that of Enel Barko. He is the one who taught me everything he knows. He showed me rare books and helped me find what I needed in them. Senior master Barko is most certainly the greatest scholar of Virilan in the empire, of that you can be sure!”

“I give you credit for your modesty,” Ronko said. He bowed his head and closed his eyes for an instant. “But that is not what is required now. The Emperor needs a person who can provide him with a brief but detailed report on Virilan and its residents, their form of governance, and their customs. In short, enough information so that a person who knows nothing of the subject can quickly gain full knowledge of that geographical enigma without becoming overly fatigued by the reading of the report. Barko told me that you might be that person.”

“Me?” Uni squeaked in dismay. “No, of course I am flattered to hear his excellent opinion of me, although I’m sure I haven’t earned it, but I can’t…”

“Can you read primary sources?” Ronko pressed on, ignoring his self-deprecation.

“Of course,” the young man brightened. “Studying history without primary sources would be like singing a song without words. Virilan is nothing but history. It has no present, at least for us. The country is closed.” His words came faster. “Nobody knows what their current state of affairs is. You must know that they only trade with the Capotians who have just one small trading post on the coast. They have only limited contact with outsiders.”

“So that’s what you will be writing about,” Ronko said. He ran his index finger along a shelf of books just so that he could demonstratively blow the ancient dust from his finger. “But here’s my advice. Don’t write in Virilan, or else you will forget what you are doing and no one will be able to read it.”

Uni smiled at the unexpected joke and began to relax.

“Tell me one more thing, my friend,” Ronko continued his questioning. “Have you ever attempted to speak Virilan?” He paused. “But of course you haven’t. There is no one for you to speak with here. And nothing to speak of. I keep forgetting that Virilan is a dead language, at least as far as we are concerned.”

“Why not?” Uni burst out. “Sometimes senior master Barko speaks to me about interesting passages from the ancient texts. And sometimes I…well, when you read those old histories, you can’t help but imagine the wars and the old heroes. You imagine what it would be like to be one of their wise men, or their commanders, or their lords…”

“Do you mean to tell me that you read their dialogues aloud? Like a shadow theater in the bowels of the imperial archive? How very interesting!”

Uni felt himself blush to the tips of his ears, but there was no retreat. And he didn’t want to retreat. The unexpected proposal was much too exciting for that.

“It’s not as odd as you think. You see, when the Virilans conquered the Five Kingdoms four hundred years ago, all the people who refused to accept their rule sailed away to the four corners, including our Empire. They were soon absorbed by the Empire, and the few books they brought with them are all we know about the country, its residents, and their language.”

“I’m not casting doubt on your methods of study. That very fact may come in useful.” He looked closely at Uni. “I had no idea that this meeting would be such a success!”

“I will do everything I can to deserve your trust. When does the document need to be ready?”

“Noon tomorrow would be perfect,” Ronko said with a shrug, his eyes wandering over the shelves.

For an instant, Uni felt as if his heart and the rest of his organs had fallen to his feet. “What? Noon tomorrow?” His voice came from somewhere near his feet, too.