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“I do not know of any gods but I do see what is around me. The legends told of this place, and here it is. Those same legends spoke of a man named ‘Drakis,’ and here you stand!”
    â€œHere I stand?” Drakis said in astonishment. “I stand here because our choices were to either retreat through a fold portal or die. How can you, of all people, believe what this dwarf has been selling?”
    â€œHow can I not believe it?” Urulani said, her voice rising with her temper. “All the signs of the legend being fulfilled . . .”
    â€œMake any prophecy vague enough and it’s bound to be fulfilled in someone’s eyes,” Drakis countered.
    â€œBut that same prophecy is found everywhere in the southern lands,” Urulani said fervently, conviction growing in her as she spoke. “From farthest Exylia to the Straits of Erebus, from the shores of the Lyrac Ocean in eastern Ephindria to the rocky coasts of Mestophia on the Charos Ocean, the story is told of the coming of Drakis and the rise of a new day of freedom, peace, and justice.”
    â€œEveryone wants to make me into this marvelous godlike hero who will come riding out of legend and save them. But no matter how hard they try—no matter how hard they believe, Urulani—I’m still just me . I’m just a slave who happened to be named Drakis and got mistaken for someone important.”
    â€œNo,” Urulani shook her head. “I was there. The Iblisi came for you—slaughtered entire villages to find you—they came because you are that Drakis, and above all they fear you.”
    â€œNo, Urulani,” Drakis said quietly. “They came after me because they made a mistake. Now that we are so far from them, I don’t think any of them cares what happens to us or even knows we’re gone.”

CHAPTER 4
    Proper Orders
    R HONAS CHAS WAS THE ETERNAL CITY of the Rhonas elves and the very life’s-heart of the Rhonas Empire . . .
    . . . And Sjei-Shurian of the Order of the Modalis was determined to make sure it stayed that way.
    He stood before an awning-covered stand in the Paz Rhambutai —the Plaza of Sweetness—in the eastern section of the Old City and surveyed the ordered patterns of various colored fruits with an indifferent eye. Sjei was an elf of such common features as to defy description. His head was elongated as was common with his race but not so elegantly formed as might call attention to it. His nose was hooked but not so sharply as might be thought attractive to his kind. His eyes were black, but the shape of his drooping eyelids shuttered them and made them unremarkable. The tips of his pointed ears dropped slightly, and his mouth was small, hiding the worn tips of his pointed teeth. He was neither fat nor thin . . . tall nor short for his kind. His single distinguishing mark was a scar that cut through his right eyebrow, yet even this noble mark was so small as to be barely noticeable unless one were looking for it. His robes denoted that he was of the Order of Vash but the commendations, ribbons, and medals it sported were absent any of the more spectacular awards. Those he eschewed in favor of the more common types that dealt largely with mundane achievements. In all, Sjei had the most remarkably unremarkable appearance imaginable in an elf of one of the military orders; someone who would easily be mistaken for one who had never drawn a weapon in all his years of service.
    Any elf on the streets of Rhonas—as happened commonly every day—would forget his face within three steps of passing and never give him another thought.
    And yet, next to the Emperor, he knew himself to be the most powerful elf in the entire Imperial City—and by logical inference, in the entire world beyond. Sjei-Shurian was the Ghenetar Omris over the Order of Vash. This post as the “general of unity” over one of the three warrior orders of the Empire would have been