Torches roared softly as Irssun led Remun deep within the palace, somewhere below the magnificent throne chamber and opulent halls he had scampered throughout as a young boy. Remun had forgotten much of the palace's layout during his years of confinement in the tower, but he distinctly recalled being forbidden from playing in these cellars. The stones that comprised these cavernous halls were ancient indeed; the torchlight of the Sashul's Guard illuminated infant stalactites that had formed over a thousand years of sediment-rich water leeching through the stones of the vaulted ceiling above. Cobwebs laden with centuries of dust hung in the stolid air as banners of a long dead and forgotten kingdom. Mardok the Subjugator, the very first Emperor of the Salished Dominion, founded the city that would become Nyssos atop the ruins of the castle of some vanquished Rainlander king, and this dark undercroft was the last remnant of that ancient citadel.

The vaulted corridor led into an antechamber illuminated by a brazier, where a handful of palace guards stood vigil at the entry to a larger chamber beyond. Without doubt, they knew Irssun and his entourage of Sashul's Guard, but they did not recognize Remun, and so they failed to make way as Irssun approached.

"Forgive us, Master Irssun, but I cannot permit the boy to pass," one of the palace guards spoke up, stepping directly in the path of Irssun and his entourage.

"Stand aside," Irssun commanded. "This boy is the last living son of the Sashul. You will let us pass." With no further comment, the palace guards stepped to the side, standing at rigid attention on both sides of the portal to the chamber beyond. Irssun, Remun, and the Sashul's Guard went inside.

Beyond the archway was a larger chamber whose stalactite-studded ceiling was held up by pillars of crudely-hewn stones. The floor was covered thickly in dust. Shards of pottery and dust-covered urns embedded within the soil suggested that this was once a storage chamber for the ruined castle. Looting warriors under the command of Remun's distant forebear likely smashed these very pots and vases a thousand years ago during Mardok's sack of the original citadel. Today this chamber housed broken and ruined remains of a different sort.

In the flickering glow of a triad of braziers filled with crackling coals: a man-shaped figure resting upon a wicker cot, draped over with a veil of purple silk. Remun stepped past Irssun and the guards and stood above the veiled body of Sashul Davorgada. Remun gingerly tugged on a corner of the veil and revealed the lifeless face of his father, only to find a face he scarcely recognized.

A withered, pallid visage met Remun's eyes as he drew back the sheet. Fatty, wrinkled skin hung limply to his face, seemingly ready to slough off at the slightest agitation. There were bags under closed eyelids, sagging and purple with red veins coursing just beneath the skin. His hair was thinned and gray and the natural knappiness of ethnic Salished hair had been left unchecked, resulting in a long, wiry mane. Gone was the stark jet-black beard that Remun remembered, so meticulously greased and braided that it looked as if it were carved from crespice wood; a mop of frazzled whiskers were all that remained.

This was not the Sashul Davorgada that had been Remun's father, the liberator of Arshadar, the executioner of Lord Vissaban and a half dozen other rebellious lords, and the man who had imprisoned Remun for ten years for a crime he would never dream of commiting; but he had been once. A thick and squarish jaw peering through the sallowed flesh and the tall, blocky nose that Remun had inherited gave proof that the corpse before him had indeed been his father many years ago.

"What happened to him?" Remun asked with languid dejection, keeping his gaze fixed upon the face of the dead Sashul.

"Nothing nefarious," Irssun responded, stepping forth to join Remun beside the cot. "He passed in his sleep, the Sashul's Guard posted outside his bedchamber reported nothing of note until he failed to wake this morning. I personally inspected the chamber, and found no sign of struggle or intrusion - as your father's spymaster for a generation I know the hallmarks of even the most delicate assassinations. If he was poisoned, I could find no trace of it in his salivary humors. There were no bites, cuts, scrapes, or wounds. Not even the Dratha have assassins capable of dispatching a target so cleanly. If anything, it was [i]fear[/i] that killed your father.

"Fear?" Remun asked, parting his gaze of his deceased father to meet Irssun's sharp, calculating eyes. "You mean to tell me that jailing his own sons was not enough to quell his paranoia?" The smallest ember of anger burned within him, and even the calming B'zuri rituals he had learned to control this fury were struggling to quench the vitriol threatening to ignite within his heart.

"No," said Irssun plainly. "Ever since his own coronation, your father heard only treachery in every word and daggers in men's smiles. Just as your brother was born and before you were ever thought of, Vissaban's revolt served to assure your father's lunatic fears. The Congress of Masters lost their chance to break the Salished Empire on the ramparts of Arshadar, but they soon recognized the chance to break the Sashul instead. Their spymasters fed us misinformation, fabricated rumors of treason where no malignant plots existed. Your father personally executed two lords that I later found to be entirely innocent. The lords therefore feared their Sashul, and the Sashul feared his lords."

"Constant worry and fretting ground your father down, and when his health failed him, many lords saw their opportunity to free themselves." Irssun continued, pacing slowly around the cot now. "Varrod and his clique and the Ahsor Vok family have departed the dominion except in name, and another four holdings have expressly refused to answer to Nyssos. Half of the Empire is in revolt; Khalul achieved with a score of spymasters what all of Vissaban's levies and an Ashenrider army could not. So great is the triumph of the Congress that we cannot even commit your father's remains to the necropolis of Zuag-Si, for a wretched and depraved clique of degenerates has been allowed to usurp control of the citadel there. And even if that were not the case, the funerary procession would certainly be waylayed by the brigand armies and pirates that now rule the countryside."

Remun replaced the veil over his father's face. "It would appear that the situation is utterly hopeless," he concluded spiritlessly. "When the lords know that my father is dead, and a boy who has scarcely seen the light of the sun since he was child is proclaimed Sashul, what hope is there for the Salished Empire? The lords will unanimously abandon the Dominion, for no lord will ever answer to a boy whose only understanding of Azoth comes from books and scrolls? I think that a spymaster of all men would be able to predict such an outcome.

Why would you even let me out of my chamber to begin with? You would be better served leaving me in my chamber to rot while you fled the coming catastrophe. Do you intend to see me to the coronation, only to serve me on a platter to the Dratha in exchange for your own life?"

"You will not question my loyalty, you dolt!" Irssun snarled, startling Remun. Save for the crackling braziers, silence settled once again upon the cavernous undercroft. "Even your father was smart enough to trust in me. If you wish to make it through the coming days without a blade in your throat then you will do as your father did and trust in me as well."

"Understand, Remun, that I have no illusions as to the current state of affairs," Irssun continued with a sigh. "The coming days, years perhaps, will be among the darkest in the history of the Salished Dominion. But they need not be the end, or even the beginning of the end. I see you have little faith in yourself, that you do not believe yourself fit to be Sashul."

"How could I be?" Remun protested. "I know nothing of being Sashul."

"Not true," Irssun interjected. "On the contrary, you will likely be the most well-learned Sashul in the history of the Empire. You have spent the last ten years studying history, religion, politics, and statecraft. You have been training to be Sashul with utmost rigor since you were a child."

"Y-you knew I read?" Remun asked incredulously.

"Knew?" Irssun scoffed. "I've been [i]giving[/i] you most of those texts. Did you seriously believe that this palace's library had intact copies of the B'zuri Manuals just laying about? Those scrolls cost a small fortune to procure, but I knew that their teachings would keep you from going mad in your captivity the way your brother did, so I acquired them for your study. I've been guiding your studies these years without your even knowing."

"But why?" Remun asked again. "Why should you care, Irssun? Why would you not simply leave?"

"There is something that few Sashuls or kings or emperors ever come to realize that I need you to understand, Remun: kingdoms and empires are not merely the playthings of kings and Sashuls. There are nearly a million souls living in the Salished Dominion, some of which I count as friends and kin and I will not see them all butchered and enslaved by Khalul and his ilk. I will not pass into the divine with the destruction of this empire written as my epitaph. And so I will spend my days serving you, the legitimate heir of the Salished Dominion, until my final breath, that you and your progeny will lead our people through these dark and treacherous times."

"If that is your motivation," Remun said, determination in his voice for the first time he could remember, "then I will put my trust in you. I will not let this empire sink into the abyss of deceit and bloodletting. I will be the Sashul that the Dominion needs."

"I am relieved," Irssun replied with a sigh, perhaps in relief or perhaps also in anticipation of the toil to come.

"There is much to be done." Irssun continued, turning to the veiled body on the cot. "The world must know eventually of the passing of Sashul Davorgada. In lieu of interment at Zuag-Si, his earthly remains shall be burned in a mighty pyre that his soul may be committed up to the heavens on the rising smoke.

And there, our people will be introduced to their next Sashul."