by Andre Norton
Where was Melkolf, Ramsay wondered as he tramped along the last corridor, the one with the secret door that led to the lab. Was Melkolf again at work, perhaps trying once more to match a redundant Kaskar to another victim on a third world plane? At least Ramsay had not had any dream to raise his suspicions. But he was certain now that, if he could put any power into an order, it would be given to destroy the machine squatting evilly below.
Neither Berthal nor the Shaman had said a word since they had left the landing stage. Perhaps their thoughts of revenge, needful action, defense, were as active as Ramsay’s own. Berthal was the charge-at-all-obstacles-unheeding-of-the-cost type, so he could be countered that much more easily. But Ramsay was wary of Osythes, not knowing how far or how effective were the powers of these of the Groves. They appeared to be able to use minds in action as capably as the Company used its physical strength and experience in warfare. Therefore—they were to be most feared.
The doors of the Empress’s apartment opened at their arrival. Ramsay, summoning up his old anger for a defense, went boldly through. There she sat, cloaked, crowned, small—deadly—in her canopied chair. Beside her, in another seat lacking that shadow-producing overhang, was—Thecla.
Ramsay shot a single glance at the girl. He had, through those days since that attack on the wharfside, kept—or tried to keep—her face out of his mind. She had been a part of the plan that would have left him dead and long since forgotten.
He supposed she would claim, if he ever accused her, that it was part of her “duty.” That she owed Olyroun any life, including her own, if it was demanded of her. The odd sensation he had felt when Lom acknowledged his rule—yes, that made him understand, a little. She had been bred to the belief that a true ruler was a servant of the land, its defender to the death. She would accept any sacrifice the good of Olyroun would demand, and no one would ever know what private thoughts and desires she had set aside. Yes, he could understand, but this was not the Thecla he had held in foolish memory.
He bowed, deeply to the withered old woman in the chair of state, less lowly to the Duchess. Thecla’s face was pale, her features set. Ramsay caught a glimpse of her hands, not lying gracefully in her lap, but with the fingers tightly laced together, as if to keep some control on herself.
“Your Splendor Enthroned.” He spoke to the Empress.
She wasted no time. “We had a bargain, stranger.”
“You had a bargain,” he corrected her bluntly. “The one offered me in that hour was not the same!”
Thecla’s hands flew apart. “What is it that you would say?” she demanded.
Ramsay turned his head deliberately, looked her full in the eyes. Amazing that she could produce that expression of strained surprise. He had always heard that royal personages never could be themselves, that their life of being on constant show must make actors of them from birth, but still her question surprised him.
“Let us have no secrets, at least none concerning the past,” Ramsay returned. “My Lady Duchess, you carefully provided the disguise of your kinsman, the Feudman. I warrant that you returned me so to Lom—though your first rescue of me now seems a little strange—or were you then acting on impulse that you later reconsidered? Back in Lom I was able, of course, to discover the futility of trying to counter the act that had brought me here.
“Then”—he once more addressed the Empress—“we have the very timely intervention of the Reverend One.” Ramsay nodded to Osythes. “oddly enough, considering the need, he did not allow Melkolf to dispose of me. I wonder why the second and more complicated manner of erasing me was tried. There must have been a reason, but I don’t suppose any of you are going to favor me with an explanation of it.
“At any rate, you were very frank with me—about the danger it meant to show this face”—Ramsay touched his own chin—“in Lom lest the High Chancellor be alerted and some strange and terrible doom be visited upon an innocent stranger unfairly drawn into your palace intrigues. Therefore I was sent to a carefully arranged meeting with one who, I was later informed, was the highest-priced and most efficient assassin in Ulad.
“It was your misfortune that I, too, have some skills, which are not of your world and so escaped that tidy plot. That I did survive involved me in some other factors—”
“This is what you believe, you truly believe?” It was not the Empress who asked that, but Thecla. Her hands were no longer clenched; the fingers moved on the surface of her rich tunic. Seeing them so for a second, Ramsay was whirled back in time to watch other fingers, perhaps more slender, but no better shaped, flicking down upon a board those five strips with their potent symbols.
“This is what I believe,” he replied with firmness.
Her hands stilled, she only watched him dumbly.
He discovered he could not look at her again. After all, in this company, she was perhaps the least of his enemies. That withered doll propped up in the chair of state might be the foremost, unless Osythes held that position.
There was a sound from the Shaman, but the Empress raised her hand in a quelling gesture.
“Let be, Reverend One. We have no time for the unraveling of old tangles. There is the present one facing us. So you have gone to Ochall, and you are Emperor in Lom—and in name—” Her eyes burned fiercely in her face. “And how are you the better for such a choice?”
Ramsay shrugged. “Perhaps I am not—but I am alive—”
“He who yields to Ochall has no life that will matter!” She attacked in force.
“Have I yielded then?” Ramsay returned.
He was aware that those three—for he did not count Berthal, who stood, still sulking, near the wall—had centered probing gazes upon him. And he stared as stealthily back. Did they not have the clarity of sight to understand that when they tried to manipulate events in the future they were only slightly removed in truth from the High Chancellor who had manipulated a man?
“If you are not yet his tool,” said the Empress at last, “you cannot escape.” But the tone of her voice was troubled. Her eyes shifted from Ramsay to Osythes, as if asking some unvoiced question.
“I have been told,” Ramsay said deliberately, seeking to strike some involuntary reaction from the three, “that in this game I stand as the Knave of Dreams.”
The sound of sucked-in breath—Thecla’s hands were now pressed against her mouth; above their masking her eyes were wide and frightened. But it was Osythes who spoke:
“And who did this telling?”
“One Adise,” Ramsay replied shortly, and then elaborated, wishing to see the effect of his words upon them. “Fear and Fate, Fear and the Queen of Hope. Does that mean anything to you, Enlightened One?”
Osythes nodded slowly. However, when he spoke, it was to the Empress rather than in answer to Ramsay’s question.
“Your Splendor Enthroned, there lies the answer! There—”
She interrupted him. “I do not understand your secrets, Reverend One. All I know is that in this hour this—this Kaskar who is not Kaskar rules Ulad. And at his right hand stands the dark one who will pull us all down! Well, we meddled with fate, and this is our reward. But while I live”—now her words were directed to Ramsay fiercely—“I shall fight for all my lord wrought here! And I promise you, I am no mean enemy!”
With lifted chin, and those eyes as bright and menacing as some bird of prey’s, she offered him battle, showing far more dignity and purpose than Bertha’s dramatics with the sword of ceremony.
“You do not know Ochall.” Ramsay knew at this moment, enemy or no, he could not allow her to remain ignorant of what the High Chancellor planned. “He has already dealt with the Merchants of Norn, and what he has gained thereby—listen and believe.” In bald, terse words he outlined the Battle of the Ridge, sparing them no detail that might clarify the horror that could be turned against Lom itself.
“In Yasnaby—” Thecla cried out. Now her hands covered the whole of her face, and she was shuddering as if he had produ
ced before their very sight not just spoken the words but the whole scene of that massacre. “In Olyroun!”
“Monstrous!” The Empress’s shoulders sagged a trifle. It would seem that more years had gathered in those few moments to weigh her down. “And yet you company with this man! Why do you then reveal his works? Do you mean to use fear as a weapon intended to cow us into a quick surrender?”
“I say only what I have seen—felt—” Absently Ramsay raised his hand to his cheek where the searing fire had left no scar but memory. “If it was my intention to invade Lom, I would have given Ochall his five days—”
“What do you want of us?” Thecla cried now.
“What I have always wanted—my own place.”
“But we—Melkolf cannot give you that!” Thecla was flushed; her back stiffened, and she faced him as she might a threat she must not openly acknowledge.
“Yes,” agreed Ramsay. “Therefore—we are left with a problem. I am Kaskar now and cannot return. And who is Kaskar?”
“You play with words!” The Empress showed open anger. “The girl is right—what do you want of us?”
“I do not know—yet,” Ramsay returned. “But I warn you—I play no more of your games. Nor”—he hesitated for a second to give emphasis to the rest— “will I play Ochall’s. That he has power beyond my reckoning—that you had better believe. That he intends to hold Ulad, one way or another—that also you are aware of—”
“You accompanied him here—” began the Empress.
“I brought him because here he can be watched. Had I left him in Vidin—would you have the fog and flame come upon you?”
For the first time Osythes broke into their exchange. “Knave of Dreams—” he repeated slowly. “And what have you dreamed?”
“Nothing—yet.”
“Adise—” Thecla hesitated over the name and then continued with more confidence. “She is the Great Reader—”
“Take no comfort from that!” snapped the Empress. She gave the Shaman a hostile glance. “I begin to think, Reverend One, that Ulad’s cause did not attract a true supporter in you. Rather we have all been blind yet once again and have been manipulated, even as Kaskar was ruled by Ochall, into this situation because of some decision of the Enlightened Ones, which will do us no good at all! Blind! Blind!” She raised one hand to cover her eyes. “Old and blind and worthless! And so Ulad falls because I have failed.”
“No!” Thecla moved to catch the Empress’s other hand. “Do not think so!” She glanced up at Osythes. “Reverend One, tell her that is not true. You—all of you—could not be so cruel!”
“Ulad shall not fall.”The Shaman said those four words deliberately, as if they did not form an assertion, but a promise.
“Another foreseeing?” Berthal came away from the wall, his lips bent in a sneer. “Well enough—let this—this outlander answer me blade to blade and I shall make sure of that!” His hatred was hot in his boast.
“A foreseeing”—Osythes again spoke in that measured way— “can only indicate probable events, which may be changed by the choices of those concerned. All of you are aware of that. But—” He paused as if to think his way through some web of mind. “There is a pattern—and it is far-reaching. Ulad is a necessary part of that pattern—the first stable government seen in this land since the Great Disaster. Thus Ulad is the foundation upon which we must build anew. No, Ulad, because of our actions, in spite of our actions, will not fall. Yet that does not resolve our separate fates—”
The Empress had been watching him, her one hand clasped in Thecla’s, the other now lying limply on her knee as if her outburst of moments earlier had exhausted even her indomitable strength and will.
“Be Ulad safe,” she said now in a low voice, “and I care not that fate rises in my path.”
“I care!” Berthal came a step closer to Ramsay. “True blood will rule here! Ulad is the House of Jostern! We made this land in the past, we shall maintain it now! And you”—he fairly spat at Ramsay—“are none of us. Live as Emperor and you will speedily die—”
Ramsay suddenly laughed. “For yet another time, Prince?”
But Berthal nodded as if that had been an accepted truth. “Yes.”
“Enough!” The Empress’s old authority was once more vibrant in her voice. “We do not bait each other here and now. Rather do we seek to come to some accord. You have made yourself Emperor,” she said to Ramsay. “Do you hold to that?”
“Would you accept me so?” countered Ramsay wonderingly.
“I will accept everything—all—that preserves this land. You say that Ochall is not your master. If this proves true—then—”
“No!” Berthal’s denial cut across her words. “He is not the Heir, he is nothing—a man who should rightfully be dead! Let him wed with Thecla, sit upon the throne? You are old! You are mad!”
Thecla was on her feet between the Empress and Berthal, who again had the appearance of one maddened to the point of losing all control, even as he had been at the Place of Rags.
“Be silent!” Like the Empress’s voice earlier, hers now held the whiplash of unquestioned authority. “Her Splendor Enthroned remains the Head of the House of Jostern—”
“I need not your liege words, my dear,” the Empress said. “And I am not shaken in my wits. Ulad must come first. We do not plunge this land into war with man against son, brother against brother, over any question of heirdom. If Kaskar proves that he is not Ochall’s creature—”
Ramsay was the one who interrupted now. “Your Splendor Enthroned”—he gave her her title—“I am no man’s—no woman’s creature. What I decide shall be of my own free will. Since I was unwilling and unwitting player in your game for power, I now reserve my own decision.”
He bowed to her, to Thecla, ignoring both the Shaman and Berthal, who made as if to step between him and the door of the chamber and then thought better of it, meeting Ramsay’s gaze. Then, leaving them to think about his declaration of independence, Ramsay purposefully left the room.
Where Kaskar’s apartment might be within this pile, Ramsay had no idea. But he was not subjected to the humiliation of trying to find out, for in the corridor beyond awaited Jasum and two of the Vidin guardsmen. Almost, Ramsay thought, as if they expected to be called upon to protect the person of their sworn lord. And with their escort he reached a richly furnished chamber not unlike that in which he and Thecla had sat to exchange stumbling words the first night of his life here.
He dismissed his liege men with courtesy, wanting to be alone. Where was Ochall in this pile, and what might the High Chancellor be doing? If he, Ramsay, only had someone at his back whom he could wholly trust! The half promise of the Empress to support Kaskar—how much could he depend upon that? Very little. He should know that from his former betrayal. And to be Emperor—he had never intended that!
There was a tray on a table, bearing a stoppered, thin-necked bottle of cut crystal, a waiting matching goblet, and with these a plate of cakes. Ramsay sank into one of the piles of cushions, which here took the place of chairs, and began to eat ravenously, suddenly conscious of the fact that it had been a long time since he had last dined. He would rather have had a more substantial meal, but his own need to think in private kept him from summoning a servant.
Having wolfed the cakes, he sipped the liquid with more caution, wanting no unexpected potency to cloud his mind at this moment. Outside, the dusk cloaked the windows. A single lamp burned on a far table. And the radiance from it was very limited, so that he was well hidden in the swiftly gathering shadows.
There was an ache beginning above his eyes. He was tired—so tired—to try to sort out any impressions of this day was now a wearying task. That he had begun this wild venture at all—why?
Dreams—
No dream could be any wilder than this.
Ramsay longed with all his might to awaken, to know that this was merely a prolonged adventure born out of his own imagination. Dream—they had told him that—t
he Enlightened Ones.
Suppose he could dream himself awake in the right world? For all the proof they had shown him— perhaps that was as false as other things they had said and done.
No! He could not allow himself to be disarmed. Ramsay sat up straighter, glanced sharply about the chamber. He had that small subtle hint to alert him. Ochall—was the High Chancellor bending on him now some unbelievable power of will to lead him into this particular path of thought? He had to cope with the reality, not allow himself to drift into the dream again.
And in the Palace of Lom he had no one to trust. In all this world he had—
A face formed vividly in Ramsay’s mind—Dedan! The mercenary had no company now. If he had survived his terrible injuries he would be left without resources. Dedan—
The thought of the First Captain was like a tonic. Ramsay nodded, though there was no one there to witness the gesture which approved his idea. Dedan would be sent for, through the Enlightened Ones— that need was as sharply clear as if Ramsay could see it all laid out in print before him. Dedan was also Ramsay’s witness against Ochall—therefore this must be done in secret. And who was better able to handle secrets than Osythes?
He would—
Again Ramsay tensed. He had not heard that door open behind him. But hunter’s instinct, sharpened by circumstances, told him he was not alone any longer. In the shadows he shifted about to see who had come so silently and perhaps—for good reason—secretly.
SIXTEEN
Veiled, hidden, she advanced. But he knew her. This was the guise she had worn beside the bier of a dead prince, a newly risen man.
Ramsay arose.
“What do you want?” His voice was even more brusque than he intended. She had presented him with two faces in the past—her concern, the reason for which he had never understood, then the false concern when she had set upon him that near-fatal disguise of Feudman.
Thecla stood just within the farther reach of the lamp rays as she lifted her long veil.
“Why did you say such things—that you were marked for death by our will?” she asked simply.