Working God's Mischief

by Glen Cook

  She said no more. Madouc surveyed them all, looking for something more. He got a head shake from Brother Candle.

  Only Hope knew what Hope was doing. She did not share her thinking because she was seldom really sure where she was headed herself. Today’s iron plan could fall into ruin by next week—though every plan had to do with the Twilight and the new age to follow. Change mainly touched the day’s choice of route.

  Brother Candle felt small when he considered the Twilight. Hope was painting on a large canvas and dared no conservative brushwork. She did not mind flashing some gaudy color once in a while, either.

  He did not think that she was careful enough about hiding her true nature.

  He should remind her that few mortals were flexible enough to accept a supposedly impossible Instrumentality. And these men knew that gods could be murdered.

  Kedle’s blank face failed to mask her own similar thinking. Then Hope’s flirtatious wink told the old man that she knew his mind. She was being deliberately provocative. Probing for something to do with the Special Office brothers?

  Madouc offered a probe of his own. “My lady, if your family knows the Idiam around the Dead City I would be interested in engaging in a conversation.”

  “How familiar they are I can’t say. They don’t confide in me. They think I talk too much.”

  Brother Candle stifled a smile. She had used the truth to tell a lie.

  The more he knew about her tribe—learning in snippets—the more the true lie seemed a family convention.

  Hope said, “I recommend patience. Wait till the Righteous arrive. You will receive informed answers then.” She tipped a hand toward the Pramans. “Those gentlemen know more than I do. They have seen the Dead City, and the devil er-Rashal as well.”

  Again Brother Candle was troubled. Hope went right on being too open. She was demanding trouble.

  Why?

  He did not think he could work that out by observation and reason alone.

  Madouc said, “Suppose we stop posturing and speculating and review what we do know, collectively. It’s almost certain that we have more tools than we think.” He made a two-handed gesture toward his map.

  Brother Candle said, “My lord Master is correct, Hope.” She flashed him a look that caused serpents to stir.

  44. Gherig, the Idiam, and the Lord of the Dead City

  It was evening. The sun had settled to the horizon, behind the rearguard. The light got mixed weirdly in as-yet unsettled dust from an earlier windstorm, then painted Gherig an unflattering orange. Ugly when Lord Arnmigal had seen it as Else Tage, the fortress shone uglier still in that light. Lord Arnmigal scowled. Despite having suffered vast damage, still being repaired, Gherig looked even more formidable than it had back then.

  Titus Consent rode on Lord Arnmigal’s right. Bold as death, Empress Helspeth rode to his left, with an ease and style that recalled her elder sister. Wife played a more mature, reserved, and dignified Helspeth than did Hourli but her Empress lacked the sly, warm good humor of Eavijne’s. Lord Arnmigal sometimes tried to pick his players to suit the moment.

  The differences were fine but Titus had noticed. He had wondered aloud why the Empress had become so mercurial.

  He remained uninformed of Helspeth’s condition. God willing, gods willing, he would never know.

  Lord Arnmigal did not normally ride with the van. He did so now because he wanted to see Gherig while there was yet light enough and, further, wanted to escape the constant complaining of Queen Clothilde, whose battered company his scouts had taken captive that morning.

  Only a few people remained with Clothilde. Most had deserted because she was so unpleasant. The few sterner folk had been depleted further while fighting off Gisela Frakier in the pay of a crusader noble with a grudge.

  Lord Arnmigal cared nothing about that. That was past. Clothilde was inside his shadow, now. Future foul behavior would be punished.

  Never had he encountered anyone with a greater sense of entitlement than Clothilde. She would fit well with the most self-absorbed pre-Revelation devil-gods. He asked Wife: “Is there a formula for dealing with her sort?”

  Clothilde refused to recognize that she was at the mercy of her captors.

  The Helspeth avatar smiled as though at a private joke. “Are you hinting that something be done? Murder works.”

  “Now you’ve planted an ugly idea.”

  “Ah. You’re too much of a gentleman.”

  “Not an accusation often directed my way.”

  She nodded. “Perhaps not by the true Empress. But she is mad, in her special way. I suppose something should be done just to rivet the Queen’s attention.”

  “She’s no queen, now. Don’t let it be anything fatal, really.”

  “Still the surest cure.”

  “There would be repercussions.”

  “Then fix the possibility in her mind. You don’t want her to become even more unbearable.”

  Something did happen. Something actually rather small.

  Clothilde lost her voice during a fuming rant at a hapless servant. The more she strove to rage and roar the more constricted her throat became, to the point where she could no longer breathe.

  She collapsed. She never got another word out but kept right on trying. Three collapses were required to make her understand. She would smother herself if she insisted on being herself. She could end the attacks whenever she was ready.

  So Clothilde did begin to hold her tongue—and swiftly became terrified. Insidious reality gnawed furiously at the roots of her universe.

  It dawned at last. No one cared. She was at the mercy of this gang who had taken her everything. Many clearly would not be loath to make sure she became no threat in the future. The Commander of the Righteous had but to nod.

  Clothilde was servility personified by the time the Righteous reached Gherig, but she did not deceive Lord Arnmigal’s strange women. They recognized every malevolent impulse as it spawned. The Commander of the Righteous restrained the malice of the Shining Ones but allowed them to make it crystal that Clothilde would own no power or significance other than that of a prisoner.

  Empress Helspeth told her directly, “Discard any hope you have because your cousin awaits you. His situation mimics your own, though he tells himself that it is otherwise. He will be a hostage to your behavior. You will be a hostage to his. The Brotherhood of War could win great favor with Indala by delivering Rogert du Tancret.”

  Indala’s attitude toward Black Rogert was secret from no one but Rogert himself. Du Tancret was willfully blind and cared nothing for the opinions of others.

  Wife told Lord Arnmigal, “The woman has grasped the enormity of her situation at last.”

  “And still you have a caveat?”

  “A wolf never stops being a wolf. A wolf will remain a wolf even when it should become a lapdog in order to survive.”

  “Meaning she won’t be able to control herself?”

  “She will not. She is what she is. Point out any of her sort who ever changed their nature.”

  He knew of no one, of course. “Then smart money wouldn’t bet on changes for the meeker.”

  Wife chuckled. “Oh, naturally not. However, if you put your ducats down it wouldn’t be the first long shot you ever bet. But this one wouldn’t come up a winner. I still say smart money ought to consider a surprise viper bite or fatal accident.”

  Easily arranged with allies such as her.

  “Maybe someday. But not yet.”

  The question she did not ask hung in the air.

  “That’s too much going the easy way. That’s the kind of thing that gives us men like Gordimer and er-Rashal.”

  Wife stared with eyes gone entirely blank.

  “All right.” He confessed, “You are correct. I have made some easy choices myself.” The transition might be an inalterable consequence of changes that came with the advance up the ladder of command. “Whatever, that isn’t our problem now. The Rascal is our problem. He
is our only problem. The coming few days could shape the Holy Lands forevermore. They might shape the fate of the Shining Ones, too. Do we know what’s going on at Gherig?”

  “They have no secrets. Aldi is there. The Master of the Commandery has gathered the Captain-General, the Widow, and a few renegade Lucidians more interested in smashing the sorcerer than in fighting westerners.”

  “Who would they be? Pramans seldom look beyond today’s sunset. They’ve heard from birth that whatever happens will unfold the way God wills it.”

  “There is an old Sha-lug general named Nassim Alizarin. Accompanying him are several longtime comrades and a grandnephew of Indala, one Azim al-Adil. He is young enough to have noticed Aldi.”

  “That just means he’s still alive. Right?” Having suffered Aldi’s effect himself. “Do you all thrive on tempting mortals?”

  “Yes. Yes we do. A goddess needs her fun. You know those names?”

  “Nassim, I do. Our paths cross occasionally.” Though it would be effort wasted trying to hide from the Night, he offered nothing more.

  Could this become another thread of complication?

  Wife asked, “Rather than obsess, suppose we just see what unfolds?”

  He sensed an implied suggestion that the direst threats could be resolved in a heartbeat. Or in the stopping of one.

  He bobbed his head once, sharply.

  * * *

  It was a rare moment.

  “Pinkus. You’ve found a local source for spoiled grape squeezings.” Then, “Bo. I heard you signed on with Hell’s Legion.”

  “They threw me out, Boss. Too dirty for them. I’m just another rat in the shadows nowadays. Did Joe come with?” Biogna exchanged hand clasps with Titus Consent. They were never close but had known one another for years. Each held a grudging respect for the other.

  Hourli, in Grail Empress guise, observed without expression, as did Ghort’s companions. Lord Arnmigal recognized Aldi despite physical changes and Holy Lands apparel. She winked, then wilted under a glower from Hourli.

  Hourli’s irritation did not get past the old Seeker, nor the leathery hardcase Lord Arnmigal took to be the Widow. She stank of lethal power in a supernatural direction, as though she was halfway to ascendance via sheer violent inertia.

  His gaze met hers.

  The world stopped. His vision went tunnel. For a moment there was nothing but her eyes, fathomless darknesses. Then she reeled away.

  Contact broken, Lord Arnmigal felt as though he had looked into some dark mystic mirror from the arsenal of the Old Ones. Or as if he had peered into the deeps of his own blighted soul.

  The Widow was more shaken than he. She collapsed. The old Maysalean caught her, tried to sustain her dignity.

  Lord Arnmigal thought the man seemed vaguely familiar. Where? When? But … there stood Nassim Alizarin. Madouc of Hoeles observed from farther back. People reentered his life, some again and again.

  The stage of the world might be large but those pulled by similar threads of fate would inevitably collide when warp met woof as the blind sisters spun the thread and wove the tapestry of destiny.

  Such heresy!

  He looked down, turned slowly.

  He did have a shadow today.

  Needlessly, not apropos of the conversation, he said, “Keep an eye on those two.” Meaning Rogert du Tancret and Clothilde, who had left moments earlier, du Tancret supposedly intent on showing his cousin the quarters he had had prepared. Really, they hardly pretended that they did not mean to begin conniving immediately.

  Head shakes all round, his people, Gherig’s, the Firaldians and the Connectens. He would win no friends trying to micromanage people here. These folks did not recognize his right to give orders in the first place.

  Hourli said, “Suppose we focus on the matter that brought us together? On the lion roaring beyond the light of the campfire.”

  Lord Arnmigal agreed. “You do the talking, Your Grace.” Unlike Helspeth, Hourli did not mind the honorific.

  She bobbed her head in irritation recognized all round. She was the Empress. She needed neither permission nor instruction from any general.

  The goddess stand-ins were touchier than the woman they played.

  Having Helspeth do the talking was the plan. Lord Arnmigal did not want to be seen as bulling in to take over. Nurture of allied egos was as important as maintaining your weapons when at war.

  So far he sensed real resentment only from Nassim Alizarin and, more strongly, from Nassim’s Lucidian mentee.

  Young Azim did not want the old man’s thunder taken. Nassim, meanwhile, did not like the changes he saw in a one-time Sha-lug hero who had, somehow, reforged himself as a prince of the Unbelievers.

  The others were more inclined to defer to the man with the loudest weapons and nastiest resources. Lord Arnmigal suspected that Aldi had not offered them any real appreciation of the magnitude of the latter.

  The gallery included Special Office brethren of stony mien. They would suffer this congress with the Night only until the horror in the Idiam was extinct.

  Those humorless men had no true apprehension of what was spawning out there. Why should they take the word of Nassim Alizarin? The man was an Unbeliever, for Aaron’s sake!

  Yet they were convinced that something dreadfully big was shaping.

  Hourli said, “The Righteous have brought several mystic tools that will help.” She neither enumerated nor described those tools. The Special Office gentlemen were distressed enough. The Church insisted that those were imaginary toys associated only with rustic fantasies like the Shining Ones. Total fairy-tale stuff, they. “Most noteworthy is a new formula of firepowder. The sorcerer will find it uncongenial. It is much harder to set off from a distance.”

  Lord Arnmigal caught a whiff of steaming unhappiness floating around that remark.

  “The new firepowder won’t be proof against the sorcerer’s spells, just more resistant. Our falcons will be able to get close enough to gift him with some truly unpleasant weather.” She did not report that only limited quantities of the new formulation existed. What her audience did not hear, er-Rashal was unlikely to learn. Once the falcons started firing the sorcerer should be too busy dodging to find time to create inconvenient new spells. “He won’t get the leisure to look for ways around his new problem.”

  Lord Arnmigal puffed up with pride. Pella, assisted by his artillery mentors, had reformulated the firepowder. His idea had been stunningly simple, if not obvious, but, alas, was also stunningly expensive. They added a minuscule amount of silver dust to make the firepowder spell-resistant. Less expensive, but of weaker effect and so necessary in greater volume, copper and tin also worked. Even lead might help.

  The metals certainly caused colorful muzzle blasts.

  Pella and his accomplices had not yet gotten close enough to the Rascal to test the new powder under combat conditions.

  These people would understand that. Still, new powder would buoy morale, heading into the Idiam.

  Lord Arnmigal also had a notion that it would be handy to head into unfriendly country with a clearer picture of what waited there.

  The Shining Ones scouted reluctantly. They were disinclined to alert er-Rashal to the magnitude of what was coming.

  Lord Arnmigal wondered if there was more to the story. He did not fully credit anything anyone told him these days. Sometimes he even doubted Titus’s reports, again having misgivings about Consent’s religious conversion. Pella he did not trust, either, though in the boy’s case because the kid was determined to do things denied him only because his mother would never forgive his father if something went wrong.

  “General Alizarin, they say you know er-Rashal best. As Her Grace reported, the Righteous have some unusual resources. I’d like to hear your thoughts on how those might be used.”

  He and the Shining Ones meant to use the Great Sky Fortress relics to bump the Rascal through the gates of Hell.

  The allies would be encouraged to believe
they were in charge but the real power would reside with the Shining Ones. The rest would serve to keep the villain from running away. He would stroke their egos, though.

  He did not hide his thinking that well. The others began to suspect. They grew increasingly uncomfortable. The Righteous staff and the Shining Ones became least comfortable of all.

  He strove hard against the quickening megalomania—seemingly with lessening success.

  In his secret heart, stirring ugly, lay the dread that he had begun to walk the road already taken by Gordimer the Lion. Might he be unable to turn back even while aware of how he was changing? Could it be that the spite of the old women hidden in the shallows of Night made them weave inescapable evil destinies?

  No sisters of fate at all, they, but sisters of malice instead?

  * * *

  The talk was done. Argument was at an end. Accords had been accorded, every participant with secret reservations. Negotiations with the Ansa, heavy on the “gifts,” had been finalized. A loose picket line slowly became a siege line as the encirclement of Andesqueluz shrank. A city’s noose, Titus declared it.

  Skirmishes with er-Rashal’s resurrected sorcerer-defenders took place, brief encounters of pain dealt exclusively to the Rascal’s minions. Anxious rage inside the ruins grew steadily. Though the darkness inside Andesqueluz was supernatural rather than quotidian, those drawing the noose tighter swore that a black glow waxed and waned there, like the beat of a great slow heart.

  The Shining Ones guarded against demonic outbursts while soldiers of the Righteous, the Brotherhood, the Vindicated, and Pinkus Ghort’s Firaldian volunteers, with the Ansa and even Black Rogert, labored unto dehydrated exhaustion hauling water and supplies, and dragging falcons to positions Pella chose. The boy picked his sites based on scouting done by the Shining Ones. His choices favored the finest lines of fire.

  Pella proved the worth of his new firepowder right away.

  * * *

  The brooding malice in Andesqueluz grew blacker by the hour. His dead operatives lost, er-Rashal came out himself. Cockily, he anticipated inflicting misery on the Righteous by exploding their firepowder inconveniently.