by Glen Cook
She touched his cheek tenderly. “Of course. Silly man. Old as the world, you are. A destroyer of empires. Creator of a monster like Radeachar. And you’re as nervous as an eighteen-year-old awaiting the birth of his firstborn. And I love you for it. I love you for caring.”
“I’m worried for you.”
“Stop. This isn’t anything a million other women haven’t survived. Just do what I told you. Here. Wait. Help me lie down.”
He looked down at her distended belly and its fiery stretch marks, at breasts swollen to twice their normal size. Nepanthe flinched. She knew she was not attractive this way. “You’re beautiful,” he said.
Tears sprang into her eyes. “Pull the sheet over me and go. Please.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Just do it. Please?”
He did.
Nepanthe broke into wild tears after the door closed. She could not decide whether they were tears of joy or of disappointment.
The wizard moved through the palace with a fast, jerky step, like a marionette manipulated by a drunken puppeteer. Puzzled eyes followed his progress. He didn’t notice. He went directly to the suite occupied by the Royal Physician.
That Doctor Wachtel was held in high regard was evidenced by the fact his personal suite was outshone only by the Queen’s. King Bragi himself occupied only two small rooms. The doctor had five.
Wachtel and the wizard were old philosophical adversaries. The doctor received him with ill-concealed glee, yet did not crow about his having come to petition aid. He asked the pertinent questions, reiterated Nepanthe’s advice. “Get what sleep you can. It’ll be a long time yet. I’ll just check in occasionally till the pains get closer together.”
The wizard grumbled and babbled and asked foolish questions, and the doctor humored him. Only mildly reassured, Varthlokkur returned to his apartment. He went in and held Nepanthe’s hands till the maids ran him out. He tried to rest, without much success.
Varthlokkur was pacing, oblivious to his companions. The King stepped into the wizard’s sitting room, watched him for half a minute. “You’ve got a classic gait,” he observed, chuckling, “Get any sleep?”
“A little.” As if only suddenly aware of location and situation, he asked, “Shouldn’t I be in there?”
“Does she want you?”
“I don’t know. Wachtel doesn’t.”
“I see his point. Made a nuisance of myself at a few birthings. Fathers may be good for the mother’s morale, but they’re hell on doctors and midwives. At least till they’ve had enough kids to know when to keep their mouths shut.”
“I could help. I have skills….”
“I think the main help Wachtel wants is a closed mouth. He needs you, he’ll ask.”
“I’m well aware of his opinion of me.”
“How’s she doing?”
“All right, they say.”
As if on cue, the doctor came from the bedroom. He was drying his hands.
“Well?” Varthlokkur demanded. “Is it here?”
“Take it easy. No. She has a long way to go. It’ll come around midnight, I’d guess.”
“Guess? What do you mean, guess?”
The old doctor scowled. “I meant what I said. I don’t have your faculty for seeing the future. All I can do is go by past experience.”
“The future? My heavens. I forgot to cast horoscopes for the child.” In moments he was furiously busy. He flung charts and books, pens and inkwells onto a table. “Guess I’d better do both today and tomorrow,” he muttered. “Midnight. Damned.”
The King grinned at the doctor. “That’ll keep him out of your hair. See you all later. Duty calls.”
Pink ripped the night above Castle Krief. Bold letters formed: IT IS A GIRL. People were amused. The King was heard to say, “Wizard, that’s carrying the Proud Papa routine a little far.”
Grinning, Varthlokkur accepted congratulations from a horde of well-wishers. He sprinkled silver. He filled the castle halls with diminutive magical delights. Imps dashed about singing silvery hosannahs. The wizard’s joy was contagious. He shook hands with people who never had dared approach him before. They contracted the joy-fever and carried it to others. It spread out of the castle and caught on in the town. Winecasks rolled out. Kegs were bunged. For a while it seemed one birth, and one man’s pleasure in it, would write the end of an era, would put paid to the long, grim, sober struggle for survival which had ground the nation since the war’s end.
“Eat! Drink!” Varthlokkur urged, pushing people toward the groaning tables he’d set out. “Come on, everyone.”
“Make way for the King!”
The noise died a bit. King Bragi pushed through the crowd and thrust out a meaty hand. “It was a long time coming, wasn’t it? How’s Nepanthe?”
“Perfect. Came through beautifully. Happy as anyone can be.”
“Good. Good. Can I see my wife now?” He had sent Queen Inger to hold Nepanthe’s hand during the delivery, the only meaningful gesture that had occurred to him.
“If you can find her.” The crowd swirled and whirled and swept them apart. When next the wizard spied the King he was forehead to forehead with Dahl Haas, trying to hear over the merriment. Bragi grew pale as Haas talked.
Varthlokkur’s joy evaporated. He felt it now. The east was a-boil, roaring, raging. A great typhoon of magical energy had been released there… He should have sensed it earlier. He was getting old, letting one part of life distract him from another this way. He pushed through the crowd, feeling grimmer by the moment. He ignored the startled looks caused by his rudeness. He seized the King’s hand, yanked, did not let go till he had dragged the man to the castle’s eastern ramparts.
Horrendous flashes backlighted the Mountains of M’Hand. Their peaks stood forth like rotten, jagged teeth. He hadn’t ever seen anything like it. The barrage rolled on and on and on, like endless summer lightning playing mutiny beyond the horizon.
“What is it?” the King whispered.
Varthlokkur did not reply. He sealed his eyes and let the indirect might of it touch him. He grunted. Even here, so far away, the psychic impact was like the blow of a mailed fist.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. A billion stars watched with cold indifference as the two tiny creatures on the stone barrier stood with faces continuously splashed by evil light.
“What the hell is it?” the King demanded, voice scarcely more than a breath. There was no sound in the east, yet the very roots of the walls seemed aquiver.
Varthlokkur stared, ignoring his companion. The signal fires which carried messages from Fortress Maisak and the Savernake Gap were all ablaze. He barely heard the King ask, “Is Hsung attacking Maisak?”
“It’s begun. Matayanga is attacking Shinsan. Lord Kuo was waiting. A god wouldn’t dare those battlefields now.”
The flash and fury went on. “I wonder,” Bragi said. “Did Baxendala and Palmisano look that hairy from this far away?”
“Maybe. Though Lord Kuo has mustered more power than we ever saw during the Great Eastern Wars. What can Matayanga throw at him? Besides numbers? They’re not much in a thaumaturgic way.”
More and more people came to watch the display. There wasn’t an ounce of joy left. Varthlokkur spared them hardly a glance. He did not want to see them. They looked like refugees, all huddled and silent.
Bragi said, “I suppose the Tervola will have a taste of that for us someday.”
“Shinsan is an empire unaccustomed to defeat,” Varthlokkur replied. “We’ll see them again. If they survive this.”
“If?”
“Would Matayanga have attacked if its kings believed defeat inevitable?”
Horns sounded outside the castle. “That’s Mist,” Varthlokkur said. “She’ll have been alerted before we were.”
The woman joined them shortly. “It’s begun. First reports came in last night. Southern Army detected the Matayangans moving up. With two million men. Just for the first attack. They’ve c
onscripted everyone over fifteen.”
“Human waves,” Varthlokkur said. “Will they break through?”
“Southern Army is outnumbered twenty to one. There’ll be other waves. Lord Kuo is trying to assemble a reserve, but he might not have gotten started in time.”
“When do you make your move?” the King asked.
“It’s too early to worry about that.” Concern creased Mist’s perfect brow. “We have to find out what’s happening first. If it gets too bad out there we’ll drop it.”
“What the hell for?” the King demanded.
“You forget she isn’t interested in destroying the Dread Empire,” Varthlokkur said. He eyed his friend. There was a touch of monomania in the man these days. “Only in seizing control.”
“Yeah. Well. Let’s set up in the War Room. Looks like we’ll be busy for a while.”
Mist said, “My place would be better. I’m already in touch with my people out there.”
The King looked at Varthlokkur. The wizard nodded. The King said, “In two hours, then.”
Varthlokkur turned and took another look at the fire-gutted sky. Worms writhed in his guts. What bold fools we are, challenging the man who has that dancing at his fingertips.
Once Mist was out of earshot, the King whispered, “Are we backing the wrong horse?”
“We? This was your idea.”
“Uhm. So it was.” Bragi made a sour face.
Lord Ch’ien made a small gesture. Mist glanced up. The King was standing in the doorway, agog. It had been years since he had been here on the top floor of her home. She had made changes.
He strode over. “How about I replace your sentries with mine? We’ll draw enough attention without having orientals standing around.”
“Right.” She beckoned an Aspirator from the runner pool, gave him his orders. Taking the King’s arm, she indicated a bank of seats which had been constructed along the nearer and side walls of the room. The entire third floor had been stripped of partitions. The windows were heavily curtained. The far wall was bare and shadowed. A huge table occupied the center of the room.
“Ask your staff to sit and stay put,” she said. “And tell them to stay away from the south wall. They could get us killed if they stumbled through a portal.”
A man stepped out of thin air. He reported to the gentleman in charge of the room’s centerpiece. Mist listened with one ear. A routine report.
“I’d about give my left arm for a map like that in my War Room,” the King murmured. The map atop the table was thirty feet long and fifteen wide. It represented Shinsan and the empire’s tributaries. Every city of significance was noted, as were all major geographical features. The whereabouts and movements of the empire’s many legions were marked in bright colors.
Another messenger popped into the room. A tableman listened, began spreading red sand.
Mist told Bragi, “Sit down.” Then, “My people are doing better than I expected. I’m getting first-rate information. Probably because Lord Kuo is keeping his head down.”
No probably about it, she thought. Lord Kuo was laying low somewhere, letting the thing take shape. She rose, took a pointer, tapped the map. “Somewhere in all this blank space he’s hidden his reserve army. In a few days he’ll drop a big hammer on the Matayangans.”
“How is Southern Army doing?”
She kept her opinion to herself. “You see the map. It’s maintaining the integrity of its lines. Against the odds, that’s all you could ask of any army. Just a minute.”
A messenger had appeared. She moved round to where she could catch snippets of his report. “Damn!” she said, though softly.
The table chief moved small, numbered black markers into a cluster at the map’s easternmost edge. He moved others to a riverbank two hundred miles behind the cluster.
“What’s all that?” the King asked.
She told the whole truth when she replied, “We’re not sure. Communications are muddled. Eastern Army is under attack.”
“Matayanga caught them with a surprise ally?”
“This started before the southern thing. It’s been on more than a week.”
“There’s a whole second war there?”
“Something awful is happening…” She controlled herself. Bragi might be an old friend, and an old fighting companion, but he wasn’t part of the family. One did not show one’s fears to the outside world. “Before he disappeared, Lord Kuo gave Eastern Army a new commander. Lord Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i. He’s an old peasant who came up the hard way. Goes way back. Very capable, and stubborn as hell.”
“Uhm.”
She sighed. Good. He wasn’t interested in the east.
“Any notion when you want to move?”
“Not before Lord Kuo comes out of hiding. I don’t want to jump in blind.”
“If we’re going to be a while, I’d better make arrangements for my people.” The King rose, grunting as he did so. Mist watched him go. He was feeling very tired, very old. She felt a moment of empathy. She, too, felt tired and old. And she’d feel much more so before this was done. The danger would mount by the minute, and every minute would increase the odds against the coup attempt remaining secret. “Wen-chin,” she murmured, “please don’t waste any time.”
The interminable wait became a deathwatch. The Matayangan attack went on and on and on, and still the time did not ripen. Tempers began to flare.
“Lord Kuo must have nerves of stone,” Mist opined to Lord Ch’ien. “I don’t think I could have held off this long.”
Lord Ch’ien tapped the map with the tip of his pointer, sketching the outline of the bloody stain of Matayangan advance. His hand quivered. The red sand thrust deep into Shinsan. Mist’s informants said the original Southern Army hardly existed anymore. Some hard-hit legions had been disbanded and their survivors distributed as replacements. There was a huge gap in the army’s line. Matayangans were pouring through.
Lord Ch’ien said, “My limit has been surpassed. Maybe that’s why Lord Kuo is in command.”
“Tut-tut. No second-guessing at this stage of the game.”
The King appeared. He scanned the map. “It’s been two days,” he said. “All this courier traffic has to leave traces. How long before somebody starts adding things up?”
“I know! I know!” Mist snapped. “Pretty soon we’ll have to assume they know. Damn the man! Lord Kuo, I mean. Why doesn’t he move?”
“He hasn’t got them where he wants them yet,” Bragi observed laconically. He considered the map again. “But if he waits much longer, there won’t be anything left for you to take over.”
“Compare the size of the cancer with the whole,” she snarled. Then, “Lord Ch’ien. The time. If he hasn’t moved within fifty hours, I’ll do so myself.”
“In the dark?” the King asked.
“If I have to. I won’t be able to trust my people much longer than that. By then if one defected they’d all stampede.” Wearily, she added, “It would take ten years to put it all together again.”
Aral seated himself beside her while she was talking. He said something meant to be soothing. He tried to take her hand. In front of Lord Ch’ien. She pulled away.
It was time to put paid to this nonsense. She shouldn’t have started it. Fool. Man-weak fool. She’d lost the Tervola once because of Valther. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.
She ignored Aral’s look of pain.
Lord Ch’ien hadn’t caught the byplay, she saw, but Bragi had. He was nodding to himself. She felt her cheeks reddening. He didn’t comment, though. He said, “It’s late. I’m going to get some sleep.”
She watched him speak with his captains before leaving. Their continuous presence irked her. They had eyes like hawks. She had to keep them in mind every instant. Damn this having to depend on outsiders!
Her irritation mounted as the hours passed. Her men, too, were tense. They couldn’t speak without snapping at one another. The conspiracy was about to shake itself apart. And s
till time twisted the springs of tension tighter.
The night churned slowly onward. The red stain of Matayangan invasion seeped across the table. Confused messengers arrived from the far east, their reports only further obscuring the situation there.
“Lord Ch’ien.”
“Princess?”
She tapped the map with the pointer. “Do we dare move while this is happening?”
Lord Ch’ien eyed the east briefly. “I think we can discount it. For the moment. Our people there will keep those forces uninvolved.” The weariness edging his voice made it more husky and hollow than normal. Mist shuddered.
Lord Ch’ien volunteered, “Western Army will be the real worry. I’ve heard that Lord Hsung has an agent in the palace here. By now everybody in this squalid village knows something is happening. The stupidest spy would have sent a message mentioning it.”
“Time. The invincible enemy. Are we going to manage it, old friend? Or will time do us in?”
“I couldn’t say, Princess. But I do have a feeling we’re close to the moment of decision. There’s a new tension in the blanklands there.”
Mist stared at the unmarked portion of the map, closing out all else. And, yes, Lord Ch’ien was right. She could feel a great something flexing its muscles there, tensing, like a serpent coiling to strike. So. It wouldn’t be much longer.
“Princess?”
“Lord?”
“The moment approaches. And still we haven’t decided what to do with these people once they’ve served their purpose.”
This was a discussion she had hoped to avoid, and yet had known to be inevitable. “I don’t follow you.”
“You know who they are and what they’ve done, Princess. This petty King. This sorcerer Varthlokkur. These carrion-eaters who orbit them.” He indicated several of the King’s men. “We have to decide what to do if we’re successful.”
Mist sighed. “They’ve dealt honorably with us, Lord Ch’ien.” She couldn’t tell him that they were her friends. A princess of the Dread Empire did not have friends. Not foreign friends.
“For their own ends. They hope to weaken the empire, to delay the inevitable day of reckoning. The King… He would destroy us if he could.”