by Glen Cook
The amateur yammer smiths never plugged the Star Rider into their calculations. Nor did they consider the fact that the King Without a Throne had a wife who actually meant something to him.
No one expected to see Haroun in Al Rhemish so no one saw him.
An old hero named Beloul lived in Al Rhemish, amongst other retired heroes. Once a general, Beloul’s pitiful pension and the bile of the current king forced him to live in an adobe hovel shared with an equally decrepit former aide and that man’s middle-aged illegitimate daughter. Beloul had been one of Haroun’s most devoted and brilliant commanders. He had been the same for Haroun’s father before him. Haroun was amazed to see how poorly Beloul was treated but more amazed to find him still alive. He suppressed the urge to contact Beloul immediately.
There were few rootless men around Al Rhemish. The current regime discouraged the presence of the crippled of mind, body, or soul. Megelin found those people distasteful. Those who pandered to the king drove off anyone so dim or ill-starred as to have become disfigured in service to his cause.
Haroun liked his offspring less every day but not once did it ever occur to him to put the boy aside.
He made quite sure that neither Megelin nor his henchmen were watching before he went to visit Beloul.
Trouble was, he could not shake the fear that he was being watched himself. He suffered this constant, creepy paranoid certainty that never discovered a fleck of sustenance. It went way back. Random and seldom during his flight from Lioantung, lately it had become a fixture, and much more aggressive. It had to be a product of his insecurities, grown fatter after the Norath incident and his wastrel spending of good luck during the sojourn at Sebil el Selib. Not once, even employing all his shaghûn skills in the privacy of the erg, had he apprehended any genuine observer.
In bleak humor he wondered if God Himself was not the watcher.
Reason suggested that a genuine observer would have to be Old Meddler but the sense of being watched antedated that point—the encounter with Magden Norath—when the revenant would have garnered the interest of that old devil. Before that Haroun bin Yousif was dead to the world.
One cool evening, while street traffic was heavy, bin Yousif went to the general’s door. A woman answered, which rattled him totally. Women did not do such things. They did not show themselves to strangers. Their men folk did not allow it. But… Here she was just another fellow in the household?
Beloul and El Mehduari must have been poisoned by outside ways while they were in exile.
The woman looked him straight in the eye, bold as any warrior confident of his prowess. She intimidated him. He was amazed.
“Well? Can you speak? No?” She began to close the door.
“Wait. I’ve come to consult the general.”
“The general is retired. He doesn’t contribute anymore. He isn’t allowed to contribute. In return for his silence we are provided a stipend sufficient to hold starvation at bay. I will not jeopardize that. Go away. Consult someone else.”
“Beloul ed-Adirl! Present yourself!”
She had rattled him that much. And now she was about to make him hurt.
“Admit him, Lalla,” came from the gloom beyond the woman, in a voice like dead insects being rubbed across one another.
The woman did as instructed, eyes locked with Haroun’s, assuring him that he faced plenty of pain if he gave her an excuse.
Wow. Never had he encountered anyone whom he knew, instantly, was as hard as this woman. She might be as hard as him.
The setting sun had been in Haroun’s eyes. He entered the house as good as blind, but eventually did make out an amorphous shape amongst cushions against a far wall, too small to be Beloul or El Mehduari—though, at this remove, he surely remembered them larger than life.
That shape extended a pseudopod, gestured, suggesting he take a seat. “I have heard your voice before. Who are you?”
Beloul became more clear as Haroun’s eye adapted. He did not like what he saw. Beloul in his mind was Beloul thirty years ago, powerful, confident, a champion fit to contend with the Scourge of God. This Beloul…
“You do not know me?”
“I cannot see you. These eyes betray me.”
That might explain the darkness, some, though not for the fierce woman.
“You rode with my father. You were too indulgent with me and my brothers when we were boys. You’re still too indulgent toward my son.”
“Do you have a name?” There was an edge to the general’s voice, now, as the old steel surfaced.
The woman rested a hand on the hilt of the curved dagger at her left hip. Haroun was sure she knew how to use it.
“I do. I won’t say it here, in this city.”
“Now I know you. Come closer. I have never conversed with a ghost.”
That did not reassure Haroun. Did Beloul want him inside grabbing range? It would take but an instant for the woman to… He stepped forward. The old man swept a hand at him, hard, sure it would meet no resistance. “Ouch!” He began massaging his wrist.
“Damned solid for a spook,” the woman observed. “He must be a demon instead.”
Beloul chuckled, a dry old man’s laugh. “You aren’t far wrong.”
“Would this be who I think it must be, then, Uncle?”
“Yes, Lalla. The revenant who untangled the curse of Magden Norath. Be seated, youngster. Tell me tales of the years. Tell me what brings you here in my end times.”
The woman asked, “Is there anyone I should inform? Someone I should summon here?”
“That will wait. Let’s hear his story first.”
Haroun settled onto a ragged reed mat. Nothing lay beneath that but dirt, which would become mud during any persistent rain. He faced Beloul. The man had been a personal hero when Haroun was a boy. He was saddened by the way time and Megelin had treated Beloul.
Haroun did note that Beloul offered him no honor as king.
He was just another man, possibly not in good odor—though Beloul was not one to be seduced away from the grand Royalist strategy by side issues. Beloul owned a conscience that was unique.
Had Beloul been making ultimate decisions back when, today’s world might wear a different face—though that would in no way resemble the world that Beloul had hoped to see. Old Meddler, the Pracchia, and Shinsan would have sucked the blood out of Hammad al Nakir and the West despite Beloul. The Disciple had been just another torment.
That water had sunk into the sands. The world that existed now was the world in which everyone had to struggle, including every survivor on the other side.
After some silence the general asked, “Well? Why are you here?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. It was a destination. I was looking for something that I can’t name. I have these grand ideas, but…” He paused to collect himself. “I vanished when I did because the Dread Empire imprisoned me. They got caught up in a huge war with a revenant devil and forgot me. I escaped. I made my way across the entirety of Shinsan. Getting back drove me obsessively. But once I got through I had no idea what to do. All that time buried alive changed me. I am no longer the man that I was.”
“It has been a while since Norath went down.”
“Yes. And that just happened. It was an unexpected opportunity. I didn’t think. I acted. Afterward, I still had no plan, for a long time, till I thought that I might find what I needed in Al Rhemish. I’m here, now, and now I wonder, what next?”
“Uhm.”
“I’m a lost soul, Beloul. I’m alive. I’m very good at staying alive. Barring Old Meddler, I’m maybe the best there ever was at that. But what do I do with the life I’ve so devoutly preserved? Choices I made, that led to my becoming an unwilling guest of the Tervola, cost me my claims on most everything else. I can’t be king again. Megelin is king. I made him king so I could run off on my own.”
“You’re right. Megelin is king. And he is a bad king. Only those parasites getting fat because of his incompetence would argue
if you demanded your crown back.”
“I don’t want to do that. Are you saying I should?”
The door opened, apparently on its own. Night had collected outside, but a pinkish glow backlighted those few buildings that could be discerned through the unexpected opening. Looking over his shoulder, Haroun thought there must be a fireworks show happening on the far side of Al Rhemish.
Catlike, the woman Lalla glided in that direction armed with a massive tulwar that Haroun had missed completely.
She was, for sure, one dangerous being. Yet, though the old man mentioned it, Haroun never quite got her name.
There was a powerful flash in the doorway. The deadly woman yelped and threw the tulwar down. It shone an angry scarlet.
The wizard Varthlokkur stepped inside, across the overheated blade. His hands were up, palms forward, shoulder high. “I intend no harm.” He spoke with an odd rhythm, inflexion, and pronunciation.
Of course. He was speaking his own boyhood dialect.
The dialects of Hammad al Nakir all descended from the language spoken in Ilkazar. The written form remained unchanged.
Beloul recognized the wizard. He kept his hands in sight. “To what do I owe the honor of this unsolicited home invasion?”
“This one is needed elsewhere. He has a critical matter to attend. I came to move him before one whose name is no longer mentioned flies in to end the threat.”
What might have been a fireworks erupted outside, in the distance. The wizard glanced back. “A diversion. Rumor will blame the master shaghûn who destroyed the wicked Magden Norath. He is here and he has the righting of wrongs in mind. That will distract everyone.”
Haroun declared, “But I was responsible…”
“I watched. General. Let it be no secret that this man was here. You sent him away. Let the fear of him rage amongst the wicked. Encourage those inclined to do so to waste time and treasure hunting the ghost.”
Beloul responded, “He will be beyond discovery?”
“He will abide with the living dead.”
Haroun observed, “That doesn’t sound encouraging.”
Varthlokkur said, “You will meet outsiders like yourself. Most will be friendly.”
Haroun realized that he had begun to drift mentally. The wizard had done something to weaken his will and relax him. He even lacked much curiosity about why this was happening—though he did wonder how his will and curiosity had been suborned so easily.
The woman eased her dagger into her left hand, fluid as a panther preparing for a kill rush. The skin on her right palm had begun to blister. She crouched slightly, to get more spring into her legs. The general shook his head almost imperceptibly.
Haroun caught the exchange. Varthlokkur did not. The wizard had come within a heartbeat of sharing the fate of Magden Norath and missed it entirely.
The Unborn made it as far as the high Kapenrungs in Tamerice, carrying two men. Fatigue claimed the monster there. It set them down barely in time to avoid disaster.
Catastrophe in a different mask began to gather almost immediately.
Varthlokkur and bin Yousif grumbled and created a camp while the Unborn, a sickly mix of bloody orange and rotten fruit brown, hovered and shivered as though freezing. The thing inside closed its eyes for the first time in the wizard’s recollection. He was immensely irked by the delay. Old Meddler would miss the excitement at Al Rhemish only if he had gone into hibernation. Its purpose had been to catch that villain’s attention and fire his curiosity, to get him to expose himself, hopefully rendering himself more traceable, while sparking his interest in discovering what was going on inside a Fangdred gone rigorously opaque to spying eyes. There was so much more that Varthlokkur needed to do to convert the fortress into the ideal death trap.
But he was stranded out here in a different wilderness, nearly as cold as that at home, with a companion who remained unconvinced that he had an obligation to participate in the coming struggle.
Haroun might slide away if Varthlokkur’s attention lapsed. He might even try to eliminate the threat implicit in the wizard’s knowledge of what had happened to Prince Gaia-Lange and Princess Carolan, before he did his slide.
Or maybe neither of them would escape the tribesmen slowly surrounding them. They were not the friendly sort of Marena Dimura common in Kavelin’s mountains.
These people were, for all their determined isolation, not wholly ignorant of the modern century. They knew what a pink globe in the sky meant. They knew those concerned about survival exercised extreme care around the Empire Destroyer. They failed to be sufficiently intimidated, though, to select the more sensible course and just stay away. Young warriors had to show their courage. Being young, naturally, they disdained the obvious exaggerations about the Empire Destroyer.
There were sorcerers in their tribe, seen every day. Those old frauds were not scary. They could barely make milk curdle, and that took time when it was cold out.
So half a dozen youngsters lost their hair, including beards and eyebrows, as they prepared to rush the outlanders. Lucky boys. They ran into Varthlokkur’s wards before Haroun’s. The latter would have granted an opportunity to participate in a mass funeral.
The elders ordered everyone back. The outsiders ignored the tribesmen, then, while they extended the same courtesy in return.
The Unborn needed two days to recover. Thereafter it leapfrogged them, fifty miles to a man, wilderness site to wilderness site, but making a common camp during times of rest. Varthlokkur tried to sell Haroun on a scheme that he would not explain in concrete form, saying only that there was an evil as old and foul as smallpox that needed extirpation. He would not name that evil’s name.
His own non-plans aborted, bin Yousif did agree to withhold any refusal till he had spoken with other members of the cabal.
He determined the identity of the unnamed target quickly enough. “This sounds like a mirror image of that old devil’s schemes.”
“That’s true.”
“But his plots reach inside institutions. The Pracchia was everywhere, inside everything, like a plague. To be a real reflection you’d have to create reliable turncoats amongst his associates.”
The wizard nodded. “Also true, and unlikely to happen—with one exception. But there are some living men we know he’s touched. Your son and your father-in-law, for example. Neither may signify anymore. Neither seems to be anything but a pawn. Neither amounts to a mile marker on the road to the heart of darkness anymore.”
“Let me think about them.”
“You will participate?”
“You have the best answer I can give. I’ll cooperate provisionally. Where are you taking me? Somewhere way up north, obviously. You haven’t told me who you want me to see, either. Why should I take you on faith?”
“What I don’t tell you, you can’t tell anyone else.”
Bin Yousif nodded. “I see.”
“I hope so.”
“Or maybe I don’t.”
The wizard knew he had to give up something. “Our destination is the Wind Tower at Fangdred.”
“I remember the fortress. I remember the Candareen. I was a festering young fool, then.”
Varthlokkur smiled.
“But that fool was blessed by Fortune. He survived to become this old fool of today. I look forward to seeing what changes time has scribbled on that monument to my youthful indiscretion.”
“You’re going to be disappointed. You’re remembering another mountain and another fortress, Ravenkrak. Which was on top of the Candareen. I don’t believe you’ve ever seen Fangdred, which balances precariously on top of El Kabar.”
Bin Yousif’s recollections were confused. He saw nothing even remotely familiar when the Unborn brought him to Fangdred, and that was not just because of the aerial perspective. The wizard was right. He had not been here before.
Unlike most of Radeachar’s clients, bin Yousif enjoyed the aerial view. He was less comfortable inside Fangdred, with all those people, f
ew of whom he knew and some of whom had put the hell into the last few years of his life.
Wandering through the castle, followed by the whelp of the grand she-king of the east, barked at if he thought about touching something, Haroun decided that he really wanted to get on to the next phase of this scheme. Unless he was clever enough to slip out and vanish.
Even after having been briefed he did not completely understand. These crazies wanted to eliminate the perpetual world plague sometimes called the Old Meddler. Laudable ambition, but one that stood no chance of attainment. Might as well aspire to resurrect Ilkazar in all its cruel glory, or to throw a saddle on a whirlwind.
The wizard had let fall the fact that it was hard to track Haroun inside Hammad al Nakir. He just might make sure that was even harder once he got back there.
He thought he would be headed there soon. These people did not show much of their hands but he had no need to see much to penetrate their thinking. He knew how such minds worked. He had one himself.
He might even see Yasmid again.
He looked forward to that.
Inger indulged in a quick final consultation with Josiah, Nathan, and Babeltausque. That morning, early, the news was uniformly bright. Virulent factions had yet to develop. Delegates were paying for what they wanted. Taxes were being collected. The locals yielded theirs up with smiles. Prosperity threatened. Indications were, most of those gathered for the Thingmeet really did want to abort any return of the chaos that had prevailed after the disappearance of the King.
“Stop fussing,” Josiah told her. “You’ll do fine. Just step out and tell them what you told me. They’ll give you your say.”
She eyed Fulk, half-asleep in his little chair, dressed in clothes that had been fashionable when Gaia-Lange wore them long ago. There had been no money for anything new.
Josiah went on being reassuring. “I’ll be with him. He doesn’t have to do anything but show himself. If nobody makes a fuss he won’t get distressed and suffer an attack. How is he now?” The Colonel looked hard at Doctor Wachtel.
“You are correct, Colonel. I gave him his medication.”
The old man kept answering his calling despite the stress of being a known foe lurking near Fulk and Inger. Inger firmly believed him incapable of violence. She was correct. Wachtel would do no physical harm to forward his politics.