Wrath of Kings

by Glen Cook

  “I see.”

  “And I’m not confident of the wizard’s translations. He’s your ally, Illustrious. You know him best. Is his agenda at variance with ours?”

  “I ask myself frequently. And I can’t give you a definitive answer. My guess is, he’ll be reliable so long as the greater threat exists. He’s put himself square on target for that one, possibly deliberately.” She looked round, did not see Varthlokkur. He had said nothing about leaving so must be somewhere in the castle. He should not be gone long. He hated leaving outsiders unsupervised in his space. Mist wished he would stay where she could keep an eye on him. “Do the best you can. I’ll find an interpreter you can trust.”

  She looked around again. Scalza was focused on the Star Rider, Nepanthe on events in Kavelin. Ekaterina was beside Ethrian, who had abandoned his puzzle in favor of watching the shogi wars from behind Lord Kuo. When did Wen-chin do any work? She seldom caught him in the act but he was always caught up.

  The game ended. Victorious, Lord Kuo abandoned his seat. Ethrian and Ekaterina crowded in opposite the Old Man. Eka began resetting the board.

  Old man and boy shared a conspiratorial grin.

  Scalza called, “Mother, I need you here.”

  A man with a donkey herd and saddle horses to wrangle ought not to be able to manage much in the way of stealth. Donkeys did not present the nasty challenges offered by camels and mules but they did harken to a unique drummer, in a dimwitted sort of way. They needed close care and inspired supervision. So how could the killer of a king stay out of sight for so long?

  Old Meddler was baffled.

  Eventually, he decided that someone must be masking the killer from afar. After operating on that premise a while, though, he changed his mind. Even disguised, all those animals would leave a big scat trail and a route stripped of greenery.

  The old devil decided that he could not find his man because his man was not out there to be found. He was no longer on the move.

  Old Meddler had existed in this world for millennia, and in another for ages before that. His mind was a clutter of ten thousand times the memories of the oldest mortals around. Outside the moment and task at hand that could be a sink of confusion, a cat’s cradle of memories mixed and tangled, fragmented and partially lost. He sometimes enjoyed crystalline recollections of events two thousand years gone but modern memories eluded him even when he knew they were there. Till he actually saw it, and considered it from up close, he did not remember the Imperial watchtower.

  There were donkeys and horses at a pool in the shade of the tower. They had stripped every plant. The killer was nowhere to be seen.

  A faint, almost echoing call came on the breeze, drifting down from the battlements. He looked up, expecting to glimpse a pale white child’s face. That left him frowning. Why did he think that?

  He probed the spell suite that had drawn the killer to the tower. He had done good work back then… He remembered the place now.

  His mood collapsed.

  He had not shut everything down once he finished manipulating the boy who would become the King Without a Throne.

  Troubling, that. An inexcusable lapse. He should review all his recent work, though the blunder was harmless enough—except to the rare traveler who wandered into range of the haunting call.

  He tried to get to the tower from above, as in the old days, but his mount shied off. It refused two further attempts. Could it sense something that he did not? Though unlikely, the chance should not be ignored. Silly to force something dangerous.

  Could someone have converted the tower into a deathtrap? Improbable, but improbable death had stalked him a thousand times. Death had her eye on him now, and was sharpening her claws, he was sure.

  It was the season to indulge in a psychotic level of caution.

  He brought the winged horse to earth near the pool. The donkeys still carried their travel packs, the horses their saddles. The killer had become too entranced to take care.

  He did not ease their burdens himself, though it would have taken but a moment to have the Windmjirnerhorn deliver fodder and grooms of a golem kind. The idea never occurred.

  Obviously, the killer had been taken by the tower. No mystery, that.

  A conjured haunting, crocheted from true, wicked ghosts captured and constrained to carry out targeted missions, could endure indefinitely. Numerous such infested the world, many this same devil’s handiwork, abandoned in place once he finished using them.

  The old being looked at that ruin, then at his mount. Not a long walk but a walk nevertheless. So much easier just to drop in from above.

  Easier. But a stubborn beast made the walk a must. Was there a real threat? Come to think, the original setup made its victim circle the tower several times before the entrance revealed itself. Was the animal just being difficult? Why start at this late date?

  He walked. His patience did not last. After one circuit, with his soles and legs aching, he settled onto a boulder and fingered valves on the Windmjirnerhorn while trying to think how best to avoid further exercise.

  He spied the dark gap of the entrance, groaned. So. He had to go on in like a regular victim.

  He got up. He limped. He ached. How much longer must he endure before his parole finally came through?

  TWENTY-SEVEN: WINTER, YEAR 1018 AFE

  SPIRALING IN

  “I didn’t get much sleep last night,” Ragnarson announced. “My own fault. I wanted to catch up on the real story around here.”

  He sat at the same table he had used for small conferences before he went out east. Inger used it for her own meetings. This morning’s gathering was the biggest there since soon after Ragnarson’s disappearance. The Queen and her main henchmen were present. So were Aral Dantice, Michael Trebilcock, Ozora Mundwiller, and Kristen Gjerdrumsdottir. The tension was less than expected despite Bragi’s prior assertion that the meeting would continue till he was satisfied that their conflicts had been resolved.

  He tipped a thumb at a corner. Fulk and the younger Bragi were playing with blocks brought in by Babeltausque’s girlfriend. The children had no trouble getting along—though Carrie allowed them no opportunity to test anyone’s patience.

  The newcomers had no interest in the girlfriend. She was furniture, easy to look at but otherwise just there. The Queen’s faction, though, considered her an amazement. Carrie Depar was much more than an opportunistic baby hooker. Babeltausque enjoyed their reluctant admiration for his pretty.

  There was, however, almost a clang of meeting steel when he crossed gazes with Michael Trebilcock.

  Trebilcock felt Babeltausque’s attraction to Haida Heltkler. He did not want Haida abused any more than she had been already.

  There was quiet lethality in looks Josiah Gales laid on Michael Trebilcock, too. Gales knew the likely source of the maladies he suffered because of his captivity.

  Similar looks ran Aral’s way from Babeltausque. He was sure that the men who tried to kill him had been sent by Dantice—if not that iron-hearted old Mundwiller woman, whose accent, when she spoke at all, exactly matched that of the would-be killers.

  Kristen and Inger, too, often exchanged less than loving looks. Ragnarson knew he had to keep all those conflicts subdued. He dared show neither favoritism nor tolerance. Like that kid wrangling the boys. She tolerated nothing. She had paddled Fulk for launching a sulk, crushing it before it became a tantrum. Fulk had been stunned. Usually he got away with everything because he was sickly.

  “So I’m tired,” Ragnarson said. “With me that means impatient and cranky, too, so let’s see if we can’t get through this and start looking toward tomorrow. By which I mean Kavelin’s tomorrow, not yours or mine or the literal morning after.”

  None of these people, nor anyone in town for the Thingmeet, had yet challenged his right to stroll in and take over—though as yet he had garnered not one royal honorific.

  “This may be faint praise, Inger,” he said. “But I think you did as well as you could
once you worked up the gumption to arrest Dane. I hear of no harm done since then.”

  People stirred uncomfortably. Ozora Mundwiller had a thought but chose to reserve it.

  “Kristen, you slipping away after Colonel Abaca passed looks like the best thing you could have done, too. You being away and Inger arresting the Duke let the Marena Dimura back off and just posture while they took advantage of the summer.”

  There had been a change, down in the bedrock of Ragnarson’s soul, more profound than he knew. It had quickened when he stepped through the barrier separating the hidden temple from the kingdom that had conquered his heart so long ago.

  His rage at what Kavelin had cost him had evaporated. He was indifferent to the chance that the cannibal state would keep feeding on his heart and soul. “I hear talk about a Kavelin disease. I’m a true sufferer. And it infected you all once the Duke was out of the way. Not so?”

  Babeltausque said, “The catalyst was a child named Phyletia Plens. None of us ever met Phyletia but her death touched us way more than the Duke’s removal did. It gave us a whole new perspective, maybe because it was inconsequential in a strategic or statistical sense. It shouldn’t have influenced us. Children die. But sometimes something is so ugly that it grabs you by the throat and won’t let go. It jerks you around till your whole life looks different.”

  Inger, Josiah Gales, and Nathan Wolf bobbed their heads in agreement, Wolf and Inger slightly red.

  Ragnarson conceded, “That was one of the darker situations I ever heard of, and I saw some pretty disgusting stuff when I was young.”

  “What wormed into us wasn’t just the crime’s ugliness but the triviality of what drove that priest.”

  The sorcerer stumbled, his throat tightening. Ragnarson caught the subtle encouragement the Depar girl flashed him as well as the suspicion implicit in the arch of Michael’s eyebrows. Babeltausque’s secret reputation might not quite fit the actuality but, clearly, even the sorcerer himself feared that it could.

  Ragnarson said, “The year is almost over. I want its conflicts and bad feelings put behind. I want us to put our heads together and come up with something we can take to the Thing.”

  Ozora Mundwiller grumbled, “And quickly. Delegates already think the Thingmeet is just a device Inger can use to get some money coming into Vorgreberg.”

  Ragnarson nodded. “My mother said that no good deed goes unpunished. For sure no good deed is seen that way by everybody. You can be a saint who is called a saint of all saints by the saints themselves and somebody will be convinced that you’re up to no good.”

  “That would be a somebody who can’t live with himself.” Josiah Gales, looking like he had fallen asleep, chin on his chest, added, “Those with wicked hearts make their claims to divert attention from the reek of evil coming off of them.”

  Silence followed. Everyone eyed the Colonel. Ragnarson figured he was paraphrasing somebody. Gales did not go on, nor did he give credit.

  Michael said, “That’s true. But it doesn’t matter. That kind aren’t a problem now and they won’t be if they’re given no fuel for the fires they want to set.”

  “We’ll find a way.”

  Everyone looked at Ragnarson. That made no sense. He added, “You wanted to engineer unity by showing off a transfer gate.” He looked at his wife. “A good idea, only some Nordmen obstructionist will claim that it was left over from the occupation or when Mist was here.”

  Gales said, “That point did not elude us. It wouldn’t stand up, though. Everyone knows that Varthlokkur has been underfoot. The Unborn has been around a lot, too, and easterners have been seen by people definitely not part of our cabal.”

  Nathan Wolf offered his first comment. “Most people want an excuse to get along. Today’s divisions mostly start right here, with us.”

  Gales grunted agreement. The sorcerer did the same.

  Ragnarson said, “You’re right.” He waited. Nobody else had a comment. He looked Inger in the eye. She looked back without flinching.

  Memories were in the air, not all nostalgic. Sherilee was on both their minds. Ragnarson did understand that his liaison had hurt Inger.

  He had not thought that way before. He got caught in the moment… Which was not unusual. People did not think ahead and did not worry about consequences. But now he had positioned himself so that thinking that way was expected. His role demanded it. Making bad personal choices promised bad choices made as a ruler—and had that not shown itself clearly in the east already?

  “Understand this. The Bragi Ragnarson you see here isn’t the Bragi Ragnarson who roared off through the Savernake Gap. That Bragi’s ordeal forged a better man—I hope.”

  Ozora Mundwiller proclaimed, “Here comes the part you won’t like.”

  Ragnarson scowled. She was not intimidated. He was half her age and a man besides. She had spent the night with him, observing, chiding, once threatening to paddle his behind if he kept on being immature.

  “The most excellent lady from Sedlmayr is correct. This won’t be popular but it will help you stop wondering about my relationship with Shinsan.”

  Inger said, “Do talk about that, husband. The Thing will bring it up, I promise.”

  Everyone wondered how he and Michael could materialize so suddenly. Michael might have been close by all along, yes, but they all knew that he had not been.

  “Both… Varthlokkur and Shinsan have joined forces. Haroun bin Yousif and the Disciple are with them, too, believe it or not. They have combined to battle the world’s oldest fiend. The prospects don’t excite me but I may choose to get in on that, too.”

  Michael gestured a demand for quiet. “Yes. Him. The first step on that path is that we no longer mention him directly. We don’t name anything commonly associated with him, either. There are spells floating around that warn him whenever people start talking about him.”

  Ragnarson said, “Michael may choose to participate, too.”

  Inger announced, “I don’t understand. Why?” The others nodded.

  Even the sorcerer’s girlfriend seemed curious.

  “I’m not sure I get it all myself. You’d need to be Mist or Varthlokkur to do that, I guess. It’s like the Kavelin disease, only for the whole wide world. On the surface it does seem like a good idea to get shot of the mind behind the world’s pain.”

  Michael volunteered, “We’re like soldiers on the line. We’re letting the generals do the fine thinking. Maybe we’ll fight. They hope we will. They’ve conveyed their reasoning. We can do our part without grasping the nuance. No one can make a case that this enemy is good for the world.”

  Ragnarson and Trebilcock understood a fraction of what Mist and Varthlokkur were up to—which was an order of magnitude more than anyone else did. The Star Rider was not just weather, he was weather that happened somewhere else. He was not really real to most people.

  Ragnarson stipulated that. “I don’t expect conviction from you if we get caught up in this, just that you give us the benefit of the doubt during the struggle.” He sounded like he was leaning toward getting involved.

  Michael gave him no chance to clarify. “We’ll probably participate because it will require the combined efforts of a lot of people—most of whom spend their lives at each other’s throats because of him.”

  Ragnarson added, “If his victims gang up… It wouldn’t mean an end to conflict. I’m not naïve enough to think that. But persistent aberrations like Hammad al Nakir, grotesqueries like the Great Eastern Wars and Shinsan’s massively destructive conflicts with Matayanga and Escalon, that will all be a lot less likely. That old villain won’t be shuffling from faction to faction, stirring the cauldron. He won’t be pushing Magden Norath and Greyfells types in where things would stay peaceful otherwise.”

  Inger said, “You can only put some of what happened off on other people.”

  “Too true. I paid in pain, misery, and loss, and I’m still paying.”

  Trebilcock said, “You meant to whip up sup
port by making Shinsan a boogerman. Well, Shinsan has been up to mischief involving Kavelin, but nothing wicked. The Empress wanted…” He could not explain just what Mist had in mind. That could be nostalgia at work instead of Kavelin being a cog in the machinery meant to silence the tyranny of the Star Rider. Her invisible engine remained perfectly hidden inside her own mind. Her progress toward assembling its parts remained obscure.

  Ragnarson thought he knew all the people and parts but he could not get them to sift down into a recognizable pattern.

  He did see that she had stripped the villain of resources—if you called people he used resources, like timber and ore.

  Old Meddler must still be whining about the loss of Magden Norath.

  “Bragi!”

  He started. Inger was barking. “What?”

  “You stopped talking in the middle of telling us how Shinsan has become our beloved friend. Where did you go?”

  Sarcasm? He had not seen that side of his wife before. “The land of confusion. Boggled by the awesome scope of my ignorance.” He paused, chose his words. “I don’t trust anybody much anymore. Not even me. Maybe especially not me. But I do trust Mist, on this, as far as I trust anybody.”

  Michael grumbled, “You’re saying the same stuff over, pretty much.”

  “I’m out of practice saying things out loud.”

  “He was in solitary confinement.”

  “Hell, I wasn’t even conscious for a long time. Luck and a good turn I did earlier are the only reason my bones aren’t scattered across that hillside, too.”

  He went away again, to that day and the last angry hour of his embarrassment, when men ran at the critical instant, the moment when a touch of stubborn would have claimed the day. For half his captivity his purpose had been to get back here so he could inflict deep and abiding pain on those who had abandoned him.

  He was not over that yet. The rage remained but he had a harness on it now. It no longer obsessed him. And, he realized, he no longer recalled exactly who he had scheduled for the headsman’s ax. Anger had become habit.