by Glen Cook
Even so, that sloppy choice had cost him like none other since the cluster that got him sentenced to this hell. It had, worse, cost him the closest thing he had to a friend.
So now the Old Man was dead. All that he had done to help, when he had been awake, had piled itself onto Old Meddler’s weary shoulders.
So. There was no time for maintenance. No time for anything but handling the crisis of the moment.
Retina-blistering emerald light flared. A green shaft ripped through the demonic beetle, hit the iron statue in the right abdomen. Chunks of demon chitin flew, revealing the inside of the thing’s wing case to be orange and the body beneath as red and orange. Stuff flew off the iron statue, too. It staggered back a long step, leaning slightly, like a man kicked in the gut.
That flying stuff might have been globules of molten metal. They splattered, then hardened quickly.
This was not possible.
Blindness came.
He did not panic. He knew flash blindness was not permanent. He had lost vision this way before. He would recover, not as quickly as he might like. But…
That bolt, however generated, had immense power behind it, of a level not seen since… No, even the Nawami Crusades had produced no blast savage enough to pierce the frontal armor of an iron statue. Had it? This world had seen nothing like this. Someone had tapped directly into…
He could not concentrate. His eyes hurt. The pain threatened to become the focus of his existence. Despite past experience he had trouble managing his fear of blindness—though he must remain calm and controlled. He was deeply vulnerable at this moment, even with demons and iron statues to shield him.
The event had not been an attack. He understood that when no follow-up came. The demon had triggered some trap. Maybe there was competition for this place. Underground movement often wasted energy on internecine murder rather than battle the object of rebellion.
Or maybe he had been expected. That would explain the magnitude of the blast.
Unlikely, though. There was no way anyone could have predicted his visit. Some overly bright Tervola was determined to make a convincing statement to any fellow Tervola who stumbled onto his handiwork.
One of those master sorcerers had found the golden key, a way to suck power off the transfer streams. Must have. The dream had been out there for ages. No lesser source could have delivered that emerald violence.
Had he truly seen molten metal fly? He did now recall a similar instance in one rare moment where the Great One had chosen to inject himself directly into the Nawami conflict.
The Great One had used power stolen from the transfer streams. He had made himself a god by finding the way, and later became a denizen of the transfer streams, existing in all eras simultaneously while also constituting a parallel, prior entity in the world outside. The Great One inside had been the Great One the Dread Empire defeated in the eastern waste. Shinsan had gone on to root his fetch out and engineer its annihilation—though not before it reached back and fathered itself in an age long gone.
Those absurdities should have claimed devoted examination ever since. How could that happen? It had despite the logical implausibility. Could there be an even stronger ascendant coming now? Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i, whose ingenuity brought the Deliverer down? No! Not some ridiculous farmer grown too big for his trousers! But who else? There was no other significant name associated with those events. Not amongst the living.
Clearly, he had not looked where he should. But that was too hard when you were alone. Tactics devoured your time, leaving none to linger over the meaning of what might be happening behind what was distracting you at the moment.
His vision began to clear. He discerned frozen shapes. Disinclined to trigger another trap, his companions awaited his instructions.
The stricken demon had settled to the floor. Its birdlike skinny legs projected into the kitchen. Its through and through wound still produced wisps of black mist. Greenish ichors streaked the color where a wing and wing case had been ripped away. It was trying to reinstall something that had fallen out of its chest.
It was a demon. Its wound should not be mortal, in this world, but to survive it dared not flee to its own realm even though here it could survive only as a cripple.
The stricken iron statue remained fixed, almost unbalanced, in the process of taking an awkward step. The green shaft had not driven through but there was a six-inch circle of bluish purple shine on the statue’s back, bulging, where the light would have emerged had it not spent so much energy skewering the demon first.
Old Meddler’s vision continued to improve. He eyed that bulge. How could anyone set random traps that powerful? Where had they gotten the know-how?
Better question. More important question, right now. Were there more such traps? It was not reasonable that his evil luck should be so foul that he would trigger the worst trap first stumble. Far more likely that it was one of a battery.
“The perfect response to an improbable event,” he said, softly, punctuating with a tired sigh. “Stay put.” He readied the Windmjirnerhorn.
So. Yes. There were more traps, impressive in number, but with disposition and trigger choices that seemed naïve. Once you knew they were there you could deal with them easily. People as sophisticated as the Tervola ought to have built a network so cunning that the triggering of one instantly rendered the rest more sensitive.
Suppose they had been set in haste, to deal with an anticipated intrusion by mundane burglars? The traps could polish off a battalion of regular bandits. Unless that notion was what the trap builders wanted put into the head of a more sophisticated intruder.
Unless…
The curse of being Old Meddler was overthinking and seeing everything through the murky lens of his own twisted character. Of assuming that everyone was as warped of mind and motive as he.
He eliminated the most obvious traps. Even so, the iron statues triggered several more, better disguised, as they assisted his futile search the next few days.
Old Meddler grew increasingly disgruntled. He had one healthy demon left. The statue smitten by the green light had not moved since. It still communicated but that made it no less an oversize, man-shape heap of scrap.
He had planned to spend a few hours recuperating once he arrived, before investing a few more recovering weapons and tools from hiding places beneath the fortress. Magden Norath had left a lot. Old Meddler had hidden his own reserves here and elsewhere across the archipelago.
He had come to the emergency against which all that stuff had been cached.
Only… The hiding places were empty. Covert after covert, whatever had been hidden was gone, as though someone who knew every cache had systematically rid them of anything that might ever be of use to the Old Meddler.
Hours burned gathered into days of despair. What the hell had happened? Who had happened? Varthlokkur was not plausible. Had some incredibly clever Tervola matured unnoticed while developing the skills to root out the Star Rider’s hidden treasures? That reeked, too, but not as badly as the possibility that the bitch Tervola Mist might be responsible.
No. None of that was credible. Those were not people who could resist the temptation to use what had been hidden here. Tervola were dark of heart by definition, nor could Varthlokkur possibly be as goody-goody as he wanted the world to think.
All men did evil when they saw a chance to get away with it.
The Star Rider was a stubborn old beast. Yet another thirty hours of daylight and lamplight went into his search before he surrendered to the fact that every filthy tidbit was gone. The fortress had been stripped.
He had to get back west. Time was fleeing. “Enemy never rests,” he reminded himself, over and over. “Water sleeps, but enemy never rests.” He was not ready to spend the time necessary to look back and find out who had done this and what all they had done. That could cost another week. Meantime, leakage from the small freight portals had begun to weaken the Horn.
He could not destroy
those. He needed them—unless he wanted to return to the Place and start over, which would take ages because he had conscripted the best iron statues and most tractable demons already.
Perhaps the universe itself was out to thwart him.
The hours fled on. He should have launched his attack long since, crushing resistance instantly using weapons which even Varthlokkur’s weird sorcery could not withstand. He should have passed through the final fire by now, and be headed back to the Place for a long rest, not still be out here with a stomach gone sour.
By grace of the Horn he learned that his missing treasures were not lost forever. They were out there, in the waters of the strait, thrown there by whoever had robbed him.
The Horn brought several relics ashore. That was a waste. Anything that had been unbroken when it went in had been damaged by the brine and battered by surf and current. Everything had been in the water a long time, not just days. His weakening had begun even before the Deliverer crisis commenced.
“Only one option left. The other islands.” A feeble hope, there. Little of value had been cached elsewhere. There had been no clear need for the redundancy.
His remaining demon hauled him hither and yon, from barren outcrop to empty sand pile. Each cache was as pristine as could be hoped. His enemy had either not known about them or had been unable to reach the lesser islands. His mischief had been incomplete.
Sadly, what he recovered was useless now—though, sweet miracle, he did discover copies of Magden Norath’s research records. Those would be invaluable later.
He would make time for those after he finished. He would go to ground for a generation or two, maybe three, letting his fields lie fallow. New generations would produce ambitious men willing to disdain the lessons of history. And he could rest up and get ready to leap back into the game.
He had done it a hundred times before.
But first he had to push through this.
He realigned his strategy to fit the tools available and what he suspected about the people ranged against him. He brooded over the role of the Dread Empire. He had no concrete evidence but felt certain that Shinsan’s ruling class were actively working against him. Too much cleverness had gone to make him stumble.
His nature compelled him to waste time rehashing every little episode of the past year, looking to tie unrelated events into one cunning campaign, but his grand capacity for conspiracy theory could not pound some events hard enough to make them fit a unified hypothesis.
If it was all connected, he lacked some critical piece of evidence.
He had no time to winkle it out. He had to strike.
As it stood, his enemies—with everyone entangled in the year’s events—ap peared to be victims of plain old-fashioned “Shit happens.”
He announced, “It’s time. We begin.”
His pitiful army raised no cheers.
Breathless, Josiah Gales said, “It won’t take a sell to convince them that Shinsan might be a problem.”
Inger nodded numbly. That was pure understatement. The spell suppressing emotion in the Thing hall was fading. Chaos was breeding, though the delegates no longer wanted to flee.
Kristen Gjerdrumsdottir stepped past, vaulted the rail, rushed the transfer portal, flung herself at the last Imperial lifeguard. She was half his size but her momentum knocked him sideways.
Dahl Haas shrieked at her to show some goddamned sense! He got there two steps behind her, hammered the man’s helmet with the butt of his belt knife, cracked the nonmetallic material. The blow stunned the man. Several Thing members piled on. Class and ethnicity were not factors.
“Stop!” Inger’s bellow pierced the excitement. “Let him get up.”
The easterner grasped what was expected. He rose slowly, looked around carefully. He had been disarmed. Half his armor had been torn away. He would enjoy a fine crop of bruises if he survived.
Inger said, “That’s enough, people. Josiah, take charge of him. We’ll hear an exchange proposal soon.”
Its nature and details should be revelatory.
The Empress was interested only in Bragi and Michael. She might not know who Babeltausque or the Depar girl were.
Delegates eased away from the captive, awed and wary alike. The easterner submitted. He knew he needed only be patient.
Inger announced, “Stay away from the gateway. It might take you somewhere you really don’t want to go.”
The portal tweeted and crackled. It now canted slightly. The angle was visually disconcerting.
“Josiah, once you have him safe, see if you can’t come up with a way to communicate if they don’t contact us.”
Gales inclined his head. He did little talking anymore. Dr. Wachtel said he was in continuous pain and did not want to take it out on anyone.
Maybe she could exchange the lifeguard for treatment for Josiah. They were good at fixing people in the Dread Empire. Bragi should not have survived. And look what that woman had done for herself… Flash of jealousy. To look that good at her unnatural age!
The gate still hummed. Could she shove Kristen and Haas through, then work a deal to keep them over there?
Probably should not try, sweet as that sounded. Bragi would not approve. And he would be back.
“Josiah, don’t take him far. I need you handy.” On reflection, if she had to trade she would ask for Babeltausque back. Though Bragi might argue, the sorcerer was invaluable.
“Gentlemen, the interruption is over. Take your seats.” She had to milk this while it was fresh.
TWENTY-NINE: WINTER, 1018–1019 AFE
FIRE AND MANEUVER
Other than an exotic half-breed girl-child, whose beauty nearly unmanned him, no one paid attention to Babeltausque or Carrie. Most were too busy, even when all they did was look over one another’s shoulders. The couple tried their best to stay small and unnoticed, day after day.
The exotic took it on herself to see that they touched nothing in what she called the Wind Tower, a place Babeltausque felt should exist only in fairy tales.
He and Carrie were free to come and go so long as they touched nothing and did not get underfoot. Slyly, the exotic girl explained that they could leave whenever they wanted—if they could find a way out and were ready to cross the Dragon’s Teeth in winter.
The girl was curious about Carrie, jumpy around him, and reluctant to chat. She seldom left her young man long enough for a conversation, anyway.
She impacted Babeltausque like a kick to the heart of his fantasies but he managed his weakness.
Carrie murmured, “She is incredible, isn’t she?” No doubt to remind him that in this place self-control came under the heading Life or Death. “I saw her once when we were little. I envied her so much.”
“I won’t lie, darling. She is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. But she is more dangerous than a bushel of cobras.” She intimidated him in more than just the survival mode. The girl had a sinister psychic air that no one else seemed to notice.
The eastern Empress emerged from a transfer portal. Lord Yuan followed. Mist and her Tervola henchmen had vanished shortly after their return from Kavelin, leaving King Bragi in charge. Varthlokkur had gone soon after they did. Ragnarson seemed confused. There was nothing for him to do. He hung around with a dour, dark man from Hammad al Nakir, also supposedly a king, and with that man’s wife. That marriage seemed totally bizarre. She was in the throes of a difficult pregnancy. She was too old to be carrying a child. The three spent hours at a time gathered together not saying a thing.
Varthlokkur’s wife kept things going.
And that man, yonder, was the Disciple? Truly? And that one was the Old Man of the Mountain? And that other one was Kuo Wen-chin, who was once Lord Protector of Shinsan?
Fortune had delivered him into such company?
Carrie murmured, “And this is her mother, which explains so much.”
Yes, indeed. Even he was smitten, though his need insisted that they be so much younger.
The Empress announced, “That’s done. Now we wait.”
Babeltausque had little real idea what was happening. Nobody explained. What he knew he figured out from what he overheard in the few conversations in languages he could understand. He was not asked to contribute. He had nothing to do. He and Carrie were putting in hours till Mist had time to swap them for a lifeguard who had gotten left behind.
Carrie was more daring than he. She tackled the crowd, engaged in conversations where she could. Her luck was limited. Few spoke her language. Those who did were inclined to shy away because she was intimate with a sorcerer.
The Ekaterina girl had implied that she and her brother had spied on their private moments. Scalza thought it a great dirty joke. Ekaterina was troubled.
These people had bigger worries. At some level each was working to end the tyranny of the Star Rider.
Just the thought sparked terror. It showed more hubris than would mocking the gods themselves. The gods did not meddle in mundane affairs anymore.
Babeltausque surveyed the crowd while hugging Carrie close, her proximity offering reassurance. If he understood correctly, these misfits had generated all the information Varthlokkur and the Empress needed.
Where had the wizard gone? He had spent time close up with the Old Man before leaving. Babeltausque thought he was on a spoiling mission unconnected with Mist’s operation.
Radeachar carried Varthlokkur over and around what had to be the Place of the Iron Statues. There was little to be seen: rocky hill country spotted by scraggly oaks, stunted pines, breaks of scrub brush, and dried brown grass. Varthlokkur saw no running water. He saw nothing manmade. He looked in from a variety of angles in changing light and never saw anything remarkable.
And yet he sensed the presence of something there.
No angle showed him the entrance he had been told to seek.
He saw nothing even vaguely familiar. If he had visited before, that had been erased from his memory.
The echo of a memory that did haunt him was of something resembling a crowded old Itaskian graveyard, behind grey stone walls wearing lichens and creepers. There should be massive wrought-iron gates. Inside, there should be forests of monuments. Amongst those would be iron statues and statues in noble stone.