Grand Vizier of Krar

by W. John Tucker

  “What do you intend?” Blan asked.

  “I had a message to wait for Memwin,” Pretsan explained. At least he hoped it explained the matter to Blan as he was not sure that he fully understood it all himself.

  At that moment, Memwin stepped into the room and whispered, “I’m Memwin. The guards have gone. Follow me!”

  Pretsan’s jaw dropped when he saw Memwin again but Blan was already up and moving, so he followed, wondering what he had gotten himself into.

  83

  The waning half-moon was fortunately concealed by cloud as Pretsan, Blan and Memwin emerged into the carriageway outside the arena palisade. Blan was dressed in the dark uniform of a cavalry guard, her hair tied up and hidden beneath the helmet, her height and robust build consistent with that of a cavalry man, at least in the dark and from a distance.

  As a cavalry guard for the circus caravan, Pretsan had been able to obtain a key to an outside door into the arena’s service area. He had hidden it under stones just outside the door. Next to the door there was a small window for passing food and drink into the arena when guards were not present to unlock the door. Memwin had used the window to slip outside and retrieve the key from its hiding place.

  They made their way uphill and eastward, toward the library dome, although they could not see it in the dark beyond the camp lights. There was much coming and going and a lot of noise as the camp settled down for the night. Nobody took much notice of two cavalry guards walking briskly along the side of the carriageway. Nor did anyone think it unusual that the bigger one was limping, or that a small child was with them. Such scenes were not unusual. The big challenge for Pretsan, Blan and Memwin would be to get Blan past the guards at the main gate. Even Memwin would need to have a good reason for going on an outside errand at night.

  They did not speak for a long time; Memwin’s hand signals were enough to set them on their way. At last, Pretsan whispered to Blan, “The alarm should not go out until midnight when the guards will return to make sure that the arena’s service rooms are ready for tomorrow, unless someone unexpectedly goes to check them in the meantime and finds that you are not there.”

  They walked for two miles, uphill all the way, past enough tents and prefabricated buildings to house many regiments. It was not a difficult walk but, after having her movements restricted for the last eleven days, and having been on a diet unsuited to her constitution, Blan felt quite tired by the time they reached the eastern gate.

  There was a broad space between the line of tents and the outer palisade of the camp. The palisade was backed by platforms and ladders for the guards to reach the top, and there were timber watchtowers at regular intervals. A fortified bridge joined the watchtowers on either side of the gate. There was a centurion and ten guards on duty at the gate; there might have been more inside the fortified towers. In the unlikely event of an attack on the camp by the Free Alliance, the guards need only sound the alarm and thousands of soldiers would join them within a minute or two.

  “Stay back here until I wave you forward,” Pretsan whispered to Blan and Memwin. “Blansnette, try to deport yourself with the nonchalance of a bored cavalry guard. Don’t turn side on to the gate, just in case the guards note your shape in silhouette.” He then approached the watchtower where the centurion stood.

  “I am Corporal Pretsan of the circus cavalry guard,” Pretsan called. There was no point in trying to conceal his identity. He was now committed to becoming a deserter. “A prisoner who absconded from the barge before we arrived has been reportedly seen in the ruins of Belspire and I have been sent to recapture her. I ask permission of the centurion to pass the gates with my comrade and my servant.”

  “Do you have papers?” the centurion asked, meaning signed orders from a superior.

  “My centurion had urgent business of his own and did not wish to delay. At the same time he did not want the absconder to have time to move on before I caught up with her.”

  The centurion did not like the idea of letting someone pass through at night without papers. He frowned. Then he remembered something.

  “Say, are you the same Pretsan who won the athletics contest at the Port Cankrar Games last June?”

  “I am the same.” Pretsan smiled.

  “I was there. Your performance was magnificent. Congratulations!” The centurion thought for a moment and then called out, “Open the gate for Corporate Pretsan, his comrade and his servant!” Then he added to Pretsan, “Who can blame me for letting a sporting hero pass without papers? I hope you find your quarry quickly. If I’m off duty when you return, just say that Centurion Poolzus approved your mission.”

  Pretsan, feeling somewhat guilty about misleading a fan, signalled to Blan and Memwin and they all passed through the gate, expecting to hear an alarm at any moment. Blan watched Pretsan and tried to think of herself as a cavalryman and to copy his swagger.

  They all breathed out in relief as they moved out of the light cast by the beacons beyond the palisade. However, no sooner had they done so than they heard the horns and then the trumpets and then the whistles of an alarm. Someone had checked the entertainment room within the arena compound and reported Blan’s absence to the circus owner. He in turn had reported it to the centurion of the circus guard along with his suspicions about Pretsan. The centurion had then reported Blan’s escape and Pretsan’s likely desertion (which was more important to him) to the camp duty officer, a First Spear centurion who had then authorised the alarm. Due to the relative lack of importance of circus affairs to the army high command, only the circus guards were authorised to pursue the deserters. One hundred of them were already mounted and charging toward the eastern gate.

  “Quick! This way,” Memwin cried.

  Blan ran after her wondering how someone so small could run so fast. Memwin was entirely more robust than the child who first introduced herself to Blan atop Citadel Tower just two months ago. Pretsan, however, was hobbling and fell back. Blan went back to help him. The camp gate opened just two hundred paces away and a hundred cavalry charged through.

  “It’s the spear wound in my leg,” Pretsan gasped. “Leave me. Save yourself.”

  But Blan insisted, “You risked your life for me. I will not abandon you.” She struggled to support his heavy frame as he stumbled. The cavalry were almost upon them.

  84

  “We’ll help!” yelled an unexpected but familiar voice. It was Aransette. The moment was too infused with urgency for Blan to wonder how Aransette and Norsnette had suddenly appeared. She let Aransette take Pretsan’s arm over her shoulder and guide him toward Memwin who was frantically beckoning for them to follow her into some bushes at the base of the library dome.

  Norsnette had a bow with her and was already fitting an arrow, so Blan looked for a rock to throw. The ground was flush with masonry rubble. She grabbed a hefty rock in each hand and hurled them at the advancing cavalry, just as Norsnette released an arrow in the same direction.

  The archery skills of Norsnette were limited to drawing back the string and making the arrow shoot somewhere, usually in front of her. She aimed for the leading rider’s breastplate, a large target now too close for comfort, in the hope of causing him to turn aside. She misfired. However, by lucky chance the arrow bounced from a rock to the iron nose guard worn by the leading horse. At the same instant Blan’s two rocks struck the breastplate worn by the same horse. The horse came to a dusty halt and reared up, dislodging its rider, none other than Pretsan’s own centurion. The following horses swerved and came to a halt. This gave Aransette enough time to help Pretsan into the bushes and ultimately, with more body squeezes committed by Aransette upon Pretsan than were strictly necessary, through the cracked wall and into the cavity between the outer and inner shells of the dome. Blan and Norsnette followed more nimbly and then, insisting on being last, Memwin (it was, after all, her escape plan).

  Memwin led them all down the cavity to the opening she had found into the library.

  “Did you b
ring the torch?” Memwin asked.

  “As your note instructed,” Pretsan replied. He took a torch from his belt and eventually got a flame going.

  The light of the small torch was not enough to see the size of the chamber which seemed to go on forever. It did, however, show plenty of evidence that the place had been a library, its contents largely consumed by fire. The floor was strewn with the charred remains of books and other learned materials.

  “Our pursuers might not have seen where we went but they may soon guess, if this place has other entrances,” Pretsan remarked.

  “We need more light,” Blan said. “See if we can find anything to make some small fires. There can’t be much risk of setting off a major conflagration. Most things here seem to have been burnt already. We need to see it better. We are in the greatest library of the known world. If we all die tomorrow we must not do so without seeing the full glory of this building and imagining the knowledge and secrets that it once housed.”

  Blan, Norsnette and Memwin gathered what they could of burnt books and fragments of furniture, now mostly unusable except to provide edges and corners not yet oxidized to leave ash. While Aransette cleaned and rebound Pretsan’s wounds, the others built one small fire and then another further on until they could guess the extent of the chamber. They all looked up and around in awe, except Blan who looked around with a smile on her face.

  “It’s vast,” Norsnette gasped.

  “It must be the whole inside of the hilltop, I’d say twenty fathomes from floor to ceiling in the middle and maybe three hundred paces wide,” Pretsan suggested as he was being attended to by Aransette rather more carefully than was strictly necessary.

  “I agree about the height but the width will be three hundred and twenty paces,” Blan reckoned as she walked to the opening through which they had entered the chamber. It was a rectangular doorway, somewhat concave (from the inside) to match the curvature of the dome. It was about a fathome and a half high and two paces wide. She felt around the sides and then she searched the chamber until she found a length of charred timber. She used this to poke at the top of the opening. Suddenly the top descended until there was no opening at all.

  “Our pursuers won’t follow us that way,” Blan said.

  “What did you just do?” asked Pretsan in amazement. “I hope we can get out now.”

  “I now know why this hilltop seemed strangely familiar to me,” Blan remarked in reply.

  Memwin looked up at Blan questioningly. Blan looked down at Memwin, wondering if she should tell her now. Then Memwin’s face broke out into a broad smile and Blan knew that the little girl had already guessed. She had listened in to many of the conversations between Blan and Praalis, perhaps also when Blan had not known she was listening.

  “The inner shell is not very thick, maybe ten fingers at most. Won’t they just break through?” Pretsan asked.

  “They won’t break skyhull,” Memwin said triumphantly, “but the main entrance is over there,” she pointed southward. “I saw it from the outside. It’s all blocked up now, but the soldiers might take away all the stones and beams and come in there.”

  “You are right, Memwin,” Blan agreed. “When they guess that we might have hidden in here they will eventually remove the barricade. I think the original main entrance has been left open for many ages, perhaps twenty millennia. When people came here and decided to make use of the dome, they built a new entrance which opens like other doors. The side entrance we came through must have been released and opened by an earthquake that happened since the dome was abandoned in the last war. Perhaps it was the same earthquake that cracked the outer shell.”

  “I can’t pretend to know what you are talking about, but please do tell me how you propose that we escape before my former comrades come bashing their way through that main entrance,” Pretsan said.

  “Bonmar, Arnapa, Zeep and Pelembras are nearby, waiting for our signal,” Norsnette reported. “They will help, but they don’t expect us back until morning. They wait with canoes in the swamps opposite the camp.”

  With the urgency of the escape and her surprise at realising what Belspire Library really was, Blan had not had the chance to question how the twins had suddenly appeared in Belspire when she had thought them safe in Proequa. Then Norsnette explained how Arnapa and Zeep had followed Blan, how the twins had followed Arnapa and Zeep, and how Bonmar and Pelembras had followed the twins. Aransette took over to relate all their adventures up to the point where the six of them took cover in the swamps, saw Blan bathing in Belspire River and saw Memwin not far away. Being the least likely to cause suspicion, the twins had won the right to reconnoitre the camp, pretending to be local peasant girls. They had just arrived nearby when they saw Blan, Pretsan and Memwin emerge through the eastern gate.

  Memwin then told her tale, concentrating on how she had escaped from Proequa and posted herself north with the mail courier. She was very vague about her exploits as a servant attached to the circus.

  “After hearing your remarkable stories, I fully realise what a simple and uneducated person I am,” Pretsan acknowledged, “but I could not have chosen a more able group of people with whom to become a deserter. Nevertheless, how are we going to escape? How are we even going to make contact with your friends in the swamp?”

  “As for how we are going to escape, suffice to say that I believe there might be a hitherto undiscovered chamber beneath us where I intend to hide, because, if I am right, there are things I must do there,” Blan said. “I propose to find it before we need to defend ourselves. As for how you are all going to escape, I do have a plan. However, I am still worried about the fate of the other Prize Girls, not the two eager ones but the other three, especially Pinja.”

  “Don’t worry about Pinja and the other two,” Pretsan consoled her. “My friend will help them escape. We became best friends when we competed together in the Port Cankrar Games six months ago. We then both took the opportunity to join the circus guard rather than the regular cavalry. I was champion athlete and he was champion equestrian. You might have noticed, when you recently dislodged my commander from his horse, the rider just behind him turned his horse aside to block the others from coming forward. That was my friend. He is the finest horseman in the army and could easily have continued the charge. He saw that I was the quarry and turned aside to protect me. I had confided my intentions to him and he had promised to find an escape for Pinja and, if they so desire, the other two reluctant Prize Girls.”

  “That’s a great relief to me,” Blan said and then, only half joking, “Perhaps, when Memwin is Queen of Krar, she will make you a duke. You deserve it.”

  “I hereby make you a duke,” Memwin proclaimed with a big smile, a rare sight on her face.

  “Thank you, but that’s a bit grand for a simple peasant like me,” Pretsan laughed.

  “I don’t know, I like the sound of Duke Pretsan,” Aransette said softly as she brought her mouth close to his ear.

  “Well, I suppose that it might be bearable if I had a duchess to go with it,” Pretsan said as he suddenly found himself transfixed and enchanted by Aransette’s gaze.

  “That can easily be arranged,” Aransette whispered in return.

  “Now that seems to be settled, let’s go to work on our plan,” Blan said, excited by the possibilities of what she had guessed about the origin of the library dome, and relieved that Pretsan had found a new and, this time, reciprocating love interest in the form of Aransette.

  Memwin said nothing. She intended to hide with Blan in the lower chamber once it had been found, but she did not think that the right time had yet come to argue her case.

  85

  Belspire – 15th November

  An hour before dawn, Blan called for attention and announced, “We need our eyes to adjust to the dark. Let’s quench the fires and the torch.”

  “Why?” asked Memwin.

  “We need to see whether there are any chinks in the dome where daylight can come through
.”

  “Is that likely?” Norsnette asked.

  “An earthquake cracked the outer shell where we came in, so it might have caused cracks elsewhere,” Blan replied as she proceeded to put out the torch and the small camp fires they had used for light.

  They all waited patiently, unable to do much else until some light was restored. Since they entered the dome they had spent most of their time taking turns to sleep, with some success, and otherwise searching for an entrance to a lower chamber, so far without success. Once in pitch dark again they all nodded off to sleep.

  Blan woke first and was not surprised to see a faint light around her. Her lack of surprise was not because she expected to see light within the dome, but because she had been dreaming that she was with Telko, of all things flying a sky ship at great speed over land and sea to investigate the world together. As she gradually became aware that she was not flying, and then remembered where she was and what she was trying to do, she struggled groggily to her feet and tried to make sense of the light falling around her. It seemed to be coming from a number of different points all around the dome. No sooner had she stood up than Memwin was by her side full of excitement.

  “If only we had Nightsight with us,” Blan said. “He would be able to tell us what all these vague shapes are.”

  “My eyes are not so keen that others have ever thought to call me Nightsight, but my sight is better than most,” Pretsan said as he struggled up. Aransette had found him a charred wooden rod which he was now using as a crutch to take pressure off his injured leg. He had managed to brush off the pain from the injuries in his shoulder and side, but the leg injury still made walking difficult. Fortunately, his shoulder injury was not so bad as to prevent him from using the crutch, leaving his uninjured right arm and leg free.

  He continued, “Above us, I see that the dome probably once contained additional floors around a central atrium. The lattice of iron girders would have supported floors. It appears that some of the flooring survived the fire, especially near the top. That is what I guess is hiding the windows or cracks which must be letting in the light from above. Light sources around the edge of this floor seem to be hidden by the remains of furniture.”