by Dragon Lance
Six days had passed since her last communication with Helbin. During that time she’d brought the magic mirror to her own bedchamber, hiding it in plain sight on the high table that held her toiletries. There it seemed nothing more than an exotic Silvanesti trinket, and she could make multiple attempts during the day to contact the wizard, without arousing suspicion by too frequent trips to the library. She had no success; the mirror showed nothing but her own face.
Columns of smoke no longer obscured the city rooftops. The swell of angry voices, once as regular as the ocean tide, likewise was stilled.
Couriers brought war news. The bakali had crossed the Dalti River without boats by resorting to a remarkable tactic. Working night and day, they created a low, short wall of stones about twenty paces out from the eastern shore. They filled this backwater with all manner of rubbish – whole trees, rubble from human homesteads. The result was a huge floating weir of debris. It dammed the Dalti sufficiently to lower the water level behind the obstruction enough for the lizard-men to cross to the far shore. Once loose on the west bank, they swarmed through the rich farmlands northeast of Daltigoth, driving out everyone in their path. They tore down houses and barns, dragging the broken timbers and masonry along with them.
Halfway between the Dalti and North Thorn rivers the bakali host halted and began building an enormous fortified camp. The flat alluvial plain seemed an odd choice for a stronghold; it offered no heights on which to build. Undaunted, the lizard-men erected a huge earthen mound, bolstered by stolen timber and brick, and commenced digging a deep ditch around it. Other parties of bakali carved channels in the black soil back to the Dalti River. When they completed the channels, they could flood the low-lying land around the earthen mound, and create a wide, deep moat.
Faced with these developments, Ackal V scrapped his earlier plans and ordered all the empire’s remaining hordes to muster for battle. The Great Horde came together at the village of Verryne, on the east bank of the Thorn River, fifteen leagues from the capital. Only a few cavalry bands remained between Daltigoth and the bakali host, scouting and watching the enemy. This left the city open to attack, but the emperor wasn’t worried. The walls of Daltigoth were formidable, the city could be supplied indefinitely via the imperial canal.
Although the bakali seemed the greater danger, strange reports from the east disturbed Ackal V more. They gave Valaran a secret thrill of hope. Rumor had it new Ergothian forces were gathering on the plains north of Caergoth. The nomads had been smashed, and someone was driving the plainsmen back to their home range beyond the Thel Mountains. In her heart, Valaran knew who must be leading these Ergothians. So did Ackal V.
From her vantage point, Valaran watched as the disk of the sun touched the hills west of Daltigoth. Sunset had once been the signal for public houses and wine shops in the Canal District to spring to life. No more. Not with the Wolves’ and their brutal curfew.
Valaran visited a public house in the Canal District once, many years ago. For the first and only time in her life, she had ventured into the city of her birth and mixed with common folk in The Bargeman’s Rest. Tol had escorted her there. A fight had broken out, and the public house had burned, and Tol had kissed her for the first time. She could still remember that kiss: The awkward press of lips, the stubble of beard on his chin, the taste of …
Feminine laughter broke the spell of Valaran’s memories. The Consorts’ Circle was coming. The fashionably pale, uniformly foolish faces of Ackal’s other wives and the women of the court regarded the empress without interest. As custom demanded, each dropped a quick curtsey as she passed in a hiss of silk. None addressed Valaran, and soon she was alone again in the high corridor.
*
Word of Tylocost’s coup reached Tol, causing excitement among the landed hordes. A cache of treasure would be a welcome addition to their war chest, which, as Egrin wryly pointed out, previously had comprised whatever coins they happened to have on them.
Tol left Egrin and the bulk of the army to continue harrying the nomads from the country and rode swiftly to meet up with Tylocost. With him, he took Riders from Lord Trudo’s Oaken Shield Horde and Argonnel’s Iron Scythe Horde, some one thousand men on the swiftest horses. Trudo and Argonnel came as well.
Arriving at Tylocost’s camp, Tol was cheered even more to discover Kiya there.
Kiya took him by the shoulders and shook him. “Husband! Are you getting enough sleep?”
“Only in the saddle,” he joked.
After this characteristically brief reunion, Kiya led him to Tylocost.
The elf’s rough tally of the treasure cache – even with all the kender “borrowings” – was impressive. Unwilling to burden their ponies with too much heavy loot, the nomads had made the airless ravine the repository for nearly all the wealth stolen from the eastern provinces.
Tol went to pay his respects to the queen of Hylo. Casberry’s first words brought a smile to his face.
“Don’t forget your loyal allies, my lord, when it comes time to divide up all that lovely gold!”
They grinned at each other. The queen’s face was partially. Obscured by a jewel-encrusted tiara made to sit upon a brow much larger than hers.
Kiya took Tol aside and told him how they had found Helbin. It was her considered opinion the Red Robe was spying for the emperor. Tol acknowledged this was possible. Unlike his high-minded, White Robe colleagues, Yoralyn and Oropash, Helbin had always struck Tol as an opportunist.
Kiya, Tol, and an escort of warriors then went to where Kiya had left the wizard. They arrived just in time to discover Zala standing before the wizard with her sword at his throat. She told them the Red Robe claimed to be on their side, to be working for the same patron as she.
“That remains to be seen,” Tol replied. “Master Helbin, you’ll be judged by how you behave, so no tricks.”
With great dignity, Helbin nodded once. Tol cut his tether and bade the wizard follow him. They returned to the campfire. Casberry was sitting in her sedan chair, which rested on the ground. Front and Back lay nearby, snoring softly.
In spite of Helbin’s tacit cooperation, Tol left the wizard’s wrists bound. Two guards stood behind him. Folding his beringed hands in his lap, Helbin settled himself on the ground across the campfire from Tol.
“Speak, wizard,” Tol said at last. “Why are you so far from your tower?”
Helbin met Tol’s eyes squarely. “I cannot talk freely before so many, my lord. There’s no telling to whom all these ears belong.”
“Hang him and be done with it,” Tylocost commented.
Judging by the expressions around the fire, most agreed with this suggestion. Either offended or frightened, Helbin remained silent.
“So you claim to work for Zala’s patron …” Tol said. Like the half-elf, he avoided using Valaran’s name openly. In truth, there were too many ears listening. “Can you prove this?”
The Red Robe thrust out his bearded chin. “My word is beyond question!”
“Not with me.”
Tol drew his steel saber and held it up, studying the striations of the forged edge, marked with age and faint traces of rust. It was a brilliantly crafted blade. In a conversational tone, he remarked, “The last wizard I had dealings with ending by losing his head. You knew him, I believe?”
Helbin blanched. Mandes the Mist-Maker, Tol’s mortal enemy, had been a Red Robe wizard, before the lure of darker magic turned him into a rogue. “My baggage contains documents from the person in question,” Helbin said tersely.
The wizard’s belongings were brought to Tol. As he opened the appropriate satchel, Helbin’s anxiety was plain.
Tol held up the empress’s charge, read it silently, and passed it around.
Be it known, the parchment stated, The bearer is acting for the good of the Empire. By My Command, (signed) VALARAN, Empress.
Valaran’s seal, an owl clutching a scroll in either claw, was genuine, but Tylocost, for one, was not impressed.
&nb
sp; “He could be an imperial rat-catcher. Or he might have stolen the document,” the elf said, drawing a look of outrage from the Red Robe.
The remainder of the wizard’s books and papers yielded nothing of particular interest. He’d kept a log of his travels and had copious notes regarding magical processes, such as warding off scryers, confounding pursuers, and cloaking a location from sight – all perfectly reasonable since Helbin’s specialty was seeing far and not being seen. Then the searchers came upon a small brass-bound box just over two handspans long, one wide, and one deep. Its seamless sides betrayed no lid.
“Don’t touch that!” Helbin snapped at the warriors handling the box. He refused to say what it was, so Tol ordered his men to break it open.
The wizard tried to stand, but the soldiers behind him pressed him down again. “My lord, please!” he begged.
“I will have this open, Helbin,” Tol said flatly, lifting Number Six.
Brass and wood, however cunningly joined, could not withstand a stroke of steel, and Helbin gave in rather than see the box broken. “As you wish, my lord, but I should like to reveal its contents only to you!”
Though Kiya protested, Tol agreed. He and the wizard left the others by the campfire. Kiya tried to follow, but Tol ordered her to remain.
Wizard and warrior went to the center of the nomad camp. Shielded by piles of stolen goods higher than their own heads, they stopped.
As Helbin complained about his treatment and the general lack of respect shown to him, Tol examined the box. It was weighty for its size. There was no obvious clasp or latch. If the box was sealed by magical means, the millstone Tol wore in a concealed pocket should have dispersed the spell by now. He shook it hard, but heard nothing rattle inside.
“My lord, I beg you,” Helbin urged. “Do not open this box. I give you my word it is not dangerous to you. But opening it —” The wizard shuddered. “The effect could be incalculable!”
Sweat had beaded Helbin’s sunburned brow and trickled into his close-cropped beard. Tol was beginning to wonder about the possible danger. Still, he had to know what was in this box.
With Tol’s wary gaze upon him, and muttering all the while about dire consequences, Helbin opened the box. On the middle finger of his left hand he wore a large amethyst ring. He tapped the round purple jewel on the box four times. One edge of the brass rim popped up.
Tol waved him back and lifted the hinged door. The box was lined with soft black felt. Nestled inside was a dully gleaming object, a statuette wrought in gray lead.
The small figurine hardly seemed worth all the trouble. Tol noticed tiny screw clamps attached to its head. His puzzlement showed, and Helbin, averting his eyes from the figurine, whispered, “Look at its features.”
Tol bent closer, then straightened abruptly, nearly dropping the statue in shock.
“Nazramin!”
Helbin nodded miserably. “The image you hold was made by the late sorcerer Mandes. These” — he flicked a finger toward the screw clamps — “are intended to destroy the emperor’s mind, slowly and painfully.”
Tol was far less shocked than Helbin by the statue and its purpose. It surprised him not at all to discover that the devious, traitorous Mandes had been hexing his own patron. Then Helbin’s last words suddenly sparked a revelation.
“This is how Nazramin destroyed his brother!” he exclaimed.
Image magic was the lowest, vilest form of sorcery, a practice of scrubby shamans or mercenary sorcerers. It shamed a proud wizard like Helbin to possess such a monstrous object.
Seeing it again loosed the floodgates of Helbin’s memory, and the story of how it had come to him poured out.
After Mandes’s death, one of the wizard’s servants had delivered certain scrolls and the figurine to Empress Valaran. The scrolls described how Prince Nazramin had employed Mandes to ruin the mind and body of his brother, Ackal IV, through black magic. The prince did not know, of course, that Mandes had made a second image, of Nazramin himself. The new emperor’s natural cruelty had been magnified tenfold by Mandes’s sorcery.
Tol stared at the figurine. The cunningly crafted metal face bore the perfect impression of the emperor’s outthrust chin, high forehead, arrogant eyes, and his perpetual sneer beneath an upswept mustache.
Helbin begged Tol to put the statuette back in its box. Instead, Tol asked, “If I damaged this thing, would the same hurt be inflicted on Ackal V?”
“Not literally. With sympathetic magic, parallel harm occurs,” Helbin said. The two screw clamps, he explained, were simply a representation of the power summoned to damage the emperor’s mind.
Why had Mandes sent this awful object to Valaran after his death? Tol wondered. Not for atonement. The rogue wizard had never felt a moment’s remorse in his life. No, Tol realized this was Mandes’s final act of malice. Valaran, loathing Ackal V herself and inviolate within the imperial precinct, was the perfect choice to inherit the figurine and fulfill Mandes’s plan for revenge.
He asked Helbin why Valaran had sent the statuette out of the city.
“Her Majesty enlisted me in her plan to save the empire,” Helbin said slowly. “I was glad to oblige. The bakali were pouring across the border. What everyone else saw as a disaster, Empress Valaran saw as the possible salvation of Ergoth. She ordered me to travel the countryside, using my skills to obscure the movements of the bakali host from my colleagues in the Tower of High Sorcery. Without advance knowledge of the enemy’s movements, the incompetent generals of the Great Horde stood no chance of defeating the invaders.”
The explanation took Tol’s breath away. “That’s treason!”
Helbin stiffened. “Strong medicine for an ailing patient, my lord. The emperor’s corruption and brutality will surely destroy the empire. Empress Valaran lacks powerful allies at court. She reasoned, quite sensibly, that a major military defeat would stir the provincial warlords to rise up against the emperor, inspiring the cowed warlords in Daltigoth to follow suit.”
Tol swore under his breath. Scheming wench! In her grand design, who did Valaran see leading the landed hordes to the rescue? That simple, dutiful soldier, Tol of Juramona, of course! He couldn’t decide whether her grandiose machinations filled him with pride, or fear.
“You still haven’t answered the question – why send the image out of the city with you? Why not use it to destroy Ackal V, as the Mist-Maker used one to kill the emperor’s brother?”
Helbin said distastefully, “My lord, Empress Valaran is a woman of high purpose and great courage. She would not stain her soul by stooping to Mandes’s methods. She reasoned that if conditions in the palace deteriorated too rapidly, her life, and that of her son, Crown Prince Dalar, would be in danger. Her Majesty placed the statue in my keeping to ensure it remained hidden.”
That was face-saving nonsense. Ridding herself of the figure removed the temptation to kill her husband outright. His death, at this time, would be inopportune. Valaran was of noble blood, but not royal, and she would have no support to rule herself. Claimants to the imperial throne would spring up like toadstools after a summer rain. The result would be chaos on an unimaginably bloody scale.
That’s where Tol came in. Returned to Daltigoth, he and his army could maintain order while the warlords deposed or executed the crazed Ackal V. The crown prince could be enthroned, with Valaran overtly or covertly the power behind the throne, backed by Tol’s hordes. It was a brilliant plan, devious and twisted, worthy of a lifelong resident of the imperial palace.
Helbin was still talking, but Tol had stopped listening. He grasped the clamp encircling the statuette’s temples, and the wizard yelped. Helbin might loathe the statuette and all it stood for, but it had been placed in his charge by the empress herself.
Ignoring his protestations, Tol removed the two clamps. Deep dents remained on both of the statuette’s temples and on its forehead.
“This is not how Ergoth will be saved,” Tol said. He waved Number Six, torchlight flashing off its
polished steel blade. “This is the instrument of our deliverance! Nothing else!”
He hunted up a piece of cloth from a nearby pile of loot, wrapped it around the evil image, and tied the whole thing to his back, where his mantle concealed it. After filling the small brass-bound box with coins and jewels from a nearby pile of treasure, he led a sorely complaining Helbin back to the campfire.
Queen Casberry and Tylocost were trading stories about the stupidity of humans. Kiya hailed Tol in relief.
“You arrive just in time, Husband. These two are talking us all to death!”
Tol dropped the box on the ground. Rubies and golden coins spilled out.
“That’s all there was,” he said, meeting their eyes. “Release Master Helbin from his bonds.”
Kiya wasn’t certain this was wise, but Tol said the wizard was joining their company. He directed a pointed look at Helbin, adding, “His freedom and continued good health are entirely in his own hands.”
Tol sent for horde commanders Trudo and Argonnel. The treasure confiscated from the nomads would be invaluable in sustaining their fight and must be safeguarded against any attempts by plainsmen (or others) to abscond with it. Tol wanted the treasure promptly moved, all of it.
White-haired Trudo, eldest of the commanders of the landed hordes, stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Where are we to take it?” he asked.
“To the only place strong enough to hold it: Caergoth.”
His words provoked ominous silence. Trudo and the younger Argonnel exchanged worried looks. Zala, not understanding the swift change of mood, whispered to Tylocost, “What’s the matter?”
He murmured, “Caergoth’s governor is one of the emperor’s most notorious toadies. Lord Tolandruth is proscribed. In Caergoth he can be arrested, even executed.”