by Ian Irvine
‘Chissmoul,’ said Flydd, ‘head to the main city square and hover, fifty spans up so they can’t see me, while I make the announcement.’
She turned towards a large paved square, actually pentagonal in outline, in the wealthy part of the city. An ornate marble building of several storeys, fronted with columns, extended along a third of its northern edge. A series of domes soared from the centre of the structure, framed with pairs of tall, slender towers on each corner.
‘That’s the governor’s palace,’ said Flydd.
‘You know Taranta, then?’ said Nish.
‘Of course; I’ve been here several times. It was the wealthiest city in the tropics once, but it fell on hard times when the Sea of Perion dried up, thousands of years ago. The enormous mansion on the far side of the square belongs to Jal-Nish’s seneschal – the governor’s rival in Taranta.’
As they went lower, Nish saw that the columns of the palace were grimy and the stone was pitted, while the once magnificent paintwork above the portico was faded and flaking.
‘Hover here,’ said Flydd as they approached the governor’s palace. ‘Now, how did Klarm work that amplifying spell to throw his voice so far?’
He thought for a moment, touched his throat while holding the serpent staff, then stood on the prow of the air-sled and spoke in a rolling, sonorous voice that echoed across the square and back. Nish knew it as Flydd’s scrutator’s voice, the one he’d once used to persuade, to charm, and to get his way, and he had been a master of that Art.
‘Folk of Taranta, I call upon you one and all, from the highest to the lowest, in the name of the God-Emperor.’
People appeared at windows and doorways. Shopkeepers looked up from the market booths clustered at the far side of the square. Dignitaries and officials came running down the steps of the palace, and burst out of the front door of the seneschal’s mansion.
‘Folk of Taranta,’ Flydd repeated, ‘in the name of the God-Emperor Jal-Nish Hlar, I bring urgent news of the war. You are required to assemble in the old square in the peasant quarter one hour after sundown, to hear the news.’
‘The peasant quarter!’ cried a large, florid man wearing extravagant robes of black and crimson, as though Flydd had insulted him personally.
Flydd ignored him, and the air-sled drifted over Taranta for the next hour while he repeated the announcement over every public square and local market.
‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Let’s get on with it. Chissmoul, to the peasant quarter.’
Its old square was also surrounded by manors, mansions and great public buildings, once magnificent but now fallen into sad decay. The vast square had been hastily lit by a thousand lanterns, large and small, their oily fumes drifting in dark grey clouds across the assembly.
The place was packed to overflowing and abuzz with excitement, for the God-Emperor of all Santhenar was not given to public proclamations and indeed, may not ever have visited Taranta before. And if he had, Nish thought, Father certainly would not have deigned to address the common folk.
As he looked over the side, he noted dozens of patches of colour in different parts of the square, each marking the individual racial or ethnic attire of a group of the myriad peoples who dwelt in Taranta, from the scarlets and browns of the desert dwellers who went veiled against the sand-storms on the high plateaux of Faranda, to the striking mustard-yellow gowns of the former Dry Sea salt-gleaners, now driven into poverty-stricken exile by the flooding of that vast abyss, to the sapphire blue blouses and emerald kilts of the whelk gatherers of the city foreshores, and many others he had no knowledge of.
The city governor sat in a gilded throne on a platform in the centre of the square, and the God-Emperor’s seneschal – the florid fellow who wore the black and crimson robes – on another throne of equal magnificence, the two men glaring at each other, forever kept as rivals, yet forever subordinate to the whim of the God-Emperor, who had held the reins of power tightly and delegated only when he had to.
And even then, the empire kept a careful lookout. Nish saw that, at the four quarters of the square, tower-mounted wisp-watchers were whirring back and forth, their watch unceasing, their vision all-seeing, reporting everything of moment to Gatherer – assuming Gatherer was in a place where it could receive such messages, of course.
Nish wondered, briefly, where Klarm was now, if he were still alive. What would happen to the tears if he were not?
A brightly clad contingent of military officers occupied the table to the right of the seneschal, the beribboned commander of the military garrison at their head.
Other dignitaries and city elders had their own tables nearby, but the greatest of all, a board ten spans long and three wide, and so polished that Nish could make out the reflection of the air-sled in it, had been laid out well-spaced from any other, as befitted the God-Emperor of the civilised world. His table and magnificent throne were empty, of course.
‘How did they do all this in an hour?’ Nish marvelled.
‘They’re expecting to see the God-Emperor,’ said Flydd. ‘And he does not tolerate failure, or personal indignity, in large ways or small.’
‘Do you think this is a good idea?’
‘What?’
‘Allowing them to believe that Father is aboard the air-sled? They’ll be angry when they discover they’ve been tricked.’
‘I dare say,’ said Flydd, ‘but if we had revealed ourselves in advance it would have given our enemies time to prepare an attack. This way, they’ll be as surprised as anyone.’
‘They may already be suspicious.’
‘Why would they be? When your God-Emperor has been all-powerful for a decade, and has crushed all opposition, his defeat is unthinkable until it actually happens. Quiet now – it’s time.’ He nodded to Chissmoul. ‘Hover twenty spans above the God-Emperor’s table.’
‘You’re not proposing to go down, are you, surr?’ Chissmoul said anxiously, her previous outrage forgotten.
‘Certainly not,’ said Flydd. ‘But be ready for a hasty getaway in case they don’t appreciate what I’ve got to say. Tell your militia to stay down, Nish,’ he warned. ‘I wouldn’t want to lose anyone overboard.’
Nish gestured to his troops, who were peering over the sides in a yokelish and undignified fashion. Chissmoul hovered over the God-Emperor’s table. Flydd renewed his voice-amplifying spell and went to the bow, hanging on to the serpent staff with his left hand.
The wisp-watchers and loop-listeners swung around to point at him and so, Nish noted, did various smaller devices on the tops of other buildings, each operated by a black-robed scrier. Already they would be trying to identify Flydd, though they were unlikely to succeed, since few people alive had seen his renewed self.
We’ll never get away with it, Nish thought. The eyes and spies of the God-Emperor never sleep. And Father might be gone, but the command structure he put in place is intact and will crush any insurgency as brutally as he would.
‘Seneschal, Governor, Commander, city elders, and people of Taranta,’ Flydd boomed. ‘I bring you the gravest tidings.’
He paused while a stir rustled from one end of the gathering to the other.
‘That’s not the God-Emperor,’ someone cried.
‘Who is it?’ yelled another.
The dignitaries rose to their feet, staring at the air-sled. The Imperial seneschal was gesturing to a red-robed chief scrier, while the commander of the garrison was speaking urgently to his officers.
‘You’d better tell them, quick,’ said Nish.
Flydd moved closer to the edge, raised his voice, and put a little of his rhetorical Art into it.
‘My name is Xervish Flydd.’ He paused as a louder murmur ran through the crowd. ‘Many of you will know of me, for I was a scrutator and commander-in-chief at the end of the lyrinx war.’
The buzz of talk, quickly silenced, indicated that he was remembered, though not necessarily favourably by all. Flydd had taken hard decisions at that time, and Nish knew h
e had made many enemies.
‘My face is different,’ Flydd went on, ‘because, hunted near to death by the God-Emperor, I had no choice but to use a great spell, which few mancers have survived, to renew my failing body. But inside I am the same Xervish Flydd who fought and routed the enemy lyrinx, then negotiated an honourable peace … when all others wanted nothing but eternal war.’
‘That’s not how I remember it,’ Nish hissed. ‘The peace wasn’t your idea –’
‘Shut up,’ Flydd said in his own voice. ‘There’s a purpose behind my every word.’
‘There had better be.’
Flydd raised his free hand and used the amplified voice again. ‘You are wondering why I am in command of the God-Emperor’s own air-sled, and calling this conclave in his name. I bear grave tidings to the people of Taranta, indeed, to all Santhenar. The gravest tidings of all.’
He paused for a minute to let that sink in, and continued. ‘As you know, several weeks ago the God-Emperor’s proud army, ten thousand of his finest troops, set out from Taranta to cross the Range of Ruin by the high pass called Blister-bone. They marched to punish the little land of Gendrigore for sheltering the God-Emperor’s only surviving son, Cryl-Nish Hlar, and the army was commanded by the dwarf, General Klarm.
‘The advance guard crossed the pass, and so did the God-Emperor, riding on this very air-sled, and there he met his son. Nish commanded a pathetic little militia of Gendrigorean farmers and hunters armed with mattocks and cudgels – just three hundred and fifty men and women.’
There came a stir from the rear of the air-sled, and Nish could understand why. What was Flydd up to, denigrating his militia in this way?
‘Yes,’ Flydd went on, ‘Gendrigore has fallen so low that it even sent women into the front line of battle.’
The militia began to mutter among themselves.
‘Nish, shut them up before they ruin everything,’ Flydd said from the corner of his mouth.
Nish ran back. ‘Flydd knows what he’s doing,’ he said quietly. ‘Please give him the chance.’
‘He speaks with the forked tongue of his iron serpent,’ Clech growled, sitting up on his stretcher, but he gestured to the militia and they fell silent.
‘But before Jal-Nish could do battle with his son’s little ragtag militia,’ said Flydd, ‘something happened that no one on Santhenar, not even the all-seeing God-Emperor, could have foreseen. A mighty being from the void, an immortal creature called Stilkeen, materialised out of nothingness, seized him in its claws and took him hostage.’
The crowd gasped, cried out, stared at one another, then everyone began shouting at once. The governor stood up, held up his hand and the clamour ceased.
‘I don’t believe you,’ he said with an anxious glance at the chief scrier and the seneschal, as if he would be held personally responsible for Flydd’s heretical statement. ‘The God-Emperor has never been defeated; and he never will be.’
‘Be assured that he has been taken,’ said Flydd, ‘overcome in an instant, despite his mighty Profane Tears. And Stilkeen will only return him in exchange for a treasure beyond price – chthonic fire – stolen from it thousands of years ago.’
‘Your tale grows more outlandish by the minute,’ shouted the governor. ‘What is chthonic fire, and who stole it?’
‘It is the dreadful force of binding, and unbinding, that caused the volcanic death of Aachan. You remember, I’m sure, that fifty thousand Aachim fled to Santhenar in a fleet of constructs thirteen years ago, because their world was being destroyed before their eyes. Chthonic fire did that. And now, if we are not very careful, it will wreak the same havoc on Santhenar.’
There was a long pause. Flydd’s losing them, Nish thought. He’s made it too complicated, and he’s taking too long to get to the point.
‘Who stole the fire?’ bellowed the God-Emperor’s seneschal, not to be outdone by his rival. He whispered to a runner beside him and the man ran off, elbowing his way through the crowd.
‘The Charon, Yalkara, but that no longer matters,’ said Flydd hastily, evidently sensing that the situation was slipping from his grasp. ‘Since Stilkeen holds the God-Emperor hostage, there is no choice but to find this chthonic fire.’
‘What has this to do with you, an outlaw with a price on your head?’ said the governor. ‘And before that you were a lying scrutator, so why should we listen to anything you say?’
Flydd lowered his voice until the crowd had to stand on tiptoes and cup their hands around their ears to hear him. ‘I’ll tell you why –’
‘You have no authority,’ snapped the governor. ‘The God-Emperor’s deputy is General Klarm and we take our orders from him alone – or in his absence, someone who bears his signed and sealed authority. Should Klarm require us to find this chthonic fire, we will act on his word instantly, but as for you – begone!’
Flydd stood at the prow, holding the serpent staff, a faint smile creasing his broad features. ‘Are you finished?’
‘Nothing more needs be asked, or said.’
‘You haven’t asked about the God-Emperor’s army.’
The governor said, as if by rote, ‘The God-Emperor’s forces are as numberless as the stars in the sky, and in ten years they have never been defeated. They will crush Gendrigore like a cockroach on a dinner plate and carry its rebellious inhabitants into everlasting slavery.’
‘Ah!’ said Flydd, and paused meaningfully. ‘But –’
‘What?’ cried the governor.
Flydd just stood there, looking down his nose and smiling.
‘What do you know?’ cried the seneschal.
After another agonisingly long pause, Flydd said, ‘Over the past few days, there has been an almighty battle on the Range of Ruin.’
‘And our glorious army annihilated the upstart Gendrigoreans,’ said the seneschal.
‘Alas,’ said Flydd, ‘it did not. Several days ago, Nish’s little militia, in a surprise attack, seized the impregnable pass of Blisterbone.’
The seneschal swayed and grasped at the nearest object, a water carafe, for support, but it shattered in his hand. He looked down stupidly at his bloody palm. ‘But so small a number could never hold it – not even Blisterbone – against ten thousand.’
‘They held it,’ said Flydd.
‘It isn’t possible.’
‘They held it,’ Flydd repeated, and now his voice boomed out in triumph across the vast square. ‘With courage and guile, and sheer bloody determination to save their country, whatever it took, Nish’s Gendrigoreans held off Jal-Nish’s army again and again. They fought their enemy to a standstill and, at midday today, when the remnants of the God-Emperor’s once proud army finally retreated from the pass, only a broken and beaten hundred survived.’
‘No!’ cried the governor. ‘This cannot be!’
The Imperial seneschal swayed on his feet. The commander of the garrison drew his brightly uniformed officers into a huddle. Several people screamed, a hundred wailed, and then, as the catastrophe sank in, a dreadful lamentation ebbed and flowed across the square.
‘It was the greatest defeat in the history of the God-Emperor,’ Flydd went on inexorably when the clamour had died down. ‘Of ten thousand men, only one hundred survived, plus the dwarf, Klarm. While of the militia –’
He gestured behind him and Nish waved his troops to their feet. Chissmoul tilted the air-sled and slowly circled the square so everyone could see the heroes. ‘Here they are. Forty-two, counting the injured,’ Flydd concluded. ‘People of Taranta, you stand in the presence of giants.’
‘Where are our hundred?’ said the beribboned commander of the garrison. ‘We cannot take your word for this.’
The seneschal caught his arm and whispered in his ear. The commander nodded. Another runner was sent.
Before he had disappeared, however, the short, red-robed chief scrier came striding across the square, two attendants before him knocking everyone out of his path with their knobble sticks, two behind hauli
ng a head-high device on a wheeled cart. It looked like a combination of a loop-listener and a snoop-sniffer, and Nish felt a worm of ice crawl up his backbone. What had the scrier discovered?
‘Your hundred are marching down the track from Blisterbone,’ said Flydd hastily. ‘They are the bravest of men and I salute them,’ he snapped upright, performing the action, ‘but the really wet season is about to break and without aid they cannot survive.’
‘Why does this matter?’ hissed Nish. ‘Get on with it.’
‘It matters,’ Flydd replied quietly, ‘because they corroborate our story. They have to be heard.’
‘We cannot lose an entire army to so few,’ said the commander, who was white-faced and haggard. Under the God-Emperor’s reign, he would bear part of the responsibility for the shattering defeat. ‘We would become a laughing stock. There would be uprisings; civil war.’
‘I could not countenance that either,’ said Flydd. ‘You must find a way to rescue them.’
The scrier slithered in behind the seneschal and began whispering to him.
‘How can that be done?’ said the commander.
‘Nothing can save them while they remain in the treacherous high peaks of the Range of Ruin. No flying craft, save an air-sled, could negotiate the furious updraughts there. But should the survivors reach the lower parts of the range, you could ferry them out on an air-dreadnought.’
‘There are no air-dreadnoughts,’ said the commander, ‘but we might muster an obsolete air-floater or two.’
‘Then do so without delay,’ Flydd said with lowered voice. ‘Morale must be maintained at all costs.’
‘And General Klarm?’ said the governor. ‘What of our mighty dwarf?’
‘He lives,’ said Flydd.
‘After such a defeat he should have been the first to fall on his sword,’ grated the commander.
‘And I’m sure he would have,’ Flydd said smoothly, ‘save that he has a greater responsibility, one I’m sure you have not forgotten. In the God-Emperor’s absence General Klarm wields the Profane Tears and is responsible for the maintenance of the realm. And though I am now and ever will be Klarm’s most bitter enemy, I will not demean him in your eyes, for he has an even more vital task to perform.’