by Dave Duncan
The king of Krasnegar shot him a glance as deadly as a poisoned arrow. “He is slightly prescient at times.”
“Ah!” The little man smirked.
The faun’s expression implied that strangling would be too good for him, but evidently he had accepted the inevitable. He sighed.
“You can get to Krasnegar in winter, Shandie. There is a back door, a magic portal. Any sorcery is a risk now, as you know, but devices such as portals are not easily detected if they are in good repair, and I can vouch for the workmanship in this one. ” He forced a grim smile. “You may find Zinixo waiting for you on the other side, of course.”
“Where is this magic portal? Close to us?”
“No. It’s at Kinvale, a ducal estate in northwest Julgistro. The duchess is a distant relative of Inos’. If I give you a letter, I think she will at least inform Inos, even if she will not reveal the portal itself to you. “
“I know Aquiala,” Shandie said quietly. “You do?”
The imperor smiled at Rap’s evident astonishment. “Two years ago I toured the Pondague front. I always call on the senior nobility when I visit a new district. She’s a very impressive person. “
“She never told us you’d been to Kinvale. “
“I should hope not!”
Ylo grinned to himself. The duchess owed her allegiance to her imperor, not to any foreign friends.
Acopulo rubbed his wizened hands. “His Majesty’s devotion to duty has frequently paid handsome dividends. The Gods reward diligence. “
For a moment the faun seemed to contemplate the prospect of immersing him in boiling oil. “Then the matter should be simple. Except that the journey took me six weeks.”
“And we can’t use the horse posts,” Shandie agreed. “The enemy will watch them. This is no brief campaign we are facing.”
The faun began talking about writing a letter to his wife … Rivermead was somewhere in the middle of Julgistro. It should just be possible to ride there and back before daffodil time. Ylo stifled a yawn-this had been a long day.
The king was addressing the warlock.
“The imperor goes to Krasnegar, then. I have a horrible feeling I get nominated to hunt down Grunth in the Mosweeps and do lunch for the anthropophagi in the Nogids. How about you?”
The dwarf shook his big head. “Jarga and I have some matters to attend to. Never mind us.”
The others frowned, but dwarves gave away nothing, ever, not even information.
“You’ll put us ashore somewhere?” King Rap asked.
“I think it would be safer to drop you off on fishing boats as we did with your fat friend.”
Shandie nodded, and then stretched. “Ylo goes with me. Have we a mission for Sir Acopulo? “
“Azak. “
Ylo started, wondering if he had heard correctly. Evidently so, for most of the others looked as surprised as he was. Old Sagorn was smirking. Acopulo wore an expression of horror. “The caliph?” he said. “Zark?”
“I know Azak. ” Rap smiled meanly at him. “He had a very nasty experience with sorcery in his youth. He detests it with a passion. But I dropped in to see him once-I went to collect my dog, as a matter of fact-and I detected power in use within his palace. How do you think he made himself overlord of a continent?”
Shandie swore under his breath. “He enlisted sorcerers? How?”
“Perhaps he appealed to their patriotism.”
“Olybino never told me. He never even hinted at that!” Acopulo hrumphed. “But he certainly helped you against the djinn army at Bone Pass. Perhaps that was why!”
“And that was Azak’s only real defeat! Yes, I can see that the caliph should be informed. We agreed to seek out the mundane rulers, and the caliph is the most powerful ruler.” Shandie scowled bitterly. “Except the imperor, of course! I’ll write a letter for you to take. “
“So will I,” Rap said. “He doesn’t like me, but he’s a smart man. And if he’s planning an invasion of the Impire, as everyone seems to be assuming he is, then he will be interested to know that the rules have changed.”
Obviously Shandie and Acopulo felt uneasy at that. So did Ylo, although he had never considered himself a rabid patriot. This program was sounding more and more like an attempt to rally the outlanders against the Impire. Was this what was required of outlaws?
“I have never visited Zark,” the scholar said, pouting. “The weather should be pleasant at this time of year. “
“You may find it overly warm,” King Rap said innocently. “The djinns roast spies over slow fires. So we are decided? Shandie and Ylo to Krasnegar and then perhaps Nordland? Me to the Mosweeps and Nogids. Sir Acopulo to Zark. Warlock Raspnex to wherever the Evil he wants. After that, we sing what the Gods hum.” He paused and scratched his unruly mop of hair. “IIrane … Zark … The preflecting pool? You know, I have the strangest feeling I’ve forgotten something!”
“Old age catching up with you?” Sagorn remarked acidly. “Perhaps. Well, I expect I’ll remember as soon as it’s too late. If-I survive the anthropophagi, then I may head to Ilrane and try to visit with Lith’rian. ” He regarded the imperor thoughtfully. “And you? You might think about the Nintor Moot.”
“In Nordland?”
“Why not? Every summer the thanes go to the Nintor Moot and chop each other up for sport. I don’t suppose they’ll mind a few imps to use for practice. The moot would be your only chance to spread the word in Nordland. “
For a moment the listeners fell silent. The distances involved were enormous. This campaign had begun to look like the rest of their lives. Ylo shivered. He had not realized that the pool might have been showing him not the next crop of daffodils, but the one after.
“We shall need to set up a rendezvous,” Acopulo said prissily.
The faun shook his head. “If any one of us is taken, he will reveal it. The same would be true of anyone else we had told. A rendezvous would certainly be betrayed somehow. “
“A date, then?” Shandie said, frowning. “A date for the uprising? A call to arms?”
“Not even that, and for the same reason.” The king looked to the warlock; the dwarf nodded his big head, sneering in agreement.
“You must understand,” the faun said, “that this is not a mundane war. This is not Guwush and we are not gnomish rebels opposing the Imperial might. No sneak attacks and hideouts in the forest and secret passwords. It won’t work that way!”
The imperor stared at him incredulously for a long time and no one else spoke.
Rap shrugged. “If you want a picture, it’s more like a houseful of mice planning to mob the cat.”
Shandie pulled a face. “You are saying we try to rally the mice but we don’t tell them when or where to rally? That’s crazy! What are we trying to accomplish? What do we tell these sorcerers we seek to enlist? What message do we send when we speak to mundane leaders?”
“Just that there is hope, and a cause worth fighting for.” Rap sighed. “One day there will be a battle! We don’t know when, or where, or who will provoke it. When it comes, we shall have to gamble everything we’ve got-at once, to the death. But every sorcerer in Pandemia will know of it as soon as it starts. We want them to come and help, that’s all. Until then, they can only do what we are doing-pass the word and keep the faith.”
“As I recall,” Sagom said, his tone implying that his recall was normally perfect, “all the Dragon Wars were like that. Enormous battles followed by long periods of uneasy quiet.”
Shandie sat in silence, his face blank, which was his thinking expression. Then he nodded. “I suppose it makes sense. As you say, it’s a different sort of fighting. ” He smiled faintly. “I wish you luck in the Mosweeps-and with the elf. Ylo, we head north, it would appear. “
“Sounds like fun,” Ylo said blandly. But not much.
The imperor rose and stretched. “It’s been a long day, and I’d like to
sleep on this. We all have our parts to play, it would seem. You realize that we may scatte
r tomorrow and never all meet again? May the Gods be with us!”
“Amen,” Acopulo said.
“You have left one out,” the dwarf growled.
Everyone looked to Doctor Sagorn. He glanced around at the attention, twisting his long jotunn face in an arrogant sneer that raised Ylo’s hackles.
The faun chuckled. “Old age, Doctor? How do you feel about scrambling in and out of fishing boats tomorrow?”
“I abhor the prospect. If you have concluded your deliberations, then the time has come for me to leave.”
“And go where?” the imperor barked. “Nowhere. “
Such an absurdity demanded explanation. Obviously the faun sorcerer knew the answer but was not about to disclose it. Smirking, he yawned and snuggled down more comfortably in his chair. The silence dragged on.
Glaring, the old jotunn said, “You will not warn your companions what to expect?”
“But you can tell the tale so much better than I, Doctor! And one of us certainly must.”
“Very well!” Sagorn turned to the imperor. “Your Majesty … this is a strange tale, and one I have rarely told anyone. It may sound improbable, but I shall demonstrate its truth in a moment. “
Shandie sat down again. “Carry on.”
“If I asked you to estimate my age, I expect you would guess me to be in my seventies, perhaps early eighties.”
Acopulo released a long hiss of breath.
The jotunn shot him a killer glare out of the corner of his eye. “Yes, there is sorcery involved, as you suspected and I denied. “
“When were you born?” the little man demanded.
“You will not … 2859. “
“Even better preserved than I thought!” Acopulo said jubilantly.
Now, thought Ylo, some mysteries were about to be cleared up.
Scowling, Sagorn turned back to the imperor. “I age at a normal rate, sire, but I have not lived through all the intervening years. When I was ten, I irked a sorcerer. I was the youngest of a group of five boys whose presence in his house in the middle of the night he found distasteful, as he had not instigated it. In retribution, he laid a sequential spell on us.”
Shandie’s eyes narrowed. “Explain `sequential spell.’ “
“It means that only one of us can exist at a time. “
“The artist!” Ylo had shouted without meaning to; he had made everyone jump.
Sagom pouted-his long upper lip was well shaped for pouting. “As you say, the artist. Master Jalon is one of the five. At one time he was older than I, in fact I think he was the oldest. How old does he seem now-late twenties? When you forced your way into our house last night, Jalon was present. You demanded to see me, but I did not exist! That was why he refused to let the centurion accompany him when he went to fetch me. He invoked the spell, and I replaced him. Now he does not exist. I propose to depart by the same method, which should wipe the skeptical expression off your pretty young face.”
“So sometimes you are you and sometimes you are Jalon?” Sagorn grimaced impatiently. “You do not listen, boy. I am not Jalon, and never have been. I do share his memories, but we are two separate people.”
“So now you disappear,” Shandie asked, “and Master Jalon appears?”
“No.”
The king of Krasnegar seemed to be struggling with a need to laugh.
Sagorn glared at him briefly. “There are constraints, sire. I can neither call the man who called me, nor the man I called the last time. “
“Perhaps you should also explain the time limits,” King Rap said, turning pink with his suppressed mirth.
“Why?” snarled the jotunn. “Oh, well … There are other restrictions. They are complicated, but in short I could not remain here for more than a few days.”
“Rap!” the imperor barked. “Share the joke!”
The faun flushed even redder as he struggled to catch his breath. “It may not seem as funny to you as it does to me. For many years, Doctor Sagorn and his … associates, I suppose is the word. They are never a group and yet they are not exactly separate, either. But for over a century they kept on trying to find some way to break the spell that bound them-tried one at a time, of course. When I was a much more powerful sorcerer than I am now, I removed it for them. They were reunited! Then they discovered that they disliked the experience and changed their minds. At their request, I put it back again. But Sagom had been hogging more than his share of the years, and another of them, Thinal, had been shirking. They agreed that they ought to cooperate more, so I rearranged the original sorcery a little. Now they have to be more considerate of one another. That’s all. The doctor can’t stay around as long as the others can, so they will eventually catch up with him in age. Thinal can’t just vanish right away every time and stay forever young. And if Sagorn says that now he can’t remain with us very long, that means that lately he’s been hogging again.”
The old man bared his teeth in a snarl. “I was engaged in a very complex piece of research!”
The faun smothered another snigger. “Oh, quite!”
The audience looked at one another. It sounded like some sort of elaborate hoax, and yet neither man was the type to indulge in such foolery.
“I want a demonstration!” Shandie said coldly. “As you wish, sire.”
The king chuckled. “You can’t call Jalon, because he called you. So who will be the new recruit to our cause? Whom will his Majesty have the honor of meeting?”
“I shall let you choose.” The old man was enraged by the mockery. “Last time I called Andor. You have a choice of Darad or Thinal. “
“Darad?” Ylo said. “The gladiator?”
“That’s the one,” Rap said. “But we have no work for him at the moment, so we should save him for later. I look forward to meeting Thinal again-an invaluable recruit, who can play a noble role in our mission.”
“Highly improbable! ” Sagorn snapped, and another man was sitting in his clothes.
He was youthful, and an imp-a slim, dark youngster with poxy features. He glanced all around cautiously, then slid down on one knee and bowed his head to the imperor.
Acopulo had turned pale. Even Shandie was displaying shock. The dwarf was leering, seemingly as amused as the faun. “This,” the king of Krasnegar said, “is Master Thinal.”
“A businessman,” Thinal muttered without looking up. “Oh, Gods! A businessman, sire.”
“What sort of business?” Shandie demanded.
“Monkey business! ” King Rap threw his head back and roared with laughter.
Parts to play:
A place in the ranks awaits you,
Each man has some part to play;
The Past and the Future are nothing,
In the face of the stern Today.
— Adelaide Anne Proctor, Now
FOUR
True avouch
1
In a gray foggy dawn, the fishermen put Lord Umpily safely ashore on an icy jetty somewhere on the east side of Hub. He did not know whether it lay within the bounds of the capital proper or in some best-forgotten suburb-he was just glad to have land under his feet again. He had expected to be relieved of his bag of sorcerous gold and dropped overboard in the night.
Muttering prayers of gratitude to the appropriate Gods, he struggled off through snow-packed alleys in search of an inn. Emotionally he was sure he would be coshed and robbed before he found one, even though intellectually he knew that his apprehension was excessive-that no one else could know what caused that bulge in his cloak. His cloak bulged in many places. The lump that bothered him had a harder center than the others, but its mere appearance should not attract undue suspicion. Yet every time he passed a dark doorway, he thought he heard it jingle.
Umpily was no stranger to wild adventuring. He had visited almost every corner of the Impire in the past few hectic years, but then he had always been accompanied by well-armed youngsters prepared to bleed in his defense if necessary. Being alone did make a difference.
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Unmolested, cold, wet, hungry, and stinking of fish, he stamped into the Sailors’ Haven. He had patronized worse, although not often. He demanded a room with a fire, hot water, and breakfast. He sent the potboy off to the nearest tailor with orders to attend him at once, bringing a selection of raiment suitable for a gentleman of stalwart physique.
As Umpily was stripping off his wet clothes, he came upon the magic scroll in his pocket. It unrolled into an oblong strip of vellum no larger than his hand, completely blank. With it was the silverpoint the warlock had given him, although he had been told that any writing instrument would suffice. He wrote, Am ashore. Streets impassable. Bells still ringing. He let the leather roll up again and laid it on the dresser. The bells were important because they meant that the old man was not buried yet. The life of the city must be almost at a halt, with travel blocked by snow and the population driven half insane by the incessant tolling.
When a wanner, cleaner Umpily rang to summon breakfast, it was brought up by the landlord himself. The tray was copiously heaped with plain winter fare-broiled beef and dumplings and a bread pudding, all washed down with a passable porter. Umpily ate until he could eat no more, as was his custom, but he encouraged the fellow to remain and talk. The man seethed with complaint-business had come to a stop, the bar was almost deserted, roofs were leaking, fuel was short, fish spoiled on the quays, and so on. He lamented all through Umpily’s meal, except when he had to run downstairs to fetch seconds.
Satisfied at last, Umpily sent the man off with the dishes, demanding ink, paper, and quills. Then he sat back to digest and consider.
His mission was to discover what was happening in the capital and then report it all to Shandie. Right now he could not do so. The bells had informed everyone that the old imperor was dead, but the smothering snowstorm had stopped all other news from reaching even this far. Here, just five leagues from the Opal Palace, no one yet knew that the wardens’ thrones in the Rotunda had been destroyed, or that the new imperor had promptly vanished from the palace, or that several buildings in the southern precincts had exploded in fire and ruin. Even Umpily himself did not know if the Red Palace had survived the siege. He was not certain that the old Imperor’s funeral could proceed without the new imperor’s participation. If it couldn’t, he decided, the entire population would soon be driven mad by those Evil-begotten bells, himself included.