Emperor and Clown

by Dave Duncan

  If Aunt Oro asked any questions, of course, he'd have to tell the truth, and if he was still limping . . .

  "The matter of Krasnegar has already been settled, signed and sealed!" Ythbane was shouting. Bad sign. He shouted a lot these days. He'd never shouted before Grandfather got old.

  Shouting wasn't going to do him much good with the jotunn, though. The big silver beard parted to show big yellow teeth. "With respect, Eminence —" He didn't look respectful. "— the document we initialed was merely a memorandum of agreement. It was always subject to the approval of the Thanes' Moot."

  "And you were to send it —"

  "It is on its way to Nordland. I respectfully remind your Eminence, though, that Nordland is months away, and the Moot meets only once a year, at midsummer."

  The ministers were whispering at Ythbane's back, the secretaries and heralds fretting and shuffling. The jotnar were smirking. Ythbane seemed to swell, all pompous in his toga with a purple hem. "So it will not be ratified until next summer —"

  "Isn't that obvious?"

  "— but until then —"

  "No! Until the news reaches Hub! You do realize that the return journey will also take months?" The pale-skinned old man leered down at the consul, and his manner was so like the one Ythbane himself used on Shandie that Shandie almost disgraced himself by giggling. Ythbane would kill him if he did that.

  Ythbane swung around and whispered for a moment with Lord Humaise, and Lord Hithire, and a couple of other new advisors Shandie didn't know; then he turned around to confront the ambassador again, his face dark as a postilion's boot.

  "The wording of the memorandum was very specific. Until the Moot's decision is conveyed to his Imperial Majesty's council, both sides shall act as if the agreement has been ratified in formal treaty. The king will remain in —"

  "King?"

  "Oh . . . what's his name? . . . the former Duke of Kinvale!" Ythbane was snarling. He was ever so mad now, and . . . Oh, no! Shandie's dead arm had drooped so low that the train of his toga was starting to slide off it. God of Children! What did he do now?

  ". . . and you were to nominate a viceroy pro tem, subject to . . ." The consul was growing even louder and madder. He would stay mad for days after this. Shandie needed to yawn. His toga was falling off him. He really needed to go pee. He wasn't much interested in Krasnegar — he'd overheard a few whispers that it was a sellout, that the Council had settled for a paper triumph and given the kingdom to the jotnar. If that was so, then Shandie would take it back when he was grown up and a warrior imperor, but right now he was too weary to care. Another pleat slid off his hand.

  Ythbane had finished, but whatever he'd said had not impressed the big blond bear.

  "I am an ambassador, not a plenipotentiary, Eminence, as you know. I never professed to have the power to override the thane's personal rights in this matter. Indeed, if he chooses to press his claim, then the Moot itself would back him as King of Krasnegar. The thanes would never infringe a privilege of one of their own number." He glanced round at his companions, who grinned; then he added, "Not this one's, anyway!"

  "Kalkor is a murdering, raping, barbar —"

  Now the ambassador swelled, and to much better effect than Ythbane had managed. He stepped closer, his fair face ominously flushed. "Do I report your words to the thane as official Imperial policy, or as your personal opinions?" His bellow reverberated down from the dome.

  Ythbane fell back a pace. The ministers exchanged worried glances; the jotunn flunkies grinned again.

  "Well?" roared the ambassador, still wanting an answer.

  "What'th all the sthouting?" a new voice said.

  Shandie jumped and looked around before he could stop himself.

  Grandfather was awake! He was slumped awkwardly in his seat, but he was awake. His right eye was open, the left half closed as always, and he was drooling, as always, but obviously he was having one of his good spells, and Shandie was glad, glad, glad! — they were so rare now! It was as if the old man had gone away, like Aunt Oro, and it made Shandie feel all cozy-nice to see him come back, although it would only be for a few minutes.

  And Grandfather had noticed Shandie! He smiled down at him. "You're toga'th come tooth, tholdier," he said quietly. But he was smiling, not angry at all! And Shandie must move to obey an imperial command, whether Ythbane liked it or not. Quickly he gathered up the fallen folds with his right hand, looping them back on his left arm, and he lifted that useless limb back into place and held it there. The pleating was an awful scrimmage, but it would have to do. He smiled briefly, gratefully, up at Grandfather, then turned to stare across at the White Throne again, going as still as a stone pillar again. Pity he'd had no excuse to move his feet a bit.

  Ythbane had recovered from his surprise. He bowed to the throne. "A discussion of the Krasnegar matter, your Majesty."

  "Thought that wath all thettled?" Grandfather's voice was very slurred nowadays, and quiet, but the words obviously staggered the courtiers. Clearly he still understood more than they had believed.

  "Ambassador Krushjor's views of the concordat —"

  "Memorandum!" the ambassador roared.

  "Whaz 'e want?" the imperor mumbled.

  Ythbane scowled. "He demands safe conduct for Thane Kalkor to come here to Hub to negotiate in person on a matter —"

  "— he has the best claim to the throne of Krasn —" Krushjor bellowed, much louder than the consul.

  "— burning and looting —"

  "— thane of Gark, and an honored —"

  "— ever dares show his face —"

  Then . . . sudden silence, with everyone staring up at the throne behind Shandie's left shoulder. If it wasn't sorcery, then Grandfather must have gestured.

  "Kalkor?" the tired old voice whispered.

  "Yes, Sire! The same murdering raider who has been killing and looting all through the Summer Seas for months. The Navy's Southern Command has been completely reorganized over the matter, as your Majesty will recall, but too late to stop this Kalkor escaping westward, through Dyre Channel. He sacked three towns in Krul's Bay and is now apparently in, or near to, Uthle. He has the audacity to propose that he sail his infamous orca longship up the Ambly River — all the way to Cenmere!"

  Ministers and secretaries shook their heads in disbelief. Senators rumbled with outrage. Shandie had been reading up on that geography just yesterday: the Nogid Archipelago, and the horrid anthropophagi (q.v.), and the Mosweep Mountains, and trolls . . .

  "Worse!" Ythbane added loudly. "He, a notorious pirate, demands to be recognized as sovereign ruler of Gark, as if it were an independent state, so he can negotiate directly with your Imperial Majesty on the matter of Krasnegar. He furthermore demands safe conduct for —"

  "Granted!"

  Ythbane choked, stared, then said, "Sire?" disbelievingly.

  "If he'th here behaving himthelf, then he'th not looting thomewhere elsh."

  There was a long, shocked silence, then the consul bowed. "As your Majesty commands." The senators were glaring.

  "When he leavth, tell the Navy," Grandfather said wearily.

  Smiles flashed among ministers and secretaries and heralds. Ripples of mirth rolled through senatorial ranks. The jotnar scowled angrily. Ythbane even put on his smile face, briefly — which wasn't a smile like anyone else's.

  Shandie heard a sort of groan from Grandfather and desperately wanted to turn and look, but he daren't, and besides, he was suddenly feeling awfully sick in his stomach. There was a funny ringing in his head, too.

  "Safe conduct for Thane Kalkor and how many men, Ambassador?" the consul inquired with icy politeness.

  "Forty-five jotnar and one goblin."

  Ythbane had already turned to give orders, but at that he spun back to Krushjor, "Goblin?"

  Grandfather was snoring again. The sunlight was fading.

  "A goblin," the ambassador said, "male, apparently."

  "What's he doing with a goblin?"

&nbs
p; "No idea. Perhaps he looted him from somewhere? You ask — I won't! But his letter was very insistent that he will be bringing a goblin with him to Hub."

  Suddenly the ringing in Shandie's ears swelled to a roar. The step swayed beneath him. He staggered and heard himself cry out.

  As he pitched forward, the last thing he saw was Ythbane's dark eyes watching him.

  2

  Far, far to the east, evening drew near to Arakkaran. Yet white sails still sprinkled the great blue bay, and the bazaars were thronged. Palms danced in the warm and salty winds — winds that wafted odors of dung and ordure in through windows and scents of musk and spices and gardenias along foul alleys. All day, as every day, by ship and camel, mule and wagon, the wealth of the land had flowed into the shining city.

  Jotunn sailors had toiled in the docks, while elsewhere a scattering of other folk had plied their trades: impish traders, dwarvish craftsmen, elvish artists, mermaid courtesans, and gnomish cleaners; but these outsiders were very few amid the teeming natives. Tall and ruddy, swathed mostly in flowing robes, the djinns had argued and gossiped as always in their harsh Zarkian dialect; they had bargained and quarreled, laughed and loved like any other people. And if they had also lied and cheated a little more than most — well, anyone who didn't know the rules must be a stranger, so why worry?

  At the top of the city stood the palace of the sultan, a place of legendary beauty and blood-chilling reputation; and there, upon a shaded balcony, Princess Kadolan of Krasnegar was quietly going insane.

  Almost two days now had passed since her niece had married the sultan, and Kadolan had heard nothing since. Inosolan might as well have vanished from the world. Of course a newly married couple could be expected to treasure their privacy, but this total silence was ominous and unsettling. Inosolan would never treat her aunt this way by choice.

  Kadolan was a prisoner in all but name. Her questions went unanswered, the doors were locked and guarded. She was attended by taciturn strangers. She would never have claimed to have friends in Arakkaran, but she did have many acquaintances now among the ladies of the palace; persons she could address by name, share tea and chat with, whiling away a gentle hour or two. She had asked for many, with no result.

  Especially she had asked for Mistress Zana. Kadolan had a hunch that Zana's was the most sympathetic ear she was likely to find, but even Zana had failed to return her messages.

  Something was horribly wrong. By rights, the palace should be rejoicing. Not only was there a royal wedding and a new Sultana Inosolan to celebrate, but also the death of Rasha. Arakkaran was free of the sorceress who had effectively ruled it for more than a year. That should be a cause for merriment, but instead a miasma of fear filled the air, seeping from marble and tile to cloud the sun's fierce glare.

  It must be all imagination, Kadolan told herself repeatedly as she paced, but an insistent inner voice whispered that she had never been prone to such morbid fancies before. Although no one outside Krasnegar would have known it, and few there, she was almost seventy years old. After so long a life, she should be able to trust her instincts, and her instincts were shouting that something was very, very wrong.

  She had left Inosolan at the door of the royal quarters. Two nights and two days had passed since then.

  The days had been hard, filled with bitter loneliness and worry. The nights had been worse, haunted by dreams of Rasha's terrible end. Foolish, foolish woman! Again and again Kadolan had wakened from nightmares of that awful burning skeleton, that fearful, tragic corpse raising its arms to the heavens in a final rending cry of, LOVE! — only to vanish in a final roar of flame.

  Four words of power made a sorcerer. Five destroyed.

  Master Rap had whispered a word in Rasha's ear, and she had been consumed.

  The balcony was high. Over roofs and cloisters Kadolan had a distant view of one of the great courtyards, where brown-clad guards had passed to and fro all day, escorting princes in green or, rarely, groups of black-draped women. Horsemen paraded sometimes. They were too far off for her to make out details, and yet something about the way they all moved had convinced her that they were as troubled as she.

  She had erred.

  So had Inosolan.

  A God had warned Inosolan to trust in love, and she had taken that to mean that she must trust in Azak's love, that in time she would learn to return the love of that giant barbarian she had married.

  And then, too late . . .

  He was only a stableboy. Kadolan had never even met him until that last night in Krasnegar. She had not exchanged a word with him directly. She did not know him. No one did — he was only a stableboy! Not handsome or charming or educated or cultured, just a commonplace laborer in the palace stables. But he had saved Inosolan from the devious Andor, and when the sorceress had abducted Inosolan, he had shouted, "I am coming!"

  How could they have known? Crossing the whole of Pandemia in half a year, fighting his way in through the massed guards of the family men, removing the sorceress by telling her one of his two words of power — even if he had not planned the terrible results.

  The God had not meant Azak. The God had meant the stableboy, the childhood friend.

  It was all so obvious now.

  Too late.

  And the boy . . . man . . . Rap?

  At best he was chained in some awful dungeon somewhere, under peril of the sultan's jealousy. At worst he was already dead, although she feared that death itself might not be the worst.

  Even that last awful night in Krasnegar, Kadolan should have realized that a stableboy who knew a word of power was no ordinary churl. And somewhere on his journey he had learned a second word; he had become an adept, a superman. That was an astounding feat in itself, but even two words of power could not save him now.

  To and fro . . . to and fro . . . Kadolan paced and paced.

  She had been Inosolan's chaperon and counselor. She should have given better advice.

  She had tried, she recalled. She had been inclined to trust Rasha, where Inosolan had not. What better things might then have happened? Who now could know? Kadolan had warned against the flight into the desert, which had ended so ignominiously, in defeat and forced return. But Kadolan had not been insistent enough.

  So Inosolan was doomed to a life of harem captivity, bearing sons in an alien land. Her kingdom was lost, abandoned by the impire and the wardens to the untender mercies of the Nordland thanes.

  And the boy Rap was dead or dying, and that guilt tortured Kadolan worse than anything.

  Love or mere loyalty, neither should be so cruelly repaid.

  She had never put much stock in magic. She was not a very imaginative person, she knew, and she had never quite believed in the occult — not even when she had sensed the death of Inosolan's mother and gone racing back to Krasnegar, fleeing from Kinvale at three days' notice to catch the last ship before winter. In retrospect, that had been a miraculous premonition, and yet she had refused to believe, she had never told anyone. Holindarn had accepted that her arrival was a merely a fortunate coincidence. Inosolan had been too young to wonder about it at all.

  The balcony had grown insufferably hot below the westering sun. Reeling with weariness from her endless pacing, Kadolan tottered indoors and sank into a padded chair.

  By the palace standards, her new quarters were almost an insult — old and shabby, absurdly overfurnished with ugly statuary in the style of the XIVth Dynasty, which must be loot from some long-forgotten campaign. It was almost as if she had been locked up in a boxroom until someone figured out what to do with her.

  Why, oh, why would Inosolan not answer her messages?

  Had they ever reached her?

  3

  Farther down the hillside, in the middle of the city, evening shadows lay cool and blue across Sheik Elkarath's jeweled garden, and the air was fragrant with jasmine and mimosa. The earliest stars twinkled, fountains tinkled.

  Master Skarash was definitely tipsy now. He reached for th
e wine bottle and discovered that it was empty. He tossed it into a hibiscus. How many did that make? What did it matter? What was the cost of a few bottles of wine against the profits to be made from a major business partnership? Opportunities like this came rarely in any merchant's lifetime, and Grandsire was going to be enormously proud of him. Of course the details were still somewhat obscure and extremely complex, and would have to be worked out very carefully in the morning, when both parties were more alert, but there was no doubt that this evening's jollity would reap huge wealth in the future for the House of Elkarath. It would be the first coup of a very long and successful career.

  Skarash bellowed loudly for one of his cousins to fetch more wine. He peered blearily at his drinking companion.

  "You did say exclusive license, sir?"

  "Absolutely," said the visitor. "The Imperial court prefers to deal with a single supplier for each commodity — or even several commodities. It saves superfluous bookkeeping, you understand."

  Skarash nodded wisely, hiccupped, and shouted again for wine. How wise Grandsire had been to leave him in charge until his return! "How many commomm-odities would you expect?"

  "Many! But enough of tedious business. Let us talk of lighter things. I understand you have only recently returned from Ullacarn?"

  "Thatsh absholutely correct. How did you learn that?"

  "On the same ship as the sultan?"

  Skarash nodded again as a shrouded maiden — a cousin or one of his sisters, perhaps — scurried out from the house with more supplies.

  "From Ullacarn?" the stranger inquired, smiling. For an imp, he was extraordinarily handsome. Very cultured and likable. And he had the polished accents of a high-class Hubban. Skarash had been listening carefully to those rounded vowels . . . not lately, though.

  "Yesh," he found himself explaining, "I went directly. By camel. Not that we traders go directly, you unshersand . . . understand . . . because we wander. Right?"