Emperor and Clown

by Dave Duncan

  He beamed at the company in the Rotunda, but in the ambience he scowled at the dwarf beside him, amid a strong stench of barnyard. "Perhaps we'll go round the other way this time, and give stone-wits a chance to think about the question. Brother East?"

  Hooves thundered and banners snapped in the wind. "Guilty!"

  "Sister North, how say you?"

  "Not guilty," the goblin maiden said. The hag leered at Rap. She had another fate in mind for him, but she seemed to think he ought to be grateful for the opportunity.

  If all this was designed to confuse him, it was succeeding admirably; his mind reeled between conflicting existences.

  "Dear brother of the west?" Lith'rian cooed.

  "Who gets his words?" the dwarf demanded again.

  "If you must know, it's my turn. The last one was that imp in Drishmab, and East got her; nine years ago."

  "There was no illicit use of power!" the dwarf rumbled.

  In the ambience, Lith'rian winked an opal eye at Rap. "And I regretfully say there was. Your Majesty, the wardens are evenly divided. North and West are for acquittal, East and South for conviction. How says our mundane brother of the center?"

  A great horror came over the imperor's face. He knew what had been done, by whom, and who had gained from it. Now his honor was thrown into conflict with his gratitude. The spectators seemed likewise appalled, holding their breath, waiting for his reply.

  A rock the size of a melon whistled out of nowhere, aimed straight at Rap's head. He ducked and let it go past. He was sure he could have swung at it with an occult bat and hurled it right back at the dwarf, but he was also sure now that such a response would reveal more of his power than simple avoidance did. If Zinixo wanted to know his strength so badly, then that was good enough reason to keep it secret.

  Furthermore, Rap was beginning to suspect that he lacked all the spectral paraphernalia that accompanied the others' projections within the ambience. Its absence might not be a weakness but a sign of strength, an ability to see more clearly or manipulate power more directly.

  Fool! Did he think he could be stronger than a warlock?

  But if that dwarf pulled any more tricks, it might be fun to find out!

  "I find no truth in the allegations," Emshandar said harshly. Sweat was running down his ribs below his toga as he uttered this blatant lie.

  "Then we find the defendant not guilty!" Lith'rian proclaimed. His youthful smile was a blizzard of blossom petals lifted by a summer breeze in the south.

  Drums rumbled defiance from the east and armed multitudes clashed in fury; men and horses screamed.

  Something gurgled in agony to the north and more claws scrabbled in dark crypts to the west.

  The mundane spectators broke into applause. Little Shandie jumped to his feet and cheered. Inos released Kade's hand, ducked around Azak before he could block her, and raced through the forest of candelabra to Rap, obviously intending to throw her arms around him. He dodged her, as he had been dodging the dwarfs attacks, and held up a hand to ward off any second attempt. He knew Lith'rian by now. There was more to come.

  "Master Rap," said the elf. "You could read the ambience when you were a mere adept, could you not?"

  Rap nodded, bracing himself as he sensed the danger closing in.

  "Inosolan!" Azak roared. Inos gave Rap a hurt look and reluctantly walked back to her husband's side, her head bent low.

  "Faugh!" Bright Water shrilled. "You should have felt the mastery he had when he only knew one word of power! I guessed then what his destiny was!"

  "Master Rap," Lith'rian said, caution like a fence of crystal spears bristling around him, "I think you would make an excellent warden. If you wish to contend for the Red Throne, I for one would have no objection."

  Bright Water screamed an objection, a bugle rang out joyfully in the east. But Zinixo did not wait for argument or discussion, nor even for Rap's own reply. He struck instantly, as the elf must have known he would. The great mass of fortifications tipped, split, and crashed down in a landslide toward Rap.

  Rap used the direct physical simulation that had worked on Kalkor. The dwarf's spectral image was right beside him in the ambience. Spurning any pretense of subtlety, he hurled himself on it with all the occult weight he could summon. That version of Zinixo toppled over backward with Rap on top of him, grappling for his throat. The two ghostly presences rolled and struggled as if locked in mundane combat, and there was nothing transparent or unreal about it that Rap could sense. The dwarf's breath was hot on his face, and his thick body slick with sweat.

  They squirmed and twisted on a shadowy ground, directly in the path of the hurtling mass of rocks.

  The spectators in the mundane Rotunda would see nothing at all happening. In the ambience, the torrent of rock divided and roared past on either side. Rap tightened his grip on the massive neck, and saw panic and madness in the agate eyes staring up into his. Ironically, he knew that in the real world the dwarf's great strength could have easily torn him off and smashed him. In terms of occult power, though, he thought he was holding his own.

  Above them, a cavern roof shattered and began to fall.

  Without releasing his grip, Rap twisted and rolled, hauling the dead weight of the dwarf on top of him as a shield. Two massive rocks struck on either side of them and fell together, forming a canopy to deflect the rest of the crashing debris. Rap stared up at the hate-filled gray face and continued to squeeze with his thumbs. Huge hands seized his wrists and tried to wrest them away. And failed.

  The dwarf seemed to grow impossibly heavy, crushing Rap down against jagged rock. He ignored the pain, squeezing, squeezing, and watching the bulging face of his opponent. They were both panting and straining, but Zinixo seemed to have run out of tricks. He flailed punches at Rap's ribs, but they were nothing like the blows he could have landed in a mundane struggle. Then his great hands clawed for Rap's neck, meeting the challenge directly.

  "I've got you!" Rap gasped. "I'm stronger! Yield, damn you!"

  In the Rotunda the spectators had guessed that something was happening between these two. The faun and the dwarf were standing rigidly and staring at each other. In the ambience they thrashed and rolled, straining strength against strength, pouring sweat, panting harshly.

  The other wardens were intent and silent, watching but seemingly not taking sides. Yet, in the corner of his mind, Rap caught a faint image of a fiery fence encircling the battle and luminous angry shapes dancing around, trying to penetrate and being blocked. If that was not mere hallucination brought on by an overtaxed, pounding brain, then it might represent Zinixo's votaries being denied a chance to intervene.

  "I don't want your throne!" Rap said. He was on top again, trembling with the effort of keeping his grip, very near to the limit of his strength.

  But the dwarf was in worse shape, with his tongue lolling and his eyes bulging almost out of his head. He uttered meaningless croaks of fear.

  For a moment nothing more seemed to happen. Then Rap realized that in the Rotunda the corporeal Zinixo had lurched down from his throne and was staggering across the floor to attack the corporeal Rap. Rap had no reserves left to deflect a mundane assault. If the dwarf could bring real-world muscle and strength into the battle, he might win yet.

  Somehow Rap dragged up a last feverish effort and dug his thumbs in even harder, squeezing relentlessly until he thought they were about to meet inside the great neck. Will! It was all will, and endurance, and stubborn purpose.

  "Yield or I kill you!"

  The spectral Zinixo uttered a choking rattle and went limp, like a sack of sand.

  It was no trick — the warlock was dying. Revenge! Revenge for Yodello and Oothiana and being sold as a thrall and for the murderous attack itself . . .

  Do what is good, not what seems good! One of his mother's sayings. Rap fought back against his seething fury. Bind the dwarf, then? Make him votary, a slave sorcerer, to serve his every wish and be loyal unto death?

 
Where was the moral high ground in that? Revolted by his own black hate, Rap released his occult grip.

  Below the lights of the branching candelabra, the real Zinixo stood swaying before him, eyes glazed. Rap also felt spent, shaking and mentally battered. It was impossible to believe that he had no wounds, no bruises, that his back had not been shredded or his gullet crushed. He gulped great gasps of life-giving air.

  The mundane spectators were staring in complete lack of understanding. The other three wardens smiled contentedly.

  "Hail to our new warlock of the west!" Lith'rian said.

  "I am no warlock!" Rap shouted, appalled at the mad hatred staring at him in the dwarf's stricken eyes. "I don't want your throne, West! This wasn't my idea."

  Zinixo bared his monstrous crusher teeth. His huge fists were clenched and trembling.

  "I mean you no harm!" Rap insisted.

  But, for all his occult power and physical might, Zinixo was still a timorous boy. He had been the strongest of the wardens, yet always unsure of himself. A stronger sorcerer than himself was an unbearable threat to him. He saw treachery everywhere; he could trust no one. He stared at Rap in dread and hate.

  "I won't change my mind," Rap insisted. He held out a hand, "No hard feelings?"

  It wasn't going to work, he saw. Nothing could ever reconcile Zinixo to the existence of a stronger sorcerer than himself.

  "Well, if you won't make friends willingly," Rap said, "then I suppose I'll have to put a loyalty spell on you, but I don't really want to have to —"

  Zinixo grabbed the proffered hand, and jerked.

  Rap stumbled forward. The dwarf grabbed his head and pulled it down to his own level . . .

  And whispered a word of power into Rap's ear . . .

  A fifth word of power.

  3

  For Princess Kadolan, it had been a day of extremes. She could not recall any day in her life that had veered so often between the Good and the Evil.

  It had begun with the astonishing realization that she was awakening on a lumpy bed in the Opal Palace. To have arrived in Hub at all after a lifetime of longing should have been a wonderful experience, but at first it had been marred by the need to remain incognito. Furthermore, Doctor Sagorn's house, while comfortable enough, had been in a shameful state of neglect. Captain Gathmor had done a wonderful job of making her quarters shipshape, as he liked to call it, but two nights there had been more than plenty. A smelly backstreet tenement was no more inspiring for being located in Hub than it would be in any other city. Then, yesterday, she had been reunited with Inosolan, and together they had become guests of the Imperial regent himself.

  Or possibly his prisoners. Their status had unquestionably been interrogated, because Azak was a prince of a land that the Impire was about to invade, and Inosolan still had a claim to Krasnegar, over which the Nordlanders were rattling their swords. She had even been questioned about Proconsul Yggingi and the way he had roused the goblins. Kadolan had never much cared for the seamy art of politics, and she felt that her present advanced age ought to excuse her from becoming involved in not just one but three possible wars. As she had told Eigaze, the only bright spot she could see was that no one could possibly blame her for the Dwanishian border dispute, as she had never met a dwarf in her life. Inosolan had told her glumly just to wait.

  And, of course, that night she had indeed met a dwarf, or at least been in the presence of one. A warlock! So great an honor! Very few people ever knowingly met a sorcerer in their lives, let alone one of the Four. Yet, although she would never say so, had the young man in question not been sitting on a throne, Kadolan might easily have mistaken him for a surly young churl escaped from a workgang somewhere. Warlock Zinixo was sadly lacking in polish.

  From the history lessons of her childhood until sorcery entered her life in the person of Queen Rasha, Kadolan had hardly spared a thought for the Four. Had she needed to think about them, she would likely have imagined four benevolent, elderly sages sitting around a table somewhere, probably wearing funny hats. Inosolan's account of meeting Warlock Olybino had begun a revision in her thinking, and the dwarf had completed it.

  The wardens were a sad disappointment!

  She had thought yesterday hectic. Today had certainly been worse; up and down like a thresher's wrist, all day long.

  Having wakened to the memory that she was staying in the Opal Palace, she had then been sobered by the sight of peeling wallpaper and cracked plaster. Her room was not located in one of the more prestigious wings.

  Breakfast had lifted her spirits — excellent food on magnificent silver plate, very well served.

  Then Inosolan and Azak had joined her, and she had seen at once that Inosolan had some bad news to impart. Unfortunately Azak was quite the most suspicious man in Pandemia, and had been determined not to let Inosolan out of his sight, or hearing.

  Right after breakfast, her day had brightened again as Eigaze arrived with four other old friends from Kinvale days. That had meant four more joyful reunions, although saddened perhaps by the awareness of time passed. Eigaze herself had once been graceful as an elf and thin as a willow. Now she had a son in the Praetorian Hussars taller than a pine tree, while she herself . . . well, who was Kadolan to criticize?

  Up and down — Inosolan had dragged Kadolan away to go and visit the unfortunate Duke Angilki, and that had been a sad duty. The poor man had not moved an eyelash in two days, and the doctors were in their most somber mode. But the palace infirmary did have certain rooms where no man, even a sultan, was allowed to go, and those had probably been Inosolan's objective all along. She had hauled Kadolan into the first one she saw, and there imparted her dread news.

  Master Rap had visited her in the night. Kalkor was a sorcerer; the result of the duel between them was not preordained as the magic casement had suggested. They had been assuming that he would win the Reckoning and could then worry about staying away from goblins in future, but apparently that was not so. And finally Inosolan had described her efforts to share her word of power with Rap, and his discovery that she did not know one. Disaster!

  They had been a doleful party when they drove out to the Campus Abnila to view the second Reckoning, and the unending rain had not helped to raise anyone's spirits.

  Up again . . . Despite his forebodings in the night, Master Rap had somehow found the occult strength he needed, and he had ended the notorious career of the infamous Kalkor very sharply. Kadolan had felt very pleased by that, even if the man had been a relative of sorts.

  Down . . . The worst yet: Master Rap had lifted Azak's curse. Kadolan blamed herself for that. For weeks she had tried so hard to explain to the lad that he was the subject of the God's command and Inosolan's destined mate. He had never quite admitted that he returned her love, but why else would he have followed her all the way to Zark? Obviously Kadolan's entreaties had been inadequate, and the foolish boy had cleared the way for his rival to claim his unwilling bride.

  She had always believed that honor was the finest attribute a man could possess, but now she saw that even honor could be carried too far. Excess was always on the side of the Evil.

  And then he had also cured the old imperor! In some ways that had seemed like a wonderful blessing, and a most charitable thing to do, but it was very obviously a forbidden use of sorcery. At one stroke, Holindarn's former stableboy had upset the whole political structure of the Impire.

  That was when Kadolan had decided that this day was going to live in her memory as the worst she had ever known. Battered and bewildered by so many changes of fortune, she had given up trying to keep track, and had concentrated on merely remaining sane.

  However, she had been careful to stay close to her niece. The sultan had been eyeing his wife with blatantly lustful glances, which Inosolan had been ignoring while cheerfully dragging Kadolan around the Opal Palace as if determined to view every one of its sculptures and innumerable points of interest in a few brief hours. Meanwhile the day had been drawing re
lentlessly to its close. Kadolan could hardly chaperon a married woman in her bedchamber.

  Since Master Rap had gone off with the imperor, there had been no word of him. His sorcery had cured the sultan's curse, but it had left the Krasnegar situation unresolved. She had not been too surprised, therefore, when the regent had summoned them to the meeting with the wardens. That was not the sort of summons she enjoyed, but it had at least offered the possibility of some answers to some of the problems. Trying very hard to hold fast to her faith in the Gods, Kadolan had accompanied Inosolan and Azak to the Rotunda.

  The start had been inauspicious — the regent in command, and no sign of the imperor. But then Emshandar had appeared, apparently in good health, and Rap still with him, like a court sorcerer. She had begun to think that her prayers might yet be answered.

  Down again . . . With no warning. Rap had used very obvious sorcery to reveal the regent's questionable tactics and displace him from the throne. Kadolan had watched in rising apprehension, while Inosolan's fingernails dug into her hand. The boy was ignorant, of course; he had probably received no schooling at all, but she had come to know him a little during their journey from Arakkaran, and she knew he was well informed about the occult. How, therefore, could he possibly expect the wardens to allow such open use of sorcery around the Opal Throne itself?

  But for a heart-stopping moment, it had seemed that the faun's temerity had escaped notice. Visibly exhausted but yet jubilant, Emshandar had been about to end the meeting and send them all off to bed — that being one of the problems that had not been solved.

  And then the wardens had come.

  Disappointing . . . the Four were definitely not what Kadolan had expected. Warlock Lith'rian looked barely old enough to shave — although she had a vague idea that perhaps elves didn't — and Warlock Zinixo still resembled an escaped quarry worker. Witch Bright Water was young and about as close to beautiful as a goblin could ever be. Warlock Olybino was the handsome young soldier Inosolan had described. None of them looked old, or especially benevolent.