A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  Faint tremors of power rippled the ambience before Andor even opened his mouth. “…truly cannot understand why our letters did not arrive. Tribune… of course the capital is still in a ferment over the imperor’s death — never saw such confusion! Even the High Command itself… not as well organized as it used to be, I’m afraid… told you were the man to help us… The countess sends her warmest regards, naturally… Had our business not been so urgent…”

  It was a magnificent lesson in virtuoso chicanery. Rap could not tell how much information his accomplice had obtained in advance from his pillow-talk espionage and how much he was ad-libbing on the strength of his host’s reactions, like a charlatan fortune-teller. Whatever his secret, it worked. Tantalizing glimpses of gossip from the capital, rumors of scandal looming in the army, hints that the futures markets in agricultural produce were heading for a sharp readjustment… Andor promoted himself into the minor nobility and Rap to an obscure royal house in Sysanasso — traveling incognito, of course.

  Uoslope melted before their eyes. In minutes he was beaming and gruffly making statements that always seemed to turn into questions: “Casfrel’s got a reputation for hospitality, right? Better than those fleapit hostelries, mm? Daresay you’ll appreciate a hot tub after your journey, what?” He asked for confirmation that the road was in terrible condition, that the evilish speculators were mining the farming business, and that he did not know what the world was coming to.

  On that point, Rap thought, he was certainly correct.

  Hot water in a marble tub was undoubtedly welcome.

  The guest rooms were airy dreams of silk, polished wood, downy pillows, and arched windows displaying breathtaking vistas.

  * * *

  As the setting sun tinted the mountains peach and salmon, Rap found himself sitting on a terrace, nursing a goblet of chilled elvish wine. The gibbous moon silhouetted spiky cactusy shrubs on the hills. Closer, whitewashed walls still radiated heat from the day, tame pigeons strutted on the flagstones and red-tile roofs, while a small orchestra played out of sight nearby. This farmer lived in much greater luxury than the king of Krasnegar did.

  Andor was still demonstrating the quintessence of guile and duplicity. The scoundrel’s motives were visible now even to a dumb rustic faun — Tribune Uoslope’s two daughters were striking beauties. Their dark hair shone like stars, they had donned their best white dresses in honor of the visitors. They were luscious and virginal, but they wore far too much jewelry. They were overdressed rural innocents, spellbound by this urbane gentleman who had dropped into their sheltered lives from the highest circles of Imperial society. That was the idea.

  Neither of them was much older than Kadie. Watching Andor’s maneuvering, Rap felt depressingly fatherly and protective. It seemed very unfair that life involved growing old.

  The sixth member of the group was Mistress Ainopple, the tribune’s wife. She was a withered, mousy creature, who seemed to live in terror of her husband. Apparently the senator who owned Casfrel was her uncle, which explained a few things.

  Once in a while Andor would turn his charisma on her, oozing compliments on her household and beautiful daughters. She became flustered, stuttering as she tried to simper. “So hard to bring up Nya and Puo properly in such a remote situation… Must try to take them to Hub soon…”

  “Indeed you must, ma’am,” Andor responded. “For if word of such beauties ever reaches the capital, then half the eligible young men of the Impire will be flocking here to call on them.”

  Blushes all round.

  “But if your musicians are up to strumming a dance tune after dinner, ma’am, then I shall certainly insist on the honor of treading a measure with each of them, for I never dreamed that this remote land would hide ladies who outshine anything I have ever seen in the palace itself.”

  It was sickening. It was as effective as a battle ax to the skull. Andor’s mastery worked on men as well as it did on women, and he had extracted Tribune Uoslope’s fangs completely. The brusque overseer who had greeted the visitors with surly suspicion was fawning like a kitten over them now. Rap could have done as much himself, easily. Ironically, he would probably have had to use a lot more power to produce the same effect, because his heart would not have been in it. Hypocrisy came naturally to Andor.

  The resemblance between him and young Signifer Ylo was striking, but the contrasts were interesting, too. In his spare time, Ylo went in for heroics and hard work. Andor shunned both to the very best of his ability. Both men were unscrupulous libertines, but there was an innocence about Ylo that Andor must have lost years ago, if he had ever had it. However much Ylo enjoyed women, he would always expect them to have fun, also. He believed quite honestly that he was doing them a good turn. With his word of power to aid him, Andor was a much more calculating hunter. He knew the damage his seductions might cause. Not only would he care little about hurting his victims, he probably enjoyed that, also. There was a difference between amorality and immorality — not much of one, but some.

  The luxuriant valley was growing dim, stars twinkled in the velvet sky. Listening with half an ear to the conversation. Rap was also scanning the whole great compound. He had noted the silver and crystal laid out on the dining table, awaiting his dining pleasure. He had observed the many cooks scurrying about the hot kitchens, preparing the feast. Satisfied that the villa itself contained no unpleasant surprises, he was now studying the barns where the workers lived, and the grim repast awaiting them. A platoon of legionaries was doing a little better in a small barracks — it would be interesting, but probably depressing, to know how those men’s upkeep was recorded in the army’s rolls.

  He had located many imps, and a few fauns, and even a heap of gnomes, only now starting to waken. Eventually he observed three trolls being herded homeward, a big male and two girls. The quarters they were heading for were obviously new, and built strong enough to hold a dragon. Now that was an interesting —

  Ripple!

  He started to full alertness. Where had that come from? He could not tell. It had been very brief, and very slight. It had not been Andor — he was emitting a low hiss of sorcery, a faint, barely detectable glow. Somewhere close, someone had used a needle of power, a tiny flash.

  Chillingly, Rap decided that someone had just scanned him. It might even have been the tribune himself, or one of his womenfolk. If so, the perpetrator was close enough to have detected Rap’s farsight at work as well as Andor’s use of mastery. God of Fools! It was too late to caution Andor now, or tell him to stop.

  Nevertheless, the next time those beguiling dark eyes turned in his direction. Rap risked a warning frown. Andor read the message instantly. He dropped his narrative in midsentence and slapped at his arm. “Mosquitoes? Early for bugs, isn’t it?”

  With his power cut off, the spell was broken. The listeners seemed to rouse themselves.

  “Oh, we do get a few at any time of the year,” Mistress Ainopple murmured apologetically, looking guilty, as if the bugs were her fault. “We, er, should perhaps be thinking about dinner?” She shot her husband a worried glance. He would be the sort of husband who would delay a meal for hours and then complain that it did not meet his standards.

  Uoslope himself scratched his lower chin as if puzzled. “Tell me again your purpose in journeying through these parts, Sir Andor?”

  Andor had not mentioned the subject at all. “Just a guide for my friend here.” He waved languidly in Rap’s direction. “I was asked to escort him by… by certain influential persons. His homeland is having some problems in certain branches of agriculture, and he is on a fact-finding mission.” He beamed at Rap, inviting him to explain.

  Caught unaware, Rap made a mental note to get even at the first opportunity. How to proceed? A moment ago he would have been more circumspect, but if there was sorcery around, then he should grab for whatever information he could find in preparation for a very fast retreat.

  “We are experiencing a shortage of agricultural l
aborers, Tribune. Recently the supply of felons seems to have dried up.”

  The listeners all stiffened in shock, even the two girls.

  “What sort of laborers, Highness?” Uoslope demanded angrily, his rubicund face darkening.

  “I am talking of my homeland, remember,” Rap said brightly. “In Sysanasso we do not have the same milksop scruples as some of the bleeding hearts in your country.”

  “Er, quite, what?”

  If there was an illicit trade in slaves between the Impire and Sysanasso — which there might well be — then Rap had no knowledge of it. But Uoslope would not, either, and it was certainly a plausible theory.

  “What sort of laborers, exactly?” the tribune repeated.

  “Felons. The Imperial army is our main supplier. Trolls, of course. They are invaluable for certain types of work. I am sure you employ some trolls here in Casfrel?”

  “We do employ a few, mm? Useful, yes, but not very reliable, what?”

  “Oh, well,” Ainopple broke in to protest, “you can’t expect to rely on them. Can’t really rely on anyone except an imp.”

  “I heard a funny story,” young Nya said eagerly, “about a djinn, a dwarf, and a jotunn —”

  “Not another dumb-jotunn story?” Puo wailed.

  “Have you queried your supplier?” Uoslope demanded of Rap.

  “He wasn’t very helpful. He spoke vaguely of malcontents, disrupting the system and causing shortages. The price of a healthy male has risen ridiculously. I thought I’d come and see firsthand.”

  “Oh, yes!” Ainopple muttered, wringing her stringy hands. “Last year we lost our whole stock, and just when we were starting to have some success with the breeding program, too! Such a disappointment —”

  “But we have replaced them, right?” her husband boomed. “Surely dinner must be ready now, what?”

  Trolls were an indelicate subject.

  3

  The evening that had started so well deteriorated rapidly. Dinner was a social catastrophe. Rap had never been handy at making meaningless small talk, and he was preoccupied in listening for sorcery. He detected no more, and gradually began to hope that he had overestimated that one brief flicker. Perhaps it had come from much farther away than he had first thought. In that case the culprit might just have picked up some fuzzy trace of Andor’s talent in use and been trying to locate it. The obvious precaution was to avoid disturbing the ambience any further — no farsight, no mastery!

  Unfortunately, Andor had two beautiful girls to stalk, and the use of power was second nature to him now.

  Fortunately, Rap was sitting across the table from him. Every time Andor became charming, his leg got kicked.

  After a while he seemed to comprehend what this sudden belligerence meant, but it threw him totally off balance. Stripped of occult support after so many years, he was naked. He did not know how to behave mundanely, how to react. He became awkward, jittery, and stilted, which would have been very funny, had the situation not been so serious.

  Worse, the spell he had cast over Uoslope and his family wore off. First the tribune himself became surly and suspicious again, obviously wondering why these strangers had come prowling around his fiefdom, asking impertinent questions about his illicit slaves. Then the stars faded from the eyes of Nya and Puo; they began to respond to Andor’s now-clumsy blandishments with understandable disdain. The charmer had become a boor.

  As for that faun, his place was down with the hired hands, washing horses or something!

  Sensing the awkward overtones. Mistress Ainopple became even more dithery and nervous than ever. How had such a gawkish, ungainly woman ever produced two such gorgeous daughters? Her feeble efforts to keep a conversation going only made matters worse. She peppered Rap with questions about his mythical kingdom, but his one visit to Sysanasso had been extremely brief, and he knew very little about his ancestral homeland. He tried to invent a tropical version of Krasnegar and it sounded improbable even to him. She asked Andor about the Imperial court, and that reminded everyone of the imperor’s death. Things went from worse to disastrous.

  When the meal ended, there was no further talk of dancing. Everyone was willing to accept that the visitors were weary from their journey and needed to catch a good night’s sleep. With a few incoherent apologies, Rap and Andor made a break for the stairs.

  * * *

  “What in the Name of Evil was all that about?” Andor demanded in an angry whisper as they climbed. “My shins are black and blue!”

  “Someone’s using sorcery. You ripple the ambience.”

  “I shall ripple your neck, my faunish friend! Who? What sort of sorcery?”

  They reached the upper story as Rap finished explaining. He took his companion’s elbow and turned him along a corridor. “We’re not going to our rooms. We’re leaving!”

  “How? Where?”

  “Servants’ staircase. Got to get out before they loose the dogs.”

  Andor wailed. “Dogs?”

  “Along here.”

  Down they went.

  Using the barest hint of farsight, Rap avoided the domestics now clearing away the remains of the meal. Less than five minutes after bidding their host good night, the fugitives were outside the villa, standing in a patch of inky shadow. The air was cooling rapidly, and a bloated moon floated in a clear sky, illuminating the whole valley. The Mosweeps were especially striking.

  “Now wait a minute!” Andor said, strident with fear. “This makes no sense at all! We’re caught in a dead end here! The only way we can go is back down the valley, and they’ll chase us as soon as they find we’ve gone.”

  “I know that, but —”

  “They’re probably counting the silverware already.”

  “The stables —”

  “I’m going to call Darad. He’s much more —”

  “No!” Rap grabbed Andor’s cravat and squeezed. “Now, listen carefully! If you bring Darad, that’s Sorcery! You’ll give us away. You’re far better on a horse than Darad is, anyway.”

  Andor’s teeth chattered briefly.

  “What’s more,” Rap said, just so there would be no misunderstanding, “if they catch Darad, they catch you, too. If Zinixo gets any one of you, then he forces your word out of whichever one of you he’s got, and then you all die. All of you, is it not so? Besides, I need you. Come on.”

  Releasing Andor’s throat, he took a firm grip on his arm and led him off through the night as fast as he dared go.

  * * *

  “Need me how?” Andor muttered sulkily.

  “I think you’ll have to pick a lock.”

  “I can’t do that! It’s Thinal you need for that, and I can’t call him because he called me. That’s all your fault, too. Know something? You really messed up a beautiful piece of sorcery when you mucked around with Orarinsagu’s formula, you dumb faun!”

  “Not my idea. I know I need Thinal, but you can’t call him directly, and two transformations would be totally insane. Thinal must’ve picked a million locks. You’ve got his memories, haven’t you? So use them.”

  “Just because you’ve heard singing doesn’t mean you can sing!” Andor objected, but the light was so tricky and Rap was setting so hard a pace that he soon had very little breath for whining. The settlement was sliding into sleep. Few lights showed in the cottages. The gnomes would be scavenging, of course, but they never interfered with the activities of dayfolk.

  “Wait a minute, Rap! The stables are over that way, aren’t they?”

  “No, they’re that way. We’ve got a call to make first.”

  “What sort of a call?”

  “Trolls… Oh, do stop bitching, Andor!”

  Fighting his way through some prickly bushes, Rap reproached himself for his ill temper. Andor was not the only frightened man among the two of them. With sorcery ruled out, they were nothing but mundane intruders in a private fortress. There were dogs and armed soldiers around. The legionaries might have been stationed at Casfre
l as official border guards or just because the senator had pulled political strings to protect his estate; in either case those men would know exactly what to do about mundane intruders.

  And if sorcery was not ruled out, the situation was even worse. Rap kept thinking up darker and darker possibilities. Uoslope himself — and he lived very well, as virtual ruler of a private kingdom — or his withered wife, or the butler, or one of the lute players… someone had power, perhaps very great power. The greater the power, the less detectable it was in use. Perhaps that person had been eavesdropping on Rap’s thoughts ever since he arrived and that one tiny ripple had been just a momentary carelessness.

  God of Fools! Why hadn’t he listened to his premonition?

  The trolls’ prison was directly ahead, gleaming where moonlight shone on massive blocks of whitish stone. It was obviously new, and must have been built after last year’s breakout. A cell to hold trolls would have to be constructed like an elephant pen — trolls were usually restrained by brute terror, because anything else could be ripped out or torn apart. This close to the mountains, though, even a brutalized troll might feel that the chance of escape was good enough to risk yet another savage beating.

  Panting and streaming sweat in the chill night, Rap arrived at the door. Andor was close behind, still muttering under what breath he had left. Fortunately, the entrance was in shadow. A bat twittered overhead in jerky flight.

  Again Rap risked the merest hint of farsight, an occult peek… surprise!

  “It’s not shielded,” he gasped. “I thought it would be.”

  “So?”

  “So there’s a sorcerer around somewhere. Why not shield the building?”

  “Bunk!” Andor said. “Where would a plantation manager find sorcery? Or a senator? What market do you go to to buy sorcery? Sorcerers don’t need money!” He muttered “Stupid!” a few times.

  That was true, and yet Rap had expected shielding, somehow. He leaned against the wall for a moment, trying to puzzle it out. There was something other than logic involved, though, and he couldn’t find the answer.