A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  “He’s dead.”

  “Oh.” The girl looked down and then said, “Oh!” again.

  “Was he your goodman?” Thaïle asked, thinking that the girl was very young to have the long hair of a goodwife.

  “My what? Oh, no. Just a friend, sort of. He wanted to rape me.”

  The child was obviously delirious.

  “Ready? I’ll put you where the magic won’t hurt you.”

  “You’re a pixie?”

  Thaïle started. Impossible! “How do you know that?”

  “My mother visited Thume once.” The girl leaned back limply against a tree, rubbing her eyes. “Years and years ago. She almost got raped there, I think, but she sort of glossed over the details when she told me. I didn’t think they spoke impish in Thume. You have a funny accent, if you’ll excuse my mentioning it, er, your Highness. I mean, it’s a nice accent, just a little unfamiliar. Gods, I’m tired! Beg your pardon—I’m Princess Kadolan of Krasnegar. Please call me Kadie.”

  “I’m Thaïle of the… of the Leéb Place.”

  The big green eyes blinked. “Not a princess?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Well, a sorceress, of course. I knew someone would come and rescue me eventually. I wish you’d been a little sooner… Oh, I’m sorry! That does sound ungrateful, doesn’t it? I am extremely pleased to see you, truly I am! You are going to take me to Thume, I suppose?”

  Thaïle shook her head. She was not at all sure what she was going to do now. All she did know was that she was being very foolish and must hurry away, but the girl was not regarding her as a freak, a ghost from an extinct race, and now premonition was telling her that this meeting was important.

  “I was kidnapped by the goblins,” Kadie said, wiping her forehead wearily. “Months ago! I kept hoping Papa would come and rescue me, ’cause he’s a sorcerer, but he’s off trying to fight the usurper with the new protocol he invented, so he can’t know what happened to me. And my mother’s with the imperor, the real imperor, not the fake one, and I don’t know what’s happened to Gath, he’s my brother, and I’m awfully afraid I’m going to start weeping like a silly kid.”

  Madness, surely? Thaïle probed in a way she had not known she could, wiping away the shock and exhaustion. She could find no trace of madness, or what she thought madness would look like. She did see the ravages of weeks and weeks of terror and hardship, like scar tissue on the soul, but some of that was part of growing up and would have crone eventually anyway. Could all that strange babbling story have been true?

  Kadie blinked again, straightened her shoulders, and smiled.

  “Oh, that’s a great improvement! Thank you!” She glanced down briefly, and shuddered. “Poor Blood Beak! It wasn’t his fault, was it, the way he was brought up? I mean, none of us can help that. He didn’t know any better.”

  “Your father is really a sorcerer? And you know the imperor?”

  Kadie grinned, and nodded. “It’s rather a long story.”

  Thaïle nodded, but did not grin. Did the Keeper know all this about fake imperors? New protocol?

  Kadie glanced around nervously. She would be seeing massed black birds, of course. Thaïle was aware that the power outside her shielding was changing. The Covin would detect this local disturbance very soon.

  “If you’re going to take me away from all this,” Kadie said diffidently, “then shouldn’t we maybe go now? We can talk on the way if you like.” She grinned again. “This is a very strange conversation, isn’t it? I’m awfully glad you’ve come.”

  Suddenly—astonishingly!—Thaïle found herself returning the second grin. How long since she had smiled? How wonderful it felt to be talking with a simple mundane instead of all the scheming sorcerers of the College! She detected no concealment in the girl, no guile. No demon, just an unfortunate victim like herself. “I expect you are glad! Where do you want to go?”

  “Anywhere! Take me home with you.”

  “I haven’t got a home.”

  Kadie’s green eyes widened. “Oh, that’s awful! How terrible! Well, let’s go to my home. You’ll be ever so welcome there. Stay as long as you like!”

  “Where’s that?”

  “A little place called Krasnegar. Way up north. It’s hundreds of leagues from anywhere, and dull as mud.” She paused, frowning. “I will be glad to see it again, though.”

  “A little Place?” Thaïle said hopefully.

  “Very little. Very rustic, I’m afraid. Oh! The birds have gone!”

  “Quickly!” Thaïle shouted, holding out a hand. “Let’s go! Think hard about where your Place is and I’ll take us there!”

  “Poor Blood Beak!” Kadie took the offered hand, but her eyes were on the dead boy. “I always told him I would be rescued.”

  9

  Dreadnaught was drifting again, rolling uneasily, and her sails banged and flapped in the morning breeze. Some of the trolls had curled up in balls. A couple of others were smashing things in mindless fury—barrels, pin racks, davits. Most of the anthropophagi were close to berserk. Grunth and Thrugg and Tik Tok were trying to restore order, but the ship was a madhouse of emotion and monstrous flickering images.

  Jalon, as the only mundane aboard, was frantic. “What’s happening?” he asked yet again.

  Rap grabbed him by the shoulders. “Get me Sagorn!” he yelled.

  “What? I can’t—”

  “I need Sagorn! I can’t tell you what’s happening. I don’t know what’s happening. Zinixo’s burned the legions and ripped up the goblins. I want to know what he’s trying to do!”

  The minstrel cringed before his anger. “But I can’t call Sagorn. He called me—”

  “Then get me one who can!”

  Jalons’ garments ripped to shreds as Darad’s enormous form appeared in his place. The warrior stood there half naked, his hideous face turning pale. “Rap?” he mumbled, staring around the crowded deck.

  “Not you!” Rap screamed. Idiot Jalon! “Call Sagorn!”

  Darad frowned and licked his lips. “But I called him the last time. Rap…”

  “Call another!”

  SORCERERS! NOW YOU HAVE SEEN THE POWER OF THE ALMIGHTY! NONE CAN RESIST HIM. ALL MUST BOW DOWN AND SERVE!

  Anthropophagi shrieked in fury. Trolls moaned.

  Darad vanished. Rags fluttered around the puny form of Thinal the thief. His spotty face blanched as he saw the company he was in.

  “Not you!” Rap shouted. “Gods, not you! I want Sagorn!”

  COME, SORCERERS! YOU ARE COMMANDED TO COME TO HUB AT ONCE AND ENLIST IN THE SERVICE OF THE ALMIGHTY, THE GOOD, THE BELOVED. COME NOW!

  Rap wiped his streaming brow. “Thinal, I don’t think we need you just at the moment. Please will you call Doctor Sagorn?”

  “Who does he think we are?” Tik Tok screamed. His dark face was suffused with fury, his tattoos stood out in vivid color, and the bone in his nose was jumping. “Monster! He expects us to serve him after that?”

  Thinal’s teeth were chattering. “Rap, I can’t!”

  “What do you mean, ‘can’t’?”

  Thrugg rolled across the deck like a bullock. “Rap, this is serious! Some of my friends are going to answer that summons!”

  “Stop them!” Rap screamed. If even one troll obeyed the Covin’s command, then Dreadnaught and all her crew would be betrayed.

  Thinal was shaking like a flag. “Rap, I haven’t done enough time! I only just got away last time! I can’t call anyone yet!”

  Grunth’s grotesque shape loomed in the ambience. “Rap, this is bad! What’re we going to do?”

  COME, SORCERERS! THE ALMIGHTY IS MERCIFUL AND HIS YOKE IS LIGHT. NONE CAN RESIST HIM! COME JOIN OUR HAPPY BAND. COME NOW, OR ELSE BE HENCEFORTH COUNTED AMONG THE ENEMIES OF THE ALMIGHTY.

  “I will come with my spear!” Tik Tok screamed, and other anthropophagi cheered him. “If any of you oxen want to enlist, then speak up and I will kill you!”

  “We fear the Covin more than you, Maneater!” bell
owed one of the trolls.

  Rap took Thinal by the throat. “I don’t care how much it hurts, you are going to call Sagorn and call him now! If you don’t call Sagorn, then I will choke the life out of you!”

  Thinal gibbered. Strips of cloth were falling loose from him, leaving him almost naked. Sweat broke out on his face and his teeth chattered louder than ever. Uncaring, Rap began to squeeze. “Call Sagorn!”

  ANY SORCERER WHO DOES NOT ANSWER THIS CALL IS HEREBY SENTENCED TO DEATH. COME NOW!

  “Sorcerers! He lies!”

  The pandemonium seemed to pause. Rap relaxed his death grip on the thief. Who said that?

  “Sorcerers, hear the truth now!” The voice and face were faint, but in the ambience they could never be disguised.

  Rap looked to Grunth. “Is that who I think it is?”

  Registering surprise and delight, she opened her muzzle in a blood-curdling grin, flashing her huge horse teeth.

  HEED NOT THE LIARS AND THE EVIL! HEED ONLY THE WORDS OF THE ALMIGHTY. The Covin was trying to drown out the opposition, but that was not feasible in the ambience.

  “Sorcerers, there is yet hope!” the thin and distant voice said. “Rap the faun has returned!”

  “Oh, Gods!” Rap said. “Me? Who? Now what? Where is that coming from?”

  “He outwitted Zinixo once and—”

  IGNORE THE RENEGADE… The Covin’s roar was a forest fire, a waterfall, an earthquake, and none of them could hide that solitary whisper of rebellion.

  “—he can do so again!”

  “Meld!” Tik Tok shouted. “To me, everyone!”

  With a rush, the sorcerers began combining their powers in the ambience. It grew easier with practice. Rap found himself sucked in almost without willing it. They grabbed up the comatose trolls and the raging anthropophagi, joining, blending as if an occult snowball went rolling through the ship. Thrugg arrived like a falling temple… Grunth…

  “Here is the promise!” the whisper said. “The faun proposes and the wardens agree.”

  The last anthropophagous mage was blended in, and the meld was complete, thirty-seven minds. “—Hub,” they thought, “—it is coming from Hub—of course it is—I knew that—where else would it come from?—look out for the Covin—take it gently, I said—don’t be so pushy.”

  They looked and beheld the City of the Gods itself, the City of Five Hills, with the Opal Palace in the center and the palaces of the Four around it. To Rap, and even more to Grunth, it was all familiar. To the others it was an overwhelming shock, a sprawling miracle of spires and marble, copper roofs and golden domes. Temples and mansions and parks filled the center, dwindling out for leagues into brick tenements and squalor in the suburbs. The entire population of the Nogids or the Mosweeps could have vanished within its teeming multitudes. For a moment the meld roiled in astonishment. A couple of the trolls almost went into withdrawal and had to be vitalized.

  Then they sensed the hideous power of the Covin, raging like a storm over the city, unseen and unsuspected by the milling hordes of mundanes—the artisans, the merchants, the porters and refugees, the soldiers and servants, beggars and thieves, going about their business in the morning sun. Markets and wagons and marching legionaries… And still that solitary voice rang out in defiance, louder and clearer, a crippled old man, near to death but burning bright with hate and fury.

  “The imperor in Hub is a charlatan, but the true imperor still lives and he also pledges…”

  “—clearer,” thought the thirty-seven, “somewhere around—cannot locate him exactly—of course not—there he is—no, he’s not—see the Covin hunting, also—clever work—how is he doing that?—it’s Warlock Olybino—we must help him—no, we mustn’t.”

  “There shall be no more slavery among sorcerers…”

  The trolls had no love for the sorcerer whose armies had enslaved them. The anthropophagi saw only a lone warrior battling enormous odds, and their fierce fighting souls reached out to him. A ferocious argument developed within the meld itself.

  “—the Covin will catch him—of course it will—he knows that—take it easy—you’ll get us all caught if you jostle that way—what do you suppose his range is?—well, it’s a lot better than it should be—you mean because the Covin’s already gotten everyone’s attention—it’s going to find him very soon—leave him alone—it serves him right—his range isn’t all that great, is it?—how can we help him?—bet they can hear him down in Zark—we can’t help him—the Covin sure is mad, isn’t it?”

  The whirling darkness whirled faster. The stony eyes of a dwarf glared angrily over the city, larger than thunderheads. But for all its power, the Covin could not drown out that mocking voice. Nor could it catch the warlock. Giant hands of smoke grabbed and found nothing, grabbed again, and again…

  IGNORE THE LIES OF THE RENEGADE. COME NOW TO HUB AND ENLIST IN THE ARMY OF THE ALMIGHTY THAT HIS NEW ORDER MAY EXTEND TO ALL HIS SERVANTS THE BLESSINGS ONLY THEY CAN KNOW…

  “—he moves like a flea—it’s a random pattern—we must help him escape—oh, no, we mustn’t—he knew the risk…”

  “A court of sorcery will judge all offenses…”

  The contemptuous whisper continued remorselessly, rendering futile all the occult bellowing of the Covin and its frantic efforts to entrap its tormentor. On the Avenue Abnila, in the ground of the White Palace, on the lakeshore—Olybino was never in one place for more than a second and there was no pattern to his moves.

  He must have prespelled this in advance. Rap thought admiringly, but how can he ever escape in the end?

  “In future wardens will be elected by the sorcerers…” Olybino was adding a few things Rap had never thought of.

  Trolls and anthropophagi listened and watched and argued: “—we can’t desert him—we can’t save him—the dwarf will get him—he can’t keep this up forever—if we do anything we shall be detected.”

  The mundanes of the city went on with their lives unaware, but all over the world, sorcerers must surely be listening to the conflicting proclamations, watching the conflict. Then the Covin changed its tactics. The illusory hands vanished. A bolt of power crashed into the street where the warlock had been. Pedestrians and carriages were blasted to ashes, houses collapsed in fiery rains.

  The meld stilled in shock.

  A moment later the mocking voice came from a park near the Opal Palace: “All this is promised by the rightful imperor, by the wardens…”

  Soil and trees erupted in flame, but the voice came now from a bridge over Old Canal: “… and by Rap, the faun, the sorcerer who long ago refused to become a warden, but who now leads the battle for liberty and justice…”

  The bridge flew apart in dust, filling the air with scorched bodies of pedestrians and horses. Debris and corpses rained down into the water.

  “… the battle against the evil of the Covin!”

  Now the mundanes were involved, as pillars of smoke and flame sprouted at random across the city. The meld of the Dreadnaught watchers howled—trolls in horror, anthropophagi in fury. Somewhere in that joint consciousness, Rap straggled to be heard and was drowned out.

  “Brothers and sisters—” the warlock cried, and destruction smashed down in the crowded street where he had stood.

  The callous butchery roused even the trolls. The anthropophagi were already gibbering.

  “—wait for the summons, and when the trumpet sounds…” A temple collapsed in flames. “… liberty and justice…”

  “—this is slaughter—we must stop this—the maniac may blast the whole city next—quickly strike now—call for help from all the other watchers—the time is not ripe—it will never be riper—people are dying…”

  Bloodlust roared. Tik Tok’s band was incensed almost beyond reason, gathering hatred to strike. Even the meekest of the trolls wanted to rush to the aid of the wounded, at the very least, and most of them seemed ready to join the cannibals and do battle against the murderous evil. Rap himself could feel his self-cont
rol slipping, and his fragile authority had long since faded. Every sorcerer in Pandemia must be watching this. There would never be a better time to issue the rallying cry, to sound that trumpet the warlock had just proclaimed. Were the numbers enough? Would the Covin have risked this open confrontation were it not certain the odds were on its side? Was any victory possible now? Its power was mountainous.

  “Zinixo, you are a mad, odious, murderous, despicable little—”

  And that time the warlock held his ground. The Covin blasted it with a torrent of thunderbolts.

  Silence and curling smoke.

  Dead.

  The meld screamed. Fury and power built like a pillar of fire, preparing to do battle…

  In sudden panic Rap screamed a warning: “The dragons! Remember the dragons!”

  Dragons?

  The fire faded away.

  * * *

  Rap opened his eyes. Dreadnaught moved serenely over the waters of the Summer Seas in the morning sunshine. At the wheel stood the gaunt figure of Doctor Sagorn, unperturbed and dignified despite the wind-stirred rags he wore. The sails bent in curves and the wake was straight. Steering a ship, his stance implied, was a childishly simple operation.

  Trolls sobbed and moaned. Anthropophagi glared and muttered curses. Wiping his face. Rap made a quick count. Nobody missing! He sat up.

  “It is all over, I presume?” Sagorn remarked calmly.

  “Yes. It was East. Olybino.”

  “So I gathered. You were all shouting at once, but I made out that much.” The old scholar pulled a contemptuous smile. “He made a proclamation? You explained that procedure on White Impress, you may recall.”

  Rap nodded. He ached all over, as if he had been thrashing around on the hard planks. He felt soiled. He despised himself.

  He glanced around, seeing the fury on the faces of the anthropophagi and the trolls’ shame. Grunth bared her baboon teeth at him as if enjoying his failure. He was the voice of sanity and therefore not popular at the moment.

  “He died,” Rap said. “They got him.”

  “Of course.” Sagorn shrugged. “That was why neither you nor Warlock Raspnex was willing to take that particular shortcut, wasn’t it?”