A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  “It will reveal our existence to the Covin!”

  But the Covin already knew, Rap thought. Or if it didn’t know, it suspected, and Zinixo could never live with suspicion. As had been prophesied, a woman with child had brought evil to the Accursed Land.

  Rap should probably have been next after Quaith, but Thaïle passed him over. All seven pixies spoke, and all seven said no. They mostly gave the same reasons as the first two, but Toom said that war now seemed likely and to initiate brutality on such a scale would antagonize potential allies — a logic that Rap thought showed the best sense yet. It was wrong, though.

  Neem was the oldest and last. His reedy voice quavered. “No, Holiness. Surely we can mask our land in power so that the horde passes through without conflict? This has been done before.”

  Not when Zinixo was running things. Rap thought.

  Thaïle had given no reaction yet. And finally —

  “Archon Rap?”

  Rap’s mouth was dry, and he felt sick. “Yes. If the duty were mine, I would spring the trap.”

  Eight cowled heads remained bent over the ice-coated grave. Seven shocked faces stared horror at him in the ambience.

  “Reason?”

  “Two reasons. First, you cannot now avoid war with the Covin. In war you must seek to win. Backed by magic, that djinn army alone will ravage your land utterly, so you must destroy it while you have the chance. Second, the Covin has won every skirmish so far — the wardens, the imperor, the goblins, the legions, dragons, Warlock Olybino… It has met with no resistance. Unless we can chalk up a victory soon, our cause dies stillborn. To smite the djinns will send a signal to all those we must enlist, the sorcerers still uncommitted. It will show that the Covin can be beaten.”

  The dread words died away into the steady beat of the rain on the forest canopy.

  “Will it not cause revulsion, though?” Thaïle said. “As Raim suggested, will they not recoil from joining an ally who launches such mass slaughter?”

  “The djinns are not innocent peasants,” Rap said grimly. He hated his own logic, but he was sure he was right. “They are professional soldiers bent on aggression. And Zinixo began the atrocities. You saw the field of Bandor. Have you forgotten the legions?”

  Thaïle sighed. “No. It shall be done.”

  She was gone.

  One by one the archons rose to their feet until they were all standing.

  “Well?” Rap said harshly. “I seem to have convinced the Keeper. Have I changed any of your minds?”

  Neem vanished without a word. Then Toom.

  In a moment only Raim was left.

  The youngster grinned. He strode around the grave and pumped Rap’s hand in a firm clasp. “You changed mine! In fact, I think I’d have voted the other way if I hadn’t been first They all sounded so, well, timorous!”

  His sincerity was appealing, yet very juvenile.

  “I do not feel happy with my reasoning,” Rap confessed, “but the alternative would be worse.”

  The pixie nodded. “The others will come around. They will support the Keeper.” He chuckled. “Being outvoted by a demon has upset them.”

  “It takes a demon to fight demons,” Rap said sadly. He had given Thaïle a horrible beginning to her reign. He should be feeling soiled by his own words, yet he had a strange hunch that the advice had been irrelevant, the whole scene staged for some other purpose altogether.

  “Come!” Raim said. “Let us go and watch!” He was excited.

  Rap hesitated. To refuse to witness the results of his own counsel seemed the worst sort of hypocrisy, but to do so would be ghoulish. He shook his head.

  Raim scowled at him and disappeared. Rap stared for a while at Keef’s grave, and then turned and headed for the door.

  He came back to the Rap Place in clear moonlight. Kadie still tossed in nightmares. He sent her a deeper slumber. Inos slept on in the other room just as he had left her.

  He wanted to go in and join her, to lie there in her arms. He could waken her and tell her what he had done; she would hold him while he wept, and comfort him.

  He could never do that to Inos. He sat down on the steps and cradled his head in his arms.

  9

  Who never sleeps?

  In the silence of the night, Thaïle stood for a long while by the river. The site of the Leéb Place was a pond now. Nothing moved in the deep dark of the flooded crater except a silvery gleam of fish, although once in a while a breath of warm wind moved ripples of moonlight over its surface. Ugly charred tree trunks in the background marked the edge of the forest and the limits of her destruction.

  Here she had loved. Here she had been happy. Here she had brought forth a child, not half a year ago. Here she had fought the Keeper.

  Now she was Keeper. Now she knew, with wisdom greater than human, that her predecessor had been blameless in that iniquity. Not the Keeper but the archons had slain her child and her love.

  It had been foretold that Thaïle of the Gaib Place would save the College and Thaïle of the Leéb Place would destroy it. Lain had expunged the revelations from the records, but the words were still preserved in the archons’ memories, easily visible to a demigod. By their own misdeeds, the archons themselves had brought the prophecy to pass. It had been the bereaved Thaïle of the Leéb Place who had rescued the woman with child.

  She had goaded them a little this night. What fools they seemed now! They were not even worthy of vengeance. Sinning out of stupidity, in folly they had unchained the hounds of fate and been driven by them to calamity. The end of that chase had seen Thaïle herself bring in the woman with child, as the auguries had warned. Her pity had been folly, also, of course — yesterday she had been as addle-witted as the rest of the archons — but had the archons left her to dwell in peace here with Leéb, then Thume might have eluded the Almighty’s notice for ever.

  She would weep, were the pain not so great.

  How little time the Gods had granted her for happiness! Yet even less time had passed since that final morning when Leéb had departed to fetch the old woman. If They sent him back to her now, he would not know her. She was no longer a peasant child content with a peasant’s love, a peasant’s life. Leéb had died and the Thaïle he had loved so staunchly had died, also. She was not that same Thaïle now. She was the Keeper.

  With a Keeper’s responsibilities. With a Keeper’s pain.

  Lain had been Keeper for seven years. Many of their predecessors had endured longer, but in the end they all failed. In the end they all broke under the strain. They all died as Lain had died, consumed by unbearable power.

  Thaïle had never doubted that she must spring the trap on the djinn army, so why had she summoned the archons to give her counsel she had no intention of heeding? For spite? To demonstrate how far above them she was now? Petty, Thaïle, petty! But if that had been her purpose, then why had she involved the faun?

  Perhaps she had hoped for reassurance that her destruction of the djinns could be justified by necessity and was not motivated by resentment and pain. Only the faun had given her that comfort.

  A good man, the faun. He would be a bastion of strength for her in the struggle to come. He was the only one she could call on for wisdom about the Outside. He knew the world as no pixie did, or ever could, not even her, and few saw reality as clearly as he did. He had said that the djinns must be destroyed although he had hated himself as he did so.

  She looked for him then and found him moping on his own doorstep, grieving for the death of his foes. A dark cloud of impending loss hung over him and she turned away quickly. To pry into the future this night was to risk madness and despair — she would not, must not.

  Almost a thousand years ago, Keef had foreseen this day.

  For almost a thousand years, Thume had waited for it.

  Now it had come and the cause seemed hopeless. Thaïle gazed again at the dark, still pond.

  Farewell, child I never saw! Farewell, Leéb, my only love!

&n
bsp; * * *

  The moon was near to setting. Dawn stirred in the east like a wakening ogre, lightening the sky, staining the ranges with blood. Thaïle flew north and came to rest on a frosty peak above the long lake. Here she stood on the extreme limit of her realm.

  In the shadowy valley downstream, the djinn army was forming up, blighted to her eyes by a shimmer of the Covin’s sorcery. The order of march left no doubt that it planned to advance into Thume. As King Rap had said, this was her only chance to avert the threat. Only here, striking from behind the occult barrier, could she hope to take the Covin by surprise.

  She reached out to the trigger. Centuries ago, one of her predecessors had seen the deadly potential of this gorge and made it ready. It needed so little power to start the process that she had done it almost before she realized. A mountain began to move. Slowly at first, barely perceptible, then gathering speed and force, half a landscape fell away and plunged down.

  A white cloud rushed out over the still surface, impossibly fast. The lake fled from the intruding rock, rising into a dark hill of water, which swelled into the far reaches of its basin and bulged upward until it leaped over the threshold where the little stream had carved its notch. No warning tremor of sorcery alerted the army, only a great wind coming ahead of the disaster, lifting men and tents and animals like leaves. Behind it came the giant wave, white now, surging irresistibly down the canyon, bringing trees and rocks and death, rending sixty thousand souls, hurling a momentary occult agony searing across the world.

  Thaïle whimpered and curled herself small upon her vantage crag, blotting out the horror. Leéb, Leéb, what would you think of me now?

  When she looked again, there was nothing. The valley was a barren cleft in the hills, scoured to bedrock all the way to the sea. Landslides still tumbled from the walls. Waves were spreading far out on the ocean, staining it orange and masking it with spray. The caliph and his army had ceased to exist.

  Far away in Hub, black flames of rage spouted up as the Covin realized how it had been outwitted. Thunder shook the ambience. Power slammed against the walls of Thume like a mighty boot, like a child’s tantrum. The barrier trembled, and held.

  First the woman had been snatched away from the soldiers, now this. Now there could be no doubts. The Almighty’s eyes glared fury and hatred at this unexpected defiance from an unknown opponent. For a moment Thaïle braced herself to resist all-out frontal assault on Thume. Then the danger passed — for the time being. The Covin settled back to consider its enemy, as a dog might study a cat on a fencepost.

  Fire in the northwest proclaimed the sun. Longday came racing across the world.

  10

  Tiptoeing and carrying his boots. Rap was heading back to bed at last. Dawn was brightening the sky outside the windows. He was cold and damp with dew. Too late, he realized that Kadie was awake.

  “Papa?”

  “Morning, beloved,” he whispered. “Try to go back to sleep.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Sitting outside. Thinking.”

  “Thinking of what?” Kadie demanded crossly.

  Thinking of tens of thousands of men screaming as they died.

  “About the war. I think it’s going to start today.”

  “Have you talked with Thaïle?”

  Rap sighed and went to perch on a chair alongside her cot. Kadie pulled the sheet up under her chin and stared distrustfully at him.

  “Yes, I was with the Keeper for a little while.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine. Just very busy.”

  “But she hurts? The words hurt her?”

  He sighed. “Kadie, Kadie! Thaïle has an enormous ability to control sorcery! An incredible, historic ability. That’s what matters. She can live with five words when other sorcerers would be destroyed by them. Some Keepers have survived to be very old, so Archon Toom told me. Don’t worry about Thaïle. She’ll outlive all of us, I promise you.”

  “I want to see her!”

  Rap stood up. “I told you, she’s very busy. She’s queen of Thume, remember, and she has many things to worry about. I expect she’ll send for you when she has time. Now you try to —”

  “Rap!” the Keeper said, her image flickering into view in the ambience. “The dragons are rising! Come, please!”

  Seeing him start to fade, Kadie opened her mouth, but he was gone.

  * * *

  He staggered and dropped his boots. To his astonishment, he was standing in one of the little cabanas of the Meeting Place. There was no sign of the Keeper, or anyone else, either. Why had she brought him here?

  The glade was heavy with shadow under a pale-blue sky, the grass dewy. Even the flowers seemed still asleep, but birds were waking in the forest. He sat down on a bench and reached for a boot.

  Then he was whirled into the ambience beside Thaïle. All of Pandemia opened before him. He saw the northern lands glowing under their unending daylight, Zark already baking in morning heat, the steaming jungles of Guwush. The towering sky trees of Ilrane were catching the first rays of the dawn. Beyond them darkness… and power, the alien taint of dragon.

  He was overwhelmed. Suddenly he was a demigod again, as he had been in his youth, but he had never been this great. How could mortal mind stand so much? Thaïle was sharing her omniscience with him, and he even thought he could feel hints of her torment, the torturing burn of too much power. Krasnegar — the town was still there! And Hub, roiling under the evil anger of the Covin. Azak… gone!

  And Dragon Reach — power flaming. Conflict!

  “What’s happening?” he demanded.

  “I hoped you could tell me.” She was projecting fear and indecision, no longer hiding behind her impenetrable Keeper persona. Despite her might, she was still only a girl, little older than Kadie. “I have not seen its like before.”

  “Nor I!” Rap thought. “Try this.” He conjured a vision of Tik Tok — tattoos and sharpened teeth and a bone in his nose.

  Thaïle registered shock and then unexpectedly sniggered. She reached out to that confusion of forces. “Ah! Yes. I see traces of him.”

  Before Rap could tell her that was a good sign, all of Dragon Reach erupted with destruction. Waves of power rolled outward across Pandemia, lighting a myriad of momentary sparks like stars as individual sorcerers reacted to the shock. Hub blazed in black flame.

  “The dragons!” Thaïle cried. “The dragons are gone!”

  And so they were. Utterly.

  Rap crowed in triumph. “It worked! Tik Tok and Thrugg! And the others! They did it! They must have set a trap…”

  Wonderful! Marvelous! First the djinn army and now the dragons! The Covin had taken two staggering blows. He yelled out his excitement like a boy, and the Keeper smiled.

  Zinixo screamed in fury and hurled devastation upon Dragon Reach. Mountains reeled. Power flashed and roared. The world shuddered.

  “Save them. Keeper!” Rap cried. “We need them!”

  “You call them!” She thrust strength into him like coursing fire in his veins. “Bring them!”

  Rap called.

  “Thrugg! Tik Tok! Sin Sin! Murg!” One by one he declaimed the names of the band who had been his companions on Dreadnought. He knew that some had fallen to the Covin — Grunth in particular — but many must have survived to organize that incredible annihilation of the dragons.

  “Rap?” A faint image of Tik Tok’s nightmare shape flickered into view. He was distant and clearly in distress. “You are indeed a site for psoriasis!”

  “Come, friend! All of you! Come now!” Rap reached out in the metaphor plane of the ambience, feeling his hands grasped by many hands. He heaved; power surged across the world and a horde of sorcerers exploded into the cabana. Its flimsy wicker walls bulged and burst, spilling trolls and anthropophagi out into shrubbery. Roars of sorcery filled the glade. Water birds exploded off the lake in terror. Thaïle gasped at the sight of these savage figures.

  “Tw
enty-four?” Rap yelled. “No, twenty-six! Welcome to Thume! Well done, all of you!” He saw burns and wounds vanishing as the sorcerers healed themselves. Giant trolls lurched to their feet, growling. Jingling bones, a laughing Tik Tok hurled himself at Rap and enveloped him in a rib-cracking embrace.

  The ambience rumbled and Rap was back with Thaïle again. Waves of black fire boiled above the Qoble Mountains, shaking the occult ramparts to their foundations. Thaïle hurled power into them and the attack faltered. Then it ceased, as abruptly as it had begun.

  But it had been close! Clearly the Covin had traced that rescue to its source. It knew its enemy now. How long could Zinixo tolerate a rival?

  “Gods!” Rap said. “We can’t take much of that, can we? Summon your sorcerers. Keeper! All of them! We must organize defenses.”

  Thaïle nodded. Raim materialized, recumbent upon the grass outside the cabana. He had no clothes on and neither did the lovely Sial clasped in his arms. They looked up in shock and outrage. Sial screamed. Thaïle snapped out a command and the two figures vanished again.

  “I’ll bet he remembers that one!” Rap said under his breath. “Thrugg, you big monster!” But events were racing ahead too fast for friendly greetings.

  “Rap!” the Keeper shouted. “Proclaim your war! You said you had friends? Bring them!”

  Again Rap felt the surge of her power elevate him. Again he saw Pandemia spread out before him. He stood above it like a giant, a shining cloud in the shape of a man. He had been given no time to prepare his proclamation, and he bellowed the first words that came into his head.

  “Sorcerers! I am Rap, king of Krasnegar. Today we destroy the Covin! Today we begin the new protocol! Today freedom dawns! Come and enlist in the cause of right!”

  Bolts of lightning buzzed up at him from Hub and were deflected by the age-old defenses of the Accursed Land — how long until Zinixo analyzed this alien sorcery and took its measure?

  “Come now and join the cause!”

  For a moment the ambience was still, shadowy nothing, silent as a crypt; The world seemed to hold its breath. Then a familiar figure shimmered into view — a slim youth with golden skin and eyes of many-colored gem. He, too, bestrode the world with power, smiling an infinitely cynical smile.