by Glen Cook
His third morning there, before traffic picked up, he had a visitor. The man was tall, lean, and had tight, dark eyes in a hard face. Policeman? Bandit? Mocker wondered nervously.
The man sat down facing him, stared for more than a minute.
Mocker wriggled. A demon ground coarse salt into his nerve endings.
"I'm Damo Sparen," his visitor finally announced. His voice was as cold and hard as his appearance. "I own the carnival. I've been watching you."
Mocker shrugged. Was he supposed to beg forgiveness for bleeding off a miniscule portion of the man's revenues?
"You're interesting. One of the nastier cases of self-abuse I've seen. Talent bleeds out of you, and you waste it to the last ounce. Do youwant to die young?"
Mocker gulped. "Maybeso. In thousand years, or two." He grinned weakly. He was scared. "What is going on here?"
"I wanted to tell you something. I'm no diviner, but this prediction doesn't require the skills of a necromancer. You will die. Soon. Unless you mend your ways."
Mocker's fear tightened its noose.
"You keep cutting purses, somebody's going to cut your throat. Before summer's done. You're too damned clumsy."
Mocker swallowed the lump in that throat. He was bewildered. The man sounded like an evangelist.
"My eastern friend, I'm going to give you a chance to see Old Man Winter again. I'm looking for someone with your talents and not much conscience. I could use you. If we could dry you out and knock a little sense in your head. You've got the skills, but they're in bad shape."
"Self, am unsure hearing is accurate. Explicate, please. Am being offered position?"
"Conditionally. I need a ventriloquist and magician. My performers usually get a share of the net. In your case that won't hold unless you shape up. I'll give you food, found, and lessons in whatever you don't already have. Hypnotism, for instance. Make it a trial period of three months. If you stop the drinking and stealing... Don't try to bullshit me, my friend. I told you I've been watching you.
"Even without a share it's more than you've got now. Like I said, you won't last the summer this way."
Mocker hemmed and hawed. He could not believe the man was serious. Nevertheless, he decided to take a chance. He could be no worse off.
It was a fateful decision. Damo Sparen would quickly shape the raw Mocker clay into the man he would become.
Sparen was a westerner, and older, but was Mocker's spiritual brother. Their black, lazy souls had been struck on the same dies.
While supervising Mocker's higher education, Sparen became his first real friend.
"One thing you've got to learn," Sparen told him early on. "Discipline. Your troubles all stem from a lack of discipline."
Mocker sputtered.
"I mean self-discipline, not the poundings you got from Sajac. They're part of your problem, too. You don't know how to handle your freedom.
"My friend, you made it this far on sheer talent. But you've got to learn some things that don't come instinctively. You've refused so far. So you've been hungry a lot.
"Sparen's First Law: Always make the mark think he's smarter than you are. Make him think it's him doing the con. Greed will carry it for you then.
"Second Law: Don't work a con where you're boosting. Or vice versa. I warned you before, don't steal around the carnival. Yesterday you cut a purse within a hundred feet of your puppet show. Don't let it happen again. I'm not patient. You could get my whole operation broken up.
"Third Law: Don't aggravate the underworld. You got to stay in good with those guys. They're organized. You leave a bad marker with Three Fingers in Hellin Daimiel and run off to Octylya, when you get there the Dragon's men will be waiting. With knives. They like to do each other little favors.
"Fourth Law: Think big. That crap of sitting in the street selling mud packs made with cat's piss ain't got no future. You'll be doing the same thing fifty years from now. Just like Sajac."
Mocker finally interjected, "Self, am able to do only what is known to self."
"Then suppose you stop scheming and stealing long enough to learn something? You're secure here. You don't have to take risks. Expand your talents instead. Look at me, Mocker. I started out where you are now. Today I've got a villa on the Auszura Littoral. A duke is my next door neighbor. I've got copra plantations in Simballawein. I've got mines in Anstokin."
"Hai! And still... "
"And still I travel with the carnival? Of course. It's in my blood. It's in yours. We can't resist the challenge. Of what the carnival represents. One more sucker taken for everything but his greedy smile. But I don't do that kind of thing as Sparen. Sparen and his carnival are cover. Sparen is an honest and respected businessman. People trust him enough to loan him money."
For once in his life Mocker listened.
"You had what you needed when you got a hold of those jewels. Working capital. More than I started with. How in heaven's name could you have wasted it that way?"
"Self, am mystified. Am bambazoolooed. Am utterly ignorant of course to pursue."
"That's good. That's a beautiful touch. The way you talk. Never change it. If they can't understand you, they can't ever be sure their losses weren't their own fault. At worst, you'll get a little more getaway time. And it'll help convince them they're smarter that you are."
"First Law."
"Exactly."
Mocker's secondary education proceeded apace. He began to learn the self-restraint that had been missing most of his life. Sparen gave a little heavy-handed encouragement, in the form of a gigantic thug named Gouch who was always there, sap in hand, when temptation stalked too close.
"I think we're getting somewhere, my friend," Sparen told him late that summer. And he meant the word friend. They had become as close as two men could. "I think you're ready to be a partner."
"Hai! Good. Self, have several ideas... "
"This war thing has got me scared," Sparen told him, trampling his enthusiasm. "They're bully-ragging Throyes. If those crazies take over and come out of Hammad al Nakir, they'll crawl all over the Lesser Kingdoms. They'll ruin us. I've seen what a war can do to business. Luckily, this carnival business isn't the only one. There're a few better suited to wartime. It's time to start getting ready. Just in case." Sparen downed a long draft of wine. "You know, I never had a son. Not that I could acknowledge. I think I've kind of found one now."
Mocker's eyes narrowed. Was this just talk born of a mating 'twixt wine and melancholy?
"Well, that's neither here nor there. We've got to find you a trade name. Magellin the Magician strikes me. I used to have a partner who went by that. But I caught him shorting the accounts. Had to elevate his spirit to a higher plane and lower his flesh to the fishes. It was a sad occasion. I cried for an hour. I thought he was a good friend. Don't you do that to me, you hear?"
"Is farthest thing from mind, guaranteed. Have developed healthy respect for Gouch and own neck. Have learned to mend ways."
Which was not strictly true. He had learned a lot of wicked and wonderful things from Sparen and Gouch, but mending his ways was not one of them. He never could stifle his urge to cut a purse, or to squander his takings gambling.
What he did learn was how to manage theft with finesse, while Gouch was watching, so that he alone knew what was going on.
Chapter Seven:
THE EXILES
The first assassins reached the mountain camp with the spring thaw. Six good men died stopping them. "Always in threes," Haroun gasped. He was pale and soaked with sweat. "Harish always come in threes. What moves men like that, Beloul? They knew they were going to die."
Beloul shrugged and shook his head. "They believe in their cause, Lord."
A second team materialized almost immediately, and a third followed close behind. Haroun imagined an endless line of smiling, vacant-eyed men coming to die for their prophet, each certain of immediate entry into paradise.
Distinguishing friend from foe was impossible in the
ongoing refugee chaos.
"Beloul, I can't stay here," Haroun declared after the third attack left eight followers dead. "I'm a sitting target. They won't stop as long as they know where to find me."
"Let them come. I'll strip every newcomer and look for the Harish tattoo." The cultists wore a tattoo over the heart. It faded after death, purportedly when the soul ascended to paradise.
"They'll send men without it. I'm moving out. I'll drift from camp to camp. I have to show the flag anyway, don't I?" Winter boredom moved him as much as did the attacks. He was driven by a youthful eagerness to be moving, to be doing. He selected a half dozen companions and departed.
The camps heightened his appreciation of his mission. He was appalled.
The break with Hammad al Nakir meant a break with a fragile culture and briefly settled past. In some places the ancient desert ways, the nomadic, pre-Royal ways, were reemerging.
"What's wrong with plundering foreigners?" asked a captain in a camp run by an old functionary named Shadek el Senoussi.
"Weare the foreigners here, you idiot!" Haroun glanced at el Senoussi. The man's face was a mask. "And these people are more understanding than I would be were our roles reversed. I'll tell you a thing, Shadek. If your men bother your neighbors again I'll swing the headsman's blade myself. Quesani law endures, even in exile. Its protection extends to everyone who welcomed us in our extremity."
"I hear, Lord." The old man wore a slight smile now. Haroun had a distinct feeling he approved.
"This is the end of it, then. If it chokes you, tough. Treat your neighbors as equals. We need their help."
Rebellion smouldered in el Senoussi's men. Haroun glared back. The old man needed replacing. He commanded too much personal loyalty.
Few of the camp leaders were enthusiastic about him. Some were spiritual brothers of El Murid's generals: born bandits smelling opportunity in chaos. Others simply did not like being commanded by an untried youth.
He drifted westward, accompanied only by his bodyguards. He met and assessed all his captains. Then he began to seek allies.
He discovered that a claimed kingship opened no doors.
"We'll see," he grumbled after yet another rejection. "They'll sing a different song when the Scourge of God begins hammering the Lesser Kingdoms."
"Let them burn," one guard suggested.
"Will he really come?" another asked.
"Someone will. My old teacher called it historical inertia. Nothing can stop it. Not even the deaths of Nassef and El Murid."
"Many men will die, then."
"Too many, and a lot of them ours. The Disciple doesn't know what he's doing."
He tried. He tried bravely and hard, and won no support anywhere. And he went on, his mission driving him mercilessly. His guards began to fear he was obsessed.
Finally, he admitted defeat. There would be no help while the Lesser Kingdoms were not directly threatened. He returned to the camps.
He was in el Senoussi's encampment when Harish assassins found him again. Three teams attacked together. They slew his bodyguards. They slew half a score of Shadek's men. They wounded Haroun twice before el Senoussi rescued him.
"Dismiss me, Lord!" the old man begged. "My failure cannot be excused."
"Stop that. It couldn't be helped. Ouch! Careful, man!" A horse trainer was dressing his wounds. "We have a savage, determined enemy, Shadek. This is going to keep on till we're killed or we destroy him."
"I should have seen through them, Lord."
"May be. May be. But how?" Haroun grew thoughtful. The attack had shaken el Senoussi, yet he seemed more upset because it had happened at his camp than because it had happened to his king.
El Senoussi, Haroun recalled, was an appointee of King Aboud's, a lifelong functionary. He'd spent decades shunning blame and appropriating credit. "Forget the Harish, Shadek. They're like the weather. We have to live with them. Meantime, we have fires to put out." The assassins had started several. Billowing smoke still climbed the sky.
The log blockhouse that was the camp's bailey, and a hutment against the palisade, stubbornly resisted the firemen. The swiftness with which the flames had taken hold bespoke careful preparation.
"Why did they go to the trouble?" Haroun wondered. "They could have killed me if they hadn't wasted the time."
"I don't know, Lord."
The answer came three hours later.
A sentinel called, "Invincibles!"
"Here?" Haroun demanded. "In Tamerice?" He peered over the stockade.
Horsemen were coming out of a nearby wood. They wore Invincible white.
"Must be a hundred of them, Lord," el Senoussi estimated. "The fires must have been a signal."
"So it would seem." Haroun surveyed the encampment. Women and children were moving provisions into the charred blockhouse. They looked scared, but were not panicking. El Senoussi had drilled them well.
"Lord, escape while you can. I only have eighty-three men. Some of them are wounded."
"I'll stay. What good a King who always runs away?"
"He's alive when his moment comes."
"Let them come. I was trained in the Power." He spoke from bravado and frustration. He wanted to hit back.
El Senoussi backed away. "A sorcerer-king?"
Haroun saw the fear-reflections of the kings of Ilkazar gleaming in the man's eyes.
"No. Hardly. But maybe I can blow a little smoke into their eyes."
The Invincibles knew what they were doing. Their intelligence was perfect. Their first attack penetrated the stockade despite Haroun's shagh–nry and a ferocious defense.
"They're getting through where the hutment burned," Haroun shouted. He whirled. El Senoussi was barking orders. Warriors grabbed saddle bows and sped arrows into the throng in the gap, but the Invincibles entered the compound anyway.
"Go to the blockhouse, sire," el Senoussi urged. "You're just one more sword out here. You can bedevil them with your witchery from there."
Haroun allowed himself to be guided through the tumult. He saw the sense of Shadek's argument.
He was more effective from the blockhouse. He did little things and quickly betrayed individual enemies. The Invincibles gave up.
"That was close," Haroun told el Senoussi.
"It's not over. They're not going away. They're circling the camp."
Haroun looked over the palisade. "Some are circling. Some look like they're going for help."
"You'd better leave tonight, Lord."
It was the practical, logical, pragmatic course, but Haroun did not like it. "They'll be waiting for me to try. Or for somebody going after help."
"Naturally. But would they expect us to attack? They believe their own reputation. If we sallied without trying to get away... "
"It might confuse them because it doesn't make much sense."
"It does if it gets you away, Lord."
"I don't understand you, Shadek."
"Don't try, Lord. Just go. And send help."
Haroun fled during el Senoussi's third sally. He went afoot, creeping like a thief, grinding his teeth because his wounds ached. He trudged doggedly through the night, ignoring his pain.
Dawn caught him fifteen miles northeast of the encampment. That put him just twenty from Tamerice's capital, Feagenbruch. The nearest refugee camp was more than forty miles away. He decided to try the capital.
It was risky. Tamerice's nobles might be so timorous they would ignore this compromise of the kingdom's sovereignty.
If they did react, though, they would make independent witnesses to an agression. Tamerice and its neighbors might assume a more bellicose stance toward El Murid.
That chance was worth the risk. El Senoussi's was only an interim encampment. Its loss would not constitute a significant defeat.
The Invincibles wanted to destroy him, not the camp, anyway. The big, important camps they would like to raid were all in the far north.
Haroun was known in Feagenbruch, and not well liked
. He had aggravated the lords of that city with his importunities before.
He used his wounds, youth, and title to obtain entree. He spoke well while explaining to the king's seneschal. He spoke even better once shown into the presence of the king himself.
"It's an outrage, Majesty," the seneschal opined. "We can't let such arrogance go unchallenged."
"Then gather what knights you can muster. Lead them yourself. Cousin," the king told Haroun, "accept my hospitality while this temerity is being rewarded."
"I thank you, Cousin," Haroun replied. He smiled softly. Indirectly, the man had recognized his claim to the Peacock Throne.
At week's end news came that the Invincibles had been defeated and harried back into the Kapenrung Mountains. El Senoussi's people had survived.
The shock waves of the incursion would, in time, course throughout the Lesser Kingdoms, stimulating the growth of animosity toward El Murid.
The Lesser Kingdoms were small and often impotent, but each was jealous of its independence and sovereignty.
Nationalism was stronger there than in the larger kingdoms.
Haroun met a man while he was waiting for the news.
It was an inconsequential thing then, but in time would shape the destinies of kingdoms.
Bored with Tamerice's squalid palace, which was a hovel compared even to Haroun's own boyhood home, he began sampling the excitements of the spring fair set up in the meadow north of town.
One afternoon he was watching the swordswallower when he sensed the approach of a wrongness. He could identify no positive threat. That puzzled him. Usually his intuition was more precise. He looked around.
He had come without guards. If ever there was a time for the Harish to strike, this was it. He damned himself for taking an unnecessary risk.
He reached with his shagh–n's senses.
That godawful palace... Tamerice's rulers were a barbarous lot. Unlettered thick-wits disguising themselves in the trappings of noblemen. Feh! The only conversationalist there was a treasury clerk hired out of Hellin Daimiel...
Only one individual stood out of the crowd of lean farmers and ginger-haired city folk. Short, fat, brown, apparently of Haroun's own age, he was an obvious alien. There was a hint of the desert about him, yet Haroun could not recall ever having seen a fat poor man there.