by Glen Cook
“Haroun!” Megelin cried. “Come on! It’s over!”
Bragi brushed a sword aside, grabbed Haroun’s reins. Haroun wobbled in his saddle. His wound was deeper than he suspected.
Though gravely injured, Radetic directed the withdrawal. “Capture some horses!” he snapped. “Some camels. Anything. We’ve got wounded with nothing to ride.”
The Invincibles might have taken them then had they not been more interested in the welfare of their prophet and his family.
“Let’s go. Let’s go,” Radetic grumbled. “You men. Help those two get onto their animals.”
Haroun looked back once. The battleground was littered with dead and dying. The majority were followers of the Disciple. “Did we get him?” he croaked at Bragi. “Do you think we got him?”
“No,” the northerner said. “We didn’t.”
“Damn! Damn damn damn!”
Bragi snorted wearily. “If he doesn’t have a god on his side, he has a devil. Ride. They’ll be after us as soon as they get themselves sorted out.”
Chapter Fifteen
King Without a Throne
Twenty-one horses, twenty-three men and eight camels made up the caravan. They straggled across a bleached-bone desert beneath a savage noonday sun. Only the most gravely wounded rode. Those afoot cursed and coerced the faltering beasts along the rocky, dusty, wind-whipped bottom of a dry wadi. Humiliation, despair and the anticipation of death were their marching companions. Ahmed’s treachery was an agony each man bore like a brand, but no man wore it more painfully than did Ahmed himself.
For each man only the will to resist, to survive long enough to avenge, remained. The kingdom had been lost, but its blood, its Crown, lived on and would be preserved against tomorrow.
These things didn’t occur as discrete thoughts. The men were too weary. Determination was baked into their bones. Consciously they were preoccupied with the heat, with thirst, with exhaustion. In the short run only one thing mattered: taking another step.
The wadi dissolved into a badland of tent-sized boulders. “This is the place,” Ahmed croaked.
“I forbid it,” Haroun replied. “I’m King now. You deferred to me. I forbid it.”
Ahmed gestured. Men took positions among the rocks. “God go with you, sire.”
“Damn it.”
“Haroun.” Radetic’s voice was half whisper, half groan. “Let the man die the death he chooses.”
“He’s right,” Bragi said. He began to collect the remnants of water carried by those who would stay in ambush.
Haroun agonized. These men hardly knew him. It was not meet that he should leave them to die. “Ahmed —”
“Go, sire. Their dust draws close. We die for the Blood. By choice. Just go.”
Bragi finished gathering the water. “Haroun, will you come on? Do I have to drag you?”
“All right. All right.” He started walking.
There were six of them now, all but Megelin walking. Radetic rode, his guts slowly leaking onto his animal’s back. Haroun led his horse. Bragi tried to keep the animals and three youngsters together.
I’m a king, Haroun told himself. A king. How can that be?
Ali was dead. Yousif was dead. Fuad was dead, as were his sons. Ahmed had chosen to die in atonement. Now there was only Haroun bin Yousif. After him, the Scourge of God.
He would not permit Nassef to take the kingdom.
It wasn’t much of a kingdom, he reflected. And one he could claim only at the cost of fortunes in blood and tears. If he tried... He glanced back. There was no sign of the ambush. He sent Ahmed a grudging, silent salute.
In the final extremity, in the hour of crisis, Ahmed had shown more character than anyone expected. He had the mafti al hazid of old, the high death-pride that had made Ilkazar’s legions stand fast even in the face of certain destruction.
The dust raised by the pursuit was close. Nassef himself was on the trail. No one else would press so hard.
Haroun saw Bragi stumble as he forced a recalcitrant camel into line. The youngsters were about done in. There was no hope left. Not if he tried to save the whole party.
“All or none,” he told himself. “All or none.” He thought he and Bragi could make it if they abandoned the others.
Carrion birds planed the air, patiently awaiting the death their presence guaranteed. Nassef needed but chase them to track his prey.
Haroun swung his gaze to the ground ahead. “Step, step,” he muttered again and again. Slowly, he coaxed Radetic’s mount in the shadows at the bottom of another wadi. How far to the mountains? he wondered. Too far. Already his flesh strove to betray his will, to surrender to the inevitable.
A smile cracked his lips. They had gone after the Disciple like mad dogs, hadn’t they? Almost got him, too. Almost got his wife. Almost captured the pearl of his seraglio, the daughter who would finally receive a name this Disharhun.
Her wide-eyed, wild look, struck over awe and determination, all overridden by hard determination to save her brother, haunted him still.
His smile widened. Meryem must have been hurt worse than he had thought. Nassef’s pursuit was implacable and tireless, the relentless hunt of a man obsessed with a personal debt. He must be killing his men trying to catch up.
Haroun’s wound, on the outside of his left arm, was shallow but painful. He was proud of it, carried it as a badge of courage.
Radetic groaned. Haroun glanced up at the old man. Poor Megelin. So pale, so shaky. He had come so far, in the pursuit of knowledge, and his heart had betrayed him. He should have gone home when his contract expired. But he had lost his affection to a family, and a place, and was about to pay the ultimate price for that indiscretion. Haroun bin Yousif had been forced to become a man and warrior within a matter of hours. Now he faced becoming a leader, a king. While lost in an unfamiliar desert, punished by heat and thirst, aided by one bewildered foreigner, with El Murid’s jackals yapping at his heels.
He would survive! He would avenge his father and brothers, his uncle, and even his mother. And Megelin. Megelin most of all. Beloved Megelin, who had been more father than Yousif...
He paid little attention to his surroundings. He clung to the meandering wadi as long as its tendency was northward, toward the Kapenrung Mountains and the border of Hammad al Nakir. Bragi and the youngsters stumbled along behind, satified to follow his lead. Grudgingly, the wadi walls provided protection from the sun and wind.
Haroun’s thoughts drifted to El Murid’s daughter. What was it that he had seen in her face? Someday...
The fall of Al Rhemish would leave one vaguely palatable taste in the Royalist mouth. The Invincibles had been badly mauled. The Disciple would be unable to press his advantage quickly. The scattered loyalists might have time to regroup and counterattack. Ahmed’s sacrifice would steel thousands of wavering hearts. It was the sort of gesture Hammad al Nakir loved.
Haroun tried to banish the heat and misery by dwelling on the larger picture. He considered the faithful. Some would scatter according to plans long ago formulated by his father and Radetic. If necessary they could regroup outside Hammad al Nakir. The gold in the banks at Hellin Daimiel would finance their war of liberation.
If he accepted the challenge of fate, if he became their king, could he gather and wield them? Without Megelin? The old man would not last much longer...
Rationality deserted him when Megelin fell. The old foreigner meant everything to him. Yousif had given him life. Megelin had nurtured and loved him, and had sculpted him into the man he would become.
He tried to lift Megelin and found that the old man’s heart had stopped. “Megelin. Not now. Don’t give up now. We’re almost there. Megelin! Don’t die!” But even the command of a king cannot stay the Dark Lady.
Radetic’s death was the final straw’s weight. He could withhold his grief no longer. “Damn you!” he shouted toward the south. “Nassef! Micah al Rhami! You will die a thousand deaths for this. I will take a vengeance so cruel
it will be remembered for a thousand years.” He ranted on, madly. One remote, cool part of him told him he was making a fool of himself, but he couldn’t stop.
His companions didn’t care. They simply sat on rocks and waited for the vitriol to burn away. Bragi did try to comfort him momentarily, ineptly, recalling his own agony at his father’s death.
Haroun’s recovery began with a fit of self-loathing when he cursed Bragi for showing solicitude. The northerner withdrew, sat on a rock and ignored him. That hurt Haroun, exposing him to yet another level of pain. Was he insane, offending the only friend he had?
In a still moment he heard distant sounds of fighting. Men were selling their lives. He must not belittle their sacrifices. He had to go on and, if it came to that, had to let the desert claim him before he yielded to the Scourge of God.
Eyes still moist, he kissed his teacher’s cooling cheeks. “I mourn, Megelin. This wasteland is no resting place for a don of the Rebsamen.” Vulture shadows ghosted along the wadi walls. “But I have to leave you. You understand, don’t you? You were always a student of necessity.” He rose. “Bragi! Let’s go. They’ll be through the ambush in a few minutes.” The sounds of fighting were diminishing already.
He pushed on, into the night, knowing darkness would not stop Nassef. Only the Dark Lady herself would stay the Scourge of God. The three youngsters grew progressively weaker. Horses halted and refused to go on. The camels grew increasingly balky. Bragi became fractitious. He did not know how to handle the animals.
Haroun slaughtered the weakest horse, caught its hot blood, passed it around. Their water was gone. He prayed to no certain god for strength, for guidance, for a miracle. His future kingdom became confined to that narrow and perhaps endless passage of the desert.
Deep in the night, under a silver, uncaring moon, the wadi faded. If he paused to listen Haroun could hear men and animals in the distance. Nassef was gaining again.
Moments after he departed the wadi he halted, confused. Before him stood a strange old tower. He recognized the type. Ilkazar’s emperors had erected hundreds to house local garrisons. Their ruins could be found wherever the Imperial legions had passed. He was baffled because he hadn’t expected to encounter evidence of human habitation in the waste.
Bragi came up beside him. “What’s that?”
A sad keening came from the tower.
Haroun shook his head. He glanced back. The boys had collapsed.
The keening came again.
“That’s no animal,” Bragi said.
“The wind?”
“Maybe it’s a ghost.”
Haroun reached out with his shaghûn’s senses. Incompletely trained, attenuated by hunger and exhaustion, they told him nothing. “I don’t get anything.”
“Look!” A wan light illuminated a face behind an archer’s embrasure.
“That’s no ghost.”
“Maybe we can get water.”
“Could be a bandit hideout. Or a demon’s lair. Or a sorcerer hiding from El Murid.” But if the magical or supernatural lurked there, his shaghûn’s senses should have warned him.
He listened. The sounds of horses and men hung just on the edge of hearing. “I’m going to investigate.”
“Nassef is too close.”
“I might find something. Water, at least.”
“Yeah. Water.”
“Let’s go.” It was hard to get moving again. His joints ached, his muscles begged for respite. His wound sent wires of pain crawling toward his shoulder. He was afraid it would fester. Somehow, he had to elude Nassef long enough to cleanse and cauterize it.
Bragi cuffed horses, camels and boys and got them moving again. Battered sword in hand, Haroun approached the tower step by leaden-footed step. Once around the tower he stalked, seeking an entrance.
“Find anything?” Bragi asked.
“No.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Look again. You stay here.”
“What about Nassef?”
“I won’t be long.” He went around the tower again. And this time he found a black cavity at its base, facing south. He was perplexed. The opening hadn’t been there before, yet he could sense nothing magical. Was he so weak his shaghûn’s senses had fled him completely?
The keening resumed. It stirred images of a whole people grieving. It wakened a surge of emotion, of empathy.
Haroun gasped.
In the doorway stood a child, or imp, or cherub, naked, hands on hips, grinning impudently. It demanded, “Candidate, what do you fear?”
Though conventional images formed in immediate response, Haroun suspected the imp meant something deeper, was trying to evoke the nightshapes that lurked in the deeps of souls. Snakes, spiders, El Murid and the Scourge of God could be handled with boot heels and blades. The devils of the soul were more formidable.
Startled and puzzled, he could think of no appropriate reply.
He glanced at his companions. They had fallen asleep where they had stopped. Even the animals had surrendered to exhaustion. He listened. The pursuit seemed no closer.
The imp grinned again, shrugged, stepped backward, vanished. Haroun was baffled. That was sorcery, yet his shaghûn’s senses hadn’t detected a thing. He started to follow the imp...
Things exploded from the doorway. The first was a blinking, puzzled lion which, pausing to assess its situation, died under Haroun’s blade. Then came vampire bats that ripped and tore and let his blood a dozen times before he finished the last. Then came snakes and scorpions and spiders.
He never considered flight. He defeated each wave by summoning reserves of energy, anger and courage he didn’t know he possessed.
Then came the nebulous thing, the real enemy, the dark shifting form on which he painted his own faces of horror. It flung parts of itself to the sides, to strike from behind. With it came scents and whispers of evil that tore at already tortured nerves.
He stepped back, raised his torn left arm to shield himself. With a cackling, wicked roar the thing doubled in size. Haroun swung wildly. His blade encountered nothing, yet elicited a screech of pain.
Weariness threatened to drag him down. Pain became unbearable. He knew he was doomed. Yet he persisted. The screech convinced him his sole hope was attack. He stumbled forward, sword cleaving Night in wild strokes.
Darkness took him into its gentle arms. For a moment he thought he saw a beautiful, weeping woman approaching, and knew he had glimpsed the face of Death. There was one instant of trepidation and reluctance as he remembered the Scourge of God close behind him, then nothing.
He wakened to warmth and daylight and a sense of well-being. A bent old man stood over him, examining his injuries. Imp-Child watched from a doorway.
He was inside the tower. Its interior was no ruin. He tried to rise.
The old man restrained him. “Let me finish.” Haroun found his accent difficult. Sad tones crowded his reassuring smile.
“What time is it? How long have I been here?”
“Three days. You needed the rest.”
Haroun surged up. The old man pressed down on his chest with all the weight of the world.
“My people —”
“All safe and well. Resting and healing at the foot of the tower. Your enemies won’t find them. Child!”
Imp-Child brought a copper mirror with a surface clouded by age. “Stare into your own eyes,” the old man said. He did something strange with his fingers.
At first Haroun was too shaken by changes in his appearance to see anything else. Youth had fled him. The brown of his skin had deepened. His thin, long face had become an emaciated death’s head. His hawkish nose had become more shadowed and pronounced. His eyes looked haunted. Anger and pain had etched deep furrows across his forehead.
Then he began to discern the hunters deep in the pools of his eyes. The Scourge of God and two score Invincibles followed a trail implacably.
There was something wrong. Their eyes blazed with madness.
They were within a mile of the tower, but never glanced its way.
“They’re following their own trail around the stronghold,” the old man said. He giggled crazily.
Haroun glanced at him and surprised a malice which instantly transformed into sorrow. “Four hundred winters of despair,” his savior said in a voice gone sepulchral. “And finally you’ve come. I hope it’s you. Pray, be the One. This charge has grown tedious. I long for the embrace of the Dark Woman.”
Haroun felt he was an audience of one. There was something subtly unconvincing about this old man. “Where am I?” he demanded.
“The place has no name. A watchtower. It had a number once, but I’ve forgotten it.”
“Who are you?” The old man seemed not to hear. “Why are you helping me? If you’re helping.”
“Because you are of the Blood. Because you are the Candidate.”
Haroun frowned. “Candidate? For what?”
“For the Invisible Crown.”
Each answer left Haroun more baffled. “Why are you hiding out here? This is the least explored part of Hammad al Nakir.” The inquisitiveness and skepticism he had acquired from Radetic kept him from accepting the old man’s answers. “You’d better tell me a story, old man. A good one. This is all crap and wasted time. I should be heading for the border.”
The old man looked surprised and disappointed. “I am the son of Ethrian of Ilkazar, the wise man who predicted the Fall. He was unable to avert that disaster. During the destruction of the Imperial City, hoping to revivify the Empire one day, he smuggled myself and the symbols of Imperial power through the besiegers’ lines. He sent me here under a compulsion to await the coming of a suitable Imperial heir. Someone Fate would bring here. Someone of the Blood. I am to test him, and, if he is worthy, to invest him with the Imperial power. My father meant to join me, but he was killed. I’ve been trapped here for four centuries. Never before has a candidate come.”
The story dovetailed with known history and old legend. But when, his head swimming with visions of armies rallying to his Imperial standard, Haroun asked specific questions and received only evasions in reply, his credulity faded. “Get serious, old-timer. You’re dodging like a hare chased by a fennec. Give me straight answers or go away.”