A Path to Coldness of Heart

Chapter Twenty-Five:

Late Autumn, Year 1018 AFE:

Desert of Despair

M egelin’s favored henchmen were the twin functionaries Mizr and Misr the Fatherless, which they preferred to abd-Megelin, or servant-of-Megelin. Lesser Royalist lights had begun to distance themselves, softly and cautiously. Rumor said the twins were older than Al Rhemish itself. They had changed names and faith as often as the city had. They were archetypically venal, with a knack for charming anyone close by. For no rational reason Megelin trusted them above all the other blackhearts around him.

Megelin’s current favor was, largely, extorted. Mizr had bumbled in while the king was conferring with a being commonly considered mythical. The twins were not harsh in their demands, though, because Megelin’s friend was without pity or remorse. There was no escaping his farseeing eye or far-reaching wrath.

It took only a few words from that entity to convince the twins that they ought to become extensions of the will of King Megelin. Naturally, both kept their fingers crossed while their oaths were being extorted.

Misr and Mizr were there again when the entity came demanding details of events the night the monster Radeachar visited.

What little Megelin had to report he had gathered only because he feared that he might be asked. He did not himself care what happened on the old men side of town.

Even the stupid understood that the monster had wanted to be noticed. Even the dim knew which puppeteer dangled the Unborn. What even the brilliant could not fathom was, why Al Rhemish?

Megelin suggested, “It was all about confusion. Meant to cause exactly the disorders we’re beginning to see now.”

“Layers,” the ancient mused. “There will be layers, more and deeper, some planned minutely, some improvised, some coming to life despite never having been foreseen. What else happened that night?”

Megelin’s seekers had found nothing more solid than a thin rumor that his father had been seen over where the antique soldiers still hung on, consuming resources and informing the world of all the better ways they would do things if they were still in charge.

This rumor meant no more than scores just like it heard almost every day. Hammad al Nakir was nostalgic. Hammad al Nakir had forgotten the bad times. Hammad al Nakir wanted its old king back. Hammad al Nakir was trying to conjure him back from the realm of the dead.

“Fantasy or not, pursue that,” the Star Rider ordered. “We need to know what that sorcerer was doing while his familiar was entertaining idiots.”

The world shifted into an instant of total disorientation. Megelin and the twins were unsure why. The Star Rider’s admonition became a driving, throbbing obsession. They began to torment already touchy subjects more vigorously, trying to ferret out facts they might not recognize if they found them. They made plenty of new enemies.

The Empire Destroyer’s diversion not only fulfilled its design, it sparked ferocious resentments that had fermented quietly for years beneath the despair blanketing Al Rhemish.

…

Yasmid let Habibullah lead her to the meeting place. He had collected not only Elwas al-Souki and her favorites but Ibn Adim al-Dimishqi and his cronies. Al-Dimishqi was less obnoxious now that he was consumed by his audit but he remained a storm on the horizon. Inclusion in her conspiracy had not changed his ground state attitude.

The men seemed grim today. The news must be awful. She was not well. Every morning was miserable anymore.

She rejected the obvious explanation fiercely but each day made that a grander challenge at self-delusion.

Al-Souki’s stony visage collapsed into frightened concern. “Shining One! You’re so pale! You should have refused us.”

“Habibullah tells me I have no choice. I’m breathing. I have my obligations. Let’s get to it. What is the bad news?”

Elwas scowled at Habibullah. His anger failed to intimidate the old man, who said, “If our Lady’s health concerns you so much I suggest that you waste no time.”

Yasmid considered Habibullah’s rigid back. He was distressed. He had begun to suspect, she feared. He was too close. He must have asked the right questions in the right places. A stone tossed into a pond might vanish but surface ripples would still report its existence and passage.

Habibullah might not work out exactly who, when, or where, but ripples aplenty remained to tell him how.

Elwas said, “Habibullah gathered us because exciting things are happening in Al Rhemish. The sorcerer Varthlokkur sent his familiar to prance across the night sky there. Everyone believes the prodigy was a diversion. From what remains obscure. Nobody died. Nobody vanished. Nothing disappeared. If spells were cast or charms were laid on, that was done too subtly to be detected.”

“All interesting but important to me now, how? And why?”

Habibullah stated the obvious first. “Because Varthlokkur was behind it. Boldly. Yanking Megelin’s beard in public. It has to mean something serious. Varthlokkur never involves himself with Hammad al Nakir.”

“True enough.”

Imam al-Dimishqi said, “It signifies only because a grand minion of evil hopes we will waste time and energy worrying about what he is up to. While we sift shadows he will be up to something else. He has done whatever he set out to do that night.”

Elwas said, “Odd though it might sound coming from me, I agree with Ibn Adim.”

Yasmid demanded, “Because?” Elwas never agreed with al-Dimishqi. She suppressed the misery in her gut.

“We have friends in Al Rhemish. They report a brief-lived, soft rumor that Haroun bin Yousif visited Beloul ed-Adirl that night. The rumor didn’t last. Nothing else happened. But our friends promise that a mystery man did visit the old general, then another stranger came and took him away. The second visitor might have been the Empire Destroyer.”

Al-Dimishqi chuckled. “No doubt he had exactly the right number of eyes, ears, arms, and legs.”

Elwas made a two-handed gesture of accession. “The evidence is indeed that slim, Shining One. It is equally thin for a suggestion that Old Meddler turned up for a confab with Megelin right after. There are supposed eyewitnesses who won’t talk.”

Yasmid chose not to speak until she had had time to think. Then, “He visited Megelin directly?”

“Probably, but not for sure. It could be a rumor planted by somebody who doesn’t like him. But there’s definitely evidence that there were other visits. Megelin may be in the villain’s thrall.”

Al-Dimishqi agreed.

So even the fanatics now doubted El Murid’s angel.

How she wished that monster, the Star Rider, could be extinguished. There could be no truth more powerful than a reappearance of the angel while Old Meddler lay dead in the dust.

“Intriguing news, all of this,” she conceded. “But is it really the sea change Habibullah predicted when he dragged me from my sickbed?”

Al-Souki said, “We need you as the One Who Speaks for God.”

Suddenly, it felt like they were looking inside her, tapping into her thoughts and fears. Her stomach refused to let her be. She had a hard time giving a damn what anyone thought right now.

Past everything, and all the impossible morning misery-she was too damned old!-she was terrified. She could not hide this much longer. The world would then get very ugly indeed.

She rose. “If that is all…”

“That’s not everything,” Habibullah said. “We could have saved that till you felt better. The truth is… Only Elwas has heard this. The news came after I sent the call to assemble.”

Yasmid settled again, with a sigh. “This is the part that I won’t like. Right?”

Habibullah nodded. “This is that part. In trying to catch the ghost of Haroun bin Yousif, and to find out what Varthlokkur was up to, Megelin pushed a little too hard.”

Yasmid said, “There was an uprising.”

“Yes. It’s still going on.”

“What happened to Megelin?” Whatever else, he was her only child.

“I don’t know. The storm had only just begun when the news left Al Rhemish. It didn’t look good for those in charge, though. I should know more soon.”

Yasmid looked around. Each man showed mixed feelings, on her behalf and his own.

Megelin being pulled down should be good for everyone but Megelin and Old Meddler. No one was set to replace the King. No one knew who an eligible successor might be. Everyone had gotten sick of succession squabbles when the Royalists were still in exile. Once Haroun named Megelin to succeed him the question had gone away. The boy had been young. He had had time to produce an heir. He was still young enough but seemed determined to avoid that royal responsibility-along with most of the rest.

Yasmid asked, “My part in this will be what?” She suspected that Habibullah wanted to make her the next king.

She giggled, startling everyone. Habibullah considered her with narrowed eyes. She drove the hysteria down into the darkness. “You have given me a lot to digest. Permit me to return to my rest. I will say something the moment I’m sure that I’ve put together a reasoned, rational argument.” As an afterthought, she added, “I’ll have to talk to my father, too.”

That, evidently, was a good thing to say.

Habibullah began to shoo the men out.

Al-Dimishqi would not be shooed. “Lady, I have a matter that needs discussion as soon as possible.”

…

Yasmid sat down again. “Adim, I presume this is occasioned by your work in my father’s tent.”

“Yes, Lady.” Al-Dimishqi glanced at Habibullah, who did nothing to conceal his displeasure. “At the risk of offering offense, I’d like to keep this between us two. If you want to include others afterward that is your prerogative.”

Ah. So. He wanted Habibullah out of the way. That rattled Yasmid. What was he up to?

She stifled the fear, put on her woman-of-iron mask. “It has to do with something you found over there?”

“It does, Lady. It goes beyond venality and criminal behavior.”

“Very well. Step outside, Habibullah. And please don’t eavesdrop. But stay close enough to respond if I scream.”

“As you wish.” The old man showed her the ghost of a bow. He knew she would pass on whatever al-Dimishqi told her.

“He won’t go far,” Yasmid promised al-Dimishqi after Habibullah stepped out.

“You misjudge me badly, Lady. This truly is a critical matter.”

“Please be quick, then. I am feeling…” More than just awful. She was entirely alone with a man who did not approve of her at all. There were no witnesses to her propriety, not even a slave.

“Yes. Of course. I don’t want to intrude upon your illness. This, then, is the matter. We found a cache of moldy registers from the earliest days of the movement. Most are in your father’s hand. A few were recorded by your mother. And there are two courtesy of the Scourge of God.”

“Wow!” She was amazed. Those might be important historical documents.

“Indeed, wow. Though the registers are in bad shape. They’ll be more valuable as keepsakes than as records-though I did see some interesting short notes on daily thoughts that did not get into your father’s formal writings.”

“Did these records produce some remarkable revelation? Or something painfully heretical? Is that your point?”

“Not at all, Lady. What was decipherable only reinforced my faith. The real matter I want to bring up is, what happened to the thunder amulet that your father got from his angel?”

Yasmid frowned, frankly puzzled. She had steeled herself for a confrontation. Al-Dimishqi was rambling about something more legend than… “Oh! That amulet! That amulet? The one he could use to call down the lightning or make boulders fall from the sky? That turned the tide at the Five Circles and on the salt pan?”

“That amulet, Lady. Yes.”

“It was lost.”

“Lady?”

“He lost it, Adim. For real and forever, to a western soldier after he went down outside Libiannin. The plunderers took him for just another dead warrior. My father spent years trying to find it again. He failed. Even his angel couldn’t trace it. You’d think he could have found it if it had survived. So it must have been broken up and melted down. But why are you asking about it?”

Al-Dimishqi seemed stricken. “The journal… Is all that really true? I was sure I’d stumbled onto something that could change everything.”

“You may have, just not the way you hoped. Find out more. But I can tell you this: the real amulet would not have been missed by the thieves who went through my father’s stuff. It was gold and weighed a good half a pound. And it had gemstones set in it. The angel didn’t want it to be missed.”

Al-Dimishqi sagged. “I am heartbroken. I was so excited. I was sure we were about to bring a powerful tool back to the holy struggle.”

Yasmid winced, pushed the pain down. “There may have been something. It might even have been given to my father by his angel. My father may have come to believe that it was the original amulet. I know he hated that thing. He sometimes risked disaster so he didn’t have to use it… After what happened outside Libiannin-another one of his narrow, miraculous escapes from a situation that should have killed him-my father deluded himself about a lot of things. So Habibullah tells me. He witnessed most of my father’s descent. I did not. I was elsewhere. So talk to Habibullah. He may be able to put you on to the real story.”

Al-Dimishqi’s shoulders slumped further. “I apologize for wasting your time. I will go, now.”

“No waste, Adim. Never. You give cause to reflect on secret history. And… Perhaps you did come across something important that you didn’t recognize because you jumped to this conclusion. Do keep after it. And do keep me posted.”

“As you will, so shall it be.”

Yasmid watched him go, hoping that all this would keep him from thinking about her health long enough for her and Habibullah to find a strategy that would get her through this intact.

It would take a miracle. If one occurred it would be the old man’s doing. She was capable of nothing but panic anymore.

…

Yasmid was back in her private audience, Habibullah attending, now with women watching from beyond hearing. She said, “I have to go get father’s opinion now that I opened my big mouth.” She was badly distracted after her discussion with al-Dimishqi. Had Haroun gotten hold of something of great potency? Had finding that been his true purpose for coming to Sebil el Selib?

Her stomach taunted her anew.

“You will, yes. But that is a necessary gesture, the more so because we have declared the Disciple almost recovered.” Habibullah watched closely. “Sharper questions would be asked if you did not consult him.” He knew al-Dimishqi had rattled her somehow.

“I know. But his advice is useless. He doesn’t realize that years have passed. If we bring him out to show off he’ll ruin everything by refusing to recognize that the world has changed.”

“True. But you have to go through the motions. He had to go through motions himself even when he was his most popular. Those who place their lives and honor at your disposal have expectations and have the right to have them. If you fail to meet those expectations you could face what seems to have caught up with Megelin.”

Yasmid grunted, not because she agreed but because her breakfast was making a bid to return.

She controlled it yet again.

So softly she barely heard him, her lifelong friend-companion-guardworshipper asked, “Is there something you need to tell me?”

He knew.

How long before everyone did? How long till the bad end came?

With marvelous caution Habibullah observed, “All is not lost. You are a married woman.”

Who had a husband only she loved, whom her people all wanted to stay dead.

She shuddered, afraid.

“We will cope,” Habibullah promised.

She could not believe him. Her hours were numbered.

…

“I’m just not comfortable,” Mist said. “But there is no undoing what’s already done.” She tried to follow three things at once: Scalza manipulating his scrying bowl so he could spy on people at Sebil el Selib; Ekaterina and Ethrian, just staying close enough to warm one another with their presence; and Haroun bin Yousif, who was straining to follow developments in Al Rhemish. Skilled as he had become, Scalza had difficulties due to distance, and had no sound. When they did anything other than vegetate Ethrian and Eka usually only observed the shogi wars. Bin Yousif spent a lot of time muttering and being confused. He was not pleased about the troubles in Al Rhemish but could not form a solid opinion because he did not understand them, either. Nor was he even a little relaxed in the company of so many strangers, some of whom had held him prisoner not so long ago.

Mist was uncomfortable with his presence. Varthlokkur had not been forthcoming on how bin Yousif fit his own form of the Plan.

There were several of those, puffing along in parallel. The upside was, if Old Meddler knocked one down others would keep on rolling. The downside was, she and Varthlokkur kept tripping over one another’s feet.

…

Haroun concluded that Varthlokkur was right. Most of these people were supposed to be dead. He had been shocked to learn that some were still alive, Ragnarson in particular-though he had gone off to create excitement in Kavelin.

Despite explanations from Varthlokkur and the eastern empress, Haroun remained unsure where he stood. Mainly, he did not understand why they were so determined. Why try to thwart the storm?

The Star Rider was weather. Historical and social weather. You planned ahead and did what you could to endure. Prepared, you could ride it out. You did not tempt fate by trying to control the storm.

Old Meddler was no deity but he was the closest thing Haroun ever saw. The God of his childhood was a god of storms.

He could never be comfortable around so many people, in such a tight space. He did especially poorly with children. They recalled times he would rather forget.

The insanity in Al Rhemish was most worrisome. Angry people kept destroying things, venting frustration caused by years of incompetence. Men of standing kept their heads down and their mouths shut. Beloul barricaded his door once Lalla eliminated outside evidence that the place was occupied by a hero of the old days. He had chosen to weather the storm, then live with whatever coalesced under subsequent rainbows.

Haroun did not miss the parallels between Beloul’s attitude and his own.

…

There were no hours of the day when either Mist, Lord Ssu-ma, Lord Kuo, or Lord Yuan were not engaged in advancing some fraction of the eastern plan. Lord Yuan worked harder than any of the others. Their scheme was more complex than Varthlokkur’s, which risked little more than self and family, huge enough in his mind but trivial by rational comparison.

Another transfer portal arrived, again by means of the Unborn. It would connect to the transfer stream but none of its parts would be tainted by having passed through that poorly understood realm. So Lord Yuan had decreed.

Grinding her teeth against secret panic, Mist instructed Lord Yuan to key that portal to the life harmonics of Lord Kuo and the Old Man so they could escape but no one and nothing wicked could follow.

A third portal arrived. Mist had it keyed to Nepanthe and Ethrian. Ethrian and the Old Man were her most valuable assets. Scalza and Ekaterina were precious but did not have the power to save an empire. Their mother had to consider countless millions of lives.

She did not suppress maternal emotion indefinitely. When Radeachar delivered the next escape portal she had it keyed to her children. The elderly Tervola executed his instructions sullenly, making it clear that he thought her mind was clouded by personal concerns.

She had the escape portals provided with secondary keys that would allow selected others to use them if their primaries were not. Those designated as secondary did not see much hope for themselves if Old Meddler did launch a sudden thunder and lightning assault.

The mind specialists worked hours as long as anyone. They concluded that forming a useful information inventory necessitated rooting secrets out of minds other than those of Ethrian and the Old Man. There were three surviving witnesses to Old Meddler’s raid on the Wind Tower. The Old Man was the least reliable. The others were both available.

Varthlokkur came close to physical confrontation with Mist when those two proposed the research. He wanted no return to that night’s emotional storms. The Empress demurred.

Once again Varthlokkur was prepared to round on his allies and chuck everything down a well in order to protect his wife. As he defined protection. In truth, he was striving to appease his own insecurities.

His memories of that night were not pleasant. He thought that Nepanthe had suppressed hers. He did not want them resurrected.

But she snapped, “Varth, stop that right now! Am I an infant? You wouldn’t treat Eka or Scalza with the kind of condescension you show me.”

Startled, “Darling…”

“Stop! I made it past my fourth birthday. Yes. I’m more emotional than some. I get upset about things that don’t bother other people. But I am a big girl.” She touched his cheek gently. She did appreciate his concern. “I remember more than I want. But some of it might be useful-if I let the experts dig.”

“But…”

“Stop! I won’t hear any more nonsense.”

He suppressed a flood of the blistering, unreasoning rage that had swept him to the brink with King Bragi. That anger, unrestrained, was the reason today’s ugly world had come to be.

He clamped his jaw, went on with his work. He spent time with the mental specialists as needed. They proved deft at panning nuggets he did not know lay hidden in the lowest sands of his mind.

He left Fangdred, though, so he would not have to watch while Nepanthe endured the process.

He was sure he would lose his composure if he stayed.

He took bin Yousif with him.